Pandemic Report
The latest CDC weekly stats:
Variant data, normally reported every 2 weeks, is postponed for another 2 weeks because of delayed data uploads over the holidays. After months of relatively lower data the last week's posts are all reporting upsurges across respiratory illnesses, including the flu and COVID.
One of the prominent stories over the past week is the WHO is pressing China to share more data, particularly relevant to COVID-19 origins; for irs part, China argues it has been transparent.
Other related news items include:
- "China is currently facing an outbreak of human metapneumovirus (HMPV) and videos on social media purportedly show congested hospitals and overburdened healthcare systems. Health experts have raised concerns over HMPV, a respiratory virus in other parts of the region afflicting a number of Asian countries."
- Political and legal issues continue including
- U Penn expects some COVID vaccine royalties
- "A federal Covid-19 vaccine mandate preempted a Montana state law prohibiting employers from discriminating against unvaccinated workers, a federal judge ruled"
- "COVID-19 unemployment scheme involves stealing coworker's personal information"
- "Modeling tool estimates COVID-19 testing saved 1.4 million lives"
- "Data show 7% rate of long COVID in college students"
- "COVID-19 Pandemic Linked to Lower Survival Rates in Cancer Patients"
- "Accelerated kidney function decline seen with COVID-19 versus pneumonia"
- "One million cancers ‘missed’ worldwide during Covid lockdowns, WHO estimates"
Other Notes
After a blip of pageviews last weekend, the blog is back to a more regular pattern. No new essays published but I'm working on a couple of posts. On Twitter/X, my followers have surged up to 62, although it frequently seems to fluctuate daily.
I've tweeted or posted on this topic on multiple occasions , but I have a big problem with college playoffs and championships being on cable. More to the point, my Texas Longhorns were playing Arizona State in the second round, in this case the Peach Bowl. My cable bundle never included ESPN, and it's not like you can add a la carte channels for a modest fee. I think you have to upgrade to a bigger channel upgrade that probably costs like $50+ more to your monthly. and my bill is already $160+/mo. so in addition to my math MA, my middle brother has a chemical engineering degree, two nephews (different siblings) have engineering degrees, and a forensic analyst niece also got her degree there.
In my experience, the way things work if say you want to to view ESPN the app will have you sign into your cable provider. Then my provider tells the app it's not in my cable bundle, i get a sales pitch om upgrading my cable bundle. i was texting my brother and he was arguing with me, saying he was watching it free on the app. I don't know his circumstances (he recently moved back to Kansas).
I first tried to follow an Internet play-by-play but it was slow and died somewhere late in the first quarter. I ended up following some Google webpage refreshes showing possession and frequent but inconsistent play outcomes. So Texas had a compelling 3-possession lead. And then the lead evaporated in the fourth quarter, apparently including a pick-6, not to mention Texas had 2 makeable field goal attempts to put the game away in the closing minutes, but blew those. A lot of this was by way of my brother's texts. Overtime. I wasn't crazy about that; we just lost the SEC championship in OT against Georgia. it was impossible to follow anything in OT other than eventual score changes. We won in OT 2 when Texas intercepted Arizona State after Texas scored in their possession.
