The Pandemic Blog

My good friend Kevin Perry, who lives near Little Rock, Arkansas, emailed me in response to my last post . In that post, I mentioned the big problem nowadays is the large number of people, especially in rural areas of red states, who refuse to get vaccinated. To give me an idea of what life is like on the “front lines” of this fight, he said: The hospitals in Little Rock are full to overflowing.  My local hospital (Saline Memorial) is full.  The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock has set an all-time record for COVID patients.  Children’s Hospital in Little Rock has young children on ventilators.  Hospitals are diverting ambulances to outlying areas because there is no room in the inn.  My local hospital is diverting to the Baptist Medical Center in Malvern, some 20+ miles away.  Ambulances have to travel through a major Interstate construction project that often has traffic backed up for miles.  All because this state i...

Note from Tom: FeedBurner, which has been sending out the emails with my blog posts, will stop doing this sometime in July. I have engaged  Follow.It  to take over that task immediately. If you aren’t receiving the emails from Follow.It (which are sent from my email address) and want to, please subscribe by choosing the menu at the top left of your screen (you may have to hit the left arrow shown on the screen first). I’ve of course read the many stories about Covid cases rising when they should still be falling. The primary reason for that is the large number of unvaccinated people, especially in certain areas (mostly rural and in Southern states). But I didn’t realize how much cases are rising until I compared the 7-day rate of increase as of Sunday -   1.1% - with the historical rates. The last time the rate was this high was the week ending May 2. In fact, just a week ago it was .3%, meaning that we’ve jumped from 16,000 cases a day two weeks ago to 54,000 cases a...

Note from Tom: FeedBurner, which has been sending out the emails with my blog posts, will stop doing this sometime in July. I have engaged  Follow.It  to take over that immediately. If you aren’t receiving the emails and want to, please subscribe by clicking on the menu in the top left. Daily new cases were over 22,000 last week. This was the first time they’ve been at that level since the end of May. Of course, cases would be continuing on a downward track now, were it not for the fact that so many people are reluctant to get vaccinated. According to the CDC Director, “Preliminary data from several states over the past several months suggests that 99.5 percent of covid-19-related deaths occurred among unvaccinated people.” It’s hard to imagine how a rational risk calculation would lead anyone to conclude they shouldn’t be vaccinated. Yet here we are! Of course, with so many unvaccinated people in the US (and especially in other countries), it will take much longer before...