The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 209 (709)

I saw another reference to the BA.2 variant, this time a more encouraging one. This reference reported that the studies showing how bad the BA.2 variant is were done on animals, and there is no similar evidence in humans. I'd like for that to be true but, as with so much about this virus, don't want to get my hopes up too high. BA.2 is now responsible for 88 percent of cases in Denmark. People infected with BA.1 can also get infected with BA.2, but it is supposedly rare.

All 7.4 million residents of Hong Kong must undergo three rounds of compulsory coronavirus testing in the month of March. Health workers from Mainland China are coming to help. Schools, gyms, bars, and beauty salons will be closed until late April. Flights from nine countries including the UK and US will remain banned. Interestingly, authorities say they have found covid in samples taken from  packaging of frozen beef form Brazil and frozen pork from Poland, and will increase inspections of imported food. No other country has reported finding such surface transmission; it would be interesting to know what identification technique the Hong Kong authorities used. As for doing somewhere in the neighborhood of 23 million tests in one month, I do wish them luck.

The UK's prime minister says it's time to "get our confidence back." Free mass testing will stop as of April 1. Education settings will no longer have to test participants. NHS and social care staff will no longer need to be tested, though care home residents will. Covid passports will no longer be needed domestically, though they may be needed elsewhere. The Office for National Statistics covid survey will be maintained in a slimmed-down form. Finally, ongoing studies on care homes and antivirals will continue, though it is not clear who will provide funding or conduct testing. 

Iran has returned over 800,000 Astra-Zeneca doses made in the wrong place(s). In 2020, Iran banned all covid vaccines manufactured in the UK or US. Uganda will fine and/or jail people who refuse to be vaccinated. A South Korean study found that people with Omicron are 75 percent less likely to develop serious illness than those with Delta.

I've said before that long covid scares me. Today I read about a woman who had covid five months ago. Her pulse, normally in the 70s, has been jumping to 160 or 170 or even as high as 210 even when she is at rest. All standard cardiac tests are normal. The president of the American Heart Association says, "We are expecting a tidal wave of cardiovascular events in the coming years from direct and indirect causes of covid." Just as it appears we may never vanquish covid entirely, we also may never know all the ways in which it can affect us.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 153 (653)

Looking to covid in the future rather than in the present, the dean of Brown University's School of Public Health predicts, "January is going to be a really, really hard month and people should just brace themselves for a month where lots of people are going to get infected." In the present, the seven-day average number of cases was about 240,000 yesterday. Back to the future one expert says, "I think we're going to see half a million cases a day--easy--sometime over the next week to 10 days." At the same time, POTUS says that Omicron's surge in cases "should be a source of concern but it should not be a source of panic." Much as I like POTUS, this comment probably won't win him any new friends and is going to hurt him with some others. 

The CDC is changing its guidance on how long to isolate following a positive test or potential exposure. The 10 days of isolation they were suggesting has shortened to five days followed by five days of serious mask-wearing. The CDC says that most viral spread happens in the first five days and with proper masking, viral spread after that is minimal. People who were sick but whose symptoms are improving and who no longer have fever can also leave isolation after five days as long as they stay masked. The same holds for fully vaccinated people who have been exposed as opposed to tested. The National Basketball Association is taking the CDC guidance a step further and saying that players testing positive but whose viral load is low can return to playing sooner. 

The CDC is actively investigating or observing 68 cruise ships following outbreaks on board. Seven others are being monitored for covid, but the case numbers are below the threshold for starting an investigation. That threshold is positive cases reported in over 0.10 percent of passengers or a single crew member in the previous seven days. While I greatly enjoyed our trips along the Norwegian coastline on the coastal ferry and mailboat, I have no desire whatever to take one of the multi-story resort cruises around the Caribbean or other sun-drenched body of water. Truth be told, I have no desire right now even to sail on the coastal ferry. 

New York City schools will reopen in-person classes on Monday, January 3 but with changes in their covid policies. The city was quarantining entire classes if there were any possible exposure. Now, they will use an enhanced testing program to allow asymptomatic students who test negative to remain in school, a program known as "Stay Safe, and Stay Open." The outgoing mayor announced the program, but the incoming mayor is on board with the decision. The aim is to detect more infections while mitigating disruptions. The specifics of how it will work were described as follows: After one student tests positive. all the other students are given rapid at-home tests. Students who are asymptomatic and test negative can return to school the next day. They will get a second at-home test within seven days of the original exposure. Major in-school spread across classes or levels can mean a temporary closure. The testing plan is to test 20 percent of students in each school weekly. BUT (there's always a catch) the only students who can be tested are those whose parents have given permission for testing. If you won't get your child vaccinated, will you let that child be tested?

I remember sometime in a past post to this blog noting that we had passed the milestone of at least one in every 500 people having died from covid. That number is now at least one in every 406 people. At least one in every six people living in the US have been infected. I wonder how that one in six might change after (I wish I could say "if" here, but I don't feel comfortable with that) half a million cases are counted in one day. 

The View from the Hermitage, Day 383

That the coronavirus has mutated to create the variants we hear so much about should not be surprising. All viruses do that,  including influenza. The current situation appears to be that the British variant is deadlier, the South African variant blunts the efficacy of at least the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and the Brazilian variant can reinfect people who have recovered from covid-19. The British one is the one to worry about here in the US. Experts are attributing increased cases and deaths in Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania to the British variant.

Internationally, the news remains much the same. England has banned travel from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kenya and the Philippines. India just reported its highest daily number of cases in six months. The EU continues to have vaccine issues. While 47 percent of people in Britain and 30 percent of people in the US have gotten at least one shot of vaccine, only 11 percent of EU residents have. Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations says of the whole vaccine business, "This has been catastrophic for the reputation of the European Union." Brexit is probably looking better to the British every day. 

Vaccine hesitancy or avoidance remains a problem here in the US. A recent survey found that 20 percent of the respondents would only get vaccinated if it were required by their employer or school. Twenty-nine percent of Republicans said they would not get vaccinated as did 28 percent of White Evangelical Christians. I do believe there is likely a large overlap between those two groups. And of course the number of people who won't get vaccinated is a huge factor in our reaching herd immunity. And should we reach it, we need to remember that what comes can also go, and herd immunity is not forever. Dr. Fauci estimates that it will take 70 to 85 percent of the population's being immune in order to reach herd immunity; another Board-certified internist says it will take 85 to 90 percent. One factor in when we might reach herd immunity is that elementary school children might not be vaccinated until early 2022. 

Remember yesterday when I wondered what the local university would do in the fall. They announced last night that they intend to "return to the in-person residential, educational, and research experience that has always been a hallmark of our university." Classes will be in-person, libraries and recreational facilities will be open, and the grading system will return to normal. (During virtual instruction, students have been allowed to take a certain number of courses on a pass-fail basis.) The enhanced cleaning procedures put in place for the pandemic will continue. Whether staff members who have been working at home for the last year can continue to do so is being studied. Final plans for the fall will be announced by July 15. I wonder if this decision will put pressure on the K-12 public schools to follow suit. We shall see.

Finally, declines in testing in many states in the Southeast and Great Plains make it harder to know just how widely the virus is spreading as restrictions are lifted and people go back to pre-pandemic daily life. New York is currently testing 1,200 people per 100,000 in population; Rhode Island is testing 1,677 per 100,000 people. On the other end, Kansas is testing 60 people a day for every 100, 000 in population, and Alabama is only testing a few more. Only Idaho is doing fewer tests relative to population. The number of tests being conducted is resulting in some wildly different percent positivity figures New York reports a percent positivity of 3.5. Kansas and Alabama report 12 and 12.8 percent, respectively. The extreme is Idaho, with a percent positivity of 27.3.

Here in Virginia, anyone over the age of 16 can register for vaccination as of April 18. Having a Democratic governor and General Assembly, we wouldn't want to disappoint POTUS by missing his May 1 projection. People in group 1C may now register. Why they named the different groups 1A, 1B, and 1C and not 1, 2, 3 or A, B, C baffles me. Did they want everyone to feel good about being in Group 1, sort of like the participation trophies common in today's youth sports? The "1" and a letter seems to muddle things, but then no one asked me for advice as the hierarchy was developed.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 220

A couple of days ago, I shared a song lyric that spoke to me. I seem to be finding meaningful, at least to me, quotes in many places these days. The latest was the last line in an episode of Law and Order originally shown some years ago but now in syndication. "Sometimes the good you do doesn't do you any good." The line was said by Manhattan District Attorney Arthur Branch played by Fred Thompson. Whenever I read the words, I hear them spoken in Thompson's deep Southern drawl. I need to remember these words the next time I do something that I think is under-appreciated. Did I do the good deed to be thanked, or did I do it because it was the right thing and needed to be done? I'm hoping Arthur Branch aka Fred Thompson can keep me in line.

The Professor has a case of covid-19 in the undergraduate class he's teaching. There was a midterm today, and the student let The Professor know that she might be getting up and then returning during the test; he didn't ask why. The Professor watches students taking an exam via Zoom. I think the exams are open book and open notes, but students are not supposed to use the Internet. If The Professor sees a student use their smart phone, for example, he's going to want to know what they are doing. The student with covid-19 wanted The Professor to know that she wasn't going to use the Internet while off-camera.

The local university's case numbers are so low that I really wonder how many cases are missed because  students go for testing outside the university. I don't know if the university has started its testing every on-campus student every nine days. The plan is to test an entire dorm on the same day. Given the university numbers that were just updated, they may have started doing whole dorms. There were 15 new student cases, the most in a couple of weeks. Last week (Sunday through Saturday), 34 students tested positive. Three days into this week, there have already been 21 positive cases. I have not seen many photos of student gatherings, but the ones I have seen suggest little mask use and less social distancing. It makes me want to grab a random student by the shoulders and shake them as I ask, "Why?" over and over. Actually, I don't want to do that given that it would put me in close physical contact with someone who odds are has not been taking basic precautions. 

England is poised to start a challenge trial in 2021. They will take a pool of healthy young adults ages 18 through 30 and expose them to the novel coronavirus in order to test vaccines. The first step is to infect 90 volunteers with live virus with the aim of determining the smallest dose that will infect someone. Then, groups of volunteers will be given a vaccine then will be exposed to the virus. Obviously, the goal is for the vaccine to prevent the virus from taking hold. Son #1 has put his name in the pool for any trial they might end up doing in this country. I'm not sure this country would do a challenge trial. There are pesky ethical questions to be sure. 

Closer to home, my kindle is still unaccounted for.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 180

As if I didn't spend days going through and reorganizing everything in my sewing room/studio after the floor refinish, I have now moved in multiple cartons of fleece and other needle felting supplies that were in the storeroom. The goal is to open a clear path from an exterior door to the storeroom that holds the furnace as well as the area around the furnace. I was working on it now because they were going to do the job Monday and Tuesday. Guess what. The phone just rang, and they are now coming on Tuesday and Wednesday. Fortunately, I left enough room in the studio that I can still do some things over the weekend now that I won't be moving and clearing as much.

I noted on Facebook that I had resigned my job and had been officially connected with the university for more than half my life. One of the comments was to remind me of one of the many humorous episodes those 34 years contained. My third year in grad school, I was employed as the statistical consultant in the Academic Computing Center. Students and faculty would bring in their data analysis questions, and I would confirm that what they were doing was correct or try to steer them in a proper direction. One client--I cannot recall if student or faculty--proposed doing a certain analysis. Looking at his data set, I noted that his sample size was not large enough to make that analysis meaningful. He ended up out in the user area duplicating his data punch-cards (those were the days, my friend, I'm glad they came to an end) to make his sample size large enough. 

On the novel coronavirus front, Fauci says it may well be late in or the end of 2021 before life gets back to normal. HWSNBN said we've turned the corner, but Fauci begs to differ. The fall months will not be easy given the confluence of the coronavirus and influenza. There won't be a covid-19 vaccine before 2021, at least not one most people would feel comfortable taking. And even if a reliable one is approved in early 2021, getting it out to enough people who will take it will take a while. One suggestion I saw was that they vaccinate people over 70 first. Works for the husband, but I won't be in that group.

All of last week's covid-19 tests at my mom's assisted living facility came back negative. It sounds as if next week they will let small groups of residents eat in the dining room. I imagine that they would not have more than two at a table; I would not be surprised if there were one per table, but that would hardly provide the social connection people have been missing. Bingo in the doorways may give way to bingo in the library as they used to do it. That would probably depend on the number of people who show up, because I imagine they will continue social distancing. And given the possibility that a staff member could bring the virus to work, they may do more testing. They're not going to open up to outside visitors. That would defeat all the work they've done to keep residents safe so far.

I read today that the campaign committee of HWSNBN is considering holding a political event at the White House right before Election Day. I really wish someone would take the Hatch Act seriously and do whatever they would do such as fine, indict, etc. all the federal employees who assist in staging such an event. They say the president and vice president are immune, but whoever sets up the folding chairs isn't nor are the technical types running the sound system. And if that's not possible, how about a drenching rainstorm?

And this weekend we hit 26 weeks of hermitting aka six months or half of one full year. When all this started, I did not want to admit it could go on this long. Unfortunately, it has, and it would not surprise me if it lasted more than the full year we'll hit in six months.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 123

Today we shall begin with a vocabulary issue. I was just reading the covid-19 guidelines that the local university has put out in preparation for the return of students next month. Under "Case Management and Containment" there is this sentence:  

Employees will need to isolate if they test positive for the virus, and to quarantine if they have been exposed.

This raises the question of what the difference might be between "isolate" and "quarantine." Without having looked either word up, I would think that the above guideline gets these backwards. "Quarantine" seems more severe than "isolate," so why are you isolating if you do have covid-19 and quarantining if you might? I shall now turn to dictionary.com to see what the lexicographers have to offer.

It appears, at least on dictionary.com, that "isolate" has a distinct definition in the medical area: "to keep (an infected person) from contact with noninfected persons; quarantine." I would say that the key point is keeping an infected person away from noninfected people, but "quarantine" is listed as a synonym. The first definition for "quarantine" is "a strict isolation imposed to prevent the spread of disease." It appears then, that the two words are interchangeable. "Isolation" can be "quarantine," and vice versa. Did someone just decide that there needed to be different terms for staying apart because you have a disease and are contagious as opposed to might have the disease and might be contagious? If I get bored enough with packing and moving things later and find something definitive on the subject, I'll post a sequel.

The state covid-19 case count from yesterday was a bit lower than the 1,000-plus of the day before, but we're still fucked. The seven-day rolling average of 920 cases was equivalent to that measure in early June. The highest seven-day rolling average was 1,195 cases, on May 31. We do have a ways to go to match that, but it's not out of the realm of possibility. 

While college football is still on the books around here, fall football will not be on the public high school level. Similar to the educational side of the school re-opening issue, there are three options on the table. Under the first, sports would stay in their traditional season, but in the fall, all would be cancelled save golf and cross country. In both of those sports, it's not hard to maintain some form of social distancing. Under the second option, all three sports seasons would be held in abbreviated form, starting in December and finishing near the end of June. The only sports dropped would be boys and girls lacrosse. The third option is flipping fall and spring sports. The argument against this is that if schools must suddenly close in the fall, the athletes in spring sports will have their season interrupted for two years in a row. I fall in the small corner of people asking why there should be high school sports right now or, perhaps, ever, especially those that contain physical contact. If it is not safe for kids to attend school in person, why should they play organized sports?

And the local university continues to be open for in-person classes in the fall. New guidelines have been issued that, to be frank, aren't worth the screen they're shown on. Students are supposed to self-quarantine for 14 days before they leave home and arrive here. They are supposed to be tested for covid-19. The university will pay for the tests, which will be sent to each student's home. Tests will also be required for faculty and staff. Do I think students, especially undergraduate ones, will really self-quarantine for 14 days? I'm not sure some of them would make it 14 hours. As for the tests, we know from the case of VP Pence's press secretary that you can test negative one day and positive the next.

And they still seem to think that once they get here, students will police themselves in terms of not holding or attending large parties. This after last weekend's being a traditional event called mid-summers. Mid-summers is basically a party weekend. The front yards of fraternities were full of empty beer cans and red plastic cups Monday morning. The only time social distance might have had a chance of being practiced was on the way to a party or staying well away from one. I've said it before. This is oh so not going to end well.

The floor fiasco starts on Monday. The contractor is coming by on Saturday to check on things before the husband and I head to the cabin, which is about a 90-minute drive. To make things even more interesting, my mother's (hi, Mom!) assisted living facility called to tell me that an aide had noticed a lump on one of her shoulders. It does not hurt, but it is there. They said they'd left a message with her personal doctor and were waiting to hear from him. This raises the possibility that she might need to go see him tomorrow or early next week. A special trip to the doctor? We can handle that. 

And the world just keeps getting stranger by the hour.