after heart disease and cancer. (Source: CDC.)

Total U.S. gun deaths in 2020 were 43,634 (all causes, with suicide being the highest). With 37,149 deaths from gun violence so far in 2021, we're on a similar trajectory. (Source: Gun Violence Archive).

So we're currently seeing about the same number of COVID deaths every month that we see from gun violence in an entire year. It's all in how you look at the numbers.

Your point is well taken, though. In a recent episode of Andy Slavitt's In the Bubble podcast, Dr. Ashish Jha pointed out that in a lot of areas across the country (and among more privileged demographic groups everywhere else), it's easy to ignore COVID danger, because most people within these fortunate populations personally know few or no COVID victims.

As many of you know, DuckDuckGo is a great alternative to Google for the privacy-conscious. But did you know that you can use DDG to search DU instead of relying on the Google-driven search bar at the top of the site?

Just follow these steps:

1. Open a new window or tab in your browser, and navigate to https://duckduckgo.com .


2. In the search window, enter
   
   searchterm site:democraticunderground.com
   
   For example:
   
   penumbra site:democraticunderground.com

I decided to try an odd search term just to see what would happen. Interestingly, I got a list of DU posts with the word penumbra somewhere in the post, not necessarily in the subject line of the post.

I haven't run extensive comparisons with DU's Google site search, but my initial impressions are that the DuckDuckGo results will be useful for my purposes.

So that's one less Google intrusion on my life.

You may also be interested in the “Ideas from Africa” series from the excellent podcast To The Best Of Our Knowledge:
https://www.ttbook.org/series/ideas-from-africa