Are we there yet? Well, we're approaching Day 500, but as for the end of the pandemic, I'm in the "NO" camp. When I get back a week from tomorrow, I'll copy and past in the entries I write while at the cabin. I'm hoping to come back rested and refreshed.
Have a good week, all!
I'm not sure how coherent and connected this post will be. Lots of things to do in preparation for tomorrow; some have been done, while others haven't. My mind is all over the place.
In a survey conducted before some Republican governors and elected bigwigs advised getting vaccinated, 35 percent of the unvaccinated people said that they probably would not get vaccinated. If that sounds bad, 45 percent said that they definitely would not get vaccinated. Three percent said that they definitely would get vaccinated, with ten percent saying that they probably would. Some 64 percent said that they had little or no confident that the shots are effective. Probably not unexpectedly, 86 percent of the vaccinated have at least some confidence in the vaccines.
More attention is being given to the Lambda variant amid speculation that it could be more transmissible than Delta while having increased resistance to vaccines. Better we learn that before than after it starts to take hold. Senior government officials expect people 65 and older or who have compromised immune systems will most likely need a third shot of Pfizer or Moderna. Having turned 65 at the start of the month, I can tag along with The Professor when he goes for his shot.
The covid case count at the Olympics is up to at least 127, 14 of whom are athletes. The Czech women's beach volleyball team could not play due to infection and forfeited to Japan. A Dutch rower became the first athlete to test positive after competing. He tested positive after heats but before the finals (I do not know if he had qualified for the finals). There is concern that this event may call the whole testing system into question.
One report from the Olympics noted that lots of people were wearing their masks below their noses and different teams were sharing buses, something that wasn't supposed to happen. One journalist's take on how things are going: "The precautions look more performative than protective. Now that we're here, we're forced to share crowded indoor spaces, including buses to various venues, hotels, and the main press center." If all that wasn't enough, a tropical storm that could become a typhoon is on the way.
US experts are looking at various models to predict covid in the near future The worst case scenario has more than 200,000 new cases daily in the fall. A bit of good news to offset that: One single day this week saw more than 500,000 vaccinations in the US. If that were to keep up, the worst case might remain a model and not become a reality.
It's been a rough two days, and I don't want there to be any truth in some things including death coming in threes. One house in the subdivision has seemed empty, with the yard getting overgrown. We knew that an elderly lady lived there with her daughter and son-in-law as caregivers. We figured that perhaps she had gone into assisted living or a nursing home and the "kids" had moved back to their own house. Nope. As treasurer of the Home Owners' Association, I got an email from her nephew yesterday telling me she had passed and asking for some information in order to put the house on the market once it's been fixed up a bit. We learned today that someone we know had been taken off life support to pass in peace. He was the husband of my friend of 43 years. He was in his 80s and had lived a good life. The Professor and I will both miss him, and wish we'd gotten around to the post-vaccination dinner my friend and I had talked about but not scheduled. So, if I go out and squish a bug, can that count as the third death?
Vaccination news from the US? Same old, same old. The seven-day average vaccination rate at the start of July was around 500,000. Three weeks later, it's half that, or 252,000. Experts are calling the Delta-linked surge a "self-inflicted wound." One unvaccinated mother who got infected summed it up as, "Just get the stupid shot." There are 48 states here that have a seven-day average number of new cases that's at least 10 percent higher than last week. Experts say that even people who are vaccinated need to worry about the surge. It's summer now, and that means socializing is probably done outdoors, which is good. Fall and winter will see socializing moving indoors, which is not. CNN's chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta notes that "this could be as good as it gets at least for a period of time."
The government just bought 200 million more doses of the Pfizer vaccine. Over half should arrive by the end of the year with the remainder coming by May 2022. This would bring the total number of doses purchased from Pfizer to 500 million. The new doses were purchased in anticipation of children under 12 needing vaccination as well as possible booster shots for some segments of the population. Children under 12 cannot yet be vaccinated, but several school systems will require masks of all students, staff, and visitors this fall. Chicago Public Schools follows New York City and the state of California in requiring masks at school.
The Olympics have officially opened. So far, at least 110 people connected to the Olympics have tested positive. The US Olympic and Paralympic Organizing Committee's chief medical operator says that all members of the US delegation are being treated as if unvaccinated just to be safe. Remember the charts that show the number of each type of medals won by each country? I'm envisioning one for covid cases and, in a worst-case scenario, hospitalizations and deaths.
New Zealand has suspended its quarantine-free travel bubble with Australia for at least eight weeks. While the outbreaks in Queensland, Victoria, and South Australia appear to be contained, that is not at all the case for New South Wales. Both countries have relatively low vaccination rates. In New Zealand, 19 percent of the population has gotten at least one dose of vaccine; in Australia, 29 percent. Greece is enlisting clergy to try to raise the vaccination rate. Clerics were given a circular to distribute to churchgoers on Sunday; the circular describes vaccination as "the greatest act of responsibility toward one's fellow human being." Clergy were also asked to deliver a pro-vaccine sermon. Not all clergy are on board with this, though. One priest was removed from his parish this month after telling worshipers not to get vaccinated. Another priest banned vaccinated and masked worshipers from his services. With 44 percent of the population fully vaccinated, Greece is allowing businesses to admit only vaccinated people or people who have recovered from a case of covid if they want to. Those places admitting only vaccinated or recovered customers can operate at a higher capacity.
I have been making the notes for each day's post in the pages of journals I stopped keeping or books in which I had to-do lists that I stopped adding. I have six pages to go in the current book which means I'm taking a new one on our trip to the wilderness. I expect I shall give thought there to just why the hell I keep making the time to write something substantive every day with the rare copout. I pull each day's post and comments into a Word file just for the hell of it. Were I to print that document one-sided, it would take more than a ream of paper. The sequel to "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" can be "How I Spent the Pandemic," and my six-word essay can be "I looked things up and wrote." There are probably worse things I could have been doing.
South Asia remains in major Delta danger. Indonesia has converted its entire oxygen production to medical use. Hospitals in Malaysia are treating patients lying on floors or stretchers because all beds are full. Workers in Myanmar can't keep up with cremations and burials. In the last two weeks, these three nations have now all surpassed India's peak per capita death rate. India's seven-day rolling average of deaths per million people peaked at 3.04 in May. Indonesia's rate is currently 4.37, with Myanmar at 4.29 and Malaysia at 4.14. Elsewhere in the region, Cambodia's rate is 1.55, with Thailand at 1.38. Contributing factors include that people are getting tired of precautions and have stopped following them, vaccination rates remain low, and the dominant strain is the Delta variant.
A bit further south, in Australia, the prime minister on Wednesday refused to apologize for the slow vaccine rollout. A day later, he said, "I'm certainly sorry we haven't been able to achieve the marks we had hoped for at the beginning of the year. Of course I am." The premier of New South Wales has said that the majority of cases around Sydney have been "derived from critical activity--either essential workers or people doing essential things such as getting groceries--and it will be hard to bring that number down.
Scientists in the UK are backing proposals for covid boosters in the fall. They cite studies showing that the antibodies generated by two doses of the AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccines start to wane as early as six weeks after the second shot. In some cases, the antibody count fell over 50 percent after 10 weeks. England is dealing with something we also face here in the US--young people not wanting to get vaccinated or thinking they don't have to.
Things could change here in the US as the result of two meetings held today. One was to discuss mask requirements and whether they should be changed in terms of vaccinated people wearing masks. The other was to review whether certain groups of people might benefit from a booster shot of vaccine. POTUS is optimistic that the FDA will give full approval to vaccine(s) by fall and hopes that children under 12 will be able to get vaccinated soon even if on an emergency authorization basis.
In a recent telephone poll, 76 percent of respondents said they were somewhat or very confident in trusting the worthiness of covid information from the CDC; 77 percent were somewhat or very confident in trusting covid information from the FDA. Even higher, 83 percent were somewhat or very confident in trusting information from their primary health care provider. Respondents who reported relying on conservative media had low confidence in Dr. Fauci; only 38 percent expressed confidence in his covid information. On the flip side, 84 percent of consumers of "broadcast-mainstream" media expressed confidence in Dr. Fauci. Over all respondents, 68 percent reported having confidence in the good doctor.
Some Republican leaders have been urging people to get vaccinated. At the same time, half of all the Republicans in the House of Representatives won't say if they've been vaccinated or not. Perhaps the party leadership should try to get more of them to release that information. Citizens John and Mary Doe might trust their local representative more than one of the leaders with whom they have no connection.
On the sports side, the Olympics are still on, and the Opening ceremony is around 12 hours away. How many records will be broken in the track and field events? I ask because the anti-doping program over the 16 months prior to the 2021 Games basically fell apart. Almost all drug-testing was put on hold three months early in the pandemic. Globally, there was a 45 percent reduction in testing in 2020 compared to 2019. As the CEO of the US Anti-Doping Agency puts it, "Unless you're a fool, you'd have to be concerned." Over the course of the pandemic, there have been numerous personal bests as well as NCAA, national, and even world records broken. Aided by performance-enhancing substances or just more time to practice? Are you a fool?
Finally, fall National Football League games postponed due to covid will count as forfeits for the team responsible for the covid delay. That's an interesting way to encourage players and staff to get vaccinated, and it might actually work.
"The pandemic is a test, and the world is failing."
Thus spoke WHO's director general after he praised the Olympics as "a celebration of hope" while also advising that we must not forget reality. "By the time the Olympic fame is extinguished on the eighth of August, more than 100,000 more people will perish. The pandemic is a test, and the world is failing."
I just checked and it appears the Olympics are still on. The host cities always lose money, but Tokyo can't afford to lose more than they already have. The host city for 2032 was announced this week; Brisbane, Australia, the only city to put in a 2032 bid, will follow Los Angeles in 2028 and Paris in 2024. That only one city bid on 2032 says a lot. The Games may be getting too big, too much for one city or even one country to handle.
Half of Australia's population, some 13 million people, is under lockdown due to covid. The states of South Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales are imposing or extending lockdowns. Only 11 percent of Australians are fully vaccinated with another 29 percent having received at least one dose. Australia has been fighting covid with a strategy of swift local lockdowns, but that may not work given the transmissibility of the Delta variant. The prime minister said that a million doses of vaccine had been given in the last seven days, the first time that had happened. He went on to say that if that pace continues, all Australians who want a vaccine will be able to get one by the end of the year. The descriptor "who want a vaccine" is what worries me. That sounds too similar to what is going on here right now. If you want a vaccine, you can get one. If you don't, no worries.
Pfizer has struck a deal with a South African vaccine manufacturer to handle the final stage of manufacturing for vaccine shipped exclusively to African nations. "Final stage" means that the company will only handle distributions and the fill-finish final stage. That's when the vaccine is put into vials. A Pfizer plant in Europe will make the vaccine and ship it to the facility in Cape Town. The Director of Global Health Policy and Politics Initiative at Georgetown University calls this "deeply disappointing." He is worried that not enough vaccine will be sent to the African plant especially if wealthy countries decide to do booster shots. Pfizer has pledged to provide two billion doses to low- and middle-income countries by the end of 2022, but only a small fraction has already been sent.
A yet-to-be-peer-reviewed study says that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is much less effective against the Delta and Lambda variants. This is consistent with observations that one dose of AstraZeneca shows only 33 percent efficacy against Delta. The AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines have similar architectures. As noted, the Johnson & Johnson study has not yet undergone peer review. The result came from a lab experiment with blood samples and not from real world cases. There are people who got the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine and who have been asking for boosters of Pfizer or Moderna, the mRNA vaccines.
US covid fatalities are up by almost 48 percent over the past week to an average of 239 per day. The infection rate has gone up 198 percent over the past two weeks. If that sounds bad, the infection rate in Mississippi over the same period increased 308 percent. It went up 376 percent for Louisiana and 387 percent for Oklahoma. Meanwhile, vaccinations are down to 521,000 per day keeping us pretty well locked in with slightly less than half the population fully vaccinated. Some experts are suggesting that the US needs to go back to widespread mask use. I'm no expert, but am certainly more comfortable out in the world wearing a mask than not wearing one.
This just in! In the event you've thought my comments about the Olympics still being on were in bad taste, the CEO of Tokyo 2020, the local group putting on the Games, said today that a last-minute cancellation of the Games could not be ruled out given the rising numbers of covid cases. There were 1,387 cases Tuesday, the second highest day since January 21. There are now more than 70 cases linked to the Games in some way. There are five parties that would likely have to agree in order for the Games to be cancelled now or stopped while in progress (I can't imagine that happening, but if things were to get to the ultra-mega-superspreader lever): the International Olympic Committee, the International Paralympic Committee, the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee, the Japanese government, and the Tokyo metropolitan government. A Tokyo public health expert has declared that the Olympic bubble system "is not working well ... kind of broken." The plans did not include it, but there has been interaction happening between people there for the Olympics and local residents, people who live there. To recognize the efforts required to (try to) hold the Games during a pandemic, the Olympic motto has been amended to "Faster, Higher, Stronger--Together" or, in Latin, "Citius, Altius, Fortius--Communiter."
A bit more international news: As of August 9, US citizens and permanent residents will be allowed to enter Canada as long as they have been fully vaccinated for at least 14 days. Canada hopes to welcome visitors from other countries as of September 7. No word yet on when the US will reciprocate and allow Canadians to visit us. India's excess deaths during the pandemic could be 10 times the official toll, making it India's worst human tragedy. I would certainly call three million deaths a human tragedy. The US will send over one million Johnson & Johnson doses to Gambia, Senegal, Zambia, and Niger as well as three million to Guatemala.
The week of July 3, the Delta variant accounted for 50 percent of new cases in the US; this week, it accounts for 83 percent. The number of new daily cases is up 66 percent from last week and 145 percent from two weeks ago. The average number of new cases per day has tripled in the last 30 days. I find those numbers frightening. More frightening numbers: The average number of hospitalizations has risen 21 percent in the last 30 days, while deaths, which usually lag weeks behind cases, rose 25 percent in one week to average 250 per day. That's far below what it was at one point, but not at all where it could be if more people would get vaccinated. The 30 percent of Americans who are not yet vaccinated say that nothing is likely to persuade them to get inoculated. Their "no" is a hard "no." While some cities such as Los Angeles are reinstating mask mandates, the mayor of New York City has said he will not, adding," Masks have value, unquestionably, but masks are not going at the root of the problem. Vaccination is."
In news unrelated to the pandemic, Jeff Bezos became our second billionaire astronaut this morning. The flight went just as planned. Watching the rocket used to propel the capsule touch down in the center of a marked circle may have been more impressive than watching the capsule come down using three parachutes. The announcer said that two of the three could have failed and, while the landing might have been bumpy, one parachute would be enough. While making muffins and cookies today (for my mom on her 89th birthday tomorrow ... Happy Birthday, Mom!), I went back and forth on whether, were I to win one of those huge lotteries, I would most like to go to inner space (to my mind, outer space would be orbital while inner is sub-orbital) for a couple minutes of weightlessness and what is apparently a hell of a view of Earth or to the depths of the ocean. It may still be the case that we know more about the outer space above us than we do about the depths of the oceans. No weightlessness obviously, but a chance to see something no one else ever has and very few people ever will.
Consider yourselves warned that today is Monday and on the coming Sunday we will retire to Son #2's cabin for eight days with no wifi and only intermittent cell coverage. I expect that I will do what I did last year and write a daily post while there then post them all when I get back here. Day 500 will happen while we're there, probably with champagne to toast.
Today is being called Freedom Day in Britain as covid restrictions stop, and the prime minister is in quarantine after being exposed to the health minister who has tested positive for covid. Covid case numbers continue to surge, hitting level seen during the January surge. Death and hospitalizations are not up, though, ... or, as Son #2 would add ... yet. The prime minister is in quarantine for 10 days as part of the National Health Service's test, trace, and isolate program, a cell phone app that pings users who have been in close contact with someone who tested positive. The prime minister initially said that he would take part in a pilot program that would let him avoid quarantine, but angry public backlash changed his mind. He said that it is time to move away from government restrictions and to an era of personal responsibility, and that the easing of restrictions was "irreversible." That said, there are already rumors about new restrictions to be put into effect in the fall. Frighteningly, at least to me, the chief scientific adviser has said that 60 percent of covid hospital admissions had received two doses of vaccine. At least in the US, I think they are only counting a case in a fully vaccinated person as a breakthrough infection if the person requires hospitalization.
Singapore saw 163 new covid cases on Monday, the largest daily number since August 2020. One hundred six of the cases were linked to the Jurong Fishery Port while 19 were linked to karaoke bars. The health minister says that the two clusters are linked and that the numbers are likely to rise in the coming days. At least their vaccination campaign is moving faster than most of the other Asian ones with 47 percent of the residents fully vaccinated. Singapore's population is almost six million, and there have been 63,000 cases and 36 deaths.
Canada's vaccination rate is now higher than the US rate. According to the stats in that article, 49 percent of Canadians are fully vaccinated, and 70 percent have gotten at least one dose. The same percents for the US were given as 48 percent full and 55.5 percent with at least one dose. In the EU, 43 percent are fully vaccinated while 55.7 percent have gotten at least one dose. Canada certainly looks like the winner to me.
News flash! The Olympics have not yet been cancelled or postponed, though 33 staff members or contractors who are Japanese residents working on the Games have tested positive, as has a teenage alternate on the US women's gymnastics team. I'd been wondering what would happen to a team when a member or members tested positive. Athletes who are close contacts of someone who tests positive, such as a teammate, will be allowed to compete if they test negative within six hours of competition. I'm waiting to see if a team will be unable to field enough players to compete. The International Olympic Committee's sports director notes that "there is no such thing as zero risk" and that the Olympic Village would be a "covid-safe environment but not covid free." Speaking of the Olympic Village, there is video of a male gymnast jumping on one of the cardboard beds to show just how strong it is. As for intimacy, the playbook outlining safety measures advises athletes to "avoid unnecessary forms of physical contact such as hugs, high-fives, and handshakes." Over the weekend, 87 percent of Japanese surveyed were worried about Japan's hosting the Games. And Toyota, one of the prime corporate sponsors,, has said that it will not run any Olympic-themed ads during the Games.
To complicate K-12 school in the fall, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all children over the age of two wear masks when returning to school regardless of their vaccination status. I know parents who are worried that a vaccine might not be available for their children under the age of 12 until early 2022. I wonder what they'll think of this wrinkle.
Reading about vaccine inequity is saddening and angering. European and American officials now say that there was no real early-on thought given to how to handle vaccines globally despite the fact that Moderna injected its vaccine into the first trail participant on March 16, 2020, a mere five days after WHO declared a global pandemic. Every country for itself. That the pandemic struck first and hardest in developed, richer countries and even they were not ready complicated things tremendously. If they could not handle things, how could the poorer countries. Now, with those poorer countries still in desperate need of vaccines, Canada has gotten over 10 doses for each resident, and the US likely has more. Both countries are sharing the vaccine wealth with others but on a very slow scale.
Virginia is one of two states, New Jersey being the other, to elect a governor the year following a presidential election. I guess they don't want the governor riding the coattails of the president. Our gubernatorial race is heating up, and vaccine mandates are becoming an issue. In April, the state's attorney general issued a legal opinion that colleges and universities have the legal authority to require vaccination for in-person, on-campus attendance. The Republican candidate (who has been endorsed by XPot and who has been mentioned as a possible VP candidate should XPot be the Republican nominee for president in 2024) has said that he would not allow or support vaccine mandates. The Democratic candidate's campaign office did not offer a comment, but I expect they will agree that vaccine mandates are legal.
In a similar vein, Los Angeles County is reinstating a mask mandate that the sheriff says he and his deputies will not enforce. He says that his department "will not expend our limited resources and instead ask for voluntary compliance." He refused to enforce earlier covid restrictions including the statewide stay-at-home mandate last winter. His deputies don't wear masks either. Meanwhile, LA County's current average of 1,877 new cases per day is a 272 percent increase from two weeks ago. Hospitalizations are up 27 percent.
Three of the Texan Democrats who went to Washington, DC in order to prevent passage of a new voting law have tested positive, though all were fully vaccinated. One has mild symptoms; the others are asymptomatic. Since arrival in Washington, the Texans have been wearing masks only sparingly, something I hope changes now. There have been more summer camp outbreaks and stories of some camps sending symptomatic campers home without testing them, something else I hope changes now.
Covid is currently putting younger, healthy, and mostly unvaccinated people in hospitals at higher rates than earlier in the pandemic. Some relevant words from an infectious disease specialist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana seemed a good way to wrap up the 70th week of this blog despite their suggestion that the end is not necessarily near.
This year's virus in not last year's virus. It's attacking our 40-year-olds. It's attacking our parents and young grandparents, and it's getting our kids. And so understanding how different that is and that we can't take our experience from last year and apply it to today and assume we're going to be OK is our biggest fight right now ... You have to get vaccinated. That's the only way to end it. Masks and mitigation, they're not gonna take it. It's going to be vaccination.
With the percentage of fully vaccinated Americans hovering just below 50 percent, the doc's comments may be the discouraging words I never heard while home on the range.
The Tokyo Olympics are, for better or worse, still on, with about 15,000 athletes and staff having arrived. One person staying in the Olympic Village has already tested positive. The president of the International Olympic Committee has again attempted to calm the anti-Games crowd, saying that the "risk for the other residents of Olympic Village and risk for the Japanese people is zero." He noted that these will be "the most restrictive sports event ever in the world." A Ugandan weight lifter who was in Tokyo is missing after not having shown up for a coronavirus test. In June, two people traveling with the Ugandan Olympic delegation tested positive on arrival in Tokyo. It is not clear if the missing weight lifter was one of the two.
The US just had more than 41,000 new cases in one day, the largest number since early May. Cases are now rising in all 50 states as the Delta variant spreads. Right now, the variant may be winning the race with vaccines.
I read the interesting tale of three unvaccinated women in Arkansas. The first figured that she would stay safe as long as she never left her house without a mask. The second had a chronic pulmonary disease and was worried that the vaccine could give her covid. The third was of the "I never get sick" school of thought. Do you see what is coming? All three got covid. The first spent 10 days on supplemental oxygen via a nasal cannula. All three did recover, after which none of them changed their mind and got vaccinated. The National Guard colonel running the state's vaccination effort figures that one third of the population will not be vaccinated period full stop. They just won't. That third will include some health care workers; 40 percent have yet to be vaccinated. Delta patients appear to need a higher level of care than patients with the original virus did. A larger share of those now becoming infected need hospitalization than in the fall, even though those patients are, on average, younger. The average age of a current covid patient in Arkansas is 54, down from 63, but some are in their 20s and 30s.
Britain says that people coming from France will still need to quarantine due to the prevalence of the Beta variant. The current vaccines offer less protection against Beta. The UK health secretary is self-isolating after a positive test he took because he was feeling "a bit groggy" Friday. He had had both vaccine doses, which may be why his symptoms are mild. The surge in Thailand is apparently fueled by both the Alpha and the Delta variants. There is now a nationwide ban on public gatherings after a record number of cases (10,082) and deaths (141) on Saturday. The maximum penalty for violating the ban is two years in jail and/or a fine of $1,220. Vietnam continues to face its worst surge so far. Three quarters of the cases are in the south especially around Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam has gotten nine million doses of vaccine with another three million coming from the US via Covax. Unfortunately, Vietnam has a population of 98 million, meaning that those 12 million doses will not go very far.
Did you notice that the last paragraph mentioned three different variants--Alpha, Beta, and Delta? Delta may be becoming the dominant variant, but we can't let that distract us from what the other variants can do.
Windsor, Ontario sits across the Detroit River from, what else, Detroit, Michigan. It seems that Detroit had doses of vaccine on the verge of expiring. Windsor needed vaccines. Canadian officials will not allow US vaccines into the country, so Windsor's mayor proposed painting a white line down the tunnel connecting the two cities. American pharmacists could stand to the right, in the US, and inject vaccine into the arms of Canadians standing to the left, in Canada. Unfortunately, the Canada Border Services Agency said that the effort could disrupt trace and have "significant security implications." In other words, Detroit will have expired vaccines and Windsor will still need vaccines.It was a good idea in theory, and I'm sorry it could not be done for real.
The CDC director advises that we are approaching "a pandemic of the unvaccinated ... If you are not vaccinated, you are at risk." In the last week, 10 percent of counties moved into a "high-transmission risk" zone; another seven percent became at "substantial risk." The CDC director again: increasing risk "is giving us all a reason to double down and get more people vaccinated." That is so easy to say but not so easy to do. I admit to being surprised at the size of the vaccine hesitancy or resistance. If herd immunity really exists, we aren't going to get there. I'm back to being square in the "we're fucked" camp.
WHO has warned that the surges in many parts of the world increase the likelihood of new, potentially dangerous variants. The chair of the WHO Emergency Covid-19 Committee notes, "The pandemic is nowhere near finished." Indeed, Africa's death toll this week was up 40 percent over last week. Namibia and Tunisia now report more deaths per capita than any other country. Hospitals are nearly full and with dwindling oxygen supplies and a lack of medical workers. The US has said it will send 25 million Johnson & Johnson doses in coming weeks but that is so very far from enough. There is a strong possibility, too, that supplies will still be short a year from now. A commissioner with Africa Covid-19 Response says, "The blame squarely lies with the rich countries. A vaccine delayed is a vaccine denied."
England's mask mandate will end as of Monday, and it is not clear what reactions there will be. The prime minister says, "The pandemic is not over. We cannot just simply revert instantly from Monday the 19th of July to life as it was before covid." The government "expects and recommends" that masks be worn by workers and customers in crowded, enclosed spaces such as shops. London's mayor says that masks are still required on the public transit system there, and the National Health Service will still require masks in hospitals. Scotland and Wales set their own requirements health-wise, and masks will still be required there.
Believe it or not, the Olympics are still on! The president of the International Olympic Committee insists there is no risk of the Games spreading infections, saying organizers will do all they can to ensure no risk for the Japanese people. There are currently 30 confirmed cases among Olympics-related personnel. Tokyo's case count is climbing. There were 1,271 new cases Friday, continuing the largest surge in six months. The average number of daily cases has risen 63 percent in the past two weeks. Only 20 percent of the population of 126 million have been fully vaccinated. One of the leading Japanese newspapers says that the covid bubble "has already burst" and that organizers' plans to separate Olympics-related people from the general population "are failing miserably." A former chairman of Japan's bar association submitted a petition with 450,000 signatures arguing that the Games should not be held. "We won't be able to save lives if the infection spreads further and the medical system collapses. Now is the time to cancel the Games with courage."
A couple of covid quickies: The University of California will now require all students and staff to be vaccinated for the fall semester. They previously said that vaccinations would be required only when the FDA had given the vaccines full authorization rather than emergency. I guess the swiftly rising case rates persuaded them otherwise. Canada may admit travelers from all countries by early September and might admit vaccinated Americans to enter as early as mid-August.
The use of cash is falling, and most of the use that remains may be of the under-the-table variety. It seems that $100 bills (currently the largest denomination that exists) account for over 80 percent of the US bills in circulation and are rarely used in legitimate transactions.
The surgeon general said that covid misinformation is an "urgent threat to public health ... It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, harm people's health, and undermine public health efforts." It may help that some Republican governors who previously did not push people to get vaccinated are now doing just that. We could always try what the French did. They announced that people would soon need to be vaccinated in order to go to a cafe. Within 72 hours, over three million people had booked appointments, and France broke its vaccination record, giving 800,000 shots in one day.
The covid vaccines are not the only vaccines having problems. Some 23 million kids missed their basic childhood vaccines last year, the highest number since 2009. Measles is more contagious than the coronavirus. I do not want to think about a measles outbreak and a covid one overlapping. Can you say "catastrophe"?
Covid vaccines are headed to Indonesia, the new Asian covid epicenter. They set a new national record yesterday with 54,517 new cases, more than India had. Thursday afternoon, 1.5 million Moderna doses arrived; another three million will arrive on Sunday. Since March, they've gotten 11.7 million doses of AstraZeneca. Clearly those numbers could and should be higher, but it's a start unlike in Haiti. Haiti just got its very first shipment of vaccines, 500,000 doses from the US.
WHO says that proof of vaccination should not be a requirement for international travel. Vaccination status, they say, should not be the only condition given limited global access to vaccines and their inequitable distribution. I go back and forth on this not to mention that the view is different depending on whether we're talking going somewhere else or having a person from somewhere else come here.
The outlook for the US is better than earlier in the pandemic, but we still have some distance to go. Almost half of Americans are fully vaccinated. Think about that, and the flip side: More than half of Americans are not fully vaccinated. Cases and hospitalizations are well below their peaks, and deaths are at some of the lowest levels since the very start of the pandemic. At the same time, though, infections are up in almost every state. Daily cases are up at least 15 percent over the last two weeks in 49 states. Nineteen states are showing twice as many new cases per day. New cases actually bottomed out at about 11,000 daily less than a month ago; now, they number about 26,000.
A new study suggests that long covid has over 200 symptoms, some of which can last for over a year. Among the symptoms mentioned are (take a deep breath) memory loss, brain fog, tinnitus, hallucinations, tremors, malaise, diarrhea, heart palpitations, loss of bladder control, shingles, blurred vision, itchy skin, menstrual changes, and sexual dysfunction. (You may now exhale.) The symptoms cited span 10 of the body's organ systems.
Getting bored with the coronavirus? A Chinese man has been hospitalized after getting the H5N6 strain of avian flu. This is not a cause for panic, at least not yet, but a reminder that there are other potential diseases out there that could turn into new pandemics. There are now, and there always will be.
Eleven workers at a Las Vegas hospital, only one of whom had not been vaccinated, tested positive for the Delta variant after going to a party in June. None of the 11 were asymptomatic, but none needed hospitalization. Driven by Delta, lagging vaccination rates, and 4th of July parties, US cases have doubled in the last three weeks. On June 23, the average number of cases per day was 11,300; on Monday, that average was 23,600.
Delta is behind the surges in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas, currently the largest outbreak in the US. Chicago has started requiring unvaccinated travelers from Missouri or Arkansas to quarantine for 10 days or submit a negative test result. Springfield, Missouri is cancelling this year's Birthplace of Route 66 festival, originally scheduled for August 13-14. The festival features music, car shows, and other exhibitions. In 2019, some 65,000 people attended; it was predicted that 75,000 would be coming this year. As you might imagine, last year's festival was cancelled.
Young children are not yet eligible to be vaccinated; only those ages 12 and over are. If schools can't require vaccines or proof of vaccination status for students, efforts to control the virus and its variants may be for naught. New York City and the state of California will continue to require masks in public schools. Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City, says that policy could change depending on circumstances. California originally said that students who were not exempt from masking and who refused to wear a school-provided mask would not be allowed to attend, a statement that has now been omitted from updated guidelines.
Case counts and percent positivity have both doubled in the last week in New York City. Both numbers are still low but the pace of the increases has experts concerned. The metrics to watch are hospitalizations and deaths. Both are still stable due to vaccinations.
Norwegian Cruise Lines is suing Florida's attorney general over the state law barring companies from requiring customers and employees to provide proof of vaccination. Norwegian says that this will prevent the company from safely re-starting. I wonder if moving the starting/finishing port to somewhere in the Caribbean would get around the problem. I expect, though, that the people who have already reserved a spot on an upcoming cruise would not want to have to change their itinerary for getting to and home from the cruise.
More summer camp outbreaks have been recorded; experts are advising schools to be vigilant when they reopen. The fact that schools have more defined schedules and routines than camps will likely help. At least seven states--Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Montana, Oklahoma, and Utah--have passed legislation to restrict public schools from requiring either vaccination or documentation of vaccination status. More generally, as of June 22 at least 34 states had introduced bills limiting the requirement that someone demonstrate vaccination status or immunity in order to do something or go somewhere. Thirteen states have already enacted such legislation: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah.
Covid cases are surging in 45 states, meaning at least 10 percent more new cases in one week. In 34 states, new cases are up by at least 50 percent. Only Maine, South Dakota, and Iowa are showing decreases in the 10 to 50 percent range. Delaware and Arkansas are showing no change in either direction. In general, patients are younger. The common denominator of those with serious enough cases to be hospitalized is that they are unvaccinated. A CNN medical expert advises that unvaccinated people either continue to wear masks and socially distance or get vaccinated. One or the other; they can't have it both ways.
In the "what the hell" category, Tennessee's top vaccination official was fired after facing scrutiny from Republican state lawmakers over her department's efforts to get teenagers vaccinated. She had written a memo describing a 34-year-old legal doctrine that suggested ways in which teens could get immunizations without parental permission.
South Korea's major league baseball enterprise that kept on playing through the early months of the pandemic in 2020 has suspended their season after five players tested positive. Cases in South Korea are now at the highest levels of the pandemic. In Seoul, gyms have been told not to play fast music because it leads to rapid breathing that can spread more viral particles.
The announcement of new restrictions in France has led to an increase in vaccination appointments. As of July 21, someone will need proof of vaccination or a negative test result to visit a cultural venue or amusement park. In August, such proof will be needed to visit restaurants, shopping centers, hospitals, and retirement homes as well as to take long-distance transportation.
Malaysia shut down a vaccination center after 204 staff and volunteers tested positive. Of the 453 workers, 400 or 88 percent had been vaccinated. Most of the 204 workers who tested positive had low viral loads, meaning their cases were less severe. The clinic will reopen with new workers after deep cleaning. People who got vaccinated there have been urged to self-isolate for 10 days and get tested if they show symptoms. This incident happened in the state that has been hit the hardest by the current surge. Only 11 percent of Malaysia's 32 million residents have been fully vaccinated; at least one fourth have been at least partially vaccinated. Some days, you just can't win.
In other news, the Tokyo Olympics are still a go. This could get very interesting very quickly.
Starting internationally, the British reopening may come with a price. There could be one to two million cases in the coming weeks, although vaccinations mean that there will be fewer hospitalizations and deaths from these cases. While virtually all legal restrictions will end, people will be urged to wear masks in crowded enclosed spaces. Decisions about working from home will be left up to individual companies, though a public health official said that it would be best if workers stayed home for four to six more weeks. The health secretary has warned that the situation is "going to get a lot worse before it gets better."
Malta, with 77.7 percent of residents fully vaccinated, will ban visitors over the age of 12 from entering if they have not been fully vaccinated, becoming the first European country to impose such restrictions. Vaccination is to be proven by a vaccination certificate issued 14 days after the final dose of vaccine; right now, documents issued by Malta, the EU, or the UK will work. Children between the ages or 5 and 12 must have a record of a negative PCR test. Children under 5 are exempt.
Thailand is giving health care workers inoculated with Sinovac another dose of either the AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccines. This will offer greater protection against variants and reassure people who feel their immunity from Sinovac is waning. Greece will require health care workers and nursing home staff to be vaccinated. Nursing home staff must get vaccinated immediately, while health care workers have until September 1. Israel is going to offer a booster to immunocompromised people and is trying to decide whether everyone should get a third dose.
The Dutch prime minister has reinstated curbs on bars, restaurants, and night clubs just two weeks after lifting them. He also apologized for removing the restrictions too soon, saying, "What we thought would be possible turned out not to be possible in practice. We had poor judgement ... for which we apologize. Valencia's regional government is imposing new restrictions to fight a surge in cases among unvaccinated young people. The threshold for "extreme risk" is said to be 250 cases per 100,000 people. The rate among people ages 20 to 29 has risen to 1,047 cases per 100,000. The Delta outbreak in Sydney is not slowing down at all. They just recorded the highest one-day total of cases since the outbreak began in mid-June. The lockdown that was supposed to end this Friday may well be extended.
Finally, the covid technical lead at WHO expressed concern over the Euro 2020 final in London at which unmasked crowds were singing and shouting. "Am I supposed to be enjoying watching transmission happening in front of my eyes? ... Devastating."
Cases are again rising here in the US. The last seven days saw an average of 19,455 new cases, a 47 percent increase over the previous seven days. A third of the cases came from Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Nevada. Over half of unvaccinated Americans live in households that make less than $50,000 per year. Two thirds of those unvaccinated people still say that they will definitely or probably get vaccinated. We need to make it easier for them to do so in terms of work and child care issues. Of note, though, is that some Republican lawmakers want to give the unvaccinated the same civil rights protection given on the basis of race, gender, or religion.
If you thought the early-in-the-pandemic ventilator shortages were wicked, the ECMO shortages are still going on. ECMO is ExtraCorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, a technique that adds oxygen and removes carbon dioxide from a patient's blood before pumping it back into the body. It requires expensive equipment similar to a heart-lung machine, specially trained staff, and one-on-one nursing. Many hospitals have not been able to accommodate all the patients who need it. Doctors try to select the patients most likely to benefit from it, but in the absence of sharing systems, have to apply differing criteria. Things such as insurance coverage, geography, and even personal appeals may come into play. Adding to the stress, patients undergoing cardiac surgery may also need ECMO, meaning covid and cardiac issues have to be weighed against each other.
The FDA today said it will attach a warning of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare nerve disease, to the Johnson & Johnson covid vaccine. The proportion of Guillain-Barre in people vaccinated with Johnson & Johnson is three to five times higher than in the general population. In Guillain-Barre, the body's immune system mistakenly attacks part of its peripheral nervous system; most people do recover. Some officials are worried that the warning could deter vaccine-hesitant people from getting any kind of vaccine. It could also be the kiss of death for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
A reader commented that hospital visitation policies are one way to judge that the pandemic is waning or, eventually, over. I checked the policies at the two local hospitals. The local university's medical center still has restrictions in place. End-of-life and childbirth are considered special circumstances and have the most open policies. The local hospital not connected to the university appears to be back to normal visitation except for patients suffering from covid who cannot have any visitors. I think but am by no means sure that most covid patients went to or ended up at the university's medical center, which may explain part of the why the policies differ. I'll have to keep checking that; it may very well be the way to tell when we're supposedly back to normal.
Sixty-nine weeks. Are we there yet, driver? The driver replies not just yet, passenger, not just yet. While I'm no longer holding to the "we're fucked" school of thought, I still think we have a ways to go. We're not out of the deep, dark woods yet, and it's gonna take a while to get to the edge.
How to complicate a covid-19 surge? Put it on top of a military coup. Myanmar handled its initial, pre-coup covid surge by putting in some strict restrictions. Things aren't going as well this time around. The percent positivity is around 25 percent, and at most 3.2 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated.
Many teenagers are making out like bandits this summer. The proportion of Americans ages 16 to19 who are employed is the highest it has been since 2008. In May, 33.2 percent of teenagers in that age range were employed, some quite gainfully, A 16-year-old in Denver is earning $22.50 per hour including tips for cleaning restaurant tables. Adults have various reasons for not working or seeking work. Those reasons include health concerns, finding and/or affording child care, and generous unemployment, though that will end nationwide on September 6 (some states have ended it or will end it sooner). There have also been restrictions put on the program that used to bring low-skilled foreign workers here for summer employment.
In Greene County in southwest Missouri, a hospital is borrowing ventilators from other hospitals and using social media to find respiratory therapists. Only 35 percent of the residents there have been fully vaccinated. The CDC estimates that three fourths of the new cases in Missouri are due to the Delta variant. The gap in vaccination rates between Republican-leaning and Democrat-leaning counties is widening. The state vaccination rate is 40 percent, but some counties have rates in the teens and 20s. The drop-off in vaccinations nationally doesn't help. As of Friday, doses given per day were averaging 590,000, down 82 percent form the peak of 3.38 million on April 13. Three factors have been cited as contributing to the latest surges: the low vaccination rate, the Delta variant, and the lifting of the mask mandate. Don't get me started on this last one.
The CDC is urging schools to fully reopen even if they can't take all the steps the CDC has recommended. They say that school districts should rely on local health data in their decision-making. Some experts don't like this point and say that the CDC should have issued more specific guidelines.
In June the European Union officially recommended that its members allow US tourists to return. We have not returned the favor, though, keeping most of Europe on the CDC's prohibited list. A person can only enter the US from Europe if they are a US citizen, a certain family member, or have spent the 14 days before arrival in a non-prohibited country. So far, the US has not announced when it might be ready to allow open travel to resume. Right now, the prohibited countries are China, Iran, the UK (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland), the Republic of Ireland, Brazil, South Africa, India, and the European Schengen area. The Schengen area is made up of the EU members and several non-EU countries with special agreements with the EU. Just for fun, here's the list of Schengen countries (take a deep breath): Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City. Exhale.
A 90-year-old woman in Belgium died in March after having been infected with two variants--Alpha (British) and Beta (South African)--at the same time, one of the first documented cases of co-infection. She had not been vaccinated, but I don't know what Belgium was doing on the vaccination front in March. She may not have been able to get vaccinated then.
Finally, a few tidbits on Delta. It supposedly spreads 225 percent faster than the original version of the virus. It grows more rapidly and to much higher levels in the respiratory tract. A person with Delta has about 1,000 times more copies of virus in the respiratory tract than a person with the original virus. And while someone with the original virus took six days to become infectious, it only takes someone with Delta four days. See why I find variants so frightening.
I didn't take too many notes today, but let's see what I can come up with. It surprised me, but community college enrollment was down 9.5 percent in the spring semester. There was also a 6.8 percent decline in the number of high school graduates going on to any kind of college. Education experts say that delaying college decreases the chances a student will ever go back. They worry this will broaden the gap between education haves and have nots. Grad school enrollment increased 4.6 percent compared to 2020; that did not surprise me.
Another surprise is that Mississippi, with only 33 percent of residents fully vaccinated, is asking residents to do four things. First is that all residents over 65 avoid all indoor mass gatherings regardless of their vaccination status. Second is that all residents with chronic underlying medical conditions avoid all indoor mass gatherings. Third, that all unvaccinated residents wear a mask when indoors in public settings. Finally, and here's the surprise, that all residents 12 and older get vaccinated. Mississippi is tied with Alabama for last in the percent of residents fully vaccinated. That they are now openly encouraging vaccination says a lot.
The two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, both approve of the proposed CDC guidelines for schools to fully reopen. They note that the CDC guidance sets a floor rather than a ceiling and localities can adjust for special conditions. Underlying all this is that K-12 schools proved to be safer than originally thought. Higher education is a totally different matter.
The city made the national and even international news today by taking down statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The city is reviewing proposals from people who have something they'd like to do with them. The Jackson statue is said to be among the top three equestrian statues in the world, which argues for not melting it down or otherwise destroying it.
Pfizer says it will seek FDA approval for a third dose of vaccine to be given six to 12 months after the second dose. They say that antibody levels do wane and early data suggest a third dose makes antibody levels jump five- to 10-fold. If approval is granted, public health officials would decide if a third dose is needed. Right now, US officials in the FDA and CDC say boosters are not needed. Pfizer is also working on a vaccine specific to the Delta variant.
If you're tired of hearing about Delta, have you heard about Lambda? It was first found in Peru in August 2020 and was designated a "variant of interest" by WHO on June 14. WHO says, "Lambda has been associated with substantive rates of community transmission in multiple countries, with rising prevalence over time concurrent with increased covid-19 incidence." Right now, Lambda is hitting South America the hardest though cases have been found as far north as Canada. There is not yet any evidence that Lambda poses more risk than other variants out there.
Some Asian countries are now experiencing a first surge of covid. Many put in extremely tight restrictions in 2020 and greatly reduced their number of cases then. Now, however, is another story. Of Thailand's 317,506 confirmed cases and 2,534 deaths overall, over 90 percent have come since April 1, 2021. South Korea is putting in its strongest restrictions yet including no social gatherings of three or more people after 6:00 pm, no open nightclubs and churches, no visitors at hospitals and nursing homes, and only family allowed to attend weddings and funerals. Indonesia is probably the hardest hit so far. The seven-day rolling averages of cases and deaths both more than doubled in the last two weeks. Cases and deaths continue to rise in Malaysia despite a very strict lockdown--only one person is allowed out and only to buy groceries.Vietnam kept total cases in 2020 to 2,800 and reported almost no new cases from January 1 to the end of April 2021 when the surge started. There were 22,000 new cases in the last two months. India is doing better now with both cases and deaths decreasing. Still, less than five percent of the eligible population has been fully vaccinated.
The CDC said today that vaccinated children and teachers don't need to wear masks inside school buildings, though the final decision is up to school systems. The CDC is also not advising schools to require shots for eligible students as it does for measles and some other ailments. They say that, as well as whether to require that teachers be vaccinated, is up to state and local authorities. The CDC is so far offering no guidance on how teachers might know which kids have been vaccinated or how parents will know teachers' vaccination statuses. Distancing should not be required among fully vaccinated students or staff. Middle school, what I call the weak link in any school system, will be complicated. The 11-year-olds will not be eligible for vaccination while the 12- and 13-year-olds will be.
Finally, leave it to the French to come up with a great campaign to encourage vaccination. Posters show people kissing or making out atop the lines "Yes, the vaccine can have desirable effects. With vaccination, life starts again." Ya gotta love those French.
Global known covid deaths have topped 4,000,000, and just about anyone who is anyone knows that that is an undercount. Here's something interesting in a possibly frightening way, the time it took to hit each million deaths:
9 months to hit 1,000,000
3.5 months from 1,000,000 to 2,000,000
3 months from 2,000,000 to 3,000,000
2.5 months from 3,000,000 to 4,000,000
The pace is quickening thanks right now to the Delta variant and the huge number of unvaccinated people in the US and around the world. Across the US, covid cases are up 11 percent almost entirely among unvaccinated people. Every person who died of covid in the state of Maryland in June was unvaccinated. To quote a 1960s song, "When will they ever learn, Oh, when will they ever learn?"
A new state of emergency has been declared for Tokyo from July 12 to August 22, a period including the Olympics and Paralympics. Two thirds of Japan's covid cases are from the Tokyo region. The Japanese Olympic Committee in cooperation with the International Olympic Committee announced that there will be no spectators in Tokyo. There is the possibility but no certainty that spectators will be allowed at venues outside the Tokyo area. The announcement included that there was "no choice but to hold the Games in a limited way." Some specifics of the state of emergency have yet to be announced, but the health minister noted, "How to stop people enjoying the Olympics from going out for drinks is a main issue."
Some experts are asking if, given the dominance of the Delta variant, vaccinated people should continue to wear masks. My way of handling that issue is to assume that, unless I know them, any person not wearing a mask has not been vaccinated. Me? I'll be the one wearing both a mask and one of these:
I choose a button that will show up well on that day's shirt. Of course, today I haven't gone anywhere, so only Blaine and I get to enjoy the button I'm wearing which is the one on the bottom left that shows the spike protein.
The medical conditions most likely to be mentioned with covid on death certificates are diabetes, hypertensive diseases, chronic kidney disease, COPD, and demientia. Obesity and morbid obesity are also frequently mentioned.
Finally, Africa has new cases doubling ever 18 days and is in its worst week yet with some experts saying that the worst is yet to come. They are short on vaccines, have mostly young people infected, and overwhelmed health care systems. I hope Covax or first-world nations can get some vaccines and other assistance delivered as soon as humanly possible. The pandemic won't end for the rest of the world with Africa, or any continent, as infected as it is right now.
The Delta strain of covid-19 now makes up more than half of the cases in the US. Nevada requested a federal surge response team on July 1. Statewide, just over 60 percent of residents have not been vaccinated. The seven-day average of new cases is about double what it was a month ago when pandemic restrictions were relaxed. Nevada has the third highest cases per capita rate, 14 per 100,000. It trails only Missouri, which has also requested a surge response team, and Alabama. In Clark County, home to Las Vegas, only 39 percent of residents are fully vaccinated. As in many other places here and abroad, younger people are driving the surge. Not unexpectedly, 95 percent of people hospitalized in the past three month were unvaccinated.
New York City is scaling back covid monitoring and testing. In March and April, roughly 1,500 cases were sequenced every week. Now? Last week, only 54 were sequenced. In other words, there's no telling how prevalent the Delta variant might be there.
Summer camp may not be as much fun for some this year. More than 125 kids and adults who were at a Texas church camp last month have now tested positive. Many more were likely exposed at camp--there were 400 there--not to mention when infected campers and staff went home. The vaccination status of those infected was not known, but most of them were old enough to have been vaccinated. There have been 85 positive cases at an Indiana camp that did not check vaccination records nor require masks be work indoors. And 25 workers at a Christian summer camp in Oklahoma have tested positive.
One of the fastest growing outbreaks in the world right now is in Fiji. Before late May, new daily cases were in single digits; now, they're in the hundreds. About 31 percent of residents have been partially vaccinated, but less than five percent have been fully vaccinated. They're using AstraZeneca vaccine obtained from Australia. New Zealand has not approved AstraZeneca for export or use but is sending PPE and other needed things. Hospitals are so overcrowded that some people are staying away to die at home. If you doubt the power of the Delta variant, the outbreak in Fiji appears to be driven by one case of Delta that escaped from the country's isolation facilities. The government has so far declined to impose a lockdown but is arresting people who violate curfew or don't follow the mask mandate.
An analysis put out by the Israeli government says that the Pfizer vaccine appears to be less effective against the Delta variant than it is against other variants. The study says that Pfizer offers 64 percent efficacy against infection by the Delta strain but still offers 93 percent against severe disease or hospitalization. Some scientists and medical personnel say that it's too soon to draw conclusions from the study. Several other studies have looked at Pfizer's efficacy against Delta. A British study found Pfizer to be 88 percent effective; a Scottish one, 79 percent; and a Canadian one, 87 percent. Says an epidemiologist at Harvard, "If there are five studies with one outcome and one study with another, I think one can conclude that the five are probably more likely to be correct than the one."
The US has yet to meet POTUS's July 4 goal of 70 percent at least partial vaccination. In fact, the US may be hitting a ceiling on vaccinations. The people who want to get one probably have. The key group that still needs persuading is, not surprising if you've been reading here regularly, young adults 18 to 30. They feel "bulletproof" against the coronavirus; unfortunately, they are not.
2021 is my year for vaccinations. Besides the two Pfizer ones, I got a Shingrix vaccine to guard against shingles. Today I got the pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine. One more Shingrix shot in late August or September, and after that, a flu shot. The jury is still out on whether a covid booster might be on the agenda as well.
Japan's fully vaccinated rate of 13.8 percent puts it ahead of the global average of 11.3 percent. Still, fear is growing that the Olympic Games will spread the virus. Organizers have said that the plan to allow 10,000 Japanese spectators can be changed now or later. There were 716 cases in Tokyo on Saturday, the highest number in five weeks. Meanwhile, in Thailand medical staff who were vaccinated with Sinovac will be given a booster of Pfizer or Moderna. Luxembourg's prime minister is in serious condition with low blood oxygen levels. He just attended the European Union Summit June 24 and 25. Several days later he had mild symptoms and tested positive. He got a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine in May and was supposed to get a second on July 1. So far, none of the 26 other leaders at the summit are showing any symptoms.
Japan is sending millions of doses of Astra Zeneca to other South Asian countries, including Taiwan which will not accept vaccine from mainland China. Thailand, Philippines, and Vietnam are also getting vaccine help from Japan. Instead of one country giving vaccine to another, Israel and South Korea are doing a vaccine swap. Israel is sending about 700,000 doses of Pfizer that are close to their expiration dates to help South Korea fight its rising case numbers. In September and October, South Korea will send the same amount to Israel.
Here in the US, the states with low vaccination rates have almost triple the rate of new covid cases as states with above-average vaccination rates. Florida has been especially hit hard with about 17 percent of all new US cases happening there. Younger people still lag behind older ones in terms of getting vaccinated. One public health expert advises young people that covid-29 does not have to kill you to wreck your life.
Cases are surging at US immigration detention centers. The number of migrants held has almost doubled recently, from 14,000 in April to 26,000 last week. In the same time period, there have been over 7,500 new covid cases. As of May, only around 20 percent of detainees had had one dose of vaccine. Reasons for the surge in cases include the transfer of detainees between facilities, insufficient testing, and lax covid safety measures such as proper mask wearing by staff.
You may have read that the coronavirus may well become like influenza, something we deal with on a yearly basis. That sounds good, but the two viruses are very different. The coronavirus spreads faster and can cause more serious illness. The symptoms of the coronavirus take longer to show, and people with it are contagious for longer. Finally, the R for seasonal influenza is approximately 1.28 meaning that four people with flu might pass it on to five more people. The R value for the Delta variant? Seven. Yes, one person suffering from the Delta variant of the coronavirus could pass it on to seven other people. Not quite the same....
POTUS said yesterday that getting vaccinated was "the most patriotic thing" Americans could do. The US is, he said, emerging from the pandemic but not yet clear of it. He said that July 4, 2021 was about "independence from the virus" and a return to something resembling normal life. I'll buy the something resembling normal life part of that, but not the independence from the virus part. As long as covid thrives somewhere, variants will develop. And unless we are willing to keep our borders closed indefinitely, we are susceptible to whatever happens in the rest of the world. We will not be independent from the coronavirus until the coronavirus is under control around the world and people are willing and able to get vaccinated however often it takes.
The TSA screened 2.2 million people on Saturday, the most since March 5, 2020, about a week before WHO declared a pandemic. Here's hoping enough of those people were vaccinated that there's not going to be even a mini-surge in a couple of weeks.
Forty-two percent of residents of Arkansas have gotten at least one shot of vaccine; 34 percent are fully vaccinated. The seven-day case average is only (?) 475, but over the last few weeks, the number has more than doubled. Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) says he doesn't think a third wave is likely, explaining, "I think our vaccination rate is sufficient that we can avoid the surge in hospitalizations that puts us in jeopardy." He followed that comment, however, with "If we stopped right here and didn't get a greater percentage of our population vaccinated, then we're going to have trouble in the next school year and in the winter." The state's vaccination rate is "sufficient," but the state needs a greater percentage of the population vaccinated? Am I missing something here?
Mucormycosis, the "black fungus" disease that spread in India is now in Afghanistan. It is fatal in about half of the cases. The black fungus eats bone and tissue and can spread to the eye socket and brain, with disfiguring surgery possibly needed. Mucormycosis is rare in the US and Europe, at least so far.
Francs has changed a rule that people had to get their second dose of vaccine at the same place they got their first. Since most residents of France, like those of many European countries, take a month's vacation sometime in the summer, a conflict was brewing over vaccine versus vacation. Now those who get their first dose before going on vacation can get their second dose while on vacation. Covid cases in the UK are rising exponentially, largely in younger age groups. Even so, Boris Johnson announced today that most restrictions will end as of July 19. That would make England the most unrestricted country in Europe. On the other side of the world, Sydney is on "red alert." Over 600 health workers in New South Wales are in isolation over covid case contact. An unvaccinated student nurse worked at two hospitals while infected.
Here at home in the US, vaccine hesitancy remains high in conservatives, evangelicals, and some minority groups. There appears to be a cultural divide on the way. In wealthier enclaves, those still wearing masks tend to be members of the "service class." Some companies do give vaccinated workers permission not to wear a mask, but it's often on the honor system. A Harvard study suggest birthdays are a vector for virus transmission. Using health insurance claims, the researchers looked at covid rates of families in the two weeks after someone had a birthday and found covid risk rose by almost one third. The biggest infection risk was in the weeks after a child's birthday. While adults may be willing to forego celebrating their own birthdays, not giving a child a birthday party can be difficult. And holding a party at one's home rather than elsewhere can feel oh so much safer.
I can see 500 days of this blog on the horizon. That number will be passed while The Professor and I are spending a week or so away from wifi and a couple other modern conveniences that often make things less convenient. We will be at the same cabin we visited last summer while our hardwood floors were being refinished. Cell reception will come and go; last year, we were able to check email on our phones a couple times each day. I kept up with writing a daily blog post and posted all the days when we got back to civilization. The plan for this year is much the same.
It is Independence Day here in the US. Cooking out and watching fireworks are a couple of traditional activities we typically don't do. The White House is having a July 4 party at which neither masks nor vaccination will be required. It's on the honor system. Vaccinated people do not need to wear masks; unvaccinated people do. There will be some sort of testing and screening at the door. It all sounds a bit too close to what XPot used to do. I hope it does not become a spreader event and especially not a super one.
Delta continues to be a major topic in the media. The variant has now been identified in at least 98 countries. The director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute at Oxford notes, "Once Delta gets going, it will overwhelm healthcare systems very rapidly unless vaccination improves. Overwhelming health systems will lead to a disproportionate rise in deaths as oxygen runs out, healthcare professionals are knocked out, and other care halted. More thought needs to be given to whether vaccinating young children in the rich world is as important and ethically justified as vaccinating key workers and the most vulnerable in developing countries." The italics are mine; I think this question might merit discussion. I can see both sides of the issue and am glad the decision is not mine to make.
The WHO director general would like to see at least 10 percent of people in all countries vaccinated by the end of September and at least 70 percent of people in every country vaccinated by July 2022. I;m afraid I don't see that happening. The group leader of the RNA virus replication laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute observes, "We need everyone vaccinated now. We are not all protected until the whole world is protected. It can come across as idealism, but it's not--there's a cold-hearted, self-interested motivation behind all of it." In other words, none of us is safe until all of us are safe.
Six emergency workers at the Surfside condo collapse in Florida have tested positive for covid. Thanks to contact tracing, 424 members of other teams have been tested. New cases in Florida have risen by 55 percent in the past two weeks. Across the state, 56 percent of people are fully vaccinated,
Indian police are investigating whether thousands of people in Mumbai were injected with salt water rather than vaccine. The scam involved medical personnel and went on at nearly a dozen vaccination sites over the last two months. Whoa! The scam came to light when some people who thought they'd been vaccinated could not find themselves listed in a national vaccination database. Can you imagine how they likely felt when they realized that they might not have been vaccinated? Unlike the free vaccinations here, the vaccinations there had a monetary cost that I don't imagine will be recovered and refunded to those people who now must get vaccinated with vaccine not saline.
Remember all the states starting lotteries to entice people to get vaccinated? Ohio, the first state to start such a program, has ended theirs. There was an early jump in the number of vaccinations but it soon evaporated. Arkansas is also ending their program saying that it is "no longer getting the results that we want." There are still some state programs operating. In Massachusetts, the 73 percent of adults who are fully vaccinated can enroll to win one of five $1 million prizes. Residents between the ages of 12 and 17 have a chance at one of five $300,000 scholarships after they are fully vaccinated. Over 60 percent have gotten their first shot. Residents in Michigan only need to be partially vaccinated to enter for cash prizes for adults and scholarships for the younger set. Maine will award a prize of $1.00 for every person vaccinated by July 4; the prize will be in the neighborhood of $900,000. There are also prizes and incentives other than cash being offered. In Alabama, Talladega Superspeedway offered a chance to drive your own car or truck on the track. Delaware offered free tolls within the state. Indiana gave out Girl Scout cookies. New Jersey has offered dinner at the governor's mansion. Companies are also offering prizes. How about free travel around the world for a year on United Airlines, or $1 million and free groceries for a year from Kroger?
It would be nice if all those programs worked as intended. Right now, about 1,000 US counties, mostly in the Southeast and Midwest, have vaccination coverage of less than 30 percent. It has become clear that full vaccination offers maximal protection against the Delta variant. The longer that variant--any variant, actually--continues to infect people, the more chance there will be that new variants will be formed. Some of those variants will be relatively harmless in terms of any gain in function, but it would only take one that can bypass vaccine- or case-generated immunity. Only one.
Ringo Starr turns 81 on Wednesday, July 7. All he wants for his birthday is for everyone at noon to say, post, think, or otherwise express "peace and love." If only saying it would make it happen.
Son #2 just texted that they're 50 minutes out, so let's see if I can get a short post up for today.
I think that I mentioned a couple of days ago that the White House wants to counter coronavirus surges with "response teams." I wondered at the time just how those teams would respond. The Delta variant is more prevalent in Missouri than any other state; in the last two weeks, the daily number of cases has more than doubled, and hospitalizations are up 20 percent. The state has requested one of those surge response teams. Some team members will be federal staff who will help local health departments with testing and vaccinations. Other members will be CDC personnel who will help with data analysis and field investigations. There will also be focus on monoclonal antibody treatments and expanded media campaigns to encourage vaccination. Right now, only 39 percent of the population in Missouri is fully vaccinated. Public health experts are advising that in Missouri and elsewhere answering outbreaks with vaccines is not as helpful as testing and contact tracing. Vaccinations take from two to six weeks to be maximally effective.
Up to 15 millions doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine from the Baltimore plant with manufacturing difficulties have been okayed for packaging and release. Johnson & Johnson had the goal of delivering 100 million doses by the end of June which they clearly did not meet. They're missing delivery targets in Europe, too. The new batch of 15 million doses will likely be exported; the US has more than enough vaccine already.
Despite low numbers of cases, the Delta variant is gaining ground in New York City. Most of the new cases are young adults who have not been vaccinated. Only 51 percent of adults in New York City are fully vaccinated, leaving lots of unvaccinated or partially vaccinated targets for Delta. Delta accounts for one third of new cases in France. They're debating making vaccinations mandatory for health workers. The US secretary of veterans affairs is also considering requiring workers at VA hospitals to be vaccinated. Low staff vaccination rates endanger veterans who may be more vulnerable due to age and type of illness or injury.
POTUS is encouraging Americans to celebrate July 4 with gusto, while saying that next year will be even better. Travel rates are about where they were in 2019. At the same time, though, public health experts worry about those July 4 crowds when less than half the country is fully vaccinated. A former CDC director and other experts are afraid that if Delta continues to circulate, it could mutate into a form that could get through the wall of immunity full vaccination offers. I'm no expert, at least when it comes to coronaviruses, but I share their concern. The race really is on, and I'm not feeling too optimistic that vaccines will win. Make me wrong, world, please?
I survived my first birthday day yesterday. The second is tomorrow when Son #2 and DiL= come for another pancake breakfast and unknown as yet shenanigans. They called last night and sent photos of the two new additions to their menagerie. The current total is 15: five rabbits, four tortoises, three snakes, two cats, and one parrot. Gotta love those knuckleheaded kids so much that they don't ask us to animal-sit for them.
A growing number of scientists say that WHO should not be the entity to continue to investigate the origins of the coronavirus. They've called for an independent analysis similar to what was done after Chernobyl. The WHO emergencies chief says that WHO works "by persuasion" and cannot force China to cooperate. China had to approve the members of the initial WHO investigative team, their agenda, and their report suggesting that the results were not independently verified.
More local officials in the US are worried about another wave of covid. POTUS plans to deploy "response teams" to areas with high infection rates. The US will not meet POTUS's goal of 70 percent partial vaccination but will come close, at 67 or 68 percent. The District of Columbia, two territories (Puerto Rico and Guam), and 20 states have met the 70 percent goal. Those states are Vermont, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New Mexico. Fourteen states including Florida and Texas are close to 70 percent, but 16 states including nearly all the Southern ones are still below 60 percent. Mississippi sits at the bottom with only 46 percent of residents partially vaccinated.
The covid situation in the UK is being watched by other countries around the world as it turns into a race between an advanced vaccination program and the Delta variant. A professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh describes it, "The UK is in an absolutely unique position. We have the biggest Delta outbreak in a well-vaccinated country. We are a petri dish for the world." So far the Delta variant appears to be 60 percent more transmissible and twice as likely to lead to hospitalization. Two Pfizer or AstraZeneca shots reduce the risk of hospitalization from Delta by 96 percent or 92 percent respectively. Thanks (or no) to Delta, 85 percent vaccination would be needed for herd immunity.
Indonesia is tripling the oxygen supply to hospitals for the next two weeks with the extra oxygen being diverted from industry. Delta accounts for 60 percent of new cases; it is the worst outbreak since the pandemic began. Three government hospitals as swell as emergency rooms have been converted to focus solely on treating covid patients. It does not help that Indonesia has one of the lowest testing rates in the world, administering just 47.98 tests per 1,000 people. The percent positivity is currently 20.
There is concern that Africa could become "the continent of covid" as it is on the verge of exceeding the worst week ever in the pandemic. Just over one percent of Africa's 1.3 billion people has been fiully vaccinated. Every European country has more than 25 percent of its population fully vaccinated, and some are over 45 percent. Africa is mostly relying on Covax, and it is not clear just how many Covax doses have actually gotten to Africa. Some European countries including France and Denmark have separately sent hundreds of thousands of doses to African countries.
Portugal is reinstating curfews in 19 municipalities with "very elevated risk" of covid and 26 with "elevated risk." Lisbon and other popular tourist spots are among the municipalities cited. Curfew will run from 11:00 pm to 5:00 am. Only 34 percent of people are fully vaccinated, and "fully" is what protects against Delta. In Portugal and Britain, most new cases are in people under 30, pointing to the need of vaccinating younger adults.
Finally, in a "how can this get even crazier" moment, British residents who were vaccinated with AstraZeneca vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India can not automatically skip the EU quarantine that those vaccinated with AstraZeneca vaccine produced in the UK can. Approval from the European Medicines Agency for the Indian-made AstraZeneca has not been requested. Until that happens and approval is granted, the EU will not recognize it as a vaccine worthy of its recipients skipping quarantine.
Birthday Selfie 2021
I'm still reading and taking just a few notes on the pandemic, but this post is birthday-oriented. First, have I kept the resolutions I made for 2021?
Why, yes ... yes I have, all of them even.
What does the Washington Post's horoscope say about people whose birthday today is?
You are soft, giving, and perceptive. You tend to draw attention to you whether you seek it our or not. You are adventurous and impulsive, and you have an excellent memory. You are always generous and kind. This year you want to secure your future for yourself and those who are close to you. Don't push yourself too hard. Explore real estate opportunities.
With all the flowery what-not, they must really want me to keep my subscription going.
Besides my birthday, today is Canada Day, International Joke Day, and the 100th anniversary of China's Communist Party. Probably the most famous person to share my birthday would be Diana, Princess of Wales. I'm five years older than she would be.
When I Was a Child
When I was a child
big brothers picked on little sisters
saying they were no bigger
than a piece of dirt.
Bullying? It wasn’t called that then.
Now I am older.
Big brothers share with little sisters
and dirt is never mentioned
except in contexts such as gardening.
Not bullying but brothering.
When I was a child
we hid under our desks or in the cloakroom
not really sure just what it was
our parents were afraid of
as they talked in muffled voices.
Now I am older.
We no longer duck and cover
against some unknown enemy.
We are our own worst enemy
destroying our world on our own.
When I was a child
smallpox was real as was polio.
One Saturday morning we left cartoons
to get vaccines
one of which came in a sugar cube.
Now I am older
and have outlived smallpox
but not polio by decades.
There are scary new ailments
with vaccines for those willing to get them.
When I was a child
grown-up children moved home
to a place called a hometown
to plant seeds of their own children
as they themselves ripened.
Now I am older
mother to kids with a hometown
even if but one still lives in it.
Those kids call our house their home-place
something that pleases me.
When I was a child
sixty-five meant grey hair and wrinkles
men retiring to go home
and prepare to die
unless they puttered.
Now I am sixty-five.
Some wrinkles but no grey hair.
Old looks different these days.
It may feel different, too.
I’ll let you know when I find out.
