Corona-zona

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Only a couple of red numbers in the table, one an increase in Pima County wastewater over a week, and another for Mohave County over a month. Otherwise everything looks good! I managed to get Maricopa County numbers back by getting the data from the New York Times. The Maricopa County dashboard is still broken for me.  Tempe wastewater numbers are back down after a huge jump last week (or to be more exact two weeks ago because the numbers are lagged). I wonder what accounts for those spikes.  They never seem to be associated with increase in hospitalizations, so you've got to wonder how well they are tracking infections. The people who do wastewater surveillance emphasize that a link between those observations and disease has not yet been proven. Hard to know what else they'd be tracking, though. Earlier Posts You May Have Missed Was SARS-CoV-2 Responsible for Early P

  During the pandemic, people who track such things noted an abrupt increase in early onset of puberty—a.k.a. idiopathic central precocious puberty —in girls. One study concluded that "girls diagnosed with idiopathic CPP during the one-year study period during the pandemic was more than double that of any of the previous three-years." That's quite a jump in a rare condition . Naturally, scientists wondered whether the SARS-CoV-2 virus could be at fault. Now a study just presented at a pediatric endocrinology conference has offered an explanation that may not have anything to do with the virus at all. They suggest the mechanism may be increased exposure to blue light from mobile devices. The researchers reckon that during the pandemic, kids had increased exposure to such light by virtue of being on their phones more. To test this idea, the researchers exposed young rats to double the amount of blue-shifted light they would normally get. Sure enough, the treated rats expe

  For previous waves, the pattern has been that just as a wave crests and starts dissipating, a new variant comes along to take up the slack. It happened with beta, delta, omicron and sons of omicron.  I foolishly thought this time might be different, because the current BA.4/5 wave is bottoming out. To date I have not heard about any new variants coming along that would spoil the party. Until today, that is, when I saw this article in the NY Times. They describe a new Omicron subvariant called BA.2.75.2.  As with other sons of Omicron it has tricks for avoiding natural and vaccine-induced immune response, including from the current bivalent booster.  In lab tests it evaded all but one of 13 monoclonal antibodies currently in use. It also did much better at evading antibodies derived from recent Swedish blood donors than did previous Omicron sub-variants. This from a preprint study  entitled "Omicron sublineage BA.2.75.2 exhibits extensive escape from neutralising antibodies.&quo

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Statewide cases are back to decreasing, hospital beds and deaths are level. Maricopa County still doesn't have its dashboard working. All the wastewater signals are up except Pima County. Tempe is up by a lot . I know two people who live there who tested positive over the last week. I was hoping we'd be down to near zero cases by now and that the wastewater signals would be fading, especially as people get the new bivalent booster. No apparent effect so far. Earlier Posts You May Have Missed Is This Guy a COVID-19 Superdoger? Arizonans Have Not Perceived Much Pressure For or Against Pandemic Protocols

I bowl with this guy who is 42, and has never received any SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. He's suspicious of mRNA tech and worries that people who have been jabbed will suffer some horrible fate in several years, by which time some unspecified genetic process will have had enough time to do its dirtywork. He has also never worn a mask. Despite all this he has never been infected (that he knows of).  Did I mention that he's also an Uber driver? How can this be?! Back in July I blogged about NOVIDS , of which I am one. That post summarized four explanations scientists have for people who never become infected despite exposure. Health workers in the pre-vaccine days are the prime example, but my bowling buddy would fit the category. One explanation for NOVIDs was that genetics may convey protection. Another was that prior exposure to coronaviruses may have primed their immune systems to fight off the virus.   This week I saw a story about research underway to figure out what is going on with

  Image: Set of Clear Containers with Varying Fluid Levels by Dall-E Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: I should have known better than to take the dip in last week's statewide cases and deaths seriously. What do these numbers have in common? They are reported by AzDHS.   The agency has a terrible record of reliable and timely reporting of these numbers. I reckon they had some glitch where a bunch of numbers didn't get included so they threw them in this week. If you look at the case graph, the average of this week and last week is right about where the curve seemed to be headed. Speaking of glitches, what is up with Maricopa County? Their summary dashboard is still broken this week. I got through to someone and reported it last Friday. I'm still getting " The requested URL was rejected."   I wonder if there is a loss of interest in these reports among the various agencies, meaning we can

  News reports and breathless opinion pieces on both the right and left have painted a pretty bleak picture of social conflict during the pandemic. This seems to have subsided by now, but man, in 2020 and 2021 things were hot. We heard about people being attacked with hammers for wearing masks and others being confronted while shopping for not wearing masks. Workers at vaccine clinics have been attacked and called murderers . Workers asking for proof of vaccination have been attacked too. With all of this attacking going on, you'd be forgiven for thinking there is nowhere to hide from pressure to follow—or not follow—pandemic mitigation protocols. But there is new data suggesting that this impression is not a true picture of how things are, in Arizona anyway. CoVHORT is a research project on COVID-19 being conducted by the University of Arizona. It is longitudinal, meaning it collects data at multiple points over a long period, using the same participants. CoVHORT has just over

  Image: Steampunk Computer Crunching Numbers by Dall-E Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: It's a bit of a mixed picture this week. One thing is that the four-week changes are all in the right direction and not small. The weekly stat that looks the best is the statewide case rate, which fell by more than half.  At one time I'd have gotten very excited about that. But as I have mentioned many times before, case rates are no longer considered good indicators of conditions in the community because so many people are doing at-home tests that never get reported, and federal programs for free testing have ended. I have no case rate for Maricopa County. The dashboard where they report data says "The requested URL was rejected. Please consult with your administrator." I have reported the problem and will update this post if I find it has been fixed. Otherwise, new deaths dropped by a decent amount. On

  Back in December, I blogged about a new vaccine that sounded pretty exciting. It was developed by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) and showed positive results in animal models. The exciting thing is it is designed around a soccer-ball-shaped molecule to which could be attached a whole bunch of different spike proteins from different variants. Your immune system would react to all of them providing you universal protection. Human clinical trials were starting at the time I wrote the blog, and I've been unable to determine the status. An undated posting  I found said they were in their third month and still needed participants. Now the study is no longer listed on their clinical trials recruiting page . So either they have all the participants they need or are done with the trial. If I learn any more about it I will update. Anyway, it may become obsolete because researchers have  reported  the discovery of a new antibody called SP1-77 that will protect from all k

  Health officials have  announced the discovery of three cases of measles in Maricopa County. "One case is an adult and the other two are in minors. One case was hospitalized. All three are unvaccinated, and they are all recovering." This isn't exactly shocking. Back in 2015 the CDC said Arizona had the worst vaccination rate of any state in the country. I can't find any more recent state ranking data, but this story says the rate continues to decline and now stands at around 90% in Arizona. That's 8% below the level necessary for population immunity. This development comes in the wake of the pandemic. Anti-vaxxers have treated it as a golden opportunity to grow their brand , leading to  increased sales of their quack cures and remedies.   Now, more parents are holding back on vaccinations of any kind. Jason Terk, MD, a pediatrician practicing in Keller, Texas said : “It’s becoming much more challenging for me to convince people to get their kids vaccinated.”

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: We have some red numbers in the one-week change column again this week, after none last week. But they don't seem like much to worry about. Cases are up slightly at the state level but down a lot at the Maricopa County level. I note that back in the spring there was another week where we had a setback. It's visible in the case graph on March 30. Cases jumped back up temporarily before going down again. Maybe we're in a cycle like that again? Deaths are up a little. But as noted before that is a lagging indicator, and possibly for more reasons than the time it takes for serious disease to develop (i.e. state reporting delays). Wastewater samples show a small increase in Pima County, and a more substantial one in Yavapai County. But there are decreases everywhere else.   This brings me to Tempe. You may remember they didn't report last week. Turns out that was due