The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 187 (687)

Leading up to the Olympics, over 8,000 people had arrived in Beijing as of Saturday, 211 of whom tested positive for covid. Some experts say in a negative tone that China's "closed loop" and strict covid rules may be better at keeping covid from escaping to the outside rather than protecting the people inside the loop from becoming infected. I thought that was the whole point of the bubble or closed loop. It fits with China's zero covid policy; the counts inside can go as high possible as long as the count outside stays as low as possible. Locals volunteering or otherwise being inside the closed look won't be able to return to their homes until they've quarantined. Quarantine for someone testing positive inside the bubble could be for as long as five weeks. Even the trash will be isolated in keeping with China's opinion that some cases have come from virus on an object or surface.

Austria is ending the lockdown of all unvaccinated people even as it prepares to approve a vaccine mandate for all adults. As of Monday, unvaccinated people can leave their homes. They still won't be allowed to enter nonessential shops, restaurants, or cultural institutions for two weeks. Once the vaccine mandate is in place, failure to provide proof of vaccination could mean a fine of $4,000.

It did not surprise me to see stats counting US adults by their political party and vaccination status. Of Democrats, only nine percent are unvaccinated, 29 percent have had shots but no booster, and 62 percent have had a full set of shots including a booster. For Republicans, the percentages in those same three categories would be 36 percent, 30 percent, and 32 percent. For independents, 22 percent, 39 percent, and 37 percent. In other words, more Republican adults are unvaccinated than have gotten the full shots plus booster. Vaccination makes a huge difference, and so does a booster. The weekly average numbers of deaths per 100,000 people in October and November 2021 (in other words, pre-Omicron) were 7.8 for unvaccinated, 0.6 for vaccinated but no booster, and 0.1 for those with vaccinations including a booster. 

I have learned a bit more about the Omicron family. There are actually four members discovered so far. BA.1 is what we know as "Omicron." BA.2 is the "stealth" variant. There is also a BA.3 that appears to be the product of viral sex, with BA.1 and BA.2 simultaneously infecting the same person with their combination making a new viral hybrid. Finally, there is something called BA.1.1.529 about which I could find nothing but a mention. Right now, BA.2 makes up 82 percent of cases in Denmark, nine percent of cases in the UK, and eight percent of cases here in the US. While Omicron numbers are dropping in most states, the emergence of BA.2 could slow those downward trends.

Of the pandemic, he governor of New Jersey says, "We're not going to manage this to zero. We have to learn how to live with this." He is not the only governor feeling this way. It may take a while, though. Hospitals are still full; some are getting fuller. Deaths are still rising. Once the Omicrons have had their way with us, that endemic philosophy might be the way to go as long, that is, as no other, more serious variant has emerged. And more variants will emerge as long as so much of the world remains unvaccinated. 

My free covid tests courtesy of the federal government are supposed to arrive in today's mail. Here's hoping we have no reason to use them any time soon. 

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 186 (686)

I'm not sure why I had not considered this before, but covid and mandates have become issues in many divorce and/or custody cases. For example, if an ex-spouse is unvaccinated, can the vaccinated ex-spouse deny the unvaccinated one visitation? How about shared custody and the vaccination of the children? What if one parent wants the children vaccinated and one doesn't? In some cases, these issues have actually gotten couples talking more, and are a good thing. In other cases, it may be up to a court.

States that got hit by Omicron in late December are starting to see the number of new infections decline, though the declining numbers may still be taxing the system. Hospitalizations may be peaking, though deaths, which lag behind infections even more than hospitalizations, are still rising. Some experts think that the Omicron wave could crest in late February, though most believe other variants are coming given how little of the world is vaccinated. An epidemiologist at UCLA offers the advice, "This is a choose-your-own-adventure story, and the ending is not written yet. Nobody is going to be able to tell us what will happen."

Here in the US, adult vaccinations have basically plateaued. People not yet vaccinated are probably not going to get vaccinated. Also of concern, relatively few children ages five through 11 have been vaccinated. Nationally, 18.8 percent of these children are fully vaccinated; 28.1 percent have gotten one dose of vaccine. Vaccination rate varies wildly between states, though. In Vermont, 52 percent of children ages five through 11 are fully vaccinated; in Mississippi, only six percent are. 

Not a lot today, but after a late night playing Cards Against Humanity with friends (it was worth the risk), I'm moving a bit more slowly than usual today. Having gotten somewhat comfortable with my Instant Pot, I am introducing myself to our convection oven. I made a meat loaf several nights ago, and tonight have a pork loin roast going. It's smelling pretty tasty, so I think I'll go handle the side dishes. 

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 185 (685)

There's some new and disturbing--at least to me--news on long covid. Breathlessness is a common symptom of long covid patients. Findings from a pilot study of 36 patients suggest covid may cause microscopic damage to lungs, damage that is not detected in routine tests. In other words, the efficiency of the lungs ain't what it used to be. The pilot study looked at three groups. One was patients diagnosed with long covid who had normal CT scans of their lings. Some of these patients had had long covid for a year. A second group was patients who had been hospitalized with covid over three months earlier. Finally, there was a healthy control group. Patients inhaled xenon gas while undergoing an MRI. Even when all other tests were normal, long covid patients showed "significantly impaired gas transfer" from their lungs to their bloodstream. I'm concerned enough about what my asthma does to my lung function; this on top of that would not be pretty.

Some people talk about exposing themselves to Omicron to add a layer of natural immunity. This is not a good idea. It might be easier just to let Stealth Omicron or BA.2 find you. Early results peg it as being 1.5 times more transmissible than Omicron or BA.1. There are 127 cases of BA.2 known nationwide. It's been found in half the states. So if you've missed out on Omicron, maybe its evil cousin will get you.

As part of a protest against vaccine mandates, convoys of truckers are heading to Ottawa from as far away as British Columbia. Police estimate that 1,000 to 2,000 people will attend the demonstration. It may be that Canadians are too nice for demonstrations of the magnitude they had in Europe; if I remember correctly, one protest there had 40,000 participants. Americans Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr., and Joe Rogan have voiced their support for the Ottawa protest. The Canadian Trucking Alliance said in a statement that it "strongly disapproves" of protests on public roadways, highways, and bridges.

Many public events were canceled or scaled back in 2020 and 2021. Many of those same events are happening in 2022 though there are some differences from 2019 and earlier. The Winter Olympics are a go in Beijing though without public ticket sales and with American announcers working from studios in Connecticutt. Carnival 2022 has been canceled in Rio de Janeiro. Some social events typically held at the time of the Super Bowl have been canceled, but the game itself will go on as ever. Mardi Gras parades and floats are back In 2021, houses rather than floats were decorated. Still on are the National Cherry Blossom Festival, South by Southwest, and the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival held in the California desert.

The Olympics are, of the events listed above, of the longest duration and widest participation. How they turn out may say a lot about where the coronavirus leads us on its road to endemicity. The Games will take place in a bubble with everyone within that bubble tested daily as well as upon arrival at the airport. Friday, 29 of the 736 athletes and team officials who arrived tested positive. Other athletes and officials are delaying arrival because they tested positive before their departure from home. Before those people would be admitted to the Games, they must show negative test results on four consecutive days and then spend a fifth, buffer day. Those tests could present a bit of a problem, though. They have to be PCR tests, which can return positive results for weeks after someone stops being contagious. Teams affected by coronavirus so far include the US men's bobsled and skeleton team, the Norwegian cross country ski team, the German skeleton team, and the Russian bobsled and figure skating teams. The daily covid test results may be more interesting this year than the event results are.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 184 (684)

The US has now donated over 400 million vaccine doses to 112 countries. While this total falls short of the 1.2 billion doses the US has promised to donate, it is said to be more than five times larger than that of any other country. Vaccine inequity remains an issue even though 10 billion doses of vaccine have been administered globally. The US has administered five times as many extra doses (86 million) as the total number of doses given in all of Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation. In the UK, over 300 leading scientists have criticized the prime minister for not doing enough to boost vaccination levels worldwide. So many people not being vaccinated increases the opportunities for new variants to arise.

Dr. Fauci says that scientists are working on a "pan-coronavirus" vaccine to induce "broad and durable protection against coronaviruses that are known, and some that are even at this point, unknown." Don't hold your breath, though. Such a vaccine is still years away.

The head of Paris hospitals has asked whether people who refuse to be vaccinated should continue to have their covid treatments covered by public health insurance. That mere suggestion is not going over at all well. There are currently about 30,000 covid patients in French hospitals. Seventy percent of the patients in Paris and Bordeaux ICUs are unvaccinated. In Marseille and Nice, over 90 percent of ICU patients are unvaccinated. The cost to French taxpayers of one day in an ICU is $5,615.17 while the cost of one dose of vaccine is $22.32. As several people I know would say, "Do the math." An ambulance driver calls for the national health service to continue to cover all covid patients, noting, "If we enter the spiral of patient selection, are we to make smokers pay for the lung cancer treatment or punish the obese because they eat too much?"

As a result of the pandemic, American adults and adolescents have missed more than 37 million routine vaccinations for ailments such as flu, hepatitis, and chickenpox. There are state legislators of a political party I will not name who have actually suggested doing away with all the vaccinations required for school attendance. If passing on the covid vaccine is okay, why not pass on all the other vaccines? 

Sarah Palin has been going out for dinner despite having tested positive for covid. I can't help but imagine that her words of a month ago might prove to be prophetic. "It'll be over my dead body that I'll have to get a shot."

Finally, I found a fun word in today's stroll through the news. It's the opposite of "immunocompromised," that is, "immunocompetent." It sort of rolls off the tongue with a bounce on the final "t." Being competent at being immune. Is that something we need to learn to be? An interesting word to think about while watching the snow fall.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 183 (683)

There seems to be less and less coronavirus news each day, and what there is is often detail-heavy in medicine or economics, two areas I often feel uncomfortable summarizing. I handle human interest much better than technical writing. 

What's best going forward--getting vaccinated people to get boosters or getting unvaccinated people to get a first shot of vaccine? I lean toward what I think is the harder of the two, getting unvaccinated people vaccinated. The people who have not yet gotten any shot are probably not going to get one. I think we've passed the stage of people going back and forth on getting vaccinated or not. Being vaccinated even without a booster, gives the body an edge in avoiding covid, even the Omicron variant. If we want to approach anything like herd immunity or make covid truly endemic, having as many people unvaccinated as we do will slow the process down significantly.

Over half of all patients with covid in hospitals in England are being treated primarily for something else. The covid part of their condition means that they need to be kept separate from people with similar conditions but who do not also have covid. A space crunch to go with the staff crunch. An asymptomatic patient can still infect someone without covid, quite easily if the form of the covid happens to be Omicron. It seems to be more contagious than even measles.

Back to the people who don't want to get vaccinated. If they speak German, they might want to look into Paraiso Verde, a 4,000-acre gated community being built in Paraguay. While it began pre-pandemic, in 2016, it has since attracted a large number of "covid denialists." According to its website, it is "... by far the largest urbanization and settlement project in South America" and a refuge from "socialist trends of current economic and political situations worldwide" not to mention "5G, chemtrails, flouridated water, mandatory vaccinations, and healthcare mandates." So far most of the residents are German, Austrian, or Swiss. The community's founder has spoken of "preserving Germanic peoples from the presence of Islam" and on a now-deleted website questioned the blame allocated to Germany for World War II.

A friend told me that she and her family accept that anyone can get Omicron and have adopted an "is it worth the risk" philosophy. IIWTR to go for a walk in the park? Yes. IIWTR to go to a restaurant and eat inside? Possibly not. It forces, well, encourages, you to think about what you are considering doing along with how risky it might be. I do like this and may give it a try someday when I actually have a reason to go out.

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 182 (682)

The Olympic Games in Beijing loom on next week's horizon. So far, 106 out of 3,695 people connected to the Games have tested positive for covid. Two of those are either athletes or team officials. The two million residents of the Beijing district where half of Beijing's cases have been found is undergoing a third round of testing since last weekend. Testing is done by combining samples from a group of 10 people. If the collective sample is negative, all 10 are good to go. If it is positive, the 10 people are individually tested. One source reported the current Beijing outbreak as being of the Delta variant. If so, the gods help them when Omicron hits.

I read an essay based on what the writer called the "anti-calendar" in which she had recorded everything that her family did not do because of the pandemic. Graduations and other celebrations missed, possibly funerals as well. I am kicking myself for not thinking of doing that. I don't really do a lot of things out in the world, but it would still have been an interesting undertaking. 

Many European countries are ending some or all of their covid restrictions. The Dutch government defended its decision in a statement: "Despite the risks and uncertainties, the government believes it is responsible to take this big step. Because prolonging the measures that so restrict our daily lives is also harmful to people's health and to society as a whole." Compared to the US, many of the countries relaxing restrictions are much more vaccinated: Denmark (81 percent), France (76 percent), Netherlands (72 percent), UK (71 percent), US (63 percent). As for boosters, the rate in the US is slowing and currently stands at only 40 percent. 

A study published in the journal Cell reported four factors that can be identified early in someone's coronavirus infection that appear to correlate with an increased risk of long covid. Those factors would be (1) the level of coronavirus RNA in blood early in the infection; (2) the presence of certain antibodies that mistakenly attack tissues in the body; (3) reactivation of an Epstein-Barr virus; and (4) Type 2 diabetes. The first two seem to be more labor-intensive to check than the last two, and given the current strain on the hospital system, I can justify their not being checked. 

Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston has refused to do a heart transplant on a patient who won't be vaccinated against covid. They note that organs should go first to people with a better chance post-surgery of surviving and not being vaccinated against covid greatly cuts that chance of long-term survival. I can't say that I blame them. Transplantation is accompanied by serious suppression of the immune system to ensure the body does not attack the donated tissue. Without vaccination that seems to me to be inviting the virus to visit. I know a potential donor can't specify the sort of person they would like to give an organ to, but I wouldn't want one of mine going to someone who won't take care of it. 

The Road goes ever on and on ... Day 181 (681)

Son of Omicron? Omicron: The Sequel? Omicron, Part 2? How about we try BA.2 otherwise known as "Stealth Omicron." BA.2 is a sublineage of BA.1, that is, Omicron. BA.2 can only be detected by PCR testing, but has already been found in over 40 countries including Denmark, Sweden., Norway, and Singapore. It makes up about half of Denmark's covid cases. BA.2 cases are, right now, doubling every four days. So far, it is classified as a "variant under investigation." If it ever moves on to become a  "variant of concern," we may be in trouble.

A new survey reveals that 84 percent of Americans like the free masks and test kits the government is providing. That 84 percent reflects the views of vaccinated Americans. Forty-four percent of the survey respondents had already ordered free tests.This included half of vaccinated respondents but just 20 percent of unvaccinated people. 

Survey results are popular today. A survey of 4,411 people conducted this month asked how worried people were about getting sick from covid within the next year. Interestingly, respondents ages 65 and older were the least concerned despite the fact that three out of every four covid deaths recently are people in that age range. The survey also asked whether people would make changes to their normal activities to prioritize safety and public health or continue normal activity as much as possible. Prioritizing safest and public health was cited by 65 percent of Democrat respondents and 30 percent of Republicans. Flip those numbers on the other end of the continuum. For Democrats, 30 percent will continue normal activity compared with 65 percent of Republicans. In terms of how worried a person was about getting covid within the next year, vaccinated people, boosted or not, were more concerned than unvaccinated people. Interesting or not?

S(n?)ide remark on vaccinations. There was an anti-vaccine, anti-mandate protest in Washington, DC this past weekend. A reporter asked one of the protesters whether she thought she would ever get vaccinated. Her reply was "I'd die first." The obvious comeback to that is "Yes, yes you will."

Both Democrats and Republicans are concerned about children falling behind academically and socially if schools move from in-person to virtual. However, Democrats are more worried about children catching covid while attending school in person. 

While the number of Omicron cases is on a downward trend in the US, the number of deaths is as high as it was during the Delta wave. As noted above, 75 percent of the deaths are among people ages 65 and older. Unvaccinated people are 100 times more likely to die from covid than those people who have gotten three doses of either Moderna or Pfizer. 

On the global front, Denmark and the Netherlands are dropping all covid restrictions despite having record numbers of infections. As of the start of February, European Union residents with valid vaccination certificates, certificates of recent recovery, or negative test results not older than 72 hours will be able to travel between countries with no quarantine requirements. An Australian aid ship going to Tonga has 23 people who have tested positive. This is of significant concern given that Tonga has only had one covid case, and that was in October. Looking at the Olympics from just a week away, 55 people have tested positive for covid upon arrival in China. Another 35 Olympic personnel on the ground have tested positive. Participants who test positive and are asymptomatic will quarantine inside the Olympic bubble. Others will go to one of two hospitals. 

It seems that more and more of what I read about the ongoing pandemic repeats itself over and over. I am interested in how the Olympics will come off; I don't really have a good feeling about them. Stealth Omicron is a new topic, one I hope not to pursue further. Vaccination rates don't seem to be changing much any longer. Those who want to be vaccinated are and those who don't want to be aren't. It will be telling to see what happens in Europe after covid restrictions are dropped. I guess it's all less same old same old than I thought.