The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 35 (535)

We're now seeing an average of over 160,000 new cases daily, leading the CDC to ask people who are still unvaccinated not to travel over Labor Day weekend. Given that they won't get vaccinated when health experts recommend it, they're not likely to take a recommendation on travel. The next six months will be telling as we progress through Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's. Hard to say just how bad things might get two weeks out from any of those holidays. 

It may not be grounds for celebration, but since the pandemic began, covid has often followed a regular cycle. Cases surge for two months and then begin to fall. Why? It's not clear. An epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota explains, "We still are really in the cave ages in terms of understanding how viruses emerge, how they spread, how they start and stop, why they do what they do." This pattern is holding even with the Delta variant. In US states where Delta fueled surges, cases counts are now slowly dropping.The numbers in Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Missouri appear to have peaked in early to mid August.

The Democratic governor of Pennsylvania has issued an indoors mask mandate for K-12 schools, a change from the policy of leaving the decision up to school districts. I wonder if this explanation will satisfy people who don't want their kids wearing masks in school. "The science is clear. The Delta variant is highly transmissible and dangerous to the unvaccinated, many of whom are young children too young to receive a vaccine. Requiring masks in schools will keep our students safer and in the classroom, where we all want them to be." A school district in Texas that had no mask mandate has closed schools after two teachers in one week died from covid. It's not clear if either had been vaccinated. As for kids too young to be vaccinated, between August 20 and 26, an average of 330 children were admitted to hospitals every day. 

India had 46,000 new infections on Saturday, its highest in almost two months. Rural vaccination rates are rising, but it's unlikely India will meet its target of vaccinating all adults by the end of the year. Right now, only 11 percent of the population is fully vaccinated, though half of adults and 35 percent of the whole population have gotten at least one shot. Right now, demand for vaccines exceeds supply, not a good place to be but better than supply exceeding demand leading to expired doses. 

And for the gift that keeps on giving, even survivors of mild covid who were not hospitalized can have heightened risk of kidney disease with the potential outcome of end stage kidney disease in which a patient needs a transplant or dialysis. I'd take that as another reason to get vaccinated. You can only get long covid with ailments such as end stage kidney disease by first catching covid.