The View from the Hermitage, Day 472

The healthiest community in the US is also the community with the highest median family income. I would hazard a guess that Los Alamos, New Mexico also ranks right up there in terms of the average highest education level completed. Los Alamos is the healthiest community due to the low prevalence of obesity and diabetes not to mention the low levels of mental illness and substance dependency. As for that highest median family income, it's $121,000.

North Korea has from the outset of the pandemic claimed to have had no covid infections. There may be some there now since Kim Jong Un just called a special meeting of the Politburo and berated some of his top advisers for their failures in coronavirus prevention. Political pundits say that North Korea will never admit to having a covid outbreak but Kim's statements suggest that something significant has happened. 

A few other international notes: Queensland, Australia has only eight days of the Pfizer vaccine left. They evidently have some AstraZeneca vaccine but it is not clear what ages can safely get the AstraZeneca vaccine. Delta is now the dominant covid strain in Portugal. A scientific adviser to the UK government warns that reopening could lead to a surge and set up a repeat of last summer. Then, infections never got low enough to be dealt with, leading to a fall spike when schools reopened. Vladimir Putin claims that he received the Sputnik V vaccine in March. Inquiring minds wonder if that is true, then why must journalists and others meeting with him quarantine before they do so. Putin opposes mandatory vaccinations and supports people who say they have medical excuses not to be vaccinated. I have read that a lot of Russians claim to have medical excuses because they do not want the Sputnik V vaccine.

The Delta variant made it to South Dakota, meaning that it has now been found in all 50 states. It currently makes up about a fourth of all cases. At the same time, the vaccination rate is down 75 percent from its peak in mid-April. Dr. Fauci says this could likely led to two Americas, one made up of the areas in which most people have been vaccinated and the other with low vaccination rates and covid spikes. He called those spikes "entirely avoidable, entirely preventable" with vaccination. Every time the virus gets more transmissible, the number of vaccinated people needed for herd immunity rises. In Mississippi, 29.7 percent of people are fully vaccinated. The unvaccinated people have accounted for more than 90 percent of cases and deaths in the past month. Besides Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Wyoming, and Louisiana have fewer than 35 percent of their populations fully vaccinated, troubling given that a recent poll shows that most adults who plan to get vaccinated have already done so.

CNN had the article "What if the government got it wrong on masks again?" on its website. The solution, at least to me, is that wearing a mask can't hurt and not wearing one can. 

I have my "I'm not dead yet!" t-shirt and birthday tiara set out for wearing tomorrow. I have been told that my birthday is being delayed until the family can gather on Saturday, but I say I can wear a tiara whenever I want to, and I want to tomorrow.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 471

Four in 10 Americans say that going to a July 4 celebration feels risky this year. Last year, eight in 10 did. That said, people are not totally changing their behavior in light of concern over the Delta variant. Vaccines seem to be acting as scientific and psychological shields. There's some disagreement over how to deal with Delta. WHO says that even fully vaccinated people should keep wearing masks. CDC says that fully vaccinated people are okay without masks. Los Angeles County has started requiring masks indoors regardless of one's vaccination status. South Africa is entering lockdown for at least two weeks. Four of the state capitals in Australia--Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, and Darwin--are under lockdowns of varying lengths. Bangladesh is imposing its most severe lockdown yet; people can only leave home in emergencies, and soldiers will be patrolling the streets. Ireland has said that when dining indoors is again permitted only those vaccinated or recovered from covid in the previous nine months will be able to do so.

I've read a couple of reviews of Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic That Changed History by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta. It's pretty damning but also frightening in terms of how close we came to things being done very differently and not in a good way. XPot evidently asked about sending cruise ship passengers who tested positive to Guantanamo Bay and waxed philosophically about his national security adviser John Bolton being "taken out" by covid. As for the coronavirus task force chaired by Mike Pence, XPot referred to it as (I apologize in advance for the profanity) "that fucking council that Mike has."

Bloomberg has ranked countries in terms of their covid resiliency. Metrics include vaccination rates, available airplane seats, and the severity of lockdowns. The most resilient countries, in descending order, are the US, New Zealand, Switzerland, Israel, and France. The least resilient, again in descending order, are Indonesia, India, Malaysia, Philippines, and Argentina. I was quite surprised to see the US ranked at the top. Having read a Axios summary of the Bloomberg work, I may have to try to find the original for more detail on how resiliency was calculated. 

Are your kids going back to middle or high school in the fall? If school starts early in August and you want your kids vaccinated, you need to get moving. Kids can only receive the Pfizer vaccine which requires three weeks between the two doses and another two weeks for full immunity to be reached. That's five weeks, which pushes into early August.

CNN had an interesting piece on what changes made in response to covid might stay with us even after the pandemic is no more. First is how we greet each other. They think the handshake might come back but not for everybody and suggest people might feel more comfortable keeping with elbow bumps or Namaste signals. I like the Japanese bow myself. Second is thinking twice about travel. I never go on a trip without travel insurance, and I bet a lot of other people will be doing that now. I will also be thinking twice about the country to which I am going in terms of their response to the coronavirus. If they did not handle it adequately, I don't think I want to go there. We may be joining Asians in wearing masks and taking other precautions when we think we might be ill. While the 1918 influenza pandemic drew women into the workforce, the coronavirus has forced more than 2.3 million women to leave the workforce. One in four of these women quit due to a lack of affordable child care. Scientific progress is likely to remain more interdisciplinary, collaborative, and creative. The combination of mRNA technology and rapid genetic sequencing gave us viable vaccines sooner than many expected. Childhood will change significantly. Parents have much more experience now with virtual schooling and homeschooling. Even as children go back to in-person schooling, extracurricular activities such as music lessons may well continue to be virtual, meaning no commuting. Finally, work may look very different in the future. It may become more hybrid, at times at home and at times at an office. Companies have learned better how to keep operations going; sending employees home to work in conditions such as a natural disaster will be easier now that it's been done once.

 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 470

New findings suggest that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines may protect people for years as long as the virus and variants don't change too much. Even if the virus does change significantly, people who recovered from covid-19 before being vaccinated may not need boosters. Research is also suggesting that mixing the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines appears to offer good protection. Countries that have been administering the Sinovac vaccine may want to offer a different vaccine as a second or third dose to the people who initially got Sinovac. In Indonesia, 26 doctors have died from covid this month, 10 of whom were fully vaccinated with Sinovac. In central Java, 500 medical workers have tested positive in the last two weeks. All had been fully vaccinated. The Philippines health department said they would no longer tell the public which vaccination sites had which vaccines after people started waiting at 2:00 am at a site said to have the Pfizer vaccine instead of Sinovac.

The outbreaks Down Under continue. Sydney now has 130 cases, and there are new outbreaks of varying sizes in Darwin, Brisbane, Canberra, and Perth. However, there have been no deaths from covid this year, and only two people have been in intensive care. Experts say that what is needed now is strong adherence to public health guideline and good luck.

Speaking of adherence to public health guidelines, human behavior is far more important in shaping the course of the pandemic than any known variant. Changes in activity such as travel, failure to mask, not keeping socially distant, and remaining unvaccinated will help spread covid as much as or more than any variant. While the Delta variant did sweep over India, breached containment measures, crowds, and a poor public health infrastructure contributed to the spread. Figuring out the precise details of a variant may take years of research. Human behavior can be changed much more easily. The thoughts in this paragraph come from Amy B. Rosenfeld and Vincent R. Racaniello. They are not psychologists, but virologists and are very wise in the ways of human behavior.

Here in the US, one of the major barriers to mass immunity is that young adults in their late teens and 20s don't see themselves as being at great risk. As a result, they're not getting vaccinated. According to a recent federal report, only about a third of adults ages 18 to 39 report having been vaccinated. Rates are especially low among Black people; people ages 24 and younger; and people with lower incomes, less education, and no health insurance. While some people in this age range are staunchly opposed to vaccinations, a large portion are skeptical or not really interested. The people in these two groups are persuadable if the right means can be found. Of course, as cases and deaths drop in the US, it becomes harder to convince anyone how important it is to be vaccinated.

I made June's Instant Pot meal last night, Penne Bolognese from Instant Pot Obsession, and it will be made again ... and again ... and again. It was that good. Son #1 took the leftovers home with him this morning; I'll hear his review tomorrow. I expect he will like it as much as The Professor and I did. I'm thinking of mixing things up in July and trying a breakfast dish or a dessert.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 469

At the end of week 67 of this blog, I've decided to keep going for a while. I may change the title at some point if I can come up with something catchy. Since I do leave the subdivision on rare occasion--usually medically related or to visit my mom--"hermitage" is not really accurate any longer. I've toyed with putting the stopping point at whenever WHO and Dr. Fauci declare the pandemic over. I'm not confident that will happen soon, though. I'm just waiting for the first vaccine-resistant variant to appear, wondering if the vaccines can keep pace with it. 

The vaccination rate in the South is so low that some experts suggest the South could come to have its own distinct pandemic. There are various reasons for the North-South gap, several of which arise from a distrust of science. These are an underestimation of the pandemic in general and a fear of rapidly developed technology such as the mRNA vaccines. Many Southern states have a generally poor medical infrastructure. Finally, state leaders in many cases send mixed signals about the need for and value of vaccinations. This should not be because to put it bluntly, the wide majority of deaths right now are among unvaccinated people. Republican strongholds have particularly low vaccination rates. All 16 states that have so far met the July 4 goal of 70 percent partial immunization voted for POTUS in November 2020. Rural areas may have limited online access, restricting the flow of information. Finally, the are "hospital deserts" in rural areas and "pharmacy deserts" in urban ones, making it difficult for the people who want to be vaccinated to get immunized.

The vaccination rates in the Mountain West are not as low as those in the South, but are still alarming. In Idaho and Wyoming, fewer than 40 percent of the adult population have gotten even one dose. Montana, Utah, and Nevada have better rates but remain well below the national average of 54 percent. As in the South, political conservatism plays a major role. The sparse population, as with hospital and pharmacy deserts may make it hard for people to seek out vaccinations. 

There's something not necessarily new about the Delta variant every day. It is more transmissible because people with Delta have higher viral loads. India has the most cases of Delta in the world, followed by the UK. The resurgences in Israel and Australia are being driven by Delta. The covid cluster in Sydney is now up to 110. New exposure hubs include a vaccination clinic at Sydney Hospital. A second link is a seafood wholesaler whose drivers tested positive; so far, 10 new cases are connected to this. 

There are other outbreaks across Australia. The Northern Territory is facing its biggest threat since the pandemic began. A mine worker tested positive, and 15 people who had close contact are unaccounted for. Two of the miner's close contacts agreed to isolate but are now "uncontactable." A physiotherapist returned to Western Australia from Sydney. She quarantined until she tested negative then resumed her normal routine going to numerous venues and seeing clients before developing symptoms and testing positive. Western Australia's health minister noted that "this person did everything right" but there are still consequences.

Can your employer ask about your vaccination status? In the US, the answer is yes. In general, employers can require employees to be vaccinated as long as they provide exemptions or reasonable accommodations to employees not getting vaccinated for health or religious reasons. The employer must keep records private.They cannot ask why an employee is not vaccinated. There are risks associated with asking employees, though. Employees may believe that the employer should not be asking or invading their privacy. This could hurt employee relations and diversity efforts.

There's yet another cause for concern with vaccinations. Only three in 10 parents of children ages 12 to 17 intend to allow those children to be vaccinated immediately. This is setting up conflicts between kids who want to be vaccinated and parents who don't want to let them. Forty states require parental consent for vaccination of minors under 18. In Nebraska, that age is 19. In South Carolina, the age is 16 but a bill has been proposed to bar providers from vaccinating anyone without parental consent. The age in Oregon is 15 but at least one county has ordered country-run clinics to obtain parental consent for anyone under 18. In the District of Columbia, the age of consent is 11. In New York and New Jersey there are bills pending to make the age 14; Minnesota has a bill pending to make it 12. Some states including Tennessee and Alabama have bills pending to prevent public schools from requiring vaccinations.

 There's always something ...

The View from the Hermitage, Day 468

Remember SARS and MERS? Coronavirus blasts from the past. How about one over 20,000 years old. Australian and US researchers have found evidence of a coronavirus epidemic in East Asia 20,000 years ago. They studied the genomes of over 2,500 people from 26 different populations around the world, and found genetic signals related to a coronavirus in five different populations in China, Japan, and Vietnam. 

Vaccine drop-in centers are opening throughout England. People 18 and older can get a first dose, while those over 40 who had their first dose at least eight weeks ago can get their second dose along with folks under 40 who had their first dose at least 12 weeks ago. Right now, 43.87 million people--83.3 percent of the adult population--have gotten a first dose, while 32 million people have gotten a second. The goal is to have offered a first dose to all adults by July 19 and have at least 65 percent of all adults fully vaccinated by July 21 when the final stage of lockdown is supposed to ease. 

Want to get back out on the water in a resort with a keel? Celebrity Edge, the first major cruise ship to restart operations from a US port, has sailed at 35 percent capacity. All of the crew members and 95 percent of passengers are fully vaccinated. Guests over the age of 16 who can't (or won't) show proof of vaccination  are required to wear masks on board and take a series of antigen tests at their own expense. Guests who have been vaccinated get antigen tests for free. The CDC guidance under which the Edge sailed expires as of July 18.

The Delta variant accounted for 21 percent of all new cases in the US for the two weeks ending on June 19. Delta has now been found in 49 states and the District of Columbia. Only South Dakota did not report any Delta cases. Bangladesh is locking down for a week thanks to an outbreak fueled by Delta. At least 200 Delta Plus cases have been identified worldwide. Delta Plus has some worrisome traits including increased transmissibility, stronger binding to receptors of lung cells, and potential reduction in antibody response.

Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere and has yet to be able to begin a vaccination program. One Haitian clinic is seeing 15 to 20 new cases every day. Even health care workers cannot get vaccinated. A handful of workers were able to fly to the US to get vaccinated, and about 30 more got special permission to get vaccinated at the US embassy. At the same time, as many as four-fifths of health care workers may choose not to get vaccinated. Health workers in Haiti have tried getting vaccine doses from Florida that are about to expire but so far have not been successful. Health authorities in Florida say that they cannot send the vaccines without formal permission from the US government, permission that has yet to be granted. 

The NCAA College World Series is happening right now in Omaha, Nebraska. Covid was not an issue until 14 of the 27 players on North Carolina State's team tested positive. NC State chose to play Vanderbilt yesterday with the 13 other players. They lost that game and were supposed to play a second game today until the NCAA cancelled the game and forfeited NC State. No specific reason was given, though I wonder if it might have been the possibility that some of the remaining 13 players might also be positive. 

Had covid? Need or want to have elective surgery? It is not clear how long someone who has had covid should wait for elective surgery once they're through with covid. Obviously, the respiratory system is integrally involved in anesthesia. A recent study suggested that waiting at least seven weeks reduces the risk of death when compared to that of people who did not have covid. The American Society of Anesthesiologists and the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation have offered the following guidelines.

Wait four weeks after an asymptomatic or mild case with only non-respiratory symptoms. 

Wait six weeks after being symptomatic but not hospitalized.

Wait eight to 10 weeks if symptomatic with diabetes, immuno-compromised, or were hospitalized.

Wait 12 weeks if spent time in intensive care.

Obviously, one's mileage may vary, and one's doctor may disagree. The point is to have a discussion with that doctor about how long to wait. Elective means just that; you don't have to have it done at any specific time. 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 467

Israel is reimposing a mask mandate in light of a covid surge driven by the Delta variant. Half of the new cases are people who had been vaccinated. That's the bad news. The good news is that the infections of vaccinated people are much milder than those of unvaccinated people. Delta is also driving the latest surge in Africa; it's now been detected in 13 countries. Cases have been consistently rising since May. WHO says the current wave could be the region's worst yet. According to the director of the African CDC, this third wave has been "extremely brutal." In Uganda, 99 percent of the cases are from Delta; in Zambia, 77 percent.

Delta could cause more problems here in the US. More than one in 10 people who got a first dose of Pfizer or Moderna have missed their second dose. This makes them much more vulnerable to Delta. Delta appears to be behind the outbreak in Sydney. There have been 22 new cases, bringing the total to 65, making this the largest outbreak in six months. There are likely to be more new cases. Nine hundred or so clients visited a hair salon while several employees there were infectious. Raising even more concerns about Delta, many of the confirmed infections appear to have occurred after only seconds of contact. There was also a child's birthday party where at least 17 guests had tested positive as of Thursday night. The rest of the guests are expected to be infected along with household contacts of almost everyone who was there. 

The UK reported 15,810 new covid cases today, cases having risen by almost 50 percent in one week. As of June 16, 83 cases of Delta Plus had been identified in the US compared with 41 in the UK and 40 in India where Delta Plus is considered a variant of concern. Delta Plus cases have also been identified in Canada, Japan, Nepal, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Switzerland, and Turkey.

The Chinese vaccines have been getting some very bad press of late. Since the pandemic began, 401 doctors in Indonesia have died. At least 20 of them were fully vaccinated with Sinovac. Some countries in the Middle East are giving residents a third dose of one of the Chinese vaccines. Personally, I'd ask for a different vaccine.

There's a new quirk with the Olympics. Word is that some of the British Olympians are vaccine-hesitant. Well over 90 percent of the British athletes will be fully vaccinated by July 23, but there will still be holdouts. I wonder if there will be additional restrictions for unvaccinated athletes in terms of how much they can circulate.

Meanwhile, back in the US, nearly all covid deaths occurring now are among the unvaccinated. This cannot be stressed enough: the vaccines we have in the US work. Period. Full stop. Louisiana is turning to a lottery in hopes of getting more people to be vaccinated. The vaccination rate in Louisiana is lower than every state but Mississippi. Six of the bottom eight states in vaccination rate are southern. Besides Mississippi and Louisiana, there are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and Tennessee. One reason they think a lottery will work in Louisiana is that their research suggests that independent of political affiliation, the people not yet vaccinated are the people most likely to buy lottery tickets. To me, not getting vaccinated is the same as buying a lottery ticket. The odds are better in the vaccination lottery, but the covid prize sucks more than the cash one would.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 466

There are a lot of interesting angles today. First, it seems that genetic sequences from over 200 virus samples taken before a pandemic was declared disappeared from an online scientific database. US researchers have now recovered 13 of those initial sequences, and they support the suggestion that a variety of coronaviruses may have been circulating in Wuhan before the initial official outbreak in December 2019. Why these sequences were deleted is not known, though it has been described as "suspicious."

Remember all the young adults who weren't bothering to get vaccinated right away? The average age of people dying from covid-19 is shifting younger. Adults under 40 made up about three percent of covid deaths in May, more than double their representation since the pandemic started.

A cluster of covid cases in Sydney has grown to 49, leading to reimposition of a travel ban for five million residents and mandatory mask wearing. Gatherings at houses are also limited to five people. The outbreak started when an airport limo driver tested positive. He was unvaccinated--which happens to be against the law--and likely got infected transporting a foreign airline crew. The stay-at-home orders come at the start of winter break, which means lots of families are altering travel plans at the last minute. This outbreak comes after several months of near-zero community transmission, something we in the US need to keep in mind.

San Francisco is going to require all 35,000 city employees to be vaccinated once a vaccine gets full FDA authorization. Both Pfizer and Moderna have applied for this though it is not clear how long full approval might take. Some 60 percent of city employees are already fully vaccinated. They say that firing employees who will not get vaccinated would be a last resort. At a Houston hospital that required vaccinations, 150 staff quit or were fired. Close to San Francisco is a recent outbreak of the Delta variant in Marin County even though over 80 percent of the people there are fully vaccinated.

 A special envoy of the African Union has accused the world's richest nations of deliberately withholding vaccines. He says, "It's not a question of if this was a moral failure, it was deliberate." Africa so far has given only 40 million doses in a population of 1.3 billion.

I learned a bit more about Delta Plus. Evidently it carries the same mutation as Beta (from South Africa), which is partially resistant to vaccines or immunity gained through a prior covid infection. It is not known yet if Delta Plus is more transmissible than the original Delta variant. 

Covid cases in Tokyo are rising again. There were 619 new cases Wednesday, the first time in a month that new cases exceeded 600. There were 570 new cases Thursday, up from 118 Thursday last week. The emperor of Japan is forbidden by the post-war constitution from making public statements on contentious issues. This may be why Emperor Naruhito stated he is "extremely worried about the current status of coronavirus infections" without calling for any specific action. Whether the emperor will attend the Opening Ceremonies is so far unknown.

Looking away from the coronavirus, the Florida governor has signed three new education bills. The first requires public higher education institutions to annually survey faculty and staff about their beliefs to ensure they promote diversity and intellectual freedom. The second prohibits public higher education from limiting student access to ideas "they may find uncomfortable, unwelcome, disagreeable, or offensive." The third calls for creation of a K-12 civics curriculum that contrasts the US with communist and totalitarian governments using "portraits in patriotism." The governor hinted that the state might end funding to schools that do not comply. I'm wondering who the patriots in portraits might end up being. I can think of at least one resident of Florida who should not be on that list but conceivably could be proposed.

Finally, the average wedding in the US costs $30,000. I find this incomprehensible. $30,000 today would have been $12,128 in 1985 when The Professor and I got married. We paid for our own wedding and spent somewhere around $3,000. I can think of a lot of better uses for today's $30,000, money that likely came from someone's parents rather than the bride and groom themselves. I do remember someone I know saying that she and her husband dug into their retirement to pay for one daughter's wedding. If either of The Sons wants us to help pay for his wedding, that wedding will most definitely not cost $30,000.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 465

Let's start with the Olympics in general and condoms in particular.  In 2016 in Rio, 450,000 condoms were distributed via vending machines in the Olympic Village with signs advising "Celebrate with a condom." Tokyo will be distributing the condoms as athletes leave to go home. In general, the Japanese are not happy about the Olympics happening. Kaori Yamaguchi, a member of the Japanese Organizing Committee and a bronze medalist in judo in 1988, noted, "We have been cornered into a situation where we cannot stop even now. We are damned if we do and damned if we do not....The IOC also seems to think that public opinion in Japan is not important." For a country famous for consensus and uniformity, the Olympics are pretty much a slap in the face of the overwhelming feeling the Games should not be held. A political scientist at Tokyo's Sophia University described the situation thusly, "It's a bit like a gambler who already has lost too much. Pulling out of it now will only confirm the huge losses made, but carrying on you can still cling to the hope of winning big and taking it all back."

Experts in the US say that the Delta variant could cause "full-on resurgence" in the coming months, and could result in over 3,000 deaths per week even with a 75 percent vaccination rate. Delta is forecast to account for 90 percent of cases in the EU by the end of the August. India has designated the Delta Plus variant as a variant of concern. 

College students are starting to react to the vaccine mandates put in place at so many colleges and universities. Eight Indiana University students--two incoming freshmen, two incoming sophomores, and one each of senior undergraduate, incoming first-year Law, MBA, and doctoral candidate--have filed suit in US District Court claiming the vaccine mandate is in violation of the 14th amendment and state law. Six of the eight have received exemptions from vaccination on religious grounds.

Let's have an intermission on covid stuff and look at the most expensive cities in the world in 2021. The rankings are based on the cost of housing, food, transportation, and 200 other items in comparison to the prices in New York City. Here we go, most expensive on down: Ashgabat, Turkmenistan; Hong Kong; Beirut; Tokyo; Zurich; Shanghai; Singapore; Geneva; Beijing; and Bern, Switzerland. There were no countries from the Americas in the top 10. New York City, the highest us city, was 14th. Los Angeles was 20th, and San Francisco was 25th.

Back to covid but still ranking, this time in terms of seven-day cases per 100,000 people. The top (as in low numbers of cases) five are South Dakota (4), Vermont (5), Connecticut (7), Maryland (7), and Nebraska (7). The bottom five are Colorado (48), Wyoming (51), Arkansas (54), Utah (64), and Missouri (76). South Dakota at peak covid had 160 new cases per 100,000 people each day. The four cited here is per week.

The US has fully vaccinated over 45 percent of its population. The whole world has fully vaccinated just 10 percent of its population. By continent, the percents for fully vaccinated are North America (30), Europe (28), South America (11), Asia (8), and Africa (less than 1). Somewhat by continent, the doses given per 100 people would be North America (95), Europe (60), Asia (35), Latin America and the Caribbean (34), Oceania (19), and Africa (3). I'd love to see those single digits become double ones and continue up from there, but I'm not going to get too optimistic that it will happen.  

On the travel front, how about Airvnv, and that's not a typo. Guam is inviting travelers to Visit and get Vaccinated. Participating government-approved hotels are selling package deals including accommodations, meals, airport transportation, covid tests, health monitoring, and two doses of Pfizer or Moderna or one dose of Johnson & Johnson. Travelers will get tested at home before leaving and will quarantine for seven days on arrival in Guam with the first vaccine dose given on the second day there. Clearly, this is not going to be cheap. The hotels being used run from $150 to $350 per night, with the covid measures adding an extra $880. For Pfizer or Moderna, a traveler could be there for two to three weeks. The UAE are preparing a similar program.

On the resolution front, I realized that I had not yet done June's Instant Pot dinner. Perusing an Instant Pot cookbook, I offered The Professor a choice of Mexican, Indian, or Italian. He chose Italian so sometime in the next week I'll be making Penne Bolognese. I'll post a review here once we've tried it.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 464

I mentioned yesterday doing my six-month check on the resolutions I made for 2021. I called up the relevant post from December 31, 2020, and discovered that among those resolutions was to keep this blog going until I was fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. Snap! My second injection was on April 13; the two-week take-effect period ended on April 27. I had no idea I had said I would stop then. So today I've been going back and forth on stopping versus continuing. I would have noticeably more time each day. I might still be reading the array of news sources I've been reading, but I wouldn't be taking notes and thinking about how something from Source A juxtaposes perfectly with something from Source D. I actually have been trying to make time for some other, non-pandemic writing; I'm working on a poem right now. Stepping back from this blog would give me more time for that. The ten or so faithful readers would find themselves with a few more minutes in each day as well. Would they miss reading it? I'd likely miss writing it more ... or would I?

The Delta variant now accounts for 20.6 percent of new US covid cases. Delta is thought to be responsible for a six-fold increase in hospitalizations in Springfield, Missouri. Most new patients are unvaccinated and did not seem to have taken basic precautions. More spikes could be on the way given that the prevalence of Delta continues to double every two weeks. 

If Delta isn't scary enough, we now have the Delta Plus variant, still only a variant of interest but one that could become a variant of concern. Delta Plus was first seen in Europe in March but was not publicized until June 13. So far, Delta Plus is considered highly infectious and may show resistance to monoclonal antibodies cocktail treatments. It may also be able to bypass any immunity provided by both a vaccine and a past infections. Some sources say Delta Plus is cause for worry but not panic. Besides India, Delta Plus cases have been found in the UK, US, Canada, Portugal, Poland, Switzerland, Russia, Turkey, Japan, and Nepal. 

Eight members of the Ugandan Olympic team are in quarantine in Japan after a coach tested positive on arrival despite pre-departure vaccination and testing. One pundit noted that this happened when a team of 100 arrived. How about the rest of the 100,000 or so athletes, staff, journalists, etc. on their way? So why are they still having the Olympics? Can you say, "Money"? The new national stadium cost $15.4 billion. The world television rights cost $4 billion. NBC Universal is paying $1.25 billion for their broadcasting rights. Do you think the IOC wants to pay back over $5 billion? The payments made to national Olympic committees, $549 million, are just a drop in the bucket.

A couple of quick international notes includes that Canada may relax border restrictions before July 21 if their numbers keep going in the right direction. I wonder if we would reciprocate. Indonesia's total cases are now third in Asia after India and Iran and first in Southeast Asia. China could keep their border restrictions in place for another year. Russia just recorded 546 covid-related deaths, the most in one day since February. Fewer than one percent of Africa's people have been even partially vaccinated. Africa is looking more like India every day.

US vaccinations have slowed to a crawl. We're at 65.4 percent of people being partially vaccinated and won't hit the 70 percent POTUS wanted by July 4. Virginia is about to hit 70 percent, though, so hooyah for my state! Some states and countries are offering incentives tied to getting vaccinated. Then there's President Duterte in the Philippines who said, "You choose, covid vaccine or I will have you jailed. ... Don't get me wrong, there is a crisis in this country. I'm just exasperated by Filipinos not heeding the government." 

Interesting fact I learned today: the Speaker of the House of Representatives does not have to be a member of the House though every Speaker has been. XPot was evidently approached about whether he might like to be Speaker should the Republicans regain control of the House in the 2022 election. He did think about it but declined.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 463

The International Olympic Committee has decided to allow residents of Japan to attend Olympic events. Spectators will be allowed up to 50 percent capacity of a venue but capped at 10,000. Japanese health officials are not happy with this decision, though it could still be overturned should conditions worsen. Some 10,000 of the 80,000 volunteers scheduled to work at the Games have quit. As of now, 7.3 percent of the Japanese population is fully vaccinated while 18 percent are partly vaccinated. Over 80 percent of Olympic athletes have been vaccinated. There will be rules for spectators including wearing masks and not shouting. There will also be guidelines for travel to and from venues. 

The Olympic Village consists of 21 residential towers of 14 to 18 floors, for a total of 3,600 rooms. The 18,000 beds in those rooms will be made of recyclable cardboard. In case you were wondering about the math, assuming 18,000 athletes--one per recyclable cardboard bed--means each would get eight of the 160,000 condoms I've mentioned here before. I hope those cardboard beds can support the weight of two toned athletes. 

US vaccination rates for people over 65 lag behind the national level in 11 mostly Southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, West Virginia, and Wyoming. The lag means that at least 20 percent of the seniors in those states have not yet been vaccinated. For comparison, the national rate for people over 65 shows 87 percent partly vaccinated, 60 percent of those ages 18 to 64, and 31 percent of those ages 12 to 17. There are various factors at play in the low rates for seniors--conspiracy theories, belief in pseudoscience, and a more libertarian mindset. The potential outcomes are not good, says the associate dean for global health at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. "All epidemics are local at the end of the day, and transmission is person to person. There is going to be a hot pocket of transmission if someone becomes infected and others around them are unvaccinated, This is not Epidemiology 101, this is common sense." Especially considering the growing prevalence of the Delta variant, "We're sitting on a powder keg."

The US has extended restrictions on nonessential travel to Mexico and Canada until July 21 following Canada's restricting travel from the US until that same say. Tourism, leisure, and casual visits to Canada are forbidden. Some exceptions do exist for family members, foreign workers, and international students. 

Quickies on the domestic front: Over 80 percent of residents of Vermont and Connecticut are fully vaccinated. In 16 states and the District of Columbia, almost half of residents are fully vaccinated. Unfortunately, there are other states in which less than 35 percent of the residents have been fully vaccinated. US gym traffic in May was just six percent below the levels in 2019. The home fitness boom may be over. Online searches for at-home equipment spiked in April 2020 but fell to a pandemic-era low in May 2021. Bye-Bye, Peloton? Madison Square Garden just held its first full-capacity event since March 2020, a Foo Fighters concert. American Airlines has had to cancel flights because they don't have enough pilots. United Airlines is also experiencing a pilot shortage. The main cause is that they military is not producing as many pilots as it did in the days of Vietnam and the Cold War. In areas with high infection rates, households with recent birthdays are 30 percent more likely to yield positive tests. Finally, on a positive note, US deaths from covid dropped below 300 daily for the first time since March 2020.

My middle-of-the-year birthday approaches meaning I should ponder the resolutionI made six months ago and see how good I have been at keeping them. I have yet to use the Instant Pot this month, and while I have made a pie, it was a repeat of a pie made earlier in the year. Of course, if I'm hitting all the goals, I'll think I should have made them loftier. Goals are tricky like that.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 462

The view is that as soon as I remove this laptop from the dining room table, that table will be ready for the role it will play in the facilities. Take a day off from pondering the pandemic. Take a walk unless it's incredibly hot and humid as it is here. Pet your pet, hug your children or significant other; just enjoy being you. That's what I'll be doing. 

See you tomorrow!

The View from the Hermitage, Day 461

I don't have as much to report today having dedicated a good bit of it to life such as visiting my mom with The Professor along to hang a couple of pictures for her. Her room looks even better with artwork on the walls. I then waited in the car while The Professor obtained lunch and some groceries we needed before getting home. 

New York State will open nine pop-up vaccination sites at or near early voting locations in ZIP codes that have relatively low vaccination rates. While 70.6 percent of the adult population has gotten at least one dose, neighborhoods differ in their rates. Governor Cuomo hopes that being able to do two civic duties at once--voting and vaccination--will induce people to come out. 

Word is that a third wave is "definitely underway" in the UK, driven by the Delta variant and infections among younger people. A member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation noted, "We can conclude that the race firmly on between the vaccine programme, particularly getting older people second doses done, and the Delta variant third wave." He did not express confidence that the vaccine would win the race but did see "some grounds for optimism."

Assuming that covid-19 is here to stay (which I see as a strong certainty), how do we learn to live with it? We don't necessarily need a more restrictive society, but we do need a more careful one. The things that will be most easily done are those that will least disrupt lives--good hygiene, remote work where possible, mask wearing, avoiding crowds, and so on. But similar to safe sex, we won't learn to live with it until we learn to take responsibility for the risks. People have to be ready to make their own safe decisions. And no, these are not my very own thoughts, but ones I found in The Guardian. I do think it's worth considering, though, in the contexts of our own lives, what inconveniences we are willing to live with and what risks we are willing to take. 

Tomorrow we will have a combined Fathers Day and DiL='s birthday celebration. Ice cream was obtained today, and I shall make a small chocolate cake tomorrow. A good time will be had.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 460

In one report I read this morning, someone said that a "variant" could also be called a "scariant." That's somewhat true given my worry over Delta and what variants might be yet to come. While Delta appears to be worse than most other variants, it does not appear to be particularly hard on kids who cannot yet be vaccinated. Delta now accounts for 90 percent of all England's cases; the WHO cautions that Delta is becoming globally dominant. It's been noted that for now vaccines are the way out of variants, though we need to enjoy that while we can. While current vaccines can for the most part handle Delta, there may be a variant coming that they can't. 

On the vaccine front, Johnson & Johnson has pretty much fallen flat. It accounts for less than four percent of all vaccine doses given, and millions of doses may expire before they can be given. Johnson & Johnson did have the appeal of being a one-shot stop on the vaccine trail, but that appeal faded in the wake of a rare but serious blood-clotting disorder. Pausing US injections for 10 days in April was one more mark against it. Now, the press coverage of the possible contamination of millions of doses of Johnson & Johnson has pretty much sealed the deal against it. 

Europeans are still barred from entering the US for nonessential travel even if they've been fully vaccinated. On the flip side, the EU has added the US to the list of countries considered safe enough for those Americans not fully vaccinated to enter Europe after producing results of a negative PCR test for active infection. Individual countries are, however, allowed to admit or exclude nationalities as they deem fit, meaning an American might be able to go to Country A but not to its next-door neighbor Country B.

The Olympics are still on though new guidance has been given that says intimacy between athletes could lead to fines, disqualifications, or deportation. Athletes must "avoid unnecessary forms of physical contact." So where does that leave the 160,000 condoms Japanese organizers have on hand? Condoms have been something of an Olympic Village tradition since the Seoul Games in 1988 to help take care of the unofficial Olympic sport of bed-hopping. The Japanese organizers are now saying that the condoms were not meant to be used but were instead intended to be taken home by athlete and used to raise awareness or HIV and AIDS. The French are likely glad the condoms were not meant to be used given that the Games require that condoms be thicker and latex-based which some French have described as "offering an inferior experience."

South America is in trouble. Paraguay has the world's highest daily proportion of covid-19 deaths, 18.09 per million people. The next six countries in a ranking of deaths per million are also South American countries, Suriname, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Brazil, and Peru. Peru, ranked seventh, has 9.12 deaths per million. For comparison, India has 2.71 deaths per million; India, 2.71; South Africa, 2.2; the US, 1.01; and the UK, 0.14.

New findings help strengthen the case for a natural origin for the coronavirus. The lab leak theory for now rests on unverified reports of respiratory illness in three of 600 staffers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in November 2019. The WHO team looking into the origin of the coronavirus found that two-thirds of the earliest confirmed cases had some connection with the Huanan seafood wholesale market in Wuhan. It should be noted that the origin question is not a binary choice of lab versus market. The virus could have come from a farmed animal rather than a wild one, with the virus going from livestock to humans who attended the market rather than coming from some wild animal sold at the market. 

The Postal Service did not get the initial Juneteenth off unless there is no delivery planned for tomorrow, the actual Juneteenth. Potential Tropical Cyclone THREE has not yet earned its "Claudette," but at least it has not yet ruined the weekend for those living along the Gulf of Mexico. It is supposed to be 90 degrees Fahrenheit here each of the next three days, meaning I'll try to get anything that needs to be done outdoors done early. Here's hoping the temperature where you are this weekend is a tolerable one and it only rains if you need the water. 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 459

Happy Holiday! Tomorrow is a brand spankin' new federal holiday, Juneteenth. Congress passed it and POTUS signed it, announcing it starts right away. Have a good day!

While we're on sound bites, if the current tropical system in the Gulf of Mexico strengthens, it will be named Claudette and could drop almost a foot of rain on parts of the South. Fortunately, it won't do all this tomorrow and ruin the holiday.

Some Black church leaders are preaching vaccines from the pulpit, phoning parishioners to encourage vaccination, and hosting testing and/or vaccination clinics in church buildings. Choose Healthy Life is a national initiative involving Black clergy, United Way of New York City, and others and just got a $9.9 million grant to expand the range of vaccinations and make "health navigators" currently doing testing and vaccinations permanent positions. Eventually, they hope to address other ailments common in Black communities including heart disease, hypertension, diabetes, AIDS, and asthma. So far they have done over 30,000 vaccinations in three months in 50 churches in New York; New Jersey; Washington, DC; and Atlanta. The grant will expand the efforts to 100 churches in 13 states and Washington, DC, and install the infrastructure for screenings to begin. Quest Diagnostics and foundation are offering funding and testing help. 

South Asian countries are looking for vaccines due to India's, the world's largest vaccine manufacturer, deciding to keep covid vaccines at home for now. Sri Lanka has asked Japan for help, while Nepal has asked for help form Britain, Denmark, South Korea, and the US. The G7 vaccine pledge is too vague to help real planning; it promises future help when the need is now. In Nepal, 1.4 million people aged 65 and older have been waiting for their second shot of AstraZeneca after getting their first one in March. The US has promised 25 million doses, with seven million going to Nepal, but it's not yet clear exactly how many there will be, what type of vaccine they will be, and when they might arrive. Nepal has observed a weeks-long lock-down and one in three tests is still coming back positive. Bangladesh also needs AstraZeneca for second doses. Only 4.2 million of the 168 million population there is fully vaccinated. 

Operation Warp Speed invested money in developing covid vaccines, but did not work on covid treatments. The government is now investing $3.2 billion in the Antiviral Program for Pandemics to develop antiviral pills for covid-19. Why couldn't they have given it a catchier name? Suggestions?

A couple of quickie international notes: Travel into and out of Lisbon has been banned over coming weekends as Portugal sees a spike in cases. I know someone who is supposed to move to Portugal in the next couple of weeks. She has a visa to work toward permanent residency there. I hope she can get in. The US embassy in Kabul has gone into a near-complete lock-down because of a covid spike among the staff. It's killed at least one person and put 114 more in quarantine. Almost all of the cases, 95 percent, are in people who are not fully vaccinated. 

AstraZeneca can apparently increase the price of vaccine even in poor countries once they decide the pandemic has ended. The source I read said what it sounds like--when AstraZeneca decides the pandemic has ended. Forget that WHO originally declared that the coronavirus had become a pandemic. When AstraZeneca wants or needs more money, bam!, the pandemic will be over. 

The New York Times asked more than a dozen public health experts, economists, and bioethicists what the US might have done differently in terms of vaccination. Here are five points they came up with.

(1) We could have delayed second doses to partially protect more people sooner. 

(2) We could have included slightly younger people in the early vaccine rollout.

(3) We could have prioritized by ZIP code for vaccine equity.

(4) Congress would have allocated money for vaccine distribution earlier.

(5) The government needed to pitch vaccines to the public more effectively.

What do you think? I know that Britain delayed second doses and allocated first doses largely by age, starting with the elderly and working younger. Should we have delayed second doses here? Not for first responders, I would say. Medical personnel and those responding to emergencies needed full protection earlier than people like me did. But given the vaccine hesitancy here, would we start second doses as soon as people stopped coming in for first doses? And would priority by ZIP code on its own have done anything? Only if the health people took the vaccinations to those areas and made it easy for people to get vaccinated around work, child care, and other life issues that might get in the way. As for pitching the vaccines more effectively, I don't recall there being any kind of concerted, noticeable program related to vaccination. Was there one that I just missed?

I can't wait to see what kind of holiday happens with only hours of notice. See you tomorrow!

The View from the Hermitage, Day 458

The CDC has followed WHO in declaring Delta to be a "variant of concern." Evidently there is a more serious category above that, "variant of high consequence." Let's hope Delta doesn't get that far. It's doubling every two weeks, something the Alpha variant did on its way to becoming the dominant strain in the US. Dr. Cyrus Shah, covid-19 data director at the White House, says that by the time more Americans are fully vaccinated, in some five to six weeks, Delta "will be the majority of US cases ... important to start building protection now." The Pfizer vaccine is said to offer "very good" protection, while Astra-Zeneca's protection is "substantial but reduced" efficacy. Coming on Delta's heels is Lambda, a variant first found in Peru and now associated with "substantive rates of community transmission in multiple" countries in the region. And we can't forget Gamma which is apparently fueling an outbreak in the Yukon.

Covid death totals go up and down depending on how one counts covid deaths. Federal guidance is to rely on death certificates where covid was determined to be a factor. They want to count only people who die of or from covid as opposed to people who die with covid. 

On the vaccination front, some pediatricians in the US are vaccinating as many adults as children. They'll vaccinate the parents who bring the children in to save them a trip to get vaccinated elsewhere. WHO has warned not for the first time that the virus is spreading faster than vaccinations. Royal Caribbean has postponed the inaugural sailing of the Odyssey of the Seas after eight vaccinated crew members tested positive. All 1,400 crew were vaccinated on June 4 and will be considered fully vaccinated on June 18. The positive cases were identified after vaccination but before full efficacy. Six of the eight crew members are asymptomatic; the other two have mild symptoms.

Up to 10,000 people could be allowed to watch Olympic events in Tokyo. Spectators currently would be capped at 5,000 or 50 percent capacity, whichever is smaller. I'm tempted to put on a character's voice to say, "They call that a crowd?" We have a different idea of crowd size here in the US. The Los Angeles Dodgers had over 50,000 fans at Tuesday's game; they called it "Reopening Day." The Kentucky Derby was run before a crowd of 51,000. A crowd of 70,000 watched a recent boxing bout. Topping them all, the Indianapolis 500 was conducted before a crowd of 135,000. Now that's what I call a crowd. You would not find me even in the 5,000 mentioned for a possible Olympics crowd.

The US is expected to be added to a list  of countries from which the EU will admit tourists. It's not clear if the CDC vaccination card will be accepted as a vaccination passport; it was not intended to serve as one. It wasn't clear if a negative test result might also be needed. I should ask The Professor if he still wants to go to Germany to meet with a colleague there. If so, he should start checking into things now rather than his usual at the last minute.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 457

The novel coronavirus may have arrived in the US much earlier than thought. A new analysis of 24,000 blood samples taken from Americans in early 2020 suggests that the virus was here in December 2019 even if it did not become widespread until February 2020. The antibodies present after a bout of covid-19 can be detected as early as two weeks after infection. Blood samples from nine study participants, five from Illinois and one each from Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin suggested infection earlier than any case ever recorded in the US. One of the subjects from Illinois appears to have been infected as early as Christmas Eve 2019. The study is by no means definitive; it is possible that the antibodies were in reaction to another coronavirus. It is interesting to note that these nine cases did not come from either New York City or Seattle, the places in which covid was initially found. 

New York has lifted most virus rules after 70 percent of the population have gotten at least one dose of vaccine. Governor Cuomo says that this makes possible a "return to life as we know it." Federal restrictions such as masks on public transportation remain in effect. Some 899 people in New York City were evidently vaccinated with expired Pfizer; they have been informed to return for a "real" dose. Vermont has lifted all remaining covid restrictions as it becomes the first state to have at least partially vaccinated 80 percent of its residents. Individual businesses or municipalities can still implement their own rules and, as with New York, federal rules remain in effect. Bringing up the rear in terms of vaccination rates are Mississippi with 35 percent and Alabama and Louisiana with 37 percent each. The champion in the vaccination race is the South Pacific island of Palau where 96 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated. We will get that high a vaccination rate only in our wildest dreams.

The US death toll passed 600,000 sometime around lunchtime today. The US continues to have one of the worst per capita death rates, eclipsed only by Peru, Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia. Vaccination could be a top priority for years to come. 

April's Kumbh Mela festival in India is widely believed to be responsible for the Indian covid surge. Now it appears that some of the private agencies responsible for testing pilgrims forged at least 100,000 out of 400,000 results. The investigation began when a man in a neighboring state received negative test results even though he had never left his home state nor had he been tested for any reason. 

One quarter of almost 2 million covid patients have been found to have new issues. This includes people who had mild or asymptomatic covid. The new issues arise a month or more after infection. The most common new problems are pain, including in nerves and muscles; breathing difficulties; high cholesterol; malaise and fatigue; and high blood pressure. Other issues include intestinal symptoms; migraines; skin problems; heart abnormalities; sleep disorders; and mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. These issues arise in people of all ages, including children. Nearly half of all hospitalized covid patients experience subsequent medical issues, along with 27 percent with mild or moderate symptoms and 19 percent of asymptomatic patients. 

Finally, American Express will allow most employees to work from home for up to two days a week--usually Monday and Friday--permanently. Employees who worked full-time from home before the pandemic can keep doing so. Employees whose jobs cannot be done effectively from home will have to return to the office full-time.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 456

I was asked last night just how long I'm going to continue inhabiting "the Hermitage." I responded with something about when the end of the pandemic was officially declared. Technically, I do leave the Hermitage now, but only for very specific purposes that can't be done remotely, and when I do I take all form of precautions. I helped put on the election, wearing a mask and keeping as much distance as possible, handing out ballots at my arm's length plus that of the voter. I'm having my second hair appointment tomorrow and will be wearing a mask as will, I expect, my stylist. A quick run to the grocery store for some ingredient I need? Not gonna happen. I'll substitute--The Joy of Cooking has a great list of substitutions--or make something else. So when will I stop viewing the world from the Hermitage? I honestly don't know. For now, I want to keep going. The fat lady hasn't even warmed up yet. 

Quickie factoid: The Washington Post's final tally of XPot's false or misleading claims was ... suspense builds ... 30,573. If you want to know how many that comes to for each day, you're on your own. I'm not gonna go there.

It's been clear that covid-19 wreaks havoc on the respiratory system and also the heart, brain, and kidneys among other organs. Could it also cause diabetes by attacking insulin-producing cells? Some evidence suggests it might. Covid-19, the virus that keeps on giving, especially when you see the new symptoms brought by the Delta variant.

That variant scares me more every day. It now accounts for 10 percent of cases in the US, a proportion that could double every two weeks. Delta is now the dominant strain in the UK and driving new cases in people aged 12 to 20. According to the CDC, Delta offers a "potential reduction" in vaccine effectiveness and a "potential reduction" in the effectiveness of some treatments. It is not unreasonable to think that Delta could become the dominant strain here if it takes hold in areas with low vaccination rates. Even if 64.4 percent of Americans have gotten at least one dose of vaccine, one dose offers only partial protection.

Delta could also become the dominant strain worldwide, having been detected in 74 different countries so far. It has more severe symptoms than other strains including stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, hearing loss, and joint pain. In Guangzhou, China 12 percent of patients became severely or critically ill within three to four days of symptom onset. The symptom that intrigues me is hearing loss. I wonder if inflammation is at the root, but would it be affecting the auditory nerves or some other part of the ear? I'm now pretty much profoundly deaf in my right ear with no known cause. Being curious about my own hearing loss makes me wonder what might be at work with Delta.

Cases are down in the US overall but rising in many states with lower-than-average vaccination rates. Eight states--Alabama, Arkansas, Hawaii, Missouri, Nevada, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming--have seen their seven-day rolling average number of cases rise from what they were two weeks ago. All those states but Hawaii have vaccination rates lower than the US average. The 10 states with the fewest new cases per capita over two weeks all have fully vaccinated rates above the national average. This includes the three most vaccinated states, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

Novavax says that its vaccine is 90 percent effective against variants, on par with Pfizer and Moderna. It has 100 percent efficacy in preventing severe disease. Novavax may or may not seek Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA until late September, though it is applying now in Britain, the EU, India, and South Korea. Some scientists say that the US has enough vaccines in play right now but that the Novavax could be the vaccine to use for booster shots when those come to pass.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 455

Russia is seeing a new covid surge. Workers in Moscow have been ordered to stay home for a week. There were 6,701 new cases there Saturday, the highest single-day total since December. Overall, Russia had 13,510 new cases, the highest since December. The government is urging people to get vaccinated. Fewer than 13 percent of the population has been vaccinated even though the Sputnik V vaccine has been available for months. Two-thirds of Russians say that they do not plan to get vaccinated. The reasons for this include not only distrust of authorities but also frequent state news reports describing coronavirus as almost defeated or not very dangerous. 

The Copa America soccer tournament was scheduled to open with Venezuela against Brazil, the host country. One day before they were to play, at least 12 Venezuelan players and staff have tested positive. Another team, Bolivia, may have at least four people testing positive. Colombia vaccinated its team but not until Thursday, meaning there's no two-week post-injection period for the vaccine to really kick in. 

Canada has rejected 300,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine made in Baltimore. The US already rejected 60 million doses from the same facility. At the same time, though, the FDA will allow about 10 million other doses from the same facility to be distributed in the US or abroad with a warning that it cannot guarantee the manufacturer followed good manufacturing practices. I gotta ask, would you want one of these doses? I don't think I would.

Some quick notes from around the world. Saudi Arabia is limiting the hajj in July to 60,000 people living in Saudi. These people must have been vaccinated and be between 18 and 65 years old. Last year, only 1,000 people were allowed to attend. France extended the curfew for 5,000 fans Friday night so that they could stay at Roland Garros to watch the end of the French Open semi-final between Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. It was five sets well worth watching, as was today's five-set final. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, hospitals in the capital, Kinshasa, are overwhelmed. Friday yielded one of the highest daily new case totals there since the pandemic started. Finally, some countries, including Haiti and Tanzania, have given no vaccinations yet. 

The US has given at least one dose of vaccine to over half its population. In India, with 100,000 new cases daily and 3,000 deaths, three percent of the population have been vaccinated. Brazil, with 11 percent vaccinated, is averaging 64,000 new cases and 1,800 deaths daily. Most African countries are unlikely to meet WHO's goal of having 10 percent of their population vaccinated by September. 

Four times as many women as men suffer from long covid. Several other disease are more likely to affect women than men including chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and chronic Lyme disease, all often dismissed as hypochondria. Women's T cells are much more active early in an infection, possibly due to genetics. Women carry two copies of the X chromosome. Many genes that code for parts of the immune system are on X meaning that different immune responses are expressed more strongly in women. This may be why women are much less likely to die of covid than men. One theory on long covid is that fragments of the virus linger in remote pockets of the body for many months. This would explain why remnants of covid have been discovered in almost every tissue from brain to kidneys.

Finally, as covid cases decline in the US, so has testing, which will make it more difficult to identify outbreaks and track the spread of variants. And the G7 has renewed calls for investigation of the origins of the coronavirus.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 454

Vaccination rates for Blacks and Latinos in the US continue to lag. Fewer than half the states have vaccinated a third of their Black populations, while over 40 have done that with white and Asian people. Vaccine hesitancy among Blacks has gone down in recent months; interest remains high for Latinos. White Republicans are more likely to definitively refuse a vaccination. Interestingly, Black and white Americans have similar rate of vaccine hesitancy, but whites are more likely to get vaccinated. Several issues are at work here. Missing work to get vaccinated may mean missing money. There may be no child care for children who can't be taken along to the vaccination site. In cities, "pharmacy deserts" exist making getting to a vaccination site even harder.

I haven't really written about the issue of waiving intellectual property rights to allow developing countries to produce their own vaccines. I read this morning, though, that if pharmaceutical companies are willing to waive those rights, the bill for vaccinating developing countries would be in the neighborhood of $6.5 billion. Without the patent waiver the cost could reach $80 billion. This is one item on the agenda of the G7 currently meeting in Cornwall, England. In terms of getting vaccines to countries, 92 of the world's poorest countries are supported through Covax. Middle-income countries, however, are not; this includes countries such as South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, and Indonesia. Another international concern is the children orphaned by covid. Nowhere is this more apparent than India. Keeping in mind that any numbers relative to India are under-counts, possibly huge ones, at least 1,742 children have lost both parents while 7,464 have lost one. I cannot shake one image from the article in which I found the above numbers, that of six-year-old twins found laying on each side of their mother; they did not know she was dead. I'm going to be living with that one for a while.

As business picks up steam here in the US, staff shortages are many. The biggest issue is where work will happen. Most companies want at least a partial return to the traditional office, while 64 percent of workers would pick permanent work from home over a $30,000 raise according to a survey of employees at 45 of the largest US companies. The biggest reason for wanting to continue working from home? Commuting. People hate it. Kate Duchene, CEO and president of the global human capital (I think this is what we used to know as "human resources") company RGP notes, "It used to be that you fit life into work. Now it's the opposite: How do you fit work into life?"

Other changes brought about by the pandemic include continuing uncertainty, the feeling that things could change on a moment's notice. We will likely be living with this until the pandemic is no longer "pan" and the coronavirus becomes flu-like in terms of dealing with it. Cities are changing. Larger cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago are losing people to mid-size cities such as Charlotte, Portland, or Reno. The way we or at least our children learn is changing. There will likely continue to be an online component at all levels, even elementary. With the move out of large cities, transportation is changing. Car sales are up as are the prices for services such as Uber or Lyft. They're having trouble finding enough drivers. Finally, what we do for fun is changing. Virtual concerts may not completely replace traditional ones, but may exist for quite a while. Some artists or groups are putting big bucks into making a virtual concert as appealing as a public one.

England's June 21 lifting of all lock-down restrictions is likely to be delayed for up to a month due to the new dominance of the Delta variant according to government sources. Daily infections are rising three to six percent, a growth rate not seen since cases started to soar at the end of 2020. And in one of those "oh, shit!" instances, a third of all Delta variant patients who needed emergency care had received at least one dose of vaccine. Possibly scarier, of the 42 deaths recorded in England within 28 days of a positive test for the Delta variant, 23 were of unvaccinated people, seven were of people who had received one vaccine dose, and 12 were of fully vaccinated people. That last number may not scare you, but it does scare me and is one reason I won't be going mask-less even as masks technically become illegal again here in the Old Dominion. 

The Professor has taken The Sons to Northern Virginia to run a 50-mile overnight race. They'll be starting in about 90 minutes to run through the night or at least much of it. Normally they run together, but in this one Son #1 may send Son #2 off on his own. Being awake in the wee hours is normal for Son #2, meaning the night element of the race will be easier for him than Son #1. They will be carrying GPS trackers, so I can see how far they've gone when I go to bed and whether they've finished by when I get up. I do love those knuckleheads!

The View from the Hermitage, Day 453

My laptop has apparently recovered from yesterday's bout of wonkiness. Here's hoping she (her name is Twiggy) keeps on humming. I can also see again! There was clearly a problem with the new glasses I picked up several weeks ago; trying to see through them was almost as bad as trying to see without them. It took a small bit of doing, but I got the optical office to remake or replace the right lens. I picked the new pair up today, and the difference is very real. Now they're going to remake or replace the lens on my re-done sunglasses because they're just as bad as my clear specs were. Life is good!

The CDC is worried about a developing lag in routine childhood vaccinations, saying it could be "a serious public health threat." It has the potential to derail the school re-openings planned for the coming year. While we're on kids, vaccine advisers at the FDA are debating how urgent it might be to vaccinate kids under the age of 12. Specifically, what detailed information or data do they need to make a decision? Some on the advisory panel say that kids are at such a low risk, there is no rush to make a decision. Others on the panel worry about fall and winter surges. The FDA needs to advise pharmaceutical companies what kids of clinical trials and data they would need to make a decision. Those who want this started now note that giving Emergency Use Authorization for kids does not mean that it has to be given to them. Having the EUA in place means the public health folks would be ready to go if need be. 

One worry with a vaccine for kids is the possibility of heart inflammation--myocarditis or pericarditis. There have been few cases in 12- to 15-year olds. For those aged 16 or 17, there have been 79 cases out of the 2.3 million vaccine doses given; the normal rate for that age group would be two to 19. For young people 18 to 24, there have been 196 cases out of the 9.8 million doses given. Normal would be eight to 83. Some argue that there being few cases in the kids just older than 12 means there would be fewer in kids younger. 

More and more companies have employees returning to the office or are planning for that. Some will keep letting employees work from home on a full-time or part-time fashion. Part of planning for the return is figuring out how to handle the vaccine issue with employees. The worry about vaccine mandates is the possibility of lawsuits, political upheaval, and enforcement. Safety is obviously also an issue. So far, about two-thirds of companies have not developed a vaccine policy. Tuesday, Goldman Sachs gave employees two days to report their vaccination status. They say they will not require proof but told employees that lying could result in disciplinary action including termination. 

The reopening of the cruise industry could be going better. On the inaugural sailing of the Celebrity Millenium, all passengers had to have been vaccinated as well as show proof of a negative test within 72 hours of sailing. Still, two passengers who were traveling together tested positive. All passengers will take an antigen test as part of disembarkation. The cruise started and ended in St. Maarten because Florida won't let cruise lines require vaccination. And two passengers not traveling together tested positive on a Mediterranean cruise. Passengers were not required to show proof of vaccination for that cruise but did have to show two negative tests before boarding.

Bitcoin 2021 met in Miami for a week of panels, parties, networking, and deal making. It was the first major business conference since the pandemic began. In the aftermath, attendees are starting to report positive tests. Most of the events at Bitcoin 2021 took place in a large, crowded warehouse and neither vaccines nor masks were required. This week, the first major trade show, The World of Concrete, is happening in Las Vegas. There are typically 60,000 people there. Any bets on how the aftermath of that one is going to look?

The Euro 2020 soccer championship is opening with a game in Rome. Subsequent games will be in 11 cities around Europe. There will be crowd limitations, staggered arrival times, social distancing, and lots of hand sanitizer. Rome will also require fans to show documentation of vaccination, a negative test, or proof of having recovered from a case of covid. If this does not go smoothly and safely, it will validate the decision of the IOC not to allow spectators in Tokyo.

The seven-day average number of cases in the US yesterday was 13,409, an eight percent drop from the day before. Since January 2020, at least one in 10 people who live in the US have been infected, and at least one in 554 have died. And while the US case numbers are dropping, it has taken less than six months for the world to record 1.88 million covid deaths, about the same as last year's total.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 452

US vaccination rates continue to be slow. States were saying that they had Johnson& Johnson vaccines about to expire until the feds extended the three-month shelf life by six weeks. Nearly half the states (24) have scaled back their daily covid tracking. Some experts see this as too early given the ongoing public health emergency and the risk of new variants. Seattle has fully vaccinated 78 percent of its population, moving San Francisco to second place. However, San Francisco is on track to become the first major US city to reach herd immunity. Half of US covid deaths currently are of people aged 50 to 74. The rate for people 75 and older has dropped. Eighty percent of people 65 and older have gotten at least one dose of vaccine compared with about half of people aged 25 to 64. The two main groups making up the unvaccinated are those who claiming misinformation and politicization and those lacking access to vaccines. I'm not feeling good about hitting POTUS's July 4 date to have 70 percent of Americans vaccinated in some form. 

One state in India revised its death data, causing the number of deaths nationwide to go from the 2,000s to 6,000. The official death toll in India is 359,676; one research and polling agency says it is more likely at least 1.8 million. Australia recorded its second death likely due to the AstraZeneca vaccine, a 52-year-old woman who developed a blood clot in her brain. The Therapeutic Goods Administration says that the benefits of the vaccine continue to outweigh the risks. Only one other vaccine is approved in Australia, Pfizer, and it is in short supply. WHO is warning of a possible autumn surge and is urging countries to be cautious in reopening. Right now, 36 of the 53 countries in WHO's Europe region are easing restrictions. 

The Olympics are still on. Only the IOC has the authority to cancel the Games, though Japan could impose strict enough restrictions that the Games could not be held. In that case, Japan would have to bear the costs and compensate the IOC for losses from claims by third parties. The IOC's official line is that cancelling the Games would be too cruel for athletes who have spent years training and may not have another chance. The IOC and organizers will lose billions if the IOC cancels the Games. Japan has officially spent $15.4 billion , though the total could really be higher. All but $6.7 billion of that came from Japanese taxpayers. A couple of other interesting Olympic items: Journalists will be tracked by GPS and sent home for leaving isolation. Supposedly, there will be limited contact with other athletes in the Olympic Village. I wonder what they'll do with the 160,000 condoms on hand. Take-home souvenirs perhaps?

Short post, but the afternoon had some interruptions. My newest laptop was in the shop recently for a camera issue, and the guys there told me there were major issues. It's still under warranty, so they recommended I deal with it. When I got the laptop home, it worked just fine. I called them, and they said to try certain things that had given them trouble. I did, and encountered no problems. They said it would soon go wonky. Since it was not then going wonky, contacting Lenovo did not seem warranted. This afternoon, that laptop went very wonky. I'll look at it again tonight when The Professor is home for moral support. In the meantime, this eight-year-old laptop is working just fine.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 451

Not a bad day, not bad at all. The terrible noise coming from underneath the car yesterday turned out to be caused by a rod's having slipped out of place somewhere in the front passenger-side undercarriage. It took the shop five minutes to re-attach it. The cost? Free. I guess it counts for something to be regular patrons.

Coronavirus cases rose over the winter, but flu cases did not rise or even, really, appear. Only one child died of flu in the US in the 2020-21 winter, compared with 199 in 2019-20 and 144 in 2018-19. Lock-downs made no difference; states with lock-downs had about the same number of flu cases as states without lock-downs. One theory is that the measures to control coronavirus--masks, distancing, frequent hand-washing, etc.--may have prevented the spread of flu as well as covid. It is also possible that the coronavirus may have interfered with or out-competed the flu. We'll have to see what happens next winter.

The Economist has published its list of the most (and least) livable cities for 2021. There was no 2020 list. The rankings depend on factors measuring stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education, and infrastructure. The South Pacific is looking pretty good right now. The top ten cities are, from best down, Auckland, Osaka, Adelaide, Wellington-Tokyo tied, Perth, Zurich, Melbourne-Geneva tied, and Brisbane. As for the least livable cities, the bottom 10 are, from better to worst, Caracas, Douala (Cameroon), Harare (Zimbabwe), Karachi, Tripoli, Algiers, Dhaka (Bangladesh), Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea), Lagos, and Damascus. 

Experts are warning that people refusing to get vaccinated against covid are "extremely vulnerable" to the Delta variant. Delta is dominant in the UK and spreading throughout the US. I don't expect such a statement to have much of an effect on the vaccine-denial crowd. If the vaccine isn't going to work, it doesn't matter what variant it goes up against. 

To the north, Canada will in July start relaxing quarantine protocols for fully vaccinated citizens and residents returning home from abroad. Those entering the country now are required to quarantine for 14 days. If arrival is by air, those returning must also stay at designated hotels until they test negative. The first step in the relaxation will be that fully vaccinated people currently permitted to enter Canada will be able to do so without staying in the government-authorized facilities. 

A new covid outbreak in Guangzhou, China is apparently fueled by the Delta variant. As part of the response, the government tested almost the entire 18.7 million residents in three days. Some neighborhoods are totally locked down with testing being the only allowable reason for going out. The current theory is that the outbreak grew out of a cluster of eateries. Each infected person has infected more other people than in any previous Chinese outbreak. China is demanding that travelers from dozens of countries spend two weeks in employer-supervised quarantine before flying to China. Once there, they must spend at least two, sometimes three or more, weeks quarantined even if they are fully vaccinated. A positive test means additional days or weeks in isolation. 

In Germany, participation in various types of indoor social activity or personal care requires a negative rapid test no more than 24 hours prior. It's not hard to get tested. There are 15,000 pop-up testing centers across the country, with over 1,300 in Berlin. There are also do-it-yourself test kits available at assorted retail locations. People who have been fully vaccinated do not need to present a test result. Those who have only been partially vaccinated still require testing, though. 

Quickies: The US will purchase 500 million doses of Pfizer to share with Covax. Two hundred million doses will be delivered this year with the rest to come in the first half of 2022. Malaysia's ICUs are all at capacity. Eight in 10 adults in the UK are likely to have covid antibodies through either vaccination or previous infection. A pharmacist in the US will spend three years in jail after pleading guilty to trying to spoil hundreds of Moderna doses because he was skeptical about them. Portugal is slowing its relaxation of restrictions after an increase in covid cases. Last summer, 20 percent of Americans surveyed said they had trouble sleeping due to the pandemic. Ten months later, 60 percent reported insomnia, while 50 percent reported that the quality of their sleep was much worse. This is due in part to disruptions of routines as work/school vs. home distinctions become fuzzier. Less physical activity is also an issue.

 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 450

Long, tiring day that started with the car making the kind of noises you don't want to hear your car making. Fortunately, they started right as we were getting to the elementary school at which we were working. AAA has towed the car to our usual mechanic, and we will find out tomorrow (I hope) what the mechanical damage is and what the monetary damage will be. The precinct chief had to drive right by our subdivision on her way to return things, so we at least had an easy ride home.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 449

Case rates may be "going down" here in the US, but vaccination rates are "plummeting." Currently, fewer than one million people get vaccinated on an average day. This is a decline of two-thirds from the April peak of 3.4 million daily and a decline seen in every state. Twelve states including Utah, Oklahoma, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and West Virginia have seen vaccinations fall below 15 daily per 10,000 residents. Last week, Alabama had just four per 10,000. There are 13 states, mostly on each coast, that have passed the 70 percent level POTUS would like to see by July 4. Fifteen more states plus the District of Columbia are likely to meet it. Tennessee and five other states currently at 50 percent or lower are unlikely to make it. Hitting the 70 percent goal requires 4.2 million people per week, not the 2.4 million nationally seen last week.

Countries across the world have started incentive programs to increase vaccinations. Hong Kong will be giving away 20 cash prizes of $12,890 as well as a one-bedroom apartment worth $1.4 million. The lottery is open only to vaccinated residents. Registration opens June 15 for the September 8 drawings. Airport authorities will give away 60,000 tickets to city and airport employees who are fully vaccinated. Civil servants and some private citizens will get one day off from work for each dose they get. One town in the Philippines is raffling off a plot of land with a home. Interestingly, some of the vaccination incentive programs in the US are making people less likely to be vaccinated. The incentives make them more suspicious of the vaccines.

For evidence that masks worked (and still work), 11 percent of people who reported wearing a mask at all times tested positive for covid. Thirteen percent of people reporting that they sometimes but not always wore a mask tested positive. For people reporting they wore masks occasionally but not often, the percent was 18. Finally, 23 percent of people who reported never wearing a mask tested positive for covid. That's twice as many as in the always group.

Taking a quick trip around the world, Malaysia is using drones to detect people with fevers in public places. The drones can detect temperatures from as high as 20 meters above the ground. In Uganda, there was a 131 percent increase in the number of cases last week over the week before. Four African nations have yet to start vaccinating citizens--Tanzania, Burundi, Chad, and Eritrea.Norway has been giving doses with a 12-week interval but is shortening that to nine weeks. And Ontario will lessen its covid restrictions three days ahead of schedule. 

More than 100 current or former heads of state are among 230 leaders calling on the G7 to pay two-thirds of the $66 billion needed to vaccinate low-income countries. The WHO head refers to the current situation as a two-track pandemic. In six months, high-income countries have given 44 percent of the world's doses, while low-income countries have given just 0.4 percent. 

Alpha is still the dominant variant in the US and apparently disables the first line of defense giving the virus more time to multiply. Alpha has 23 mutations, nine of which alter the spike protein. One helps the virus bind more tightly into cells. Lung cells under Alpha make a lot less interferon, a protein that switches on several immune defenses. Alpha-infected cells also make some 80 times more copies of a gene called Orf9b. Orf9b makes a viral protein that dampens the full immune response. Beta and Delta also drive down interferon but in different ways.

The coffee maker is set to start at 3:51 tomorrow morning, which is about the time the alarm will go off. The Professor and I spent an hour this afternoon helping get furniture moved, plexiglass shields and marking carrels set up, and otherwise getting thing ready for tomorrow's primary election. How many people will come to vote is a toss-up. We had one single-party June primary with 65 voters in the 13 hours we were open. Several thousand people voted mail-in absentee ballots or came to early in-person voting, but I don't know how many of those might have been from this precinct. If I don't post anything tomorrow, don't think you've missed anything.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 448

There was a thought-provoking article in The Washington Post's Outlook section this morning presenting evidence that the coronavirus did not originate man-made from the virology lab in Wuhan. You can read it at https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/virus-origins-nature-lab/2021/06/03/dd50eb62-c4a9-11eb-93f5-ee9558eecf4b_story.html. Son #1 reminded me, though, that the virus could be one being studied at the Wuhan Lab that was released accidentally. One point in the article is that the coronavirus had some flaws that would not have been there had it been engineered to do harm. I don't want to think about what the last 18 months would have been like had the virus been intentionally strengthened.

There is some question of how well the covid vaccines work for people with immune deficiencies. It's estimated that there are some six million people taking immuno-suppresants that could interfere with the vaccine. The results are mixed, though. One study, on patients taking certain drugs to treat ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, showed "robust antibody responses" to both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. A second study, though, found that 46 percent of transplant recipients had no antibody responses after two doses of either vaccine. A third study concerned patients with conditions such as lupus, psoriasis, and inflammatory bowel disease treated with two types of drugs--glucocorticoids and B-cell depleting agents. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were impaired in terms of producing an immune response. Finally, two patients followed the Pfizer vaccine with the Johnson & Johnson one. One had a positive result as antibody levels rose; the other had no response. 

XPot spoke last night at a GOP convention in North Carolina and was introduced as "our president." As expected, his punching bag was Anthony Fauci. He called Dr. Fauci "not a great doctor but a great promoter" adding "but he's been wrong on almost every issue and he was wrong on Wuhan and the lab also." XPot also called on China to pay $10 trillion in reparations for having released the virus.

As the US begins to return to normality, hotels and concerts are selling out, rental cars and rental homes are being booked more often and for longer periods, and visits to museums and events are soaring. Also soaring are the prices of goods for which there is a shortage. At the same time, many restaurants and bars can't hire enough staff. Said the owner of a McDonald's franchise, "You've got a lot of people with a lot of money, and they're out there shopping. And then, on the flip side, we're scrambling for help." In terms of any full return to normality, a WHO official says that eradicating covid-19 is not a "reasonable target" and that people will have to learn how to live with it. "The virus isn't going away any time soon, there will be variants emerging."   

The covid numbers coming out of Italy continue to improve. On Saturday, there were 57 deaths, 2,436 new cases, 5,193 hospitalizations, and 788 people in the ICU. Sunday, there were 51 deaths, 2,274 new cases, 4,963 hospitalizations, and 774 people in the ICU. Numbers in India are also improving albeit slowly. India reported 114,460 new cases Sunday, the lowest in 60 days. The area around New Delhi, the capital, will ease restrictions starting Monday. At the same time, though, officials say they are preparing for a third wave.

Preparing for a third, or fourth, wave is not unreasonable, especially in Africa where only about three percent of 1.2 billion people have gotten even one dose of vaccine. WHO said last week that eight countries had seen cases surge 30 percent or more in the previous seven days. Normality will take longer than a lot of people think, because no one is safe until everyone is safe.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 447

Not much to report since I had no time this afternoon to look for anything. It was the last day of early voting and we had pretty much a steady stream of people in ones, twos, or threes. Everyone who wanted to vote got to vote, and that means fewer voters on Tuesday when, at my precinct, we're crowded into an instructional double-wide (aka a trailer) since school will still be in session. 

Anyway, Italy gave a record 600,000 vaccine doses on Friday bringing their total doses to over 37 million. They're second in the EU in terms of vaccinations, behind Germany and ahead of France and Spain. They are increasing the number of vaccination centers from 1,500 at the start of March to 2,666 now. Another 800 or so enters will open in the coming weeks. 

A 20-year-old in line to get vaccinated in England said his reason was that clubs might be reopening in three weeks. He said he has clubbing plans for about five days in a row, making up for the last 18 months. He evidently has forgotten that you are not fully vaccinated until two weeks after your second shot. As for reopening clubs, when they reopened in Thailand, there had been no single confirmed case of local transmission for several months. Thailand had recorded fewer than 5,000 cases total through November, but on one day in May recorded 5,800. Covid is laying bare the class differences, too. The rich are going abroad to get vaccinated and, should they get sick, convalesce at expensive hotels. The poor must wait for cots at free government field hospitals. Isolation is made difficult by the small houses for large or extended families. One man reported having isolated by living in his car.

I expect to write a longer post tomorrow since I'll have more time to go through the various sites I check each day. It will be hot as balls (an expression Son #2 uses), so staying inside will be better than being out, at least once the sun is up in all its glory.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 446

The Professor and I got our first shingrix vaccines this morning. The Professor has had a case of shingles and assures me that I do not want to get it. A second dose comes in two to six months. The best thing about it? Our health insurance covered it in full. I'd heard that some insurers don't, so I salute you, Aetna via the local university.

POTUS announced that the US would immediately share 25 million covid vaccines with countries around the world. There are 30 Democratic House of Representatives members who want him to be even more aggressive in helping countries such as South Africa and Brazil. I'm not sure to what extent those two countries need vaccines more than some of the very impoverished African countries. 

XPot has a new Hillary Clinton to attack in the dinners and rallies he has planned for summer. Who might that be? If you guessed Anthony Fauci, you are correct. XPot's advisers think that his base has a "visceral" reaction to Dr. Fauci because he reminds them of when businesses and schools had to shut down. To take it a step further, XPot's buddy Tucker Carlson thinks that Dr. Fauci should be criminally investigated. Let's criminally investigate XPot instead. Oh, wait, we already are.

Discussion of the coronavirus's origins continues. Dr. Fauci has said that China should release the medical records of nine people whose records could provide clues into the origins. He said, "I have always felt that the overwhelming likelihood--given the experience we have had with  SARS, MERS, Ebola, HIV, bird flu, the swine flu pandemic of 2009--was that the virus jumped species. But we need to keep on investigating until a possibility is proven."

How about we tie together the coronavirus pandemic and climate change, two things XPot denied existed or, if they did, were problems? They are, indeed, related. Deforestation and hunting of wildlife are bringing animals into closer contact with humans and livestock. Some 70 percent of new infectious diseases have come from animals including SARS, bird flu, Ebola, and HIV. Recent research estimated that the annual cost of preventing further pandemics would be $26 billion, or only two percent of the financial damage due to covid. Measures that could be taken to help prevent viral transmission include protecting forests, shutting down wildlife trading, better protecting livestock, and improving disease detection in wildlife markets. Some of the world's experts on the subject say that the world is in an "era of pandemics." Pandemics will emerge more often, spread more rapidly, and kill more people if we don't stop destroying the natural world.

Vaccination of teens needs to be accelerated. Covid hospitalizations among 12- to 17-year-olds are increasing. Of more concern than basic hospitalizations are the number of hospitalized teens who require ICU care with mechanical respiration. Teens aside, the NIH director says that states that don't reach high vaccination thresholds may be "sitting ducks" for another outbreak. I'm thinking the coronavirus will fire at will, and the results will not be pretty.

France will on Wednesday start a new system for incoming travelers. There will be three levels: Green, Orange (or Amber), and Red. Green countries include EU members, Australia, South Korea, Israel, Japan, Lebanon, New Zealand, and Singapore. Travelers from Green countries are permitted to travel to France with no restrictions. Travelers who have not been vaccinated will need to provide a negative PCR or antigen response test result within 72 hours of travel. It is not clear how travelers from countries without vaccination passports will prove that they have been vaccinated. Orange countries include both the UK and the US. Travelers from Orange countries must also show negative test results. Travelers who have not been vaccinated can enter France only for essential purposes and are required to self-isolate for seven days. The vaccine a traveler has had must be one of the four approved by the EU--Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, or Johnson & Johnson. Red countries include India and Brazil. Vaccinated or not, travelers from Red countries may only enter for urgent reasons. They must provide a negative test result and quarantine for 10 days. Of note, the quarantine will be monitored by police officers.

Variants of concern continue to be of concern. Delta now appears to be the dominant strain in the UK. Seventy-three percent of Delta cases are in unvaccinated people compared to 3.7 percent in fully vaccinated people. Only five percent of confirmed Delta cases that were admitted to hospital and only two deaths were in fully vaccinated people. Says the director of University College London's clinical operational research unit, "I get the desire to be optimistic (honestly) but minimising delays action and ultimately makes things worse. Exponential growth is a red flag. We *now* have evidence that delta is (a lot) more transmissible, partially vax resistant, and more severe. It's now 80 percent of our cases. The genie is out of the bottle."

I'm not sure I'd use the genie in the bottle as a metaphor here. Aren't genies supposed to grant wishes? I'd think that Pandora's box might be better given that when opened, it spread ills throughout the world. Some of the reading I summarized above makes me more afraid of the--not a--next pandemic. I would like to think that we could take some of the environmental action that would help prevent a pandemic coming via some animal. But how can we do that if a large proportion of the population deny or minimize the impact of the current pandemic? How do we put at least some of the ills back in Pandora's box?