ChatGPT as a potential source of COVID misinformation

Last update: Friday 12/30/22 

This note appeals for help from readers of this blog who have expertise related to infectious diseases. The  blog's editor is a data analyst with multiple certifications in data science, but has no bioscience degrees. 

Like most of the million initial users of ChatGPT, the editor asked ChatGPT a few exploratory questions and was impressed by its responses, startled by its limitations, and gratified by its candid admission that it does not understand what it's talking about.

COVID misinformation in mainstream media's predictions that China's pivot from Zero COVID will fail ... #4

Last update: Saturday 12/17/22 

This note invokes one of this blog's recurring themes ==> COVID misinformation in mainstream media. Conservative media, e.g., Tucker Carlson's Fox News broadcasts, misinform the public by propounding blatant lies; whereas mainstream liberal/progressive media present the facts, but frame the facts in unfounded assertions that appear to be plausible extensions of the facts, but fail to pass muster under close examination. Our current example is the hypocritical "sympathy" that too many mainstream pundits and their go-to bioscience experts have recently expressed in their smug predictions that China's abrupt pivot from Zero COVID will fail, as in, will involve an unacceptable loss of life. 

The era of the "COVID-19 Pandemic" is over

Last update: Wednesday 12/7/22 

Note: The quotation in the image is from Authur Miller, American playwright

The point of this note is that pandemics, as defined by epidemiologists, virologists, and other bio-experts, exist within cultural contexts. So the pandemic in the Chinese autocracy has been a strikingly different event from the pandemic in the American democracy. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the virus only killed 30,000 people in China out of a population of about 1.4 billion.  The CDC estimates that over one million Americans have been killed by the virus out of a population of about 330 million, which is about one fourth of the population in China. Based on the American experience, one might have expected China to have lost 4 million people to the virus by now.

The simultaneous collapse of American and Chinese pandemic dogmas

Last update: Monday 12/6/22 

At a recent STAT conference, Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Covid-19 coordinator proclaimed, "We are now at a point where I believe if you’re up to date on your vaccines, you have access to treatments … there really should be no restrictions on people’s activities,” Jha went on to say, “I’m pretty much living life the way I was living life in 2019.” In other words, Dr. Jha has returned to normal living ... and his blunt declaration implies that he believes that everyone who is up-to-date on vaccines (and boosters) should also be able to return to normal 2019 living.

Are the risk factors for long COVID related to the risk factors for COVID?

Last update: Monday 11/14/22 

This note briefly summarizes well known patterns of risk for severe illness and death from COVID that have been true for all of its variants. It then identifies patterns in the dysfunctions inflicted on COVID survivors that have been identified in a wave of recent large-scale studies of long COVID. These studies seem to suggest that those who at risk for the most severe disruptions in their lives from long COVID are the same persons who are the most at risk for severe illness and death from COVID.

COVID misinformation in mainstream media, e.g., Carlson (Fox News) vs. CDC (Washington Post) ... #3

Last update: Sunday 10/23/22 

Donald Trump's exile from Twitter elevated Tucker Carlson to the GOP's "Mississippi Throne".  As the new  "father of lies", Mr. Carlson never closes the floodgates. His lies are usually whoppers, blatant unapologetic distortions of the truth. But he recently showed unexpected cunning by a tweet and his subsequent release of a video clip that, had either come from Joe Sixpack, would have gone unnoticed by the liberal/progressive mainstream media or, at most, shrugged off as an understandable misunderstanding. But coming from Carlson, the mainstream took the bait, so his tweet and video quickly exploded from viral to maga viral. 

Why do we boost???

Last update: Monday 10/17/22 

"This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper."

T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, 1925

Eliot published those words almost one hundred years ago, but they still make us queasy because we still meet complex, existential challenges, not by resolving them, but by muddling through them, one clumsy foot after another. Thus we blunder our way to a confused ending to a grossly mismanaged pandemic wherein a million people died in this country at a far higher rate than in any other so-called advanced nation. 

COVID misinformation in mainstream media, e.g., The NY Times ... #2

Last update: Thursday 9/19/22 

As the editor of this blog has suggested in previous notes, conservative media, e.g., Tucker Carlson's Fox News broadcasts, misinform by propounding blatant lies; whereas mainstream liberal/progressive media present the facts, but embed the facts in unfounded interpretations. 
The Your Coronavirus Tracker page of the NY Times has become a prominent dispenser of this kind of mainstream misinformation.

The questionable value of the CDC's Community Levels

Last update: Friday 9/23/22 

Editor's apology: OK, the image for this blog note is attention-grabbing click bait. Our planet is not being attacked by a gigantic, intergalactic, spiked-headed coronavirus. However, out-sized bad guidance from the CDC should be just as improbable. Nevertheless, it keeps happening. So here's a brief recap of a recent "attack" and a warning.

This Washington Post two-fisted pundit makes bad guidance worse

Last update: Tuesday 9/20/22 

Dr. Leana S. Wen reminds the editor of this blog of the overachieving "B" students in his undergraduate and graduate level courses during his twenty years as a university professor. Although they worked hard, usually harder than his "A" students, he gave them B's because they could name all of individual trees in his assignments, but they invariably showed no perception of the shape of the forest. 

Are our pandemic managers "Jared Kushners"?

Last update: Sunday 9/18/22 

First came the Peter Principle in 1969. According to Wikipedia, " The Peter Principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter, which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to 'a level of respective incompetence': employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another." What, say you, has this to do with our management of the COVID pandemic? Patience, dear readers, patience ... :-)

Reminder ==> COVID.gov for booster shots

Last update: Monday 9/12/22 

Dr. Fauci commented during a recent White House press briefing that

"we likely are moving towards a path with a vaccination cadence similar to that of the annual influenza vaccine, with annual, updated COVID-19 shots matched to the currently circulating strains for most of the population." His statement struck the editor of this blog as a wise assessment ... except for the good doctor's reference to "most of the population". If a strong majority of the population were currently up-to-date on their primary doses and booster shots, this thumbnail portrayal of a "new normal" could not be challenged ... but, unfortunately, most of the population who are eligible for booster shots are nowhere near up-to-date on their booster shots. To be more specific, less than 30 percent of the most vulnerable members of the population, persons 65 and older, are up-to-date.

It's the most vulnerable, stupid

Last update: Friday 8/26/22 

Most older readers -- especially those of you who have been around long enough to be called "elderly" (like the editor of this blog) -- will recognize the title of this blog note as a COVIDized version of the slogan coined by strategist James Carville for Bill Clinton's winning 1992 campaign. It popped into the editor's head when he read the following headline: "Biden Administration Plans for New Booster Campaign Soon After Labor Day", Sharon LaFraniere and Noah Weiland, NY Times, 8/23/22 

COVID misinformation ... #1

Last update: Wednesday 8/24/22 

In a previous note on this blog, the editor suggested that the nation's pandemic managers had overloaded us with medical and bio science information. As normally used, the word "information" denotes assertions that are valid statements of facts. Unfortunately, our pandemic managers and their sympathizers in the mainstream media have also packed a lot of misinformation into their messages, i.e., assertions and/or implications that are not valid. 

We're fed up with the pandemic because we're suffering from COVID Information overload

Last update: Sunday 8/21/22 

Way back in 1971, at the dawn of our new Age of Information, Herbert Simon -- one of the fathers of artificial intelligence, as well as a world renowned cognitive psychologist, and a world renowned economist (Nobel Prize) -- offered a profound observation. When information becomes abundant, our attention becomes a scarce resource. There's just too much coming at us, too fast. Unfortunately, the leadership of the CDC, the FDA, and the nation's other pandemic management agencies seem to have missed this fundamental insight in their medical and bio science studies. 

Yes, the CDC must be reorganized asap; but no, it cannot reorganize itself

Last update: Thursday 8/18/22 

Regular readers of this blog will recall that its editor has cried out that the "CDC must be reorganized asap" again and again for almost two years. (A partial list of his "I told you so's" appears at the bottom of this page.)  His prior notes have also affirmed that the CDC's culture is the biggest cause of its failures, a culture that mandates that its guidance be derived from well established science. For pandemics whose variants evolve much faster than the normal speed of science, the CDC needs a culture that commits it to making timely, rational judgements that are informed by, but are not limited to lagging science. Unfortunately, the primary carriers of the culture of any organization are its leaders. Expecting the leaders of the CDC to reorganize themselves in a timely manner is about as absurd as expecting the nation's top figure skaters to reorganize themselves into a world-class hockey team before the next winter Olympics.

Where is President Biden? -- He was out of quarantine/isolation and back on the 2022 campaign trail on 8/30/22

Last update: Wednesday 8/31/22 

<Original Post 8/14/22>
Readers who follow the president's @POTUS feed on Twitter will have noticed the absence of any photos showing him in the company of other people since 8/10/22 = 6 days. Gregarious to a fault, the president is an old-time political pro who relishes the company of others, especially when there's opportunity for celebration. Given his spate of big legislative wins last week, one would have expected to see lots of joyous photos showing him amid VIP's and staff with lots of fist bumps and high fives all around .... and few wearing masks. But recent photos have shown the president by himself or on split screens with others on Zoom calls. One has to wonder if the president has had another Paxlovid rebound and has burrowed into groundhog isolation for a few days. If so, let's all hope that he's back to his old self asap, but this time wearing N95 masks everywhere ... :-)  

Fatal consequences of inconsistent CDC vs FDA self-test guidance

Last update: Saturday 8/13/22 

The CDC and the FDA recently issued separate guidance about the number of negative tests that persons should give themselves before they end their quarantine. Unfortunately their recommendations were inconsistent and will probably lead to confusion, a confusion that may have fatal consequences for persons age 65+ (and/or persons having other comorbidities)

President Biden infected and reinfected, but up close and unmasked again ... more photos 8/10/22

Last update: Wednesday 8/10/22 

Most of the text of this short blog note are the headlines linked to articles in the mainstream media. As readers will surmise, President Biden's version of the reality TV show "Survivor" has had its contract renewed by CDC Productions for another season.

Did the FDA just make another bad call about boosters???

Last update: Saturday 8/6/22 

The FDA recently announced its recommendation that second booster shots for those under 50 be postponed until autumn. So you ask yourself, why might this be a bad call, and if so, why would it be "another" bad call? When did the FDA make a previous bad call about boosters? ... Ahhhhhh, dear reader, your last question suggests that you are well under 65. As a really old guy, well over 65, the editor of this blog takes every bad policy call by any of our esteemed pandemic managers very personally, because every bad call gives the virus another chance to kill him. That's why he recalls every bad policy as clearly as anyone who ever had a near death experience can recall that experience. So hop into his Way-Back machine as he drives you back to the summer of 2021, the summer of mega breakthroughs at the beach, and the summer wherein we lost our innocence while confronting the declining effectiveness of our highly effective vaccines.

Coherent strategies for managing the next phase of the pandemic

Last update: Thursday 8/11/22 

Regular readers of this blog know that its editor has struggled in recent notes to distinguish between a realistic view of the pandemic that emerges from the CDC's own data and the overview that emerges from the CDC's guidance. The realistic view is grim, but limited; the CDC view is more akin to the boundless melodrama of a reality TV show that surges from crisis to crisis. 

"Pandemic Survivor" -- Does anybody still watch that show?

Last update: Tuesday 7/26/22 

Is that show still on? Does anybody really watch it anymore? I haven't watched since last Christmas. Who are the main characters now? Remember way back in 2020 when  "Masks" and "Other Mitigations" were the good guys and we all tuned in every week to watch them flatten the curves?... "Masks" and "Other Mitigations" were pushed out in early 2021 by "Vaccines" and "Herd Immunity". When ratings began to sag, CDC Productions replaced them with bad guys, "Delta" and "Breakthroughs". Nobody like them, so CDC tried to bring back "Masks"and "Other Mitigations", which didn't work out. After Christmas they replaced "Delta" with "Omicron". He was supposed to be a good guy because he was less lethal than Delta, yet somehow he killed more people. I remember feeling confused and bored and suddenly noticed that I had gained 15 pounds from watching too much TV; so I decided to go out more and get more exercise and fresh air. That's when I learned that Netflix announced that it would cancel its contract with CDC Productions before the fall 2022 season began. Meanwhile, is anybody still watching the show?

A strategic approach to managing the U.S. COVID pandemic

Last update: Monday 7/25/22 

The Biden administration recently elevated an office within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the same level of responsibility as the FDA, CDC, and NIAID. Called the "Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR)", its name suggests that the elevated agency will provide the strategic perspective that has been missing from our previous pandemic management efforts. The editor of this blog has repeatedly criticized the Trump and Biden administrations for their failures to manage their efforts within a strategic framework. As consequence, both administrations fumbled and bumbled from surge to surge, and lost the support of America's majority. That's the bad news. The good news is that their inevitable failures make strategic planning a political possibility for the first time. Hopefully, a failed administration led by an infected elderly president will make the most of this opportunity.

Two pandemics -- real and fable

Last update: 7/25/22 

The editor offers the following personal anecdote as a specific example of an important pandemic management issue that will be discussed in subsequent sections of this blog note. A few days ago he was having brunch with his daughter and his 8 year old granddaughter at an upscale restaurant. Outside or inside? It suddenly looked like it was about to rain, so he grumbled his OK to eat inside. He knew from pre-pandemic experience that this relatively new restaurant had excellent ventilation and high ceilings, so ... OK ... OK. But after two or three steps inside, everything was not OK.

Our pandemic of the elderly -- dead unvaccinated, dead vaccinated, and dead boosted

Last update: Thursday 7/21/22 

The long table in this blog note demonstrates two points: (1) Super majority percentages of the deaths from coronavirus variants in the U.S. have been inflicted on our nation's oldest residents, i.e., age 65+. Although older residents are less than 20 percent of the U.S. population, they experience more than 70 percent of COVID deaths; (2) This disproportionate share of deaths is growing even larger under Omicron and its sub-variants. 

Has President Biden been infected by Omicron yet? Yes, on 7/21/22

Last update: 7/21/22 

In January 2022, Dr. Fauci predicted that sooner or later just about everyone would become infected by Omicron, a prediction that came true for the good doctor himself in mid-June 2022. Readers may recall that the 81 year old infectious disease expert had previously declined to attend the infamous White House Correspondents Association gala in May 2022 because of concern for his "personal risk", a gala that our 79 year old president did attend, wearing no mask while standing close to lots of other attendees, some of whom tested positive in the days after the gala. 

Risk averse vulnerables and those who shield them

Last update: Saturday 7/9/22 

This note calls our readers' attention to a recent article (whose link was provided by Reddit) that discusses the mental stress suffered by risk averse vulnerable persons -- e.g., elderly, immunocompromised, diabetics -- who continue to maintain high levels of mediation during our current transition to "normal living". Of particular importance is the finding from the author's research that persons responsible for "shielding" the vulnerable -- e.g., their  spouses, adult children, guardians -- may suffer more stress than the vulnerable persons they are protecting. 

Why do we vaccinate?

Last update: Tuesday 7/5/22 

Why do we vaccinate? Our reasons have shifted over the course of the pandemic. But before there were COVID vaccines, we mitigated. Remember that?  Throughout the last year of the Trump administration, we all wore masks and kept social distances from each other ... Well most of us did ... most of the time. We mitigated in order to reduce the speed with which the coronavirus spread throughout our communities. 

Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis: COVID Rebel or Pioneer??? (Part B)

Last update: Sunday 7/3/22 

This blog note is the second of a two part analysis of the controversial pandemic management strategy employed by Florida's governor Ron DeSantis, a well educated man with  White House ambitions. The governor relied on one tool to manage the pandemic in his state: extensive, but voluntary vaccination of his state's senior residents, age 65 and above. He vehemently rejected all mandates, e.g., masks, moving classes online, as well as mandates for vaccinations. 

What if Governor DeSantis had imposed vaccine mandates ??? (Part A, 1st experiment, Governor DeSantis)

Last update: Monday 6/20/22 

The previous note posted to this blog ended with an awkward question: Had Governor DeSantis made one exception to his anti-mandate posture by requiring public and private sector employers to vaccinate their employees, would the death rate for all residents in Florida have been as low as the death rates in California and New York?

DeSantis in 2024 -- the COVID good news and bad news

Last update: Tuesday 6/14/22 

A few days ago, The Guardian published an article headlined, "Is rising Maga star Ron DeSantis the man to displace Trump in 2024?"

Its second paragraph declares, "The rising star of the conservative Maga movement – named for Trump’s “make America great again” campaign slogan – has beaten the former president in several recent polls of party activists, some of whom appear to finally be growing weary of Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen."   

Does the CDC have full access to its most important data?

Last update: Monday 6/13/22 

The editor of this blog has come to believe that a substantial proportion of the CDC's guidance that limited our behavior during the pandemic was not based on limits derived from an underlying "science" of the coronavirus, but on the CDC's limited access to the petabytes of data in its own repository.  

How well have our vaccines protected the oldest members of our society against COVID?

Last update: Saturday 6/11/22 

Throughout the pandemic the coronavirus has killed a far higher percentage of the oldest members of our society than any of the younger age groups. Using CDC data, this blog note compares the death rates for vaccinated persons with the death rates for unvaccinated persons within each age group

Elections 2024 ... Risk averse Democrats vs. risk tolerant Republicans ... Part 2 (Age groups and vaccinations)

Last update: Wednesday 6/8/22 

This is the second of two blog notes that position Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis as a prototype for GOP candidates in 2024 who might run on platforms that oppose COVID mandates. Part 1 examined the rationale that Governor DeSantis -- an ambitious, highly educated, risk tolerant, potential 2024 candidate -- seemed to employ in his contrarian management of the pandemic in Florida for over two years. This second part examines some of the CDC's COVID statistics by which DeSantis and other GOP candidates might be judged when presenting their cases to an electorate that was still divided into risk tolerant vs. risk averse voters ... assuming that the pandemic is still raging in 2024.

Elections 2024... Risk averse Democrats vs. risk tolerant Republicans ... Part 1 (Governor DeSantis)

Last update: Tuesday 5/31/22 

This blog note assumes that the pandemic will still be raging during the peak campaign months in 2024. It also assumes that the nation's management of the pandemic will be a critical election issue, right up there with abortion rights, immigration, voting rights, the Big Lie, and all of the other domestic controversies swirling in the stews of our hotter-than-ever political pots. It assumes that votes related to the pandemic will be strongly influenced by each voter's attitude towards pandemic risk, i.e., tolerance vs. aversion. From this limited perspective the election will be a contest between risk averse Democrats vs. risk tolerant Republicans, more specifically, between Democrats who give credence to the CDC's cautious guidance vs. Republicans who are inspired by the anti-mandate postures of Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis, a Yale undergrad. Harvard Law grad, and U.S. Navy veteran. And yes, this note assumes that the governor is preparing to run atop the GOP ticket in 2024 ... if Trump should falter.

Long COVID -- The "last" challenge to a new normal

Last update: Tuesday 6/7/22 

The bad news is that the CDC will soon certify that our COVID death toll has reached one million, a truly catastrophic outcome. The good news is that we are on the verge of a "new normal", but we are not quite there yet. As per Dr. Fauci's recent comments, the next phase will be about control. Our primary tools for controlling COVID will be (a) vaccines that greatly reduce the severity of infections and (b) antiviral medications that enable people to recover from severe infections. Unfortunately, there are millions of people for whom these tools will provide inadequate protection. 

Here's how we went from zero to "there"

Last update: Thursday 5/26/22 

One million deaths. How did we get there? Here's the best but far too painful answer:  one victim at a time plus the relatives and friends who loved them. But that would require one million obituaries with photos and loving commentaries ... way too long for a blog note. So let's just do some high speed skipping by 100,000s, OK? 

One million dead, but how many lives might have been saved by vaccines???

Last update: Wednesday 5/18/22 

This blog note calls our readers' attention to a new free online dashboard developed by Brown University's School of Public Health in partnership with Microsoft and others. The dashboard estimates answers to the question: How many lives might have been saved had more people been vaccinated?

National trust was NOT our key to more successful management of the pandemic

Last update: Monday 5/16/22 

Why did other wealthy nations, like Japan and Australia, suffer much lower COVID deaths per hundred thousand population than we did? Studies done with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight have repeatedly identified trust as a key contributing factor to more successful management of the pandemic, i.e., the greater trust the people had in their governments, and the greater trust the people had in each other.

One million dead, but the CDC is "Still the Same"

Last update: Saturday 5/14/22 

The editor of this blog never liked Bob Seger's classic, "Still the Same", perhaps because, like other earwigs, whenever this song popped into his head he couldn't make it stop. Our imminent tragic achievement of one million deaths from COVID has triggered unwelcome memories of the many blunders committed by the CDC under both presidents, Trump and Biden, blunders that have surely been responsible for hundreds of thousands of those one million lost lives. So it's not surprising that the editor found himself humming Seger's catchy little tune many times in the last few weeks.

What if nothing happened? Would you believe it?

Last update: Thursday 5/12/22 

Would you believe it if someone told you that the White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) threw a big dinner gala in a cavernous hotel dining hall that was attended by over one thousand reporters and V.I.P'S, most not wearing masks, notably President Biden, 79, but was not attended by Dr. Fauci, 81, because of his concern for his "personal risk" ... The good news is that nobody got infected with COVID? Would you believe that story?

One million COVID Deaths

Last update: Wednesday 5/25/22 

On Thursday 5/12/22, President Biden announced that flags on all federal buildings would be lowered as a highly visible marker of our nation's achievement of a horrendous milestone -- one million deaths from COVID since the beginning of the pandemic in the  U.S. back in early 2020. This is indeed a horrific milestone that should be observed with the utmost reverence. Unfortunately, there is a nagging quibble associated with the president's announcement: Are we there yet? Are we really, really there yet?

Here's another question that won't be sent to Dr. Fauci: Booster shots or N95 masks for older folks? -- DRAFT

Last update: Wednesday 5/11/22 

As quoted in a previous note on this blog ("Why are we wasting most of our vaccines?"), those 85 and older suffered more than 26 percent of all of the deaths from COVID in the U.S. since the pandemic began, 13 times the deaths expected given their 2 percent share of the U.S. population.

The same table showed that persons who were 65 to 74, suffered 22.7 percent of COVID deaths, which was less than three times their 9.6 percent share of the population. The oldest were therefore more than four times as vulnerable as those who were only ten years younger. The CDC's COVID Data Tracker page reports that almost 91 percent of the overarching 65 and over age group are vaccinated and that 69 percent the vaccinated are also boosted. Moreover this group is the most highly vaccinated and boosted age group in the country. 

Dear Dr. Fauci, Please provide me with a candid response to a personal COVID question

Last update: Monday 5/9/22 

Why did you decide not to attend the recent White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) dinner last week? You have been quoted as saying that you did not attend "because of my individual assessment of my personal risk". Beyond this, you were recently cited as being "miffed" by the message sent by the WHCA dinner. 

Why are we wasting most of our vaccines?

Last update: Sunday 5/15/22

One million deaths from COVID is a national shame and an ongoing horror. How did a great nation with the most impressive biomedical research facilities in the world allow so many people to die? The endless answers to this question will be laden with accusations and finger pointing for decades to come. The question is equivalent to another mind boggler: Will the gains that we attain when we win our total war against lethal tribes of coronaviruses be worth the losses we sustain? If the answer to this question isn't a resounding "YES!!!", then we will have suffered one of the most bitter Pyrrhic victories in history.

One million U.S. COVID deaths ... so far

Last update: Saturday 5/25/22 

The epigram in the image for this blog note provides cruel commentary on the absurd sensibility of our our modern Age of Data Science. We are told that "You can't improve what you don't measure" -- as if knowing that we have attained a horrific national benchmark will somehow enable us to reduce the pain of this catastrophic human loss in the months and years to come. "The plural of anecdote is not data." Yes, the death of one person, one man, one woman, one child is an anecdote. We are supposed to believe that policies are changed by data, by statistics. Nevertheless our individual behaviors, the fundamental stuff that sums up to national statistics, are rarely changed by statistics, but are often changed by anecdotes, as in: a friend died, or a friend of a friend, or even a friend of a friend of a friend. For most of us it isn't real until it becomes personal, until it becomes the stuff of tragic anecdotes. Obituaries are real. National statistics are just bureaucratic blather.

CDC Death Count = 1,000,254 on 5/25/22

Waiting for a COVID shoe to drop ... in the Oval Office ... with a P.S. 5/5/22

Last update: Saturday 5/7/22 

Hopefully, the editor of this blog will delete this note in a few days because the dreaded possibility that it anticipates will not have occurred, that possibility being that President Biden catches COVID as a result of his attending the White House correspondents’ gala two nights ago without wearing an N95 mask. The gala was a potential super spreader that Dr. Fauci declined to attend.  

Dr. Fauci and "loose" American vs. "tight" Chinese strategies for "ending" the pandemic

Last update: Monday 5/2/22 

Most people have heard about Dr. Fauci's comments on the PBS "News Hour" a few days ago that we were “out of the pandemic phase”. He edited these misleading words on NPR the next day to a more correct rephrasing that we were “out of the full-blown explosive pandemic phase”. Yes, we are ... assuming, of course, that the virus doesn't develop more transmissible variants that evade our vaccines and are more lethal. In a subsequent interview with the Washington Post he commented that “We’re really in a transitional phase, from a deceleration of the numbers into hopefully a more controlled phase and endemicity”. Yes, "controlled phase" being the key words.

Protecting our elderly U.S. president from Omicron with booster shots ... or not

Last update: Friday 4/29/22 

Let's suppose, dear reader, that like the vast majority of Americans, you are decades younger than 80. So why should you care about how well booster shots protect those of us who aren't? Well, one good reason is that President Biden is 79, which is close enough. Surely the president has very limited exposure to the virus in his day-to-day meetings and other activities, right? Wrong. Recent headlines indicate that Omicron has found cozy homes in the paneled offices along Washington, DC's rarified corridors of power, even within offices whose occupants are doubly boosted.