Tuesday Covid update.
As expected yesterday’s data was a bit wonky as the state workers returned from a 4 day holiday. Nationally, the new cases/day blew through any previous high and came in at 395k which is 100% higher than any previous day since February 2020. Huge caveat on this number: National reporting dumped 4 days of cases into one day. For example, nationally it was reported CT had over 14k cases but this is a 4 day total. You may have seen scare reports about Florida at over 125k cases, but that is a 7 day total. As is now the norm for omicron, serious cases refuse to move and still stuck at 0.10%.
State level: notable is Georgia which in less than a week reached 70% of its delta wave, YET deaths continue to go down with 7 day average at 8 compared to 112 at delta peak. Other states similar. BTW over 70% of the cases in Florida come from Dade and Broward counties.
One final note on long term data. The first waves in spring 2020 were low numbers but that was before the infamous PCR test took hold. The alpha wave of a year ago had a full-width half maximum (FWHM) of 80 days, the delta wave had a FWHM of 40 days. Given the South Africa experience, the omicron wave could be over quickly.
Now off to play some golf with my daughter.
My wife and I thought about living full time on a Cruise Ship but thought better of it. Health care is really crappy on the ships, and expensive. And the real clincher is that we could not have out cats with us.
I’ve participated in discussion regarding living on cruise ships as well. Inadequate medical facility is the biggest issue. Think of the medical facility as a slight improvement to your HS nurse’s station. There’s a doctor instead of a nurse, and they can prescribe medicine they have available, but if you need emergent care, then you’ll need to leave the ship.
I think the real answer is the most common for anything: moderation. We met several couples that travel on cruises for a month at a time. Uses my own cost estimates for a balcony, a month would be about $10,000 for a couple, not including packages (drinks, excursions, etc.). The way those work is when the cruise comes to an end, the extended travelers may keep their room (as noted in the video, you have to book it for the period you want), and the main advantage is they only need to exit the boat and go through Customs and Immigration to reboard. They don’t need to take luggage off when they do this.
This interested us enough to start looking into back to back cruises, particularly the relocation cruises. However, covid policy has kept us from cruising since the pandemic began. We are not afraid of getting sick, but we have no interest in having a miserable time on a vacation wearing a mask in hot humid conditions.
I do not think this is in my future as my wife is afraid of large cruise ships. The sight of them makes her gasp. It’s sort-of an “uncanny valley” thing to her. She just can’t perceive how horizontal skyscrapers can float.
There are cruise ships which are functionally floating condos. Residents buy their room and then vote, like a HOA, on where the boats goes for the next year.
Living full time on a cruise ship for me would be like living in the 9th circle of hell.
The CDC seems to have revised down their “nowcast” Omicron proportions for the week of Dec. 12 to Dec. 18, moving it 73% to 22%. This past week (Dec. 19 to Dec. 25) they’re currently saying that Omicron made up 58.6% of new cases. So it seems as if Omicron is still rapidly displacing Delta, but perhaps not as quickly as we were being lead to believe.
I can’t think of cruise ships without thinking of schlock.
I think the real answer is the most common for anything: moderation. We met several couples that travel on cruises for a month at a time. Uses my own cost estimates for a balcony, a month would be about $10,000 for a couple, not including packages (drinks, excursions, etc.).
Aw c’mon. Wouldn’t a chance to see Sonny Bono do heavy metal make it worth the price?
There’s a doctor instead of a nurse, and they can prescribe medicine they have available, but if you need emergent care, then you’ll need to leave the ship.
Some relations of ours were dumped off a cruise ship in 1975 because the wife needed immediate surgery for appendicitis. The surgery was done in Buenaventura, Colombia. Somehow, she survived the hospital and he survived the local hoodlums.
One can get the same effect without leaving home by watching the Love Boat channel 24/7 on pluto.tv. It’s free, and it features everybody who was anybody and everybody who was nobody in the late 1970s.
I HAVE WONDERED. I have tasted the realities of the cruise ship. To have to LIVE on one would make me want to consider life choices that would put me in the penitentiary instead.
My last and only cruise was to Alaska by inland passage [sic!]. The ship struck a rock deep on its hull on the way back from Glacier Bay and we had to practice lifeboat drills and re-route the ship to go outside the inside passage in order to get back quickly to Port Hardy which was at the northern tip of Vancouver Island….this because the ship was taking on water and needed rapid repairs.
and it features everybody who was anybody and everybody who was nobody in the late 1970s.
Ronald Reagan’s daughters landed three appearances between them over the show’s run.
My last and only cruise was to Alaska by inland passage [sic!]. The ship struck a rock
So that’s where Capt. Hazelwood found work.
The only ships I have ever been on, were those of the Gray Funnel Line.
Haze Gray and Under Way!
What about DIY (Do It Yourself, not DIE) cruising? This alternative lifestyle is much more affordable — provided you’re adventurous and have a skill-building mindset.
How affordable? After investment ($100 to $150K in a dozen year old refinished 40 foot sailboat), reliable cost of living data says $35,000 per year is median annual expense.
The range goes to a low as $25,000 for serious home-made provisioners who eschew bars and restaurants.
But the Mediterranean costs more, $50K minimum.
Last winter, a retired 60ish couple from the UK video blogged getting out of lockdown in Spain, heading for the island of Majorca.
She was a BBC newsreader in Southern UK, and he had done filming of some kind (videography or documentary), in fact, both for the Beeb.
I don’t recall if the spring 2021 Covid situation forced them to halt their adventures or not. But their YouTube channel was quite excellent edutainment. And for us here, very age appropriate.
The cruising lifestyle is affordable, and given savings or pensions, allows investments to grow as you travel the world. A middle class and affordable luxury compared to the above thread video.
The original sailing cruising couple is from Canada, and occupies a storied two decades long place on cable TV. And the past decade has seen a young crop of couples and the odd family join in video-blogging the life and journey, typically on Youtube.
Here’s a 21 minute look at Ryan and Sophie Sailing, a late 30s couple from Iowa and Normandy, France, respectively. The topic? Wintering in Spain, or doing boat projects with an archly comic eye — and then a look at “the sea of plastic” — and no, it’s nothing like you can expect! So, be amused and informed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICHSlswVMZk&list=PLJQxS9zIF1Wm6LpeIBOaMKxLtEDVRTN0U
Ryan and Sophie are currently making their third Atlantic crossing on their small sail boat, back to the Caribbean, where they were when Covid-19 first hit.
Cruise ships are about as appealing to me as luxury hotels. I prefer smaller more homelike places without all the pseudo-luxuries. I am very content with no celebrity clothes or diamonds. And these stupid shoes with 7-inch heels are for idiots.
Also, when I visit other countries, I like to walk around and explore for myself. I get to see what it is like for normal people who live there.
Live on a cruise ship? If you’re healthy and wealthy enough, it might not be bad for a while.
I’ve done a few cruises – some at Uncle Sam’s expense. The commercial ones are a bit nicer. But, as the video points out, the medical care issues are a bummer. We were in Costa Rica on a cruise. A lady slipped and broke her leg on rain-slickened concrete while on a shore excursion. When we got back to the ship, her luggage was on the pier. Don’t know how she recovered. I assume she got decent care in Costa Rica. But it reinforced the need for medical care insurance that includes evacuation flights if necessary. The cost of that insurance for an older person for a year could add a couple of thousand or more to the annual costs.
If you cruised only in the Caribbean, you might be able to arrange for medical and dental work in Florida when the ship is in port there. But it would be a hassle. I would get bored by nothing but Caribbean islands and Florida for years on end. Not to mention the same food, same bars, and same sort of entertainment. I get bored with those on the two thirty-day cruises we have been on. I like three things aboard cruise ships – their gyms, promenade decks, and salad bars.
They sometimes have educational programs that are worthwhile. On a cruise to Tahiti, they offered up a lecture series on Captain Cook, Pacific exploration, and the origin and expansion of the Polynesians. I enjoyed that.
My wife enjoys cruising. It gives her a break from cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Also, she likes to get dressed up for dinner. That’s fun for her.
Cruise ships have aways been havens for contagious diseases. Especially Norovirus, a food borne illness. They have had sanitizer all over the ship and special precautions are taken with the food. Still, people catch Norovirus. Also, colds and flu-like infections are common. You sit-in the show lounge and can hear people coughing and sneezing. I’ve gotten miserable colds on a couple of occasions. So, with Covid-19 I don’t see how they can prevent it from infecting people – especially in the dining rooms and show lounges. Not going on another cruise until this virus is rendered relatively harmless.
The death of an absolute giant in football and broadcasting.
“When Kamala Harris joined [Cory] Booker’s crusade to protect black supremacists from the FBI, she helped pave the way for the brutal killings carried out by these racist killers and terrorists.”
I don’t think I’ll ever go on a typical cruise. Maybe on a river cruise, though – the Danube would interest me.
When I was traveling in northern Michigan a few years ago, I ran across a fellow who was one of these folks who cruise the Great Lakes in their sailboat for much of the year. That was a pleasant conversation. He was of Irish ancestry, I forget where he said he was from on the land. But we met in DeTour Village and he convinced me to take the ferry over to Drummond Island to look around for an afternoon. That kind of maritime life is something I could sink my teeth into, perhaps. It’s probably like that in the Chesapeake, Cape Cod, that sort of thing.
I lived near Denver when John Madden was the Oakland Raider coach. The rivalry between Oakland and Denver was fierce. Madden was quite the character. When a referee would make a call he didn’t like, he would sometimes throw himself on the ground and pound his fists. The fans would go wild. It was a drama, and he knew how to act to rile up the Denver fans.
Tom Brookshier was a friend of mine from college. He went on to play in the pros and then do broadcast work. He once told me that the league liked coaches and players who could rile up the fans – a bit like pro wrestling. It’s not as fake as wrestling, but they still know what keeps the fans coming in is personalities that they either love or hate. John Madden was one of those personalities. As a broadcaster he became loved by many and became synonymous with NFL football. A big man who lived a big life. May he RIP.
Former amateur boxer Harry Reid has also gone to that exercise machine in the Beyond: “Reid was born in Searchlight [Nevada] and raised in a small cabin without indoor plumbing. His alcoholic father killed himself at age 58, The Associated Press reported, and Reid swam at a local brothel and hitchhiked to high school [curious sentence construction, no?–ed.]. . . .
Reid earned the undying enmity of many Republicans when he falsely claimed on the chamber floor during the 2012 presidential campaign that GOP nominee Mitt Romney had not paid any taxes during the previous decade. Reid never retracted the claim or apologized for slandering Romney. When asked about the accusation in a 2015 CNN interview, Reid retorted: ‘Romney didn’t win, did he?’
The following year, Reid tripled down on his scurrilous claim in an interview with the Washington Post, calling it ‘one of the best things I’ve ever done.'”
Shallow reporting.
They could have at least added a blurb about how Reid was beaten up (nuked?) by his brother—or should that be “took a bad fall”? or “had an unfortunate tete-a-tete with a door”?—maybe with a perp photo or two…
Nice to know, though, that Nevada brothels in fact double as health clubs—full service providers, indeed—though I guess the state does have a reputation to maintain…. Reminds one of that LV brothel-owner/political candidate for something or other (but aren’t they all?) who, I believe, was actually elected but had the decency to kick the bucket before assuming office…IIRC (though I may not have that story straight)…. Shades of Nelson Rockefeller, who, I guess one could say, went down swinging.
(…Alas I keep forgetting that one should not speak ill of dead gangsters…)
P.S. And here it is: all ‘ye need to know (from the link in the previous comment):
‘President Joe Biden said in a statement that if Reid “gave you his word, you could bank on it.’
…and…
‘Current Senate Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called Reid “my leader, my mentor, and one of my dearest friends.”‘
After completing his schooling, I think Reid practiced law for about nine years in what was then a 3d tier city. IIRC, he was a solo practitioner. Otherwise, he was paid public sector salaries.. How does someone with that sort of work history end up with a net worth of around $6.7 million (as of 2010)?
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Tuesday Covid update.
As expected yesterday’s data was a bit wonky as the state workers returned from a 4 day holiday. Nationally, the new cases/day blew through any previous high and came in at 395k which is 100% higher than any previous day since February 2020. Huge caveat on this number: National reporting dumped 4 days of cases into one day. For example, nationally it was reported CT had over 14k cases but this is a 4 day total. You may have seen scare reports about Florida at over 125k cases, but that is a 7 day total. As is now the norm for omicron, serious cases refuse to move and still stuck at 0.10%.
State level: notable is Georgia which in less than a week reached 70% of its delta wave, YET deaths continue to go down with 7 day average at 8 compared to 112 at delta peak. Other states similar. BTW over 70% of the cases in Florida come from Dade and Broward counties.
One final note on long term data. The first waves in spring 2020 were low numbers but that was before the infamous PCR test took hold. The alpha wave of a year ago had a full-width half maximum (FWHM) of 80 days, the delta wave had a FWHM of 40 days. Given the South Africa experience, the omicron wave could be over quickly.
Now off to play some golf with my daughter.
My wife and I thought about living full time on a Cruise Ship but thought better of it. Health care is really crappy on the ships, and expensive. And the real clincher is that we could not have out cats with us.
I’ve participated in discussion regarding living on cruise ships as well. Inadequate medical facility is the biggest issue. Think of the medical facility as a slight improvement to your HS nurse’s station. There’s a doctor instead of a nurse, and they can prescribe medicine they have available, but if you need emergent care, then you’ll need to leave the ship.
I think the real answer is the most common for anything: moderation. We met several couples that travel on cruises for a month at a time. Uses my own cost estimates for a balcony, a month would be about $10,000 for a couple, not including packages (drinks, excursions, etc.). The way those work is when the cruise comes to an end, the extended travelers may keep their room (as noted in the video, you have to book it for the period you want), and the main advantage is they only need to exit the boat and go through Customs and Immigration to reboard. They don’t need to take luggage off when they do this.
This interested us enough to start looking into back to back cruises, particularly the relocation cruises. However, covid policy has kept us from cruising since the pandemic began. We are not afraid of getting sick, but we have no interest in having a miserable time on a vacation wearing a mask in hot humid conditions.
I do not think this is in my future as my wife is afraid of large cruise ships. The sight of them makes her gasp. It’s sort-of an “uncanny valley” thing to her. She just can’t perceive how horizontal skyscrapers can float.
This is a funny because it’s true.
https://twitter.com/ryanlongcomedy/status/1475499710832123910
There are cruise ships which are functionally floating condos. Residents buy their room and then vote, like a HOA, on where the boats goes for the next year.
Living full time on a cruise ship for me would be like living in the 9th circle of hell.
The CDC seems to have revised down their “nowcast” Omicron proportions for the week of Dec. 12 to Dec. 18, moving it 73% to 22%. This past week (Dec. 19 to Dec. 25) they’re currently saying that Omicron made up 58.6% of new cases. So it seems as if Omicron is still rapidly displacing Delta, but perhaps not as quickly as we were being lead to believe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYgvqxuHPVM
I can’t think of cruise ships without thinking of schlock.
I think the real answer is the most common for anything: moderation. We met several couples that travel on cruises for a month at a time. Uses my own cost estimates for a balcony, a month would be about $10,000 for a couple, not including packages (drinks, excursions, etc.).
Aw c’mon. Wouldn’t a chance to see Sonny Bono do heavy metal make it worth the price?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UimX_j0O7dQ
There’s a doctor instead of a nurse, and they can prescribe medicine they have available, but if you need emergent care, then you’ll need to leave the ship.
Some relations of ours were dumped off a cruise ship in 1975 because the wife needed immediate surgery for appendicitis. The surgery was done in Buenaventura, Colombia. Somehow, she survived the hospital and he survived the local hoodlums.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvJIaNsf_bY&t=85s
Neo’s never done a post on Lee Israel.
One can get the same effect without leaving home by watching the Love Boat channel 24/7 on pluto.tv. It’s free, and it features everybody who was anybody and everybody who was nobody in the late 1970s.
I HAVE WONDERED. I have tasted the realities of the cruise ship. To have to LIVE on one would make me want to consider life choices that would put me in the penitentiary instead.
https://americandigest.org/cruising-off-baja/
Omicron is a gift from God.
It is all collapsing.
My last and only cruise was to Alaska by inland passage [sic!]. The ship struck a rock deep on its hull on the way back from Glacier Bay and we had to practice lifeboat drills and re-route the ship to go outside the inside passage in order to get back quickly to Port Hardy which was at the northern tip of Vancouver Island….this because the ship was taking on water and needed rapid repairs.
and it features everybody who was anybody and everybody who was nobody in the late 1970s.
Ronald Reagan’s daughters landed three appearances between them over the show’s run.
My last and only cruise was to Alaska by inland passage [sic!]. The ship struck a rock
So that’s where Capt. Hazelwood found work.
The only ships I have ever been on, were those of the Gray Funnel Line.
Haze Gray and Under Way!
What about DIY (Do It Yourself, not DIE) cruising? This alternative lifestyle is much more affordable — provided you’re adventurous and have a skill-building mindset.
How affordable? After investment ($100 to $150K in a dozen year old refinished 40 foot sailboat), reliable cost of living data says $35,000 per year is median annual expense.
The range goes to a low as $25,000 for serious home-made provisioners who eschew bars and restaurants.
But the Mediterranean costs more, $50K minimum.
Last winter, a retired 60ish couple from the UK video blogged getting out of lockdown in Spain, heading for the island of Majorca.
She was a BBC newsreader in Southern UK, and he had done filming of some kind (videography or documentary), in fact, both for the Beeb.
I don’t recall if the spring 2021 Covid situation forced them to halt their adventures or not. But their YouTube channel was quite excellent edutainment. And for us here, very age appropriate.
The cruising lifestyle is affordable, and given savings or pensions, allows investments to grow as you travel the world. A middle class and affordable luxury compared to the above thread video.
The original sailing cruising couple is from Canada, and occupies a storied two decades long place on cable TV. And the past decade has seen a young crop of couples and the odd family join in video-blogging the life and journey, typically on Youtube.
Here’s a 21 minute look at Ryan and Sophie Sailing, a late 30s couple from Iowa and Normandy, France, respectively. The topic? Wintering in Spain, or doing boat projects with an archly comic eye — and then a look at “the sea of plastic” — and no, it’s nothing like you can expect! So, be amused and informed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICHSlswVMZk&list=PLJQxS9zIF1Wm6LpeIBOaMKxLtEDVRTN0U
Ryan and Sophie are currently making their third Atlantic crossing on their small sail boat, back to the Caribbean, where they were when Covid-19 first hit.
Cruise ships are about as appealing to me as luxury hotels. I prefer smaller more homelike places without all the pseudo-luxuries. I am very content with no celebrity clothes or diamonds. And these stupid shoes with 7-inch heels are for idiots.
Also, when I visit other countries, I like to walk around and explore for myself. I get to see what it is like for normal people who live there.
Live on a cruise ship? If you’re healthy and wealthy enough, it might not be bad for a while.
I’ve done a few cruises – some at Uncle Sam’s expense. The commercial ones are a bit nicer. But, as the video points out, the medical care issues are a bummer. We were in Costa Rica on a cruise. A lady slipped and broke her leg on rain-slickened concrete while on a shore excursion. When we got back to the ship, her luggage was on the pier. Don’t know how she recovered. I assume she got decent care in Costa Rica. But it reinforced the need for medical care insurance that includes evacuation flights if necessary. The cost of that insurance for an older person for a year could add a couple of thousand or more to the annual costs.
If you cruised only in the Caribbean, you might be able to arrange for medical and dental work in Florida when the ship is in port there. But it would be a hassle. I would get bored by nothing but Caribbean islands and Florida for years on end. Not to mention the same food, same bars, and same sort of entertainment. I get bored with those on the two thirty-day cruises we have been on. I like three things aboard cruise ships – their gyms, promenade decks, and salad bars.
They sometimes have educational programs that are worthwhile. On a cruise to Tahiti, they offered up a lecture series on Captain Cook, Pacific exploration, and the origin and expansion of the Polynesians. I enjoyed that.
My wife enjoys cruising. It gives her a break from cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Also, she likes to get dressed up for dinner. That’s fun for her.
Cruise ships have aways been havens for contagious diseases. Especially Norovirus, a food borne illness. They have had sanitizer all over the ship and special precautions are taken with the food. Still, people catch Norovirus. Also, colds and flu-like infections are common. You sit-in the show lounge and can hear people coughing and sneezing. I’ve gotten miserable colds on a couple of occasions. So, with Covid-19 I don’t see how they can prevent it from infecting people – especially in the dining rooms and show lounges. Not going on another cruise until this virus is rendered relatively harmless.
The death of an absolute giant in football and broadcasting.
https://twitter.com/NFL345/status/1475981872001867781
“When Kamala Harris joined [Cory] Booker’s crusade to protect black supremacists from the FBI, she helped pave the way for the brutal killings carried out by these racist killers and terrorists.”
https://www.danielgreenfield.org/2021/12/kamala-stopped-fbi-from-monitoring.html
I don’t think I’ll ever go on a typical cruise. Maybe on a river cruise, though – the Danube would interest me.
When I was traveling in northern Michigan a few years ago, I ran across a fellow who was one of these folks who cruise the Great Lakes in their sailboat for much of the year. That was a pleasant conversation. He was of Irish ancestry, I forget where he said he was from on the land. But we met in DeTour Village and he convinced me to take the ferry over to Drummond Island to look around for an afternoon. That kind of maritime life is something I could sink my teeth into, perhaps. It’s probably like that in the Chesapeake, Cape Cod, that sort of thing.
I lived near Denver when John Madden was the Oakland Raider coach. The rivalry between Oakland and Denver was fierce. Madden was quite the character. When a referee would make a call he didn’t like, he would sometimes throw himself on the ground and pound his fists. The fans would go wild. It was a drama, and he knew how to act to rile up the Denver fans.
Tom Brookshier was a friend of mine from college. He went on to play in the pros and then do broadcast work. He once told me that the league liked coaches and players who could rile up the fans – a bit like pro wrestling. It’s not as fake as wrestling, but they still know what keeps the fans coming in is personalities that they either love or hate. John Madden was one of those personalities. As a broadcaster he became loved by many and became synonymous with NFL football. A big man who lived a big life. May he RIP.
Former amateur boxer Harry Reid has also gone to that exercise machine in the Beyond: “Reid was born in Searchlight [Nevada] and raised in a small cabin without indoor plumbing. His alcoholic father killed himself at age 58, The Associated Press reported, and Reid swam at a local brothel and hitchhiked to high school [curious sentence construction, no?–ed.]. . . .
Reid earned the undying enmity of many Republicans when he falsely claimed on the chamber floor during the 2012 presidential campaign that GOP nominee Mitt Romney had not paid any taxes during the previous decade. Reid never retracted the claim or apologized for slandering Romney. When asked about the accusation in a 2015 CNN interview, Reid retorted: ‘Romney didn’t win, did he?’
The following year, Reid tripled down on his scurrilous claim in an interview with the Washington Post, calling it ‘one of the best things I’ve ever done.'”
https://nypost.com/2021/12/28/former-senate-majority-leader-harry-reid-passes-away-at-82/
Shallow reporting.
They could have at least added a blurb about how Reid was beaten up (nuked?) by his brother—or should that be “took a bad fall”? or “had an unfortunate tete-a-tete with a door”?—maybe with a perp photo or two…
Nice to know, though, that Nevada brothels in fact double as health clubs—full service providers, indeed—though I guess the state does have a reputation to maintain…. Reminds one of that LV brothel-owner/political candidate for something or other (but aren’t they all?) who, I believe, was actually elected but had the decency to kick the bucket before assuming office…IIRC (though I may not have that story straight)…. Shades of Nelson Rockefeller, who, I guess one could say, went down swinging.
(…Alas I keep forgetting that one should not speak ill of dead gangsters…)
P.S. And here it is: all ‘ye need to know (from the link in the previous comment):
‘President Joe Biden said in a statement that if Reid “gave you his word, you could bank on it.’
…and…
‘Current Senate Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called Reid “my leader, my mentor, and one of my dearest friends.”‘
After completing his schooling, I think Reid practiced law for about nine years in what was then a 3d tier city. IIRC, he was a solo practitioner. Otherwise, he was paid public sector salaries.. How does someone with that sort of work history end up with a net worth of around $6.7 million (as of 2010)?