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 k...

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. M...

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...