Pandemic Report
The latest weekly CDC stats:
- The prosecution of COVID fraud continues and includes:
- Marine reservist who sold fake vaccination cards
- Ohio men indicted for fraudently applying to EIDL and PPP relief programs
- two Alabama men were sentenced for PPP fraud
- a Florida woman got sentenced to prison for filing a quarter million worth of fraudulent COVID unemployment claims
- aTexas man was senteced to prison for a fraudulent COVID testing scheme
- a NJ man has been indicted over filing false COVID tax credit claims
- fraud also occurs in the European Union, including this half-a-billion dollar case
- Post audits of public policy coninue including
- young people from affluent NYC neighborhoods were able to jump in line for initial vaccinations
- Florida has passed a "medical freedom" bill and implemented relevant state administrative rules, including some restrictions on masking mandates in provider facilities
- Researchers talk of the need to study the consequences of public health policies like masking/social distancing and stay-at-home, e.g.,unemployment and learning achievement
- COVID has had a massive effect on the leading causes of death globally, temporarily overtakimg stroke as #2 in the early pandemic, trailing only heart disease. Note that some 6 years of increased longevity occured in the 3 decades prior to the pandemic due to "due to reductions in death from diarrhea and lower respiratory infections and better outcomes for people suffering from a stroke or ischemic heart disease".
- Since the start of the pandemic "[s]ome people falsely asserted covid’s symptoms were associated with 5G wireless technology. Faux cures and untested treatments populated social media and political discourse. Amid uncertainty about the virus’s origins, some people proclaimed covid didn’t exist at all. PolitiFact named “downplay and denial” about the virus its 2020 “Lie of the Year."...covid misinformation persists, although it’s now centered mostly on vaccines and vaccine-related conspiracy theories. PolitiFact has published more than 2,000 fact checks related to covid vaccines alone...Experts credit the speedy [vaccine] development with helping to save millions of lives and preventing hospitalizations. Researchers at the University of Southern California and Brown University calculated that vaccines saved 2.4 million lives in 141 countries starting from the vaccines’ rollout through August 2021 alone. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows there were 1,164 U.S. deaths provisionally attributed to covid the week of March 2, down from nearly 26,000 at the pandemic’s height in January 2021, as vaccines were just rolling out.
- Severe COVID lung infections can adversely affect heart health even if COVID has not directly affected the heart
- GeoVax Labs reported favorable results from its next generation GEO-CM04S1 based on its MVA viral vector platform.Simply stated, this vaccine strategy focuses on less mutable virus aspects.
- Remember the COVID skeptics who all but dismissed COVID among children? Nearly 6 million kids are believed to be suffering from long COVID.
- About 3% of adults are immunocompromised (including "organ transplant recipients, stem cell transplant recipients, and those who are on chemotherapy for cancers such as lymphoma and leukemia, among many others," Hence, the need for FDA emergency authorized drugs like Pemgarda.
- Ivermectin has been the anti-parasitic medication of particular notoriety to COVID crackpots. There is zero medical evidence that ivermectin, primarily used for animals, has any positive effect on COVID, including off-label use by questionable physicians arguing "they know the patient best". Ivermectin does have human application and doses/formulations. The issue is not just one of ineffectiveness but of people taking dangerous doses or the wrong formulation.
Other Notes
The blog statistics continue to be bloated. Intriguingly, I now have a long string of double-digit pageview posts for the first time in several months. My X/Twitter stats continue to drag because of fewer tweets/posts. I continue to mostly dislike the hot trends. Trump continues to annoy me although I know all he's out to do is get attention by saying the most outrageous thing he can come up with, like using the word "hostages" to describe his convicted J6 mob felons, who he promises to pardon, which would be an unconstitutional abuse of power.
Splitting my attention this evening between the first night of Wrestlemania and the men's hoops college Final Four. I was happy to see NC State lose in the first game. I'm still bitter they beat my Houston Cougars in a last-second, improbable, come-from-behind victory the year I earned my MBA.
The first night of Wrestlemania has gone mostly as expected. WWE finally took the International belt off Gunther and his record long tenure with the title and put it on Zayn. There were a lot of rumors they had to take the title off him so he could fight for the brand championship belt. It was pretty clear it was going to happen when they kept the camera on Zayn's wife in a first row. The other thing is they finally split the merged tag tiles to teams from both brands, off Judgment Day. WWE had teased a splitup of the faction, and Dom Mysterio, a faction member, began meddling in a Latino group feud against his dad. And I fully expect Priest to cash in his MITB contract if not this weekend, almost any day soon. I was amused to see Rock was holding the People's Championship Ali's widow gave to him last night during the Hall of Fame telecast preceding tonight's tag match against Rhodes/Rollins
It looks like EZPass is finally catching up on transponder fees. I was nervous because the transponder does not give audible feedback like the one I had brought from Illinois 20 years back. Usually they have this little display near the booth that tells you say "PAID IN FULL".. I hadn't seen it recently. Was the transformer working? I would be upset if they charged me double for not having an EZPass.
I have to admit that I've become more interested in women's basketball because of Caitlin Clark, so I'll probably watch Iowa's championship game tomorrow. I was a pretty good shooter back in my school days. I remember just shooting around in an Air Force gym and hit 6 consecutive half-court shots (There were witnesses. I was happy with just 1; they dared me to keep shooting until I missed a shot). I tried out for school sports once, in eighth grade. I made it all the way to the final cut. I had just shot in my final shot in scrimmage running left at the top of the circle, when the coach called the practice to an end, put his arm around me and and told me I was cut. I think rejection always hurts. I told myself some of the guys that made it onto the squad were worse players and their only advantage was of height (I was more or less average and they were close to or over 6 feet. The old saying is you can't teach height. Who knows? Coach didn't tell me. Maybe I was lying to myself. I never went out for sports again. Of course, my high school team was stacked; they never lost a district game during the time I was in high school (I graduated in 3 years).)
