A blog about all things pandemic with a focus on Arizona
"It's Just Evil"
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The Lincoln Project has a new spot out "honoring" COVIDiot AZ Governor Doug Ducey for his Orwellian plan to funnel COVID-19 relief funding to schools that are not relieving COVID-19.
Hi all. Stepping out of retirement for a moment to say that the day has finally arrived. After four years of successfully avoiding COVID-19 infection I had a positive test yesterday. Symptoms are very mild—I've had worse colds. The provider at urgent care said almost all the cases they are seeing are the same. Mild symptoms may also be due to the fact that I had the original vaccine then the two boosters. All this time I thought I might be a NOVID —one of those people who never get the bug. But no, it must have been my assiduous mask wearing and avoidance of high-risk situations when things were bad. So here's double middle fingers to all the kooks who think masks don't work (I've not been wearing masks for months now). I don't know what variant I have but it's likely JN.1. It is said to be extraordinarily contagious and accounts for 60% of cases worldwide . It also tends to produce mild infections like the one I have. This article claims that right now every...
In an earlier blog , I summarized some information on why so many vaxxed people were getting infected and what immunity was doing to those at-home antigen texts. In that post I said: "Omicron cousins are less likely to cause severe disease, even if they are more contagious." In response to that @SuziSuperKitn on Twitter sent me this link to a Reuters article about a month ago, that reported on a preprint study looking at the question of whether Omicron in its various flavors is really less pathogenic. Note that this is a preprint, which means it has still not been reviewed. It is not unusual for the peer review process to turn-up issues with the study methodology that invalidate the study or require modifications. But this one includes authors from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Med School. Such researchers don't usually do shoddy studies so it's a good bet it does not have fatal flaws. What they found, in a nutshell, is that if you just compare mortali...
Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending Wednesday: Everything is looking good, except a 29% increase in COVID-19 hospital beds. That is still within what has been normal variation since the beginning of the year, so nothing to get too excited about. Deaths are up, but those numbers from from AzHDS, which as we know does not have reliable reporting practices. Given all of this, and given that the COVID-19 public health emergency ended yesterday , this is a good time to end these updates and retire the blog. I will continue to keep an eye on numbers and restart if it looks like a new wave is brewing, but I hope that is not necessary. Some of you have posted comments on the AZ Coronavirus subreddit saying you found these updates helpful for knowing when to take precautions. I'm happy to know this, because it has taken some work! If you want to monitor things on your own going forward...