The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 133 (633)

An outright theft from Axios:

10 key dates in our pandemic journey:

1. Dec. 8, 2019: The World Health Organization's official date for the onset of the first cases in Wuhan, China, that were later confirmed to be COVID-19.
2. Feb. 23, 2020: Italy becomes the first country outside China to impose a lockdown.
3. March 11, 2020: The WHO declares a pandemic. 4,616 deaths have been recorded.
4. April 2020: School closures affect 82% of the world's students, according to UNESCO.
5. Sept. 28, 2020: The world crosses 1 million deaths, with the U.S. and Brazil recording the most.
6. December 2020: The FDA authorizes the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use Dec. 11, followed by the Moderna vaccine Dec. 18.
7. Early July 2021: After falling sharply in the spring, cases begin to rise again in both the U.S. and E.U., with the unvaccinated hit hardest.
8. Nov. 1, 2021: The official worldwide death count hits 5 million.
9. Nov. 5, 2021: Half the global population has had at least one shot.
10. Nov. 24, 2021: South Africa reports the Omicron variant.

Yes, two years ago today the coronavirus took root. I can't say it has blossomed; it's more like an overgrown ground cover than a flower. Of course, most of us knew nothing of it until February 2020. I first heard about it when I was at a meeting of what I call my online quilt guild in San Marcos, Texas. I flew in and out of San Antonio. When it turned out that one of the early cases in the US was someone flying into San Antonio for some sort of military boot camp, this thing then called the novel coronavirus got my attention. I would add an item numbered 3.5, but the automatic numbering makes that difficult. The added item would be March 16, 2020 ... Jean Lightner Norum starts a daily pandemic blog. 

Some experts are starting to warn of a covid-flu "twindemic." Sixty percent of Americans are fully vaccinated against covid. On the flu side, 41 percent of adults and 39 percent of children have had a flu shot. The CDC says that the dominant strain this year is A (H3N2). In previous years, this has meant more hospitalizations and deaths among people ages 65 and older. I'm sure there are places that will give the covid booster and a flu shot, one in each arm on the same visit. The Professor and I doubled up on shingrix and flu shots.

It appears that Omicron partly evades the immunity provided by two injections of the Pfizer vaccine. Blood samples of people who had gotten two doses of the Pfizer vaccine showed a 25-fold reduction in antibody levels against Omicron. Two weeks after a booster injection, the neutralizing antibodies against Omicron were comparable to the levels of antibodies against previous covid variants. People who had a case of covid before they were vaccinated seem to have more protection. I would not, however, recommend that as a vaccine strategy. And Dr. Fauci warns, "We shouldn't be making any definitive conclusions, certainly not before the next couple of weeks." 

Omicron is doubling in the UK every two or three days such that it could be the dominant strain before Christmas. Scotland has called for working from home. England is expected to announce new restrictions this evening (which is pretty much right as I'm typing this) that may also require working from home where possible. Various places around the world are canceling or cutting back their New Year's Eve celebrations. Rio de Janeiro has canceled the celebration planned for Copacabana. Baltimore has scaled back their celebration. I haven't seen anything about Times Square and actually don't expect to. I don't think they'll cancel or limit it a second year in a row, though requiring vaccination to be there is something of a limit. South Korea is shutting unvaccinated students out of study rooms, libraries, and private cram schools known as hagwon.

WHO's top official in Europe says that since Omicron has now been detected around the world, travel bans will not contain it and should be lifted. He called for five "pandemic stabilisers:" increasing vaccination rates, giving boosters to the most vulnerable, doubling mask-wearing rates indoors, ventilating crowded spaces, and providing "rigorous therapeutic protocols for severe cases." 

Here is a link to the top 10 emojis of 2021. Spoiler: the poop emoji is not one of them. If you happen to be in Des Moines, Iowa, check out their Canada geese management plan. They are trying to make Des Moines less habitable for geese by installing tall plant buffers and riprap along riverbanks and reducing winter water aeration to create more freezing. Let us know if those work, Des Moines. We could probably use our own Canada geese management plan here.

If your mind wants to wonder, try to imagine what the third year of the pandemic will be like. I expect I'll be doing a bit of that.