I know we had to get out of Afghanistan – we probably never should have been there to start. It would have been a mess if we’d left 10 years ago or 10 years from now. As far as blame – this was a multi-party, multi-administration failure and the blame goes everywhere, and I am heartbroken for the people still there.

At this point, I only want to hear two things. One – when and how are we getting everyone out. Two – why on earth did we think we had three months to clean up after leaving? Who gave us that intelligence and why did we think it was reliable and actionable?

And that’s where I am on that. And I don’t expect to get satisfactory answers for either question.

On a slightly less shitty note, I knew the state was tracking breakthrough Covid infections, but I only just found where it is on their website. It had been tucked away under “data insights” and they just moved it to the main dashboard yesterday – that should have been front and center all along.

Out of 4.6 million people who are fully vaccinated in the state, there have been 4,056 breakthrough cases, 233 hospitalizations, and 52 deaths. This is out of a total of 244K cases, 8.6K hospitalizations, and 2.8K deaths since we started vaccinating folks.

To me, those are very good numbers and reinforces what I thought – that we hear *so much* about breakthrough infections that it seems like they’re far, far higher than they actually are. I’m not going to run out and start licking doorknobs, but this is good, and THE VACCINES ARE DOING THEIR JOB.

But JFC, we have GOT to get more people vaccinated. 98% of cases, 97% of hospitalizations, and 98% of deaths are in unvaccinated people. The vast majority of these are PREVENTABLE. I just don’t know how we get more people vaccinated other than fixing the access problems and employers forcing it.

In “good and feels selfish given everything else” news – the basement is dry! My brother went to town with the waterproofing materials and it seems to have done the trick and he will be reinforcing it over the course of the week. He said he found a couple old/empty tubs of waterproofing stuff as he worked, so it would seem this is not the first time it had to be done – but that would have been a minimum of 16+ years ago when my Mom was still alive, so I’d say it held well.

Hang in there everyone and just do the best you can.