Few days old, but still probably a good early take.
Yeah the hot take seems to be "quit it with the hot takes" which is something, I guess. I dunno. I think the world would be a much calmer place if everyone read The Hot Zone. Or The Andromeda Strain. Or anything about any pandemic. Because in general? Evolutionary adaptation means "more infectious, less severe". Not always? But successful pathogens are the ones that spread without invoking heroic measures like vaccines, quarantines, masking, etc. Odds are, the Russian Flu Pandemic killed a million people. A hundred years later, the bug that caused it is about 10% of colds worldwide. That's not the population of Bukhara being pussies in 1889, that's OC43 getting better at virusing. My fervent hope is the astonishing adaptability of COVID-19 will aid it in achieving ubiquitous harmlessness faster than any pathogen in history.
I increasingly doubt that Omicron originated in South Africa. The number of daily new cases is much higher elsewhere, like, sayyyyyy here (U.S.). The world is essentially punishing South Africa economically for having a robust testing and tracing program. What a sad message this sends.
Really horrible incentives being created for a region that can not afford more bad incentives. If you're South Africa right now, you're definitely thinking, "Why the hell should I try to help in the future when all I get is shit on in response." The scare headlines from NYT and elsewhere are less than helpful right now. Immune evasion by the virus is sort of predictable, and not doesn't have to be a death sentence for the economy all over again. I'll bet if anyone looked, they'd find more variants. My step brother and his wife just got covid for the second time, and they were vaccinated in between. That's some immune evasion right there, but who the fuck is going to sequence their viral genomes? We all need to cool it right about now. I really hope to never become a person who uses phrases such as "main stream" or "liberal" media, but they're really pissing me off right now.
Fuckin' Bryan Adams tested positive twice in one month His rep said at the time that Adams was "fully vaccinated and has no symptoms at all."n October, Adams had to pull out of a performance at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony after he tested positive.
And for my next trick. I would be interested to see a per capita (or case) comparison of SARS-CoV-2 genome sequencing broken down by country, or even at the state level here. Maybe my google skills are lacking. Yup, media frustration is real. It's not only a question of lessening funding/income, you've also gotta wonder if the absence of serious competition from right-wing outlets lets the "liberal" gatekeepers backslide into slop.
As of December 2020 Not per capita? But let's not get greedy
Thanks. Very interesting. For posterity: Gotta be careful with that Y-axis log scale. So there aren't many wealthy countries that were doing less sequencing than the USA on a per case count basis as of Dec. 2020. I would bet we've improved upwards, but probably not even close to by factor of 10. It's also a function of outbreak severity and testing rates, but yeah. Maybe it's a more benign variant than Delta, i.e. doesn't replicate as fast? Time will tell.
You are now aware that the Spanish Flu originated in Santa Fe, Kansas. “They trained over 50,000 troops at a time who all lived in close quarters. The Army was cognizant that it needed to help our French and British Allies out, so there was no questioning, they were sending troops out — soldiers were being sent that had flu-like symptoms,” said Robert Smith, supervisory curator for Fort Riley Museums. Troops traveled by train from the Midwest to ports, then boarded ships bound for the war. “Recruits were being shifted from camp to camp by the thousands and they were taking with them fatigue and it made for easy exposure. The infections and disease followed,” Smith said. Along the way, the virus mutated, many times. It hit people in waves, becoming more virulent each time. The first wave in the winter of 1918 was serious. The second wave — during the summer, when many of the soldiers were on the Western Front — was deadly, Smith said. The third wave came during the fall, when troops were returning. “We gave it to our Allies and they gave it to our enemies,” Smith said.Camp Funston, at Fort Riley, was the largest training facility in the Army, full of makeshift non-insulated barracks, housing 250 soldiers each. It teemed with soldiers from all over the Midwest, training for duty in France.
Yeap. It was called the "Spanish Flu" because Spain was neutral in WW1, so they were the only ones able to report accurately because the warring factions all felt like acknowledging the true severity would hamper their warring. That should be in the article.
Sounds kind of like this insane map showing Florida is one of the lowest risk states for COVID. https://www.instagram.com/p/CW3ukBclvCL/?utm_medium=copy_link
If you scroll down in the description: I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the governor of Florida, an aspiring Trumpist, is presiding over a uniquely bad testing and reporting system. I'm sure.In observation of Thanksgiving, Florida has delayed its weekly report of COVID-19 data.
I've read that the standard fast-test we use here in the USA primarily for identifying COVID does not work well for the Omicron variant.... it only shows up reliably in PCR tests. So the fact is that we do already have Omicron here, and it's probably throughout the States, but we just aren't diligently testing for it. I'm sure THAT's going to go well...