Corona-zona

  Over the weekend, the Department of Energy changed its assessment of the origin of the pandemic. It had said the origin was inconclusive, but now according to an article in the Times   the agency now thinks  it was a lab leak from a Wuhan lab. The change was based on new intelligence (they won't say what) that "was relatively weak and that the Energy Department’s conclusion was made with 'low confidence,' suggesting its level of certainty was not high." DOE shared the same info with other agencies, none of which changed their assessments. The article outlines the diverging views among different intelligence agencies: In addition to the Energy Department, the F.B.I. has also concluded, with moderate confidence, that the virus first emerged accidentally from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a Chinese lab that worked on coronaviruses. Four other intelligence agencies and the National Intelligence Council have concluded, with low confidence, that the virus most...

  I've been a fan of wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2. I have blogged about it , and have included figures in the weekly summary for some time now. To review, the virus shows up in wastewater because when people are infected they shed virus in their feces, so it's present in wastewater systems and samples from those systems can be used to estimate population level spread. It's a great public health method because it's 100% anonymous and can cover large groups of people without needing them to do anything except what comes naturally. The CDC recently decided to try the technique to see if they could detect virus incoming on international flights. They tested 80 international flights incoming to JFK International Airport in New York. Guess what? They were able to detect virus in 81% of the samples! It worked! Well, we know we can detect virus in wastewater and planes contain wastewater. Why did we need  this study  to prove we can detect virus in airplane wastewate...

Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending Wednesday: Well! Remember a couple of weeks ago when I wondered whether Superbowl visitors would bring in a new wave of COVID-19? It looks like we could have an answer, if the case numbers are to be trusted. As it turns out, they are not to be trusted. I checked with Will Humble who knows about these things. He says almost all the new cases this week are due to a dump of stale data from 2022. I really don't understand this. What is the point of reporting these cases if they're not current?!  Anyway, we will find out if this was an anomaly next week. Previous posts you may have missed: Bret Stephens Misrepresents Study to Claim Anti-maskers are Owed an Apology Extracts of Two Plants Shown to Block SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Mechanism

  On Tuesday NY Times Columnist Bret Stephens ran an op-ed  where he dripped contempt for people who said masks work. He thinks we all owe him and other anti-maskers a big fat apology. He cites a new review of scientific literature as evidence that masks really don't work. He quotes one of the study's authors (an epidemiologist who I suppose he interviewed) as saying there is no evidence that masks work, and no evidence that hand washing and air filtration work either. He then whines about how badly the anti-maskers were treated when they were right all along. No mention of poor treatment of pro-maskers. I guess it's OK since they were wrong all along? Here's the thing. Look at the "plain language summary" written by the authors of the   actual study :  We are uncertain whether wearing masks or N95/P2 respirators helps to slow the spread of respiratory viruses based on the studies we assessed. Hand hygiene programmes may help to slow the spread of respiratory ...

I don't know about you, but just looking at that picture makes me want to sneeze! But it turns out it has promise as something more than an annoying fall allergen. Last month Emory University researchers published a study outlining their efforts to screen botanical agents to find any that have a protective effects against SARS-CoV-2. They scored hits with two extracts, one from the flowers of tall goldenrod (Solidago altissima) and another from the rhizomes of the eagle fern (Pteridium aquilinum). To find them, scientists attached SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins to a payload that would make cells fluoresce. This provided a visual marker of when a cell had been penetrated.  They then mixed these "virus-like particles" with specially engineered cells and various extracts from the Quave Natural Product Library. It contains thousands of botanical and fungal natural products extracted from plants collected at sites around the world. They looked for cases where few cells were lit u...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending Wednesday: Most numbers are up and the changes average +20%. These are increases are small in absolute terms because they are a percent increase on an already-small number. Nonetheless we'd prefer to see the numbers going in the other direction. The good news is that hospitalizations are continuing a downtrend. That is our most reliable indicator of serious illness.  I don't know what is going on with Tempe. Maybe they're updating their wastewater numbers only every other week now? January 29 was the latest data both last week and this week. I have reset the scale of the y-axis on the case graph to a more reasonable range now that the past year no longer includes the January 2022 peak. We are at approximately the same lows as we saw last April and October. At those times the line did not stay flat for as long as it has recently. Previous posts you may have missed: An...

  About a month ago I blogged about the latest efforts of the anti-vaxxer asshats, who've been trying to claim that any unexplained, sudden death is because of vaccines. Today I learned that this effort is a lot more organized than I thought. According to an AP investigation , the trend is being driven by a dark web film that features a montage of headlines found on Google to falsely suggest they prove that sudden deaths have “never happened like this until now.” The film has amassed more than 20 million views on an alternative video sharing website, and its companion Twitter account posts about more deaths and injuries daily.  An affiliated Twitter account has been flogging the hashtag #diedsuddenly, posting new cases as it finds them. The problem is that the film and posts are straight-up lies.  AP uncovered case after case where the cause of death was unknown or attributable to other known medical conditions. They even list people who died but were unvaccinated as vic...

A recent article in the New York Times details problems one pharma company is having getting approval for a new post-infection COVID-19 treatment. This post is your TL;DR for that article. Existing monoclonal antibody treatments have lost effectiveness due to new variants, and the only option for universal treatment at this point is Paxlovid. However, Paxlovid has worrisome interactions with other drugs, meaning some people can't take it. A company called Eiger Biopharmaceuticals developed and requested emergency use authorization from the FDA for a drug called  pegylated interferon lambda. Interferons are proteins that signal to your immune system that there is an invader that needs to be eliminated.   Interferon drugs are tricky because they signal your immune system to attack, and most kinds have receptors throughout the body. However, the company found a type of interferon whose receptors are specific to the respiratory tract. This means the drug could be usefu...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending Wednesday: Looks like continued smooth sailing for Superbowl week. Hope the visitors don't bring in a ton of new cases. The only things up are cases at the state level, and Yavapai and Tempe wastewater levels. The first two of those are trivial.  Tempe is up 30% but that is one week after it plunged by almost 80%. I didn't have last week's numbers last week because Tempe is becoming a little inconsistent in when readings are posted. Previous posts you may have missed: The Pandemic is One Reason for High Job Vacancies

  Last evening's PBS Newshour aired a story about why there are so many unfilled job openings, leaving unemployment at 50+ year lows. It focused on working-age people dropping out of the workforce.  As for why they are doing so, it gave a list that included some of the usual suspects. First, there is a hollowing-out of the labor market.  Mid-tier jobs—ones that had attractive salaries and benefits, including retirement—continue to be replaced by automation. This means there are a lot of low-tier jobs that are not attractive to workers and high-tier jobs they are not qualified for. Another factor cited was the large number of people with felony convictions, a result of our incarceration-happy culture. Yet another was government benefits, particularly disability payments. But the not-usual suspect was the COVID-19 pandemic. For one thing, the pandemic outright killed 217,978 people of working age , and most of those people occupied jobs.  But that's not all. Julia Pol...

  Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending Wednesday: All numbers are down. I think this is the first time that has happened since I started doing these summaries two years ago. Enjoy the green! The only other notes are about wastewater. It looks like Tempe has changed its reporting to have a longer lag. There was no update last week, and the update that is there now is for the week that would normally have been reported then. I also noticed that BioBot, where I get the county wastewater data, is reporting nationwide average wastewater levels. For Jan 25 (the date of the data reported above) the figure was 704. So our levels are 1/3 to 1/2 of what they are nationwide.