Thoughts On A Sunday

I have been amazed at how quickly the days are getting shorter even though there’s nothing unusual about it. It has always caught me off guard seeing the sun setting earlier every day. I had hope we wouldn’t need to put our clocks back in November but it seems Congress can’t make up its collective mind. Almost everyone I’ve talked to hates having to change their clocks twice a year. It screws us up for a week or more every time we do.

It is time to start thinking about the coming winter, getting summer stuff stored away and winter stuff pulled out and ready. While winter is still three months away it will be here before we know it.

You know what else will be here before we know it?

Monday.

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During my errands today I notice a lot more color around as more swamp maples are turning as are the white birches – the maples turning red and the birches yellow.

Watching the local TV prognosticators they’re saying we’ll see peak foliage colors towards the second half of October. Some are saying the colors might be muted this year because of the higher than average rainfall. It’s the same when there is below average rainfall. So it’s anyone’s guess how good the colors will be this year.

Personally, I don’t think it will make any difference. It won’t keep the leaf-peepers away.

That’s fine with me.

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It’s time to start bombing Canada. This is the casus belli.

The last thing we need is a poor clone of the old Soviet Union along our norther border.

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I know some insurers here in the US have been raising insurance rates on Electric Vehicles because the cost of repairs after an accident is so high as compared to old fashioned internal combustion engine vehicles. The costs are so high in some cases that at least one insurer in the UK has stopped insuring EVs.

John Lewis has stopped offering insurance to electric car drivers amid fears over the cost of repairs.

The department store’s lending business John Lewis Financial Services has put a temporary pause on customers taking out cover or renewing existing policies on battery-power vehicles while its underwriter, Covéa, analyses risks and costs.

Insurers are facing rising costs for vehicle repairs, which are eating into profits. According to the Association of British Insurers (ABI), vehicle repair costs rose 33pc over the first quarter of 2023 compared to 2022, helping to push annual premiums to record highs.

Electric cars can be particularly expensive to repair, costing around a quarter more to fix on average, compared to a petrol or diesel vehicle, according to Thatcham Research, the motor industry’s research centre.

Particular worries surround the batteries, which are commonly mounted on the floor of the vehicle. This placement can make it more likely that it will be damaged even in a minor accident such as mounting a kerb.

Can the same thing be all that far behind in the US? Damage to the battery pack on an EV can be a major expense to replace. Battery packs are often part of the structure of an EV and it doesn’t take much for one or more cells in the pack to be damaged, something that can turn the battery pack into a rolling incendiary device. Depending upon the vehicle the cost of a pack can run between $10,000 and $30,000. I can’t see insurers wanting to shell out that kind of money when a pack is ‘tweaked’ by running over a street curb.

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More and more people have stated they won’t take the next series of Covid vaccinations, particularly in light of mounting data that the experimental vaccines have major negative side effects and are not as efficacious in preventing being infected or reducing the spread. It seems SloJoe is pissed off that people won’t automatically line up to get the latest Covid vaccines.

In a Wednesday speech in San Francisco, President Joe Biden hammered Americans for shying away from taking any more shots for new coronavirus variants and for increasingly turning a deaf ear to discussions about vaccines.

Biden appeared at the Fairmont San Francisco Hotel in San Francisco, California, to deliver a short speech on America’s efforts on artificial intelligence for scientific research and medical applications. But at the outset of his little address, he went off on vaccines.

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The president then urged everyone to talk more about the need for this investment in research. And that led him to go off on vaccine deniers.

“And one of those areas — you saw what happened with regard to the crisis — health crisis that we had that cost us,” Biden exclaimed. “We lost well over a million people. And as time began to move on, you had more and more voices saying, ‘No, no, no. You don’t need to get that shot. You don’t need to be — get — you don’t need to.’

“And we have a new strain of COVID now, and we have answers for it. But I just would urge those in public life and both political parties or no political party to be cautious about the ac- — the sometimes inflammatory things you say about this, because people’s lives are at stake,” he railed.

When the vaccine may be as much as killer as the illness it is supposed to protect against, why would anyone take the gamble, particularly for a disease that has an overall survival rate of over 99%? How many Covid ‘deaths’ were actually people who died with Covid, but not from Covid?

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Speaking of Covid, it seems the newest wave of Covid hospitalizations has stalled despite expectations of a continuing increase. Instead the number of Covid hospitalizations has been falling.

In the week ending Sept. 16, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data show hospitalizations are down 4.3 percent. The number had been increasing since July, although the CDC's historical trends shows that hospitalization numbers were relatively low compared with previous increases in the virus—notably compared with a prior "surge" that occurred in the summer of 2022.

Meanwhile, the latest figures show that emergency department visits are down 19.3 percent and test positivity is down 1.6 percent. Deaths are up by about 12.5 percent, the data show, but that figure is also relatively low when compared with previous years.

The EG.5 variant, which has been dubbed Eris, accounts for about 24.5 percent of all cases, according to the CDC's variant tracker. FL.1.5.1, known as Fornax, is estimated to be responsible for about 13.7 percent of COVID-19 infections, the CDC figures show.

About a month ago, amid a steady rise in hospitalizations, some health officials suggested that it doesn't appear to be as bad as before.

While hospitalizations had increased, deaths had not. Whether that is due to the latest variant not being nearly as deadly as previous variants or to more truthful reporting of cause of death isn’t known, at least not by me. Only time will tell.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where we’re seeing a return to summer weather, the leaves are changing colors, and the number of leaf-peepers is expected to increase over the next few weeks.