Pandemic Report
The latest stats from WaPo:
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The latest stats from CDC:
We now see the biggest drop in average daily counts (down to about 65K per day) since the omicron BA.5 wave. The Houston Chronicle reports that the Omicron-tweaked mRNA vaccines were available in Texas as of Thursday. Note these are not intended to be first mRNA doses; they are unusual in that they include protection against the original COVID-19 virus and newer variants of omicron, BA.4 and BA.5 (see above graphic). They also went through animal but not human subject trials. Note that the Pfizer vaccine is approved for ages 12 and above, Moderna for all adults. I haven't seen guidance on those of us who are single or twice boosted. At work, my primary local work location is HPCON (health protection condition) alpha, which is near normal, where masking is optional except for certain (medical) facilities. Note that your local mileage may vary.
Other Notes
Well, my blog stats have dropped off a cliff since Friday although a couple of days don't make a trend. But I am puzzled when I go from say 60 pageviews a day to a bakers dozen or so, and maybe as low as a handful for my latest daily post. But to be honest, I've noticed other weird stats, like unlikely unusual hits for a late February post. With nearly 5900 posts over 14 years, I'll occasionally see an old post getting a cluster of hits, but usually it's a one-time thing. This late February post was doubling my biggest weekly post stats, which is highly suspicious. So it's possible some others were inflating my numbers and the diminished pageviews reflects my "real" stats. Disappointing, if true, but I don't write for the stats.
It's hard to describe why I shop as much as I do from Amazon. Today is a good example. I have a couple of Garmin devices, which I periodically have to update (software and maps). (Yes, I use Google Maps on my cellphone all the times; but, e.g., I once got an outage near a critical turn off around Harrisburg, PA to a job interview; so I'll often have redundant backups, like my Garmin and/or turn-by-turn direction printouts.) Google Maps sometimes gives bad directions; I once didn't make job interviews in Baltimore and Delaware. In both cases, I futilely asked recruiters in advance to get directions from the interstate from the clients.) So I don't know how many times I've done the updates--maybe a dozen or 2 times); it normally takes a while But this time it was different; it stopped at the top of the update, complaining it needed a 32 GB SD memory card because of internal device constraints. To be honest, I never even noticed the card slot on the device. Amazon makes it easy for me to enter the Garmin model and SD card specifications. I'm sure I could probably find them at a local Walmart or Best Buy. In this case I got a vendor. Free delivery can vary; in this case, it'll take a week, longer than usual via Prime. There are other things like egg slicers, low-carb baking mix, and low-sugar BBQ sauce. The egg slicer thing was weird; I love boiled eggs, but my slicers have had problems like a busted blade--I don't know how that happened.. Quite often, I might go to Walmart for any inexpensive gadget, but over the last year or 2, it's been hit or miss. Of course, I've bought memory cards for my computers and cellphones, too.
Food prices are still blowing me away. I remember a year ago eggs were costing about 60 cents a dozen at Lidl. And then almost in a heart beat, no doubt because of the avian flu, prices quadrupled or more. More recently it's vacillated above or below $3. I checked while at Walmart today, and eggs were about 30 cents a dozen more expensive. I'm now a lot more selective what I'll buy at Walmart. I still can find grass-fed chuck roast at $6.50-7/lb, But Lidl has more selection, specials, and prices on steaks. But you name it and prices have gone up. I can recall getting a 12-pack of Diet Coke cans at special for about $3 and the regular price is over $6.50. I don't eat much pizza but it used to be you could buy a budget frozen pizza at Walmart from $2.50-2.75, but the same now starts about $3-4. I could buy a small bag of cut iceberg lettuce for about 92 cents and I think the last time I checked it was $1.13. Someone on Twitter recently talked about a $9 loaf of bread. It's not that bad at Lidl or Walmart, and I myself rarely eat bread. But I find myself taking advantage of Lidl's specials.
A related anecdote happened when I went to self-checkout today. I noticed after totaling my order, a package of country-style pork ribs on the counter. I knew I had picked up a package; did I forget to ring it up? So I made a separate purchase. Long story short, I discovered 2 packages when I got home. I guess someone had left it there for whatever reason. I'll use it but if I wanted 2 packages, I would have put them in my cart.
