Continuing coronavirus happenings (Part 2)

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“Possible?” I don’t like that phrasing.

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Flying recently has been nuts. Planes are completely packed, concourses are packed, check-in areas are a crush of humanity.

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I heard an interview… almost a month ago now, where the NHS task force seems to think that it’s the covid messing with your mitochondria, which explains a lot of the symptoms, and does at least give some avenues for treatment.

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Mitochondria and microbiota dysfunction in COVID-19 pathogenesis (nih.gov)

Mitochondrial metabolic manipulation by SARS-CoV-2 in peripheral blood mononuclear cells of patients with COVID-19 | American Journal of Physiology-Cell Physiology

JCI Insight - Circulating mitochondrial DNA is an early indicator of severe illness and mortality from COVID-19

This is an area of interesting research. Nothing to hang our hats on yet, but intriguing. Not least of all because (i suspect) this is not an ability unique to Sars Cov-2. We are going to learn tons of things about viral infections as a whole, not just Covid.

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Now, THAT would be nice.

Did I mention that I met two ladies who made their kids write anti-vaxx slogans on the sidewalk, asked them if they would care to stop endangering others and was insulted, by kids and adults?

Those asshats do have kids.

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Thanks for bringing this to my attention. This is fascinating. The idea that this virus changes parts of the mitochondrial pathways, for me, is really unexpected.

Again, WDKS. Hopefully, this doesn’t lead to overblown pop-sci reports, but to a deeper understanding of how the FUCK this thing kills so many of us, and how to prevent this.

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Suspect that ship may have sailed, but yeah, fascinating prospect for understanding what is going on, and if this actually is somehow unique to Sars-Cov-2, that would be, in a way, even more fascinating. What a weird bug!

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Who would have expected that Haiti, of all places, would actually be a good news story in this pandemic. Now, if we could just figure out why. This story doesn’t really offer any compelling explanations.

I guess they were long overdue to have some good luck for once.

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Apparently cops, as a group, aren’t big on getting vaccinated. Which obviously sucks for the countless citizens who have no choice about whether or not to interact with police.

This despite the sobering statistic:

Police officers were more likely to die of covid-19 last year than of all other causes combined, according to data compiled by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund.

But we’re still supposed to cut them slack when they shoot unarmed civilians because “it’s a dangerous job.”

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The main supplier, the Serum Institute of India (SII) produces the two-shot AstraZeneca vaccine. But increased domestic demand for doses in India, where the pandemic is currently surging out of control, has interrupted supplies being flown out for COVAX. […] “Until April, COVAX expected about 114 million doses and so far, they’ve only received 24 million doses. By now they should have delivered 90 million more doses. It’s very, very, very frustrating right now”.

[O]xygen producers are based in India’s east, while the soaring demand has been in cities in the western and northern parts of the country. […][T]he country lacks enough transport and storage capacity. […]India is short of cryogenic tankers.[…]
While the emergency aid could save lives, it seems not to have reached those who are gasping for oxygen.

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https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/05/japanese-town-spends-covid-funds-on-huge-squid-statue?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_b-gdnnews&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter&__twitter_impression=true

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I filtered :canada: COVID data by provinces, separating those led by Liberal or left-leaning provincial governments and Conservative or right-leaning governments. Only one populous province, British Columbia, currently falls in the Liberal category (and BC is a wee bit suspect, having spawned Bill Van Der Zalm and the SoCreds, but I digress). That leaves the data a little noisy, and even taking a 1-week rolling average doesn’t really smooth it that well.

(Also, I’m told our :canada: colours, Liberal red and Conservative blue, are not the natural choice elsewhere :thinking:, so sorry, eh, if the colours are not what you’re used to… at least we keep it simple here by actually naming the parties for their respective ideological bents…)

So, given that occasional questions have been put forward in this forum speculating as to the relative competence associated with the two different approaches to governing: here are some data. Data are normalized by provincial population and presented per thousand, daily averages smoothed by weekly rolling average.

It does suggest that Liberal-led provinces have squashed the waves more quickly and more effectively.

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