The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 368 (868)

Monkeypox moment: Local public health agencies, still recovering from handling covid, now have to handle monkeypox. It is going better in some places than in others. There is also concern over equitably distributing vaccines among richer and poorer nations.

Back to covid, China's factory activity shrank in July due to sporadic covid outbreaks. Factory output and new orders both fell, especially in energy-intensive industries such as petrol, cooking coal, and ferrous metals. Needless to say, there may be even more supply chain problems ahead. 

According to the White House physician, POTUS has had "no reemergence of symptoms and continues to feel quite well." I remember a lesson in high school English about the difference between feeling good and feeling well. If you had a similar lesson, you'll know why that statement bothers me.

A study done in the UK found that acute covid infection led to a six-fold increase in cardiovascular disease. Contributing to this were an 11-fold increase in pulmonary embolism, a six-fold increase in atrial arrhythmias, and a five-fold increase in venous thrombosis. Diagnosis of theses declined from four to 12 weeks after infection. From 12 to 52 weeks, things were back to normal. Starting with a pool of 13.4 million patients identified via over 1,300 family practices, the study involved 428,000 people who had had covid as well as a comparable number of patients who had not. 

As school years start, school mask mandates are coming back in places such as Louisville, Kentucky. In some other places, teachers are required to wear masks, but student mask use is up to parents. The District of Columbia is requiring students ages 12 and over to be vaccinated; this is one of the strictest such mandates in the nation. Some public school districts such as in New York City are strongly recommending that students be vaccinated but are not requiring it. 

I have decided to discontinue labels such as "pandemics." If a post has a topic considered at relative length, I'll use that as a label. Most posts will likely go label-less.