It won't be too long a post today. I'm supposed to have my right thumb in a brace that makes typing difficult at best. I saw the hand doc, and the pain I've been having lately is likely not connected to the joint into which I got cortisone three weeks ago. So I got cortisone in a different joint in my thumb. I promise to put the brace back on as soon as I finish typing this. Promise.
News item that made me happy: Federal workers may take time off to get their kids vaccinated. That takes away one excuse for not doing so. I chatted with a neighbor a couple of days ago while I was out walking The Family Dog. Neighbor said that the 10-year-old girl who lives across the street from her wanted so much to get vaccinated that she asked her parents if they could get her into a clinical trial months back when those started. Mother said no and is now saying that the girl can't get vaccinated at all. Back in the fall, mother was showing signs of aligning herself with QAnon, which may be why the vaccine-negatory attitude now. Fingers crossed that the father can step in and negotiate with the mother.
Two studies show that vaccinated people don't get as sick from breakthrough infections as unvaccinated people get from their non-breakthrough ones. A large and still ongoing study of 780,000 veterans shows that all vaccines provide strong protection against death even if their efficacy against mild and symptomatic infection wanes. A second study shows that people who got Moderna or Pfizer vaccines are much less likely to end up in a hospital on a ventilator or to die than are unvaccinated people.
Pfizer says that its antiviral pill has been found in a clinical trial to be highly effective at preventing serious illness among at-risk people who got the drug soon after beginning to exhibit symptoms. The drug, Paxlovid, appears to be more effective than Merck's antiviral drug.
Internationally, India has held Diwali, the festival of lights. Last year the crowds at Diwali helped fuel the covid surge that decimated the country. Vienna will help vaccinate children as young as five without official approval from the EU. They say the pandemic is getting "younger and younger" and requires action now. Private doctors in several other EU countries are vaccinating kids, but this is the first systematic program. Japan is reducing the length of quarantine for vaccinated business travelers from 10 days to three.
Here at home, eleven states--Arkansas, Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming--are suing the federal government over vaccine mandates. Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio have sued to stop the mandate for federal contractors from taking effect. Schoolkids in New York City will get the same financial incentives offered to adults getting their first shot, $100. People can take tickets to places or events instead of the money should they so desire. Finally, a White House aide who traveled with POTUS to the climate conference tested positive and is in quarantine abroad and so far asymptomatic. POTUS was not in close contact with the aide, and other staffers who were have been kept separate from others.
And I shall now put on the thumb brace and see if I can find a book I want to read. The list of things a person can do with the thumb on the dominant hand out of service does not contain most of the things I would otherwise do right now.
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