Tuesday night.

Yet another groundhog day. I have to keep reminding what day of week this is. It’s Tuesday, but it may as well be Wednesday or any other weekday. So little variation…

At work, I’m helping train a newbie: one of at least two that I’ll help onboard in the coming weeks. How strange, that merely staying at the same job for two years gives that sort of seniority and apparently prestige. (I’m still not buying that, and am suspicious of any attempts to convince me so. Heh.) My old-timey coworkers who actually manage people inside the warehouse find it hard to believe I’ve been away for over a year. I guess I’m not the only one stuck with the groundhog day syndrome, eh.

…there’s probably something else I can do during my waking hours aside from working, gaming, reading, eating, half-assed attempts at exercise, and pretending to study Spanish. Yet for the life of me, I can’t think what.

In covid news, the American Red Cross found that 21% of blood donations from unvaccinated donors during the first week of March in the US had covid antibodies. Blood donors aren’t representative of the entire population, but that’s interesting nonetheless. It means that a) wow, 21% of American blood donors had been exposed to covid at some point, and b) double-wow, this means 79% haven’t been exposed at all. Both of those numbers are huge and significant in their own way. So much for the idea of herd immunity. (The UK tried the herd immunity idea and ended up generating a highly contagious variant that’s all over the world now. Probably best not to try that again.)

In other news, things are getting worse in Brazil. They keep setting new records for covid deaths almost every day. Today, the new highest death toll was 2,841. They have about 280,000 deaths so far, and that’s not counting all the ones that got misdiagnosed, misreported, or simply swept under the rug. The newest health minister, cardiologist Marcelo Queiroga, seems to be yet another puppet for Bolsonaro. His main advice consists of washing hands, wearing masks, and nothing else. He’s also against lockdowns… It’s hard to imagine a more gruesome environment for a virus to spread: an anti-vaccine president and a succession of puppets as health ministers. (Querioga will be the fourth since the pandemic began.) Brazil is highly unlikely to get huge shipments of vaccine (enough to make a difference) anytime soon, and it’ll probably be the horror story of 2021 as the year goes on. As always, here is hoping I’m completely wrong.

Good night, y’all.