Coronavirus, week 49: Anniversaries and more

I took a week off here and there on blog posting, while actually, I think, starting before this time, but per Skeptical Raptor's 1-year observation, yep, it was when Rudy Gobert was announced as testing positive, followed by the NBA putting its season on hiatus and etc., that "we" realized this might be serious. Raptor admits underestimating the vaccine effort, and also profiles a year of COVID quackery. Remember hydroxychloroquine?

That said, the Raptor also expects the mutation rate to not slow down. He does hope that it becomes milder, and thus, eventually, like today's flu (which used to be the Spanish flu, dreaded by Monty Python and more seriously by others).

• Capitol and Main has a good 1-year overview as well, including noting social issues.

• President Biden has directed states to make all adults vaccine-eligible by May 1. Texas lowered the eligibility age to 50 this week, but, since it's still near the bottom of the nation in vaccine distribution, being eligible for something you can't get is like having shit in one hand and toilet paper out of reach of the other.

At the same time, Biden, while targeting a return to semi-normalcy by the Fourth of July, warned against something we might call "Neanderthal behavior."

More takeaways here.

• And, the Biden Administration has tasked OSHA into looking at national mask standards, mandating employers work to boost COVID workplace safety, easier reporting of COVID-unsafe work conditions, etc. No names, but, in case actions by Neanderthal governors increase the likelihood of Neanderthal capitalism, this is a "marker." In addition, activists are pushing OSHA to officially adopt new mask standards released by ASTM.

• Austin can keep its local mask mandate in place until Kenny Boy Paxton's suit against it goes to trial.

• Sadly, the Texas stRangers, team once led by later-to-be Guv Shrub Bush, is taking a page from current Guv Strangeabbott and says it may open the home opener at 100 percent capacity. 

• Interestingly, men are more likely to get vaccinated than women. That's one of several takeaways about vaccination. That said, two in five are still "vaccine hesitant." Of course, that ties in with seeing a lot more Karens than Karls on antimasking, to be honest, including a maskless woman with baby/toddler at a Denton Kroger. So much for stereotypes of woman the nurturer, eh?

• Also interesting but not surprising? Atheists and agnostics are more likely to get vaccinated than the religious.

• Counting Puerto Rico as well as DC, but not even smaller outlying territories, Tex-ass is up to 42nd out of 52 jurisdictions in percentage of fully vaccinated residents. With that, we MAY be up to "herd immunity" (at 75 percent) by the time school starts in the fall.

• Some new research say more kids may have it than previously believed, and largely be asymptomatic, thus being unwitting spreaders. (And, per discussion on Facebook, yes, doctors wouldn't know how much they're spreaders if they're asymptomatic, and given that they've not been known to have it that much, and that we're behind the curve on adult contact tracing, there's no way we'd ever get close to getting up to speed on kids' contact tracing.)

 

• Meanwhile, many of these kids are getting an inflammatory syndrome that makes them the child equivalent of long-haulers.

• Could a cure, or at least more relief, for "long haulers" be connected to one for chronic fatigue syndrome?

 

• Here's Josh Rogin's latest on the idea that, without claiming lab engineering, we don't know everything about the novel coronavirus' origin, and it could well have been an accident from bad biosecurity at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.