A NEW CHINA COVID CRISIS?

 Before China's covid crisis, some more interesting news of the day:

• The national debt ceiling drama gains sanity.
• McCarthy and Biden pulled it off.
• Ironically, more Democrats (165) than Republicans (149) supported McCarthy's bill in the House.  Passage was 314-117.
• The Senate will act tonight.
• Biden will sign on Friday.  I thought the deadline was June 8, today?

• 
  The Women's NCAA Softball World Series begins with four games.
• I've been watching game #2, Oklahoma vs Stanford.
• Oklahoma, for the whole year has a team batting average of .372, and is on a 48-game winning streak.  Never heard of anything close to that kind of batting average.  

• 
  During these playoff games this year they have had 18 home runs.  The rest of the 7 teams at Oklahoma City had 25.  Oklahoma is highly favored to win their third straight championship.
• Stanford has a freshman pitcher, NiJaree Canady (right).  Should be an Oklahoma blowout.  I just saw her pitch a 75 MPH fastball.  74 MPH is equivalent to a 100 MPH baseball. But into the fifth inning (I'm watching now), the score is 0-0.
• Oh, well, Oklahoma just scored 2 runs, so this will become their first of other victories to come.

• 
  The National Stanley Cup Finals has game #1 on Saturday:  Vegas Golden Knights vs Florida Panthers.  I don't watch ice hockey.

• 
  Never saw an NBA game on TV all year...until the end of Boston's victory over Miami and a bit more of Miami over Boston to make the finals.
• Tonight at 8:30 EDT, Miami at Denver on ABC.  I'm planning to watch.
• A #8 semi-finals team has never won the championship.  That is the Miami Heat.
• Boston was #1, but Denver is #2 and a 79% favorite to beat Miami.
• In their 47th year, this is the first time Denver has reached the finals.
• Denver has the most un-athletic-looking basketball player you'll ever see in the NBA.  
• 
  His name is Nikola Jokic...but he is not a joke.
• Hate to be racist, but he is a white player from Serbia.
• Was the 41st pick by Denver in the 2014 draft.
• He is now the league's most valuable player.
• Does everything, and you need five players to guard him.
• 28 years old, 6'll" tall, with a wingspan of 7'3", weighing 284 pounds.
• In one game, had a triple double in 14 minutes and 33 seconds of court time...fastest ever in NBA history.
• But a selfless  team player.
• Made 38.3% of 3-pointers, 83% of foul shots and 63.2% of all shots this year, and gets  a whole lot of rebounds and assists.  NBA average is 39% and 46% for all shots, while the NCAA 35% for 3 pointers and 45% of all shots.
• Read these articles to prep you for the NBA finals.
• 
  Tonight, the finals of the Scripps Spelling Bee championship.  Go to your Ion Channel.  In Hawaii, we see it after it's all over, at 7PM on Channel 1027 or 27.  Your home channel?  Good luck finding it.  Not on ESPN anymore.  Here are the 11 finalists, and note the dominance of those with roots in India.  Can you believe that the smallest person below, 12-year old Tarini Nandakumar, is only a sixth grader, and this is already her third time in this competition.  The oldest person here is 15.

I searched and searched and could not find more confirming info on the latest China covid crisis.  So let me start with the New York Times this morning of Covid’s lasting damage in these 3-D reconstructions of lung scans.

The latest People's Daily Online from China said more than a dozen things, including their lunar rover, U.S. strip club shooting, International Children's Day in Budapest something about global warming, a sideline article about current COVID-19 infections showing low prevalence, and that reinfected people only have a mild sore throat.Also Kissinger razor-sharp on China-US relations, with a photo.

Yesterday, Time magazine said:  China Might Have 65 Million Cases a Week by June.  How Worried Should the World Be?  They mentioned Eric Feigl-Ding, who was born in Shanghai, but moved the U.S. with his family at the age of 5, and is now Chief of COVID Task Force at the New England Complex Systems Institute:

Worrisome—New XBB-driven #COVID wave in Chinawith ~40 million infections per week by late May and ~65 million infections/week by June… all while state-media downplayed outbreak last week. Bad sign—40% cases are already **reinfections** and rising as immunity from previous illness wanes. But China rolling out #XBB-targeting strain vaccines soon, while US/Europe still has… none.

This same Omicron subvariant (XBB.1.5) is also responsible for most of the U.S. cases today.  While it's true that the U.S. does not have a specific vaccine for this virus, the lates Omicron booster is around 50% effective for the XBB, but only about a third for those 65 and older.  There will be no next booster until the coming Fall.

According to Zhong Nanshan (president of the China Medical Association from 2005-2009 and a recipient of the Medal of the Republic, the highest honor in the country):

• By January of this year, almost 80% of China's 1.4 billion population had been infected.
• Then came this second and current wave, where his modeling shows the infection rate rising to 65 million/week in June.
• Boosting his projection is data from Beijing, where the number of new infections grew four times in four weeks in that city.  Most of those are re-infections.
• Said that a specific vaccine for the XBB.1.5 will soon be available.

Yanzhong Huang, from China, but now at Seton Hall, said We shouldn't worry if China doesn't worry.  China will learn to co-exist with this disease.  Symptoms are mild.  Catherine Bennett of Australia's Deakin University adds that the likelihood of another dangerous sub-variant emerging is much smaller now.

As of March this year, The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center provides some mortality rate numbers.  They vary so widely, and the best I can figure out is that the Peru rate is so high because most of their cases came early.  Those of the Orient/Oceania are low because their populations were vaccinated when the wave arrived.  However, Germany and France were among the first countries to be hit before vaccination, and they are also much lower.

• Peru  4.9%
• Mexico  4.5%
• Ukraine  2.1%
• Iran  1.9%
• USA  1.1%
• Germany  0.4%
• France  0.4%
• Japan 0.2%
• Australia  0.2%
• Iceland 0.1%
• New Zealand  0.1%
• Singapore 0.1%
• Qatar 0.1%
• S. Korea  0.1%

South Korea recently has had the most new cases per week, and this past week had 105,688 new cases with 79 new deaths, or a mortality of 0.07%.  The USA had 23,968 new cases with 218 new deaths, or a mortality rate of 0.09%, more than ten times higher than South Korea.  I noticed that, after their first wave in 2020, the number of new cases in the country dropped to ZERO on 1 March 2020.  More than three years later, they today are consistently #1 in new covid cases.

There is only a rough rule of thumb regarding world seasonal flu cases because it is difficult to pin down the true data.  The past three years have been much lower, but the previous numbers are said to have had around one billion annual cases.  There were from 300,000 to 500,000 deaths, giving a mortality rate of around 0.04%, or relatively close to the covid mortality rate of 0.07% for South Korea.

Finally, global death toll from past influenza pandemics.  Not shown are the 6.9 million deaths from the COVID-19 Pandemic.

America's Got Talent premiered last night, and the Mzansi Youth Choir getting a golden buzzer.  Simon cried.  They are from South Africa.  My favorite was 11-year old D'Corey Johnson, who sang Journey's Open Arms.

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