Edmund Schweppe

Got my registration request in for this summer's edition of the All Star 2 conference on Star Island.

Something to look forward to, while I await the next snow event. (Supposedly three to four inches in my neck of the woods by tomorrow evening.)

Official Winter Storm Warning in effect as of 4PM EST today:
( Nine to fifteen inches expected )
Of course, Wednesday's forecast is for rain and high temperatures near 54F, so everything but the plow berms will likely wash away in a few days ...

I'm not at all sure this qualifies as "moving past chaos", as the Associated Press headline claims. Still, we do have a Speaker of the House of Representatives, three weeks after the House Bombthrower Freedom Caucus deposed Kevin McCarthy:
( Mike Johnson, a staunch Louisiana conservative, is elected House speaker as GOP moves past chaos )
Representative Johnson is, from what I understand, not just extremely conservative. He's a full-fledged denier that Joeseph Biden won the 2020 Presidential election, as evidenced by his being the author of an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court when the state of Texas claimed that the presidential election was fradulent because ... Pennsylvania gave out too many absentee ballots due to COVID. (The Supremes shot that case down in flames, noting that "Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections.") Johnson is also apparently in favor of a national ban on abortion, along with massive cuts of Social Security, Medicare, and other "entitlements." He also has a ... poor, shall we say? ... record as a fundraiser, which is one of those things the Speaker of the House is expected to do for his party.

So, we've now got a not-yet-well-known Republican backbencher, who presumably will do whatever the Freedom Caucus demands of him. Yay?

Once again, Jim Jordan is not the Speaker of the House:
( Read more... )
I suppose the good news is that Jordan is only going through this exercise in humiliation once per day, rather than Kevin McCarthy's agonizing multiple-votes-per-day marathons. On the other hand, McCarthy never dropped below two hundred votes.

Well, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has reorganized how they present COVID information - again:
( Read more... )
On the one hand, it makes some amount of sense to provide a one-stop overview of respiratory illnesses statewide, as the combination of COVID, flu, and RSV combined are what's most likely to overload the health care system.

On the other hand, this looks to me like the state (like the feds) is looking at respiratory illnesses as just an acute threat, and is focusing its attention and messaging on the short term. Long COVID is definitely a thing, despite our lack of hard data as to prevalence and treatment.

On the gripping hand, this quite thoroughly breaks my wall-o-text builder. They're scattering information across at least five raw data files, and it sounds like they're shifting from one data file per dashboard per week to one file per dashboard per July-through-June surveillance period (updating every week). This may take a while to fix.

It's done: Kevin McCarthy voted out as Speaker of the House
( Read more... )
Those of us who've been doing Zoom meetings for the past few years know the sensation of the speaker being on mute. This is, AFAICT, the first time a Speaker has been put on boot ...

The US government's free home COVID tests website is once again taking orders for no-cost, at-home COVID tests delivered via the US Mail. Each household in the US can order four more free rapid tests.

I put my order in today. According to the USPS, "Orders will ship free starting the week of October 2, 2023." There's also the following note regarding test expiration dates:

Tests may show "expired" dates on the box, but FDA has extended those dates; see the full list of extended expiration dates.

Presumably, that means they'll at least start by shipping more of what's already in stock, rather than wait for the new-build tests announced last week.

It stinks that we still need these; given the need, though, far better to have them than not.

( Wall-o-text )

A big jump in COVID deaths compared to last week (29 vs 19); reported confirmed cases up slightly, but the test rate ticked up as well, so the percent-positive ratio actually dropped a bit. The current census of COVID patients in hospitals is up slightly, but the ICU population this week is more than double last week (39 vs. 19), and the total number of new hospitalizations is up almost 15%. At least the week-over-week MWRA wastewater numbers are down. On the other hand, there was a lot of rain in the Boston area late last week; since many of the MWRA cities and towns have combined sewer and storm drainage flowing out to Deer Island, I have to wonder how much of that decrease is due to dilution.

Once the news formally broke that the FDA and CDC had signed off on the latest COVID vaccines, I signed myself up for a booster at my more-or-less-local CVS. The appointment was early this evening, so I hied myself down at the appropriate time and presented myself at the vaccine check-in counter - only to be told that my health insurance wasn't covering the shot, and would I like to spend almost two hundred bucks out of pocket instead? According to the pharmacy tech, the insurers have yet to update their coverage files for the new vaccine. Left unexplained (because the tech had no information) was how CVS' online vaccination scheduling tool, which supposedly specifically checked my insurance status as part of the signup process, let me make the appointment in the first place.

Mumble, grumble, and whiskey tango foxtrot? I'll likely call the insurer on Monday and see if I can get an answer; I have a cynical suspicion, though, that much pointing of fingers and blaming someone else will ensue.

Anyway, I did not get vaccinated today. Which annoys me no end.

More thunderstorms this afternoon. Also, a fortunately brief loss of power; presumably one of the system's automatic transferring dinguses successfully transferred this time.

Many of the branches and trees downed by the Friday storms are still lying about, waiting to be collected. Not to mention all the pine cones that haven't been ground to mush by local traffic.

( Wall-o-text )

Welp, that ain't good. Not yet horrible, perhaps, but definitely not good. Newly confirmed deaths are up by 50%. So are newly confirmed cases, even as tests dropped back below 20k per week; the percent-positive ratio is now over twelve percent. The current hospital census is up almost eleven percent from last week, while the number of new hospitalizations is up over twenty percent. And the MWRA wastewater numbers are up over forty percent from last week on the north side and nearly sixty percent on the south side.

In hopefully good news, a study at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston found that people's immune systems have as good (if not better) responses to the latest BA.2.86 variant than the other variants currently circulating:
( Read more... )

I was hoping that the CDC's new "weekly" CDC Respiratory Virus Updates page might include an update, but no such luck as of this posting.

( Wall-o-text )

The good news (such as it is) is that there were fewer deaths this reporting period. Also, tests are up fractionally (although still far below the testing rate of April 2020). However, cases are also up, and the percent-positive ratio is now up to 11.39%, the highest reported since January 12 (when we were averaging four times as many tests per day). Hospitalization rates are also up, and the wastewater levels from both the north and south sides of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority sewershed are both up compared to last week, not to mention way up compared to their June levels and way, way up from their all-time lows in previous Junes.

One other point in the wastewater numbers: back in April, the MWRA went from daily sample collecting to a three-day-per-week cycle. As of last Thursday (August 24), they've gone back to daily collections. I haven't seen any official announcement as to why.

Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have launched a new site, CDC Respiratory Virus Updates, in which "CDC is posting updates on the respiratory illness season here every week", apparently on Wednesdays. The first such update (last Wednesday) reported the initial risk assessment for the new BA.2.86 COVID variant; the second (yesterday) updated that risk assessment:
( Read more... )

The new variant hasn't officially been spotted in Massachusetts, and it's still very early days figuring out whether it'll be better or worse than any of the other variants floating around. On the other hand, the local trends are mostly going in the wrong directions anyway, even without this new variant. There's no need to panic - yet - but I can't say there's any basis for lowering one's guard.

( Wall-o-text )

Newly reported deaths ticked up by one. Newly reported confirmed cases up nearly thirty percent, while newly reported tests are only up around ten percent; thus the percent-positive ratio has broken the ten-percent mark for the first time since January 19, when it was reported at 10.86%. The current hospitalization count is up to three hundred, the highest level reported since April 6.

At least the MWRA wastewater levels haven't been showing big jumps over the last couple of weeks. And the absolute numbers of hospitalizations and deaths are still low compared to previous surges. But a percent-positive ratio over ten percent and climbing is bad news.

Former President Donald J. Trump was indicted for the fourth time last night; this time in Fulton County, Georgia, along with eighteen other named co-conspirators:
( Read more... )

The indictment covers ninety-eight pages, nineteen defendants, and forty-one separate counts starting with violations of the Georgia state Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. That first RICO count alleges one hundred sixty one separate and distinct criminal acts in furtherance of the conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election.

That's four indictments, in four separate courts, in three states and the District of Columbia, in less than five months.

Way to go, Donnie.

In today's Boston Globe, an op-ed piece by Dr. Jerome Adams: Ignoring COVID-19 is still not an option for most Americans
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I'm glad to see somebody in public health calling out that ridiculous op-ed by Dr. Ashish Jha claiming that we can now ignore COVID. And goodness knows health equity is a huge problem in these United States. But Dr. Adams makes no mention of masking, ventilation improvements, or even air monitoring.