SILENT SPREADING IS THE CURRENT COVID WORRY

From the beginning of this covid pandemic till a few months ago I weekly on Thursday showed a table of vital statistics. I still on this day tend to feature some facet of this disease because it remains with us, and the older you are, the more prone you are to an earlier death. In fact, at 15 Craigside, we have returned to wearing masks in the building because of a minor outbreak. Not residents, but mostly dining staff members.

So today I'll show the latest weekly data on SARS-CoV-2 from Worldometer. Note though that many countries no longer are even reporting.

Most cases this past week:

World 149,666
#1 South Korea 82,165 (55% of all world cases)
#2 USA 18,654
#3 Brazil 9,634

Deaths this past week:

World 661
#1 Brazil 167
#2 USA 98
#3 Russia 86

Deaths this past week per million population

World 0.1
#1 Turks and Caicos 25
#2 Malta 7
#3 Singapore 6
#4 New Zealand 3
#7 Australia 2
#10 Brazil 0.8
#13 Thailand 0.6
#14 S. Korea 0.6
#21 USA 0.3
Note that South Korea had 4.4 times more cases than the USA, but had only twice the number of deaths per million population.

Hawaii is probably typical of the state of COVID-19 today. Not as bad as during the peak, but still a concern.

During the past week: 71 cases, 48 hospitalizations, 9 deaths and a positivity rate of 8.4%. You can this to be less than 5%. All the deaths were of people 60 and older.
The matter of long covid remains. The estimate in Hawaii is 10%, but the CDC reports that since the beginning of the pandemic 6% of Americans got long covid.
The recommendation is for all to continue to wear masks in all forms of public transportation, and certainly in any crowded room.
The most common subvariant is Kraken, the Omicron XBB.1.5 at 45%, XBB.2.3 16% and XBB.1.16 14%.

The Atlantic had a particularly interesting article by Katherine Wu: No One Really Knows How Much COVID is Silently Spreading...Again.

During the early stage of the pandemic, medical science did not appreciate the danger of asymptomatic cases. There was no pressure on those who tested positive but had no or little symptoms to wear a mask. This is the group that spread the disease more than anything else.

Doubly troublesome was that it takes up to six days for an infected individual to show symptoms, but this person can begin spreading the infection as soon as two days after getting covid.
In summary, symptomless transmission was the problem.
Today, with vaccinations and herd immunity, fewer and fewer are being hospitalized and dying.

BUT, SILENT SPREAD IS STILL OCCURRING!

A big plus, though, is that one infected with the Omicron subvariant now tend to show symptoms in 3 days, so these individuals tend to wear masks and limit the spread.
This why the past winter was not so bad.
On the other hand, symptoms are now milder, and if no test is taken, this is the group that is spreading covid.
Even worse, many more who get infected show NO symptoms. These are the most dangerous people.
The sense is that anyone with any kind of precondition, like old age, should be taking Paxlovid if they test positive. Mild or no symptoms are preventing this treatment, and the weaker can actually show later more serious symptoms.
Adding to the current woe is that testing is now not free.

On the vaccination front, looks like that fall shot will include protection from the flu, covid and respiratory synctial virus (RSV). Those with health insurance will get the tripledemic injection for free.

Also, the seasonal flu apparently returned this winter, but the peak was in December instead of February. The estimate is that as many as 58,000 died in the U.S. from the flu during that period. How much covid has decline, for the data at the top showed that only around a 100 died for the whole past week. Dividing 58,000 by three months or 12 weeks gets a number close to 5000/week. Interesting though that I don't know anyone who caught the flu this past winter.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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