The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 34 (534)

I actually struggled today to find new news items concerning the no-longer-novel coronavirus. A couple of items made to look new were a couple days old. Have we really gotten to the same-old same-old stage? No news is good news really doesn't hack it here. It took me longer than usual to find what I did, which was okay since I don't really have the energy to do much other than sit after not having slept well for a couple nights in a row. 

The Washington Post includes a quickie covid tabulation every weekday morning listing cases, deaths, and vaccination doses given as of 8:00 pm the day before. According to the Post, we had 260,673 new cases, 2,114 deaths, and 693,177 vaccinations given yesterday. Looking at the numbers daily, they're headed in the wrong direction. 

Around 70 percent of adults in the EU have been fully vaccinated. Adding in children and teenagers, takes the percentage down to 55 percent. For comparison, the US's percentage is 52, Israel's is 61, and Britain's is 64. Unfortunately, the overall percent masks the reality that things are going so differently from country to country. Each country administers its own vaccination program. Belgium, Denmark, and Portugal are over 80 percent fully vaccinated; Spain and the Netherlands are over 75 percent. On the other end lie Latvia at 45 percent, Romania at 31 percent, and Bulgaria at only 20 percent.

The new variant discovered in South Africa in May that I mentioned yesterday has not yet fulfilled WHO criteria to be considered a variant of concern or even a variant of interest. Its prevalence is low enough that it might just die out. I guess that means there's no need to panic ... yet.

A survey this summer by the Pubic Religion Research Institute found that 79 percent of white Catholics and 56 percent of white Evangelical Protestants identified as vaccine acceptors, meaning that they'd gotten at least one dose of vaccine or planned to soon. Right in the middle? Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a.k.a. Mormons, at 65 percent. Although the Church leadership encourages vaccination and mask-wearing, within the membership, vaccine and masking attitudes track along political lines. Interestingly, the LDS was one of the first faiths to respond at the outset of the pandemic. They stopped all church gatherings and closed their temples in March 2020. 

As for political lines, every Republican governor has been vaccinated and urges others to do so as well. With the exception of Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, however, they will not mandate vaccinations or masking. Hogan just required hospital and nursing home employees to be vaccinated. Of the 10 states with the most cases per capita, nine voted Republican in 2020, and nine have Republican governors. In Republican Florida, the majority of people oppose a mask requirement even for health care workers. You can probably guess my reaction to having read that.

A New Jersey woman has been charged with having sold about 250 forged vaccination cards. She and another woman also fraudulently entered at least 10 people into the state's immunization database, which would allow them to get an Excelsior Pass, the state's digital vaccination certificate. Thirteen people who bought fake cards--some of them hospital and nursing home staff--have each been charged with a felony. How much did a fake vaccination card cost? That would be $200, with an extra $250 required for entry into the state database. Those people could have saved from $200 to $450 and avoided potential jail time by just getting the free vaccine.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 33 (533)

Where to start? I wish I could add "the ridiculous or the sublime?" but that likely won't work here, at least not today. If you continue to worry about the Delta variant, you might want to skip that in May South African scientists detected a new coronavirus variant that may have increased transmissibility. At least it contains multiple mutations associated with increased transmissibility. It has not been established if the increased transmissibility is because it's more contagious or because it is able to overcome immunity from vaccination or past infection. An infectious disease specialist and one of the authors of a paper about the new variant offers that "this pandemic is far from over" and "this virus is still exploring ways to potentially get better at infecting us." For some reason, that last comment has me picturing the coronavirus spike protein dressed as infamous villain Snidely Whiplash.

The EU has removed the US and five other countries from the "safe list" of countries whose residents can travel to the EU with no additional requirements such as quarantine and testing. It will be up to individual counties whether to follow this. To be on the "safe list" requires having fewer than 75 new covid cases daily per 100,000 people over the previous 14 days. The US has been well above that figure. It also does not help the US that it still has not opened its borders to Europeans, and they're not thrilled about the lack of reciprocity.

The daily average for hospitalized covid patients in the US in now over 100,000, higher than in any previous surge except last winter's when most Americans were not yet eligible to be vaccinated. Hospitalizations nationwide have increased by almost 500 percent in the past two months. Florida has 16,457 hospitalized covid patients, the most of any state. Texas is second on what is not a good list on which to be. Oxygen supplies are running low for some hospitals. One Florida doctor said he was seeing younger and younger patients die, all of whom were unvaccinated. The article in which he was noted did not specify if these younger patients were so young as to not yet be eligible for vaccination.

From hospitalizations to deaths. Deaths in 14 states increased by more than 50 percent in one week. Deaths went up by more than 10 percent in 28 more. A projection from the University of Washington suggests we could see 1,400 daily by mid-September. 

Demand for ivermectin continues to rise. It started as a veterinary drug in the late 1970s, and the discovery of its effectiveness combating certain parasitic diseases in people won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2015. The ivermectin sold for animals can be a much higher concentration than that intended for humans. Calls to state poison control centers have jumped fivefold since July. Mississippi says that 70 percent of recent calls to its state poison control center come from people who have ingested ivermectin from feed supply stores.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 32 (532)

Schools reopen in England this week; colleges and universities open later. Covid infections are now 26 times the levels they were this time last year. I'm not sure that makes the recent reopening of most things much of a success. At least here, once things are reopened or restricted less, it's hard public-opinion-wise to go back to the earlier, sterner restrictions. I bet there are Australians, though, who would love to be in England. Australia just had 1,323 new cases with the overwhelming majority, 1,218, in New South Wales. There were also 813 hospitalizations. Lockdowns continue, though I don't think there are any new ones. The New South Wales premier has committed to reopening once 70 percent of people ages 16 and older are fully vaccinated. India is by no means back to the dire state it once was, but there were still 45,083 new cases Sunday.

Things are no better here at home. Oregon is bringing in refrigerated trucks to hold bodies for which the morgues have no room. A yet-to-be-vaccinated teacher in California went to work with symptoms for two days and read aloud to her class without a mask. Half of her class got infected, with infections corresponding to the seating chart. The closer to the front where the teacher was reading, the more likely a child was to be infected, everyone in the first row for example. The children in the class were too young to be vaccinated, making what the teacher did so much worse for me. It is one thing for an adult to choose not to be vaccinated. Kids under 12, though, right now have no choice in the matter.  

Interestingly, at least to me given the current attitude toward masks, Florida very early on encouraged vaccination by opening mass vaccination sites and sending vaccination teams to retirement communities and nursing homes. Then summer and a move to the air conditioning found inside has led to peaks in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. As of Friday, Florida had an average 242 virus deaths per day, nearly as many as California and Texas combined. Other states with comparable vaccination rates have had a small fraction of Florida's hospitalization rate; experts say that Florida's initial vaccination rate may have appeared high but was not high enough given the demographics of the state's population. Add in that people are still partying as if it's going out of style (maybe it should, at least for a while) and that the governor opposes any mask mandates. 

Firefighters in Corpus Christi, Texas will come to homes to give vaccinations. The city of 327,000 has seen about 1,000 deaths so far, and the ICUs are full. About half the locals over the age of 12 are fully vaccinated, a rate lower than the state as a whole. Two weeks into the school year, over 1,000 cases have been connected with the school district, most among students. The city is doing everything it can to encourage vaccinations. Walk-in vaccination centers are open in shopping malls, and the firefighters will come to a home any time of day.

Some projections show the US as seeing 100,000 more covid deaths between now and December 1. The director of the University of Texas Covid-19 Modeling Consortium explains, "Behavior is really going to determine if, when and how sustainably the current wave subsides. We cannot stop delta in its tracks, but we can change our behavior  overnight." A scientist at the University of Washington says that wearing masks could save 50,000 lives.

"Vaccine mandate" can be a matter of interpretation. In New York City, proof of vaccination is needed to go to a gym or restaurant, though it is not required to get on a bus or the subway. In Pasadena, California, Basilico's Pasta E. Vino requires proof of being unvaccinated in order to be served. Which makes me wonder how a person proves that they have not been vaccinated. The CDC did not give everyone a vaccination card that only got filled out when a person got vaccinated meaning that a blank card documents the lack of a vaccination.

Hurricane Ida recently came ashore in Louisiana and is weakening very, very slowly. It is still a Category 4 hurricane which means the sustained winds are the equivalent of an EF2 tornado. Just as some people choose not to be vaccinated against covid, some people who could have evacuated chose not to, sometimes with reasons related to covid. One couple said they were afraid about taking their unvaccinated children to a crowded shelter. A man said he had tested positive for covid and was afraid no shelter or hotel would take him. With over 400,000 people already without power, I hope the hospitals unable to move patients elsewhere have good generators.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 31 (531)

Yesterday's blog post had nothing to do with it, but spectators going to the US Open tennis tournament and over the age of 12 will now have to prove they have gotten at least one dose of vaccine. There is still no mask mandate. The mayor's office initially said that only spectators in the stands would need proof of vaccination. The US Tennis Association extended that to apply to anyone coming onto the grounds of the tennis center. I don't think anyone in the NYC mayor's office or the USTA reads this blog, so I cannot take credit for what seems to me a very good decision. Now if they would only add a mask mandate given that people will be sitting shoulder to shoulder.

A large British study found that people infected with the Delta variant are twice as likely to be hospitalized than people infected with the Alpha strain. The analysis was of over 40,000 infections in England. The results add to the evidence that Delta may cause more severe illness. Fewer than two percent of the cases were in fully vaccinated people, so no conclusions were made on the difference in vaccination status. 

A Florida court okayed school mask mandates there. Parents had argued that the state constitution requires keeping schoolchildren safe and secure and that masks accomplish that in this pandemic. More kids are hospitalized in Florida right now than at any other point. 

Ida is expected to hit Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane tomorrow. For comparison, Hurricane Katrina came to shore 16 years ago tomorrow as a Category 3 hurricane. Louisiana hospitals are preparing as best they can; there is not time to transfer patients in inland hospitals that would not in any case have room for them. There is no planning scenario for a Category 4 hurricane hitting while hospitals are full. This week, Louisiana recorded its highest ever single-day death toll, 139.

The father of a Texas anti-vaxxer currently being moved from an ICU to a hospice also had covid. The father still thinks the vaccines should not be mandated but said, "Personally for me, I'm not so hesitant about the vaccinations now. I've stared down that barrel and quite honestly, it scared the hell out of me."

Declassified portions of the Wuhan report say that US intelligence agencies have not been able to determine if the coronavirus came as a result of an accidental leak from a lab or emerged naturally. Five intelligence communities say the cause was "natural exposure to an infected animal through an animal infected with it or close progenitor virus." Another agency says, with moderate confidence, that the source was a "laboratory-associated incident" that  most likely involved "experimentation, animal handling, or sampling by Wuhan Institute of Virology." All agencies agree that the virus is unlikely to have been created as any kind of biological weapon. They also do not believe Chinese officials knew about the coronavirus at the time of the outbreak.

Two quick one-liners that  might be interesting. POTUS is suggesting that vaccine booster shots should perhaps be given earlier than at eight months after the second shot. Also, half of 12- to 17 -ear-olds have gotten at least one dose of the Pfizer vaccine. That's the only vaccine currently approved for teenagers, though Moderna has applied for such approval in Canada.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 30 (530)

SARS-CoV-2. The gift that keeps on giving. Today's distressing news, at least to me, is that a new study published in The Lancet found that almost half of hospitalized covid patients were still experiencing at least one lingering symptom one year after becoming ill. That's one year, folks. The study tracked 1,276 Chinese covid patients discharged between January 7 and May 29, 2020, with a median age of 57. Patients were assessed six months out and one year out. Patients, well, survivors, were given a physical exam, lab tests, and a six-minute walking test of endurance and aerobic capacity; they were also interviewed. 

One year out, 49 percent had at least one lingering problem.  Compared with people who had not had covid but who had similar pre-existing conditions, covid survivors had worse health overall 12 months later. Covid survivors were much more likely to be experiencing pain or discomfort, anxiety or depression, or mobility problems. Seventy-five percent of patients had needed supplemental oxygen in the hospital but had not needed intensive care, a ventilator, or even nasal oxygen. Women were more likely than men to have lingering symptoms. Some issues such as shortness of breath were more common in people who had been more severely ill, but other issues did not correlate with severity of covid. 

From an editorial that The Lancet published about the study: "The need to understand and respond to long Covid is increasingly pressing. Symptoms such as persistent fatigue, breathlessness, brain fog, and depression could debilitate many millions of people globally, Long Covid is a modern medical challenge of the first order."

That was enough detailed news. Here are a few quick items from around the country, Hawaii is seeing a record number of hospitalizations with vaccinations static. Overall, 62.1 percent of Hawaii is fully vaccinated, but only an estimated 40 percent of native Hawaiians are. Many native Hawaiians harbor a distrust of the government since the US-supported overthrow of the monarchy in 1893. Natives make up 21 percent of the population and, until July 10, 2021, accounted for 21 percent of covid cases. From July 11 to August 16, they accounted for 28 percent. 

Calls to poison control centers have increased three-fold compared to before the pandemic started, with most of those calls right now being about ivermectin. An Arkansas doctor is being investigated for prescribing the drug thousands of times. That number seems high to me, but I'm just reporting what I read. The prescriptions must have been issued electronically because I can't imagine signing my name that many times.

Illinois has issued a statewide indoor mask mandate. Educators there are already subject to a vaccine mandate. The Maryland Board of Education has issued a statewide mask mandate. Oregon has seen a 10-fold increase in hospitalizations since July 9, the highest ever since the pandemic started. Educators and health care workers there must get vaccinated or lose their jobs.

The US Open tennis tournament starts on Monday open to a full house of spectators. Arthur Ashe Stadium will be considered an outdoor space even when the roof is closed. Evidently, the ventilation system is that good. There will be no entry requirements, and no masks required outdoors. I'm not feeling too optimistic about this.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 29 (529)

Japan suspended use of some 1.63 million doses of the Moderna vaccine after some unused vials were found to be contaminated. Some of the contaminated doses might have been inadvertently given, but no bad effects have been reported. Contamination was found at several Japanese vaccination sites. The contaminated vaccine was manufactured in Spain. Japan now has 43 percent of the population fully vaccinated.

Cruise lines have detected covid among vaccinated crew and passengers including an elderly passenger who died. The CDC now advises people at higher risk not to cruise. It also recommends that passengers be required to show proof of vaccination plus a recent negative test. Cruise companies are also requiring masks be worn indoors. The companies are offering full refunds if people test positive or decide to cancel after the cruise line shortens the length of the trip. Royal Caribbean International is also offering to fly people home if they or anyone in their party tests positive during the cruise. I know people who love to cruise and have missed it greatly during the pandemic. The only cruises I have been on were on Norway's coastal ferry; they were totally unlike what I've heard the mega-large-jumbo cruises in the Caribbean. Alaska is tempting, but not for several years at least.

Covid cases are on the rise in 46 states. Cases have gone down 0 to 20 percent in Maine, Missouri, and Arkansas, and down over 20 percent in Louisiana. Tennessee showed the largest increase followed by Mississippi, South Dakota, Georgia, Indiana, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Right now, the US is averaging over 150,000 new cases daily, a 22 percent increase over the last two weeks. 

There are currently more cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in Florida than at any previous point in the pandemic. The average for new known cases hit 23,314 one day last weekend, 30 percent higher than the previous peak in January. At the state level, 52 percent of Floridians are fully vaccinated, though there are  some counties in which fewer than 30 percent are fully vaccinated.

Some quickies from out there on the Interwebs: Pfizer will have booster shot information to the FDA by the end of this week. WHO is starting a program to manufacture vaccine in Latin America and the Caribbean; the aim is addressing vaccine inequity. Maine's Episcopal diocese has ordered all staff and clergy to be vaccinated. Hawaii is reinstating restrictions such as crowd limit for gatherings. The governor is asking tourists to please not come right now. Health officials in Nebraska are so desperate for staff that they are recruiting unvaccinated nurses offering incentives such as a $5,000 sign-on bonus as well as "no mandated covid-19 vaccinations." Myocarditis is more likely to come after a case of covid than after a vaccination. WHO's weekly assessment reports that new cases around the world are flattening while new cases in the US are rising. The fastest case growth is in Japan.

The road goes ever on and on ... Day 28 (528)

I mentioned a few days ago being worried as the percentage of breakthrough infections seems to be increasing. A Los Angeles study of 43,127 covid infections found 25 percent of them to be breakthroughs. Delta is a wily opponent, finding the weak points in our defenses. Globally, covid cases seem to be leveling off, at least according to WHO. The last week saw over 45 million cases and 68,000 deaths. As bad as those numbers sound, they are only a slight increase on the previous week. The caveat is that there was a similar pattern in May right before Delta started to seize control. Some experts are getting more worried about flu season. The CDC usually advises getting a flu shot by the end of October, but not to get it too early since it's only good for about six months. Some experts are recommending getting one this year as early as possible. 

Non-covid related distraction: If you happen to be scuba diving in the south Pacific and are approached by a sea snake, let it lick you. It's likely to be a male licking to see if you are a female sea snake with whom it can mate. It might also be a female sea snake thinking you look like a good hiding place from the marauding males interested in mating. Lately, more divers have been approached by the snakes, and these are the probable reasons. And, yes, sea snakes are venomous.

The intelligence directors have delivered their report on the origins of the coronavirus to POTUS. The report is still classified, but word is that it offers no definitive conclusion. China is calling for its own investigation, claiming that the coronavirus leaked from the facility at Ft. Detrick, Maryland. The Chinese are taking the coronavirus very, very seriously. Authorities in 12 cities have warned that people who refuse to be vaccinated could be punished if they are found to be responsible for spreading an outbreak. The form of punishment was not detailed. 

Johnson & Johnson will submit data to the FDA that suggests a booster of its one-dose vaccine dramatically increases its efficacy. When volunteers in their trial got a booster six months after their initial injection, antibodies jumped nine times higher than they did after the first dose. An NIH study estimated that vaccinations of the three authorized or approved vaccines prevented almost 140,000 deaths in the US by May 2021. Unfortunately, vaccines became less effective as Delta gained strength. It's not clear, though, if Delta or time since vaccination was the cause.

New South Wales set another daily record Wednesday, with 919 new cases. Queensland has closed its borders with New South Wales, Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory. New Zealand saw its highest daily toll of new cases in over a year; there were 210 found on Wednesday. It won't help that five people may have been injected with saline rather than vaccine at one vaccination site. Japan has 21 of 47 prefectures under emergency order. The number of new cases was up 65 percent over the past two weeks to average 23,003 cases daily. The states of emergency are expected to last at least until September 12. The international tidbits seem not to change that much from day to day, do they? I hope that it won't be too long before I'm reporting the outbreaks in Australia and New Zealand are under control, and Japan is emerging from its long summer of athletics with covid as a chaser.

The Vice President promised one million doses of the Pfizer vaccine to Vietnam; that would bring total US vaccine donations to Vietnam up to six million doses. In a interesting development, Vietnam is offering to pay patients who have recovered a monthly allowance if they agree to stay on at the hospital to help health workers. Beside lodging, there would be a stipend of about $350 a month, an amount that goes a lot further there than it does here.

Right now, Remdesivir is the only antiviral approved for use against covid. An oral antiviral called MK-4482 inhibits covid replication in hamsters. As of April, it was being tested on humans. Science moving forward.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 27 (527)

Yesterday's covid numbers for the US were 248,488 new cases, 1,293 deaths, and 610,018 doses of vaccine given. It's the 248,488 that scares me the most. The last time we saw a number like that, we were thinking once it came down that it wouldn't get that high again. As the director general of health in New Zealand put it, the Delta variant is like a whole new virus. The vaccine number is on track for August; there have been over 400,000 vaccinations every day this month. Dr. Fauci says that if the "overwhelming majority" of the population is vaccinated, the US could have control of covid by spring 2022. And then he adds, "But there's no guarantee because it's up to us." That statement is, unfortunately, all too true.

There have been multiple positive covid tests connected to the Paralympic Games already, tests that were recorded abroad or in training camps in Japan. They just had the first Paralympic athlete to test positive in the Paralympic Village. The unnamed athlete is now in isolation elsewhere. The Summer Olympics had just under 700 positive cases. It will be interesting to see how the Paralympics compare. Meanwhile, Tokyo recorded 4,220 new cases Tuesday and nine deaths. It remains under a state or emergency at least until after the Paralympic Games end.

The covid cluster in New Zealand has grown to 148 cases. Experts say that it could grow to 1,000 and take four to six weeks to stamp out. There were 41 new cases on Tuesday. The majority of cases appear to be Samoans; I don't know enough to comment as to the possible reason other than they may have been to the same gathering. There are only eight people hospitalized, none of whom are in the ICU. A math modeler at the University of Canterbury says that the cluster is on track to be the largest New Zealand has experienced. Just when you thought you were home free, one little thing goes wrong. 

The chief health officer of New South Wales says that the citizens there could be wearing masks indoors for years and that proof of vaccination may be required to enter high-risk venues even when the state hits 80 percent of the population vaccinated. The lockdowns there continue with no real end in sight.

Meanwhile in England, the Cornwall tourist board is urging people to go somewhere else. Cornwall just hosted some 70,000 people at the Boardmasters music and surfing festival. So far almost 5,000 covid cases have been traced back to that festival. I don't know if there was any sort of vaccine or testing required to attend. I wonder what will happen as the college football season here begins in a week or two. I know that the local university is not restricting attendance now, and has no vaccine or testing requirement that Ive heard about. Perhaps fortunately, they haven't had a sellout game in quite some time. 

Charlie Watts, the drummer for the Rolling Stones, has died at the age of 80. I wonder if they'll replace him and, if so, how old the replacement will happen to be. Will they search for another geriatric to fit in with the rest of the group or might they take a chance with someone much younger? And who will be the next group member to kick the bucket? Mick Jagger? Keith Richards? Just remember that you can't always get what you want.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 26 (526)

Big coronavirus domestic news of the day is that the FDA has given full approval to the Pfizer vaccine for people ages 16 or older. The vaccine as given to ages 12-15 is still under an emergency authorization. The decision on whether the vaccine may be given to children under 12 may be months away, something I know some parents will absolutely hate hearing. The full approval strengthens the case for any vaccine mandate. The military, for instance, can now move full steam ahead and not have to deal with questions about the vaccine's safety if it had not been fully approved. New York City can require all Department of Education employees to have received at least one dose of vaccine by September 27. There is no testing alternative there; it's the vaccine or a valid medical or religious exemption. I've noted before on this blog haw much I hate the alternative of presenting a negative covid test. A person can test negative one day and positive the next. It's far from a truly valid substitute for vaccination.

School districts in Florida and Texas continue to defy the bans on mask mandate issued by their governors, sometimes in creative ways. One school district in Texas modified their dress code to make "no mask" one of the banned clothing items. At least seven districts in Florida, serving over a million students, are now requiring masks. One county put in a mask mandate after recording over 200 new cases in the first week of school. 

Locally, the county school system opened today, while Wednesday is the first day of classes in the city. (Virginia has independent cities that function the same way counties do; the county in which I live is home to one of those independent cities.) I just learned that the county schools have no plan to test staff or students in any way at any time. The city schools are working with a state program that would combine samples to test some defined group. If the combined sample is negative, no one in the group has covid. If the combined sample is positive, then each individual can be tested to determine who actually has it. I much prefer the city's reasoning. I'm not sure things will end well for the county.

Alabama reports that 85 percent of their hospitalized covid patients are unvaccinated. I find that troubling after weeks of reading that between 95 and 100 percent of people testing positive had not been vaccinated. Is Delta winning on the number of breakthrough infections? In a month, will only 75 percent of hospitalizations be unvaccinated people?

Taiwan has a 40 percent partial vaccination rate but only three percent of people are fully vaccinated. The country has had so much trouble getting vaccine from foreign manufacturers that they have started using a locally developed vaccine called Medigen. It has emergency authorization based on Phase 2 trials, but concerns have been expressed about its effectiveness and safety. Is this a case of any port in a storm? If Taiwan has the resources to purchase vaccine, I find it troubling that they cannot purchase it. Are countries such as the US, Canada, and the UK hogging the vaccine market to an extent that countries that can buy it can't get it? We've been criticized for keeping more vaccine than we need and letting countries using Covax and donated vaccine go without. Are we also keeping some countries from buying their own?

Jumping around the world, Vietnam is deploying the military to enforce the Ho Chi Minh City lockdown that started on Monday. People cannot leave homes even to purchase food. Needless to say, there was lots of panic buying over the weekend. It's been nine years since I was in Vietnam, but it seemed to me that many if not most of the people there purchased food daily. We met several people who never cooked but ate all their meals at sidewalk cafes. I wonder what they're doing right now. 

Finally, did you know that Africa has five mountain ranges with enough seasonal snow to allow skiing? There are even two rudimentary ski resorts, one of which is in Lesotho.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 25 (525)

The Central Park concert intended to celebrate New York City's recovery from the pandemic was cancelled midway through due to lightning. Only vaccinated people could attend,which for most things in New York includes people who have received just a single shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. The photos I saw of the crowds showed no masks whatsoever and shoulder-to-shoulder people as far as the photo showed. Superspreader? I hope not, but Delta does have a bit of attraction to the partially vaccinated. 

Remember bleach as a covid preventative? The new one is ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug commonly used for livestock. Some people are taking it to prevent covid, something Fox News has promoted. NIH says that the studies being cited in terms of ivermectin's preventing covid had "serious methodological limitations" including small sample sizes and unclear outcome measures. In Mississippi, over two-thirds of recent calls to the state's poison control center were related to ingestion of ivermectin.

Sri Lanka has begun a 10-day lockdown after recording over 3,600 new cases daily since Tuesday. Vietnam recorded 10,654 cases on Friday, one of the highest daily tolls ever. Residents of Ho Chi Minh City have been ordered to stay at home. Over half the country's cases and 80 percent of the deaths have occurred in Ho Chi Minh City. Only 1.6 percent of the country's population is fully vaccinated. Over 4,000 people protested the latest lockdown in Melbourne. Most were not wearing masks. 

The Paralympics are starting in Tokyo, where the pandemic has worsened dramatically since the Olympics were held. Some public health experts argue that holding the Olympics in the midst of the surge in cases sent the wrong message, encouraging people to let up on mitigation measures. Nationwide, over 80 percent of critical care beds are occupied. New cases averaged 20,307 per day this week up from 14,729 last week.

Here at home, pediatric hospitalizations are at their highest point since the pandemic began. Those under 12 are unvaccinated, not by choice, making the elevated numbers not quite a huge surprise. Research published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine showed that critically ill covid patients were less likely to die or require ventilation if they lay on their stomachs while receiving oxygen. I don't know enough anatomy to be able to guess why that might be the case. Maybe lying on one's stomach puts less pressure on the lungs than does lying on one's back.

XPot held a rally in Alabama and informed the crowd that he had been vaccinated against covid and they should be vaccinated as well. The response? Boos and jeers. I have to give XPot credit for pushing the idea of vaccinations. He did something I would agree with for once.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 24 (524)

More short takes after spending a few hours traveling to Richmond and back to look at induction ranges. No place here had any or were going to get any in the short run, so I let my fingers do the typing first to obtain phone numbers of appliance merchants in Richmond and then to punch the digits. I stopped calling at the first place that had any. The two they had each had pluses and minnuses; the question is how those figure in the difference in price? The store is holding both until Monday afternoon; we told them we'd call Monday morning and tell them which one we want.

And so ... the FDA is expected to give the Pfizer vaccine full approval next week, perhaps as early as Monday. Some public health experts hope that this might help some vaccine-hesitant people become vaccine recipients. Fingers crossed that it works.

The local university has "dis-enrolled" over 200 students who failed to provide proof of covid vaccination or exemption therefrom. Only about 40 had actually registered for classes meaning (that start Monday or Tuesday) that the others may have decided they weren't coming after all. The school said that it had reminded students of the requirement by text, email, snail mail, phone call, and phone call to parental unit(s), so they can't say they did not know about it. Meanwhile, Rice University in Texas will require masking but not vaccination; being in Texas means that legally they cannot make such requirements. Even so, they have delayed the start of classes by two days and will run all classes online through September 3.

The archdiocese of Philadelphia is joining those of New York City, San Diego, and Honolulu in not sanctioning religious exemptions for covid vaccination mandates. The archdiocese of El Paso is even requiring their employees be vaccinated. 

 New York City is imposing a vaccine requirement for high school athletes and coaches in what it terms "high-risk" sports. Those would be ones with definite or likely close contact between players. Right now, those include football, volleyball, basketball, lacrosse, and wrestling. So far soccer, baseball, tennis, track, and gymnastics are considered at low risk. Hawaii has a similar mandate in place. 

All nursing home employees must be vaccinated as a condition of employment, a requirement that will take effect sometime in September. Facilities not complying will face fines or lose eligibility to get federal reimbursements. I'm in an internet quilting guild and heard today from one of our older (70s or 80s) members that she'd finally put her husband with Alzheimer's in a memory care unit after years of taking care of him at home. She went to visit him today and returned home to an afternoon call from the facility that a staffer had tested positive so her husband would be tested, and she should get tested herself. God, that sucks! I will admit that one reason I am continuing to stay alone save for things that require me in person--such as picking out major appliances I'll be using--masked and distanced is that I don't want to take covid to my mom in assisted living, where it appears a third of the aides did not want to be vaccinated the first time around. She has enough of a chance to catch it from one of them; she doesn't need more chances from me. 

 

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 23 (523)

I'll try not to pad this post too much, but my pandemic notes are scant. I spent a good two-plus hours this morning with my oldest friend here. I used to feel funny about calling her my "oldest" friend, at least until I realized that she is the person here that I have known for the longest time and, at 86, she really is the oldest non-family person I consider a friend. I spent time this afternoon with an even-older woman who happens to be my mom. We watched golf and chatted about the state of the golf, the world, and the two flocks of Canada geese that live around her facility and who do not seem to get along at all. I got home and found The Professor getting ready to take a walk, so I went along. 

Three more senators have tested positive for covid. All were fully vaccinated, and all have minor symptoms. This brings the Congressional covid count to 11 senators and over 50 representatives. I have not seen a similar count for governors, but Virginia's governor had it as does Texas's.

Philosophical and potentially legal question: Does a primary care physician have the right to refuse to see a patient who is unvaccinated? In other words, if I were not vaccinated, could my family doc refuse to see me for my annual physical? What I read suggested that legally it might be okay, but ethically?

Baptist Health hospitals in Jacksonville, Florida currently have over 500 covid patients. This is more than twice the number they had at the peak of the July 2020 covid surge. A church in that area with 6,000 members, primarily African American, had six members die in a 10-day span. None had been vaccinated. Now, the church has medical experts available after services not to give vaccinations, but to answer questions about the vaccines. The church has also hosted two vaccination drives at which over 1,000 shots were given.

Over one million doses of vaccine were administered yesterday. This was the first time since early July that vaccinations topped one million in a single day. The overall rate of vaccinations is over 70 percent higher than one month ago. The Culver City Unified School District, a small district in Los Angeles, will require students over the age of 12 to be vaccinated. This is the first such requirement in California and possibly in the nation as a whole. Proof of vaccination is due on November 19.

The Texas Education Agency has suspended enforcement of the ban on mask mandates, and the Texas State Supreme Court said that school districts may require masks after all. Both decisions are temporary. A Florida district that does not require masks had to quarantine 440 students two days into the school year.

Finally, a few tidbits on the non-covid side. Rattlesnakes change the frequency of their rattle the closer humans get to them. The frequency changes from 40 Hertz to 60 to 100 Hertz. The higher frequency made people in a simulation study believe that the snake was closer to them than it really was. The frequency change may be a survival technique for the rattlesnake. My question is whose survival? The snake's or ours?

And in the at-least-we-don't-have-that-disease-here-too category, Ivory Coast has Ebola cases, Guinea has cases of Marburg (Marburg's first appearance in West Africa), and Uganda has polio cases. In other words, we may have it easier here than we thought.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 22 (522)

Covid hospitalizations in the US are hitting record highs for all age groups under 50. The most affected groups are people ages 30-39 and people under 18. Both of these groups are more than 30 percent over their previous peaks. Overall hospitalization numbers are rising but still below the highest numbers, those from January. If the numbers keep increasing at the same rate, though, there could be a new all-time record number of hospitalizations in just a month. Florida, Arkansas, Oregon, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Mississippi have all set pandemic records for hospitalizations in recent weeks. Alabama has no more ICU beds. Wednesday night, there were "negative 29" ICU beds available. People are waiting in emergency room hallways until there is an opening. Arkansas is getting close to their capacity. 

All teachers and school personnel including volunteers at all schools--public, private, and charter--in Washington State will need to be vaccinated as a condition of employment. This is the strictest state-level mandate set so far. There is a deadline of October 18 after which those not complying will face possible dismissal. There is no regular testing alternative. Exceptions will only be made for legitimate medical reasons and "sincerely held religious beliefs." So, how are "sincerely held religious beliefs" verified? Regular attendance at some house of worship belonging to a denomination not amenable to medical care? A letter from your pastor? Would Pastafarians qualify?

The White House is fighting back on the bans of mask mandates in schools. The Secretary of Education says that he will deploy the Education Department's civil rights enforcement arm to investigate states that block universal masking. Letters have been sent to the governors of Florida, Texas, Arizona, Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah admonishing their efforts to ban mask mandates. Perhaps more frightening than a ban on mask mandates is Florida's governor saying that the decision to quarantine children should be left up to the parents. It was one thing when he said that passing someone in the hall should not count as exposure, but when he mentioned that parents could opt out of quarantining their kids because of exposure within a classroom, it's a good thing he was not in the room with me. 

The clear plastic barriers in stores, restaurants, and other potentially crowded places actually do little to stop the spread of the virus. They do not allow exhaled particles to disperse. They change the airflow in the room, disrupt normal ventilation, and create "dead zones" where particles can build up and become highly concentrated. If we use partitions again at the polls in November, maybe I should exhale to the side.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 21 (521)

Just learned we're under a tornado watch for the next five hours. Only once in the 30-plus years we've lived here has the sky gotten so angry that we took the animals and headed for the basement storeroom, the safest, most secure place in the house. If anything comes to pass to interrupt my writing, I'll let you now when I post. 

First, some gory details. Over the past week, the US has been averaging139,800 new cases each day, up 52 percent from two weeks ago. Deaths are up 87 percent to an average of 696 each day. These are nowhere near as high as they've been, but they're high enough for me to worry. Over a fourth of the ICU beds in use nationwide is occupied by a covid patient. The Delta variant now accounts for 99 percent of new cases, with only 50.9 percent of the population fully vaccinated. Cases in children are also rising just as schools reopen. There were over 121,000 new pediatric cases last week. This probably won't end well. (My expert opinion, not that of an expert.)

Remember the Texas governor who is prohibiting mask and vaccine mandates? He tested positive yesterday with a breakthrough infection. He can't be counted as a breakthrough infection, though, because here in the US we only count breakthrough infections if they result in hospitalization or death. Right now, the governor is still alive and asymptomatic in the governor's residence. On Monday night, he spoke to a packed room of hundreds of people, most of whom were not masked nor were they keeping any distance from other people. The governor is getting monoclonal antibodies. Usually these are given only to patients who are at risk of getting very sick. Maybe there's something about the gov that we don't know. 

As for breakthrough infections, preliminary data from seven states hint that the Delta variant is changing the breakthrough picture. Breakthrough infections accounted for at least one in five newly diagnosed cases in six of the states and higher percentages of hospitalizations and deaths than had previously been observed in all seven. The seven states--California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia--were chosen because they've been keeping the most detailed data. The chair of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco noted, "Remember when the early vaccine studies came out, it was like nobody gets hospitalized, nobody dies. That clearly is not true." It's not just happening here either. Almost 60 percent of hospitalized covid patients in Israel are fully vaccinated despite "fully vaccinated" describing 78 percent of everyone over the age of 12.

I found an interesting discussion on three myths about vaccine mandates. First is the idea that such mandates are unprecedented. Not! There was a vaccination mandate issued in the late 1800s in reaction to smallpox. Health care workers, kids going to school, and members of the military have all been under some sort of vaccine mandate for years. The second myth is that vaccine mandates are illegal or unconstitutional. Again, not! The Supreme Court has ruled that local authorities have the right to issue vaccine and other health mandates. The Court has rejected all challenges to mandates based on constitutional arguments. Finally is that people will be required to be vaccinated in order to do anything ever again. This is not true, though there is some question of who should pay for the testing of people who voluntarily decline to be vaccinated and how long the testing should continue. Requirements vary by locality. 

The WHO director was not pleased to hear the news that Americans will be encouraged to get a booster shot eight months after their final dose of vaccine. "Vaccine injustice is a shame on all humanity, and if we don't tackle it together, we will prolong the acute stage of this pandemic for years when it could be over in a matter of months." I have to question that statement. I do not think the virus can be brought under control in a matter of months. Not gonna happen. The ONE campaign dedicated to ending extreme poverty and preventable disease agrees with the WHO director, saying that booster shorts threaten "to widen the gap between the haves and the have nots."

Japan is extending and expanding its states of emergency after seeing almost 20,000 new cases and 47 deaths on Tuesday. The entire Paralympic Games will now be held under the state of emergency surrounding Tokyo. Pope Francis put his two cents in on vaccination calling getting vaccinated "an act of love." New Zealand's one covid case has grown to ten. Genomic sequencing links those cases to the Delta outbreak that began in Sydney. The situation in New South Wales has not improved. They just set a new daily case record of 633 new cases and three deaths. Of those new cases, 63 were in children ages nine and under. The age range from 10 to 19 was represented by 104 cases, while 107 cases were in people in their 20s. Each person infected in New South Wales right now is passing the virus to 1.3 other people. 

The sun is shining, and what clouds there are are white, not grey. That's 35 minutes down, and 4 hours, 25 minutes to go. I'm not getting worried ... yet.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 20 (520)

It looks as if they'll be recommending booster shots eight months after the second Pfizer or Moderna shots or the only Johnson & Johnson shot. It seems that the vaccines will need full approval for this to happen. Assuming it does, my booster would be in mid-December. All I want for Christmas is my covid booster? I'll try not to think of how little those boosters will lessen Re.

The Delta variant continues to be most troublesome. One in five US ICUs is full to 95 percent capacity. This means there better not be a bad vehicular accident, purposeful or accidental shooting, or anything else that might require intensive care. There may not be a bed at the inn, er, in intensive care. Even regular-care beds are filling up. One Miami hospital that had 70 covid patients around the first of July now has over 300. Texas has asked the federal government to send five mortuary trucks. Covid cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are all still rising. Texas officials say that the trucks have been requested as a "precaution" to which I say, "Yeah, right." In Mississippi, a 30- to 50-bed field hospital is being set up in a parking garage. Health officials say that a "failure of the hospital system in Mississippi" is imminent.

A former assistant secretary for health under XPot (if you're new here, XPot is the ex-POTUS), a pediatrician, says that the US could soon reach a true number of about 500,000 new cases daily, which would mean 50 to 100 thousand Americans will get long covid. Child cases have increased steadily since the beginning of July. During the August 5 to 12 week, there were 121,427 child cases.

New Zealand has discovered its first locally transmitted covid case since February, resulting in a three-day nationwide lockdown. Auckland and an area the infected person recently visited will be locked down for seven days. There is a definite plus side to being an island nation, especially a relatively small one.

On the mandate front, 69 percent of adults polled support school mask mandates. Breaking that down by political preference, 92 percent of Democrats, 67 percent of Independents, and 44 percent of Republicans support the mandates. In terms of state prohibition of local mask mandates, 57 percent of Republicans support the bans while 16 percent of Democrats don't.

The mandate situation is proving to be a hot issue for higher education as well as K-12. While over 500 universities nationwide have vaccine mandates, many more do not. The Penn State faculty senate passed a resolution expressing "no confidence" in the university's plan to bring students back without a vaccine mandate. According to the university president, the decision was based or blamed on "political realities." Of the 71 percent of students who responded to a recent survey, 83 percent said they'd been vaccinated. You can do the math on that one.

At least Penn State has a mask mandate which is better than Clemson University in South Carolina. Yes, South Carolina, a state prohibiting both mask and vaccine mandates. Some Clemson faculty say that the university administration should push back and tell the state that as a university, Clemson needs to "follow the science." Clemson faculty will protest on the first day of classes calling for at least a mask mandate. Last spring's mask mandate was not carried over to this fall. It seems that Clemson has asked students to protect themselves from Delta by wearing masks, but few masks were to be seen at freshman convocation. For the transfer student convocation, masks were placed on every seat, and most were worn. 

Mississippi State faculty are concerned that only 52 percent of the student body there reports having been vaccinated. Some professors have requested remote learning until at least the Delta variant is brought under control. The Professor has not reported hearing of concerns from fellow faculty members at the local university. Said university does have a vaccine mandate, and close to 95 percent of students report having been vaccinated along with 93 percent of the faculty and staff. The mask mandate will be re-evaluated on September 6 and dropped or renewed as the situation requires. 

It seems that in many cases, we're still making it all up as we go along. Or maybe it's that the Road keeps turning unexpectedly as it goes on and on. I wonder how many people would claim to have been bored by the past year and a half.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 19 (519)

I don't get many comments on this blog, but I enjoy reading the ones I do get. I appreciate that people take the time to tell me something of their own experience, agree with something I wrote, even disagree; I learn from what readers share with me. There are days when I skip over long, informative reports and don't include them. in this blog. My blog, my rules. I put in what about the pandemic speaks to me. Every now and again I find myself wondering if I'd be reading this blog daily if I weren't writing it. Maybe. I really don't know. To those who do read this regularly or not and comment on it or not, thanks. 

Covid continues to surge in 40 states. The NIH director says we could have 200,000 new cases a day in a matter of weeks. The reasons include vaccine hesitancy, not following mitigation measures, and simple complacency. Many people are tired of the pandemic and want to go back to where they were in 2019, so that's what they try to do. News flash: It will never be 2019 again. Hopefully, it will never be 2020 again either. 

New York City plans to require visitors and staff members at museums and other cultural institutions to be vaccinated. The plan was negotiated with the Cultural Institutions Group composed of the 33 museums and art groups operating in city-owned buildings or on city-owned land. Vaccination can be proven with a photo or hard copy of an official vaccination card, a New York City vaccination app, or an "official vaccine record for cleared vaccines." I'm not really sure what that final one is, but that's how it was on the list.

Police and prison guards in California are less vaccinated than the California public. In one prison, only 16 percent of officers are fully vaccinated; six other prisons have rates at or below 30 percent. As of Friday, 64 percent of California's eligible public was fully vaccinated. The Los Angeles Police Department was 51.8 percent fully vaccinated as of June 8. The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department had a 26 percent vaccination rate but was only counting officers who were vaccinated at department clinics. San Francisco is setting a wonderful example with 79 percent of the sheriff's office and 80 percent of the police department at least partially vaccinated. 

Can breakthrough infections lead to long covid is a question that has not yet been studied in any detail. Ten to 30 percent of adult covid cases result in symptoms lasting over weeks or months. Most of the data collected on long covid has come from people who had not been vaccinated when they were infected. One study of breakthrough infections, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and conducted prior to the emergence of the Delta variant, looked at a group of 1,497 vaccinated health care workers, 39 of whom got breakthrough infections. Seven of the 39 were still exhibiting persistent symptoms six weeks after coming down with covid. The authors caution that the sample size was small and the study was not designed to look at long covid. It was designed to study antibody levels in infected people. 

Internationally, Hong Kong has added 15 more countries including France, Spain, and the US to its list of high-risk countries. This would mean a 21-day quarantine for people entering from those countries. Monday was the worst day so far in New South Wales, with seven deaths and 478 new cases. Sydney is now in its eighth week of lockdown. There is growing concern over getting vaccines to Aboriginal Australians. Only 15 percent of indigenous Australians have been fully vaccinated compared with 26 percent of all Australians. The Tokyo Paralympics will follow the footsteps of the Olympics and go on without spectators. Ninety-seven percent of the Olympics, including all the venues in Tokyo, had no  spectators. Finally, a Canadian study suggests that babies and toddlers are less likely to bring covid home than are teenagers, but once infected are more likely to spread the virus to others. Think twice about hugging that infant.

My brother commented in an email yesterday that he thinks of time as "before the pandemic" or "since the pandemic." He's not sure there will ever be an "after the pandemic." I do like that distinction. I was looking at a tour catalog yesterday, reading of a great adventure The Professor and I would like to take to Georgia (the country, not the state) and Armenia. There was a May 2022 departure date that would work for us. But wait. We're more than halfway through 2021 on the way to 2022. May is only what, nine months away. There's no way I'll be willing to get on a plane by then or go to a country whose covid status might be on the uncertain side. That's how I'm thinking now, since the pandemic.

The road goes ever on and on ... Day 18 (518)

I descended from the upstairs this morning and checked my news feed only to see video of helicopters flying between the US embassy in Kabul and the airport and the news that the Taliban had surrounded the city. I can't get Saigon 1975 out of my mind. The helicopter on the roof of the US embassy leaving scores of Vietnamese behind. That news wasn't enough, though. There are schools going virtual after less than two weeks of in-person instruction. There's research coming out of Finland suggesting that fully vaccinated people can get and transmit covid even when fully masked. Finally, the Ivory Coast has confirmed its first Ebola case since 1994.

After the morning dog-walk, it was time to check out the local and the Washington papers. The day got even better (said sarcastically). Here are the headlines from pages 4 and 5 of the local paper:

• Were 20 years in Afghanistan worth it? / Many US lives were lost, but Taliban now poised to regain rule.
• Afghan women fear return to 'dark days'
• Taliban siege continues / Biden deploys 1,000 more troops to Kabul to aid in evacuation
• Death toll climbs to at least 57 / Authorities dispute social media reports of hundreds still missing (flooding in Turkey)
• At least 304 killed as 7.2 magnitude quake hits Haiti
• COVID-19 claiming more young victims
• 50 sent to hospitals in NY bus crash

There were also some short blurbs with no headlines. These concerned:

• Wildfires out west
• Heat wave in Europe
• School shooting in New Mexico
• Flooding in West Texas
• Storms in the Atlantic
• Attack on a wedding in Pakistan 

I wasn't sure I could handle any more bad news until I looked at the Outlook section of this morning's Washington Post. I won't say this article was good news, but it had me happily punching numbers into the calculator on my phone only to be telling The Professor that we really are fucked. I'm something of a numbers nerd, and this gave me something to play with. Remember R0 (arr-naught), the number of  new people one contagious person infects? Meet Re (arr-eee), the number of new people a single person infects accounting for precautions being taken and overall immunity levels. Here's the bad news about the Delta variant: Even with full 100 percent immunity (everyone is fully vaccinated) and using 85 percent effectiveness (what the drug manufacturers say holds against Delta), Re is still greater than one. Booster shots aren't worth it in terms of lowering Re under one. Using the current 50 percent of fully vaccinated people, Re approaches five. As the authors put it, "So with half the population in the United States vaccinated, the delta variant is still more infectious that the original variant was last year."

Have a good rest of the weekend. I plan to try to.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 17 (517)

The governor of South Carolina borrowed a page from the governor of Texas, saying, "Mandating masks is not the answer. Personal responsibility is the answer, common sense is the answer. And we have an abundance of both in South Carolina." Really? I guess personal responsibility is all about responsibility for the first person, yourself. Other persons must not matter.

The idea of vaccine booster shots is getting more heat internationally. WHO says that stopping booster shots until at least the end of September will help ease vaccine inequality. The US government says it won't do this and describes it as a "false choice." I've been trying to figure out just what this statement means. I still believe that none of us is safe until all of us are safe, which means that other countries matter, especially those not able to help themselves to the degree we can help ourselves. 

New South Wales has announced another seven days of lockdown and added a fine of $5,000 for breaking lockdown. Offenses in this regard include lying to obtain a travel permit and lying to a contact tracer. There is a $3,000 fine for lesser offenses including exercising in groups larger than two. The state is bringing in an additional 500 military personnel to help the 300 already there. The death toll in the current outbreak is up to 40. There are almost 400 people in hospitals, 64 of those in ICUs and 29 on ventilators. There have been almost 12,000 cases since the current outbreak started in late June. This go-round seems to be hitting younger people harder than earlier ones did. Of the 64 people in ICUs, four are in their 20s, six are in their 30s, and seven are in their 40s.

Yeah, short post. Real life can get in the way sometimes. Besides, who wants a lot of "we're fucked" news on the weekend? We're still fucked, but we don't have to think about it so much.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 16 (516)

The CDC today joined the FDA in authorizing a third dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine for people with compromised immune systems. The authorization applies to transplant recipients, cancer patients, patients with HIV/AIDS, and other people with immune systems compromised in some way. Vaccinations are moving slowly in the US, but in the right direction. On July 29, 615,000 people were vaccinated; on August 12, 699,000 people. Our neighbor to the north, Canada, has the world's highest vaccination rate with 82 percent of the eligible population over the age of 12 having gotten at least one shot. Some 70.3 percent are fully vaccinated.

San Francisco is barring unvaccinated people from indoor spaces; the order takes effect August 20. Showing a negative test result is not enough, nor is being only partially vaccinated. The order applies to indoor dining, bars, gyms, large concerts, and theaters. It does not apply to dining outdoors, entering restaurants to pick up takeout, or to children under 12 who cannot yet be vaccinated. Cases in California are about 10 times higher than they were in mid-June despite 65 percent of eligible residents being fully vaccinated. In San Francisco itself, 78 percent of the eligible population is fully vaccinated; 96 percent of residents between the ages of 12  and 17 are fully vaccinated. The city would like to see those percentages increase. For a group of at least five people, the city will send a mobile vaccination team to a home or business. People even get a choice of the Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson vaccines.

Vaccine mandates continue to make the news. The Department of Health and Human Services will require its health workers, including contractors and volunteers, to be vaccinated; there will be no option of submitting negative test results. Medical and religious exemptions will be allowed. Many Health and Human Services workers are already required to have flu and other vaccines. The Supreme Court will allow Indiana University to require students be vaccinated. Exemptions will be permitted on religious, ethical, and medical grounds. Exempted students muse wear masks and be tested frequently. I checked the Indiana University website in search of an explanation of the "ethical" grounds. There, it listed "ethical objection" with no explanation. I will have to give thought to just what that might involve. Closer to home, the local county is requiring public school teachers and staff to be vaccinated or be tested regularly. 

Some brief numerical factoids: Over the past week, the national average for cases is 125,800, up 78 percent from two weeks ago. Deaths rose by 92 percent to an average of 616 per day. There were 68,800 patients hospitalized each day, up 82 % from two weeks ago. Florida, Mississippi, and Oregon reported more cases in the last week than in any other seven-day period. Texas and Florida accounted for almost 40 percent of new hospitalizations last week. 

It turns out that the prevalence of covid among migrants at the border is the same as for the US overall. In other words, the surge in covid cases can't be linked to migrants. It looks as if we owe it all to the Delta variant despite what some politicians are saying.

So much lately seems like "been there, done that" moments. Part of me would like to get angry about that, but most of me want to shrug and say, "Meh." It is what it is and will be what it will be. I've made it this far and can keep on keeping on.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 15 (515)

As the child of educators and as someone who went to school, college, and grad school for something like 19 years, I think "school year" before "calendar year." We're not having autumn weather here yet, but the back-to-school ads, the school buses learning routes, and photos posted on social media about someone's kids first day of school almost scream "Happy New Year!" to me. It's going to be an interesting one. Some areas have already switched to virtual learning at least on a temporary basis. And on Twitter this morning, I read a series of posts that made me oh so very glad that our kids are beyond K-12 or even college education. A mother in Richmond, Virginia wrote that less than two weeks into the school year, three fourth grade classes at the school one of her children attended had been sent home because three children had tested positive for covid. In the middle of the thread of tweets, it came out that a fourth child had tested positive. The parents of fourth graders were told that the children could not come back to school for 14 days. While the school was giving out computers to the children who did not have them at home, the real issue was a lack of answers from the school administration. A couple of parents wrote of phone calls not being returned or being told to call a different person who then did not return calls. It may be all downhill from here on out.

South Carolina has joined Texas and Florida in terms of a governor's saying that schools or school systems cannot issue mask mandates for the coming school year. All three governors have threatened to cut funding and/or salaries for districts that defy the order. The White House has said that it will look into whether federal funds could be used to make up any funding cut by governors. This just came as a notification to my cell phone: The Governor of Virginia has unveiled a public health order putting in place a universal mask mandate for K-12 schools. Unlike in states where the governor has banned mask mandates with some schools or school districts putting them in anyway, the order in Virginia came because some districts were acting against issuing mask mandates. 

Hawaii has joined California in requiring teachers to be vaccinated or tested regularly. The order in Hawaii applies only to public school teachers, while California's applies to both public and private school teachers. Minnesota has issued a vaccine or testing mandate for state employees. It is not clear if it applies to teachers.

The CDC uses a metric based on covid case numbers and positivity rates to classify locations in terms of the transmissibility of covid. Right now, 98 percent of US residents live in an area of high or substantial community spread, compared with 19 percent one month ago. Nationwide, the number of new cases has increased 86 percent in the last two weeks. The number of deaths is up 75 percent over the same time period. More than once in the last couple of days, in conversation with Son #1 or The Professor, I have repeated my early mantra, "we're fucked." I have trouble right now envisioning any way this is all going to end that isn't badly.

One in five US hospitals with ICUs, some 583 total hospitals, have ICUs that are at least 95 percent full. Over 10,000 covid patients have been admitted to Texas hospitals this week. At least 53 hospitals in the state have full ICUs. The President and Chief Executive Officer of Harris Health System in Houston says, "If this continues, and I have no reason to believe that it will not, there is no way my hospital is going to be able to handle this. I am one of those people that always sees the glass half-full, I always see the silver lining. But I am frightened by what is coming." There were 240 children hospitalized at Children's Hospital of San Antonio, an increasing number admitted with severe symptoms. There are even infants as young as two months on supplemental oxygen. Many children arrive with unrelated illnesses but then test positive for covid. 

Preliminary, not yet peer-reviewed findings from the Mayo Clinic suggest that both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are preventing significantly fewer infections than before Delta become dominant. Pfizer itself says that its vaccine loses about six percentage points of efficacy every two months, a result consistent with research coming out of Israel and the UK.

Many police are refusing to be vaccinated. The Fraternal Order of Police estimates that over 500 officers have died from covid since the start of the pandemic. It is not known if they caught it on the job. The FOP recommends vaccination. It's a sticky issue because mandates might be a violation of collective bargaining agreements in effect in some place.

Coming up, the FDA is expected to announce that a third dose of vaccine be given to immunocompromised people, and the intel group looking into the origins of the virus is nearing its 90-day point. A draft report is supposedly under preliminary review.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 14 (514)

The national vaccination rate in the US has risen to what it was in June. California will require all teachers and school staff to be vaccinated or tested weekly; Dr.Fauci approves. The CDC today urged pregnant women to be vaccinated, saying that no increased risk of miscarriage had been found connected with vaccination. Three major airlines--Southwest, American, and Delta-- will not require employees to be vaccinated. I don't plan on flying anytime soon, but I think United, which is requiring vaccinations, would be my first choice. 

Reacting to the Delta variant, Oregon has joined Louisiana and Hawaii in reinstating a statewide mask mandate. Hawaii is limiting gatherings to no more than 10 indoors and 25 outdoors. Indoor events at bars, restaurants gyms, and places of worship are limited to 50 percent of capacity. Masks are required at all times except when eating or drinking. On July 1, there were 40 hospitalizations in Hawaii related to covid; there were 246 yesterday. Of those 246, 235 were unvaccinated. An executive of the Health Care Association of Hawaii warns, "The numbers tell us that the worst of the surge is in front of us." Two judges in Texas have ruled that local leaders can issue temporary mask mandates despite the governor's order forbidding them. There were almost 20,000 new cases in Texas yesterday, nearly double what there were two weeks ago. The ICU at Houston's Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital is full, with 63 percent of the patients being covid cases. 

As covid cases surge, so are testing requests. The number of people seeking tests in California has more than doubled from a month ago when case counts were at the lowest point of the year. The requests for tests are rising nationwide. The surge is being driven by vaccinated people concerned about breakthrough infections. Germany will stop paying for covid tests for people unvaccinated by choice. After October 11, only people under 18, pregnant women, or people with medical reasons not to get vaccinated will be able to be tested free of charge. I've actually thought of that as an incentive for people to get vaccinated. If people have to repeatedly present test results coming from the last 72 hours and they've got to pay for the tests themselves, getting vaccinated would save money.

Authorities in northern Germany say that 8,600 people there may have been injected with saline solution, not vaccine, by a Red Cross nurse. The nurse's motives are not known , but she had posted skeptical views about vaccines on social media. The unit leading the investigation is the one that investigates politically motivated crimes. 

A Sydney man has been charged with breaching public health orders. He spent over a week in Byron Bay before testing positive. With the lockdown in place, travel more than six miles from one's home is generally not permitted. The man claims he was inspecting properties, travel that is exempt from lockdown rules. Authorities are investigating the truth of his claim. He evidently did not believe in the virus, did not wear a mask, and did not do any sort of distancing. He is currently in a hospital. When he is released the police want strict bail conditions.

Volunteers are digging graves in Indonesia, and coffin makers are making three time as many coffins daily as they used to. It too over a year for Indonesia to exceed 50,000 deaths but only nine weeks to double that. 

The WHO director has warned that unless things change, the world could see 100 million more covid cases by early 2022. The "official" count now is around 200 million, but the real number is much higher. Looking at how case numbers have doubled in a relatively short time in countries around the world, I can't say that I think we won't hit 300 million in early 2022. Maybe we should have a pool on when we see the 300 millionth case. I thought about saying "when and where," but I don't expect we'll know the specific place. It could even be right here in the good ole US of A.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 13 (513)

Here's your irregularly scheduled alarm about something else that can hurt or kill you. The CDC is investigating four cases of a rare and serious bacterial infection called melioidosis after identifying cases in Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, and Texas. Two of the four patients have died. Melioidosis is normally contracted through travel, principally travel to Southeast Asia or northern Australia. What is concerning is that none of the four patients had traveled internationally. The most likely cause then is some imported product such as food or drink, a personal care or cleaning product, medicine, or a single ingredient in any of those products. Meioidosis comes from a bacteria called Burkholderia pseudomallei typically found in contaminated water or soil. Symptoms can be mistaken for those of tuberculosis and include cough, shortness of breath, weakness, vomiting, fever, or rash on abdomen and face. Underlying factors such as kidney disease, diabetes, and excessive alcohol use can increase the risk of serious illness. Two of the four patients, including one of the two who died has risk factors such as COPD and cirrhosis.

China has punished dozens of local officials for their failure to control Delta outbreaks. This is the worst resurgence in China in over a year. In Australia, New South Wales has expanded its lockdown geographically in response to four deaths and 356 new locally transmitted cases almost all in Sydney. The lockdown is now in its seventh week and scheduled to end on August 28. It may very well last through September, though, given the new numbers. Only 22.5 percent of Australians over the age of 16 are fully vaccinated. 

The CDC has added seven countries to the list of Level 4 Do Not Go There countries. A country is added when there have been over 500 cases per 100,000 residents in the past 28 days. The additions are Aruba, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), France, French Polynesia, Iceland, Israel, and Thailand.

The US is averaging 124,000 new cases daily, over double the number two weeks ago, and the highest rate since early February. Hospitals in hot spots are approaching capacity. Pediatric hospitalizations continue to rise leading to worry that the Delta variant may be more virulent in kids. The last week saw 94,000 new cases in children. Most don't require hospitalization, but the number that do is growing. Last week, 200 children were admitted to a hospital across the US every day last week. Experts are predicting back-to-school surges, something no parent or school employee wants to hear.

The governor of Texas has appealed for out-of-state help in fighting the third covid wave. A county-owned hospital in Houston has put up tents for covid overflow. Some patients are being sent out of state including one to North Dakota. The Texas Department of State Health is looking outside Texas for nurses and other needed personnel. Private hospitals already have vaccine mandates. Dallas is joining Houston in putting in mask mandates in schools. The two-week daily average of new cases is up 165 percent to 8,533. I can't help but think that if the governor had been willing all along to permit vaccine and mask mandates, he would not now need to be looking "outside" for help and the situation would not be quite so dire.

Gym closures during the early days of the pandemic led lots of people to exercise at home. Now that gyms are, for the most part, reopened, many of those people are not going back. As one person put it, she no longer has to drive to and from the gym, fill water bottles, change clothes, and spend time away from her family. We may be in a new era of high-tech home workout equipment and virtual classes. Peloton reports that sales are up 141 percent in the first three months of 2021. If you can afford Peloton, you can afford even more. Forty percent of Peloton users also have gym memberships. 

The local university's health center has tightened their restrictions on visitors. They never did completely end the restrictions put in place in 2020; now they're starting on the way back to those extra-strict restrictions. It's just another sign that we are still far from any sort of normal.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 12 (512)

The Closing Ceremonies to the Summer Olympics were yesterday, and the Winter Olympics start in Beijing in but 180 days. If you thought the covid restrictions in Tokyo were tight, the ones planned for Beijing are even tighter. There will essentially be no contact between Chinese people and the people associated with the Olympics. Guards in biohazard suits will patrol to stop people from leaving the Olympic bubble. Interviews will be conducted behind plastic separating walls and using microphones. People associated with the Olympics will wear armpit thermometers that will alert someone should the wearer begin to run a fever. I assume that they will take competition into account because I would think the exertion of, say, cross-country skiing or speed skating might raise someone's body temperature. 

Covid cases here in the US continue to average over 100,000 daily, an average that has doubled from two weeks ago. Deaths are also close to having doubled, at about 516 daily. The Delta variant now accounts for 93 percent of US cases. The US military will mandate vaccines for troops even if the FDA has not given full approval to a vaccine. The Secretary of Defense says that this is one of the few ways left to try to protect troops from the virus. 

The governor of Arkansas had signed a bill banning mask and vaccine mandates. With cases surging, he now says, "It was an error to sign that law. I admit that....facts change, and leaders have to adjust to the new facts and the reality of what you have to deal with." Not all of his fellow governors agree. This, from a statement from the office of the Governor of Texas: "Governor Abbott has been clear that we must rely on personal responsibility, not government mandates. Every Texan has a right to choose for themselves and their children whether they will wear masks, open their businesses, or get vaccinated." The statement went on to urge people to get vaccinated while at the same time noting that the vaccine "will always remain voluntary and never forced in Texas." Cases are increasing exponentially in Austin, Texas; San Antonio and Houston are also experiencing surges. Houston's mayor has defied the governor's ban on mask mandates. Only six ICU beds, 499 hospital beds, and 313 ventilators are available in the Texas trauma service area that serves the 2.4 million people in and around Austin.

Staying in the South, Louisiana how leads the nation in new cases. Friday saw a daily increase of 6,116 cases. There are 2,421 covid sufferers hospitalized, 277 on ventilators. The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival scheduled for October 8-17 in New Orleans has been canceled for the second year in a row. Mississippi health care services are also stretched thin; there are only 42 adult ICU beds available in the entire state. In Alabama, 93 percent of ICU beds are occupied by covid patients. In Georgia, hospitals in Atlanta are nearing capacity.

The Florida governor signed a law that says proof of vaccination cannot be requested in Florida. A US District judge now says that Norwegian Cruise Line can ignore this law and require both passengers and crew to present proof they have been vaccinated. Whether this will really help is open to question after six passengers on a Royal Caribbean cruise tested positive for covid despite having been vaccinated and testing negative right before departure.

So the more things change, the more they somewhat stay the same. I don't think crowd or attendance limits will be put reinstated, though, nor will curfews. Should they be? I'll trust the public health people on that. Right now, I plan on working at a fiber festival the first weekend in October. It will be my first time in a crowd since March, 2020 other than while getting vaccinated. As I did at the vaccination sites, I will be wearing a mask, along with a button noting that I choose to wear a mask even while fully vaccinated. However, should there be a covid outbreak in the area around that time, I may decide it's not worth the risk. Same old same old? Probably. I'm still more than a little afraid.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 11 (511)

Jumping from country to country internationally, the Philippines just saw its biggest single-day spike in deaths since April 9. That would be 287 deaths. Russia says that it has had 164,881 covid deaths, but  records show 463,000 excess deaths since April 2020. Thailand had fewer than 5,000 covid cases in all of 2020 but has had over 700,000 cases so far in 2021. Saturday saw a daily record number of new cases, 22,000, not to mention 212 deaths. Canada will reopen its border to fully vaccinated US residents tomorrow. The US has yet to open its border in reverse. Finally, over 230,000 people protested in cities across France yesterday. It was the largest protest in four consecutive weekends of protest.

Somewhat internationally, there were 22 new cases tied to the Olympics Saturday, putting the total number of cases over 400. No athletes were in the 22 new cases. They administered over 600,000 tests during the course of the Games. Organizers are now in talks with national teams and Japanese officials to develop a follow-up system for the coming weeks. 

One of the infectious disease specialists at the local university's hospital tweeted that he was receiving job offers with local certifications handled, free housing, and set-your-own-hours scheduling if he could start immediately. All of the offers were from hospitals in, where else, Florida. Pediatric intensive care units there are overwhelmed, so they may be looking for pediatricians, too. 

Over 1,000 US cases have been identified as the Lambda variant using genomic sequencing. WHO considers Lambda a "variant of interest." Early studies suggest that it is more transmissible that the original virus, but so far, existing vaccines appear effective against it. 

The US is averaging over 100,000 new cases daily, the highest in almost six months. The last time the daily average was this high was February 11. The low point for the case average was 11,299 on June 22. On the good side, 50.1 percent of the US population is now fully vaccinated, a percentage that rises to 59 percent for people ages 12 and over, 61 percent for people ages 18 and over, and 80 percent for people 65 and over.

Austin, Texas sent an alert via text, phone call, email, social media, and other channels reporting that "the Covid-19 situation in Austin is dire. Healthcare facilities are open but resources are limited due to a surge in cases." The governor of Texas has banned mask and vaccine mandates; the city may sue the state over the mask mandate. Friday was one of the worst days since the pandemic began in 2020. The ICUs are near capacity with 102 patients on ventilators. 

Kindergarten enrollment during the last school year was about one million kids lower than expected. Many schools saw 20 percent fewer kids than expected. These children will now be starting first grade without the basics learned in kindergarten. The largest declines were in neighborhoods below or just above the poverty line, the kids from which may be most in need of those kindergarten skills.

Public health experts say that there is no evidence that migrants are driving the surge in covid cases. Many major outbreaks are happening in states that do not border Mexico, including Arkansas and Missouri. One expert pointed out that the coronavirus is not a border issue nor is it a migrant issue. It is a national issue. It is actually an international one, but I'll let an expert call it a national issue here.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 10 (510)

The local university has added a mask mandate for fall, well, until September 6 at which point it may stay or go. Masks must be worn at all times (except for eating or drinking) inside any building except dormitories by all people, vaccinated or not. Those people who are not yet vaccinated must wear masks even outdoors. The psychologist in me loves that in everything I've read about this the university never calls the unvaccinated unvaccinated. They are always "people who have yet to be vaccinated." I don't know if this is to make them feel less stigmatized, less set apart in a negative way? 

Protests seem the in thing this weekend. Protests in Italy are against new measures requiring proof of coronavirus status to attend indoor events and for teachers. Some protestors in Milan wore Star of David badges that bore the words "not vaccinated." Thousands in Poland are protesting covid restrictions on unvaccinated people. Some carried "Enough of coronapsychosis" signs. Protestors in Paris shouted, "Macron we don't want your pass." As of Monday, people will need a health pass to eat in a restaurant or drink in a cafe indoors or on a terrace. Passes will also be required for intercity transportation. Finally, there was a protest in Bangkok against the perceived failure of the government to handle outbreaks. The only protests I can recall here in the US were several mask burnings quite a while back. I certainly don't recall hundreds or thousands of people filling a public space or marching through the streets protesting some aspect of the coronavirus situation. That's likely a good thing; I would think the crowds could easily become superspreaders.

Speaking of superspreaders, the Sturgis motorcycle rally started yesterday. They expect somewhere between 500,000 and 700,000 people to attend. Last year, hundreds of cases were linked to the rally. It's not clear what might happen this year. Much of the rally will be held outdoors, and for the first time, attendees can take alcohol outside bars. Vaccines should reduce the risk of serious illness. Despite its relatively low vaccination rate, South Dakota currently has the fewest new cases per capita. No screening process is in place, but Johnson & Johnson vaccines are offered, though they would not take effect until the rally was over. Also available will be coronavirus tests, free masks, and hand sanitizer stations.

California and Hawaii are putting pressure on workers in public and health sectors to get vaccinated. California is getting rid of the option of substituting regular testing for vaccination. California's public health officer says cases and hospitalizations are way up and unvaccinated health care workers contributed to that. The governor of Hawaii says that vaccinations or frequent testing of state employees is needed to prevent strain on the health care system. There is resistance in health care including nursing homes with some facilities saying that a vaccine mandate will cost them staff in a field that already has high turnover.

Florida now has more hospitalizations, including for pediatric patients, than any other state. A new state rule means that parents who feel school requirements amount to harassment can request private school vouchers. The governor notes, "We can either have a free society, or we can have a biomedical security state. And I can tell you: Florida, we're a free state. People are going to be free to choose to make their own decisions."

Only 27 percent of residents over the age of 12 are fully vaccinated in Lassen, California. A man whose wife got vaccinated early on did not get vaccinated until Delta arose. "I just waited until I wasn't afraid," he said. He says that friends have told him, "You drank the Kool-Aid." A vaccinated woman doesn't want to lose friends and says, "I wear my mask and hope for the best." Being an introvert with many acquaintances and few friends is something of a survival strategy, I guess; if my any of my friends have yet to be vaccinated, I'm not worried about losing them.

At dinner with close vaccinated friends last night, one commented on the fact that I still so carefully limit my activities and interactions. They made it sound like something noteworthy. It doesn't seem that way to me. I do worry at times about Son #1 and The Professor having to do so many things I don't want to. There was an article in today's Guardian with the headline "I want this pandemic to end--yet I secretly pine for another lockdown." I can't say that I'd like for the pandemic to continue indefinitely, but I can't say that staying away from many different things and people has really been that difficult. I wonder if I should be concerned about that.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 9 (509)

Vaccine and mask mandate stories abound. United Air will require all 67,000 US employees to get vaccinated. The governor of New Jersey will announce a mask mandate for public K-12 schools; the governor of Illinois has already said that all school districts must impose mask mandates. Four large school districts in Florida say that they will defy their governor's ban on mask mandates. A similar situation is unfolding in Arizona. And the president of the US's most powerful teachers' union has signaled her openness to vaccine mandates for teachers. 

While the Pfizer vaccine may have full FDA approval by September, it is not yet clear when some vaccine will be cleared for kids under the age of 12. Says an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina, "You can't control how they interact and touch each other. If there's a virus, kids will take it home." If your kids are grown, remember all the fall colds they would bring home from school? Yeah, that's a coronavirus, too.

A vaccine mandate for the US Armed Forces likely will not fly until at least one vaccine has full FDA approval. Things did not go well some 20 years ago when troops were required to be vaccinated with an anthrax vaccine that had not yet gotten full approval. The rationale behind requiring troops to be vaccinated is that accommodating unvaccinated troops would limit who can be selected for deployment. A former Air Force staff sergeant who is now a radiology tech in an Emergency Room explains, "We have to have healthy people in the military to carry out missions, and if the covid-19 vaccine achieves that, that's a very positive thing." The biggest challenge should vaccines be mandated will be scheduling shots around training.

France will join Germany in administering booster shots to older and more vulnerable people as no consensus exists among scientists on the need for such boosters. The WHO director remains against such shots saying that the world can't "accept countries that have already used most of the global supply of vaccines using even more of it." The German health ministry responds, "We want to provide the vulnerable groups in Germany with a preventive third vaccination and at the same time support the vaccination of as many people in the world as possible." Germany will thus donate at least 30 million doses to countries where vaccination campaigns are lagging. 

The US seven-day average for hospitalizations is up over 40 percent from a week before. Seven states that represent less than a fourth of the US population account for half of new infections and hospitalizations: Florida, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. Mississippi had only eight ICU beds available yesterday and over 1,147 people hospitalized with covid. Here's hoping this reverses as more people get vaccinated. There were more shots given in a single day since July3, 864,000 doses. Of these, 585,000 were first shots. Tennessee has seen a 90 percent increase in first shots over the past two weeks. Oklahoma has seen an 82 percent increase, while Georgia has seen an increase of 66 percent. Demand for shots in Louisiana has nearly quadrupled in recent weeks. Slowly but surely, are we getting there? I hope so, but the pandemic has taught me not to count my chickens too early, get my hopes up too high, or otherwise count on something possible while a negative looms off-stage.

Going back to work remains in limbo for many if not most people. There are also parents who would like to go back to work who say that they can't given the uncertainty about children returning safely to school full-time or child care.

I read one article today that described four areas in which our understanding of covid has changed. The first is how covid spreads. In the early days, the main advice was to wash hands and disinfect surfaces that might be touched. Fomite transmission turned out to pale against the aerosol transmission now known to be the principal means of covid spread. Second is, what else, masks. While they were not recommended early on, once the aerosol spread became clear and the medical people had all the masks they needed, masks began to be seen as essential to just us folks. Third is the nature of the disease itself. Early on, covid-19 was seen as a respiratory infection. Now, we have seen its involvement in blood clots, brain inflammation, delirium, stroke, heart abnormalities, and liver and kidney damage. Finally, it was not originally known--or suspected--that there could be so many asymptomatic cases. Now, we accept that one in three covid patients is asymptomatic and can still transmit the disease. This may well be what scares me most about covid--its spread by asymptomatic carriers. How many Typhoid Marys have we had out there?

And to make most of the readers of this blog feel better, thank your lucky stars or the gods and goddesses that you don't live in Grand Prairie, Texas. Someone's pet venomous West African banded cobra got out of its enclosure and has been on the loose since Tuesday. Authorities advise not trying to catch it should you come across it. I can't believe they even think most people would try to catch it, but I know that there are people who would. Me? I might well be on my way out of town until it's located. 

 

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 8 (508)

The known total of global covid cases is now over 200 million. Think it's going away anytime soon? The second 100 million cases happened in half the time of the first 100 million. The global total for deaths is now at 4.2 million. Note that both of these figures are surely undercounts. More of the deaths have been in the US than any other country, some 614,000. Give Brazil credit for 550,000 and India, for 425,000. Mexico with 240,000 and Peru with 200,000 fill out the top five. Britain, Colombia, France, Italy, and Russia have each had over 100,000 deaths.

Sydney remains locked down until at least August 28. Victoria just entered a new seven-say lockdown after eight new cases were discovered, with five that could not immediately be linked to known cases. Ibiza, known as Spain's party island, is looking for young private detectives ages 30 to 40 to find illegal parties before they start and tip off the police. If you're thinking what a good job this might be, they only want professional detectives, not amateur ones. 

After the WHO director's comments on first-world nations stopping booster shots until third-world ones have had a chance to get 10 percent of their population vaccinated, Dr. Fauci made a distinction between booster shots and additional doses of vaccine. Some groups, such as the immunocompromised, may need larger doses of vaccine for adequate protection, so their third shot would not be a booster as much as simply a third shot.

So far, they've tied about 500 cases of covid to the Milwaukee Bucks' winning the NBA championship. People shouting and cheering inside what looked to be a full arena and at watch parties outside not to mention a victory parade gave covid many, many opportunities to spread. Fifty-two percent of Wisconsin residents are fully vaccinated. The New York Auto Show scheduled for August 20-29 has been canceled. I wonder what other large-scale events might follow.

The New Jersey governor had some sharp words for the unvaccinated: "You've lost your minds. You are the ultimate knuckleheads. And because of what you are saying and standing for, people are losing their life."

More businesses are issuing vaccine mandates or offering bonuses to employees who get vaccinated. Pfizer will require all US workers and contractors to be vaccinated or tested weekly. Vanguard is offering a $1,000 reward to fully vaccinated employees. Tyson Foods says that vaccination is now a condition of employment for all US workers, and is offering $200 to front-line workers who verify that they are fully vaccinated. On the mask mandate front, the United Auto Workers and several auto companies have said that all auto workers will be required to wear masks at unionized plants, offices, and warehouses. This would include fully vaccinated workers.

The description of current covid sufferers is "younger, quicker, sicker." In California, case counts of millenials ages 18 to 34 have climbed faster than any other age bracket. They're 554 percent above the rate for millenials in a comparable two-week period in early June. Over the same period, cases for people ages 35 to 49 rose by 479 percent, while cases for people ages 65 to 79 rose by 222 percent. Some experts say that the high rates for millenials are a result of lower vaccination rates; others couple that with a devil-may-care, it's-not-going-to-hurt-me attitude. 

Here's a fact to drop into a conversation sometime. In 2020, 6,707 Americans renounced their US  citizenship, up 237 percent over 2019. Most people renouncing American citizenship are ultra-wealthy. Evidently, only the US and Eritrea tax people based on citizenship rather than residency. If you're an ultra-wealthy American and don't mind living abroad, your tax bill can be cut. An international tax lawyer based in Poland who specializes in helping people renounce their US citizenship says that there are likely to be another 20,000 or 30,000 people who want to renounce but can't get an appointment to do so. The wait for an appointment at the Canadian embassy is now a year and a half. Bern, Switzerland has a backlog of more than 300 cases.

The governor of Virginia did a covid press conference this afternoon. Early in the pandemic, he did them daily; I don't think they're on any regular schedule now. His big announcement was issuing a vaccine mandate for state employees. They need to verify their vaccination status by September 1 or submit negative test results weekly. I watched the press conference using Facebook, meaning that I had a running stream of comments to the right of the conference screen. More appeared to be negative than positive, but perhaps the positive people were busy working or doing something else, not sitting in front of a computer or television. Some comments were downright scary. One person equated getting a vaccination with being raped. Someone else asked if the vaccines work, then why hasn't covid gone away. Multiple people urged state workers to walk out. Several people also suggested border closures because that's how the virus is getting in. One person went so far as to say that the troublesome border was the one with West Virginia.

The Olympics close on Sunday. I must admit I am surprised at the low numbers of Olympics-related cases being cited. I wonder what might show up a week or two after everyone has gone home, though with the Paralympics coming later this month, there may be a number of people staying. Pandemics sure do keep us guessing.