Early and late circadian rhythms – The next phase of vaccination – The most likely candidates for COVID – Unanswered questions about the pandemic – Evening statistics
A placid day, spent mainly hiking at Burke Lake and afterwards addressing Christmas cards. The solstice will occur at about 10:00 tomorrow, so today will be the shortest day of the year.
During my childhood and adolescence I was quite a late riser, getting up for school very reluctantly and not fully awake until well into the morning. In graduate school I would arise at 10:00 AM whenever my schedule allowed it. I frequently got ill during this time of year, and could generally be assured of at least one severe cold or bout of influenza during the first three weeks of December. When I began to work at an office and, later on, when I hiked periodically during weekends as well, my sleeping schedule necessarily changed. I have long been a “lark” as opposed to an “owl,” and I remain one even now, when I’m retired and have no obligation to get up early. The periods of illness in late autumn abruptly disappeared when I changed my sleeping habits. Can the fact that I was receiving the maximum amount of daylight during the days approaching the solstice be related to this cessation of annual illness? It is only a theory of mine and I have no substantive data to back it up, but I’d be interested to find out if anyone has made a study of sleeping patterns and their relation to susceptibility to illness.
A CDC advisory panel recommends that the next in line for receiving the vaccines should be elderly people over 75 and essential workers such as emergency responders, teachers, corrections officers, postal workers, public transit workers, and food supply workers. This seems to me eminently reasonable. I would like to get the vaccine eventually, but I recognize that others face much greater chances of getting infected than I do, with my relatively limited contact with others and the absence of underlying conditions. This phase of vaccines will probably continue to the end of February. People in my situation (over 65, less than 75, with no underlying conditions) are likely to have access to the vaccine in March.
Some progress has been made in determining who is more likely to get infected. Age, of course, was known to be a factor from the start. So is gender: men are more prone to the COVID infection than women. Race may also be a factor, although this is less certain; minority races tend to be economically disadvantaged in comparison with the majority, and the fact that, for example, a Hispanic is more likely to have a job for which telecommuting is not an option plays a role in the higher rate of infection. Obesity, hypertension, and diabetes are all significant underlying factors. Therapeutic treatment of the disease has improved considerably. In April the mortality rate was over 6%. It is now well under 2% cumulatively, and for those who have contracted the disease recently, the rate is closer to 1%.
There are, however, many unanswered questions, as to why the disease should be so much more severe in some cases than others in the same risk category. I have frequently have had occasion to mention Nick Cordero, the Broadway performer who contracted the disease and eventually succumbed to it. He was relatively young, in perfect health before he became infected with COVID, physically fit, with no excess weight. Why was it so virulent in his case while in the case of Trump – thirty years older, overweight, and physically inactive – it had relatively little effect? And Cordero’s case is far from unique. The cases of young and fit men and women becoming severely or even fatally ill as a result of COVID comprise a minority, but they are not insignificant. There are former marathon runners who now find it difficult to walk from one end of a room to another, people who used to go to the gym every day who now are barely capable of making coffee in the morning, and so on. One side effect of COVID is damage to the circulatory system, which induces fatigue at the smallest provocation. But it seems, at the moment, to be quite sporadic. Some people get it and some don’t. There appears no way of telling, in advance, how severe the disease is likely to be in any individual case.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 77,157,719; # of deaths worldwide: 1,699,135; # of cases U.S. 18,266,402; # of deaths; U.S.: 324,857.