Written by Steven Hansen

The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average is 7.3 % HIGHER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago. U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 5.1 % HIGHER than the rolling average one week ago. 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;

• Global daily new coronavirus cases continue at record levels
• BREAKING NEWS: FDA approves Gilead’s remdesivir as coronavirus treatment
• BREAKING NEWS: Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine ‘behaves as desired’, analysis finds
• Warning for COVID Long Haulers From Polio Survivors
• Rents Plummet on Urban Apartments
• Columbia report: US could have avoided 130,000 COVID deaths with better response
• CDC redefined what counts as close contact with someone with COVID-19 to include briefer but repeated encounters.
• Employees work an extra 26 hours a month when remote
• Predicting the Risk for Ventilation in COVID-19 Patients
• Pfizer Sets Up Its ‘Biggest Ever’ Vaccination Distribution Campaign
• The anti-vaccine community is reshaping their opposition based on civil liberties
• The worst virus outbreaks in the U.S. are now in rural areas

The recent worsening of the trendlines for new cases should be attributed to going back to college/university, cooler weather causing more indoor activities, holiday activities, and continued loosening of regulations designed to slow the coronavirus spread.

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 – as the evidence to-date shows a lower severity of COVID-19. In addition, certain activities are believed to carry a higher risk – like being inside in air conditioning and removing your mask (such as restaurants, around your children/grandchildren, bars, and gyms). It is all about viral load – and outdoor activities are generally safe.

The daily number of new cases in the U.S. is remaining stubbornly and embarrassedly high – and is currently increasing.

The following graphs show the 7-day rolling average for new coronavirus cases and deaths have been updated through 22 October 2020:

z coronavirus.png​

Hospitalizations (grey line) and Mortality (green line) For Week ending 10OCT2020

source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html

Source: EU CDC – The data insignificantly varies from the data produced by Johns Hopkins

* as of 19 Oct 2020

** evidently several States included “probable” deaths today in the number

*** red color indicates record number

Coronavirus News You May Have Missed

FDA approves Gilead’s remdesivir as coronavirus treatment – CNBC

• The FDA approved Gilead Sciences’ antiviral drug remdesivir as a treatment for the coronavirus.
• The intravenous drug has helped shorten the recovery time of some hospitalized Covid-19 patients.
• Remdesivir is now the first and only fully approved treatment in the U.S. for Covid-19.

Coronavirus: Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine ‘behaves as desired’, analysis finds – SKY

The COVID-19 vaccine being developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca haS been shown to work as planned by new analysis.

A method to check the inoculation contains all the correct parts was developed by a team at Bristol University, providing greater evidence that the vaccine works.

Even though the research has not yet been peer-reviewed, it has been hailed as a “wonderful example of cross-disciplinary collaboration”.

The vaccine is currently undergoing Phase 3 clinical trials to further establish the safety of the treatment.

It comes after confirmation the trials will continue after a man taking part died in Brazil. It is understood that the man was taking a placebo and not the active vaccine.

The new method of analysis allowed scientists to check that the vaccine was properly designed to replicate the parts of the COVID-19 make-up needed to train the immune system to fight the disease.

The study proved that the vaccine is correctly programmed to replicate the “spike protein” associated with COVID-19 that has been inserted into the immunisation shot.

‘Learn to live with the pandemic’: Physicians warn that a vaccine may not prevent Covid from becoming endemic – CNBC

• “I think the answer is that, yes, this will become endemic,” said Dr. David Heymann, who led the WHO’s infectious disease unit during the SARS epidemic in 2002-2003.
• This means the infection rate of the coronavirus, like other coronaviruses, may eventually stabilize at a constant level and become present in communities at all times.
• To protect yourself, the WHO recommends that people keep a distance of at least 1 meter from others and disinfect frequently touched surfaces. It also advises cleaning hands thoroughly and often, and for people to avoid touching their eyes, mouth and nose.

[editor’s note: also read ‘Caution flag should be up’ – Cashin says market overestimating vaccine benefits

No, Mouthwash Will Not Save You From the Coronavirus – New York Times

Even if people coated the inside of their mouths with a coronavirus-killing chemical, a substantial amount of the virus would still remain in the body.

A rash of provocative headlines this week offered a tantalizing idea: that mouthwash can “inactivate” coronaviruses and help curb their spread.

The stories sprang from a new study that found that a coronavirus that causes common colds – not the one that causes Covid-19 – could be incapacitated in a laboratory when doused with mouthwash. The study’s authors concluded that the products they tested “may provide an additional level of protection against” the new coronavirus.

But outside experts warned against overinterpreting the study’s results, which might not have practical relevance to the new coronavirus that has killed more than 220,000 Americans. Not only did the study not investigate this deadly new virus, but it also did not test whether mouthwash affects how viruses spread from person to person.

“I don’t have a problem with using Listerine,” said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University. “But it’s not an antiviral.”

… The researchers tested the virus-destroying effects of several products, including a watered-down mixture of Johnson’s baby shampoo – which is sometimes used to flush out the inside of the nose – and mouthwashes made by Listerine, Crest, Orajel, Equate and C.V.S. They flooded 229E coronaviruses, which had been grown in human liver cells in the lab, with these chemicals for 30 seconds, 1 minute or 2 minutes – longer than the typical swig or spritz into a nose or mouth. Around 90 to 99 percent of the viruses could no longer infect cells after this exposure, the study found.

“It’s clear that if these compounds come into contact with the virus, they can inactivate it,” said Dr. Craig Meyers, a researcher at Pennsylvania State University who is an author of the study.

But because the study didn’t recruit any human volunteers to gargle the products in question, the findings have limited value for the real world, other experts said. The human mouth, full of nooks and crannies and a slurry of chemicals secreted by a diverse cadre of cells, is far more complicated than the inside of a laboratory dish. Nothing should be considered conclusive “unless human studies are performed,” said Dr. Maricar Malinis, an infectious disease expert at Yale University.

[editor’s note: this is a continuation of our published headline yesterday which said “Mouthwash Can Kill COVID”. According to Medscape: “Can oral rinses help stop the spread of COVID-19? After reviewing evidence from more than 100 articles, researchers have concluded that some oral rinses may help curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2, but more research is “desperately” needed.“]

Score Predicts Risk for Ventilation in COVID-19 Patients – Medscape

A new scoring system can predict whether COVID-19 patients will require invasive mechanical ventilation, researchers report.

The score uses three variables to predict future risk: heart rate; the ratio of oxygen saturation (SpOâ‚‚) to fraction of inspired oxygen (FiOâ‚‚); and a positive troponin I level.

“What excites us is it’s a really benign tool,” said Muhtadi Alnababteh, MD, from the Medstar Washington Hospital Center in DC. “For the first two variables you only need to look at vital signs, no labs or invasive diagnostics.”

“The third part is a simple lab, which is performed universally and can be done in any hospital,” he told Medscape Medical News. “We know that even rural hospitals can do this.”

For their retrospective analysis, Alnababteh and his colleagues assessed 265 adults with confirmed COVID-19 infection who were admitted to a single tertiary care center in March and April. They looked at demographic characteristics, lab results, and clinical and outcome information.

Ultimately, 54 of these patients required invasive mechanical ventilation.

On multiple-regression analysis, the researchers determined that three variables independently predicted the need for invasive mechanical ventilation.

Predictors of Mechanical Ventilation
Variable	Odds Ratio	P Value
Heart rate at admission	1.03	<.001
SpOâ‚‚/FiOâ‚‚	0.62	.001
Positive initial troponin level	4.18	<.001

CDC redefines COVID-19 close contact, adds brief encounters – AP

U.S. health officials Wednesday redefined what counts as close contact with someone with COVID-19 to include briefer but repeated encounters.

For months, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said close contact meant spending a solid 15 minutes within 6 feet of someone who tested positive for coronavirus. On Wednesday, the CDC changed it to a total of 15 minutes or more – so shorter but repeated contacts that add up to 15 minutes over a 24-hour period now count.

The CDC advises anyone who has been in close contact with a COVID-19 patient to quarantine for two weeks.

…It also serves notice that the coronavirus can spread more easily than many people realize, he added.

The definition change was triggered by a report on that case of a 20-year-old Vermont correctional officer, who was diagnosed with a coronavirus infection in August. The guard, who wore a mask and goggles, had multiple brief encounters with six transferred prisoners before test results showed they were positive. At times, the prisoners wore masks, but there were encounters in cell doorways or in a recreational room where prisoners did not have them on, the report said.

Pfizer Sets Up Its ‘Biggest Ever’ Vaccination Distribution Campaign – Wall Street Journal

In Kalamazoo, Mich., a stretch of land the size of a football field has been turned into a staging ground outfitted with 350 large freezers, ready to take delivery of millions of doses of Covid-19 vaccine before they can be shipped around the world.

The facility is a hub in the sprawling supply chain Pfizer Inc. has built to handle the delivery of a vaccine widely awaited as a possible relief from the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. pharmaceutical giant says it wants to deliver up to 100 million doses this year and another 1.3 billion in 2021.

Like other drugmakers testing potential vaccines, Pfizer is urgently laying the groundwork with its logistics partners so it can move quickly if its vaccine gets the go-ahead from the Food and Drug Administration and other regulators around the world.

…The New York-based drugmaker is working with Germany’s BioNTech SE on one of several experimental Covid-19 vaccines in late-stage testing. Pfizer says it may know whether its vaccine works by the end of October and that it could be ready to apply for emergency-use authorization of its Covid-19 vaccine by late November.

The company’s effort to deliver relief to pandemic-weary populations will revolve around refrigerated storage sites at two of the company’s final assembly centers-the Kalamazoo facility and another in Puurs, Belgium-and rely on dozens of cargo-jet flights and hundreds of truck trips every day. Distribution centers in Pleasant Prairie, Wis., and in Karlsruhe, Germany, have been outfitted for extra storage capacity.

Pfizer so far has spent about $2 billion on developing the vaccine and setting up the distribution network.

The U.S. government placed an initial order for 100 million doses, with the option to purchase 500 million additional doses. The EU ordered 200 million doses with an option for another 100 million. Japan ordered 120 million doses and the U.K. 30 million. Countries in South America and in the Asia-Pacific region also have placed significant orders.

Employees work an extra 26 hours a month when remote – EBN

Only months ago, a growing number of businesses were experimenting with or adopting a four-day workweek, but remote work policies imposed by the coronavirus pandemic have pivoted this trend in the opposite direction.

Full-time employees are working an extra 26 hours a month when remote, adding nearly an extra day of work to the week, according to a new report from Owl Labs, a video conferencing technology company.

The increase in work hours may be due to employees needing more time to adapt to new changes businesses have made in response to the pandemic, says Frank Weishaupt, CEO of Owl Labs. Having the workplace always available – as employees work right in their house – is also blurring the lines between work and home, possibly adding to their hours worked.

… Employees may also be filling in the time they spent commuting with more time at work. The report found employees were spending an average of 40 minutes daily on their commute.

But along with increased work hours are increased levels of stress. Almost 1 in 2 employees are worried that staying remote could negatively affect their career, according to the findings. During the coronavirus pandemic, 91% percent of employees say they’ve experienced moderate to extreme stress while working from home, according to a survey by Ginger, a mental health benefits platform.

Rents Plummet on Urban Apartments – National Real Estate Investor

Thousands of apartments stood empty in August 2020 that had been occupied only a few months before in urban cores across the country, including in previously white-hot markets like San Francisco and New York.

Desperate owners have been dropping rents and offering eye-popping concessions and optimizing on-site amenities in attempts to lure tenants. But it’s not nearly been enough to offset the trend of residents relocating to more spacious and less expensive markets as well others, including many young renters, who have lost jobs and moved back home to live with their parents.

In addition, as the economic chaos caused by the coronavirus cuts into the demand for apartments, developers continue to finish new luxury apartment towers downtown that are fighting to attract the renters that are left.

San Francisco and New York City are not the only damaged downtowns. Core urban markets across the U.S. are suffering from higher vacancy rates and bigger cuts in rental rates than suburban areas in the same metropolitan areas.

“Downtowns are getting hit the hardest. All of the top six markets had negative downtown absorption,” says Andrew Rybczynski, managing consultant for CoStar Advisory Services. “We’ve seen strength in two areas: the suburbs and cheaper commuter markets near major metros.”

Regulators, experts take up thorny vaccine study issues – AP

The U.S. regulators who will decide the fate of COVID-19 vaccines are taking an unusual step: Asking outside scientists if their standards are high enough.

The Food and Drug Administration may have to decide by year’s end whether to allow use of the first vaccines against the virus. Thursday, a federal advisory committee pulls back the curtain on that decision process, debating whether the guidelines FDA has set for vaccine developers are rigorous enough.

“We will not cut corners, and we will only use science and data to make that determination,” FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn pledged at a meeting of the Milken Institute Wednesday.

Exactly how much data his agency needs to be sure a vaccine is safe and effective is a key question for the advisers. An even bigger one: If the FDA allows emergency use of a vaccine before final testing is finished, will that destroy chances of ever learning just how well that shot — and maybe competitors still being studied — really work?

“We can’t lose sight of the fact that it is in our societal interest to see these trials to completion,” said Dr. Luciana Borio, a former FDA acting chief scientist who will be watching the advisers’ debate.

Plus, multiple vaccines are being studied — shots made with different technologies that each have pros and cons.

“The first vaccine is not necessarily the best vaccine,” cautioned Dr. M. Miles Braun, a former FDA scientist now with Georgetown University School of Medicine. If the trials aren’t allowed to finish, it may be difficult or impossible to ever know for sure.

Stressing freedom, vaccine opponents rebranding in virus era – AP

Years before this year’s anti-mask and reopening demonstrations, vaccine opponents were working on reinventing their image around a rallying cry of civil liberties and medical freedom.

Now, boosted by the pandemic and the political climate, their rebranding is appealing to a different subset of society invested in civil liberties – and, some health officials say, undercutting public health efforts during a critical moment for vaccines.

A new analysis from several institutions has found that between 2009 to 2019, conversations around civil liberties in the anti-vaccine community had increased, with Facebook pages framing vaccines as an issue of values and civil rights.

Researchers reviewed over 200 Facebook pages supporting vaccine refusal for their paper published in the American Journal of Public Health this month. David A. Broniatowski, the paper’s lead author, said current protests against government lockdowns and masks took their pages directly from the anti-vaccine playbook.

“We could’ve seen it coming,” said Broniatowski, an associate professor at George Washington University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. “This was all happening right under our noses, and it’s continuing to happen.”

A Rising Number Of U.S. Children Have The Option Of In-Person School – NPR

As of Election Day, the report says:

• 37.8% of students will be attending schools that only offer virtual learning.
• 35.7% of students will be attending schools offering traditional, in-person learning every day.
• The remainder, 26.5% will be attending schools that offer a hybrid schedule of two or three in-person days per week.

From Labor Day to Election Day, Burbio calculates the percentage of students with access to at least some in-person school will have grown by 22 percentage points, from 38% to 60%. There are large regional variations, with states like Texas and Florida offering full-time, in-person learning to more than 75% of students, while California, Washington, Maryland, Oregon and Hawaii have more than 90% of their students learning only online.

Columbia report: US could have avoided 130,000 COVID deaths with better response – Newsweek

A new report from Columbia University researchers finds that at least 130,000 coronavirus deaths in the United States could have been avoided if the U.S. had responded to the virus as well as a group of other high-income countries.

The report compares the per capita death rate in the U.S. from the virus with six other high-income countries: South Korea, Japan, Australia, Germany, Canada and France.

It finds that if the U.S. had the same rate of death as France, it would have about 55,000 fewer deaths, while if it had South Korea’s rate it would have about 215,000 fewer.

“We therefore posit that had the U.S. government implemented an ‘averaged’ approach that mirrored these countries, the U.S. might have limited fatalities to between 38,000 to 85,000 lives – suggesting that a minimum of 130,000 COVID-19 deaths might have been avoidable given alternate policies, implementation, and leadership,” the report states.

… If the U.S. had the same death rate as its neighbor Canada, about 132,000 deaths would have been avoided, the report finds.

To explain the disproportionately high number of deaths in the U.S., the report points to a number of shortcomings in the Trump administration’s response that have also drawn widespread criticism from other experts.

Warning for COVID Long Haulers From Polio Survivors – Medscape

Polio is considered a disease of the past. A vaccine for the virus that causes it was developed in the 1950s, and the disease was eradicated in the United States by 1979. But there are still up to half a million polio survivors in the country. And, like Eulberg, many of them have developed new pain and disability that can be traced to the disease they thought they had recovered from decades before – a condition that has become known as postpolio syndrome.

It is still an under-researched and poorly understood syndrome. There’s no definitive way to diagnose it, its cause remains unclear, and no treatment is known to slow or halt its progression. Yet there are effective ways to manage symptoms, say physicians who treat postpolio patients.

The syndrome is thought to affect between 20% and 85% of those who have recovered from the disease, meaning the condition likely affects tens of thousands of people in the United States and many more around the world. Their experience is a timely reminder that epidemics can ripple through the decades, sometimes in unexpected ways, even after the pathogens that cause them are eradicated.

According to diagnostic criteria developed by the March of Dimes, postpolio syndrome is new muscle weakness or decreased endurance that occurs in people with a history of paralytic polio, after partial or complete recovery from the infection and a long interval – typically 15 to 30 years – of stable functioning. The weakness comes on gradually, persists for at least a year, progresses slowly, and can be accompanied by fatigue, muscle wasting, and muscle and joint pain. Some patients also develop breathing problems and difficulty swallowing.

The worst virus outbreaks in the U.S. are now in rural areas. – New York Times

With the U.S. case count and hospitalization rates approaching a third peak, none of the country’s biggest hotspots are currently in a large city. Almost all the counties with the largest outbreaks have populations under 50,000, and most have populations under 10,000. Nearly all are in the Midwest or the Mountain West.

Among the counties with the worst per capita outbreaks, seven of the top 20 were in South Dakota – six of which have fewer than 10,000 people.

Leading the nation was Norton, Kan., – population 5,486 – with an average of 44 new daily cases a day per 10,000 people.

The shift to rural areas is a stark contrast to earlier in the pandemic, when previous peaks saw virus cases concentrated mainly in cities and suburbs. The current surge is the most geographically dispersed yet, and it is hitting hard remote counties that often lack a hospital or other critical health care resources.

Since late summer, per capita case and death rates in rural areas have outpaced those in metropolitan areas.

The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts

Spain has become the first country in western Europe to accumulate more than 1 million confirmed infections

Ireland is already focused on saving Christmas, but unless the country can get the pandemic under control, there won’t be much Christmas cheer this year in Galway, Cork or Dublin.

Sri Lanka’s main fish market has been closed and a curfew widened as an outbreak grows.

AstraZeneca’s Brazilian vaccine trial will go on despite a participant’s death, as sources say the person didn’t receive the active vaccine.

Coronavirus challenge trials, like the one planned in Britain, will likely have “limited” relevance in the real world.

Spain, France Each Exceed 1 Million Confirmed Coronavirus Cases

New law in Ethiopia threatens two years in jail for failing to wear a mask

Wikipedia and the W.H.O. join forces to combat Covid-19 misinformation.

France expands its curfew to cover two-thirds of its population.

Greece Imposes Compulsory Mask Use, Nighttime Curfews to Combat Covid Spread

Two-hour coronavirus test to be made available at Narita airport

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

In an unusual move, FDA’s vaccine advisory committee meeting on Thursday will be streamed live on YouTube, in part to increase public confidence in vaccines.

Patients are complaining that doctors in Georgia and other states are not wearing face masks during their appointments.

Preventive cancer screenings plummeted during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with colon and breast cancer screenings down 75% and 85%, respectively, and remained depressed through the summer, a study in JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics found.

Risk of COVID transmission is low on planes — as long as everyone wears masks.

An ethical path to herd immunity? Vaccination is the only way, one expert said.

Housing Boom: Sales of Million-Dollar Homes Double

Alabama lieutenant governor tests positive for COVID-19

Biden’s Big Health Agenda Won’t Be Easy to Achieve

Utah Sees Record COVID Hospitalizations As New Cases Rise

Amid Stimulus Deadlock, Nearly 1 Million Lose COVID Unemployment Benefits

Puerto Rico’s 911 call centers close after employees test positive.

Houston teachers stage a sickout over virus safety after the district loosens its closure policy.

OSHA is under fire over its regulation of meatpacking plants.

Southwest will start selling middle seats again in December

Moderna completes enrollment for late-stage vaccine trial

It may take a decade before business travel begins to expand after its coronavirus-driven slowdown, according to Southwest CEO Gary Kelly.

Health Secretary Alex Azar Says All Americans Who Want a Vaccine Could Get One By Spring 2021

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

September 2020 Leading Economic Index Somewhat Improves

September 2020 Headline Existing Home Sales Now Has Four Straight Months Of Significant Sales Gain

October 2020 Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Marginally Improves

17 October 2020 New York Fed Weekly Economic Index (WEI): Index Improves

17 October 2020 Initial Unemployment Claims Improve – Downward Revision Of Previous Two Weeks Of Claims

COVID-19 Has Temporarily Supercharged China’s Export Machine

How The COVID Pandemic Accelerated The Militarization Of The Western Empire

Most US Farmers Remain Loyal To Trump Despite Pain From Trade Wars And COVID-19

Coronavirus INTERACTIVE Charts

include($_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’].’/pages/coronavirus.htm’); ?>

Human coronaviruses ‘inactivated’ by mouthwash, oral rinses

include(“/home/aleta/public_html/files/ad_openx.htm”); ?>

Permanent link to most recent post on this topic