Post #6865 J

 Pandemic Report

The weekly CDC stats are:

via NBC

There is no doubt with an escalating positive testing percentage we haven't peaked yet in this summer wave. As per the second chart, we've exceeded last summer's surge and are approaching 2022's. As familiar readers know, I have 6 younger siblings and 21 nephews and nieces. I just heard my Mom has caught COVID-19 a second time  and recently another niece and niece-in-law have caught it. And that's based on incidental reports. I know at least 4 other nephews, another niece, and my youngest brother  (and/or spouses) have previously caught COVID during the pandemic. It's possible others have gotten it and I haven't heard about it. Many that did catch it, like my Mom, were breakthrough infections. It seems like the vaccines have done what they were designed to do--fight off serious health complications.

But, of course, celebrity infections grabbed the headlines. One was one of my favorite rock singers, Rod  Stewart. However, something like 40 Olympic athletes who have tested positive over the last 2 weeks. Of particular note is 100M gold champ Noah Lyles who got diagnosed 2 daus prior to his signature 200M event; he still managed to win bronze (Olympic officials leave it up to the infected atlete on whether to compete) but left the field in a wheelchair. He had been penciled in for the 4x100 relay, but they substituted and lost by DQ anyway..

Other news items of interest include:

• CDC now regards COVID as endemic: "The definition of “endemic” is fuzzier, but generally refers to a disease that’s become entrenched in places, like malaria is in many parts of Central and South America and sub-Saharan Africa, forcing people to learn how to live with it.."
• In 2023, COVID dropped from the 4th to 10th leading cause of death in America/
• A WHO study suggests vaccines saved 1.6M European lives.
• Globally an estimated 400M people have experienced long COVID.
• Ohio State researchers are looking for a cure to long COVID targeting an enzyme chronic infected produce in abundance
• Pfizer's KP.2 fall 2024 vaccine may come up for approval this month, Moderna next month, and Novavax later this fall.
• COVID relief fraud cases continue to be prosecuted, including
• A Tennessee woman who illicitly took over $100K in COVID unemployment benefits for other identities has pleaded guilty.

Other Notes

The blog continues to pull in suspiciously high numbers. I finally published a commentary on Biden's exit from the Presidential election yesterday. My Twitter/X imptressions are going okay although I can't seem to break past followers in the low-40s range. Oddly, my political tweets are less popular than my cultural (e.g., sports) ones.

My final car payment is less than the current autopay so I ended up calling my car finance people  to arrange for a one-off payment and cancel my autopay. Somehow it looks like the payment failed when I checked both portals today but I have to wait for regular business hours to check why the payment failed. This is a pain because the finance agent wanted me to check with my bank to ensure autopay cancelled. It annoys me because I went out of my way to ensure they processed the final payment and they didn't contact me over the ussye. (They showed the status of my payments on the portal.)

I didn't expect to have an open schedule off work the last 2 weeks, so I got to watch a lot of Olympic events live, Some things like volleyball  are difficult to watch because you can't distinguish between a deflection off a block or a misfire.