The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 329 (829)

It seems that the administration of the previous or expired POTUS was trying to obtain herd immunity via mass infection. Needless to say, this likely contributed to oh so very many preventable deaths in the fall and winter of 2020-21. Wacko (in my humble opinion) doctor Scott Atlas pushed the White House to change CDC guidance and limit the amount of covid testing. He also disparaged and politicized mask-wearing as a mitigation measure without proposing alternatives. The purpose of limiting testing was that it would hurt the now-out-of-office POTUS in the election. Deborah Birx, one of the legitimate doctors advising the White House, described White House efforts to suppress information as cases surged in late 2020. She said that documents held back included data on viral spread and recommendations for containing it. Birx sent regular updates to each state and said she was told to change those reports about 25 percent of the time. If she did not make the requested changes, the reports were not sent. It makes me wonder even more than I already have how things would be today if the US had taken the pandemic seriously from the day it was declared or even before. 

Back in the present day, New York City will no longer enforce the mask mandate for businesses. It is not clear how much it was still being enforced in the first place. An epidemiologist at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health says vaccination mandates would help in light of masks no longer being required but only if there is some incentive or disincentive offered or imposed. 

It did not surprise me to read that Americans in lower socioeconomic communities are about half as likely as those in wealthier communities to get antivirals such as Paxlovid. One contributing factor is that the antivirals require a prescription and must be started in the early days of infection. People in the lower SES communities may not have easy access to a Primary Care Physician, which makes getting a prescription within the prescribed time limit difficult. 

A couple of quickies: Florida-based Publix grocery stores will not offer covid vaccinations to children under the age of five. You've seen this here before, but Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 can escape antibody responses in people who have been fully vaccinated and boosted and previously infected. It's not monkeypox, but sewage samples in London have shown evidence of a rare polio virus. Right now, they're saying it's no biggie because children are vaccinated against polio. At the same time, though, they're encouraging people who may have missed one or more of their child's routine vaccinations to catch up. Britain was declared polio-free in 2003 and, I'm sure, would like to stay that way.