COVID – 2022 versus the NEWS

COVID hasn’t gone away! It has increased this last week from 510,086 to 615,965 new cases. The five-month drop in deaths has stopped dropping and has now climbed this week from 1,134 to 1266 deaths per day. Let us hope this isn’t the harbinger of a new peak, but only time will tell if human ingenuity will overcome human stupidity.

The US Supreme Court just voided the half-century Roe abortion decision, and many states instantly declared pregnancy termination a crime. This decision will generate lots of political turmoil for years to come and bring the Supreme Court itself under a cloud of violating the majority opinion of most Americans.

Putin’s war is still getting lots of news coverage and lots of money from the US, but his depriving the world of vast amounts of grain will bring starvation to many poor people. Also, Putin’s chokehold on Europe’s fuel is sending prices up on oil and natural gas, which power modern high society.

My hope is that the Webb space telescope’s first photos, which are due to be revealed on July 12, will be fantastic and excite enthusiasm for humanity’s greater aspiration than greed for political power. Of course, that will distract me from the ongoing COVID disaster. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that gun violence and school mass murders have occasioned lots of horrible news, but that awful news finally got the US Congress to write some legislation.

COVID versus the future – 2022/06/20

COVID 7-day averaged world case rate is 510,086, down from 601,000, and the 7-day averaged death rate is 1,134, down from 1,400. Those are good drops although the case rate is still as high as the former peaks before the Omicron peak. However, the daily death rate is one-seventh of the first peak and one-fifteenth of the worst peak. That seems like a good indicator that the COVID pandemic is on the way out, but a new long-term subcritical hangover is still with many of those people who had the disease but didn’t get hospitalized. If those people have refuge sites of potential viruses that can become active, it may spring back. However, if a pocket of COVID does recur as a local outbreak, there will be a massive response with new vaccines and antiviral medications. Once the disease is confined to relatively small outbreaks, it will probably be controlled. Unless, of course, the outbreak begins in a mass concentration event, like we are now seeing in airports with flight delays and cancellations, leaving passengers from all over the world stuck in airports confined together for hours.

Time will offer humanity many opportunities to prove itself stupid and resourceful.

COVID – Logarithmic chart 2022/06/10

Corel Draw has crashed again and refuses to open. I have used these programs since they were introduced and have updated them several times, but have always used the simple features of the original program. I don’t need the other stuff and don’t see a reason to pay them for the decades-old program I paid for repeatedly when free ones are online and don’t crash.

The problem I would have illustrated was that the case rate and death rates both worldwide and locally here in Deschutes County, Oregon, the USA have taken a sudden uptick. No one is wearing masks here anymore, and people I know have departed on worldwide trips. The skies above are filled with jet contrails from planes loaded with travelers. If we had held on to the strict mask and social distancing protocols this Covid pandemic would have gone away a long time ago. With the massive turnout for the Queen of England’s jubilee, we will probably get a further kick in the pants. Here is the chart from five days ago, so just imagine the upticks. Covid cases per day up to 533,387, and Covid deaths per day up to 1,300.

COVID – Logarithmich chart 2022/06/05

COVID – Logarithmic chart 2022/05/31

COVID is evolving into a less deadly form. I’ve never heard the authorities talk about why it is getting milder. My assumption is that it acquires more garbage as part of its molecular structure, and that makes it less effective compared to the more nimble original structure. COVID has evolved more efficient abilities to grab onto a human cell, but while adding those it added other things that made a fighter into an obese sluggard.

The chart of COVID cases per day took a sudden drop this week, and the COVID deaths per day continued its four-month-long downward trend. But here in the US we had a near-record number of travelers visiting their families for Memorial Day for our fallen soldiers. That activity will probably bring on another short-lived spike in US cases. I can understand why people would like to go on vacation and visit their relatives, but I have trouble agreeing with the removal of masks when in grocery stores or sporting events. The latest masks work much better so why not wear them?

COVID – Logarithmic chart 2022/05/31 – JPG – Click the graph for a bigger image.

COVID Logarithmic chart 2022/05/20

COVID Logarithmic chart 2022/05/20 – JPG – Click the image for a larger view.

COVID Logarithmic chart 2022/05/20 – GIF – Click the image for a larger view.

The COVID cases per day HEAVY BLUE line has taken a significant jump up, and as expected the COVID deaths per day have also taken a jump up. The world seems to believe that when the disease eases off, they can let down the efforts to contain it and bring it to an end. The simple fact is that when there are still cases available to transmit the disease and people who haven’t caught it yet, there will be a transmission. Nowhere has this been more true than here in Deschutes County, Oregon, where I live, where few people were still wearing masks in the grocery store I visited today. There were two deaths this week per two hundred thousand people, or one per hundred thousand, which is far higher than the world rate. The people here seem reasonable, but they are still taking off their masks and abandoning social distancing too soon. A couple of weeks more and the local rate would have dropped to zero cases, but no one was willing to wait that long, and so we have a new outbreak.

COVID logarithmic chart 2022/05/15

The CDC appears to be responding more to political pressures than to what their scientifically-based experience would prefer. An epidemic isn’t over until it and all of its variants have ceased to exist. That hasn’t happened with COVID, or the 1919 flu either in totality. These diseases tend to have refuges where they sustain themselves. Some species of bats are known to catch diseases such as flu and not totally eliminate them from their bodies as do humans. Thus, when the conditions are right for humans to catch a disease, those bats carrying the disease in what is for them a benign state can transfer it to humans. Most bats avoid humans, but a dead bat may be picked up by a human who might transfer the virus from their hands and fingers into their nose. COVID is most easily transferred and caught in human nostrils, and becomes dangerous when it gets into the lungs via breathing or post-nasal drip.

The COVID cases per day BLUE line has gone flat for two weeks, and the COVID deaths per day BLACK line has continued to drop to 1,525. The death line lags the cases line by about three weeks, so it will probably go flat soon. The biggest problem is in China, but they are locking down everything with their unpopular zero-tolerance policy. Another month of that will make or not the COVID outbreak in China.

COVID logarithmic chart 2022/05/15 – JPG – Click the image for a bigger view.

COVID logarithmic chart 2022/05/15 – GIF – Click the image for a bigger view.

COVID logarithmic chart 2022/04/30

COVID logarithmic chart 2022/04/30 – JPG – Click the image for a bigger view, click + for an even bigger view.

COVID logarithmic chart 2022/04/30 – GIF – Click the image for a bigger view, click + for an even bigger view.

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The most important event on this chart is that the deaths from COVID are continuing their three-month trend of going down. Everywhere in the world, governments are lowering their restrictions on behavior, except China, which is having a serious outbreak, and because they haven’t vaccinated their population, the disease is liable to spread quickly and over the whole country. The draconian lockdowns are only one way of coping, and it is the most crippling to the morale of the community. We hated wearing masks, but the Chinese are forced to say in their homes for weeks on end.

A small change made on this chart is the statement at the top which states that the human population will reach eight billion on January 10, 2023. The COVID pandemic hasn’t stifled the population explosion, but the war in Ukraine is interfering with the creation and shipment of wheat and natural gas, which will create starvation for people already living on the edge of hunger.

COVID logarithmic chart 2022/04/05

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The daily number of world COVID deaths has dropped again. It was 10,100 on February 1st, down to 8,143 on March 1st, and down again to 3,845, on April 1st, and now on April, 5th it’s 3,348. That’s the lowest number of deaths per day since March 26th, 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic. A new variant has come into being named Omicron BA.2, which may follow the trend of being less deadly. There are others, like one of a few weeks ago, Omicron BA.1. The COVID pandemic isn’t over until it’s over, but when the total disease drops into local pockets, then aggressive measures can contain it and, with local cooperation, bring it to an end.

I mentioned in the post five days ago that I had just gotten my second Pfizer booster shot and was feeling fine. However, the next day I was feeling tired and my temperature had risen to three degrees above my normal temperature. That wasn’t a problem and it had dropped to only one degree high by the next day. And totally normal by the following day. It was so mild an event that there is no hesitancy in recommending the second booster.

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COVID logarithmic chart 2022/04/05 – gif – Click the image for a bigger view.

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COVOD logarithmic chart 2022/04/05 – Click the image for a bigger view

COVID logarithmic chart 2022/03/31

The seven-day rate of new infections of Covid has dropped for two weeks. But the even better news is that the death rate has dropped to 3,857 per day, down from 10,100 two months ago. That is the lowest rate for over two years. If the new variant named Deltacron, because it is a combination of the Delta and Omicron variants, hadn’t come along, maybe the trend would continue. My understanding of these variants is the more extra materials that transfer over to the basic infectious molecule, the less virulent it becomes. If that is true this Deltacron won’t be as deadly, and even if the pandemic continues it won’t be as deadly.

Even with these hopeful ideas in mind I got my second booster shot this afternoon. My excuse is that it’s my 86-1/2 birthday, and that it is the people in their 80s who have done the most dying. The reason is that our age group is still plentiful, but most are suffering some degenerative conditions.

COVID logarithmic chart 2022/03/31 – JPG – Click the image to enlarge, click + to enlarge more.

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COVID logarithmic chart 2022/03/31 – GIF – Click the image to enlarge, click + to enlarge more.

COVID logarithmic chart 2022/03/25

A seven-day average of total cases per day has been added to the COVID logarithmic chart below. The COVID case chart usually precedes the death chart by two weeks, but that isn’t noticeably shown when viewing these wavy lines. The Blue bold wavy line is the new Average case per day line and the Black bold wavy line is the average total deaths per day line. They diverge slightly this last year, implying the medical team’s wisdom is coping better with the disease. Also, these last few months show the Omicron variant is more transmissible but less deadly. The beautiful drop in cases and death since February 1st has reversed and the case curve is going back up. That is probably due to the recent easing of mask usage, social distancing, and world travel increasing. It is saddening that people are unable to keep doing what works when those techniques would finally bring the COVID to an end. It will now dribble on perhaps forever as a background disease lurching forward from hard-to-locate reservoirs. Some animals like bats and deer may form reservoirs, and some people may catch the disease and not fully clear it from their bodies with natural human defenses and they may form a permanent reservoir.

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COVID logarithmic chart 2022/03/25 – JPG – Click image to enlarge, then click + to make it even larger.

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COVID logarithmic chart 2022/03/25 – GIF – Click image to enlarge, then click + to make it even larger.