This morning I made an appointment to get my covid booster shot next week, six months after my second dose. The local health department has set up a vaccination center in an empty storefront at the local indoor mall. Going out there to get the shot will let me see just how dead the mall has become. I remember, way back in my grad student days, when the mall opened, and the office staff of the psychology department spent their lunch hours checking it out. A hot commodity then that is looking now at a very uncertain future.
There is exciting medical news not connected with the coronavirus. The WHO has approved the first malaria vaccine. Malaria is one of the oldest and deadliest infectious diseases. It kills about 500,000 people annually, nearly all of them in sub-Saharan Africa and more than half of them children. I've taken two trips that put me squarely in malaria zones (Cambodia and the Amazon), and anti-malarials were one of the first things I investigated on the planning end of the trips. The people who live in malaria zones can't exactly live on anti-malarials, making a vaccine truly valuable.
As for children and covid, children under the age of 18 are 22 percent of the American population but account for 27 percent of covid cases. The CDC says that 645 children have died from covid. That's a very small part of the total death toll, but the loss of entire lives not lived. What might those children have accomplished had they reached adulthood? The FDA is currently reviewing trial test results for children between the ages of five and 11. They're also considering whether a second, booster, shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine might be needed.
Overall, US covid cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are falling. There are still causes for concern, though. Most of the deaths were in unvaccinated people, and around 68 million eligible Americans remain unvaccinated. A University of Washington epidemiologist and former CDC scientist notes, "We're not out of danger. This virus is too opportunistic and has taught us one lesson after another." That last sentence makes it seem as if the virus is a conscious entity plotting against us, perhaps an alien invader from another planet. I only hope that we remember what we have learned from this viral entity and perhaps deal better with a new, different one in the future.
Will there be another winter surge? I would like to think that we've learned enough about vaccinations and mitigation measures such as masking that holiday gatherings are not the superspreader events many of them were a year ago. I would also like to think that my glasses are clear plastic and not a bit rose-colored. Last year, the surge to our north in the wake of Canada's Thanksgiving foretold what we were hit by. Canadian Thanksgiving is this coming Monday; the next couple of weeks may be truly telling.
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