Post #5289 J

 Shutdown Diary

The latest stats from Washpo:

In the past week in the U.S. ...

New daily reported cases rose 22% 

New daily reported deaths rose 18.8% 

Covid-related hospitalizations rose 22.8% \

Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 9.4%.

The number of tests reported fell 13%  from the previous week.

An average of 313.5k adults received the first dose in the U.S. over the last week

According to CDC,

Not good news; we are roughly averaging 125K cases a day, At roughly 246M American adults, our current vaccination rate is under 1% of adults a week. I don't see a crossbreak of cases by vaccination status (part of the problem is the reporting standards differ by state; the statistics I've seen is that vaccine effectiveness is somewhat less under the the current, highly contagious Delta variant, up to 20% of reported cases but roughly 3% of the hospitalized and under 1% of the deaths. When you consider over 71% of American adults are at least partially vaccinated, this has become primarily a pandemic of the unvaccinated. No doubt many asymptomatic cases and maybe some symptomatic cases go undiagnosed on both sides of the vaccination divide. CDC in the more recent link above says "Beginning May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections to investigating only those among patients who are hospitalized or die." (I suspect in part they are concerned that anti-vaxxers are seizing such statistics to spread FUD among the unvaccinated.)  Vaccine effectiveness can be measured on different criteria, including diagnosed cases, but primarily against hospitalization or mortality. They are performing remarkably well, especially against the latter two criteria. In terms of cases, the CDC said they had counted just over 10K cases by the end of April over 100M fully vaccinated Americans, a fraction of 1%.

It had to happen sooner or later. I had to pick up a security token at a government facility under a reinstituted universal masking policy. I think it's the first time since Maryland lifted its masking mandate in mid-May that I've worn one. I disagree with the policy for multiple reasons but primarily conventional masks do little against bioaerosols and unrealistic expectations. (I'm sure a number of COVID-19 victims followed all the rules.) As I've tweeted, I think the best argument is two-way protection against virus-laden respiratory splatter.

A number of notable news stories since my last journal post:

• The DoD will be implementing a vaccine mandate.
• Justice Barrett denied an Indiana University student appeal against a university vaccine mandate. (There are certain exemptions, including religious objections.) I supported Barrett's decision as consistent with the Tenth Amendment.
• Vaccines are now approved/encouraged for pregnant women.
• CDC has approved a third vaccine booster for immuno-compromised individuals. I fully expect that to be extended to older Americans over the weeks ahead.
• Lower-dosage vaccines for children (<12yo) are now under trial and on track for maybe a md-winter approval.
• New York City became the first city to require a vaccine mandate for certain indoor activities, including dining. Expect that trend to expand. A number of government (including schools/colleges) and hospital facilities are phasing in vaccinate or test weekly mandates.
• A lot of anecdotal stories: a nurse who lost her unvaccinated parents to COVID refuses to vaccinate; a fully-vaccinated mom caught COVID-19 from her kids who had attended summer camp; a Florida toddler with kidney disease caught COVID and spread it to her vaccinated parents; a Houston baby with COVID-19 had to be airlifted 150 miles because there wasn't an available local hospital bed. I think part of the reason I've fixated on the kids with COVID stories is because some like Tom Woods have been dismissive of any serious issues with the category. There are developmental reasons why infections are lower in the group as a whole, but kids are vulnerable to a number of viral infections, period. Think I'm kidding about Woods? This is from his latest email: "Also, this scenario is coming: vaccines get approved for kids. Any damn fool can see kids don't need them."

There have been some stories of families split apart over COVID-19. I have mentioned my family has a female relative in a memory care facility in Texas. The facility has expanded policies on universal masking (regardless of vaccinated status), social distancing, etc., even though they don't mandate vaccinations for residents or staff--which I find utterly insane. I've told my RN sister I want our relative to get a booster (since she was vaccinated in January). So I've gotten some pushback from siblings on all this, mostly group text exchanges.

I really don't know my siblings' politics but at least 3 of my 6 in-laws were from military families like mine. They generally don't argue with me because they know I love to argue. I think they lean Republican but know my distaste for Trump, so they steer clear of that subject. I have a brother who once worked for Koch Industries, but he himself is no libertarian. He's a chemical engineer and like me picked up an MBA on a part-time schedule at night. (Well, I finished my MBA during my full-time doctoral studies residency.)  He's about 3 years younger. I think like me he started out as a pro-life liberal Democrat. We've generally not talked politics but he's been known to forward me a column from the New York Times (Dude! You don't know me at all.). His 2 kids are definitely progressive. But he had mentioned supporting Bush. 

I don't think my siblings or their kids follow my blog; two or 3 nephews admitted seeing my blog and/or Twitter feed. So anyway I sent out an email pointing out some of the things I've written in this segment, talking about reinfection and the like.

So my brother sends me this rambling, incoherent, indulgent response vaguely sprinkling in the word "reinfection". Now I happen to have some high standards in terms of writing, and I was in no mood to put in time and effort to try to figure out what he was really trying to say. I remember Barry Obama had these lengthy convoluted pretentious speeches. So basically I wrote back to my brother, basically telling him to be more specific and organized (I have no patience with muddled thinking). I think he was proud of and sensitive about his pretentious rubbish. Maybe the Koch brothers tolerated sloppy thinking for their managers/professionals, but I don't like people wasting my time. I was very specific in what I had communicated.

I have never before seen a man in his late middle age suddenly revert into an 8-year-old trying to yank his big brother's chain, but I got everything short of his thumbing his nose at me. I have no ides how someone with an engineering degree fails to understand the science behind vaccines, but here's an excellent excerpt from this Scientific American article describing relevant points:

Another worry with breakthrough cases is passing the virus to others. But people infected “tend to be less likely to transmit, no matter what we’re looking at,” Smith says. “We see this with viruses and bacteria—even with pertussis, one of the reasons that people try to ‘cocoon’ around infants” who cannot initially be vaccinated against that disease. “Cocooning” refers to vaccinating those who spend time with the infant as a protective barrier because the pertussis vaccine is not administered before the age of two months.

COVID vaccines are expected to reduce transmission among those with an asymptomatic breakthrough infection, says Nick Grassly, a professor in the department of infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College London. “So you already have the fact that you’re immunized and less likely to become infected, and even if you are infected, your risk of transmitting the virus is reduced,” he adds. One reason is that the amount of the coronavirus, its viral load, is lower in such infections, so there is less of it to transmit. 

Life's Little Problems

I've had a love/hate relationship with Mozilla Thunderbird email client for years; I used to use Outlook Express; I found Microsoft's replacement unusable and transitioned to Thunderbird. I've had multiple posts in my SoftDoc blog. Some days it can take up to 20 minutes to get the client up, weird popups and the like.

But every few months it'll launch--and show a blank email window and prompt me to enter a first email account. What this means is my profile folder in AppData has been corrupted. The solution I've devised for that is to mount my last full backup and replace the profile folder.

I use Microsoft Teams at work, which enables functionality like chats, calls and meetings. I've also used other web conferencing products in the past. I'm sure Zoom and Google Meetings  have similar functionality, and I believe all 3 offer some free, limited versions of their products. I think I got a Teams download notification from my Windows workhorse. An initial install failed foe convoluted reasons; usually my go-to tactic in these cases is to ensure I run the install executable as administrator, which worked in this case.

Readership

The blog readership seems to be paralleling last month's slow place except for the 2 blowout days at month's end. Projections can be misleading but I seem to be trending towards a 1700 page view month, perhaps the worst month in years. I usually have at least 1 or 2 100+ pageview day a month which hasn't happened yet. 

Twitter is on a bit of a rebound. I had a rare 12K+ impression tweet on Obama's birthday party (involving his vaccination status) and multiple other 1K+ days to average more than 1K a day for the first time in weeks, even taking into account negligible numbers during my suspension. I've even finally hit double-digits in followers (just barely and maybe only temporarily).

Entertainment

Smackdown continues to be the better WWE show. They finally put the Intercontinental on babyface Nakamura. It's long overdue; they've had heels for all 4 men's solo titles for some time. Not sure who they will have Reigns feud with after Cena; they could go with Rollins or Nakamura, or a deferred feud with Finn Balor. They had been teasing a 3-way with Balor for SummerSlam (one week from today), but Balor didn't appear on Smackdown Friday to call out Cena in person for taking his spot. It's possible they book an ending at the PPV, where Balor intervenes to cost Cena his cherished 17th championship. There is a rumor of the Rock returning to confront Reigns for Survivor's Series over the head of the table for the bloodline. It's not rare for WWE to have a long lead-in for some feuds, like when they put a belt on part-time Hollywood Rock. The Sasha Banks Wrestlemania rematch with current champ Bianca Belair could be a sustained feud like Bayley's before her training injury. The tag team situation to me is boring and predictable; they've long been teasing  a father-son rift in the Mysterios as dad Rey is constantly criticizing son Dominik's performance. Probably the most intriguing storyline is Sad Sack Baron Corbin, who has fallen on hard times since losing his King of the Ring crown to Nakamura.

In case you wonder why I don't cover IMPACT, AEW or other promotions, it's mostly a result a result of their cable TV outlets not being in my cable bundle and I really don't want to spend that much more than I already do considering the fact I don't really watch that much TV. Much ado has been made about CM Punk and Daniel Bryan reportedly soon joining AEW, following other WWE veterans like Big Show, Rusev, Christian, Andrade, Aleister Black, and others, not to mention prospective recruits like recemtly released Bray Wyatt. But to be honest, I think the WWE messed up mostly by letting Black and Andrade go. I think Punk is a good talker and Bryan is a good technical wrestler (but I hated his annoying "yes" chants and other gimmicks). None of this makes me more likely to watch AEW, but I'm not really part of their demographic.