Pandemic Report
The latest weekly stats from CDC:
 |
As we head into the highest travel holiday period since the start of the pandemic, all the indicator are unfortinately trending in the wrong/worse direction. The biggest story, as you can easily see in the variant charts above, JN.1 is dominating, responsible for nearly half of new cases, even higher in the Northeast:
Authorities have so far not reported different or more severe symptoms from JN.1 compared to previous strains.Though officials so far believe the public health risk from JN.1 is no greater than that of other recent strains, its unprecedented accumulation of mutations — most inherited from JN.1's highly mutated parent BA.2.86, which first raised concern over the summer — has kept health authorities on guardData from early studies of the strain cited by the WHO in a risk evaluation this week also pointed to research suggesting JN.1 "displays a higher immune evasion" compared to its BA.2.86 parent, though not enough to prevent this season's COVID-19 vaccines from being effective.
Other recent notable news items:
- Mucosal vaccines administered up the nose or down the throat have proven effective at stopping the COVID-19 virus in its tracks, appoaching the vaccine ideal of sterilizing immunity.
- There are bureaucratic issues since the USG is no longer directly subsidizing vaccine shots for all. For example, assisted living/memory care facilities are generally regulated by states vs the USG (different than nursing homes). This affects ability of say resident nurses to bill Medicare. A workaround may be to shuttle patients to pharmacies or doctor offices.
- The former National Guard husband of Congresswoman Luna is suing DoD over being let go over refusing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate, having claimed a religious objection over the use of fetal cell lines (not tissue), implying a connection to abortion. [Note: I am a pro-life Catholic and I don't have any related concerns.]
Other Notes
We've now exceeded 500 posts fo the year with a week left. Pageviews are up over 1100 for the month but a 1-day cloudburst of maybe 400 makes any analtsis dubious at best. [As I write, it looks like another cloudburst Saturday night.] My Twitter/X followers are up to a second account high of about 33 and my impressions are modestly up to about 300 daily. There are a lot of people with better numbers and engagements but for a fairly unknown libertarian this isn't bad especially when a number of tweets never reach double digit impressions.
Pet peeve. A recent procedure involved creating a second shallow wound. Doctor notes didn't discuss nursing care, if any, fot it, particularly in their notes, which nurses review. The nurse was quizzing me during a recent appointment. I vaguely recall a regular rotation of dressings which I've been doing, but she is not going to rely on something not in her notes. I tried to contact the doctor through his assistant but he's already on holiday. If anything she wanted me to contact the recent surgeon who is also on leave. I hate getting caught in the middle of this stuff. I saw a different nurse and doctor a few days earlier, and the issue wasn't raised by either of them.
Have you ever dealt with captcha hell from within a transaction? I have dealt with these things when I'm on VPN and trying to Google or logging into a pssword manager. For some odd reason, I ran into a problem confounding captcha and/or card verification. I got a later notifcation that asks why I've left items in my cart. I follow theit link--and empty cart. You can't make this stuff up.
I swear I'm running though nicrowave ovens more often than I used to change broken phone answering machines. I think I just bought my third in less than 2 years. Not sure what happened to the last one. It just stopped heating one day after heating some microwave popcorn. It's a pain because most of my Nutrisytem entrees require heating. Amazon wanted 4-5 days for delivery and Walmart (since I don't buy their plus service) wanted a $10 delivery fee.
Some of the missed (M), rarely shown (R), or new (N) Hallmark/other holiday movies this season:
- "Finding Christmas": (R-HMM. I caught this once playing at 4 AM.) Sean is a NYC ad agency owner whose longtime girlfriend has broken up with him. Owen, a Southern handyman and aspiring musician, also has a long-term girlfriend breaking their relationship. They impulsively decide that a change of pace is in order and house swap. Sean's assistant Mia and Owen's sister, single mom Ryan, help the swapmates get adjusted.
- "Trading Christmas". (M-past HMM). Somewhat analogous to the previous title's plot. A successful East Coast novelist Charles has writer's block, and West Coast widow/empty-nester Emily is facing a Christmas apart from her college student daughter. To shake things up, Charles and Emly houseswap. Emily's unknowing friend Faith and Ray, Charles' also single brother, get inolved with the swap.
- "Christmas Hope". (M-past Lifetime). Part of the "Christmas Shoes" trilogy: all missing. Patty, a social worker, and airline pilot Mark find their marriage crumbling after son Sean's tragic fatal vehicle accident. Emily's single mom dies, and Patty brings her home for a holiday visit.
- "Holiday Road". (N-HC). This is probably my favorite of this year's crop, along with HMM "A Season for Family". Nine strangers are desperate to get to Denver for the holidays, but their flight gets canceled over the weather. They all join in a long SUV ride of misadventures, led by a young black female social media influencer. There are a compelling storylines here, including an unlikely odd couple, a father longing to be with his daughter (with a twist), a divorced mom without custody of her young daughter, and an Asian couple estranged from their grown son.
- "A Very Merry Mix-Up". (HC). Alice, a struggling NYC family-owned antique shopowner, becomes engaged to Will Mitchum, a rising young businessman. Wlll is going to take Alice home to meet his folks bit is personally delayed by business reasons but convinces Alice to go on ahead of him. Alice meets Matt Mitchum (no relation, but has a brother Billy). Long story short. Matt and Alice think Billy is Will, and she is escorted to the wrong residence. The real Billy makes his way home, and Alice realizes the mix-up. Up to that point, Matt and Alice have been slowly bonding.
