Pandemic Report
The latest CDC weekly stats:
Although the national stats are relatively low still, the testing and emergency room stats slightly ticked up, mostly 27 states with concentration in the west. south and southeast. "The strongest indicators were seen in Arkansas, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia." Why summer waves? "Summer waves may be linked to people spending more time indoors with air conditioning during the height of summer heat." Why 2 waves for COVID but one wave annually for influenza? "Some scientists point to rapid mutations and waning immunity from past infection or vaccination...A second theory suggests there are three distinct groups of people – a summer group, a winter group, and a group that gets infected twice a year. The idea is based on the idea that people vary in how long they're immune after infection, vaccination, or both."
Crackpot anti-vaxxers are falsely trying to link rock performer Ozzy Osbourne's death to COVID vaccines. https://t.co/n4sPGqasBF
— raguillemette (@raguillemette) July 27, 2025
Other COVID-related news items include:
- "Study suggests long COVID is more prevalent than previously thought...Long COVID is generally defined as a chronic illness with a range of symptoms or conditions that can last weeks, months or even years after the initial illness... researchers have reported it affects as many as one in 10 people. The new close examination of infected nonhuman primates suggests that figure may be much higher.. Researchers monitored the macaques over six months and found persistent parameters of disease in 60% to 90% of the animals, even though the overt symptoms appeared relatively mild."
- "Study reveals pandemic life made brains age faster, even without catching COVID-19"
- "Pneumococcal Vaccine Associated With Reduced COVID-19 Severity, Hospitalizations"
- "Cardiac Biomarkers Equally Apt to Rise in COVID-19, Influenza"
- "Low-cost diagnostic tool delivers COVID-19 test results in under an hour"
- "SARS-CoV-2 detections in wastewater accurately predict illnesses within 1 week, study finds"
- "2023-2024 COVID-19 Vaccine Efficacy Wanes Over Time"
- "CoVerage outperforms rivals in early detection of COVID mutations"
- "Australian data confirm link between mRNA COVID-19 vaccination and menstrual cycle changes"
- "COVID-19 May Trigger Alzheimer's-Like Protein Buildup In Brain And Eyes, Study Finds"
- ""Globally, over 2.5 million COVID deaths prevented worldwide thanks to vaccines, data indicate"
- Prosecutions continue of COVID relief or other crimes:
- "$2.5M recovered from Vancouver real estate developer for COVID-19 loan fraud"
- "Man sentenced for COVID-19 unemployment fraud scheme totaling $16,196"
- "Monroe County man gets prison time for COVID-19 pandemic fraud"
- "North Texas man sentenced to over 24 years for pandemic relief fraud"
- "Southern California couple stole nearly $1 million through COVID fraud scheme"
- Legal or political developments continue:
- "Seattle 911 supervisor wins $800K settlement over COVID-19 vaccine mandate."
- "Report by Defense Department nominee suggests Covid may have been part of Chinese military weapons research"
- "New research shows how immigration status can become a death sentence during public health crisis. A study looking back on COVID-19 deaths in California found that immigrants who were potentially undocumented experienced much higher relative excess mortality during the pandemic"
- "EU regulator backs Moderna's updated COVID vaccine"
- "Pfizer and BioNTech Receive Positive CHMP Opinion for LP.8.1-Adapted COVID-19 Vaccine in the European Union"
- "New York ends paid sick leave for COVID-19 five years after pandemic"
- "Box Office Grosses Won’t Return to Pre-COVID Levels Even by 2029, New Report Forecasts"
- "ICU nurse wins back workers comp after refusing COVID-19 vaccine"
Other Notes
The blog still has questionably bloated statistics. My posts now are averaging into double digits but just barely and sometimes it takes a few days to reach that rate. We should hit 40 for the second straight month maybe higher if the essay I'm working on goes out this week. My X/Twitter impressions seem to be somewhere in the 1-2K.impression rate weekly (if and when Twitter teases a stat trying to lure me into a paid subscription. The old Twitter included basic stats to all users.)
I've usually been a fan of Google's services, including email, browser, maps, Blogger, YouTube, translate, etc. I do have occasional gripes, like Chrome's captcha games when I do a search with my VPN on. With YouTube, I usually embed at least 5 or more video clips in my daily posts (occasionally I embed Facebook or other clips) but lately I've noted more frequent interruptions of longer (say, McClanahan episodes) content and sometimes additional spots if you don't take advantage of the first skip period. It wouldn't be so bad if we were talking 30 seconds but some of these things are like mini-infomercials.
I hate losing an external hard drive. It recently happened to one of my reliable Seagate's It was one of those things like a likely loose connection inside the enclosure, like the device manager can see it but the disk manager can't or if it does, it sees it as uninitialized . At that point you realize you've probably lost the data but you have backups, but Windows says it can't initialize. So back to Amazon and I decided on a 2TB SSD. I had one already preassembled it its own case. But this one came with its enclosure separate. I've worked with enclosures before but this one required unscrewing a tiny screw. I had a tiny screwdriver set but I couldn't unscrew it.. Back to Amazon: there are no-tools alternatives so hopefully one of them works.
