The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 2 (502)

International news first, and I’ll save the news that may be sending me back to the hermitage or at least keep me awake at night. Japan has broadened the areas under states of emergency and extended the existing states until the end of August. Five other areas have been put under less-stringent restrictions. While there are new cases daily connected to the Olympics, there is still no sign of Olympics-to-general-public transmission. The Delta variant is spreading in China. The Chinese strategy for earlier outbreaks was to impose strict lockdowns at outbreak sites, hold travelers to lengthy quarantines, and conduct city-wide testing. These strategies are not working with Delta. Two cases have now made it to Beijing, which has very strict prevention policies.

The worst per capita covid death rate in Southeast Asia is now Myanmar. Some people there claim that the military is “weaponizing” covid. Medical oxygen is going to military hospitals and hospitals with government supporters. The same hold with PPE and masks. The military is said to be  letting covid run out of control. Doctors who opposed the coup fear that they will be arrested if they show up to work at public hospitals. Some do run makeshift hospitals knowing they will be arrested if caught. The UN human rights group says there have been 260 attacks on medical personnel resulting in 18 deaths. The military has detained 67 health care workers and is looking for 600 more. There are no real figures on vaccination. Vaccination was only in its first week when the coup took place. Maybe three percent of people got two doses. China is sending more vaccine, but it’s not clear who will get it first.

Remember my mantra early in the pandemic? “We’re fucked”? Today’s news makes me feel that even more than I did before. Let’s start with some quotes from the CDC director:

 

I think people need to understand that we’re not crying wolf here. This is serious … It’s one of the most transmissible viruses we know about. Measles, chickenpox, this—they’re all up there.

 

The measures we need to get this under control—they’re extreme. The measures you need are extreme.

 

The number of cases we have now is higher than any number we had on any given day last summer.

 

Internal CDC data scheduled to be released today show that fully vaccinated people may spread the Delta variant at the same rate as unvaccinated people do. Given that so many breakthrough infections are asymptomatic, there may well be more Delta being spread than previously thought. Covid’s R0, the number of other people an infected person will infect, is 8 or 9. R0 was 2 for the un-mutated coronavirus. For reference, here are the R0s for some other viruses:

 

Smallpox R0 = 3

Polio R0=4-6

Mumps R0=10-12

Chickenpox R0=10-12

Pertussis (whooping cough) R0=15-17

Measles R0=16-18

 

So the good news is that covid’s R0 is not as high as those for pertussis or measles. The bad news is that covid is more contagious than two viruses the world was all too happy to see be eradicated, smallpox and polio (admittedly, there are still cases of polio here and there around the world).

On June 22, there were 11,299 new cases of covod on average every day. This was the low point for 2021. The average number of new cases over the past seven days was 66,900. The CDC has noted the importance of updating all communications that describe breakthrough cases as “rare” or a “small percentage” of all cases to reflect that vaccinated or not, the amount of covid you transfer to others is the same. While that will clarify things, I don’t expect the people who need to pay attention to it will.

And the governor of the great state of Iowa says that mask guidance isn’t “grounded in reality or common sense.” I don’t know what reality she is grounded in, but it’s not the same as mine.

Today’s news from the CDC makes me feel much as I did at the outset of all this--vulnerable. I may have been vaccinated, but I could still get infected but with only no or mild symptoms. I may have been vaccinated and feel fine, but that doesn’t mean I’m not contagious. I’m three times as contagious as someone with smallpox was, and thanks to a vaccine, that disease has been eradicated. So why the hell don’t people want to get rid of covid?

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 1 (501)

I said I might change things up for the second 500, and so I am. While I am still being probably more careful than I need to be, the doors to the hermitage now swing both ways. While I might not go into a retail establishment, movie theater, or other crowded establishment, I will now occasionally leave the hermitage if I need to. At the same time, we continue as a country and world to wade or otherwise muddle through the pandemic. The new name for this blog comes from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. It may also have been used in The Hobbit as the walking song from which it is taken, “The Road Goes Ever On,” was supposedly written by Bilbo Baggins.

 The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

I’ve liked this passage since I first read it, and used it on a quilted wall hanging. I thought it appropriate here because I know not when or how the pandemic will end, just that for now it is very ongoing.

I did mark the writing of the 500^th post yesterday. The Professor and I popped a bottle of champagne before dinner. First, though, we availed ourselves of a wee bit of one of my birthday presents. Fellow Virginians know that a previously controlled substance became legal for personal use in Virginia on July 1. The 500^th post seemed like a reason to use a wee bit of it, the first time in some 40ish years that I’ve used any form of it. Talk about memories flooding back. I do still have photos of 1975 or 76’s Ultimate Taco …

The Office of Attending Physician has issued a mask mandate for the House of Representatives. Masks must be worn in the Capitol complex unless a rep is alone. Inside meeting and conference rooms, everyone must be masked. Needless to say, the Republican reps are not happy. The Minority Leader tweeted that the decision was not based on science but was a political decision by the Democrats. In response, the Speaker of the House, said, “He’s such a moron.”

More businesses and even the federal government will be issuing or have issued vaccine mandates. Two federal courts have already ruled such mandates are legal and enforceable. Remember the French needing to be vaccinated to eat inside a café? Five hundred San Francisco bars will ask patrons to show proof of vaccination in order to enter.

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary says that “we have never experienced the expansion of the infections of this magnitude.” Covid cases are soaring not just in Tokyo but countrywide. Several new prefectures have asked to be put under states of emergency. The case rate in Tokyo is now 88 per 100,000 people. For comparison, the US rate is 18.5 per 100,000 people. While the Olympics might be thought of as the cause of the latest growth in cases, there is so far no evidence of Olympic to general public transmission. I’m finding slightly different numbers in different sources in terms of the number of athletes and Olympic personnel who have tested positive. One report noted that there were two athletes hospitalized. Evidently, the US team has had more positive tests than any other team, but the US has more athletes there than any other country.

Sydney just saw a record in the number of new cases in any single day. The military has been called in to help enforce the lockdown. Thailand has turned a cargo warehouse at Bangkok’s airport into an 1,800- bed field hospital. It is designed for patients with moderate symptoms. There is a separate field hospital for patients with deteriorating conditions. Thailand had 30,000 cases at the start of April. They now have over 540,000, and limited testing means that the true number of cases is likely much higher. Just over five percent of the population has been fully vaccinated.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 500

The CDC has released guidelines advising fully vaccinated people to wear masks indoor in area of high transmission of covid. “High transmission” is defined as over 50 new infections per 100,000 people calculated over seven days; an alternate definition is a percent positivity of eight percent or higher. Currently, two-thirds of all counties would be considered high areas of transmission. Some epidemiologists have said that the CDC should have advised a blanket mandate covering the who country. The CDC also advises universal masking of everyone, including those who are fully vaccinated, in schools. Some states, including Illinois and Nevada, have already put mask mandates in effect. As you might imagine, there are already states saying that they will not follow the CDC’s guidance. The governor of Arizona has said, “Arizona does not allow mask mandates, vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, or discrimination in schools based on who is or isn’t vaccinated.

Vaccine hesitancy and resistance continue. Most hardcore vaccine-resistant people are older, white, and more Republican. More of the resistant are from the South. The hesitant are more likely to say that they don’t follow traditional mainstream news. The are also most likely to distrust institutions and authority figures including POTOS, the CDC, and state governments. Interestingly, at least to me, is that people with children at home are disproportionally likely to be vaccine-resistant, a potential complication to efforts to increase child vaccination rates.

The University of Washington reports that US covid cases may have been undercounted by as much as 60 percent. Officially, the US has seen 33 million cases, but that 33 million could really be 65 million. One factor considered is the rates from Indiana and Ohio, two states that did random testing rather than only testing people presenting with symptoms. These two states identified two-thirds more covid-positive people than other states did. This finding has implications for what level of vaccination might be needed for the US to reach herd immunity. We might not reach herd immunity this year or, perhaps, ever.

The CDC has issued new travel advisories for five countries. Israel is now at level three—reconsider travel. Cyprus, Kyrgyzstan, Portugal, and Spain are now at level four—do not travel. The situation in India has greatly improved. In May, there were 400,000 new cases and 4,000 deaths daily. On Monday, there were 30,000 new cases, the lowest level in over four months, and 1,000 or fewer deaths. Sydney has extended its lockdown not by one week this time but by four. In Thailand, people seeking treatment for covid are being sent home by train to ease the pressure on the medical system.

Finally, a finding on life in a hermitage, at least in the UK. There, vulnerable people were advised to say at home or to shield. Those people advised to shield were eight times more likely to have confirmed infections than those at low risk. While testing rates were higher in the shielded group than in the low-risk one, many tests were ordered only if a person was symptomatic. People judged to be at medium risk had four times as many confirmed infections that people judged to be at low risk. Said one of the researchers, “We don’t know what would have happened to these people if they hadn’t been advised to shield, but the bottom line is that it certainly didn’t prevent them from having adverse outcomes … I don’t think you can realistically expect someone to stay in their house and never leave it for months on end.”

While I did leave my house to walk in the subdivision, until I was fully vaccinated (two weeks following my second dose of vaccine) I left the house only for a flu shot, to walk the dog in places not conducive to contact with other people, and to stay somewhere other than the house while the hardwood floors were being refinished. I was lucky enough to have Son #1 who at the outset told me there was no reason for me to go out because he would take care of shopping and erranding. I’m still pretty much staying in, venturing out only when necessary or someone very special. The view from the hermitage? Pretty damn nice, though I do wonder if it might be time to call this pandemic blog something a bit more accurate.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 499

The CDC is expected to recommend masks for vaccinated people but only in certain areas of the country. Those areas will likely not include Virginia, but that’s not going to stop me from wearing mine. At the same time, more places and businesses are working on both mask and vaccine mandates. The Veterans Administration has become the first federal agency to require employees bbe vaccinated. California is going to require all state employees and health care workers provide proof of vaccination status or be tested regularly. New York City has a similar plan for all municipal employees including police and teachers. My favorite one is the San Francisco Bar Alliance calling on member establishments to require vaccinations for patrons wishing to be served inside. All these follow over 50 major medical and health groups issuing a joint statement calling for a vaccine mandate for all health care workers. Of course, many Republican-led states are preemptively prohibiting mask mandates, but courts have already ruled that employers can issue vaccine mandates.

An article in The Guardian said that the current vaccination slowdown repeats historical patterns of vaccination campaigns in the US, going back to poliomyelitis in the 1950s. I wonder if the same sort of patterns happened then as now. That is, wealthy and well-resourced people get vaccinated more than those in vulnerable situations. People in urban areas get vaccinated more than people who live in rural areas. People in the north are vaccinated more than those in the south. White Americans are more vaccinated than Black and Latino Americans. Finally, and this is one I don’t think held historically, Democrats are more vaccinated than Republicans.

Every county in Arkansas and Florida is listed as “high transmission.” Every single one. This past week, Florida accounted or almost one fourth of all new cases in the country, more than any other state. Orange County, Florida, home to Disneyworld, Universal Studios, and SeaWorld Orlando, is seeing almost 1,000 new cases daily, the same numbers as seen at the highest peak last year according to the mayor. Some 61.59 percent of residents ages 12 and older have had at least one dose of vaccine.

Remember how Detroit could not share its about-to-expire vaccine with Canadians living across the border in Windsor, Ontario? Well, workers in US factories in Mexico just south of the border are being bused across the border to San Diego to be vaccinated with doses nearing expiration. The factories in which the workers work produce items for the US. Were the Coca Cola plant to have to stop production temporarily would mean San Diegans would be off Coke, and I’m not talking about the drug.

Restrictions on travel to the US from Europe and other parts of the world will remain in place for the time being. No information is out there as to how long that might be. And long covid patients are to be covered by federal disability law.

New cases in Britain have declined for six days in a row. It is not clear if it is transient factors such as summer break for schools, the end of the EuroCup, or fewer tests being administered that are causing the decline. It could be that the prime minister was correct in saying that the country could withstand a return to normalcy despite the presence of the Delta variant. Scientists say it will take longer to know bette.r Hospitalizations and deaths, but lagging indicators, have not dropped.  In Australia, Victoria and South Australia are coming out of lockdown while Sydney enters its fifth week. The outbreak there is now up to 2,000 cases.  Tokyo cases outside the Olympics continue to rise, with the recent 2,848 being the highest daily case count since the pandemic began. The test positivity rate is 14.5 percent. The Olympics are up to at least 160 cases, including 21 athletes.

In other Olympic news, Simone Biles withdrew from the team final citing mental health issues. The pressure on that young woman has been incredible. She expressed concern when spectators were banned that looking at her parents in the crowd before she performed an event centered her and helped her remain calm. She gave her teammates, especially the alternate who had to step up and perform on no real notice all the credit for winning the silver medal. The 17-year-old gold medalist in the 100m breaststroke lives and trains, where else, in Alaska.

If you need something beyond the pandemic about which to worry, the US is monitoring 200 people for possible exposure to monkey pox. No, it does not make a sufferer crave bananas; it is a rare relative of smallpox.

The View from the Hermitage, Day 498

As if we didn’t know it already, things are not going well on the coronavirus front. Dr. Fauci is telling us that we are “going in the wrong direction” and “it’s not going to be good.” Experts are warning people who are unvaccinated not to go to bars or restaurants. I really don’t think that’s going to make a difference unless a person is unvaccinated for faith or medical reasons. Worst-case models predict 4,000 deaths daily. Right now, 49 percent of the total US population is fully vaccinated; that rises to 57 percent for all eligible people ages 12 and over.

Vaccination rates are stagnant in at least 14 states. Continuing at the current pace, Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota will not hit the notable 70 percent goal until summer or fall of 2022. While many people, especially in conservative states, remain deeply skeptical of the vaccine, former governor of New Jersey Chris Christie says that some of that skepticism may be the result of how vaccinations have been presented to the public. He says that those who are unvaccinated don’t want to be indoctrinated. Leaders need to explain rather than order.

Spanish golfer Jon Rahm, current or recent number one in the world and 2021 US Open champion, had to pull out of the Olympics due to a positive covid test. In the spring, Rahm was pulled out of a PGA tournament, while leading, due to having been in close contact with someone who tested positive. At the time, Rahm had not been vaccinated, though he was after his quarantine. Let’s hear it for breakthrough infections.

While I’m touching on the Olympics, cases in Japan are up 105 percent in the past two weeks. I’m wondering what is going to happen world-wide when the thousands of people gathered in Tokyo go home. I also wonder if there is a plan to cancel or postpone the Paralympics should the current Olympics go to hell before the closing ceremony.

College applications for fall are down five percent. Applications for financial aid are also down. Many students are working to support their families. Others are taking advantage of the labor shortage’s making more well-paying hourly jobs available. The thing is, though, that people who don’t start college right after high school are not very likely to start later.

Internationally, children are dying at alarming rates in Indonesia. Over 100 have died each week of this month; over 150 died during the week of July 12. Children currently make up 12.5 percent of confirmed cases. Indonesia remains the covid epicenter: There were 50,000 new cases on Friday and 1,566 deaths. Only six percent of Indonesians are fully vaccinated; 16 percent have gotten one dose. Malaysia has passed one million cases and has the highest infection rate in Southeast Asia. Sixteen percent of Malaysians are fully vaccinated. As of August 1, unvaccinated Pakistanis will be barred from domestic air travel. Partially vaccinated people and those not vaccinated for medical reasons as well as foreign nationals are exempt from the requirement. There were 76 new cases in China Monday, the highest one-day total since January. I have to say, though, that 76 is miniscule compared to some of the other numbers I’ve noted here.

Finally, in the just-plain-wrong category, Kraft macaroni and cheese ice cream is evidently a hit. Just. Plain. Wrong. And, if murder hornets and plague of locusts didn’t worry you, there are now acid-shooting whip scorpions in Texas.