"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.
1 comment:
The idea is that a mask protects the world from you and not the other way around so that safe feeling is an illusion. My take is that the Olympics are only going ahead because the one who cancelled it, paid for it . When everyone thinks that someone else should do it then it tends not to get done.
I'm waiting to see if the need for vaccination for nightclubs pushes up take up. We now have walk in centres, no appointment needed and yet the latest reported first jab total was under 40,000. That's less than the new cases.
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