Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. and Global new cases 7-day rolling average continues to set new records – and this rolling average in the U.S. new cases are now 19 % higher than one week ago (yesterday it was 21 % which means the rate of acceleration is slowing). U.S. Death rates due to coronavirus have been holding relatively steady (today deaths were near the upper end of the range seen in the last few weeks). 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;
- Today almost all 50 states have new cases increasing. 19 states hit their own record high.
- How U.S. leadership broke down in the early stages of the pandemic
- The pandemic could actually strengthen the U.S. food system
- 85 infants test positive for COVID-19 in Texas county amid alarming spike
- FDA issues first emergency use authorization for Covid-19 pool testing
- Weather forecast wrong again? Researchers say COVID-19’s impact on air travel is to blame
Repeating from past posts, deaths resulting from the coronavirus are relatively low even whilst we hit record highs in new cases. There are two possibilities put forth by the experts:
- Deaths lag new cases by 3 to 5 weeks, This would mean we should have begun to see a spike in deaths beginning 11 July 2020. [note: US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams said on 04 July 2020 “We know deaths lag at least two weeks and can lag even more.” If this is true – deaths should have begun spiking beginning on 03 July] At this point, the expected spike is NOT happening.
- The current form of the coronavirus may be easier to transmit but not as deadly. This combined with better procedures in dealing with the more severe cases could result in little noticeable spike in deaths. It also should be realized that the U.S. now has one of the highest testing rates in the world which means a higher rate of identification of those who contracted COVID-19 but are not showing symptoms. Also, there is reason to believe that duplicate positive tests on a person will result in multiple new cases (and now we are also seeing larger testing errors)..
My continuing advice is to continue to wash your hands, wear masks, and maintain social distancing. No handwashing, mask, or social distancing will guarantee you do not get infected – but it sure as hell lowers the risk in all situations. In addition, certain activities are believed to carry higher risk – like being inside in air conditioning and removing your mask (such as restaurants, bars and gyms).
The daily number of new cases in the U.S. is remaining stubbornly high, increasing, and the 7-day rolling average continues in record territory.
The following graph showing the 7-day rolling average for new coronavirus cases has been updated through 18 July 2020:
z coronavirus.png
Coronavirus Statistics For 18 July 2020 |
| U.S. Only | Global | U.S Percentage of Total | ||||
| Today*** | Cumulative | Today*** | Cumulative | Today | Cumulative | |
| New Cases | 71,494 | 3,650,000 | 255,130 | 14,040,000 | 28.0% | 26.0% |
| Deaths** | 908 | 139,266 | 7,453 | 597,148 | 12.2% | 23.3% |
| Mortality Rate | 1.3% | 3.8% | 2.9% | 4.3% | ||
total COVID-19 Tests per 1,000 people | 2.29* | 128.46* | ||||
* as of 15 July 2020
** evidently several states included “probable” deaths today in the number
*** red color indicates record number
Coronavirus News You May Have Missed
Jamie Dimon’s warning for the U.S. economy – nobody knows what comes next – CNBC
- The range of outcomes for the economy in the second half is incredibly wide: JPMorgan Chase sees no fewer than five different paths it can take.
- The bank has gotten more pessimistic, seeing unemployment in its default “base” scenario hitting nearly 11% by the end of this year, 4.3% worse than when it made the same forecast in April.
- In a worst-case scenario where the virus surges further in the fall, forcing another round of widespread shutdowns, unemployment could peak at roughly 23%, the bank said.
- “The word unprecedented is rarely used properly,” Dimon said this week. “This time, it’s being used properly. It’s unprecedented what’s going on around the world, and obviously Covid itself is a main attribute.”
A Times investigation examines how U.S. leadership broke down in the early stages of the pandemic. – New York Times
[editor’s note: I consider this another politically biased post. HOWEVER, Republicans (and businesses) tend to push decision making down to the lowest level capable of making an informed decision as the pandemic was far from uniform throughout the country. Each area seemed to need a different response. This approach IMO failed in this instance because 1) nobody knew enough (including the federal government); and 2) the coronavirus, as it turned out, is continuing to turn each state into a hotspot at various times.]
President Trump and his top aides decided to shift responsibility for the coronavirus response to the states during a critical period of weeks in mid-April, focusing on overly optimistic data signals and rushing to reopen the economy, a Times investigation found.
Interviews with more than two dozen senior administration officials, state and local health officials and a review of documents revealed a haphazard response during the initial surge in cases in the United States, characterized by offloading authority and, at times, undercutting public health experts.
A team in the White House led by President Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, met daily on the crisis, but the ultimate goal was shifting responsibility. “They referred to this as ‘state authority handoff,’ and it was at once a catastrophic policy blunder and an attempt to escape blame for a crisis that had engulfed the country — perhaps one of the greatest failures of presidential leadership in generations,” write Michael D. Shear, Noah Weiland, Eric Lipton, Maggie Haberman and David E. Sanger.
Crucial yet forgotten: the Filipino workers stranded by coronavirus – Nikkei Asia Review
As native English-speakers, thousands of Filipinos work in hotels and casinos from Las Vegas to Macao and Phnom Penh. Filipinos are nurses and doctors in Milan, Jiddah and Miami. Some 400,000 work aboard cruise ships or cargo ships, where they make up the largest share of any one nationality in the industry. They are engineers at oil refineries and nannies in homes. At airports from Singapore to San Francisco, Filipinos handle baggage, man security and staff customer service desks. When weary travelers transit through the once-bustling airport of Dubai, there’s a good chance the person serving them coffee is Filipino.
At the same time that their labor has powered economies abroad, their money has supported households back home. Remittances make up 35% of financial flows to the Philippines — more than foreign direct investment, tourism and overseas development assistance — and 9% of the country’s GDP.
As the coronavirus pandemic closed borders and countries shut down, the industries Filipino workers have gravitated to — tourism, airport services, shipping and cruises — were among the hardest hit. With borders shut and economies shrinking, many are now trapped in foreign countries that feel a limited sense of responsibility for their welfare.
The pandemic has highlighted how much the global economy depends on migrant labor, and how countries have treated their migrant populations as disposable resources. Migrants are struggling with indefinite furloughs and lost jobs; they are being neglected by institutions and face rising xenophobia in many countries. Despite the contributions they have made to the countries where they work — often at great personal cost — and even though their labor will be critical to the economic recovery of their host countries, few governments have proved willing to help them through this crisis.
The pandemic could actually strengthen the U.S. food system – National Geographic
COVID-19 spread chaos across U.S. agricultural supply chains in the spring and is widely expected to do so again this year as the number of cases and deaths continues to rise. As that first wave of disruptions happened, 4P rapidly scaled up its direct-to-consumer business, even as the schools and restaurants that once made up half of its revenues shuttered. Since the pandemic began, 4P’s subscription revenues year-over-year have jumped 1,100 percent, with general revenues up 500 percent. They now employ six times more people than before the pandemic.
… COVID-19 caught farmers and processors in the various food-service supply chains in a pincer attack. As it forced the closure of schools, offices, and restaurants, slashing badly needed sales, the virus also sickened thousands of workers throughout the few and massive U.S. processing factories—like the Smithfield pork plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota—that serve the conventional food system.
… Though it is far too soon for systematic data, reports from farmers, CSA alliances, regional food researchers, and wholesalers across the country suggest a boom is under way for direct-to-consumer operations, as long as they’re close enough to cities to take advantage of dense urban markets, says Nelson of the Farm Bureau Federation. A sweeping study on the impacts of COVID on agricultural markets by a task force of land grant universities like the University of Georgia and Ohio State University, meanwhile, has concluded chiefly that more study is needed.
[editor’s note: an interesting article which deserves a full read]
RECOVERY: Steroid Benefit in Severe COVID-19 Holds Up – MedPage
The sickest patients hospitalized with COVID-19 who received dexamethasone, the low-cost steroid, had a significantly lower incidence of death versus patients receiving usual care, preliminary results from the U.K.-based RECOVERY trial found.
Incidence of death was significantly lower for patients in the dexamethasone group who received mechanical ventilation versus those receiving usual care (29.3% vs 41.4%, RR 0.64, 95% CI 0.51-0.81) and those receiving supplemental oxygen without mechanical ventilation (23.3% vs 26.2%, RR 0.82, 95% CI 0.72-0.94), reported Martin Landray, PhD, of the University of Oxford, on behalf of the RECOVERY Collaborative Group, and colleagues.
However, there was no significant difference in the incidence of death between groups among those patients who did not receive respiratory support (17.8% vs 14.4%, RR 1.19, 95% CI 0.91-1.55), Landray’s group wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Overall mortality at 28 days was significantly lower in the dexamethasone group versus usual care (22.9% vs 25.7%, RR 0.83, 95% CI 0.75-0.93, P<0.001), the researchers noted.
Economist: U.S. Workers, Economy Will Suffer With End Of Federal Pandemic Benefits – NPR
Millions of American workers have been receiving $600 from the federal government each week during the pandemic in the form of unemployment assistance. But that’s set to expire by the end of the month, leaving many in a high state of anxiety.
People are facing income losses of up to 70% without federal pandemic unemployment assistance, says Indivar Dutta-Gupta, co-executive director of Georgetown’s Center on Poverty and Inequality and an economic adviser to the campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
“Families are going to face high rates of eviction, homelessness, food insecurity, hunger,” he tells NPR’s Sarah McCammon. “And the economy overall is going to see much slower progress in a recovery than otherwise.”
85 infants test positive for COVID-19 in Texas county amid alarming spike – The Hill
Younger Americans eager to get back to their social lives are increasingly responsible for the spread of the coronavirus, risking their own health and that of their family and friends under what health experts say is the misguided impression that the virus cannot cause them harm.
Health departments across the country are reporting that younger people are making up larger shares of the total number of those infected with the virus. The greater infection rates among young people are occurring both in states that are getting a handle on their outbreaks and those that are not.
“In these trends, we are seeing the impact of our collective decisions. We are jeopardizing the gains we made as a state,” Washington state Health Secretary John Wiesman said Friday, pointing to an increase in hospitalizations among people between the ages of 20 and 39. “[T]he actions each one of us takes now will determine what happens next.”
… There are signs, too, that even children are vulnerable to the disease. More than 10 percent of confirmed cases in Arizona, Washington and Tennessee are among those under the age of 20, an analysis by Bloomberg found.
FDA issues first emergency use authorization for Covid-19 pool testing – CNN
The US Food and Drug Administration on Saturday announced it has issued an emergency use authorization that allows the laboratory Quest Diagnostics to pool samples from up to four individuals to test for Covid-19.
This is the first Covid-19 diagnostic test in the United States to be authorized for use with pooled samples, the agency said in a statement.
“This EUA for sample pooling is an important step forward in getting more Covid-19 tests to more Americans more quickly while preserving testing supplies,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said in the statement. “Sample pooling becomes especially important as infection rates decline and we begin testing larger portions of the population.”
Sample pooling allows multiple people to be tested at once. The samples are collected and then tested in a pool or “batch” using just one test. If the pool tests positive, this means one or more of the people tested in that pool may be infected with the virus. Each of the samples would then have to be tested again individually.
Weather forecast wrong again? Researchers say COVID-19’s impact on air travel is to blame – Study Finds
A new study says with fewer planes in the sky, thanks to COVID-19, global weather data is becoming less accurate.
Researchers working with the American Geophysical Union report the world lost between 50 and 75 percent of its aircraft weather observations in March, April, and May. The drop-off began when nations started grounding commercial flights due to the pandemic.
These aircraft are constantly recording things like air temperature, relative humidity, air pressure, and wind during their flights. With fewer planes reporting in, meteorologists now have less information to build their forecasts with.
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Nicaragua’s ruling Sandinistas denied the virus. Now they’re dying by the dozens.
Over 2,000 health care workers in Ghana have been infected with coronavirus
‘False sense of security’: Australian brand faces $28,000 fine over ‘anti-virus activewear’ line
The following are additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Poll: Who always wears a mask in public—and who doesn’t?
‘Building the Ship As We’re Sailing It’: What We Heard This Week
Studies Examine Link Between COVID-19 and MIS-C in Kids
Most California Schools Unlikely To Open In Fall Under New State Rules
What Accounts For High Coronavirus Positivity Rates Among Florida Kids?
85 infants test positive for COVID-19 in Texas county amid alarming spike
With case counts rising, U.S. leaders push stricter measures.
SC health officials announce almost 1,500 new COVID-19 cases and more deaths
More Than 800 New Coronavirus Cases Reported in Indiana as Total Nears 20,000
10,000 plus new coronavirus cases reported in Florida; deaths top 5,000
CDC projects more than 157,000 deaths in U.S. by Aug 8
1,000 federal inmates at Texas prison test positive for COVID-19
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic With Hyperlinks
June 2020 Credit Access Survey: Shows A Decrease In Credit Application Rates To Series Low
New Federal Reserve Survey Shows Pandemic’s Economic Impact
About Unmasked! The Effect Of Face Masks On The Spread Of COVID-19
Retail Sales Went Nuts In June, So Wear A Mask Already To Keep It Going
Why The Coronavirus Pandemic Became Florida’s Perfect Storm
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]. Note that using this data is dangerous as the actual flu cases are estimated and not counted – nobody knows how accurate these guesses are.
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 as many do not show symptoms?
- Masks do work.
- Do we develop lasting immunity to the coronavirus? Another coronavirus – the simple cold – does not develop long term immunity.
- To what degree do people who never develop symptoms contribute to transmission?
- The US has scaled up coronavirus testing – and the accuracy of the tests has been improving. However, if one loses immunity – the coronavirus testing value is reduced.
- Can children widely spread coronavirus?
- Why have some places avoided big coronavirus outbreaks – and others hit hard?
- What effect will the weather have? At this point, it does not seem hot weather slows this coronavirus down – and it seems air conditioning contributes to its spread.
- Outdoor activities seem to be a lower risk than indoor activities.
- Can the world really push out an effective vaccine in 12 to 18 months?
- Will other medical treatments for Covid-19 ease symptoms and reduce deaths? So far only one drug (remdesivir) is approved for treatment.
- A current scientific understanding of the way the coronavirus works can be found [here].
Heavy breakouts of coronavirus have hit farmworkers. Farmworkers are essential to the food supply. They cannot shelter at home. Consider:
- they have high rates of the respiratory disease [occupational hazard]
- they travel on crowded buses chartered by their employers
- few have health insurance
- they cannot social distance and live two to four to a room – and they eat together
- some reports say half are undocumented
- they are low paid and cannot afford not to work – so they will go to work sick
- they do not have access to sanitation when working
- a coronavirus outbreak among farmworkers can potentially shutter entire farm
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 4 % [the 4% is the average of overall statistics – however in the last few months it has been hovering around 1.0%] – which makes it between 10 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.
Resources:
- Get the latest public health information from CDC: https://www.coronavirus.gov .
- Get the latest research from NIH: https://www.nih.gov/coronavirus.
- Find NCBI SARS-CoV-2 literature, sequence, and clinical content: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sars-cov-2/.
- List of studies: https://icite.od.nih.gov/covid19/search/#search:searchId=5ee124ed70bb967c49672dad
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