Pandemic Report
The latest stats from WaPo:
Well, a modest uptick in cases to 25K cases daily. Unfortunately, we are still only seeing modest improvements in bivalent booster shots administered. Not a lot of new news items; like in the case of the federal government, we see winding down of emergency measures, various public policy mandates and restrictions and comprehensive coverage (e.g., daily news).
One retrospective I found of interest is of the US military, which has lost around 100 soldiers and suffered half a million infections.
I haven't seen much on the zoonotic vs lab leak debate since the intriguing briefly accessible data relevant to raccoon dogs at the Wuhan animal market. The following is from an intriguing follow-up post:
A recently released report by Chinese investigators has described in detail for the first time evidence that illegally traded wild animals triggered the coronavirus pandemic, reported The New York Times. A team of Chinese investigators on January 12, 2020, combed a market for clues regarding the emergence of a strange new illness in the city of Wuhan. The team found that the cages typically used for transporting animals had tested positive for coronavirus.The genetic material from that swab, which was covertly uploaded to a global database and only made public this year, has been examined by a group of international specialists three years later. The scientists, in a study that was made public on Monday night, said the swab evidence supports their contention that the coronavirus pandemic was started by illegally traded wild animals.
The story is more subtle; I believe the animals had been removed from the market by the time of data collection and were not directly tested for infection. But the nature and extent of animal/COVID-19 data around the cages are highly suggestive of a zoonotic jump to humans.
But the article is also interesting because it discusses some subtle aspects of measurement (e.g., filtration of human matter), the limited availability of data for Western scientists, generalizability of results from the results, etc.
Other Notes
The blog readership of March barely topped February but mostly because of a strong monthly start and 3 more days. I did seem to get one evening this week from a similar burse of pageviews from Hong Kong. One other oddity: one of my daily posts attracted 60 pageviews this week. Very odd in the sense it is rare for daily posts lately to hit double digits, and I don't think even more popular other format posts have gone over 40 readers in several weeks. The last 2-3 weeks I've seen very few readers on business days, without multiple daily posts. For example, I got as few as 7 pageviews one day. My Twitter stats are also down, in large part because Twitter doesn't let me see tweets unless I turn off my VPN.
Well, it's Final Four and Wrestlemania weekend. The WWE Hall of Fame was broadcast last night, highlighted by still active Rey Mysterio. I'm always fascinated by the personal stories of wrestlers. In the case of Rey, he spoke of the hard time he had breaking into Mexican wrestling, his girlfriend (now wife) working to help him pay basic expenses while pursuing his dream. He's got a match tonight against his heel son. I just watched the NXT version of Wrestlemania.this afternoon. I wax disappointed but not surprised to see long-term champ Bton Breakker job the title. He had already beaten everyone, so it's been just a matter of time before he was called up to the main WWE roster.
