QUARANTINE BLOG # 598

November 18, 2021

This is a long way to go for a smile, and absolutely no disrespect intended, but it’s the way my mind was working yesterday morning at breakfast.  Bonnie and I are reading the Bible through in a year, and the New Testament text for Wednesday started with James 1:1.  Read it in your best Sean Connery voice: “James, a bond servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

👉  Pfizer announced Tuesday that it is seeking emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration for its experimental antiviral Covid-19 pill, known as PF-07321332 or Paxlovid.  

“With more than 5 million deaths and countless lives impacted by this devastating disease globally, there is an urgent need for life-saving treatment options.  The overwhelming efficacy achieved in our recent clinical study of Paxlovid, and its potential to help save lives and keep people out of the hospital if authorized, underscores the critical role that oral antiviral therapies could play in the battle against COVID-19,” Albert Bourla, chairman and CEO of Pfizer, said.  

The pill is to be administered in combination with an older antiviral drug called ritonavir and is meant to treat mild to moderate Covid-19 in patients at increased risk of hospitalizations or death.  The trial showed an 89% reduction in the risk of hospitalization or death from Covid-19 among people given the drug within the first three days of symptom onset.

👉  One of the scarey things about Covid-19 has been all of the misinformation that is being circulated.  One young woman I know won’t get the vaccine because she has heard that it causes sterility.  QB – and many other sites much more widely read – have published frequent pieces that declare reputable doctors don’t post findings on YouTube, but people don’t listen.

Watch this clip from CNN about a child who was in a trial of the Pfizer vaccine for children 5 years old and older.  Taylor Hirth pointedly addresses the misinformation.

👉  “Ooh You’re Gold” has a the first of two great computer stories:

And the second is a true story, with the names changed to protect the innocent (and the guilty):

One day the manager of a jewelry story received a phone call from his wife, who was madder he said, than he ever remembered her being.  When he came to the phone she said, “How do you turn this rassen-fracken fricken-bricken computer on????” (It was late December or early January and they had bought a computer as a family Christmas gift).

He said, “There are two buttons on the front of the computer.  Push one of them.” (The buttons were the power switch and the reset switch).

She said, “I did, and nothing happened!!!!”

He said, “Push the other one.”

As the late Reverend Flavis L. Burroughs once said, “I deny the allegations, and I hate the alligator.”

👉  Two “communication” Blackouts:

👉  Two panels with a marriage reflection:

👉  Two for our cat fanciers:

👉  Tuesday the Kalamazoo Gazette reported that Grace Sturgis Church had an unusual visitor.  Pastors Amanda and Luke Eicher went into the auditorium on Monday – the first day of hunting season – to find a 10 point buck (not the one pictured) wandering around, trying to find his way out.  After roaming through the church, the buck found his way back to a first-floor window and jumped back out into nature through the same window he came in.  The pastors posted a video to Facebook, showing the deer's eventual escape. 

👉  Monday was the day for deer to enter buildings.  A deer ran through the front door of Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge and climbed up an escalator. Surveillance video showed the animal bounding through an open door and stumbling on the slippery floor as workers and visitors watched from a few feet away.  The deer regained its footing enough to climb up the down escalator and reach the second floor, where it was finally corralled and held down by several people.  The deer was loaded on a hospital bed that was rolled outside to a truck from the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Department.  The animal had to be euthanized because of injuries received from having been struck by a vehicle before entering the building.

👉  While not as dramatic, and not this past Monday – but it was on a Monday, August 30 to be exact – a family of deer were wandering around in our backyard.  They have been frequent visitors, but they choose to remain outside.

👉  Our close today is from Psalm 42:1-2, and Praying with the Psalms by Eugene H. Peterson.

 “As the deer longs for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?”

God is to the soul what water is to the body: an absolute need, felt intensely. The longing, at the same time that it witnesses to our need for God, is evidence of the reality of the God who is there to fulfill our being.

Prayer: “As pants the hart for cooling streams when heated in the chase, so longs my soul, O God, for Thee, and Thy refreshing grace.” In Jesus’ name (Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady, “As Pants the Hart”). Amen.

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