The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 273 (773)

Are we there yet, Mom? Dr. Fauci said that the US is "out of the full-blown explosive pandemic phase" and moving into a transitional phase. The coronavirus and covid will always be here in some form on some scale. The White House covid coordinator notes that stopping infections is "not even a policy goal. The goal of our policy should be: obviously, minimize infections whenever possible, but to make sure people don't get seriously ill." I include that quote because it is so convoluted. He should have just said that we will never be able to stop infections and need instead to work to minimize them. The EU says that it is moving out of an emergency phase but still focusing on vaccination, pandemic surveillance, and testing in anticipation of a fall surge. As for the world as a whole, there's still a pandemic going on.

The CDC says that 60 percent of Americans including 75 percent of children had been infected with the coronavirus by February. If this sounds good, keep in mind that natural antibodies do not guarantee protection. The director of the Center for Health Security at Johns Hopkins University advises, "Betting that you are in the 60 percent is a big gamble. For anyone who's not been vaccinated and boosted, I would take this new data as a direct message to get that done or expect that the virus is likely to catch up to you if it hasn't already."

Pfizer has requested FDA authorization for a (first) booster to be given to children ages five through 11. It appears that the FDA might be willing to consider both Moderna and Pfizer vaccines for children ages six months through four years. I wonder what the vaccine hesitancy rate is going to be for that age group. Probably higher than for the five through 11 one, I'd say. 

The Vice President has tested positive pretty much just as her husband is leaving isolation. The Veep will stay away from the White House until she tests negative and was, fortunately, not in close contact with POTUS in the days before she tested positive. This has raised the question of whether POTUS and FLOTUS should attend the White House Correspondents' Dinner. They're expecting some 2,600 people to be there, a total that does not include Dr. Fauci. He declined the invitation "because of my individual assessment of my personal risk." (Does anyone in Washington speak clearly any more?)

Remember the early days of the pandemic, the days of murder hornets and other plaques? The answer to those is mousepox. Researchers are using computer power to study which animal viruses might jump to humans. They program a computer to take in all the information about viruses and how they mutate, spread. etc. They then add information about thousands of animal viruses and wait for the computer to highlight the riskiest viruses. Mousepox tops every list so far. Mousepox was discovered in 1930 and kills mice with "ruthless efficiency." About 250 human diseases have arisen when animal viruses jumped to humans. The best known examples are probably HIV (from chimpanzees) and covid (from bats).