Some participants in covid "challenge trials" never got covid despite being exposed in various ways or even having the virus placed directly inside their nostrils. Some did report minor symptoms, but their viral levels never got high enough to trigger a detectable level of antibodies, T-cells, or other defenses. One theory as to why this happened is that these people may maintain "memory T-cells" from previous infection by another coronavirus. There is also some evidence that having had the H1N1 strain of influenza might provide partial protection against covid. Finally, there could be a genetic component as there is with Malaria and norovirus.
It does not surprise me that the pandemic has hit women with more serious social and economic impact than men. In terms of loss of work as of September 2021, 25 percent of those affected were women compared with 20 percent men. Females were also more apt to drop out of school or to report an increase in gender-based violence. The pandemic has not created new inequities between genders, but it has exacerbated existing ones.
About one in every four Americans is unvaccinated. I find this fact hard to grasp when the global rate of full vaccination is now up to 56 percent and will at some point pass the US rate. I don't think that the rest of the world has serious vaccine mandates; are those people just more trusting in science or in their governments? I wonder.
One of my state's two Senators, Tim Kaine, has announced he has long covid two years after his initial infection. He said his nerves feel as if he'd had five cups of coffee. He is pushing for more research on long covid, as discussed in The Covid National Preparedness Plan put out by the White House yesterday. That plan carries a commitment to efforts to "detect, prevent, and treat long covid." Specific proposals include an interagency research plan and "centers of excellence" to provide care.
The Surgeon General has requested major tech platforms provide information about the scale of misinformation on social networks, search engines, crowd-sourced platforms, e-commerce platforms, and instant messaging systems. He also wants to know "exactly how many users saw or may have been exposed to instances of Covid-19 misinformation" and aggregate data on the demographics of those exposed. The Surgeon General says that "this is about protecting the nation's health." The data coming in from every tech platform sounds overwhelming to me, but I guess that's why the government has data scientists.
One of the pandemic's longest border closures has ended. Western Australia is now allowing entry from both within and outside of Australia. The border closure served them well. Until the Omicron surge, they had registered only 11 deaths. One of my friends in Perth hopes to be seeing her son soon. Living in Melbourne, he was unable to come home to visit; I'm not sure if she could have visited him and been able to return to WA.
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