Written by Steven Hansen

The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average are 52.2 % HIGHER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago and U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 27.1 % HIGHER than the rolling average one week ago. Today’s posts include:

• U.S. Coronavirus New Cases are 55,828
• U.S. Coronavirus deaths are at 622
• Covid-19 breakthrough infections are preventable, but it’s going to take a big effort to stop them
• Which SARS-CoV-2 vaccine should I get, if any? – The model simulated the health outcomes for a 65-year-old and found the patient would gain a net of 7.4 days — an extra week of life — if the person received the mRNA vaccine versus opting to not vaccinate at all.
• The Truth About Facebook’s Anti-Vax Problem
• Past SARS-CoV-2 infection enhances mRNA vaccine-induced neutralization of variants of concern
• Fox has quietly implemented its own version of a vaccine passport while its top personalities attack them
• Researchers Find Gene That Helps Identify COVID-19 Cases
• Two Shots, Two Paralyses After COVID Vaccine
• Amazon, Citing Free COVID Vaccines and Testing, to Stop Swabbing Warehouse Workers
• U.S. likely past ‘peak’ for economic growth, but economists don’t expect sharp drop
• Study suggests COVID-19 vaccine confidence and hesitancy in the UK driven by trust, not misinformation
• Hospital Not Making Its Prices Transparent? CMS Wants to Raise the Penalty for That
• Researchers Find Common Denominator Linking All Cancers
• J&J may file bankruptcy for talc products
• Plus many more headlines …

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Hospitalizations Are The Only Accurate Gauge

Hospitalizations historically appear to be little affected by weekends or holidays. The hospitalization growth rate trend continues to improve.

source: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/COVID19_3.html

Historically, hospitalization growth follows new case growth by one to two weeks.

As an analyst, I use the rate of growth to determine the trend. But, the size of the pandemic is growing in terms of real numbers – and if the rate of growth does not become negative – the pandemic will overwhelm all resources.

The graph below shows the rate of growth relative to the growth a week earlier updated through today [note that negative numbers mean the rolling averages are LOWER than the rolling averages one week ago]. As one can see, the rate of growth for new cases peaked in early December 2020 for Thanksgiving, and early January 2021 for end-of-year holidays – and it now shows that the coronavirus effect is improving.

In the scheme of things, new cases decline first, followed by hospitalizations, and then deaths. The potential fourth wave did not materialize likely due to immunizations.

Coronavirus and Recovery News You May Have Missed

Two Shots, Two Paralyses After COVID Vaccine – MedPage

A man experienced two discrete contralateral facial palsies, one after each dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The first episode developed 5 hours after the 61-year-old man received the first dose of the vaccine, reported Abigail Burrows, MBBS, of Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Guildford, England, and colleagues.

The second occurred 2 days after he received the second dose and was more severe, they wrote in BMJ Case Reports. On both occasions, the patient was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy.

“Our case is the first reported incidence of unilateral facial nerve palsy occurring after each dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine,” Burrows said.

“Although a causal relationship cannot be established, healthcare workers should continue to report these findings so that we can investigate any potential links,” Burrows told MedPage Today. “Given the rapid rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine, it is important to share and report on adverse effects so that we are more aware and better informed as clinicians.”

Facial paralysis can occur after viral infections, traumatic injury, cancer, or during pregnancy. Bell’s palsy, the most common cause of facial paralysis, is a form of temporary paralysis or weakness on one side of the face that stems from dysfunction of cranial nerve VII (facial nerve). Symptoms appear suddenly over a few days and generally start to improve after a few weeks.

During the phase III Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 trials, seven cases of facial paralysis or Bell’s palsy were reported in the vaccine groups (seven of 35,654), and one case was seen in the placebo groups (1 of 35,611). A causal relationship was not established, but the FDA recommended that vaccine recipients be monitored.

Fox has quietly implemented its own version of a vaccine passport while its top personalities attack them – CNN

Tucker Carlson has called the idea of vaccine passports the medical equivalent of “Jim Crow” laws. And other Fox News personalities have spent months both trafficking in anti-vaccine rhetoric and assailing the concept of showing proof of vaccination status.

But Fox Corporation, the right-wing talk channel’s parent company, has quietly implemented the concept of a vaccine passport as workers slowly return back to the company’s offices.

Fox employees, including those who work at Fox News, received an email, obtained by CNN Business, from the company’s Human Resources department in early June that said Fox had “developed a secure, voluntary way for employees to self-attest their vaccination status.”

The system allows for employees to self-report to Fox the dates their shots were administered and which vaccines were used.

The company has encouraged employees to report their status, telling them that “providing this information to FOX will assist the company with space planning and contact tracing.”

Employees who report their status are allowed to bypass the otherwise required daily health screening, according to a follow-up email those who reported their vaccination status received.

“Thank you for providing FOX with your vaccination information,” the email said. “You no longer are required to complete your daily health screening through WorkCare/WorkMatters.”

The Truth About Facebook’s Anti-Vax Problem – Slate

The tensions between the houses of Biden and Zuckerberg aren’t quite a sudden development. According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook and the White House have been privately meeting for months to discuss ways to curb anti-vaccine content. The administration had reportedly been optimistic about the prospect of working with Facebook, but talks recently fell apart as officials decided that the platform has a flawed and insufficiently rigorous approach to confronting vaccine hesitancy. And it’s not just Biden who’s ramping up public pressure on Facebook. Earlier in July, White House chief of staff Ron Klain told the New York Times that people in focus groups that the administration is commissioning on vaccines are most commonly pointing to Facebook as the source of misinformation they’ve seen on the topic. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy additionally called on social media companies to “take responsibility for addressing the harms” of vaccine misinformation in his first advisory of this administration, and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has called on Facebook to work harder to remove anti-vax posts. On Monday, Biden addressed the issue with a lighter touch, saying, “My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally that somehow I’m saying Facebook is killing people, that they would do something about the misinformation, the outrageous misinformation about the vaccine. That’s what I meant.”

After Biden’s initial comments, Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity, wrote a sharp-elbowed blog post claiming that the facts do not bear out the president’s accusations, and suggested that the administration is trying to shift the blame on Facebook for failing to reach its goal of getting 70 percent of Americans vaccinated by July 4. (The country narrowly missed the mark, with a 67 percent vaccination rate.) “The fact is that vaccine acceptance among Facebook users in the US has increased,” Rosen wrote. “These and other facts tell a very different story to the one promoted by the administration in recent days.” He further asserted that more than 3.3 million Americans have used Facebook’s vaccine finder tool to schedule an appointment, and that the platform has already taken down more than 18 million pieces of COVID-19 misinformation. However, the post did not disclose how many people interacted with those 18 million pieces of content, as Harvard Shorenstein Center research director Joan Donovan noted.

Was Biden right in pointing the finger at Facebook for its role in facilitating the spread of vaccine misinformation, or was his ire misplaced? A bit of both, actually. As it turns out, the story is a lot more complicated than either party has acknowledged.

Ultimately, Facebook has improved in the way it deals with health misinformation during the pandemic in terms of taking down and limiting the spread of such content, and the platform likely isn’t the main driver of vaccine hesitancy in this country. But at the same time, the anti-vax movement wouldn’t be as powerful and pernicious as it is without Facebook.

U.S. likely past ‘peak’ for economic growth, but economists don’t expect sharp drop – The Week

The United States is “past the peak” for economic growth after widespread business reopenings and COVID-19 vaccinations led to a surge in consumer spending this spring, Ellen Zentner, the chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley, told The Wall Street Journal.

But that’s probably not a big deal. Zentner said it’s unlikely “something more sinister is going on here and that we’re poised to then drop off sharply.”

Michael Feroli, the chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co., agreed. “It’s normal,” he told the Journal. “You shouldn’t expect 9 percent growth forever. We feel very confident that we’re going to see strongly above-trend growth in the second half of the year.” Read more at The Wall Street Journal.

J&J may file bankruptcy for talc products – Yahoo

Johnson & Johnson may split into two companies to offload its Baby Powder liabilities and seek bankruptcy protection, according to seven people familiar with the matter.

Some sources told Reuters exclusively J&J could use a Texas “divisive merger” law which allows a company to split into two entities.

One would be for its Baby Powder and other talc products, which tens of thousands of plaintiffs allege contained asbestos and caused cancer.

J&J’s newly split company could then pursue bankruptcy, which may result in lower payouts for cases that have not been settled.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers view the move as one that skirts potentially expensive settlements, while companies view it as a way to confine many lawsuits to one court.

In a statement to Reuters, a J&J talc product subsidiary said the company “has not decided on any particular course of action in this litigation other than to continue to defend the safety of talc.”

Researchers Find Common Denominator Linking All Cancers – Technology Networks

All cancers fall into just two categories, according to new research from scientists at Sinai Health, in findings that could provide a new strategy for treating the most aggressive and untreatable forms of the disease.

In new research out this month in Cancer Cell, scientists at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (LTRI), part of Sinai Health, divide all cancers into two groups, based on the presence or absence of a protein called the Yes-associated protein, or YAP.

Rod Bremner, senior scientist at the LTRI, said they have determined that all cancers are present with YAP either on or off, and each classification exhibits different drug sensitivities or resistance. YAP plays an important role in the formation of malignant tumours because it is an important regulator and effector of the Hippo signaling pathway.

“Not only is YAP either off or on, but it has opposite pro- or anti-cancer effects in either context,” Bremner said. “Thus, YAPon cancers need YAP to grow and survive. In contrast, YAPoff cancers stop growing when we switch on YAP.”

Many YAPoff cancers are highly lethal. In their new research, Bremner and fellow researchers from the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, NY, show that some cancers like prostate and lung can jump from a YAPon state to a YAPoff state to resist therapeutics.

When cancer cells are grown in a dish in a lab setting, they either float or stick down. The team of researchers found that YAP is the master regulator of a cell’s buoyancy, where all the floating cells are YAPoff, and all the sticky cells are YAPon. Changes in adhesive behavior are well known to be associated with drug resistance, so their findings implicates YAP at the hub of this switch, explained Bremner.

Joel Pearson, co-lead author and a post-doctoral fellow in the Bremner Lab at the LTRI, said therapies that tackle these cancers could have a profound effect on patient survival.

Hospital Not Making Its Prices Transparent? CMS Wants to Raise the Penalty for That – MedPage

Large hospitals could be fined up to $2 million annually if they fail to comply with federal rules on making hospital prices more transparent, according to a proposed rule released Monday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

“Hospital price transparency helps Americans know what a hospital charges for the items and services they provide,” the agency said in a press release. “CMS takes seriously concerns it has heard from consumers that hospitals are not making clear, accessible pricing information available online, as they have been required to do since January 1, 2021.”

Therefore, “CMS proposes to increase the penalty for some hospitals that do not comply with Hospital Price Transparency final rule,” the press release said. “Specifically, CMS is proposing to set a minimum civil monetary penalty of $300/day that would apply to smaller hospitals with a bed count of 30 or fewer and apply a penalty of $10/bed/day for hospitals with a bed count greater than 30, not to exceed a maximum daily dollar amount of $5,500. Under this proposed approach, for a full calendar year of noncompliance, the minimum total penalty amount would be $109,500 per hospital, and the maximum total penalty amount would be $2,007,500 per hospital.”

The rule contains a number of other provisions, including:

• Increasing payments to hospital outpatient facilities and ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs).
• Stopping the phase-out of the “inpatient-only” (IPO) list.
• Changing the radiation oncology episodic payment model.

Study suggests COVID-19 vaccine confidence and hesitancy in the UK driven by trust, not misinformation – News-Medical

An interesting new study, released as a preprint on the medRxiv* server, reports that vaccine hesitancy in the UK is driven not, as is commonly thought, by the so-called ‘infodemic’ of misinformation that has characterized much public messaging during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Instead, the personality of the individual, the ability to trust scientific and government leadership, political affiliations, and openness relative to the process of vaccine development was found to be key in the development of this attitude.

… The researchers aimed to understand what made individuals decide to accept or refuse the vaccine at the start of the rollout in the UK. Using a mixed-methods approach, on about 4,500 adults, the survey covered mostly Whites, with 65% being female.

In this survey, 85% of the participants expressed vaccine willingness. Only about one in five, however, said they believed the UK government was acting rightly in its COVID-19 control strategies. Many said the government’s step in distributing vaccines was “sensible and responsible,” both for themselves and for the community at large.

These people also felt that the vaccine was essential to protect those most vulnerable, who were not eligible for vaccination. Many also felt it was the only way to restore one’s freedom to return to a normal life.

Reasons for vaccine hesitancy

Those who did not feel this way had, not surprisingly, 63% higher odds of refusing the vaccine.

When queried in greater detail, the reasons for skepticism directed at government actions centered around the motives for such actions, truthfulness and political or social agenda. About a third stated the government could never/rarely be trusted for its truthfulness in this area, and these subsets had approximately nine times, and five times, higher odds for vaccine hesitancy, respectively.

[editor’s note: also read People becoming desensitized to COVID-19 illnesses, death, research suggests]

Take your best shot: Which SARS-CoV-2 vaccine should I get, if any? – EurekAlert

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine have developed a computerized decision-analytic model to compare projected outcomes of three vaccine strategies: a patient opts for a messenger RNA vaccine, a patient decides to get an adenovirus vector vaccine or the patient simply forgoes a vaccine altogether.

… The model simulated the health outcomes for a 65-year-old and found the patient would gain a net of 7.4 days — an extra week of life — if the person received the mRNA vaccine versus opting to not vaccinate at all. Of the two strategies that include receiving a vaccine, both yield virtually equivalent results, with the mRNA vaccine demonstrating a minimal gain of roughly one day of life compared with the J&J vaccine, says Eckman.

The study findings are available online in the scholarly journal Medical Decision Making Policy & Practice. Other co-authors include Richard Lofgren, MD, President and CEO of UC Health, and faculty members in the UC Department of Internal Medicine: Margaret Powers-Fletcher, PhD, assistant professor; Jennifer Forrester, MD, associate professor; Carl Fichtenbaum, MD, professor and George Smulian, MD, professor.

Researchers Find Gene That Helps Identify COVID-19 Cases – Medscape

A gene called IFI27 that becomes activated early in COVID-19, even when symptoms are absent, might help identify people most likely to have contracted the virus after coming in contact with an infected person, researchers say.

Every week for six months, 400 UK healthcare workers completed questionnaires about COVID-19 symptoms and provided blood samples and nasal swabs for PCR testing. In 41 workers diagnosed with COVID-19, IFI27 genes were “switched on” at the time of their first positive PCR test, even in asymptomatic individuals, according to a report in The Lancet Microbe.

In some cases, IFI27 could predict infection one week before a positive PCR test, coauthor Joshua Rosenheim of University College London told Reuters.

Overall, testing for IFI27 correctly identified 84% of COVID-19 cases and correctly ruled it out in 95% of uninfected participants.

Blood biomarkers like IFI27 can signal other viruses as well, so PCR is still the gold standard for diagnosing COVID-19.

“However, testing for blood biomarkers is still valuable,” Rosenheim said. “IFI27 predicted infection despite the person not having any symptoms and often before a positive PCR test, so it could be used during contact tracing.”

Covid-19 breakthrough infections are preventable, but it’s going to take a big effort to stop them – CNN

As Covid-19 case numbers overall are on the rise again across the United States, breakthrough infections, while rare, are making headlines.

Florida Rep. Vern Buchanan tested positive for Covid-19 after vaccination, according to a statement from his office Monday. Fully vaccinated entertainment journalist Catt Sadler warned her hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers not to “let your guard down,” after she got sick after caring for someone with Covid-19 who wasn’t vaccinated. Last Thursday, six players on the New York Yankees tested positive. This was the second instance of breakthrough cases on the team.

Breakthrough cases are also already cropping up in the Tokyo Summer Olympics. An alternate member of the US Olympics gymnastics team, Kara Eaker, who had been vaccinated tested positive for Covid-19 Sunday, her father confirmed to CNN affiliate KMBC Monday. So had basketball player Katie Lou Samuelson who confirmed on her Instagram account that she would not be able to compete in Tokyo.

The good news is that the number of breakthrough infections can be reduced, but it will take a much bigger community effort to protect people from getting Covid-19.

… “If we want breakthrough cases to stop, then we need to have everybody else get vaccinated, so there’s no virus in circulation and then it won’t matter anymore,” Edwards said.

Nationally, less than 50% of the US has been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the CDC.

If more people are vaccinated, the coronavirus has fewer people it can infect. It also limits the number of new variants that can develop. More variants in circulation increase the likelihood that the coronavirus can evade the protection of the vaccines.

“If you are not vaccinated, you remain at risk,” said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky on Friday. “This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”

When asked if people who are vaccinated should be doing anything different than they normally would on Sunday, Murthy told CNN that even with a breakthrough infection “which, again, happens in a very small minority of people — it’s likely to be a mild or asymptomatic infection.” He did say he would wear a mask indoors out of an abundance of caution if he is in an area with a large number of unvaccinated people.

Pfizer less effective in over-50s and against Delta find Israeli researchers – The Australian

The Pfizer vaccine may be less effective in older people, Israeli officials have warned, as an increasing number of double vaccinated Israelis test positive to the coronavirus.

A monitoring team at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem reported that about 90 per cent of new confirmed cases in the over-fifties group were people who had been fully vaccinated, the London Times reports.

“It seems there’s a reduced efficiency of the vaccine, at least for part of the population,” the team said. They said, however, that the research needed more analysis before they could reach any definitive conclusion about its efficacy.

The warning comes as the country fights a fourth wave that has been driven by the highly infectious delta variant, despite more than 60 per cent of the population being vaccinated.

Israeli officials have also advised that the vaccine is “significantly less” effective against the delta variant of the coronavirus.

“We do not know exactly to what degree the vaccine helps, but it is significantly less,” said Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Israel’s Health Ministry warned on Monday that the vaccine’s effectiveness against delta could be even lower than the readjusted numbers it published two weeks ago.

Earlier this month, the ministry lowered its projection of 95.3 per cent effectiveness across all coronavirus variants, to admit the vaccine provided just 64 per cent protection against delta. It said the vaccine was 93 per cent effective in preventing severe disease and hospitalisation, compared with the 97 per cent reported in the medical journal The Lancet in May.

[editor’s note: also read Israel claims Pfizer COVID vaccine less effective against Delta variant and Vaccine doubters’ strange fixation with Israel]

Tokyo Olympics organizer won’t rule out last-minute cancellation – The Hill

The head of the organizing committee for the Tokyo Olympics said the committee has not ruled out a last-minute cancellation of the games as coronavirus cases continue to rise in Japan.

“We can’t predict what will happen with the number of coronavirus cases. So we will continue discussions if there is a spike in cases,” Toshiro Muto said on Tuesday, Reuters reported.

“We have agreed that based on the coronavirus situation, we will convene five-party talks again. At this point, the coronavirus cases may rise or fall, so we will think about what we should do when the situation arises,” he added.

[editor’s note: also read US women’s gymnastics team staying at hotel instead of Olympic Village after positive test and A Superspreader Olympics Could ‘Ruin’ Athletes’ Careers and IOC President Thomas Bach Says Canceling Olympics Wasn’t an Option]

Amazon, Citing Free COVID Vaccines and Testing, to Stop Swabbing Warehouse Workers – Newsweek

Amazon said it will stop testing warehouse workers for COVID-19 at the end of this month, citing that vaccines are widely available and testing is free.

Last year, the company provided free tests to its warehouse employees as the tests were more difficult to procure. Warehouse workers were considered essential as they worked through the pandemic on packing and shipping orders.

Amazon disclosed in October that nearly 20,000 workers, or about 1.4 percent of its total workforce, had been infected with COVID-19 by that point in 2020.

Past SARS-CoV-2 infection enhances mRNA vaccine-induced neutralization of variants of concern – News-Medical

Researchers in the United States have conducted a study suggesting that individuals previously infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) exhibit better neutralizing activity against variants of concern following vaccination against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) than previously uninfected vaccinees.

The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts

Researchers in Finland have conducted a study showing that the neutralizing bodies generated following infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) – the agent that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) – generally persist for at least a year.

Stocks in the U.S. and Europe had their worst day in months yesterday as investors worried about the Delta variant.

The U.S. accused China of hacking Microsoft. (Here’s how China became a cyber threat.)

More than two dozen athletes, coaches and officials have tested positive for the coronavirus.

Ben & Jerry’s will stop selling its ice cream in the Israeli-occupied territories. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called the move “morally wrong.”

WHO decision on emergency use approval for Covaxin likely by end-August

Research: India’s deaths during pandemic 10X official toll

Southeast Asian countries — including Indonesia, Myanmar, and Thailand — are struggling to combat the third wave of the pandemic, as the Delta variant takes hold throughout the region.

India’s true COVID-19 death toll is estimated to be between 3 and 4.7 million, according to a new study — potentially 10 times higher than the official count

Nearly All 301 Crew Members Aboard South Korean Warship Infected With COVID

Error by Patrick Vallance, UK Chief Scientific Adviser, Goes Viral. Vallance wrongly stated around 60 percent of U.K. COVID-19 hospitalizations were among fully vaccinated people, rather than those who were not vaccinated.

Rule-breaking in bars and cafes seen as a reason for Covid surge in Holland

Jeff Bezos just went to space and back

The following additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts

JPM’s Kolanovic: Stop Freaking Out About The Delta Case Spike

AAP Calls for ‘Universal Masking’ in Schools — Vaccinated or Not

A federal judge — appointed by Donald Trump — upheld Indiana University’s vaccine requirement for students and staff members.

Twitter suspended Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene for 12 hours after she posted misinformation.

Biden wants spending to boost economy, but GOP to block vote

Northern California wildfires scorch more than 158,000 acres as PG&E reveals it may have sparked the Dixie Fire

A federal judge ruled that Indiana University can require COVID-19 vaccination, rejecting a challenge from students who argued the mandate was unconstitutional.

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) tested positive for COVID-19, although he stated that he is fully vaccinated.

HHS allocated $103 million to reduce burnout among healthcare workers.

Communities suing Johnson & Johnson and the nation’s three largest opioid distributors are expected to announce their plan to move forward with a $26 billion settlement later this week.

Delta variant accounts for 83 percent of all COVID cases in US

Staffers in White House, Pelosi’s office test positive for coronavirus

Four States Seeing Major Spikes in COVID Cases Due to Delta Variant

A patient at Houston Methodist Hospital was confirmed to be infected with the Lambda variant, which is rapidly spreading in South America.

NIH Director Backs Masking in Schools

Apple delays return to office until October at the earliest

Bill Gates and George Soros Backed Organization Buys Out COVID-19 Testing Company

Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic and Recovery With Hyperlinks

June 2021 Residential Building Growth Rate Continues To Slow

May 2021 CoreLogic Single-Family Rents: Rent Prices Increased Four-Fold, Intensifying Affordability Challenges

Why Freedom Day Is The Latest Example Of COVID Propaganda

Military Spending In The Post-Pandemic Era

U.S. States Closest To Full Vaccination

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