As reminders…

Alpha–Variant first identified in the UK

Beta–Variant first identified in South Africa

Gamma–Variant first identified in Brazil

Delta–Variant first identified in India

Omicron–Variant first identified in South Africa

Updating the chart above:

Ancestral: B.1.1.529 Omicron (and pretty much all the BA.X cousins)

Transmissibility: All the +

Immune Evasiveness: All the +

Vaccine Effectiveness: Check (for hospitalization)

Also as a reminder:

This time, the update will be short.

No, no… I mean it. Not only because it has been a brisk week outside the update, but also because there is just not all that much worthy of in depth coverage right now.

Marburg

–Still a challenge to get much high quality information out of Ghana at the moment, and the WHO’s reports are starting to lag by about a week. However, many reports in the news that one of the recent Marburg deaths was a toddler, who was the child of the younger of the first two cases to fall sick and die. The mother is also a positive case, but by available reports has survived. There remains some concern that there could be undetected transmission still going on out in the community in Ghana.

So far though, only 4 confirmed cases as near as I can piece together.

Monkeypox

–Only news of note here is that the CDC, as well as both San Francisco and New York City specifically, have declared monkeypox health emergencies. The goal of this declaration is to free up additional resources. Both San Fran and NYC are leaders in total number of cases and active spread. As both are international cities with vibrant communities of the currently most affected demographics, this is not a huge surprise, and hopefully lets them provide additional support to those communities. Concentrating some of the vaccine doses there would also be nice–hopefully that is happening.

That said, perhaps most interesting, if puzzling, is the announcement that the Feds consider 1.6 million people in the US as “highest risk” for monkeypox, and thus vaccine eligible (there are nowhere near that many doses available)–off of only 6,600 or so confirmed cases. That is a remarkable number of potential close contacts, although I’m not sure if they are just extrapolating the demographics for those currently at high risk of encountering monkeypox.

Also saw headlines that Las Vegas is starting to monitor their sewer water a little more closely, looking for evidence of emerging outbreak. Given the high association of transmission with sexual activity in the current outbreak, this, too, probably makes sense for “Sin City.” Considering Bourbon Street, and the “laissez les bon temps rouler” spirit of New Orleans, they -might- want to consider the same.

Coronavirus

–Super slow week on the coronavirus front. Of course, you had President Biden’s “rebound positive,” which has been a thing with paxlovid, the Pfizer pill, as previously covered. He reportedly has no symptoms, so this is likely just dead virus particles being cleared, which will still turn a test positive. I suspect when you are the President, and recovering from COVID, you get swabbed a little more often than the rest of us.

Otherwise, around the horn, cases in Japan may finally be leveling off. Western Europe and most of South America are level to falling. You are seeing some activity in central and Eastern Europe. In China, they still have substantial activity (for them, with official cases in the hundreds), and thus lockdowns involving enormous numbers of people. That said, Macau is finally starting to re-open. In the US, cases are level to starting to trend down. For all the angst of a BA.5 wave in headlines just recently, let alone the DOOOOOOM new variant in India (also showing falling activity), we are right on schedule for the end of the BA.4/BA.5 omicron cousin waves.

Bellweather South Africa continues to have minimal activity.

–Updating previous stories, you may remember that time early in the pandemic when Denmark slaughtered millions of their minks after discovering a few positive for SARS-CoV-2, fearing that they could be sources of transmission or mutation. Denmark’s agricultural ministry announced earlier this year that they “regret mistakes” in that decision, which, in retrospect (and I believe we said at the time) was a little hasty for so drastic an action.

–The CDC is expected to ease restriction recommendations for schools on social distancing for the coming school year, suggesting we are, indeed, moving to that moment when even the politicians agree that the pandemic threat (overwhelmed hospitals) is medically well contained and current risk relatively manageable.

–There aren’t even good conspiranoia headlines or papers to sciencepalooza this week either. Only other real news of note comes from Eli Lilly and Company, which will make bebtelovimab, its third monoclonal antibody to get EUA (which is still quite active against omicron and cousins) commercially available. This seems to be driven by the US government about to run out of the 150,000 doses it bought earlier this year, and without additional Congressional outlay, there is no money for the Federales to buy more for distribution to the states. Instead, states and hospitals can order from Lilly later this month. You can read more about that here.

Socioeconomic

–Panama and Pakistan are the latest to join the list of countries starting to see significant protests and actions to try to limit the effects of rampant inflation in food and fuel.

–A grain ship managed to get out of Odessa under the humanitarian treaty we mentioned recently between Russia and Ukraine, which is overall positive. Apparently the missile attack is being taken as a total accident, for the time being.

–Rather unfortunate commentary from the San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly this week, who said in a Reuters sponsored Twitter Spaces interview “I don’t feel the pain of inflation anymore. I see prices rising, but I have enough… I sometimes balk at the price of things, but I don’t find myself in a space where I have to make tradeoffs because I have enough, and many Americans have enough.”

Some other headlines to peruse, from just the past few weeks, while still contemplating your Federal Reserve leadership on its continued quest to contain inflation and maintain employment:

61%, or 203 million Americans, are living pay check to pay check

Credit card use increases at fastest rate since 2005 as saving nosedives

Long lines in food banks as inflation highs hit (again, if you can spare, think of others in need in your communities. Every bit will count.)

–In a probably unrelated note, a Google trends search for “guillotine” show searches remain level to slowly increasing over the last few years.

–Finally, I am going to repost this, from earlier this year, and then add a bullet below explaining why:

“Which brings us to the zeitgeist.

I read the headlines about more and more adults having meltdowns in the aisles over trivial things, especially as supply chain issues continue to roil. Certainly the last couple times I have gone to the grocery store the faces of the other customers have all reminded me of “Mad World.” There’s a sense of tension, exasperation, everyone in their own little world. There is less civility in the air. Less co-operation on everything, even the very trivial. It’s suddenly an existentialist angst universe. Are you getting that sense too?

Around this time last year, I mentioned Radigan Carter’s thoughts that the world would be collectively entering a state of mourning and loss, dealing with the trauma that has been all the twists and turns of the pandemic. I wonder if this is not collective stage 2 of the Kubler-Ross Model, and more people are at that “anger” stage.

As the poet once wrote,

“the waters have reached my neck.
I have sunk into the mire of the deep,
    where there is no foothold.
I have gone down to the watery depths;
    the flood overwhelms me.
I am weary with crying out;
    my throat is parched.”

I think with the holidays immediately past, but COVID here and more rampant than ever, supply chain issues here, but more rampant than ever… There was the hope of the holidays, but here it is almost mid-January and everything seems the same.

And that “everything” has truly been every thing. The invasion of the pandemic, the revealed fragile reality of a modern society run on global just in time supply chains, and the bonfire of the credibilities have burned through the pillars of the earth. A world that seemed stable and predictable just in 2019, 2019!, is not so now. Instead, we are all crammed on to the struggle bus together. It feels like the crust shifts wildly below our feet. We feel the damp wet cling of our clothes in the flood, and the rising sense of panic as the waters rise, and there is no bottom our stretching feet can find below us for anchor.

I am certain the outbursts on social media, and in the real, in the aisles and restaurants and airports and planes, are people feeling exactly that.

As uncomfortable as it can be in the moment, it is a blessing to have the opportunity to forgive.

Forgive you and others.

I think too that it’s not trite to say that the only way out is through. We will get to the other side. And it will be better. The world will not always be cranked to Maximum Stupid. It really does seek out a balance when it gets too heavy in one direction.

For myself, I’m trying to remember to pause and focus on what is still in control. I don’t have to give off that “Mad World” vibe, even if that is the feeling around me in places I go sometimes. I can still practice patience. I can try to recall Qoheleth when he concluded: “I praised joy, because there is nothing better for mortals under the sun than to eat and to drink and to be joyful; this will accompany them in their toil through the limited days of life God gives them under the sun.” All else is hevel.

Focus on the small, simple, daily steps while this zeitgeist persists.

After all, the poet also wrote:

“Thus we do not fear, though earth be shaken
    and mountains quake to the depths of the sea,
Though its waters rage and foam
    and mountains totter at its surging.”

–So the reason I bring this up is again, the zeitgeist. I have had in my notes to touch on this subject over the last couple updates now, because quite independently, I have heard others, not on this mailing list, but out “in the wild” describe this:

“Certainly the last couple times I have gone to the grocery store the faces of the other customers have all reminded me of “Mad World.” There’s a sense of tension, exasperation, everyone in their own little world. There is less civility in the air. Less co-operation on everything, even the very trivial. It’s suddenly an existentialist angst universe. Are you getting that sense too?”

I am willing to bet you have either been feeling the same, or encountering the same.

Let alone the number of people who have confessed to burn out. Just exhausted with work. Just exhausted with the constant sense of foreboding, or maybe the sense that something significant has shifted, another shoe is to drop, and it’s all just going wrong. It feels like constantly playing defense, not offense. Or like the entire world is snakebit, and every little thing just continues to slip away.

Everyone can feel it, but no one can really find the words to say it.

I also wonder if the hyperpolitics, the zero to nuclear in online interactions, or even in the world in the interactions, on politics are also not just the schismogenesis of the times. I wonder if it’s just a convenient release valve for this tension, this weight we’re all carrying these days.

Maybe we shouldn’t do that.

I worry too that all of those micro interactions, the less considerate drivers, customers we run into–the less friendly faces in the store aisles. They all add up.

More than you think–and there is science behind it.

This is a short five minute video, and well worth your time to see what the tiniest difference makes.

I know it’s pithy to say “be the change you seek,” but we can at least be the example. Make the conscious choice, even once a day, to step out of the zeitgeist. To run counter to it. Even if, yes, it’s a little “fake it until you make it” some days.

You’re here for the art in this next video (one minute long), to illustrate that exact point, of one fish that changes direction and the effect that begins to have (although the show this sequence opens is surprisingly worth your time too).

After all, the science suggests that what happens with the fish in that credits sequence is true. That even just one moment of stepping outside how we all feel right now can be enough to change things just slightly for someone else, and that can start to chain react.

Network effects are powerful, powerful things. And nonlinear.

This, too, is science. Not merely faith.

But you should have faith, and try it.

Be the example.

See where it goes.

–Your chances of catching coronavirus this week, in most places in the world, are still equivalent to the chances that you should crank the volume up for this one too.

<Paladin>