Coronavirus Archives - The Pickled Prepper Blog

COVID-19 Ticks Upward in U.S. Is a New Wave Starting?

The bad news is that COVID-19 infections are once again rising int he U.S. The good news is that they are rising very slowly.

COVID-19 cases ticked upward in the past week, with an 11 percent increase in reported cases over the past 14 days. Hospitalizations also were up by 9 percent. But you’d have a tough time noticing the change as the media is largely ignoring the story.

Funny how they TRUMPeted ever piece of bad news in 2020, but in 2021 they remain silent.

Speaking of trumpeting, the Drudge Report was trumpeting the news that research from Israel shows that the Pfizer vaccine is less effective against the South African variant. (The actual article is more tempered than the Drudge Headline, seen above and says a larger sample size is needed to be sure.) But the nightmare that new variants can do an end run around the vaccine seems to be one step closer to being true.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say the chances are at least 1 in three that we will see another wave of COVID-19 cases in he U.S., although I expect it will only rise to about half the height of our January peak. That’s not good, but it is far better than Europe is experiencing. It could also be bad for summer vacations, spending on travel and leisure, and back to school.

A Slight Change of Plans

I’ve posted 465 times since this blog was founded in March 2020, and haven’t missed a day since November. That could change in the near future.

With the arrival of spring and the need to do more work outside, I’m going to be much busier than I have been all winter and during our COVID-19 lockdown. The result is likely to be fewer or shorter posts.

(For more details, refer to the latter half of yesterday’s post where I address turning hobbies into work and the dangers of getting carried away.)

I still expect to post multiple times per week, but the frequency may vary or be inconsistent based on the weather, meaning more posts when it rains. Posts will continue to cover:

Prepping
Homesteading, including:
- Chickens
- Bees and Beekeeping
- Gardening
Guns and ammo
Economic topics that relate to prepping, including inflation, shortages, and fiat currency
COVID-19 and any other epidemics that might come along (like Ebola)
Product reviews
Book reviews
Posting news and YouTube videos of interest to preppers and homesteaders

Thank you to our many loyal readers, and please hang in there.

COVID-19 Continues to Spread in Europe, Latin America and Michigan

While COVID-19 cases remained relatively steady in the U.S. this past week, Europe and Latin America continue to struggle with the virus.

After the initial outbreak in China, our coverage of Coronavirus has focused on the United States (31 million cases), where we are based, and Europe, which has had a terrible outbreak (44.2 million cases). Lately, the extent of the infections in Brazil (13 million cases) has made the news. Now, we learn that Latin America and the Caribbean have surpassed 25 million cases. Their death toll is second only to Europe.

In Europe, things are especially bad in the Czech Republic, where the lockdowns and curfews remind many older residents of the repression they suffered under the Communist regime. The country reportedly has the highest number of deaths per 100,000 residents in the world.

To Mask or Not to Mast, that is the Question

I can’t count how many times I walk up to a store and see the mask sign, forcing me back to my car to get my mask. We’re seeing those signs come down.

We went to the hardware store today, a place I seem to visit weekly to pick up fasteners and other hardware, and as I parked the truck, I told my wife she didn’t need to wear her mask. This surprised her, but went with it. Sure enough, none of the employees were wearing them, and I only saw one customer wearing a mask–around her chin but not her nose or mouth.

There was some point in late January or early February when I went into the hardware store and noticed I was the only one in there wearing a mask. Ever since then, I’ve left it in the car. For my wife, It was her first public outing without a mask in months.

After we left the store, my wife commented that it felt weird not to wear her mask. Not freeing, mind you, but weird.

COVID-19 Bounces Back in the U.S. Signaling Possible Start to a New Wave

As COVID-19 case numbers rise again, we may be witnessing the end of the hope and excitement about a return to “normal” by summer.

The number of new COVID-19 cases in the United States grew this past week for the first time since the early January. Cases increased 12 percent over the past 14 days, according to the New York Times. I’m not going to call this a trend until we string together another couple weeks of increases, but we may have just seen the low point.

The number of hospitalizations and deaths continued to drop, although the drop in the number of patients hospitalized due to COVID-19 appears to be slowing. It will interest me to see if the increase in vaccinated people results in a lower percentage of hospitalizations and deaths if the number of positive cases rises. By inoculating most of the elderly population, where deaths mere the most common, you would expect that number to drop.

New York City may be our Canary in the COVID Mine

For decades, miners would bring canaries into coal mines to act as an early warning system for carbon monoxide and other toxic gases. NYC may be our early warning system for COVID-19.

I left New York City back in the early 1990s. As a recent college graduate, it was a fun place to live and work, but it was a terrible place to raise children and an even worse place to be a prepper.

In 2002, I visited Lower Manhattan and saw the remains of the World Trade Center. It was a somber moment as 9/11 was still fresh in everyone’s minds. There was no formal memorial yet, just a makeshift one with photos, notes, flowers and such on the fencing that surrounded the ruins. I believe that was the last time I was there, and I have no desire to go back.

These days, in our COVID Crisis, there is even less reason to go. Thankfully, my wife’s close friend and former colleague who used to live on Staten Island moved to Florida, so there’s no reason to go back to “the city.”

COVID Retreats in U.S., Continues to March Across Europe

The U.S. continues to ramp of vaccine production and distribution while Europe sees a new wave of COVID-19 cases begin to build.

This week’s COVID-19 report is much like last week: The U.S. is holding its own as the number of new cases flattens out, but Europe is doing worse and worse. Germany, for example, is experiencing an almost exponential rise in cases.

According to the New York Times, the U.S. reported 34,217 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, along with 444 deaths. Hospitalizations dropped to 39,333, down about 4,000 from last week and the lowest they have been since early October.

COVID-19 Cases Lead to Worries, New Lockdowns in Europe

As new variations rise in prominence, Europe is paying the price for its slow vaccine roll out and Brazil suffers its worst week ever.

While number of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. continues to decline, the COVID-19 crisis in Europe worsens. Germany has determined that they are into their third wave of the virus and Italy will lock down two thirds of their population on Monday and ban travel over Easter weekend. Health experts believe Germany might bounce back in April to the higher number of daily cases it saw in December when the virus peaked there.

The cause of Europe’s worsening rate of cases appears to be the spread of new variations (which account for 70 percent of all recent cases in France, for example), a relaxation of lockdowns and social distancing rules, and a lagging vaccination process. The Wall Street Journal points to “Indecision by EU Governments” and political bungling of the vaccination process. . Italy, for example, hopes to vaccinate 80 percent of its population by the end if September. The U.S. says it will have enough vaccine on hand to do so four months earlier.

The U.S. is not only rolling out vaccines far faster and more extensively than Europe, but the Atlantic Ocean and international travel restrictions offer some protection from overseas variations. Variation B.1.1.7, which was discovered in the UK last fall, is in 46 U.S. states while the B.1.125 variant identified in South Africa is in 21 states, and the P.1 variant first found in Brazil has been identified in only nine states across the U.S. (Data on variations is from this article.)

The Check is in the Mail: More COVID-19 Stimulus and Mask in the Great Outdoors

The house passed yet another COVID-19 Stimulus bill which President Biden says he will sign on Friday. Think about how you will use your cash.

The new stimulus bill that passed Congress today puts a good bit of money in my pocket from actual cash to tax benefits. That’s money I can use to continue to improve our new home, build out our garden, and buy supplies, but that doesn’t mean I think the stimulus was a good idea.

Simply put, the government needs to stop spending money it doesn’t have. We’ve been spending trillions of dollars that have to be borrowed, or created electronically by the Federal Reserve. With the national debt expected to reach $33 Trillion by the end of this year, that house of cards is going to come crashing down at some point. In the meantime, our fiat money will buy less and less. That kind of inflation is an insidious, invisible tax that nibbles away at the money in our wallets and accounts.

I’ve talked about inflation before, so I’m not going to beat a dead horse, but follow my advice and stock up on anything you might need or want before prices go higher. I also expect some desirable items to be in short supply as people use their stimulus checks and their tax returns to go on a spending spree.

Don’t be like the government. Get as debt free as possible.

COVID-19 Increases in Europe Despite Continued U.S. Decline

Just two months ago, the U.S. was seeing COVID-19 cases grow at 9 percent per week. In the past week, the U.S. has seen growth of 1.4 percent. Meanwhile cases across Europe are climbing.

As cases of COVID-19 continue to slow in the U.S. with hospitalizations down about 70 percent from their peak, cases in Europe increased 9 percent over the past week. The big question is whether a similar increase lies in the future for the United States.

According to the WHO, its new variations of the virus that are causing the European increase, as reported in this article from the Associated Press:

The variant first found in the U.K. is spreading significantly in 27 European countries monitored by WHO and is dominant in at least 10 countries: Britain, Denmark, Italy, Ireland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Israel, Spain and Portugal.
It is up to 50% more transmissible than the virus that surged last spring and again in the fall, making it more adept at thwarting measures that were previously effective, WHO experts warned. Scientists have concluded that it is also more deadly.

In reality, the difference in numbers may related to the greater success with vaccination in the U.S. The European Union, as we have reported before, was slow to order vaccines and is lagging the U.S. in both vaccine availability and the number of people being vaccinated per day.