"The food here is awful." "Yes, and the portions are so small."

 I sometimes wonder if the editors at the LA Times read their own paper. The top story on the paper's front page today says that a new coronavirus strain that is sweeping California is not only more transmittable than the old strain but it is more deadly and resistant to the Covid-19 vaccine. In another month, a UC San Francisco researcher said, it will probably account for 90% of all new infections in the state.

But then you go to the front page of the California section and the lead story there is that blacks and Hispanics are getting vaccinated far less frequently than whites or Asians. Prior stories about this have suggested the reasons are institutional racism, long memories of Tuskegee, and lack of transportation to inoculation centers. 

Well, cripes. If we are all being vaccinated for one version of Covid and all the new cases are from another vaccine-resistant strain, I wonder why anyone would even bother to worry about racial disparities in the vaccination rate. It's like that old joke about the two old ladies who went to dinner in the Catskills. "The food here is awful," said one. "Yes," said the other, "and the portions are  so small."