If you remember, I asked:
No.
No, they didn’t. And this morning is positively Biblical out there.
Specifically Genesis 6:13–9:29.
The answer to yesterday’s question
Author: 6000
Quick trip
A quick trip down to Agulhas to check that all is in order after the recent bad weather.
It mostly was, but a few important jobs and repairs got done, and now it really is.
A beautiful day, making me wonder if there actually had been any rain. But yes, the fields were sodden, and then I saw the state of the road south of Bredasdorp. The Agulhas Plain does serve as a giant runoff from the Soetmuisberg, but generally the roads remain clear. Not today, with the knee-deep water on the A319 allowing only the larger vehicles through. Thankfully, I was in one of them, and so it worked out ok.
Once here, managed a quick walk as well, and some photos, none of which were amazing, but that isn’t an issue.
Favourite one was probably this White-Fronted Plover on the beach here. And even then, maybe more for the pebbles than the bird.
Back home now, and ready to grab a quick dinner before loadshedding. Will the first clouds of the cold front hold off long enough to grab a quick shot of the Milky Way while the village lies in darkness (apart from the wanker with the generator in his garage)?
I guess you’ll find out right here tomorrow.
H5N1 – coming soon
With a world suffering with pandemic fatigue, knobhead anti-vaxxers rife everywhere you look, and a general deep distrust of Government-instituted Nonpharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs), an outbreak of something really serious right now couldn’t come at a worse time.
Jimmy Carr: “Do you think we overreacted to Covid-19?”
Jimmy Carr – His Dark Material (2021)
Audience: “Yes!”
JC: “Yeah, a lot of the survivors think so.”
And yet, the warning signs are very much there that Highly Pathogenic Avian Flu (HPAI) (H5N1) has had its fun with the birds and is moving onto mammals. In the US, there have been almost 200 “spillover” infections of mammals with the virus:
On March 29, the USDA first published its data on cases of HPAI infections in mammals from 2022 to late March 2023. The H5N1 virus subtype was detected in numerous species: bobcat, black and brown bears, bottlenose dolphin, harbor and grey seals, mountain lion, red fox, raccoon, striped skunk, and more.
While on the Pacific Coast of South America it’s looking even more serious:
Indeed:
Senapesca made a balance on Monday on the progress of avian influenza in Chile, detailing that a total of 11,471 specimens have died as a result of this influenza.
The authorities confirmed the deaths of 9,853 sea lions, 1,555 Humboldt penguins, 27 chungungos, 21 spiny porpoises, 14 Chilean dolphins and one huillín.
Senapesca is the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in Chile.
Chungungos and huillíns are two different sorts of otter. You live*, you learn.
And sure, the penguins are very much avian, but the rest of them… well… it’s not good news.
It’s important to understand that at the moment, there have been very few human cases of H5N1, and no reports of human to human transmission. So no need to panic. But there are a couple of provisos: firstly, that this is a very nasty virus with a very high mortality rate in the cases we have seen (far, far (far!) higher than SARS-CoV-2), and secondly, we’re potentially only ever one mutation away from that human to human transmission becoming a thing, and the more mammalian infections that we see, the more likely that is to happen.
On the plus side, we have a very good handle on this Influenza virus already. It’s been around for a while and we’ve got a lot of information on its genomics and how it works. That should mean that any vaccine production should be able to be rapidly achieved, and that the product should be very effective.
But then there are all the politics and logistics to slow things down.
It then remains to be seen – in the event of it all going pear-shaped – how many people will actually go and get vaccinated, given the problems detailed in the first paragraph above. But in this case, I can’t see choosing not to as being any more than an accelerated form of natural selection.
Anyway, definitely one to watch out for.
Enjoy your day.
* not if you’re an otter, obviously
Same same, but different
Want to make an achievement sound better than it actually is?
It’s easy: to show bigger numbers, simply use smaller units.
Like this:
130 million millilitres sounds an awful lot. But it’s “only” 130,000 litres. Which is, ok, still quite a lot, but sounds nowhere near as impressive as “130 million” of anything in a soundbite.
I’m not quite sure why Gauteng Police Commissioner Lieutenant colonel Elias Mawela (for it is he) didn’t take it a step further and go for the 130 billion microlitres option.
130 BILLION?!?
That sounds like a huge success! Well done, Commissioner!
Both wrong
Imagine my delight – noting that this was merely a fender bender with clearly limited possibilities for injury – when I spotted a crash on the road in Wynberg earlier.
Why?
Because this was at the junction of Wolfe and Waterloo.
The vehicle turning into Wolfe from Waterloo was a taxi, turning into Wolfe despite the clear “No Minibus Taxis” sign under which the bump took place.
The vehicle turning right from Wolfe into Waterloo was a car, and would have avoided the taxi completely had it have noted the “No Right Turn” sign at the top of Wolfe, next to which the collision occurred.
Oh dear. What a pity.
But will they have learnt anything? I doubt it.
Note that the above images were taken on a much nicer day than today.
Also note that the minibus on the left of the image above belongs to a school, isn’t a taxi, and may or may not be turning right.