The View from the Hermitage, Day 472

The healthiest community in the US is also the community with the highest median family income. I would hazard a guess that Los Alamos, New Mexico also ranks right up there in terms of the average highest education level completed. Los Alamos is the healthiest community due to the low prevalence of obesity and diabetes not to mention the low levels of mental illness and substance dependency. As for that highest median family income, it's $121,000.

North Korea has from the outset of the pandemic claimed to have had no covid infections. There may be some there now since Kim Jong Un just called a special meeting of the Politburo and berated some of his top advisers for their failures in coronavirus prevention. Political pundits say that North Korea will never admit to having a covid outbreak but Kim's statements suggest that something significant has happened. 

A few other international notes: Queensland, Australia has only eight days of the Pfizer vaccine left. They evidently have some AstraZeneca vaccine but it is not clear what ages can safely get the AstraZeneca vaccine. Delta is now the dominant covid strain in Portugal. A scientific adviser to the UK government warns that reopening could lead to a surge and set up a repeat of last summer. Then, infections never got low enough to be dealt with, leading to a fall spike when schools reopened. Vladimir Putin claims that he received the Sputnik V vaccine in March. Inquiring minds wonder if that is true, then why must journalists and others meeting with him quarantine before they do so. Putin opposes mandatory vaccinations and supports people who say they have medical excuses not to be vaccinated. I have read that a lot of Russians claim to have medical excuses because they do not want the Sputnik V vaccine.

The Delta variant made it to South Dakota, meaning that it has now been found in all 50 states. It currently makes up about a fourth of all cases. At the same time, the vaccination rate is down 75 percent from its peak in mid-April. Dr. Fauci says this could likely led to two Americas, one made up of the areas in which most people have been vaccinated and the other with low vaccination rates and covid spikes. He called those spikes "entirely avoidable, entirely preventable" with vaccination. Every time the virus gets more transmissible, the number of vaccinated people needed for herd immunity rises. In Mississippi, 29.7 percent of people are fully vaccinated. The unvaccinated people have accounted for more than 90 percent of cases and deaths in the past month. Besides Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Wyoming, and Louisiana have fewer than 35 percent of their populations fully vaccinated, troubling given that a recent poll shows that most adults who plan to get vaccinated have already done so.

CNN had the article "What if the government got it wrong on masks again?" on its website. The solution, at least to me, is that wearing a mask can't hurt and not wearing one can. 

I have my "I'm not dead yet!" t-shirt and birthday tiara set out for wearing tomorrow. I have been told that my birthday is being delayed until the family can gather on Saturday, but I say I can wear a tiara whenever I want to, and I want to tomorrow.