Here is Dr. Klotman’s Week 215 video update. The highlights are:
- Americans are spending more and saving less. We’re going on vacations, eating out, and doing all things that we couldn’t do easily during the pandemic. Marketing folks sometimes refer to such behavior as pent-up demand.
- All of the COVID activity indicators (cases, hospitalizations, wastewater viral levels, etc.) continue to decline. Good news.
- Recent COVID cases reveal that the JN.1 strain that was dominant a month ago now accounts for about 75% of cases. In the same month, a new strain, KP.2 (a descendant of JN.1) has gone from insignificant to accounting for 25% of new cases. Not so good news.
- A reasonable expectation is that by summer or fall, KP.2 will be the dominant strain. Crap!
- Influenza A H5N1, aka bird flu, has been found in dairy cattle in five states including Texas. There have been no cases of human-to-human transmission, but if it mutates further (it will) or recombines with another strain such as H1N1 (swine flu), all bets are off. I hate it when that happens.
On a celebratory note, TIME magazine voted Dr. Peter Hotez one of the world’s 100 most influential health care professionals. You will likely remember that Dr. Hotez and research colleague Dr. Maria Bottazzi developed Baylor’s heat-stable viral protein COVID vaccine that has been used in South Asia. Congratulations, Dr. Hotez.