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?