Thank you for the prayers!

The worst of it seems (he says cautiously, hoping to avoid after hubris, nemesis) to be over.

Barring the documented double-dip effect, it has not been godawful. The brain fog seems to be in retreat, too, though long stretches of typing can still be a trial at times. Reading has been less impaired, thankfully. I would appreciate the return of the sense of smell, but that can take even more time, worse luck.

My eldest son was also confirmed positive. Home Depot gave him two weeks to get it out of his system, along with some paid leave. Everyone had manageable cold symptoms, or none at all. 

Here's hoping.

 

 

Down with covid.

 

That's both a confirmed-PCR diagnosis and my general feeling about the situation.

Anyway, my case and that of my eldest son are the worst, but they are fairly mild. 

Unfortunately, my brain fog is maddening.

Prayers welcome.

Almost two years and mountains of data later, and our Top Men can't tell the difference.

The difference between "with" and "from" when it comes to coronavirus deaths, that is.

Because, in various important contexts, starting with treatment, dying with Covid-19 is a critically-different phenomenon than dying from Covid-19. 

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that distinction is still unknown for some reason:

Two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the CDC still hasn’t set up a system to distinguish causation from correlation, [CDC Director Dr. Rochelle] Walensky admits.

* * *

The CDC’s data reporting website makes no such distinction at all. It’s not a case of waiting a few weeks for their “death registry” to catch up. All of its data on admissions and deaths are entirely correlative and always has been. The causation data simply doesn’t exist, and it never did.

This is important for more than just deaths when it comes to public policy, but let’s start there. The failure of the CDC to impose reporting requirements for degree of causation in deaths correlated to a COVID-19 diagnosis has left us completely unable to gauge risk and craft public policy with Omicron. We know from hard data that Omicron is far more transmissible than earlier variants, but we have no idea how dangerous it is otherwise. And even if we have that eventually with Omicron, we don’t have comparative data from other variants. My friend John Hinderaker at Power Line has done some fine work in using excess-mortality rates to determine actual risk in the pandemic, but this is only a secondary measure that is less reliable than the kind of measures the CDC should have had in place by mid-summer of 2020.

However, this failure has a broader impact than just on reported deaths. The lack of causation data on hospital admissions prompted a major media hysteria last month when COVID-correlated pediatric admissions suddenly jumped. Reporters jumped to the conclusion that Omicron had turned potentially deadly for children — even while no one could point to an Omicron-caused death in the entire world.

Some might say we have systemic problems at the CDC (and FDA, while we are at it).

Some would be correct. 

The pandemic's other death toll.

The head of OneAmerica insurance said the death rate is up a stunning 40% from pre-pandemic levels among working-age people.

“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” the company’s CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference this week. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”

OneAmerica is a $100 billion insurance company that has had its headquarters in Indianapolis since 1877. The company has approximately 2,400 employees and sells life insurance, including group life insurance to employers in the state.

Davison said the increase in deaths represents “huge, huge numbers,” and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica.

“And what we saw just in third quarter, we’re seeing it continue into fourth quarter, is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he said.

“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.”

The full story, stemming from a conference held in Indiana, can be found here.

The cascade effects of this thing, including the policies pushed during it, are going to be with us for years. And the idea of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for governmental actions during the pandemic grows more sensible by the hour.

 

"Average used-car price nears $30,000...."

I have never spent more than $12,500 on a car--and that was a two year old 1995 Buick Skylark.

Nice car--all the bells and mid-90s whistles.

Not even close since, and with that in mind, it should {?} be clear I've never bought a new car.

Right now, our family vehicle is a 2005 Expedition XLT--literally totaled, thanks to being t-boned in a rural smash-up over the summer. 

It's still driveable, albeit an embarrassment to be seen in, so we still use it. But for how much longer? We're playing with house money, and it's running out.

However, the current used car market is insane, and it does not appear that we will be able to replace it with anything other than a similar wreck.

 “I’ve never seen anything remotely close to this — it’s craziness,” said Schrier, who has been selling autos for 35 years. “It’s quite frustrating for so many people right now.”

When the government reported that consumer inflation rocketed 6.8% in the 12 months that ended in November — the sharpest jump in nearly 40 years — the biggest factor, apart from energy, was used vehicles. And while the rate of increase is slowing, most experts say the inflated vehicle prices aren't likely to ease for the foreseeable future.

The blame can be traced directly to the pandemic's eruption in March of last year. Auto plants suspended production to try to slow the virus’ spread. As sales of new vehicles sank, fewer people traded in used cars and trucks. At the same time, demand for laptops and monitors from people stuck at home led semiconductor makers to shift production from autos, which depend on such chips, to consumer electronics.

When a swifter-than-expected economic rebound boosted demand for vehicles, auto plants tried to restore full production. But chip makers couldn’t respond fast enough. And rental car companies and other fleet buyers, unable to acquire new vehicles, stopped off-loading older ones, thereby compounding the shortage of used vehicles.

Bleak as the market is for used-car buyers, the computer chip shortage has also driven new-vehicle prices higher. The average new vehicle, Edmunds.com says, is edging toward $46,000.

Even so, prices of used cars are likely to edge closer to new ones. Since the pandemic started, used vehicle prices have jumped 42% — more than double the increase for new ones.

Remember this moment when the Nu variant starts rampaging.

Eh, let's wait and see about a travel stop from South Africa, says "America's Doctor."

Why? Because it's still early:

Only a few cases of the B.1.1.529 “Nu” variant have been detected [outside of South Africa] so far. By the logic of March 2020, that should make this an opportune moment to slap a travel ban on southern Africa. We might not be able to stop Nu from reaching the U.S. but we can limit the number of travelers bringing it in, slowing the spread. And the slower the spread is, the fewer people will be infected while the country waits for Pfizer and Moderna to produce an updated vaccine, if need be.

I have an idea: tell him he's acting like a fellow over-rated egomaniac when the latter was too late about stopping travel from Europe.

That might do it.

The UK has already issued a travel stop. 

Meanwhile, the stock market dropped like a stone today--maybe that will wake up a caretaker or two at the White House.

Here's some more data about the variant that's giving some epidemiologists the sweats.

It's rampaging through the South African province that includes Pretoria and Johannesburg, and has surpassed Delta in the course of three weeks.

[Update: mirabile dictu, someone is awake in DC: travel ban begins Monday, which I hope means we test everyone in the meantime and then citizens and legal residents who return, too. Good on the Administration for acting quickly.]

The Corona-Killing Bullet?

Maybe, but don't break out the champagne flutes yet.

Pfizer announces that its new antiviral pill cuts down the risk of hospitalization and death by almost 90 percent.

An experimental coronavirus pill reduced the risk of hospitalization and death by 89 percent in high-risk people infected with the virus, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer announced Friday.

The effect of the drug, a five-day regimen designed to block the virus from making copies of itself, was found to be so strong midway through the study that an independent committee monitoring the clinical trial recommended it be stopped early. The data has not yet been published or peer-reviewed. Pfizer chief executive Albert Bourla told CNBC that the company would submit data to U.S. regulators before Thanksgiving.

* * *

 David Boulware, an infectious-disease physician-scientist at the University of Minnesota Medical School not involved in the research said the findings were “pretty impressive.” He noted the drug was most effective when given earlier, within three days of symptoms, but it remained highly effective even when given five days after symptoms appeared — which may better reflect the real world use of the drug.

“That’s great. That’s a huge impact,” Boulware said.

Two dampeners:

1. As mentioned in the article, peer-review is necessary.

2. As a gent who got a suddenly-necessary Pfizer booster two weeks ago yesterday, understand that I am not inclined to pop corks for Pfizer's more grandiose claims. 

IF it is true, this is great and glorious news--a literal game-changing life-saver.

If so, it will turn corona into something more akin to the flu. Not to mention taking the steam out of the boiler of our society-straining vaccine wars. 

But let's wait and see.

A good explainer about antibodies and our immune system's ability to evolve.

Short, distorting summary: when it comes to antibodies, quality replaces quantity. 

Most of our B cells, or the antibodies they produce, won’t actually react at all to SARS-CoV-2, or a vaccine that resembles it. That’s because our bodies are always churning out B cells at random, repeatedly futzing with their genetics so that they’ll make a diverse array of antibodies—billions or trillions in total—that can collectively recognize just about any microbe they might ever see. This process is haphazard and imprecise, though: When B cells are born, “they don’t have any particular pathogen in mind,” Gabriel Victora, an immunologist at Rockefeller University, told me. Instead of gripping firmly onto the virus’s surface, many antibodies might just “bounce on and off,” giving the pathogen ample time to wrest itself free, Bhattacharya said. It’s the best defense the body can slap together on short notice, having never met the bug before. Early antibodies are sort of the immune system’s best guesses at defense—the immunological equivalent of throwing spaghetti against a wall to see what sticks—which usually means we need a lot of them to truly pen the pathogen in place. They’re also fragile. Most antibodies don’t hang around for more than a few weeks before they degrade.

Such flimsy fighters aren’t terribly good investments for the long term. So while the subpar antibodies are duking it out on the front lines, the immune system will shuttle a contingent of young B cells into a boot camp, called a germinal center, where they can study up on the coronavirus. What happens inside these training camps is a battle royal in miniature: The cells crowd together and desperately vie for access to the resources they need to survive. Their weapons are their antibodies, which they wave frantically about, trying to latch on to chunks of dead coronavirus, while a panel of other immune cells judges them from afar. Only the most battle-ready among them—the ones whose antibodies grip most tightly onto the coronavirus—move on to the next round, and the losers perish in defeat. As Gommerman put it, “If they suck, they die.”

The harrowing cycle repeats itself over and over, and only gets more grim. Survivor B cells will xerox themselves, deliberately introducing errors into their genetic codes in the hopes that some of the mutations will enhance their antibodies’ chances of gluing themselves to the virus. The entire process is downright “Darwinian,” like a super-sped-up form of natural selection, Victora said. The weaklings are weeded out, leaving just the sharpest and strongest behind. It’s also very prolonged.

Researchers such as Ali Ellebedy, of Washington University in St. Louis, have found that these tournaments of culling continue for at least 12 to 15 weeks after people receive their COVID-19 vaccines, perhaps longer.If all of this is getting a little too Squid Game, consider the much rosier upshot: At the end of this process, our bodies are left with some truly primo antibodies, well poised to take up the mantle of protection as the first waves of mediocre defenders start to fall away.

 

Follow which science?

Or whose scientists?

When ardent pro-covid-vaxxers jump down the throats of the hesitant, some variation of "trust the science" is part of the overall Deus Vult crusade sermon.

And yet, nothing has exposed the problems with the American medical establishment quite like a global pandemic with a novel virus.

We could factor in the politicization of American medicine, which promises to reap quite a pile of caskets in coming years. The early preview here being the seeming magical belief that virtuous protests confer immunities that unvirtuous ones do not. But let's circle back to that one later.

No, right now the main problem is that there's a welter of problems with the actual collection and genuine scientific analysis of medical data relating to the plague. 

Now, understand that this is coming from, depending on your vax perspective, a Citizen Hero or Traditor Drone who got his Pfizer shots in April of this year. Me, I just ran some calculations with the data and it seemed that I was high-risk for bad corona results, so that's what I think of it.

Further, having had the flu vaccine before, I recognize the corona versions are not and cannot be magic bullets. But like flu shots, they do promise to and have successfully reduced the severity of symptoms for breakthrough infections.

• Which brings us to problem one: how many breakthrough infections are there? 

Thanks in part to our continuing grievous failure to develop fast, cheap and effective tests, we have no idea at all. I have a sneaking suspicion that My Much Better Half and I had mild cases back in August which were beaten back by the vaccine. You see, our son had a Little League teammate who got a mild case in late July, but since my son was vaxxed along with his teammates, the season went on. Quite possibly corona...then again, summer cold? "Worst" symptoms gone in 48 hours and lasted a week total. But it sure would have been nice to have those cheap home tests like the Brits do.

• Which then, as the first story below the bullet notes, points to problem two: do the vaccines, particularly the Pfizer one, wear off quickly--i.e., within six months?

Sure looks that way, he says with a measure of disquiet after a quick glance at the calendar. 

So, it sounds like boosters would be called for, which is what Israel did after that nation experienced a post-vaccine wave, tamping it back down.

• Which brings me to problem three: the experts aren't remotely in agreement on that idea, with some arguing against doing so ten days ago:
  

The discussions have taken place amid ongoing tensions between scientists at the CDC and FDA and other federal officials working on the Covid-19 response about the administration’s public messaging on vaccine efficacy and boosters, given the gaps in available data.

The Sept. 27 call was originally planned for the week before. The White House abruptly rescheduled it after the CDC’s independent vaccine advisory committee recommended that the Pfizer-BioNTech booster be reserved for high-risk groups, including the elderly.

The rescheduled call was the tensest one to date, according to the three people with information on the talks. Fauci argued that the CDC committee’s stance — that science did not support giving boosters to all adults — was incorrect. And he dismissed suggestions that the administration had to choose between a broad U.S. booster campaign and donating vaccines to countries in need.

The president’s chief medical adviser also told the outside experts that boosters could, and should, be given widely to reduce the spread of the coronavirus rather than only to prevent severe disease or death.

Fauci’s remarks drew disagreement on the call, the five people familiar with the matter said. Several participants were left mystified about the goal of the government’s vaccination campaign.

“It was very tense,” one person said. “More than anything, it was like Fauci felt he needed to make a point.”

Since the FDA and CDC authorized limited use of the Pfizer-BioNTech booster in late September, top administration health officials have said publicly that they will follow the recommendations of scientists in planning the booster rollout.

But hours after the Pfizer-BioNTech decision, Biden predicted that booster shots would soon be available “across the board.”

“In the near term, we’re probably going to open this up,” the president said.

So which is it? Boosters or no?

Trust the science? 

Sure.

Which set of results? 

It seems that knowledgeable experts are in disagreement. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking and there are mandates shoving needles into arms.

Hopefully.

Merck claims its new anti-viral halves hospitalization risk from coronavirus.

I genuinely hope so, but we shall see. 

Overselling has been one of the myriad failures of the American medical establishment over the course of the pandemic.

This is what happens when you erase border controls.

 

 Eight hundred covid-positive Haitians quarantined in El Paso motel.

Note the source: not America's Praetorian-Corporate Media Complex, which at best underplays and more typically ignores disastrous decision-making by the current party in power. 

The body count meter is suspended when you wear a "-D."

Covid is an especial problem amongst Haitians because less than 0.2 percent of that tragic nation are fully vaccinated. And those who are are almost certainly part of the corrupt ruling class who aren't leaving.

How bad is it? So bad that Laredo's Democratic Mayor is calling the policies of Orange Man Bad favorable by comparison. THAT bad.

Finally, take note: 60,000 more migrants surging north now.

But that's fine with both the ruling party and Wall Street. In fact, it's the whole idea: allegedly strengthening the ruling party's voting bloc(s), and ensuring a wage-depressing stream of ultra-cheap labor.

All during a pandemic we're forcing the locals to get shots for.

Lucky about that body count meter.

 

As they say, you can't spell "class" without the vowel and repeating consonants.

 

Like most of the bummers set forth in Alanis Morisette's iconic pop tune, the pontiff's observation about an unvaccinated colleague does not qualify as an example of situational irony. 

A guide for the perplexed:

So here, situational irony would be more along the lines of suffering life-threatening complications from a life-saving vaccine.

Don't you think?

Anyway, while the observation is not irony, it does smack of schadenfreude. 

Which is fine, because you can probably find that in the Beatitudes or something.

Waning protection over time makes the most sense.

 An interesting analysis of why Moderna is apparently outperforming Pfizer right now.

Moderna come out a little later, and--most intriguingly--had more time between the two shots. 

Which may explain the better immune reaction.  

The British one-shot-for-everyone-first strategy seems to be paying off big time.

Been under the weather for a week plus.

Cold symptoms. 

Mild, but persistent.

No fever or nagging coughs, thankfully. Really, apart from frequent-ish nose-blowing, it's been a very light malady.

I received the Pfizer shots back in April, so I am among the Fully Vaccinated.

In any year not ending in -20 or -21 I would wave it away as a very mild summer cold. And it still probably is? And yet, one of my middle son's Little League teammates came down with a mild case of corona two weeks ago.

In any event, I seem to be coming out from under it today, so good. 

Vaccine reluctance crosses racial and political lines.

I have received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine and will get the last in a couple of weeks. I think it is salutary and it was the right decision for me in my situation.

But I won't be wagging my finger at the more reluctant among us. There are various legitimate concerns about the vaccines ranging from the novelty of their RNA background to bad-to-horrific historical experiences with health care institutions--to name but two. Obviously, there can be other factors which involve reasoned calculations against getting the jab(s).

You will see infographics about vaccine reluctance in "red states," and while there is no doubt resistance among rural whites, there is also reluctance among African American populations which the slick partisan presentations frequently elide. And there is good reason for African-Americans to be wary--generations of substandard care would make anyone reluctant to get jabbed with a brand new medical treatment for which there is no legal recourse if it goes south.

Michigan shows both phenomena, and again, I can understand why people are skeptical. 

A little space for folks who are reluctant would be nice.

I'm looking at you, Karens.

Oh, and one more thing: I'm not carrying around a "vaccine passport" of any kind. Just in case you're wondering.

On the other hand...

Using the Defense Production Act could be salutary--if the stuff is made here. 

Our bipartisan-forged dependence upon the Sinofascists is one of the reasons we got hammered by the plague. Telling 3M to import more masks from Shanghai isn't going to fix anything. Except the wallets of men whose wallets desperately need thinning.

We can't make our own Tylenol, for the love of pete. And we know it.

I am also curious to see how Biden's "Buy American" plan is going to work, what with economic nationalism not being a shareholder fave.

Your weekly reminder: everyone's mental health has taken a big hit.

Some numbers:

 According to data from Mental Health America (MHA), however, more people are facing deteriorating mental health. From January through September of 2020, the number of people who have taken MHA’s anxiety screenings has increased by 93 percent over the entire previous year. The organization’s depression screening has seen a 62 percent increase over 2019’s totals. Before the year was even over, more people were trying to find out if they were suffering from anxiety or depression than ever before.

MHA isn’t the only organization with data pointing to the mental health impact of the pandemic. A survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation in July 2020 found that 53 percent of adults said the pandemic had a negative toll on their mental health. Data collected from the CDC found that 41 percent of adults experienced symptoms of an anxiety or depressive disorder in December 2020, compared to 11 percent in January-July of 2019.

It can be seen in the increase in overdose deaths. 

And the preliminary statistics on suicides are frightening, too.

Coronavirus *is* a menace.

And while I do not share the sentiment, I can certainly understand why people think it has been overplayed for political purposes. When people who claim to take it seriously act otherwise, it breeds deserved distrust.

Exhibit A: virus-ravaged New York's vaccination rates are low, especially on weekends:

For now, the vaccination effort does not resemble the sort of mass mobilization many imagined. New York City has yet to open any large vaccination sites. Instead, hospitals administered many of the first vaccinations to their employees. Hospitals have been encouraged to use each shipment of vaccines within a week, and the operation does not always have a race-against-the-clock feel.

The number of vaccinations plummets on weekends and all but stopped for Christmas Day, when more planes landed at Kennedy International Airport than vaccine doses were administered in New York City.

The vaccination program is now in its third week and has yet to accelerate dramatically, even as supply has begun to increase. More than 340,000 doses have been delivered to New York City so far.

Exhibit B: a Congresswoman who tested positive for the virus on December 28 was present for the vote for Speaker of the House yesterday--which blatantly violates the CDC guidance for infected persons.

[By the way, if you get hung up on the moniker for corona in the first link of Exhibit B, keep that and other irrelevant thoughts to yourself.]

Give him another Emmy.

The Governor needs to watch football in person, so He shall watch it in person.

Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.

But having the imperator go to the Coliseum alone was so obviously an act of pulling rank that 6,700 select fans will also be permitted to attend alongside Andrew Commodus.

We should all be clear about the malarkey that Cuomo is spewing in an attempt to whitewash this embarrassing spectacle. He’s now describing this event as the beginning of a new program designed to “reopen business safely” as the pandemic begins to recede. Of course, there are two major problems with this attempt at public relations spinning.

First of all, there was no such plan in the works until the Bills locked up the AFC East. The entire state still hasn’t reached the point where Cuomo will allow normal service in bars and restaurants or larger outdoor gatherings (including weddings), to say nothing of packing thousands of people into a football stadium. This plan was cooked up because Andrew Cuomo himself wanted to go see the Bills play. But even he realized how horrible the optics would have been if he’d asked to be the only fan in the stadium, so he’s going to allow thousands of others to go.

The other point is that pandemic is not “receding” in New York State. At least not yet. Case numbers are rising in many counties and hospitalizations are also up. Yes, the vaccine has arrived in New York and it’s being distributed as quickly as possible, but only a relative handful of people have been inoculated thus far. The playoffs start in ten days. We’re not going to be anywhere near herd immunity by then. Even if every man woman and child could somehow get the vaccine, that still wouldn’t matter because the vaccine is given in two doses and takes up to two weeks after that for the full effects to set in. We’ve already seen a nurse come down with COVID a full week after being vaccinated.  

I have admired this Bills squad from afar this year, but I am going to have to root for a first round flameout instead.  

 

Dr. Fauci's Truth Problem.

The problem with paternalistic lying is that it's still lying. 

First, he lied about masks, saying they were not effective, in order to keep ordinary yokels from making a run on the supplies.

And now, he's been called out for moving goalposts on the level of vaccination necessary to achieve herd immunity.

There is another problem with lying--it makes the listener wonder what else you might not be telling the truth about.

And speaking of not being forthcoming: has anyone followed up on the bombshell story revealing the NIH's funding of "gain of function" research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology?

But just last year, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the organization led by Dr. Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.

In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.

Many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.

SARS-CoV-2 , the virus now causing a global pandemic, is believed to have originated in bats. U.S. intelligence, after originally asserting that the coronavirus had occurred naturally, conceded last month that the pandemic may have originated in a leak from the Wuhan lab. Dr. Fauci did not respond to Newsweek's requests for comment.

And please note that there's a difference between "creating" and "manipulating," which is something to keep in mind when reading the "rebuttal" statements which have not actually responded to this story.