Someone asked a while back, a long while back I think, how long I intended to keep this doing this daily blog. One of my replies was until WHO declared the pandemic over. We may be getting there sooner than I thought. WHO's regional director for Africa just said, "The pandemic is moving into a different phase. We think that we're moving now, especially with the vaccination expected to increase, into what might become a kind of endemic living with the virus." WHO's regional director for Europe says that continent could soon enter a "long period of tranquility." Mandates and restrictions are dropping almost like flies here in the US, though this hasn't convinced the CDC that they should be.
Cases are dropping in the US but somewhat unevenly, with an overall 61 percent drop in the per capita case number over the last two weeks. Deaths are still rising, but the rate is slowing. Kentucky, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia reported their highest number of cases in mid- to late January. Average deaths are high in California, Florida, and Washington. In fact, Washington has reported more deaths in the past week than in any other seven-day period in the pandemic. Washington is also ending its outdoor mask mandate and could set a date to end their indoor mask mandate next week.
Of course, saying that things are back to normal and mask mandates, no longer needed will make the vaccine-hesitant more vaccine-resistant. If things are back to normal and no one needs a mask, then why should people get vaccinated? In my humble opinion, things are not back to normal. Dr. Fauci has said that the pandemic's being under control would mean 10,000 cases per day in the US. Right now, we're over 200,000 per day.
The pandemic is seeing more and more college students drop out. Retention is generally measured by how many first-year students return for a second year. At least that is the most common spot for students to drop out. Some 2.6 million students started college in fall 2019. Community colleges saw a 3.5 percent drop from 2019 to 2020. That looks good when the overall rate was 26.1 percent or some 679,000 students.
A couple of quickies. The pandemic has caused a migration of rats from restaurants to houses as they follow the food. There were a record-high 12,638 complaints to the District of Columbia's hot line for reporting insect or rodents problems. Calls are up 130 percent since 2017. Prince Charles is isolating after testing positive. He is fully vaccinated and boosted and also had covid before, in March 2020. He did meet with the queen recently, but so far she is testing negative. In terms of something you may not want to learn, Charles's pet name for Camilla is Mehabooba which means "darling" or "beloved" in Urdu.
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