FiveThirtyEight¹

Since before the vaccines were even available, experts have warned that they wouldn’t be 100 percent effective at preventing infection. Luckily, the vaccines that we ended up with were actually much more effective than what early predictions suggested — Moderna and Pfizer are both better than 90 percent, and Johnson & Johnson is around 72 percent effective against the original strain of COVID-19 in the U.S. — but since they aren’t 100 percent, that means some vaccinated people can still get COVID-19. Early studies show the vaccines are less effective against the delta variant, with both Pfizer and Moderna around 90 percent effective against infection, and J&J up to 71 percent effective against hospitalization. And we’re seeing more breakthrough infections as the delta variant spreads.

Nevertheless, study after study shows that your risk of getting COVID-19 is much lower if you’re vaccinated than if you’re unvaccinated. In a study published last week that followed over 98,000 people in England from late-June to mid-July, vaccinated individuals were three times less likely to contract COVID-19 than unvaccinated individuals, even as the delta variant dominated cases. In fact, even if you do get infected after vaccination, your risks of getting seriously ill, needing to go in the hospital, needing to go in the intensive care unit or dying are reduced even further. Vaccinated Americans have accounted for less than 0.06 percent of hospitalizations, according to a review from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which looked at states that report breakthrough cases. Of the more than 166 million Americans who have been vaccinated, 1,507 have died after contracting COVID-19 — a rate of 0.0009 percent.

1. Rogers, Kaleigh. “Still Unsure about Getting the Covid-19 Vaccine? Start Here.” FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight, August 11, 2021. Accessed August 29, 2021. https://fivethirtyeight.com/.

“It’s true that compared to something like a tetanus shot, which has been in use for nearly a century, COVID-19 vaccines have a much shorter record of safety. But there are a few things to consider. One is that, due to the pandemic, billions of people have received these vaccines. Collecting data on how a medical intervention impacts billions of people would take decades in any other scenario, but we’ve been able to get it in just a few months. And because these vaccines are new, they are being carefully monitored. It’s how experts were able to identify that the AstraZeneca vaccine carries a small risk of a rare blood clot condition called thrombocytopenia syndrome. The risk is less than 10 in 1 million, yet researchers were able to identify it quickly due to intensive monitoring and the sheer number of people getting their shots.”¹

1. Rogers, Kaleigh. “Still Unsure about Getting the Covid-19 Vaccine? Start Here.” FiveThirtyEight. FiveThirtyEight, August 11, 2021. Accessed August 29, 2021. https://fivethirtyeight.com/.

Civil War Era Photographic Portraiture No. 2
Originally Published in American Civil War Chronicles

Half-plate ambrotype of Confederate officer Captain William F. McRorie of Co. A, 4th North Carolina Infantry Regiment, Richmond, Virginia.—C. R. Rees & Co.

Cased images by Rees included in the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs at the Library of Congress show a studio setting identical to this ambrotype.

According to the Gorgas Library at the University of Alabama, “Born to German immigrants in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Rees first established a photographic studio in Richmond, Virginia in 1851. After a brief attempt in the mid-1850s to open a gallery in New York City, Rees and his family returned to the area and established themselves as fixtures in Richmond and nearby Petersburg. After his studio burned in April 1865 along with the rest of Richmond, Rees reopened and continued working in the area until at least 1880.”

Recently sold at auction at Swann Galleries for $13,000 with–A Confederate States America Twenty Dollar bill, with the handwritten number 38392. Circa 1862.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/9795989/william-f-mcrorie

Phase 1 trials of vaccines began in March 2020.

The available safety data to support the EUA include an analysis of 30,351 participants enrolled in an ongoing randomized, placebo-controlled study conducted in the U.S. These participants, 15,185 of whom received the vaccine and 15,166 of whom received saline placebo, were followed for a median of more than two months after receiving the second dose.

A recent study published in Jama shows that for every 1 million Americans vaccinated against COVID-19, only 60 developed heart problems. Complications were short-lived.

Long-term complications of getting COVID-19 can be severe for the unvaccinated, including intubation and death in far too many people.

The vaccines are highly effective.  Very high percentages that “get the jab” will be protected from the virus.  However, some will get the virus.  Almost none who were vaccinated will be hospitalized or die from COVID-related conditions.

Get the Jab!

Royalty-free images by Mike¹ — No. 150 of over 1200 images

Madison Zoo Flamingo, Henry Vilas Zoo, June 11, 2007

American flamingo²

The American flamingo (Phoenicopterus ruber) is a large species of flamingo closely related to the greater flamingo and Chilean flamingo. It was formerly considered conspecific with the greater flamingo, but that treatment is now widely viewed (e.g. by the American and British Ornithologists’ Unions) as incorrect due to a lack of evidence. It is also known as the Caribbean flamingo, although it is also present in the Galápagos Islands. It is the only flamingo that naturally inhabits North America.

Flamingo³

Flamingos or flamingoes /fləˈmɪŋɡoʊz/ are a type of wading bird in the family Phoenicopteridae, the only bird family in the order Phoenicopteriformes. Four flamingo species are distributed throughout the Americas, including the Caribbean, and two species are native to Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Post Endnotes

1. I am sharing some of my public domain images in periodic blog posts.
2. “American Flamingo.” Wikipedia, most recent edit, August 19, 2021. Accessed August 24, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org…flamingo.
3. “Flamingo.” Wikipedia, most recent edit, August 19, 2021. Accessed August 24, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org…Flamingo.

Series Notes:

• This image is also shared as public domain on Pixabay,  Flickr, and Pinterest.
• Images are being shared in the sequence they were accepted by Pixabay, a royalty-free image-sharing site.
• Only images specifically identified as such are public domain or creative commons on our pages.
• All other images are copyright protected by me, creative commons, or used under the provisions of fair use.

While we were on a trip to Colorado, we found out our youngest daughter, Jes, and her husband, Shane, were thinking about moving back to Arkansas.

A couple of days later, Jes told us they had made an offer on a rural home in northwest Arkansas.  She asked us not to share that information until they closed on the deal.

They closed yesterday.

Jes and Ciera, our granddaughter, will be heading to their new home early next week.  Shane has to finish out his notice at work.

Needless to say, it was good news for us. Over the last 21 years, they’ve lived in New Jersey, northern Texas, Wisconsin, and California.  A 2 1/2 hour drive is much better than the longer trips to those places.  We’ll be able to see them much more often.

Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 9

The Big Question this Spring – What’s Hitler Got?¹

This cartoon was published in the April 29th, 1939 issue of Ken, a short-lived illustrated magazine that debuted just over a year earlier.

Ken was a very controversial, political, large format magazine with full-page photo spreads, published every two weeks on Thursdays. It contained both articles and stories.

Originally designed as a left-leaning anti-fascist publication, during its short life Ken was a significant source of anti-Japanese hysteria, that “not only joined the parade of accusations about Japanese Americans on the West but projected them at a nationwide level.” The magazine’s first reports on supposed Japanese spies appeared in its inaugural issue.  In the months that followed, Ken continued its slanted reportage.²

By January 1939, editor Arnold Gingrich announced the intention to wind up operation, with Ken suspending publication after the August 1939 issue.

One of the magazine’s early picks as editor, George Seldes, held that Ken failed “when its owners abandoned the publication’s planned editorial independence to fall in line with advertiser pressure to suppress unflattering investigative reportage such as consumer advocacy and republican critique of fascism, including the Hitler and Mussolini regimes’ fight against the republic in the Spanish Civil War.”²

I couldn’t find anything on the cartoonist, Robert Malone.

1. Malone, Robert. “The Big Question This Spring – What’s Hitler Got.” Ken, April 6, 1939.
2. Robinson , Greg. “Ken Magazine and Prewar Anti-Japanese Propaganda.” Discover Nikkei, August 27, 2019. Accessed August 24, 2021. http://www.discovernikkei.org/… ken-magazine.
3. “Ken (Magazine).” Wikipedia, last edit: January 17, 2021. Accessed August 24, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_(magazine).

Civil War Era Photographic Portraiture #001
Originally Published in American Civil War Chronicles

Title: [Unidentified cadet in Virginia Military Institute uniform]
Date Created/Published: 1845.
Medium: 1 photograph : sixth-plate daguerreotype ; 9.4 x 8.1 cm (case)
Summary: Portrait of a young man who, in later years, might have fought in the Civil War as a Confederate soldier. The initials VMI, visible on his cap, are laterally reversed because of the daguerreotype process.
Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-ppmsca-34334 (digital file from original item)
Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
Call Number: DAG no. 1447 [P&P]
Notes:
…..Title devised by Library staff.
…..Case: Rinhart, no. 138 (reverse image).
…..Gift; Tom Liljenquist; 2012; (DLC/PP-2012:127).
…..More information about this collection is available at http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.lilj
…..Purchased from: Bill Turner, La Plata, Maryland, 2012.
…..Forms part of: Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs (Library of Congress).
…..Forms part of: Daguerreotype collection (Library of Congress).

___________
Mike’s notes:

Note – This image has been digitally adjusted for one or more of the following:
– fade correction,
– color, contrast, and/or saturation enhancement
– selected spot and/or scratch removal
– cropped for composition and/or to accentuate subject

Dust, Drought, Depression, and War No. 8

According to the “Life On The American Newsfront” section of Life magazine’s November 23, 1936, issue, Doctor Joseph Mayo was driving on the Burlington Railroad tracks, making a “short cut,” when he was hit by a train and killed after he had “bumped a mile over ties.”¹

I can’t imagine taking a shortcut by bumping along over railroad ties.

As a kid living in a railroad town, I shortcutted across tracks many a time as well as walked the tracks on the ties. There were seven or eight sets of tracks to cross and, even though there was a regular crossing and an overpass between home and downtown, I would sometimes cross between them.  A five or six-foot chainlink fence now runs on the south side of the tracks.²

So I’m somewhat familiar with railroad tracks and I can’t imagine anyone intentionally bumping along over ties in a car for any distance at all, let alone a mile or more.

Maybe it was different in Wisconsin in 1936.

I don’t think so.

The November 23rd, 1936, issue of Life was the first issue of a new magazine under an old name. Debuting during the height of the Great Depression, the reboot issue of the photo-heavy Life American news magazine¹ was quite different from the general interest and light entertainment magazine that had ended earlier that year. Publisher Henry Luce had bought the magazine for $92,000 simply because he wanted the name for his company, Time, Inc. Life‘s subscription list, features, and goodwill were sold to Judge, a satirical weekly publication.

Its “Life On The American Newsfront” section certainly didn’t have much depth, saying that Doctor Joseph Graham Mayo, son of famed surgeon Charles Mayo, took a shortcut by driving along the Burlington Railroad, bumping a mile over the ties before an express train came through at 65 mph, smashing his car and killing Mayo and Floosie, his hunting dog. It also says that Mayo and Floosie were buried together.

The New York Times of November 10 describes it differently:

Similar articles appeared in other papers around the country, such as the Boston Globe and the Rochester, Minnesota, Post-Bulletin.  It even made the front page of The Piqua Daily Call in Piqua, Ohio.

The railroad where Mayo died parallels the Mississippi.  So does the Great River Road in that area, though I’m sure it wasn’t called that then.

Back then, it was state highway 35.

It still is… and it runs parallel to the railroad tracks… just as it did back then.⁴

It was a little harder to research facts back then, but Life was able to get the pictures.

They should have been able to get the right facts.

Even if it was their “first” issue.

(At least one other piece in the “Life On The American Newsfront” section in that issue of Life also had factual issues.)

1. “In Alma, Wisconsin.” Life. Time Inc., November 23, 1936. Accessed August 22, 2021https://books.google.com/….
2. North Platte, Nebraska, is and always has been a railroad town. It “was first platted as a railroad town by (Union Pacific) chief engineer Grenville Dodge. He chose the location because of the availability of good water nearby, and its distance from Grand Island, Nebraska. The town, first known as ‘Hell on Wheels,’ received its first train in 1866. Dodge then constructed major shop facilities and winter quarters for its crews. In 1867 it began conducting main line operations through the town. The early yard was a flat-switched yard with 20 tracks.” Today, Bailey Yard is the world’s largest railroad classification yard. An average of 139 trains and over 14,000 railroad cars pass through Bailey Yard every day, and the yard sorts approximately 3,000 cars daily using the yard’s two humps. (Wikipedia)
3. “Dr. Joseph G. Mayo Is Killed by a Train; Son of Famous Surgeon Dies in Auto on Way to Wisconsin Home from Hunting Trip.” The New York Times, November 10, 1936. Accessed August 23, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/1936/11/10/archives….
4. “Official Highway Map of Wisconsin 1930.” content.wisconsinhistory.org. Accessed August 23, 2021. https://content.wisconsinhistory.org….