Pandemic Report
The latest stats from WaPo:
Well, cases are down to about 38K daily. BA.5 is down to about half share, with the BQ.1 series a distant second in a fragmented field of variants. A couple of data summary changes: as of a week ago CDC stopped reporting data on a daily vs. weekly basis, which may contribute to some clumptiness in data, and CDC is now reporting only on bivalent booster data.
As I write, I'm working on a separate related post. and came across a summary table on vaccine effectiveness too large to include here but available here.
As the CDC chart above shows, first month bivalent boosters stats are underwhelming. We are still averaging over 400 deaths daily, many of which are preventable, and we expect an uptick of cases in more virus-saturated indoor environments.. I implore if you had your primary vaccination over 2 months ago and had not had a bivalent booster yet. please do so now. If you are unvaxxed and don't have shot-related allergies, please get your primary series done.
Duke Human Vaccine Institute (DHVI)) has announced a first-generation pan-coronavirus vaccine. They "reported that three doses of the pan-coronavirus vaccine induced neutralizing antibodies against Beta, Delta and Omicron variants, including the subvariant BA.5...The vaccine candidate is a combination of a nanoparticle antigen developed at Duke, along with an adjuvant – an ingredient that boosts a vaccine’s effects." We see another pan-coronavirus candidate here, based on molecularly engineered banana lectin.
We continue to see public policy adjustments, such as California relaxing emergency restrictions in February and Qatar relaxing restrictions just before its hosted upcoming World Cup (men's soccer).
Other Notes
Well, blog readership improved somewhat over the past week; I'll likely pass last month's second lowest count in years; still only half the count of my long-term trend. My last essay (a semi-autobiographical one which reflects on my political odyssey and my academic job market) attracted a few dozen readers; in part I had worked on it for days. But the daily posts are struggling to find double-digits.
I recall weird dreams more than other people. One recent one involved a snickering Trump stealing my cheap flat screen TV. I never dream about the former POTUS, who I despise. I'm not a psychologist, not sure what it means: how he's captured the right-wing media as a RINO? A more troubling one is once again a variation of an exam. (Don't ask why; I had real-life students from hell as a professor, but for some reason these are with me as a student.) Weird stuff like going into a final without having attended a class all semester and completely unprepared. This one is a variation where I had to go up for a government clearance, and I didn't notice and didn't know some obscure government acronym on the qualification exam.
Well, as I recently mentioned, Hallmark recently started to its around the clock holiday cable movie schedule. The changes I see this year is on their flagship channel, they used to have a weekday doughnut hole for a daily home & family talk show, which apparently got canceled a year ago last August. I knew it wasn't on the schedule recently. The other thing is they're promoting 3 new cable holiday flicks each weekend. I know they have cross-network competition with Lifetime; I've sometimes seen clusters of cable holiday movies in daytime and certain nights, I think they transition more next month with some new content.
I wanted to end with discussion of one of my favorite Hallmark movies, "Five More Minutes." The movie was inspired by a hit song (also co-written) by former American Idol country artist Scotty McCreery in tribute to his late grandfather, longing to spend more time with him.
In the Hallmark movie, Clara, a laid-off art teacher, comes home to run her family's confectionary. Clara runs into an old boyfriend Logan who had recently retired from the military; they had broken up over his enlistment (without telling her). Clara hires a motivated assistant, Jay, who finds her late beloved paternal grandfather's unknown journal which details his love for Martha, a woman he met before Clara's grandmother. Long story short, Jerry (the grandfather} comes back from war to find Martha had moved on, starting her own family. Clara and Logan eventually track down Martha, feeling she had the right to know about Jerry's feelings for her. At this time, it's confusing to me how Martha fits into the story, unless it has something to do with Clara's relationship with Logan.
SPOILER: I'm going to describe the ending of the movie here, because I like the twist in storytelling. Martha drops by to tell Clara they had met years later and to leave some mementos of Jerry in an envelope Clara doesn't open immediately. There's some issue at the confectionary (maybe the alarm is tripped). She finds Jay at the store and is wondering he is there so late on Christmas Eve. He explains he had to meet someone nearby. They go into the store, and Clara opens up how she misses her grandfather, he was gone too soon, and she wishes she had just 5 more minutes more, she had so much she needed to tell him. Jay prompts her, "What would you tell him?" Clara gushes out her feelings, and Jay tries to comfort her, assuring her Jerry knows. He suddenly says he has to leave and heads into the freshly fallen snow. After he's left, the toy train at the store starts running and dumps open Martha's envelope to Clara, revealing photos of her young grandfather--who is a dead ringer for: Jay... She runs outside after Jay, Grandfather, only to find his footprints have disappeared into the snow.
