Cases trending up again this week–back to a low 20s average for the last couple now.  Geographic spread has widened, and there are now a couple chains of infection with no known original contact–indicating, as we discussed last week for about the billionth time, that contact tracing efforts remain inadequate to ring the virus.

Despite our hopes.

No update on the sisters, one vaccinated, one questionably so, with Ebola last week that I can find.

The status quo continues, but the simmer remains a simmer.

3247 confirmed cases, 2235 deaths thus far.

You may have seen reports about a new respiratory virus in Hong Kong in the past week.  That has been confirmed to be caused by a new coronavirus, whose cousins include the viruses behind SARS and MERS.  This new virus has been found in 15 of the 59 or so patients in Hong Kong with respiratory symptoms.  At the moment, it is NOT believed to be easily, if at all, transmissible person to person.

As if Hong Kong needed more to worry about than impending martial law and continued assaults on protestors by police.

This does not appear to be a major international health threat at this time.  If that changes, I will let you know.

In tangentially related news, you may have seen the 60 Minutes report on Epstein and the interview with the private pathologist hired by Epstein’s brother to review the autopsy (he is the one who disagreed with the manner of death being listed as “suicide”).  I have not seen the entire piece.  I did see the short snippet that showed the autopsy photos of the wound on Epstein’s neck and agree with the conclusion that it is lower than one typically sees in suicides of the kind Epstein supposedly performed.  To my eye, that wound appears awfully low to have caused the three fractures (two fractures of the thyroid cartilage that makes the Adam’s apple and the hyoid bone).  I agree that fracturing all three of those is highly unlikely even in judicial hangings, and much less so in the kind of force in the type of hanging Epstein is alleged to have pulled off.  I saw the photos of the alleged noose.  Again, purely my opinion, but it is -possible- that was used.  That cloth is much broader than the bruising on Epstein’s neck.  However, it may have wound up tightly during the action, with only a very compressed edge actually pressing into Epstein’s neck with his body weight.  The absence of blood on the noose does not bother me–that looks most like bruising and maybe a few small , shaving cut size lacerations at best.  If the noose was tightly compressed when it was doing the strangling, it may have also impaired significant bleeding through those lacerations that would have shown up in those pictures.  So the noose to me is a maybe–but I would need the material in my hands and convince myself that under body weight, it winds up into a much smaller, much tighter surface.  Because otherwise, that bruise is totally consistent with a garrotte too.
And today, the government announced that no, it had indeed somehow, someway deleted all the footage outside Epstein’s cell at the time in question after all.  Apparently, they saved the video from the wrong floor, NOT the one Epstein was on.  And the back ups required and made continuously of the high security area where Epstein was kept suffered a tragic technical error.  So to recap, the security footage was tragically lost the same time two guards broke every suicide protocol and happened to “fall asleep” at the same time instead of check in on the one successful suicide that jail has had in decades…which just -happened- to be the time that Epstein would manage to commit suicide in a jail cell explicitly designed and engineered to keep that from happening.  And Epstein just happened to be the most high profile prisoner and key potential witness in a blackmail ring of a number of rich and powerful business, showbusiness, academic and political figures over several decades of trafficking underage girls for rape, prostitution and sexual assault.  Hell, just this week The Sun published photos showing Bill Clinton with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein and a known trafficked victim on one of Bill’s many trips on the Lolita Express.
-That’s- the guy that all these terrible, unfortunate, policy lapses and accidents happened to.  And still, NO ONE seems to have been rounding up all the possible rich and powerful who may be implicated in these crimes–despite the trafficked victims naming MANY of them as participants.

What are the odds, right?

About as good as your chances of getting Ebola this week.

<Paladin>