Coronavirus, Late August Edition, 2022

 Coronavirus, Late August Edition, 2022

By the Numbers

The Numbers: 

Nationwide, the estimated number of cases, using official numbers, has dropped about 25% in the last 2 weeks.  The official numbers continue be under-counted by a factor of 3-10, depending on the source of the estimate.  One caveat, there seems to be a rising trend of 2% (averaged) for each of the last 5 days I cannot account for.  It could be accounted for by vacation mixing of the population, or a rise in reinfections, or an aging of older vaccines?  I don't know. 

More in keeping with reality, the number of people hospitalized with Covid for this wave is also dropping, from a peak of 39,400 on July 31 to 36,000 this yesterday.

I did publish a report earlier in August, but as it had little relevant content, I did not promote it.  If you are interested, it is here...

New Vaccines Available Soon:

A vaccine tuned for both the original variant of Covid, "Alpha", and for the baseline Omicron, is now available in the UK.  They claim it provides good immune response for the BA4 and BA5 variants as well. 

Being tuned for two variants is referred to as "bivalent".   Its a common practice to have multiple strains in a single shot when there is uncertainty as to what the population will encounter.  Most often you will see this with flu shots.

It is expected in the US to have a release of a booster tuned specifically for BA4 and BA5 will be released in September.

There is a bit of controversy over these new vaccines.  Allow me to summarize it.  

The BA4/5 vaccine has only been tested in mice and not humans.   The counterpoint is if we wait for human trials, the need for BA4/5 will dwindle by the time those trials are completed.  See "The Numbers", above.

The overall vaccine being produced by Moderna and Pfiser has proven safe and has efficacy.  The new vaccine in mice trials have shown efficacy against the latest Omicron variants.  

My opinion is that a booster was already inevitable for the fall, so why not the get one tuned for what is out there?  The previous boosters were all set to the first variant, "Alpha".   

To be clear though.  This release of the the BA4/5 booster is a political decision.  They are following a pattern of "Least Harm".  Normally with vaccines, the doctrine is to take the totally safe path by performing a couple levels of human trials.  But meanwhile, 200-300 people are dying of Covid per day.  Hence the argument on what the actual, safest, course is. But then, most of the deaths with Covid are still among the unvaccinated.

Deaths With Covid, Ratios:

Per World Data, the Covid deaths by Vaccination status at the end of May for the US is:
Per 100,000
    Unvaccinated    5.5
    Primary Vaccination (2 shots)  .92
    PV + 1 booster    .72
    PV + 2 boosters  .23
This puts the ratio of dying of Covid, unvaccinated to vaccinated at 23.9 -1.

I have done the math on Pennsylvania specific hospitalizations and deaths and ratios are almost an exact match.

Google "covid deaths unvaccinated" and your state, and the numbers are probably there as well.

 

Coronavirus, Early August Edition, 2022

 Coronavirus, Early August Edition, 2022

By the Numbers

The Numbers: 

Nationwide, the estimated number of cases, using official numbers, continues to hover around million active cases.  The estimated under count is unknown.  But could still range from 3 to 10 times the number of officially infected. 

More in keeping with reality, the number of people hospitalized with Covid is also climbing.  To about 39,000 for this week, up from 27,000 last report, 10,000 in April. The peak was 150,000 in January.  The deaths per day average continues to climb to over 300.  As deaths are a lagging indicator, this kind of implies that this current "wave" of Covid BA4 and BA5 has peaked and is now in decline.

New Vaccines Available Soon:

Vaccines tuned specifically to the BA4 and BA5 variants of Omicron should be available next month. See WebMD.

Monkey Pox:

I am not going to provide any sort of regular updates on Monkey Pox.  But it is getting the press treatment to get you needlessly good and scared.  This is not anything like Coronavirus, which was a hill I was willing to die on.  Monkey Pox is not.  Everything about Monkey Pox is well known.  We have been living with it for 50+ years, and standard treatments are available.  

Of the 7,500 or so victims in the US so far, none have died from the disease.  It is not easily transmissible.  It is passed by skin to surface area contact, usually extensive contact, usually intimate contact, but also from contact with any surface area.  Sheets, table tops have been shown to carry the disease.  

Monkey Pox is endemic in Africa, as it exists in animals there, and occasionally makes the leap to a human.  The reason we need to quarantine and  eradicate it here is we don't want it leaping to our native animal population.

Biden's Covid Case:

Joe Biden caught Covid and it followed a predictable pattern for someone that was vaccinated and over 80 years old.  He quarantined and after testing negative, came back to work.  A day or two later, like so many others, he tested positive again.  I reported on this rebound effect, incorrectly named Paxolovid Rebound,  in an earlier edition.  His signing of the latest bills from congress was marred by frequent coughing. 

All the Covids save the early versions of Omicron settle deeply in the body, most notably, in the heart, kidneys and lungs.  Delta and the current versions BA4 and BA5 tended to settle deep in the lungs.  Omicron settled in the bronchial tubes.  There they damaged cell tissue for the effects referred to as "Long Covid". 

While I appreciate him going back to work, this is something you do not want to push.  Just testing negative does not mean you are well.  Even if you are younger, it may take months for full recovery.  You have to give your self time to recover from Covid.  But don't go back to work two days after your latest negative test.  

Alex Jones, My 2 Cents

I know very little about Alex Jones, and when the trial started, I had to google him.  "Oh, that guy". He is one of those serial liars feeding misinformation on any number of topics, and from a brief scan, profited nicely off of them.

I sat through his response to his verdict.  He admits to being wrong about Sandy Hook, but stops short of admitting he lied about it for nearly a decade.  He apologized to the parents he wronged, but with the caveat that there were aberrations in the initial reporting of the slaughter of their children that convinced him that ..., well I am not going into it.  

He fully reverts to type in his apology.  It wasn't that he was wrong and hurt a myriad of parents.  His apology focuses on him personally being attacked by the left wing media, the judge, his own lawyers, his own IT staff.  It's all their fault that a judgement in excess of 4 million dollars (now over 40 million) was put upon him.  

But he was wrong and he is sorry.  

His business of perpetrating lies was shut down around 2018, and with it, his income of millions a year shut down.  I'm sure he is sorry.  

When did he know he was wrong? When did he first apologize?  The rest of us knew he was wrong around 2012.  But he repeated his lies up to the time he was de-platformed, and beyond.  At that time, he couldn't admit to being wrong, because if he did, then the question immediately arises to what else is he wrong about?  Like WMD's in Iraq? Vaccines do not work? Democrats mailed explosives to themselves?  Obama's birth location.  

In his response he recounts his apology to the jury, and then mentions he was right about the WMD's in the same breath.  Dude, that was 20 years ago, and you were wrong then as well.

While he was making money on this, and other bald face lies, he was making millions per year, he was not going to admit he was wrong, even when he knew it.  

His response was not an act of contrition, but a reboot of his business.

Following the tactics of our lamentable last president, he is going to raise the money for the judgements from the same flock he has been fleecing for decades.  Then he won't pay it anyway.