Forever?

Worldwide (Map) 
August 26, 2021 – 213,854,000 confirmed infections; 4,463,000 deaths
July 29, 2021 – 196,414,175 confirmed infections; 4,194,100 deaths

 
US (Map) 
August 26, 2021 – 38,222,000 confirmed infections; 632,300 deaths
July 29, 2021 – 34,724,000 confirmed infections; 612,050 deaths

 
SA (Coronavirus portal) 
August 26, 2021 – 2,722,205 confirmed infections; 80,470 deaths
July 29, 2021 – 2,422,155 confirmed infections; 71,431 deaths

News blues

The virus will be around “forever”? Advice on how to live with it  – a compendium of articles from The Atlantic Monthly

COVID-19 is not going away. The virus that causes it is on track to become endemic, like the ones that cause the common cold. You’ll probably encounter it at some point, if you haven’t already. 
That doesn’t mean you should stop taking precautions. We can still buy ourselves time  — time to vaccinate more people and avoid deadly hospital surges. But the virus will be part of our lives in the long term.
“We need to prepare people that [the current wave of cases is] not going to come down to zero,” one psychologist warns…

• The virus itself could still get worse.  “Delta could continue to ratchet up its rate of spread, or it could be ousted by another super-infectious variant,” our staff writer Katherine J. Wu warns. “There is no playbook for evolution.”
• Global inequities could worsen as the virus transitions to endemicity. “The human and economic costs of new diseases are borne by all, but unequally,” the historian Kyle Harper reminds us.
• But eventually, the coronavirus will become a less worrisome part of life.  “When everyone has some immunity, a COVID-19 diagnosis becomes as routine as diagnosis of strep or flu”….

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Deaths Data Shows 80% of South Africans May Have Had Covid 

As many as four out of five South Africans may have contracted the coronavirus, indicating that the country may be one of the world’s hardest-hit nations by the disease, the chief actuary at Africa’s biggest health insurer said.
Emile Stipp, the actuary at Discovery Health, based his calculations on the country’s case-fatality rate and excess deaths, a measure of the number of fatalities compared with an historical average. They are thought to provide a more accurate picture of the impact of the pandemic than the official toll.

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The Lincoln Project The Best of Us  (0:41 mins)
Monster Trump Rally  (1:00 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Well, I’m snowed under. My new job – at a Covid vax clinic – presents an hour each way commute for 28 miles each direction. Stop and go traffic up the wazoo. Nine hours putting out fires at the job, supervising the vax-ing of at least 200, and sometimes more than double that number, per day.
The staff is truly amazing. Project manager type that I am, this job presents multiple tasks, from big to little – to occupy my busy mind.
I’ve so much to say about the wonderful work – exhausting as it is - and share what I’m learning about Covid-19. There’s nothing secret or confidential about the information. It is available to anyone who knows where to look. That’ll be my role: indicating areas of good information.
I fly to Texas today, but I plan to begin sharing information over the next couple of days.
Tune in for more….

Hip deep

News blues

The not-so-blue news: “The U.S. administered more than 1 million vaccine doses Friday, marking the third day in a row more than a million shots were distributed, including 526,000 first shots. 
So, finally, with Covid-19 hospitalizations increasing, a greater number of Americans have recently made the decision to get vaccinated than in the last six weeks. .”
(See below for a personal experience of front vaccinations of at least 600 of those 1.05 million doses.)

***

According to Daily Maverick, 80% or as many as four out of five South Africans may have contracted coronavirus, indicating South Africa may be among the world’s hardest-hit nations. 

***

The Lincoln Project Ducey  (0:38 mins)
Last week in the Republican Party, next episode  (1:45 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

We can’t predict the next coronavirus variant. But there are some fundamental principles that explain why the virus has morphed as it has and where we could be headed next. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Posting here took a backseat to working this week – and posting will continue to take a backseat as long as I work in a Covid vaccination clinic. It’s a wild, wild ride!
A reminder: the day after I returned from my 1.5-year unexpected sojourn in South Africa, I was vaxed at a local grocery store. No line, no wait, in and out with vital vax record card in hand. Three weeks later, I repeated the process at the grocery store. Easy peasy. Why travel to a hospital and stand in line?

I work in one vax clinic in a multiple-hospital system that is member-based. My role is to ensure smooth sailing of the day-to-day vaccine program so that medical professionals can vax as many people as show up at the hospital seeking one of the three currently available vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J).
With member medical records residing on the central computer system, check in is, in general, smooth. Member-clients make appointments before they arrive and have their documentation ready for check-in.
With the vaccines and associated collateral – syringes, etc. - provided by the federal government, vax clinic providers must guarantee that anyone who wants a free vaccination can have a free vaccination. In return, the Feds want documentation – and lots of it.
Our vax team consists of 2 client reps checking in clients, 1 client rep managing the line, 2 nurses prepping, 5 to 7 nurses jabbing, and me, smoothing the overall process. My workday begins with updating information on the numbers of registered member clients expected that day.
The member count is easy.
What is not easy is guessing how many unregistered, non-member clients will drop in for jabs – and when.
Until Friday, the process was, for the most part, smooth. Things slow down when nurses take fed Labor Department-mandated lunch breaks of one hour, but for the most part, we manage. Until Friday, numbers of drop ins each day averaged between 175 to 300 - each requiring the generation of a temporary member number and other necessary documents.
Then came Friday.
The unexpected news that immunocompromised people were eligible for a 3rd dose of vaccine threw off everything. Third doses are not booster shots (scheduled to begin mid-September), but people lined up for “booster” shots anyway. Dozens of people were given personalized explanations on the difference between “3rd dose” and “booster”; some went away resigned, some angry.
Dozens of immunocompromised members and non-members arrived, many in wheelchairs or using walkers (blocking hallways).
One person, after taking her second jab and staying for the mandatory 15 minutes of observation, left the clinic… then returned an hour later with dizziness and high blood pressure. The usual protocol is to wheel such a patient to the emergency department. This time, since her symptoms were ambiguous, a nurse and I wheeled her to an upstairs clinic for further observation by an emergency department doctor.
Third dose protocols coincided, too, with opening Pfizer vaccinations to children over 12 years old. Dozens of children - some braver than others - accompanied by parents or guardians, arrived for their first jabs.
Most touching, a young man, blind, came in with his parents for a shot. It took some persuading to seat him, have him raise his sleeve, and accept the jab. Afterwards, he received an ovation.
My next several months promise to provide many insights into people and pandemic. My current over-riding emotions? Grateful that We the People are at the point of accepting lifesaving vaccinations; being part of a team providing lifesaving vaccines; and love, yes, love for the many, many people coming into the clinic, trusting we’re doing our best for them, offering their arms for an Emergency Use Authorized (EUA) vax, and supporting one another, young and old, firm and infirm, all human.
On Friday, our team administered about 600 of the more than 1 million vaccine doses - the third day in a row more than a million shots were distributed across this nation.
Amazing times.,

We expect the FDA to fully approve the Pfizer vaccine on Monday. Once that happens, well, last Friday’s rush will have been a precursor to many more people flooding in…
Bring ‘em on…

Hip to Covid

Worldwide (Map) 

August 19, 2021 – 209,892,500 confirmed infections; 4,401,700 deaths
May 20, 2021 – 164,620,000 confirmed infections; 3,413,350 deaths
December 31, 2020 – 82,656000 confirmed infections; 1,8040100 deaths

US (Map) 
August 19, 2021 – 37,201,600 confirmed infections; 625,150 deaths
May 20, 2021 – 33,026,300 confirmed infections; 587,870 deaths
December 31, 2020 – 19,737,200 confirmed infections; 342,260 deaths

 
SA (Tracker) 
August 19, 2021 – 2,652,660 confirmed infections; 78,694 deaths
May 20, 2021 – 1,621,370 confirmed infections; 55,510 deaths
December 31, 2020 – 1,039,165 confirmed infections; 28,035 deaths

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

A sparse post for today but…
I’m now supervising a Covid vaccination clinic for a large hospital system in California. Soon – this weekend – I’ll have much information about Covid, about folks getting vaccinated, and about the day-to-day life of a worker with one hour commutes at the start and the end of the day.
How do people commute like this for a lifetime?
After just one week, the answer to the question is, “who knows? I couldn’t do it…."

Dumb and dumber

News blues

It’s bleak out there

COVID-19 hospitalizations for people in their 30s have reached a record high in the U.S. in the latest evidence that the dangerous delta variant of the disease poses formidable risks for younger age groups.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a total of 170,852 hospital admissions of those age 30 to 39 from the beginning of August 2020 to last Wednesday. The number of daily admissions, based on a seven-day average, jumped from 908 the week beginning July 29 to 1,113 the week starting Aug. 5. That’s a 22.6% bounce — and still climbing

Read more >> 

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South  Africa records 10,139 new cases and 272 deaths with 10,139 new Covid-19 cases and 272 deaths recorded on Sunday.
This brings the cumulative number of cases in the country to 2,605,586 and the total number of deaths to 77,141.
The number of vaccinations administered is 9,387,129.
KZN officially in its third Covid-19 wave, largely driven by riots

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Not directly related to Covid 19 and our global response to the pandemic, some inevitable news: Donald Trump is on the outs. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving person >>  (3:05 mins)

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Whackidoodle-itude reaches new heights as social media posts claim the coronavirus vaccines can be passed – or “shed” – from an immunized person to an unvaccinated woman and then somehow affect the woman’s reproductive system are whipping around social media.
This is false!

Top medical experts agree that it is impossible for a person to transmit the vaccines to people they happen to be near and for a woman to experience miscarriage, menstrual cycle changes, and other reproductive problems by being around a vaccinated person.
“This is a conspiracy that has been created to weaken trust in a series of vaccines that have been demonstrated in clinical trials to be safe and effective,” said Dr Christopher Zahn, Vice President for Practice Activities at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the leading U.S. organization for medical professionals in women’s healthcare.
Calling the vaccines “our single best tool for confronting a global pandemic that has taken 600,000 lives in this country alone,” Zahn added in a statement emailed to Reuters that “such conspiracies and false narratives are dangerous and have nothing to do with science.”

Read more >> 

…yet more nuttiness

…some straight talk from one ‘Merican to other ‘Mericans  (2:20 mins)
...and another attempt to educate and elucidate, this one from the Republican Accountability Project  (0:55 mins)

Read the current top 10 conspiracy theories >>  

Healthy planet, anyone?

Lilly Geisler goes to a lot of trouble to recycle. So, she left CNN a voicemail asking: How much of my recycling actually gets recycled? John Sutter travels to Muncie, Indiana, to find out.
Watch "Let's Talk About the Climate Apocalypse" series >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Second thoughts on spraying wasps… I did not, after all, spray the wasps that live in my houseboat ceiling. Instead, I was able to complete installing the trim without  further riling up the wasps and inviting more stings. I opted, instead, for the live and let live option. Go wasps!

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Last year’s motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, made the news as a giant Covid super-spreader event. Alas, that wasn’t enough of a lesson for that state’s governor or motorcyclists from around the country. They had to do it again. 
Worrying to learn that, this year, one of the co-owners of the marina in which I moor my houseboat attended this year’s event.
My new job begins tomorrow. Thank the gods it places me far from the marina for at least the next week. That’s not really enough time for Covid infections to replicate – the virus can incubate up to 2 weeks – but I’m still glad to be far from there.