Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) Thread - 2022 Breaking News

Hemp is a sustainable, renewable product that was used for many things until other industries clamped down on its cultivation.

Among other things:


Another claim is that Mellon, Secretary of the Treasury and the wealthiest man in America at that time, had invested heavily in DuPont’s new synthetic fiber, nylon, and believed[ dubiousdiscuss ] that the replacement of the traditional resource, hemp, was integral to the new product’s success.[152][157][158][159][160][161][162][163] DuPont and many industrial historians dispute a link between nylon and hemp, nylon became immediately a scarce commodity.[ clarification needed ] Nylon had characteristics that could be used for toothbrushes (sold from 1938) and very thin nylon fiber could compete with silk and rayon in various textiles normally not produced from hemp fiber, such as very thin stockings for women.[156][164][165][166][167]

ETA: Okay, upon reflection, that doesn’t belong in Breaking News. My bad. It just makes me so mad that hemp and cannabis have been demonized for no reasons beyond profit. Regular ciggies and booze make lots of money for producers and the government (taxes). I’m cranky. Need lunch. Running out of edit time, too.

This is why I moved to Oregon. We have our priorities straight.

“You have some new issue? OK, let’s see how it relates to pot.”

The two compounds studied were cannabigerolic acid and cannabidiolic acid. Though not THC, both compounds are found in cannabis sativa, and cannabidiolic acid is found in marijuana (CBD).

Here’s a link to the abstract:

Supreme Court Blocks Biden Vaccine Rules for Private Employers, Allows Them for Healthcare Workers

Kavanough & Roberts were in both majority rulings. Breuer, Kagan, and Sotomayor would have allowed the OSHA rule for large employers to stand. Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Barrett objected to both mandates.

Note that I posted the same news three posts up from this.

Premier Francois Legault said not getting vaccinated leads to consequences for the health care system and not all Quebecers should pay for that.

He said the levy will only apply to people who do not qualify for medical exemptions. It is the first time a government in Canada has announced a financial penalty for people who refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

320,856,811 total cases
5,538,766 dead
264,014,557 recovered

In the US:

65,236,475 total cases
869,212 dead
42,911,490 recovered

Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:

Massachusetts wastewater numbers continue to decline. This looks real, and has been a fairly reliable leading indicator. I think this wave will soon decline in the northeast:

https://www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm

Meanwhile in New Hampshire the opinion is that we’re just at the beginning of the omicron surge, with a model predicting cases will rise through February. But don’t worry, the state board of education just moved to prevent remote schooling, so it won’t be a disaster or anything :roll_eyes:

And rumor, via the WMUR covid newsletter, has it that the state’s moving to only reporting deaths weekly.

Here’s some news:

German growth remains below its pre-pandemic level and lags the estimated eurozone figure of 5% as performance was less robust than several other major economies such as France, Spain and Italy.

New Johns Hopkins figures are in. Here are the states registering a new Record Daily High in reported COVID cases (7-day average) on February 13 2022

Vermont – 1830
New Hampshire – 4734
Maine – 1178
Massachusetts – 32921 (COVID traces in effluent may be down, but reported cases are still rising)
Rhode Island – 7560
Connecticut – 13770
Delaware – 3330
Washington DC – 2572
Virginia – 28290
South Carolina – 21143
Georgia – 41108
Michigan – 21262
North Carolina – 39791
Wisconsin – 20958
Illinois – 44391
Indiana – 20150
Kentucky – 11532
Tennessee – 19380
Mississippi – 9695
Minnesota - 15658
Arkansas – 10194
North Dakota – 1902
South Dakota – 2771
Nebraska – 2094
Oklahoma – 12020
Montana – 1759
Wyoming – 1282
Colorado – 25021
New Mexico – 6156
Idaho – 2243
Nevada – 8408
Utah – 14292
Arizona – 16363
Alaska – 1946
Washington (state) – 23563
Oregon – 11258

That’s 35 states plus DC recording highest-ever numbers of daily reported cases (7-day average) of COVID. Most other states have experienced record highs within a week or so.

The US as a whole records 950089 cases yesterday (7=day average), another world record.

I’m going to pull a quote from this article, as it got largely ignored yesterday:

… The Associated Press has recently told its editors and reporters to avoid emphasizing case counts in stories about the disease. That means, for example, no more stories focused solely on a particular country or state setting a one-day record for number of cases, because that claim has become unreliable.

There’s a shift afoot regarding how raw case counts should and will be reckoned. The impact of this shift is yet to be determined.

They certainly have a point. Different sources give different numbers (as people keep pointing out to me), and trying to compare numbers from two different sources is pretty hopeless. And no one doubts that there are lots of underreported cases.

But I’ve been sticking to the same metric throughout - seven-day averages of daily reported cases as generated by Johns Hopkins (however they make their determination). They, at least, ought to be consistent in their methodology, and one ought to be able to compare their results with those from some other date. But I make no claims about comparing these to data generated elsewhere. In short, I think these daily record highs I’ve been reporting have some value in observing the trends.

And the biggest point – the reason I’m reporting this in the first place – is that we won’t have the numbers under control until no state is reporting a new record high for several days running. The fact that we’re getting new record highs (often for several days from the same state) indicates that we’re nowhere near this point. I had stopped reporting for weeks on end when we were at the lulls during the summer.

Just as an aside … how do you get the 7-day case averages on Johns Hopkins? I didn’t have any problem navigating to the page below (and I saw the red-&-pink-squares map on the way there), but I don’t see where “7-day average” is explicitly indicated the way, i.e., Worldometers does.

EDIT: And as I post the link … the parenthetical “7-Day Moving Average” message pops up. Is that the Johns Hopkins site default setting? Compare with Worldometers, where users have to explicitly set the graphics to display raw counts of “Daily Cases” vs “7 Day Moving Average”.

Dickered around on Johns Hopkins and stumbled onto this – the graphics make more sense now:

I’m guessing it’s actually January~otherwise I’ve just done a big Rip Van Winkle.

Arizona in hot water with the Feds again:

The Biden administration on Friday threatened to rescind millions of dollars in federal coronavirus aid for Arizona, accusing the state of using the funds to undermine efforts to stop the spread of the virus.

Republican Gov. Doug Ducey’s office has 60 days to either change two federally subsidized state school programs totaling $173 million, or redirect the money toward “eligible uses,” the Treasury Department said in a letter.

If Arizona fails or refuses to comply with Treasury’s demands, the Biden administration may claw back that stimulus money and withhold a second tranche of pandemic relief funding, Treasury said.

Here’s some news:

This next part is great:

324,056,386 total cases
5,546,754 dead
265,270,133 recovered

In the US:

66,140,710 total cases
871,518 dead
42,996,672 recovered

Yesterday’s numbers for comparison:

In case you thought it was over: