Day 434 is 62 weeks in. Last night we hosted the first non-family members we've had in our house for longer than that. All fully vaccinated, we sat around the table mask-less, catching up on the far too long since we'd last been together. There are more friends we want to catch up with, but not on too fast a schedule. It takes time for an introvert to start re-engaging with the world.
The National Basketball Association opens the door to comparing two years of the pandemic. The NBA is just starting playoffs. Last year, the playoffs were done in a bubble with no ill effects. This year, there is no bubble nor are there mandatory vaccinations, and the League eased mitigation rules two months ago. Quarantines are no longer mandatory after exposure, and vaccinated players no longer have to get tested on off days. Dining is allowed in outdoor restaurants, and friends and families can visit fully vaccinated players without checking in with the team. For teams meeting an 85 percent threshold, no masks are required at practice facilities. In-person team meetings and meals on team flights are also permitted. What the virus might hold in store for this year's playoffs is yet to be seen but cause for concern.
Despite the players being young, strong athletes, some have had worrisome lingering effects of their bouts with covid. Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics just scored 50 points in a play-in game but needs to use an inhaler before games because of fatigue and breathing difficulties. Tatum had covid in January 2021. Another Celtic, Evan Fournier, had covid in April. He reports that his vision and depth perception are still diminished. He compared the way bright light bothers his eyes now to how it feels after a concussion. Milwaukee Buck Jrue Holiday needed three or four weeks to to restore conditioning after spending two weeks at home recovering. All players testing positive have extensive cardiac exams before being allowed to return to play.
On the global scale, concern is building about a new wave in Gaza. The only lab functioning there did 547 tests on Thursday and Friday, 202 of which were positive. Less than four percent of the populations is fully or partly vaccinated, compared with 60 percent in Israel. Complicating matters, Israeli bombing has damaged some hospitals and clinics. Remember when XPot said that the number of covid cases was so high only
because we were doing more testing? Turkey has the fifth highest number
of covid-19 cases in the world yet just stepped down from a
three-week-long "full" lockdown. The health minister said that the case
numbers had dropped by 72 percent, a drop doctors say was statistically
impossible. The docs suggest that the large drop instead showed a
"huge reduction" in testing. I guess XPot may have been right all along.
Rhode Island has become the eighth state to administer at least one coronavirus shot to 70 percent of its adult population, joining Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Vermont. Vaccinations in the Northeast lead the country while those in the South lag. Vaccinations are also lagging in many US prisons, jails, and detention centers. Nationally, 61 percent of people over the age of 18 have gotten at least one dose of vaccine. That percent goes down to 40 for federal prisoners. Fifty percent of inmates in state prisons have gotten at least one dose, while the percent drops to 20 for immigrants in detention centers.
Over 400 colleges and universities are now requiring vaccines of students returning in the fall. Only eight percent of those institutions are in states that voted for XPot. The number grew Friday when Indiana University and its satellite campuses became rare outliers in a red state. Indiana has the highest number of schools requiring vaccines, 14, of any red state. There are 15 states in which no single college or university has a vaccine requirement. These include Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, Mississippi, and Alabama.
And so it goes...
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