Blue Monday

 Today is what they call Blue Monday.

It's supposedly the one day out of the year when Americans suffer the most depression.  Christmas is over, it's usually cold and gray, and the bills people racked up over Christmas are starting to come due.  

Today is also the full moon.  The first of the new year.  Make of that what you will.  

We had today off work for MLK day.  I'm not quite sure where my day went, or what I did with myself.  All I remember is catching up on season 2 of the new version of All Creatures Great And Small on PBS.  

The season ended up with a Christmas special --which made me wish it was Christmas again.  It also made me miss the old days, when American TV shows always did a Christmas episode.  They don't do that any more.  They usually have a Fall finale sometime in late November or early December, then no new episodes until sometime in January.  

I don't know when they started doing that, or why, but I wish they'd go back to making Christmas episodes. 

After that, I watched the first episode of the new Around The World In 80 Days, with David Tennant.  I finished the day up by watching a few episodes of La Brea.  That's one of the few shows out there that isn't a reboot or sequel.  This is what happens when you overschedule your children.  Boredom breeds creativity, and kids need to be bored.  

By the way, did you hear they're rebooting Fresh Prince Of Bel Air now?  I won't be watching it.  It just won't be the same without Carlton doing the Carlton.  

Also, by the way, if you're feeling just a bit blue, go to Google dot com, and search for Betty White.  Wait a few minutes....you're welcome. 

Well, I don't really have much to talk about today, unless you want to hear how much of a couch potato I was.  Oh, there is one thing that's been on my mind.  

I don't talk a whole lot about the political side of the pandemic.  It is my considered opinion that it should have never been politicized in the first place, but it was, and that's where we are right now. 

What I wanted to talk about was, much has been made lately of the Director of the CDC saying she didn't know how many of those 847, 577 deaths were with COVID, or due to COVID.  First of all, this is not new.  Dr. Birx said that two years ago.  Remember Dr. Birx?  Yeah, her...

Now, I know how some of you feel about the CDC right about now, but let me play devil's advocate for a minute.   As far as data and statistics go, the CDC only knows what is reported to them by the states.  If the state's information isn't accurate, or they don't provide those details, the CDC isn't going to know.

Now in my state, every COVID or suspected COVID death is thoroughly reviewed by the health department.  They examine the patient's medical history and what Dr. Byers called the cascade of events, and a whole bunch of other medical jargon I didn't quite understand.  If they determine that something else (car wreck, non COVID related heart attack, etc.) is the primary cause of death, then that's what's put on the death certificate, and it is not counted as a COVID death.  State health officer Dr. Dobbs and state epidemiologist Dr. Byers have explained this process multiple times in press conferences, town hall meetings, and Q&A sessions over the last two years. 

Because of this, I feel reasonably certain my state's records are accurate -- within the margins of normal human error, that is.  And people do make mistakes, even under the best of circumstances.  There was a case back towards the beginning of the pandemic, where a clinic called a man and told him he'd tested positive, when he hadn't even been for a COVID test.  That happened here, too.  When the health department investigated, it turns out the receptionist at the clinic had dialed the wrong number.  

Simple human error, but instead of saying, "Hey, I think you have the wrong number", the guy decided to go after his 15 minutes and made a video, trying to push the narrative that the virus and everything about it was all fake. 

But that's a different story for a different day. 

All that to say, I feel pretty sure Mississippi's numbers are pretty accurate.  I have it on good authority that Florida does the same thing.  Some of these other states, I'm not so sure about.  New York, for example.  When the previous governor resigned, the first thing the interim governor did was to add some 12, 000 deaths to the state's total, because she said the previous governor wasn't reporting all of them.  

Just last week, I read a report where an auditor in the state of Michigan under reported nursing home deaths by 46%.  

And then there's California.  California is so messed up, I don't think even California knows what California is doing.  

So, if you have questions about the totals and such, my best suggestion is to contact your state health department and demand an explanation from them.