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Saturday, November 29, 2025

Post #7460 J

Pandemic Report

I still haven't seen updates of the CDC major stats, but more recently, there have been lags of 2-3 weeks.

Here are the latest The Sick Times trends compiled from CDC and wastewater sources:


Why do respiratory illnesses typically surge during the fall/winter?


Relevant state surges: "As of Nov. 18, COVID-19 cases were surging in Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and West Virginia. Cases were likely to surge in Texas, Kansas, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Louisiana, Vermont, South Carolina, and Massachusetts, according to Newsweek."

Celebrity infections include semi-retired WWE wrestler/actor Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson. 

Relevant news items of interest:

  • " Bird flu virus could risk pandemic worse than COVID if it mutates, France's Institut Pasteur says"
  • "Long COVID takes $1 trillion global economic toll each year"
  • "New Data Shows COVID-19 Infection Much Worse For Children Than the Vaccine"
  • "SARS-CoV-2 Infection May Be Linked to New Allergies in Children"
  • The battle against COVID misinformation continues:
    • "X user posted about 'Corona virus' in 2013, but there's no reason to believe post was about COVID-19"
  • "How to Improve Indoor Airflow at Your Thanksgiving Gathering"
    • Use an air purifier
    • Use your air conditioning
    • DIY: If you have access to a box fan, a MERV filter and some duct tape, you can make your own DIY air filter device. 
    • Open your windows; try to seat your guests as close as possible to the fresh air coming in
  • Prosecutors continue to pursue COVID relief fraud and other crimes.
    • "Former Phoenix news anchor sentenced to 10 years for $63m fraud in Covid relief scheme"
    • "Four Charged in COVID-19 Loan Fraud Scheme Targeting SBA Funds"
    • "Lincoln man pleads guilty to fraudulently obtaining $1.5M in Covid relief funds"
    • "NJ Ponzi schemer pardoned by Trump is headed back to prison over $44M COVID-19 scam"
  • Political/legal news items:

Other Notes 

I continue to see dubious pageviews on the blog. I should reach post 40 for the month tomorrow, even without the essay I'm working on getting posted by then. I should pass the 400 post mark probably over next weekend. Obviously, I won't reach the 500 mark, for the month-plus I was in the hospital and rehab. My daily pageviews of new posts are starting to approach the mid-teens. My X stats continue to slump. losing another 10 or so followers, with few tweets reaching into 100 or more impressions.

I'm still struggling to get past the credit card issue with Amazon I mentioned in the last post. I believe the issue was caused by one of the 2 interbank brands; the name of the duopoly brand isn't important. I'm not sure what happened but it probably involved the purchase of certain PC security software licenses based overseas that tripped an alert. The vendor transaction initially failed, and I provided an alternative card. I remember being perplexed because I had plenty of credit on the card in question. Sometime later, I started getting notifications from the card issuer about the rejected transaction, implicitly warning me that my card had been suspended until I called their fraud line. They really didn't explain precisely what flagged the transaction. I did recall an earlier issue in which I had asked about a prior situation in which I was asked for a confirmation code, and my inference was that my VPN vendor had connected me to one of their overseas ports. I recall in one case the nendor indicated my location from NYC. Other things as well, like getting Google ads for local NJ vendors over 100 miles away. But the card issuer fraud unit denied that this was a VPN issue. They mentioned something that could have been the legitimate EU software vendor. At any rate. I thought they had cleared the hold on the account. I think shortly after that call, I started having problems with Amazon purchases.

I described some of the oddities in the last post. It started with asking me for another card, but then they canceled the transaction. This ended up costing me because I apparently lost the chance to grab a limited supply? portable hard drive at a good price. (Amazon doesn't maintain the shopping cart for a canceled order. just hyperlinks for cart items, and at some point, couldn't pull up the hard drive.) At some point, I was able to create sublists I could use backup cards I keep mostly for emergencies. Amazon and my default card issuer started pointing at each other, with the card issuer insisting it never saw the transaction.

So after publishing last week's post, I tried to submit like a $50 online order from Walmart, but implied all but 1 item on my list wasn't in stock. I wasn't going to test my card on over 1 item. I decided a run at my favorite grocery store, Lidl, wary that my card would be declined at checkout. To my relief, the card was approved like expected. I then tried a smaller Amazon purchase, apparently accepted as normal. Oddly, it still hasn't been shipped although it was still showed expected delivery early this week. I was later told by an Amazon customer service agent they had run into staffing issues, and I just received a notice it should arrive Monday. But another later transaction, motivated by Amazon's Black Friday sale. once again got canceled. (I resolved it as described in the prior paragraph). Fed up, I called the default card issuer again. It's difficult to say but I was led to believe the transaction was being filtered at the interbank level, that the issuer hadn't deactivated the filter earlier as expected.

The issuer agent thought I was going to verify her alleged fix worked, but I had already processed the transactions on the other cards. So I think my residual shipment on Monday should get me caught up with Amazon. I'm still concerned why the first purchase last week with my default card worked and the second was canceled; maybe it had to do with the size of the transactions. I was more worried about the card being used for some recurring transactions. Eventually, I'll test a bigger Amazon transaction on the card. Don't get me wrong; I'm glad they are protecting my account against fraud. I think, though, the issuer made a mistake in clearing the hold on my account

A big issue I dealt with over the past week was an archive of older PC backups, software, encrypted volumes, emails, podcasts, licensed music, etc. I also wanted a couple of cloud accounts with lifetime multi-terabyte volumes. The files that sometimes require exceptional handling with the newer ISP are large files like 1 GB+ files. I recall in the process I had "purchased" (for free) an hour-long TV episode. Among other things, I wanted to test watching the video in question, and long story short Apple/iTunes only allows you to watch the episode on 5 devices. I didn't find something like Dropbox's list of current device listing (I probably downloaded the TV episode like a dozen years ago on former PC's).  I eventually found an iTunes box that allowed deregistered licensed devices so you could register your current device.The general problem I ran into was robocopying the reorganized virtual drive back down to my external drives. Sometimes that required downloading big files via browser interface and revising robocopy parameters. I could then clone the archive faster between external drives on an available PC.

Finally. I love this time of year as the regular college seasons wind down and you see traditional rivalry games, like Ohio State/Michigan, Alabama/Auburn, and the Longhorns/Aggies. I tweeted about the  latter. I got my first Master's (in math) at UT. Ironically. I sought a commission to the USAF (my dad was career enlisted), and the idea was to pursue a PhD in meteorology at A&M, but I was passed over the selection pool after graduation, and the rule was that I was ineligible for the next 6 months, and in the interim I won a commission to the Navy as a math instructor at thr Navy Nuclear Power School in Orlando. Ironically, one sister has 6 kids, including 3 Aggies and 2 Longhorns. My youngest nephew got 2 degrees in meteorology from A&M and had been admitted to their PhD program (but decided to stop at his Master's). At any rate, there was a hiatus in the rivalry when A&M joined the SEC around 2012. The rivalry restarted last year when UT joined the SEC and failed to win the conference title game against GA. This year we were ranked #1 going into the season under new QB Arch Manning, but we lost games to Ohio State, Florida and Georgia. A&M came to Memorial Stadium Friday undefeated. The Horns won with a strong second half. I think A&M lost its shot for the conference championship but will probably play into the college playoffs. I think the Horns have a slim chance for the playoffs but will probably settle for a bowl game

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