the mellow tigger's musings

Well, I didn't have this event on my bingo card for this year. (That's an actual thing, and it's not long until I have to review it for accuracy from the news this year.) Wearing my "animal rights" cap, this news headline is just awful all around.

Law enforcement kills several monkeys after truck hauling them overturns in Mississippi.
According to authorities, the Rhesus monkeys were on their way to a testing facility in Florida after being at Tulane University. The monkeys were 40 pounds and were first reported to be “aggressive,” as well as also carrying hepatitis C, herpes, and COVID.
- https://www.actionnews5.com/2025/10/28/truck-hauling-aggressive-monkeys-carrying-herpes-covid-overturns-mississippi/

Thankfully, the writer included the necessary Oxford comma near the end of that sentence. I had to chuckle, though. This event is an eerie metaphorical summary for 2025.

Edit 2025 Oct 29:
The metaphor gets even better. Those poor monkeys were not infectious (according to Tulane University), so they were killed by authorities for no good reason, based on early misinformation.
- https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/escaped-monkeys-destroyed-mississippi-police-mistakenly-told-danger-rcna240387

An important overview paper about SARS-CoV-2 was published from The Medical Journal Of Australia online yesterday. It cites a lot of other papers, summarizing what's known about some of the issues I've been warning about here for a while. It focuses on things like immune dysregulation and viral persistence. This article has a long title with a bit of hope in it: "Towards a cure for long COVID: the strengthening case for persistently replicating SARS-CoV-2 as a driver of post-acute sequelae of COVID-19". Note, however, that it doesn't mention virus in neurons as another (non-curable) method of persistence. It only mentions the 2 methods of persistence (gut, and bone marrow/immune system) as potentially curable paths of persistence.

As always, I encourage everyone to keep masking. I do it myself every time I'm around other people.

I've decided to do something different in 2025. I know that even when restricting my doom-and-gloom posts to Moody Monday, that's still a lot of negativity that nobody needs in trying times. So I'm going to try transforming it into something almost "fun" for next year.

Near the end of 2024, I intend to post my Doom Bingo 2025 card. I will have each square with a topic that I expect to appear in 2025 as "Something Bad That Happens". I might even include some links for why I predict it will appear in the course of the year. During the year, however, I will not post about that topic. Really! Instead, as evidence piles up, I'll keep a folder of news clippings that I can use in December 2025 to determine if I "win" the bingo card for that year.

Now, I may post tangent topics, like helpful things to do to prepare for the troubles. I won't, however, post warnings any more. The time for warnings is over. Either my sense of trends is right or wrong. A Bingo game might make even bad news seem less traumatic. If nothing else, it'll keep this blog a little more like it used to be in the old days, focused more on interesting things to learn or do, or the fun intersection between many topics.

So, stay tuned. My planned Doom Bingo 2025 card will show up here soon. :) Finally, some relief from the stressful topics.