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Covid News: San Diego Wastewater Samples Double in 1 Week and 3 Unvaxxed STL Cardinals Roll the Dice [1]
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Date: 2022-07-26
When have I seen this before? Oh yes, for about 2 and a half years consecutively. The President of the United States has Covid, though thankfully he seems to be doing well, of course thanks to robust and safe vaccinations and developed treatments, and I might have thought..
Well what might I have thought? I might have thought that if you turn on the television and see your President has become ill with a virulent disease, there is at least the slightest chance you would don a mask in the frozen foods aisle. Alas, we have seem to have lost the messaging battle. Perhaps we never fought it.
Updated Thursday by the SEARCH Coalition, a group of local research labs led by UC San Diego and Scripps Research, wastewater testing detected 15.5 million coronavirus copies per liter of wastewater sampled in Point Loma Wednesday. It’s a score that is 91 percent greater than the 8 million copies per liter detected in the same sampling location one week earlier. The trend visible in wastewater is starkly different than the one depicted by the latest testing data released by the county health department Thursday. Comparing the same Wednesday-to-Wednesday period, positive test results reported to the health department fell 8.3 percent, dropping from 2,191 to 2,007. Plotted on a graph, the sharp increase in coronavirus wastewater detections looks very similar to the hockey stick-shaped curve visible at the beginning of the first Omicron wave in December 2021. That wave crested at 47.6 million coronavirus copies per liter of wastewater on Jan. 9.
If I told you there is a very effective way to not cause an incendiary event with a lighter, and that would be to not smoke around oxygen tanks, would you at least consider going outside? I would think so. If Covid is flame and an exposed face is the oxygen tank, a lot of people are “smoking” recklessly.
Masks are effective. They are also yesterday’s news.
New York City is being absolutely hammered, again, by Covid. But even in the Big Deep Blue Apple, there is no political appetite for intervention, not anymore.
One of the major concerns I have is that Americans seem to not trust that fire is hot and hurricanes bring dangerous winds. They appear to want proof.
According to CDC’s COVID Data Tracker, only about 34% of people who are eligible for a COVID-19 booster and about 29% of people ages 50 years and older who are eligible for a second booster have gotten one. Booster vaccination rates vary widely across the United States. In the Northeast and parts of the Midwest, 50% to 70% of eligible people have gotten a first booster in almost every county. Unfortunately, much of the Southeast and Southwest are in the 30% to 40% range. This means millions of people are not fully protected because they are not up to date on their COVID-19 vaccines. Both the rise in cases and the gradual decrease in vaccine protection since your last shot make it an especially important time to get up to date on COVID-19 vaccines.
The following map shows vaccination rates in the U.S. currently.
It is not great. It also goes far in explaining the second map, below, as the high transmission rates overlay almost perfectly, even down to the county, with low booster rates, for those who questioned the vaccine’s effectiveness.
Like oh, I don’t know, three of the St. Louis Cardinals.
In the first map light blue is low booster rates, and in the second map burnt siena is high community spread.
Boggles the mind.
Earlier I mentioned my hometown St. Louis Cardinals, three of whom can not actually go to Tornoto when the baseball club visits the Toronto Blue Jays. Two of them are, statistically speaking, the two best players in the National League. The two, Nolan Arenado and the man who is actually considered a favorite to win MVP, Paul Goldschmidt, talk about personal decisions, and doing what they think is right, and whatever other kind of idiotic talking points Fox News implanted in their brain. From Paul Goldschmidt:
“I talked to as many doctors and medical professionals as I could to try to gather as much info on what they know, what they don’t know and all of that type of stuff,” Goldschmidt explained. “For me, I just determined that the potential risks of taking the vaccine outweigh the potential benefits.” Nolan Arenado speaking with Jeff Jones of MLB.com said that his desire to start a family was part of his decision. Arenado added he doesn’t want to be a spokesperson, he’s just choosing what’s best for him and his family. “With all due respect, I disagree with that,” Dr. J. William Campbell, Head of Infectious Disease and Prevention at St. Luke’s Hospital. Dr. Campbell said it’s a challenge when high-profile athletes or other public figures put out a message, questioning the COVID-19 vaccine’s safety.
They are not alone. Six Philaelphia Phillies recently sat out of a series in Toronto as well. In fact, Toronto may have a good chance in the playoffs in part because Canada is not letting in unvaccinated players.
Arenado for some reason got it into his head that the vaccine causes his little Nolan army to retreat. Never read that. Never heard that. But then again, I don’t use Facebook for research.
Pitcher Miles Mikolas, who is known for eating a live lizard, came up with some kind of theory about how bad things about the vaccine are coming out, and how he wished he would not have gotten one. And who doesn’t want to take epidemiological advice from someone who eats live reptiles? The third, Austin Romine, a catcher, is there because they needed someone on the roster to fill the spot. He probably gets released soon.
The end result is that the Cardinals’ two best players, no matter how healthy they think they are, if they catch Covid could end up on ventilators.
Or worse.
The new variant, followed by the new new variant, is likely to be in the Omicron family. This means that if you have recently been hit with Omicron you may be more likely to tolerate it, but not entirely likely to avoid getting it again. According to some doctors, even an Omicron infection from a month ago could be little protection against BA. 5.
Maddening.
The good news is by fall there should be an Omicron variant broad acting vaccination booster to get, so maybe, finally, presuming this virus stays on its current course, it will finally be coralled.
Currently the moving average is about 125,000 new cases per day, and about 348 deaths per day, down slightly from the week prior at 384, though those trail cases. Assuming the current pace of deaths continues, another 55,000 plus Americans could die from Covid by the end of this year. That would be the equivalent of 18 more 9-11’s.
The New York Post editorial board, probably not comprised of persons capable of challenging Marilyn Vos Savant in chess, has this to say about the President’s plight.
President Joe Biden seems to be handling COVID pretty well. At 79 he’s in a high-risk age group, but he’s also fully vaxxed and boosted — which drastically reduces the odds for serious illness. We wish the president a rapid recovery. So far, it looks like his case is high-profile evidence that the pandemic is completely over — that Americans’ anti-coronavirus efforts should focus exclusively on getting jabs to those who need them and treating cases as they pop up.
Except the thing is, nearly 20,000 persons in this country are currently in the hospital. I don’t dispute the vaccines have shifted the situation to a more endemic phase, but to pretend that the problem is behind us is still shortsighted. As I said, another 55,000 Americans may die from Covid between now and the end of the year. Does that sound over? That would still be a rate of three times the seasonal flu.
Mandates are unlikely to return, and if you do wear a mask, you may be the only one, unless you see me, who dons one at the store because I have had this thing and I can promise you I never, ever, want a “mild” case of this monster again.
And for me, it may never be over. My lungs are not the same, my legs are not the same, even my “wit fastball” to me seems flat, although you can let me know in the comments. Millions of Americans are definitively not the same, and may never be. So do what you think is right. If you want to wear a mask wear one, if you want to stay home, the movie will stream eventually.
There are many things I would love to go do. I would love to take a friend up on free baseball tickets for one. But I won’t. Because one thing I would rather do than those things is..
Stay alive.
-ROC
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