Pandemic Report
The latest weekly stats from CDC:
We continue to see overall declines in the fall/winter COVID-19 surge. finally seeing some declines in deaths. Of course, your mileage can vary; for example, I've seen stories of recent outbreaks at certain schools in Texas.
Some news items of interest include but are not restricted to:
- Rutgers researchers are looking at treatments coping with drug-resistant strains of COVID, which affect, for instance, some applications of Paxlovid.
- COVID-19 relief fraud prosecution includes, but are not restricted to:
- A New Yorker was convicted for using stolen identities to obtain fraudulent EIDL loans and unemployment benefits
- 3 men, including 2 brothers, were convicted for stealing over $7M of early payments on fraudulent early pandemic small business loan applications
- a Brooklyn woman was convicted of reselling hotel rooms meant for healthcare workers or COVID patients
- A Vancouver real estate developer was convicted in Oregon of PPP, money laundering and wire fraud
- a Washington state resident used an EIDL loan to purchase a personal RV,
- A California resident got $1.5M in fraudulent COVID unemployment claims
- There is some empirical evidence that using alternate arms in consecutive COVID-19 vaccine shots may improve effectiveness
- Omicron vaccines saved over 4000 NZ Māoris lives and an additional 34000 hospitalized
- CNN has reviewed COVID-19 fatalities among the elderly who account for 75% of the victims, including nearly 5000 in a 3-week span over the New Year, 3 years after availability of highly effective vaccines. (Another 1300 have also died from flu or RSV, both with available vaccines.) Lagging vaccine adoption and masking/social distancing practices across the board are troubling, but the fact that it's happening even in a number of nursing homes and assisted living facilities after high profile casualties earlier in the pandemic. I have an elderly relative in a facility who did catch COVID, ironically during a week she was scheduled to get her updated vaccine.
- A recent study confirms a number of natural cause deaths during the pandemic were uncounted COVID-19 deaths
- High-dose nitrix oxide inhalent for critically ill black patients with COVID decreases risk of death
- The battle against anti-vaxxer misinformation continues
- anti-vaxxers tried to attribute excess deaths in the UK to vaccines
- anti-vaxxers claim vaccines cost more lives than they save
- Montana Senate candidate Rosendale is claiming in a campaign ad that Fauci brought COVID to Montana the year before the US breakout
- Another study correlates infected veterans to higher healthcare expenses over the following year
- The Grey Lady points out although fewer kids catch COVID, some do go on to develop long COVID
- Another sudy shows COVID vaccine shots during pregnancy are safe for preborn babies.
Other Notes
An average week on the blog although a third of them were on Tuesday, which I find suspect. My Twitter/X impressions are at a multi-month low.
I think this might be the first time in a journal post I address the economy and the stock market especially since Biden is trying to take credit for the recovery and the rise in the stock market. No, I don't want to turn this into a political rant, and I don't think Trump is any better on the economy. Note that I am not a trained economist:I took a couple of MBA core graduate courses and did well, but developed some strong views, definitely not promoted or influenced by my UH professors. While I've accumulated a retirement nestegg, I sold at the bottom of the pandemic crash, losing over 30% of my savings and didn't trust a Fed-stimulated rebound. I've invested more cautiously since then, very warily given sluggish global supply chains, inflation, struggling Chinese and German economies. I don't believe the Fed has finally achieved the mythical soft landing averting recession, nor do I believe the US economy can remedy the global economy on its own. I've occasionally held stock in members of the Magnificent 7 (Apple AAPL, Amazon AMZN, Meta Platforms META, Alphabet GOOGL, Microsoft MSFT, Nvidia NVDA, and Tesla TSLA ), but keep in mind these stocks make a third of stock market value, the average stock is muddling through. The multiples of Mag 7 are near bubble territory, and I'm hearing Enron-like exuberance, that "profits don't matter". Moreover, I recently read nearly half the states are struggling in the midst and Biden's hype is not their reality. The unemployment numbers do not include the long term unemployed, and the LFPR is still below the pre-pandemic high. The high tech industry has been shedding jobs, a lot of new jobs are lower-paid service sector or in the less productive healthcare and government sectors. The government is constantly revising past months' numbers downwards and millions of job listings have disappeared. GDP numbers are bloated and reflect unsustainable government spending and higher inventories. For more specifics, I encourage interested readers to subscribe to Peter St. Onge's Youtube feed.
My situation is anecdotal and hardly representative of most people. But the last several weeks I've been unsuccessfully pursuing remote DBA roles while dealing with a health issue. Less than a year ago I was offered an unsolicited higher-paying job but it required moving to Norfolk, VA. In my career I've had to constantly move to other states to find work in academia or IT. It's largely an employers' market. Oh, I've seen worse markets, including the great recession. I'm not a perma-bear, but my intuition is telling me things are about to become much worse. Politicians are not the answer.
