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!