I have been posting information about the pandemic on Facebook for quite some time. More than once, people close to me have encouraged me to post my musings in a more accessible way, so here I am. Background: In the early months of the pandemic many in my friends circle…

Saw this table of data in an NBC news story and thought “lets see it as a plot.” There is a recent CDC study claiming the risk of omicron hopsitialization is about 1/5th if vaccinated vs. not vaccinated, and 23 times lower if boosted so I was curious to plot…

I have been tracking Manhattan (New York County, New York) to see if it would more or less match the omicron infection curve South Africa showed us. Sure enough, about 5 weeks after it entered its very steep exponential growth curve (doubling every 2–3 days) the breakneck pace is slowing…

In the past 4 months, Delta has remained dominant (see covariants.org) regardless of “new variants” that have peppered the news. Nothing else can get a toehold. Even the riff on Delta, AY.4.2 is only moderately more transmissive. Delta might be as…

No formal studies yet because widespread Delta is still quite new in the US healthcare system, though some preliminary papers are starting to appear out of the UK which has been wrestling with this for 4–6 weeks longer. So far, younger people (< 50) appear twice as likely to go…

There have been several srquenced samples where Delta has acquired a new mutation, K417N. You may be seeing stories about “Delta +” (Pango lineage (B.1.617.2.1) in the news, however the fears outlined in many stories are likely overblown. It is natural for the idea that this could be a problem…

After what unfolded in India in February and into April, I began closely watching how the frequency of the Delta (Δ) variant grew in different countries, especially the UK. Covariants.org has been scraping viral genetic sequencing data for some months now and charts the frequencies of different variants in different…

This grew out of a facebook reply where someone asked for information about the vaccine. It is long, but they seemed to like it. I hope it is as useful to you as several people there told me it was for them. I get why this vaccine is a little…

Pango lineage B.1.621 (aka 21H in the Nextstrain Clade naming convention) is not yet a Variant of Interest (VOI). My quick peek at its activity on my stalwart variants source, Covariants.org, shows a story in some nations that tells me WHO will name it a VOI soon. 21H is most…