Bulletin: The FDA advises not eating cicadas if you are allergic to seafood. You have been warned.
Axios is retiring its weekly map of the US showing increases or decreases of covid-19. There have been fewer than 20,000 new cases per day spread across a population of 331.5 million people. Here's hoping there's no need to bring it back come winter. We can probably thank the vaccines. Huffington Post published six signs that vaccinations work:
(1) Infections are falling as vaccinations increase. The downward trend started when 40 percent of the population had gotten at least one dose. Israel saw a similar pattern.
(2) Hospitalizations and deaths are down.
(3) Cases among kids are declining as more adults get vaccinated. There has been a 50 percent reduction over the last four weeks. As before, a similar pattern was seen in Israel.
(4) Vaccinated people directly exposed to covid aren't getting sick. There have been only 1,600 breakthrough infections in 123 million people.
(5) A Kentucky nursing home outbreak did not lead to serious illness for the majority of those who were exposed.
(6) The same as in (5) happened with an outbreak on the New York Yankees.
They also listed a few other things that will help end the pandemic. First is a clearer understanding of how long immunity lasts. Expanded genetic sequencing and treatment options will also help, as will fast (and at-home) testing. Finally and possibly, to me, most important is a change in how our culture approaches illness. The coronavirus pandemic could be something of a wake-up call in that respect.
Vaccine mandates at colleges and universities could be problematic for international students. Some of the vaccines used in other countries have not been approved by WHO, meaning that many universities will not accept them. It's not clear either whether giving someone who has gotten one of the non-approved vaccines a different vaccine is safe. US universities do not want to lose international students, who are a source of major revenue. China sends the most students to US higher education followed by the 200,000 India sends each year. At Columbia University, one-third of the student body comes from overseas. Indiana University is getting around 200 phone calls and 300 emails daily from 6,000 international students with questions and concerns about the mandate. There is one system, though, that has found a workaround. The California State system plans to accept any vaccine that has been authorized by a regulatory body in the country of origin.
In Japan, the most senior medical adviser and the head of a panel of experts advising the government said that holding the Olympics now would be "not normal." The president of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics organizing committee has said "we cannot postpone again." Japan is seeing a relatively high number of deaths among Asian countries, and only 2.7 percent of 126 million people have been fully vaccinated. It's hard to know how things will go as July 23 approaches. Some 10,000 of 80,000 volunteers have pulled out of helping. More than 100 municipalities in Japan say that they will no longer host teams from abroad.
I read that there is a "realistic possibility" that Delta (India variant) is as much as 50 percent more transmissible than Alpha (UK variant). Modelling suggests that a variant more than 40 percent more transmissible could lead to daily hospitalizations exceeding those recorded over the winter. In other words, we're not out of the woods yet no matter what the US numbers look like.
No comments:
Post a Comment