Coronavirus week 57, part 2: Lagging recovery, vaccine hesitancy, Indian concern

I decided to break the rest of my weekly update away from the longer news about Swanson Tucker Carlson and Gretchen Whitmer so it wouldn't be buried.

Now that we've got that, and warnings to readers not to go duopoly tribalist, out of the way from that post, here's the rest of the week's coronavirus news roundup.

First, Olivia Messer, formerly of Daily Beast, reports on journalism stresses on covering COVID. We give her a ding, assuming she writes her own headlines, for using "okay" instead of "OK."

Second, Texas lags the nation, at least in big cities, in coronavirus recovery in terms of things like unemployment. And, especially in Helltown, there's the additional tie of rebounding oil prices having a mostly jobless recovery in the oil patch. Friend Chris Tomlinson says the Saudis will turn the spigots back on if oil pushes much higher, and agrees that between this and lack of debt financing, automation of oilfield jobs looks more and more appealing to drillers big enough they can get a head start on that. 

More on the crappy recovery, in the Metromess, at the Dallas Observer.

Third, in case you haven't noticed, the ongoing effects of the pandemic continue to disrupt supply chains. Click the link to see everything affected. (Actually, it's not all COVID; in the case of chlorine, it's last year's monstrous Hurricane Laura.)

Fourth, as Texas shows, in more and more of Merika, vaccine availability ain't the issue. Vaccine hesitancy is.

Fifth, Texas Monthly has a bio piece on living with long COVID.

Sixth, WHO says the new Indian triple mutant variant is of global concern.