May 31, 2022

Omicron Bows Out…for now

Figures don’t lie, though they sometimes break our hearts. In this case, covid cases are dropping sharply around the world. So are deaths, as the chart at the foot of the page shows.

Inexplicably, many news organizations use two-week averages, which are sluggish and report important changes too late—after when people can take interventions. As happens often, an abundance of caution leads to error.

 

What's Next?

Hard to say for sure, but the odds are a new variant or sub-variant will pop up in the fall or winter.

There was a kerfuffle about a new strain, omicron ba 2-12-1. It arrived just as cases were peaking, so it probably won’t cause a resurgence.

As viruses, including covid-19, evolve they tend to become milder. So it is possible it may return as a cold in the fall, rather than as a menace.

I’m wearing my mask through flu season anyway. Who wants to catch that?

 

 

 

Masking and Distancing Affect Other Respiratory Viruses

Friends of the blog at the prestigious journal Nature, report that many childhood viruses were suppressed during by covid-19 controls.  As the populations abandons masks, they are back.

For instance, Respiratory Syncytial Virus, which normally causes nasty colds and asthma in the winter, spiked this summer.

Influenza virus is lurking, but it is H3N2—which is covered by the current vaccine.

Monkeypox virus is spreading primarily through sexual transmission, so masks won’t help.

 

 

Procrastinator Saves Lost Hiker

Hiker Legs Large

When Rene Compean snapped a photo of his soot-stained legs hanging over a steep cascade of rocks, he feared it was the last picture he’d ever
take. Hopelessly lost while hiking in Southern California, he thought he
might die, according to the Washington Post.

On April 12 he started a two-hour hike and quickly got lost.

The temperature was dropping fast in the
remote mountains.

Compean  took his cellphone and climbed in  in slashing winds to a high point where he found a bar of signal.

He texted an SOS and the above picture of his legs to a friend. He didn’t remember he’d disabled locations settings on his phone.

He spent a miserable freezing night huddling in a jacket. He saw two cougars and a bear, but no animals approached.

Fortunately, Ben Kuo, a computer programmer in nearby Ventura County, liked to procrastinate  saw upon a tweet from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, along with the photo of Compean’s legs.

Kuo inspected the image and thought, “I bet I could find that spot,” he recalled.

By examining the image Compean had sent his friend, Kuo managed to come up his coordinates for where he might be. Sheriff’s deputies found Compean and brought him home.

 

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