COVID-19 update
Coronavirus cases and deaths in King County and across the state are dropping precipitously after an Omicron-fueled peak in the first weeks of January. Still, hospitalizations remain high, at an average of 59 each day in the county.
Nearly 31 percent of hospital beds in the state are occupied by coronavirus patients, according to the Department of Health.
National Public Radio reported that a new variant of the virus, Omicron BA.2, has emerged in Asia, Europe and a handful of U.S. states, including Washington. The new subvariant is also called “stealth Omicron.”
Vaccines continue to be extremely effective at preventing severe disease, according to health authorities. So far, 66 percent of the Washington state population is fully vaccinated against the virus. Vaccination rates are higher in King County, where 78.7 percent of the population have received two doses of the vaccine and 87 percent of people who are eligible for vaccination — ages 5 and older — have completed the two-dose regimen.
Health authorities also recommend that people get booster shots. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), shots of the Moderna or Pfizer BioNTech vaccines are preferred in most situations. The CDC recommends Moderna boosters for people ages 18 and above, while the Pfizer BioNTech was recommended for people ages 12 and above. Boosters are recommended at least five months after completing either the Moderna or Pfizer BioNTech two-dose series.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the Moderna vaccine for use on Jan. 31, a change from its previous emergency-use authorization.
Give people money
A new study released by the National Academy of Sciences showed that giving mothers with low incomes $333 per month during the first year of their children’s lives led to more high-frequency brain waves by the time the kids reached their first birthday.
Mothers were randomly chosen to receive either a large or “nominal” monthly unconditional cash payment beginning shortly after birth. On average, the payments equated to an approximately 20 percent increase in the annual incomes of the mothers in the high-cash gift group.
While researchers urged caution and further study before concluding that the additional money could directly cause more high-frequency brain waves in infants, they also wrote that “[o]n balance, though, we judge that the weight of the evidence supports the conclusion that monthly unconditional cash transfers given to the mothers in our study affected the brain activity in their infants.”
A number of cities and countries have created experiments around universal basic income (UBI) in recent years, including Finland and Stockton, California.
Ashley Archibald was the editor of Real Change through July 2023, and is now a communication specialist for Purpose. Dignity. Action.
Read more of the Feb. 2-8, 2022 issue.