COVID update – April 27

The full COVID update for Tuesday is here.

In the USA, cases are up 61% in the past two weeks, and there are now more states in the “new cases” red zone than out, 29 to 21. And the official numbers are probably low because more and more people are testing at home rather than heading out to a lab or clinic. Positive home tests have a way of staying out of the official stats.

The official testing percentages are creeping steadily upward. No states have re-entered the red zone yet, but a handful are getting close.

There is also some good news. COVID total hospitalizations and ICU cases remain steady, and fatalities are still declining. Only five states are in the fatality red zone.

Only one state (Kentucky) is in the red zone for both new cases and fatalities.

238 thoughts on “COVID update – April 27

  1. Let’s not forget that vaccine protected breakthrus suppress transmission before we start talking up “more contagious but milder”.

    Vaccine immunity closes the contagiousness window faster. Downstream, there’s less of the virus infecting the unvaccinated.

    The mRNA booster is even more protective: neutralizing antibodies. Which you don’t get from a breakthru. Nor can you get that from “convalescent plasma”.

    Either way, R goes down. Once we account for vaccine immunity, the raw value of R is now something like 10x higher than Delta. But a community’s vaccinated are like the control rods in a reactor.

    Details: The case counts we’re seeing now are even more of an undercount than in the past. The biggie, for the “milder” claim: CFR for the unvaccinated has held constant.

    1. And then there’s this current headline… “South Africa’s Covid Positivity Rate Hits Three-Month High…” That’s where omicron started.

  2. At least we’re not Sweden…

    “ Sweden was well equipped to prevent the pandemic of COVID-19 from becoming serious. Over 280 years of collaboration between political bodies, authorities, and the scientific community had yielded many successes in preventive medicine. Sweden’s population is literate and has a high level of trust in authorities and those in power. During 2020, however, Sweden had ten times higher COVID-19 death rates compared with neighbouring Norway. In this report, we try to understand why, using a narrative approach to evaluate the Swedish COVID-19 policy and the role of scientific evidence and integrity. We argue that that scientific methodology was not followed by the major figures in the acting authorities—or the responsible politicians—with alternative narratives being considered as valid, resulting in arbitrary policy decisions. In 2014, the Public Health Agency merged with the Institute for Infectious Disease Control; the first decision by its new head (Johan Carlson) was to dismiss and move the authority’s six professors to Karolinska Institute. With this setup, the authority lacked expertise and could disregard scientific facts. The Swedish pandemic strategy seemed targeted towards “natural” herd-immunity and avoiding a societal shutdown. The Public Health Agency labelled advice from national scientists and international authorities as extreme positions, resulting in media and political bodies to accept their own policy instead. The Swedish people were kept in ignorance of basic facts such as the airborne SARS-CoV-2 transmission, that asymptomatic individuals can be contagious and that face masks protect both the carrier and others. Mandatory legislation was seldom used; recommendations relying upon personal responsibility and without any sanctions were the norm. Many elderly people were administered morphine instead of oxygen despite available supplies, effectively ending their lives. If Sweden wants to do better in future pandemics, the scientific method must be re-established, not least within the Public Health Agency. It would likely make a large difference if a separate, independent Institute for Infectious Disease Control is recreated. We recommend Sweden begins a self-critical process about its political culture and the lack of accountability of decision-makers to avoid future failures, as occurred with the COVID-19 pandemic.”
    From NATURE this week.

  3. Thanks for keeping this issue on a front burner!

    Regarding relaxing masking and other protocols, I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet. It’s been found that the virus is widespread among white-tailed deer, and that minks can transmit the virus to humans.

    Minks are mustelids which also include wolverines, badgers, weasels, stoats, otters, etc. These animals hunker down over the winter and become more active in the spring. Some have indiscriminate diets, including scavenging frozen deer carcasses! Blood to blood transmission is most effective, and these animals are often sporting cuts from fighting among their species and others. Safe to say some of these animals will come into close contact with virus variants in deer that have been mutating all winter.

    Can others transmit to humans, we don’t know, but the latest thinking is that the virus originated from infected civets in live markets. Civets are less closely related to minks than minks to other mustelids, so my guess is that vectors are not going to be restricted to just civets and minks, maybe a lot more candidates.

    If you hear about some nasty cervid/mustelid crossover variant, originating say out of the Western US or Canada, remember you saw it here first!

  4. Ummm…
    Mar. 15, 2022 — COVID-19 cases may surge again in the United States if wastewater testing proves to be a reliable predictor.

    ABC News reported that 37% of wastewater sites monitored by the CDC from Feb. 24-March 10 have seen an increase of 100% or more in COVID-19 viral levels found in the wastewater. About 30% of those sites showed an increase of 1,000% or more.

    “It is likely we will see a new rise in cases across the United States as our wastewater data is showing a concerning signal,” Rebecca Weintraub, assistant professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, told ABC News.

    1. Not that y’all need my opinion, but I’ve always sided with the right-wingnuts in the sense that they believe case stats are a distortion.

      PCR tests distort because positivity correlates only by accident with contagion. That is, among possible scenarios, either that tiny viral loads aren’t contagious, or that the virus (pathogen) may spread but disease severity is low, dominate the odds.

      The main advantage of antigen tests was always their relative lack of sensitivity. The convenience factors — timely results & low in cost & infrastructure — are really the icing on the cake.

      Essential, IMO, as convenience determines participation, but sensitivity to a load comparable to spread threshold, that’s the red meat.

      The exact same thing can be said for the official decision to favor vaccine delivery by injections & without regard to the logistics (special freezers). This was the achilles heel in Project Warp Speed for which I don’t consider it to be the big success it’s widely credited with.

      It was MedBiz turf protection — or call it Regulatory-Industrial complex — that prioritized maintaining strict controls vs. high availability.

      The low impact of omicron in well-vaccinated areas uncovers the weakness of policy extremes. For instance, China’s zero-tolerance lockdowns. Tactics need to evolve as conditions change. China & Hong Kong are stuck in that loop right now. Even New Zealand realized it need to shift to keep standing.

      Here in the U.S., in spite of vaccination resisters, it just so happens that omicron variant spread like wildfire & incidentally left behind a coat of natural immunity without the earlier devastation.

      The main reason, as we’ve discussed, is simply because “severity = novelty”. COVID is not new to enough of us that both its spread & impact are closer to tolerable than at the outset.

      We’re firmly in the territory where PCR detection is mostly unhitched from bad outcomes. Conspiracy mongers calling out case counts as lies are correct… lately. They were more wrong than right before, but life’s complicated. Situations change facts.

      That’s what makes me a “moderate”. I believe in the good intentions we tend to ascribe to leftists. I just also believe — left or right — results matter. If your prejudices lead you to favor counterproductive tactics, you’re doing it wrong!

      1. Yeah…what’s a million or so Covid deaths…the virus could care less about your opinion.

        1. Yeah, “in the sense that” is carrying a lot of water. It’s literally so, that the virus bears no special malice vs. its victim.

          I’ve believed that PCR was a misleading test because it lumps together transmissible viral loads with residual genetic fragments. Ie, leftover junk.

          I don’t thereby conclude, as the wingnuts do, that the whole picture we can get by looking at a spectrum of data (hospitalization/deaths, distribution of cases, etc) is necessarily wrong. It’s wrong if we draw the wrong conclusions. Which we don’t have to.

          But journalists in particular have been routinely misled by their poor/shallow understanding of the data.

          There is also an element of scare-mongering, ie, propaganda, in exhibiting big case numbers while in fact we may have succeeded in “flattening the curve”.

          We’ve used case numbers with the ulterior motive to coerce people to vaccinate. Not that this motive isn’t well-intentioned. The freedom to infect one other isn’t a civil right, after all.

          Convincing people to accept a common obligation is a reasonable goal. It’s just that, well, trying to do so thru misleading numbers is dishonest & demeaning. It may be a “white” lie, but there might be backlash—and if so, it’s karma.

          1. On Thursday, South Korea recorded its deadliest day during the pandemic, with 429 deaths in a 24-hour period. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported 621,328 cases (1 percent of the population of 50 million), another daily record and a 55 percent increase from 400,730 the day before. More than 85 percent of the country’s population is fully vaccinated, and more than 60 percent have received a booster shot.

            Let’s see how this develops.

  5. Well, the theory why surges sink as fast as they rise is interesting in its simplicity. The virus exhausts its ready supply of victims. I suggest this is a spinoff of “herd immunity” which let’s call “herd thinning”.

    1. Yes, that is mathematically correct. Imagine if you will, a new disease so contagious that everyone, let’s say in City A of a million people, catches it in the first week. New cases go from zero to a million in week one. Therefore, mathematically, the number of new cases in week two must drop right back to zero – there’s nobody left uninfected. That’s obviously an exaggeration, but it illustrates the point that a high rate of contagion will very rapidly attack those who are vulnerable, thus rapidly exhausting the number of potential victims, followed by a period in which new cases fall rapidly as the disease simply runs out of targets.

      Not only should the slope of increase be very similar to the slope of decrease, but the rate of contagion should be inversely related to the duration of the wave of new cases. (100% instant transmissibility = more or less zero duration). Thus Delta climbed slowly but lasted long, while Omicron climbed fast with a much shorter duration.

      I have another speculation that I haven’t done the math to justify. I’m going to guess that when the total case numbers can be tallied, that they will be similar for delta and omicron. Delta will be a comparatively low number per week for many weeks, while omicron will be a higher number per week for fewer weeks, and I’m guessing that the multiplication will produce sort of similar totals. Again, I have not tried to run any preliminary numbers on that hypothesis, but I think I am making a reasonable conjecture. Of course Delta and Omicron faced different conditions in terms of prophylaxis, and that will muddy the results, but no study in the real world is absolutely clean or completely accurate because, to word it technically as Einstein used to do, shit happens.

      1. This is a variation on the classical mathematical models used to describe the time course of predator-prey populations (e.g., foxes vs. rabbits vs. grass). A few papers have been published on this, although they are mostly focused on predicting the trajectories of numbers of infected and recovered, and not so much fatalities.

        1. In practical terms, the thing you’d like to be able to predict is the burden on the health care system, so that hospitals are never overrun and can treat each case appropriately. Where we got lucky with omicron is that its high level of transmissibility was not matched by a high hospitalization rate, so there was generally no need to “flatten the curve.” We would have had no way to handle the situation if those days with 800,000 new cases had produced hospitalizations in proportion to the original strain.

          1. Agreed. Couple of tidbits to add. The main idea here dates to at least ~ 1800, paper by Malthus.

            The multiplication Scoopy refers to is called area. Ie width times average height = area under the curve. AKA “fundamental theorem of calculus.”

            We see in COVID charts some curves of “cumulative” stats. Such a curve is of course the running total, ie the total area to the left of each point.

            Scoopy’s conjecture is basically Kepler’s 2nd law, AKA “Kepler’s area law”. Which dates to ~ 1600.

            Academics refer to exponential growth/decay scenarios as “Malthusian”.

            So we have 2 helpful search terms: malthusian, “Kepler’s area law”. Quite nice image results illustrate the latter.

            As to Scoopy’s allusion to real-world confounding factors: Yes, mitigations muddy the simple scenario.

            To fwald: Seems to me, fatalities = (infected – recovered), doesn’t it? (I mean, in the long run.)

  6. Not sure why some think that we should be able to stop a virus. Once they’re here, they’re here to stay. Get used to it. Flu has been killing people for a long time and people got used to that. And if the flu didn’t kill you it could have easily damaged your heart. It’s called the real world.

    1. Oh, I agree with you, basically, but… There are literally countless counter-examples to your assertion. 1918 “Spanish” flu, for one. But countless, because there’ve been pathogens killing our predecessors before there were even people. They do come & go. As far as I’m concerned, COVID has come & gone, too. What we have now are 2 totally new pathogens we’re calling Delta & Omicron. And a few others.

      The uncomfortable truth is that COVID got out of hand way more than it needed to simply bc we didn’t act fast enough or big enough to suppress it when we had our best odds, early on. There were easy mitigations we took a pass on & never pushed. Like open a window & turn on a fan. Like cloth masks do some good, don’t let perfection stop us from doing what we can. Washing hands & sanitizing shopping carts was a waste of time & money & fostered a false feeling of safety.

      We locked everyone down bc we waited until it was no longer possible to contain the spread within identifiable hotspots.

      We never developed any of the tools we would’ve needed in order to track the spread. Our health industry & scientific leaders used scientistic jargon to avoid the career risks of making uncomfortable decisions. Such as spending money to drive the science: to prove & produce alternative tests, treatments & vaccines. Especially, pills or patches instead of shots! They wouldn’t even let us have at-home tests!

      Sometimes, the real world we live in is the bed we made for ourselves.

    2. I’d like to add that measles & rabies are terrifying viruses that thankfully & luckily omicron didn’t turn out to be like. Measles is more infectious than omicron, too. It’s just that anti-vaxxers haven’t been as effective at suppressing measles vaccination. So we’ve managed to keep it relatively under control for some 6 decades. Back then, its surges every couple of years killed off a couple million at a time. Largely, babies.

      The point is, vaccines do keep both measles & rabies under a tolerable level of our control. Not so, omicron. We got lucky. Someday, we’re gonna run outta that luck. The measures I’ve been advocating won’t be enough. We’ll need to do better than even that. Here’s to hoping we get human again before then.

      1. One of the vaccine success stories that still doesn’t get enough press is the conquest of diphtheria. A hundred years ago you could count on at least 10,000 deaths annually, the vast majority children, in the U.S. alone. Today, it”s virtually nonexistent, even in the less developed parts of the world. I sometimes wonder if as many people would have up in arms over the COVID vaccine if the disease had disproportionately struck children, as did diphtheria and polio and measles.

  7. New local update: Steady. Beds/ICU, plateau. Cases, still exploding. Test+, up to 15%. As @US says, good news. Contingently. Things will change. Not all of it will be good. Context, high local buy-in: 1+ shots, 88%. 3+ shots, still rising, now 42%. Yet, end doesn’t seem in sight.

    See latest Ed Yong reporting on tests: too little, too late. Consensus rising that CDC broken. Leaders Walensky/Fauci strived to make do with a bad hand, finally resorting to breaking ranks, but still a mess.

    My summary of failures would be… Mainly, many little things could have been done, but were locked out by institutional inertia, turf protection by medical professionals & healthcare industry.

    Like, masks, ventilation, mass tests (home/antigen, comprehensive gene sequencing), more vaccines, emphasis on low-skill delivery, mass distribution (freezer bottleneck a deal-breaker).

    Funding trials for solutions (vaccines & treatments) would’ve been trivial next to mfg prepay (which in our system is necessary for mass prod). But fans, opening a window, funding masks & cheap antigen tests, many lost chances to mitigate, get on top of the situation early. Finally, we’re starting to shut the barn door, but the horses are long since gone. Well, nuff said.

  8. Update. Local, in that way anecdotal, but I see it with a karma kick.

    Or, it goes to the outcome difference due to public behavior. BTW, my county is “the peninsula” sitting between SF & Silicon Valley. Its .8M residents are more blue-collar than its neighbors to the N & S, of course depending on how we do the averaging. 80% are 2+ shots (not excluding kids). Over half of those are 3 shots.

    Cases are thru the roof, of course. 18k in 30 days. It’s fair to say that a contributor is asymptomatic vaxed as carriers spreading the virus, especially omicron. I do worry, the more the virus persists in the population, the more the goal of eradication eludes us. The consequence is that the virus remains an ongoing threat.

    At the other end, test positivity has risen to 10%. To put this in perspective, that’s 30k people tested on average 7 times each. Among the resulting 210k tests, 90% were negative. The primary use of this stat is as an indirect measure of how representative of the whole county the sample size tested is. The bigger this number, the less the case count really tells us about overall transmission.

    IOW, it’s a data processing thing, not a disease thing. It’s telling us our methodology sucks. The data we’re looking at is crap. We’re better than this. Or rather, clearly, we are not. Beyond that, we should pretty much ignore this number.

    What remains is the only 2 stats I’m taking seriously. ICU beds & total beds. Absolute bed numbers are all small, so percentages are misleading. For instance, covid total beds & ICU beds doubled in a week. Covid beds are still outnumbered 2-to-1 by non-covid.

    In contrast, ICU beds jumped from a baseline of 10 to almost 20 in a week. That’s 1/3 of ICU beds, almost all in use. OTOH, no surge beds are used. Including them, we’re over half empty. The total beds picture is similar. Just, a factor of 10 more beds.

    Though hockey sticks are already seen in both ICU & total beds, and it’s early days, so far, the growth is linear (not exponential).

    I’ve seen both staff shortages & long lines for drive-thru testing. The lines are gone bc ran out of tests.

    0 new deaths. This, having been our flat line for some time. Looking at Deaths by Sex, the M/F numbers add up to total covid deaths. Which I interpret as saying 100% of covid mortality occurred during copulation. Or at least, perhaps, sexual transmission led to death.

    1. To all the public officials who were “surprised” (caught flat-footed, more like) by Delta & Omicron, see my sentiment in Snoopy’s post below where he quotes Bugs Bunny.

  9. Have a friend in his late twenties…two shots of Pfizer plus booster and previously infected with Covid tested positive for Covid today. Omicron is serious business.

      1. For the moment, I’m scared for people I know who are still unvaccinated. Otherwise, fingers still crossed.

    1. Not to diminish your shock, but that’s my reading of the stats. IOW, 99% effective (vs. infection) with booster still means lots of breakthrus. Also, SA reported a *prevalence* in young folks. Makes sense to me: Seniors are better protected & probably being more cautious. Kids’ attitude early on in calling Covid a “Boomer Remover” was shortsighted.

      1. Thanks, UncleScoopy. I was afraid I might have misremembered, but I did so only slightly. The exact quote is: “…it’ll go away like things go away.”

        You know, there are still people who think he wasn’t a gigantic dunce?

  10. “ With the number of omicron cases appearing to double every two days, confirmed U.S. coronavirus infections have increased more than 50 percent in roughly two weeks, from 81,900 on Nov. 30 to 124,110 on Dec. 16, according to The Washington Post’s rolling seven-day average.”

    1. That reporting is technically accurate, but deceptive and intellectually dishonest. The seven days including Thanksgiving are low because there were four of those days when many states were not counting or reporting. Indeed, six of those seven days were below the previous week because of reporting procedures, not because of case declines, so it is absurd to use that week as a baseline. That week was 16% LOWER than the previous week. Everyone who studies the numbers knows that, and knows that the Thanksgiving week can’t be used for a baseline, so the Washington Post should be embarrassed by that paragraph.

      This is why you should get your reporting from a sleazy soft-core pornographer rather than the paper of Woodward and Bernstein.

      The last four calendar weeks have been:

      now – on pace for 124k
      last week 116k
      previous week 115k
      previous week 79K
      previous week 93k

      So to be more accurate, it has gone up 33% in the four weeks since the last accurate pre-Thanksgiving week, a compound average of 7% per week. And the last two weeks have seen almost no movement at all.

      I use calendar weeks rather than 7-day averages, but the NY Times calculates the 7-day average at 95,000 on November 24th, and 124,000 now, representing an increase of 31% in a bit more than three weeks, which works out to 9% per week. Take special note of the fact that the average was 122,000 on December 7th, versus 124,000 at this moment, so it is barely moving at all – less than 2% in the past 9 days. Basically totally flat.

      Also note that the Times calculates that the 7-day fatality average has not really moved at all from the 7th until now. (It has actually declined from 1,298 to 1,288. Again, basically totally flat.)

      The reality is bad enough without twisting the numbers to say something that just isn’t there.

        1. That is correct. Hospitalizations have increased by 10-11% per week for quite some time now, as I have consistently noted in the daily reports. The number of COVID hospitalizations was 44,000 on the day before Thanksgiving, and is now about 62,000. That’s about 41% over 23 days, which works out to 11% per week. Unlike cases and fatalities, this stat has not started to flatten out in recent days.

          Hospitalizations tend to lag behind new cases, so this seems to show that cases were probably increasing by about 10%-11% per week about two weeks ago. We are not sure whether that is true because of the poor reporting during Thanksgiving week, but it seems like a reasonable supposition based on what we do know. Cases increased from 93k per day in the week before Thanksgiving to 115k per day in the week after Thanksgiving. That’s about 23.6% in two weeks, or 11% per week.

          Unless omicron changes the math, the increases in hospitalizations should start to flatten down soon, reflecting what happened with new cases about a week and a half ago.

          1. Well, Delta was a new thing & so is Little-O. (O-mega being Big-O & O-micron as I said.) The math always changes whenever we face any new pathogen. Flu+Covid (twindemic) changes the math, too. What’s shaping up seems to be that omicron flourishes in the head & doesn’t spread as readily into the lungs. We don’t quite know that yet, but. What we really need to know & don’t is how much less severe it’ll be in the vaxed & how many more unvaxed will be severely infected. By severity, I mean trouble breathing. Both affect hospital admissions.

            My brother’s on Hawaii island & I have not found a good data source for hospitalized covid there. Deaths on the island are still nearly 0. Here, in my county of .75 M, there are 13 covid patients in hospital today. We are not in lockdown, retail at 100%, eateries spaced, masks indoors. Not sure of practice in other businesses, but salons are being careful about masks & some point a thermometer at you on the way in. IOW, YMMV. I can’t say what we’re seeing in NY w/omicron won’t come here. But I’m not taking it as a given that it will.

  11. For me, it’s not a thing until it’s a thing. When it happens, I’ll be eating crow. For now, I’m not seeing overwhelmed hospitals nor any deaths of late. Not in my area. 1 in 5 of us are unvaxxed. I don’t sweat the unfully vaxxed. I lump them with unvaxxed. I simply divide fully vaxxed by total residents. We mask when we shop. We eat out. Tables are spaced. Ventilation is good.

    Evolution in Action. We’ve voted with our feet long before elections. COVID is just The Uncommon Cold. The reason newness = severity is the occasional pathogen comes along that kills off a bunch of us when our unknown-pathogen immune response is too mild. Those of us who survived get damn sick, just in case, every damn time. Self-inflicted. Not from everyday germs, though, only new ones. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.

    That’s why a pre-existing condition, so-called comorbidity, tips us over the edge. Deniers think COVID deaths are overblown. They blame excess deaths on misattribution of other causes to COVID. But no, excess deaths do not lie. Take away the virus, those deaths don’t happen.

  12. “ U.S. infections rose to an average of about 120,000 a day this week, the most since September, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University and Bloomberg through Friday. The delta variant continues to drive infections and hospitalizations, though the new omicron variant has been reported now in more than 25 states.”

    1. Especially concerning are the dramatic recent rise in COVID hospitalizations and the enormous spike in the testing percentage .

      (The 7-day average has soared from 4.9% to 8.3% in just 40 days).

      (Hospitalizations had dropped as low as 12,000, and are now back around the 60,000 mark.)

      These facts, coupled with the fact that there is a large group of vaccine resisters in even the most diligent states, indicates that it will be a long, bitter winter.

      About the only consolation is that COVID is now hitting some purple states, and that vaccine resisters are basically committing suicide en masse, like lemmings. In some of those states just a few thousand voters can flip an election, and those who are not fully vaccinated are 13 times as likely to die from COVID, making those states bluer by the day. As the TV pundits frequently remind us, actions have consequences.

  13. This will get worse thanks to the Thanksgiving Holiday…and just wait for Christmas…superspreaders galore.

  14. According to scientist/virologist Peter Hotez, approximately 150,000 fully unvaccinated people have died from Covid since June 1, 2021. This is out of approximately 183,000 Covid deaths since that time, meaning that approximately 5/6 of those dying from Covid were fully unvaccinated. It’s certainly reasonable to believe that most of the remaining 33,000 were those partially vaccinated.

    I can’t say as I care about those Americans (and Canadians) who are unvaccinated dying, I just wish they’d all die off as quickly as possible so the rest of us can put this all behind us.

    1. “For Big Miners, U.S. Workers Are Most Reluctant to Get Vaccinated
      Mining companies operate in some of the world’s least developed countries, yet have their lowest Covid-19 vaccination rates at U.S. sites.”

      Brilliant…

      1. Hey, that is a big success story for the GOP! And, uh, freedom or something! And why are you ignoring Hilary and Uranium One if you care so much about mines?

    2. Sometimes I feel like you do about the unvaccinated, Adam T, and other times I remember how I used to feel about people back before Trump won the 2016 election and we found out so much about a lot of the American public.

      I recommend watching Beau of the Fifth Column’s videos on YouTube, especially his recent one about the upheavals in the Q-World. He has a shrewd but human take on most things, IMO.

      You probably don’t really need any advice from me. You are better informed than I am, that’s for sure.

      1. I’m not just venting, I really wish these people would either wise up and get vaccinated or literally drop dead, but there is a Playboy of the Western World aspect to this from me as well.

        Unlike many Americans who profess to be horrified at the notion of wishing people dead, I actually wear a mask in all indoor public settings even in places I don’t have to (which right now in British Columbia is just private homes) precisely because I actually don’t want to be responsible for anybody’s death, even a Covidiot.

        Though there are alternate interpretations of the play, the generally accepted, is it expresses how it’s one thing to believe something in the abstract, but another to believe the same thing in a concrete way.

        If you’re not familiar, the protagonist in the play arrives in a new town after believing that he had killed his father. All the town’s inhabitants fete him and praise him for his courage at having the courage to have done so after he tells them about his father believing that he is just telling a yarn, but when his father actually shows up in the town all battered and bruised, the townsfolk run the son off saying “how could you have tried to kill your father?!?!”

        1. I know the feeling. I can see your point of view about them. Of course, it would be better if they would wise up, get vaccinated, stop believing anything OANS or Fox “News” tells them, and start voting with a realistic appreciation of their own interest instead of anger and fear.

          But they need to be stopped from going down the road they are traveling, just as the South needed to be stopped in 1861. Even more so, because unlike the South, they want to take the rest of use with them.

          And if they are the victims of their own delusions, well…. I am not going to blame myself for that, anyway.

    3. For the first time, the pandemic might alter the political landscape in the USA. It is now tearing through some swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, etc. Since the left is basically vaccinated and the right is basically unvaccinated, it means that the fatalities will disproportionately reduce the number of Trump voters, thus swinging the states slightly farther leftward.

      Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

      1. Gotta disagree. Without covid – or with a Trump covid response better than the series of tweets and fart noises that we got – the fucker could have been re-elected. 2020 was the first time.

        1. I think Trump would have been as well. The reason from me is that, as I’ve written here before, economic growth kinds of builds on itself and steadily encompasses more and more until even the chronically unemployed start to get hired.

          I think the U.S economy, as uneven as it was given that the Federal Reserve could not even start to unwind the previous tapering program, was getting close to that point, and when that happens, not surprisingly people start to feel more and more a sense of ‘peace and prosperity’ and support the President more and more.

          I don’t know if Trump’s handling of Covid hurt him or not in the election, but it froze the economy and prevented the continued economic growth from occurring. The polls on the election from March to November of 2020 largely didn’t change.

          I think Trump, when he’s being rational and realizes the election wasn’t stolen from him thinks this as well. I think in his own way this is why he whines that he was the person most negatively effected by Covid, (or whatever he specifically said that was very close to that.)

  15. Bad news…and no clue currently on how effective the vaccines are. All four confirmed cases in Botswana were among vaccinated people.

  16. I’m at the point now where I want to see the idiots of the world die off anyway.
    Right now it’s the perfect storm coming: winter, a new Delta Plus variant, schools in session, and of course the holidays.
    I do think things will settle down when the new Pfizer pill goes into full production.
    This of course assumes that the conspiracy crowd will actually take it (you know, because of all the 5G, infertility, rewriting DNA, and tracking devices in it) , but I bet two weeks in ICU slowly suffocating will change their minds. (I hope they refuse to take it still, because screw ’em)
    If this pill works as advertised, and so far the studies look good, it’s a game changer.

  17. Not that I disagree with Nature Mom’s sentiment about wanting to re-anchor to safety. It’s just that…

    First, novelty = severity. The seriousness of a pathogen is not just about its own “potency” or “virulence”. It’s also about how fast our immune response recognizes the pathogen & is able to control the infection. Pragmatically, we should mark a new pathogen by its effect. Not technically, by lineage. From that perspective, the Delta variant became a new disease. We were lucky that it could still be, if only marginally, swept under the same rug covering the initial outbreak. Our path back to “normal” is on the verge of being thwarted yet again.

    The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 variant A.30 is heavily mutated and evades vaccine-induced antibodies with high efficiency

  18. The time is coming & the case is being made that talk of putting CoVid behind us has not turned out to be our likely long term prospect. We are going to have ups & downs. What we need to talk about now, realistically, is shifting in & out of a lower gear. Probably on an as-needed basis. Which means, geographically, a patchwork of outbreaks & counter-measures. Like so many other diseases & pathogens.

    http://news.yahoo.com/zealand-admits-no-longer-rid-053826244.html

    http://news.yahoo.com/japans-dip-covid-19-cases-074352014.html

    http://news.yahoo.com/where-does-natural-immunity-stand-in-fight-over-vaccine-mandates-231039244.html

  19. You think anti-vaccine idiocy is new?

    Prior to the pandemic we’ve had measles outbreaks because of anti-vaxxers thus setting the stage for where we are now. We needed to push back against this before, we really need to do it now.

  20. Not hatred, informed self interest. Kids can’t get the shot, they aren’t safe, duh. Now I know you couldn’t care less, not being a kid. But won’t someone, please, think of the economy? The sooner we get to herd immunity, the sooner people can get back to work, unload the container ships, drive the trucks and get you that Baby Yoda doll you’ve had your eye on.

    1. Since this is steve we’re talking about, I assume you mean a Baby Yoda blow-up sex doll, Nature Mom.

      1. Dang Roger, I was trying to keep it classy and soft-pedal that detail. For the same reason, I will not describe *how* Baby Yoda gets blown up nor speculate whether he opted for the deluxe model with the vibrating anus.

        1. You are right, Nature Mom, and I apologize. I forgot that “classy” is the one word that sums up the essence of this website and its master, Uncle Scoopy. I have dishonored an American monument of dignity and good taste.

          And OF COURSE steve is getting the deluxe version. I defy anyone to imagine that he would do otherwise. “It is to laugh!”

  21. Back on Sept 10th I posted a comment about anti-vaccers. At the time I had discovered that two of my co-workers were anti-vaccers.
    As a quick update, I have since learned that there is a 3rd co-worker of mine that is anti-vaccine. And for the record, I’m part of an IT group of around 20 people total. These are allegedly intelligent people.
    I have also learned that my own sister and her husband are anti-vaccine.
    So far, out of the 5 people, here’s what they all have in common:
    1. Conspiracy theorist
    2. Strong religious belief (to be clear, for my sister, the religion is catholic)
    3. Foxnews

    For myself, I don’t believe there is a mysterious invisible sky God, anymore than I believe in the Great Pumpkin, so from the outside looking at all of the anti-vaccers, it looks to me like they all show a willingness to believe in something that is not real as a form of mental comfort.

    (I realize my amateur analysis doesn’t apply to everyone. No need to bombard me with replies. It’s just a tiny sampling of what I have observed. )

    1. Yeah, almost all of it is the willing disbelief. I also have a Catholic sister. She literally – *literally* – always has Fox on, except maybe when everyone’s asleep. It’s spooky, the endless TV as much as the Fox.
      But there’s also this privilege subtext (not very sub) of “I’m white and fairly well-off, this shouldn’t be my problem”.

  22. Seriously, how is CBS not slapping this map up every night during the evening news – ideally with a big “Breaking! News!” buildup. Even the whackos who are dead (and I mean dead) set against getting the shot might think to do what we were all doing pre-vaccine – stay in, WFH, bake some bread maybe…

  23. Repeating, not a problem as Trump said covid-19 would miraculously disappear by summer 2020. So it shall be written, so it shall be done!

    Do you believe in miracles? Indeed, many hearken back to the glory days of 2020. 😛

    Yielding back the balance of my time …

    1. Yes, I as recall, Trump said Covid would “go away like a thing that goes away.” How much more concrete and specific can you get?

      1. In cases where Trump’s words conflict with reality, reality has it wrong. Trump’s word is definitive. And don’t even get me STARTED on the man’s eloquence.

  24. Of interest to me is the psychology of an anti-vaccer. I know two very smart people (both are in IT) that are both conspiracy theorists. They are also both religious, believing the earth is only 5 or 6 thousand years old. They are both now vaccinated (very recently).
    What I see in common here is that when they do not clearly understand something, they leap to the conclusion that it must be a conspiracy, or God, or some other thing that flies in the face of the facts as we know them. Just me two cents here, but I think it has something to do with giving yourself mental closure in the face of the unknown.
    I’d be interested to hear from a strongly religious person here that also does not believe in conspiracies. Does such a person exist?

    1. I consider myself a religious person, although not necessarily a biblical literalist like your friends. But I don’t think I can offer any profound insights into the minds of conspiracyphiles, especially those who also claim to be good Christians. Christ teaches us to love our enemies, and even if I often fail I at least admit that I ought to. Many big name conservative (and some liberal) torch-bearers, on the other hand, tell us to do the exact opposite, and way too many Christians fail to see the conflict. I fear that people like your friends have been conditioned, over the years, to automatically assume the worst about people; if there are two or more possible explanations for something, they immediately jump at the one that sheds the worst possible light on humanity in general. I feel sorry for people who are burdened with such a dismal world view.
      Christian anti-vaxxers are frequently heard to declare that they place their faith in God over science to keep them healthy. In response, I quote from Inherit the Wind: “Why did God plague us with the ability to think? Why do you deny the one faculty of man that raises him above the other creatures of the earth–the power of his brain to reason?” Science IS the answer to our prayers.

    2. Well, this doesn’t relate directly to your question, but if you are a con man looking for pigeons, you would take into consideration that anyone who would believe that Genesis is literally true will pretty much believe anything you care to sell them. They are your ideal target audience for theories which are unsupported by facts, or even for theories directly contradicted by facts.

      On the other hand, I don’t think you should lump together all deeply religious people. A good Christian follows the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, but can still believe that parts of the bible are metaphorical, and that other parts are humbug. (The book of Deuteronomy, for example, was an obvious fraud that somehow made it into the accepted canon.)

      As another commenter noted, one can be religious and believe that God gave us the gift of reason so that we could discover for ourselves the immensity and immeasurable wonder of His universe. A religious person can believe in evolution or the big bang, for example. Religion and truth are not irreconcilable. Many religious people believe simply that however the universe came into being, that was how God chose to create it, and however mankind came to evolve, that was God’s plan all along.

      1. I just want to point out here that I got two very intelligent responses in a row; a rare thing on the internet. 🙂 So kudos to the both of you.

        I find the idea of the conspiracy theorist very interesting. Not so much the conspiracy itself, but the why of it. I guess there are many reasons. I think one reason would be an insecure person’s way of feeling superior. As in, being the only person that knows what is really going on.
        I think another is probably a subconscious way of dealing with mental anxiety. As in, the mysteries of the universe are too much to come to grips with, therefore it must be x or y.
        Anyway, it’s interesting how the pandemic has brought so much of it into the light, and the mental stress of the whole thing may have even pushed a larger chunk of the population towards the conspiracy mindset. Some of the big factors there being mass media and social isolation.
        Anyway, interesting stuff.

    3. Would just add re: whys and wherefores since the beginning of 24/7 cable news (1980s) and especially the interwebs now with runaway, totally out of control social media: facebook, twitter, snapchat, insta etc all extreme religious, political, social, economic etc debate has been exacerbated to the nth degree.

      iow fake news is now mainstream (4) yrs of Trump notwithstanding. 😛

      Their are now folks at their fav political sites/channels 24/7. Shocking! lol

      Indeed, spending all your time at celeb nude site(s) = normal 😉
      Political sites not so much. ok, starting to go off-topic, but you get my drift. The information highway is wayyy too congested both literally and figuratively.

      Nobody takes time or has the time to smell the roses anymore.

      Once you become situated in your fav tribe er political echo chamber nothing is gonna burst your bubble even something as simple /normal/rational as taking a vaccine to prevent you from dying. My way or the highway. Yielding back the balance of my time.

  25. Seems like daily stats are pretty useless. As they seem to change pretty dramatically day to day. Especially given states report differently.
    Maybe a better chart would reflect a 2 week “moving average” instead? It might also catch back reporting (e.g Florida’s back dating to the date caught rather than date tested) and show trends a little better?

  26. “Florida and Louisiana are experiencing their highest pandemic deaths per capita to date, surpassing their January toll.”

    And the Governor of Florida has presidential ambitions. What a fucked up country.

    1. Oh hell yes. And the Supreme Court decision on the Texas abortion law is another big step down that road. Fark had a link to an article at a website called Vox that was the clearest explanation that I have seen. If it’s accurate, it would be appalling, except my ability to be appalled seems to be burned out right now,

      Now you know why “may you live in interesting times” is considered to be a curse.

    2. It’s hard to imagine. Some governors are trying to contain COVID. Others are cautiously staying out of the fray. DeSantis and a few others are actually trying to spread COVID by preventing localities and businesses from trying to contain it. And that makes him presidential material.

      We live in a strange time in a strange country. The DeSantis case is one of the strangest.

      You can grasp why Trump is the way he is and why he says dumb things. He actually is dumb, and that’s compounded by the pathological narcissism, so I guess he actually believes those things. His lack of intellect means he’s not capable of understanding the complexities of science, and the narcissism means he’s not willing to believe that some other people do.

      But DeSantis is no dummy. He graduated from Yale and got his law degree from Harvard Law, in both cases with honors. He was also a top athlete and part of a Navy Seal operation. He seems on paper to be a perfect Presidential candidate.

      Despite his presumed intellect, he seems to subscribe to the Trump newsletter. In his case, he must understand the problems and the solutions, but willfully ignores them in pursuit of the Trump base and the electoral power it can confer. That is truly cynical.

      1. Well…to be fair, he was the legal advisor to the SEAL Commander, Special Operations Task Force-West in Fallujah.

        So not actually a Navy Seal.

        1. He was on the ground in Fallujah. That’s SEAL enough for me, even if he could not have passed the physicals.

          1. There’s no need to diminish his achievements. He was the captain and best player on a Division 1 varsity team. That’s an elite athlete, no matter how you cut it. As college athletes go, he wasn’t Roger Clemens or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Jim Brown, but he had game.

          2. Arguably not the best player just the highest team batting average in his senior yr. Yale never made the NCAA Tournament when he was on the team. Of course, Yale only have made it in the years 1947, 1948, 1981, 1992, 1993, 2017. A friend competed in diving at a major Division 1 School and then became the diving coach for the school. I asked him if he had considered himself to be an elite athlete…he couldn’t stop laughing,

  27. Probably said already…WA and OR are not that unusual of cases. The Eastern parts of both states tend to align heavily with the “lets take horse dewormer” crowd, while the western parts, well, they do not. So it would stand to reason that the Eastern parts of both states would produce higher numbers than the West.

    1. I agree with what you wrote.

      My point is that they not the usual triple red zone states with a generally ignorant populace and an incompetent government. The aggregate data make Washington and Oregon seem to be two of the dumb-ass states, when that’s not really true. They just have a dumb-ass east. Having them in the red zone can’t be compared to having Mississippi in the red zone in this sense: If Washington and Oregon were split into four states, each split east and west, only two of the four would be in the triple red zone. In contrast, you could split Mississippi into 82 states by county, assess their weekly data, and all 82 would likely be in the red zone.

      1. this is a really ignorant comment. I have lived in Washington and Oregon most of my life, and what you said isn’t true. First of all, equating Democrat to “smart” and Republican to “dumbass” is completely stupid. Both are dumbasses, just in different ways. Second, the states aren’t divided east and west, although you could look at numbers that would suggest that. In fact, the states are divided into “Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia and everything else” and “Portland/Eugene/Salem and everything else”. The government of both states are INCREDIBLY incompetent and corrupt. They happen to be Democrats, but that’s not why they’re incompetent and corrupt, they’re just a bunch of awful people who have completely lost control.

        Anyway, there is no real correlation to number of cases per populace to your “dumbass” vs “smart” voting centers. There are high numbers in red counties, high numbers in blue counties, and low numbers in both as well. And, while your “dumbass” counties are being dumb about vaccines and masks, the “smart” counties are burning down their cities with 500 consecutive days of riots. You have no idea how scary it is to go into sections of those cities that I used to love. Dumbasses abound everywhere, on both sides, and anyone blaming the OTHER side is a dumbass.

        1. My comments have nothing to do with politics – only with new cases, as linked in yesterday’s page, with vaccinations, and with the COVID policies of the state’s governments. The coastal areas of Washington and Oregon are relatively COVID-free, comparable to New England. The Eastern areas have high rates of infection, ala Idaho. (Probably from lack of vaccination.)

          That’s not me creating the East/West delineation – it’s the COVID map. And your “no correlation” comment is just factually incorrect in that regard. The map is quite clear. There may be some small pockets of moderate COVID on the western section, but no high areas, and the correlation is VERY strong – as you move east, COVID increases. (Again, see the map. In both states, if split East/West, the west would not be in the triple red zone, while the east would be over the top.)

          As far as the governance goes, I was referring ONLY to their policies toward COVID. The dumb-ass states in the southeast are in the red zone BECAUSE they have an ignorant, unvaccinated populace, sometimes in every county, and they have foolish governments making bad COVID policies. That isn’t true of Washington and Oregon. Their governments have the right COVID policies, and the western halves of their states are controlling the virus fairly well.

          Finally, I assume you are also ignorant of what is basically the only rule of commenting on this site – NO SOCK PUPPETS.

          1. The sock-puppet also claimed that Washington and Oregon aren’t divided east/west. This is also clearly not how many people in Washington and Oregon see it, as there are annual calls in Eastern Washington to secede from the rest of the State, and there are occasional calls, one just recently, for Eastern Oregon to join Idaho. I would recommend that Eastern Washington, Eastern Oregon and Idaho to become one state named Dumbass.

        2. It is impossible to still be a Republican and be a decent, intelligent, well informed person. They have done too much that is stupid and evil, and still defend having done it. Conservative, OK. Republican, no. Antivaxxer, hell no.

    1. Eeewww, I don’t want to poke that, my finger would probably come away smelling like a hospital hallway.
      Put an EEG on DeSantis though, check for brain function. You’ll have to crank the gain way up. Do that nice Kay Ivey from Alabama too, bless her heart.

  28. “Florida on Thursday reported 21,765 more COVID-19 cases and 901 deaths to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to Miami Herald calculations of CDC data.”

    Heckuva job Ron, heckuva job…

    1. Florida reported 1,727 Covid-19 deaths in its latest weekly report, the most since the state has been issuing the reports.

    1. I think that’s just a statistical fluke. While the number of new cases is fairly consistent from day to day, the number of reported fatalities is not, for various reasons, including the timing of their reports. In a small state like Wyoming a variance of one or two deaths can throw the state in or out of the daily red zone. Any given state may slip in and out of the fatality red zone. Only the three or four states with mega-problems seem to report excessive fatalities every single day.

      So, give Alabama and South Carolina a day or two and I’m sure they’ll resume their rightful places among the incompetent.

      I guess the map would be more stable and consistent if I did it based on the weekly numbers instead of the dailies, but I like keeping an eye on the stats.

  29. “U.S. weekly infections topped 1 million on Friday, apparently for the first time since the surge last winter, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Average daily fatalities also ticked over 1,000 on Saturday.”

    1. And now you’ll be paying for the monoclonal antibody treatment at $6000 per patient since the federal government gives it to the patients for free.

  30. “Florida’s weekly Covid-19 cases rose to a record, with confirmed infections increasing 12% to 151,415 for the seven days through Thursday as Governor Ron DeSantis stakes his claim against mask mandates.”

    Way to go Florida…

  31. Of course the Southern states are still wildly spreading covid — mindless Trump zombies & conspiracy freaks who politicized mask-wearing & vaccines, and are now paying the heavy price, and making normal people pay too.

  32. Currently the worst Canadian province, Alberta, is significantly better than the best U.S. state, Maine.

    With the borders now opened, given that we have comparable vaccination levels, we’ll probably be seeing an uptick, with subsequent return to lockdown.

    Key takeaways: The vaccine primarily reduces the likelihood of severe symptoms; it does not prevent you from catching the disease, nor does it prevent you from from spreading the disease when caught. Wear your mask.

    1. They were in two of the three red zones. The map only shows the states that were in all three.

      (Texas missed in fatalities on Monday.)

  33. Is Alabama the dumbest state?

    “ As coronavirus cases and hospitalizations surged in Alabama, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) mentioned the state’s lowest-in-the-nation vaccination rate at a political fundraiser, eliciting cheers from the audience in a video posted this week.
    Days after the video surfaced, the state’s health leader said officials have tossed out more than 65,000 coronavirus vaccines that expired, citing low demand that experts have partly attributed to the politicization of the vaccine. Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate in the country…”

    1. She got worse:
      ““Well, what they don’t know is that in the South we all love our Second Amendment rights,” she said in the clip shared Tuesday. “And we’re not real big on strangers showing up at our front door, are we? They might not like the welcome they get.”
      Greene’s spokesman, Nick Dyer, denied that she suggested people shoot those promoting vaccines.
      “Your colleagues in the fake news are making things up and attributing things to her that she did not say,” he wrote in an email.”
      I watched it. She did.

    2. MJT is leading Alabama to a fine effort, Figaro, but I am sure Texas, Arkansas, and Missouri will rise to the challenge. Or sink, depending on your point of view.

      1. “The Austin area — with a population of almost 2.4 million people — has just six intensive-care unit beds left, state health data show. A total of 313 ventilators are available.”

        Emergency declared in Austin.

    1. From the same group of disingenuous deep-thinkers who blamed Obama for the stinking pile of shit that was the economy Bush left for him.

      “The buck stops with that other guy.”

      — Republicans, probably

        1. Still better than going well fuck, we have no idea how many people caught this shit. Your false +s make a dent in offsetting the real +s who didn’t get tested. Testing pos then wearing a mask is a small sacrifice when there’s a plague about. If you’re warming up a whole rant about dictatorial policy, put it back in your pants – this isn’t that, it’s just common sense.

        2. Case stats are nearly a perfect predictor of hospitalizations one or two weeks later and fatalities three weeks later. Because of some changes from last year’s situation, the multiplier from cases to deaths is not as high as it was last year, but the basic math is still pretty reliable when you look at the percentages of increase. In other words, despite the subtleties and complications, a big increase in cases in week 2 over week 1, will probably mean about a big increase in hospitalizations in week 3 over week 2, and a big increase in fatalities in week 5 over week 4.

          Last year we could expect a perfectly proportionate increase. If cases went up 30%, fatalities would go up 30% about three weeks later. This year the rate of fatalities is tamped down by the vaccination program and by certain other complicating variables, so fewer patients die or are hospitalized. Because of that, the calculations are a little different. Maybe a 30% surge in cases only causes a 15% or 20% surge in fatalities (I haven’t done the regressions, so I’m not sure of the precise calculations). But one thing seems certain: more cases, plus time, equals more hospitalizations and more deaths.

          As you might suppose, being able to forecast increases like that is very useful to hospital administrators.

          And, sadly, to undertakers as well.

          In other words, pretty much every human being on earth was capable of predicting the fatalities that were going to happen in Florida in the past few days. Make that everybody except their governor, who proceeds as cluelessly as ever, and actually seems intent on making things worse rather than better.

        3. Yes, you can test positive from having COVID. Though not from getting vaccinated. However, genetic fragments don’t stick around for long. If you had COVID recently, there’s nothing ‘false’ about a positive. If you were asymptomatic, then your case was ‘missed’. There’s nothing wrong with counting your infection, in that case, either. Even if it’s after the fact. Apart from those 2 situations, there aren’t a ton of ‘false positives’.

          If you do test positive, the next step would be triage & more tests (besides PCR). Symptoms, blood oxygen, viral load, etc. In your false pos scenario, these tests would be negative. IMO, you could let your doctor tell you what your opinion should be.

          Not too many people are being tested without symptoms. Like, not usually people with proof of vaccination. One exception that comes to mind is athletes. Yes, there are others, too. But again, they’re not most of us.

  34. Yeah, Biden really should have forced a national mask mandate so those dipshit governors couldn’t force cities to *not* require them.

  35. Personally know of seven breakthrough infections….ages range from 3 teens to 2 in their 40s to 2 in their late 70s.

  36. Based on how Delta has quickly moved thru other countries, the days of avoiding it are over. People are going to get immunity either thru a vaccine or au naturel. The South has opened door #2.

    1. Common misconception; they’re just a front for Big Buttwipe. Follow the money – who stands to gain the most when everyone stays home? Charmin. Northern. Somewhere that annoying Snuggles bear is laughing til he pisses himself, then wiping it up with fifties and hundreds.

  37. “CDC study shows three-fourths of people infected in Massachusetts covid-19 outbreak were vaccinated”

    From WaPo.

    1. In a state where most people are vaxed and there is a lot of testing, this isn’t unexpected. The crux of the biscuit, though: What percent of breakthrough positives went to the ICU? Unvaxed positives, same question?

        1. Right…I always get my news from Twitter….see the Israeli statistics that largely mirror the MA ones.

    2. “Florida has reported the highest daily average hospitalizations in the nation, 36 for every 100,000 people over the past two weeks,”

      NYT

      1. You do know we have a dumbass governor here and Trump also is here everything is controlled by republicans hopefully since they are not vaccinated hope they die and there will be less Republican voters ans state can have some resemblance of sane here

        1. I guess that is the consolation prize. The lack of vaccinations among the ignorant, and their subsequent fatalities, could cause purple states like Florida to turn blue. I guess that’s a perfect example of “thinning the herd,” in that those too stupid to survive will die.

          But the problem with that thinking is that it allows the virus to keep replicating. The more it replicates, the higher is the likelihood of mutation. The more it mutates, the greater is the likelihood that one of the mutations will eventually manage to defy our inoculations.

          As much as we hate the idea for certain reasons, the rest of us have to figure out a way to keep the stupid alive .

    1. Darn, the EdBot woke up. I see nobody bothered to make new material for it. I guess they realized it’s not worth the effort.

      1. His style is hysterical scumballs who can scream ROUTERS!!!!!! eleven times in two minutes. Thank God we don’t have any of those in the White House anymore.

    2. He ain’t the problem. It’s the people who voted for Orange Moron, who refuse to wear masks or get vaccinated that are causing this. I’m all for vaccine passports and telling those who refuse the shot and come to the ER when they get COVID to go to the nearest Republican HQ for treatment.

  38. SW Missouri is just like Vegas and Orlando because of….Branson MO
    No surprise there.

    1. According to the weekly summary, Sweden still has a major increase in cases, but has only has had one death in the last 14 days.

  39. My vindication: Safe in the knowledge that, thanks to my decision not to get the jab, I enjoy 100% complete protection against breakthru covid.

    1. Your reaction perfectly captures my conspiracy theory of political sabotage. Politics overrides the good of the country. The modern conservative would rather the people suffer & die than concede that the “bad guys” might actually do some good, once in a while. Nope. Since even one success may lead to permanent credibility.

      1. I said you wouldn’t concede anything. Are you contradicting me in any way? AFAICT, no. You’re just making my case.

    2. This has has a lot more to do with with the kind of numbskulls like those at the CPAC bozofest who cheered Biden not hitting the vax goal rather than any failures on the part of Biden. This idiocy was was best exemplified by the other dimwit Trumpoid poster girl, the Boebert, with her “Don’t come knocking on my door with your Fauci Ouchie!”.

  40. During a White House briefing, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the seven-day average of coronavirus infections soared nearly 70 percent in just one week, to about 26,300 cases a day.

    1. Scary. Just a month ago the average was about 10,000 cases per day. Now it is nearly 30,000 and rising.

    2. Some statistics are scary. Some are misleading & needlessly scary. The local news are bandying about these stats lies. Not that I think the situation isn’t getting bad & won’t get worse. Just, a little sanity.

      In my microcosm of 3/4 million souls, cases doubled from 500 in 30 days, to now 1k in 30 days. Positivity doubled from 0.7 per 100k to 1.4. There are now 15 COVID patients in our hospitals, up 2x from not long ago. 5 are in ICU. 4 new deaths. But then, 1/2 a million of us are fully vaxed.

      For perspective, we have 110k ineligible for vax (mostly kids < 12). Of the eligible, 80k are unvaxed & 60k haven't had their 2nd shot. 250k total participants in the Delta epidemic. 1 in 3 people.

      Still, we aren't dying left & right. We aren't even in a hospital bed. (Roughly, I believe, you're admitted if you need O2.)

      1. Well, let me put it this way. I’m not scared. But I’m checking my local stats every day. It’s a habit I’ve acquired. I have no plans to quit any time soon. Sure, a big percentage of a small magnitude is still small. But someone mumbled something to me once to the effect that exponential growth blah blah blah. I don’t recall the exact details, but it sounded impressive at the time. So there’s that.

        1. “As the seven-day rolling average of new infections approached 52,000 on Tuesday, more than four times the level just three weeks ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidance recommending Americans resume wearing masks in indoor public places in many parts of the country — regardless of whether they’re vaccinated.”

          The CDC has some serious messaging problems. The doctors I know at the time thought the elimination of masks indoors for those vaccinated was a huge blunder.

  41. I’m trying to think of what all of these red-zone states have in common. Hmm, I’m sure it’ll come to me…

    1. The irony of der fuhrer er lord and savior getting the best Covid treatment known to mankind! Seriously, you can’t make this shit up!

      Indeed, the “original” der fuhrer would be jealous lol. Apologies to actual lemmings.

      Yielding back the balance of my time …

      1. Further irony is that the USA had so many vaccines so fast because Trump offered such co-operation and partnership with the pharma companies. It was the one thing he did absolutely right in his term, and his own base has managed to mar that achievement.

        Maybe if Biden’s people called it “the Trump vaccine” or “TrumpCare”?

        On a serious note, I believe that Biden should reach out to Trump and negotiate a way that they could do a joint appeal to the USA to get vaccinated. I really think an appeal from Trump would help. (And Biden can let Trump have all the credit for developing the vaccines. Who cares as long as it gets COVID under control? I think that might salve Trump’s ego enough to get him to participate.)

        1. Unfortunately, Trump would *never* do it.

          1) He couldn’t possibly care less about other people, so the fact that tens of thousands are still dying for no reason wouldn’t even be a blip on his radar.

          2) He won’t lift a finger to do anything that he perceived as positive for Biden — the more COVID deaths on Biden’s watch the better, in his narcissistic worldview. Even if Biden did give him credit, he still wouldn’t do it; Trump is the living embodiment of the old “cutting off your nose to spite your face” saying.

        2. I’m not even willing to give Trump credit for vaccine development.

          The US government spends billions of dollars per year on drug research. This is the default mode of the US government. All Trump had to do was not meddle with it.

          1. Trump made the vaccine in the same sense – and to a much lesser extent – that Al Gore invented the internet.

          2. That’s literally true, but even Trump’s strongest critics admit that he put the USA way ahead of the rest of the world in terms of getting out of the gate.

            What saddens me when I look at the numbers daily is that another country passes us every day on the “most vaccinated” chart. We were about at 40% when Spain wasn’t even off the schneid. Now we’re at 48% and Spain is at 49%. To extend my racing metaphor, we did get out of the gate first, then pulled up lame.

          3. I’m contrarian to “Trump’s strongest critics”. I believe it was right to plop down federal bucks on vaccines. It was right to bet big. But we didn’t also hedge. We should’ve fed the cottage industry of vaccine candidates that we instead let die on the vine. We failed to approve trials. We didn’t fund those trials. There were innovations to lower the cost per dose. Low cost is the key to modern civilization. There was new delivery tech that didn’t need a high-skilled paramedic to administer (eg, a patch). With tech like that in our pocket, think of the impact not just on COVID-19 worldwide, but on future epidemics, too.

    2. As one great American once said, “I love the poorly educated.”

      There are 19 states that made at least one red zone. 15 of them gave their electoral votes to Trump, 3 to Biden, 1 (Maine) split.

      There are nine states in serious trouble, having made two red zones. Eight of the nine voted for Trump. Nevada was the only exception.

      1. Trump has a point. I’ve always thought practically everyone should have a degree. Now, I’m aware how few do. And that it’s not because it’s out of reach. It’s because the vast majority of adults didn’t want & still don’t want more school. It has to be possible to have a decent life, without ever going to college.

        In Germany, govt & biz both support & contribute to a broad practice of apprenticeships for non-college young adults.

    3. They are the ones who believed Biden and Harris who said they wouldn’t get the vaccine if Trump had anything to with it.

  42. Yeah. AR sucks at this COVID stuff. We lost a family member who lived about 40 mins from Little Rock last week, his wife is in the hospital now getting ready to be ventilated and her mom (90) was just taken to the hospital. These folks live in a very rural area…hard core Trump supporters (which is their right) and believed all the folks on that wing saying this is a hoax, it’s not that bad. NONE of them were vaccinated…our family members nor the several small communities around them. The other family and friends are now posting on social media that they are getting the shot.

    1. Yay! I mean, condolences.

      In a way, though, a lesson cheap at twice the price. Not the best way to get a news update. Costly, & sad. But, good that it doesn’t look like you’ll be digging a mass grave.

      Sorry, I’m not too good with that whole tact thing.

      FWIW, I didn’t get religion just because I lean left. Ish. I was lucky enough to shop an asian supermarket, early 2020. Everyone was wearing masks. Already. I thought, maybe, just maybe, all these people know something. That maybe I ought to know, too. A nudge. Not more than that. But it’s good enough, if it works.

  43. In Tennessee, 52% of adults have received a dose of vaccine, ranking it among the five states with the lowest vaccination rate. And yet, the seven-day average number of Covid-19 cases per 100,000 residents is 10.9, 13th lowest in the U.S. as of Thursday.

    1. That’s right. Tennessee is an exception. They also have a low percentage of positive tests.

      Can you say “Ticking time bomb,” kids?

      There are one or two other exceptional states as well, for reasons unknown. The most dramatic exception is Alaska, which ranks 1st in testing percentage and 30th in vaccinations.

      1. Taking a quick look at the vaccination rate maps… (1) (2)

        I’d say that the places that aren’t getting vaccinated within each state are “where the White Republicans live”.

        In TN, that means that the urban centers are disproportionately covered, so it’s probably making it a bit harder for the virus to get around, since it’s having to work with people traveling between and within the rural counties on business, as opposed to those going into the big cities and towns. The comparatively mountainous terrain may be making all the difference compared to AL, and the comparative urbanization may be helping TN in comparison to KY or AR.

        With AK, the low population Native Alaskan census areas and boroughs have the highest vaccination compliance (a mercy, since they also probably have a low genetic resistance to zoonotic diseases and minimal healthcare infrastructure). While the places with the worst vaccination rate include the Ma-Su valley, the most conventionally “rural” part of the state and home to Palin. North Slope bucks that pattern and I’m tempted to attribute it to the influence of Tucker Carlson on oil workers.

        In this case, I suspect that the state’s isolation compared to the rest of the country is temporarily protecting it from the consequences of vaccine non-compliance.

      2. Update: County vax at a crawl, still rose 58k (after 1M). Eligible pop (12+): Of 2/3 M, 87% got, of whom 89% fully = 77% are good for Delta. Still widespread masking. Case rate spike, from 30 day avg mid teens, to last week low 20s. Numbers for current week trickle in, low but unstable. Positivity, hosp adm, ICU, stay low; 0 new deaths.

        Below: No need to panic, but some fears justified. Dr. Bette Korber, acclaimed for HIV vaccine says… OK for now, but eyes open thru 2024.

        5/12 Forget herd immunity

        news week X 2021 X 05 X 28 X forget-herd-1590656

        6/16 Delta rising

        nat geo X science X article X
        the-delta-variant-is-serious-heres-why-its-on-the-rise

        7/2 Delta evolving

        nat geo X science X article X
        how-dangerous-is-the-new-delta-plus-variant–heres-what-we-know

        Economy peaking? I’ve felt 2% inflation target’s too low. Even double, to 4%, w.b. manageable, solves problems. Mainly, expectations that the Fed will take away the punch bowl, arise nearer a higher target.

        7/7 Reflation rethink, bonds tumble

        reuters X business X
        global-markets-economy-analysis-2021-07-07

        7/8 Economy peaking, central banks reset

        reuters X business X
        fine-mess-weak-inflation-prompts-global-central-bank-reset-2021-07-08

        Dear “Traditional Conservatives”: You’re in with bad apples. Even your “more moderate” & long-held ideas on law, econ, are dogma based on lies. If you are who you think you are, you need to rethink everything you know, from the ground up. You need an epiphany. If it isn’t cathartic, you’re doing it wrong.

        7/8 Even GOP moderates are awful… median = insane

        daily beast X
        the-good-republicans-are-bad-and-the-bad-ones-are-batshit

        No, I don’t think racism is the heart of America. It’s there, it’s central, to many. But our core forces are class, power, money. Yes, the rich & powerful throw racism dog food to their dogs.

        But 1619 is a debate point. Teaching it to all our kids wouldn’t be more effective than just teaching history. Like, what did we get in 1790, what happened before & after the civil war. But, we have a lot on our plate today. Important stuff, we still can’t get right. “Slavery” isn’t the incantation that’ll get us on top of this mountain in front of us. Health, energy, politics. Honesty is under siege around the globe. It’s a world war. Meanwhile…

        Liberty… equality, brotherhood. America lost its way, on 2 of those major fronts.

      3. Follow-up: 2 deaths. That’s new.

        Tuesday cases revised upwards, to 44. Tue trajectory 16, 21, 32, 44. Wed drops back to teens, but I’m expecting an upwards revise. Thu, only 1 case. But so, ever so, preliminary.

        Hosp, ICU in single digits, as always. 1% positivity. FWIW, key capacity constraint isn’t beds/space, it’s staffing. There’s 0 transparency about that.

  44. “The good offer goodness from the secret of their heart. The perverse offer perversity from the secret of their heart. That which is expressed is what overflows from the heart.” – Some Guy

      1. Appreciated this. Went over on Mom like a lead balloon. For ten seconds. She’s 84. English isn’t her native tongue. The double negative threw her. But she grinned, once she’d processed it.

  45. Hmmm….what IQ averages do these states have in common? Florida is the home of DeSatan…I expect their doing much worse…they’re just better in covering up.

    1. Florida and Texas, MILLIONS dead due to being dumb and not imposing on citizen’s freedoms. Oh wait, that never happened, it’s been 8 months. Extra bonus points to anyone who can use the word ‘trump’ in a sentence.

      1. Covid will miraculously disappear by last summer. Oh wait!

        No bonus points …

  46. Florida is at 0. But they aren’t testing. How likely is it they actually have 0 cases Vs Trumpian no cases if you don’t test?

    1. Fair point. Florida is one of the states that have been accused of manipulating the data, and they did fire that one woman allegedly for reporting their numbers correctly. They don’t seem to want the honest numbers out there for scrutiny. I have to think they are still testing, so the zeros must be bad reporting rather than bad public health policy. At this moment I don’t know the story behind their recent lack of data.

      In all fairness, the fatality data from healthdata.org, which compares “excessive deaths during the pandemic” to “reported COVID deaths” does not show Florida’s numbers to be especially dishonest. Their ratio of reported deaths to inferred total deaths is higher than the national average.

      So, at least for the moment, I’m going to invoke Hanlon’s Razor and ascribe their flawed data to incompetence rather than malice.

  47. “In the Seychelles, Chile, Bahrain and Mongolia, 50 to 68 percent of the populations have been fully inoculated, outpacing the United States, according to Our World in Data, a data tracking project. All four ranked among the top 10 countries with the worst Covid outbreaks as recently as last week, according to data from The New York Times. And all four are mostly using shots made by two Chinese vaccine makers, Sinopharm and Sinovac Biotech.”

    Bad news.

    1. Chile is a perfect example. Despite a higher inoculation rate than the USA, its new COVID cases have remained alarmingly high, almost as high as unvaccinated populations in the region, like Paraguay.

  48. Last week’s red boxes a little unfair, as 2wks ago Monday was a holiday. IOW, a Sunday, sort of.

    My county’s vax outreach was massive. Big progress in recent weeks. 1st shots now 80%+. 70%+ fully. (Even in 12+ pop.) New cases 9/day (last 7-day avg). 4/day, since Fri. For you keeping score at home, that’s 0.00004 fraction of pop a week. (County pop 775k.) Only SF next door close to us in SFBA metro. Total shots 1M. Passed .5M only 4/1. Mask, social orders all rescinded as of 5/11. Just tooting my horn bc feels safe out there. Only ATM, no doubt. Y’know, most folks still wearing masks. As a social signal, mostly, not so much for protection, anymore. Time’ll come we need for protection again, I’m sure. I’m not looking forward to being squeezed up against strangers, though. A little personal space’d be a welcome permanent change, if ya ask me. Not that you would.

    1. Well, the red boxes just represent facts. Higher = red. But your point is completely correct. One cannot fairly compare a holiday weekend to a normal one.

  49. Scoop! You have a link to the U of W story ranking the states? Can’t find it online.

  50. Update: The science facts of COVID-19. Stuff we can stop doing.

    1. Yes, science says vax’d don’t need masks. Key facts:
    2. Vax’d: low nasal viral load incl asymptomatic & break-thrus.
    3. Hence near 100% protection against transmission.
    4. Case rate plummets when 1st dose vax’d hits 40% of pop.
    5. Once 1st shots hits 60%, “it’s hard for cases to go up”.
    6. Near me: 1st shots 80% of 12+ pop, 80% of whom fully vax’d.
    7. Immunity keeps rising for 60 days after final dose.
    8. Yes, it would’ve been safe to delay 2nd shots.
    9. Unvax’d are protected by low case rate!

    #5 case in point: Liverpool held an unmasked night club indoor event of 3k packed sweaty dancers. Superspreader situation. Vax’d & un. No effect on low case rate.

    Careful tracking study in Wuhan showed only 1 transmission in 7k was outdoors.

    Children don’t transmit covid. At case rate 20/wk per 100k, UK found children are safe in school… no masks, no distance.

    No use: Temperature sweeps (asymptomatic transmission), plexiglas shields (aerosol transmission), hand washing & sanitizer! (Zero utility for covid.) We can shake hands. Could’ve, the whole time.

    1. Correction: Source Dr. Monica Gandhi of SF State U said of hand hygiene, “No utility for coronavirus.”

        1. Thank you, Figaro. Yes, UCSF. Much obliged. Sorry for the error.

          Zeynep Tufekci put the “cleaning theater” slightly differently: Transmission by “fomites” was an assumption. Actually, it was baseless. It did eventually turn out to be false. I mean, scientists asked & answered that question, in the negative. Unsurprisingly. A lot is known about coronaviruses. Partly from SARS & MERS, partly from the common cold. The main fact is, a lot of scientists out of their specialties confused pathogens. Among other things coronavirus is not, it is not the flu & it is not tuberculosis. Modalities of other pathogens did not apply to COVID-19. Duh!

    2. How many actual “superspreader” covid events have been found to have happened?

      1. My DuckDuckGo query:
        how many known covid superspreader events?

        Quillette post reporting 58 SSEs (world) as of 4/23/2020.
        https://quillette.com/2020/04/23/covid-19-superspreader-events-in-28-countries-critical-patterns-and-lessons/

        DB of 2000+ SSEs as of 1/9/2021.
        https://kmswinkels.medium.com/covid-19-superspreading-events-database-4c0a7aa2342b

        The downloadable spreadsheet’s row count is 2047.

        DB project site
        https://covid19settings.blogspot.com/

        DB in a box
        https://covid19settings.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

        DB spreadsheet
        https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1c9jwMyT1lw2P0d6SDTno6nHLGMtpheO9xJyGHgdBoco/edit?usp=sharing

  51. Agree with your optimism, Scoopy. It seems there will be places with few cases (“herd immunity”). Likely many of them, maybe almost everywhere. I don’t expect that condition to be rock solid. As long as there’s virus somewhere else & a vulnerable subpopulation, the case rate “temperature” will fluctuate. But high degree of immunity ought to act as a brake (“flatten the curve”). Fingers crossed.

    Case in point: SF is 50% vaccinated, 75% at least 1 shot. Low level of hesitancy. Vaccine outreach was ubiquitous. Localized herd immunity seems a lock.

    Latin America: 8% of world population. 35% of covid deaths.

    India: People dying not because oxygen supply is short, there’s enough generators. Just not enough cylinders. Victims choking to death while standing in line needing oxygen. Or if not, when they do get into the hospital, they’re too far gone for just oxygen, they need a ventilator. If they’re so lucky, many don’t last for long even then.

    Undercount: If you die in line, you don’t get a test. You aren’t reported as a covid death. That’s not the only way deaths go unreported. Observers at cremation sites estimate around 4 times as many cremations as reflected in reported covid deaths.

    I asked about update on U.S. undercount. New study looked at deaths not attributed to covid diagnosis, estimating 50% to 100% undercount. IOW, a multiplier of 1.5 to 2. That’s deaths. Cases multiplier is likely to be higher. I’m just saying, infections are significant. Adding them to vaccinations may get us to effective herd immunity sooner than what media reports have been circulating.

    1. Note that the healthdata.org estimate that later got its own post is what I referred to above as a “new study”. Experts asked for reactions added that this estimate is on the conservative side. It’s possible to make even more aggressive estimates of up to double that size. Hence I gave a range.

      On my point that past infections could add to immunity along with vaccinations, I’ll admit, experts have been urging covid survivors to get vaccinated anyway. Experience being a motivator to heed that advice, most of this group may get swallowed into the fully-vaccinated stat. My hope of millions in undercounted immunity is, more likely than not, a vain one.

      I still feel we can get most of the way back to normal. The hope is that we can change the minds of fence-sitters with reasonable qualms. Assuming we do get there in the end, it may be in spite of never converting the political objectors. That’s a good-sized fraction of conservatives & I’ll even toss in the wacko lefties, but I figure they’re both not too big a fraction of all of us.

      Speaking of which, yes, “Trumpism” discouraged compliance to restrictions that would’ve better contained covid in the U.S. But, no, that’s not the moral of the story. We screwed up because the CDC’s mission had evolved from disease control to “science”. This is only one of many ways we screwed up. Because of who we are as a people. The ways we’d become unable to take appropriate actions when the time came (which wasn’t unexpected), were all years in the making. Michael Lewis’s book about this may be, I’ll say, mediocre, but I’d echo his point that if we lay all the blame on Trump, that might feel like we’re off the hook.

      Epidemics come & go. We still haven’t fixed obstacles to acting to limit them. It should’ve been within our means. But we lack the ability to act early while the science is uncertain. Science takes time. Time’s precious at the beginning. We have to prepare. That takes money & people. Who among us wants us to spend on healthcare that isn’t for us & our family specifically? How many of us realize that we shouldn’t punish our institutions because they made a mistake? We should punish them when they’re too timid.

  52. Disturbing factoid in the media: 2nd shot no-shows. People changing their minds about the vaccine after already getting their 1st shot.

    Never mind my stupid conspiracy theory about some people wanting to sabotage the country so the wrong folks don’t get the credit. Like, if it turned out that government does stuff & the country prospers, that means govt might sometimes be part of the solution & not just be the problem. That could cast doubt on not just the Trump faithful, but the entire conservative philosophy. This would partly explain why Trump’s wing is really the only game in GOP-town. Why so much of the bad info being spread (e.g., Tucker Carlson) preys on vaccine hesitancy. Anyway,
    let’s set such animosity & speculation aside for the moment.

    Do we have an updated estimate on unknown-case multiplier? Earliest guess was 10x. Cumulative reported cases is 10% of U.S. pop. That’d suggest we’re up to 100% previously infected. If we’re 30% fully vaccinated & if stealth cases were to add another 20%, say, that’s 60%. Vaguely herd immunity territory. Meanwhile, cases are still trending down. It’s too soon to say if it’ll flatten out above zero. But I reckon we aren’t that far from thinking of covid as less than a raging pandemic. At least, practically, for those of us not in a surge.

    Reactions, anyone?

  53. Its really hard to run a news story saying, “the US is mostly kinda meh right now. Not going out of control, but not really dropping as fast as we would like.” You either have news stories talking about the doom they can find in isolated outbreaks, or the stories of “we should just open everything up now.”

    The main problem is statistics can be twisted to prove anything. The CDC says that ~78 of the people who are hospitalized in the US with COVID are overweight or obese. That makes it sound like this disease is mostly causing problems for people who are already unhealthy. But, if you look at the CDC’s statistics for the US from 2017-2018 (the most recent I could find), it says that 74% of Americans over 20 years old are overweight or obese. 74% vs 78% doesn’t seem like much of a difference in the representation.

    But, due to these “scare tactic news stories” for overweight and obese people, healthy people think they are virtually immune to the disease. I’m just glad I’ve only got 2 weeks to wait for my second shot, then 2 weeks after that my life won’t depend as much on other people not being stupid.

    1. Yes, totally accurate and very good points.

      Also very sad to confront the reality that 74% of Americans are overweight.

      1. Well, it also depends on the definition of overweight. If they’re going by the Body-Mass Index (BMI), then a lot of that 74% is questionable. According to my height, I am overweight at 155 lbs; the BMI says I need to be under 145. Which would be pretty unhealthy for me because I’m already pretty slim. Of course, it could be due to my athletic physique… but probably not.

      2. When you go to pretty much any restaurant (except, ironically, the very high-end ones) or your typical convenience store, it’s not difficult to see why — portions are enormous. The “typical” serving size has grown by leaps and bounds over the last several decades, and those convenience stores are selling huge 64+ oz sodas. I recently went to a Zaxby’s (chicken place in the SE) and ordered a medium Diet Coke; it was *64* ounces. For a medium. And they have a large and XL on the menu. That, along with the science and research that goes into making foods as addictive as possible, is borderline criminal, and unarguably unethical.

        Compare this ad from the 70s to what you get at a fast food place now. https://imgur.com/gallery/efMh92o — it’s stunning.

        1. When you are trying to make a point let’s not exaggerate you were doing good until your foolish story of a 64 ounce drink at Zaxbys there is not a 64 ounce drink ina fast food restaurant large or medium.

          1. I’m with randy on this one. 64 ounces is half a gallon. Maybe there is some place that sells half-gallon drinks, but I will not believe it is common without a lot of proof. And sure not as a “medium”.

          2. The medium drink at Zaxby’s is 32 oz, which is still a whopper of a “medium.” I’m old enough to remember when my parents were shocked by the unfathomable 16-oz bottle, declared by my mom to be too much for any person to consume as a single serving.

          1. 7-11 G/BG/SBG/DG = 22/32/44/50
            MickeyD’s S/M/L = 12/21/30
            BK = 20/30/40

            McD can cheap out because their $1 drink promo was so popular. My guess is smaller cups comes down more to labor cost of refilling cup stacks than to beverage cost per se.

            I figger the advent of 50 (down from 64 or 56 to fit car cupholders) made the tens system 20/30/40/50 the most consistent progression. But eg 20/32/42 & no 50+ are common at gas stations IME.

            Course, my drink would be Diet Dr Pepper. Lately it’s been club soda hand-laced with lemon, cuz diabetes (artificial sweeteners inflame the gut, ostensibly).

  54. In regards to the negativity of the news and the highlighting of conflict, we have that in Canada right now.

    There is no question we have had an increase in cases and hospitalizations in three of the four biggest provinces (Quebec has escaped the increase so far) however, in addition to that, all that is mentioned on the news is the federal government having difficulty accessing vaccines and the provincial government having difficulty administering them.

    Not mentioned, and I suspect I might be the only person to notice this in all of Canada, 10 million doses have now been administered, for an average of 1 million doses delivered every 3 days for the past 6 days. With a total population of around 38 million, that means nearly 1% of Canadians are now being vaccinated every day. In Canada, we have decided to get the first dose delivered to as many people as possible, with the second dose not to be administered to many (if any) more people until four months after their first dose. In total, more than 9 million Canadians have received at least once dose, for approximately 25% of the total population.

    In regards to accessing of vaccines, Canada has maintained a 7-10 day stockpile for probably over a month now. Some of the shipments are definitely haphazard, but over all, this is probably the best that can be expected.

    Ontario has had a surge in cases because, like Michigan, the ‘U.K variant’ has taken hold. This variant is much more contagious but is no more virulent. I’m not sure that greater precautions need to be taken to deal with it.

    Here in British Columbia, the ‘Brazilian variant’ has taken hold. It is much more contagious, is apparently 2.5 times as virulent as the original Covid, and can cause much more harm to younger people. The Vancouver Canucks hockey team was likely hit with the Brazilian variant and nearly all the players got it, and several of them might be ‘long haulers.’

    I don’t think it’s completely known if additional precautions have to be taken, but there are warnings that wearing masks in indoor setting might provide less protection for lengthier stays (like in a shopping store) even if everybody is masked and that even outdoors it is advisable to either wear a mask, or to not stay for long with people who ‘you don’t know where they’ve been.’

    That these variants happened to come along right around the same time as the vaccines could make me conspiratorial (just as the vaccines came along, the government (which financed the vaccines) had to find a new way to keep people under control!) but, I was alerted to the possibility of rogue mutations causing variations that can be both either more contagious, more virulent or both shortly after the initial virus. The person who alerted me and others to this was trying to warn us of the dangers of not wearing masks because ‘freedom!’

    1. To add to that. I don’t expect everybody to engage in some kind of ‘don’t worry, be happy’ or ‘everything is fine’ approach, but, while the various levels of government can bicker about each others failings, there should be more of an emphasis from both the senior levels of government and the media that the technicians who deliver the national vaccine shipments to the local level and the medical people who administer the vaccines have essentially got this down to a science and are doing a very good job.

      In regards to the Canucks, while I don’t believe a single Canucks player went to the hospital, there is also a real story that was likely lost in the media hyping up the negative. The negative story, which is certainly based on a kernel of truth, is that the National Hockey league and the team let the players down because the team was supposed to return to play this past Friday, after a single full practice (an increasing number of players had returned to skating as early as this past Monday.

      One can argue over how much practice time the team needed or should have gotten, and it can certainly be argued by itself that one full practice was hardly enough, but it can also be argued, ‘everybody sometimes faces tough situations’ and until that practice, the players (those healthy enough to play) were willing to go along with it.

      What happened though is this: for those not familiar with hockey, it is a fast pace game in which players take an approximately 40 second shift if there is no stoppage and they then change on the fly for approximately 80-120 seconds depending on how many shifts they take. So, this requires a great deal of endurance training and top lung capacity, as the players go full out for those 40 seconds on the ice. The players said that they thought they were fine and fully recovered going into the full practice on the Thursday, but early on they realized how quickly they were out of breath.

      It seems this was not something even the medical staff of the team was expecting and this damage to this sort of endurance (or strength) training is either new or hightened with the ‘Brazil’ variant. However, enough of the Canucks players were able to go this Sunday.

    1. I suppose you think you’re joking. Modi is in fact one of a number of reactionary leaders in the global wave of rightwing takeovers it just so happens coincides with Trump’s rise to power over here. Though this might be inaccurate, strictly, I’d still call Modi a racist.

      1. All I know for sure is that there have been almost 3 million deaths globally from this virus. 500,000 of those are directly Trumpy’s fault. Blood on his hands!!!

        The other 2.5 million are tragedies due to a 100 year world-wide pandemic.

        1. OK. Sorry, Geoff, didn’t get the joke. Or, took it the wrong way. Still don’t quite get what your last sentence is alluding to. But I’ll give it to you, you did have a point & I guess yes, you were “rite”. Peace.

  55. There is so much we don’t know about long term hidden effects to those who got COVID-19 with only minimal obvious discomfort. So it is disturbing that the vaccine-hesitant are saying the side effects of the vaccine are worse than getting COVID. I’m a month past my second Pfizer and holding off flying and indoor dining for a couple more months

  56. Tim said (21/04/10): “Your post is a whole lot of “the best is the enemy of the better”. We don’t “know” a lot of things. But we can still take a lot of educated guesses about them and be better off…”

    Yes, you’re right about my mixed msg. Your point is what I intended as my main one. Along the way I admitted TX has yet to be decisively punished for opening up recently. It’s still possible they won’t be. In which case I’ll admit their gov maybe had good counsel rather than sheer politics behind it. That was “tertiary”. My 2nd’ary msg would be: We can now stop doing some of the useless measures that’ve become habits. We didn’t always know they weren’t a big deal. Masks still are. Distancing still is. Although 6ft is misguided. The important skill we need is recognizing & avoiding potential spreader situations.

    Disinfecting surfaces & masking outdoors are now overkill & theater. Being a mask cop outdoors was self-defeating & is now objectively wrong. It’s shocking how long it took to reopen parks. Not because we have scientific proof, but because as you say, we have very good best guesses about stuff now.

    Not insisting on a high priority to ventilation indoors was a terrible way to not appear to be demanding too much cost & effort. The reason this was a bad decision from the very start was that we had bad reasons to guess covid wasn’t “airborne” (fear of guessing wrong, we disregarded erring on the safe side) & we had quite good info (just not “science”) in reports of asymptomatic transmission coming from Wuhan. Right there, once we pick up on that, “airborne” almost jumps out at us. Admittedly, not what “airborne” as medical jargon usually means but the msg could’ve been made clear enough to doctors & nurses.

    In my mind such details are a micro look at a wider problem of experts holding common folk in low esteem. (Generally, pro’s looking down on amateurs, etc.) Taking the time to explain things clearly & free of jargon pays dividends in the long run. The downside is it tends to demystify their job, lowers their awe factor & maybe even barriers to entry. I’m aware of this effect as a major reason my own serious skill, computer programming, never got easy enough for non-geeks. I mean, many people never get the hang of VCRs/DVRs, or even have trouble with kitchen appliances, but a lot of regular folks do manage. But there’s just way too much economic value in appealing to authority when it comes to computers. Jobs hung on Micro$oft or Cisco certs, etc.

  57. I think there is another culprit here as well. Those in the younger age group are taking more risks. A year into the pandemic, they haven’t gotten it, they must be invincible. I know this because three of my friends got it, right here in the joke stretch.

    Their IG accounts told the story easily. And worse, they are back out and about because it didn’t hit them “that hard”. I got shot 2 today and I plan still to take precautions.

    1. Agree. I speculated that there is also a behavioral component.

      Like you, I have received both shots, but have not changed any of my routine. I wear my mask. I avoid all indoor gatherings and large outdoor gatherings.

      I will try to stay out of this battle until it is over.

      I get upset when I see so many careless people unwilling to wait it out until we have more vaccinations under our collective belt, but t’aint a damn thing I can do about it.

Comments are closed.