Post #7771 J

 Endemic Report

The latest CDC stats:

It looks like CDC has reorganized its relevant webpages, consolidating respiratory illnesses.

The Sick Times:

We now see the clear shape of the summer surge, with testing and infections spreading across the South and up the West Coast, and a foothold in the Midwest. Probably the biggest news is post-pandemic audits, like the current British investigation into government waste. In the US, we see Congressional Republicans wanting to test Biden's pardon of Fauci, a focus on "vaccine injuries", and the Trump Pentagon continuing to focus on military amnesty for those who refused COVID shots.

COVID news items include:

• "Contagious cuteness: Children’s birthday parties spread COVID-19 to grandparents during pandemic"
• "Individualized, Goal-Oriented Cognitive Rehab Beneficial for Long COVID"
• "COVID-19 booster strategies provide lasting immunity"
• "‘Red Robin did nothing wrong’: Gee defends burger chain, blames COVID-19 as Red Robin shutters 70 locations"
• "Moms who receive COVID, flu vaccines during pregnancy more likely to vaccinate their babies, study says"
• "Fractional COVID booster doses provide strong long-lasting immunity"
• "One Nation's Malcolm Roberts falsely claimed COVID-19 vaccines caused miscarriages"
• "Political polarization drives surge in anti-vaccine legislation across the US"
• "Japanese researchers have linked long COVID to the herpes virus"
• COVID relief fraud/other crimes:
• "CPD Agrees to Fire 8 Police Officers Who Lied to Get COVID-19 Relief Loans"
• "Las Vegas woman sentenced to prison for COVID-19 tax credit fraud scheme"
• "Nevada tax preparer, 11 others indicted in alleged $14M COVID-19 loan fraud scheme"
• "Delaware woman sentenced for role in $9.1M COVID-relief fraud scheme"
• "State accountant fired after SIU exposes Covid-19 corruption kickbacks"
• "Former state senator pleads guilty to stealing $844k in COVID-19 relief money"
• "Midcoast man ordered to repay $67K for COVID relief fraud"
• "Federal indictment alleges scheme involving 12 defendants took more than $14 million in COVID loans
• Political/legal news:
• "Court won’t revive COVID loss lawsuits from Golden Corral, Summit hotels"
• "Mortgage Lender Fails to Avoid FCA Suit Over Covid Relief Loan"
• "After $178M payoff from Moderna, Arbutus BioPharma expands patent litigation against Pfizer and BioNTech"

Other Notes

The new normal of higher blog pageviews, if anything, has accelerated over the past week. I had a 3-day Texas trip to attend a niece's wedding in the Dallas area over the weekend; I brought my Chromebook, ,but for some reason I couldn't connect to the Hilton WIFI. (I did it on my Android cellphone.) So I largely depended on prescheduled posts. I still haven't written, let alone started, my latest essays since I returned on Sunday. X/Twitter continues to muddle on, roughly stabilizing my follower base. No recent viral posts. 

It was my first scheduled flight since I flew to San Antonio last summer for my late Mom's funeral mass. I had planned an earlier holiday trip on SWA a couple of years earlier, but I caught a vicious flu after a family visit to Cincinnati over Thanksgiving and canceled my reservation. SWA still owed several hundred dollars in credit, but they wanted like $1200 for a short-term reservation, and I took Spirit and Frontier instead for about half the fare. Spirit almost canceled my flight from Nashville, and Frontier lost my luggage.

I think I had to supplement my credit for the shorter round trip to Love Field. A few different things: SWA had since transitioned to assigned seating, no longer allowed one free suitcase, and of course, I remembered the security lines from the budget shutdown days.  My youngest sister wanted me to bring a backpack back with something she didn't trust to baggage (related to Mom's possessions). I think backpacks weren't a thing yet when I was in K-12. I was worried about compliance with SWA dimensions, but bought a good one from Amazon. I worried about SWA's obesity rules (buying 2 seats), but I'm literally the lightest I've been since my road warrior days as a consultant around the millennium. Gone are the embarrassing times I needed belt extenders. In fact, I could tighten my buckle a few inches. I think it was also the first time I resorted to boarding passes on a cellphone, delighted how it integrated with Google Wallet.

For the most part, TSA was less of a pain than usual. No longer shoe hassles and I didn't have to take off my belts (well, they started to in Dallas, but quickly amended it to say it was optional if your pants would drop). For some odd reason, they still wanted me to separate my empty leather cell phone holster with threaded loops from my belt.

I have 21 nephews and nieces (and 26, I think, grandnephews and grandnieces). This was the first niece/nephew's wedding I've attended. As an Oracle DBA for over 3 decades, I often have to work nights, weekends, and holidays. I got to meet 5 grandnieces and 5 grandnephews for the first time. I melted over 3 of them serving as flower girls. I got to see one of my nieces who is a PhD candidate in archeology at Berkeley; I had another 2 nephews who started for PhD's in engineering and meteorology, but stopped at their Master's. The bride niece was my third sister's only daughter, a forensic scientist working for the state of Texas; my sister, with education and library degrees, started her kids' given names ABCDEF, the first 5 all Eagle Scout sons.

I was mildly surprised to find my Catholic niece had joined her fiancé's Protestant church. I found the Baptist minister sitting next to me at the reception. I was praying my sister-in-law wouldn't mention her married gay son or her parish priest. It turned out the minister himself had a gay son.