2020-2021 Corona Virus

[Jeepers]

"Pride goeth before the fall."   IMO

India Covid-19: How Modi could have stopped his country's devastating crisis but didn't - CNN

 

SNIP.

"(India) has saved the world, entire humanity, from a major tragedy by effectively controlling coronavirus," Modi boasted at the World Economic Forum on January 28.

With many in India feeling the pandemic was over, there was a slower take-up of vaccines there than expected. About 300 million of India's 1.3 billion population are illiterate, meaning they may have had less ability to investigate what was going on for themselves.

"You can't blame people for thinking 'maybe the government knows best, maybe things are back to normal, maybe we should go out and live our normal lives,'" said Pradeep Taneja, an expert on Asian politics at the University of Melbourne and a fellow of the Australia India Institute. 

[Jeepers]

 

Jordan detected three cases of the Indian COVID-19 variant in people who had not travelled, the health minister told state-owned Al Mamlaka TV.

"Two cases were recorded in Amman and one in Zarqa in people who did not travel, which confirms that the emergence of mutated cases does not necessarily have to come from outside, but rather as a result of specific reproduction," Minister Firas Al-Hawari told Al Mamlaka TV.

Jordan recorded on Saturday 704 cases of COVID-19 with 35 deaths, bringing the total cases detected in the kigdom to 712,077 with 8,871 deaths, according to the health ministry.

 

Jordan detects three cases of Indian COVID-19 variant - minister | Reuters

[Homesteader]

Maybe we don't need so many respirators anymore in the USA? Pallets and pallets and pallets were found at a landfill in Miami-Dade, WPLG TV reports.

 

"From the packaging, Local 10 News traced the model and the manufacturer: Beijing Aerospace Changfeng Ltd. in Beijing. A posting from a broker shows the device selling at $26,000 during the height of need last spring, as U.S. medical workers scrambled to find ventilators for an exploding number of COVID-19 patients," the station reported. 

[Homesteader]

When I met DH, he built and raced cars. I remember when the guys used to make repairs (welding) to the race car gas tanks. They would fill them up with fuel and then weld on the outside. They could boil the fuel without very many accidents.   I think of the gene therapy in the same way. Welding gas tanks aren't the answer, but until a better technique comes along, most cars (and welders) are saved without too many incidents. 

[Ambergris]

In a situation like this, a substance as common as black pepper could have been the answer, and it would have been pushed in order to save the Pre-Covid economy.   A few people are doing very well out of the Covid economy, but way more are not.  Entire societies are shifting, and establishments crumble when that happens.

Right now we are going to be facing extraordinary inflation, because the government is going to have to literally print money to send it out to people the way it has been doing.  The doctors' retirement funds' dollars will be devaluing like every other dollar out there.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Ambergris

[Mother]

Inflation has many causes.  Here's a good article that explains the various types and who profits from it. 

 

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/111314/what-causes-inflation-and-does-anyone-gain-it.asp

[dogmom4]

In the first article about India the writer called their variation a ‘double mutant’. Does anyone what the Indian variant is actually called? Has it been found in the US? 
 

[Ambergris]

B.1.617 yes

[Ambergris]

Countries reporting the most new infections each day, averaged over seven days:
INDIA              385,841

BRAZIL              58,413

USA                   47,167

TURKEY            29,224

ARGENTINA      20,372

Countries reporting the most deaths each day  
INDIA              3,619

BRAZIL            2,316

USA                   694

COLOMBIA        470

ARGENTINA      416

 

Basically, this means Colombia isn't testing, or isn't reporting results.   

 

Infection rates are high and increasing in (sorted by region, then by severity) Ireland, Lithuania, Bahrain, India, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, Honduras, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Seychelles, Angola, Egypt, Réunion,  Cameroon, and New Zealand. 

 

Where cases increased (or not) in the last week

For the week ending Sunday, May 2, 2021

	CASES TO DATE		ONE-WEEK TOTAL
State	Total cases	Per 100K	New cases	Per 100K	1-wk chg.
United States	32,491,117	9,787	347,438	104.7	–15.1%
Michigan	940,175	9,414	28,375	284.1	–25.5%
Puerto Rico	250,430	7,841	7,629	238.9	–28.4%
Colorado	513,765	8,922	11,523	200.1	–3.6%
Minnesota	579,235	10,271	10,992	194.9	–7.3%
Pennsylvania	1,161,184	9,070	22,655	177.0	–16.6%
Rhode Island	148,186	13,988	1,862	175.8	–14.4%
Delaware	104,909	10,774	1,687	173.2	–18.3%
Florida	2,242,778	10,442	34,194	159.2	–13.8%
Maine	61,847	4,601	2,071	154.1	–16.9%
Alaska	68,148	9,316	1,089	148.9	–4.3%
Illinois	1,342,067	10,591	18,721	147.7	–0.5%
West Virginia	153,918	8,589	2,536	141.5	+1.6%
North Dakota	107,708	14,134	1,020	133.8	+9.2%
Oregon	186,344	4,418	5,644	133.8	+1.2%
Connecticut	339,233	9,515	4,467	125.3	–21.7%
Washington	404,709	5,315	9,397	123.4	–3.7%
North Carolina	969,752	9,246	12,820	122.2	–3.2%
Massachusetts	691,172	10,028	8,388	121.7	–17.2%
New York State	2,044,164	10,508	23,412	120.3	–23.9%
Indiana	723,058	10,740	7,862	116.8	+17.0%
New Hampshire	95,377	7,015	1,556	114.4	–30.4%
South Carolina	580,273	11,270	5,288	102.7	–7.3%
Maryland	449,180	7,430	5,737	94.9	–20.6%
Kentucky	445,139	9,964	4,184	93.7	+14.9%
Tennessee	847,430	12,409	6,381	93.4	–39.6%
Ohio	1,075,004	9,197	10,698	91.5	–3.9%
Iowa	395,205	12,526	2,837	89.9	–9.9%
Wisconsin	661,685	11,364	5,159	88.6	+3.6%
Vermont	23,126	3,706	550	88.1	–1.8%
Montana	109,030	10,201	933	87.3	–2.0%
Georgia	1,105,423	10,411	9,067	85.4	–5.0%
Nevada	315,438	10,241	2,598	84.3	–0.3%
Virginia	661,314	7,748	7,104	83.2	–12.0%
Idaho	187,656	10,501	1,473	82.4	+4.2%
Utah	398,012	12,415	2,581	80.5	–3.5%
Texas	2,893,866	9,980	23,173	79.9	–1.5%
Wyoming	58,142	10,046	446	77.1	+4.0%
South Dakota	122,660	13,865	674	76.2	–27.5%
Washington, D.C.	47,855	6,781	532	75.4	–19.5%
New Mexico	197,733	9,430	1,512	72.1	+11.8%
Nebraska	220,127	11,380	1,395	72.1	–38.2%
Arizona	863,927	11,869	5,190	71.3	+4.3%
Louisiana	458,581	9,865	3,040	65.4	–15.2%
Missouri	521,069	8,490	3,779	61.6	+14.0%
Kansas	309,130	10,611	1,758	60.3	+16.3%
Mississippi	311,900	10,480	1,551	52.1	+33.4%
Alabama	528,597	10,781	2,466	50.3	–33.9%
Arkansas	336,105	11,137	1,399	46.4	+11.6%
Hawaii	32,580	2,301	656	46.3	+20.8%
Oklahoma	448,305	11,330	1,755	44.4	+4.0%
California	3,746,006	9,481	13,376	33.9	+1.4%
New Jersey	1,000,010	11,259	2,119	23.9	–88.9%

 

Where the highest share of the population has been vaccinated

Most recent data as of May 2, 2021

State	First dose	Fully vaccinated	Total doses
United States	44.7%	32.3%	249,566,820
New Hampshire	61.2%	30.3%	1,159,614
Vermont	58.4%	40.2%	599,965
Massachusetts	58.0%	39.0%	6,495,919
Connecticut	56.2%	41.1%	3,361,098
Maine	56.1%	42.0%	1,234,253
Hawaii	54.1%	37.0%	1,264,136
Rhode Island	53.8%	38.9%	951,345
New Jersey	52.8%	38.4%	7,600,716
New Mexico	52.0%	39.3%	1,860,755
Pennsylvania	51.2%	34.1%	10,531,067
California	50.1%	32.4%	31,670,889
Maryland	49.9%	36.1%	5,005,250
Washington, D.C.	49.5%	31.8%	626,082
New York State	48.9%	37.0%	16,353,467
Virginia	48.4%	35.0%	6,947,022
Minnesota	48.2%	36.1%	4,535,336
Washington	48.0%	34.1%	6,099,153
Delaware	47.9%	34.8%	793,383
Illinois	47.6%	31.8%	9,748,918
Colorado	47.6%	34.8%	4,649,806
Wisconsin	46.4%	37.0%	4,786,435
Oregon	46.2%	32.6%	3,207,617
South Dakota	45.2%	38.3%	716,196
Iowa	44.9%	36.1%	2,473,624
Nebraska	43.8%	34.7%	1,470,513
Michigan	43.5%	33.6%	7,373,940
Kansas	43.1%	32.9%	2,070,420
Florida	42.8%	30.5%	15,721,876
Alaska	42.3%	36.2%	564,720
Kentucky	41.6%	32.9%	3,213,684
Arizona	41.5%	30.2%	5,216,530
Montana	41.4%	33.3%	777,944
Ohio	41.1%	33.7%	8,622,766
Utah	40.5%	25.5%	2,225,385
Nevada	40.4%	29.4%	2,122,615
North Carolina	39.9%	30.9%	7,266,480
North Dakota	39.6%	33.4%	569,428
Puerto Rico	39.5%	26.1%	2,006,360
Texas	39.0%	28.4%	19,519,836
Oklahoma	39.0%	30.6%	2,736,824
Missouri	38.3%	28.9%	4,118,674
South Carolina	37.1%	28.5%	3,329,233
Indiana	36.9%	28.3%	4,311,755
Arkansas	36.1%	26.6%	1,845,530
West Virginia	36.0%	31.0%	1,189,041
Georgia	35.6%	26.0%	6,550,721
Tennessee	34.9%	25.8%	4,150,612
Idaho	34.6%	28.2%	1,108,625
Wyoming	34.4%	28.6%	363,149
Alabama	33.0%	24.5%	2,670,926
Louisiana	32.4%	26.9%	2,733,787
Mississippi	31.6%	24.5%	1,625,364

 

 

deaths in the last week

For the week ending Sunday, May 2, 2021

	DEATHS TO DATE		ONE-WEEK TOTAL
State	Total deaths	Per 100K	New deaths	Per 100K	1-wk chg.
United States	577,329	174	4,819	1.5	–3.1%
West Virginia	2,686	150	-135	0.0	N/A
Nebraska	2,245	116	3	0.2	–89.7%
Wyoming	707	122	2	0.3	+0%
Oregon	2,501	59	16	0.4	–36.0%
Hawaii	483	34	5	0.4	+25.0%
Kansas	4,982	171	14	0.5	–6.7%
Vermont	247	40	3	0.5	+50.0%
Utah	2,204	69	22	0.7	+22.2%
Tennessee	12,197	179	55	0.8	–40.9%
Arkansas	5,743	190	25	0.8	+4.2%
Idaho	2,046	115	15	0.8	+7.1%
Mississippi	7,199	242	24	0.8	+9.1%
Washington	5,499	72	65	0.9	+20.4%
Montana	1,574	147	11	1.0	–35.3%
Arizona	17,344	238	76	1.0	–33.9%
Iowa	5,959	189	32	1.0	–30.4%
Delaware	1,626	167	10	1.0	–28.6%
Massachusetts	17,621	256	71	1.0	–19.3%
Rhode Island	2,671	252	11	1.0	–15.4%
Louisiana	10,382	223	46	1.0	–14.8%
North Dakota	1,494	196	8	1.0	+14.3%
South Dakota	1,967	222	9	1.0	+80.0%
Washington, D.C.	1,106	157	7	1.0	+133.3%
Texas	50,465	174	310	1.1	–13.2%
California	61,554	156	454	1.1	+3.9%
Colorado	6,449	112	65	1.1	+20.4%
Missouri	9,097	148	67	1.1	+21.8%
Indiana	13,349	198	75	1.1	+50.0%
Virginia	10,791	126	100	1.2	–9.1%
North Carolina	12,651	121	128	1.2	–5.9%
Alabama	10,913	223	62	1.3	+1.6%
Maine	789	59	17	1.3	+142.9%
Nevada	5,464	177	42	1.4	–26.3%
Connecticut	8,097	227	50	1.4	–3.8%
Ohio	19,284	165	162	1.4	+23.7%
Minnesota	7,160	127	81	1.4	+37.3%
Kentucky	6,517	146	68	1.5	–38.7%
New Hampshire	1,305	96	21	1.5	+50.0%
Puerto Rico	2,315	73	50	1.6	–13.8%
Wisconsin	7,567	130	94	1.6	+77.4%
South Carolina	9,520	185	90	1.7	–4.3%
Illinois	24,358	192	219	1.7	+19.0%
Alaska	347	47	13	1.8	N/A
Oklahoma	6,788	172	72	1.8	+278.9%
New York State	52,057	268	362	1.9	–10.0%
Maryland	8,776	145	115	1.9	+16.2%
Florida	35,968	168	434	2.0	+2.1%
New Mexico	4,067	194	43	2.1	+87.0%
Georgia	20,212	190	237	2.2	+9.2%
Pennsylvania	26,327	206	289	2.3	–1.7%
New Jersey	25,600	288	220	2.5	–7.2%
Michigan	18,893	189	484	4.8	+1.9%

 

Data is incomplete with regard to the 135 people apparently risen from the dead in West Virginia.  

 

 

 

 

Edited May 6, 2021 by Ambergris

[Mother]

It doesn’t appear to be abating just changing from state to state and country to country.  Is anyone seeing a specific pattern that might indicate if any particular action makes it worsen or lessen? 

[Ambergris]

Generally speaking, the deaths are a couple of weeks behind the contagion and the contagion is in reverse order of percentage of the population that is vaccinated, except in the very thinly populated states.

[Ambergris]

WHEN WILL THIS END?
Nearly two months on, India’s devastating Covid-19 wave is still unrelenting
REUTERS/DANISH SIDDIQUI
No end in sight.
By Manavi Kapur
It has been eight weeks since India’s second Covid-19 wave began, and millions of Indians continue their frantic search for basic healthcare facilities—oxygen, medicines, hospital beds. Once lauded for its low death rate, the country may be staring at an orphan crisis because of mass fatalities.  India recorded 414,188 new Covid-19 cases and 3,915 deaths yesterday (May 6). At the start of the second wave around March 15, India was recording approximately 25,000 cases and 150 deaths a day. While India’s total Covid-19 fatalities were nearly 160,000 in one year of the pandemic till mid-March, it added 80,000 deaths to its tally since then.  The catastrophic second wave Covid-19 took even the government by surprise, and two months on, efforts to actively mitigate this disaster are not nearly enough.
Despite high-level meetings chaired by prime minister Narendra Modi, Covid-19 patients are dying at small hospitals even in some of India’s largest cities. There are not enough hospital beds, those with ventilators are even more scarce, and oxygen is the new currency Indians are either chasing or hoarding out of fear. All this while, people are dying even in glitzy urban agglomerations.  On May 5, NDTV news channel reported that six people had died at Gurugram’s Kriti Hospital, allegedly because there wasn’t enough oxygen. A ghastly video shows a locked ICU room and all hospital staff missing from the scene. As patients’ relatives make their way into the ICU, they find body after body.  Later, the administrator at the hospital admitted that the staff had to hide for their safety, till the police could reach them. Deaths by oxygen shortage are by no means isolated instances. At Delhi’s Batra Hospital, 12 people died because the hospital’s oxygen supply was not replenished on time on May 1. One of those dead was a senior doctor being treated for Covid-19.

This oxygen crisis has persisted despite the Delhi high court and India’s Supreme Court hearing the matter on an urgent basis. Meanwhile, states have been in an ugly political tussle with the central government over oxygen allocation and supply.  It was only on May 5 that Delhi, for instance, received the full 700 metric tons of medical oxygen that it was allocated. The Delhi chief minister claims that if this oxygen supply can be sustained—and augmented to over 900 metric tons—he can add nearly 9,000 oxygenated beds for Covid-19 patients. Delhi also announced a website for booking oxygen cylinders for those in home isolation through proper government channels.

These measures have been too slow to come. Even now, Indians have had to stand in queues for hours to get oxygen cylinders filled, wait for the benevolence of strangers on social media, and risk getting duped by those in it to make a quick buck. And this is the story of India’s capital—one of the most developed cities in the country with some of the best health infrastructure.  But the city still does not have a Covid-19 war room, a crucial aspect of triaging cases and managing access to healthcare that states like Maharashtra and Kerala have been able to successfully implement. There is no single entity coordinating hospital admissions even today, and patients are left running around the city looking for beds or calling in favours.  Not only are steps like the oxygen website coming in with an undesirable lag, but the Indian government also has not recalibrated its priorities to take on this pandemic of unprecedented proportions head-on.
Till the last week of April, Indian states were in the grip of a feisty election, hotly contested particularly in the state of West Bengal. Since the start of the second wave of Covid-19, cases in Kolkata, the state’s capital, have shot up exponentially, taking test positivity rates as high as 50%.  But perhaps the largest toll of India’s elections came in the form of village-level polls in Uttar Pradesh. Teachers were forced to attend polling station duties, even if they were ill. Teachers’ unions have assessed that 700 such teachers died because of this polling duty.  Religious events and polling aside, a large number of farmers are still camped at Delhi’s borders in protest against the Modi government’s farm laws.  The fear now is that as Covid-19 spreads to India’s villages, the lack of awareness about the disease and the poor mechanism of reporting deaths is going to spell catastrophe for large swathes of the population.  But the Indian government has other things on its plate.
India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar is currently in London for the G7 meeting but has now been forced to attend it virtually. Source-based reports say that two members from the Indian contingent tested positive for Covid-19, and sent the rest of the team into a forced quarantine in London. India is currently on the UK’s red list for travellers because of its current outbreak.  This is not a good look for a government that has been worried about the global perception of its pandemic response.

For instance, reacting to a news report published in The Australian newspaper, the Indian High Commission in Canberra said that it took exception to the report as being “completely baseless, malicious, and slanderous.” The news report directly blamed prime minister Narendra Modi for the “viral apocalypse.”

India’s information & broadcasting ministry also held a virtual workshop for officers to help them “create a positive image of the government,” according to a source-based report in the Hindustan Times newspaper on May 5.  As if that weren’t enough, India’s foreign ministry had to sweep into action when it found out that embassies in India were sending out SOS calls for oxygen cylinders to members of the opposition party instead of the ministry. After Srinivas BV, an Indian Youth Congress leader, helped the embassy of the Philippines and the high commission of New Zealand in Delhi, the foreign ministry sent out a protocol document for how these emergencies should be handled. This included going through the ministry’s Covid Cell channel.

An investigation by news platform Article 14 revealed that the foreign ministry’s Covid Cell for diplomatic missions was reactivated—after it was initially set up in March 2020—only on May 1, after the SOS call from the Philippines embassy.  If that diplomatic embarrassment wasn’t enough, the Delhi high court asked the central government about why 3,000 oxygen concentrators, which came as part of foreign aid, were stuck at the customs, based on photographs circulated by newswires. India’s customs authority had to issue a clarification that no such consignment was stuck at the airport, and yet, if someone found said consignment, they should immediately alert the authority.

[Ambergris]

Gudwaras are offering free oxygen where available, by the way.

 

++++++++

 

May 7 Reuters Anuron MitraNivedita Bhattacharjee

India's main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi warned on Friday that unless the deadly second COVID-19 wave sweeping the country was brought under control it would decimate India as well as threaten the rest of the world.  In a letter, Gandhi implored Prime Minister Narendra Modi to prepare for another national lockdown, accelerate a country-wide vaccination programme and scientifically track the virus and its mutations.

Gandhi said the world's second-most populous nation had a responsibility in "a globalised and interconnected world" to stop the "explosive" growth of COVID-19 within its borders.  "India is home to one out of every six human beings on the planet. The pandemic has demonstrated that our size, genetic diversity and complexity make India fertile ground for the virus to rapidly mutate, transforming itself into a more contagious and more dangerous form," wrote Gandhi.  "Allowing the uncontrollable spread of the virus in our country will be devastating not only for our people but also for the rest of the world."

India's highly infectious COVID-19 variant B.1.617 has already spread to other countries such as Britain, forcing nations to cut or restrict movements from India.  In the past week, India has reported an extra 1.5 million new infections and record daily death tolls as its hospitals run out of beds and medical oxygen. Since the start of the pandemic, it has reported 21.49 million cases and 234,083 deaths. It currently has 3.6 million active cases.

Modi has been widely criticised for not acting sooner to suppress the second wave, after religious festivals and political rallies drew tens of thousands of people in recent weeks and became "super spreader" events.  His government has also been criticised for lifting social restrictions too soon following the first wave and for delays in the country's vaccination programme, which medical experts say is India's only hope of controlling the second COVID-19 wave.

While India is the world's biggest vaccine maker, it is struggling to produce and distribute enough doses to stem the wave of COVID-19.

Modi has stressed that Indian states must keep up vaccination rates. Although the country has administered at least 157 million vaccine doses, its rate of inoculation has fallen sharply in recent days.  "After having achieved a rate of around 4 million a day, we are now down to 2.5 million per day due to vaccine shortages," Amartya Lahiri, an economics professor at University of British Columbia was quoted as saying in the Mint newspaper.  "The 5 million a day target is the lower bound of what we have to aim for, since even at that rate, it will take a year for us to get everyone two doses. The situation unfortunately is very grim."

India reported another record daily rise in coronavirus cases, 414,188, on Friday, bringing total new cases for the week to 1.57 million. Deaths from COVID-19 rose by 3,915 to 234,083.

Medical experts say the real extent of COVID-19 in India is five to 10 times the official tallies.  India's healthcare system is crumbling under the weight of patients, with hospitals running out of beds and medical oxygen. Morgues and crematoriums can not handle the number of dead and makeshift funeral pyres burn in parks and carparks.

Prominent U.S. disease modeller Chris Murray, from the University of Washington, said the sheer magnitude of infections in India in a short period of time suggests an "escape variant" may be overpowering any prior immunity from natural infections.  Infections are now spreading from overcrowded cities to remote rural villages that are home to nearly 70% of the 1.3 billion population.

Although northern and western India bear the brunt of the disease, southern India now seems to be turning into the new epicentre. The share of the five southern states in the country's daily surge in infections rose from 28% to 33% in the first seven days of May, data shows.  In the southern city of Chennai, only one in a hundred oxygen supported beds and two in a hundred beds in intensive care units (ICUs) were vacant on Thursday, from a vacancy rate of over 20% each two weeks ago, government data showed.  In India's tech capital Bengaluru, also in the south, only 23 of the 590 beds in ICUs were vacant, and only 1 in 50 beds with a ventilator were vacant, a situation officials say points to an impending crisis.

The test-positivity rate — the percentage of people tested who are found to have the disease — in the city of 12.5 million has tripled to almost 39% as of Wednesday, from about 13% two weeks ago, data showed.  Bengaluru has 325,000 active COVID-19 cases, with demand for ICU and high-dependency unit (HDU) beds up more than 20 fold, said H. M. Prasanna, president of the Private Hospitals and Nursing Homes Association in Karnataka state, which includes Bengaluru.  "Every patient coming to the hospital needs a ICU or a HDU bed...that is why patients are running from one hospital to another searching for an ICU bed," he said.  "There is also short supply of medical oxygen...Most of the small hospitals now who can't procure oxygen on a daily basis are refusing to admit COVID patients."

 

[Ambergris]

May 6:
Brazil recorded 73,380 additional confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the past 24 hours, the Health Ministry said on Thursday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in Latin America's largest country above the 15 million mark.

The ministry also said Brazil recorded 2,550 fatalities from COVID-19 in the last 24 hours, lifting the official death toll to 416,949.

(per Reuters)

Edited May 7, 2021 by Ambergris

[Ambergris]

On 5/2/2021 at 11:52 AM, dogmom4 said:

In the first article about India the writer called their variation a ‘double mutant’. Does anyone what the Indian variant is actually called? Has it been found in the US? 
 

Here's a chart for which variants are found where:

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions

 

I haven't found the Indian on it, because "sporadic" is a thin slice.

 

Edited May 7, 2021 by Ambergris

[Ambergris]

On 5/6/2021 at 12:48 PM, Mother said:

It doesn’t appear to be abating just changing from state to state and country to country.  Is anyone seeing a specific pattern that might indicate if any particular action makes it worsen or lessen? 

Dry air makes it worse.  Circulating a breath deep in your lungs and projecting it out into the air is more likely to project the virus particles with it, thus the ban on singing outdoors and sports/cheerleading.

With at least nineteen variants having been identified that have at least 1000 cases each in the US, however, there's a lot of room for each to have its own comfort zone.

[Ambergris]

Egypt may be one of the next headlines countries.  Cases are on the rise, and deaths are averaging not quite 30% less than they were at the peak of their one-month death spike.  My guess is that deaths are significantly higher now, but not being fully reported.

The fun information is that the one of the main vaccines there is BBIBP, also known as Sinovac, which as you might have guessed is a Chinese product.  The Chinese government is testing it in places including Egypt, and it is an "inactivated-virus" vaccine.  Surely nothing could go wrong with that.

Interim data from late-stage trials in Turkey and Indonesia showed that the vaccine was 91.25% and 65.3% effective respectively.  Researchers in Brazil initially said it was 78% effective in their clinical trials, but in January 2021 revised that figure to 50.4% after including more data in their calculations. Earlier in November, their trials were briefly halted after the reported death of a volunteer, but resumed after the death was found to have no links to the vaccine.

[Mother]

People truly are guinea pigs it seems.  But we have been for a long long time.   This tells of some of them but there's more to be found if you search deep.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States      Wiki might not be the most reliable source but it definitely gives one a place to start searching.  

 

One such 'study' I read about (not sure where now) was that 'they' sprayed a substance in the skies over CA, I believe it was in the 30's, and then required doctors to report certain 'symptoms' to the health department. It turns out the substance was part of a biological weapon's study.  It was thought this was safe but it appears people were ill for years after.  Of course conspiracy theories abound, like with Lyme Disease being researched at Plum Island's animal research lab, most of which can't exactly be proven. Still, those theories do raise doubt.  

 

Having been the victim of both Lyme Disease, several vaccine 'reactions', and severe chronic/autoimmune diseases without known causes (or cures) I'm willing to admit I might be more cautious and suspicious than some.   

[Ambergris]

Mucormycosis: The 'black fungus' maiming Covid patients in India
Soutik Biswas - India correspondent
Sat, May 8, 2021, 9:37 PM·
On Saturday morning, Dr Akshay Nair, a Mumbai-based eye surgeon, was waiting to operate on a 25-year-old woman who had recovered from a bout of Covid-19 three weeks ago.  Inside the surgery, an ear, nose and throat specialist was already at work on the patient, a diabetic.  He had inserted a tube in her nose and was removing tissues infected with mucormycosis, a rare but dangerous fungal infection. This aggressive infection affects the nose, eye and sometimes the brain. After his colleague finished, Dr Nair would carry out a three hour procedure to remove the patient's eye.  "I will be removing her eye to save her life. That's how this disease works," Dr Nair told me.

Even as a deadly second wave of Covid-19 ravages India, doctors are now reporting a rash of cases involving a rare infection - also called the "black fungus" - among recovering and recovered Covid-19 patients.

What is mucormycosis?  Mucormycosis is a very rare infection. It is caused by exposure to mucor mould which is commonly found in soil, plants, manure, and decaying fruits and vegetables. "It is ubiquitous and found in soil and air and even in the nose and mucus of healthy people," says Dr Nair.

It affects the sinuses, the brain and the lungs and can be life-threatening in diabetic or severely immunocompromised individuals, such as cancer patients or people with HIV/AIDS.  Doctor believe mucormycosis, which has an overall mortality rate of 50%, may be being triggered by the use of steroids, a life-saving treatment for severe and critically ill Covid-19 patients.  Steroids reduce inflammation in the lungs for Covid-19 and appear to help stop some of the damage that can happen when the body's immune system goes into overdrive to fight off coronavirus. But they also reduce immunity and push up blood sugar levels in both diabetics and non-diabetic Covid-19 patients.  It's thought that this drop in immunity could be triggering these cases of mucormycosis.
Steroids are an essential life-saving drug for Covid patients  "Diabetes lowers the body's immune defences, coronavirus exacerbates it, and then steroids which help fight Covid-19 act like fuel to the fire," says Dr Nair.  Dr Nair - who works in three hospitals in Mumbai, one of the worst-hit cities in the second wave - says he has already seen some 40 patients suffering from the fungal infection in April. Many of them were diabetics who had recovered from Covid-19 at home. Eleven of them had to have an eye surgically removed.  Between December and February, just six of his colleagues in five cities - Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi and Pune - reported 58 cases of the infection. Most of the patients contracted it between 12 to 15 days after recovery from Covid-19.

Mumbai's busy Sion Hospital has reported 24 cases of the fungal infection in the past two months, up from six cases a year, according to Dr Renuka Bradoo, head of the hospital's ear, nose and throat wing.  Eleven of them had to lose an eye, and six of them died. Most of her patients are middle-aged diabetics who were struck down by the fungus two weeks after recovering from Covid-19. "We are already seeing two to three cases a week here. It's a nightmare inside a pandemic," she told me.

In the southern city of Bengaluru, Dr Raghuraj Hegde, an eye surgeon, tells a similar story. He has seen 19 cases of mucormycosis in the past two weeks, most of them young patients. "Some were so sick that we couldn't even operate on them."

Doctors say they are surprised by the severity and the frequency of this fungal infection during the second wave, compared to some cases during the first wave last year.

Dr Nair says he has come across not more than 10 cases in Mumbai in the past two years. "This year is something different," he says.

In Bengaluru, Dr Hegde had never seen more than one or two cases a year in over a decade of practice.  Patients suffering from the fungal infection typically have symptoms of stuffy and bleeding nose; swelling of and pain in the eye; drooping of eyelids; and blurred and finally, loss of vision. There could be black batches of skin around the nose.   Doctors say most of their patients arrive late, when they are already losing vision, and doctors have to surgically remove the eye to stop the infection from reaching the brain.  In some cases, doctors in India say, patients have lost their vision in both eyes. And in rare cases, doctors have to surgically remove the jaw bone in order to stop the disease from spreading.  An anti-fungal intravenous injection which costs 3,500 rupees ($48) a dose and has to be administered every day up to eight weeks is the only drug effective against the disease.

One way to stall the possibility of the fungal infection was to make sure that Covid-19 patients - both in treatment and after recovery - were being administered the right dose and duration of steroids, says Dr Rahul Baxi, a Mumbai-based diabetologist.  He says he treated some 800 diabetic Covid-19 patients in the past year, and none of them contracted the fungal infection. "Doctors should take care of the sugar levels after the patients are discharged," Dr Baxi told me.

A senior government official says there is "no big outbreak". Yet it is difficult to say why a growing number of cases of mucormycosis are being reported from all over the country. "The strain of the virus appears to be virulent, sending blood sugars soaring to very high levels. And strangely, the fungal infection is affecting a lot of young people," says Dr Hegde.  His youngest patient last month was a 27-year-old man, who was not even a diabetic. "We had to operate on him during his second week of Covid-19 and remove his eye. It's pretty devastating."

[Ambergris]

Axios
Sat, May 8, 2021, 6:57 AM·1 min read
The CDC acknowledged Friday that airborne spread of COVID-19 among people more than 6 feet apart "has been repeatedly documented."

Why it matters: This is "a change from the agency’s previous position that most infections were acquired through 'close contact, not airborne transmission,'" the N.Y. Times reports.
The new guidance says airborne transmission is more common when people are close, but "These transmission events have involved the presence of an infectious person exhaling virus indoors for an extended time (more than 15 minutes and in some cases hours) leading to virus concentrations in the air space sufficient to transmit infections to people more than 6 feet away, and in some cases to people who have passed through that space soon after the infectious person left."

The bottom line: Aerosol expert Linsey Marr "pointed out that one updated page on the C.D.C. website, entitled 'How Covid-19 Spreads,' says that inhaling the virus when people are far apart is 'uncommon,'" the Times noted.

"The statement is 'misleading and potentially harmful,'" Dr. Marr said.

[Jeepers]

Ambergris, I didn't know there were that many variants now. Sigh.  Thanks for your reports. Very much appreciated!  

 

 

15 hours ago, Ambergris said:

Steroids reduce inflammation in the lungs for Covid-19 and appear to help stop some of the damage that can happen when the body's immune system goes into overdrive to fight off coronavirus.

That was one of the initial fears when the 'vaccine' first came out. I remember them warning us not to ramp up our immune system with elderberry and echinacea etc. for fear of the immune system going into overdrive and destroying everything.  

 

Mother, I agree that we have been guinea pigs all along too. Never forget Tuskegee. Every time I hear a company brag about their product not being animal tested I think to myself, no not tested on animals but on humans. I've also heard horror stories about Plum Island. If only half of it is true...

[Mother]

If it’s true is it paranoia?  

[Ambergris]

Here's what's known about the coronavirus variants

By Maggie Fox, CNN

Updated 7:48 PM ET, Fri May 7, 2021

(CNN)The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week it had designated a coronavirus variant first seen in India as a "variant of interest," adding it to the growing collection of viral variants it's keeping an eye on.  Vaccine makers are so worried about the chance new variants will escape the protection offered by immunization that they are already testing booster shots and tweaking their vaccine formulas to specifically target some of the more troubling variants.   And doctors around the world are warning that even more variants will arise as the virus continues to evolve inside the bodies of the tens of millions of people it is infecting.
The CDC has designated three levels of variants: variants of interest, which have the potential to be dangerous but haven't caused much disruption yet; variants of concern, which are more contagious, evade some treatments, cause more severe disease or get past diagnostic tests; and variants of high consequence, which significantly evade the effects of vaccines or treatments.  "Currently there are no SARS-CoV-2 variants that rise to the level of high consequence," CDC says.  Here's what's known about the variants of interest and variants of concern:

Variants of interest
In laboratory tests, all the CDC-designated variants of interest have been found to resist the immune attack in blood taken from people who have recovered from Covid-19, as well as from people who have been vaccinated.
B.1.526 - First seen in New York last November, B.1.526 has what's called a 484 mutation. To understand the variants, it's important first to understand the mutations that characterize them. The E484K mutation is a change in the part of the virus called the spike protein -- that's the knobby structure that sticks out from the surface of the virus. The change, in a region called the receptor binding domain, makes the virus attach more easily to the cells it infects and also makes the virus less recognizable to the immune system.  Tests show it can in theory resist the effects of Eli Lilly's combined monoclonal antibody treatment, although it's not clear if that translates into treatment failure, the CDC says. Regeneron's antibody cocktail treatment for Covid-19 seems to work against it. It has also been shown to resist the immune attack in blood taken from people who have recovered from Covid-19, as well as from people who have been vaccinated. It accounted for just under 9% of samples sequenced in the US as of April 10.  New CDC research published this week shows it's not associated with more severe infection or a greater risk of reinfection.
B.1.526.1 - Also first seen in New York, B.1.526.1 has a different pattern of mutations when compared to the original strain sequenced from China, including one called L452R that seems to help the virus infect cells more easily while at the same time making it harder for antibodies to attack.
B.1.617 - First seen in India in February, this one is sometimes misleadingly called a "double mutant" because it has both an L452R mutation and a 484 mutation -- although not quite the same 484 mutation seen in other worrying variants.
B.1.617.1, B.1.617.2 and B.1.617.3 - These were all first seen in India, and were circulating before B.1.617. They all have the same mutations as B.1.617, plus a few extras. Although Indian officials have said these new variants are driving the spike in coronavirus cases that is currently overwhelming the country's hospitals, the director of India's National Center for Disease Control, Sujeet Singh, said this week the evidence is lacking. "We have not been able to establish the epidemiological and clinical correlation completely yet," Singh said Wednesday.  British health officials, however, upgraded B.1.617.2 to a variant of concern Friday because of its rapid spread there. "There is currently insufficient evidence to indicate that any of the variants recently detected in India cause more severe disease or render the vaccines currently deployed any less effective," Public Health England said in a statement.  Dr. Chris Whitty, chief medical officer for England, said during a Royal Society webcast Thursday that the B.1.617 variants probably fall in the middle in terms of danger between B.1.1.7, which seems almost fully susceptible to vaccines and treatments, and B.1.351, which has been documented to infect people who recovered from infection with earlier variants of coronavirus, and also to partly evade the protection offered by vaccines.
B.1.525 - First seen in the UK and Nigeria, this one carries the E484K mutation. It's been found in fewer than 1% of samples tested in the United States. That surveillance is incomplete. This week, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said the United States is now sequencing approximately 8% of the country's roughly 450,000 weekly Covid-19 cases.
P.2 - Circulating in Brazil since last year, this variant also carries the worrying E484K mutation and has not been found widely globally.

Variants of concern
CDC defines these as variants for which there is evidence they are more transmissible, cause more severe disease, fail to respond to treatment, evade immune response or fail to be diagnosed by standard tests.
B.1.1.7 - The B.1.1.7 variant first seen in the UK has been shown to be at least 50% more transmissible and some evidence suggests it may cause more severe disease, although at least one study found no evidence of this. It carries 23 mutations, including one called N501Y that increases transmission.  It accounted for 60% of all samples tested in the US as of April 10, according to CDC. The University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates it now accounts for virtually all new infections in 23 states.  It's fully susceptible to monoclonal antibody treatments and vaccines.  "We are confident that the vaccines that are least currently available in the UK work against that, for practical purposes," Whitty said.  A team in the Gulf state of Qatar tested the effectiveness of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine during a time when Qatar was seeing circulation of the B.1.351 variant first seen in South Africa and the B. 1.1.7 variant first seen in the UK.  "The estimated effectiveness of the vaccine against any documented infection with the B.1.1.7 variant was 89.5% at 14 or more days after the second dose. The effectiveness against any documented infection with the B.1.351 variant was 75%," the researchers wrote in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine.
B.1.351 - First seen in South Africa, this variant has both the E484K mutation that is linked with immune escape and the N501Y mutation suspected of helping make other variants more contagious. It has been shown to be 50% more transmissible and evades Lilly's dual monoclonal antibody treatment but not others. Blood tests and real-life use both suggest it can infect people who have recovered from coronavirus and also people who have been vaccinated against Covid-19.  Vaccine makers trying to get out ahead of the new variants by developing booster shots have focused on B.1.351, as it's the variant scientists most fear could elude vaccine protection. Moderna said Wednesday that a booster shot of its vaccine revs up the immune response against B.1.351 and another variant, P.1.  The good news is it does not seem to cause more severe disease, as initially feared, said Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, Director of the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa.  "It turns out in South Africa the evidence we have now is that it is not more severe," he told the Royal Society briefing. It does, however, escape the human immune response to a significant degree. It spread rapidly across South Africa, Karim has reported, accounting for 11% of viruses sequenced in October and 87% of samples sequenced in December. "If you were infected with the virus before, you are not fully protected this time," Karim said. "About one-half of the individuals who were exposed did get infected again."
P.1 - First seen in Brazil, it also has both the E484K and N501Y mutations, with more than 30 others. It has been demonstrated to evade the effects of Lilly's monoclonal antibody treatment but not one made by Regeneron. Blood tests show it might escape both natural and vaccine-elicited immune responses.
B.1.427 - First seen in California, this one has the L452R mutation. CDC says it's about 20% more transmissible and may partly resist the effects of Lilly's monoclonal antibody treatment. Blood tests suggest it might be able to re-infect people who have been vaccinated against Covid or who have recovered but that has not been demonstrated in real life yet.

B.1.429 -- Another so-called California variant, this one has the L452R mutation along with others and is similar to B.1.427 in other ways. It accounted for 4% of samples sequenced nationally as of April 10.  Last month a team at the University of California, San Francisco did in-depth sequencing of more than 2,000 samples from people who tested positive for coronavirus across California. They found the B.1.427/B.1.429 variants increased from no samples in September to half of all samples taken in January.
They seem to replicate better in the noses of infected people, something that could explain their faster spread, the UCSF team, led by Dr. Charles Chiu, reported in the journal Cell. But they are not as transmissible as the B.1.1.7 variant.

CNN's Virginia Langmaid contributed to this story.

[Ambergris]

Countries reporting the most new infections each day on the average of the last seven days:
INDIA          391,280

BRAZIL         59,986

USA              44,754

TURKEY       23,819

ARGENTINA 20,328

Countries reporting the most deaths each day *
INDIA                3,831

BRAZIL              2,126

USA                     688

COLOMBIA         449

ARGENTINA        420

 

 

[Ambergris]

Countries reporting the most new infections each day (averaging last seven days)
INDIA             390,996

BRAZIL             61,411

USA                  41,384

TURKEY           20,688

ARGENTINA    20,354

 

Countries reporting the most deaths each day (averaging last seven days)
INDIA                3,880

BRAZIL             2,100

USA                    679

COLOMBIA        451

ARGENTINA      439

Currently hospitalized USA
May 2-9 average: 34,315  The average number of COVID-19 patients in US hospitals fell 9%, the second weekly drop in a row.

 

	DEATHS TO DATE		ONE-WEEK TOTAL for the week ending May 9
State	Total deaths	Per 100K	New deaths	Per 100K	1-wk chg.
United States	582,085	175	4,756	1.4	–1.3%
Michigan	19,377	194	484	4.8	+0%
Florida	36,445	170	477	2.2	+9.9%
California	61,957	157	403	1.0	–11.2%
Texas	50,851	175	386	1.3	+24.5%
New York State	52,387	269	330	1.7	–8.8%
Pennsylvania	26,589	208	262	2.0	–9.3%
Illinois	24,577	194	219	1.7	+0%
New Jersey	25,801	291	201	2.3	–8.6%
Georgia	20,367	192	155	1.5	–34.6%
Ohio	19,428	166	144	1.2	–11.1%
North Carolina	12,780	122	129	1.2	+0.8%
Virginia	10,895	128	104	1.2	+4.0%
Wisconsin	7,652	131	85	1.5	–9.6%
Missouri	9,173	150	76	1.2	+13.4%
Maryland	8,851	146	75	1.2	–34.8%
South Carolina	9,592	186	72	1.4	–20.0%
Minnesota	7,231	128	71	1.3	–12.3%
Kentucky	6,586	147	69	1.5	+1.5%
Indiana	13,418	199	69	1.0	–8.0%
Alabama	10,978	224	65	1.3	+4.8%
Washington	5,564	73	65	0.9	+0%
Arizona	17,409	239	65	0.9	–14.5%
Massachusetts	17,682	257	61	0.9	–14.1%
Puerto Rico	2,374	74	59	1.8	+18.0%
Colorado	6,508	113	59	1.0	–9.2%
Tennessee	12,255	180	58	0.8	+5.5%
Louisiana	10,433	224	51	1.1	+10.9%
Oklahoma	6,832	173	44	1.1	–38.9%
Connecticut	8,137	228	40	1.1	–20.0%
West Virginia	2,726	152	40	2.2	–129.6%
Kansas	5,016	172	34	1.2	+142.9%
Nevada	5,498	179	34	1.1	–19.0%
New Mexico	4,098	195	31	1.5	–27.9%
Oregon	2,530	60	29	0.7	+81.3%
Mississippi	7,228	243	29	1.0	+20.8%
Iowa	5,985	190	26	0.8	–18.8%
Utah	2,224	69	20	0.6	–9.1%
Montana	1,592	149	18	1.7	+63.6%
Arkansas	5,760	191	17	0.6	–32.0%
Rhode Island	2,687	254	16	1.5	+45.5%
Idaho	2,061	115	15	0.8	+0%
South Dakota	1,980	224	13	1.5	+44.4%
Delaware	1,636	168	10	1.0	+0%
New Hampshire	1,315	97	10	0.7	–52.4%
Nebraska	2,251	116	6	0.3	+100.0%
Maine	795	59	6	0.4	–64.7%
Hawaii	488	35	5	0.4	+0%
North Dakota	1,499	197	5	0.7	–37.5%
Washington, D.C.	1,110	157	4	0.6	–42.9%
Wyoming	710	123	3	0.5	+50.0%
Vermont	249	40	2	0.3	–33.3%
Alaska	349	48	2	0.3	–84.6%