The OC Health Care Agency reported 2,662 more cases of the coronavirus between Friday, July 1, and Tuesday, July 5, increasing the cumulative total since tracking began in the county to 606,717.
There were 13,896 new cases reported in the last two-week period as of Tuesday. The county is averaging 31 new cases a day per every 100,000 residents.
There were 227 people reported in Orange County hospitals with coronavirus on Tuesday, including 30 who required intensive care.
The county reported no new deaths on Tuesday, keeping the count of Orange County residents who have died from the virus to 7,126.
The data on deaths in the county is compiled from death certificates, or gathered through the course of case investigations, and can take weeks to process. The most recent death recorded was on June 28.
Of the 7,126 deaths reported from the virus, 1,354 were skilled nursing facility residents, 714 were in assisted living facilities, two were OC jail inmates, and 21 were listed as homeless.
It is estimated 575,284 people in the county have recovered from the virus. The count of people who have recovered is based on the prior 28-day cumulative case count.
Data posted each day is preliminary and subject to change, officials emphasize. More information may become available as individual case investigations are completed. The Orange County Health Care Agency dashboard can be found here.
Click here to download a pdf copy of the daily tracker.
The fast-changing coronavirus has kicked off summer in the U.S. with lots of infections but relatively few deaths compared to its prior incarnations.
COVID-19 is still killing hundreds of Americans each day, but is not nearly as dangerous as it was last fall and winter.
Its going to be a good summer and we deserve this break, said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.
With more Americans shielded from severe illness through vaccination and infection, COVID-19 has transformed for now at least into an unpleasant, inconvenient nuisance for many.
It feels cautiously good right now, said Dr. Dan Kaul, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor. For the first time that I can remember, pretty much since it started, we dont have any (COVID-19) patients in the ICU.
As the nation marks July Fourth, the average number of daily deaths from COVID-19 in the United States is hovering around 360. Last year, during a similar summer lull, it was around 228 in early July. That remains the lowest threshold in U.S. daily deaths since March 2020, when the virus first began its U.S. spread.
But there were far fewer reported cases at this time last year fewer than 20,000 a day. Now, its about 109,000 and likely an undercount as home tests arent routinely reported.
Today, in the third year of the pandemic, its easy to feel confused by the mixed picture:Repeat infections are increasingly likely, and a sizeable share of those infected will face the lingering symptoms oflong COVID-19.
Yet, the stark danger of death has diminished for many people.
And thats because were now at a point that everyones immune system has seen either the virus or the vaccine two or three times by now, said Dr. David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Over time, the body learns not to overreact when it sees this virus.
What were seeing is that people are getting less and less ill on average, Dowdy said.
As many as 8 out of 10 people in the U.S. have been infected at least once, according to one influential model.
The death rate for COVID-19 has been a moving target, but recently has fallen to within the range of an average flu season, according to data analyzed by Arizona State University health industry researcher Mara Aspinall.
At first, some people said coronavirus was no more deadly than the flu, and for a long period of time, that wasnt true, Aspinall said. Back then, people had no immunity. Treatments were experimental. Vaccines didnt exist.
Now, Aspinall said, the built-up immunity has driven down the death rate to solidly in the range of a typical flu season. Over the past decade, the death rate for flu was about 5% to 13% of those hospitalized.
Big differences separate flu from COVID-19: The behavior of the coronavirus continues to surprise health experts and its still unclear whether it will settle into a flu-like seasonal pattern.
Last summer when vaccinations first became widely available in the U.S. was followed by the delta surge and then the arrival of omicron, which killed 2,600 Americans a day at its peak last February.
Experts agree a new variant might arise capable of escaping the populations built-up immunity. And the fast-spreading omicron subtypes BA.4 and BA.5 might also contribute to a change in the death numbers.
We thought we understood it until these new subvariants emerged, said Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious disease specialist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Texas.
It would be wise, he said, to assume that a new variant will come along and hit the nation later this summer.
And then another late fall-winter wave, Hotez said.
In the next weeks, deaths could edge up in many states, but the U.S. as a whole is likely to see deaths decline slightly, said Nicholas Reich, who aggregates coronavirus projections for the COVID-19 Forecast Hub in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Weve seen COVID hospitalizations increase to around 5,000 new admissions each day from just over 1,000 in early April. But deaths due to COVID have only increased slightly over the same time period, said Reich, a professor of biostatistics at University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Unvaccinated people have a six times higher risk of dying from COVID-19 compared with people with at least a primary series of shots, the CDC estimated based on available data from April.
This summer, consider your own vulnerability and that of those around you, especially in large gatherings since the virus is spreading so rapidly, Dowdy said.
There are still people who are very much at risk, he said.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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A week before the UKs first coronavirus lockdown, a lab worker at Aneurin Bevan University Health Board in Newport was screening nose and throat swabs from an intensive care patient. The paperwork carried no clinical details and the swabs were not double-bagged to indicate high risk. As such, the work was done on an open bench. But the swabs were more dangerous than thought. It later emerged that they came from a patient who was fighting for their life with Covid.
The incident in March 2020 was among the first of dozens of mishaps, blunders and failures involving Covid that the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) investigated over the course of the pandemic. With so many labs, hospitals, universities and test centres handling the virus, such incidents came as no surprise.
Two blunders at the Royal Wolverhampton hospitals NHS trust in April 2020 were typical of incidents early in the pandemic. Covid samples from infected patients were knocked off racks into lab areas where staff were working. Whilst no actual harm occurred, the consequences of the incidents could potentially have been more serious, the HSE found.
A month later, a scientist at Public Health Englands Porton Down laboratory was bitten on the forearm while scooping a Covid-infected ferret from its cage. On removing their PPE and protective suit, the researcher noticed the bite had drawn blood. They showered to clean the wound and on advice from the on-call medic, went home to self-isolate and monitor the wound.
The HSE met with Public Health England in April 2021, 11 months after the ferret incident, and reported significant progress at Porton Down, but managers at the site acknowledged a substantial amount of work that remains outstanding. The same day, the lab received an enforcement letter from the HSE about a January 2021 mix-up over Covid samples, which led to scientists pipetting live virus on the lab bench, believing it had been killed.
PHE was not the only government agency brought up on safety concerns. One Sunday morning in November 2020, a staff member at the National Institute for Biological Standards and Control, operated by the UKs Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, found that a room housing Covid-infected marmosets and hamsters had flooded. The water, pouring from a hose left on in a sink, was a few inches deep but had not entered the animals cages. Some of the water was collected and poured down the sink, without being disinfected first.
According to HSE reports, the flood spread to the neighbouring corridor and leaked into the office below. There, staff in full PPE and breathing equipment quickly covered electrical equipment and bagged up damaged ceiling tiles. The remaining wastewater was disinfected and poured down the drain. Whilst it cannot be fully concluded whether or not live virus might have [been] present in the leaked water, the likelihood appears to be minimal, the HSE concluded.
To meet the massive demand for Covid tests, the government swiftly created and staffed its Lighthouse laboratories, which ran millions of PCR tests each week. The HSE reports highlight numerous times when samples were spilled on technicians or found to have leaked, with whole trays of test samples sometimes dropped or knocked over.
A week before Christmas in 2020, as the Alpha variant was fuelling the UKs deadliest wave of Covid, the Milton Keynes lab was ordered, at the last minute, to divert more than 3,000 samples to the Alderley Park Lighthouse lab in Cheshire. Without proper mediboxes to package them in, staff secured the samples in waterproof wrap and sent them off in a transport cage.
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The decision was made in an effort to salvage specimens for testing, rather than discarding and not testing 3,000 plus patients, the HSE report notes. But staff at Alderley Park were not impressed and considered it a breach of transport regulations. Luckily no leaked or damaged samples were detected, they told the investigation.
Further incidents highlighted problems with home test kits. Some swabs failed to snap in the right place, meaning people had to force them into sample tubes before closing the lids. On being opened at Lighthouse labs, these sprang out and sometimes splattered PPE-clad technicians. Robots had their moments too. At the Leamington Spa Lighthouse lab in July 2021, a robot flicked a swab out of a containment cabinet and on to the floor, prompting a swift evacuation until a spillage team arrived.
In spring 2021, the Department of Health was rolling out an alternative to PCR known as the Lamp test. A lab run by the UK Health Security Agency and Manchester University NHS foundation trust was having problems with the test and hosted an expert from the University of Central Lancashire to help troubleshoot. After running tests on what were thought to be harmless control samples, it emerged that two were Covid-positive saliva. Because the work had been done without appropriate precautions, all five people in the room, including a member of the Department of Healths Tiger Team were sent home to self-isolate.
COVID-19 was the third-leading cause of death in the U.S. between March 2020 and October 2021, according to an analysis of federal data released Tuesday.
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, analyzed death certificate data and found that the coronavirus accounted for 350,000 deaths 1 in every 8 in the U.S. during that 20-month period.
The data illustrates the toll of the pandemic, as COVID-19 was a top-five cause of death in every age group aged 15 years and older.
Heart disease was the No. 1 cause of death, followed by cancer, whichaccounted for a total of 1.29 million deaths combined.
Compared with 2020, deaths from COVID-19 in 2021 decreased in ranking among those aged 85 years and older but increased in ranking among those aged 15 to 54 years and became the leading cause of death among those aged 45 to 54 years.
Among those aged 85 and older, the coronavirus was the second-leading cause of death in 2020 but dropped to third in 2021, likely because of targeted vaccination efforts in this age group.
According to the study, COVID-19 increased from the fifth- to the second-leading cause of death among people aged 35 to 44 years, from 6,100 deaths up to 13,000.
Compared with 2020, COVID-19 became the fourth-leading cause of death in 2021 among those aged 25 to 34 years, at 5,000 deaths, and those aged 15 to 24 years, with 1,100 deaths.
The authors noted that the increased ranking of COVID-19 as a leading cause of death in some age groups matches a downward age shift in the distribution of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. in 2021 compared with 2020. This trend could be attributed to higher vaccination rates among elderly and more vulnerable people.
Vaccines are now authorized for every American at least 6 months old, but only about 67 percent of the population is up to date with the shots. Booster shots are authorized and recommended for everyone down to age 5, but less than 50 percent of the eligible population has received one.
In a recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Ultrasound, researchers assessed the influence of severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on scrotal infections.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, various patients reported different types of symptoms. Some patients also experienced symptoms like epididymitis and acute orchitis.
In the present study, researchers investigated the association between COVID-19 disease severity and scrotal infections.
The study cohort included adult men who were hospitalized following a positive COVID-19 diagnosis via a reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test and underwent scrotal ultrasonography (US) testing from October 2021 to February 2022. Before the US examinations, each study participant was investigated for medical history as well as symptoms related to scrotal infections.
Patients who had a positive RT-PCR result for COVID-19 and a chest computed tomography (CT) were eligible for the study. The eligible participants were classified into groups based on the disease severity: (1) type 1 included patients displaying mild symptoms without any abnormal radiological findings, (2) type 2 included patients displaying mild symptoms as well as the presence of pneumonia on the chest CT scans, (3) type 3 included patients exhibiting either a low oxygen partial pressure or a high respiratory rate in the arterial blood, and (4) type 4 included patients who needed mechanical ventilation and had a history of either shock or organ dysfunction resulting in an intensive care unit (ICU) admission.
The patients were examined using US for scrotal findings 15 days after the positive COVID-19 diagnosis. During US, the team assessed unilateral or bilateral involvement, heterogeneity in echogenicity, enlargement of and increased blood flow in the epididymis and testis, as well as detection of an epididymal abscess.
Enlargement of and increased blood flow in the epididymis and testis and heterogeneous echogenicity are the primary US findings correlated to acute orchitis while minor manifestations included a thickened tunica albuginea, scrotal wall edema, and hydrocele. The detection of all the three main features, or any two main features along with a minimum of one minor feature was deemed as the diagnostic standard for acute orchitis. Additionally, the detection of all three main features, or any two main characteristics with one minor feature was the diagnostic standard for acute epididymitis.
Scrotal US findings of the study cohorts were investigated and compared while the ages and laboratory test results of the patients were assessed and classified. The team assessed the association of acute scrotal infections with comorbidities including hyperlipidemia, hypertension, coronary artery disease, hepatic cirrhosis, chronic liver disease, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
The study results showed that among the 213 eligible patients, 7% had acute orchitis, 3.7% had acute epididymitis, and 7.9% had acute epididymo-orchitis. A total of 40 scrotal infection findings were detected among the patients. The average age of the patient cohort was 61.7 8.3 years while that corresponding to patients belonging to the type 1 category was 53.3 9.1 years, type 2 category was 67.8 10.7 years, type 3 category was 72.8 9.1 years, and type 4 category was 86.9 6.2 years.
The team observed clinical scrotal symptoms in 11.2% of the total patients. Notably, the incidence of scrotal complaints was higher among patients experiencing severe disease symptoms. The team noted that the type 3 and type 4 patients were more likely to report hyperlipidemia, hypertension, coronary heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and chronic kidney disease. Moreover, increased levels of fibrinogen, neutrophil, lymphocyte, D-dimer, and C-reactive protein (CRP) were found in clinical severe patients.
Furthermore, almost 98% of the total patients recovered while 2.3% died from COVID-19 in the study. The team noted a significant statistical correlation between patient mortality and the severity of COVID-19 symptoms. Moreover, patients belonging to the type 3 and type 4 categories were found to have more testicular heterogeneous echogenicity, higher testicular vascular flow, epididymal abscess, as well as enlargement of the epididymis. Additionally, type 4 patients reported more epididymal heterogeneous echogenicity as well as higher epididymal vascular flow. Also, cases of acute orchitis, acute epididymitis, and acute epididymorchitis were substantially higher among type 3 and type 4 patients.
Overall, the study findings showed that acute scrotal infection was detected among COVID-19 patients even when no symptoms were displayed by the patients. Acute scrotal infections among COVID-19 patients were found to be significantly associated with COVID-19 disease severity.
Journal reference:
(WXYZ)The State of Michigan added 13,102 confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 over the past week, according to new numbers released from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
That comes out to an average of around 1,872 confirmed and probable cases per day.
According to the state, there were also 64 deaths from confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19.
In all, there have been 2,619,533 confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began in Michigan and 36,982 deaths from the virus.
The MDHHS said it will now release COVID-19 case and death data on Tuesdays instead of Wednesdays.
Cases have dropped significantly from May, when metro Detroit was at a high transmission level. Last week, the CDC placed most of Southeast Michigan back at a low level of community transmission. Some parts of Michigan remain at a high transmission level. All of those counties at a high transmission level are in Northern Michigan.
Additional Coronavirus information and resources:
View a global coronavirus tracker with data from Johns Hopkins University.
See complete coverage on our Coronavirus Continuing Coverage page.
Illnesses like the common cold and the flu have become endemic in human populations; everyone gets them every now and then, but for most people, they arent especially harmful. COVID-19 will eventually transition to endemic status at some point but when?
Possibly within two years, according to a new Yale study published July 5 in the journal PNAS Nexus.
To develop a better understanding of when and how COVID-19 might become endemic, Yale researchers turned to rats, which, like us, are also susceptible to coronaviruses. By collecting data on coronaviral reinfection rates among rats, they were able to model the potential trajectory of COVID-19.
There are many different types of coronaviruses, including SARS-CoV-2 the virus behind COVID-19 and several that cause the common cold. Animals like pigs and chickens live with endemic coronaviruses, too, and a key factor identified in the spread of animal and human coronaviruses alike is their tendency to evoke whats known as non-sterilizing immunity.
It means that initially there is fairly good immunity, but relatively quickly that wanes, said Caroline Zeiss, a professor of comparative medicine at Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the study. And so even if an animal or a person has been vaccinated or infected, they will likely become susceptible again.
Over the past two years, scientists have come to see that SARS-CoV-2 yields non-sterilizing immunity; people who have been infected or vaccinated are still at risk of reinfection. So experts expect that the virus wont go away any time soon.
To better understand what SARS-CoV-2 might do over time, scientists have used mathematical models. And given the strong similarities between animal and human coronaviruses, collecting relevant data from animals presents an opportunity to better understand SARS-CoV-2, says Zeiss.
There are many lessons to be learned from animal coronaviruses, she said.
In this study, Zeiss and her colleagues observed how a coronavirus similar to one that causes the common cold in humans was transmitted through rat populations. The team modeled the exposure scenario to resemble human exposures in the United States, where a portion of the population is vaccinated against COVID-19 and where people continue to face natural exposure to SARS-CoV-2. They also reproduced the different types of exposure experienced by people in the U.S., with some animals exposed through close contact with an infected rat (high risk of infection) and others exposed by being placed in a cage once inhabited by an infected rat (low risk of infection).
Infected animals contracted an upper respiratory tract infection and then recovered. After three to four months, the rats were then reorganized and re-exposed to the virus. The rates of reinfection showed that natural exposure yielded a mix of immunity levels, with those exposed to more virus through close contact having stronger immunity, and those placed in a contaminated cage (and therefore exposed to lower amounts of the virus) having higher rates of reinfection.
The takeaway, Zeiss says, is that with natural infection, some individuals will develop better immunity than others. People also need vaccination, which is offered through a set dose and generates predictable immunity. But with both vaccination and natural exposure, the population accumulates broad immunity that pushes the virus toward endemic stability, the study showed.
She and her team then used this data to inform mathematical models, finding that the median time it could take for SARS-CoV-2 to become endemic in the United States is 1,437 days, or just under four years from the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
In this scenario, according to the model, 15.4% of the population would be susceptible to infection at any given time after it reaches endemic phrase.
The virus is constantly going to be circulating, said Zeiss. So it will be important to keep more vulnerable groups in mind. We cant assume that once we reach the endemic state that everybody is safe.
Four years is the median time predicted by the model, she said, so it could take even longer to reach the endemic stage. And this doesnt take into account mutations that could make SARS-CoV-2 more harmful.
Coronaviruses are very unpredictable, so there could be a mutation that makes it more pathogenic, said Zeiss. The more likely scenario, though, is that we see an increase in transmissibility and probable decrease in pathogenicity. That means the virus would be easily transmitted between people but less likely to cause severe illness, much like the common cold.
There is precedent for this trajectory. In the late 1800s, what was known as the Russian flu killed approximately one million people around the world. Researchers now think the virus behind that pandemic was a coronavirus that originated in cattle and eventually evolved into one of the common cold viruses still in circulation. Reduced pathogenicity associated with the transition from epidemic to endemic status has also been observed in pig coronaviruses. And almost all commercial chicken flocks across the globe are vaccinated for an endemic respiratory coronavirus that has been present since the 1930s.
Longstanding experience with coronaviral infections in other animals can help us navigate a pathway to living with SARS-CoV-2.
However, endemic stability in the United States also depends on what happens to the virus elsewhere.
We are one global community, Zeiss said. We dont know where else these mutations are going to arise. Until we reach endemic stability around the entire globe, we are vulnerable here to having our U.S. endemic stability disrupted by introduction of a new variant.
But I think overall the pictures hopeful. I think we will be in endemic stability within the next year or two.
The study was funded by the National Science Foundation.
Media Advisory
Tuesday, July 5, 2022
COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in the United States between March 2020 and October 2021, according to an analysis of national death certificate data by researchers at the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health. The study appears July 5 in JAMA Internal Medicine.
During the 20-month period studied, COVID-19 accounted for 1 in 8 deaths (or 350,000 deaths) in the United States. Heart disease was the number one cause of death, followed by cancer, with these two causes of death accounting for a total of 1.29 million deaths. Accidents and stroke were the fourth and fifth leading causes of death. In every age group 15 years and older, COVID-19 was one of the top five causes of death during this period.
When the authors analyzed deaths in 2020 (MarchDecember) and in 2021 (JanuaryOctober) separately, they found that in 2020, COVID-19 was the fourth and fifth leading cause of death among people ages 4554 and 3544, respectively. But in 2021, COVID-19 became the first and second leading cause of death in these age groups. Among those 85 and older, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death in 2020, but dropped to third in 2021, likely because of targeted vaccination efforts in this age group.
The pandemic has also had an indirect effect on other causes of death in the United States. Past data have shown that deaths from other causes, including heart disease, accidents, stroke, Alzheimers disease, and diabetes increased from 2019 to 2020, possibly because people were reluctant to seek medical care for fear of catching COVID-19. Additional impacts of the pandemic on other causes of death may emerge in the years to come, the researchers said. For example, the pandemic prevented many people from getting regular cancer screening, which may result in future increases in cancer deaths.
Meredith S. Shiels, Ph.D., Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics, National Cancer Institute
Leading Causes of Death in the United States during the COVID-19 Pandemic, March 2020 to October 2021 appears July 5 in JAMA Internal Medicine.
About the National Cancer Institute (NCI): NCI leads the National Cancer Program and NIHs efforts to dramatically reduce the prevalence of cancer and improve the lives of people with cancer. NCI supports a wide range of cancer research and training extramurally through grants and contracts. NCIs intramural research program conducts innovative, transdisciplinary basic, translational, clinical, and epidemiological research on the causes of cancer, avenues for prevention, risk prediction, early detection, and treatment, including research at the NIH Clinical Centerthe worlds largest research hospital. Learn more about NCIs intramural research from the Center for Cancer Research and the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics. For more information about cancer, please visit the NCI website at cancer.gov or call NCIs contact center at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237).
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH):NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.
NIHTurning Discovery Into Health
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Covering COVID-19 is a daily Poynter briefing of story ideas about the coronavirus and other timely topics for journalists, written by senior faculty Al Tompkins. Sign up here to have it delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.
Halfway through 2022, is the United States national plan to just give up and accept that everyone will get infected with COVID-19 over and over?
I know more people who have COVID-19 infections now than I did at the height of the pandemic a year or two ago. None, fortunately, are deathly ill, thanks to vaccines. Virtually every newsroom I talk with lately has some COVID-19 cases.
The map below shows how we start the week, with virtually the entire county in red on the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions transmission map. It shows 87% of U.S. counties are at a high level and 95% of U.S. counties are at a substantial or higher level of COVID-19 transmission.
(CDC)
And yet news coverage is thin, and we seem determined to keep the pandemic running for another year. If we get a new vaccine targeted toward omicron variants, there is no assurance it will be effective against a quickly changing virus. And new studies just published in Lancet question whether booster after booster will offer the protection you would expect, especially for people who are considered high risk.
Know this: BA.5, which is moving across the globe as the new predominant variant, is severe. In Italy, for example, hospitals report they are increasingly having to use ventilators again to save patients. So far, in the U.S., where cases are rising, severe illness and hospitalizations are stable and well below the worst days of the pandemic with pockets of rising cases.
Intelligencer, part of New York Magazine, put it this way:
The newest wave of COVID infections and reinfections, fueled by more transmissible subvariants of the Omicron strain including BA.4 and BA.5, continues to grow across the U.S. As countless Americans gather(ed) over the July 4 holiday weekend, its entirely possible that there are more new daily infections happening in the country than at any other point in the pandemic other than the Omicron wave. And as the worrisome BA.5 subvariant rapidly rises to what will likely be global dominance, the U.S. isnt the only country experiencing a surge.
Last week, the U.S. test positivity rate which is now a more reliable indicator of case surges than official case counts reached a seven-day average of over 15 percent for the first time since February 3.
Dr. Bob Wachter, chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, tweeted this weekend:
(Screenshot/Twitter)
The danger of transmission is not just that people will get sick. Every new infection is an opportunity for the virus to evolve. COVID-19 needs a host to live in and find new ways to survive. Even if the host does not get deathly ill, they keep giving the virus a fighting chance to keep infecting. Intelligencer explains:
Against these new subvariants, vaccines and prior infection are proving less and less effective at preventing infections and reinfections. They also appear to be at least somewhat less effective at preventing hospitalizations as the coronavirus evolves particularly among the many un- and under-boosted seniors. A big wave of cases will be at best disruptive, will increase the risk of a lot more people developing long COVID, and will give SARS-CoV-2 many more opportunities to evolve. The impact of multiple COVID reinfections, which many Americans already have or soon will experience, remains unclear. Most importantly, BA.5 may be the worst COVID variant yet.
Its unique mutations make it the best equipped major variant to date at avoiding antibodies, which means it can likely reinfect people who recently had other Omicron subvariants. There is still a lot that scientists dont know about the strain, and the threat of other even worse variants emerging remains very real. (BA.2.75, an Omicron subvariant recently detected in India, is the newest one to rapidly attract scientists attention.)
Los Angeles County Director of Public Health Barbara Ferrer warns, All of the information to date points to the need for us to prepare for the likelihood of significant transmission in the upcoming weeks. In Los Angeles County, new case numbers are rising day after day.
Deadline reports:
The elevated daily test positivity rate likely represents the higher rate of transmission thats associated with the highly-infectious Covid sub variants and also the decline in routine testing at schools, which was much more comprehensive than in the community-at-large and so included many who wouldnt normally be tested.
The 7-day average number of new Covid-related hospitalizations is now 109 per day. Ferrer called that a stunning increase from the 84 new cases per day reported last week. Todays new hospitalizations average is also 78% higher than what it was just a month ago.
There is now concern again about increasing stress on the healthcare system.
The raw number of Covid-related new cases at area hospitals has risen to whats effectively a four-month high (since February 3) at 808.
Virtually all of the West Coast looks like Florida, listed as high risk.
(CDC)
Investigative Reporters and Editors sent out a note to all of us who attended the conference a week and a half ago in Denver to say:
We have had about 48 people report testing positive, most of them after the conference ended Sunday. That is a low number considering we had more than 1,400 people attending the conference in person and other conferences were going on at the same time as ours at the Gaylord Rockies.
I can tell you that most people did not wear masks, and there was a lot of close contact socializing and seating at the conference. But who knows whether the cases came from the conference as opposed to airports, Ubers, restaurants and bars, where they were loudly cheering the Stanley Cup playoff games.
Some news organizations accused U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of endorsing a misunderstood claim about fetal cells being used to develop COVID-19 vaccines. The claim was part of Thomas dissent in an opinion involving religious objections to the vaccines.
But if you closely read what Thomas wrote, you could argue that he is not agreeing that there is a legitimate link between aborted cells and the vaccines, but that the people involved in the case the court was considering believe there is an objectionable connection. Thomas wrote:
Petitioners are 16 healthcare workers who served New York communities throughout the COVID19 pandemic. They object on religious grounds to all available COVID19 vaccines because they were developed using cell lines derived from aborted children.
The justice does not say if he agrees with the claim, but he does not refute it either, before going on to say he thinks the court should consider whether state laws should be allowed to require vaccinations for health care workers without offering a religious exemption.
Axios wrote, Clarence Thomas suggests COVID vaccines are created with cells from aborted children.
USA Today columnist Michael Stern tweeted:
Others were factually correct but still do not point out that the citation repeated the claim from the plaintiffs.
NBC reported, Justice Thomas cites debunked claim that Covid vaccines are made with cells from aborted children.'
Politico reported, Clarence Thomas cites claim that Covid vaccines are developed using cell lines derived from aborted children
Now, about those fetal cells. I have mentioned this before but it has been a while but since both abortions and COVID-19 are involved in this matter, it is worth exploring again. It is true that human cells are used in research for drugs of all sorts. But those cells were obtained decades ago from a 1985 voluntary abortion. As PolitiFact explained, while six Catholic bishops (out of 434) raised concerns over the vaccines origins, the U.S. Catholic Bishops said the vaccines links to abortion are very remote:
The vaccine is made using a modified cold virus called an adenovirus, which trains the bodys immune system to recognize the coronavirus. These adenoviruses are grown in a cell line called PER.C6, which was originally derived from an 18-week-old fetus aborted in 1985. To create the cell line, scientists isolated a cell from the fetus and cloned it to produce cells of the same genetic makeup. After the adenovirus grows in the cells, the cells themselves are purified away, essentially removed, to create the vaccine.
To some Catholics, the vaccines link to abortion, however distant, raises strong moral objections.
Pfizer and Moderna use mRNA technology, which gives the body instructions to identify the virus. The companies also made use of human fetal cells to test the safety and efficacy of their vaccines. This makes their use more acceptable U.S. Catholic bishops, who said in December that the connection is very remote from the initial evil of the abortion.
I believe that morally everyone must take (a) vaccine, Pope Francis said in a Jan. 10 interview for an Italian news program. It is the moral choice because it is about your life but also the lives of others.
Here is something to reflect on post-July 4. Gallup found:
While the current 38% expressing extreme pride is the historical low by four percentage points, the combined 65% reading for those who are extremely or very proud was two points lower in 2020 than it is today. The current readings are well below the trend averages of 55% extremely proud and 80% extremely or very proud.
Before 2015, no less than 55% of U.S. adults said they were extremely proud. The highest readings followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when patriotism surged in the U.S.
However, extreme national pride in the U.S. has been trending downward since 2015, falling below the majority level in 2018; it is nearly 20 points lower now than it was a decade ago.
(Gallup)
As you read this chart, it is useful to know when the data was collected. Gallup explains:
These data are from a June 1-20 poll that was conducted after mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, claimed 31 lives, including 19 children. Bipartisan gun legislation in response to the shootings was passed shortly after the poll ended. The polling also preceded the U.S. Supreme Courts highly anticipated and controversial ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.
Maybe this would be a good time to point you to an essay that The Atlantic just published written by Republican Sen. Mitt Romney. Here is an excerpt:
Bolstering our natural inclination toward wishful thinking are the carefully constructed, prejudice-confirming arguments from the usual gang of sophists, grifters, and truth-deniers. Watching angry commentators on cable news, Im reminded of H. L. Menckens observation: For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.
When entire countries fail to confront serious challenges, it doesnt end well. During the past half century, we Americans have lived in a very forgiving time, and seeing the world through rose-colored glasses had limited consequences. The climate was stable, our economy dwarfed the competition, democracy was on the rise, and our military strength made the U.S. the sole global hyperpower. Today, every one of those things has changed. If we continue to ignore the real threats we face, America will inevitably suffer serious consequences.
In the last few weeks, I have done a lot of teaching for journalists from Brazil, China, Russia, Georgia and beyond. Those conversations help me to contextualize Americas current struggles and give me deep gratitude for our press freedoms. I do not know if I call what I feel pride as much as I call it gratitude for our freedom to report good and bad news, and gratitude for centuries of people who fought for that freedom and defended it.
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Covid-19 reinfections can bring some new risks of serious medical problems, hospitalization and death, a new study has found.
Protection provided by vaccines and prior infection has greatly improved Covid outcomes since the pandemics early days, and reinfections are typically less severe than initial ones. Yet each new infection carries a risk of medical problems, including hospitalization, death and long Covid, according to preliminary data from a study of patients in the Veterans Affairs health system.
