Endemic Report
The Sick Times
We see the winter wave continue to decline, although it's increasing in MA and FL. By far, the biggest news over the past week is the highly mutated "Cicada" variant BA.3.2 (nicknamed "because it has largely remained undetected or "underground" since discovery"), already spreading in 25 states ("including California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Wyoming").""The number of mutations from JN.1 viruses makes it less likely that the current vaccines will be highly effective against Cicada, but we need more data to better answer this question," said Hopkins. .Cicada already accounts for about 30% of COVID-19 sequences in Germany and some other Northern European countries (such as Denmark and the Netherlands) as of January, he said."
The latest COVID-19 weekly news items:
- "No link between Covid-19 vaccines and sudden cardiac death"
- "Universal vaccine could protect against flu, COVID-19 and colds, say researchers"
- "COVID-19’s Stalling Effect on Children’s Executive Function"
- "Yep, a mom's COVID shot during pregnancy protects her baby, a large study finds"
- "'White plague’ is on the rise in the US — it’s deadlier than COVID and becoming antibiotic-resistant"
- Prosecutors pursue COVID relief fraud/other crimes:
- "Texas man sentenced in COVID-19 unemployment fraud scheme"
- "Dunkirk man pleads guilty to stealing COVID-19 unemployment funds"
- "Suburban man gets 6.5 years in federal prison for COVID-19 relief fraud"
- "California businessman sentenced for COVID loan fraud"
- Legal/political issues:
- "Judge dismisses case against Bellingham over COVID-19 vaccine mandate firings"
- "EEOC touts $15M agreement resolving COVID-19 vaccine bias claims"
- "Mystery company pays $15M to resolve COVID-19 vaccine complaint"
- "House ethics panel rules Cherfilus-McCormick stole COVID relief funds"
Other Notes
The blog continues to attract a large number of questionable page views. I'll likely break 40 posts for March; I finally published a follow-up essay on my earlier rant on the pushing on a string voter ID bill, trying to manipulate an almost certain midterm rebuke of Trump. This essay focused more on the unconstitutional aspects vs. voter suppression.. X/Twitter remains challenging, especially for impressions on my political tweets. My followers lately have oscillated between 207 and 215
Much of my attention over the past week has focused on March Madness, with my 2 graduate schools, UT and UH, reaching the Sweet 16. Unfortunately, both failed to reach the Elite 8. I don't recall Illinois ever trailing in the UH game. I think it took 4 minutes before UH scored a point, and from a tie at half, Houston quickly fell well behind and never threatened Illinois in the second half. I can only recall 2 UH foul shots all game, and their offense was lackluster most of the game. The wrong time to have an off-game shooting. To be honest, I had seen 2 late season losses against Arizona, and I had doubts about them returning to the finals.
I finally did my taxes for 2025. It was a bad year for a variety of reasons, including a death in the family, poor professional work opportunities locally, and my health situation a year ago. In theory, I would have done it weeks ago, but I had to wait on paperwork related to the family passing. One of my pet peeves with the federal paperwork is that they don't make fillable PDFs or spreadsheets for worksheets.
