Hope everybody had a merry Christmas.   This is likely the last blog of the year unless something drastic happens.  There are three things that surprised me this year which in retrospect I should not be surprised about.  These three things also caused me distress over the future of the country.

Obviously, COVID-19 is the biggest news of the year.  I am surprised by the number of people who claim that restrictions as a result of the virus are infringements on their freedom.  Decades from now I think people will look back and wonder how badly we responded to the pandemic.  They will wonder that a country that will certainly lose more than half a million people before the vaccine will save it, could have been so selfish to not lose a small amount of freedom to save lives.   This is the same country that was willing to give up a lot more freedom in the Patriot Act after losing 3,000 lives in 9/11.

I should not be surprised that people use the second amendment rights to walk into the capitol of Michigan to protest against restrictions with automatic weapons in hand.  I should also not be surprised that people can walk the streets of Kenosha with automatic weapons and not be stopped by the police except to offer them drinks.  To me, this is not about freedom but about lawlessness and different treatment of races by the police.  While the mainstream media did cover these events, I have not heard many mainstream commentators who expressed shock at these event.  What would happen if a large group of Black men enter a government building to protest police brutality while holding automatic weapons?  I want to see what Fox News would say about that.  Don't worry, no Black group will do such a thing.  They know what the outcome would be.

We may be rejoicing that Trump lost by a landslide of over 7 million popular votes.  But if we take away the margin Biden won by in California (5 million) and in New York (2 million), we can see that in the other 48 states, it was a draw.  Given how poorly Trump has handled everything from the pandemic, to the economy, to foreign policies, not to mention his lack of morality, it distress me that outside the two most populous liberal states, he was able to win 50% of the vote.  This shows how divided we are.  So it is unlikely that Biden or anyone else can get things done in the future.

I think I am done ranting for the last time this year.  Thank goodness this crazy year is ending.  Hopefully 2021 will be much better.  Happy new year, everybody.

 I have not been writing about Trump's obsession of trying to overthrow the election result with ridiculous and false claims.  Those claims are so outrageous that even the justices in the Supreme Court who were appointed by him have ruled against him.  So I figure eventually this will die down and he would have to leave office.  Better spend time worrying about the virus, the economy and all other problems in the nation than worrying about Trump's crazy claims.  But every time it looks like Trump and his allies are coming to the end of the road for them, he will not give up and puts the nation into more danger.

I know Trump does not care about the country and its citizens.  The death rate and hospitalization rate are getting worse.  The economy is plummeting.  Russia is hacking into computers of our companies and government institutions.  Yet Trump just talks about the non existing election frauds.  As our intelligence agencies are accusing of Russia's espionage, he is saying that it is not Russia.  He says it is maybe China even though the evidence is overwhelming that it is Russia.  Why is he so scared of Russia and Putin?  Time after time he has defended Russia over our own intelligence.  Even after Pompeo says it is Russia, Trump tells his staff to stand down on this claim?  Why?

Now there are reports that he wants to appoint Sidney Powell to be special council to investigate election fraud.  The same Powell who was on his team alleging voter fraud.  How is that for a democracy.  Michael Flynn is advocating that Trump declare martial law to prevent the transfer of power?  How is that for a democracy?  It seems like Trump and his supporters think we are a banana republic.  I think four more years of Trump in power will turn U.S into one.

I thought all along that Trump is doing all this even if he knows he can't win is because he can raise millions of dollars.  He loves money and given that he is deep in debt and probably need defense funds after he leaves office, he is trying to get as much money as possible.  Those people who four years ago believed that he will build a wall and Mexico will pay for it, are now contributing money for overturning the election.  Once again these people are taken by this snake oil salesman.

But at least these people taken by Trump are just losing their money.  The really dangerous people are those who threatened the REPUBLICAN election officials in Georgia and other states for not overturning election results.  The idea of martial law is attractive to them.  They think Trump will help them overthrow the government.  They won't be successful.  But I am sure Russia will be willing to lend them a helping hand!

 My wife had an experience in the past couple of weeks which illustrates that after almost a year, we still have not figured out how to contain this pandemic.  The scientists have figured out a lot about this virus but we have not used the knowledge we have acquired and turned that into actions that will decrease infections and thus save lives.

My wife volunteers at a free clinic one or two days a week.  She was contacted by the clinic on a Saturday that one of her fellow volunteers had tested positive for COVID.  My wife had last worked at the clinic on Monday before this.  She had brief contact with that fellow volunteer but she believed it was less than 15 minutes and both were wearing masks.  So it is unlikely that my wife would have been infected.

My wife checked the protocol for this and was told that she should quarantine for 2 weeks from that Monday.  If she has no symptoms during the two weeks, then she should get tested after to be sure she is negative.  The quarantine is right, but I don't see the benefit of getting the test after the quarantine is over.  The most infectious time after exposure is from 4 to 10 days.  So ideally she should get tested as soon as she found out about the positive test of her co-worker.  This way, if she is positive, she can warn the people she had contact with from Monday to Saturday of that week.  Getting a test after two weeks of quarantine would not help anyone she had contact with during those first five days.  (The only contacts she had during that time was mainly me.  We saw couple of friends but we were outside and wore masks.)

The ideal thing would have been that we can get quick antigen tests which would give us results right away.  We should have been able to test daily from day 5 (Saturday) until at least day 10.  If there is a positive result then we should have gone in for a PCR test to confirm.  But we cannot get the antigen test and the county told us not to go in for the PCR test until after the quarantine is over.

So after the 14 days was over, my wife went to get tested.  She waited in line for 40 minutes and then was told that they had run out of tests and to come back another day!  Two days later she went back and got tested.  She finally got the expected negative result 4 days after that.  I ask:  What good is it to get a test result 20 days after the exposure?  She was not going to infect anyone after two weeks even if she had been infected herself.  The testing timeline is not according to the best scientific data, in my opinion.  There is not availability of the quick antigen test.  If we are still depending on the PCR tests, at least have them available at all times and have turn around times of no more than one day.  Otherwise, tests are not doing much good.

Also there was no contact tracing.  My wife got the news from her clinic.  There was no contact from the county health department.  We had to inquire ourselves about the protocol, which is not correct, in my opinion.  I am wondering, given this lack of on time testing and contact tracing, if the infection counts in my county or elsewhere in the nation is anywhere near correct.

Well, maybe the vaccines will eventually bail us out.  But meanwhile, unnecessary infections and deaths are bound to continue.  The authorities are still not doing a good job almost a year into this.  A large portion of the public are also not doing their part by wearing masks and social distancing.  This is still going to be a bad winter and spring, unfortunately.

 The inequality of black and white was again vividly on display in Staten Island last week.  The manager of a bar which had defied restriction orders due to COVID, ran away from the police and then drove his car with a cop on the hood of the car.  This was caught on video.  The man said that he was running away from two men who did not identify themselves as policemen.  Yeah, right!  

The guy was eventually arrested without injury.  Not only that, he was released without bond!  Now, what would happen if this guy was black?  A black guy running away from the police?  Probably shot.  A black guy made it into his car and then hit a cop?  Probably shot.  A black guy arrested after above action?  Probably beat up, if not get kneed to death or given an injection of ketamine at a dose twice his weight.  A black guy goes before a judge after hitting a cop with a car?  Certainly he would not have gotten out without bail.  Maybe a black guy could have come out of this unscathed, like this Staten Island guy.  But don't bet on it.  

Those who support this white guy would say the government deprived him of his freedom to operate his bar.  They deprived him of his freedom not to be intimidated by the police.  But do any of these people support black people who are deprived of their right to be treated as equal human beings?

 I was going to write a couple of days ago but there was a power outage our neighborhood from 9 am Monday until 3 am this morning.  So it was about 42 straight hours where we had no electricity or internet.  We also had an outage last Thursday from 5 am to 7 pm.  So a quick calculation: we had no electricity for a total 56 hours in the past 142 hours.

The frustrating  thing is that the power outage was not directly caused by nature but intentionally by the Southern California Edison.  We were told last year that Edison have devised a plan to shut off electricity based on factors such as wind velocity and direction, humidity and so on.  The reason being that there has been fires started by wind knocking down powerlines and igniting fires.  The thing is, California has always had strong winds periodically.   There has been practically no rain this season and so things are very dry.  But again, droughts are not unusual in California.  

I think what is somewhat different is that there has been more lawsuits against electric companies for start of fires.  So I can understand that Edison is trying to prevent fire from down lines as much as possible.  But the last few days, the wind conditions were not among the worst I have seen since I moved out here.  And the outages are longer than they need to be given the winds had died down well before power was restored.

I think shutting down power whenever the wind blows is not a solution to fires.  The main problem is that there are too many power lines above ground.  Wind would not affect power lines underground.  Edison and the government is reluctant to spend money to put lines under ground.  I also believe that the upkeep of existing lines is not up to par.  Just turning off electricity cause Edison less.

This is an example of the poor infrastructure of the country generally.  I had been thinking about writing about our infrastructure.  This last few days has been another wake up call for the many things that need to be fixed but there is a lack of political will to do so.  More on this in the future.