Shutdown Diary
The latest stats from Washpo:
In the past week in the U.S. ...
New daily reported cases rose 8%
New daily reported deaths rose 21.2%
Covid-related hospitalizations rose 2.4%
Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 10.9%.
The number of tests reported fell 29.5%
In the last week, an average of 899.5k doses per day were administered, a 5% increase
An average of 305.2k adults received the first dose in the U.S. over the last week
According to CDC:
Well, the news is still grim; we've had two days over the past week with over 200K cases; it was just a little over 2 months ago we were in the mid-teen K range. The rolling average is at the 160K range and it does seem we've reached the inflection point on the wave, that the case wave is peaking, but my read of the data is subjective and would need to be independently verified. The partial vaccination rate among adults is now just shy of 75% and we're approaching two-thirds of adults fully vaccinated.
I wanted to use this space (I considered making these comments part of a one-off post) to comment on ivermectin. I did have a brief Twitter thread on this point, and I wanted to expand on my points. First, let me be clear; I have no research credentials on medical matters; I have no position on the potential use of ivermectin as a med in the treatment of COVID-19, but I do know that there has been a serious uptick in overdoses in (unauthorized?) treatments of COVID. I've been beating the drum for some time that vaccination is the best single proactive step to minimize the severe effects of getting COVID-19 and limit passing on the infection to other people. Remember, a vaccine is not a guarantee against infection, especially in the middle of a pandemic, and if you experience symptoms, it's important to seek medical attention sooner than later, especially if they drag on and/or symptoms worsen. There's some evidence that the vaccines are less effective (but much more effective than unvaccinated) against the Delta variant and for some older and/or immuno-compromised individuals, protection starts to diminish after 6 months or so. And consult your physician before trying to use ivermectin or any drug you hear about on the Internet or your social circles. You certainly want to ensure dosages and formulations are appropriate for human use.
I think I really didn't pursue it until it became a hot topic on Twitter over the weekend. And hundreds of progressives were parroting a claim about ivermectin being a horse dewormer. Apparently this was started by some FDA tweet to the effect: "You are not a horse! Don't take it!" I don't know the context: are humans intercepting ivermectin formulated for horses and using it, or is it a generalization of ivermectin in general? It isn't unusual for drugs to find alternative uses, including for other species. Animal testing is often a preliminary test for toxicity of prospective drugs, in part given analogous organs and systems.
It would be beyond the scope of this post to describe research designs in detail, but you want to control against extraneous factors which might correlate with outcomes. The treatment should be standard (e.g., same formulation, quality, dosage), subjects should be randomized between treatment and control groups, observations should be consistent and the outcomes reliably measured, and the nature and extent of participants increase the reliability and power of statistical findings and affect generalizability of findings. You should also test for replicability of statistical findings. Of course, the study hypothesis should express some underlying theory of constructs under investigation. For example, why do we think ivermectin should mitigate the effects of COVID-19? What if any effects does it have on the respiratory system? Have we seen successful treatments on COVID in animals?
As I pointed out in my Twitter thread, ivermectin has been approved for some narrow application in humans, e.g., "In humans, the most used dose of ivermectin for onchocerciasis, strongyloidiasis and enterobiasis ranges between 150 to 200 µg/kg, while it is used at higher doses of 400 µg/kg for lymphatic filariasis." In another NIH piece, the work in a COVID- 19 context has been of uneven quality from research criteria described in the previous paragraph. Nothing is remotely comparable in quality that we have seen in the approval process
Another point I think is really interesting was an Israel study that compared unvaccinated, prior COVID-19 infection vs mRNA (mostly PFizer) vaccinated prior uninfected vs. partially vaccinated, prior infected. The basic result as better effectivess in the order of 3, 1, 2. It's somewhat unexpected because I've seen studies suggesting natural immunity had nearly four times the rate of vaccine breakthroughs, Now the mRNA vaccines are somewhat less effective against the Delta variant, and there is some evidence that immunity diminishes in some groups (including older people) (A lot of Israelis were vaccinated by the end of January, over 6 months ago.
Miscellaneous Notes
One of the things that annoys me about my cable service is when it does its daily power cycle for processing whatever changes, half the time it loses the volume on my TV. I have to manually cycle the TV 2 or 3 times to regain volume.
In WWE, it looks like indeed they are going to book a "Daddy's Revenge" rematch, probably non-title, between Goldberg and Lashley, probably at an upcoming Saudi "Crown Jewel" PPV. It looks like they are booking former champion match competitors Rhea Ripley and Nikki Cross ASH as future women tag team titleholders, while Nia Jax steps up to challenge RAW champ Charlotte Flair. I have no idea why they booked Bianca to face others for her rematch against returning new heel champion Becky Lynch. Karrion Kross may be through his quixotic jobbing streak, but they aren't having his NXT escort Scarlett accompany him and these masks they have him wear to the ring look stupid.
On Facebook you'll see some interesting questions; one was your first plane trip. Mine was unusual because I as a fifth-grader flew with Mom and my then 5 younger siblings across the Atlantic to Germany (I think) to join Dad stationed in northeast France. He had to secure family housing, couldn't get on base, so he rented a house on the outskirts of Mars La Tour. The owners had a garden with fruit trees. gooseberries, and the sweetest grapes you ever tasted, all that we could eat. We lived near a small farm and I remember Mom used to buy these huge waxed balls of Gouda cheese from a travelling cheese wagon. (Gouda remains my favorite, and sliced Gouda is on my regular Lidl shopping list.) I often walked to the local boulangerie to buy a freshly baked pain or baguette. (I swear to God nothing better.) I lost most of my fluency in French after the kindergarten incident I described in earlier posts, but Mom and Dad were raised bilingual (third-generation) Franco-Americans; in fact, the natives thought Mom has a Parisian accent.
