New York Times (August 28)
“Each pandemic fall has brought with it employers’ hopes of a broad-scale return to the office.” Delta scrapped last year’s plans, “but this time, business leaders are adamant that they won’t change course.” Over a third of the workforce is adamant about staying remote, “It’s either the end of the era of flexibility around where work takes place — or the beginning of outright rebellion.”
Tags: Adamant, Business leaders, Delta, Employers, Fall, Flexibility, Office, Outright, Pandemic, Plans, Remote, Return, Workforce
Tampa Bay Times (February 9)
The latest Omicron wave “isn’t receding as quickly as hoped” based on the symmetry of past waves. “By now cases should have fallen to fewer than 5,000 cases a day. Instead, Florida’s daily average was nearly 18,000 cases on Sunday…nearly 270 percent higher than expected had the wave been perfectly symmetrical.” Omicron’s lingering success appears linked to “an abundance of mutations that made the variant about 2.7 to 3. 7 times more infectious than the delta variant in vaccinated households.”
Tags: 000 cases, 18, Delta, Expected, Florida, Higher, Infectious, Lingering, Mutations, Omicron, Receding, Symmetry, Variant, Wave, Waves
Bloomberg (January 7)
“This isn’t the way Xi Jinping wanted to start 2022. In Xi’an, China is witnessing its worst Covid outbreak since the virus emerged, and the ancient city has been locked down for two weeks battling the delta variant…. Any nationwide outbreak could raise questions about Covid Zero and its number one supporter: Xi Jinping.
Tags: 2022, China, Covid Zero, Delta, Locked down, Outbreak, Variant, Virus, Xi’an
USA Today (November 30)
“People are in for an anxious couple of weeks as data is collected, patient records are scoured, hospitalizations are tracked and blood samples are tested. Only then will we know whether this is another delta variant, fast-moving and highly contagious, or something like a gamma, which appeared, sputtered out and quickly disappeared.”
Tags: Anxious, Contagious, Data, Delta, Disappeared, Fast-moving, Gamma, Hospitalizations, Patient records, Sputtered, Tested, Tracked, Variant
Tampa Bay Times (September 7)
“For weeks, the virus preyed on America’s illusion of a defanged Covid. Most people returned to a semblance of their former lives.” Then, harsh reality set in. “The fast-spreading Delta variant has flooded hospitals across the South. It’s killed more people in Florida and Louisiana than the darkest days of the pandemic winter, and left so many COVID-19 patients gasping for breath that some places face shortages of medical oxygen.”
Tags: COVID-19, Defanged, Delta, Fast-spreading, Florida, Gasping, Hospitals, Illusion, Louisiana, Oxygen, Pandemic, Patients, Reality, Shortages, Virus
Radio New Zealand (August 17)
Going into a national lock down “buys us some time to see results of testing and contact tracing to assess how widely the outbreak has spread.” So far, there’s only one case, but he may have infected others. “One thing we’ve learned from watching Sydney over the past two months is that half-measures can quickly lead to disaster…. Our best option is to go hard now and then relax later if it turns out we have avoided the worst…. With Delta there are no second chances.”
Tags: Contact tracing, Delta, Disaster, Half-measures, Lock down, Outbreak, Relax, Second chances, Spread, Sydney, Testing
San Francisco Chronicle (August 13)
“The wildly infectious delta variant that has raged across the world and forced the United States into a fourth—and in some places unprecedented—surge has reshaped the coronavirus pandemic into a plague that may take many more years to come to an end.”
Tags: Coronavirus, Delta, Infectious, Pandemic, Plague, Raged, Surge, U.S., Unprecedented, Variant
Wall Street Journal (July 29)
“The U.S. economy grew rapidly in the second quarter and exceeded its pre-pandemic size, but the outlook has suddenly turned cloudier due to the fast-spreading Delta coronavirus variant.”
Tags: Cloudier, Coronavirus, Delta, Economy, Fast-spreading, Grew, Outlook, Pre-pandemic, Q2, Size, U.S.
LA Times (August 8)
“Delta’s computer outage highlights the airline industry’s vulnerability.” On Monday, over 650 flights were cancelled and over 2,000 delayed when Delta’s system went down. These massive failures are becoming more common amidst airline consolidation and expansive systems. “Experts have blamed the rash of outages on massive, interconnected computer systems that lack sufficient staff and financial backing.”
Tags: Airlines. Vulnerability, Cancelled, Computer, Consolidation, Delayed, Delta, Flights, Outage
Chicago Tribune (December 9, 2013)
“The world’s biggest airline opens for business on Monday. Chicago has a huge stake in its success.” American Airlines Group Inc. will be formed from the merger of American Airlines and US Airways. The new group will complete against United-Continental and Delta-Northwest in what many see as a more stable competitive sphere. As “the only city in the country with three airline hubs” (American, United and Southwest), Chicago looks poised to benefit from this consolidation.
Tags: American, American Airlines, Chicago, Continental, Delta, Hubs, Merger, Northwest, Southwest, United, US Airways
