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.