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.