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The summer surge of COVID-19 cases, which began shortly after the Fourth of July and was instigated by the highly transmissible Delta (B1617.2) variant, is showing signs of waning. Yesterday, the nation reported 33,807 new COVID-19 cases yesterday and 279 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 tracker. (Soucheray, 9/13)

KHN: ICUs Are Filled With Covid — And Regret 

It’s a struggle for Joe Gammon to talk. Lying in his bed in the intensive care unit at Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, this month, he described himself as “naive.”  “If I would have known six months ago that this could be possible, this would have been a no-brainer,” said the 45-year-old father of six, who has been in critical condition with covid-19 for weeks. He paused to use a suction tube to dislodge some phlegm from his throat. “But I honestly didn’t think I was at any risk.” (Farmer, 9/14)

Covid-19 infections have risen "exponentially" among children in the US since July, according to data published Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The group reported 243,373 new cases among kids over the past week. While this is a decline from last week, when 251,781 cases were reported, it's about a 240% increase since early July, when kids accounted for 71,726 cases. "After declining in early summer, child cases have increased exponentially with nearly 500,000 cases in the past two weeks," AAP said in a statement. (Christensen and Vera, 9/13)

Coronavirus cases among school-age children in Pennsylvania were nearly 10 times greater last week than during the same period in 2020, state health officials said Monday, with local officials saying the rise could be due to a variety of factors, including the highly transmissible delta variant, the return of in-person school, and an increase in testing. Between Sept. 2 and Sept. 8, nearly 5,400 Pennsylvania children between ages 5 and 18 had confirmed infections, according to the state Department of Health, compared to 574 children who were infected during the same week in 2020, when most children were in virtual school and delta was not circulating. (McCarthy and McDaniel, 9/13)

Bay Area school districts aren’t following L.A.’s lead on requiring coronavirus vaccinations and testing for students and staff. More Bay Area restaurants are closing for mental health breaks. And with rapid at-home COVID tests hard to find in the Bay Area, here’s what to look for, and where. Resources on COVID-19 and California’s reopening: For detailed maps and new city-by-city Bay Area data, check out The Chronicle’s Coronavirus Tracker. To get regular updates on our coverage, sign up for our coronavirus newsletter. (Vaziri, Buchmann, Beamish and Fracassa, 9/13)

Davy Macias, 37, was intubated and dying of complications from covid-19 when doctors helped her give birth to her daughter. She would never see her baby. Her husband, Daniel Macias, 39, would only get a brief glimpse of their child because he, too, was hospitalized after contracting the virus. According to Davy’s sister-in-law, Terri Serey, Daniel waited to name the baby girl because he believed he and his wife would walk out of the hospital alive to introduce the newborn to their four other children, the eldest age 7 and the youngest, 2.But about a week after the baby was born, Davy died. Two weeks later, so did Daniel. (Mark, 9/13)

Jeff Bridges says his cancer is in remission, and he's making progress in his fight against the long-term effects of Covid after a tough battle. In a new post to his website, the actor says his cancerous mass is now the "size of a marble" and his Covid "in the rear view mirror" after a struggle that began earlier this year. Bridges believes he caught the virus after being exposed at the facility where he was receiving chemotherapy treatment. He spent five weeks in the hospital, he said, because "my immune system is shot from the chemo." (Gonzalez, 9/13)

Last month, Dr. Simone Gold stood before a crowd at a conservative church in Thousand Oaks, Calif., and delivered a talk riddled with misinformation. She told people to avoid vaccination against the coronavirus. As an alternative, she pushed drugs that have not been proven effective at treating COVID-19 — drugs that she also offered to prescribe to the audience in exchange for $90 telehealth appointments. "Don't text me when you've gotten a positive test, I don't want to hear it," she said to the gathering. "I've told you ahead of time to get the medicines. It can take a week because we're so swamped." (Brumfiel, 9/14)

Glance at Jessica Alix Hesser’s Instagram page and you may feel a little like you’ve just opened up a pamphlet for a meditation retreat. Amid photos of lagoons and a waterfall, Hesser (eyes closed, one hand touching the side of her face) is awash in rainbow-hued lens glare, or soaking in a bath with flowers floating on top. Her website contains blog posts recommending natural cardamom floss and Gregorian chants. Sprinkled throughout, however, are posts where Hesser urges her nearly 37,000 followers to question the safety of the vaccines. “Would you sign your children up to be part of a pharmaceutical trial and take them into a lab to get shot up with some experimental drug created by a criminal company?” she asks in one June post. In another one from April, she writes that “many of you have heard about the large number of poke-free women” experiencing changes in their menstrual cycles “after spending time with people who got the jab.” Medical experts say that’s impossible. Hesser did not respond to requests for comment. (Fetters and De Vynck, 9/12)