Thursday, July 29, 2021

Pandemic Part 6.

 


May 13, 2021.

The best possible news, in a really existential sense:

The fully vaccinated may quit wearing masks indoors and outdoors according to the  CDC.

May 25, 2021

A Year in a Pandemic: COVID-19 in Wyoming

May 27, 2021

In surprising news, the Biden Administration is now opening up the investigation on the source of SARS-CoV-2.

Claims that the source was a Chinese lab have been there all along, but they've tended to be concentrated in certain demographics that hosted a variety of other extreme claims about the disease and were largely discounted early on.  Now, however, the Administration is joining other governments from around the world to demand greater Chinese accountability on what occurred and there's some renewed scientific suspicion that the disease source may in fact have been a Chinese laboratory.  That suspicion was heightened this past week with it was revealed that workers at the lab sought medical attention in November 2019, well before the first reported outbreaks of the disease.

The Administration actually used Anthony Fauci to first break this story prior to the CDC doing son. That was an interesting approach, and it's likely because Fauci is widely respected.  It then went more public with it shortly thereafter.  By taking this approach it's fueling the conspiracy theory fire, which it has to know, and so it no doubt has to be careful.

A few things about this.

The Administration isn't saying it is from a Chinese lab.  It's saying it doesn't know the source, and this is a potential one. That's a change in position, but it isn't an endorsement of that view.   The disease, the government is stating, may have a natural origin, we just don't know what the origin is.

If it does come from a Chinese government lab, the next question is why on earth would they be doing that?  The only logical conclusion is that they were working on a weaponized variant of the SARS virus, but if so its an atypical biological weapon, so that isn't really very clear.  No other logical explanation is immediately available, which also doesn't mean that there isn't one.

If they were working on a weaponized SARS virus, as noted, it'd be a weird weapon.  Most work on biological weapons is on diseases like Anthrax.  The reason is that the thought is that you can infect an enemy group extremely rapidly, and they die very quickly, and then the area is safe to go into.  You don't want anything that's even somewhat slow spreading as your own troops will get it and the entire thing will last for months.  Ideally, you want your enemies dead in a few hours and the spread over even quicker than that.

That's for the typical battlefield application, however.  If you are looking at a different type of weapon, a more economic or impairing one, the considerations may be different.  I.e., if you want to cripple a nations economy, or simple cripple a nation, including its fighting men, a slower rolling disease would be better.  In that scenario, you get the infection rolling just a little before you go to war.  Just long enough to get an epidemic rolling, then you strike.

That such a disease can impair an economy was proven by this pandemic, to be sure.  This wasn't during wartime, however, and that's significant as the next nearest example, the 1917 Influenza, didn't shut down anyone's war economy.  It may have played a role, however, in frustrating the 1917 German spring offensive, and it definitely took the Australian army in Europe out of the war for its last final months.

That you could do this is pretty clear.  The U.S. Navy had a huge problem with SARS-CoV-2.  And the US economy was really impacted, although frankly not as much as thought, and largely due to the obviously peacetime efforts to contain the disease, the latter factor which wouldn't exist in time of war.

That China is preparing for war with the United States isn't a secret, it's well known. That doesn't mean it will occur, although there are plenty of defense analysist that believe it's a certainty.  The reason is that the US is all that stands between China forcibly reincorporating Taiwan, which is a declared Chinese goal.  The US, moreover, also interferes with Chinese nearby marine aspirations, including ones that involve the Philippines, Japan and Vietnam.  And the US operates against Chinese interests around the globe.  China sees itself as a great power, but in the late 19th Century, early 20th Century mold, and is behaving accordingly.  It has a definite near time goal of incorporating Taiwan into itself, and hasn't ruled out military force to do it.  Indeed, it figures its necessary.  And it figures it needs to be done soon, lest Taiwan outright declare its independence while it can still be assured of US assistance should things go badly wrong.

In that scenario, a biological agent spread through unfortunate and unknowing human hosts would be an effective means of messing with an enemy.  It wouldn't defeat them, but it would distract them.  And if you can even impair one aircraft carrier sufficiently, that may be a battle winning strategy in and of itself.

Was the lab working on this?  Who the heck knows.  They may very well not have been, and odds are they were not. We just don't know. And they may have been trying to synthesize the disease in order to be able to better know it, and hence be better situated to combat all SARS variants in the future.  Communist China is simply so secretive, you can't really tell what's going on, and that's the problem.

May 29, 2021

Two Denver County Sheriff's deputies, one of whom worked in their jail, died of COVID-19 within ten days of each other.

One of the two was a die hard opponent of vaccinations, and it seems likely neither were vaccinated.  As noted, one frequently made comments in opposition to the vaccine.

June 4, 2021

Over 600,000 Americans have officially died of SARS-CoV-2 at this point.

The US is donating 25,000,000 vaccines to the US lead COVAX program that seeks to vaccinate internationally.

June 11, 2021

A bill that would prohibit businesses from requiring proof of vaccinations for the most part passed committee with only Cathy Connolly voting against it.

June 28, 2021

A new variant of the disease that surfaced first in India is rapidly advancing globally and will soon be the dominant variant.  

Sydney Australia is on hard lockdown.

July 7, 2021

The Delta variant of the disease is causing heightened concern across the country and has put the disease back in the local headlines.

The good news is that the vaccinations are effective against it, and they now are known to last much longer than at first supposed. The bad is that the new variant transmits easier, a typical evolution event for a virus, but atypically it also is deadlier. With increased summer mobility, officials in low vaccination rate states are concerned. Additionally, as part of this, low vaccination rate Wyoming has the highest death rate per capita due to COVID-19 than any state in the country.

The Delta variant has been causing havoc globally and appears set to in the United States.  South Korea, which had handled its initial outbreak very efficiently, is now experiencing a new surge.

July 12, 2021

Israel has approved a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and Pfizer is working on approval of a third dose in the U.S.

In new that probably ought to get more circulation, given human nature, it's now been shown that erectile dysfunction is associated with having had Covid.  Not only that, having had the disease impacts the production of sex hormones in males and females, leaving some women with symptoms of menopause and some men with much reduced testosterone.

There's been a huge amount of resistance to the vaccine in some quarters, with some people simply refusing to consider it.  We now know that up to 1/3d of those who come down with the disease are left with psychological or neurological problems, and we now also know that it contains the risk of effectively making somebody more or less biologically neutered.  A person has to wonder if getting the news out would impact vaccination rates.

July 20, 2021

Casper's Banner Medical Center (the hospital) will be making vaccination for COVID 19 a condition of employment starting in October.

July 22, 2021

The staff of the local hospital issued a distressed message that hospitalizations are reaching early pandemic infection rates once again, and urged people to get vaccinated.  Officials in Cheyenne issued statement that on the eve of Frontier Days they were concerned about the same thing.  The new infections are concentrated in the Delta variant.

July 24, 2021

The Delta variant is now the dominant variant in the state.  Infections are the highest they've been since January, when the pandemic plateaued in the U.S. The majority of those infected have not been vaccinated.

Republicans in Congress have been attempting to boost vaccination rates, but it appears the effort is having little impact.  Indeed, a statement by Mitch McConnell, if Facebook is any guide, simply resulted in the usual counters to vaccination which would suggest at this point people have stopped listening to the debate.

Assuming that the lack of vaccination does not cause a vaccine resistant strain to develop in the unvaccinated population, which is a real risk, this will ultimately have a peculiar demographic effect.  Hospitalization rates and death rates are rising, but its among a distinct demographic.  Some have poked a bit of fun at this, claiming its "Darwin at work", but there is an element of self selection at work that actually is, at this point, killing those who were convinced early on that the vaccines were a bad idea due to what really were politically motivated strains of thought.

July 29, 2021

The CDC has issued a mask rcommendation for vaccinated individuals who go into places with high transmission rates.

Prior threads:

Worried.


Pandemic, Part 5


Pandemic, Part 4





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