February 18, 2022

Washington State will drop its mask mandates, including for schools, next month.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/us/washington-state-covid-mask-mandate.html

Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington State said Thursday that he will eliminate the state’s mask mandates, including for schools, next month as Covid hospitalizations and case numbers continue to drop.

The governor plans to end statewide requirements for a mask mandate on March 21 although Mr. Inslee said businesses, local governments and school districts can still have their own requirements. Masks will still be required in health care settings, public transit and correctional facilities.

Mr. Inslee’s announcement follows similar moves to drop mask mandates in states like California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Oregon. Mr. Inslee said that hospitalizations remain elevated and the state needs to remain cautious. But he said the state projects hospitalizations to continue dropping substantially over the coming weeks.

“We should be very pleased with the progress that we have made,” Mr. Inslee said. The governor had already announced last week that the state’s outdoor mask mandate would end Friday.

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February 18, 2022

California lays out a plan to treat the coronavirus as a manageable risk, not an emergency.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/18/us/california-lays-out-a-plan-to-treat-the-coronavirus-as-a-manageable-risk-not-an-emergency.html

California health authorities unveiled a “next phase” pandemic playbook for the most populous U.S. state on Thursday that will treat the coronavirus as a manageable risk that “will remain with us for some time, if not forever,” rather than an emergency. The plan, which includes measures to promote vaccines, stockpile medical supplies and mount an aggressive assault on disinformation, will be a new chapter in responding to the coronavirus, which has infected at least one in five Californians and claimed the lives of more than 83,000 state residents.

It is also an acknowledgment that “we’re going to live with this,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an interview preceding the announcement. “We’re not in denial of the hell that has been the last two years,” he said. But, he added, “This is not like World War II, where we can have a ticker-tape parade and announce the end.”

A towering spike in new coronavirus cases driven by the Omicron variant peaked in the state in mid-January and has since receded, leaving the daily average about where it was late last summer, at about 25,000 new cases a day. The fading of the surge has been taken as a signal to ease restrictions around the country.



Earlier this week, Mr. Newsom loosened California’s indoor mask requirements for vaccinated people, and state health officials said they would reconsider school mask mandates at the end of February. Los Angeles County lifted its outdoor mask mandate, Disneyland and other businesses eased their mask rules for vaccinated people, and the Coachella and Stagecoach music festivals announced that they would not require attendees to wear masks, be vaccinated or take a test when the events take place this spring.

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February 18, 2022

Enrolment site for the investigational UK trials of the Moderna mRNA-1273.529 Omicron-tweaked jab

Check Eligibility

Complete a few questions to check qualifications.

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February 18, 2022

Enrolment site for the investigational UK trials of the Moderna mRNA-1273.529 Omicron-tweaked jab

Check Eligibility

Complete a few questions to check qualifications.

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February 18, 2022

COVID Won't End Up Like the Flu. It Will Be Like Smoking.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths, from either tobacco or the pandemic, could be prevented with a single behavioral change.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/02/covid-anti-vaccine-smoking/622819/



It’s suddenly become acceptable to say that COVID is—or will soon be—like the flu. Such analogies have long been the preserve of pandemic minimizers, but lately they’ve been creeping into more enlightened circles. Last month the dean of a medical school wrote an open letter to his students suggesting that for a vaccinated person, the risk of death from COVID-19 is “in the same realm, or even lower, as the average American’s risk from flu.” A few days later, David Leonhardt said as much to his millions of readers in the The New York Times’ morning newsletter. And three prominent public-health experts have called for the government to recognize a “new normal” in which the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus “is but one of several circulating respiratory viruses that include influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), and more.”

The end state of this pandemic may indeed be one where COVID comes to look something like the flu. Both diseases, after all, are caused by a dangerous respiratory virus that ebbs and flows in seasonal cycles. But I’d propose a different metaphor to help us think about our tenuous moment: The “new normal” will arrive when we acknowledge that COVID’s risks have become more in line with those of smoking cigarettes—and that many COVID deaths, like many smoking-related deaths, could be prevented with a single intervention.

Read: Endemicity is meaningless

The pandemic’s greatest source of danger has transformed from a pathogen into a behavior. Choosing not to get vaccinated against COVID is, right now, a modifiable health risk on par with smoking, which kills more than 400,000 people each year in the United States. Andrew Noymer, a public-health professor at UC Irvine, told me that if COVID continues to account for a few hundred thousand American deaths every year—“a realistic worst-case scenario,” he calls it—that would wipe out all of the life-expectancy gains we’ve accrued from the past two decades’ worth of smoking-prevention efforts.

The COVID vaccines are, without exaggeration, among the safest and most effective therapies in all of modern medicine. An unvaccinated adult is an astonishing 68 times more likely to die from COVID than a boosted one. Yet widespread vaccine hesitancy in the United States has caused more than 163,000 preventable deaths and counting. Because too few people are vaccinated, COVID surges still overwhelm hospitals—interfering with routine medical services and leading to thousands of lives lost from other conditions. If everyone who is eligible were triply vaccinated, our health-care system would be functioning normally again. (We do have other methods of protection—antiviral pills and monoclonal antibodies—but these remain in short supply and often fail to make their way to the highest-risk patients.) Countries such as Denmark and Sweden have already declared themselves broken up with COVID. They are confidently doing so not because the virus is no longer circulating or because they’ve achieved mythical herd immunity from natural infection; they’ve simply inoculated enough people.

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February 18, 2022

Chris Murphy: Take a minute to watch this. It's tempting to view Putin as some world-dominating

mastermind. But that's not what's happening here. At all.

https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1494428782823890944

February 18, 2022

Joe Biden says risk of Russian invasion of Ukraine 'very high'

Liz Truss says reports of Ukrainian military activity in Donbas are ‘straight out of the Kremlin playbook’

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/17/joe-biden-says-risk-of-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-very-high



Joe Biden has said he believes Russia is on the brink of invading Ukraine, as he joined Nato allies in warning that shelling in the disputed east of the country may be an attempt to set up the pretext for an incursion. Claims of attacks by Russian-backed separatists at several locations in Ukraine’s Donbas region, including at a kindergarten and a school, were said to bear the hallmarks of an attempt to incite conflict.

The US president, speaking shortly after the expulsion of his country’s deputy ambassador to Moscow, said his administration had “reason to believe” that Russia was “engaged in a false-flag operation to have an excuse to go in”. He told reporters: “Every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine, attack Ukraine … My sense is it will happen in the next several days.”



The president made his comments as Russia handed over its long-awaited response to American and Nato proposals about European security. The Kremlin said in its 10-page letter that the US had not taken its concerns seriously about Ukraine’s potential to join Nato and that Russia would need to take unspecified “measures of a military-technical nature”.

Biden ordered his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to change his travel plans at the last minute in order to speak at a United Nations security council meeting on Ukraine. Russia continues to deny that it has any intention of invading Ukraine but Blinken told those assembled that they found themselves in a “moment of peril for the lives and safety of millions of people”.

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February 17, 2022

MACH references high-tech architecture at yellow house in Barcelona

https://www.dezeen.com/2022/02/12/casa-collumpio-mach-high-tech-barcelona/









A façade of bright yellow steelwork and an industrial-style interior informed by the high-tech architecture movement define this house in Barcelona, designed by local architecture studio MACH. Located on a backstreet close to Parc Güell by Antoni Gaudi, the dwelling called Casa Collumpio combines living areas with space for MACH's own office. Casa Collumpio is conceived as a stack of three flexible, open floors around a central core, which are enclosed as simply as possible to allow them to "evolve" over time to suit its inhabitants. "The house was designed from the very beginning so that every floor was completely opened," MACH told Dezeen.









"Of course, the idea is for the living and kitchen floor to stay the same, but the semi-underground level and the first floor were originally planned to contain two bedrooms, each with light walls that could be removable or changed in the future," the studio continued. Casa Collumpio sits on a heavy concrete plinth containing the slightly sunken ground floor, with its two upper floors built from a lightweight steel frame that is infilled with blockwork and plastered walls.









Inside, the concrete ground floor contains a bedroom while the first floor has a living room and kitchen. Underneath a corrugated steel ceiling, the top floor offers a space for a second bedroom that is currently used by MACH as a studio. The idea of flexibility is emphasised by the materials in Casa Collumpio's interior being left exposed, bringing an industrial feel that is continued in the steel and concrete furnishings.







This rawness is contrasted by the bright yellow finish that has been used on the facade, rear elevation and staircase, which was informed by British high-tech architecture of the late 20th century. "At this time, the Eames House by Charles and Ray Eames and 22 Parkside by Richard Rogers played a really important factor, and later we came across the unbuilt Yellow House by Peter and Alison Smithson," the studio told Dezeen. "The final decision of painting it yellow was not decided until the very end, and it's kind of an homage to them, to make the house more joyful," it continued. MACH was founded by Laia Gelonch and Marc Subirana with studios in Madrid and Barcelona.

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February 17, 2022

As BA.2 subvariant of Omicron rises, lab studies point to signs of severity

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/17/health/ba-2-covid-severity/index.html

(CNN)The BA.2 virus -- a subvariant of the Omicron coronavirus variant -- isn't just spreading faster than its distant cousin, it may also cause more severe disease and appears capable of thwarting some of the key weapons we have against Covid-19, new research suggests.

New lab experiments from Japan show that BA.2 may have features that make it as capable of causing serious illness as older variants of Covid-19, including Delta. And like Omicron, it appears to largely escape the immunity created by vaccines. A booster shot restores protection, making illness after infection about 74% less likely. BA.2 is also resistant to some treatments, including sotrovimab, the monoclonal antibody that's currently being used against Omicron.

The findings were posted Wednesday as a preprint study on the bioRxiv server, before peer review. Normally, before a study is published in medical journal, it is scrutinized by independent experts. Preprints allow research to be shared more quickly, but they are posted before that additional layer of review. "It might be, from a human's perspective, a worse virus than BA.1 and might be able to transmit better and cause worse disease," says Dr. Daniel Rhoads, section head of microbiology at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. Rhoads reviewed the study but was not involved in the research.

BA.2 is highly mutated compared with the original Covid-causing virus that emerged in Wuhan, China. It also has dozens of gene changes that are different from the original Omicron strain, making it as distinct from the most recent pandemic virus as the Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta variants were from each other.

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update on Sweden's numbers



https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa

Cases per day




Deaths per day




From the start

February 17, 2022

12-Year-Old Charged With Murder in Brutal Beating Death of 70-Year-Old Asian-American Man

https://www.thedailybeast.com/philadelphia-12-year-old-charged-with-murder-in-brutal-beating-death-of-70-year-old-asian-american-man

A 12-year-old Philadelphia boy is accused of fatally beating a 70-year-old Asian American man during a brutal carjacking attack. The boy, who has not been named because he is a minor, allegedly joined two others in carrying out the deadly assault. A 16-year-old and 18-year-old also face murder charges in connection with the Dec. 2 carjacking, according to Philadelphia police.

The victim, Chung Yan Chin, was left clinging to life in a hospital after prosecutors say the three youths threw him to the ground and pummeled him before making off with his vehicle. He suffered a brain injury and died on Dec. 21. The 12-year-old faces a court hearing next week, while 18-year-old John Nusslein faces a court hearing for murder charges in April. The 16-year-old, identified by police as Qiyam Muhammad, has an arrest warrant out for him but is not yet in custody, authorities said.

Read it at Philadelphia Inquirer


Boy, 12, charged in Mayfair murder

https://northeasttimes.com/2022/02/16/boy-12-charged-in-mayfair-murder/

Two males, ages 12 and 18, are charged with murder for the beating death of a 70-year-old man in Mayfair. Police identified the 12-year-old as Kalib Morales, of the 1600 block of Wakeling in Frankford. The 18-year-old is John Nusslein, of the 3200 block of Birch Road in the Far Northeast. An arrest warrant has been issued for Qiyam Muhammad, 16.

The incident took place on Dec. 2, at 10:35 p.m. Officers in the 15th Police District responded to a radio call for a “Hospital Case” on the 3000 block of Teesdale St. Upon arrival, officers observed an unresponsive male, later identified as Chung Yan Chin, bleeding from the face and head. The victim was transported to Jefferson Torresdale Hospital by Medic 38 and placed in ICU in critical condition.

The victim’s Toyota Camry was stolen. On Dec. 23, the Homicide Unit was notified that the victim had succumbed to his injuries on Dec. 21. After further investigation by homicide detectives, Nusslein was arrested on Jan. 14. Morales was arrested on Feb. 3. Both males were charged with murder, robbery, carjacking and related offenses. ••