Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. pandemic effects have fallen for the second day in a row. 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 whether there will be a doubling of cases and deaths in June – and wealthy hospitals hoarding millions of dollars.
Today’s selection of coronavirus news includes several which disagree with each other. There is so little scientific proven information on COVID-19, that even the information we believe is true served up by the mainstream press is largely just informed guesses. News today is mostly spin.
Several selections today in the coronavirus news have been contributed by Roger Erickson, GEI author and Biology Entrepreneur.
Coronavirus News You May Have Missed
Coronavirus: ‘Missing link’ species may never be found – BBC
An “intermediate host” animal passed the coronavirus from wild bats to humans, evidence suggests.
But while the World Health Organization says that the research points to the virus’s “natural origin”, some scientists say it might never be known how the first person was infected.
It remains unclear whether this host animal was sold in the now infamous Wuhan wildlife market in China.
But the wildlife trade is seen as a potential source of this “spillover”.
FDA tightens rules on antibody tests after false claims, accuracy problems – NBC News
U.S. regulators Monday pulled back a decision that allowed scores of coronavirus blood tests to hit the market without first providing proof that they worked.
The Food and Drug Administration said it took the action because some sellers have made false claims about the tests and their accuracy.
Under pressure to increase testing options, the FDA in March essentially allowed companies to begin selling tests as long as they notified the agency of their plans and provided disclaimers, including that they were not FDA approved. The policy was intended to allow “flexibility” needed to quickly ramp up production, officials said.
US daily coronavirus deaths reportedly projected to double to 3,000 by June – The Guardian
As Donald Trump proclaimed success in America’s fight against the coronavirus and continued to push for the US economy to reopen, it was reported on Monday that internal projections show the administration is expecting 3,000 deaths a day by 1 June.
… CDC and Fema “forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now”, the paper said.
… The White House attempted to pour cold water on the New York Times story.
Spokesman Judd Deere in a statement said: “This is not a White House document, nor has it been presented to the coronavirus taskforce or gone through inter-agency vetting.
Between 1,000 and 2,000 deaths are currently being reported in the US each day.
Italian scientist says she discovered main mechanism behind COVID-19 – The Jerusalem Post
COVID-19 damages the hemoglobin, impairing the ability of red blood cells to transport oxygen throughout the body, compromising the lungs and resulting in Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS), Italian pharmacology scholar Annalisa Chiusolo explained to The Jerusalem Post.If her thesis is correct, it would resolve many outstanding questions about the novel coronavirus, such as the greater vulnerability of men – specifically male diabetics – to become seriously ill from the virus, as well as the lower rate at which pregnant women and children contract COVID-19.
She told the Post that SARS-CoV-2, the formal name for the novel coronavirus, needs porphyrins for its survival – and probably for its replication – so it attacks hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in the blood, which translates to less oxygen available for the body. The consequence of less oxygen is the accumulation of carbon dioxide.
Intelligence officials back Trump’s assertion that they downplayed the virus threat in January. – New York Times
The intelligence agencies sought on Monday to back President Trump’s assertions that he was given only minimal warnings about the threat of the coronavirus early in the year, singling out their own lapses without noting that around the same time, scientists, public health officials and national security officials were sounding alarms.
Mr. Trump was first briefed by intelligence agencies about the novel coronavirus on Jan. 23, said Susan Miller, the spokeswoman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. But she acknowledged that the initial briefing downplayed its threat. Mr. Trump was “told that the good news was the virus did not appear that deadly,” Ms. Miller said. As the world has painfully learned, that assessment was wrong.
Ms. Miller’s statement came after weeks of Mr. Trump and administration officials railing at what they have called inaccurate accounts in the news media that intelligence agencies put multiple warnings about the virus in the president’s daily intelligence briefing. On Sunday, Mr. Trump said the intelligence agencies in January had told him the virus was “not a big deal.”
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic could have been prevented – Virology Blog
After SARS-CoV, a number of laboratories continued their research on the virus, but big Pharma lost interest in the virus – because it had disappeared from the face of the Earth. There was no money to be made in SARS-CoV antivirals or vaccines, so none were made. As a result, when SARS-CoV-2 emerged in late 2019, humanity was completely unable to stop its inexorable spread around the globe.
What could have been done? To start, we should have made antiviral drugs that inhibit a broad range of bat SARS-like CoVs. One protein encoded in the genome of these viruses – the RNA dependent RNA polymerase, essential for the synthesis of all viral RNAs – is the most highly conserved protein among all of these viruses. It would have been straightforward to take a sample of these RdRps from bat CoVs, produce them in cell culture, and find small molecule compounds that inhibit all of them. A pan-CoV antiviral drug could have been developed through human phase I trials, and stockpiled for the next pandemic. But there was no money to support such work – neither in the halls of big Pharma or forthcoming from the under-funded NIH.
It might have even been possible to make a pan-CoV vaccine, although in my view this would be much harder and less certain than a pan-CoV antiviral drug. One approach, similar to that being taken to make universal influenza vaccines, is to identify conserved epitopes (the amino acids to which antibodies are directed) on the viral spike protein. It would be straightforward to examine the spike proteins of many bat SARS-like CoVs to identify such conserved epitopes and either design vaccines to target them, or produce monoclonal antibodies agains such targets to be used therapeutically.
Container cargo imbalance from COVID-19 deepens – JOC
Forwarders and insurers warn that cargo flows are becoming more uneven across key markets as a natural container imbalance on headhaul and backhaul trades is exacerbated by extensive blank sailings from carriers trying to match capacity with declining demand.
Stay-at-home orders and the closure of most retail outlets across Europe and North America since early March to limit the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has erased consumer demand and stopped manufacturing in many parts of the world. But cargo has been steadily building up in warehouses, port terminals, and inland depots during the lockdowns, according to forwarder association FIATA and insurer TT Club.
“These are primarily non-essential products, for which there is little demand as retail outlets are closed or supplies for production lines that are either static or at reduced capacity,” TT Club noted in a statement this week.
Trying to make sense of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 – Polaris Capital
I’ll begin with an update to my April 18th post that included information about patients in South Korea who were testing positive after recovering from COVID. They had all been released from the hospital after negative PCR tests and the concern was that they were being re-infected. At that time, I wrote “my hunch is still that the tests are either picking up dead viral particles or the patients were never really completely recovered.” The former is now most probable as on Thursday, South Korea’s infectious disease experts announced that dead virus fragments were likely the cause. It’s still possible that the latter is also true in some cases as I haven’t seen any evidence to the contrary, particularly in the subset of patients who were showing mild symptoms, but of course those symptoms could be due to a different illness that they had acquired. I’ll keep updating the story as more information surfaces.
Another interesting story came out of Guangzhou, China. Aggressive contact tracing has been widely implemented as an important part of the containment strategy in countries that have the virus under control. But I also think we can learn a lot about how the virus spreads from the countries that are effectively implementing these strategies. We have so many new cases per day in many parts of the US that there’s no way to know where infections were acquired and contact tracing is almost impossible. That’s not the case in locations where new cases are very limited and strict protocols are in place. China released the results of a study that traced how one asymptomatic person infected nine others in a restaurant. Four of those people were sitting at the table with patient zero but five others were not, and some were far enough away that they should have been safe. After some investigation they determined that an air-conditioning unit was likely to blame. Based on how it was positioned, the air flow could have been circulating around the tables and carrying viral particles. It’s notable that the infected person was listed as asymptomatic, so they wouldn’t have been coughing and sneezing. This study has implications for us as we reopen businesses and pile into air-conditioned restaurants, planes with recirculated airflow and any other confined indoor spaces with man-made air currents.
Amid Coronavirus Distress, Wealthy Hospitals Hoard Millions – Medscape
As the coronavirus wreaks havoc with hospital finances, wealthy hospitals sitting on millions or even billions of dollars are in a competitive stampede against near-insolvent hospitals for the same limited pots of financial relief. Those include the $175 billion bailout fund Congress allotted for health care providers as part of two recent coronavirus packages and loans from private banks.
Certainly, even the richest hospitals are having their balance sheets despoiled by a triple punch: the stock market slump, the cost of preparation for coronavirus patients and the cessation of profitable surgeries, which is costing many hospitals half or more of their revenues. Inova, for instance, has spent $32 million to buy personal protective equipment and install negative air pressure systems in 200 hospital rooms, Jones said. (As of Monday morning, the system had 323 coronavirus patients.)
But unlike safety-net and smaller hospitals, many big health systems have the resources to stay afloat without financial assistance through the summer and beyond. Half of the 284 hospitals whose bonds Moody’s Investors Service rated in 2018 had enough cash on hand to cover six months or more.
Is Bat Coronavirus 4991 a Smoking Gun in China’s COVID-19 Cover-up? – Citizens Commission on National Security
In an article that appeared on February 6, 2020, scientists at the State Key Laboratory of Virology, Modern Virology Research Center, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University wrote that the partial RdRp gene sequence of bat coronavirus strain BtCoV/4991 (GenBank KP876546) had a 98.7% nucleotide identity with COVID-19.
On March 16, 2020 and maybe earlier, it was noted that BtCoV/4991’s short sequence was a 100% match for the same short sequence in RaTG13 and was also a 100% match for SNU01, the viral isolate from the first COVID-19 patient in South Korea.
The obvious question then as now remains, are RaTG13 and BtCoV/4991 the same coronavirus? If true, it could reveal a cover-up by China as to the true origin of COVID-19.
New Study to Track National Response to Coronavirus Efforts – WebMD
Researchers say the study, named “Communities, Households, and SARS/COV-2 Epidemiology (CHASING) COVID,” is designed to further our understanding of the pandemic — how it’s affecting American life, how it’s spreading, and whether efforts to slow the spread are working.
“For this pandemic and future pandemics where there is no vaccine or treatment, we need to understand which components of the public health response — like masks, stay-at-home orders, avoiding gatherings, and hand washing — are being taken up in communities and households, as well as which ones work best at reducing community transmission,” says Denis Nash, PhD, executive director of ISPH and principal investigator of the study. “We also need to understand the impact of reopening society, and how the public health response adapts to what happens next with the pandemic.”
For the study, Nash’s team recruited more than 7,000 people from across the country, representing a diverse sample of the population. Roughly one-quarter are ages 60 and above; one-quarter are black or Hispanic; and just over half are men. At least one-quarter identified themselves as frontline workers in health care or other essential fields.
People taking part in the study will be contacted monthly for at least 6 months to assess what they’re doing to control the epidemic: Are they wearing face masks, staying home, washing hands? They’ll also be asked about COVID-related issues like any symptoms they may be having, testing and diagnosis, and health care access. Twice during the 6 months, participants will provide dried blood spot specimens, which ISPH will store until a proven antibody test is available.
Excess Cancer Deaths Predicted as Care Disrupted by COVID-19 – Medscape
The majority of patients who have cancer or are suspected of having cancer are not accessing healthcare services in the United Kingdom or the United States because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the first report of its kind estimates.
As a result, there will be an excess of deaths among patients who have cancer and multiple comorbidities in both countries during the current coronavirus emergency, the report warns.
The authors calculate that there will be 6270 excess deaths among cancer patients 1 year from now in England and 33,890 excess deaths among cancer patients in the United States. (In the United States, the estimated excess number of deaths applies only to patients older than 40 years, they note.)
Coronavirus Statistics For 04 May 2020
U.S. Only | Global | U.S Percentage of Total | ||||
Today | Cumulative | Today | Cumulative | Today | Cumulative | |
New Cases | 24,972 | 1,160,000 | 77,772 | 3,470,000 | 32.1% | 33.4% |
Deaths | 1,297 | 67,682 | 3,503 | 246,979 | 37.0% | 27.4% |
Mortality Rate | 5.2% | 5.8% | 4.5% | 7.1% | ||
total COVID-19 Tests per 1,000 people | 0.80 | 20.59 |
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic With Hyperlinks
Loan Officer Survey Shows Banks Have Significantly Tightened Lending Standards
Whither U.S. Crude Oil Production?
March 2020 Headline Manufacturing New Orders In Coronavirus Decline
Cooperation Needed On Covid-19
Americans Split On Contact Tracing App
Could Sell On May Be A Good Strategy This Year?
What Are The ‘Reopen’ Protesters Really Saying?
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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