Coronavirus, the Late August Edition

 Coronavirus, the Late August Edition

       By the Numbers 

The FDA has granted full approval for the Pfizer vaccine. One less excuse for the refusenicks.

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The number of daily new cases and the total number of active cases continues to grow.  My earlier prediction that we would hit 2 million active cases by Aug 18 was exceeded by 5 days. 

The rate of increase is leveling off.  We currently have an estimated active case count of 2.7 million.  The average number of daily new cases last 7 days was 120,600, increasing by just 1.05% per day, compared to late July when it was between 10-15% per day, but we haven't plateaued yet.

If it wasn't for children being sent back to school I would say curve was about to level out around 3 million, followed by a sharp drop sometime the first week of September.  This fire has burned very bright, and against an ever reducing pile of fuel. There are only so many unvaccinated left, and by the end of August, the vaccination rate nation wide should hit 77%. 

But the politicos are insisting on sending children back to school.  And regardless of how well protected they are, this churn of the population cannot reduce the amount of Covid cases, so it can only increase it.  

A week after school opens, there will be cases among the children, which will have already passed onto their families.  A week later we will be back on virtual learning.  The systems are set up already, so this time around it shouldn't have even been a question.

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On Variants.  All Covid is effectively the Delta variant  now.  It was 51% of the cases in June, 83% at the end of July, and is well over 95% now.

Lambda is concentrated in LA and Houston areas and represents about 1% the total cases in those areas.  Any articles you read regarding Lambda's mortality rate, infectiousness, and ability to "breakthrough" vaccines is hyperbole right now.  I noticed the word "may" distributed liberally in those articles.  

We don't really know.  

But, if Lambda was more infectious, lethal, or vaccine avoiding compared to Delta, I think we would have a better hint of it by now.  

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The articles about breakthrough rates and Delta and vaccination loss of efficacy were across the board. But now I am seeing a consensus with the major medical services.

I have had to rewrite this section 4 times in 9 days due to the deluge of newly  uncovered information.

Rather than posting various reports I'll just cut to the (current) finals.

The effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines among front-line workers declined to 66% after the delta variant became dominant.  The formal report, dated Aug 18 from the CDC is here.

This is pretty much in alignment with Israel's health ministry regarding  putting Delta  at 64%.

Now take this with a grain of salt.  Assuming front-line workers are properly protected, but they are also exposed 8 or more hours a day.   Time of exposure is also a factor.  15 minutes in the grocery store is not really a problem.

Since May, there has been 41,000+ deaths in the USA due to Covid.  The CDC's counts of total breakthrough deaths at 1,829.  This puts the vaccination to unvaccinated ratio at around 19-1 for hospitalizations and death.  I have seen over a dozen reports from individual hospitals all saying the same thing. 

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The topic of booster shots evolved quickly in the last 2 weeks.  What you heard in beginning of the month may not apply now.

By mid September, all American adults will be eligible for a booster if their last vaccine was 8 months ago, or if they are immunocompromised.

It is recommended your booster be the same brand as your vaccine, but it is not mandatory.   There is some chatter that mixed vaccines is better.  

At this time, the booster will be exactly the same vaccine as you received earlier.  Work is being done on tuning them for "Delta", but that is still a work in progress.

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As mask requirements are being heavily suggested or required again, the mask-deniers are back in force.  Beware being presented with studies with false headlines.  I just got one with the headline broadly proclaiming masks don't work, when in the summary the study proclaims they do work.  Followed by a long line of comments of "I knew it!" from people that didn't read the article.   This particular study was not even about testing if masks work or not, but about some masks work better than others.  

And proper fit is important.  

So nothing new here.

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There is a good article on myths being put out by refusenicks, mask-deniers and other "it ain't so crowd" put out by the Boston University.  ... here...