Pandemic Review
The latest weekly stats from CDC:
The latest daily stats from Worldometer:
The "good news", if any during this JN.1 wave, is a sign that hospitalizations may be leveling off; note that this may be misleading; it could be an anomaly, so we'll need a few more weeks to confirm a trend. Recent vaccines continue to lag at 16% or so, which is disappointing because the monovalent booster has a great record at preventing hospitalization and death. Make no mistake; it is dangerous out there. In fact, I got an email from John Hopkins, a past provider, that they have resumed masking at their facilities.
I didn't find a lot of new news items over the past week, but one that caught my eye was of Brazilian children, about a quarter million over 3 years of the pandemic, hospitalized over respiratory illnesses. Of those who died, a disproportionate 3-times-higher number were infected with COVID-19. I think the reason that caught my attention is because I remember libertarian skeptics like Tom Woods have been dismissive of healthcare issues of children exposed to COVID.
We continue to see of people getting prosecuted over crimes involving federal COVID-19 funding and other violations, including but not limited to:
- a Washington state physician has seen his medical license restricted for spreading COVID-19 misinormation and prescribing ivermectin
- a former WV state health official approved unverified COVID relief payment claims and lied to law authorities over the misconduct.
Other Notes
Over a 1K blog readership pageviews this month which used to be normal but seem to to reflect mini "cloud bursts". Twitter/X readership is back to a more normal pattern.
Well, in my last journal post I mentioned I had somehow resurrected my mini-PC from some sort of power issue. I just installed some Windows patches and was in the middle of doing a backup wheb the PC went down for unknown reasons, probably a hardware error, and won't restart.
Election 2024 officially starts Monday with the Iowa caucuses in subzero weather. I think DeSantis needs a strong second to stay in the race. He's way behind in NH and doesn't have a shot without momentum from Iowa.
