Baseball is back, and only a week late. As a fan with an infant, even though my Mets are somehow already without our top two starting pitchers, I am thrilled. Things are not fully open without opening day. Aside from putting masks on for the subway, life is now fully back to the way it used to be.
Thanks again for writing these up, much appreciated. Have you taken a look at any of the Pfizer data releases from the FDA?
Regarding the Vanity Fair article: definitely should be read. The history is pretty shocking, although not surprising if you are sufficiently cynical. I would recommend people check out This Week in Virology episode 364 as well. They interviewed Ralph Baric about his work with gain of function and the Wuhan lab in 2015 and... well if you have a dark sense of humor it is kind of hilarious the stuff he said. Link is in my little write up about the VF article here: https://dochammer.substack.com/p/on-the-origins-of-covid-19?s=w
Anecdote on the UK wave: remember when I told you last week about how I was still waiting to hear back from my job interview in London? They've updated me that the reason for the delay is that half my interviewers are OOO with covid.
Quick recap of my poorly calibrated calls on Taiwan. (1) I originally thought Taiwan would catch Covid around lunar new year, it didn't, so (2) I decided its protocols must be good enough to keep omicron out somehow.
Methodology note, active case numbers count a lot of new cases that were already in preventative quarantine. So Taiwan's charts look like it has had a few cases for months, but really it's had roughly no real local transmission since last summer. Seems like that's changed.
Impact will be hard to predict.
Taiwan has high baseline vaccination rates, but *lower* for the elderly.
No prior big outbreaks to create sinkholes of immunity.
Taiwan does have some of the best healthcare in the world, but its hospitals are normally bustling and don't seem to have a lot of slack.
Thanks again for writing these up, much appreciated. Have you taken a look at any of the Pfizer data releases from the FDA?
Regarding the Vanity Fair article: definitely should be read. The history is pretty shocking, although not surprising if you are sufficiently cynical. I would recommend people check out This Week in Virology episode 364 as well. They interviewed Ralph Baric about his work with gain of function and the Wuhan lab in 2015 and... well if you have a dark sense of humor it is kind of hilarious the stuff he said. Link is in my little write up about the VF article here: https://dochammer.substack.com/p/on-the-origins-of-covid-19?s=w
Anecdote on the UK wave: remember when I told you last week about how I was still waiting to hear back from my job interview in London? They've updated me that the reason for the delay is that half my interviewers are OOO with covid.
Quick recap of my poorly calibrated calls on Taiwan. (1) I originally thought Taiwan would catch Covid around lunar new year, it didn't, so (2) I decided its protocols must be good enough to keep omicron out somehow.
Cue the other shoe:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/taiwan/
Methodology note, active case numbers count a lot of new cases that were already in preventative quarantine. So Taiwan's charts look like it has had a few cases for months, but really it's had roughly no real local transmission since last summer. Seems like that's changed.
Impact will be hard to predict.
Taiwan has high baseline vaccination rates, but *lower* for the elderly.
No prior big outbreaks to create sinkholes of immunity.
Taiwan does have some of the best healthcare in the world, but its hospitals are normally bustling and don't seem to have a lot of slack.