News roundup for Fri, Dec 24, 2021

5 Comments on News roundup for Fri, Dec 24, 2021
Is the US army developing a universal SARS vaccine

The US Army has created a coronavirus vaccine that could prove to be effective against multiple variants of SARS-CoV-2 and even previous SARS viruses. This is huge news. The vaccine has cleared phase 1 trials and is entering phase 2. It’s being tested against Omicron. The work on this vaccine was done at Walter Reed.

The White House has paused student loan payments through May 1st. Interest rates are at 0% during the moratorium period. This is the second extension of the moratorium.

Here’s a useful and informative fire diagram:

Storm shelters are still saving lives. A Kentucky family survived a recent tornado hit by using one built many decades ago. You definitely can’t put a price on your family’s safety. Pre-fabricated shelters can also be relatively affordable.

The world has 278.2 million COVID cases. The world has gained 5 million cases in the last week. There have been nearly 5.4 million deaths in total. The US has had a cumulative 52.6 million cases—over 854,000 cases were added in the last week. Over 834,000 Americans have died—about 10,000 in the last week. The US added 232,000 new cases Wednesday, and over 115,000 by mid-day Thursday. The US is still leading global daily case gain followed by India, Brazil, the UK, and Russia. Daily cases rise in the US is extremely high:

Some big cities in the US are hitting the highest daily case gains on record since the pandemic started:

The FDA has given emergency use authorization to Pfizer for an oral antiviral for COVID. Paxlovid is expected to work well against Omicron. The only problem is that there isn’t enough of it to go around. There isn’t yet enough production to match the need for it. We also have the problem of testing in time to utilize it. We need therapeutics like this because monoclonal antibodies are no longer effective against the newer variants:

There is more data to support the notion that Omicron is less virulent than other variants. A word of caution, though–it may not cause as much morbidity or mortality (and time will show us whether this is true or not) but if it’s much more transmissible than other variants it’s still going to cause mayhem by infecting large numbers of people:

COVID case gain around the world is distressing, but there’s good news on the pandemic front as well:

Omicron might be causing steep case rises but also precipitous drops:

There was a comment question in the previous roundup about case statistics—I thought this might be a helpful chart for folks:

The White House plans to help to get more tests into the hands of more Americans. This is desperately needed, especially if people want to be able to take advantage of therapeutics for COVID that require early identification of cases:

Stephanie Arnold | cosmicpixle

Stephanie Arnold is an advanced practice psychiatric nurse and a doctoral candidate in UA Tuscaloosa’s DNP program. Stephanie moonlights from time to time at UCLA teaching mental health nursing. She also likes making cold-process soap.

  • 5 Comments
    • Eric December 23, 2021

      One brand of monoclonal antibodies is still effective: Sotrovimab.

      The two best treatments if you’ve already been infected are Paxlovid and Sotrovimab. Both are in extremely short supply, so most people won’t get either of them. Still worth trying, though, and it’s important to take either as early as possible.

      Try hard to avoid infection for at least a couple months until supply shortages ease. Therapeutics will also continue to improve, and we’ll almost certainly have better antibody treatments soon that better target Omicron. Just need to avoid infection a little longer to take advantage of them.

      And of course: Get vaccinated and boosted! Vaccines won’t stop infection, but will at least reduce the severity. Not perfect by a long shot, but vaccination is still one of the best tools we have.

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    • brownfox-ffContributor December 23, 2021

      What you can do about it:

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    • Lara B December 24, 2021

      Happy holidays, Stephanie.  Thanks for the updates.  

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      • Stephanie ArnoldContributor Lara B December 25, 2021

        Happy Holidays! Wishing you and everyone a happy New Year, too. 

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