Pandemic Report
The latest weekly stats from CDC:
The latest daily stats from Worldometer:
We still see tapering down of the late summer mini-wave in terms of improving test ratios and fewer related ER visits. However, as we transition to colder weather recirculated, unfiltered, bioaerosol-laden indoors air poses an increasing risk.
Other items of note:
- As many as 1 in 3 people infected with COVID-19 will develop prolonged symptoms, known as long COVID or up to one in 7 Americans.
- The newest evolved rapidly spreading emergent strain is the more infectious HV.1.
- Anti-vaxxer misinformation about the COVID vaccine is eroding trust in vaccines in general, down to about 71% in general and up to 16% believing in hazardous side effects.
- There are some hotspots of COVID in the US, leading some California counties to reinstate mask mandates, e.g., in healthcare facilities.
- mRNA vaccine makers Moderna and Pfizer have had to lower revenue estimates of the newly released monovalent vaccines and seen related stock price declines. Pfizer has also laid off some 200 employees for related reasons.
- American researchers have estimated at least 2.4 million lives have been saved globally due to vaccines.
- Experts explain why some vaccines, like for measles and polio, seem to be preventative and others, like flu and COVID, seem somewhat less effective: it has to do with the former viruses being more stable, and the latter being rapidly evolving. For example, the original COVID-19 vaccines were designed for the alpha variant and we didn't see a tweaking until the more recent bivalent boosters. Anti-vaxxers exploit the differences of vaccines dealing with mutating viruses.
- Continuing prosecution of federal COVID relief fraud, like in this case, involving this former spokesperson for the (Native American) Blackfeet Nation.
Other Notes
Blog readership continues at a more regular pace; I'm still puzzled that Singapore pageviews still modestly outnumber US pageviews.
Of my pet peeves is when I periodically have to login to password manager which tracks my stored IP credentials. I'll forget I'm on my VPN and assume I made a typo in entering my master password. I'll eventually check my emails and find a notification from the service provider saying it blocked my login, asking me to verify my new location--from ROMANIA? What the hell? My VPN is supposed to track from the east US. I earlier mentioned my canary in the coal mine was seeing a bunch of foreign trends on Twitter/X, often in unfamiliar languages. It's bad enough I have to turn off my VPN if I use Google to track the latest COVID news or end up in captcha hell.
I knew that minimum wage increases would explode fast food prices, not to mention inflationary pressure on food supplies, etc. I don't remember when I last ate out but it may have been Subway on the drive back home from visiting my sister in Ohio over the Thanksgiving weekend. I don't recall what I paid, but I think it was about $8 for a 6-inch combo. I winced but wasn't that surpassed because the last times I went to Burger King and McDonald's it was around the $10 neighborhood.
Familiar readers may remember in my MBA business strategies capstone class, I and another headed our group's final project, which we chose to be McDonald's. My colleague chose McDonald's because he and his then girlfriend while courting used to meet at a McDonald's midway between their cities; I grew up in a large USAF NCO family on a tight budget; we rarely ate out because of the expense. Dad sometimes wanted to give Mom a break from cooking, We kids used to watch a local kids' weekday show with cartoons, which was sponsored by McDonald's. We enviously watched as some birthday kid's party chowed down on burgers, fries, and milk shakes. So, I remember the folks took us there on special occasions like my First Communion and Confirmation. Anyway, I fought off attempts by our Pakistani teammates who basically freeloaded off our analysis: they wanted to stick stupid Ray Krocisms into the report. One I particularly remember was his explanation that there was only one way to prepare hamburgers: fry them. (Other chains, of course, found ways of differentiating their products, e.g., fresh beef Wendy's burgers or Burger King's charbroiled ones.) Kroc used to contrast the preparation of hot dogs which he considered too complicated: you can grill, boil, fry, steam, microwave, slow cook them, etc. Never mind people serve millions of them at home, you can buy them at ballparks, street vendors in NYC, m national dedicated chains, convenience chains, even in mixed chains like Sonics. Personally, I'm still convinced McDonald's could sell a lot of hot dogs. Maybe not to me, because I don't prefer processed meats, and the last time I checked you can't buy a grassfed burger there. (Of all places, I discovered during my 2016 move to Arizona you can get a grassfed burger at Carl's Jr.) If I put dietary restrictions aside, I prefer Whataburger and my second choice would be a Whopper. McDonald's is okay; I like the Big 'N Tasty, but they don't sell many of them and I had to wait an abnormal amount of time the last time I ordered one. And still the worst cup of coffee I've ever had was when I went with Navy buddies to an outlet in Orlando in the late 70's. I ordered coffee and I got the inky black residual that must have been standing on a burner forever. I can still taste it in my memory. That should never have been served to a customer. Not the only time: while I was a full-time residential PhD student at UH, I stopped at a Burger King after visiting my folks near San Antonio, and I ordered onion rings (with my burger). I guess like in the case of that coffee, they didn't want to start a fresh batch; I think I only got like a couple of cold rings and the rest mostly residual fragments or fried dough.
I think what got me fixated on fast food was a tweet that spoke of an $18 Big Mac combo in Manhattan. What the hell? I'm seeing Burger King advertising a 2 for $5 burger bundle. I can buy over 3 lbs of grassfed burger for that money. Had prices gone wacko over the past year? It may well be some prices differ by location, but:
The average price of a meal at Wendy’s is now $11.11, which is more than any other major fast food chain...[T]he average price of a meal at McDonald’s is $9.05, and the average price of a meal at Burger King is $8.66.
I was still young when the Beatles disbanded. I remember covering at least one of their tunes ('Something') in high school choir; I still remember singing "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" ('She Loves You') through a box fan as a kid because I thought it sounded cool. I knew most of the songs but not the group except for a few songs. I started building my vinyl LP collection in high school and college. I still remember tentatively buying {I was paying for school so my budget was limited) the red album (2-record album of early Beatles' material, much of which were love songs). Song after song, I was like, "The Beatles wrote that song?" It's probably my favorite album of all time. I then bought the blue album where the Beatles evolved to more advanced material, some of which were more obscure (and drug influenced?) and I didn't care for as much, e.g., 'A Day in the Life', 'I Am the Walrus', 'Ob-la-di', 'Strawberry Fields', but more than enough classic hits, including 'Let it be', 'Something'. 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps', 'Here comes the sun', 'Hey Jude' and 'Back in the USSR'. I eventually bought all their major albums on vinyl.
Yoko, late John's widow, later handed over 3 Lennon tracks, 2 of which were released in the 90's: 'Real love' and 'Free as a bird'. The remaining track, 'Now and Then' had some technical challenges to extract John's vocal, and here is the recently released result:
