Written by Steven Hansen
Today total coronavirus cases exceeded 1,000,000 with the number of new cases continuing to marginally decline. Deaths from coronavirus remain stubbornly high. Following is a set of interactive graphs and tables for the world and individual states – as well as today’s headlines on coronavirus which include topics on face masks and an experimental antiviral drug that is being tested in treating patients with Covid-19.
Several selections today in the coronavirus news have been contributed by Roger Erickson, GEI author and Biology Entrepreneur
Coronavirus News You May Have Missed
Anthony Fauci should explain ‘$3.7 million to the Wuhan laboratory’ – The Washington Times
President Donald Trump’s legal counsel, Rudy Giuliani, in a recent chat on “The Cats Roundtable” on New York AM 970 radio, suggested a good U.S. attorney general move about now would be to investigate key members of the past Barack Obama administration on the Wuhan, China, laboratory, to see what they knew and when they knew it.
And then he mentioned Dr. Anthony Fauci specifically.
And then he accused the prior Team Obama of sending $3.7 million to the lab in 2014 — at a time when that same Team Obama had banned the funding of any lab that was involved in virus experimentation.
White House testing plan largely places responsibility on states – CNN
In a new set of documents, which President Donald Trump unveiled during an early evening press briefing, the administration offered a blueprint for coronavirus testing laying out where it sees the boundaries between federal and state responsibilities.
But the White House said Monday the federal government should act as the “supplier of last resort” for the tests as it works with states to ramp up a testing regime that health experts say is necessary before a national reopening.
Instead, states should “develop testing plans and rapid response programs” and “maximize the use of all available testing platforms and venues,” according to the copy of the blueprint.
States are also instructed to “identify and overcome barriers to efficient testing,” including “misallocation of supplies” and “logistical failures.”
Consumers see glimmer of hope for economy but not for their own incomes – The Conference Board
Consumer assessment of present business and labor market conditions in The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index® declined 90 points to reach 76.4—a record month-over-month drop. Consumers believe the economy is in recession right now. In contrast to what consumers see today, their expectations for the future have improved by 7 points to 93.8. Clearly when things get worse, the future is likely to look better. Consumers think the outlook for business conditions and jobs will get better in the next six months. However, expectations for household income weakened, which does not bode well for consumer spending power once the economy opens up again.
Millions of Americans locked out of unemployment system, survey finds – Reuters
The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute found in an online poll that for every 10 people who have successfully filed unemployment claims, three or four people have been unable to register and another two people have not tried to apply at a time of acute economic crisis.
Official U.S. statistics show that 26.5 million people have applied for unemployment benefits since mid-March, wiping out all of the jobs gained during the longest employment boom in U.S. history.
EPI’s survey indicates that an additional 8.9 million to 13.9 million people have been shut out of the system, said Ben Zipperer, the study’s lead author.
“This study validates the anecdotes and news reports we’re seeing about people having trouble filing for benefits they need and deserve,” Zipperer said.
America’s face-mask culture is changing, and their meaning changes too – National Geographic
As the impacts of coronavirus wend through societies, two major parts of our public lives— communication and culture—are being changed by one thing: a mask. How will people respond to the cues we get from faces when large parts of those faces are concealed? And how will cultures in which masks are not the norm adapt to this new reality?
Humans are “absolute experts at interpreting faces,” says Alexander Toderov, a psychologist and neuroscientist at Princeton University. We are “constantly, over the course of a lifetime, developing this expertise.”
His research has shown that people respond nearly instantaneously to new faces, forming judgments about other people’s character, emotions, and attitudes in less than a hundred milliseconds. Different parts of the face signal different emotions. The mouth is where most anger is expressed; disgust is signaled largely from wrinkling around the eyebrows and nose.
But we generally use the whole face to interpret emotion—which is why wearing masks for health and safety can initially present some social and cultural obstacles.
F.D.A. Plans to Announce Emergency Use of New Drug After Trial Showed Shortened Recovery – The New York Times
The F.D.A. plans to announce as early as Wednesday an emergency use authorization for remdesivir, an experimental antiviral drug that is being tested in treating patients with Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to a senior administration official.
Ahead of the announcement President Trump and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the federal government’s leading infectious diseases scientist, on Wednesday hailed early trial results of the drug, holding out hope that it could help stem the rising death toll.
Meeting with reporters at the White House, Dr. Fauci cautioned that the results of the study overseen by his agency, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, still need to be properly peer reviewed but expressed optimism that it could make a difference in speeding up the recovery of some patients infected with the virus.
Another study, conducted in China and published in the Lancet, questioned the value of the drug for treatment of severely ill patients but left open the possibility that it might be useful for others. The research was incomplete, however, because not enough participants could be enrolled.
USDA To Implement President Trump’s Executive Order On Meat and Poultry Processors – USDA
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue released the following statement after President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to keep meat and poultry processing facilities open during the COVID-19 national emergency.
“I thank President Trump for signing this executive order and recognizing the importance of keeping our food supply chain safe, secure, and plentiful. Our nation’s meat and poultry processing facilities play an integral role in the continuity of our food supply chain,” said Secretary Perdue. “Maintaining the health and safety of these heroic employees in order to ensure that these critical facilities can continue operating is paramount. I also want to thank the companies who are doing their best to keep their workforce safe as well as keeping our food supply sustained. USDA will continue to work with its partners across the federal government to ensure employee safety to maintain this essential industry.”
‘These Guys Never Had a Chance.’ Nearly 70 Dead in COVID-19 Outbreak at Massachusetts Veterans Home – Time
Nearly 70 residents sickened with the coronavirus have died at a Massachusetts home for aging veterans, as state and federal officials try to figure out what went wrong in the deadliest known outbreak at a long-term care facility in the U.S.
While the death toll at the state-run Holyoke Soldiers’ Home continues to climb, federal officials are investigating whether residents were denied proper medical care and the state’s top prosecutor is deciding whether to bring legal action.
‘The Nightmare Scenario’: How Coronavirus Could Make the 2020 Vote a Disaster – Politico
For a certain segment of the American electorate, the onset of the coronavirus pandemic birthed a 2020 nightmare scenario, with an embattled President Donald Trump delaying the November election.
But the prospect that terrifies election experts isn’t the idea that Trump moves the election (something he lacks the power to do); it’s something altogether more plausible: Despite an ongoing pandemic, the 2020 election takes place as planned, and America is totally unprepared.
Why the Coronavirus Is So Confusing – The Atlantic
Why do some people get really sick, but others do not? Are the models too optimistic or too pessimistic? Exactly how transmissible and deadly is the virus? How many people have actually been infected? How long must social restrictions go on for? Why are so many questions still unanswered?
The confusion partly arises from the pandemic’s scale and pace. Worldwide, at least 3.1 million people have been infected in less than four months. Economies have nose-dived. Societies have paused. In most people’s living memory, no crisis has caused so much upheaval so broadly and so quickly. “We’ve never faced a pandemic like this before, so we don’t know what is likely to happen or what would have happened,” says Zoë McLaren, a health-policy professor at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. “That makes it even more difficult in terms of the uncertainty.”
But beyond its vast scope and sui generis nature, there are other reasons the pandemic continues to be so befuddling—a slew of forces scientific and societal, epidemiological and epistemological. What follows is an analysis of those forces, and a guide to making sense of a problem that is now too big for any one person to fully comprehend.
What Antibody Studies Can Tell You — and More Importantly, What They Can’t – Propublica
In the U.S., especially at the start of the outbreak, there was a paucity of such tests — and even now, there aren’t enough to test every person who has only mild symptoms, let alone identify people who are asymptomatic carriers.
So that means the case counts that we see reported every day are certainly an undercount. The question is: how much of an undercount? The only way to know is to test a random sample of a given population and see who has antibodies — proteins in the blood that indicate past infections.
Once you know the percentage of people who have been infected (the fancy word for that is “sero-prevalence”), then you can calculate what’s known as the “infection fatality rate.”
… To do that properly, researchers need to test a random sample of the population. One of the main criticisms of some recent studies is that their results could have been biased because of how participants were recruited.
U.S. Only | Global | U.S Percentage of Total | ||||
Today | Cumulative | Today | Cumulative | Today | Cumulative | |
New Cases | 24,132 | 1,010,000 | 70,943 | 3,050,000 | 34.0% | 33.1% |
Deaths | 2,110 | 58,355 | 5,738 | 216,563 | 36.8% | 26.9% |
Mortality Rate | 6.3% | 5.7% | 4.7% | 7.1% | ||
total COVID-19 Tests per 1,000 people | 0.57 | 16.90 |
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic With Hyperlinks
March 2020 Pending Home Sales Crash Due To Coronavirus
April 2020 Chemical Activity Barometer Again Declines And Consistent With A Recession
Advance Estimate 1Q2020 GDP Quarter-over-Quarter Growth Now In Contraction Due To The Coronavirus
April 2020 Conference Board Consumer Confidence Decline Continues After March’s Record Decline
April 2020 Richmond Fed Manufacturing Survey Jumps Deep Into Contraction
Infographic Of The Day: Navigating Uncertainty – Leadership Accountability In Times Of Crisis
Coronavirus INTERACTIVE Charts
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Analyst Opinion of Coronavirus Data
There are several takeaways that need to be understood when viewing coronavirus statistical data:
- The global counts are suspect for a variety of reasons including political. Even the U.S. count has issues as it is possible that as much as half the population has had coronavirus and was asymptomatic. It would be a far better metric using a random sampling of the population weekly. In short, we do not understand the size of the error in the tracking numbers.
- Just because some of the methodology used in aggregating the data in the U.S. is flawed – as long as the flaw is uniformly applied – you establish a baseline. This is why it is dangerous to compare two countries as they likely use different methodologies to determine who has (and who died) from coronavirus.
- COVID-19 and the flu are different but can have similar symptoms. For sure, COVID-19 so far is much more deadly than the flu. [click here to compare symptoms]
- From an industrial engineering point of view, one can argue that it is best to flatten the curve only to the point that the health care system is barely able to cope. This solution only works if-and-only-if one can catch this coronavirus once and develops immunity. In the case of COVID-19, herd immunity may need to be in the 80% to 85% range. WHO warns that few have developed antibodies to COVID-19. At this point, herd immunity does not look like an option.
- Older population countries will have a higher death rate.
- There are at least 8 strains of the coronavirus. New York may have a deadlier strain imported from Europe, compared to less deadly viruses elsewhere in the United States.
- Each publication uses different cutoff times for its coronavirus statistics. Our data uses 11:00 am London time. Also, there is an unexplained variation in the total numbers both globally and in the U.S.
- The real question remains if the U.S. is over-reacting to this virus. The following graphic from the CDC puts the annual flu burden in perspective [click on image to enlarge].
What we do not know about the coronavirus [actually there is little scientifically proven information]. Most of our knowledge is anecdotal, from studies with limited subjects, or from studies without peer review.
- Is social distancing at 6 feet correct? Some are saying 4 meters (13 feet). And what is the correct social distance if one rides a bike?
- Will warm weather and higher humidity slow the coronavirus spread? Will September see another spike in cases? Next Winter may see more cases than seen previously.
- Should we decontaminate products (such as food) that are brought into the house?
- Does one develop immunity after recovering from coronavirus?
- Is COVID-19 mutating? How will this impact the ability to create immunization or even immunity?
- Are ventilators damaging patients – should oxygen be used instead?
- The U.S. outsourced bat virus research to Wuhan after the U.S. shut down its testing due to containment issues.
The bottom line is that COVID-19 so far has been shown to be much more deadly than the data on the flu. Using CDC data, the flu has a mortality rate between 0.06 % and 0.11 % Vs. the coronavirus which to date has a mortality rate of over 5 % – which makes it between 45 and 80 times more deadly. The reason for ranges:
Because influenza surveillance does not capture all cases of flu that occur in the U.S., CDC provides these estimated ranges to better reflect the larger burden of influenza.
There will be a commission set up after this pandemic ends to find fault [it is easy to find fault when a once-in-a-lifetime event occurs] and to produce recommendations for the next time a pandemic happens. Those that hate President Trump will conclude the virus is his fault. The most important issue will be an analysis of whether the federal government took a strong enough lead in dealing with the pandemic.
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