It can hardly be convenient for the ruling party, the ANC,  to see a power crisis just ahead of the elections.  That is what we have though with stage 4 load shedding and just the time when people are getting ready to go to the polls.  The situation with Eskom is nothing short of a disaster and it reminds one in many instances of the problems with the Road Accident Fund.  Eskom though is much more critical to our economy and there seems to be a tremendous issue in taking the necessary steps to get it working properly.  One gets the sense that we will have to live with this, ever worsening, for years and years before the situation is going to be rectified.  It is fine to say that Eskom will have 100 mobile generators ready to help voting stations, but what about all the businesses that have been put out of business because of a lack of electricity or load shedding?

It is very interesting to follow the developments in America with regard to booster shots and the vaccines.  It seems clear that what happens there will probably ultimately be adopted here as well and it gives us an idea of what we can expect in the future. 

That future appears to involve booster shots and particularly for those who had the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, like I did, it seems that what they are recommending is instead of having another shot of the same vaccine, you should have a different one.  They call this mix and match.  In that regard, the people who had the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and had a booster shot with Johnson & Johnson found that their immunity was boosted 4 times, but if, instead of having the Johnson & Johnson shot, they had a booster shot from Moderna, their immunity was boosted 76 times instead. 

From all of my reading, and it is very close between Moderna and Pfizer, it appears that Moderna’s vaccine is slightly more effective than that of Pfizer and they in turn are both quite a bit more effective than Johnson & Johnson.  I am going to try and have the booster shot with the Moderna vaccine as soon as that is allowed.