winterwx21

Yeah only a little over an inch of rain for the northern part of our county. But at least it's still a good soaking and plenty to give everything a good watering. More to come tonight into tomorrow too, as some more bands should swing from northwest to southeast.

Obviously there were huge rain totals down in central and southern Middlesex County, but much lower amounts up here in extreme northern Middlesex County. I picked up 1.30" so far here.

97 degrees here right now. That's the high temp we had yesterday, but it feels slightly better than yesterday. Helps that the dewpoints are a little lower today. Yesterday was horrendous with the heat index up to 110.

Good timing too. Good to get a lot of moisture into the soil before the major heat wave. Plants in the vegetable garden will be able to handle the tremendous heat better now.

Rain came down in buckets (close to 1 inch) and lots of close lightning strikes. Great storm.

Things have really changed with the Delta variant. Much more easy for vaccinated people to catch and spread the Delta Variant. Other countries that actually count the breakthrough cases are reporting large numbers of breakthrough cases with the Delta variant. Iceland has 93% of its above 16 years old population vaccinated, yet they're seeing a major Delta surge. I posted an article where the chief epidemiologist of Iceland talks about how vaccinated people are easily catching and spreading the Delta variant. And who knows how much worse it will be with future variants. Hopefully vaccines won't become less and less effective with each variant.

The data on recent Delta hospitalizations in the UK... https://eturbonews.com/3000042/hundreds-of-vaccinated-people-hospitalized-in-uk-with-delta/ There are plenty of articles on the problems that Iceland is having right now. I assume you know how to do a search. Here is one where the chief epidemiologist of Iceland talks about how they're finding that vaccinated people can easily contract and spread the virus... https://www.icelandreview.com/society/covid-19-in-iceland-vaccination-has-not-led-to-herd-immunity-says-chief-epidemiologist/

Dr. Eric Topol wrote a good article on how America is flying blind when it comes to the Delta variant... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/09/america-is-flying-blind-when-it-comes-to-the-delta-variant I wonder if the lack of counting of breakthrough cases in our country is because they just want to keep calling it "a pandemic of the unvaccinated" here. We know from data from other countries like the UK and Israel that there are a huge amount of breakthrough cases. And as Eric Topol mentions in the article, some countries are reporting that 10% to 20% of their hospitalizations are in vaccinated people. In fact I just read an article that talked about the fact that the UK just released data on their Delta variant hospitalizations from July 19th to August 2nd. Of the 1,467 people that were hospitalized, 512 people (34.9%) were vaccinated. You have to wonder why other countries are reporting that a much higher percentage of people in hospitals are vaccinated. The United States just is not being honest about the fact that the Delta variant is causing a significant threat to vaccinated people. I was just reading about the outbreak that Iceland is having right now. They thought Covid was over, but now they're having a big outbreak due to the Delta variant. In Iceland, 93% of the population over 16 years old is vaccinated. Yet they're seeing an outbreak. The vaccines just are not stopping the transmission of the Delta variant.

It's actually Novavax's fault. They keep delaying their submission to the FDA. The FDA is waiting and will approve it quickly when they submit. The FDA is saying they will still be willing go give NVAX emergency use authorization, despite the Pfizer vaccine getting full approval, because they really want a protein vaccine available as an option. It's frustrating for a lot of people that NVAX has been moving so slowly with this.

I definitely agree that the Delta variant is worse than the flu because of how incredibly contagious it is. A virus that's this contagious does a tremendous job of finding people that are most vulnerable, which is why we're seeing more hospitalizations and deaths with this than we see with the flu. But the media and even many doctors are misleading people when they claim that this variant is more likely to cause severe illness and death than variants of the past. The statistics from other countries are showing the opposite. Not really surprising because as viruses mutate, they tend to become more contagious but less lethal. But of course that does not mean that this virus still isn't dangerous for people with underlying health conditions.

Yeah the ignoring of natural immunity in our country might be the worst of all, because they want to force people to get shots that they don't even need. The other day I posted statistics from Israel that showed that natural immunity outperformed vaccine immunity by a wide margain in that country.

Yep. Other countries like Israel and the UK are being much more honest about the huge number of cases in vaccinated people. But in our country they are not honest about that, because they want to keep calling it a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Another way some doctors are being dishonest is that they're claiming that either you're vaccinated or you'll catch the Delta variant. That is completely untrue. There's no such thing as a virus getting to everyone. The 1918 flu didn't get to everyone. The Delta variant ravaged India, but there are tons of people over there that didn't get it. The lies that some (even doctors) come up with to try to scare people is very disturbing.

The scare tactics and fear mongering in this country is off the charts. The way the media and even many doctors talk about this Delta variant, leads people to believe that this variant is much more dangerous for young people. But notice how they never talk about the statistics on it in our country. They publicize and hype like crazy the cases in which young people are severely ill in the hospital, in an attempt to trick people into thinking this is common. But they don't give any kind of statistics on the hospitalization and death rates for younger people, because they want to push vaccination for everyone. Other countries have been honest about the low threat to younger people and have actually put statistics on it. The UK released data recently on death rates for people that were hospitalized with the Delta variant. The death rate for unvaccinated people under 50 years old was 0.02%. They also put out statistics showing the overall death rate for everyone is under 0.2%. We're seeing similar statistics from Spain. I was just reading a very good article from Spain. The author talks about how ridiculous vaccine passports are, but also the statistics showing the extremely low death rates now and the very tiny hospitalization rate for young people. They point out that the covid hospitalization rate for people under 30 years old in the last 2 months for Spain is only 0.3%. Here is the article... https://collateralglobal.org/article/the-delta-variant-decoupling-in-spain-and-the-illogic-of-vaccine-passports/ Yet in the United States, they will never ever show statistics like this. They want to keep mega hyping the rare severe cases in people under 30 years old. They want to mislead people and push their agenda. We will keep hearing about how this variant is more dangerous and deadly, even though the statistics don't back that up at all. The media really sucks. Time to turn off the news.

Actually Dr. Sallis' study was about physical activity level, not body weight. He controlled for all the known risk factors like overweight/obesity, heart disease, smoking, diabetes, etc. The study found that physical inactivity was the biggest modifiable risk factor for severe Covid, even greater than obesity. The study showed that physical fitness level is the most important thing. It makes sense because we know that exercise strengthens the immune system, heart and lungs.

Dr. Sallis has been very frustrated by this. He believes that many lives would have been saved throughout the pandemic, had health authorities gotten the message out that something as simple as exercising greatly reduces the risk of getting severely ill from Covid.

I certainly am not against the current covid vaccines. They have been a life saver for many. I really think it's all about individual risk level. For people that are at high severe Covid risk, it absolutely makes sense to take the vaccine. We know the people that are at higher risk. Obesity, low physical fitness level, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, etc. The benefits greatly outweigh the risks of the vaccine for these people. But a 25 year old athlete? Someone like that is at such incredibly low risk of seeing severe Covid complications that it might make sense to not want to take any risk at all from the vaccine. That's my opinion. There have also been lots of studies that have shown that healthy diet and exercise greatly reduce the risk of severe Covid. There was a large new study that came out a few weeks ago that showed that a Mediterranean style diet reduced the risk of severe Covid by 40%. And numerous studies have shown that exercise greatly reduces the risk of severe covid. Sports medicine specialist Dr. Robert Sallis did a major study in California that looked at over 48,000 people that got Covid, and compared people that were sedentary to people that got the recommended 150 minutes of exercise per week. People that did not exercise were twice as likely to be hospitalized and 2 and half times more likely to die than people that exercised regularly. The study results were incredibly dramatic and showed that physical activity level was the biggest modifiable risk factor for severe Covid, even more than obesity. So I am a big believer in the natural protection of being in great shape. I know it's not 100% protection, and there certainly are cases of people that are in great shape getting severe Covid. But it does lower the risk to such a low level, that it's a level that I can live with without being too worried. I will post a link to an interview that Dr. Sallis did about his exercise/covid study. It's a long read, but a lot of great information... https://www.eatmovethinkpodcast.com/podcast/ep-65-how-to-protect-against-covid And I'm not against getting vaccinated for myself. I'm just waiting for a vaccine that I'm more comfortable with. Novavax has a Covid vaccine that should be coming out this fall. It's an old fashioned protein subunit vaccine, the type of technology that has been used for many childhood vaccines. So we have long term safety data on that type of vaccine, and the other plus is that the side effects in the couple days after the vaccine aren't as severe as well. So I will likely get that when it comes out.

I read an article that talked about how they tried this in some places in Hawaii, and it ended up being a complete and utter disaster. The restaurants had so many problems that they're no longer enforcing the vaccine requirement. Bill de Blasio is like a Communist Tyrant. To force people to get a vaccine, for a virus that now has a 99.8% survival rate (which the latest data from the UK shows) to participate in society is horrible. A vaccine that has caused some short term serious events like heart inflammation and blood clots, and we don't know about potential long term risks because the proper long term studies (which are supposed to be many years for vaccines) were skipped due to the emergency. The most disturbing thing is de Blasio completely denies natural immunity. Despite the fact that many studies have shown that natural immmunity is as good or even better than vaccine immunity. So he wants to force some people to take the risks of a vaccine when they have absolutely no need for it due to natural immunity. Here is an article that shows statistics from Israel that show that natural immunity has outperformed vaccine immunity in that country... https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309762

Beautiful. I was outside running in the smoke tuesday night, and I couldn't help but to keep looking up at the orange moon. Nice side effect of the smoke.

That cell dropped 0.85" here. Extremely heavy downpour and there was some lightning with it too.

And it is coming down in buckets here right now. Tremendous downpour.

Yeah, got only a little over a half inch here. That's ok though ... the ground was still very moist from the heavy storms we had a couple days ago.

Yeah, getting hit with another one right now. Lots of lightning along with the heavy rain too.

Yeah I was just gonna mention that. It was disappointing that the heavy rain missed us earlier, but thankfully this small cell popped up over Hunterdon county and is now hitting us. It's pouring here now. Water for the garden afterall.

It was really strange how it skipped over us. It looked as if we were about to get pounded as the line dropped towards us, but it suddenly weakened just a few miles to our north. Just a moderate shower here. Then it strengthened back up just a few miles to our south. Central Middlesex county getting very heavy rain. That was horrendous luck that we had here. We did get some 40mph gusts with the gust front, but not even a tenth of an inch of rain. Annoying because I didn't water the vegetable garden because it looked very likely that we were gonna get plenty of rain. Hopefully we'll have better luck tomorrow.

It's coming down in buckets here. Closing in on 1 inch of rain. A decent amount of lightning too.