WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER SETS RECORD VISITS FOR YEAR 7,017,658 VISITS! 2,098,003 VISITORS MADE 6 VISITS A DAY EVERY DAY. 63,330 UNIQUE VISITORS MADE 133,730 VISITS IN DECEMBER. WPCNR AVERAGED 17,284 VISITORS A WEEK, VISITING 31,270 TIMES.

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WPCNR WASHINGTON DELEGATION. January 7, 2022:

Editor’s Note: Early this morning, in a 15th vote on who will be Speaker of the House for the New 118th Congress, two key opponents of Congressman Kevin McCarthy who claimed they would never vote for him changed their votes to “present,” effectively abstaining from the vote. Those two votes of “present” were cast by Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Matt Gaetz of Florida on the 15th vote this week attempting to vote Mr. McCarthy Speaker of the House.

Statement From New York State Conservative Party 

Chairman Gerard Kassar on Speaker McCarthy’s Election 

January 7, 2023

“The New York State Conservative Party congratulates House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on his historic victory tonight. The Party is particularly proud of the 11 House Republicans from New York State who presented a strong, unified, and unwavering front for Speaker McCarthy in round after round of voting. Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a dynamic House leader, was one of those honored to nominate Speaker McCarthy on the House floor. 

“These 11 members, each of whom was supported by the Conservative Party — the Party provided the direct margin of victory in four of those races — will play a key role in the 118th Congress, and rightly so. The Republican delegation from New York is ready and able to help lead our nation forward.” 

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WPCNR THE LETTER TICKER. From the White Plains City School District. January 5, 2022:

Today one day after school reopened from the holiday break in White Plains, the City School District sent out this letter commenting on the school situation:

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Happy New Year! I hope you had a restful holiday. Here is the latest on COVID-19, flu, and RSV in the U.S.

Overall respiratory health

It’s still looking rough out there. High numbers of influenza-like illnesses (ILI)—fever, cough and/or sore throat reported at doctors’ offices—are peppered across the U.S.

Respiratory illness season was early and has already reached a high compared to the last decade, but it’s on the descent. It’s too early to celebrate, though, as we may see multiple wave humps as we did in the pre-pandemic years.

If we zoom into specific viruses, we see different stories.

RSV

RSV is nosediving, a welcome development for older adults, parents of kids under 5, and pediatric hospitals.

In mid-November 2022, at the peak of RSV, hospitalizations blew pre-pandemic years out of the water. This was mainly driven by admissions among kids under 5 years old, which reached an all time high rate of 70 kids hospitalized per 100,000 infections. (Historically, peaks range from 26-52 kids hospitalized per 100,000 infections).

Flu

Flu continues to follow RSV and is also trending downwards, but certainly not as quickly. All metrics—test positivity rate, positives in nursing homes, hospitalization—are showing reprieve.

As far as cumulative severity, the Northern Hemisphere is largely reflecting patterns of the Southern Hemisphere last summer—flu is back, but not particularly severe. Flu hospitalizations are on track for a mediocre season compared to, for example, the severe 2017-2018 flu season.

This doesn’t mean there isn’t any suffering, though. We have already lost 13,000 Americans to the flu—61 of those were children.

Will flu continue to decline? Not necessarily. Countries in the Southern Hemisphere, like South Africa, saw two waves of flu: the first driven by one strain—called influenza A—and the second driven by another strain—influenza B. Currently, influenza A is driving U.S. cases, which means that we, too, may have another wave.

COVID-19

Then there’s COVID, the only one of these three viruses trending upwards right now.

I’ll start with the good news: we got through 2022—one full year—without a new variant of concern. In other words, Omicron continued to mutate without a variant coming out from left field. As I’ve written before, this is a welcome development.

The bad news: Omicron subvariants continue to do plenty of damage on their own. This is especially the case when coupled with the holidays (i.e. changing behaviors and social networks) and cooler weather.

Currently the viral culprit is XBB.1.5., which has caught the attention of many. In fact, the WHO is currently conducting a risk assessment, which should be out in a few days.

XBB.1.5 continues to have a viral advantage in the U.S. as it started in the Northeast and is now quickly bleeding into the South and will soon dominate in the Midwest and West. A great visualization below displays the projected spread. A peak is expected in February.

JWeiland @JPWeiland

A visualization of when spikes are expected in other parts of the country

4:01 AM ∙ Jan 4, 202361Likes9Retweets

How big or severe will the wave be? 

It’s hard to predict given such a complex immunity wall in the U.S. and limited knowledge of XBB.1.5, including the inability to rely on trends from other countries, as this is a homegrown problem. (Singapore had a XBB wave, but XBB.1.5. is a 3-generation difference. Also, Singapore has a highly boosted population.)

Regardless, we are already in a wave. For really the first time, reported case numbers have completely decoupled from wastewater, so we can’t rely on this anymore. Wastewater is clearly on the rise.

Unfortunately, hospitalizations are increasing too.

In the Northeast, hospitalizations among those over 70 years old are reaching very uncomfortable levels. They aren’t close to last winter, yet, but let’s please not make last winter’s disaster our standard of health.

It’s important to note two positive things regarding severe disease:

1. Hospitalizations are very different today than they used to be. Indicators of severe hospitalization, like ICU use and proportions of dexamethasone administered— the standard of care for COVID-19 pneumonia—are not increasing.
2. This is a good sign that the severity of Omicron with XBB.1.5 mutations may not have changed, but we don’t have hard evidence of this yet.

2. Vaccines work. People vaccinated with the fall booster have an 18.6 times lower risk of dying from COVID-19 than unvaccinated people right now. The risk of infection is also three times lower. This is even the case for people with weaker immune systems, like those over 80 years old.

One of the biggest problems with the newer subvariants is that monoclonal antibodies, including Evusheild, do not work. (Paxlovid still works.)

This means that part of the safety net we had for the vulnerable is missing, which is a massive problem. Unfortunately, it looks like this will take months to fix.

Bottom line

RSV and flu trends are showing welcoming signs, but COVID-19 is now taking over.

The impact of XBB.1.5 and the height of the COVID-19 winter wave is unknown, but the vulnerable are already in a tough spot.

There are a lot of sick people out there and still plenty of winter season left. Stay healthy… You know what to do.

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9,003 CASES OF COVID IN DECEMBER UP FROM 6,374 IN  NOVEMBER—71% INCREASE.

WPCNR CORONAVIRUS SURVEILLANCE. Data from New York State Covid Tracker. Observation & Analysis by John F. Bailey

December wrapped up its covid case count Saturday with 9,003 cases for the 31 days.

This was the highest total of covid new positives since July when there were 10, 298.

Previous monthly highs for the year were June, 9,642; May, 13, 13,055; April, 8,964; February 4,389. January, 77,828. (January was preceded by December 2021 when there were 44,880 infections).

Westchester’s last week of covid 2022, finished with 1,771 new cases of covid Saturday, actually the first week in December the county held infections to under 2,000 cases.

The county started the new year Sunday January 1 with 197 new infections of 1,253 tests a 14.6% positive rate. Westchester averaged 20.4 new cases daily the last 7 days per 100,000 of population which works out to 205 daily Westchester cases, 1,435 cases a week and 5,740 cases a month. I wish some officials would make sense out of this to the public because we ran 9,003 new cases this month.

I had originally predicted a possible 8,000 to 12,000  cases by December 12, based on November 2022 being higher in infections than last November (2021) when we experienced 4,006.Infections this year in November, one month ago were double last year.

 Infections in Westchester ticked steadily up to  200 infections the last 10 days of November were double last years. In the last three days of November the infections from the travel and meet vacations of the Thanksgiving break hit  405, 359, 410 and 367. In the first 5 days of each week from Sunday through Thursdays from Dec 4 to 8, December 11 through 15, and Dec 18 through 22, and Dec 18 through 22, Westchester averaged 348 new cases a day the first 5 days of the week indicating in my opinion the rapid infections persons got over the “social days of Friday Saturday and Sunday.

It is interesting that Christmas Weekend was quieter.

Sunday the 25^th was peaceful , with  only 425 cases Christmas Day and Monday. Cases spiked at midweek  on  Wednesday the 27^th when 314 new infections were lab certified positive, 371 on the 28^th, 325 the 29,,,then just as in the previous weeks before Christmas the Friday and Saturday 30^th and 31^st quieted with 210 and 226

Now we start back to normal.

Schools wide open countywide. Superintendents of Schools not sharing infections of covid publicly, thanks to the State Education Department ruling districts did not have to report infections of covid among students, teachers and staff on a weekly basis. In my opinion, this was a reckless decision. The Governor should not have gone along with that.

Look, if the schools are really controlling and nomitoring covid then reporting low numbers to the State Education would be a good thing. Just saying you’re low does not mean you’re low.  Show me the grades!

So when all the mingling in the schools begins again in January, we have no idea the effects of covid infections, sporsadic un lab-tested testing analysis, all the sensitive relaxation of rules. Hey, I would so like to think that all parents are responsible and will not fail to test their children if they are showing symptoms, but what if it justifies jeopardizes their employment, or a single mother or father’s employment? Testing sporadically in the schools means we have no idea how many school districts stand. I think the State Education Department should reverse this decision. That’s what those November and December numbers say to me.

Perhaps the County Health Department might ask the school districts for their numbers of covid infections for the year. Are the districts even keeping records when they are told they do not have to? This is just bad management, and obfuscation of reality for the sake of keeping the economy moving at the expense of children and their parents and caregivers’ sanity, and the polishing of politicians’ reputations.

Another thing to bear in mind as we get back to “normal” when do you start to deal with the infections of  4,500 the last two weeks as they come out mingling. Not their fault.

But this means more people in Westchester are going to get sick. Despite assurances hospitalizations are down for covid, how far down are they? What about the flu and the RSVP infections? Do we have enough covid medication?

I do not think health policy should be made on what is convenient for politcians who do not like to make decisions people don’t like.

This has been a lousy year for controlling covid in Westchester County due entirely to the failure of the state legislature which eliminated masking, social distancing, and mass congregations and gatherings, sports, dining which have directly jumpstarted covid after it had been stymied by the vaccines in April, and by July, we started our run of a third wave in the fall a fourth I hope this is not beginning of a Fifth.

School District policies, County policies and state officials  and the politicians reluctance to report facts and interpret them and tell us what is happening with real numbers and what they mean instead of analyzing “the now” and “the new” and what the trends may mean cannot make comparisons to how many infections we had last year to justify their performance. We have vaccines now. If we continue to spread the disease because policies are lazy and ineffectual, this plague will be around a long long time.