Happy Pi Day!! Unfortunately, 1:59 slipped right by as I was baking, so I missed 3.14159. Oh well. I'll live.
President Obama reports testing positive for covid. He tested himself in response to a scratchy throat Friday night. He's fully vaccinated and boostered, so here's hoping his case stays a mild one. So far, Michelle has tested negative.
A 136-page "road map" for moving from the current crisis to the "next normal" has recommended that a Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics become part of the CDC. We really need something to help us. In November 2019, the US ranked first among 195 countries in pandemic preparedness. Even so, the US has had failures that include politicization, lack of trust, individualization of health, and widespread inequality. That list has one key reason totally unrelated to public health--lack of trust. Recent research looked at infection and fatality rates in 177 countries looking for connections to democracy, universal health care, hospital capacity, quality of healthcare, and economic inequality. No connection was found between any of those factors and outcomes. The only factor that seemed to matter was trust, in leaders and in one another. While trust does play a critical role, other improvements are still needed in data collection and sharing, vaccines and treatments, improved ventilation, and high quality masking during respiratory outbreaks. It would be helpful, as the next pandemic dawns, to be able to contain outbreaks closer to their source.
Pfizer is collecting data on a second booster. The Netherlands is offering people who received one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine followed by one booster of an mRNA vaccine a second dose of mRNA vaccine. The stated aim is to help travelers meet the restrictions of more countries.
China has locked down the province of Jilin with a population of 24 million people. People cannot move around and very definitely cannot leave. The system of "closed management" includes three rounds of testing; people are permitted to leave home for those. Multiple officials in the province are being fired or punished. I have no details on what that "punishment" might entail.
Something positive about the coronavirus! The public health measures put in place to stop the spread of covid also stopped the spread of dengue virus. The decline in dengue started in April 2020. The estimate is that there were 720,000 fewer cases of dengue in the first year of the pandemic due to restrictions on movement. School closures also played a role. Influenza cases were also down in the winter of 2020-2021. I have not read if they were down as much in the winter about to end.
Beware the Ides of March!
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