Post #7113 J

 Pandemic Report

The latest weekly stats from CDC

COVIS-19 and other respiratory illnesses (flu, RSV, etc.)  remain at high or very high levels for many, if not most states across the US. Over the past week we've seen 5 year anniversaries of the WHO and US declaring public health emergencies. We continue to see related political stories: the CIA recently flipped from favoring the zoonotic to the lab leak theory of COVID-19 origins, although it has low confidence in that assessment (China continues to regard that as very low possibility, although WHO still criticizes lack of transparency in disclosures); Congress seems to want to test Biden's preemptive pardon of Fauci (fifth amendment exception against self-incrimination: a perjury trap?) with a deposition; Trump wants to reinstate military who left the service rather than comply with fit for duty vaccine mandates; HHS nominee RFK, Jr. tried to stave off attacks on his anti-vaxxer past; and China is pushing back on the Missouri AG's cOVID lawsuit. Among recently infected celebrities: champion gymnast Gabby Douglas and Friends actor David Schwimmer.

Other news items of interest include.

• "US flu activity climbs, with more deaths in kids"
• "Japanese Researchers Develop Peptide To Counter COVID-19 Viruses"
• "After COVID-19, doctors urge the community to make a primary care appointment"
• "[Mixed CoVID status] couples help researchers discover gene that may afford protection against COVID-19
• "Unvaccinated vets were most at risk for hospitalization and death"
• "Leukocyte count may predict COVID-19 severity in postmenopausal women"
• "Long COVID test for kids may be possible with the discovery of a unique blood “fingerprint”
• "COVID-19 linked to increase in biomarkers for abnormal brain proteins"
• "Flu activity is on the rise, norovirus cases are spiking and ER visits for COVID are down"
• "COVID-19 linked to more severe outcomes than flu, RSV in 2022-2023 season"
• "COVID Lockdown Disrupted Preschoolers’ Social Skills"
• "Ocugen, Inc. Announces Investigational New Drug Application in Effect After Review by FDA to Initiate Phase 1 Clinical Trial Evaluating First-in-Class OCU500 Inhaled Vaccine Candidate for COVID-19"
• "COVID-19 more common than flu and RSV, causes more adverse outcomes, study on veterans shows"
• "Study identifies rare diseases linked to increased COVID-19 mortality risks"
• "The research found that nursing homes, which house just 1% of Americans, accounted for 31% of all U.S. COVID-19 deaths in 2020. Despite this outsized impact, many of the prevention measures adopted — including visitor restrictions, isolation practices and ventilation modifications — had limited evidence supporting their effectiveness."
• "Risk for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Higher After COVID-19"
• "Innovative method can identify fake COVID-19 vaccines without opening the vaccine vial"
• "An observational study comparing the severity of COVID-19 and influenza among nearly 6 million Denmark residents finds a higher rate of hospitalizations and deaths in those infected with SARS-CoV-2—mainly among unvaccinated people, those with chronic conditions, and males—from 2022 to 2024. "
• "Dexamethasone Reduces Mortality Among Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19"
• "New bird flu outbreak in California, HMPV and COVID: Why is everyone sick in 2025?"
• "COVID-19 pandemic linked to increased emergency department walkouts"
• "Prior vaccination prevents overactivation of innate immune responses during COVID-19 breakthrough infection"
• "‘Healthy skepticism,’ shifting protocols may fuel COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy, fatigue"
• Prosecution of COVID era crimes continue:
• "5 Dayton-area men accused of conspiring to commit COVID-19 relief fraud"
• "Alabama man convicted of $379,000 COVID-19 loan fraud while he was in federal prison"
• "Rochester resident pleads guilty in $250M Feeding our Future COVID-19 fraud scheme"
• ""Baton Rouge woman uses COVID relief money to fund destination wedding, sentenced to federal prison"
• Political or legal issues in the COVID era continue
• "Ex-KCCI worker settles vaccine mandate lawsuit; claimed religious objection to COVID shot"
• "State lawmakers are pushing for vaccine exemptions even as childhood vaccination rates fall"
• "NICU Nurse Loses Lawsuit Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate, Religious Exemption"

Other Notes

The blog continues to get a number of dubious pageviews. I finally got my Jimmy Carter post out, which I needed to get my monthly target of 40 or more. That post was rather unusual because it had a lot of personal stories  It'll be hard to maintain that target in a short month. I've tentatively thought  about posts on Trump with respect to Immigration and tariffs, and I may cover his inaugural address in one or more posts. No red hot tweets on Twitter/X, but I'm probably gettin 3-4K impressions weekly. My followers briefly dipped to the 60's but have briefly rebounded into the 70's.

WWE had its Royal Rumble tonight. As expected, Charlotte Flair returned from injury to win the women's battle royal and a shot one of the women's championships at Wrestlemania. The men's match was superb with one of my favorites returning (AJ Styles). I'm somewhat surprised  they put Jey Uso  over Cena,  a sentimental favorite for a title shot in his last year of wrestling. it was an unexpected battle of babyfaces.

I finally caught an episode of  WWE Rival AEW Dynamite, which is streaming on Max. but I had .to watch it mostly on rerun because I ran into chronic Internet issues. My ISP is a pain in the ass to deal with on service issues. They'll often do unnotified maintenance in the area and they'll never directly connect you to a technician. They usually assume you haven't tried to restart the modem or you loosened the cables. No, restarting the modem, usually taking 2 minutes, started taking hours, if at all. Someone called me after they demanded I schedule an appointment for the next day. that person thought the modem was possibly failing, which I didn't think was likely. Long story short, apparently squirrels made it into their outside equipment and chewed up some cabling.

Mu Thunderbird/MailStore setups have led to bizarre issues. One of them seemed to be somehow it was caching hundreds of inbox messages no longer in my folders (which i usually truncate after archiving. At some point I switched from Thunderbird IMAP to POP configuration. I'm still getting a few messages that came from God knows where.. I usually have zero messages in my inboxes when I do my Mailstore archiving, which means in theory no messages added to my Mailstore local inbox. 

Then something weird happened to my vendor folder. I do monthly updates to my history files. The vendor folder holds all relevant emails, say Amazon order emails, shipping notices, delivery confirmations, etc So somehow Mailstore stopped adding my vendor emails about mid-month; I'm not sure why, but I lost about a half month of folder emails before I noticed the problem. I tried dropping/recreating the folder, and Thunderbird notes I have vendor filters. Nope. So I've set up a differently named vendor folder which seems to be archiving as expected. I'll be auditing my other email folders to check on updates