Infection Rate Dropping, Death Rate Rising

The Covid-19 new case rate has been dropping lately. A look over at The New York Times Coronavirus in the U.S. page shows that in a little over two weeks the daily new-case average has dropped by half.

The news is not all good, though. While a drop by half is great, the current level is still 4.5x what it was in late November when news of the Omicron strain broke.

The Million Death March

Moreover, while the new case rate is dropping, the death rate is still climbing. This is somewhat expected as, in statistical terms, deaths are a trailing indicator of sickness. In real terms, yesterday's Covid-19 death toll was 2,658. This is 2.5x the death rate in late November, before Omicron.

Total deaths in the US from Covid-19 are just over 893,000 as of yesterday. At current rates they'll pass 900,000 by Monday or Tuesday. And even if the daily death rate subsides back toward 1,000 we'll cross the grim milestone of 1,000,000 dead probably sometime in April.

Boba Fett S1E6: No Boba Fett, Again

Last night we watched S1E6 of The Book of Boba Fett. The episode is entitled "From the Desert Comes a Stranger", but it might as well be entitled "The Mandalorian S3E2" or "Boba Fett Writes a Book About Somebody Else". In this episode, like in the previous, the title character basically doesn't appear. He's on screen for all of one scene, where he speaks, I think, two throwaway lines. Space Orc #2 has a bigger part in this episode than Fett.

Seriously, what's with this? This kind of situation, where a TV show nominally about one character (Boba Fett) gets taken over by stories about another character halfway through the season, usually indicates a major production problem. Like, the star had a bad motorcycle accident and couldn't film scenes for 3 months, or had a big fight with the director and walked off the set, or died. Yet the takeover storyline with Din Djarin of The Mandalorian is just so good that it doesn't seem plausible it's anything less than Plan A.

In this episode, which is effectively S3E2 of The Mandalorian, we see:
( Episode spoilers (tap to expand) )

And, of course, the titular character of this episode:



I practically LOLed when I saw this scene begin because it's such a trope of classic Western movies: the tall, thin stranger dressed in a long coat and broad brimmed hat, walks purposefully in from the empty desert. I swear I could practically hear the space-spurs clanking at his heels.

Such clearly Western tropes are another way in which season 1 of TBoBF is effectively becoming season 3 of The Mandalorian. Recall that Mando was basically a Space Western. It made extensive use of these tropes, particularly in early episodes. While it was fresh there it feels too derivative here. It feels like TBoBF was trying to become its own show but the writers gave up after 4 episodes.

Of course, with how the writers of this show were struggling for traction until they added Mando to the story, it might as well be called:



Update: Read how Episode 7 finishes a stumbling season with a crap-tastic *plop*. 😡

No Rain in 4 Weeks. Drought Danger Again

The weather here has been a good news/bad news story the past several weeks. Good news: for the past 4 weeks we've had sunny or mostly-sunny days with afternoon high temperatures around 63 degrees (17° C). Bad news: This dry weather is completely unseasonable. We should be getting rain... and because we're not, we're at risk of worsening drought this year.

Recall that California has a Mediterranean climate pattern. Essentially all of our annual rainfall occurs between November and March. Earlier this winter we were off to such a good start. A few big rain systems— dubbed atmospheric rivers— in November and December gave California a big leg up on its seasonal rainfall/snowfall. I wrote about it a few times expressing hope that some of the damage of the past few years of drought would be reversed. But then, as a CNN.com article published today headlines, precipitation in January basically flatlined (3 Feb 2022).

The CNN article describes how a snow monitoring station high in Sierras measured 17 feet of snow in December— and only 9 inches in all of January. California went from being ahead of the precipitation curve a month ago to being behind now.

CNN provided this graphic showing areas of drought in the US:



As you can see much of California is in "severe drought" conditions— and other parts of the US West are worse.

Can we catch back up on rainfall and move to "moderate drought" or, better, out of drought entirely? Sure. If that gauging station measures just 8 more feet of snow this season we'll be at average for the year. (The "year" for precipitation tracking is July 1 - June 30.) That's just 2 big storms. We could definitely have 2 big storms later this month or in March.

But the problem is, no rain is on the horizon right now. A quick check of the local 10 day forecast shows 10 days of dry weather with high temperatures stretching from not just 63 degrees but up to 73 (23° C)!

If I were a religious person I'd pray for rain.