But scientists warned this week that the coronavirus will continue evolving to evade immunity, causing future surges that will be difficult to predict.

Covid-19 has evolved faster than expected, and “we should expect a lot of evolution going forward,” Trevor Bedford, a professor of biostatistics at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, told a panel of independent FDA advisers on Wednesday. “Those viruses will do better and will spread locally and perhaps regionally and perhaps globally.”

The US has generally followed surges in the UK three or four weeks later, but reported cases are holding steady at an average of about 26,000 a day. Although deaths have declined significantly from the Omicron peak, more than 500 Americans are still dying every day.

Source: After Europe’s latest Covid surge, will the US follow suit? | Coronavirus | The Guardian

Republicans are aggressively undermining gay marriage

An adult marrying another adult of the same sex? Outrageous; the Lord will smite thee. An adult marrying a child of the opposite sex, on the other hand? Totally fine with God, apparently.

Such is the perverse logic of the always righteous Republicans, a number of whom recently sponsored legislation that would legalize common law marriage in Tennessee. While that sounds innocuous on the surface the legislation is a shameless attempt to undermine same-sex marriage, which has been legal across the US since 2015. The bill’s mastermind, the Tennessee state senator Janice Bowling, explained that the bill declares “that the marriage between a man and a woman is not a creation of the state government or its statutes, it is a common law right”. Bowling also noted that the bill provides “an alternative form of marriage for those pastors and other individuals who have a conscientious objection to the current pathway to marriage in our law”.

These conscientious objectors were so busy being homophobic that they didn’t have any time to be concerned about minor things like child marriage, it seems. The original iteration of the bill essentially eliminated minimum age limits to get married and paved the way for child marriage. As another state senator, Raumesh Akbari from Memphis, told reporters: “It’s ugly enough Republicans are advancing an unconstitutional bill to undermine marriage equality, but the fact that this bill reopens the debate on child marriage is outrageous.” The Republicans backing the bill didn’t seem too bothered by the whole child marriage thing when it was first pointed out but, after international backlash, they inserted an amendment adding a minimum age requirement of 17. Very noble of them.

Source: Republicans are coming after same-sex marriage – and won’t stop there | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian

What this past week has taught me is that we are just pretending to understand this virulent, mysterious and unpredictable pandemic.

We bury ourselves in statistics, as if that gives us a sense of control. But what does the case count even mean now that so many folks are testing themselves at home and no one is tallying those results?

I appreciate all the work the researchers are doing. Rutherford said there are now tantalizing hints that blood type may be linked to COVID-19 immunity. That kind of revelation might lead to new ways to prevent or treat the disease. But even a perfect understanding of the big picture won’t mean we can predict the course of an individual infection.

“From a public health standpoint, we’re not worried about you. … You’re a good outcome,” Rutherford said. “Not as good as having no infection. But having an asymptomatic infection, we’ll chalk that up as a win.”

And right now, that sounds pretty good to me.

Source: Column: For two years, I’ve tried to protect myself from COVID-19. Now I’ve tested positive – Los Angeles Times