Corona-zona

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Last week it looked like things were possibly moderating, but this week makes it clear that was an anomaly. There are only two measures heading in the right direction.   Hospital beds are down a fraction of a percent from last week. This is further evidence of what I suggested a couple of weeks ago, that we are not seeing an exponential increase in hospital utilization this time around. The other number that is down is Mohave County wastewater, but it's only down a little after setting a new 2022 record last week. Pima and Yavapai wastewater levels set new 2022 records, and Tempe is up substantially meaning there is lots of the bug out there in the community ( here is an explainer on wastewater surveillance).   Posts from the Last Seven Days you May Have Missed The Other (Pandemic) Hearing You Probably Weren't Following Last Week

  Image by  cytis   from   Pixabay Last week most people were focused on hearings about the former president's (FP's) corruption and malfeasance with respect to a plot to overturn then 2020 election (until the Supremes cancelled a constitutional right on Friday). But there was another hearing going on. On Thursday the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis held a hearing on the FP's corruption and malfeasance in the pandemic domain. It featured Dr. Deborah Birx, his lead on the pandemic response. I blogged about Dr. Birx earlier this year on the anniversary of the FP's inject-them-with-disinfectants  comment. I noted how she was soldiering when she failed to call-out his crazy ideas and suggested this is a good reason not to have ex-military people in positions like hers.  That notwithstanding, she was very qualified for her job. She coordinated responses to other epidemics, including AIDS, Ebola, and Avian Flu. The hearing made it clear she knew exactly w

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Overall, not too bad looking! Cases are down around 5% for both the state overall and for Maricopa County. Wastewater signals are decreasing or nearly flat except for Mohave County.  The death rate has almost doubled, but that is to be expected as it's a lagging indicator. Also it's still low in absolute terms. Hospital beds are up but not by much and we're still not seeing the kind if acceleration is usage we have in past waves. When I went to add the test positivity rate, the Mayo Clinic site had this notice: "These data are not available for the state of Arizona at this time, due to lack of reliable reporting for negative test results." Sonora Quest is no longer reporting this data at all.  So I guess there's another leading indicator we don't have anymore. Makes me wonder whether the state is taking the strategy: Don't talk about it and peo

A story out of the UK reveals an irony about the Omicron variant. It is less deadly , but has killed more people than Delta. How can both things be true? It's a numbers game.  Delta was more likely to put you in the hospital or kill you. But Omicron is a lot more contagious, with more ability to evade antibodies from vaccinations or previous infection.  So Omicron and its sub-variants are causing more infections. About a month ago I blogged about how seemingly all of my friends were getting it. That has continued. Because it is causing more infections, it is causing more deaths even though it is less pathogenic. A virologist in the article put it this way:  “To use a shooting analogy, Delta is like a sniper rifle and Omicron is more like someone with an Uzi (machine gun). So each individual shot might be less likely to kill someone but there’s a lot more bullets." In the U.S., it has been especially bad in rural areas. Experts attribute that to low vaccination rates. Meanwh

Florida has chosen not to preorder pediatric doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Governor Ron "Florida Man" DeSantis says doctors, clinics, and hospitals can just fend for themselves without getting the state involved. That's interesting, because every other state besides Florida has decided that they should not fend for themselves and have preordered the vaccines. Every other state.  "To do an emergency use for a 6-month-old or a 1-year-old simply to placate anxiety, that's not the standard when you're doing this," said DeSantis , the pediatric medicine expert. He's right. It's to placate anxiety resulting from the needless death of a child. Over 900 of them have done so in the pandemic to date. DeSantis's sycophant state Surgeon General Joseph Lapado agreed: "From what I've seen, there is just insufficient data to inform benefits and risks in children." It's a pretty safe bet that what he's seen comes from ant

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: There is more green in the table today than I expected. Deaths are down 30% and hospital beds are down modestly. At least they're not increasing exponentially like they have in past waves. Case have increased statewide at a slower rate than the last couple of weeks, though they are up in Maricopa County at about the same rate. Also let's remember those case numbers may not be very meaningful because of increasing use of unreported home tests—as mentioned in previous posts. For wastewater, Pima is down a little and Yavapai is down almost 20% from its 2022 record value last week. Mohave and Maricopa are both up by about a third. For Maricopa that comports with the case rate difference between it and the state. So it's a mixed bag, but at least that means things aren't going off the rails they way they have done in the past. On the other hand, as noted in a post

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

  Yesterday, AzDHS released a blog post noting that most counties in Arizona are now above the CDC's "low" level.  They show a tiny map so I got a better one from the CDC : The six counties at the medium (yellow) level—Cochise, Coconino, Gila, Maricopa, Mohave, Pima—include the state's largest and comprise 85% of the population. The only difference between the low (green) and medium levels is a recommendation that "if you are at high risk for severe illness, talk to your healthcare provider about whether you need to wear a mask and take other precautions." Two counties—Apache and Navajo—are at the high level. At that level CDC recommends wearing a mask indoors in public.  Indian communities have been hit hard in the pandemic, but they have achieved much higher vaccination rates. A few months ago I blogged about how out of 15 counties in the state Apache County is number one (95% vaccinated), Navajo County is number four (75.3%), and Maricopa County comes i

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Statewide case rates have increased around 30%, close to what they did last week and less than they did the week before that. So although those are increasing, so far they appear not to be increasing at an accelerating rate.  The case graph even shows a little flattening over the last few weeks.   That is good. Maricopa County cases actually decreased a little. Deaths and hospital beds went up too, but not drastically. They remain at a fraction of their 2022 high values. Two of the wastewater locations had increases, with Yavapai posting another 2022 record (quite a few COVIDiots up there so this is not a huge shock). Mohave and Tempe wastewater values are down. All in all, it could be a lot worse—and it has been in the past. Hospital Beds Then and Now Last week I wondered how the hospital beds numbers in the current wave compared the the ones during previous waves. For me that

I know this is a coronavirus pandemic blog, so this us slightly off topic. But I thought readers might like to know that the first monkeypox case has been detected in Arizona here in Maricopa County. Y'know, in case you're feeling like you don't have enough to worry about these days. Some public health people are concerned about this and I'm not too sure why.  According to the CDC : Monkeypox spreads between people primarily through direct contact with infectious sores, scabs, or body fluids. It also can be spread by respiratory secretions during prolonged, face-to-face contact. Monkeypox can spread during intimate contact between people, including during sex, as well as activities like kissing, cuddling, or touching parts of the body with monkeypox sores. At this time, it is not known if monkeypox can spread through semen or vaginal fluids. So it sounds hard to pick up without pretty direct contact with an infected person. Also said persons have the rash, so you can a

  Unless you have no friends, you probably know a lot of people who are vaxxed and boosted and nonetheless are getting infected. If the vaccines work, how can this be? A recent article on the CBS News site asks and answers this question. In a nutshell, current variants have evolved to evade the antibodies generated by vaccines (and previous infections). And those tend to wane after a few months anyway.  That means you can get infected even if you're vaxxed and boosted. But the vaccines are still doing their job of priming your immune system to prevent a serious illness if you are infected. Vaxxed people feel protected from the virus so they let their guards down. They return to risky behavior like eating in crowded restaurants, not wearing masks in public, and so on.   Combine this with a more infectious variant and it's a recipe for a lot of mild infections in vaxxed people. I know a lot of people who have gotten infected recently. To a person they describe it as similar to

In a controversial and widely-read essay  published recently, Jonathan Haidt argues that during the last ten years politics have become "uniquely stupid" because of the internet. If that is true then the last three years of pandemic politics is the poster child. Most of the COVIDiocy we've seen has taken place on the internet, and whatever has happened in person was organized on the internet. It's where anti-vaxxers denounce a miracle of modern medicine and get rich selling their supplements and quack cures. It's where anti-maskers organize rallies to rail against mask mandates. This is happening despite the efforts of search services to demote links to fake news. I challenge you try and find an anti-vaxxer link on Google using keywords like "COVID vaccine side effects" or "COVID vaccine dangers." If you get anything it will be buried deep in the results. So why does this garbage continue to circulate and influence people? An article just o

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Welp, last week I thought the early warning indicators might be leveling off but this week we see they are clearly headed back upward again. Hospitalizations are continuing to increase, but I don't think at the rate they were at the beginning of the year (I will try to compare the rates for next week's report). Case rates are up. Last week I did a post about how I'm seeing so many cases in my social circle, really more than at any other time in the pandemic.  In that post I cited a researcher who guestimated cases were eight times higher than what are being reported. Today I saw  this rticle about a not-yet-reviewed study that says they are 30 times higher! If that is true then we are at a case rate similar to January. And if so then the hospitalization rate looks pretty good. A couple of notes about the table: I changed to a Mayo Clinic site for the positive t