Pandemic Report
The latest CDC weekly stats:
The latest daily from Worldometer:
The variant exhibits are a bit dated because CDC had deferred publication over the holiday. Next week's post exhibits should cover the current biweekly period through next week. A largely expected uptick given the heavy travel period relative to earlier pandemic Thanksgivings and of course cooler weather. Perhaps the most notable recent development is the tripling of variant BA.2.86 over a 2-week period
Other notable notes:
- Life expectancy has dipped since the pandemic but more recently regained more than a year, not quite to pre-pandemic figures.
- Still lagging recent updated monovalent vaccination rate, currently at about 16%.
- A recent meta-analysis shows a pattern of heart complications among long-COVID patients
- Partisan politics continues to dominate COVID discussions
- Impeached but acquitted Texas AG Ken Paxton is suing Pfizer over claims of vaccine efficacy
- The GOP-controlled House Judiciary committee is investigating alleged collusion between the White House and YouTube over COVID and/or vaccine misinformation
Other Notes
The misleading burst of blog pageviews lasted about 4 days, probably adding about 7K to legitimate hits, making statistics unusable. We are on track to exceed 500 posts this year, a mark I first exceeded in 2020, but I'm off pace to set a new post record. My Twitter/X impressions are up slightly to over 250+ impressions daily, but it's been a while since my last "viral" (1K+) tweet.
I'm sure all readers have their own horror stories in dealing with health care. In August I had a procedure to deal with a leg wound. They preferred I recover using a certain machine, and the ideal is for a visiting nurse to change dressings a couple of times a week. They needed the machine as a prerequisite for dealing with nursing agencies. Long story short, we couldn't secure a visiting nurse, and the local Wound Care doesn't support said dressings. So, the machine has gone unused since then. I tried to get the insurance company to get the equipment returned; the customer agent was in a state of denial, arguing with me, insisting lots of others have no problem booking nurses. There were 2 groups trying to recruit someone locally and they gave up after 3-4 weeks. I've ended up going to local wound care twice a week for alternative bandaging.
So, the wound is healing, but it could mean a year or more to close on its own. There is another procedure which in theory could close the wound sooner. In this case, the plastic surgeon wanted the same machine; he and/or his nurses would be willing to do the bandage rotations on office visits. But he wouldn't do the procedure without one available. In the interim, the equipment vendor was beginning to harass me; perhaps they needed evidence the machine was in use for billing. And then literally days before the procedure they demanded the unit be returned immediately. That likely would have scrubbed the procedure. I didn't understand their argument that my therapy was "complete": the wound continued to exist, and the 2 doctors were in contact. Dealing with the insurance company was like Lucy and the football, (Charlie Brown reference) I got a piece of paper from the plastic surgeon, but, no, they needed a doctor-to-doctor consultation. I did forward the original authorization with the plastic surgeon but he would run into a bureaucratic hurdle. I was under the impression the insurance company was going to extend the original authorization so I tried to get the original doctor to do that exchange. I knew with Thanksgiving last week it would be tough to get both parties to connect, and I reminded my first doctor's daughter, also a doctor, when I saw her Monday morning, and she assured me it would be taken care of. No feedback from the providers, the insurance company, or the vendor. I'm thinking we were talking about repurposing the original machine for use by the plastic surgeon.
So, I brought it to the surgery Tuesday. I noticed to my initial dismay (I didn't have any issue precharging the unit) overnight that I was having issues connecting the charge cable to the unit. The vendor specifically warns against an outage of more than 2 hours. And the problem is, the plastic surgeon told me disconnection puts the surgical repair at risk. I get an initial estimate that the fully charged unit will run for 14 hours. I'm pleading with the vendor to expedite a replacement cable, just on humanitarian grounds--you guys are putting my health at risk. But, nope: they're insisting I have to get paperwork done for a new machine and they won't service a machine they have already recalled. I'm literally pushing all 3 sides. When I finally get closure from insurance, the vendor insists the analyst gets 4 hours to review the paperwork. And then they've got a 6-hour window for delivery (at 2AM). Never mind I finally lost power for the unit about 6:40 PM. My delivery crosses shifts which adds to the complexity--and I also got flatly lied to that the new unit was already on the road to me by then. My plastic surgeon is advising me to go to the emergency room and get admitted (a point I made to insurance noting I had already reached my out-of-pocket cap). They have loaners but they have to be used on-site.
So, I was up and running 5 minutes after the delivery. And having to learn the product on the fly. Literally 5 minutes of dropping off the old device at UPS this morning, I'm getting an alert I have to change a full cylinder.
Another installment on my series on favorite Hallmark holiday cable movies:
- "Karen Kingsbury's Maggie's Christmas Miracle". Maggie meets her one true love in her tween/early teen years at Christmas time when her life is totally shattered after her dad abandons their family, ending the young romance in the bud. Maggie grows up to be a successful lawyer/single mom to Jordan having problems in his math class. She hires Casey to tutor Jordan. Have she and oddly familiar Casey met before? HMM
- "Time for Me to Come Home for Christmas". Cara is desperately trying to keep her family's jellies business open with new products like candy bars, initially created by her late mom, but investors want more automation (meaning employee layoffs) for new funding. She keeps running into Heath, an up-and-coming country singer, on the way home, and the young couple starts to bond. HMM
- "A Season for Family" This is one of the new HMM movies. Maddy is a single mom hotel manager with adopted son Wesley. Wesley has a brother Cody he's never met who lives somewhere in Utah. Maddy and Wesley visit Utah relatives and unknowingly run into Cody and his widower dad Paul. Paul and Maddy discover the truth, but there's a complication: Cody doesn't know he's adopted.
- "A Heavenly Christmas" Eve is a workaholic who dies during an icy trip. She becomes a Christmas angel assigned to Max, uncle/legal guardian. Max, once an aspiring singer, is a struggling cook. Sparks begin to fly, but angels can't fall in love with humans--or can they? HMM.
- "Catch a Christmas Star" This is one of my old favorites which has migrated to Hallmark Drama. Nikki is an emerging country superstar who has never stopped loving her aspiring baseball star boyfriend Chris. Chris' career crashed with injuries and he didn't want to stand in the way of her success. Chris married and had 2 kids with his wife, now deceased. Nikki is the idol of Chris' daughter; she hears of her dad's past romance with Nikki and wants her grieving widower dad to find love again. The kids hatch a scheme fo rthe two to meet again.
