On the university front, Rutgers University in New Jersey, one of the largest universities in the country with around 70,000 students, is requiring that students at the three main campuses in New Brunswick Newark, and Camden get vaccinated before they return in the fall. Exceptions will be made for medical or religious reasons and for students studying only online or off-campus. They will still require masks and social distancing even among groups of fully vaccinated people.
Over 12,000 students at over 20 universities around the US will be the subjects in a study on whether people immunized against coronavirus with the Moderna vaccine can still spread it to others. The study will track infections among vaccinated students and their close contacts. The goal is a good idea of just how careful vaccinated people need to be. Half of the students will be randomly selected to get the vaccine right after they enroll. The other half will get vaccinated four months later. Students will be followed for five months, get tested for the virus daily, and provide blood samples to check for antibodies. Over time, researchers expect to ask some 25,500 close contacts to swab their noses daily for two weeks, provide two blood samples, and answer weekly questionnaires. Offhand, I would say that Rutgers is not one of the over 20 universities in the study.
Continuing with vaccines, both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines appear effective in pregnant and lactating women. Protective antibodies have been found passed to newborns in some cases. Questions are again being raised about the fact that the US will end up with some 70 million more vaccine doses than might be needed to vaccinate all the adults. Arguments for keeping that surplus include that it is not clear when vaccines might be needed for children; that may not be until fall. It is also not yet clear what sort of boosters might be needed and at what intervals. The trials conducted so far did not assess how long the vaccines stay active. Still, of the vaccine distributed globally, 75 percent have gone to just 10 countries, and at least 30 countries have not yet vaccinated anyone.
States continue to announce relaxation of capacity restrictions, and in-person learning is increasing. More people are traveling, though some 56 percent of Americans haven't traveled at all during the pandemic. (It is not clear what definition of "travel" was in this case.) The CDC Director is not happy about these trends, noting that deaths are remaining stable at around 1,000 daily, and new cases have stayed around 57,000 daily for the past three weeks. Some states are seeing weekly case increases of 10 percent. Vaccinations are working, though variants still carry a greater risk of exposure and can complicate treatments. Assuming that 70 percent of people get vaccinated, it may still take five months for herd immunity.
The University of Washington has released a model showing 600,000 deaths by July 1, which wuld mean 59,000 people dying in the next three months. If the mask rate went from the current 75 percent to 95 percent, 10,000 lives could be saved.
Fancy a hot dog? The ones in Iceland are quite good. In fact, I'll throw in a photo from 2017. The hot dog I'm consuming is the best hot dog I have ever had. When we return to Iceland, I plan to get another.
Their hot dogs might lack the secret sauce the one I'm eating had, but right now there are folks roasting hot dogs on the lava from the erupting volcano, Fagradalsfjall. Said volcano was dormant for some 700 years before springing back into action recently. Some people are going so far as to say that the lava patterns are "cute" or like "Disneyland."
On average, there are 20 active volcanic eruptions around the world at any given time. Right now, there are 24. One in Kamchatka, Russia is so remote that the only impact is on air traffic. The world's most active volcano, Merapi in Central Java, Indonesia is sending pyroclastic currents toward villages. They want to be careful there. Another Indonesian volcano in Sinabung was dormant for more than 700 years until it erupted in 2010. It is still erupting.
Damn, that was a good hot dog.
2 comments:
I'd heard about the hot dogs (available at petrol stations if I recall correctly??) but we never had any there. Maybe we need to go back and try them... (actually, it IS one of the places on our list).
I watched the night shots of the volcano and what you don't get is a sense of scale. It wasn't until I saw some daylight footage with people in the frame that I realised how small it was.
I think the grand plan here is that all adults will have had one dose of vaccine by July so the student body should be due its second dose at the start of term.
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