surfing the universe

2021-0826h-1534-AustinTX

Today, I ran for the first time in I don’t remember when. I ran two miles at a 10-minute mile pace. The temperature now is 99ºF so I’m guessing it was over 100ºF when I ran. It felt good to move my body and burn up some of the stress hormones I’ve been feeling in my body.

Today over 72 people were killed in two separate apparently suicide bombings in Kabul, Afghanistan – one at the airport’s Abbey Gate and one nearby close to the Baron Hotel.

Yesterday, the 7-day average of CoViD-19 deaths hit a record number of 9,856 for this sixth wave of CoViD-19 infections. A week ago on August 19, the 7-day average of daily CoViD-19 cases peaked at 657,522. Dividing these two results in a worldwide case fatality rate (CFR) of 1.499%. This compares with a CFR of 1.695% using the previous peak in the Spring of 828,292 7-day average of daily cases on April 29th and 14,041 7-day average of daily deaths on May 3rd. Both of these are lower than the CFR calculated from the previous Winter is 1.988%, based on Jan 26, 2021 peak 7-day average deaths of 14,808 and Jan 11, 2021 peak 7-day average of cases of 744,724.

Comparing to a year ago, the CFR was 2.43%, based on a peak 7-day average of 6,415 deaths on August 5, 2020, and a peak 7-day average of 263,473 cases on July 31, 2020.

For these calculations, I used data from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/. Another source of data to compare with is https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html.

For my county of Travis County, the CFR is roughly calculated as 0.7% using 7-day average of 4 deaths and 7-day average of 565 cases. This compares with 1.1% for total cases of 100K and total deaths of 1108.

It is important to remember that the CFR is not the same as the IFR, the infection fatality rate. Only a subset of infections are validated by tests and become confirmed cases. The ratio of cases to infections depends on the level of testing in the community. Deaths due to CoViD-19 are believe to be a more accurate value. So, the IFR is very likely less than the CFR. If the IFR is calculated for your specific cohort group (age, health conditions, etc.), then it can give a reasonable estimate of your chances of dying from CoViD-19.

For comparison, in 2018 living had a fatality rate of 0.7546% worldwide. Travis County had an age-adjusted fatality rate of 0.62% overall and 0.72% for men (TravisCounty nih.gov death rate). I’m not sure if I’m missing something, but it seems that living for a year in Travis County as a male is currently about the same risk of dying as having a positive CoViD-19 test result (7 per 1000).

2021-0901W-1700-AustinTX-OPAs

My brother sent me a link to research done in Israel comparing those who previously had CoViD-19 with those who were vaccinated. It is “the largest real-world observational study so far to compare natural and vaccine-induced immunity to SARS-CoV-2”. Science reported August 26, 2021 on this research in Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine—but vaccination remains vital. From the article:

The newly released data show people who once had a SARS-CoV-2 infection were much less likely than never-infected, vaccinated people to get Delta, develop symptoms from it, or become hospitalized with serious COVID-19.

https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital

The original research article, Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections, reports the following results:

Results SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021. The increased risk was significant (P<0.001) for symptomatic disease as well. When allowing the infection to occur at any time before vaccination (from March 2020 to February 2021), evidence of waning natural immunity was demonstrated, though SARS-CoV-2 naïve vaccinees had a 5.96-fold (95% CI, 4.85 to 7.33) increased risk for breakthrough infection and a 7.13-fold (95% CI, 5.51 to 9.21) increased risk for symptomatic disease. SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees were also at a greater risk for COVID-19-related-hospitalizations compared to those that were previously infected.

https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415

The conclusion is clear on the benefits of antibodies created from an active CoViD-19 infection versus antibodies created from one or more vaccines.

Conclusions This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant.

https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415

One statistic from the paper that was not highlighted above was that the chance of symptomatic breakthrough infection in the vaccinated group was 27 times more likely than symptomatic reinfection in the unvaccinated previously infected group.

After adjusting for comorbidities, we found a 27.02-fold risk (95% CI, 12.7 to 57.5) for symptomatic breakthrough infection as opposed to symptomatic reinfection (P<0.001)

https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415

2021-0822u-2359-AustinTX

It’s been a full day, starting with ecstatic dance at the high road and ending with friends harmonizing tones under the full moon at Casa de Luz. My throat is sore – not from a cold, but from yelling with angry emotion at dance. I’ve apparently been storing some anger in my body while I’ve been feeling an abundance of love and ability to support others.

A guy approached me at Barton Springs today and tried to convince me that I should get vaccinated. I tried to tell him that I was quite satisfied with the full mix of antibodies I stored in my long-term memory after catching COVID-19.

My brother just texted me “I like the idea of starting back the blog with your conversation with the guy at Barton”.

Hmmm – Good idea! my past self thinks as it receives this message from the future! 🙂

Anyway, back to the “guy at Barton”, he asked me “Do you want the pandemic to end?” and when I took a while to answer, he was confused. “When someone asks me if I want the pandemic to end, I yell out YES!!!!”. I told him that I thought the pandemic would end when people stop paying attention to it, but that the cold virus that causes COVID-19 will be with us from here on and that he, and everyone else, will eventually be infected if they live long enough. I expressed my view that if everyone were vaccinated, then the strains of SARSCoV2 that didn’t like the vaccine would go away, leaving only the strains that were resistant to the vaccine to move around the world. I think it was around this point that he said our conversation wasn’t “fun” anymore.

In Austin, this week has seen the peak of cases and cases are heading back down. Perhaps that’s why Barton Springs required me to wrap my shirt around my head before letting me in. “Everyone must wear a mask to enter – manager’s orders”, said the person sitting in front of the gate. At least once you get inside the gate, you can immediately remove your mask, or shirt in my case, and walk freely wherever you wish. Society, in Austin and elsewhere, is really struggling with how to react as we are in coming up on two years since the first COVID-19 case was identified. It is interesting to see that cases are as high or higher than they have ever been, and yet everything is still open in most places around the world.

More to come on this topic. I’m tired now. I felt an urge to write and then realized it was day 600 since I started blogging about feeling a new world. Other topics coming are Love, intimacy, and making a movie to save the world.

2021-0206S-2040-AustinTX

This morning I woke up feeling well … unexpectedly well. I even exclaimed to my friends that I don’t recall ever feeling so healthy and alive – almost like being reborn. To tell the story properly, I should start at the beginning – well, not the very beginning since I don’t have that much time, but I’ll start at the beginning of the week.

Day 397 (Sunday) – My good friend Katie had been staying with her ex and sons for a few weeks. When I heard she was flying back to Austin, I offered to pick her up at the airport. Mid afternoon I got a message from her – she missed her connecting flight. Ahh, evidence of a split in the universe, I thought at the time. Her missed connection was an unexpected event. I dismissed it instead of pondering what new futures might be visible now. An hour later I got a new message that she had been placed on a new flight arriving late Sunday.

“I can still pick you up – and you can stay overnight if you want”, I text Katie.

“Awesome!”, Katie replied.

Had I stopped to ponder the universe split, I would have realized that it had increased the probability that Katie would be staying over. Most likely, had I picked her up earlier in the day, we would have caught up and then I would have taken her home. But with her arriving late, it was more likely she would stay over. Nothing much else changed between these two universes where she made or missed her connecting flight.

My day continued normally and I picked Katie up at the airport. I confirmed she wanted to stay over.

“Would you like to take a shower?”, I offered. You can’t be too safe these days with a COVID pandemic and potentially infected people traveling on planes.

“Yes, that sounds really good. Do you have any clean clothes I can wear?”, Katie replied.

“Sure, you can also do a load of laundry if you want”, I answered.

As Katie took a shower, I showed in the other bathroom. After we were both dressed, Katie said with annoyance, “My ex just texted me that he has a fever. He probably made himself sick. He’s such a hypochondriac.”

I even had a good night’s sleep. Since the beginning of the week when I found out my friend had become sick with COVID, I had been preparing for the worst. I had picked her up from the airport late Sunday and we had talked late into the night, falling asleep together in bed. She coughed a few times during the night, but nothing alarming. While she was over, she got notified that someone she had been in contact with recently now had a fever. In retrospect, I should have paid more attention to this moment. It was like …

(to be continued)

2021-0219F-0836-AustinTX

Day 416 (Friday) – Katie and I are listening to soft piano music playing over the Sonos speaker in my living room. The sun is reflecting off of the ice covered trees outside. Snow is still on the ground from a few days ago. We are cuddled under the covers while lying on Katie’s egg-crate mattress topper. It’s time for us to write. Katie just read a prompt to me about how when we are creating, then the creator is also creating through us. It made me think about life and creation. I imagined how all life on Earth could have been designed by some intelligent alien life form and somehow seeded onto Earth. But this could not be the original creation event since the intelligent alien life form also needs a creation story. I zoomed my perspective out in both time and space and imagined and quantum field of random fluctuations flowing through the field. This reminded me of the Tai Chi that Katie and I were practicing the day before and how the instructor led us through a slow, smooth movement practice that would occasionally result in a slap of energy. From this zoomed out perspective, I saw the entirety of the universe we know as an infinitesimal point in space-time.

“It’s going to be lumpy”, Katie said as she stirred a pot of polenta on the stove.

“That’s what our universe is, just a bit of lumpiness”, I replied.

2021-0125M-0800-AustinTX

AAPL stock is up pre-market in anticipating of Apple’s quarterly and annual earnings report coming Wednesday in which Apple is expected to announce a record over $100B in revenue for the quarter.

AAPL’s market cap and enterprise value are both on track to cross $2.5T soon.

AAPL’s P/E ratio now hangs out in the 35-45 range. The last time AAPL had a P/E ratio consistently this high was in 2008 before the stock market crash that occurred on Sept. 29, 2008. During the following decade 2009-2019, AAPL had a P/E ratio in the 10-15 range.

APPL’s price to sales is currently 8.88. It’s price to book is around 36.

AAPL’s enterprise value is 8.6 times it’s revenue and 29 times it’s EBITDA.

I can feel it when AAPL is going up now because it starts feeling too high for me and I sell covered calls a bit out of the money. These promptly lose money but provide a bit of insurance against a large drop. I think AAPL is going to continue to rise into earnings and possibly after. AAPL is beginning to join the ranks of other stocks, like TSLA, in which the branding becomes worth multiple times the actual business.