2021 Closes

 Time for my last blog post of 2021, a year that started badly and hasn’t much improved IMHO. There are multiple stories for this year that will be recounted in history but in my view, the two major ones remain an attempted coup by Trump and Trumpists in January and the continued ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic with new variants (Delta and Omicron) making their appearances. 

The conspiracy by Donald Trump and his confederates continues to emerge from the dark shadows where it has been concealed by ongoing lies and propaganda. There is no Great Steal; that is a lie. The election of 2021 was won by President Joe Biden. Trump and his criminal cronies can lie all they want but the January 6 Committee is bringing to light a conspiracy to overturn the election and install Trump as a dictator. The idea was that the insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January would result in a bloody confrontation with leftists and that would allow Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807. The military would close the Capitol and by preventing Congress from counting the electoral votes by the end of the day would ensure that Trump could claim the election null and void. What Trump and his cabal did not count on was that the only people creating mayhem that day would be his cult. They also did not count on the abundant records of that day, much of it via phone calls and texts, becoming available to the investigators. Congress is reconvening at the start of the New Year. We will hopefully have much more evidence seeing the light of day after this. I do hope the media drops the idea of “fairness” in its reporting, too. Let’s call this what it was – a failed attempt at a coup to overturn the U.S. Government.

The second great story of 2021 is of course the Covid-19 pandemic. 2021 began with hope fostered by the introduction of effective vaccines that work against the coronavirus. While they do not produce sterilizing immunity, they dramatically reduce the risk of severe disease, hospitalization, and death. In concert with the use of masks and improved ventilation, as well as avoidance of crowds, we hoped for cases, hospitalizations, and deaths to come under control. Instead, we see this:

 

These are Covid-19 cases in the U.S. per the NYT, expressed as 7-day averages. The first two bumps at the left are the early spread. In 2020, followed by the major rise in cases in winter 2020-21. Vaccines began rolling out in December 2020 and were really ramped up by the Biden administration in spring of 2021. By June 2020 it looked as though we would be able to control this beast but two issues were in the way. The first was that vaccine uptake stalled with a substantial minority of Americans saying they would not take a vaccine. The anti-vaccine forces were allied with the Trumpists leaving many parts of the U.S. vulnerable. The second factor was the Delta variant which was both more transmissible and more virulent than the original forms of SARS-CoV-2. By late summer we were in a major Delta surge. That was slowly subsiding until Omicron exploded in November. The Omicron story remains unfinished. In the U.S. as can be seen on the right side of the graph, Omicron continues its spectacular rise, exceeding Delta. In South Africa, Omicron cases are now plummeting; that may happen here too. We just don’t know yet. The best advice is get vaccinated and boosted, wear a good mask (KN-95 or better), ventilate well, and avoid crowds. Given the mass psychosis of the anti-vaccine and anti-mask minority, we are likely to have a rough several months ahead at least.

To everyone: stay safe, protect yourselves, and protect others. Getting through this requires a community effort. Rugged individualism just creates fresh replication material for SARS-CoV-2.