{"id":30856,"date":"2021-12-05T09:33:19","date_gmt":"2021-12-05T14:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=30856"},"modified":"2021-12-05T09:33:23","modified_gmt":"2021-12-05T14:33:23","slug":"this-is-the-week-that-was-weird-but-not-in-a-fun-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=30856","title":{"rendered":"This is the week that was…weird, but not in a fun way"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Mike McGann<\/strong>, Editor, The Times<\/em> @mikemcgannpa<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Well, it\u2019s been a week.<\/p>\n

Between the sheer joy of dealing with hackers who briefly locked me out of these sites (thankfully, I was able to quickly recover things and build a digital moat around the server \u2014 which hopefully will defend it better) the emergence of a new COVID variant and Dr. Memet Oz declaring his candidacy for U.S. Senate, it\u2019s been a lot to digest.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all exhausted by COVID, but even before the emergence of Omicron, we were going to see a spike in cases, thanks to the Delta variant and folks still refusing to get vaccinated and wear masks in public. Now, most of those who are COVID deniers aren\u2019t Chester County residents: we have a very high percentage of county residents who have gotten at least two shots (and seem to be rushing to get their third booster shot \u2014 based on how long it takes to get an appointment these days).<\/p>\n

Still, the next couple of months are going to be a challenge \u2013 as new numbers showing the county with a new spike infections highlight. Again, we just don\u2019t know what the impact of Omicron is going to be, so I\u2019m basing this just on how Delta continues to spread.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not going to see shut downs and closures as we saw in the spring of 2020 \u2014 we have a much better handle on the virus and how it spreads.<\/p>\n

Sp, here\u2019s the deal: when you\u2019re out in public, but inside, wear a mask. Yeah, yeah \u2014 I get it, no one likes it. But be smart, masks work (ignore the junk science people cite as an excuse for not wearing them). Masks slow the spread, it\u2019s a fact. Earth is round, gravity is real and masks work \u2014 anyone telling you differently is lying or wildly misinformed.<\/p>\n

And yes, we should keep having kids wear masks in school. I\u2019m personally tired of the drama kings and queens claiming that masks are some sort of awful burden for students. For the most part, kids don\u2019t care and are fine with wearing masks inside, especially when the adults in their lives set a good example. And it keeps schools open.<\/p>\n

More than 900 Chester County residents have died from COVID. That\u2019s not fake, those are real lives. Sadly, we\u2019ll likely lose a few more. How many more is largely up to you and how you behave.<\/p>\n

Frankly, most of us are getting tired of the selfish jerks who keep battling any containment measures for COVID \u2014 they\u2019re literally the reason we\u2019re seeing yet another spike in cases.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not much we can do about people who don\u2019t care if their neighbors, friends and families get sick or even die \u2014 shocking as that fact is.<\/p>\n

All we can do is keep on plugging, get boosters and wear masks in public.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s smart. It\u2019s considerate. And it is the right thing to do.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Every time I think politics in Pennsylvania can\u2019t become more surreal and less reality based \u2014 it does, and Dr. Oz running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania caps what has been a wacky run up to the 2022 elections.<\/p>\n

Dr. Oz is a long time resident of Cliffside Park\u2026.New Jersey. It\u2019s an area I know well as I worked as newspaper reporter and editor for publications such as The Hudson Dispatch<\/em> (RIP) and The Herald-News<\/em> (which I think is still published in zombie form by Gannett).<\/p>\n

And yeah, a lot of people will shrug \u2014 Oz\u2019s issues make him seem likely to fit in with the pack of GOP candidates for U.S. Senate. It will be interesting to see whether there will be a race to the bottom to become the most \u201cTrump\u201d candidate in order to win the primary, only to then get obliterated in the Philly suburbs in the general (Trump is slightly less popular than food poisoning hereabouts).<\/p>\n

The gang of GOP misfits running for Senate and governor make former Republican Gov. Tom Corbett seem like John F. Kennedy (for the record, while one could disagree with Corbett, he was decidedly sane, answered questions arguably better than our incumbent governor and at least tried to work across the aisle \u2014 despite often being sabotaged by the GOP legislature).<\/p>\n

***\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The hacking thing is on me \u2014 I knew I needed to beef things up in terms of server security when we moved to a faster server earlier this year, but it never made it to the top of the list of the many things I need to do to keep this joint running (yes, I do everything from Web development, to ad building, to editing and writing \u2014 it\u2019s the only way to make this business model work).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m hopeful that the new steps (and $$) invested in keeping the server secure hold off any future attacks \u2014 but when you use the world\u2019s most popular publishing platform, there\u2019s always someone looking for a backdoor in to cause havoc. So, it\u2019s a matter of keeping my fingers crossed and being more vigilant.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m super thankful for our readers and advertisers, all of whom showed a lot of patience while we worked to fix things up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Mike McGann, Editor, The Times @mikemcgannpa Well, it\u2019s been a week. Between the sheer joy of dealing with hackers who briefly locked me out of these sites (thankfully, I was able to quickly recover things and build a digital moat around the server \u2014 which hopefully will defend it better) the emergence of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11048,9585,11047,3912,11049,9790],"class_list":["post-30856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-2022-elections","tag-covid-19","tag-dr-memet-oz","tag-featured","tag-hacking","tag-masks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30857,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30856\/revisions\/30857"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/30855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}