Corona-zona

 As we all know, a lot of people perished during the pandemic. Also as I have blogged before, Arizona is worst among all the states in that regard.  Now, stats are out from the CDC showing that Arizona had an average life expectancy of 76.3 years in 2020. That is below the national average of 77 (a figure that is itself down by two years because of the pandemic), and puts us at a rank of 33 among the states.  The worst is Mississippi at 71.9 years. That's probably at least partly because people there have to spend so much time typing the extra letters of their state's name over the course their lifetime. Arizona Public Health Association Will Humble noted  that this is the biggest drop in life expectancy since World War II. Then it was because of battlefield deaths. Today it's because of COVID-19 deaths, but as Humble points out, it's not only those deaths:  When you have a hospital system that’s overwhelmed, and ours was in crisis standards of care in July 2...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: For the first time since March 2, 2022, all the change indicators are green. Interestingly enough, the seven day average of cases shown on the graph for today (1215) is very close the the value for that date (1378). For reasons unknown, Tempe did not update its wastewater measures for this week. That's too bad because it was a source of concern in the report last week after a 30X jump over one week. I expected things to get even worse in North Tempe given the start of the semester at ASU. Maybe the samples blew up their machine? I feel like I shouldn't let myself think this, but...here we are, by all indications coming off of another wave. But unlike past such periods, I've heard of no new variants waiting in the wings to come and get us again. Could we be seeing the end of the tunnel? Posts from Earlier This Week You May Have Missed Blake Masters Develops Amnesia...

  Blake Masters is a candidate for Senate from Arizona. He is also a knuckle-dragging right wing extremist . During his primary campaign he claimed that black people are responsible for gun violence, said he thinks Ted Kaczynski had some great ideas, pushed the "great replacement" conspiracy theory, and complained about the immigrant "invasion." There's only one problem: The "full MAGA jacket" is not a good look for a general election where about two-thirds of Arizona voters are not Republican cult members. So he is furiously peddling toward the middle by focusing on "cultural issues"  (link could be paywalled). Chief among them is the government's pandemic response: They locked down and we can never forget this. These Democrats, they shut down their states. They shut down businesses. They shut down schools. They gave up on our children, of course, and they locked people inside for no reason. The Unabomber fanboy went on to complain that ...

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: This week's numbers don't look quite as good as last week. Case numbers continue to decline. Again, case numbers are considered unreliable because of changes in testing, but at least they are going down. They are at about the same level as they were in May. Deaths are up considerably, but as noted last week those figures have some hellacious delay built into them, and reflect what was going on like a couple of months ago. Hospital beds are up slightly. It's not clear why they should be, given that case numbers are going down. Wastewater measures look good except Tempe. Its average almost tripled over a week and came close to hitting the 2022 record.  The interesting thing is that if you look at the areas with the highest levels, they are all in  tend to be North Tempe.  One in particular, area 6, had a massive increase. That area  straddles Apache between R...

A few days ago, the CDC released new "streamlined" COVID-19 guidance  "to help the public better protect themselves and understand their risk." According to the author of the new guidance, it "acknowledges that the pandemic is not over, but also helps us move to a point where COVID-19 no longer severely disrupts our daily lives."  The new guidelines deemphasize prevention of transmission and emphasize prevention of severe disease. Greta Massetti, a C.D.C. epidemiologist, said at a news briefing on Thursday: We know that Covid-19 is here to stay. High levels of population immunity due to vaccination and previous infection, and the many tools that we have available to protect people from severe illness and death, have put us in a different place. What's in the new guidelines?  Here's an abbreviated list: Be up to date on vaccinations Do the same thing if your exposed whether you're vaccinated or not, namely wear a good mask for 10 days and get te...

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: The row for Maricopa County cases is incomplete because there is a notice on their site saying that "due to a reporting delay" they won't be updating their case numbers until tomorrow. I will update the table when the numbers are available.   I expect a decline there too, because CDC has changed the community level for the county back to low . The table has been updated. There is a decline for Maricopa County, as expected. Most everything else is looking good. Cases, deaths, and hospital beds for the state are down.  Wastewater is up for Pima County and up just a little for Mohave, but is down quite a bit for Yavapai and Tempe.  It's worth remembering that there is quite a reporting lag for many of these measures. All the wastewater figures are from 7-10 days ago.   I have also learned from @willhumble_az on Twitter that AzDHS is at least seven wee...

Worry seems to be fading over SARS-CoV-2. We can't have that! So nature has provided us with a new potential source of concern . It's called novel Langya henipavirus (LayV). It was discovered in China in 2018 but just now formally identified.  People who catch it have fever, fatigue, cough, loss of appetite and muscle aches. No deaths have been associated with it. As with monkeypox, I'm having trouble getting too excited about this one. At present the main transmission route seems to be from animals to humans. The main culprit is the shrew, with more than 25% of those tested showing up positive. So if you can avoid shrews—which I manage to do every single day—you're probably not going to catch it. They are not yet sure if it's possible for this to transmit the virus from humans to other humans. It's always possible it could evolve in that direction if we get too many human infections, but there have only been 35 reported so far. If this thing has been around sin...

  The recent Republican primary nominated people like Qrazy Qari Lake for governor and goat roper Mark Finchem for Secretary of State. This makes it tempting to conclude that they have drunk the Kool Aid and gone all-in to nominate the most extreme MAGA crazies they could find. But there are at least some exceptions. Ron Watkins (another goat roper) came in last in the District 2 primary.  They also rejected   Shiry Sapir (link may be paywalled) as their candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction. The latest results I can find show Tom Horne leading her by 9%. Sapir is a Scottsdale real estate broker/investor who became a "parent activist" after she became enraged at school closures and mask mandates during the pandemic. Besides wanting to expose kids to more disease, her ambition was also to prohibit a list of topics like slavery and LGBTQ rights from being taught in schools.  I'm unable to find Horne on-record about pandemic measures. But he  s...

  Facebook's parent company Meta is considering easing up on the rules it has banning the distribution of misinformation and disinformation about the pandemic. Because we need more misinformation and disinformation about the pandemic, I guess. In a blog post Meta's President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg says: Meta remains committed to combating COVID-19 misinformation and providing people with reliable information. As the pandemic has evolved, the time is right for us to seek input from the Oversight Board about our measures to address COVID-19 misinformation, including whether those introduced in the early days of an extraordinary global crisis remains the right approach for the months and years ahead.  Rather than banning transmission of false information outright, they're thinking about "labeling or demoting it either directly or through our third-party fact-checking program." So let me get this straight. Meta remains "committed to fighting" misinfor...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Wow it's been a while since I had a table with so much green! Numbers are all looking good this week, with the exception of deaths. They had a slight increase over the last week—but they are a lagging indicator.  Everything else is down. Cases, hospital beds, and Pima wastewater are also down compared to four weeks ago. The case graph takes a downward turn from what has essentially been flat for weeks. I'm hoping this is an indication that we are over the hump on this surge. But I'm knocking on wood as I write this, and will only feel confident if the downtrends continue for coming weeks.