Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I really should read my own blog.

Everybody saw this coming.

That pie keeps getting more and more forks, reducing anyone’s chance of even a Perot.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Come on, man.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

This fight is for everything.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

In after Baud. Damn.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

We still have time to mess this up!

How are Republicans going to find someone with more charisma and personal charm than Jim Jordan?

It’s the corruption, stupid.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Wednesday / Thursday, Aug. 25-26

COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Wednesday / Thursday, Aug. 25-26

by | 72 Comments

This post is in: ,


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More wishcasting than predicting, IMO:

… A disease is described as endemic when it continues to be present within a given geographical area but its impact is manageable.

Her remarks come at a time when India has eased restrictions amid a fall in its Covid-19 caseload. The number of daily cases has fallen from a peak of 400,000 in April to about 25,000 this week…

In an interview with the Wire news website, Ms Swaminathan said that India – like several other countries – was reaching a stage where there “is low level of transmission”, unlike the “exponential growth and peaks that we saw a few months ago”…

Ms Swaminathan suggested that although India would continue to experience “ups and downs” at a regional level, it’s unlikely to see another overwhelming surge in infections like it saw during the second wave when patients suffered from acute shortages of hospital beds and medical oxygen.

She added that given India’s heterogenous population, there would be localised peaks among people “who were perhaps less affected by the first and second waves, or in areas where there is low vaccine coverage”…

Experts say India also needs to keep an eye on new variants.

If there is a variant more infectious than delta, that strain could circulate quite widely even in a population that has either been infected or vaccinated, Mr Jameel explains.

Other experts also agree.

“Newer variants will be escaping immunity, and for as long as that happens, you can never claim the virus is in the endemic stage,” said Mr Kant.

This is particularly a cause of concern for India, where a large number of people are still vulnerable to the virus…

======

… Although there is still some debate, lab tests suggest the Delta variant is not particularly good at evading the antibodies produced by vaccines or previous infection. That leaves two more probable explanations for the rise in breakthrough cases: Delta’s ferocious infectiousness or a gradual waning in vaccine-induced immunity. The U.S. nursing home residents who were studied are older and frail, and their response to the vaccine might drop faster than other populations. They were also among the first to get the vaccine—some back in December 2020…

“It could be that Pfizer’s protection drops from its initially very high levels and then stabilizes, or it could be that people who have had two doses of Pfizer will need a third,” says Sarah Walker, an epidemiologist at Oxford who led the U.K. study. In Israel, which used only the Pfizer vaccines, researchers also found that people fully immunized in January had twice the risk of being infected with SARS-CoV-2 during June and July as people who were vaccinated in April.

But David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, notes that the apparent decline in protection could have other causes, including changes in individual behavior and the rate of transmission in the community. Dowdy notes that in the New York study, the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines dropped most in the 18- to 49-year-olds and least in those older than 65. That suggests an increase in risky behavior among younger people—such as visits to restaurants, bars, and concerts—may also account for the trend. “People’s behavior has changed substantially” since the last wave, he says, with fewer masks and more large gatherings. “The potential for more frequent—and more intense—exposure over time” plays a role alongside Delta or possible waning vaccine immunity…

There is broad agreement that for people with weakened immune systems, whether because of age or disease, boosters can offer important protection. “There’s a proportion of the population for whom two shots is not sufficient. For certain groups of people a three-dose regimen is required,” says Sander, who has studied the effects of boosters in immune-compromised patients. He has advised the German government to offer boosters to everyone over age 60. Boosters for health care workers and close contacts of people with weaker immune systems are also likely to be important, he says, to prevent transmission to vulnerable groups and to keep health care workers on the job when hospitals are stretched thin…

======

ISTR ‘medical experiments on prisoners’ being frowned upon during the Nuremberg trials…

Reader Interactions

72Comments

  1. 1.

    NeenerNeener

    Monroe County, NY: 197 new cases yesterday. This is depressing.
    I’m glad I managed to get some doctor visits, home repairs and car maintenance done in that brief time before the Delta variant got a real foothold.

    I go for my previously postponed third Moderna shot today.

  2. 2.

    YY_Sima Qian

    On 8/25 China reported 3 new domestic confirmed cases (0 previously asymptomatic) & 0 new domestic asymptomatic cases.

    Yunnan Province reported 3 new domestic confirmed cases (all mild, 2 Burmese & 1 Chinese nationals), all traced close contacts already under centralized quarantine since 8/11. 3 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There currently are 31 active domestic confirmed cases there. 1 community at Ruili remains at High Risk. 1 Medium Risk village has been re-designated as Low Risk. 1 village at Ruili remains at Medium Risk. 

    Jiangsu Province did not reported any new domestic positive cases. 53 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There are currently 451 active domestic confirmed cases in the province.

    • At Nanjing 16 domestic confirmed case recovered. There currently are 110 active domestic confirmed (20 mild & 90 moderate) cases in the city.
    • Yangzhou did not report any new domestic positive cases. There currently are 367 active domestic confirmed (61 mild, 331 moderate) cases in the city, though more than half are actually being treated in Nanjing. The High Risk township has been re-designated as Low Risk. 16 zones/sites are currently at Medium Risk.
    • At Huai’an there currently are 6 active confirmed cases in the city.

    Hunan Province did not reported any new domestic positive cases. 2 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There are currently are 96 active domestic confirmed (including 2 serious) & 13 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.

    • At Changde there currently are 3 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the city.
    • At Xiangtan there currently are 2 active domestic confirmed & 2 domestic asymptomatic cases in the city.
    • At Changsha There currently are 2 active domestic confirmed cases in the city.
    • At Yiyang there currently are 2 active domestic confirmed & 5 active domestic asymptomatic case.
    • At Zhuzhou there currently are 27 active domestic confirmed & 1 active domestic asymptomatic cases.
    • At Zhangjiajie 2 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There currently are 63 active domestic confirmed & 2 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the city.

    Henan Province did not report any new domestic positive case. 6 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There are currently 107 active domestic confirmed & 1 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.

    • Zhengzhou did not report any new domestic positive cases. 6 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There currently are 81 active domestic confirmed & 1 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the city. 4 sites remain at Medium Risk.
    • Shangqiu did not report any new domestic positive case. There currently are 15 active domestic confirmed cases in the city. 2 sites remain at High Risk & 2 sites are currently at Medium Risk.
    • At Zhumadian, there currently are 4 active domestic confirmed cases in the city.
    • At Kaifeng there currently are 7 active domestic confirmed cases. 7 villages are currently at Medium Risk.

    Hubei Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. 1 domestic confirmed cases recovered & 3 domestic asymptomatic cases were released from isolation. There currently are 81 active domestic confirmed (36 mild & 45 moderate) & 53 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.

    • At Huanggang 1 domestic confirmed case recovered, There currently are 3 active domestic confirmed & 2 active domestic asymptomatic cases.
    • At Jingzhou, there currently are 2 active domestic confirmed cases in the city.
    • At Jingmen 1 domestic asymptomatic case was released from isolation. There are currently 41 active domestic confirmed & 12 active domestic asymptomatic cases. 1 sub-district & 1 township remain at Medium Risk.
    • At Wuhan 1 domestic asymptomatic case was released from isolation. There currently are 34 active domestic confirmed & 36 active domestic asymptomatic cases. The Medium Risk residential compound has been re-designated as Low Risk.
    • At Ezhou there currently are 1 active domestic confirmed & 3 active domestic asymptomatic cases.
    • At Xianning the domestic asymptomatic case was released from isolation.

    Shanghai Municipality did not report any new domestic positive cases. There currently are 8 active domestic confirmed cases in the city, 6 from the airport cluster & 2 from the hospital cluster. 5 residential compounds remain at Medium Risk.

    Imported Cases

    On 8/25, China reported 23 new imported confirmed cases (4 previously asymptomatic), 19 imported asymptomatic cases, 1 imported suspect case:

    • Guangzhou in Guangdong Province – 5 confirmed cases, 3 Chinese nationals returning from Myanmar & 1 each from Bangladesh & Thailand; 6 asymptomatic cases, 2 Chinese nationals each returning from Myanmar & the Philippines & 1 each from the DRC (via Nairobi) & Turkey (via Tehran)
    • Dongguan in Guangdong Province – 2 confirmed cases (1 previously asymptomatic), 1 each coming from Iran & the UAE; 2 asymptomatic cases, 1 each coming from the Philippines & Tanzania; all off flights that landed at Guangzhou
    • Shenzhen in Guangdong Province – 1 confirmed case, a Chinese national returning from Indonesia
    • Foshan in Guangdong Province – 1 confirmed case (previously asymptomatic), coming from the Philippines; 1 asymptomatic case, coming from Egypt; both off flights that landed at Guangzhou
    • Yunnan Province (locations not specified) – 7 confirmed cases, 6 Chinese nationals returning from Myanmar & 1 from Laos; 2 asymptomatic cases, both Chinese nationals returning from Myanmar; all via land border crossings
    • Shanghai Municipality – 3 confirmed cases, 1 Chinese national each returning from Malaysia, Spain & there UK (via Helsinki); 1 suspect case, no information released
    • Tianjin Municipality – 1 confirmed case, no information released, yet; 3 asymptomatic cases, 2 Indonesian crew members off a cargo ship & a Chinese national returning from the Philippines
    • Shenyang in Liaoning Province – 1 confirmed & 1 asymptomatic cases, no information released
    • Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province – 1 confirmed case (previously asymptomatic), coming from Morocco; 2 asymptomatic cases, 1 each coming from Cameroon & Egypt
    • Fuzhou in Fujian Province – 1 confirmed case (previously asymptomatic), coming from Japan
    • Jiangsu Province (location not specified) – 1 asymptomatic case, no information released
    • Chengdu in Sichuan Province – 1 asymptomatic case, no information released.

    Overall in China, 104 confirmed cases recovered (36 imported), 24 asymptomatic cases were released from isolation (21 imported) & 3 were reclassified as confirmed cases (all imported), & 3,119 individuals were released from quarantine. Currently, there are 1,497 active confirmed cases in the country (695 imported), 14 in serious condition (10 imported), 467 active asymptomatic cases (389 imported), 2 suspect cases (both imported). 38,776 traced contacts are currently under centralized quarantine.

    As of 8/25, 1,988.433M vaccine doses have been injected in Mainland China, an increase of 12.69M doses in the past 24 hrs.

    On 8/26, Hong Kong reported 3 new positive cases, all imported (from Nepal, Pakistan & Greece, have been double vaccinated in Hong Kong). 

  4. 4.

    Betty Cracker

    Yahoo analyzed why Florida is faring so much worse than California during the Delta wave. Bottom line: DeSantis prioritized sucking up to Trump’s base over public health.

  8. 8.

    debbie

    I will take a heart of sheep over a cyclone of reindeer any day!

    Reindeer Cyclones are a real thing… a swirling mass of threatened reindeer stampeding in a circle making it impossible to target an individual.. here the fawns are in the middle

    This herd is on Russia’s Kola Peninsula, in the Arctic Circle
    pic.twitter.com/0Y2UwBKuOh
    — Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) March 30, 2021

  9. 9.

    lowtechcyclist

    So in terms of Covid deaths, we’re back up to a Jonestown every day. Swell.

    Take a bow, Fox News, Govs. DeSantis, Abbott, Noem, etc., the vast majority of GQP officeholders, and all the others with loud megaphones who have chosen to oppose necessary public health measures because it helps their political careers to cause lots of people to die unnecessarily.

    They should be tried for crimes against humanity, and sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in Gitmo.

  10. 10.

    Matt McIrvin

    A thing that complicates the Florida picture is that vaccination is very unevenly distributed there– there are counties with extremely high vaccination rates and counties where it’s very low. I’d like to know how the deaths are distributed geographically… but Florida is suppressing that information. I would not be surprised if the death count is actually twice as high as reported, or more.

  11. 11.

    mrmoshpotato

    Florida doctor booted from hospital after offering to provide “medical exemptions” at $50 a pop for parents who wanted to keep their children mask-free.

    Booted from hospital and into the Sun?

  12. 12.

    Gin & Tonic

    I posted this last night. The five leading states in vaccination rates are in New England. The five states with the lowest COVID-19 hospitalization rates are in New England.

  14. 14.

    Suzanne

    @Gin & Tonic: I have seen prediction that the Northeast will get its ass kicked in the fall, once it gets a bit cooler. PA isn’t doing quite as good a job as New England, but still relatively good, and I concur that now is not the time to leave.

    ETA: But our cases are climbing with no peak in sight. Ergh.

  15. 15.

    New Deal democrat

    Good news and bad news as far as South Dakota is concerned.

    The good news is that the artifact in the 2 week old data resulting from switching from weekly to daily reports, that resulted in a 400%+ increase in cases cited by the NYT, has now aged out of the comparison, so the %age increase has declined sharply.

    The bad news is that new cases in SD have continued to increase in the past several days, so its 2 week increase is still 250%, and that is the worst in the nation, eclipsing WV and AK. And Vermont’s daily numbers have decreased, so it has less than a 50% increase.

    Even so, SD has one of the 10 lowest levels of new cases per capita of any of the States.

    The earliest hit States have now almost all peaked. TX and FL may be included in that. In fact, the only State in the Deep South with a continued significant increase is GA. Most of the big increases are in the upper Midwest and upper West and Alaska.

  18. 18.

    Mary G

    The OC had 500 and some new cases today with 6 deaths. Positivity 8.0%. Many cities are still ruled by Republicans and have not reinstated the emergency rules that were canceled in June.

    I had to go out today to the DMV because I forgot to renew my license in 2019 and they were closed for most of 2020, doing a lot of stuff online. They are limiting appointments and had good spacing, maybe 15 people in 100 chairs. Only 3 or 4 had masks on. Of 12 clerks 10 had masks.

    CVS was about the same mask wise. ? It’s in an extremely wealthy area that’s still solidly Republicans, so I wore my Biden_Harris mask to annoy them. Nobody was getting vaccinated and I had a choice of appointment times. Kind of a bummer. I did get a couple of glares from MOTUs just off the golf course.

  21. 21.

    Betty Cracker

    @lowtechcyclist: DeSantis is following the Trump playbook, i.e., lying on Fox News in an attempt to brazen it out. There are a lot of stupid people here, so maybe that’ll work. But the math doesn’t lie. Even if you let him slide on the excess deaths that happened on his watch prior to the vaccines (and you shouldn’t; he made things worse than they had to be), it’s obvious that current deaths are directly attributable to his anti-mask demagoguery.

  22. 22.

    MomSense

    @Matt McIrvin: 
    We had our family reunion over the weekend and one of the women, who attended remotely from Naples Florida, lost her husband to COVID last year. She had to fight for three months to get his death certificate to list COVID as the cause and not Alzheimer’s. He did have Alzheimer’s but that is NOT what killed him.

  26. 26.

    MomSense

    @Betty Cracker:

    The two mechanisms government has to end COVID are masks and vaccines.  DeathSantis has sabotaged the only means we have of ending COVID.  He’s a psychopath.

  27. 27.

    Baud

    The politics of Covid and Afghanistan are similar.  People think that because the Dems believe in empathy, we will support bad policies if people are just emotional enough about it.  Thus, you end up with these over the top performative BS in response to our actions.

  29. 29.

    Matt McIrvin

    @MomSense: Whenever people complain that COVID deaths were really just “deaths WITH COVID”, it enrages me just because excess-death stats make it so clear that the opposite is true–many thousands of COVID deaths are being recorded as something else.

  31. 31.

    Amir Khalid

    Malaysia’s Director-General of Health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah reports a record 24,599 new Covid-19 cases today in his media statement, for a cumulative reported total of 1,640,843 cases. He also reports 393 new deaths today, also a record, for a cumulative total of 15,211 deaths — 0.93% of the cumulative reported total, 1.11% of resolved cases.

    There are currently 265,841 active and contagious cases; 990 are in ICU, 487 of them on ventilators. Meanwhile, 22,657 more patients have recovered, for a cumulative total of 1,359,791 patients recovered – 82.87% of the cumulative reported total.

    35 new clusters were reported today, for a cumulative total of 4,583 clusters. 1,471 clusters are currently active; 3,112 clusters are now inactive.

    24,591 new cases today are local infections. Selangor reports 6,936 cases: 574 in clusters, 3,097 close-contact screenings, and 3,265 other screenings.

    Sabah reports 3,487 cases: 263 in clusters, 1,992 close-contact screenings, and 1,232 other screenings.

    Johor reports 2,785 cases: 779 in clusters, 1,267 close-contact screenings, and 739 other screenings. Penang reports 2,078 cases: 230 in clusters, 765 close-contact screenings, and 1,083 other screenings. Sarawak reports 2,024 cases: 246 in clusters, 1,187 close-contact screenings, and 591 other screenings.

    Kedah reports 1,538 cases: 54 in clusters, 925 close-contact screenings, and 559 other screenings. Kelantan reports 1,312 cases: 142 in clusters, 790 close-contact screenings, and 380 other screenings. Perak reports 1,170 cases: 144 in clusters, 516 close-contact screenings, and 510 other screenings.

    Kuala Lumpur reports 874 local cases: 386 close-contact screenings and 488 other screenings.

    Pahang reports 690 cases: 82 in clusters, 497 close-contact screenings, and 111 other screenings.

    Terengganu reports 567 cases: 53 in clusters, 434 close-contact screenings, and 80 other screenings. Negeri Sembilan reports 526 cases: 15 in clusters, 229 close-contact screenings, and 282 other screenings. Melaka reports 514 local cases: 108 in clusters, 216 close-contact screenings, and 190 other screenings.

    Perlis reports 67 cases: 21 in clusters, 25 close-contact screenings, and 21 other screenings. Putrajaya reports 20 cases: 13 close-contact screenings and seven other screenings. Labuan reports three cases: one close-contact screening and two other screenings.

    Eight new cases today are imported: seven in Kuala Lumpr and one in Melaka.

    The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 423,380 doses of vaccine on 25th August: 161,386 first doses and 261,994 second doses. As of midnight yesterday, the cumulative total is 32,635,907 doses administered: 18,792,979 first doses and 13,842,928 second doses. 57.5% of the population have received their first dose, while 42.4% are now fully vaccinated.

  32. 32.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @rikyrah: OMG, that takes gall.

    My building had a coffee-with-management meeting yesterday, and people were up in arms that 13% of the workforce here is still not vaccinated. Management is resisting because they have trouble hiring, but residents were clearly furious.

  34. 34.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: My employer had an in-person office meeting and outdoor lunch last Friday. Full vaccination was a requirement for attendance. As far as I know, our (quite small) Boston-area workforce is 100% vaccinated–and we do software and mostly work remotely these days. It astounds me that this isn’t the case for, say, doctor’s offices.

  38. 38.

    Robert Sneddon

    @MomSense: Don’t get fixated on masks — they do help reduce the spread of this disease but they’re not actually that effective, especially the sorts of badly-fitted masks worn by Joe Public. Vaccines are the real tool for hammering down case numbers and infection events while a lot of the other mitigation efforts like hand-washing are marginally effective at best and ineffective performative theatre at worst.

    As for ‘ending’ COVID-19, that’s unlikely to occur absent a really spectacular scientific breakthrough. The SARS-CoV-2 virus has animal hosts which can act as viral reservoirs even if it was eliminated in human hosts entirely, allowing reinfection events afterwards. Realistically speaking we’re moving towards a ‘Living with COVID-19’ post-pandemic world where vaccination will keep the numbers of serious COVID-19 infections and deaths down to a low roar, safely ignorable by the public like we regard alcohol or smoking-related illnesses and fatalities today.

  39. 39.

    New Deal democrat

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I agree with you. That is why, even prior to Sturgis, I had been watching South Dakota carefully. Sturgis is the acid test. My suspicion is that the prior existing immunity from SD’s horrific outbreak last autumn and winter will keep their numbers down. Which is still the case, since as I wrote above, they still have one of the 10 lowest per capita infection rates in the entire country. Essentially so far they have increased from an *extremely* low rate of infection (lowest in the country) to a very low rate of infection.

  41. 41.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @rikyrah: @Matt McIrvin: Residents are 100% vaccinated and management knocked themselves out to get us that way.

    They broke down the vaccination rate by department which I found interesting.

    100%: activities, administration, corporate, sales (those are all small departments–activities, frex, is 2)

    92%: housekeeping (all adult women, mostly Hispanic or east European)

    87%: member services (my guess is that’s one unvaccinated person on a 7 member staff)

    85%: the nursing home/memory care/assisted living building (OK, that’s shocking, and even worse…

    78%: home health care workers

    72%: food and beverage (wait staff, cooks)

    67%: maintenance (probably one person in a 3 person office)

  43. 43.

    YY_Sima Qian

    8/25 data for Jiangsu Province came in late:

    • At Nanjing 16 domestic confirmed case recovered. There currently are 110 active domestic confirmed (20 mild & 90 moderate) cases in the city.
    • Yangzhou did not report any new domestic positive cases. 36 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There currently are 331 active domestic confirmed (49 mild, 282 moderate) cases in the city, though more than half are actually being treated in Nanjing. The High Risk township has been re-designated as Low Risk. 16 zones/sites are currently at Medium Risk.
    • At Huai’an 1 domestic confirmed case recovered. There currently are 5 active confirmed cases in the city.
  44. 44.

    sab

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: My dad’s floor in his assisted living has had an outbreak, so he is back in lockdown. One case last week and a couple more this week. I can’t get back in to see him until two weeks  of no positives.

  45. 45.

    Ken

    @rikyrah: I don’t think there’s anything in the Constitution that allows the President to remove a State’s administration and replace it with competent (or at least sane) people.

  46. 46.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: After my surgery in February I had an in-home nurse and PT visiting me. The in-home PT said some things that suggested to me that she believed conspiracy theories about COVID being a fake pandemic. I didn’t pry about whether she was vaccinated–at that point, vaccination was rare enough that I was basically assuming nobody was vaccinated. We did wear masks the whole time. But I bet she never got shots.

    After that, I was doing PT at an outpatient center for a while. When I started, they told me that everyone there was vaccinated except for one staff member, who had “sold her slot on eBay”. I still don’t know what the deal with that was, and kind of don’t care to know. Fortunately I didn’t interact with that staff member.

  47. 47.

    Matt McIrvin

    @New Deal democrat: The other places that have reported per-capita total case numbers that high are North Dakota, and… Rhode Island, which is effectively a Northeastern urban area with a state boundary around it (so I wouldn’t be surprised if, say, my town in MA has similar total stats). They were hit hard in the spring 2020 wave and hit very hard again in winter/spring 2021.

  48. 48.

    Ken

    Yesterday there was a report that UGA was not going to have any restrictions at its home football games. Today Georgia has moved up to the highest “severe” category on covidactnow.org. Bad timing by the UGA, or karma having fun?

  49. 49.

    Matt McIrvin

    @New Deal democrat: …also, a large part of the reason this wave is less severe in the Northeast than in the rest of the country is probably that we don’t just have a lot of vaccination, we had a very high amount of prior infection in the pre-vaccine waves too–especially the very first one in spring 2020 when nobody knew what they were doing and cases were probably being undercounted by a factor of 10 or more.

    Prior infection with Alpha or earlier strains doesn’t give you as effective immunity against Delta as vaccination does, but it helps. And a lot of people around here have both.

  50. 50.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio

    Here in the Great State of Tennessee (the greenest state in the land of the free!), we have 5,153 new cases, 31 new deaths, 106 new hospitalizations (current total 2,802), and a 19.59% positive rate on tests. 10% of the regular floor beds in our hospitals are available, and 6% of our ICU beds. Our vaccination rate is now at 41.4% fully vaccinated, with 48.6% having had at least one shot.

    But Jesus will save us.

    He’ll have to, because state leadership is too stupid to do the job.

  51. 51.

    Robert Sneddon

    Scotland — 4,925 new cases of COVID-19 reported with fourteen new reported deaths of someone who had tested positive. Test positivity rate is 11.5%. Hospitalisations and ICU bed occupancy numbers are only slightly up — 47 ICU beds occupied and 426 people in hospital with confirmed cases of COVID-19. For comparison with US states, Scotland’s population is about 5.5 million people. There are no specific reports of pediatric hospitalisation numbers.

    Just over 17,500 vaccinations were administered in Scotland yesterday (Wednesday) with over 20% of those vaccinations being first doses. 81.3% of the 18+ adult population are now fully vaccinated with another 9.7% having received their initial dose of vaccine. 16 and 17 year olds are now at 43.2% first dose and 8.4% second dose.

    England’s NHS is making preparations to roll out vaccinations to 12-year olds and up but they’re still waiting on the JCVI to give it the go ahead. If/when this happens then we can expect the health services of the other UK nations to follow suit promptly.

  56. 56.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @Ken: but to go all turley up in here, there is also nothing in the constitution that says a president can’t do that

  57. 57.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @Ken: those mullethead chik*fil*a fetishists will still vote to replace raphael warnock with herschel walker in 2022

  58. 58.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Betty Cracker: ​
     

    The way I see it, first there’s all the anti-mask, anti-vaccine demagoguery by Fox News and related media, and by GQP elected officials. This has two effects: first, for those who are embedded in the GQP tribe, it makes vaccine and mask refusal an essential part of their tribal identity.

    But second, a lot of (mostly low-information) people who aren’t hardcore tribe members, or in the tribe at all, pick up on the differing messages coming from the two parties, and because they aren’t paying enough attention to sift through who’s saying what, they just register that there’s a lot of uncertainty about vaccination, so they’re reluctant to get vaccinated, even though they’re not opponents of vaccination.

    Pols like DeSantis have been part of this all along, so no question that they share responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths that could have been prevented by good public policy backed by consistent messaging from all corners of the political spectrum.

    And then on top of that, you have governors such as DeSantis actively interfering with and blocking the efforts of localities within their states to implement good policies to fight Covid.

    In my mind, people like DeSantis have committed crimes against humanity, just as surely as those who committed the Rwanda massacres did. To paraphrase Woody Guthrie, some people will kill with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen.

  59. 59.

    Scout211

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/26/weather/us-western-wildfires-thursday/index.html

    The Air Quality Index, a measure of how unhealthy the air is, spiked to an astonishing 694 in Tahoe City on Monday, according to AirNow.gov. In Reno on Tuesday, the AQI hit 453. An AQI between 300 and 500 is considered “a health warning of emergency conditions” in which even healthy individuals are at risk for respiratory illness. AQI below 50 indicates the air is healthy and poses little to no risk, even to individuals with respiratory disease.
    The index has been around or above 300 in the Tahoe and Reno areas every day since Friday.

    Compounding the problem, researchers have found recently that wildfire smoke has a significant impact on the severity of coronavirus cases. A study published this month in the journal Science Advances found increases in fine particulate matter from wildfire smoke in 2020 led to a surge in Covid-19 cases and deaths in California, Oregon and Washington.
    “What’s happening in Lake Tahoe and in Reno is very concerning,” Francesca Dominici, a researcher at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and co-author on the wildfire smoke study, told CNN, “because we know that exposure to a high level of fine particulate matter can amplify the negative effect of the pandemic.”

  60. 60.

    Betty Cracker

    @Robert Sneddon: There’s a lot of conflicting info on the efficacy of masks. The Atlantic (I think) recently published an article that suggests the jury is still very much out on whether making children wear masks in schools really helps keep them safer. But it also pointed out that the evidence that masks help in other settings (involving adults) is pretty strong. We just don’t know.

    That said, if I still had kids in school, I’d support school mask mandates for a couple of reasons: 1) better safe than sorry, and there’s no other mitigation tool to keep kids under 12 safe in school right now, and 2) mitigation methods like masks have already been politicized, and unfortunately, it’s not confined to masks nor based on data such as examined in the Atlantic.

    Anti-mask activists tend to reject vaccines too. Better to minimize contact with pro-COVID plague rats as much as possible, and they’ll self-exclude from spaces where masks are required.

  61. 61.

    Betty Cracker

    @lowtechcyclist: That’s a great point about people who aren’t zealots getting the impression that there’s uncertainty around the vaccines and dithering about it.

  63. 63.

    Another Scott

    @Betty Cracker: +1

    It’s hard to tease out what’s important in schools because kids interact so much outside of the classroom.

    But we do know that public health measures (masking, distancing,  “lockdowns”, etc., etc.) work – they controlled the spread in places that applied them before we had vaccines.  We’re throwing away half of our tools if we say that <b>only</b> vaccines will get us out of this mess. Belts and suspenders…

    Of course, vaccines are vital.  But we can do more while we keep rolling them out.

    And there are reasons for optimism.  Repost – Dean Baker at CEPR – Denmark and the case for optimism on the pandemic.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  64. 64.

    Cermet

    @Ken: Yes, Lincoln did it to Maryland at the start of the civil war; he declared martial law and had arrested any and all legislators that support Maryland secession. It worked very well. Bush the very lesser declared we were invaded and used martial law provisions to lock up certain people as enemy combatants here in the US of a. Since the virus has invaded the country … . Ok, maybe a bit over the top, law wise.

  65. 65.

    Fair Economist

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: My mother has to hire 24 hour home health care and she says it’s almost impossible to get vaccinated caregivers. My thought is that the institutional jobs are pushing hard for vaccination and the gullible ones have been driven out to home assistance jobs, while the smart sitters who got vaccinated have gotten their better-paying jobs.

  66. 66.

    Platonicspoof

    Regarding undercounts of total U.S. COVID deaths, this research paper at The Lancet published July 13, 2021 concluded that:

     

    We estimated that 766,611 deaths attributable to COVID-19 occurred in the United States from March 8, 2020 — May 29, 2021. Of these, 184,477 (24%) deaths were not documented on death certificates.

     

    Figure 3 is “Unrecognized COVID-19–attributable death rates per 100,000” state by state.

  67. 67.

    Hoppie

    Interesting how that Economist reported poll on politicization reinforces the idea that “Independents” are just rethuglicans too embarrassed to admit it.

  68. 68.

    J R in WV

    @Matt McIrvin: 

    My family doc is a year older than I am, from a rural community practicing in Charleston WV — he and his entire office is vaccinated. My dentist, also in CRW and all his staff are fully vaccinated.

    My next door neighbors are vaccinated, one works as an inspector with the county Health Dept, has had a booster shot, the Kanawha County Health Dept appears to have booster shots available for walk ins with any immune system issues.

    I think doctors who are not vaccinated should lose their license to practice, same for nurses, dental assistants and hygenists and dentists as well.

    Health care is a Dangerous occupation in these Trumpian Plague days..!!..

  69. 69.

    Bill Arnold

    @Betty Cracker:

    There’s a lot of conflicting info on the efficacy of masks.

    Be very careful about anti-masker “info”. There are some agenda-driven people out there writing what sometimes superficially look like plausible anti-mask scientific papers, but generally the science is dubious and the references are blatantly cherry-pickied. (I’ve only personally picked apart a couple such papers, to be clear.)
    Masks in a closed indoor area are especially for “source control”, which means pre-filtering the plumes from infected people to reduce the level of virus-laden particles in the shared air.
    Very good masks, like N95 respirators, are also proven to protect their users if well-fitted, and depending on viral load in the air, less efficient masks can protect the user a lot too. The initial scarcity of N95 respirators was due to reserving use for medical professionals in contact with COVID-19 patients.

  71. 71.

    Matt McIrvin

    Just saw another new paper out of Israel, this one claiming that natural immunity from prior COVID infection is considerably more effective than vaccination at preventing both infection and severe disease with Delta.

    It’s interesting to me in that it flatly contradicts several prior studies I’ve seen, and of course antivaxxers are touting it heavily. Not sure what the deal is. Seems interesting in that it studies infection or vaccination happening at the same time, which may be the key variable here–a more recent vaccination will probably be better than an earlier prior infection. And of course it doesn’t say that, other things being equal, being vaccinated is worse than not being vaccinated.

  72. 72.

    Chris T.

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Whenever people complain that COVID deaths were really just “deaths WITH COVID”, it enrages me just because excess-death stats make it so clear that the opposite is true–many thousands of COVID deaths are being recorded as something else.

    Tell them: OK, I’m going to shoot you. Don’t worry, though, you won’t die from a bullet in your head, you’ll only die with a bullet in your head.

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