Chutzpah, Thy Name Is Abbott

Covid-19 is devastating Texas. The state is reporting an average of more than 12,000 new cases a day, and intensive care units are basically full.  Covid tents are once again being erected in hospital parking lots to deal with the surge.

. . . If only there were some kind of vaccine,

In fairness, Texas is certainly not the worst state in terms of vaccination rates, with something like 56% of its eligible residents vaccinated--not great, certainly, but not as bad as some other Deep Red states.  I imagine having liberal bastions like Austin helps.  But the sheer size of Texas's population means that huge numbers of Texans remain unvaccinated, despite the near ubiquitous availability of vaccines.

In the meantime, though, Texas governor Greg Abbott remains steadfast in his refusal to do anything constructive in combatting the virus.  Not only has he refused to implement a statewide mask mandate, he has gone a step further, and forbidden local governments from imposing mask mandates of their own.  At the same time, though, Abbott is begging health care workers from other states to come to Texas to help with the Covid surge.

All I can say is, I hope that--Hippocratic Oath, notwithstanding--these out-of-state health care workers tell Abbott to go fuck himself sideways.  If he's not willing to do anything to mitigate the spread of the virus, why should anyone risk their own health and well-being to bail him out?  If I were a health-care worker, I'd offer to come to Texas if and only if statewide mask mandates are put in place, along with any number of other mitigation measures.  I might also ask for a million dollars a week. Why not?

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In other news, the CEO's of Southwest, American, and Delta Airlines have announced that they will not require their employees to get vaccinated, in contrast to United Airlines, which did impose such a mandate.

Really, Delta? Isn't it bad enough for your corporate image that the plague raging across the country is universally and unrelentingly referred to as the "Delta variant"? You really want to compound that by going on record as being less than fanatical in taking steps to protect your staff and customers?

Waiting

This afternoon, our college's marketing director, who also serves as our public information officer (PIO) sent the management group a message over Microsoft Teams: "So we have fires on both sides of campus right now." Off our eastern perimeter, a smallish fire was burning at a storage space (I swear, California has more storage space per capita than anywhere else on earth) and a larger one had ignited off to our west at the local Chevron refinery.  Not to worry, though: The refinery blaze was apparently a truck fire, not likely to ignite the storage tanks.  As of this writing, the smoke seems to have dissipated, and it looks like the fires might be out.

As of this writing. . . 

That's the thing, though: We're basically in the heart of wildfire season right now.  The Dixie Fire northeast of Sacramento has been burning for about a month and is still only about 20% contained.  It's already become the second largest wildfire in California history, and its effects have been seen and felt as far east as Denver, Salt Lake City. . . and Iowa.. . and even New York.  Interestingly, though, folks in my neck of the woods--not especially close to the fire, but certainly closer than Denver, Salt Lake City, et al.--haven't been particularly affected.  Oh, there've certainly been some hazy days, but for thanks to whatever quirks of the jetstream have been holding sway nearby, we really haven't had much in the way of smoky, oppressive air.  So far, despite constant reminders of a "bad" fire season, we've been relatively unscathed--far less. . . scathed?. . .than we've been in recent years.

I'm thankful for that, of course, but every time I take the slightest bit of comfort, I remember that the other shoe--and there's always another shoe--could drop at any moment.  Past performance is not a predictor of future results.  Lack of fire right now ensures nothing about the absence of fire in a week. . . or a day. . . or an hour.  When all it takes to start an inferno is some careless smoker tossing an insufficiently extinguished cigarette into the wrong patch of overly dry grasses. . . . I sometimes find myself seriously wondering how it's possible that the entire state isn't on fire in perpetuity.

Sure, life is unpredictable.  We all walk around under constant threat from random catastrophes over which we exercise no control--even if most such random catastrophes are relatively unlikely: Terrorist attacks, lightning strikes, getting bonked on the head by a meteorite.  But the world still feels so much more precarious now, as the uncontrollable catastrophes just seem to increase in number, and sometimes it seems like we're all just waiting for the big one to hit.