Several key COVID-19 trends that authorities track are now accelerating around the country, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday. It’s the first major nationwide uptick in the spread of the virus seen in months.
The largest increases are in the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic, the agency said in its weekly report updated Friday, though virtually all regions of the country are now seeing accelerations.
Data reported by the agency from emergency rooms and wastewater sampling have tracked some of the steepest increases so far this season in the region spanning Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin.
Rates of infections of nursing home residents across this Midwestern region have also soared in recent weeks, higher than in most other parts of the country, approaching levels not seen since the peak of last winter’s COVID-19 wave.
To drive home your point even more, unfortunately chicken pox immunity doesn’t really last forever. It’s a herpes virus, a DNA virus, that integrates into cell genomes. It especially likes neurons, cells which you keep your whole life. Since it’s there for the rest of your life, it reactivates at inconvenient times. Shingles is probably the most benign form of reactivation, but it can cause meningitis, encephalitis, vasculitis too, among other things, all of which is very bad news for your brain. So for all the people out there with children, get that chicken pox vaccine. You don’t want that potential ticking time bomb living in your kid when there’s a way to prevent it.
And for all the older people out there, get that shingles vaccine when you can. It’s not perfect but it’ll help “remind” the immune system to keep varicella virus in you surpressed.