The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 134 (634)

Omicron is out there, still somewhat lurking, while here in the US we continue to deal with the dastardly Delta variant. In the last two weeks, cases went down more than 20 percent in only one state, Wisconsin, where cases dropped by 22 percent. Cases went up over 20 percent in seven states: Rhode Island (a 40 percent increase), Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Kansas, Illinois, and Indiana. Cases in Alaska and Montana decreased between 10 and 20 percent. As a country, we are averaging over 120,000 new cases per day, a 27 percent increase over two weeks ago. Deaths are up 12 percent to an average of 1,275 per day. 

New Hampshire, New York, and Maine are calling on the National Guard to help health systems overwhelmed by rising numbers of cases. Right now, there are 15 percent more hospitalizations than there were two weeks ago. Michigan leads in hospitalizations per capita. Maine has 73 percent of residents fully vaccinated, behind only Vermont and Rhode Island nationally, and just saw cases reach a pandemic peak. Maine Medical Center, the state's largest hospital, has at times this week had no critical care beds available. On November 8, there were 980 people hospitalized with covid in Missouri; there were over 1,600 people on Wednesday. Missouri's University Health system had 10 covid patients in early November and had 39 on Wednesday. Says the system's chief medical officer, "What we're seeing now is still overwhelmingly the Delta variant." 

The Global Health Security Index developed by the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security showed no country as being prepared for various health emergencies and problems such as the next pandemic. The US ranks at the top of the list but is still considered unready. Maybe Omicron will be a good motivator for countries to start looking ahead. 

Omicron is spurring wealthy nations to push booster shots even harder, causing WHO to express concern over vaccine equity, and not for the first time. Booster shots are now outpacing first shots globally. Only 8 percent or 103 million of 1.3 billion Africans are fully vaccinated. Some 73 percent of the vaccine shots globally have been in high- or upper-middle-income countries. Only 0.8 percent have been in low-income countries. Some wealthy countries have offered poorer countries vaccine doses about to expire. Countries have had to turn them down because they lack the capability to get them to people before they expire. 

An epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania sees some value in the Omicron variant, saying that it "is pulling the fire alarm. Whether it turns out to be a false alarm it would be really good to know if we can actually do this--get a new vaccine rolled out and be ready." WHO has appointed an independent scientific panel to advise on whether vaccines need reformulating. For now, boosters are taking the place of new vaccines. The FDA has authorized Pfizer boosters for teenagers ages 16 and 17 on an emergency basis. The CDC is expected to endorse the FDA's recommendation. 

Over 167,000 children have lost parents or in-home caregivers to covid in the US. That should not surprise me given the overall number of deaths, but it still somewhat slaps me in the face. The number internationally is in the area of two million. I looked for a corresponding number of parents who have lost children to covid, but the only reference that Google gave was from the Wall Street Journal and required an $8.00 per month subscription to read. I go back and forth wondering about the toll paid by each group. I cannot imagine losing a child, especially a young one, but at the same time, I cannot imagine what it is like for a young child to lose their principal caregiver, the one who ideally takes care of and teaches the child about life and the world in which they live. I never experienced the latter and now pray I never experience the former.