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.
3 comments:
I'm still sticking with "science will save us all". One of the reasons that Delta is so prevalent is that it could be a cold or hay fever, the classic symptoms of cough, lack of taste and fever aren't there. I suspect that for every one person who takes a test there are a dozen more walking around sneezing and cursing their antihistimines.
The Office of National Statistics (ONS) survey a random sample once a month and test for antibodies, the most recent result estimated that 89.8% of the adult population have antibodies. That equates to 70% of the total population (there's no vaccination here of the under 18s). I am now starting to ponder the magic "herd immunity" that we heard so much about early on.
A long time ago I said that I'd know when this was over when the teaching hospitals returned to normal visiting arrangements. Nope, not yet.
There was much talk a while ago about a self-administered test for Covid, but I haven't heard anything lately. If such a test gets developed, it would be good to get them in the hands of as many people as possible.
I take a self administered test twice a week to see my mum. Here they come in packs of seven and are free from pharmacies. You swab your throat and nose and have a result in 30 minutes. They're not as accurate as the lab ones and if you have a positive result you are supposed to have a "proper" test to confirm the result.
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