Pandemic Report
The latest weekly stats from CDC:
The latest daily stats from Worldometer:
So, we coninue to see overall the winter COVID-19 surge recede , but note that nontrivial numbers of hospitalizations and deaths continue; you may need to check your local community to see if your location is a COVID hotspot. I myself intend to get a second 2023/4 booster by the end of the month. But to give a simple personal example, I had to work with a federal civilian on a complicated database problem at a government site. At the start he was offsite, explaining he had a bad cold and didn't want to spread it at work. I instantly thought of bringing an N95 mask with me the next day. (Actually, he didn't cough or sneeze once while I met with him in-person later.)
News items of interest include but are not restricted to;
- A recent study concluded an annual COVID booster makes both economic and healthy sense, even if you share some or all of the costs.
- "A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study has found that mRNA vaccines for the COVID-19 virus are not linked to cardiac death in younger adults.he study was conducted using Oregon death certificate data for people aged 16 to 30 who died from a heart condition between June 1, 2021, and Dec. 31, 2022. The study was done after cases of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle, were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System."
- Reduced HDL-C and heightened ferritin levels are important metabolic markers linked to long COVID in a recent study.
- Public COVID policies continue to wind down like Biden executive order 13991, involving wearing masks in federal buildings.
- COVID-19 protein Nsp1 is not only good at keeping ribosomes from manufacturing proteins but suppresses production of new ribosomes.
- Anti-vaxxer rubbish conimues to spread:
- No, celebrity OJ Simpson died from cancer, not a COVID vaccine
- No signicant risk of stroke for days post-vaccine.
- A European study attests to the effectiveness of vaccines in reducing the risk of long COVID and other complications
- "The outcomes from this study support NVX-CoV2373 [protein-based Nuvaxovid vaccine] as a viable alternative to mRNA vaccines for both primary series and boosters, broadening vaccine choice."
- Prosecution of COVID-19 relief fraud continues:
- A California woman pled guilty to millions in PPP amd EIDL fraud
- A former Boston Pizza shop owner claimed pandemic loans for the restaurant he no longer owned.
Other Notes
My blogger stats continue to be bloated and unusable, literally hundreds of incidental pageviews daily. I prefer the "real" numbers, good or bad. I'm still not motivated by hot trends lately on Twitter/X to proliferate my Twitter/X tweets/posts and impressions.
I can't believe I'm still dealimg with health insurance crap. For the second time this year, I'm getting billed by the same providers as if I didn't have insuramce. In fact, I have secondary coverage. I have called the same billing folks at least 3-4 times over the last several weeks. Now I understand some confusion was inevitable because I wrongly thought my primary insurance in January accepted my providers. My secondary was my primary insurer for December. So I'm going to have to call the billing people again, and it's a pain. Then a former employer demanded payment for March/April COBRA, claiming I didn't notify them (I did--I still have the early March email.) It never ends.
I have dealt with hellish commutes before in Houston, Chicago, Silicon Valley, etc. More recently, the DC and Baltimore Beltways can be impossible. But for motorists going through the area, you're basically dealing with I-95, 695 (Beltway), and 895. You're basically paying tolls each way except through the north beltway. The south beltway features the now infamous collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge. I have only driven the south beltway once because of Google Maps, ironically the week before the collapse. The other tollways are tunnels. More recently I've been making business trips to Annapolis. There's a convenient link to I-97 off 895S past the tunnel. But basically travel near the tunnel can back up for up to miles with various mergers to 2 lanes in each direction. Google Maps will estimate my commute maybe just over an hour but around rush hour it can be double that or more. I don't have an issue doing my share of alternating with other cars merging into my lane. What really irritates me is when an aggressive second car decides to jump his lane in front of me.
Well, WWE finally put Cody Rhodes over Roman Reigns at Wrestlemania last weekend, enabling him to "finish" his story, win the belt his infamous dad Dusty never got. Oddly, the most interesting development was Solo decided to take out big brother Jimmy Uso with the help of a new relative joining the Bloodline. I'm not sure of the motive: is Roman scapegoating Jimmy, fresh off a feud with twin Jey, for his loss? The other major development of interest was Drew McIntyre winning the world title from Seth Rollins, long rumored to be taking time off to heal from some nagging injuries, only for McIntyre to rub it in CM Punk's face, which badly backfired as Damian Priest finally cashed in his MITB contract.
