CDC COVID Data Tracker

CDC COVID Data Tracker This site is not easy to read, at all. Also, Utah is missing.

Masks Again? Delta Variant’s Spread Prompts Reconsideration of Precautions.

Masks Again? Delta Variant’s Spread Prompts Reconsideration of Precautions.: Roughly half of Los Angeles County residents are fully vaccinated, and about 60 percent have had at least one dose. While the number of positive tests is still below 1 percent in the county, the rate has been inching up, Dr. Ferrer added, and there has been a rise in the number of reinfections among residents who were infected before and did not get vaccinated.

Those reinfections are especially demoralizing. I spoke with one person (small sample size!) who caught it twice, and the second time was much, much worse.

L.A. County urges indoor mask wearing as Delta variant spreads - Los Angeles Times

L.A. County urges indoor mask wearing as Delta variant spreads - Los Angeles Times Aaaand masks are back.Guess I'll hold off on buying those teeth whitening strips.

Vaccinated Among Delta Deaths, but Older and Relatively Few: UK Data

Vaccinated Among Delta Deaths, but Older and Relatively Few: UK Data: "Someone aged 80 who is fully vaccinated essentially takes on the risk of an unvaccinated person of around 50 — much lower, but still not nothing, and so we can expect some deaths," the statisticians said. My mom just turned 80, so this is concerning.

Vaccinated Among Delta Deaths, but Older and Relatively Few: UK Data

Vaccinated Among Delta Deaths, but Older and Relatively Few: UK Data: As of June 21, 92,029 cases of Delta have been confirmed by Public Health England, of which 117 ended in death. Of those cases, 109 were in those over the age of 50. UK officials did not give a more detailed age breakdown, but coronavirus deaths disproportionately affect the very elderly. Looks like I'm masking up.

Highly contagious Delta coronavirus variant spreading fast in California - Los Angeles Times

Highly contagious Delta coronavirus variant spreading fast in California - Los Angeles Times The Delta variant is gaining traction in Los Angeles.Only two states away.

Unvaccinated Missourians fuel COVID: 'We will be the canary'

Unvaccinated Missourians fuel COVID: 'We will be the canary': As immunizations slow, the delta variant has become the predominant form of the virus in the region. Aaron Schekorra, a spokesman for the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, said it makes up 93% of the random sample of cases that the county is sending for analysis, up from 70% three weeks ago.

Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated - New York Daily News

Nearly all COVID deaths in US are now among unvaccinated - New York Daily News: only about 150 of the more than 18,000 COVID-19 deaths in May were in fully vaccinated people. That translates to about 0.8%, or five deaths per day on average.

Delta: WHO urges fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks as variant spreads

Delta: WHO urges fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks as variant spreads “Vaccine alone won’t stop community transmission,” Simao added. “People need to continue to use masks consistently, be in ventilated spaces, hand hygiene ... the physical distance, avoid crowding. This still continues to be extremely important, even if you’re vaccinated when you have a community transmission ongoing.” Looks like I'll be wearing a mask again. The Delta variant should hit my state in a week or so.

Unvaccinated Missourians fuel COVID: 'We will be the canary'

Unvaccinated Missourians fuel COVID: 'We will be the canary' Frederick said some people in the heavily Republican state are resistant because they feel as if Democrats are pushing the vaccine. “I keep telling people, while we are busy fighting with each other, this thing is picking us off one by one,” he said. “It takes no sides. It has no political affiliation. It is not red. It is not blue. It is a virus. And if we don’t protect ourselves, we are going to do a lot of damage to our community.” Extreme political polarization leads to death and chaos. I guess the poor and naive are disposable. May God have mercy on the souls of everyone who manipulated these people for cheap political points. How Newt Gringrish Destroyed American Politics

Delta plus Covid variant: Here's what you need to know

Delta plus Covid variant: Here's what you need to know:India’s Health Ministry reportedly said Wednesday that it had found around 40 cases of the delta plus variant with the K417N mutation. The ministry released a statement on Tuesday in which it said that INSACOG, a consortium of 28 laboratories genome sequencing the virus in India during the pandemic, had informed it that the delta plus variant has three worrying characteristics. These are, it said: increased transmissibility, stronger binding to receptors of lung cells and the potential reduction in monoclonal antibody response (which could reduce the efficacy of a lifesaving monoclonal antibody therapy given to some hospitalized Covid patients). I don't have time to write about this because I'm grading, but I just bought some KN95 masks, even though I'm vaccinated.

US Delta-Variant Rate Doubled in 2 Weeks, 9.9% to 20.6%: Fauci

US Delta-Variant Rate Doubled in 2 Weeks, 9.9% to 20.6%: Fauci Exponential growth. It's a freight train that can't be stopped at this point. Let's watch as, sadly, people discover the limits of their ideology.

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On June 10, the chief doctor of Moscow's flagship Covid-19 hospital, Denis Protsenko, told the Echo Moskvy radio station that patients were not responding to previously effective treatments.

What We Did Before Just Isn't Working-- Delta Variant Threatens to Overwhelm Russia - The Moscow Times

%u2018What We Did Before Just Isn%u2019t Working%u2019%3A Delta Variant Threatens to Overwhelm Russia - The Moscow Times Russia only has a 13% vaccination rate. I would argue that a country's vaccination rate is an indicator of their social and infrastructure health, but look at Japan's, which is ridiculously low.

New Covid study hints at long-term loss of brain tissue, Dr. Scott Gottlieb warns

New Covid study hints at long-term loss of brain tissue, Dr. Scott Gottlieb warns “You could compensate for that over time, so the symptoms of that may go away, but you’re never going to regain the tissue if, in fact, it’s being destroyed as a result of the virus,” said Gottlieb, who serves on the board of Covid vaccine-maker Pfizer. Oh my.

Covid delta: WHO says variant is the fastest and fittest and will 'pick off' most vulnerable

Covid delta: WHO says variant is the fastest and fittest and will 'pick off' most vulnerable “We can protect those vulnerable people, those front-line workers,” Ryan said, “and the fact that we haven’t, as Director-General [Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus] has said, again and again, is a catastrophic moral failure at a global level.” I would argue that another moral failure is everyone who has intentionally conveyed the message that the virus isn't a threat in order to sell alternative cures, promote themselves, or keep their businesses open.

Cleavon MD on Twitter: "Delta variant is rampant. 83 patients with COVID hospitalized at this hospital in Missouri. Almost all unvaccinated people. The morale among hospital staff is low." / Twitter

Cleavon MD on Twitter: "Delta variant is rampant. 83 patients with COVID hospitalized at this hospital in Missouri. Almost all unvaccinated people. The morale among hospital staff is low." / Twitter Rural, white evangelicals in parts of Missouri are being smitten by an uncaring virus.

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The%20Delta%20Variant%20Could%20Create%20%u201CTwo%20Americas%u201D%20Of%20COVID%2C%20Experts%20Warn: It%u2019s%20unclear%20whether%20Delta%20will%20dominate%20as%20quickly%20and%20totally%20as%20it%20did%20in%20the%20UK%2C%20where%20it%20replaced%20an%20outbreak%20driven%20almost%20entirely%20by%20the%20Alpha%20variant.%20In%20the%20US%2C%20a%20larger%20number%20of%20competing%20variants%20are%20circulating%2C%20making%20it%20harder%20to%20predict%20what%20will%20happen%2C%20Bette%20Korber%2C%20a%20computational%20biologist%20at%20the%20Los%20Alamos%20National%20Laboratory%20in%20New%20Mexico%2C%20told%20BuzzFeed%20News.%20But%20she%20expects%20Delta%20to%20become%20the%20most%20common%20variant%20in%20the%20US%20within%20weeks.%20%u201CIt%u2019s%20really%20moving%20quickly%2C%u201D%20Korber%20said.

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The%20Delta%20Variant%20Could%20Create%20%u201CTwo%20Americas%u201D%20Of%20COVID%2C%20Experts%20Warn: A study of cases in Scotland published this week found that the risk of hospital admission with the Delta variant was roughly doubled compared to people infected with the Alpha variant.

Expect the Unexpected From the Delta Variant - The Atlantic

Expect the Unexpected From the Delta Variant - The Atlantic Delta has gotten so much attention because it has the most troubling collection of traits yet: It is markedly more transmissible than Alpha, can sicken a large proportion of people who have had only one dose of a vaccine (though not those who have had two), and may even cause more severe disease. All of this is enough to be a warning, especially as Delta is now responsible for 10 percent of U.S. cases and rising. But as with Alpha, which was also suspected to be more severe, how the variant ends up behaving in the real world will depend on more than its biology. It will also depend on how we—the virus’s hosts—choose to behave, how many more people we vaccinate, and, to some extent, how lucky we get. One of the better articles I've read on the Delta variant. Despite it's increased transmissibility vaccinations may prevent a surge.

Eric Topol on Twitter: "Over 11,000 new cases in the UK today, nearly all can be attributed to delta B.1.617.2, highest since 19 Feb 43% increase in hospitalizations past week https://t.co/pItJxXPpv6 @OurWorldinData https://t.co/1OfLktW4qx" / Twitter

Eric Topol on Twitter: "Over 11,000 new cases in the UK today, nearly all can be attributed to delta B.1.617.2, highest since 19 Feb 43% increase in hospitalizations past week https://t.co/pItJxXPpv6 @OurWorldinData https://t.co/1OfLktW4qx" / Twitter Here comes a brutal, second wave of infections. It's like a slow motion train is approaching, but the train gets faster and large with each passing moment. All we have to do to stop it is push a large, red button, but the people tied to the tracks have been told that pushing the button has a statistically insignificant chance of harming them.

It has been six months of posting about virus mutations

Almost six months. I started this blog so I could profit from the suffering of anonymous strangers by generating a little ad revenue, and then Google told me that I was just scraping news stories and unworth of ad revenue, and the algorithm was right. But now I have this crappy little record of how the variants have moved through society in the last six months and it is chilling to skim over these posts and see that process at work. I realize that in our social media environment fear is an income stream, but nobody reads this blog so let me say that THERE'S NOTHING TO STOP A MORE DANGEROUS VIRUS MUTATION from emerging, except for widescale vaccination. People have three choices:

• You can isolate, wear a mask, and hope you don't get the vaccine,
• you can get vaccinated and greatly reduce, but not eliminate the risk of infection and expose yourself to the statistically very small risk of side effects, or
• You can get vaccinated and wear a mask in high-risk situations, like Walmart

I really, really need to read some research about the ways in which people interpret statistical probabilities. I guess most of us, most of the time, don't live our lives by statistical probabilities, even the "smart" people. I mean, pure rationality excludes a great deal from our worldview, but in the case of epidemiology, it seems like the safest bet.

How the Alpha 2019 Coronavirus Variant Became So Powerful - The New York Times

How the Alpha 2019 Coronavirus Variant Became So Powerful - The New York Times Gregory Towers, a virologist at the University College London, and his colleagues grew coronaviruses in human lung cells, comparing Alpha-infected cells with those infected with earlier variants of the coronavirus. Dig deeper into the moment. Special offer: Subscribe for $1 a week. They found that lung cells with Alpha made drastically less interferon, a protein that switches on a host of immune defenses. They also found that in the Alpha cells, the defensive genes normally switched on by interferon were quieter than in cells infected with other variants. Somehow, the immune system’s most important alarm bells were barely ringing in the presence of the Alpha variant. “It’s making itself more invisible,” Dr. Towers said.

Missouri health department urges COVID-19 vaccinations amid Delta variant spread | Coronavirus | stltoday.com

Missouri health department urges COVID-19 vaccinations amid Delta variant spread | Coronavirus | stltoday.com JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri's health department on Wednesday urged residents to get vaccinated against COVID-19 amid increasing cases of the Delta variant of the virus. The department said a rising number of people are contracting the highly transmissible variant, which was first detected in India. "It is clear that the variant has become prevalent in communities throughout Missouri," the Department of Health and Senior Services said in a statement Wednesday evening. I'm still curious about whether news of these variants will have any effect on the "vaccine hesitant" or whether it will cut through their ranks like a hot knife through butter, like a lawnmower through dandelions, like a firehose through cotton candy, like a depressed English teacher through a box of Kind bars sitting in his desk drawer.

Health officials in southwest Missouri believe dangerous variant is source of most virus cases | Coronavirus | stltoday.com

Health officials in southwest Missouri believe dangerous variant is source of most virus cases | Coronavirus | stltoday.com The Delta variant arrives in Missouri. There's a sense of inevitability to this.

Fauci Says Risks From The Delta Variant Underscore The Importance Of Vaccines : Coronavirus Updates : NPR

Fauci Says Risks From The Delta Variant Underscore The Importance Of Vaccines : Coronavirus Updates : NPR: What Fauci says on NPR: Some studies have recently come out essentially documenting that indeed, this particular variant does transmit significantly more readily between people and among people than the virus that is now the dominant virus, which is the Alpha variant, which is the one that's more dominant in the United States. In addition, a very recent data — literally yesterday and the day before — shows that, in fact, it is a more dangerous virus in the sense that it can potentially make people more severely ill. So the combination of more transmissibility and a greater severity of disease appropriately prompted the CDC to elevate it to a variant of concern. I feel sorry for Fauci, because he has to go in front of the nation and say, repeatedly, "We don't know what's going on right now, and by the time we do, it will be too late." Not a fun gig.

Shout out to visitors to this blog

Here's to you, six people that came to the most depressing blog in the world yesterday. I hope you found what you were looking for.

WHO says delta Covid variant has now spread to 80 countries and it keeps mutating

WHO says delta Covid variant has now spread to 80 countries and it keeps mutating The delta variant has spread to more than 80 countries worldwide. Delta now makes up 10% of new cases in the U.S., up from 6% last week. The WHO added a new variant called lambda to its list of variants of interest. I'm hoping my vaccination will protect me from these spreading mutations.

COVID-19 Delta variant likely to become dominant U.S. strain, Gottlieb says - CBS News

COVID-19 Delta variant likely to become dominant U.S. strain, Gottlieb says - CBS News Gottlieb says the mRNA vaccines are sufficient to protect us from the Delta variant. I'm vaccinated, but will probably start taking vitamin D again and wearing a mask in crowded spaces. "The mRNA vaccine seems to be highly effective, two doses of that vaccine against this variant. The viral vector vaccines from J&J and AstraZeneca also appear to be effective, about 60% effective. The mRNA vaccines are about 88% effective," he said, referring to the vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech. "So we have the tools to control this and defeat it. We just need to use those tools."

What You Need To Know About The Delta COVID-19 Variant | HuffPost Life

What You Need To Know About The Delta COVID-19 Variant | HuffPost Life: Summary: more transmissible, and rumors of increased severity, but that hasn't been confirmed. Some strange fungal infections were showing up in India, and some talk of it affecting younger victims more severely than other variants.

WHO renames COVID variants with Greek letter names to avoid stigma

WHO renames COVID variants with Greek letter names to avoid stigma The new system, which was announced Monday, is based on the letters of the Greek alphabet. The United Kingdom variant, called by scientists B.1.1.7, will now be Alpha. B.1.351, the South Africa variant will be Beta, and the B.1.617.2 variant discovered in India will now be known as Delta.<\i> This seems like a good idea, especially if it increases the likelihood of reporting variants. I can never remember the actual names anyway. The Delta variant, or the variant formerly known as the India variant, has come to New Jersey.

Neutralising antibody activity against SARS-CoV-2 VOCs B.1.617.2 and B.1.351 by BNT162b2 vaccination - The Lancet

Neutralising antibody activity against SARS-CoV-2 VOCs B.1.617.2 and B.1.351 by BNT162b2 vaccination - The Lancet The gist of this is that the older you are, the fewer antibodies you produce over time after having received the Pfizer vaccine, and this may have implications for the variants coming out of India that are now dominant in the Uk and are coming soon to a theater near you.

Vietnam identifies new, highly transmissible variant of coronavirus | TheHill

Vietnam identifies new, highly transmissible variant of coronavirus | TheHill So there's a variant with elements of the India and UK mutations, but the actual covid infection rate is decreasing, although the numbers of deaths of increased slightly. Essentially, nobody knows what is going on right now and by the time you do know, with a virus, it's too late.