The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 283 (783)

Happy Mother's Day Eve! I have blueberry muffins in the oven to take to My Mom tomorrow. I may add some French fries; she's craving those, and they don't serve them at her assisted living facility. If you're a mother, I hope your youngin's treat you right tomorrow. If you're a son or daughter, treat your mother right tomorrow. You should actually do that every day, hard though it may seem.

Public Service Announcement over, it's back to the coronavirus. Some of the demographics of the one million Americans dead from covid are not at all surprising. Three fourths of the dead were over the age of 65. An elder care expert notes, "A million things went wrong and most of them were preventable." On average, more men died than women. Overall, more Whites died, but Black, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, and Native American people suffered disproportionately more than other groups. Mississippi was the state with the highest per capita death rate. 

The White House is warning of a fall surge and developing plans on how to provide vaccines if covid aid stops. The possibility exists that 100 million Americans--30 percent of the population--will get covid this fall or winter in a model that assumes the virus stays an Omicron family variant and not a brand new variant. The wave is actually predicted to start in the summer as people in the South spend more time indoors to escape the heat. Right now, the government can't provide enough booster for the general population without more funding. Older and immunocompromised  people would likely be given priority.

Will long covid be the next phase of the pandemic? Right now, there is no treatment and some difficulty precisely defining it. As many as 24 million Americans may have experienced long covid symptoms. Women are 33 percent more likely to have symptoms than men. Symptoms include brain fog, fatigue, organ damage, chest and joint pain, loss of senses of taste and smell, cough, headache, and gastrointestinal and cardiac issues. Insurance companies often decline payment because it cannot be precisely diagnosed. The demand for long covid care right now far outstrips the current capacity. That better change if it is the next phase.