Corona-zona

People are kind of freaking out about this new variant detected in South Africa, named after the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet, Omicron. I must say I was a little surprised that we are up to the 15th Greek letter already.  I knew we had gotten as far as Mu, but I don't remember a Nu or an Xi. Turns out they are skipping former because it's not pronounced like it's spelled, and they are skipping the latter to avoid offending the Chinese president.  Boo!!! If we have a deadly new variant, wouldn't it be perfectly fitting to name it after a genocidal dictator? But I digress.  Travel from South Africa is being banned  all over the place . South Africa is complaining that it's being " punished " with these travel bans because it detected the new variant.  Huh? Other countries are supposed to forego steps to prevent spread of a dangerous variant just because South Africa detected it? I don't get it. The new variant has a whole bunch of mutations , most ...

  Here is the Arizona pandemic numbers summary for the week just ended: Case numbers are down this week, especially statewide.  The seven-day average also appears to be headed down: I'll reserve judgement on whether this is good news or not. On the surface it would appear to be. On the other hand, it's a holiday week and reporting by AzDHS tends to get screwed up around these times.  We will see next week—after holiday gatherings—whether the downtrend holds. Hospital bed utilization is up, but not horribly and that always lags increases in infection rates.   The vaccination accelerometer looks terrible as usual. I wonder if I should stop doing this graph. It's not like anything is likely to suddenly change.

A couple of months ago, I blogged about some Phoenix-area physicians who were enrolling participants in a clinical trial to test some coronavirus pills. The drug, molnupriavir, interferes with the virus's ability to replicate itself successfully. The trial was successful —so successful that they called an early end to Phase III. The drug worked so well an independent review board concluded it would be unethical to continue giving half the participants a placebo. The two pharma companies developing the drug, Merck and Ridgeback,  said that it reduces the chances of hospitalization or death by 50%. Treatment consists of four capsules taken twice a day for four days. Even better news is that the drug messes with the virus's reproductive machinery, which is common to all coronaviruses and is also something that is unlikely to change through mutation. So it should work against SARS-CoV-2 and all its variants, as well as future variants and future SARS-type viruses. In fact, it ma...

Last week the Biden administration said it's planning to ramp up vaccine production capacity to produce at least a billion extra doses per year by the end of 2022. That will be done by investing in companies with experience making mRNA vaccines. I've not been able to find details about how this investment will work. I'm a little worried that this will be another case of the government investing millions in pharma companies and helping them invent things, only to have them hog all the spoils like Moderna is trying to do now. This story was framed as a response to pressure to do more for poorer foreign countries, most of which have very low vaccination rates. That makes sense, because those are breeding grounds for new variants that could travel to the U.S. and wreak havoc like Delta has done. But something else caught my eye in the announcement. White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients said : "This program would also help us produce doses within six to...

  Here is the Arizona pandemic numbers summary for the week just ended: All the metrics continue in the wrong direction. Hospitalizations are accelerating, going up 3.3% this week versus 2.4% last week. How long do you suppose it will be before we start seeing those reports of "crisis-level" hospital loads here? We have now surpassed the summer peak of 3,741 cases per day (seven-day average). The current figure is 3,845.  That means we are at the highest case rate since last winter's surge (pre-vaccine). And as you can see from the following, the trendline over the last month is not good: Vaccination Fail Continues Unsurprisingly, the vaccination accelerometer continues to show anemic growth: I ask again: What the hell is Dr. Carmona, our vaccination czar, doing? He was appointed on Sept. 18 and is paid $400 per hour as a consultant. That's $16,000 per week if he's billing a full 40 hours per week. His stated strategy was to keep doing more of what we were already...

Here are some pandemic stories on my radar today. Increasing Hospitalizations Among Fully Vaxxed CDC officials are reporting an increase in the number of fully vaccinated people  being admitted to hospitals or going to the emergency room. Fauci said there was a "uptick" that amounted to "a significant proportion, but not the majority by any means.” Unfortunately he didn't give any numbers.  CDC Director Walensky implied that the uptick is mainly in people 65 and older. This is probably a consequence of waning vaccine effectiveness in this age group, which was the first to be jabbed earlier this year. As I noted earlier this week, a published study done in Israel showed that the Pfizer vaccine starts losing effectiveness two months after the second dose. Delta Cousin a Reason for Concern—Or Maybe Not News has been circulating for a few weeks about a variation of the Delta variant that is gaining a foothold. Sometimes referred to as " Delta Plus ," it has b...

A friend sent me a link the other day to a tweet of an extremely cool two-minute animation showing how mRNA vaccines work. I tracked it back to the original source. You can (and should) watch it here . It was made by the Vaccine Makers Project  (VMP). Note that their website has a layout issue where the page appears blank except for the header, until you scroll down quite a way (at least for me, using Chrome). According to the  about page , VMP a project of the  Vaccine Education Center  at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The group does not make vaccines and does not accept donations vaccine makers. So it's kind of puzzling why they chose the VMP name. The project is educational and targeted at kids in primary and secondary school. They have a number of other such educational animations which you can find here .  Image by Vaccine Makers Project

  About three weeks ago, I noted that infection rates were going up in the UK. It has a history of leading pandemic trends in the U.S. by a couple of weeks. Sure enough, now cases are rising all over the U.S. The same thing is happening all over Europe . On Saturday I blogged about the huge numbers of people in Arizona who are unvaccinated and previously uninfected as a way of explaining how we could still be seeing such high infection rates. But what about other states where they have higher vaccination rates? Vermont has the third-highest vaccination rate in the country, at 71.87%.  Yet they are experiencing a new surge of cases.  The estimated Vermont population is 623,251.  That's 8% of the population of Arizona, so it's important to adjust for that if we are going to compare them.  The infection rate for Arizona is 46.47 cases per 100K people (based on a 7-day average). The same figure for Vermont is 54.71. How can this be when they have such a high...

  Those whacky anti-vaxxers. They're getting forced into being vaccinated by employer mandates. But they're not taking it lying down! They're turning to a whole slew of folk remedies to "detox" their bodies, as well as more extreme measures.  There is an instruction manual for sale on Amazon. Chiropractors are getting in on the act , advising people to take supplements like glutathione, and to eat stuff like activated charcoal, chlorella, cilantro, and garlic to "help grab those heavy metals and bring them with when they exit the body." Others are turning to detox baths. Recommended formulations include "baking soda, epsom salts, and benonite [sic] clay to remove radiation, unspecified poisons, and nanotechnologies." Needless to say there are more extreme options. One is to add borax to the bath. But that is dangerous . Borax is used as "a cleaning agent used in detergents, enamel glazes, insecticides and mould treatments" and is “...

  Here is the Arizona pandemic numbers summary for the week just ended: Sigh. The numbers are uniformly terrible. Cases rocketing up, hospital bed utilization up.  As you can see from the next chart, we are basically back where we were eleven weeks ago. The trendline looks like we're poised to shoot past that peak. Better get your booster if you haven't already. And this is no surprise but it's the 15th week of practically no movement on vaccinations:

 A couple quick updates on two recent Corona-zona posts. Brynovich Has to Start Over About six weeks ago I blogged about how AZ Attorney General was pandering to the MAGA crowd by filing suit against upcoming vaccine rules by the Biden administration. This week a federal district court judge  denied  his request for an injunction.  Basically the court ruled that he jumped the gun by filing the suit before the actual rules were formulated. Now if he wants to persevere he will have to start over and and include those in a new complaint. This guy is not a very good lawyer. Also the link above describes the rules as a vaccine mandate. But damn it, it's not a vaccine mandate. It's a rule that you must either get vaxxed or be tested regularly (if you work for a company with over 100 employees). That's a choice, not a mandate. The press should stop framing this in a way that is both misleading and helpful to the COVIDiots. Rodgers Sort of Tries Apology, Gets Slapped on F...

  In an earlier post I mentioned the covidestim.org website. Unlike all other sites, which summarize reported numbers, this one gives the results of epidemiological modeling.  This modeling is beneficial because, for example, some people are infected and don't know it or don't report their illness. The true number of cases can be estimated by including other data in statistical models. For example, serological analysis (which shows the presence of virus antibodies in blood samples) offers another data point for estimating how many cases there have actually been.     Using these likely true-case numbers, covidestim.org estimates the percentage of the population that has ever been infected. Right now that number for Arizona is 75.25%.  In addition to infections, many of us have been vaccinated. It's not as many as we'd like, but according to  JHU  55.47% of Arizonans have had the jab ( AzDHS says it's 60%; I don't know what accounts for the diffe...

  A report by the Arizona Public Health Association (AZPHA) says that COVID-19 was the leading cause of death in State 48 in 2019. Moreover, Arizona was the only state in the Union with that distinction.  Data are from 2019 because CDC has not yet released general deaths data for 2020. That COVID-19 was the leading cause is 2019 is saying something, too, because the pandemic wasn't even in full-swing by the end of that year. I fully expect the same to hold true for 2020. What is responsible for this? Well one thing has to be the large elderly population in the state. People over 65 were the main victims and casualties of the disease before vaccines were available. But AZPHA Director Will Humble also lays blame at the feet of our governor and his public health department. Commenting on an earlier report comparing Arizona with Colorado and Washington—which have similar population numbers but more cautious approaches to the pandemic—he said: The governor not only did not inclu...

[ I dedicate this post to my sister, who hates Aaron Rodgers with unbridled passion. ] As you may have heard, Packers Quarterback Aaron Rodgers is in hot water. He was asked at a press conference if he was vaccinated, and he said "yes I'm immunized." Last week he was diagnosed with COVID-19. That's because he was lying. He wasn't really immunized. Instead he took a homeopathic treatment to "raise his antibody levels."  He asked the league and players association to accept this treatment, but they wouldn't . That's because homeopathy  doesn't work . It's quackery par excellence . Even the Russians (who are no strangers to questionable medical practices)  say it's BS .  So Rodgers got caught. Now he's being called out for his dishonesty, not least by Terry Bradshaw . And he's none to happy about being held accountable. He insists he didn't lie—as if the only way he could have lied was to say he'd had the vaccine. He li...

  Millions of us have been jabbed in the arm with a needle this year for our COVID-19 immunizations. That could change after clinical trials next year. A company called Vaxxas has developed a microneedle patch to deliver vaccine. They explain it like this: "Vaxxas' HD-MAP is readily fabricated by injection molding to produce small patches each with thousands of very short (~0.25mm) microprojections."  In other words the patch contains thousands of very tiny needles about as long as two hair-widths. They are coated with a vaccine, and just barely penetrate the skin, as shown here: It turns out this is a much better way to deliver vaccine because there are a lot more immune cells in your skin than there are in your muscles. According to the company, delivering vaccine there "trigger[s] natural immuno-cellular alarms that cause vaccine components to be rapidly trafficked to lymph nodes eliciting a robust immune response."  They have successfully tested the delive...

  Is is the Arizona pandemic numbers summary for the week just ended: Sigh. This is depressing.  After it was looking like the summer surge was going to end, everything is going in the wrong direction. And not by just a little.  New cases are up by 5 people per 100K, both in Maricopa County and statewide. The COVID-19 hospital beds percentage is going up.  There is a clear upward trend in the 7-day average of new cases over the last three weeks. Since October 20 it has been increasing by about 42 cases per day: This is in no small part due to our crappy effort on the last mile (or maybe last ten miles) of the vaccination effort.  We're not picking up hardly any new cases, and haven't been for three months: Top Image by  Shutterbug75  from  Pixabay

  One day after the post about deer getting COVID-19 , there's more news of cross-species transmission for us to worry about. There is a new type of coronavirus infecting humans, and it seems to be coming from dogs. It's a good story about medical detective work. Some health care workers in Haiti were not feeling well. Physicians thought they might have Zika virus, which circulates there. But tests turned up negative. So researchers exposed samples from the workers to a monkey cell culture, hoping if a virus were present it would infect the cells. It did, and genetic analysis of the cells showed the presence of a new kind of coronavirus, the eighth type known to infect humans. Turns out a nearly identical coronavirus was detected previously in Malaysia, where it had caused pneumonia in children. The fact that is popped up in both places so recently suggests it may have been circulating widely and scientists hadn't noticed it until now. Unlike deer, dogs do not avoid close ...

  Well here's some not-great news. COVID-19 is spreading in deer populations.  Researchers have published a pre-print paper detailing circulation of the SARS-CoV-2 in wild and captive White Tailed Deer populations in Iowa. Between November 2020 and January 2021, 82.5% of the deer they tested had evidence of the virus. Doing genetic analysis of the viruses detected, the researchers concluded that there have been multiple "zooanthroponotic spillover events." That means transmission from humans to deer. Wait...what?!? You may have noticed that deer prefer to stay as far away from humans as they can. Deer also live outdoors. Outdoor human-to-human transmission is  believed to be rare . Human-to-deer transmission has to be even rarer. How the hell did humans get close enough to deer to give them COVID-19—multiple times? It just doesn't make a lot of sense.  However it is happening, it is happening and that's bad. Deer could serve as an animal reservoir for the virus. ...

  Here are three AZ stories making the news. Supreme Court Upholds Decision Against Ducey Public Illness Laws Yesterday the Arizona Supreme Court confirmed the obvious. They took all of two hours to make and write a decision  upholding a lower court ruling that public illness measures (mainly anti-mask) conceived by the Governor and tacked on to budget bills this summer are unconstitutional.  I mean, even to a non-lawyer like me this was a no-brainer. The constitution plainly says you can't just throw random shit into a bill that, on the surface, is about budgets.  Apparently the legislature has been doing this kind of thing for a long time. So a side benefit of the ruling is that it will put a stop to the practice for non-pandemic issues as well.  It's yet another legal defeat for Attorney General and would-be next governor Mark Brynovich. If he's not even a good lawyer how can he be a good governor? Nursing Students Demand Freedom to be COVIDiots Two nursing ...

  A recent statement in the Washington Post (may be paywalled) by Governor Ron "Florida Man" DeSantis caught my eye.  He said: We’ve seen huge declines. Right now, Florida has the lowest covid-infection rate — case rate and infection rate of covidestim — in the country. I had no idea what "covidestim" was, but thankfully WaPo linked it . Turns out it is a project by Yale, Harvard, and Stanford medical schools to model pandemic numbers in the states.  They try to estimate the likely number of actual infections, etc., based on reported data. The raw data don't tell the whole story because (for example) some people get COVID-19 and don't know it or report it, meaning the reported cases underestimate the true numbers. The researchers do complicated statistical modeling to estimate the true numbers. I did not know about this project and website, so I suppose I need to thanks DeSantis for bringing it to my attention. If only he hadn't done that in the proces...