The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 290 (790)

North Korea confirmed 21 new deaths and 174,440 more people with fever symptoms, bringing the overall totals to 27 deaths and 524,440 cases. State media also said that 243,630 people have already recovered while 280,810 remain in quarantine. The emergency epidemic office has blamed the deaths on "mistakes like overmuch taking of drugs, bereft of scientific medical treatment." Kim Jong Un has declared the outbreak both a "great disaster" and a "huge disruption." He is said to be donating some of his private medicine supplies to help in the fight. He also said they would follow the Chinese model of virus protection. Now, that will be interesting to hear about should they decide we will hear about it. How bad are things really there? A professor in South Korea said that the public acknowledgement of covid meant "the public health situation must be serious."

The prime minister of New Zealand has tested positive and will be spending another week in quarantine. She's been in quarantine for a week already after her partner tested positive a week ago. New cases in South Africa continue to rise, from about 360 per day in early April to about 8,000 per day now. Experts say the counts are likely undercounts. Because the symptoms can be very mild, many people just don't get tested.

England opened vaccinations to children ages five through 11 about six weeks ago. In that time, seven percent of eligible children have been vaccinated. In the first six weeks of vaccine rollout for children between 12 and 15, 24 percent got a first dose. Some parents think that covid poses little risk to younger children. Others worry about the risk of rare side-effects. Many of the parents who did get their children vaccinated cited a fear of long covid as the reason. In other cases, someone in the household was immuno-compromised or otherwise at risk of serious illness. 

 Closer to home, four cadets at the Air Force Academy may not graduate or be commissioned due to their refusal to be vaccinated against covid. They may also have to pay back about $200,000 in tuition and fees. There are two weeks until graduation, so there is still time for that first vaccination. So far, there are no similar incidents at the Army's West Point or the Naval Academy. The Air Force Academy also has two juniors, 1 sophomore, and 6 freshmen who have so far refused to be vaccinated. 

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 289 (789)

I had several sets of notes taken for today's blog and then sat down and followed a tweet from Eric Topol that sucked me down a rabbit hole of sorts. The original reference requires no technical background to understand, but if you don't want to check for yourself, here are a few key points:

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"The Delta variant that caused devastating surges around the world in 2021 had mutations in L452 as well, so many scientists have been watching this hot spot carefully, including Yunlong Richard Cao of Peking University. On 11 April, Cao says, he and his colleagues noticed a pattern: New Omicron sublineages from New York, Belgium, France, and South Africa all had changes in L452. 'The independent appearance of four different mutations at the same site? That's not normal,' Cao says.

"...the new variations apparently helped the Omicron subvariants evade those previously powerful antibodies."

"Based on its immunological profile, it 'should be called SARS-3,' he says--an entirely distinct virus. ['He' is Linfa Wang, a bat coronavirus researcher.] "The limited protection that BA.1 provided against the new subvariants in lab studies has already raised questions about how useful the new Omicron-specific vaccines might be. Wang says the virus is evolving too quickly for strain-specific vaccines to keep up. Instead, a broad cocktail of monoclonal antibodies targeting different strains might be the best way forward, he says."

"Kristian Andersen, who studies viral evolution at Scripps Research, draws a sobering lesson from the newest Omicron variants. Although we don't know what future variants will look like, he says, 'we can be certain that they'll continue to be more and more capable of immune escape,' possibly leading to lower protection against nor just infection, but also against severe disease. 'We need to focus on broadening out immunity,' he says.

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Son #1 says this is all hype despite its having been published in Science, a quite reputable journal. He reads it as the variants not being an "entirely distinct" virus, but just a mutated, milder form. In my Twilight Zone, dystopian mind, I find it well worth concrete investigation. Maybe covid-19 should be covid-21 since Omicron emerged in late 2021. In terms of immunity, I've read that people with antibodies to the older, "original" version of SARS have some immunity to the novel version of SARS. In that case, having had SARS-2 should give some immunity to SARS-3. Stay tuned. News at 11:00?

As for the other notes I made, the state media in North Korea is now saying "covid" instead of "fever." Six deaths have been reported in the 350,000 cases. It seems that while the entire country is essentially locked down, 187,800 people are in formal quarantine. Kim Jon-Un has been seen wearing a mask. He criticized health officials saying that the outbreak "shows that there is a vulnerable point in the epidemic prevention system." (If I were one of those health officials, I'd be worrying about how to get my ass and those of my family out of the country without delay.) Analysts are warning of a major humanitarian crisis. One says, "We are in the early stage of the spread of vast human misery. The nature and scale of the illnesses, deaths, hunger, and starvation can only be established much later." Some people are wondering whether the new publicity is really a request for help. China has formally offered help. South Korea and the US have made it known that they are open to dialogue. 

After the director of WHO called China's zero-covid policy "unsustainable," all photos and references to him have been removed from the Chinese internet. The government has called the WHO director's remark "irresponsible" adding that WHO did not have a "proper understanding of the facts." As Dragnet's Sgt. Friday used to say, "The facts, ma'm. Nothing but the facts."

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 288 (788)

If you thought the lockdowns of city sections or even entire cities in China were bad, North Korea has locked down the country. That's right, the entire country. They just reported their first covid outbreak, declaring it a "maximum emergency." I find it difficult to believe that they made it over two years without any cases, though they do keep their borders tightly controlled. First outbreak or not, it's not going to be pretty over there. It's not clear how many people there have been vaccinated, but it's clear that not many have. I'd bet those who have been vaccinated are in the political elite while the general population sits unimmunized. 

As for Chinese lockdowns, the ones in Shanghai closed a General Electric Healthcare factory that makes medical imaging contrast material aka dye. Doctors here in the US are having to prioritize patients, doing scans on the most serious ones while postponing scans for those who can safely wait. The Shanghai plant is now up to 25 percent capacity. The goal is to have the normal flow back by the end of June. GE is also using a plant in Ireland to meet the need.

POTUS has ordered federal flags to fly at half-staff until next Monday to mark the one million deaths from covid. We're oh so very close if we aren't already there. The CDC puts the death toll at over 995,000, while The New York Times has it at over 997,000. While we're on numbers, there were around 159,000 confirmed new cases yesterday along with 800 new hospitalizations; both of those are the highest in several weeks. Deaths were at almost double the seven-day average, 585 deaths compared to the average of 308. If we're gaining ground on covid, we're doing it slowly.

Moderna has asked the FDA for authorization to give its vaccine to children ages six through 11 years. It's not clear how much authorization will help get children vaccinated. Right now, only 28.5 percent of children in the six-through-11 age group have gotten two doses of the Pfizer vaccine. I'm not sure offering a second vaccine will get any more parents to vaccinate their children at least in the short term. 

The EU says that member countries no longer need to require masks on planes and in airports. Airlines can continue to require masks if they want to. It was recommended that masks still be required by airlines for flights to and from countries that still require masks. 

Finally, there are data suggesting that long covid might be linked to viral fragments left in a person's gut. One researcher calls these fragments "ghosts." Researchers have already found viral fragments in hearts, eyes, and brains. These fragments have been detected up to 230 days after the original infection. I admit that in the back of my mind is that all this could be a Twilight Zone episode in which everyone who gets infected retains some viral fragment that activates after some time period with appropriately eerie results. Here's hoping ... not.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 287 (787)

A new study (peer-reviewed and published in Nature) claims that China's lifting its zero-covid policy would result in a "tsunami" of infections and close to 1.6 million deaths, due in large part to the low vaccination rate for the elderly. The gory details include predictions of over 112 million symptomatic cases, five million hospitalizations, and 1.55 million deaths. The ICU demand could be 15.6 times the existing capacity. The Chinese government may be backed into a corner. Holding on to zero-covid will not be easy, but it may well be better than the alternative. Still, WHO has told them that they do not think the policy is sustainable. 

First thing this morning, I read about gun-related deaths being up 35 percent in 2020, the first year of the pandemic. Deaths hit a new record, over 45,000. Was this due to more people being at home together and under additional stressors? Were there more robberies or other crimes? I don't know. Second thing this morning, I read about another death record, this one in 2021 for deaths from overdoses, at 108,000. I'm not sure the two records are related, but both are likely outgrowths of the pandemic. 

Female college graduates with babies and toddlers were significantly more likely to work for pay during the pandemic, perhaps because it allowed them to work from home. I wonder how this might change as more businesses or government agencies require employees to return to a physical office. Women without college degrees ended up working less during the pandemic, possibly because many were in jobs requiring on-site work such as service jobs. 

And that's it from Lake Wherever this early evening. It was a busy day, but a good one. Here's to another good day tomorrow.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 286 (786)

The people who railed at mask mandates and the other mitigation measures used here in the US should be glad they don't live in China. The daily count of cases in Beijing is dropping, and is now at the lowest since mid-March. Still, the restrictions there are being tightened, not loosened. Schools are closed indefinitely, and many of the city's office workers are working from home. Shanghai has essentially been locked down since April 1. There, it only took one positive test for all the residents of an apartment building to be sent to a quarantine camp. It had been just the floor on which the person testing positive resided, but that, too, has been tightened. Sort of puts mask mandates in perspective, eh?

As one school year draws to a close, people are already looking forward to the next one. Both the mayor of New York City and the governor of the state of New York say that they support making vaccination required for public school students. It likely won't happen, though. The FDA has yet to grant full approval for a vaccine for children under the age of 16. The vaccine also seems not to work as well in children under the age of 12. Right now, there are striking differences in vaccination rates between groups of students--ethnicity, religion, socio-economic status. Trying to get around all those would not be easy.

Attention is being given to what's been termed "Paxlovid rebound," a resurgence of covid seen after finishing the five-day course of Paxlovid. The latest "name" to suffer from this seems to be Stephen Colbert. Pfizer, maker of Paxlovid, says this happens in only 0,005 percent or less of cases. They also note that in clinical trials, two percent of patients had a rebound infection regardless of whether they were in the Paxlovid or placebo group. Some experts suggest starting a second five-day course of Paxlovid when the rebound infection starts, especially for high-risk patients such as immunocompromised patients. Unfortunately, there is no real data that says the second course works. 

POTUS is holding a covid-19 summit of world leaders on Thursday. The call from other world leaders for additional global aid from the US is likely not to be answered. There was talk of working such aid into a bill for military aid to Ukraine, but its presence would slow approval of the military aid needed as soon as possible. 

Who are the latest "names" to test positive? Try Presidential aide Susan Rice and Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr. More are coming, I am sure.  

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 285 (785)

Some school districts in Virginia are running into trouble over their covid numbers. That's not in terms of how large or small those numbers are but in how and to whom they are reported. The Virginia Department of Health says that knowing the level of covid spread within K-12 schools is critical to preventing transmission. The Department, though, has stopped contact tracing, and some school districts have followed suit. One father complained that he heard from his daughter that she had been exposed by a classmate's testing positive. He said that he never heard from the school or district.

Taiwan continues to move from zero-covid to "living with the virus." Meanwhile, the People's Republic of China continues with zero-covid, and it's not looking good there. Some Chinese fear that the government is using the pandemic and lockdowns to expand its power and control. Similarities do exist between the Shanghai lockdowns and the situation with the Uyghurs and Kaakhs in the western province of Xinjiang. Shanghai's quarantine camps are apparently not that different from the re-education camps in Xinjiang. One source expressed the view that the pandemic has done "a huge favor to the Chinese Communist Party." An activist from Human Rights Watch commented, "I think the Covid control is almost like a milestone toward deepening repression." 

It seems that global covid efforts are looking more like global HIV efforts 20 years ago. Rich nations have, and other nations don't. Low-income countries currently account for less that one percent of global testing, as a WHO official notes, "If you're not testing, you can't sequence, you can't isolate, you can't treat. Everything else unravels."

As for sequencing and isolating, here's an advisory from CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen: "These new variants are so contagious that a cloth mask just isn't sufficient. You really should be wearing a high-quality respirator mask, like an N95, KN95, or KF94." That is, if you're wearing a mask at all.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 284 (784)

Happy Mother's Day to all who "mother" anyone in any way. In the interest of marking the day, there is very little coronavirus news out there. There is, though, a confirmed report of a case of monkeypox in the UK. Remember monkeypox? A computer model cited it as a potential new pandemic. What I've read suggests that it does not spread easily between people. You can read more about it here, thanks to the BBC. Scroll down a bit, and there's a section on what the symptoms are and how someone might catch it. 

Other news bits include clear signs of a fifth wave in South Africa. The test positivity rate there right now is 31 percent. Here in Virginia, the test positivity rate is over 10 percent for the first time since February. The hospitalization rate for unvaccinated people is twice that for fully vaccinated people, and the death rate is 14 times higher.

Listen to a/your mother: Get vaccinated. Stay boosted.