Coronavirus, Early March 2021

 

  Coronavirus, Early March 2021

By the Numbers

The number of active cases continues to improve. I estimate that we dropped below 2 million earlier this week. About the same number of cases as on November 8. And we were mortified then.

The mortality numbers are holding around 2,500 per day. So the actual mortality rate, if you catch C-19 today is worse than it was about 3 months ago. About 1.1% vice .8%. I can find no reason for this growth.  My working theory is that it has to do with exhaustion of the medical personnel.

New versions of the virus continue to grow and it is expected the UK version; “Kent” will be the dominant version of the virus by mid March. Kent is about 50% more infectious, but no deadlier than the common version. Current Vaccines are effective against “Kent”, but less effective against the “South Africa” version.

Over 50 million Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine including over half of all Americans, ages 65 and older.

Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine has final approval. It is a one shot and done vaccine and does not require extreme cold storage. Everything I read about it has it as effective as the previous vaccinations, including dealing with the new variations.

About 3.5 million doses shipped on Monday.

It is deemed effective 28 days after the shot.

The Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine has NOT been approved for children under 18.

On Texas, I'll try to keep this as apolitical as possible:

The governor of Texas announce that masks will no longer be required, and all C-19 restrictions will be lifted.  When he announced this, he also mentioned that the enforcement of masks wasn’t being done anyway. And looking at the numbers he seems to be right. Texas averaged 7,000 new cases a day for the last 7 days, and 5,000 new cases per day for the previous 2 weeks. Down from a peak of 27,000 on Jan 12.

Ben Franklin once said, "Let the experiment be made!"

By that he meant, if reasonable people aren't sure if something is right or not, let one state do one thing, another state another, then compare notes.

So Texas is volunteering to be Guinea pigs to see their C-19 numbers go up, or down.

While the antimaskers note there is nothing preventing you from wearing a mask, but there is already been reports of haranguing reasonable people to “Take it off!”

We are mostly herd animals and we take our cues from the leadership and pop culture. We want to be independent, strong and unique, just like everyone else 😊

Take the story of Veronica Lake. In WWII, she was a famous actress with long flowing blond hair. And women emulated her by the millions. However this was just in time when women started integrating into the heavy industry production and countless thousands were injured and killed when their hair got caught into the machinery. The answer was a plea to Veronica to change her hair style, and she did. And the women that emulated her followed.

Reprinted from previous:

If you live in Pennsylvania, to find out if you are eligible for the vaccine, the website is: https://covidportal.health.pa.gov/s/Your-Turn

For everyone else, you’ll have to look up your own state.  Every state is different.