Corona-zona

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: I have redesigned the layout of the table a little. I hope you like it. Compared to last week, more of the early warning indicators are up; however, most of the increases are not large and the absolute values are still very small compared to 2022 highs.  The exception to that is Yavapai County, where wastewater values set another 2022 record this week. I checked their website , and so far there's no indication that the wastewater levels have any corresponding case or hospitalization increases.  Overall, I see some things to keep an eye on here, but nothing to get worried about. Posts from the Last Seven Days you May Have Missed Arizona Set to Pass Two Pro-Pandemic Laws Happy Inject Yourself with Bleach Day!

Arizona is on course to pass two laws to make pandemics spread more efficiently (HT @willhumble_az on Twitter). They appear to be do-overs to compensate for the legislature's fail   at attaching similar measures to a budget bill last year. One bans mask requirements in schools.  H.B. 2616   Prohibits the state or a political subdivision, governmental entity, school district or charter school from requiring a person under 18 years of age to wear a mask or face covering without the express consent of the person's parent or guardian.   And that's it. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are. Some virus could come along that spreads like measles and kills three-quarters of the people it infects. Schools would be powerless to prevent its spread. What breathtaking stupidity. The other, H.B. 2498   Prohibits the state or any political subdivision that receives or uses tax revenues (governmental entity) from requiring an Arizona resident to receive a vaccinatio...

  It's hard to believe, but it was two years ago today that our moron of a former president took to a news conference to share his awesome ideas about how to combat COVID-19 infections. He suggested we inject the victims with disinfectant, and put "powerful lights" inside their bodies (somehow) to cure them. Here is a  Sarah Cooper mime  of the performance in case you've forgotten how cringe-worthy it was. His poor pandemic expert Dr. Deborah Birx stood next to him, looking on in horror. She has since said that she didn't say anything at the time because her military background taught her to never make her commander look bad in public. Maybe that's a good reason not to have ex-military people in positions like hers. I say that because when a president says something ignorant there are plenty of gullible people who will take it seriously. Like the people who actually misted their body with, inhaled vapors of, gargled with, or drank cleaning products because o...

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Let's begin with some notes about the table. I have dropped the fully vaccinated percentage and rank among states. That has not changed basically since August and won't change by much more than +0.1% per week. As noted before, how that 0.1% keeps tricking in every week mystifies me. In place of those rows I have added ones for Sonora Quest positive test percentage, and—now that it looks like there is a reliable source of data—wastewater values for Tempe, Pima, and Yavapai counties. These are what experts agree we have left as early warning indicators. The caveat here is that these data are delayed. Sonora Quest posts every couple days (but did not today, so far), and the BioBot data are a week behind. So are the Tempe values, but they have not yet posted values from last week for some reason, so I'm not yet listing any current or change values for Tempe.   If Sonora...

  Chinese Police Parade Pandemic Violators (2021) You have probably seen the video images of desperate residents of Shanghai , China. The entire city has been placed under quarantine for weeks in an attempt to stem a COVID-19 wave there.  According to reports, people are not allowed to leave their residences for any reason—not to shop, walk pets, fill prescriptions, get medical treatment—and they are arrested if they do.  There is no end in sight and people are running short on food and medicine. I have been surprised that the Chinese government would allow images like these to circulate. Normally they maintain tight control over the narrative, so they must intend for these scenes to get out into the wild. A guy writing an op-ed at Forbes  says the Shanghai shutdown is strategic, but for non-pandemic reasons. The idea, he claims, is to squeeze Western economies by shutting down China's biggest manufacturing and shipping port.  Corona-zona Senior Southeast Asia ...

  This just in: A federal judge in Florida (because of course Florida) has struck down a CDC rule requiring people on airplanes and other mass transit to wear masks. The judge in question was appointed by T**** (because of course she was). The judge said in her ruling that the CDC never had the authority to issue these mandates. I suppose she never read section 361 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S. Code § 264). It  says "the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to take measures to prevent the entry and spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the United States and between states." As Steve Vladek, professor of law at the University of Texas said : This is both a big deal and a truly preposterous (nationwide) injunction. The CDC’s statutory authority is specifically directed at preventing the spread of communicable diseases across state lines. Where else is such spread more likely to occur than transport hubs like airports? Whe...

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday, and Pima/Yavapai counties and Tempe wastewater surveillance: In the table, everything is in the right direction, except a slight increase in COVID-19 hospital beds. Cases are now at their lowest point since a year ago. Despite my worries last week, it seems there is not a new wave brewing in Arizona...yet. Wastewater signals are, however, increasing in Pima and Yavapai counties—but decreasing in Tempe. Note that all the wastewater data are a week to ten days old.  That's too bad because this is the only thing we have that can provide an early warning. Here is an excellent explainer  from an epidemiologist (HT u/Soundvessel on Reddit) on why case rates are unreliable indicators now. Note especially the first graph showing a huge disconnect in the UK between current case counts and cases detected in random sampling (something I've noted before ) that started in January....

  As you probably know, SARS-CoV-2 has a wide range of severity levels. Some never get it despite exposure and lack of vaccination. Some people get asymptomatic cases, some get mild cases, and some get quite severe cases. Scientists are trying to work out explanations for these things. Two recent stories summarize this work. First, there is work on the never-COVID people.  This NPR story talks about research exploring two reasons why some people never get the virus even though they are chronically exposed. One study showed that exposure to other coronaviruses—the kinds that can cause common colds—might prime the immune system to fend-off SARS-CoV-2. It looked at the blood of about 60 health care workers at a hospital who were repeatedly exposed to the virus (before vaccines were available) but never fell ill. Analysis of their blood showed the presence of an immune cell called a cross-reactive t-cell. Workers who did become ill did not have these cells. Since SARS-CoV-2 is a...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday, as well as the most recent update of Pima County (it's back!) and Tempe wastewater surveillance: The table looks pretty good. The statewide case rate is down again, though looking at the case graph I note not back on the track is was on before last week's anomaly increase (due to adding old data). Death rates are up a little but only a fraction of a percent. Hospitalizations are level. The Pima County wastewater data has been restored at the CDC site. It's chart shows a kind of alarming increase of 1200% - 1800% over the last couple of weeks.  The same does not appear in the Tempe data. But if you look at their dashboard , which breaks out specific areas, there may be some action in the one covering South Tempe (my chart averages all areas).  Let's hope this is not an early warning of a new wave! Posts from the past seven days you may have missed New Variants ...

  These last few weeks have been a relief. I've reduced masking a lot and have felt better about going out to eat (though still only outside).   Still, I've been waiting for the BA.2/"stealh" Omicron shoe to drop and force me back into January-style behavior again. Yesterday the CDC said it makes up almost three quarters of the variants detected in infected people in the U.S.  It is spreading rapidly in China , but that is different from the U.S. because so few people in China have been infected or vaccinated with an effective vaccine. On the other hand it is spreading like wildfire in Europe, which is not so different from the U.S.  Experts are thinking it probably won't cause a severe wave here in the U.S. I sure hope they are right. Unfortunately there are other variants brewing. They are recombinant strains, produced when two variants infect the same person and share generic material. One is called XE. It is a combo of BA.1 and its cousin BA.2, and i...

  A couple of days ago Nature Medicine published results of a " challenge study " where they deliberately infected healthy people with the OG strain of SARS-CoV-2. The purpose of the study was to learn more about the course of an infection with the virus. Researchers recruited 36 volunteers aged between 18 and 30, who had no known risk factors for severe disease. There was extensive informed consent to make sure participants knew what they were getting into. They also had supplies of antibody treatments available in case anyone got seriously ill. Participants were then given a tiny drop of fluid containing the virus—an amount comparable to what you might get from an aerosol droplet expelled by an infected person. They were then monitored around the clock for two weeks in a hospital setting. The results are very interesting. None of the participants developed severe disease, and only half of them even became infected. So either getting infected once exposed is a 50/50 propos...

I—and I assume, readers of this blog—have never thought of ivermectin horse paste as an effective treatment for COVID-19. That's because we are not the kind who swallow conspiracy theories that the medical establishment is somehow involved in a conspiracy to keep an effective treatment from the public. I would bet my bottom dollar that if ER physicians thought it was effective, they'd have been handing it out like candy during January.  People who do believe such things have gone bonkers, as has been well documented in this blog. Medical professionals have received threats of deaths and physical or sexual violence over their refusal to administer a drug unapproved to treat the disease that had no known effectiveness for that purpose. Not that facts will matter to the COVIDiots—because, y'know, the whole medical establishment is in on the conspiracy. But we now have a study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine proving that ivermectin is ineffective at pre...