Thought this was pretty cool…from YLE…
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2020s bingo card check:
Googling “UFOs” on-the-daily brings back legitimate ongoing mainstream news coverage, including White House briefings.
ETA:
The UK: “where are our UFOs?!?” 
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It looks like the next wave has started in the UK. Unfortunately, a lot of the data sources I’ve used in the past are winding down and/or updating less frequently so it’s getting harder to gather info.
Typically, the US waves have followed UK waves by about a month, but the chatter I’m reading is that this UK wave might be driven by XBB.1.5, which presumably originated here in the US so is already dominant here, so not sure how that plays out.
Our wastewater viral load was finally coming down here in Houston, so I was hoping for a good 4-6 weeks of lower levels starting around spring break in mid March. Now I’m not so sure.
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Our numbers have been steadily decreasing here in NC too. I think peak damage was done the week of and week after Christmas.
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I did get an email from the Zoe study earlier this week that said U.K. cases were rising.
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I noticed this week that the numbers stopped their quick decline. With pleasant spring weather just around the corner I’m hoping it’s just a short leveling out before dropping again.
School illnesses are still down on our campus, since the start of the year - absences have been cut more than in half compared to the fall.
Many people I know with littles are still getting hammered. (But also, when we had littles every winter felt like constant illness.)
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But are numbers declining because there are less cases or less testing and reporting?
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I’m really only paying attention to wastewater levels and hospital admissions and both are going down here.
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I still track cases (and when I can find it, test % positivity but that’s not always reported every week but when it is it helps me somewhat inform the trend for cases) but I triangulate between cases, hospitalizations & wastewater and when in doubt, follow the wastewater overall.
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I think we’ve always known cases are underreported, but since home tests bc widely available I think the numbers are even more underreported. I know so many who have had covid, tested at home only, and never got reported anywhere. Even some tried to call and report it to their local health departments and were basically shrugged off that it didn’t matter and wasn’t official.
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Yeah, that’s why I like when I can get a number reported for test % positivity. Then I at least know are we looking at like 9% (less undercounted) or 30% (severely extreme undercounted). And I’m glad we have a super reliable and easy to access (so far, knock on wood) wastewater metric.
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Reminds me … I recently looked up the positivity rate for an area we are considering for a driving trip … it was 41%! In my area, positivity rates have ranged from 4%-10% since things calmed down a bit after the big Omicron surge in Dec/Jan 2021 so I am not used to seeing 40+%.
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Oh wow! I think we saw 40% in the first peak of Omicron but ever since then it’s “stabilized” in the high teen’s low 20’s. Last week it wasn’t reported but week before that was 18%. Last month I got excited to see it “as low as” 13%. The last time we were <10% was March-April 2022. That was a nice time, I mean, going out of my mind waiting for <5 vaccines aside.
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Same, but hospital admissions are looking a bit level this week, and wastewater levels not dropping as steeply. It’s just one week so not enough to see a trend change - just enough to give me pause.
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East Palestine is about 45 minutes from us. We have good friends that live much closer. It is really sad and frightening.
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Yes. Please don’t take my “bingo card” references as minimizing the seriousness of the situation. Actually, it’s more the opposite. Things so significant are happening that they are akin to disaster movies and we’re just like 
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Oh, I didn’t take it as you minimizing it at all! It is crazy, especially with that movie.
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The XBB.1.5 takeover continues. CH.1.1 still appears unable to compete. Not seeing any strong indications or even persuasive speculation on what’s next.
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Ok, need to revisit the above discussion with better depth. Apparently last July, the WHO added a new official designation, SUM=subvariant under monitoring. Since everything these days is VOC Omicron, SUM was added to flag Omicron subvariants they are keeping an eye on.
Current SUMs:
As I think back, I think I’ve seen them talk about subvariants under monitoring, but I hadn’t realized that was an official WHO designation, i just thought it was a description. 
After all the Kracken nickname controversy, there is a proposal by T. Ryan Gregory, Daniele Focosi, et al to have a more widely accepted common name system for subvariants based on astronomical names. Not sure if it will gain any traction.
Anyway, the new subvariant starting to get some chatter is XBB.1.9.1
I think XBB.1.9.1 is currently lumped in the XBB bucket in the CDC reporting, so doesn’t look to be taking off in the US as of yet. XBB.1.9.1 is basically a niece/nephew of XBB.1.5.
ETA: 
Hmmmm…it looks like bebtelovimab might (at least in theory) be effective against the currently dominant XBB.1.5 (and also XBB.1.9.1). I wonder if the FDA will re-authorize it? (Bebtelovimab is the monoclonal antibodies that were not effective against BQ.1/BQ.1.1 so the FDA withdrew authorization when those became dominant.)
ETA2: Oh, nope. There’s a note at the bottom of the bebtelovimab resistant box that it also includes all XBB subvariants. 
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