(2022-07-14) ZviM Covid 7/14/22 BA.2.75 Plus Tax

Zvi Mowshowitz: Covid-19 7/14/22: BA.2.75 Plus Tax. That’s the new variant for this week. I am not worried about it, but there is little other news on the Covid front and I’m still attempting not to reuse titles.

Executive Summary
BA.2.75 is potentially a thing, unclear if it is a meaningful thing yet.
Spike in deaths that is likely a data artifact.

The Numbers

Deaths

Diving into the state-by-state data shows a bunch of places that are getting increasingly lazy with when they report deaths

Cases

BA.2.75 Our Price Cheap

My guess is this probably isn’t going to be an impactful thing, to the extent it is a thing at all.

Universal Variant Vaccines Our Price Cheap

Patrick Collison of Stripe and Fast Grants writes that with a modest lifting of regulatory barriers and a small (~1bb) investment we could greatly accelerate universal Covid vaccines that would protect against all current and future variants

We are not doing it because we are not interested in doing helpful things regarding Covid.

BA.1.2.3.4.5

Mina thread reminding us that BA.5 isn’t more immune evasive except insofar that it is different from previous strains. Against a not-yet-infected individual there’s no difference

If Covid Infects a Human

CNN calls the latest variant the ‘worst’ one, Nate Silver reminds us that this is insulting to people who know that the infection fatality rate is much, much lower.

In Other News

Novavax vaccine remains illegal for the moment, but this will soon change. Presumably minimal impact but good to see. Continues be to be nuts that life saving medicines remain illegal long after we know they are going to be legal in the future.

If you do get Covid, Zeynep reminds you to make sure if at all possible to give yourself the necessary recovery time. The best way to recover is to take it easy and not rush back into things

Thread pointing out that while installing new air ventilation systems can be expensive (while still being worthwhile) the lowest hanging fruit is that usually there are already systems in place and we haven’t done proper maintenance, which is far cheaper. (CO2)

New Long Covid study starting costing 1.2 It is prospective. It aims to involve more children than adults for reasons I cannot fathom... Thus, it has taken over a year to get started, and costs over a billion dollars. Despite that, I still don’t know how they expect to get the answers they seek at the end of the four years, as I expect the core hard problem of correlation not to go away. And for everything to have changed by the time we get to four years later. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make the attempt, but I do not have high hopes.

Not Covid

FDA Delenda Est, Mokeypox edition.

seriously, we have a million doses of vaccine sitting in a warehouse, that have been fully inspected by the EMA, waiting for the FDA while it fails to do its own inspection that it insists upon for no reason. As a result, at-risk people who want to get vaccinated for monkeypox cannot get a shot.