Endemic Report
The latest COVID-19 weekly stats:
The Sick Times:
Stats show a continuing decline across the country as a whole, no state reporting increases. By far the biggest news over the past week is the Trump administration's pause on the CDC report showing strong protection from recent COVID-19 vaccines against serious disease. There is some chatter about whether the rapidly spreading Cicada variant may spark an early summer wave.
COVID-19 news items include:
- "Long COVID tied to higher risk of heart disease, even after mild infection"
- "Pemivibart Shows Safety, Prevents COVID-19 in CLL Subset in Phase 3 CANOPY Trial"
- "Eye symptoms may signal higher-severity long COVID"
- "Beneficial bacteria in respiratory microbiome may protect against long-COVID symptoms"
- "Cicada variant of Covid-19 appears to be affecting children"
- "Scientists finally crack mystery of rare COVID vaccine blood clots"
- "How to regain your sense of taste and smell after COVID-19"
- "FAKE NEWS: Mircea Lucescu died from the COVID-19 vaccine"
- "OPKO Health’s ModeX Therapeutics Initiates Clinical Trial of MDX2301 for the Prevention of COVID-19"
- "Ageing Lungs Linked to Severe COVID and Flu in Older Adults"
- Prosecution of COVID-19 relief fraud/other crimes continues:
- "12 years in prison for NJ man in $170M COVID-19 tax relief fraud case"
- "Bloomfield Hills mogul blew COVID cash on Rolls-Royce, mansion, feds say"
- "Robeson County woman sentenced for COVID loan fraud scheme"
- "Former Las Vegas woman sentenced in $100M COVID-19 fraud scheme"
- "Buffalo man facing COVID fraud charges"
- Legal/political issues:
- "Former NBA star John Stockton makes a last appeal to the Supreme Court"
- "Former lawmaker’s suit against licensing boards moves to federal court"
- "Norwegian Cruise Line pays back North Carolina customers in settlement over COVID-19 sales tactics, Attorney General says"
- "COVID-19 fraudster drops bid for new sentence"
Other Notes
The blog continued to experience high pageviews. I finally published my first April essay. I'll probably need another to reach 40 posts in a 30-day month. My next essay will likely reflect on the Iran war. My X/Twitter account continues its slump, with my followers threatening to drop below 200 for the first time in months.
I need to touch on a pet peeve. I've been doing the above summaries for years. It's a free blog, and I haven't made a penny since starting the blog in 2008. At least a handful of sites in my search tend to be paywalls so nagging, I can't even grab the headline, never mind read the content. I'm basically promoting their content. I understand why, say, an Idaho newspaper wants to promote digital subscriptions. But I don't have a budget to subscribe to every site with COVID content that might be relevant to my time-consuming weekly summary.. If it's not worth my time and effort, I'll simply drop the content in question.
