Pandemic Report
The latest weekly stats from CDC:
US News describes a CDC study based on blood donation data last fall: nearly 96% of Americans had natural (infection) 23%, acquired (vaccine) 26%, or hybrid 48% immunity. Note that hybrid exposure tends to be linked with higher, longer lasting antibody protections. Older adults tended to be more acquired and less hybrid; this means it's especially important for older adults to remain up to date vaccinated and when prudent, mask and/or maintain social distancing.
Unvaccinated people had a higher rate of COVID-19 infection, the researchers found, “indicating that vaccination provides some protection against infection.” But the study noted that the difference could also be due to practicing mitigation measures like masking and social distancing.
How to make sense of higher infections among the boosted? First of all, a lot of these infections are minor:
"During this Omicron wave, we're seeing an increased number of mild infections — at-home type of infections, the inconvenient, having a cold, being off work, not great but not the end of the world. And that's because these Omicron variants are able to break through antibody protection and cause these mild infections," John Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medical College, told CBS News.
Second, only the most recent boosters provided some designed protection against omicron, not necessarily against more recent variants. Third, protection tends to wane over time, especially among at risk groups like the older, so recency of vaccination is particularly important for them. Fourth, there may be moral hazard at play, some vaccinated people at risk may feel an undue sense of invulnerability and have unrealistic expectations of vaccination; additional steps may be prudent to minimize risk of exposure through other mitigations such as masking, social distancing, and good hygiene.
Other Notes
I do like Sam's Club Scan & Go app; I wish most supermarkets had similar on not a few occasions I've found myself surprised at checkout. Occasionally I'll escalate a price discrepancy but at self-checkout it's normally a hassle to hail a manager or employee: is it worth my time to quibble over minor purchase items? Lidl will sometimes mark some items on clearance but unlike Walmart you don't have a discount price barcode. I think checkout clerks manually apply the discounts, I bought a few cups of yogurt supposedly on discount and it charged me a buck or so a cup, not that bad but not a bargain.
So, the nice thing about the app is you get the price when you scan the item; any surprise, flick the item off your purchase list and return the item to its shelf. However, it's a little too easy to flick off an item by grasping the phone the wrong way--and you're stuck trying to figure out which item you need to rescan.
Food prices haven't reverted to pre-pandemic and probably won't but egg prices are now beginning to normalize at least in my area of MD--roughly $1/dozen, budget brand. I've seen some cans of pasta (not a personal item, but something I regularly check), some down below a buck a can
