Covid-19 -- Update -- August 13, 2023

Locator: 45445COVID.

Current circulating variant and variant of interest. Link here. Vaccine update, August 14,2023: link here.

Periodically, folks should go back and re-read the history of the Covid-19 pandemic, starting with a short overview, such as that posted by wiki. It really was an amazing time. 

Wuhan flu. The blog.  Coronavirus: statistics.     Seasonal flu: CDC.  

The data at this page can no longer be accurate. So many folks in the US are taking their own tests at home and not reporting results to anyone or anywhere. But it's all we have. Most recently:

Ranked by new cases, of the top eleven, note which countries did not make the top ten list:

For those who did not notice, keep reading.

And then this headline, 

The following chart from MMWR keeps moving to the right, so it won't be too long before the data from 2019 starts to disappear at the MMWR site:

The graph I find most remarkable, link here:

And, now, from today: 

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My Covid-19 Library

The Genetics Of Corona Virus, link here. 

Breathless: The Scientific Race to Defeat a Deadly Virus, David Quammen, 2022. Link here.

Spike: The Virus vs. The People - the Inside Story – Sage Scientist’s Revelatory Covid Memoir -- Jeremy Farrar -- October 15, 2022. Link here.

Apollo's Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way We Live, Nicholas A. Christakis, c. 2020. 614.5924CHR. Link here.

Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City, Fang Fang, translated by Michael Berry, c. 2020. 614.5924FAN.

Covid-19: The Pandemic That Never Should Have Happened And How To Stop The Next One, Debora MacKenzie, c. 2020.  614.5924MAC. Credentials: a journalist, with history of "working as a biomedical researcher. Book jacket does not say what her degree was in and where she got her degree.

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story, Michael Lewis, c. 2021. 614.5924LEW. Credentials: best-selling author, to include: The Fifth Risk; Moneyball; Liar's Poker; The Big Short.

Fifth Risk: written during the first half of the Trump administration, The Fifth Risk framed the federal government as a manager of a portfolio of existential risks; natural disasters, nuclear weapons, financial panics, hostile foreigners, energy security, food security, and on and on and on. [He could have included other risks: loss of free speech; loss of rights to own guns; loss of right to privacy and on and on and on.]

This, Premonition, may be one of the most interesting of the lot. Told by a great story-teller. No index. Will have to find out for myself his thoughts on Fauci and gain-of-function. Later: review over at The [London] Guardian. Less than impressed. I agree. Explains why Trump did not fire Fauci: he did not have that authority.