The View from the Hermitage, Day 382

Full disclosure: There will not be any April Fools jokes in this post. If I had thought of a good one, I might have used it, but the brain just wasn't working in that direction, possibly because there was another mass shooting last night, this one in California. One news source said it was the third mass shooting in 16 days. CNN reported that by their definition--of which I am ignorant-- it was at least the 20th mass shooting since the Atlanta attacks two weeks ago. Either way, it makes me both sad and angry. One of the victims last night was a 9-year-old boy. He was denied any chance to have a life.

On the vaccine front, there was an accident at Johnson & Johnson's Baltimore plant that ruined ingredients that would have gone into some 15 million doses of their vaccine. Better news is that continuing Stage 3 trials show that the Pfizer vaccine is 91 percent effective for at least six months. It also appears to offer full protection against the South African variant.For someone in between shots of that vaccine, that was good news. Given that some in my family are getting the Moderna vaccine, I hope the same can be said of it.

The US appears more and more on the verge of a fourth covid wave, though the experts say that given vaccinations this fourth surge should be far less deadly than the previous waves have been. We've been averaging about 63,000 new cases per day over the past week, about the same as in the second wave. New York and Michigan continue to be in particularly poor shape. The number of new cases declined in only five states, most of which were in the Southeast. Hospitalizations are also rising, but 73 percent of senior citizens have gotten at least one dose of a vaccine. 

As we approach graduation season, it's worth noting that the percentage of high school graduates who continued straight into university in fall 2020 was down 6.8 percent. The drop was larger at high-poverty high schools than it was at low poverty ones, 11.4 percent vs. 2.9 percent. Fall 2020 freshman enrollment across all colleges was down 13 percent from 2019. Freshman enrollment was down 21 percent at community colleges. At the same time, The Professor was noting this morning that his department is going to have more first-year graduate students than they had counted on to the extent that it might be hard to find teaching assistantships for the number who would need them. I pointed out that the pandemic has cut into jobs so deeply that grad school may seem like an good alternative to being unemployed. 

There were almost 67,000 deaths in Brazil in the month of March. In Europe, new cases have surged from fewer than one million a week to about 1.3 million a week. Twenty-seven European countries are in partial or full nationwide lockdown, and 21 have night-time curfews. Sicily's heath minister has resigned after being targeted in an investigation into falsifying figures to avoid the strictest form of lockdown. Italy uses a three-tiered and colored system to indicate the degree of restrictions imposed. The highest risk areas are red, meaning people can leave home only for work, health reasons, essential shopping, or emergencies. The other two levels, orange and yellow, have less strict restrictions. It's worth noting that national health inspectors looked into the possible falsified figures in Sicily last November.

England's chief medical advisor said that relaxation of covid restrictions was likely to result in variants gaining a foothold. He said that covid will become flu-like and have to be managed in a similar fashion, as "a seasonal, very dangerous disease that kills thousands of people every year and society has chosen a particular way around it."

So where will we be a few months down the road. Will the local university still be doing mostly virtual instruction come fall? Will public schools be open for all students all days, or will families continue to be able to opt for all-virtual or hybrid schooling? Will we be going through the same rigmarole we are now? Interestingly, as I was working on this paragraph, I saw a notice that the Texas Rangers Major League Baseball team will have their stadium open at full capacity for today's Opening Day game. I think the pessimistic thoughts I was going to describe are, indeed, justified.