Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

My daughter will start her first covid-era business trip on Sunday. France to LA to SF to Chicago to NYC. She is ultra ultra cautious about covid because losing her sense of smell would be the end of her career in the Bordeaux wine industry, so I take this as a good sign about conditions in her neck of the woods.

 

Mask requirements have ended out here - still keeping it on. Hearing about the largest lockdown in China following a surge in cases makes me wonder if we might be headed for another uptick.

 

Not good.

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/15/is-omicron-subvariant-bapoint2-to-blame-for-rising-covid-cases.html

Buckle up. I'm sure Spring Break will do wonders for things.

 

The U.S. might actually weather BA.2 OK, for the simple reason that so many unvaxxed (and a lot of vaxxed) have already caught omicron. It was just a matter of time for South Korea.

 

This will be the thing to watch. It also depends on when it starts to work its way through the US. If we don't get hit with it until summer, we may be in for another spike because the immunity will wane.

 

A covid surge in Western Europe has U.S. bracing for another wave

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/03/16/covid-ba2-omicron-surge/


"A surge in coronavirus infections in Western Europe has experts and health authorities on alert for another wave of the pandemic in the United States, even as most of the country has done away with restrictions after a sharp decline in cases.

Infectious-disease experts are closely watching the subvariant of omicron known as BA.2, which appears to be more transmissible than the original strain, BA.1, and is fueling the outbreak overseas.

Germany, a nation of 83 million people, saw more than 250,000 new cases and 249 deaths Friday, when Health Minister Karl Lauterbach called the nation’s situation “critical.” The country is allowing most coronavirus restrictions to end Sunday, despite the increase. Britain had a seven-day average of 65,894 cases and 79 deaths as of Sunday, according to the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Research Center. The Netherlands, home to fewer than 18 million people, was averaging more than 60,000 cases the same day."

 

Michael- Is that so? Career-threatening? Must be like a pianist's fingers. Or a knuckleballer's fingernails.

 

Makes sense. If your palate is part of your job and you no longer have one, I can see how that would end that particular career.

 

Done with it!

 

Done with it!

Once again, America is in denial about signs of a fresh Covid wave | Eric Topol

 

This spring will be the biggest event in Bordeaux's wine trade, en primeur. All the top-end chateaux have mass tastings for the negociants (middlemen wholesalers, my daughter's firm is one). On a typical day, she might taste 20 wines. Here's the kicker. These wines aren't ready for sale. They're next year's vintages, tasted before bottling. So everyone in her firm must make a GUESS as to how valuable a wine will be based on how it smells and tastes before it's even fit to drink. So yeah, her sense of smell and taste are kind of important.