It's not yet clear how much of a worry monkeypox should be. I absolutely love the way in which one Vanderbilt University scientist described it: "This is one that I think we can nip in, if not in the bud, certainly in the flower." Virginia has its first suspected case, a woman who recently visited Africa.
On July 15, the covid public health emergency will expire. At that point, an estimated 5.3 million to 14.2 million Americans could lose their Medicaid coverage. The wide range is due to uncertainty over how individual states will respond. Even at the low end, that's too many people to leave out in the cold when it comes to covid.
As of Wednesday, there were over 110,000 new covid cases daily, about a 30 percent increase over two weeks. New deaths, though, have been averaging fewer than 400 daily over the past two weeks. These numbers may be influenced by the government's starting a new procedure for distributing Paxlovid to get it to more people amid the rise in cases. Requiring a prescription makes it harder for people to obtain, and the "test and treat" program proposed by POTUS never really took off.
The covid lockdowns in Shanghai are leading to a shortage of imaging dye, or contrast, used in medical scans in the US. Some 50 million exams with contrast are performed every year. The Shanghai factory operated by GE Healthcare is one of two major suppliers. The plant just reopened, but distribution trouble could last well into the summer. Right now, the plant is operating at 60 percent capacity and will only be up to 75 percent in two weeks. The shortage of contrast is leading to delayed, deferred, or ignored screening, something that will not help the rate of excess deaths.
The new dominant variant in the US, BA.12.2.1 spreads faster than its predecessors, is good at escaping immunity, and might cause more serious disease, as it combines properties of the Delta and Omicron variants. The same holds for the BA.4 and BA.5 variants; they, too, have virtually the same mutation as Delta. An Ohio State virologist says that the current virus "just hides in the cell and spreads through cell to cell contact. That's more scary because the virus does not come out for the antibody to work." It may take months to see just how bad these new variants might be.
Are mask mandates going to come back? They are at the University of California at Los Angeles. I don't expect them to come back at the local university, but I've been wrong on a number of pandemic predictions, so who knows.
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