Here’s Dr. Klotman’s Week 169 COVID update. China continues to be the world hub for COVID activity. The Texas Department of Health Services has reported a case of Measels. That’s a disease that should have become extinct, but like other highly contagious viral diseases, vaccine hesitancy has put its eradication beyond our reach. My bet is that we will never make it go away because there will always be people who insist on being vulnerable to it. Alas.
There is still hope that we will have an m-RNA vaccine to the SARS-2-CoV XBB strains this fall. Susan and i are getting our boosters as soon as that bi- or tri-valent vaccine becomes available.
Dr. Klotman discusses bats as a zoonotic reservoir of coronaviruses. They are important mammals, but the more we encroach on their habitats, the more we become unwilling partners to their unique biome – the bacteria, fungi, and viruses that are part of their existence. Just as we carry commensal as well as pathological species in our respiratory, integumentary, and gastrointestinal tracts – so do they. Ah, if only everybody kept their cooties to themselves. Sigh.