Entries tagged with good news

Entry tags:

a little good news: renewable energy

How about a palate cleanser from the day's big news? I've got 2 related items that are actually very good news, rather than just a little bit good.

Fossil fuels dropped to only 49.2% of USA electricity production.

Fossil fuels just hit a record low in the US electricity mix last month, while solar and wind soared to all-time highs, according to fresh data from global energy think tank Ember. In March 2025, fossil fuels accounted for less than 50% – 49.2% – of electricity generated for the first month on record. This beats the previous monthly record low of 51% set in April 2024.

- https://electrek.co/2025/04/04/first-month-on-record-fossil-fuels-drop-below-50-of-us-power-mix/
Fossil fuels dropped to only about 60% of electricity supplied worldwide.

Renewables and nuclear provided 40.9% of the world’s power generation in 2024, passing the 40% mark for the first time since the 1940s, according to a new global energy think tank Ember report. Renewables added a record 858 TWh in 2024, 49% more than the previous high in 2022. Solar was the largest contributor for the third year running, adding 474 TWh to reach a share of 6.9%. Solar was the fastest-growing power source (+29%) for the 20th year in a row.

- https://electrek.co/2025/04/07/world-surges-past-40-percent-clean-power-in-record-renewable-boom/

Sure, I quibble with the inclusion of nuclear fission in the non-fossil-fuel category. New fissile material will not be created by nature in any meaningful time frame, therefore it is another non-renewable resource of limited quantity on Earth.

Still, though, eliminating carbon output into the atmosphere remains my top political concern, so both of these items are truly great news.

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happy day

It's only 8:40am local time, but I already feel unreasonably happy today.

The guy from Wolf Pest Control showed up promptly at 8am this morning. He sprayed the hornet nests, using his ladder to climb on top of my front porch to reach the 2nd one. The 1st one is easy to reach, near the ground. He had a bulky full-body suit like a firefighter that he wore for the work. He said to give it at least a week before trying to seal them up. He recommends people just wait through the winter too. I'll try clearing up the brush next week, at least, so the painters have clear access to my house later. I shouldn't be bothered by hornets by then. It was definitely worth the $240 for 30 minutes of work this morning.

He was surprisingly nice to talk to, while I wrote out a check afterward on the front porch step. He said he doesn't exterminate bumblebees, which are more regulated than hornets, even if they're the infestation, "because pollinators are good". Maybe he liked my pollinator-friendly yard? Appropriate to the business name, he definitely had the "wolf" look with a full beard, from the bear terminology. I have no idea if he's family, but I'll hope that he is.

The mood in Minneapolis is gearing down for winter. I didn't get everything done that needs to be done for the house, but I got the first floor painted, with plans for the second floor this year. I got the 4 worst windows replaced, with only 1 more to go. I bought the latest new smart phone generation, replacing the broken one I had for years. Thanks to a generous gift from my parents, my bank account didn't even suffer from all this spending. It's still growing into what for me is a large nest egg, so I could easily withstand another year or two of unemployed job hunting, if it came to that.

I'm going to encourage this good mood today and avoid the news.

Entry tags:

a little good news

There's too much going on in the world and in my area of it, so today I'll share only Good News.

The first week of school has ended, and the pace of work is finally slowing. The high point was a long ticket where the phone caller said, "Don't leave me!" as I tried to exit politely after solving the main issue for them. By the end of the call, I helped a 75-year-old woman with signing up for her very first course at the university. It's a nice reminder that I, too, might someday return to college.

I've had a broken screen on my Pixel 4a phone for several years. A few days ago, it finally started causing problems when it wouldn't recognize touches on the screen to unlock it. I need it a few times each day for multifactor authentication at work. Today, since I didn't work due to USA holiday, I rode the bus to Best Buy in Roseville to buy a new Pixel 9 and switch my phone SIM card to it. It's up and running again, although not everything is reconnected. Among the first things to reconnect was the multifactor authentication. It was an expensive purchase but definitely an improvement over my last phone. Bonus 1: I learned that there's a single bus route (no transfers!) that goes straight from my area to that distant shopping area. Bonus 2: I saw during the round trip not just 1 but 2 people in masks!

The big news is this: Researchers might have found what causes the clots by SARS-CoV-2. I mentioned last year that the spike protein seemed to be the culprit, but it wasn't clear why. Now, this new research says that "fibrin binds to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, forming proinflammatory blood clots that drive systemic thromboinflammation and neuropathology in COVID-19." That's really big news. If they know the mechanism, then they can find counteracting agents. There's a lot more to that study, but I'm still exhausted and can't really follow it at the moment. I'm hoping to learn if it's the S1 or the S2 protein, or both together, that causes the clots. Still, though... this discovery is very good news.

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we're getting a grocery store

Great news!

We're getting a grocery store in north Minneapolis, entering the same space used by the former Aldi's. I don't know anything about Colonial Market and Restaurant, but judging from the pictures I see at this page, they'll have the things I want that I can't get at the asian grocery. I saw news stories today from MPR and BringMeTheNews.

Bonuses:

They're based in Minnesota, so the money will stay "local".
The owner (pictured here) describes himself as "Afro-Mexican", so the money will help a minority-owned business.
It would be great if I don't have to walk 1.5 miles through the warzone each way, take bus rides, or pay for delivery, thereby making food that much cheaper for me.

All of this news makes me happy.

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some progress

Thanks to the rain, the fireworks are not as bad as usual for this July 4th holiday in the USA. I was still awake until almost 3am last night, hearing both fireworks and sirens everywhere. I caught up this afternoon on about 2 hours of that lost sleep, but I need a few more hours. Rain tonight will be scattered, so the noise may keep me up again.

I didn't post earlier, but I completed the painting on my house. The part that I will do, anyway. The quality looks only "okay" right now. I need to buy some Goo Gone like foeclan suggested, to see if I can loosen up all of the tape that's still stuck around the windows. But the painting is done. Now, I need to find a company who can paint the rest of the house. I probably shouldn't wait another year for that repair. Those eaves obviously need it now. The bright turquoise is growing on me. Now, I like it even better than the previously dark navy blue.

And the yard needs work. I've started reclaiming it, but it needs a lot more work.

After several weeks, workers finally finished installing the upgraded storm drain in the alley directly behind my house. They poured concrete instead of laying asphalt, and they finally added dirt back in around the sides after it dried. They also added grass seeds, which I don't want, so I threw out some more clover seed, and we'll see which takes over. I vote for clover. Anyway, I'm glad to see this improvement. To thank the government for this service, I just now signed up as an official volunteer to keep it clear of debris. This program has several sponsors, but I think I first learned about it through the city of Minneapolis. I'm not yet finding a way to link directly to "my" drain, but you can zoom around this Adopt-A-Drain map to see the kind of participation they have from other citizens. It's a nice idea, and it's sort of a citizen science issue too. They want regular recurring data about what is cleaned up, how much (in gallons or pounds), and how long it took to clean (in minutes). Here's the photo of the new drain.

Unrelated to all of that, I wanted to report some other minor good news. I realized yesterday that the box of wine in my fridge is probably a few months old. Which is okay, as such things go, since it's not fine wine to begin with. But then I realized that it means I have not been drinking to get to sleep. When did that change happen? I'm beginning to think that it's thanks to using the Corsi-Rosenthal box to get to sleep at night. There's more to that story.

My database administrator, from the mainframe programming job I had when I first moved to Minnesota a quarter-century ago, gave me one of those Amazon Echo spheres as a birthday or Christmas present. I had to go check my emails to remember, but I ordered an Amazon Smart Plug in mid-March this year. With it connected to the air filter, I can crawl into bed and say "Alexa, turn on plug 1 for 1 hour." This gentle noise from the fan helps me get to sleep, and it doesn't run all night either. Apparently the noise is very effective, because I have been sleeping better by not having to listen to arguments and gunfire as I'm trying to fall to sleep. I hadn't noticed this effective change, until I realized that old box of wine was probably bought around the same time. I'm sure that's good news for my liver.

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a little good news about Minnesota

As I remember it, the original plan proposed by Xcel Energy was to decarbonize by 2050. The subsequent well-justified public outcry at their lazy schedule led to the current phase-in plan to drop coal by 2030, which is the worst of our current CO2 contributors.

Coal power plants still supply almost 1/4 of Minnesota's power. That's down from about 1/2 in 2014, just 10 years ago. Thankfully, renewable energy currently supplies about 1/3 of our energy needs. And that nice percentage is even after annoying delays from the monopoly Xcel Energy to approve applications for solar projects to connect to the power grid.

Here's the good news. They're sticking to the plan. :) This report from CBS News talks about the changing energy mix. They call attention to the fact that Minnesota holds the sites of the soon-to-be 5th largest solar facility in the whole USA. It will cover 4,500 acres across 3 sites and contain 1.8 million solar panels. That's a change worth celebrating.

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a little good news about Minneapolis

I know nothing about the Institute For Quality Of Life, but they recently produced a Happy City Index for 2024. Their methodology included only cities with at least 300,000 people (which included 1,692 cities in the world in 2014 when that requirement changed) and have objective data available for 24 activities across 5 categories. These activities include things like the following:

citizens (education, inclusion, libraries),
governance (openness, digital service, strategy/vision),
environment (management, green spaces, pollution),
economy (GDP, innovation, entrepreneurship, flexibility), and
mobility (public transport, mobile applications, safety, multimodal).

There is only one USA city to make the "gold" rating:

Minneapolis, at #18 in the rankings

This metro area is like Austin (a gay-friendly and bike-trail city which didn't make the list at all) but without the awful traffic congestion and ozone pollution. The USA cities that earned silver ratings are: Boston (#38), Baltimore (#57), and Washington (#85). The USA cities that earned bronze ratings are: San Francisco (#114), Salt Lake City (#145), Madison (#167), Pittsburgh (#190), Rochester (#214), and Portland (#237). See the whole list yourself.

I tell you occasionally about the high voter participation in Minnesota, but the civic mindedness here includes both conservatives and liberals, best exemplified by our US Senator, Paul Wellstone and his famous truism, "We all do better when we all do better." Don't let my little warzone dissuade you from considering Minneapolis (or Minnesota in general) as a relocation destination. Most of the people here are nice and want peaceful coexistence. Even my Jordan neighborhood of north Minneapolis has its small charms. If we can ever get the gunfire under control, it could easily become the kind of creative center that's typical of many multicultural zones throughout the world. While Prince lived in north Minneapolis as he learned music, that home was rather far south of me. It's an obvious example, though, of the potential that I see in the community here.

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SARS-CoV-2 antibodies

I saved this news for Moody Monday, but it's also partly a Good News item. Really.

Researchers revealed (still in pre-print) a detectable cause for some of the myriad symptoms of Long Covid. They transferred particular SARS-CoV-2 antibodies from humans into mice, then those mice developed a similar subset of Long Covid disease symptoms as the humans who provided those antibodies. This discovery that pinpoints a mechanism of injury means that treatments (not necessarily cures yet) are possible for at least some of the debilitating effects of infection. That's finally some very good news. One of the authors posted a thread on Xitter, but here's the rollup of that information:

Strikingly, transfer of IgG antibodies of Long-COVID patients strongly induced symptoms in mice! Most pronounced was the induction of pain, measured with e.g. a Von Frey test (Long-COVID IgG in green, lower indicates more pain; log scale). Since Long-COVID is a very heterogeneous disease (different symptoms, severity, etc.) we also tried to divide the patients into separate groups. With a little help from proteomics (proteins in blood) we identified three groups (color coded red/grey/yellow). Interestingly, antibodies from different patient-groups induced different symptoms in mice! Group-yellow IgG immediately induced pain symptoms, group-red induced delayed symptoms. Remarkable: group-grey IgG induced no pain, but was the only group to induce immobility. So in short: 1. IgG antibodies from Long-COVID patients induce symptoms in mice, indicating autoimmunity plays a causal role in this disease. 2. Antibodies from different subgroups induce distinct symptoms, indicating the presence of multiple (groups of) auto-antibodies... Another cool thing: our findings seem to have been independently validated by the @PutrinoLab, who recently showed similar preliminary data on this scientific conference (May 2024)

Here's a video presentation (YouTube, 10 minutes) of this material about PASC (aka Long Covid). It mostly went over my head, but I noticed that they're also accepting persistent infection as another potential cause of long term disease.

So, not only does the spike protein alone cause blood clots, but the antibodies alone seem to cause further disease symptoms. Whether vaccination or virus exposure, there may be consequences no matter how we acquire these proteins. "The only winning move is not to play." (movie quote explanation) People are already asking good questions about what this transferrability means for the medical blood supply. The USA CDC has a lot to say about Long Covid, and their most recent estimate is that about 17.8% of people in the USA (which works out to almost 60 million Americans) have ever experienced symptoms of it. As I keep saying, the world changed in 2019 December. Everything about this terrible virus is fascinating. We will learn so much about human biology from this ongoing global event.

Entry tags:

a little good news

Here are the opening sentences from the NPR article.

"A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has ruled that Donald Trump does not enjoy broad immunity from federal prosecution, a major legal setback for the former president, who said he will appeal. They wrote that for the purposes of this criminal case, "former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant."
- https://www.npr.org/2024/02/06/1223904739/trump-immunity-ruling

At this point, there is no benefit for the U.S. Supreme Court to pick up the case. Anything they decide would escalate the already bad tensions (although the linked survey is from 2019, not 2023) in the USA.

The USA has no king. Yay for us.

Entry tags:

good news

a little good news

My cat, Hope, is doing well now. I continued trying new brands of food, and I've found one that she enjoys wholeheartedly. It's Purina Friskies Prime Filets Turkey Dinner in gravy, a wet cat food in a can. She eats it all at once, licks the bowl clean, and begs for more. After nearly a month of it, she's definitely looking healthier. She still looks a bit gaunt and feels a bit too bony on the edges, but she's definitely a lot better than she was after a year of very picky eating. She also eats most of the Nutro Perfect Portions chicken cuts in gravy, in plastic cups, and Fancy Feast Medleys beef and pork milanese with carrots and potatoes, in a small can. Altogether, she's eating (and pooping) well now. That's a very welcome change.

Another welcome change is sunlight. We spent much of early January under overcast skies in Minneapolis, but the sun is out finally. We're also 4 weeks past winter solstice, and I can tell the sun is getting higher now. I have actual sunlight in my south-facing ground-floor windows for part of the day now, as it peeks over parts of the house next door. I spent almost 2 months without much direct light in those windows. It's nice to have light again. It's still dark outside when I sign in to work at 7am local time, but that will change soon.

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nature lives here

Look, it's been super hot in Minneapolis this week. On Tuesday, we had air temp 36.6C/98F, heat index 45C/113F, and wet bulb 31.6C/89F. Plus, I've been stressed from a terribly busy week at work. I've gotten no house painting or yard work done... and it shows.

But instead of looking, please listen.

Watch on YouTube

The sound is starkly different at my house. It's wonderful. It's even more amazing here at night. Please try the #Lawns2Legumes program in Minnesota or its xeriscaping equivalent in your area. I promise to get some yard work done next week.

Nature lives here. Hope remains.

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a little good news

India becomes the first country to place a lander on the moon's south pole. That achievement is scientifically important because there may be deposits of water there. That water could be used for human biological needs, both drinking as water and breathing as oxygen (after processing it).

I'm not a fan of Prime Minister Modi (who encourages nationalism), but I do very much like this quote:

"India's successful moon mission is not India's alone... the success belongs to all of humanity."
- Times Of India

That's the wonder of science rather than capitalism. The whole world can participate in the excitement of new discoveries, potentially improving life for us all someday. This nice achievement comes from the oldest multicultural civilization still on the planet, one that has survived and thrived without monotheism. I rather like India, as such things go, in spite of their old caste system.

I can't currently find my old post about it, but I visited the Hindu temple in Maple Grove many years ago, back around 2006. They had an open house immediately after the main building construction finished. They invited the whole Twin Cities community after it was vandalized earlier during construction.

I admire that kind of response to violence. It's part of why it makes me a little bit happy that India landed their spacecraft at the moon's southern pole.

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some VERY good news from the warzone

I have written before about the micro-route buses that are available here in north Minneapolis. They take you from the front door of current location to the front door of your destination, but only within a very limited geographic range. Luckily for me, the range available right now is within reach of the doctor (also within walking distance), the dentist, and the major grocery store and its pharmacy.

This wonderful service is only in its test phase, unfortunately. Metro Transit has just announced, however, that they intend to expand the range of service here within north Minneapolis!

"MICRO is super localized, serving a five-mile radius in north Minneapolis... The top destination is the Cub Foods on west Broadway. Since the pilot program began, MICRO has taken more than 38,000 rides. MICRO cost the same as riding Metro Transit or Mobility. The service has one more year of its pilot program before expansion begins."
- https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/metro-transit-micro-buses-north-minneapolis/

If they're planning to expand the service after the test phase ends, then that means it's here to stay! That is terrific news! It's only 20 minutes until the 7am start time for service today, then I begin my weekly trip to the Cub Foods that they mentioned in the article. This service really is a great idea, and I'm very glad that it's available now that I don't have a car.

(Unrelated to the good news, but I wanted to justify the title... I heard automatic gunfire late last night that woke me up. I don't know the time, but it was outside the range where I call 911. I'd guess it was about 4-5 blocks away. I wonder if it was this incident, which is the right distance from my house.)

Entry tags:

a little good news

At last report, Voyager 2 was 18h 27m 03s of light-travel time from Earth. Then on July 21, we lost contact with the craft. We sent a bad command to Voyager 2 that made the spacecraft lose its antenna alignment toward Earth. NASA has finally heard back from it! They received a "heartbeat signal", so they know it's still operating. They're hopeful they can realign its antenna with Earth again.

As of today, marijuana is legal in Minnesota. Most cities are still restricting sales until they can develop local rules, but a Minnesota tribe made history with the state's first legal marijuana sale.

Ten years ago today, gay marriage was legalized in Minnesota. Some people are noting this 10th anniversary of the special event. Civilization, you may notice, did not collapse as a result of this change.

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a little good news in Minnesota

I mentioned a year ago that I lost some weight after ending my job. I regained much of that weight during winter in Minnesota, which is part of the typical cycle, but I'm now back down again. I weighed 88kg/195lb this morning. Extreme stress is normally not supposed to be part of a weight loss regimen, but I'll take it as an improvement for my long term health. It's been many years since I weighed this little.

Somebody here on Dreamwidth runs a Little Library program. I'm sorry, I'm not remembering who. Dreamwidth isn't helping me search for them. (Maybe these were private posts instead of public?) For nearly a month, I've been wanting to share this photo I took about 2 blocks from my house. While the Little Library is nice (although somebody ripped off the front door already *sigh*), but look in the background. They've converted their entire yard to clover! I'm so glad that the Minneapolis #Lawns2Legumes program is spreading. There's no need for "grass lawns" in cities. I hope people xeriscape with more plants that don't require frequent watering and mowing.

It's old news making the rounds again, but bison have been reintroduced to the Native Wise farm with ties to the Lake Superior Chippewa. The farm is in northern Minnesota. The farmer's great grandfather was Chief Buffalo (which I think was a name, not a title). The bison were a donation from The Nature Conservancy (my former employer).

Minneapolis was ranked #1 city for "Best Places to Bike" in the USA. Minnesota entered the 5 "Top States For Business" ranking, pushing out Texas for the first time. As I keep saying, people really should consider moving to Minnesota. While still being part of the USA (and the downsides that involves), life here is pretty good.

Entry tags:

dreams,
good news

the couch is in good shape

I woke up early this morning to a bad dream. It was centered on my new job. The dream was an unrealistic situation, so I won't get into it other than to mention that my subconscious is still focused on this new experience.

Instead, I keep forgetting to relate a little good news, very small in the grand scheme of things. I mentioned last year that I would FreeCycle my couch on the front porch, and I did. Nobody took it, though, so it still sits on my front porch. Later, I posted about letting cats use my porch during a bitter cold spell. What I never mentioned is that the very next day, my front porch smelled strongly of cat urine. :( I never could find the source of it, and neither could my cat after sniffing around the couch cushions repeatedly. I hoped without evidence that they had peed underneath the porch on the frozen ground, and that's what I was smelling for weeks.

I'm happy to report that as soon as the ground thawed, the smell immediately disappeared. It seems they had used their bathroom under the porch, so I'm still using the sofa for brief breaks to unwind after work. Yay. A little good news. :) Take the wins where you can get them.

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I am employed!

I'm relieved that I get to stay in my house and tend to my wonderful garden a while longer. :) I just verbally accepted a position for Tier 1 tech support at Pennsylvania State University. I will start in 2 weeks. My work schedule will be a new one for me: Saturday-Wednesday, 7am-4pm Central timezone.

I'll take a bit of a pay cut from what I had before, even working full-time hours. I can afford it now, though, since I no longer have a mortgage to pay off. As soon as I start depositing paychecks, I'll see about discontinuing my car insurance payments. I've kept those payments current until now, in case I needed to drive a vehicle as part of a relocation this summer. As soon as I applied, I immediately checked into the process of paying income taxes in two states. It's relatively simple. I'll pay the Penn taxes (3.07%) first, then the remainder of the (higher) Minn taxes (5.35 - 6.80%). In effect, I'll still pay only 100% Minnesota income tax, but much of that money will go to Pennsylvania first.

I'm happy to not be draining my meager savings any longer. :) And I'll have some new health insurance too, so I can stop relying on Minnesota taxpayers for my current coverage.

I'm very happy that with this 100% remote job I will get to maintain my COVID-safe lifestyle a while longer. :)

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a lot of good news

My overdue #ALittleGoodNews tag leads us instead to a lot of good news. :)

Energy: The headlines include lots of encouraging developments. Both in the USA (in 2023) and in the world (by 2025), renewable energy sources are overtaking coal energy generation. And that trend will continue to improve, thanks to forecasts like USA utility-scale new solar capacity outpacing new fossil fuel plant construction.

Environment: We have proof that farmers devoting 10% of their land to wildlife-friendly planning can lead to improved bird population. The Nature Conservancy uses easements this way to make the environmental practice continue even with private ownership of land tracts. Obviously, they're using a good tactic that can provide meaningful results. A startup company named GaeaStar is developing a 3d-printed clay alternative to disposable food containers, preventing a common daily source of plastic waste. Researchers in Japan have found a "cheap" (gold nanoparticle) catalyst that can convert plastic waste to more useful substances.

Legal (Social and Anti-Capital): Gender bias in academics is improving, and now "tenure-track women are at parity with tenure-track men in three domains (grant funding, journal acceptances, and recommendation letters)", but the details get more nuanced the deeper you look into them. Progress, though, is progress. Librarians are celebrating a lot of creative works entering public domain this year. I maintain that we all do better when we all have access to the sum of human creative endeavors. (I suspect that most claims in favor of creative control boil down to some form of capitalist need.) Also, Time magazine is removing their digital paywall. Even a Fox News poll found that "57% think political attacks on families with transgender children is a major problem". Yes, that Fox News, but their viewers continue to vote for politicians who do it anyway. Colorado becomes the first USA state with a right-to-repair law for farmers. This anti-capitalist move is very welcome, and we should celebrate those farmers for their important victory!

We can turn this ship from its doomed course. Accept that we'll have to do it with the usual malcontents kicking and screaming their opposition. Do the hard work of turning this civilizational construct anyway. I'm convinced that it's possible for us to succeed. :)

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that... was... AWESOME!!!

I used the bus micro-route app this morning for the first time. I last checked their service map when my car died on January 26th. At the time, the service map was still in its original first test region which is officially "north Minneapolis", but it remained south of me. When I checked again yesterday, the map extended northward and now included my house! I asked the driver after I paid for my fare today, and he said my area was included about 2 months ago, so that timeline matches my experience.

I used the shuttle today for door-to-door transportation from my house to Cub Foods grocery. I brought my 2 reusable bags and packed them to overflowing with all of the wonderful foods that I haven't been able to get from the local asian grocery or Target's shipping service (not the same as more expensive local delivery service). I stocked up on bulk spices, frozen vegetables, sauerkraut in a jar, and I even got 2 super-cheap frozen pizzas that will fit in my small toaster oven. I don't even care about the consequences of this gluten-filled buying spree. After I finish this post, I'll eat some pepperoni pizza, and tomorrow I'm going to eat my delicious breakfast sandwich. This menu is gloriously decadent compared to my recent super-healthy eating. And the round trip cost me a total of US$2. Yeah, that's not a typo.

This micro-route map from Minneapolis bus transit currently includes my large grocery store, my pharmacy, my dentist office, two (maybe three?) medical clinics, my local hospital, and my local library (and voting center). Technically, it also includes my veterinarian, but I doubt the bus service allows a loud cat in a carry-on cage. I'll check later, but I expect I still need to find a non-car solution to getting my cat to see her doctor for medical care.

This is exactly the cheap and convenient metropolitan experience that I've imagined possible all of my life, and I'm finally living it now in Minneapolis at age 55! I want SO VERY MUCH to find a job that lets me stay in my house without a car.

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random SARS-CoV-2 headlines

I expect this post to be my last one about this epidemic for a while. New research just supports my previous assertions rather than disproving them. I've already said everything that needs to be said. Reminder: Everything that's happening can be predicted easily from the 5 things to know about SARS-CoV-2.

See a few recent headlines...

Many people were told their Long Covid symptoms were "all in the head" and not real, like this child. These symptoms are not the result of anxiety. In fact, it's the reverse, with people feeling anxious because their health problems are being ignored. Thankfully, someone is now clearly stating that the medical community should stop doing that, because the damage is real, even when the mind or brain itself is affected. Front line physicians are finally beginning to realize just how little they know. That's good news, at least.

Also good news is that mainstream news has started to cover the long term complications of infection. This virus damages the immune system. Even Time Magazine did an article (free archive copy) recently on this topic. This virus infects and destroys CD4 T cells, it damages CD8 T cell responses, and it hampers interferon production. The new XBB 1.1.16 variant includes "improvements" (good for disease, bad for humans) in this interferon process, meaning that it will produce more virus in the body. So-called immunity debt was always a bad concept. As expected from a damaged immune system, we're seeing an increase in cancer, simultaneous disease is a thing that happens, and life expectancy continues to fall. I remember thinking to myself during the earlier epidemic, learning about toxoplasmosis in people with AIDS, "Wait, it's a disease in sheep that's infecting people?" Now, though, we have a disease in plants that is showing up in humans for the first time.

There has even been good news in the anti-vaccination realm. Researchers showed the effects on young people in England of vaccination versus infection. As rational people would expect, vaccination is good while infection is bad. "By contrast, a positive SARS-CoV-2 test is associated with increased cardiac and all-cause mortality among both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals." In fact, risk of cardiac events is so high after infection (even mild infection), that some cardiologists see clear benefit of vaccination in reducing that risk. Don't get infected. If you've been infected, then don't get infected again.

When the man in the shop
asked me
if I was going
to keep wearing my mask
forever
I replied by asking him
if he was going
to keep getting strangely ill
forever
and I could tell immediately
that he did not like my question.

https://mastodon.social/@plaguepoems/110119565072892815

The USA Senate voted to end the Covid-19 emergency declaration. Taking the opposite tactic, I have tried my best to warn people ahead of time about what they can expect to happen. I even created a website just for that sole purpose. Obviously, I failed to change the world. I'm encouraged by the fact that other people are taking up the cause, detailing with citations the many consequences of infection. Stay safe out there. Remember that the virus is airborne, so always isolate, distance, and mask.