Pandemic Report
The summer surge may be near the top but the test positivity rate especially is especially bothering me. Celebrity infections continue, notably Ohio Gov. DeWine (R), who had previously caught COVID 4 years ago.
The biggest news which I earlier tweeted is that the FDA approved the 2024/2025 KP.2 mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, Novavax had prepared for JN.1 vs KP.2 and their approval/rollout will emerge over the next few weeks.
- Is natural infection equal to or better than vaccination? "For people at high risk of severe illness, experts say get the vaccine when it becomes available. That's because infection may not provide as much protection as vaccination, said Dr. Ofer Levy, the director of the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. Protection from infection can vary based on the severity of infection, the strain, as well as a person’s age and health."
- Why should you wait for another vaccine if recently vaxxed? "High levels of antibodies present from recent infection may prevent the vaccine from stimulating new immune cells."
- Minimum waiting period since last infection/vax? "Patients who recently had COVID may consider delaying their vaccine by 3 months". Note: this guidance may be lowered for higher-risk individuals. Anibody protection starts to wane after 3 months,
Other news items of interest:
- COVID infections were strong enough in Calvert, TX for the local schools to go on temporary hiatus for deep cleaning.
- A recent study showed increased mental illness over unvaccinated severely infected over the coming year.
- People following the Mediterranean diet may reduce their risk of getting COVID/
- Prosecutors continue to pursue related relief fraud:
- A Georgia resident was sentenced for over $1M in pandemic relief fraud
- A California man was convicted for not delivering on nearly $3M in protective glove orders and spending the money on boats and vehicles,
Other Notes
The blog continues to get roughly twice the long-term trend pageviews which I regard with suspicion. Twitter/X is a mixed bag; I don't aggregate daily stats, but I'm probably averaging 100-300 impressions. I still feel at least some political tweets are getting shadow banned.
I discovered an interesting thing about Hallmark Channel scheduling and its holiday movies. Perhaps they mentioned it in some release but I hadn't heard it promoted. On weekdays it typically runs cable movies from approximately 11 AM to 11PM EDT (with sitcom reruns the other 12 hours). Here's the interesting observation: I've noticed they've kicked off the movie schedule with one of their holiday movies.
Interesting troubleshooting via Prime Video on my TV (I have a TV Cube attached).. One day I couldn't get any content. I then tried to see if I could view content on my PC. It usually gripes if it's not running on WIFI and also if my VPN is running. So here's the point: right after I shut down my VPN, I went back to Prime Video via the cube--and now all of a sudden, I could pick up content. I'm not sure why my problem was resolved--maybe there was a coincidental Amazon outage. But I've watched Prime Video content all the time with the VPN on my PC.
