The View from the Hermitage, Day 368

I have not heard that my vaccination appointment for tomorrow has been moved, so the weather forecast must be suitable. They're moving the vaccination site over the weekend. The new one will be in the covered mall and occupy space vacated by JC Penny. Waiting will be able to be done indoors there as opposed to outdoors at the current site, a vacated KMart in a strip mall. I had an email link to a form that I will now not have to complete tomorrow on-site. I do love paperwork reduction.

The likelihood of another covid surge here in the US is still mixed. Looking at new cases during the past week, 13 states had increases, 13 states had decreases, and the rest were basically level. Michigan was the winner (loser?) on the case increase front, seeing a 53 percent jump from one week to the next. The big losers (winners?) on the case decrease front were Alabama, Arizona, California, and Georgia, all of which had declines over 30 percent. At least no state saw the virus results seen in Brazil. It reported its highest daily case increase since the pandemic began, one day after the death total hit a new high. 

US health experts continue to warn about relaxing mitigation measures too early. They say that Europe's spike in new cases and hospitalizations should be a warning for us. European countries were experiencing the same sort of drops that we are and started to disregard mitigation. One other reason for the different results in Europe and the US is that the US is getting more people vaccinated sooner, while Europe is fighting the greater spread of contagious variants. The talking heads warn, though, that those variants will be coming here if they aren't here already, and continued vaccinations are vital. 

The European Medicines Agency says that the AstraZeneca vaccine is "safe and effective." As a result, countries including Spain, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, and Lithuania have announced plans to resume use. Ireland and Sweden say they will announce something "in a few days." The US will be giving millions of doses of its stockpiled AstraZeneca vaccine to Canada and Mexico. Canada just announced that they will start giving the AstraZeneca vaccine to senior citizens. 

Work continues on treatments for covid, work necessary because there will be new cases in people not getting vaccinated or people for whom the vaccine does not work. There are three broad approaches in the works: antivirals that directly affect the virus's ability to thrive inside the body; drugs that calm the immune system; and antibodies that can target the virus taken either from the blood plasma of survivors or made in a lab. Steroid treatments are also being studied, including the dexamethasone XPot was given and even hydrocortisone. Remdesivir is evidently not as valuable as early research suggested.

Finally, another result of a poll on the pandemic: Republicans underestimate the risks posed by the coronavirus while Democrats overestimate the risks. You probably saw that one coming, right?

The 49-Day Ceremony for my sister-in-law was interesting. My heart broke seeing my brother there all alone. Had hymns been substituted for the chanting, it would have seemed very much like a memorial service or funeral, taking away the incense-lighting. For some unknown reason, the camera on my laptop was not working, so my Zoom square was grey. This gave me the chance to jot down two things said that I want to remember. One was offered by a man who said he had worked in hospice care for decades. He said it was posted at his hospice: The trouble is you think you have time. Isn't it? How many things do we say we'll do later? I'm going to try to do some of those things sooner, I think. The other thought was much the same: I knew this day would come; I just didn't know yesterday that it would be today. And we don't know today if it might be tomorrow. More words to try to take to heart.