Day 332: Boiling Frogs

The world is at 82 million cases, with the US nearing 20 million. Massachusetts remains at #18 among the states, with cases up one and a sixth percent today.

The vaccine frenzy is even more frenzied in the UK, where an anonymous doctor rails against it in "Boiling the bioethical frog", an article that links plenty of the science behind his own "vaccine hesitancy".

Also on the cure is worse than the disease front, AlJazeera reports on stillbirths caused not by the COVID pandemic itself, but by the reaction to it.

Day 326: Bowing Down to The Science

As Christmas fast approaches, the world is at 79 million cases. The US is approaching 19 million cases, with a third of a million deaths. COVID deaths are a contributing factor in our record-breaking annual death toll of over 3 million all-cause deaths. Massachusetts has risen to #18 among the states; our cases are up 1.5% today.

COVID variant B.1.1.7. continues to freak out UK and their neighbors, but its true scientific significance remains unclear.

Today Bruce Pardy complains in the Financial Post about that not-so-true science known as "The Science" before which we all must genuflect, whatever heretical beliefs we may maintain in private (or on blogs):

Scientific groupthink is now in vogue. Doctors who question the wisdom of pandemic lockdowns run the risk of being censored and cancelled. Thankfully, some are made of sterner stuff, such as Matt Strauss, a critical care physician and assistant professor of medicine at Queen’s University, and an early signatory of the Great Barrington Declaration. The declaration is a statement now endorsed by over 12,000 medical and public health scientists and over 38,000 medical practitioners expressing concerns about the science of prevailing COVID-19 policies. It asserts that lockdowns are producing devastating effects on short- and long-term public health that are disproportionate to the threat from the virus. As Strauss wrote in The Spectator in October, “mandatory government lockdowns amount to a medical recommendation of no proven benefit, of extraordinary potential harm, that do not take personal values and individual consent into account.”

Day 319: The End of Anti-vaxing?

Massachusetts cases were up 2% today and have exceeded 300,000; we are officially eyeing Alabama's #18 spot. While Florida has doubled down on allowing dining, California has gone freakishly far by banning outdoor dining, leading to outright rebellion and, of course, lawsuits. In a similar post-COVID spirit, Planet Fitnees calls a tool a tool in their loud protests of Boston shutting down gyms.

It's not clear whether the feverish "together-apart" celebration of the Pfizer vaccine will spell the end of anti-vaxing. The news cycle is a harsh mistress and has already jumped on an adverse reaction in Alaska. PlagueBlog can hardly imagine that the same innumerates who couldn't tolerate the 99.9% survival rate of COVID-19 will be able to put up with an equally miniscule rate of vaccine side-effects, but you never know.

Day 318: Alas, Phase 3

The world is at 73.6 million cases. The US at 17 million; #2 India is quickly approaching 10 million and #3 Brazil is slowly approaching 7 million. Late last week, Massachusetts edged out Colorado to return to #19 in state case totals. (Massachusetts cases were up one and a quarter of a percent yesterday and are up one and a third of a percent today.)

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts rolled back to Phase 3 Step 1 last week, and this week several cities and towns (Arlington, Boston, Brockton, Lynn, Newton, Somerville, and Winthrop) rolled all the way back to Phase 2 Step 2. Several more are expected to follow us over the cliff soon, while others have already declared their intention to keep the gyms and barstools open.

Day 315: The Pandemic Before the Pandemic

There's been a notable development in the collection of COVID-19 cases from 2018. Retrospective cases have been popping up for a while now, but the latest is special because it's a retrospective case of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in December. The patient was a four-year-old from the Milan area with no travel history, picked up (and a specimen preserved) by measles surveillance. More details on the case are available from the CDC letter.

Massachusetts cases were up 1.9% today.

Day 314 Retrospective in Numbers

The world had achieved 71 million total cases on December 11th, with 16 million of them in the US, along with 300,000 deaths. Massachusetts held steady at #20 in the US, with 280,000 cases, over 11,000 deaths, and a 2% increase in cases for the day.

The Biogen conference made the news again, with new genetic evidence that the event that never should have happened led to 333,000 cases in "at least 29 other U.S. states, Australia, Sweden and Slovakia."

Day 310: Unshared Streets

The world is at 67 million cases and 1.5 million deaths. The US is at 15 million cases, and California has taken back the #1 spot from Texas. Massachusetts has surged back to #20, with 11,000 deaths total; our cases are up 1.9% today.

Also in Massachusetts, in a particularly poorly-formatted web update, the people's republic city of Cambridge has announced they are unsharing their shared streets as of December 4th due to the onset of snow. Because of the general failures of communism sharing, they do not plan to reshare the streets under the same terms come spring.