This will be short again because of the amount of time needed still early this past week to finish creating all of the US state graphs. Next weeks should be back to normal. The only thing that might change that is if the variant data I use is broken down further, which requires an overhaul once again.
COVID
A simple screenshot from the CDC summarizes what is going on in the US.
Hawaii is a good indicator of what is coming. They are affected much earlier than the rest of the US with the FLiRT variants because of vacation travel from Oceania and SE Asia. Wastewater readings (brown line) are quite high.
The TLDR: It’s back. You really should be wearing a respirator indoors. Sadly, there won’t be vaccine in time for these variants and much of the population hasn’t been boosted this year.
H5N1
This is a graph of wastewater readings for H5N1 in California. The burnt umber squares are detections of H5N1. I’m mostly concerned about it in Palo Alto and San Francisco. I truly hope this is a signal from cattle or wild bird runoff. Cattle seems unlikely though because of the locations.
Wild birds are a possibility, but do they really excrete enough to create a sufficient signal in wastewater (except Canadian geese, they have super-pooper superpowers).
I really hope this isn’t evidence of movement of H5N1 into a human population in a high-density area. That could easily spell the start of a major global disaster.
SCOTUS
The Supreme Court struck down the Chevron deference. In essence, it has been the administrative practice of allowing regulatory agencies with expertise to take the lead in policy. Now, any of those decisions are up for litigation.
This matters because without the Chevron deference in practice, dangerous drugs and medical products could enter the marketplace more easily (FDA), companies could pollute the environment and provide products that cause harm (asbestos is a good example), workers will have less protection (OSHA), food could become more dangerous (FDA and USDA), public health measures could be limited (CDC), and healthcare could become more dangerous (CMS). That’s all just the tip of the iceberg.
An article in JAMA warned of the implications in March, stating it “threatens to roll back the very regulations that have advanced medicine and public health through medical product regulation, reduced disparities in health care access and coverage, and allowed for deliberate and informed responses to public health crises. The analogous disempowerment of agencies tasked with safeguarding the environment, housing, civil rights, and workers’ rights will similarly threaten regulations directly implicating social determinants of health.”
The entire country is going backwards in time, and not in a good way.
