Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average is 17.9 % HIGHER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago. U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 13.3 % 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;
- The U.S. 7 day rolling average of new cases is also at record levels
- Meadows doubles down on White House pandemic response: ‘We’re not going to control it’
- Fauci says the “primary” goal of a Covid-19 vaccine is to prevent people from getting sick
- Nurses make up most of the hospitalized Covid-19 cases among health care workers
- Nations mulling Gilead’s COVID drug should consider trial flop, too
- Face Shields Staved Off COVID-19, hospital-associated infections at Texas Hospital
- AstraZeneca says its vaccine produces immune response in older adults
- Fauci Says the First Wave of COVID-19 Never Ended in the U.S.
The recent worsening of the trendlines for new cases should be attributed to going back to college/university, cooler weather causing more indoor activities, fatigue from wearing masks / social distancing, 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, avoid crowds, 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 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.
Hospitalizations (grey line) and Mortality (green line) For Week ending 17OCT2020
source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html
Coronavirus News You May Have Missed
Nurses make up most of the hospitalized Covid-19 cases among health care workers – CNN
Nearly 6% of all hospitalized patients with Covid-19 work in health care and most in that group were nurses, according to a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 4% of health care workers who were hospitalized died.
The CDC-led Covid research team reviewed the charts of nearly 7,000 Covid-19 patients who were in the hospital between March 1 and May 31.
Most were women. A large proportion were Black. These patients skewed much younger than the general Covid-19 patient population. The median age of a health care professional who was hospitalized was 49, compared to 62 for the country as a whole, the team reported in in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
Nearly 90% of hospitalized health care professionals with Covid-19 had at least one underlying medical condition. The most common, reported at nearly 73%, was obesity.
In addition to infection prevention and control efforts, the CDC researchers said there is a need for prevention and management programs to help people control their weight. Obesity significantly increases the risk for severe Covid-19 illness.
This research is in keeping with earlier studies. Research in China also found that people in nursing-related occupations accounted for the most cases among the health care profession.
Nurses may be most at risk of being exposed to the novel coronavirus because they have extended cumulative exposure time. Nurses have the most close and frequent contact with sick patients.
Meadows doubles down on White House pandemic response: ‘We’re not going to control it’ – The Hill
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on Monday rejected the notion that the Trump administration has given up on fighting the spread of the coronavirus, but then doubled down on his controversial remarks that the U.S. will not control the virus.
“We’re going to defeat the virus; we’re not going to control it,” Meadows told reporters outside the White House. “We will try to contain it as best we can, but … we need to make sure that we have therapeutics and vaccines.”
Meadows was seeking to defend comments he made Sunday, when he told CNN “we’re not going to control the pandemic,” an extraordinary admission that the administration has essentially given up on fighting the spread of the coronavirus.
He also told CNN’s Jake Tapper that, “We are gonna control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigations.”
ACEP Rebuts President Trump’s False Statements about Overcounting COVID-19 Deaths – Emergency Physicians
In response to President Trump’s baseless claims about physicians miscounting deaths due to COVID-19, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) released the following statement:
“On behalf of the nation’s emergency physicians, ACEP is appalled by President Trump’s reckless and false assertions that physicians are overcounting deaths related to COVID-19. Emergency physicians and other health care workers have risked their lives day in and day out for almost a year battling the greatest public health crisis in a generation-all while watching countless patients die alone, going to work without sufficient protection equipment, and struggling with crushing anxiety about getting sick or spreading the virus to their loved ones.
To imply that emergency physicians would inflate the number of deaths from this pandemic to gain financially is offensive, especially as many are actually under unprecedented financial strain as they continue to bear the brunt of COVID-19. These baseless claims not only do a disservice to our health care heroes but promulgate the dangerous wave of misinformation which continues to hinder our nation’s efforts to get the pandemic under control and allow our nation to return to normalcy.”
[editor’s note: excess death statistics align fairly well with coronavirus deaths]
WHO: Nations mulling Gilead’s COVID drug should consider trial flop, too – Reuters
Health officials reviewing Gilead Science Inc’s remdesivir against COVID-19 should consider all evidence, including a trial in which the medicine failed, before giving it the green light, the top WHO scientist said on Friday.
U.S. regulators appeared not to have done so when approving the drug this week, Soumya Swaminathan told a news conference.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved Gilead’s antiviral drug for treating patients hospitalized with COVID-19, making it the first and only drug approved for the disease in the United States.
The FDA decision came a week after the release of the results of the World Health Organization’s Solidarity trial, which concluded remdesivir has little or no impact on a patient’s chances of surviving COVID-19.
The FDA said its approval was based on three trials, including a 1,062-patient study by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, which found that remdesivir reduced hospital stays to 10 days from 15 days, and helped reduce the risk of death in some patients who were receiving oxygen. The drug did not improve overall survival.
… “The Solidarity results do not refute these findings of benefit to patients,” the FDA said in a statement posted on its website.
Remdesivir is also approved for treatment of patients with severe COVID-19 in Japan, Taiwan, India, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and the European Union. Gilead is allowing generic companies to manufacture the drug for supply to 127 low-income countries.
[editor’s note: we are in a period of reckless and non-peer reviewed papers flying around left and right. At this point, I can find a study to support any point of view. I am beginning to see WHO as a politically motivated organization in a period when politics should not be in a decision making process.]
Face Shields Staved Off COVID-19, hospital-associated infections at Texas Hospital – MedPage
A program of universal face shields for healthcare personnel (HCP) at one Texas hospital was not only tied to fewer COVID-19 infections, but fewer hospital-associated infections (HAI), a researcher said.
In the pre-intervention period, from April 17-July, 5, HCP infection rate increased from 0% to 12.9%, but it declined to 2.3% during the intervention period, July 6-July 26, reported Mayar Al Mohajer, MD, MBA, of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.
Moreover, in the pre-intervention period, HAI cases rose from 0 to 7, but dropped back down to 0 during the intervention period, he reported in a late-breaking presentation at the virtual IDWeek.
Al Mohajer noted how the approximately 500-bed hospital, with over 6,000 employees, implemented infection control measures in April. This included surveillance testing and biweekly testing of HCPs in “high-risk units,” such as the emergency department, the transplant unit, and the COVID unit. Asymptomatic patients were also tested on admission and day 7.
… While the hospital had already implemented most of the CDC’s infection prevention measures, the one thing they had not done was implementing face shields. Face shields “reduce the potential of autoinoculation, protect the portal of entry,” and prior research has shown that they aided in preventing aerosol transmission, he noted.
“When they [studies] looked specifically at small particle aerosols, face shields blocked 68%” of them, he said.
[editor’s note: there have been studies in the past where face shields combined with masks improved protection against contracting COVID-19 – however, face shields alone did nothing to improve protection]
AstraZeneca says its vaccine produces immune response in older adults – The Hill
AstraZeneca said Monday that its potential coronavirus vaccine provokes an immune response in older adults, which it touted as a positive development as clinical trials proceed.
The immune response in older adults was similar to that in younger people, the company said, and adverse responses to the vaccine, known as reactogenicity, was lower in older people.
“It is encouraging to see immunogenicity responses were similar between older and younger adults and that reactogenicity was lower in older adults, where the COVID-19 disease severity is higher,” an AstraZeneca spokesperson said. “The results further build the body of evidence for the safety and immunogenicity of [the vaccine].”
Fauci Says the First Wave of COVID-19 Never Ended in the U.S. – Newsweek
On Monday, Anthony Fauci said the first wave of the coronavirus infections in the U.S. never entirely ended and called the current upticks in COVID-19 cases across the nation only “an elongated and an exacerbation of the original first wave.”
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told Yahoo Finance, “We’ve never really had waves, in the sense of up and then down to a good baseline. It’s been up and wavering up and down till, now, we’re at the highest baseline we’ve ever been, which is really quite precarious.”
Colleges slash budgets during the pandemic. – New York Times
As it resurges across the United States, the coronavirus is forcing universities large and small to make deep and possibly lasting cuts to close widening budget shortfalls.
Though many colleges imposed stopgap measures such as hiring freezes and early retirements to save money in the spring, the persistence of the economic downturn is taking a devastating financial toll, pushing many to lay off or furlough employees, delay graduate admissions and even cut or consolidate core programs like liberal arts departments.
Ohio Wesleyan University is eliminating 18 majors. The University of Florida’s trustees this month took the first steps toward letting the school furlough faculty. The University of California, Berkeley, has paused admissions to its Ph.D. programs in anthropology, sociology and art history.
“We haven’t seen a budget crisis like this in a generation,” said Robert Kelchen, a Seton Hall University associate professor of higher education who has been tracking the administrative response to the pandemic. “There’s nothing off-limits at this point.”
State governments from Washington to Connecticut, tightening their own belts, have told public universities to expect steep cuts in appropriations. Students and families, facing skyrocketing unemployment, have balked at the prospect of paying full fare for largely online instruction, opting instead for gap years or less expensive schools closer to home.
Falling enrollment, lost tuition puts colleges in extreme financial distress – CNBC
Sharp enrollment declines due to the pandemic have taken a severe financial toll on many colleges and universities, and the impact may last for years to come.
To that point, 67% of higher education leaders said decreased revenue from tuition and student housing are the biggest challenges they now face, according to a recent poll from consulting firm NEPC’s endowments and foundations practice.
Overall, undergraduate enrollment fell 4% this year, according to separate data from National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, with incoming freshmen accounting for the biggest drop – sinking 16% from last fall.
For many colleges and universities, the consequences could be severe, according to Sam Pollack, a partner in NEPC’s Endowments and Foundations practice.
“The coronavirus pandemic created the most severe liquidity crisis higher education has faced since the global financial crisis,” he said.
As many schools moved to a hybrid approach to education, with a combination of in-person and online classes, the number of students living on campuses is also down substantially.
Nearly three-quarters of those polled by NEPC said occupancy in school-owned housing – another a critical source of revenue – declined this year, and about one-quarter said it decreased more than 50%.
Fauci says the “primary” goal of a Covid-19 vaccine is to prevent people from getting sick – CNN
The main goal for a coronavirus vaccine is to prevent people from getting ill, and actually preventing infection is secondary, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday.
“The primary thing you want to do is that if people get infected, prevent them from getting sick, and if you prevent them from getting sick, you will ultimately prevent them from getting seriously ill,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a Yahoo Finance interview.
He said that a vaccine that prevents infection would be even better.
“If the vaccine also allows you to prevent initial infection, that would be great,” Fauci said. “But what I would settle for – and all of my colleagues would settle for – is the primary endpoint to prevent clinically recognizable disease.”
[editor’s note: I believe the primary purpose of the vaccine is to prevent hospitalization and death]
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
1 in 5 Russian Lawmakers Have Had Coronavirus
Buckling under a resurgence of the virus on the continent, the Spanish government declared a national state of emergency that includes an overnight curfew in hopes of not repeating the spring’s near collapse of the country’s hospitals.
Italy has imposed at least a month of new restrictions to fight rising infections, shutting down gyms, pools and movie theaters and telling cafes and restaurants they must close at 6 p.m. daily.
Pediatricians are urging the British government to reverse course and provide free meals for poor children during the school holidays as the COVID-19 pandemic pushes more families into poverty.
With the virus battering Europe with renewed force and as winter looms, its restaurant industry is struggling. Spring lockdowns already devastated many eateries, and now a new set of restrictions is dealing a second blow. More than just jobs and revenue are at stake – restaurants lie at the heart of European life.
As COVID-19 Cases Spike, Pneumonia Vaccine Demand Rockets and Europe Runs Low
Europe’s virus numbers look like they did in the spring: high and getting higher.
Austria Considers Second Nationwide Lockdown After Record Weekend of Coronavirus Cases
New French COVID cases could be 100,000 per day: government medical advisor
India sees lowest single-day jump in Covid tally, deaths in 3 months
Australia’s Victoria logs zero COVID-19 cases, a first since July
China is testing millions of people in Xinjiang for Covid-19 after one asymptomatic case found
Spain’s PM Sanchez Seeks to Keep New State of Emergency in Place Until May
Health authorities in Mexico acknowledged that the nation’s death toll is far higher than previously reported. Officials said at least 139,153 deaths are now attributable to COVID-19, much higher than Mexico’s official, test-confirmed death toll of about 89,000.
Native Americans battle COVID-19, voting obstacles
The following are additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Hospital bed availability in Nashville declined to 5%, with transmission rates highest since early July.
A housekeeper at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center who contracted COVID-19 describes how her experience was very different from the president’s.
HHS officials shelved a plan under which Santa Claus performers would push COVID-19 vaccines in exchange for getting early access themselves.
El Paso issues stay at home order, nightly curfew to curb spread of COVID-19
Delta adds hundreds of passengers to no-fly list over mask policy violations
COVID Hospitalizations Are Soaring in These U.S. States
California Gov. Newsom’s Thanksgiving Rules Blasted By Celebrities
Texas Turns Convention Center Into Makeshift Hospital Amid COVID Surge
Newark’s mayor says nonessential businesses must close by 8 p.m. daily, starting Tuesday.
Kansas counties with mask mandates had half the rate of new infections, a study finds.
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic With Hyperlinks
October 2020 Texas Manufacturing Improves
September 2020 Headline New Home Sales Slow
Building An Inclusive Recovery In The Middle East And Central Asia
Sick Of COVID-19? Here’s Why You Might Have Pandemic Fatigue
Warning to Readers
The amount of politically biased articles on the internet continues to increase. And studies and opinions of the experts continue to contradict other studies and expert opinions. Honestly, it is difficult to believe anything anymore. A study usually cannot establish cause and effect – but only correlation. Be very careful what you believe about this pandemic.
I assemble this coronavirus update daily – sifting through the posts on the internet. I try to avoid politically slanted posts (mostly from CNN, New York Times, and the Washington Post) and can usually find unslanted posts on that subject from other sources on the internet. I wait to publish posts on subjects that I cannot validate across several sources. But after all this extra work, I do not know if I have conveyed the REAL facts. It is my job to provide information so that you have the facts necessary – and then it is up to readers to draw conclusions.
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 although there is now a discussion of whether T-Cells play a part in immunity [which means one might have immunity without antibodies]
- 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? [current thinking is that they are becoming a major source of the pandemic spread]
- 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 farm workers. 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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