My Breakfast Friend

 During the isolation of the pandemic it is always good to have some steadfast friends.

NJ 2022 01 29

 Approaching the second anniversary of my announcement of a pandemic, next week. Here is the latest. Clearly State and County decreasing from omicron.

Deaths continue to rise. Rate is low but the peak has not been reached. It is 6-10 weeks after peak infection.

Town doubling up a bit, still younger spreading drives the infection.

Now in Nature there is an excellent overview of how little we know of omicron, and perhaps the virus in general. They note:

Little more than two months after it was first spotted in South Africa, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has spread around the world faster than any previous versions. Scientists have tracked it in more than 120 countries, but remain puzzled by a key question: where did Omicron come from? There’s no transparent path of transmission linking Omicron to its predecessors. Instead, the variant has an unusual array of mutations, which it evolved entirely outside the view of researchers. Omicron is so different from earlier variants, such as Alpha and Delta, that evolutionary virologists estimate its closest-known genetic ancestor probably dates back to more than a year ago, some time after mid-2020 (ref. ¹). “It just came out of nowhere,” says Darren Martin, a computational biologist at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. The question of Omicron’s origins is of more than academic importance. Working out under what conditions this highly transmissible variant arose might help scientists to understand the risk of new variants emerging, and suggest steps to minimize it, says Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization in Saskatoon, Canada. “It’s very difficult to try to mitigate a risk that you can’t even remotely wrap your head around,” she says.

 At the heart of science is uncertainty and even more so surprises. We recognized omicron a day after it was identified and said it would explode. There were 30+ mutations, a very large number exceeding the "natural laws" of viral mutations.

In contrast the Bishop of Rome as noted in the NY Times states:

Information based on scientific facts is a human right, Pope Francis said Friday, urging Catholic journalists to help people who were misled by false reports about the coronavirus and vaccines.  “To be properly informed, to be helped to understand situations based on scientific data and not fake news, is a human right,” the pope told members of the International Catholic Media Consortium on Covid-19 Vaccines. An “infodemic” was spreading, the pope said, calling it “a distortion of reality based on fear, falsified or invented news.” Journalists and scientists, he added, should treat those who believe in false information with respect and not place them in “ghettos.” Instead, they should try to build bridges to those who need to hear scientific truths.

 If we know so little and things change so quickly then one must ask what is the truth. Scientific data is an ever changing flow based upon what we can measure and how we interpret it, and false information today may be fact tomorrow. 

All one has to do is review the concept of herd immunity. We denied its existence from the beginning in this pandemic. ssRNA viruses mutate at a phenomenal rate and thus what was fact yesterday is like the Times of yesterday, perhaps good for wrapping rotten fish for the trash.

The omicron virus opens the door on a volume of new questions. It will take time to get some answers.

Russia, 1978 Redux

 

Saint Petersburg, 1978. The store shelves are at best half empty. If it is Tuesday then we can buy milk, potatoes on Wednesday, Thursday is bread. Every other Sunday we can get toilet tissue if we are on line early. Vodka is always available, the water is filled with Giardia. We brush our teeth with vodka, only safe fluid for that purpose. 

Political commissars abound in all parts of our existence. The military, the Academy, the factory, has its political commissars. The GRU and KGB watch and track our every movement.

Then there is the US today. Went shopping, if one could cal it that. Half the shelves were empty. No cheese, eggs were on their way out, but today we bread day. Political commissars seem to be expanding everywhere, especially in Universities and Big Business. They monitor our "attitudes" and beliefs, and if we do not comply then "there will be consequences". The FBI, IRS, HHS etc now can monitor our very thoughts. All they have to do is see what we put on the web, this included. They have massive psych profiles of every citizen, and possibly even those not being citizens, but less so.

As I think back going on fifty years the similarities are amazing. And at the same time horrifying.

NJ 2022 01 22

 We present this data but as we have more unreported at home tests we have no assurance this this reflects any form of reality.

State incidence is dropping fast

As is the county

Whereas deaths, which generally lag 30-45 days are still peaking, especially LTC

Town prevalence is still high but deceasing

New per county still high

Masks or Diet?

 One gathers that "fat shaming" has become a new woke concern. On the one hand the "wokies" demand masks and vaccines whereas they decry any body shaming.

However in a recent Nature article they note:

Obesity and impaired metabolic health are important risk factors for severe COVID-19. Novel data indicate that these risk factors might also promote vaccine-breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 infections in fully vaccinated people. Here, these relationships are discussed and post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 that are related to obesity and impaired metabolic health are addressed....Vaccination against COVID-19 is highly effective in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic7. However, because patients with obesity and/or T2DM show immunosenescence (for example, of the CD4+ and CD8+ T cell compartments) and increased HbA1c levels are associated with a reduced immune response to an influenza A (H1N1) vaccine1, the question arises as to whether obesity and impaired metabolic health might adversely influence the efficacy of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. In this respect, a study published in September 2021 that included patients who were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and were admitted to the Yale New Haven Health system hospital investigated parameters associated with vaccine-breakthrough COVID-19 infections. Among the pre-existing comorbidities, overweight, T2DM and cardiovascular disease were frequently seen in patients with severe or critical illness.

 Isn't science confusing?

Did You Ever Wear an N95 Mask?

 I have worked from time to time in a sensitive area, one where there may have been some rather dangerous viral elements. Thus a full respirator, Tyvek outer garments etc. Plus vaccinations to the extreme. The worst mask I have ever worn was the N95, early on in the pandemic. I also use them in dealing with certain herbicide distribution to block not just the herbicide but the silica medium which frankly can be worse. 

N95 require a clean face, no beard, double attachments, like a surgical mask but tighter, and proper placement. Try these for a full day.

They then accumulate a multiplicity of exhaled organisms that beginning their new life mm from your skin. In a nice warm moist nutrient rich environment! Again your face.

Now let us take a side trip as to the threat. The original COVID and I suspect through Delta was a lung resident virus which apparently was transmitted by nm sized aerosols. Say 100 nm with 30-40 nm virions. They could hang in the air by Stokes forces and manage to infect those about you. Omicron is a nasopharynx resident virus and most likely spread by droplets if not even surface contamination. The droplets at micro sized, about 30-100 micron in diameter. Thus N95 can stop these fairly well if worn diligently. 

But having the DC folks sending out some 400 million and then I guess demanding we wear these things in utter nonsense. You wear an N95 once, since you have contaminated it with you own microorganisms and the outside worlds as well. So you would need an endless supply and the trash becomes a mass of medical waste! Besides the cost, the inconvenience, and the logistics, where are we to dump all of these non-decomposable masks!

My guess is that this is just another gimmick to assuage the folks and pretend that something is being done. NOT!

Is There Anything Real in Economics?

 Engineers build bridges, machines, computers, even software. Physicians diagnose diseases and try to cure them using facts. Biologists can determine genetic defects and try to remedy them.

What can economists do? That was the question which initiated this blog going on 14 years ago. In the rather proto Marxist web site, in my opinion and in my experience, the Project Syndicate, they note:

Forecasting inflation is a staple of macroeconomic modeling, yet virtually all economists’ predictions for the United States in 2021 were way off the mark. This dismal performance reflected a collective failure to take economic models seriously enough, as well as other analytical shortcomings. In 2008, as the global financial crisis was ravaging economies everywhere, Queen Elizabeth II, visiting the London School of Economics, famously asked, “Why did nobody see it coming?” The high inflation of 2021 – especially in the United States, where the year-on-year increase in consumer prices reached a four-decade high of 7% in December – should prompt the same question. Inflation is not nearly as bad as a financial crisis, particularly when price increases coincide with a rapid improvement in the economy. And whereas financial crises may be inherently unpredictable, forecasting inflation is a staple of macroeconomic modeling. 

There are all sorts of equations for predicting but as I tried them over the decades none work. Why inflation? Two reasons. First too much Government spending, period. Second, total lack of confidence in the Government. I lived through Carter in DC and saw that mess up close. At least he was one of the most decent Presidents, a bit clueless, but well intentioned. Currently we have lived through one after the other of rather bumbling characters. On both sides of the fence. 

It took Carter 4 years to get to the mess he was in. We have another three under the current regime. The economists should be relegated to other soothsayers. Not to be listened to.

An Interesting Observation

 In a recent paper by Gogoi et al (See Gogoi et al, The Age of Cyclic Dinucleotide Vaccine Adjuvants, Vaccines, 2020, 8, 433), the authors note:

Most of the available vaccines confer an humoral antibody response but are unable to generate long-lived memory T cell responses, especially CD8+ T cell response against viral infections. For instance, the need for the cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses in an antiviral response is undisputable. Yet, in the current COVID-19 vaccine development, most efforts aim to generate neutralizing antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2, rather than promoting the long-lived, potential cross-protective antiviral memory CD8+ T cells responses. The reason mostly lies in the lack of vaccine technology, e.g., adjuvants, that triggers the memory CD8+ T cell response during vaccination. Equally important, current vaccines are administered, i.m., or i.d. or s.c., and fail to generate vaccine protections on the mucosal surface. Most infectious agents enter the body on mucosal surfaces. Effective vaccines should not merely reduce the severity of the disease but prevent people from catching the infection, achieving sterile immunity. Only the induction of mucosal vaccine protection, i.e., the generation of mucosal IgA and mucosal tissue-resident memory T cells (TRM), can prevent the initiation, progression, and transmission of respiratory infections. For example, the oral administered Sabin poliovirus vaccine is effective because it elicits a strong mucosal IgA response and provides intestinal immunity, the site of primary poliovirus infection. In contrast, the injected Salk polio vaccine does not produce intestinal immunity and therefore is less effective at preventing the spread of poliovirus in a population.

 Now what does all of this have to do with COVID. First, the COVID vaccines do not prevent the disease nor do they prevent even getting "infected". They mitigate the infection. Thus the Omicron explosion is almost all in vaccinated individuals, most just a head cold. In addition a vaccinated person can still get infected and spread the infection. They may just not get very ill. Also most of the vaccines have no adjuvants and thus have a waning level of protection. Second most COVID vaccines have no adjuvants and this has fleeting immunity.

In effect  the current vaccines a useful for a transition to a longer lasting vaccine set. The problem is simply that we have poor communications from the "leaders" in this field, especially the batch of Government folks leading the marching band. 

Admittedly viral infections, vaccines, and the immune system are not well understood by most physicians not to mention the public at large. I would argue that if one asked people to describe DNA and RNA you would get a mess of horrible responses. But that is the fault of our grossly incompetent educators in Secondary schools.  

NJ 2022 01 15

 We are now well into the new year and perhaps the peak from the Holidays is abating in new cases but deaths are now exploding again. That is, if we believe any of the numbers. So let's start.

The town doubling time is reaching a critical low. Infections spread like wildfire. Given the use or misuse of at home kits this data has become useless. 

The prevalence means that almost one in 10 people in the town are currently active carriers. It appears that no Public Health officials give a damn.

The incidence is still high especially in the County.

The doubling times are almost all in double digits. The 200 level has been breached.

The state incidence appears to have peaked and is going down.

The County not so much.

BUT, deaths are exploding again. The rates are very low but the total infected is the driver.

Finally LTC deaths are up again. I thought we solved this problem! Thanks Gov, just party on now that you got elected.

Engineers vs Economists

 I remember taking a course on fluid mechanics which included water flow in channels. Namely rivers and the like. Narrow the channel and open yourself up for more problems. 

Some economist writes in the NY Times about expanding Manhattan by some 160 acres into the inner harbor. That would dramatically narrow the Hudson River and the East River. Thus flow rates would increase and the buffer capacity of the inner harbor would decrease. This is a simple undergraduate problem for most engineers, or at least it was.

But alas not for any economist. You see economics is not a science. You cannot perform controlled experiments and there is no body of knowledge upon which one can design anything. Talk to 20 economists and you get at least 50 opinions.

Thus this recommendation states:

Creating land in the harbor would also help New York City fortify itself against climate change. The new community would push currently vulnerable places like Wall and Broad Streets further inland, and the peninsula can be designed with specific protections around its coastline to buffer itself and the rest of the city from flooding. In particular, wetlands ecologies around the shorelines would absorb surges. Building the land at a higher elevation would further improve its protective ability, and the new peninsula could recreate historic ecologies and erect environmental and ecological research centers dedicated to improving the quality of New York’s natural world.

Absolute nonsense. In fact it would increase surges. Please, let us just keep the economists in Government where the cause enough damage. Keep them out of New York Harbor.

More is not Necessarily Better

 Just an observation regarding "boosters". There is the phenomenon called T cell exhaustion. 

The authors note:

T cells exposed to persistent antigen and/or inflammatory signals in chronic infection or cancer can become 'exhausted', a state characterized by a hierarchical loss of effector functions and memory T cell properties, and by the expression of multiple inhibitory receptors. T cell exhaustion prevents optimal control of infections and tumours, but modulating inhibitory pathways that are overexpressed in exhaustion can reverse this dysfunctional state and reinvigorate immune responses. Exhausted T cells are a distinct lineage of differentiated T cells; these cells are phenotypically and mechanistically different from other dysfunctional states of T cells such as anergy and senescence.

Often found in chronic infections like Hepatitis C and cancers it occurs when the infection, including antibodies, continually bombard the immune system. Perhaps, as yet unknown, the bombarding with boosters may result in T cell exhaustion and thus loss of any putative immunity. So one must beware that more may be worse not better.

"Sharp Practice" or How DC Will "End the Pandemic"

 Data is the sine qua non of Public Health. To date we have had some albeit shabby. The CDC is unreliable, late, incomplete, and sometimes just plain nonsense. I have been following the NJ data which we have noted is often noisy at best. 

Now comes the "team" in DC and their next step is to totally eliminate data. As the NY Times notes:

Private insurers will have to cover the cost of eight at-home coronavirus tests per member per month starting on Saturday, the Biden administration said Monday. People who provide their insurance information will be able to get the tests with no out-of-pocket costs at certain pharmacies; in other cases, they will have to file claims to their insurers for reimbursement, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, just as they often do for medical services. The plan “incentivizes insurers to cover these costs up front and ensures individuals do not need an order from their health care provider to access these tests for free,” the agency said in a statement. Roughly 150 million Americans, or about 45 percent of the population, are privately insured. Insurers that do not require people to pay the upfront cost for tests at certain retailers will be charged no more than $12 per test, if the test was purchased at an out-of-network site. Otherwise, insurers will be charged the full price of a test. “Today’s action further removes financial barriers and expands access to Covid-19 tests for millions of people,” Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the Biden administration’s Medicare and Medicaid chief, said in a statement.

This is a Trojan Horse to get what little numbers we have to go to zero. No data, no pandemic! Get all those unreportable at home tests and then at best the only thing one may have is deaths. If that. We have Supreme Court Justices shingling the legal roof in the fog, well off the edge, making statements for which they are neither qualified or correct. Now we have Public Health folks trying to navigate in the blind!

It does eliminate the Pandemic. No data, no infections, no Pandemic. 

We seem to going from the absurd to the insane! 

The one who controls the data, controls the "facts", in fact, they create the facts or "truth". At home tests do not get reported, only PCR tests do. Thus abandoning PCR for at home means we no longer have any means to count, and if we report nothing then perhaps the problem goes away. This is not a complicated obfuscation. On the other-hand we do not have very bright folks doing this in DC. Also death certificates may have a multiplicity of causes, often pneumonia. Many cancer deaths were pneumonia, so we should try to track these aberrant causes of death.

"Sharp Practice" indeed!

 

NJ 2022 01 08

 We will be ignoring the CDC data since it is useless. We will just be looking at the state and environs.

The State new infections looks as if it may have peaked. Omicron does yield symptoms quickly. Also these are ONLY PCR results.  Thus they are delayed and fail to account for thousands of at home data.

The county is the same. I suspect we shall see a second New Years peak this week. Again almost all are break throughs despite what some Supreme Court Justice may think. I am continually amazed as to the arrogance of the incompetents.

This should be the concerns. Deaths are exploding again, albeit at low death rates.

Town prevalence is at 600+ and I am not surprised since holidays bred massive gatherings.

The county and town show the results.

This is More than a Pandemic

 The town prevalence is now well over 600 of the 10,000 residents. The town is well over 95% vaccinated but these are all break throughs. It is clear that people are congregating, not being careful, and given college kids at home they are the petri dish of the virus.

Just a reminder. The prevalence is the number of infected but NOT quarantined individuals capable of spreading the virus. That means more than 1 in 20 are infected and spreaders! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, that is what happens.

COVID and Organization

 

During WW II the Manhattan Project was an example of massive resource management and the efficient use of people. During the current pandemic we see just the opposite. It is becoming a massive Government mess up. Players playing games with each other and senior management apparently clueless. For example, the data states that almost 95% of those infected have been vaccinated already. 

My suggestion, for what it is worth, is a General Groves organization. Not a General from the current woke military but a person like Groves. A brusque goal oritnetd individual. 

The suggested organization, independent of everything would look as above.

. Testing: An entity which would coordinate all testing protocols and reach agreements with vendors.

Variants: An entity which would identify, track, and describe any and all variants. It would also anticipate putative variants.

Therapeutics: An entity which would coordinate, fund, and integrate all therapeutic options ensuring efficacy and effectiveness in a timely manner.

Immunization: An entity which would coordinate, communicate, and assist any and all entities providing for immunizations. It would also ensure that immunizations were kept current as variants were identified.

Data Management: An entity responsible for the coordination, collection, distribution and transparency of any and all relevant data. 

Health Care Coordination: An entity which would coordinate and assist any and all providers to ensure timely and effective provisioning of all elements of prevention, treatment, and communication.

Quality: An entity which would monitor and assure quality of delivery.

Logistics: An entity which would assist and effect optimal logistics as regards to distribution, planning, availability, and assistance.

The only requirement for people working in this group would be that they never held any Government job for longer than a year. 

Now the "usual suspects", the forever on cable "academics", have also come out in force, each suggesting some, in my opinion, useless strategy. For example in JAMA:

Another part of this humility is recognizing that predictions are necessary but educated guesses, not mathematical certainty. The virus, host response, and data will evolve. Biomedical and public health tools will expand, along with better understanding of their limitations. The incidence of SARS-CoV-2, vaccination rates, hospital capacity, tolerance for risk, and willingness to implement different interventions will vary geographically, and national recommendations will need to be adapted locally.

But these very same were predicting by the hour. Another states:

First, the CDC needs to collect and disseminate accurate real-time, population-based incidence data on COVID-19 and all viral respiratory illnesses. The US should not be reliant on extrapolating cases and outcomes from data collected from a few, underrepresentative sites. The country needs a comprehensive testing and reporting system for all viral respiratory illnesses. Data from all medical and testing facilities, all emergency department cases, and all hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths need to be reported to the CDC and linked to anonymized sociodemographic, vaccination, and clinical outcomes data. The reporting system should accommodate the ability to incorporate data from at-home tests, ensuring a simple mechanism to self-report results, and should provide real-time reporting on a public website.

 As we have noted again and again it appears the CDC does not work weekends and holidays. Thus one should have no reliance on such an entity. This same academic states:

In addition, there needs to be a system for clear recommendations from trusted public health authorities, advising local governments and the public about the appropriate use of facial coverings, depending on the setting; an individual’s vaccination, immune, and risk status; and the level of community transmission. An easily interpretable risk assessment map that encompasses these variables to provide immediate risk determination at the zip code level for individuals could be developed and updated daily. Such a system would help reduce confusion and guesswork that many individuals face today as they make daily decisions on how to protect themselves.

Frankly no one trusts the Government. Just look at the most recent back and forth from the CDC. The premise of the above is unattainable. 

The Next Variant

 The French have identified a new variant, again out of Africa. Not yet clear what the implications. We would expect continuing variants from immune suppressed areas.

Lions and Tigers and Bears

 Or as Watson said in his Double Helix, Scientists, Doctors and Engineers. Specifically Watson remarked upon a possible failure in his description of DNA:

Maurice (Wilkens) refused to get excited. My repeated refrain that DNA could fall at any moment sounded too suspiciously like Francis (Crick) in one of his overwrought periods. For years Francis had been trying to tell him what was important, but the more dispassionately he considered his life, the more he knew he had been wise to follow up his own hunches. As the waiter peered over his shoulder, hoping we would finally order, Maurice made sure I understood that if we could all agree where science was going, everything would be solved and we would have no recourse but to be engineers or doctors.

Watson would repeatedly restate his dislike of physicians and engineers, not to mention his even lower appreciation for surgeons. He was, after all, a scientists, he made the science, and did not follow it. Had he and Crick followed the science they would have been a doctor or an engineer and DNA would not have been understood.

So do we now have any scientists to follow the science or are we awash in doctors, engineers and worse politicians and lawyers! It appears the latter. Pity. 

CDC Gone Dark?

 It appears the CDC has gone dark on data. The last report was sometime mid last week and as of now they are still unchanged. This is the tip of the iceberg at that place. One truly wonders why we wast any time and money on these folks.

Thoughts on the Spike

 The spike protein is the vehicle that initiates cell entry via an ACE2 receptor. The Omicron spike is much more different than the Delta and previous ones. We have discussed this before. Here we attempt a bit of empiricism and rationalism, measurements and logic. We do not have dispositive experimental data as of yet. But let us begin.

1. The Corona virus attached its spike protein to the ACE2 receptor in a cell.

2. The virus then enters the cell, and duplicates itself again and again and also causes massive damage to the cell.

3. The binding of the spike and ACE2R (the cells receptor and gateway to inside the cell) is due to charged sections on both proteins. The charges are a result of which amino acids are connected to which other amino acids.

4. However thermodynamic processes effect the topology of the proteins and this their binding properties. The warmer the local temperature the more active and stretched out is the protein.

5. The original Wuhan strain as then Delta seem to require 98.6F and higher to open the spike to bind. Perhaps it is also an ACE2R issue as well.

5. Thus the prior variants had to make it to the lung to be activated and do their damage. Like a flu virus.

6. However, the Omicron variant seems to be activated at lower temperatures thus causing an upper respirator response. Namely Omicron activates at temperatures in the nose and throat. The details are lacking but some experimental evidence has been shown.

7. Moreover, when the response occurs, namely the virus gets inside the cell, the virus is multiplying aggressively. Thus in Omicron the multiplication occurs in the nasopharynx, totally unlike the other variants. Thus it spreads more easily. It may also spread in a different manner. The problem is that we still really do not know how these spread. Note that if it is by aerosols, the lung aerosols are much smaller than nasal aerosols! Does this mean anything? We really do not know!

8. The older variants could infect and then take a long while to exhibit symptoms due to the need to passage to the lungs. Whereas the Omicron is like a common cold, it reacts and multiplies almost instantly and creates a cloud of viral aerosols. Thus the increased infectivity.

9. In vaccinated people one suspects that there is lung protection as one would see in a flu, allowing time to have the adaptive immune system respond. However in Omicron like the common cold the innate system explodes with massive cytokines and thus the symptoms.

10. Thia may also explain why the vaccines are less potent, most of the antibodies are in the lung cells as are the memory T cells. The nose has never seen this stuff before. In a sense it is a different infection.  

11. How long does the virus in Omicron hang around? Now we use some logic plus facts. The previous versions lived in the nice warm lung, multiplying as the adaptive immune system responded. Apparently spreading the lung infection demanded some heavy talking or breathing to get those aerosols out. Also symptoms took longer from data of initial infection. Thus the older versions had a long lead time and possibly five days works. Now for the Omicron, it starts almost immediately and takes a long time fighting with the innate and adaptive immune system. My clinical experience say it may be 15 days from data of infection, almost date of symptoms, to a low viral load. Thus one must not compare apples to oranges. Yet.

One may ask if the above is correct. The literature provides some empirical evidence the remainder is Galen.

Finally, and most importantly, the Jesuitical Sophist seems clueless on these issues. It would be nice if we had someone who could say what we known, and empiricist, then what we can logically determine, the rationalist, and then let people know there is still a lot of work in progress.

NJ 2022 01 01

 Happy New Year etc. We may be stopping this because the data has become useless. First the State has stopped, second the CDC is always useless, and third, the at home tests are many time more than PCR. 

First the estimated infection rate per  vaccinate per 100,000 per week. The CDC said 100, we measure 1,000. Omicron is 10 time more infectious than Delta. However it is an upper respiratory infection. Namely the spike protein attaches at 94F not requiring 98.6F as others. Like the common cold. BUT, it remains in the nasopharynx for weeks! Thus just giving and giving!

We see this in the chart below where we projected CDC data from the increased vaccinations. Useless data. Reminds me of the pompous morons from almost two years ago predicting the end of the world.

The chart below is amazing. We now have more than 100% "immune" to some degree! And daily infections exploding.

The town doubling time has collapsed downward. Back to where we started. Also remember that at home tests are NOT included!

Town and county exploding, town especially worse. The local ethnic family gatherings are doing this. Saw it yesterday especially!

At present we have 400+ infected people walking around. This is based upon PCR data. Given the mild Omicron and at home tests we most likely have 3-5 time that number, topping 2,000 out of a population of 11,000!

The State new infected per day explodes

As does the county

Deaths are still low but LTC continue.

Certain counties have the higher density

State prevalence is now 2% but as before I guess more likely close to 10% Omicron!

Happy New Year.