Written by Steven Hansen
Today’s coronavirus deaths were at the lowest level since 30 March 2020 – however weekend numbers always decline and then rise as the week progresses. At the end of this post is a set of interactive graphs and tables for the world and individual states – as well as today’s headlines which include moderate outdoor ultraviolet exposure offers reduced coronavirus transmission; the Fed is now the proud owner of bankrupt Hertz bonds; and Cuba credits two drugs with slashing coronavirus death toll.
Here in southern Florida – it has rained solidly making the beaches little used. However, this is not true everywhere as the following video explains.
There is currently only ONE proven way to reduce the risk of contracting COVID-19 – and that is to social distance and wear a mask. Stay safe the Memorial Day.
Coronavirus News You May Have Missed
Cuba credits two drugs with slashing coronavirus death toll – Reuters
Communist-run Cuba said this week that use of two drugs produced by its biotech industry that reduce hyper-inflammation in seriously ill COVID-19 patients has sharply curbed its coronavirus-related death toll.
… One is itolizumab, a monoclonal antibody produced in Cuba and elsewhere. The other is a peptide that Cuba says its biotech industry discovered and has been testing for rheumatoid arthritis in Phase II clinical trials.
Oxford University Vaccine Trials Run Into Hurdle – Bloomberg
The Oxford University team in charge of developing a coronavirus vaccine said a decline in the infection rate will make it increasingly difficult to prove whether it’s been successful, the Telegraph reported. “It’s a race against the virus disappearing, and against time,” Professor Adrian Hill, director of the university’s Jenner Institute, told the newspaper. “We said earlier in the year that there was an 80% chance of developing an effective vaccine by September. But at the moment, there’s a 50% chance that we get no result at all.” Hill said he expects fewer than 50 of the 10,000 people who have volunteered to test the vaccine trial in coming week to catch the virus. If fewer than 20 test positive, the results may be useless, the newspaper cited him as saying.
Although developers globally are working on as many as 100 experimental vaccines for Covid-19, the process is likely to take time. Finding a vaccine and distributing it globally will be a “massive moonshot,” Dr. Michael Ryan, executive of director of the World Health Organization’s Emergency Program, said earlier this month. There’s a chance the disease may be here to stay, he said.
Trump places travel restrictions on Brazil – Politico
The Trump administration on Sunday announced that it was restricting entry for travelers from Brazil, which ranks only behind the United States in the number of coronavirus cases, according to a Johns Hopkins University database.
In a White House proclamation, President Donald Trump said he was restricting nearly all non-U.S. citizens from coming to the U.S. if they were physically present in Brazil during the 14-day period prior to travel. Green card holders, close relatives of U.S. citizens and flight crew members are exempt.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Homeland Security have determined that Brazil is “experiencing widespread, ongoing person-to-person transmission” of the virus, the proclamation read.
The Coronavirus Is Deadliest Where Democrats Live – Seattle Times
The staggering American death toll from the coronavirus, now approaching 100,000, has touched every part of the country, but the losses have been especially acute along its coasts, in its major cities, across the industrial Midwest, and in New York City.
The devastation, in other words, has been disproportionately felt in blue America, which helps explain why people on opposing sides of a partisan divide that has intensified in the past two decades are thinking about the virus differently. It is not just that Democrats and Republicans disagree on how to reopen businesses, schools and the country as a whole. Beyond perception, beyond ideology, there are starkly different realities for red and blue America right now.
Democrats are far more likely to live in counties where the virus has ravaged the community, while Republicans are more likely to live in counties that have been relatively unscathed by the illness, though they are paying an economic price. Counties won by President Donald Trump in 2016 have reported just 27% of the virus infections and 21% of the deaths — even though 45% of Americans live in these communities, a New York Times analysis has found.
The very real difference in death rates has helped fuel deep disagreement over the dangers of the pandemic and how the country should proceed. Right-wing media, which moved swiftly from downplaying the severity of the crisis to calling it a Democratic plot to bring down the president, has exacerbated the rift. And even as the nation’s top medical experts note the danger of easing restrictions, communities across the country are doing so, creating a patchwork of regulations, often along ideological lines.
Moderate Outdoor Ultraviolet Exposure Offers Reduced Coronavirus Transmission – coronavirus today
On May 23, 2020, a Harvard published paper from an international team of researchers said ‘We projected the relative risk of COVID-19 disease transmission due to environmental factors in 1,072 global cities. Our projections suggest warmer temperature and moderate outdoor ultraviolet exposure may offer a modest reduction in transmission.’
The White House rolls out a plan to leave virus testing largely up to states. – New York Times
The Trump administration’s new testing strategy, released Sunday to Congress, holds individual states responsible for planning and carrying out all coronavirus testing.
The Department of Health and Human Services released the proposal to meet requirements in the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, signed into law by President Trump on April 24, that some federal agencies come up with a strategic testing plan within 30 days.
The federal government’s role is to “enable innovation, help scale supplies and provide strategic guidance,” according to the report, but states, territories and tribes are ultimately responsible for setting and meeting testing goals, with some help from private companies.
The United States is conducting about 300,000 tests per day, and the proposal says this number should be sufficient if testing can be targeted to “likely-positive individuals.” An analysis by the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University estimated the actual need at more than 3 million tests per day and 5 million per day by June. This estimate is based on the idea of testing everyone infected, and also tracing and testing all of their contacts, with a test that would miss 20 percent of cases.
[editor’s note: in the same report, the Trump administration is pledging to buy 100 million swabs by the year’s end and distribute them to states to help expand the nation’s capacity to test for the novel coronavirus.]
WHO officials warn countries not to become complacent with COVID-19 – WMUR
The World Health Organization said the downward trend of coronavirus cases didn’t occur naturally, and is warning countries not to become complacent.
“Many countries have paid a heavy price in doing the measures that have needed to be done to suppress the transmission of this disease, and they deserve credit,” Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s health emergencies program, said during a Monday briefing.
“My concern right now is that people may be assuming that the current drop of infections represents a natural seasonality, and I think that’s a dangerous assumption,” he said.
Ryan said it’s “worrisome” when people assume the downward trend occurred naturally. In reality, Ryan said, “that has occurred because of very, very, very tough public health measures that have been tough on the population.”
Recruitment For Oxford’s Hydroxychloroquine Clinical Trial Continues – coronavirus today
On May 24, 2020, COVID-19 treatment researchers from Oxford University issued a letter which said: ‘we received a letter from the MHRA in which they notified us of their concerns relating to the use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for patients with COVID-19 in the light of the recent publication by Mehra et al in The Lancet on 22 May 2020.’
‘We have held two videoconferences with the MHRA and provided detailed responses.
This morning we have received written confirmation from the MHRA that, “it is acceptable to allow continued randomization into the hydroxychloroquine arm of the RECOVERY trial.”
The Chief Medical Officers of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the NHS Medical Director have written to all doctors strongly encouraging participation in the national randomized trials in COVID-19 of which RECOVERY is one.
WHO temporarily pauses hydroxychloroquine study, citing safety concerns – The Week
The World Health Organization is temporarily halting a study on hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as potential COVID-19 treatments due to safety concerns.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the decision on Monday, after a study published in The Lancet medical journal suggested COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine were more likely to die, CNN reports. The drugs were being reviewed as part of the WHO’s Solidarity Trial — a coronavirus research effort involving more than 400 hospitals in 35 countries.
President Donald Trump last week revealed he takes hydroxychloroquine as a preventative measure against COVID-19, despite there being no evidence of its effectiveness and the FDA cautioning against the drug due to serious side effects including abnormal heart rhythms. Meanwhile Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is touting the other drug halted in the study, chloroquine.
‘Nothing can justify this destruction of people’s lives’ – spiked
Countries across the world have been in lockdown for months in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The costs of the policy are enormous – in terms of life, liberty and the economy. But is it worth it to save lives? Yoram Lass was once the director-general of Israel’s Ministry of Health. Lass is a staunch critic of the lockdown policy adopted in his native Israel and around the world. He has described our response to Covid-19 as a form of hysteria.
… It is the first epidemic in history which is accompanied by another epidemic – the virus of the social networks. These new media have brainwashed entire populations. What you get is fear and anxiety, and an inability to look at real data. And therefore you have all the ingredients for monstrous hysteria.
It is what is known in science as positive feedback or a snowball effect. The government is afraid of its constituents. Therefore, it implements draconian measures. The constituents look at the draconian measures and become even more hysterical. They feed each other and the snowball becomes larger and larger until you reach irrational territory. This is nothing more than a flu epidemic if you care to look at the numbers and the data, but people who are in a state of anxiety are blind. If I were making the decisions, I would try to give people the real numbers. And I would never destroy my country.
[editor’s note: there a many more issues discussed in this post and readers may gain some understanding by clicking the hyperlink for this post – you do not have to agree with what is being said but it does provide food-for-thought]
The Fed Is Now The Proud Owner Of Bankrupt Hertz Bonds – ZeroHedge
On March 23 – the day the S&P dropped to its cycle low of 2,237 – the Fed stunned capital markets when it announced it would purchase investment grade corporate bonds, traversing a Rubicon into secondary market intervention that not even Ben Bernanke had dared to cross. A few weeks later, on April 9, the Fed doubled down by announcing it would purchase not only junk bonds from “fallen angel” issuers (an announcement which came just days after a quarter in which a record $150BN in investment grade bonds were downgraded to junk, starting the long awaited tsunami of “fallen angels”), but would also buy junk bond ETFs such as HYG and JNK.
… both ETFs [HYG and JNK] hold that infamous Hertz bond that was issued last November and that will default before paying a single coupon.
To be sure, we can only extrapolate but it is safe to say that the Fed’s holdings of both these ETFs are modest for the time being, and we assume that the bulk of ETF purchases have targeted the investment grade, LQD ETF; still the fact is that as of this moment, the Fed is a holder, via BlackRock and via HYG and JNK, of bonds which are in default, and which make the Fed a part of the Hertz post-petition equity once it emerges from bankruptcy!
This means that unless the Fed somehow manages to divest of Hertz bonds that comprise its HYG and JNK holdings, the US central bank is as of this moment a stakeholder in the Hertz bankruptcy process, and assuming there is no liquidation, will end up owning a pro-rata stake of the post-petition equity once the company emerges from bankruptcy in the not too distant future.
What happens then nobody knows: will the Fed take a vocal position in the company’s future? Can the Fed even own equities via a debt-to-equity swap? What happens when hundreds of other junk bonds default and the Fed ends up owning billions in post-petition equity pro forma for equitization?
Coronavirus Statistics For 24 May 2020 |
| U.S. Only | Global | U.S Percentage of Total | ||||
| Today | Cumulative | Today | Cumulative | Today | Cumulative | |
| New Cases | 20,568 | 1,640,000 | 94,633 | 5,370,000 | 21.7% | 30.5% |
| Deaths | 633 | 97,720 | 2,737 | 344,815 | 23.1% | 28.3% |
| Mortality Rate | 3.1% | 6.0% | 2.9% | 6.4% | ||
| total COVID-19 Tests per 1,000 people | 1.19* | 40.54* | ||||
* as of 23 May 2020
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic With Hyperlinks
Making Economies More Resilient To Downturns
A Couple Of Insights From The April Current Population Survey
The Primary Dealer Credit Facility
Memorial Day: Why Veterans Are Particularly Vulnerable To The Coronavirus Pandemic
The Fed’s Pandemic Response Actions Have Not Been To Save The Economy
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.
- How many people have been infected?
- Can the US really scale up coronavirus testing and tracing?
- What forms of social distancing work best?
- Can children widely spread coronavirus?
- Why have some places avoided big coronavirus outbreaks?
- What effect will the weather have?
- Can we reopen parks and beaches? [we will find out soon as many beaches and parks have reopened]
- Do we develop lasting immunity to the coronavirus?
- Can the world really push out a vaccine in 12 to 18 months?
- Will we get other medical treatments for Covid-19?
- Do we need all these ventilators?
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 – and that includes every single politician!
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