Pandemic Report
The latest stats from WaPo:
We are down to about 20.8K cases daily, and deaths are below 300. I think this is the lowest number since last summer.
Debarre, along with researchers from the U.S. and Australia, studied the genetic sequences further and found that one could be traced to a cart from a stall that one of the scientists from the team remembered from a visit to the market back in 2014, according to the New York Times. At that time, raccoon dogs were kept on a cart in which their cages were placed on top of cages housing birds, a setup that infectious disease experts know can promote the spread of viruses from species to species. The sample taken from the cart in 2020 also contained SARS-CoV-2.
The new samples Debarre found may help to provide some answers. But shortly after she and other scientists reached out to the Chinese team who had written the original report, the genetic sequences disappeared from GISAID.
While the latest genetic evidence found animal and viral genes in the same location, it still does not point to an infected animal—or an animal’s genetic sequence that shows evidence of infection with the virus.
Pfizer's oral treatment Paxlovid has been proven effective by the FDA for high risk adults.
Other Notes
Well, the previous week blog stats went from one of the best in months to one of the worst, even down to single-digits Friday., maybe down over 70%. The mysterious Hong Kong readership seemed to disappear. Even my first essay post in a couple of weeks barely broke double-digits. Twitter readership fell under 1K impressions daily as I predicted, but initially it was weird like "you've got 31.4K impressions over the past 28 days for like 870 views per day". Say what? If I get 28K in 28 days I get 1K daily/
March Madness is here. I have 2 alma maters in after the first round of 64 teams: the University of Texas and the University of Houston. I'm closer to UH. We lost 2 championship games while I studied for my doctorate during the days of Phi Slama Jama. My cable bundles didn't let me see either game.
PC problems never seem to stop. I mentioned in a recent journal entry that I finally got an old application AskSam on one of 2 PC's. Somehow it got uninstalled, presumably security software. I haven't traced it yet; I know the install persisted over a system bounce. I reinstalled it to get exports of over a dozen files. Then upgrading Chrome and changing the security on an older laptop took forever.
Generally. I multi-task very well, but I sometimes zone out when I'm writing; I was "watching" the horror film "The Visitor" on Amazon Prime. I think it probably confuses people who give it their full attention. Yes, I could have watched it again, but I knew how it ended. So, I found a synopsis online. Some of it was disgusting, over and beyond your standard horror flick. You can probably guess what I'm talking about.
