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.