So many distractions this morning. Reddit's live feed of what is going on in Ukraine and Russia. A few online human interest articles from the war. Finally, having finally seen the movie Dunkirk, there was some delving into what was real, based on real, exaggerated, or just plain made up. Interestingly, there was not that much of just plain made up stuff. The movie's producer and director went to great lengths to be as historically accurate as possible while still telling one heck of a story.
Following up on yesterday's post, My Brother commented via email that he had seen the same report I had on how different political leanings influenced how great a risk people thought covid is. On the liberal side, "very liberal" people thought covid a greater risk than did "liberal" people, and "liberal" people thought covid a greater risk than did "slightly liberal." The trend on the conservative side did not match or mirror the one on the liberal side. There, "very conservative" people saw covid as a greater risk than did "conservative" or "slightly conservative" people. The group that thought the risk was the lowest was the middle one, plain old "conservative." This middle group is no longer a bridge between the two extremes. Further, one might expect to see the "very conservative" group view the risk of covid as the least of the three groups, not the greatest. Is it that the "very conservative" people might also be the most senior citizens, who are most at risk should they get infected? Is one group better-read scientifically than the others? Comments?
Since I opened with survey data, here's another puzzling one. In July 2020, 11 percent of people surveyed said that "they would have no return to pre-Covid activities." They would stay in more, maintain more distance from others, etc. In February 2022, 13 percent of people surveyed said the same thing. They have no intention of ending pandemic behaviors but will continue to avoid settings such as elevators, mass transit, and indoor dining at restaurants. One scientist notes that having that percent of the population voluntarily withdraw from most social interaction would be as if millions of people just disappeared.
The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the country, is lifting its indoor mask requirement for students and staff. Masks are still allowed but no longer a must-do. New York City's school system, the largest in the country, stopped requiring masks on March 7. Nationwide, 92 percent of schools have dropped mask mandates. It should be noted that the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics still recommend masking in school settings.
BA.2 now accounts for 30 percent of new cases in New York City, and 23 percent, nationally. How worried should we be? Well, a medical epidemiologist noted that "It's very unusual to see a surge followed by another surge in rapid succession, it's almost always a sign of some kind of immune evasion ... There are more unanswered questions about this than any previous variant."
When they make the movie Covid fifty years after the fact, I wonder how historically accurate it will be.
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