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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Yesterday ago I posted some data from the county on covid fatalities. In a county of about 2 million, there were three fatalities in the last coupla weeks.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>The new case rate is down some, but didn’t really go away: we are still getting 150ish new cases per day on average, but it is really different from before, where we had maybe 200ish cases per day but a waaaaay higher fatality rate.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>It got me to thinking: this is a little like how I remember HIV was back in the 80s. It seemed like a lotta people caught it back then, and when they did, they would spin right on into the ground pretty quickly. I am not an expert on these matters, but I do recall there seemed to be a lot of new cases and they didn’t last long.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>But a coupla decades later, you don’t really hear much about HIV, and even those who have it seem to hang on for a long time. I had a step brother who had it 11 yrs before it finally took him down, and most of that time he had no visible symptoms.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Now we see covid, a kind of similar pattern perhaps. The new case rate isn’t going down much, but the fatality rate is, almost everywhere.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>This causes me to speculate: perhaps the most susceptible people caught it, right up front, and the most likely to perish perished soon afterwards. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>On the other hand, now we see cases like my second cousin in law, who is 76, who came down with it, but his symptoms were never all that severe. He had a low-grade fever for a coupla weeks, fatigue, tested positive, not much they could do for him really, a week later he was OK. His bride is 72, same house, never caught it, never tested positive for antibodies or virus.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>…hmmmm…<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>In any case, as of about today… it has been long enough since the start of the Sturgis rally, if that is a super-spreader event (how the heck could it not be?) we will see a wave of positive cases. Recall there are estimated a quarter million biker proles at that rally last week, starting around 10 or 11 days ago. If we don’t see the impact of that, I don’t understand how this thing spreads.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>spike<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>