Pandemic Report
The latest weekly stats from CDC:
Well, we continue to see the summer surge decline as even Las Vegas is seeing pre-pandemic tourism numbers; I keep watching that declining positive testing percentage. There still examples of COVI?D infections affecting things, like a recent political debate not taking place because a candidate was infected) and a California city hall was shut down.. No doubt the biggest story od the week is CDC recommending sa second 2024-2025 monovalent vaccine shot for the immunocompromised or senior citizens (after a few months).
Other items of not include:
- A number of deaths during the early pandemic attributed to natural causes were due to the virus or indirectly because of deferred healthcare under healthcare conditions.
- Congressional Republicans questioned the effectiveness of HHS PR expenditures during the pandemic.
- A recent study found airline strategies of masking and staggered seating helped contain COVID-19
- "Two studies published today in Science Translational Medicine differ on whether COVID-19 vaccine boosters can trigger an immune response in mucous cells in the nose and mouth—a longtime goal of vaccine researchers."
- While some meds like Metformin (used by Type 2 diabetics) have had some good applications during the pandemics, others, including an asthma drug, haven'.t
- Prosecutors continue to pursue relief fraud and other crimes:
- A California nan was sentenced to over 8 years in prison for PPP an other fraud
- A Southern California Fairgrounds, a government entity not qualified to take a PPP loan, and has agreed to a $5.5M settlement
- "Two former Broward [FL}Sheriff's deputies were convicted Wednesday by a federal jury of COVID-19 relief fraud."
- "Colorado Funeral Home Owners Accused of Stashing Dead Bodies Plead Guilty to Federal Fraud Charges"
- "Georgia woman gets 12-year prison sentence for $30M COVID-19 scheme"
- "Spokane [Washington state] dermatologist indicted for using $1.5 million in COVID-19 relief funds on luxury cars, home
- "New Bern [NC] man pleads guilty to posing as landlord and scamming COVID-19 assistance program
- "Former Montco [PA] restaurant owner sentenced to 21 months for Covid-19 relief fraud
- "Former Mount Vernon [VA] political activist sentenced to prison for defrauding restaurant employees and COVID-19 relief workers
- In other legal action:
- a hospital prevailed against an employee arguing religious reasons for not doing a vaccine shot
- "BART workers fired due to COVID vaccine mandate to get over $1M each, federal jury decides"
- A Missouri homeowner has found her home with a multiple-K lien against her property because of excessive pandemic unemployment payments
- "[IL] State’s top court embraces broad COVID immunity for nursing homes"
- Another study reinforces the need of women to mitigate risks of COVID infection during pregnancy (by vaccination, etc.) because it can affect newborn heart development
- "UH engineers and Houston Methodist researches develop AI COVID-19 tracker
- Some scientists argue because of the rapidly mutating COVID-19 virus, the traditional goal of herd immunity isn't feasible.
Other Notes
Mediocre blog readership, especially over the middle of the week when readership didn't even reach 2 dozen. My Twitter/X impressions are doing well in the sense they (trying to motivate to get more analytics with a paid premium membership) they tell me I've gotten 3.3K over the past week, which is probably more than double what I had been operating for weeks. But there are occasionally situations I know I've written a good tweet that gets noticed. Let me give a great example from today. A Trumpkin waxed enthusiasm aver Donald, Melania and Barron being the best White House family in history, I wrote a comparison with JFK's attractive family and just knew anyone remotely aware of Kennedy would agree. I mean Jackie Kennedy was the definition of class, and who doesn't remember John-John saluting his dad's casket? I usually get less than a handful of impressions, and this one at last glance got 360 impressions and 2 likes.
Usually. I love raving about Lidl, my favorite supermarket. But there's often room for improvement. One of my pet peeves is sometimes they'll mark down items for clearance, but unlike Walmart the clearance items don'y come with a relevant barcode. I THINK the cashiers will mark down the discount, but I vastly prefer self-checkout. i've only tested out small clearance items like a yogurt and a Sloppy Joe can, and they seemed to ring up at regular price. Now the regular price isn't bad but i probably wouldn't have purchased the item at the time except for the discount.
I don't know what's going on with eggs, my obsession. The app is showing $2.14 a dozen, but the large posted price has been $3.77 for weeks now. I've never seen a price discrepancy like that. It\s not a big deal because I've got a multi-dozen box of Walmart in my refrigerator.
Tough week for sports. My M.A. is from Texas and last weekend they were ranked #1 in college football. Georgia beat them in Austin. Then today they played Vanderbilt and barely staved off a come from behind victory I was have to track by webpage refreshes. Then my Minnesota Vikings, previously undefeated, lost 2 games this week.
I've had a weird experience with Amazon over the past week. They were supposed to deliver certain items a week ago. As best as I can figure after talking to customer service is they are out of stock and are awaiting replenishment. Usually they give you a warning about limited stock before you place an order. This was sort of a commodity purchase so I could have gone with another vendor
