The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 239 (739)

As of this morning the unofficial number of covid cases in the US was 79,954,199. The unofficial number of covid deaths was 978,111. Both numbers are surely higher, possibly significantly higher. I sometimes have trouble wrapping my head around such huge numbers. I often fall back on the thought that when I was in elementary school, New York City was the largest city in the country, and its population was seven million. So at the very least 11 of my childhood New York Cities have had covid. As the number of deaths approaches one million, I remember that, again, in my childhood, being a millionaire was huge; few people attained that level of wealth. One million was a lot bigger then than it seems now. 

Ten large US airlines have asked POTUS to let the mask mandate for airports and on planes expire next month. The flight attendants' union agrees. (They're the ones who have to enforce it on a plane.) I found the list of airlines interesting: Alaska Airlines, American, Atlas Air Worldwide, Delta, FedEx Express, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Southwest, United, and UPS. As long as they don't mind if I keep wearing a mask, though I'm not at all sure when I'd think flying somewhere was worth the risk. 

Also on the mask front, schools with mandatory masking during the Delta surge had less in-school covid transmission than schools with optional or partial masking policies. With mandatory masking, there were 7.3 school cases for every 100 community-acquired cases. With optional or partial masking, there were 26.4 school cases for every 100 community-acquired cases. The study ended about the time Omicron started its surge.

Despite the abysmal vaccination rate, Africa's death toll from covid is so much lower than the death tolls in other parts of the world. Africa has certainly had its own covid spread. Two-thirds of the population in most sub-Saharan countries have antibodies. Since only 14 percent of the population is at all vaccinated, those antibodies can't be from vaccination. They have to be from infection. Reasons for the low death rate given that so many people seem to have had covid? The median age is 19. In sub-Saharan Africa, two-thirds of the people are under the age of 25, and only three percent are 65 or older. Older people may not have lived long enough to develop the underlying health conditions that can complicate covid. The overall climate is warm, and many activities take place outside. These last two factors did not, however, matter when it came to covid in India. Two possible explanations: Testing is relatively nonexistent in many places in Africa, and people are more likely to die at home with the cause of death never being reported.

The WHO says that the BA.2 form of covid is now the dominant version in the entire world. It seems that 86 percent of the cases reported to WHO between February 16 and March 17 were BA.2 rather than BA.1. Given what I just typed about testing being rare in many parts of Africa, I wonder from whence those reported cases came. Possibly not Africa.