The View from the Hermitage, Day 476

I can see 500 days of this blog on the horizon. That number will be passed while The Professor and I are spending a week or so away from wifi and a couple other modern conveniences that often make things less convenient. We will be at the same cabin we visited last summer while our hardwood floors were being refinished. Cell reception will come and go; last year, we were able to check email on our phones a couple times each day. I kept up with writing a daily blog post and posted all the days when we got back to civilization. The plan for this year is much the same.

It is Independence Day here in the US. Cooking out and watching fireworks are a couple of traditional activities we typically don't do. The White House is having a July 4 party at which neither masks nor vaccination will be required. It's on the honor system. Vaccinated people do not need to wear masks; unvaccinated people do. There will be some sort of testing and screening at the door. It all sounds a bit too close to what XPot used to do. I hope it does not become a spreader event and especially not a super one.

Delta continues to be a major topic in the media. The variant has now been identified in at least 98 countries. The director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute at Oxford notes, "Once Delta gets going, it will overwhelm healthcare systems very rapidly unless vaccination improves. Overwhelming health systems will lead to a disproportionate rise in deaths as oxygen runs out, healthcare professionals are knocked out, and other care halted. More thought needs to be given to whether vaccinating young children in the rich world is as important and ethically justified as vaccinating key workers and the most vulnerable in developing countries." The italics are mine; I think this question might merit discussion. I can see both sides of the issue and am glad the decision is not mine to make.

The WHO director general would like to see at least 10 percent of people in all countries vaccinated by the end of September and at least 70 percent of people in every country vaccinated by July 2022. I;m afraid I don't see that happening. The group leader of the RNA virus replication laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute observes, "We need everyone vaccinated now. We are not all protected until the whole world is protected. It can come across as idealism, but it's not--there's a cold-hearted, self-interested motivation behind all of it." In other words, none of us is safe until all of us are safe.

Six emergency workers at the Surfside condo collapse in Florida have tested positive for covid. Thanks to contact tracing, 424 members of other teams have been tested. New cases in Florida have risen by 55 percent in the past two weeks. Across the state, 56 percent of people are fully vaccinated, 

Indian police are investigating whether thousands of people in Mumbai were injected with salt water rather than vaccine. The scam involved medical personnel and went on at nearly a dozen vaccination sites over the last two months. Whoa! The scam came to light when some people who thought they'd been vaccinated could not find themselves listed in a national vaccination database. Can you imagine how they likely felt when they realized that they might not have been vaccinated? Unlike the free vaccinations here, the vaccinations there had a monetary cost that I don't imagine will be recovered and refunded to those people who now must get vaccinated with vaccine not saline. 

Remember all the states starting lotteries to entice people to get vaccinated? Ohio, the first state to start such a program, has ended theirs. There was an early jump in the number of vaccinations but it soon evaporated. Arkansas is also ending their program saying that it is "no longer getting the results that we want." There are still some state programs operating. In Massachusetts, the 73 percent of adults who are fully vaccinated can enroll to win one of five $1 million prizes. Residents between the ages of 12 and 17 have a chance at one of five $300,000 scholarships after they are fully vaccinated. Over 60 percent have gotten their first shot. Residents in Michigan only need to be partially vaccinated to enter for cash prizes for adults and scholarships for the younger set. Maine will award a prize of $1.00 for every person vaccinated by July 4; the prize will be in the neighborhood of $900,000. There are also prizes and incentives other than cash being offered. In Alabama, Talladega Superspeedway offered a chance to drive your own car or truck on the track. Delaware offered free tolls within the state. Indiana gave out Girl Scout cookies. New Jersey has offered dinner at the governor's mansion. Companies are also offering prizes. How about free travel around the world for a year on United Airlines, or $1 million and free groceries for a year from Kroger?

It would be nice if all those programs worked as intended. Right now, about 1,000 US counties, mostly in the Southeast and Midwest, have vaccination coverage of less than 30 percent. It has become clear that full vaccination offers maximal protection against the Delta variant. The longer that variant--any variant, actually--continues to infect people, the more chance there will be that new variants will be formed. Some of those variants will be relatively harmless in terms of any gain in function, but it would only take one that can bypass vaccine- or case-generated immunity. Only one.

Ringo Starr turns 81 on Wednesday, July 7. All he wants for his birthday is for everyone at noon to say, post, think, or otherwise express "peace and love." If only saying it would make it happen.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 395

As I start the two-week countdown to full immunization, I'm feeling the same post-injection fatigue that I felt after the first shot. The location of the shot hurts a bit more than it did last time as well. The vaccinator did say that reactions could be delayed by a day or two, so I'll see what tomorrow holds. In the meantime, I'm glad I got a walk and a workout in first thing this morning before the fatigue really kicked in. 

While scientists are saying that temporarily halting administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is the safe thing to do, public health officials fear this could heighten vaccine hesitancy. The one in a million case rate may be too much for some people. There is also concern that the halt and extra study could be a boon for conspiracy theorists, and that the pause" might kill more people than it would have saved. In the related case of the AstraZeneca vaccine, Denmark is the first country to permanently stop administration, while France will use the Johnson & Johnson vaccine as planned. The EU is not cancelling its existing orders for the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, but will not place any new orders in the near future.

The Olympic Games are 100 days away as covid cases in Japan continue to surge. Parts of Tokyo and other cities are under a quasi-state of emergency. Over the last week, 3,200 new cases have been reported daily. Shots for people over 65 years old are just now beginning. Up until now, only frontline medical workers have been vaccinated, and they make up less than one percent of the population. In other words, Japan will be very far from being fully vaccinated by July 23 when the Games start. Seventy percent of the Japanese public would like to see the Games delayed again or cancelled outright. 

There is a new fatigue to go along with general pandemic fatigue, Zoom fatigue. Zoom fatigue is of five types: (1) general (overall tiredness); (2) social (desire to be alone); (3) emotional (feeling overwhelmed and drained); (4) visual (eyestrain); (5) motivational (lacking the drive to start new activities). Interestingly, women of all ages score higher than men on all five of those. Zoom also raises the issue of mirror anxiety, a psychological phenomenon where one's image in a mirror triggers heightened self-focus which in turn can contribute to anxiety and depression. Because of this, researchers urge Zoom users, especially women, to turn the self-view option off.

I think I've mentioned the Krispy Kreme incentive of a free doughnut daily for the rest of the year if you show them your vaccination card. Other incentives offered in parts of the US include Brazilian doughnuts, marijuana, beer, arcade tokens, vaccine card lamination, popcorn, free video games, water equipment rentals, and my personal favorite, cash. Some other incentives offered around the world include a gold nose pin for women or a stick blender for men in one Indian city. Other Indian cities are offering snacks, car repair discounts, stationery biryani, sweets, chicken dishes, and a five percent tax rebate. In parts of Beijing, an extra box of eggs, chicken wings, tissues, flour, and cash have been offered. Try ice cream in Russia or restaurant discounts in Dubai. And there's a variety of incentives in Israel as well: Coca-Cola, alcoholic or nonalcoholic beer, a loaf of challah, pizza, and pastries. If incentives work, might disincentives work also? In Indonesia, those who don't get vaccinated will face fines or have their welfare payments cut. 

A New York Times op-ed piece argues for making covid vaccinations mandatory in certain cases. The authors argue that "Vaccines should be required for health care workers and for all students who plan to attend in-person classes this fall--including younger children once the vaccine is authorized for them by the Food and Drug administration. Employers should also be prepared to make vaccines mandatory for prison guards, EMTs, police officers, firefighters, and teachers if overall vaccinations do not reach the level required for herd immunity." The authors also note that as of March 7, just under half of all frontline health care workers had not yet been vaccinated. For some, the employer had not yet offered vaccination. Still, 18 percent said they did not plan to get a shot, and 12 percent were undecided. Certain vaccinations are already required by K-12 schools and universities; why can't covid be added to those lists?

Finally, as someone who tries to at least get a walk in every day, it was gratifying to read that sedentary people are far more likely to be hospitalized and to die from covid than people who exercise regularly.