Did you ever think that business would be the most trusted institution in the world? Guess what! It now is. Trust in business rose during the pandemic when it became apparent that governments would not develop and distribute vaccines alone. Trust in government is at an all-time low globally based on polling in 14 countries. People said business outperformed government on every issue measured: covid, job creation, health care, education, disinformation, climate, and addressing systemic inequalities. Some 80 percent of employees expect their companies to act on issues such as vaccine hesitancy, climate change, automation, misinformation, and racism.
Booster vaccine shots could be on the way. The Pfizer CEO says the data he has seen suggest a booster be given somewhere between eight and 12 months after the first two shots. The Modern CEO suggests boosters in September starting with people at the highest risk.
Looking at weekly covid numbers, Mississippi and the District of Columbia were the only state units showing covid increases between 10 and 50 percent. Covid in Nebraska was decreasing by more than 50 percent. All other states were steady or showing decreases between 10 and 50 percent. The US averaged about 30,000 cases daily over the past week. Dr. Fauci previously said that restrictions could be safely relaxed when the average cases hit 10,000 daily. For once should we hope that Dr. Fauci was at least a little in error?
A not-yet-peer-reviewed study suggests that the school reopening plan in Texas may have contributed to thousands of covid cases and hundreds of deaths. Estimated cases and deaths in the two months following school reopening are 43,000 cases and 800 deaths. The virus was said to be running rampany in Texas at the time. It is also not clear whether schools used proper mitigation strategies consistently.
A new hot spot is rising in Argentina. In early March, the daily case count was about 5,000; this week, it is 35,000. Besides relaxed restrictions, the country has a low vaccination rate. Contributing to the increases is the presence of both the Brazilian and British variants. Deaths at the start of March averaged 112 daily; Tuesday there were 744 deaths. Argentina is now third in daily cases behind India and Brazil and forth in deaths after India, Brazil, and the US. Relative to population, Argentina now has the highest number of covid deaths per day in the world with 16.46 deaths per million on Tuesday. Brazil reported 11.82 deaths per million. Some experts are predicting a total catastrophe within 10 days.
The local university has announced that covid vaccinations will be required for students and faculty for the coming fall with information submitted to the university by July 1. They are also studying which jobs that have been being done remotely need to move back to the physical campus. Domestic and international travel will once again be permitted with come conditions. Back to normal come fall? Probably not totally, and it's not clear how long it will last. We can always hope.
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