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.
1 comment:
Here, home of the Alpha variant, the Delta variant is now dominant. It's what's responsible for the increase in new cases here. My guess (no coffee, no research) is that the vaccination rate has dropped, either that or we are panicking, because the mass vaccination centres have just opened to a five year age range. It's previously dropped by a year or two at a time but the 25-30 group have been called all together. I've looked and it's not because there aren't many of them, there are about the same numbers as in the 55-59 age range.
I used to work the elections because I worked for the council so got paid twice for the day.
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