COVID Class

Posted on by Thor

This sketch from January of 2021 shows one of my Urban Sketching classes held at Crealde. At the time the case counts were the highest they had ever been during the course of the ongoing pandemic, with over 800,000 new cases a day in the United States. At that time over 2,500 people were dying from COVID every day in the United States.

I kept my classes outside for student safety but maintaining social distancing was a challenge. Students don’t go to in person classes to social distance, they go because they want a break from social isolation. I maintained my own social distance by carrying a 6 foot long stick. More often than not I maintained a 22 foot distance since I am well aware that an airborne virus does not limit itself to a six foot radius. It billows in the wind.

Each student still got one on one attention since I would share my ideas with quick sketches to demonstrate perspective and composition. Those sketches remained in my sketchbook, but I did them bold enough to be seen from any distance.

Today deaths have remained steady at about 400 to 500 deaths a day from COVID-19 in America since about April of 2022. People however are “over” the pandemic. 500 deaths a day seems like a drop in the bucket compared to the 2500 deaths a day we faced in January of 2021. People will do anything rationalize crowding together and wishing away the pandemic. This fall and winter the numbers will again rise thanks to new immune evasive variants and the fact that masks and social distancing seem to be a thing of the past. I continue to take every precaution. I like being the only person in the room wearing a mask.

Fall COVID Colors

Posted on by Thor

Emerging COVID variants and waning immunity means there will be a wave of COVID infections in the fall and winter of 2022. BA.2, BA.4 and BA.5 are subsiding but other variants are in the wings to take it’s place. The effort to roll out a bi-valiant booster to combat the new variants has been anemic at best. Only 2% of Americans have opted to get the shot. Al the while Omicron is evolving with a new generation of immunity-dodging variants.

United Kingdom and some other European countries, are seeing the swift ascent of BQ.1 ( a descendant of BA5). In India, the BA.2.75 variant is on the rise. BA.2.3.20, is growing quickly in Singapore, and has turned up in Denmark and Australia. BQ.1.1 (a member of the BQ.1 family with one extra spike change) and BA.2.75.2 are the most immune evasive, being able to dodge most neutralizing antibodies elicited by infection with BA.5. That means your past infection will not protect you from being re infected.

BA.4.6, dubbed Aeterna by variant trackers on Twitter, is slowly but steadily climbing toward the top of the mountain of variants in the U.S. In early October 2022 it accounted for 14% of cases in the United States. It’s growth is exponential. Aeterna appears to have a nearly 6% growth advantage over BA.5, according to an Oct. 7 technical brief from the United Kingdom Health Security Agency.

I am sure your head is swimming with all the different variants which are competing to infect us. Those who have gotten vaccinated have some protection from severe disease and death but the anti vaccine folks are shit out of luck.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, predicts a coming wave of infections that will swell in October and peak in late December or early January. So far no single variant has become undeniable the most dominate. I would put my money on BA.4.6 to be knocking on your door this fall season.

Why are more Republicans dying of COVID-19?

Posted on by Thor

ABC News reported that average excess death rates in Florida and Ohio were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats between March 2020 and December 2021, according to a working paper released last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Vaccine hesitancy among Republicans may be the biggest cause. The partisan gap in the deaths widened between April and December 2021, after all adults became eligible for COVID vaccines. Excess death rates in Florida and Ohio were 153% higher among Republicans than Democrats during that time, the paper showed.

The June study suggested that COVID vaccine uptake explained just 10% of the partisan gap in the deaths. Those researchers suggested that compliance with other public health measures such as mask use and social distancing was a significant factor. It is hard to imagine that people who deny the efficacy of getting vaccinated might also not wear a mask or social distance. This defies science and logic.

The research was limited to Florida and Ohio. It is possible that people from those states are just dumber that Americans from other states. More research is needed. About 20% of the U.S. population still hasn’t received a single Covid shot, according to the CDC. Only 2% of Americans have gotten the new Omicron specific booster shot. As the pandemic continues to play out, we will see more death among vaccine deniers most of whom happen to be Republicans.

 

Vaxed and Relaxed

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With mid term elections coming up, all politicians will campaign on a Vaxed and Relaxed platform. They all will brag about what has been accomplished and ignore the steady state of over 400 deaths a day from COVID-19. If you say life has returned to normal enough times the sheep will believe you. The government cut its free at home testing program because they would prefer that you believe that the pandemic is behind us. It is not.

The vaxed and relaxed population took every precaution at the beginning of the pandemic. They locked down, social distanced, and wore masks.  Yet the virus just will not go away. It persists. These folks got vaccinated and some even got boosted and with that done they decided the pandemic for them was over. They decided that for them the COVID virus was no worse that the flu.

The BA 5 virus is the most transmissible variant of the virus ever and we do not yet know the lingering effects of long COVID. Since testing is so lax, we have no clear picture of just how many people are being infected every day. BA 5 now seems to have peaked and cases are starting to fall.

During a typical flu season you might see on average 800 to 1,780 deaths a day. Right now there are about 2,3oo deaths a day from COVID-19. COVID is not like a mild flu. If the rates of death due to COVID remains the same for a year there would be 832,600 deaths globally. OCID is the number 4th cause of death in America right now.

COVID is here to stay. Any hopes of mitigation or eradication have long since passed. The virus will continue to mutate. The virus has found ways to escape the protections offered for the vaccinated. Though vaccines that were designed to offer specific protection against the Omicron variants are now becoming available, the uptake will likely be limited. That leaves plenty of human fuel to stoke the viral fire.

Surface

Posted on by Thor

As hospitalizations decline across America, politicians are once again in a rush to declare victory and lift all safety measures. It seems there is always a knee jerk reaction to the changing landscape of the pandemic and a high degree of acceptance of easily avoidable death.

Is it too early to lift all safety measures? Only about 27% of the US population has received a coronavirus vaccine booster shot, according to CDC data. The moves to phase out state mask mandates conflict with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention‘s guidance to continue wearing masks in areas with “high” or “substantial” Covid-19 transmission, which includes about 99% of U.S. counties.

States lifting mask mandates include, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon and Rhode Island. The percentages of people vaccinated in these states are…

  • 66.8% in Delaware and Illinois
  • 68.2% in Oregon
  • 69.6% in California
  • 73.5% in New Jersey
  • 74.8% in New York
  • 77% in Massachusetts
  • 77.2% in Connecticut
  • 79.7% in Rhode Island
  • 59%. in Nevada

That means on average, over 25% of the people in those states are unvaccinated and therefor highly vulnerable to possible hospitalization and death. There are well over 100,000 new cases of Omicron a day. So why are states declaring victory over COVID? There is a new variant on the rise named Stealth BA.2 which spreads even move effectively than Omicron. This variant may create a new wave and stall the drop in hospitalizations as it has in the United Kingdom. In the next two weeks we should see just how bad BA.2 will become. It would make more sense to jump into the freezing water moments before a rescue is on the horizon.

Of 5 to 11 years olds, only 23% are vaccinated and they will be the first to be thrown under the bus. Omicron is more severe in children than adults. 1 in 7 kids can develop long COVID. Children infected then bring the virus home to their parents and grand parents.  There is likely to be another surge in the summer just as there was in 2020 and 2021.

Chris Hayes put out a Tweet saying, ” A big part of American Exceptionalism is just generally tolerating a lot more death and illness and violence and shorter life spans than other peer countries.” Over 900,000 deaths means less in America than it does for other nations. Politicians are fine with justifying the deaths of children, saying the children are dying with COVID rather than from COVID. That is a morally warped semantic perspective that seems to imply that children are expendable. Since the advent of a vaccine to combat COVID over 200,000 unvaccinated Americans have died needlessly due to an aggressive anti science sentiment.

History is once again repeating itself, we have been to this rodeo multiple times during this pandemic. America is unsinkable. This too shall pass, but stay safe in the mean time folks.