I had to hunt diligently for what coronavirus news I could find today. The dearth at least gave me some time to work on a quilt, somewhat calming after a less-than-calm morning. Since there's not that much to write here, I may even get back to that quilt today.
Officially, the US count for new daily cases is around 100,000. Some epidemiologists, however, believe there could be as many as a million new cases each day. Hospitalizations are up 18 percent over two weeks. One expert called the BA.5 subvariant "the worst version of the virus that we've seen." US health officials are "urgently" working on a plan to make second boosters available to all adults. Son #1 is hoping it happens before he flies out of state in late August for a 100-mile race.
Children's physical activity declined by about 20 percent during the pandemic. The researchers looked at rates in all continents but Africa and Antarctica (I'm not sure there are any children there). The decline has been cited as one of the factors responsible for the increase in depression for children and adolescents. In my childhood, we were allowed to play outside on our own, which makes me think our activity would have gone up if schools had suddenly closed and virtual school took less time than in-person school had. The days were different over 50 years ago.
Various Canadian cities or provinces could be entering or already be in a seventh covid wave. Ontario and Quebec are already there, as is British Columbia which happens to be in its third wave of Omicron. Cases are rising there but not as significantly as hospitalizations are. Alberta's case and hospitalization rates are rising as they near that seventh wave. In The Professor's home province of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Prince Albert, and North Battleford are nearing a seventh. The COVID-19 Hazard Index uses data on vaccine protection, current caseload and spread, impact on healthcare system, and mortality to compute what danger places are in. Newfoundland and Labrador have the highest ratings, 2.98 out of a maximum of five.
And that's it from here--no really bad news but also no really good news.
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