QUARANTINE BLOG # 618

December 8, 2021

“Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water.”  That was the tag line for Jaws 2, the second film in the shark movie franchise.  Well, this isn’t about sharks, but it is even more deadly.  Just when you thought it was safe to go back out into the world, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus has reared its ugly and deadly head.

Yesterday The New York Times asked “Four Big Questions About Omicron.”  Here is the abridged version of that report.

1.  Does Omicron spread faster than earlier variants? The evidence for faster spread of Omicron seems strong. “The data out of South Africa suggest that the Omicron variant is spreading more quickly than Delta,” Janet Baseman, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington said.  It spreads more rapidly among people with no immunity than earlier variants did.

2.  Is Omicron more severe than earlier variants? It is too early to know whether the average person who contracts Omicron becomes sicker than the average person who contracted earlier versions of the Covid virus. Severe Covid illness often takes a week or more to develop, and the world has been aware of Omicron for less than two weeks. 

3.  Are vaccinated people protected or not? The answer depends on the meaning of “protected.” Is it protected from any Covid infection – or from severe illness? “I do think vaccines will hold up, not so much for getting infections but for severe illness,” Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Research said. 

4. Do Covid tests still work? Yes, based on the signs so far.

Bottom line. For now, vaccinated people can reasonably continue to behave as they were – but many should feel urgency about getting booster shots. Unvaccinated people remain at substantial risk of serious illness. About 1,000 Americans have been dying each day of Covid in recent weeks, the vast majority of them unvaccinated.

👉  If you had trouble yesterday connecting to Netflix, or couldn’t book tickets online with Delta Airlines, or order a Big Mac and fries with the McDonald’s app the problem rested with Amazon Web Services.  AWS is the biggest cloud provider and provides cloud computing services to many governments, universities and companies including Instacart, Venmo, Kindle, Roku, and Disney+.  Late last night AWS said many of the most serious glitches had been repaired.

👉  More than 230 skiing and snowboarding Kris Kringles took to the slopes in the western Maine town of Newry, home to the Sunday River Ski Resort to raise money for charity. The jolly ole’ St. Nicks took a break last year because of the global pandemic. But they returned to kick off the ski season in full holiday garb, including white beards, red hats and red outfits. Before dashing through the snow, the Santas must all donate a minimum of $20, which helps support local education and recreation programs.

👉  A homeowner in Poolesville, Maryland, a town about 25 miles outside of Washington D.C., (about a half an hour from Damascus, Maryland, where Bonnie and I pastored our first church) was attempting to use smoke to purge snakes from the house, according to Montgomery County Fire Department officials.  In the process, the homeowner caught the house on fire, causing about $1 million in damage. Pete Piringer, a spokesman for the county fire department, said on Twitter that 75 firefighters were called to put out the blaze that started in the basement.  Piringer said the fire was accidental and that no people were hurt.  But he said the well-being of the snakes is “undetermined.”

👉  Consider these:

I’m great at multi-tasking – I can waste time, be unproductive, and procrastinate all at once.

Hospitality is the art of making guests feel like they’re at home when you wish they were.

If you keep your feet firmly planted on the ground, you’ll have trouble putting on your pants.

I was going to give him a nasty look, but he already had one.

👉  Two thoughts from “Ooh You’re Gold.”

👉  Two Christmas pictures:

👉  Some more origin stories of NFL team nicknames.

Team owner, general manager, and head coach Paul Brown nicknamed Cincinnati’s AFL expansion franchise the Bengals in 1968 in honor of the football team nicknamed the Bengals that played in the city from 1937-1942.  According to Brown, the nickname “would provide a link with past professional football in Cincinnati.”  Brown chose Bengals over the fans’ most popular suggestion, Buckeyes.

There’s some debate about whether Cleveland’s professional football franchise, the Cleveland Browns, was named after its first coach and general manager, Paul Brown, or after boxer Joe Louis, who was nicknamed the “Brown Bomber.”

The Dallas Cowboys, who began play in the NFL in 1960, were originally going to be nicknamed the Steers.  The team’s general manager, Texas E. Schramm, decided that having a castrated bovine as a mascot might subject the team to ridicule, so he decided to go with Rangers instead.  But fearing that people would confuse the football team with the local minor league baseball team nicknamed the Rangers, Schramm finally changed the nickname to Cowboys shortly before the first season began.

👉  You may be looking for an unusual vacation site.  If so, Dinosaur Kingdom II, located near Natural Bridge, Virginia (a great spot in itself) may be just what you are looking for.  If you go, imagine yourself in 1863.  A family of Virginia paleontologists has accidentally dug a mine shaft into a hidden valley of living dinosaurs.  Unfortunately, the Union Army has tagged along, hoping to kidnap the big lizards and use them as “weapons of mass destruction” against the South.  

What you see along the path of Dinosaur Kingdom is a series of tableaus depicting the aftermath of this ill-advised military strategy.  You could use DK2 as the place, like this couple did, to pose for your engagement photographs.

👉  Today’s close, “The New Song,” is from Celebrating Abundance by Walter Brueggemann.

“Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the earth! Let the sea roar and all that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants. Let the desert and its towns lift up their voice, the villages that Kedar inhabits; let the inhabitants of Sela sing for joy, let them shout from the tops of the mountains” (Isaiah 42:10-11).

Can you imagine writing this poem and singing this song in exile? Can you imagine defying the empire by sketching out this daring alternative? Can you dare to sing this song under the very nose of Babylonian soldiers, about a new reality that counters the empire? Think of it, new reality conjured in worship, by the choir, inviting new courage, new faith, new energy, new obedience, new joy.

The new song never describes the world the way it now is. The new song imagines how the world will be in God’s good time to come. The new song is a refusal to accept the present world as it is, a refusal to believe this is right or that the present will last. The church is always at its most daring and risking and dangerous and free when it sings a new song. Because then it sings that the power of the gospel will not let the world finally stay as it is.

About many things, it appears that not much can be done. When this community of faith could do very little, however, it did not resign itself to playing it safe. Instead, it sang new songs, counter songs that refused to let the promise of the gospel sink into the landscape of the empire. The new song is a bold assertion, innocently declaring that the God of the gospel has plans and purposes and a will to reorder the world, to bring wholeness and health to the blind, the poor, the needy, the nations so fearful.

It is no wonder, once the singing begins, that all creation sings and dances and claps with us. The whole of creation sings a new song about God’s new world. Heaven and nature sing and earth repeats the loud amen. We sing the song, even in exile, then we live the new reality. The Babylonians cannot stop us, because the song is true and more powerful than the tearfulness of the world. The exiles are indeed on their way – rejoicing.

In this Advent season, teach us the new song, which heralds the new world that is coming, the new reality that is taking shape before our eyes. May we rejoice in its truth and power and join all creation in its loud amen! Amen!

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