Coronavirus, Late January Edition, 2022

 Coronavirus, Late January Edition, 2022 <heavy sigh>

By the Numbers

 

The Numbers:

The Omicron surge seems to have peaked on Jan 17th, and since then, the number of daily new cases has declined by 1.8%, per day, for 11 days now.  From 780,000 new cases a day to 497,000 yesterday.

My estimated number of current cases peaked on Jan 21 at 10.3 million cases, more on that calculation later..  The winter wave last year peaked on Jan 19 at 5.3 million.  The near coincidence of those days implies causality.  Probably a combination of a harmonic of the incubation period and holiday get together, followed by the winter doldrums.  I'm sure there will be many PHD theses's (thesisi? Hell-- Dissertation)  in years to come that will be looking at those stats.  

Last year, the daily new cases peaked at 301,000 on Jan 8, 2021.

A note on my estimated number for current cases.  Until Omicron, I based this number by summing up 3 weeks new cases, and multiplied by 1.06 to account for severe cases that last longer.  Omicron seems to have a shorter duration, and fewer severe cases, so I altered the formula to sum up 2 weeks cases and multiplied by 1.03.  And when I reduced the count with the overall formula, the Omicron variant has just about twice the number of active cases despite the shorter sick time and lower severity.   

Keep in mind also, that the Omicron counts are definitely under counted.  The medical system was drastically overloaded and test kit shortages were everywhere led to frustration and people just went home to suffer there.  Fortunately, most Omicron cases seem to devolve down to a really, really, bad case of the flu, followed by a nagging bronchial cough that could last months.

 

Free Covid Test Kits:

In response to the test kit shortage everywhere, the federal government will ship 4 test kits, tuned to include Omicron, to your home.  Just follow this link.  What is good about this is you don't have to wait anywhere and you will just know.  What is bad, is the number of tests executed and return positive is unknown to the medical authorities, and reduces their ability to track the pandemic.  This is one of the reasons why any numbers you see are going to be low.  For instance, Johns Hopkins had reported several days of over a million new cases, while the official numbers never broke 900,000.  I assume that Johns Hopkins's plus number had some way of factoring in the unknowns.  As one of the premier medical systems on the planet, I have to assume they know what they are talking about.

 

Omicron Death Counts: 

I try to avoid the morbid death counts.  I don't even track them.  There are plenty of places to get them if you want to.  Omicron is certainly less fatal one on one, but there are a lot more ones.  The number of fatalities is now exceeding the Delta wave.  Over 3,100 yesterday.  The peak death count for the Delta wave seems to be around 2,800.  I expect the Omicron death count to climb, as it is a lagging indicator by several weeks on the new case numbers.  And they peaked about 11 days ago. 

 

Covid susceptibility  in your genes?:

Polish scientists have discovered a gene that they say more than doubles the risk of falling severely ill with, or even dying from Covid-19.  The University of Bialystock has determined that the gene is present in 14% of the Polish population, 9% of Europe overall, and 27% in India.

By their calculations, it is the fourth most important factor determining the severity of the illness after age, weight and gender.

 

For more details, but not much more, see here....

 

This is why I will not submit to one of those gene testing sites.  Once you have been typed, it is only a matter of time before the insurance companies will find out and make your genetics a pre-existing condition.  Another reason for the USA to adopt a universal (single-payer) health care system.

 

CBD as a Preventive Treatment for Covid?

CBD, or  Cannabidiol has it's fans.  Quite a large number of them.  I am NOT one of them.  I wrote an article on the subject earlier this year in response to my Chiropractor, whom I fired, for pushing the stuff.  So when I read the headline, "Oral CBD Prevented COVID-19 Infection in Real-World Patients, Study Suggests", I had to delve into it.   

Short form: The authors state in line 1, "While not a substitute for vaccines, CBD..."

 

Long form:  There is an explanation on why they think CBD is effective.  And the study was fairly large at 1,212 people.  It demonstrated that patients taking an dosage defined as 100mg/ml CBD having significantly fewer "breakthrough infections".  The patients seem to have all been taking CBD for seizure-related conditions already and they demonstrated 6.2% infected with Covid, compared to 8.9% of the control group.

 

A note here, so far, despite all the claims of the benefits of CBD overall, like migraine, muscle pain, high blood pressure, and many, many more, it has only proven efficacy for epilepsy in children.  So a testing group of patients for seizures seems like a natural follow-up.

The journal this study was reported in, Science Advances, is listed as a peer reviewed journal, but there is some criticism on it's methodologies, but frankly, I am not qualified to offer an opinion on it.  

The dosage listed is confusing, as it is listed as a concentration level, and not a dose amount.  I dug into the term listed, CBD100, and got no further clarification on the dosage.

I would take the advice of the study's authors, “What we don't want… is people just running out and thinking, ‘I can take CBD, and then I don't have to get vaccinated or I don't have to be masked,’” Rosner said. “This is what we really don't want to see.”