COVID vaccine works - we're saved!

I still do some programing and website design and so I have some Apple machines I use to test compatibility and layout but they truly suck if I want to actually do anything. Fortunately they are on the local WiFi and so I can move files or images to one of my file servers and access from any of the machines, windows. linux or apple.

I was just trying to help, not get into a Mac vs. Windows discussion. You said you'd been told by the Genius at the Apple Store that you couldn't transfer files between your Windows machine and an iPhone, and I was just trying to let you know that that's not true. They might call them geniuses, but they're really not.But about comparing Windows and MacOS I don't know that you can get an accurate measure of MacOS by how well it does Windows things in the same way that Windows does them, just as you couldn't get an accurate measure of Windows by how well it does Mac things in the same way that Mac does them. My use of the word "easy" was only in reference to AirDrop, not anything else. It turns out there's an AirDrop compatible tool for Windows, so you can use AirDrop to move files between iPhone and Windows.iPhone has a builtin called Files that uses a hierarchical directory structure and can hold any file type.I just thought of another way to transfer files between an iPhone and Windows. There's a Windows app called Microsoft Remote Desktop that runs on iPhone, and you can see your Windows directory structure from it and move files back and forth between Windows and iPhone using either copy/paste or drag/drop. I can connect my iPhone wirelessly to either my Mac or my Windows machine, for sure using Bluetooth, probably WiFi, too. The software for this website is developed and maintained on a Mac, and I wrote the RideGuru app for iPhone/iPad on a Mac (it's in the app store). (Prior development experience was on Unix/Linux, prior to that VAX/VMS, prior to that DECSystem-10/20.) In many contexts you can choose between copy/paste and drag/drop.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

Fauci says the US is likely to see a fall surge. He acknowledges that the Northeast (where I live) is currently experiencing a surge but apparently believes it will remain local to the Northeast and that the rest of the country will continue to have low numbers through the summer.Fauci doesn't explain why the Northeast is an anomaly and not a harbinger, and what I see when I look at the numbers is the very early stages of an increase for the country. The only thing we have going for us is that the spread of respiratory diseases tends to fade during warmer months.People in general continue to be idiots. In my state as the numbers have gradually ramped up over the past few weeks mask usage has ramped down. Grocery store mask usage was around 10-15% this week. My wife attended a few courses Friday and Saturday and was the only one wearing a mask until an afternoon ice cream social when a few more people put on masks (except when eating, of course). Over the past few weeks our county has gone, per 100,000, from 6.2 to 9 to 11 to 13 to 15 cases daily (it's a 7-day moving average).The most common idiotic behavior we see, even from the CDC, is that as numbers begin to come down, restrictions and mask mandates are lessened or abandoned. Clarifying, they begin to ease the constraints as the numbers *begin* to come down, not after they've come down.--Percy

Two new variants, close relatives of omicron, have been detected in central New York state. Known as BA.2.12 and BA.2.12.1, they are causing a small and localized surge. They've also been detected in other countries, but the US has the most cases thus far.It's only four days since my previous post, but in that time the case rate in my county has risen from 15 to 16.--Percy

In my opinion optimism has outrun evidence at every step along the way. Over the past six months the expectation has arisen that covid is transitioning from pandemic to endemic. I'm not so sure. Two days ago our county's case rate for a 7-day moving average per 100,000 was 16, it is now 21. The Northeast is currently the nation's most significant covid hotbed.I said a week ago that the Northeast might be a harbinger rather than an anomaly, and now numbers for the country have started rising again.Mask wearing in the grocery store this week? Maybe 10%. But covid doesn't care if you're sick of wearing a mask.Maybe omicron is so much less virulent than the original virus, and maybe our skill at treating covid has improved so much, that catching covid should no longer be a concern, no worse than a cold. Maybe.There are a lot of articles in the press recently about how to balance the risks as things open up, but how does one balance the risk of something that can potentially kill you or leave you long-term debilitated. I've probably already mentioned several times a close friend who has long covid, originally catching it in the early stages of the pandemic about two years ago. He is better now than he was, but he's also so much less than he was. He currently has a cold that would normally just be a nuisance but has wiped him out. A 15-minute walk yesterday exhausted him and he looked it, face red, pained and gaunt.Most people who catch covid will recover just fine (in the near term - an understanding of long term effects will take time), but everyone thinks they're going to be in the "most" category. What if you're not?--Percy

Before I get into the topic, since my last update ten days ago our county's case rate for a 7-day moving average per 100,000 has gone from 21 to 30. The grocery store is still a barren wasteland as far as masks.In the January/February, 2022, issue of American Scientist there was an article about covid's effect on the brain. It described a 2021 preliminary study that relied upon the UK Biobank of 45,000 people in the UK that includes brain imaging data going back to 2014. Many people in the study caught covid, and recent brain images were compared to old. The study found that covid causes a reduction in gray matter tissue in the frontal and temporal lobes:

quote:

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The team found marked differences in gray matter—the cell bodies of neurons that process information in the brain—between those who had been infected with COVID-19 and those who had not. Specifically, the thickness of gray matter tissue in the frontal and temporal lobes was reduced in the COVID-19 group, differing from the typical patterns seen in the group that hadn’t experienced COVID-19.

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In the general population, it is normal to see some change in gray matter volume or thickness over time as people age, but the changes in those who had been infected with COVID-19 were larger than normal.

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Severity of the illness was not a factor. Those who had contracted covid processed information more slowly. Long term impact on aging of the brain and the degree of recovery are open questions.--Percy

My county's case rate has risen from 30 to 31 cases per 100,000. Virus mutations aren’t slowing. New omicron subvariant proves it, reports an article in today's Washington Post. New omicron subvariants continue to spawn, like BA.2.12.1, BA.4 and BA.5. We don't know much about these subvariants except that they're more transmissible. This might be good news. Let me explain.The last thing a respiratory virus wants to do is kill the host. A host that's no longer breathing is no longer seeding the air with virus spawn. So lethality is selected against. A host that is too sick to get out and about among other people is not very useful to the virus. Shut-aways or hospitalized people keep the virus from spreading. So making the host too sick is also selected against.What a respiratory virus wants most is high transmissibility combined with minimal impact on the host. A highly infected but completely functioning host is the ideal. The best host is probably one who enjoys running in crowded subways. High transmissibility and minimal severity of illness are the selection pressures on covid variants. The most transmissible variant will have a strong tendency to displace all others. If it also causes the least severe illness then that would be the ideal outcome, both for the virus and for us.We don't yet know the severity of illness caused by the new variants, but if selection pressures can dominate over random outcomes (not guaranteed) then there is reason for hope.In other news, Deborah Birx continues her rehabilitation tour, saying things that make sense. I get the impression that she's aghast at things she said and acceded to under Trump. Right now she's reporting her conclusions that the north should experience winter surges and the south summer ones with a periodicity of four to six months. See Ex-Trump Advisor Birx Warns Of Summer Covid ‘Surge’.--Percy

Your post reminded me of what I had read about parasites that alter the behavior of their hosts to increase their propagation (propagation of the parasite, not the host), as described in this wikipedia article. This would explain the emergence of the vast number of anti-mask, anti-science, anti-vcxx, anti-mandate far right conservatives who want to cancel or even execute any politician or health care professional who is trying to effectively deal with the Covid19 pandemic/epidemic.Is the Covid vaccine also a vaccine against Republican wingnuttery?

Or maybe Covid is a vaccine for society against Republican wingnuttery?

That particular disease would prefer to kill its host.

I also have high hopes that Covid will become domesticated if it circulates in the human population. What still concerns me is Covid hiding out in a non-human host for a while and then hopping back to humans. This could have been how we got the Omicron variant to begin with, although I think that hypothesis has fallen out of favor as of late. Whatever happened with Omicron, it was hiding out somewhere for a while and the jump in S gene mutations was a bit worrying.

Coronavirus wave this fall could infect 100 million, administration warns says the Washington Post headline. The article has little good to say, but it does give some internal indications that it understands it's a pessimistic assessment.It says that as immunity wanes this fall and winter that there could be 100 million cases. An investment in updated vaccines for the new variants (omicron BA.2, BA.4 and BA.5) would probably be prudent. If omicron has a .1% mortality rate (my number, I think I'm being conservative) then that's an additional hundred thousand deaths. There's also the various forms of long covid to consider.Nationally case rates have more than doubled since the end of March. The northeast remains a hotspot and over a slightly longer period case rates in my county are up from 6 to 35 per hundred thousand for a 7-day moving average, an increase of six times. People may be starting to get the message here as the number of masks in the grocery store this week had risen from around 5% last week to maybe 15% this week.Through the first year of covid only a few people we knew contracted covid, but during the past six months or so around 10 to 15 people we know have contracted it. Two people I know have contracted it twice. We have several times learned that someone we'd had contact with only two or three days before had contracted covid. One the contact was outdoors and we paid it no concern, but the other was indoors and we were very concerned. One woman we know insisted on playing in her tennis league even though her husband was home with covid - half the players didn't show up that week. Good for them. Sends the right message.The number of people who contract covid with mild cases and fully recover sends the wrong message. More attention should be paid to those who I don't have mild cases. I don't have exact figures in front of me, but I imagine I'm not too far off to say that around 10% are hospitalized, 5% end up in the ICU, 1% are intubated, and .1% die. This is not a virus you want to mess with.Also, a fair percentage of people who apparently fully recover experience symptoms returning weeks or even months later, even though they didn't catch covid again. The disease is neurological. Yes, it attacks the lungs, but it really likes the olfactory nerve centers when it can affect taste and smell and gain a pathway to the brain. As I reported last week, people who have contracted covid at any level of severity experience reduced brain mass and complete mental tasks more slowly. Some in the neurological field are predicting spikes in Alzheimer's years from now as the neurological effects people suffered years ago eventually catch up with them.My wife and I desperately do not want to catch this virus, but we can only be cautious for so long. When this spike here in the northeast calms down we're returning to normal life, which means eating out inside, visiting family (requires cross country travel), vacations, etc. We'll put the masks back on as necessary and reduce activities whenever things get really bad, but otherwise we're returning to life as normal.We were so close some months ago. Our local case rate was down to 1 per hundred thousand, and we figured one more week at 1 and we'd stop wearing masks. It didn't happen, probably because most of the rest of the county had already stopped wearing masks, allowing it to once again gain a foothold. I don't know what it is about people that leads them to insist on dropping restraints just as things are starting to get better, instead of after they're already better.--Percy

In Hidalgo County over the whole Covid-19 event so far 2% of infected patients died.We are still seeing one or more daily covid-19 deaths and between 50-100 new daily known infections.

We're all back to normal here. A few weeks ago - also when all restrictions had been lifted - we had the highest infection rate since the beginning of COVID. But hospitalisations were low and deaths very low.We're in the 'living with it' mode now. And infection rates are falling fast.

I think you're at 2 per 100,000. Ah, I remember 2. Those were the good old days.--Percy