Holy night, Covid night...

The Christmas we want...

"All hell dun broke loose," begins an email from a friend tonight, December 23.

Her whole family was gathering from various western US cities to share five days in Palm Springs and then spend Christmas through New Year's Day in Seattle.  

But her son came down with Covid-19 on Monday.  After becoming sick but testing negative, he tested positive today.  That means he will be spending Christmas isolated in Palm Springs while the others fly back to Seattle.

Meanwhile, her granddaughter's partner became sick with a high fever.  He tested negative too but will get a second test tomorrow.  That means her granddaughter is exposed and has to isolate from everyone in the family or at least wear a mask. 

My friend's other granddaughter flew to Seattle from Hawaii to spend Christmas with the family.  Her mother will fly home to Seattle from Palm Springs as scheduled, but her father will stay there until he feels well enough to fly home.

Meanwhile, that granddaughter heard from her roommates at the University of Hawaii that two of them have tested positive.  That means she needs to quarantine from her mother.  

This Omicron variant is spreading like wildfire, everywhere from New York to Hawaii.

How do you do togetherness at Christmas when 2-3 family members are sick and several of the others are on quarantine?

How do you have Christmas dinner together?  And open presents?  Dare we go out to church in person on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning?

We too have had a crazy week here in Santa Monica with two family members arriving from New York City and bringing the Omicron variant with them.  They're in a hotel but one of the two (my niece) tested positive on Wednesday.  She was sharing a bed with her mother, so they both have it, no doubt.  So far neither is very sick, but others may get Covid from them and become sicker.

Meanwhile, my daughter who lives 15 minutes away will probably not come here for Christmas because she spent 5-6 hours on Sunday with friends who got sick on Tuesday.  See my blog post on this Wednesday night, Dec. 22.  

This Omicron variant just sneaked up on all of us.  We did not take it seriously and cancel our travel plans.  

I refused to go to dinner last night with my ex-sister-in-law but did spend 2 hours with her and my niece today in their hotel lobby; I stayed masked except for eating a breakfast sandwich from Starbucks and drinking a peppermint mocha.  Six feet distanced.  Was that too close for this new variant?  Will I get Covid again?

It's all about travel.  If we stayed home, this virus wouldn't spread like a wind-driven fire.  We got too confident that the epidemic was waning.  Instead of shutting down like a year ago, some of us made plans to travel, to visit family, to go out to restaurants and shows.

We must do all we can to keep this virus from spreading, to keep ourselves out of the hospital, and to keep others from being exposed.  Otherwise, we become incubators that help it to mutate further and evade our drugs.   

Taking vaccines and wearing masks are acts of kindness to those who are fragile (have auto-immune illness, are taking immuno suppressants, or are cancer survivors, etc.).  

Doing all we can do is a simple courtesy to the doctors, nurses, and aides who are caring for those who are sick and dying.

For many of us, this Christmas will be Silent night, Covid night....

But still, God comes to us in human form to cheer and redeem us.  

Without all the busyness and distractions of merriment, maybe we will have time to reflect on our place in the Cosmos, to feel the presence of a God who wants to connect with us.

Test your guests!

Do you have out-of-town guests arriving?

Or are you planning to have dinner with friends or relatives who have flown in from somewhere?

Buy a couple boxes of BinaxNOW rapid Covid-19 tests now before your guests drive up or arrive at the airport.  Each box costs about $25 and contains two test kits.

Test yourself and ask your guests to do so also.

Finding the BinaxNOW could be easier said than done.  The shelves could be empty.  But keep trying.  Walgreens and CVS are your best bet. 

"All the Walgreens around here are sold out," a clerk told me at the intersection of Lincoln and Pico Blvd. in Santa Monica.

"When will you get a delivery?" I asked.

"Maybe today or tomorrow, I don't know.  Could be anytime," she replied.

I drove 15 minutes to the next closest Walgreens, and voila!  They had many boxes, all behind the photo shop counter, and twenty people were clustered around as a clerk patiently handed out two per person.

We stood in line to buy them and emerged triumphant.  'Tis the season to be jolly!

I called my niece and her mother, who had arrived the night before from New York City, and offered to deliver a box of BinaxNOW to their hotel.  

They didn't mind testing before our big dinner date in the evening with other family members.  It takes just 15 minutes to get a result.

When I drove up to Casa del Mar Hotel on Ocean Way, they were both outside waiting for me so that I could just hand them the box and not need to go inside the hotel or into their room. 

We chatted for a few minutes on the sidewalk, all three of us wearing masks.  I stood about six feet from them as I explained how I had caught Covid on Nov. 4 from an out-of-town visitor (see previous blog post). 

My niece said she came down with Covid last March after a ski trip to Colorado.  She had two vaccines and a recent booster too.

How vaccine effectiveness drops after 5-6 months

"I've had my vaccines and a booster too, but it was last August," said her mother.

"Well, they say that after five months you need another booster," I said.  "I was 7 months after my last vaccine and a day after my booster when I caught Covid.  But the vaccines protected me from having a serious case."

Then we bumped elbows and said, "See you tonight."  They had plans to visit LACMA this afternoon with another family member.

On the way home, I passed that first Walgreens and decided to stop in.  Maybe they'd had a delivery.

There was a FedEx truck parked outside the store as I drove up.  The delivery man was building a stack of 21 boxes on one dolly cart.  As I watched, half of them fell to the ground.

"Probably the rapid tests, special delivery!" I said to myself.

Right.  Inside I found cartons of BinaxNOW stacked all around the UPS counter with several people walking up to get two boxes.

"Wait!  Just give me a chance to open the cartons," said a clerk.  

I bought two more boxes--deck the halls! Fa-la-la-la-la...

When I telegraphed the news--I have 3 boxes!--I immediately got requests for them.  

One was reserved for my husband, who tested negative this afternoon, as I had done the night before with the last test kit in the house.  We had gone to the Pantages Theater the previous weekend to see Hamilton and could have been exposed then.  We wanted to check before going out to dinner with family.

I drove another box to my daughter and took the third to a friend of hers who suspected that she and her husband had come down with Covid-19.  They each had a fever, aching, and tiredness--but so far hadn't lost their sense of taste or smell.  (I didn't experience that loss when I had Covid a month ago.)

As I was driving to Culver City to deliver these rapid tests, I got a call from my niece.  She had tested positive--though she had absolutely no symptoms.  She felt fine, just as she had when making plans to travel and when they had left New York. 

Her mother tested negative, but clearly she had been exposed to the virus by her non-symptomatic daughter. 

They immediately cancelled their plans to spend a week in Palm Springs after visiting Los Angeles.  Next they separated into two hotel rooms and began looking into how soon they could fly home.  Is it better to wait until they both test negative?  Or fly home before either of them might become symptomatic?

My niece planned to stay in her hotel room until flying home. Silent night, Covid night... 

Her mother said dinner plans were cancelled, but negotiations ensued with my husband and his sister, who were still willing to go to the restaurant.  After all, family members had flown across the country for this visit.

I stayed home.  Last Sunday my daughter had visited her friends (now sick and probably with Covid), so she didn't go to the dinner.  People who have been exposed shouldn't go out and endanger others.

My other daughter, who works at Starbucks, didn't go either.  She's scheduled to work on Christmas Eve and Christmas; if she gets exposed, she can't go to work.  It wouldn't be right to ask someone else to do those holiday shifts.

Much drama, and we didn't even get to the subjects of religion or politics.

Anyway, be a good Girl Scout or Boy Scout, and be prepared.

Buy a couple boxes of rapid tests now.  If you test positive, then you get to stand in line 3-4 hours for a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, as my daughter's friend did today.  

After someone in a lab uses a microscope to look at the genetic material in the droplets from her nose, and someone else sends her an email, she will get the results--tomorrow, if the system works well.

If you get a positive result, you get to start work on quarantining, finding a monoclonal antibody that works on the Omicron variant, contacting people you may have exposed, and interviewing with your local health department in their effort to trace contacts and stop the spread. (The GlaxoSmithKline monoclonal infusion is currently the only one that works on Omicron.)

See details of how complicated all that can be--even if you have a mild case--by checking my posts on November 13 and November 15.

If you've had your vaccines and booster, you will probably not have a serious case of Covid-19 because you still have maybe 20-30% of your antibodies, which will help your body to fight the virus.  If you have an auto-immune illness or are a cancer survivor, you could need hospitalization.

The most important thing we can all do in the next two months is keep ourselves out of the hospital and not expose anyone else.  Our health care workers are already exhausted and stressed out.  We owe them a debt of gratitude.

Taking vaccines and wearing masks are acts of kindness to those who are fragile.

Doing all we can do is a simple courtesy to the doctors, nurses, and aides who are caring for those who are sick and dying.

Doing our part also helps the FedEx delivery people, the drug store employees, the nation, and the world.  Just think about this guy trying to load 21 cartons of rapid tests on one little dolly cart so he can rush on to deliver more to the pharmacy across town.  He's making a list, checking it twice...

Santa and his sleigh in Covid times

The Smiley Guy vs. Abortion Rights

Beware of nice guys.

Chief Justice John Roberts bugs me.

Out of all the judges, he's the most smiley.  He wants to be Mr. Nice Guy.

But really, he's taking away our right to end a pregnancy, to determine how many of us will live the next 8 months of our lives, how we will define ourselves for sixty years.  

What's between us and God, he thinks should be up to him.  

Justice Roberts, can't you be just plain mean like Samuel Alito?  Or Clarence Thomas? 

Or just a raving hypocrite like Brett Kavanaugh?    

That way the country could see through you more easily.

It was astounding to hear you question the lawyers.  Listen to it on YouTube.

"Why is 15 weeks not enough time?" you asked. 

The sheer masculine innocence of that question!

As if hesitating to end a pregnancy were like vaccine hesitancy.  Just get over it, my dears.  Make up your minds. You've got 15 weeks.

13 weeks, actually, since the day you had sex.  

11 weeks from the day your bleeding should have happened.  

7 weeks from the time your period was a month late but you didn't feel pregnant.  

3 weeks from the day your period was two months late and you realized that ohmygod you might really be preggers!  But it couldn't be true.  

Justice Roberts, bless his heart, now gives you three weeks to go through denial, anger, bargaining, depression and come to a screeching halt at acceptance that you are actually pregnant.

No, just two weeks to go through those five stages because you still need a week figure out whether to let the pregnancy continue or to end it.  

If you decide you just can't possibly bring a human being into this world and have the strength and sanity and money to take care of him or her, and you certainly couldn't give a baby away to who-knows-what kind of parents, now you have no weeks left to find a Planned Parenthood Clinic.

You may have no money to drive to a clinic 4-5 hours from your home.  Maybe you have no car.

Maybe you need child care for your kids while you spend a day or two getting the job done.  Or maybe you can't take time off from work.  

But don't worry about this, dear, because you've already used up your 15 weeks.  Your life is now in the hands of that smiley guy Roberts and that liar Kavanaugh.  And Alioto and Thomas and Gorsuch.  And of course Amy Coney Barrett, who thinks that handing a baby over to strangers should be easy as pie.  

The government of Mississippi has decided 15 weeks should be enough for you, and the justices will probably agree with them.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor fights for justice
as Senator Elizabeth Warren looks grimly on.

Of course, the US government gives years to American citizens who have vaccination hesitancy, who just can't quite bring themselves to face that needle.    

For abortion hesitancy, however, there's no tolerance.  15 weeks, sweetie.  Get over it. 

Thanksgiving and the turkeys

Thanksgiving 2019

Thanks to Covid-19 pandemic, Thanksgiving will be easier again this year.  Fewer family gatherings.

But for those of you who do attempt to gather together to ask God's blessing, good luck.

My brother in Colorado is rather ferociously expressing his fear of inflation if the Build Back Better Act succeeds in getting through the Senate.  But no danger of him showing up in Santa Monica for Thanksgiving.

My sister replied to him today with a meme from The Naked Gun, a film-spin-off of the 1988 television series Police Squad!

In the meme, police lieutenant Frank Drebin (played by Leslie Nielsen) shouts "Please disperse!  Nothing to see here.  Please!" in front of a destroyed building as bombs explode and voices shout.

I have no idea how this meme relates to Biden's Build Back Better plan, except that the building in it will need to be rebuilt.  

Does she mean nothing to see in Build Back Better?  Nothing to see in claims that inflation will result from spending for pre-K, child care, elder care, and extending the Child Tax Credit?  Nothing to see in efforts to combat climate change?  Nothing to see in expanding affordable health care?

Nothing to see in claims that inflation will not occur?  

I didn't hear objections from my family about Republican spending for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Of course, those wars didn't cause any inflation.  And Trump's tax cuts for the wealthy sure didn't cause inflation in anything but the stock market.

Little sis thought she could reply to bro without me seeing it, but her email went to all three of us.  She made the following comments:

They want us to sit quietly and say nothing.  And continue to vote for them while American Pravda tells us we're all good. (And the ruling class pelosis and aocs take the money and run.)

Speaking of SF there are now coordinated mass break-ins at high end malls--3 this weekend!  We're all going to be on Amazon (the new J.C. Penney's mail order catalog).

Good luck getting through to Anne.  If I say what you said, she bites my head off.

Confidential.

Fortunately, her family in San Diego won't be gathering together with us either.  That hasn't been safe for years.  

I pray that someday the political tensions in this nation will ease enough for us all to meet face to face and agree to disagree.  Family values, right?  I do love my sister and brothers. 

Now to do an internet search to find out what she means by "American Pravda."  And why she thinks Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a bartender by trade, is ruling class.  And why Trump and his friends Rupert Murdoch, Sheldon Adelson, Joe Ricketts of TDAmeritrade, etc. are not ruling class and have not been taking the money and running.

Oh my God, American Pravda: My Fight for Truth in the Era of Fake News  is a book by James O'Keefe, whom Wikipedia describes as an American right-wing to far-right political activist and provocateur. He produces secretly recorded undercover audio and video encounters in academic, governmental, and social service organizations, purporting to show abusive or illegal behavior by representatives of those organizations.

Amazon says: The "American Pravda" title is a play on the name of Pravda (meaning truth in Russian), a long-term Communist Party publication in the Soviet Union,

I didn't know my sister supports right-wing Republicans.  I was hoping she was a Bush/Cheney moderate these days.  I don't know whether she means the words "American Pravda" to refer to American newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post--or to the Biden administration. Or maybe Democrats in general.  

I see that O'Keefe is a 37-year-old who twelve years ago made false claims against ACORN and caused its bankruptcy.  He had to pay $100,000 in a settlement with one of the workers he misquoted.  Apparently, he's a darling of Breitbart.  Clearly he's making money off the fake news flames fanned by Trump.

Well, folks, happy Thanksgiving.  If you share a big dinner with family, keep your mouth shut.  Except for helpings of turkey and stuffing.   

Julius Jones' life matters

 "I've made mistakes, but I'm not a killer.  I'm not a murderer," says Julius Jones from his jail cell, where he awaits execution tomorrow.

His impending death hangs heavy over this nation.

"That people are only hearing about it today is evidence that black lives don't matter," say many observers.

I didn't hear about it until yesterday.  

Today I called the office of the governor of Oklahoma: 405 521 2342.  You can call too.

My message:

Please tell the governor not to execute Julius Jones.  Give him more time in jail or commute his sentence.  Free him.

The governor could make a terrible mistake that he will regret later.

A life hangs in the balance.

The state of Oklahoma did not allow Julius to hug his mother today, the day before his death.  They have not hugged for 22 years.

Black lives matter.  

House shames Gosar

Rep. Jackie Spears introduced the bill to censure Gosar

"As a woman Speaker of the House I want to be clear," said Nancy Pelosi.  

"These threats specifically target a woman, a woman of color, which is part (as the resolution states) of a global phenomenon meant to silence women and discourage them from seeking positions of authority and participating in public life."

Speaker Pelosi called Paul Gosar's behavior "an insult to the house of Representatives." 

Then she spoke powerfully about the significance of his threatening anime video.  I present excerpts from the video of her comments, available on YouTube.  

"Again, this is about workplace harassment and violence against women. Yet the member has never apologized for his actions. 'It's a cartoon, relax,' he said. Really? A cartoon?  Relax?

"'I'm entitled to speak to the people and to do so in a manner that is engaging,' he said.  Really?  Is it engaging to depict killing a colleague or anyone?  It's not just about members of Congress--anyone threatening anyone?" she asked.

"Disguising death threats against a member of the Congress and a president of the United States in an animated video does not make those death threats any less real or less serious.  And indeed conveying portraying them this way makes them potentially more dangerous by normalizing violence.

"It isn't funny.  And yes, you have a right to speak, and so do we have a right to react to what you are saying when you are threatening the lives of members of Congress and the president of the United States.  

"It is sad that the entire House must take this step because of the refusal of the leadership of the other party," she continued.  

"The resolution on the floor before us today is about accountability.  It is about integrity in this House, and it will serve as a reminder to this House and to this Congress, that as is said in Rule 23, 'Shall behave at all times in a manner that shall reflect credibly on the House....'

"Again, a threat against anyone is wrong, whether you're a member of Congress or not, for this [resolution] is just about the example, again, that was a total violation--[needing censure] by the action of the members. "

After all the debating, just before 4:49 pm today, Paul Gosar stood below the podium of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and listened to her read the censure of his behavior.  His buddies stood with him.

"Gosar, flanked by nearly two-dozen colleagues in the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, stood in the well of the House as the censure resolution was read aloud" reported ABC News .

His crime?  Threatening to kill a person in his work place--the House of Representatives.

Anyone else would be fired for making such a threat, but he has not been removed from his post as a representative from Arizona.

After all the speeches by Kevin McCarthy and others defending his behavior, it was satisfying to hear Pelosi lay out the facts and name Gosar as guilty of threatening violence and acting in such a way that others may become violent.

Censure is essentially a public shaming; for the time being, he's allowed to stay in Congress.

NPR reported:
Under the censure resolution adopted by the House, Gosar had to stand in the well of the chamber and listen to the rebuke as it was read aloud. And he will no longer serve on the Natural Resources committee or the Oversight panel — where Ocasio- Cortez is also a member.

The Republican caucus refused to censure him in any way, but two Republicans voted with Democrats for censure: Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.  

My infusion of monoclonal antibodies

Getting my infusion

If you are 65 or older and have any serious health risk, and you come down with Covid-19, consider getting an infusion of monoclonal antibodies, which nips the infection in the bud.  

My case of Covid-19 was relatively mild, so I didn't think I needed the top-of-the-line medical care that our former president got.  I was pretty sure I wouldn't take a turn for the worse.

But Dr. Bill, my brother, told me I should ask my doctor to give me a referral for the infusion. 

An infection with this virus can start out mild and then attack some organ that is vulnerable.  Or you can have an overreaction of your immune system, called a cytokine storm.  In any case, you have to be in the first several days of your symptoms and not hospitalized to qualify for this treatment.

With a referral, a Medicare panel will review a person's health situation and decide whether to pay for you to have this safeguard.

Anyone over 65 qualifies for the infusion if they have one other factor like diabetes or heart disease.  

But you have to ask for this treatment--the average primary care doctor may not know the latest on Covid care.  Or she may not regard your case of Covid as any serious threat to your health.

My brother told me this on a Tuesday night, and by Wednesday afternoon I had a virtual appointment with one of my doctor's partners.  She was skeptical about my need for the infusion, but she made the referral.  

Soon after, I received a call that Medicare had approved the infusion, that I would get a call from a local infusion center called IV League, Inc. the next morning.

On Thursday morning at 8:30 am, a clerk at the infusion center called and gave me a choice between an 11 am or 12 noon appointment.  

I chose 11 am, but the first step was to bathe myself and wash my hair.  I'd been sick for five days, but I wanted to look good for this big occasion.  I didn't realize how tired I was and slow.

At 10:45 am, I ran out the front door and typed "6706 Bristol Parkway, Culver City CA" into the Google maps app on my cell phone, but the address was actually 6076.  Instead of taking 20 minutes to get there, I got mixed up and took 30 minutes to find a small building tucked into a business park next to the San Diego freeway.

Drip, drip, drip

I arrived 15 minutes late, but the infusion techs were kind and patient.  

Apparently the right combination of monoclonal antibodies has to be mixed up just before being dripped into a patient's arm, so I had to wait while the mixing was being done in a lab.

Soon, however, the saline solution hung above my head and the antibodies were being pushed into a vein on the inside of my right elbow.

The lady in the next room told the tech that she had just been to an emergency room where she was diagnosed with Covid pneumonia.  She and her son had been sent here to be treated.  She was very tired and listless, but she too had dressed up nicely for this occasion.

I felt guilty for being there.  I wasn't sick enough, I told myself.  I was wasting the government's money.  

"Relax!  You're not relaxing!" one of the techs kept telling her son.  She couldn't find enough of a vein in his arm to insert the infusion needle.

I relaxed and prayed for this woman and her son and all the people who needed Covid vaccines or infusions and couldn't get them.  I gave thanks for the infusion techs, risking their health to treat all of us.

Afterward, I sat in a small room with others waiting twenty minutes to be observed for a possible adverse reaction to the infusion.  

One white man about 30 years old wore a red cap backwards on his scruffy hair; he had a beer belly.  I wondered whether he was an anti-vaxxer.

Another was clearly a retired person like me, privileged, white, getting the infusion just in case.

I drove home feeling relieved that both tasks were over: my panic to get this appointment and my frantic search to find the clinic.

Finally I could go back to bed and just rest.

How to get a test for Covid

Hi, world.  I tested positive for Covid on Tuesday, Nov. 9.  

It was hard for me to believe when the home test kit showed two pink lines (positive), not one pink line (negative).  

"These tests aren't that accurate," I said to my daughter Roz.  I thought I just had a light cold--mild headache, not much sore throat, tired feeling.  Not even as bad as the average flu, but my cough was getting deeper and "productive," as they say.

Roz did a search on rapid tests, however, and the internet said a positive test is almost always correct.  For info on this kind of testing, see https://www.aahealth.org/rapid-covid-testing-faq/

Walgreen's sells the rapid home tests, 2 for $24.  Nationwide.  But on any one day, a store could run out.  CVS near me didn't sell them. 

The next challenge was to find a PCR test, the kind they send to a lab and you wait 2-3 days for the results.  You can't get the top treatment for Covid-19 unless you have proof of a positive PCR test.

PCR stands for Polymerase Chain Reaction.  The scientist who developed this method of testing for the presence of a specific bit of DNA was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993.

To get a PCR test, you need an appointment with your doctor or a clinic or a testing place set up in a park or parking lot or near a pharmacy like CVS.  Again doing an internet search, Roz found a park near me where the test is being done in the recreation center office.  Same-day appointments were available.

I came home exhausted, but the work of being a Covid patient was just beginning.

That night I called my brother, Dr. Bill.  He said, "You need to get monoclonal antibodies."

"What's that?" I asked.  More new vocabulary to learn.  

"The treatment they're doing now for people like you, over 65 with at least one other serious medical condition," he said.  "You probably qualify for it.  Medicare will pay."

The easiest way to qualify is being overweight or having diabetes or being immunocompromised.  But there are others.  

The next day, Wednesday, I called my doctor's office, expecting to be told to walk right in.

Instead, I had to make an appointment for a virtual doctor visit.  One of her partners would do it later in the day. 

The appointment wasn't by Zoom or Facetime, of course.  That would have been too easy.  And it couldn't be done via laptop.

I had to download the MyChart app onto my cell phone.  Then I had to make an account and password and find the button to do a virtual appointment.

When the doctor finally appeared on my screen, she was skeptical.  "How are you feeling?  Why do you want an infusion?"  

"My brother told me to.  He said Covid-19 can start out mild and suddenly get worse." 

To get this treatment, you can't be super sick and you can't be just imagining you have Covid.  As with Goldilocks, everything has to be just right.

"Okay, I'll forward a request and see if you qualify," she concluded.  "We will contact you if Medicare says yes, and then you'll have to submit proof that your test was positive."

Tomorrow: going for my infusion.

Note:

LHI.care/covidtesting is the national website where you can find the nearest testing site and get an appointment.  LHI stands for Logistics Health Inc.  Logistics Health was founded in Wisconsin in 1999, now part of OptumServe, which got a contract with the federal government in 2001 to handle testing, immunization, and record keeping for federal employees, military, vets, and others.

My mistakes: how I caught Covid-19

 

I did everything right for 20 months--March 2020 through November 3, 2021. Twice I refused go to lunch with a visiting friend.  I refused to drive a visitor to LA in my car.  I even traveled on a plane to attend my nephew's wedding celebration in Washington, D.C.  That was in late July 2021, when everyone had recent vaccines and cases of Covid in the US were dropping.

But then I made a series of mistakes.

Step 1  -  I spent an afternoon with a friend from out of state.

A friend of mine living in Ann Arbor MI was making plans to visit her family in Las Vegas for the first time in two years.  Afterwards she was going to spend two days in Los Angeles, staying at a hotel.  I was planning to meet her at her hotel and then drive with her to visit two other friends.

Step 2  -  I figured we were both safe because we had been vaccinated.

I had had the Pfizer vaccine on February 25 and on March 18.  She had had the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in May and was not sick at all when she left Michigan.

I never stopped to think that she might be exposed to the Delta variant in Las Vegas and carry it to me.  I thought the break-out cases were few and far between.  Neither of us realized that a high number of Covid cases was occurring at the beginning of November in Vegas, but I knew that was happening in LA County.  

Step 3  -  I didn't realize I might have just 30% of the ideal number of antibodies.

No one told me that 6-7 months after my vaccinations, I might have just 30% of the antibodies I had built up shortly after receiving the vaccine.  Dr. Bill, my brother, told me this fact a week later when I called to tell him I had Covid.  

Step 4  -  I'd gotten my booster shot on Nov. 3, so I thought I was superprotected on Nov. 4.

Wrong.  It takes roughly two weeks for people to manufacture a high level of antibodies after receiving a booster. "You had no more antibodies on Thursday than you had on Wednesday when you got the booster," said Dr. Bill.

Step 5  -  I didn't wear a mask while driving my car with my out-of-town friend.

I drove to my friend's hotel to meet her on Thursday at 1 pm. I hugged her while saying hello.  We both wore masks in the hotel lobby, but I took my mask off when I got in my car. 

"You don't have to wear a mask in the car," I told her.  After all, we were both vaccinated, right?

"I'm going to keep wearing my mask," she said.  

"She's cautious," I thought.  Unnecessarily cautious.  It didn't occur to me that maybe she was trying to be careful not to expose me, just in case.

We talked.  I drove us to see two other friends in the Fairfax neighborhood north of I-10.  On the way back to the west side of Los Angeles, we were stuck in traffic for an hour, laughing and talking.  A car is a small space, and I wasn't wearing a mask.

Then we went to a restaurant with a friend, wearing our masks except while eating.  It was a huge, high roofed place with 40 tables, only two of them occupied.  

Step 6  -  I wasn't alarmed when my friend started to feel unwell about 6 pm.

It could be anything, I thought.  A flu.  A cold.  Or possibly Covid.  I wanted her to stop by my house and have a piece of the pumpkin pie I had made, but she said no.  By the time I dropped her off at her motel, she had cancelled her Friday plans with another friend. She just wanted to rest.  She had a ticket to fly back to Michigan on Saturday.

Step 7  -  I exposed other people.

On Friday I went to visit a friend whose husband had died ten days earlier.  I hugged her.  We sat in her living room and talked for 40 minutes.  I talked to her toddler grandchildren and held the toys they handed me. (None of them got Covid.)

At home I interacted with my husband and adult daughter, who works at Starbucks.  Because I had just had a booster, I thought I could not get Covid-19 even if my friend had it. I thought I was Superwoman. (None of them got it either.)

Step 8  -  When symptoms began, I thought it was because of the booster.

On Saturday evening I noticed a teeny bit of scratchiness in my throat.  By Sunday I had a sore throat and light cough.  I felt tired and chilled, even though I was dressed warmly.  I started to wonder if I had whatever my friend had.  I lay down to take a nap at 5 pm, felt hot, and took my temperature: a 99.4 fever.  

It wasn't much; I've certainly been sicker in the last year and a half.  This couldn't be the Big Bad Covid, I told myself.  At most, it's the booster.

Step 9 -  I kept up with my work deadlines and went to a routine doctor appointment.

I didn't rest.  I didn't listen to my body.  I wish I had.  Instead, I exposed my doctor and a nurse at a doctor appointment on Monday.  By afternoon, I was exhausted and had a deep cough.  

Step 10 -  I didn't own a home rapid test for Covid-19, and I had no idea where to get one.

I decided to try to get tested but had no idea where find a home kit or where to drive to get a swab done and sent off to a laboratory.  I should have bought the kit earlier and kept it on hand.

I was exhausted, but I drove around for an hour or more, looking for a home Covid test.  I learned that an appointment was needed to get the Polymerase Chain Reaction test-- the PCR-- but none was available for that day or the next or the next.

When Roz got home from Starbucks, she told me they sell them at Walgreen's, but I was too tired to go get one by then.  Besides, it was such a light cold. I had no more fever.

But I got a text from my friend in Michigan:  "I've lost my sense of smell."  I knew she had Covid-19.

The one thing I did right: getting my vaccines.

Because I had received two vaccines, I had some antibodies already in my system.  As a result, I didn't become seriously ill or need to be hospitalized.

The next story (Nov. 13):

how I found a home test kit the next morning but couldn't believe the positive result I was seeing.

how I found a place to get a Polymerase Chain Reaction test (PCR) to be sent to a lab.

how Dr. Bill, my brother, told me to get an infusion of monoclonal antibodies.

. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

See this article: "Antigen vs. Antibody: What are the differences?" by Anna MacDonald on the Technology Networks website.   

the

AT&T backs One America News

The Walter J. and Ermalee Hickel House

Two years ago I found myself in a low-cost, motel-like residence for families of patients at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage.  It's called the Walter J. and Ermalee Hickel House.

My husband had suffered pulmonary emboli while we were on a cruise to see Alaska's glaciers.  

I spent many evenings in my room with very few television options.  There was no MSNBC.  

At least there was CNN, the channel that reports both sides.  "The sky is blue.  Now let's hear what QAnon and the Proud Boys think."

While searching for access to national news, I came across One America News Network.

"This is more far-right than Fox News!" I reported to my husband on my visits back to the hospital.

It was incredible, but I figured the hospital's connection to the Catholic church was the cause.  Either that or all of Alaska is being fed this hogwash.

I didn't do any research on OANN when I got back to Los Angeles, but now in October 2021 it has popped up in the news as being founded and funded largely by AT&T.

Should I stop paying $128 to AT&T each month?

I'm afraid the answer is yes.  

That's what Rick Stengel of Media Matters told listeners a few days ago while being interviewed by Nicolle Wallace on Deadline: White House--on MSNBC.  (See my previous blog post.)

"AT&T is allegedly One America News Network's biggest backer" says a report on The Verge on October 6, 2021.  

Reuters Investigates was the first to report the connection between Trump TV: the AT&T Connection.

I'm grateful to be back in a part of the world where I have access to news that is not far-right propaganda.  I'm sorry I need to find another cell phone provider.

Will this be like the time in 1995 when I heard about Shell Oil's actions in Nigeria and cancelled my Shell credit card? 

Within a few years I learned that Mobil and all the other oil corporations were doing equally bad things elsewhere--but I didn't stop buying gasoline and driving my car.

Maybe all the owners of the media corporations are buddies.  Maybe I won't be able to find a cell service that's not enslaved to the racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, pro-billionaire, pro-Trump forces behind the January 6 insurrection.

3 Ways to Boycott Murdoch

Rick Stengel of Media Matters on MSNBC

"When are they going to admit there was no insurrection?" asked Tucker Carlson on Fox News on September 16, 2021.  Another anchor, Laura Ingraham, made similar claims.

Thanks to Nicolle Wallace in her Deadline: White House news hour today on MSNBC for reporting on the cumulative lies spoken on Fox and even printed in today's Wall Street Journal.

She interviewed Rick Stengel of the nonprofit Media Matters on reports that Fox is about to release a "documentary" claiming that the attack on the Capitol and its police officers was a false flag--an action set up by the FBI to make the right look bad. 

Fox is "supporting people who committed the earlier insurrection, and they're motivating people to do another one," says Stengel. 

Even Geraldo Rivera, another Fox anchor, spoke out against lies by Carlson today, calling his words "inflammatory and outrageous and uncorroborated." 

To make matters worse, the Wall Street Journal today published a Trump letter to the editor repeating his false election claims.  

The Fox "documentary" makes the false flag claim that the Jan. 6 insurrection was planned by the FBI to make the right wing look bad.

"There are dozens and dozens of people who are on trial for their crimes in participating in that riot,  " he observes.  "They are testifying about their planning and their actions that day."

"The myth of the great fraud is his platform for 2024 if he runs again, and they promote it because the audience wants to hear and loves it," explained Stengel.

"I think if they aired porn, they'd like that too," replied Wallace, "There are some things that are not suitable to air, that violate norms and standards."

 Can lies like this qualify as speech protected by the First Amendment?

"The one kind of speech that is not protected is speech that leads directly or indirectly to violence," notes Rick Stengel, citing the Brandenburg decision by the Supreme Court in 1955.

Enough summarizing of current lies, whether on heard on Fox News or printed in the Wall Street Journal.

How can we, the people, protest these lies on Fox News and in the Journal, both owned by the Murdoch family?  

"One way that people can protest is to boycott all the products and outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch, which fuel and support Fox News," Stengel says.  Read his call for a boycott on the Media Matters website.  

• Cancel your subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal or anything owned by the Murdochs.
• Don't watch the NFL on Fox Sports
• Don't use the products advertised on Fox Sports or in the WSJ.

"That's the sort of thing that will get Rupert Murdoch's attention," advises Stengel. "There's a very traditional form of protest and boycott that's available to people.  Grassroots public protest is perfectly acceptable and very effective."

Most of us can only boycott Murdoch's media empire partially, though, because his NewsCorp owns so much of what we watch, from Hulu to American Idol.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Footnote: Both News Corp and the Fox Corporation, News Corp's sister company and successor to the former 21st Century Fox, are owned and controlled by the Murdoch family.

.

Cancel Facebook?

Should I stop posting my dog photos and feminist Christian news on Facebook?

I took a 4-year vacay from FB after its reader-enhancing formulas helped elect Donald Trump, and now I'm considering whether to leave again because of its role in the lead-up to January 6 insurrection against our usual peaceful transfer of power in the USA.  

To get more eyeballs, FB looked the other way as Stop the Steal and QAnon worked around its weak efforts to ban them.  It also cut back on its Civic Integrity team and ignored the team's advice.

What do you think?  Should we give FB-Meta a time-out?  All we have to do is treat it like a violent child in the family, shutting them up in a room until they calm down and find a way to play nicely with others.  

This report in the Washington Post reveals how half-hearted Facebook's efforts to stop enhancing hate have been.  Thank you, Craig Timberg, Elizabeth Dwoskin, and Reed Albergotti.

Politico also revealed in Andrea S. Levine's article on Oct. 22 that Facebook took down the original Stop the Steal group in November, but it did not ban content using that phrase until after the Jan. 6 riot.

Facebook felt like such a safe space that a Capitol police K-9 officer exchanged messages with one of the insurrection planners before January 6.  Afterward, he tried to delete those posts and get his friend to delete them too.  Now he's facing a possible 20 years in prison and had to resign from his job.

Listen to NPR's report on how Stop the Steal evaded FB's weak efforts by affiliating with other FB groups.

Thank you to FB whistleblower Frances Haugen for her courageous testimony to the Security and Exchanges Commission on Capitol Hill, reported in the above media and first reported by Buzzfeed.

Exvangelicals, post-evangelicals and other evolving creatures

Some born-again Christians are running away from the e-word as fast as they can.  

Check out this link to the article on Rachel Held Evans by Eliza Griswold posted Oct. 26 in The New Yorker in the section titled On Religion.  

You may have already seen the Washington Post article by Sarah Pulliam Bailey Oct. 22 on post-evangelicals and exvangelicals.  

Bailey attended an ad hoc gathering of a hundred post-evangelical pastors in mid-October in Indiana.  She  reports that some younger evangelicals are moving away from views often associated with evangelicals, tending to be more LGBTQ-affirming and more opposed to racism and Trump..

Some of us older evangelicals have been moving in a more tolerant direction for years.  

After all, this book Evangelical Feminism: A History was published in 2005.  There was a thirty-year history of evangelical feminism back in 2005.  

Another example is the group founded in 1974 as Evangelical Women's Caucus, now known as Evangelical & Ecumenical Women's Caucus - Christian Feminism Today.  EEWC-CFT has been LGBT affirming since 1986.  People didn't hear much about the Q back then.

Our website is full of thoughtful articles, book and film and music reviews, original poetry, and a useful FAQ.

Some in EEWC-Christian Feminism Today have tossed the e-word in the trash bin, but others like me still consider themselves evangelical, even if we don't look like it to the run-of-the-mill evangelical today.

Because the word evangelical just means "good news," eu-angelion in Greek, I see no reason to hand it over to right-wing folks who don't seem to me to be living out that good news.  

I'm a Bible-thumping, gospel-believing follower of Jesus, like Beth Moore.  She's been sending out some powerful tweets lately after being dinged by the Southern Baptist Convention for standing up against its all-male control.  See her on Twitter @BethMooreLPM

These positive signs remind me of that Martin Luther King Jr. quote: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” 

John MacArthur: Keeping women down

John MacArthur in 2013
born in Los Angeles in 1939

 John MacArthur is a sad case.

I used to see him as an opponent.  But now I realize he's 82 years old, a year older than Speaker Nancy Pelosi, three years older than Mitch McConnell, and four years older than President Joe Biden, the seniors who govern our nation.  He's nine years older than I am, bless him.

Oh, I forgot Senator Joe Manchin, who is 74, and Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who is 45, a junior to them all.  She won her seat in 2018 when Senator Jeff Flake stepped out of Arizona politics after criticizing Trump.  Manchin and Sinema actually govern the US as much as Pelosi, McConnell, and Biden do.  Being passive-aggressive gets them attention.

Anyway, Johnny has been serving at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California, since 1969, when he began as the junior pastor there.  His father was a Baptist radio preacher in Los Angeles, educated at Bob Jones College in South Carolina.  Johnny began college at Bob Jones but returned to Los Angeles to attend a now-defunct church college.

The point is that he is who he is, and he's not going to change.  Misogynists, like racists, only vanish by dying off.  They don't change their minds.

If you check out Wikipedia's page on MacArthur, you see who he is:

MacArthur has been involved with multiple controversies regarding his outspokenness on certain topics. MacArthur is very open about opposing same-sex marriage, against female pastors, and the social justice movement.^[37] He has delivered multiple sermons where he discusses these issues.^[38]

In 2012, at The Shepherd's Conference, MacArthur was participating in a word association questionnaire where the moderator gave him the name "Steven Furtick." MacArthur proceeded to argue that Furtick, pastor of Elevation Church, was "unqualified".^[39] Furtick responded to this comment in his 2016 book Unqualified: How God Uses Broken People to Do Big Things.

In 2019, at the Truth Matters Conference, where, during a word association questionnaire, the name "Beth Moore" was given. Reiterating his stance on 1 Timothy 2:12, MacArthur responded by stating that Beth Moore should "Go home" and that "There is no case that can be made Biblically for a woman preacher. Period. Paragraph. End of Discussion."^[40] Moore responded to this stance by stating on her Twitter account, "I did not surrender to a calling of man when I was 18 years old. I surrendered to a calling of God. It never occurs to me for a second to not fulfill it. I will follow Jesus - and Jesus alone - all the way home. And I will see His beautiful face and proclaim, Worthy is the Lamb!"^[41]

In 2020 and 2021, during the COVID-19 global crisis, MacArthur denied the existence of a pandemic, ignored orders from Los Angeles County public health officials regarding services at Grace Community Church, and insisted that no one from the church had become seriously ill.^[42] Los Angeles County sued the church over its refusal to close down, and the church counter-sued, claiming religious freedom discrimination. Eventually the lawsuits were settled out of court with the county and state paying $400,000 each to Grace Community Church. In August 2021, MacArthur admitted to congregants that "many people" contracted COVID-19 while it "went through" the church in December 2020 and January 2021, including both he and his wife.^[43][44]

I thought of picketing his church to protest his recent statements against women pastors, but then I reconsidered.  

Why bother?  He's not going to change.  His church may change out from under him while he still lives.  

In an article for Sojourners magazine, I interviewed women there who had no idea that he believes women should submit to their husbands.  Grace Community Church downplays that theology when recruiting young members.  Apparently it doesn't sell well. After a few years when a woman is deeply involved in the church, she learns these doctrines.  Or dicktrines.

Grace Church doesn't teach Galatians 3:28.  Or Acts 2:16-21.  In its Bible studies, you'll learn about Ephesians 5:22, but nothing about Ephesians 5:21. 

Johnny and his buddies at The Master's Seminary like to ignore the women who worked with Peter and Paul preaching the gospel in the earliest years of Christianity: Prisca, Lydia, Junia, Phoebe, Mary of Magdala, and others.  

Note: The seminary began as Los Angeles Baptist Theological Seminary in 1927.  The new name hides its Baptist roots and plays up its masculine identity.  No women are allowed to enroll. 

The website says: "One word sums up the legacy that is entrusted to the men who come to TMS: faithfulness."

I could think of other words: Sexist.  Patriarchal.  Misguided.  Non-biblical.  Would Jesus exclude half the human race from a college to train preachers?  

I mean the guy denied the existence of the pandemic during 2020 and lied about whether his congregants had become seriously ill with the coronavirus of 2019.  

He was lying like Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who was recently exposed by Rep. Adam Schiff in a blatant lie.  Read about it in Schiff's new book, Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could.

Schiff told Morning Joe:

“One of the stories I tell about Kevin McCarthy is, I was sitting next to him on a plane having a private conversation and then him going to the press and telling the press the exact opposite of our conversation, and when I confronted him on the House floor about this and said, ‘Kevin, you know I said the exact opposite of what you told the press,’ his answer was to me, ‘Yeah, I know, Adam, but you know how it goes.'”

Pastor MacArthur, you lied to us about whether your members at Grace Community Church were getting seriously ill with Covid-19 because you encouraged them to keep attending indoors during the worst of the pandemic.  "Yeah, I know, folks, but you know how it goes."

McCarthy, MacArthur.  Both big-time liars, both deeply into preserving and gaining power for their side.  One claims to follow Jesus; one doesn't even pretend to be a man of values.

Like Trump, John MacArthur deserves our pity, not our attention as a worthy opponent.  

I won't bother to picket Grace Community Church to counter the wacky views of this guy.  

Instead, I will pick up the pen and use my social platform.  

I will also pray for him.  He followed his father's footsteps obediently, but millennials and their grandchildren won't buy his opposition to women's equality, to marriage equality, and to the rights of women and gays to serve the church.

As Jesus prayed, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do."