… To kick off the effort, the White House is gathering key federal officials, top scientists, and pharmaceutical executives including representatives of Pfizer and Moderna for a Tuesday “summit” to discuss the new technologies and lay out a road map for developing them.
“These are vaccines that are going to be far more durable, that are going to provide far longer-lasting protection, no matter what the virus does or how it evolves,” Ashish Jha, the White House Covid-19 response coordinator, said in an interview. “If we can drive down infections by 90% … Covid really begins to fade into the background, and becomes just one more respiratory illness that we have to deal with.”
Jha acknowledged that such a campaign would likely require more money from Congress, though he declined to provide a specific estimate.
The summit is the strongest sign of support to date for developing a new generation of Covid-19 vaccines — an effort that several prominent researchers have long advocated, but that has languished due to lack of investment. Several of those scientists praised the new White House initiative, expressing hope that it is a harbinger of bigger steps that will yield a next generation of Covid vaccines…
“We have fantastic vaccines that are actually doing a lot of good right now and are quite safe,” Jha said. “And so the bar for approving new vaccines is going to be that it has to be better than that. And that’s going to be a high bar.”
While hospitalization rates remain low compared to the devastating Covid waves of January 2021, September 2021, and January 2022, they have steadily climbed since April, as contagious viral variants including BA.4 and BA.5 have rapidly spread. There is really no predicting, experts say, what the virus will throw at society next.
“There’s a sense that we’re playing catch-up with the virus,” Jha said. “The virus is constantly evolving. We’re having to evolve with it, that’s fine. But over the long run, we really need a serious breakthrough.”
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In a normal timeline, the story below would’ve been the lead — or even deserving of its own, prime-time post. But the America-first grifters, the conspiracy theorists, and the media enabling them have dug in so deeply that it’s going to make absolutely no bloody difference in this one. For the record — here’s the first of a long, meaty thread with lots of links:
Where did the pandemic begin?
Was it from nature or a lab?
Since the start, this fundamental question has gone unanswered.
Until now.
Out in @ScienceMagazine: SARS-CoV-2 emerged into humans via the live animal trade at the Huanan Seafood Market.https://t.co/hnl9j3E6j6
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) July 26, 2022
Key visual: All the known early infections spread out from the ‘bullseye’ target of the wet market —
Analysis of spatial distributions of early #COVID19 cases and environmental samples from the Huanan market point to the market as the epicenter of #SARSCoV2 emergence, from activities associated with wildlife trade. https://t.co/tykjmEOGxW @MichaelWorobey @K_G_Andersen pic.twitter.com/THYDkLualC
— Science Magazine (@ScienceMagazine) July 26, 2022
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Speaking of stories that will change nothing, except the historical record — Politico with a book extract on “The One Time Trump Couldn’t Lie His Way Out of a Crisis”. India, February 2020:
… Trump had known for a while that COVID-19 was poised to spark a pandemic unlike the globe had seen in a hundred years. After he and other top aides, among them Mike Pence and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, initially downplayed warnings coming from elsewhere in the administration — including from national security aide Matt Pottinger and trade adviser Peter Navarro — the president had grown convinced of the danger posed by what he often dubbed “the plague.” He confided in the journalist Bob Woodward as far back as February 7 that he knew the virus was deadly.
But publicly, Trump lied.
He lied at the gathering of the world’s elite in Davos, Switzerland on January 22, saying, “It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” He lied days later in Michigan, declaring that “everything’s going to be great” and falsely claiming, “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” He later said the virus was going to have “a very good ending for it.” And with an eye toward Wall Street, he lied to the entrepreneurs in India, declaring “as far as what we’re doing with the new virus, I think that we’re doing a great job.”
But the markets fell again that day Trump spoke in New Delhi, creating their biggest two-day slide in four years, and things were about to get worse. None of Trump’s magic words would prevent the Dow from losing 37 percent of its value from February to March, shocking the market when it dropped almost 3,000 points on March 16 — its worst single-day plummet in history…
By October, Trump’s lies about COVID caught up with him when he was hospitalized, ill with a potentially deadly disease after nearly a year of flouting the rules, believing that wearing a mask would, as he told aides, make him look like “a pussy.”
After he was discharged from Walter Reed, and with the lighting just so, Trump strode up the steps to the Truman Balcony. Though still highly contagious, he tore off his mask before stepping inside. Reporters on the lawn, though, noticed something odd: Trump immediately backtracked out to the balcony again before returning inside, as if recreating his entrance. And that’s what he did: He was using the moment to film a video marking his so-called triumph over COVID.
Trump, though having required emergency hospitalization, was once more downplaying the virus. More than 200,000 Americans already had died. And as much as the president was trying to project strength, to convey the impression that he was impervious and could bully and trick his latest and greatest foe into submission, a careful watch of the video depicting him ripping the mask from his face showed a different story.
Trump was gasping for air…
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NOT HELPING, Bloomberg!
That, I suspect, is the tweet that will go viral. Here’s a less hyper version of the story:
China’s central metropolis of Wuhan temporarily shut some businesses and public transport in a district with almost a million people on Wednesday, as the city where the pandemic first emerged raised vigilance after several new infections.
China, heavily invested in its “dynamic COVID zero” policy, relies on mass testing, quick restriction on business activity and people’s movements and strict quarantine of cases to block nascent clusters from widening…
Wuhan’s district of Jiangxia, with over 900,000 residents, said its main urban areas must enter a three-day restriction from Wednesday, during which it will ban many large group events and dining at restaurants, close various public entertainment venues, agricultural product marketplaces and small clinics and suspend bus and subway services.
It also urged residents not to leave the area during the three days and encouraged travellers to avoid entry.
The order came quickly after Jiangxia authorities said late on Tuesday they had detected two cases during regular testing drives and found another two from the screening of individuals who came in close contact with infection.
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BA.5 in Australia
New record of hospitalizations @covidbaseau
Sharp rise in deaths @OurWorldInData pic.twitter.com/PQYcZtmSOl— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) July 26, 2022
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If only for the photo…
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#LongCovid: It's not just adults. A non-trivial rate of what's also called post-Covid condition—PCC—is being reported in kids after severe & moderate Covid. Out of 1884 kids who received 90-day follow-up, 5.8% had some form of PCC: cough, fatigue, weakness https://t.co/DWv1nCGgAl
— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) July 26, 2022
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Reader Interactions
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YY_Sima Qian
On 7/26 Mainland China reported 79 new domestic confirmed (51 previously asymptomatic), 525 new domestic asymptomatic cases, 0 new domestic suspect cases, & 0 new deaths.
Guangdong Province reported 3 new domestic confirmed (2 previously asymptomatic) & 4 new domestic asymptomatic cases. 13 domestic confirmed cases & 13 domestic asymptomatic cases recovered. There currently are 133 active domestic confirmed & 132 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province. As the province does not break down recoveries by jurisdictions, I cannot traced the active domestic cases in each jurisdictions due to multiple clusters at the same time.
Guangxi “Autonomous” Region reported 33 new domestic confirmed (20 previously asymptomatic) & 236 new domestic asymptomatic cases. 12 domestic confirmed & 20 domestic asymptomatic case recovered. There currently are 386 active domestic confirmed & 2,091 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the region.
At Haikou in Hainan Province 6 domestic confirmed & 1 domestic asymptomatic cases recovered. There currently are 17 active domestic confirmed & 4 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the city.
At Zhijiang County in Huaihua, Hunan Province, there currently is 1 active domestic asymptomatic case remaining.
Wuhan at Hubei Province reported 4 new domestic asymptomatic cases, all at Jiangxia District, 2 found via community screening & traced close contacts under centralized quarantine. 1 of the community cases is a free lance construction workers that does odd jobs at a number of sites across the city, so there is significant risk of a wider outbreak. W/ this in mind, the municipal authorities started city-wide mass screening, aimed to complete by midnight on 7/26, w/ further testing in the morning of 7/27 to pick up stragglers. 4 sites are currently at High Risk, & 4 at Medium Risk.
At Inner Mongolia “Autonomous” Region 1 domestic confirmed case recovered. There currently are 3 active domestic confirmed (2 at Bayan Bur & 1 at Hohhot) cases remaining.
Gansu Province reported 15 new domestic confirmed (12 previously asymptomatic) & 219 new domestic asymptomatic cases. 37 domestic confirmed & 59 domestic asymptomatic case recovered. There currently are 417 active domestic confirmed & 2,996 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province. As the province does not separate recoveries by jurisdictions, I cannot track the count of active domestic cases at the different jurisdictions, due to the simultaneous outbreaks in different locations.
At Ürumqi in Xinjiang “Autonomous” Region there currently are 4 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the city. 3 sites are currently at High Risk, & 1 at Medium Risk.
Shandong Province reported 1 new domestic confirmed & 20 new domestic asymptomatic, all at Heze, 2 traced close contacts or community screening, 11 via screening of residents in areas at elevated risk, & 3 via voluntary testing. 24 domestic asymptomatic cases recovered. There currently are 4 active domestic confirmed (3 at Heze & 1 at Heze) & 87 (29 at Linyi & 58 at Heze) domestic asymptomatic cases remaining. 14 sites at Heze are currently at High Risk, & 21 at Medium Risk.
Henan Province reported 1 new domestic confirmed & 7 new domestic asymptomatic cases. 33 domestic asymptomatic cases recovered. There currently are 8 active domestic confirmed & 374 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.
At Liaoning Province there currently are 2 active domestic asymptomatic cases remaining. As the province does not break down recoveries by administrative divisions, I cannot track the count of active cases in administrative divisions, given the multiple simultaneous outbreaks. 1 site at Dandong is currently at High Risk, & 1 at Medium Risk.
At Yushu in Changchun, Jilin Province there currently are 43 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the city. 1 site is currently at High Risk, & 2 at Medium Risk.
Beijing Municipality did not report any new domestic positive cases. The municipality is not publishing the count of active domestic positive cases there. 1 site is currently at High Risk, & 2 at Medium Risk.
Tianjin Municipality reported 1 new domestic asymptomatic case, found at fever clinic. 1 domestic confirmed & 1 domestic asymptomatic cases recovered. There currently are 2 active domestic confirmed & 55 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the city. 4 sites are currently at High Risk, & 10 at Medium Risk.
Shanghai Municipality reported 2 new domestic confirmed & 14 new domestic asymptomatic cases, 15 are traced close contacts under centralized quarantine & 1 via community screening (at Baoshan District). 5 domestic confirmed & 20 domestic asymptomatic cases recovered. There currently are 34 active domestic confirmed (none serious) in the city. The city is no longer publishing the number of active asymptomatic cases. 8 sites are currently at High Risk & 62 at Medium Risk.
Anhui Province reported 2 new domestic asymptomatic cases. 9 domestic confirmed & 72 domestic asymptomatic cases recovered. There currently are 49 active domestic confirmed & 394 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.
Jiangsu Province reported 1 new domestic asymptomatic (at Suzhou) case, a person coming from out of province. 1 domestic confirmed & 11 domestic asymptomatic cases recovered. There currently are 11 active domestic & 46 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province. As the province does not separate recoveries by jurisdictions, I cannot track the count of active domestic cases at the different jurisdictions, due to the simultaneous outbreaks in different locations.
Zhejiang Province reported 1 new domestic asymptomatic (at Taizhou) case, a person coming from Shangqiu in Henan & found via community screening. 1 domestic confirmed & 2 domestic asymptomatic cases recovered. As the province does not break down recoveries by imported & domestic cases, I cannot track the count of active domestic cases there. 5 sites at. Taizhou are currently at High Risk, & 2 at Medium Risk.
At Fujian Province 3 domestic confirmed & 8 domestic asymptomatic cases recovered. There currently are 2 active domestic confirmed & 32 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province. As the province does not separate recoveries by jurisdictions, I cannot track the count of active domestic cases at the different jurisdictions, due to the simultaneous outbreaks in different locations. All areas of the province are now at Low Risk.
Jiangxi Province reported 2 new domestic confirmed & 5 new domestic asymptomatic cases, all at Nanchang, all traced close contacts under centralized quarantine. 3 domestic confirmed & 8 asymptomatic cases recovered. There currently are 11 active domestic confirmed (all at Nanchang) & 51 active domestic asymptomatic (50 at Nanchang & 1 at Ji’an) cases in the city. 6 sites at Nanchang are currently at High Risk, & 9 at Medium Risk.
Sichuan Province reported 19 new domestic confirmed (15 previously asymptomatic, 12 at Chengdu & 7 at Meishan) & 9 new domestic asymptomatic (8 at Chengdu & 1 at Neijiang) cases. 8 of the new domestic positive cases at Chengdu were previously asymptomatic, 7 are traced close contacts under centralized quarantine, & 5 via screening of residents in areas at elevated risk. The cases at Meishan were previously asymptomatic. The case at Neijiang came from out of province & tested positive during at home health monitoring period. As the province does not break down recoveries by imported & domestic cases, I cannot track the count of active domestic cases there. 64 sites at Chengdu & 2 at Meishan are currently at High Risk. 69 sites at Chengdu & 1 at Meishan are currently at Medium Risk.
Chongqing Municipality reported 3 new domestic confirmed (2 previously asymptomatic, 2 at Jiangjin District & 1 at Changshou District) cases, the new domestic positive case is a traced close contact under centralized quarantine. 2 domestic asymptomatic cases recovered. There currently are 17 active domestic confirmed & 4 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the city. 5 sites are currently at High Risk, & 2 are currently at Medium Risk.
At Guiyang in Guizhou Province the domestic confirmed case recovered.
At Xining in Qinghai Province the domestic asymptomatic case recovered.
Honghe Prefecture in Yunnan Province reported 2 new domestic asymptomatic cases (both at Jinping County). There currently are 1 active domestic confirmed & 45 active domestic asymptomatic cases there.
Imported Cases
On 7/26, Mainland China reported 41 new imported confirmed cases (4 previously asymptomatic), 58 imported asymptomatic cases, 1 imported suspect case:
Overall in Mainland China, 130 confirmed cases recovered (37 imported), 303 asymptomatic cases were released from isolation (30 imported) & 55 were reclassified as confirmed cases (4 imported), & 10,283 individuals were released from quarantine. Currently, there are 1,796 active confirmed cases in the country (536 imported), 23 in serious/critical condition (domestic), 7,197 active asymptomatic cases (522 imported), 1 suspect case (imported). 122,482 traced contacts are currently under centralized quarantine.
As of 7/26, 3,4169.441M vaccine doses have been injected in Mainland China, an increase of 803K doses in the past 24 hrs.
On 7/26 Macau did not report any new positive cases. There were 0 new deaths.
On 7/26 Hong Kong added 4,508 new positive cases, 220 imported & 4,288 domestic (1,595 via RT-PCR & 2,380 from rapid antigen tests), 10 deaths (84 – 96 y.o.).
On 7/26, Taiwan added 25,692 new positive cases, 171 imported & 25,521 domestic (including 154 moderate or serious). There were 28 new deaths (ages ranging from 30+ y.o. to 90+ y.o., actual dates of death range from 5/14 – 7/24, 25 w/ underlying conditions, 10 fully vaccinated & boosted).
NeenerNeener
Monroe County, NY:
82 new cases for 7/25/22
89 new cases for 7/26/22
(PCR tests only)
Deaths now at 1919.
Vaccinations now at 72.7%
New Deal democrat
Let’s start with Biobot, since wastewater doesn’t lie. The bad news is, it shows a nearly 50% increase between June 29 and July 20. The good news is, in the last week of that period, between July 13 and July 20, it only increased less than 4%, suggesting that the BA.5/July 4 superspreader celebration wave has peaked, at a level equivalent to 500,000 “real” cases (from a starting point of 350,000). The only region where wastewater has not plateaued is the Midwest.
Meanwhile, the CDC variant data indicates that by the end of last week, BA.4&5 constituted 95% of all cases. This is consistent with infections from these variants being at or past peak. All regions of the country had similar variant profiles. There is no new variant making any appearance.
Confirmed cases have remained between 120-130,000, with yesterday at 129,000. Only the Midwest region shows a slight increase, including the States of IL, IA, KY, MI, and NE. Elsewhere NY, NJ, and CA have plateaued. Hospitalizations have continued to increase, to 46,700, consistent with evidence that BA.5 in particular is more virulent. Deaths, at 429, have continued to plateau at roughly 100 more daily than the March-June period.
I think the BA.5 wavette has peaked, although whether we have a sustained plateau, or going into a substantial decline is completely unknown, but based on the experience of South Africa, I think the latter is more likely.
p.a.
Great, now I have to wish Joe Manchin well to at least continue the job of diluting tRumpublican Nazification of the Federal Court system.
This timeline… 🤬
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s Ministry of Health reported 4,759 new Covid-19 cases yesterday, for a cumulative reported total of 4,659,710 cases. It also reported nine deaths for an adjusted cumulative total of 35,932 deaths – 0.77% of the cumulative reported total, 0.78% of resolved cases.
30,939 Covid-19 tests were conducted on 23rd July, with a positivity rate of 9.0%.
There were 46,260 active cases yesterday, 56 fewer than the day before. 1,477 were in hospital. 52 confirmed cases were in ICU; of these patients, 28 confirmed cases were on ventilators. Meanwhile, 4,806 more patients recovered, for a cumulative total of 4,577,518 patients recovered – 98.2% of the cumulative reported total.
4,756 new cases reported yesterday were local infections. Three new cases were imported.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 16,656 doses of vaccine on 26th July: 377 first doses, 4,435 second doses, 1,383 first booster doses, and 10,461 second booster doses. The cumulative total is 71,978,984 doses administered: 28,066,295 first doses, 27,429,011 second doses, 16,178,591 first booster doses and 305,087 second booster doses. 85.9% of the population have received their first dose, 84.0% their second dose, 49.5% their first booster dose, and 0.9% their second booster dose.
OzarkHillbilly
Abbott shows again that the GOP really couldn’t give a shit about children once they are born.
eclare
@OzarkHillbilly: I read that article you posted yesterday about the prisoners watching cats, very touching.
NotMax
@New Deal democrat
Wastewater, you say?
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
No lie told
WereBear
I have never screamed into the void as much as I have lately.
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear: When you scream into the void, the void screams back.
@eclare: Glad you enjoyed it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
You all may remember a couple of days ago when I talked about my DIL’s father (with blood cancer) being kicked out of rehab. She took him straight back to the ER, where they admitted him. Good thing they did. Turns out there’s a huge blood clot in his leg.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I wonder what his lungs look like. If he’s anything like me, they might look like apple trees.
eclare
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Seems like that would a huge legal issue, to kick someone out of rehab who then upon release gets admitted to a hospital. When my parents were in rehab, ambulances were called, and both were taken to the hospital when they needed to be. The rehab place would call to inform me.
Glad he is where he can get the treatment he needs and is taken care of. That must be a huge relief to everyone
Obligatory keep *all* paperwork.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@OzarkHillbilly: @eclare: The poor guy. I really feel for him. All he wants is to go home and have things be the way they were.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@eclare: Profit-driven medicine will be the literal death of us
WereBear
@Dorothy A. Winsor: How else can they monetize human life?
Hunger games.
eclare
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Understandable. I would want that too.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It ain’t no fun.
VOR
Microsoft announced earnings yesterday with growth slowing to 12% or $5.7B over prior year. The earnings press release blamed “Extended production shutdowns in China that continued through May”, i.e. COVID restrictions, for a slowdown in PC sales and a 2% decline in Windows OEM revenue from prior year. This may explain articles or editorials in US Business press like the Bloomberg piece since China’s COVID efforts are hurting profitability of US corporations.
Kevin
I’m just here to say fuck Greg Abbott. What an asshat.
O. Felix Culpa
@Kevin:
Seconded.
Geo Wilcox
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Will be, it already is.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
As you likely well know, as we age, nothing can be the way it was.
We want it to be, but we never get that wish.
WereBear
@Ruckus: It’s true! Yet, I have managed to accumulate wisdom to make up for it, and I’m running with that.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
@WereBear:
I hate to say this but you are both correct.
Elevating money over health never works. And the thing is that money is important, it’s just not that or as important. At least it shouldn’t be.
Ruckus
@WereBear:
Being aware of the issues and working through them is one of the things that makes it work better. Denial is not just a river.
Ruckus
@Kevin:
Thirded.
If conservative politicians had at least one fucking clue, or even one drop of imagination, they wouldn’t seem like the death squad. They are fighting wars they lost long ago. They seem to think that life was better when everyone had a musket and one or two people in town held the most of the money, when big business required 2 people to gather the eggs their chickens laid, when illness often meant death, when time could be told with a sun dial. Or starring into the sun. The further we go along in time the farther back they go. Regressive fucks. I wonder if they actually have any real ideas, especially about what they are going to do if they catch the stupidity car they are chasing.
Betty
The AP fact check shows how dangerous parody can be in this era of QANON and the like. They will believe anything but actual facts.
YY_Sima Qian
Yeah, the Bloomberg piece on the situation in Wuhan is pretty cringe worthy, but par for the course. I do think even the movement restrictions enacted in Jiangxia District is an overreaction, since the city-wide mass screening ordered from yesterday afternoon does not seem to have turned up positive batches. No additional rounds of mass screenings have been ordered, yet, so outside of Jiangxia District we are back to needing to be tested once every 5 days. If no other community cases pop up in Jiangxia, I would expect all movement restrictions to be lifted at the end of the 3 days of “quiet” period.
Most western MSM coverage use the click-bait of “hundreds of millions under some degree of movement control”, ignoring the fact that there is a wide variation in the degree of movement controls depending on the location & the status of the outbreak. The only places under full lock down are Lanzhou in Gansu (specifically Chengguan District) & Beihai in Guangxi (specifically Haicheng & Yinhai Districts). Most places w/ restrictions are following the kind of policies that South Korea had employed from 2020 to 2021, but w/ added mass screening campaigns to try to achieve elimination as opposed to the latter’s suppression. The only way that China Beige Book can arrive at 1/5 of Chinese population under movement control is if they are counting the entire populations of Gansu, Anhui, Henan & Guangxi Provinces, Shanghai, Tianjin & Beijing Municipalities, & Chengdu in Sichuan, Line & Heze in Shandong, Nanchang in Jiangxi, & Shenzhen in Guangdong as under restrictions. That is not the case.
Last week, we had colleagues visiting Shenzhen from Beijing, as well as colleague coming from Shenzhen to Wuhan, despite the ongoing low level outbreak at Shenzhen. This would have been unthinkable a couple of month ago under the older version of China National Commissions’s pandemic response guidelines. The newest version significantly curtailed the extent of areas to be placed under movement control when there are positive cases (which also correspond to the extent of areas where travelers originating from are required to quarantine upon arriving at destination), the duration of quarantines for close contacts, & duration for areas designated at elevated risk, all reflecting the shorter incubation periods of the Omicron variants.
I do sense growing population weariness w/ “Dynamic COVID Zero”, due to the markedly increasing frequency of domestic clusters & outbreaks triggering restrictions, but the newer policies are also making the restrictions less widely applied & for shorter durations, to reduce the impact to society & the economy.
The Moar You Know
I don’t know why anyone in 2022 is still trying to prove where COVID came from. The sane people already have known for two years that it came out of that damn “wet market”. The 47% of psychotic nutbags we have to share the country with “know” that it came out of a “Chinese bioweapons lab” funded by Democrats and no amount of science is going to convince them otherwise.
I despair of this nation.
Ohio Mom
@The Moar You Know: Of course it came from the wet market, but for argument’s sake, it hardly matters. It’s loose upon the world and now that is the realty we must address.
YY_Sima Qian
Great work by the teams that authored the papers published in Science, & the published version improved upon the pre-prints in several important areas. It is a shame, & shameful, that it took a team of western scientists to conduct such an investigation w/o active support of Chinese colleagues. Chinese scientists are in far better position to carry out such an investigation, w/ far better access to more complete data, but the CCP regime deterred any such efforts from relatively early on, partly in response to the lab leak CT coming from the US. Yet another example of the deleterious effects of Great Power Competition.
J R in WV
The way most people have been and are responding to the Covid19 Trump-plague is really dispiriting.
What happens when we get a newly mutated virus which is as transmissible as the BA.4 and BA.5 varients of Covid, but with a much more serious fatality rate?
Will people reject masks again?
Claim the vaccines are poisonous?
Lunatics!! Even if there is Scopolamine in vaccines who cares? Wife uses it routinely for motion sickness when we travel. Crazy is so strange!!
I hate mask wearing too, but I do it 95% of the time, always when around a medical facility or a big crowd. Sometimes not when at the Farmer’s Market picking out fresh corn, but mostly there too, outdoors. Always in the big Kroger’s we shop at.
Primer Gray (formerly yet another Jeff)
@eclare:
The first time I tried to go to rehab, they found I had blood clots and then kicked me out…straight into an ambulance to go across the street to the ER…where I got to lay on a gurney in the hallway for the next 11 hours.
They told me yep, you have blood clots…then admitted me for a few days and put me on blood thinners…then it took a few days to get back into rehab since they were resisting letting me back in since they’d kicked me out.
Last summer was not my best summer.
Ruckus
@Primer Gray (formerly yet another Jeff):
I just got back from a trip across Los Angeles County, 50 miles each way, train and bus. Almost no one on the train was unmasked and I saw the bus driver on the return not even open the door for someone who wasn’t wearing a mask, until they put it on. Mask wearing in stores seems to be better than about 90% right now. Even those who look like they sleep in their clothes had masks for the most part.