Pandemic Report
The latest CDC weekly stats:
Well as we are now officially in summer, the surge, perhsps exacerbated by the recent holiday/summer vacation travel season, is definitely on the ascent across the board. For the first time in months infections are rising in all regions, especially the west (COVID test positivity was 12.8%). New JN.1 descendant subvariant LB.1 (see above) is rapidly spreading, even faster than KP.3 did.
Anecdotally we still hear of celebrity infections, like Orioles' Hall of Fame pitcher/broadcaster Jim Palmer. Even in my extended family:one of my nephews and his then pregnant wife, who has since given birth to a second grandnephew, caught COVID late in the pregnancy; all report themselves to be in good health now
The latest news items of interest include:
- Why are some people resistant to COVID infection without acquired immunity? [A new study's researchers] "found that people who resist infection have a much faster immune response in their nasal tissues compared to those who get sick. This response includes the activation of mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells and a drop in inflammatory white blood cells, which clear the virus before it sets in..The study also found that people who resist infection have elevated expression of a gene called HLA-DQA2 in nasal cells."
- While the median time to recover from a COVID infection is 3 weeks, over a fifth of infected take more than 90 days.
- Reason.com and others point out that the USG itself has been a source of misinformation over and beyond the recent revelation that the military ran an anti-vaxxer campaign agaonst the Chinese Sinovac vaccine in the Philippines but it included stuff about the efficacy of cloth masks, unrealistic expectations from social distancing, the ability of vaccines to prevent subsequent infections, etc. More importantly, the Biden Administration unduly restricted legitimate scientific query through a corrupt relationship with social media companies.
- Only one African country (South Africa) had any significant vaccine production capacity, and the continent only produces about 2% of its needs. While WHO is still working towards a global pandemic treaty, French President Macron and African leaders have launched a $1B initiative towards establishing vaccine production infrastructure intended to lessen dependency on foreign supplies, which were largely unavailable through the early pandemic.
- One analysis concludes even with lack of preparation for the pandemic, early containment measures and vaccines probably saved over 800,000 lives.
- "In retrospect, most Americans view four pandemic-related policies positively, with varying percentages believing each was a favorable idea: mask-wearing requirements in businesses and stores (70%), healthcare personnel vaccinations (65%), closing down of indoor dining restaurants (63%), and schools (56%)."
Other News
Blog leadership continues to show bloated statistics. I think the individual posts are generally more reliable although it still puzzles me why the occasional 10 yr+post shows up. As for Twirrer/X, I'm not sure because X no longer provides analytics for "free" Twitter, but I'm probably averaging 100-200 impressions a day. I've got just under 40 followers, about half of what I accumulated on my earlier account over 7 years.
I looks like HMM is foreshadowing Hallmarj's "Christmas in July" (which I think they're starting next weekend given next Saturday's new cable movie) with a Christmas movie week. I didn't even know until I checked mt cable listings this afternoon. I had cleared my Amazon Prime queue and was continuing to binge on "Young Sheldon" I was pretty geeky as a kid but never as bad as Sheldon (the infamous nerd from The Big Bang Theory). The show is just glorious. The episode where he proofreads his physics professor's paper and demands co-author credit for catching a mistake (the prof is also his grandma's former boyfriend) is just inspired.
It reminds me of when I offered to put my dissertation chair's name on some subsequent papers and he refused, saying it was all my work. I remember I had befriended a young black (like Africa) ISU professor. We had talked some joint research projects, but I was on a one-year contract and had to deal with an unethical department chair. The bottom line was I futilely looked for a faculty appointment elewhere in a recession. I only mention this for context; my friend promised to put my name on any related paper he published. I immediately objected; I was grateful for his thinking of me, but I had very high standards to what I publish under my name, not to mention I don't think it's moral to take credit for other people's work. To this day, I still search publication credits under my name. I'm not aware of any.
Well, one of my cloud providers provided a complimentary VPN service. [I also subscribe to another VPN service but I run into login blocks for a password manager and/or certain websites.] One benefit of the newer service is I could use it with my search provider without playing those infuriating captcha games. There were a lot of stability issues with the VPN, and it also seems to have been terminated over the weekend.
