Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average is 25.5 % HIGHER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago. U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 5.5 % HIGHER than the rolling average one week ago. U.S. hospitalizations due to COVID-19 are now 11.8 % HIGHER than the rolling average one week ago. Today’s headlines include;
- Daily new cases in the U.S. set an all-time record of 88,130
- Daily new cases in the World is the second-worst in history at 494,867
- The Formula to Make Remdesivir Is Available to Anyone on GitubH
- Apartment Prices Are Crashing In Major Cities Worldwide
- Regeneron halts trial of COVID-19 antibody drug in sickest hospitalized patients
- Antibody drugs seem to work. But the virus is moving faster than we can make them
- Is There Any Safe Way to Socialize Inside This Winter?
- Is Your Supermarket a COVID-19 Hotspot?
- Hospital Bills for Uninsured COVID Patients Are Covered, but No One Tells Them
- One boy with COVID-19 likely led to 116 positive cases at a Wisconsin summer camp, CDC report shows
- Roche to make hundreds of millions of COVID-19 rapid tests monthly
- San Francisco curbs virus but once-vibrant downtown is empty
- Scientists propose tax on meat and livestock to help avert future pandemics
The recent worsening of the trendlines for new cases should be attributed to going back to college/university, cooler weather causing more indoor activities, possible mutation of the virus, 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 – and 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 if you can maintain social distance.
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Hospitalizations (grey line) and Mortality (green line) For Week ending 24OCT2020
source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidview/index.html
Coronavirus News You May Have Missed
The Formula to Make Remdesivir Is Available to Anyone on GitubH – Newsweek
Last week, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first treatment for Covid-19. The drug is called Veklury, although most people refer to it by its scientific name, remdesivir. But what very few people knew is that the recipe for manufacturing the drug has been hiding more or less in plain sight-at absolutely no cost-on the online code hosting platform GitHub.
Of course, one would need the hardware to recreate the almost 400-atom molecule formula. But one would imagine that Gilead, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures Veklury, would like to keep that recipe secret, considering it has brought in $873 million in revenue this year so far. With the announcement that Veklury would be ready for international distribution by the end of October, one might expect that revenue to be only a fraction of what it could reap.
San Francisco curbs virus but once-vibrant downtown is empty – AP
Before the pandemic, Senor Sisig food trucks were a common sight in downtown San Francisco, dishing out Filipino fusion tacos and burritos to long lines of workers who spilled out of office towers at lunch.
The trucks now are gone, forced into the suburbs because there’s practically no one around to feed in the city’s center.
As the coronavirus pandemic transforms San Francisco’s workplace, legions of tech workers have left, able to work remotely from anywhere. Families have fled for roomy suburban homes with backyards. The exodus has pushed rents in the prohibitively expensive city to their lowest in years. Tourists are scarce, and the famed cable cars sit idle.
The food trucks, like many other businesses, are wondering when things will bounce back.
“Is it ever going to get back to normal, is it ever going to be as busy as it was – and will that be next year, or in 10 years?” said Evan Kidera, CEO of Senor Sisig.
On Tuesday, more of San Francisco reopened for business after Mayor London Breed proudly declared last week that the city’s low virus case numbers allowed it to move into California’s most permissive reopening tier. That means more people can go back to the office, eat indoors at restaurants, visit museums and soon even enjoy a beer or cocktail – outdoors – at a bona fide drinks-only bar.
It is the only urban county in the state to hit this tier, joining a handful of sparsely populated rural ones.
Apartment Prices Are Crashing In Major Cities Worldwide – ZeroHedge
Covid’s effect on cities is starting to hit the price of rentals – and it’s not just in the United States.
Apartment prices in some of the richest cities in the world are starting to show the effects of an exodus out of crowded city areas in order to move to more spacious suburbs. A slowing ebb and flow of international students, combined with a younger generation growing disinterested in paying city-price premiums, are both helping the demand side of the rental equation dry up.
Tim Lawless, Asia Pacific head of research for data provider CoreLogic Inc., told Bloomberg: “You’re daft if you aren’t negotiating lower rent right now. Supply is high and occupancy has fallen off a cliff.”‘
Renters across the country and renegotiating with their landlords. For example, Christine Chung just negotiated a 9% reduction in rent for the house she lives in in Sydney, Australia.
She told Bloomberg: “I’ll push for another rent reduction at the end of the lease. The market has changed.”
In New York, Manhattan apartments are the “cheapest they’ve been since 2013”.
The number of listings in the city have tripled from a year ago and the city’s median rent has fallen 11%. Studio rents have plunged even further, disproportionately.
In San Francisco, the median monthly rent for a studio fell 31% in September from a year prior, to $2,285. This far outpaced the national average of a 0.5% drop.
Death Rates Have Dropped for Seriously Ill Covid Patients – New York Times
The coronavirus struck the United States earlier this year with devastating force. In April, it killed more than 10,000 people in New York City. By early May, nearly 50,000 nursing home residents and their caregivers across the country had died.
But as the virus continued its rampage over the summer and fall, infecting nearly 8.5 million Americans, survival rates, even of seriously ill patients, appeared to be improving. At one New York hospital system where 30 percent of coronavirus patients died in March, the death rate had dropped to 3 percent by the end of June.
Doctors in England observed a similar trend. “In late March, four in 10 people in intensive care were dying. By the end of June, survival was over 80 percent,” said John M. Dennis, a University of Exeter Medical School researcher who is first author of a paper about improved survival rates in Britain, accepted for publication in the journal Critical Care Medicine. “It was really quite dramatic.”
Though the virus has been changing slowly as it spreads, and some have speculated that it has become more easily transmissible, most scientists say there is no solid evidence that it has become either less virulent, or more virulent. As elderly people sheltered inside and took precautions to avoid infection, however, more of the hospitalized patients were younger adults, who were generally healthier and more resilient. By the end of August, the average patient was under 40.
Were the lower death rates simply a function of the demographic changes, or a reflection of real progress and medical advances in treatment that blunted the impact of the new pathogen?
Researchers at NYU Langone Health who zeroed in on this question, analyzing the outcomes of more than 5,000 patients hospitalized at the system’s three hospitals from March through August, concluded the improvement was real, not just a function of changing demographics. Even when they controlled for differences in the patients’ age, sex, race, underlying health problems and severity of Covid symptoms – like blood oxygen levels at admission – they found that death rates had dropped significantly, to 7.6 percent in August, down from 25.6 percent in March.
Scientists propose tax on meat and livestock to help avert future pandemics – Reuters
Policy makers should consider levying taxes on livestock production and meat consumption to reduce the risk of future deadly pandemics, international experts said on Thursday, as they published a study calling for better protection of nature.
“Over-consumption of meat… (is) bad for our health. It’s unsustainable in terms of environmental impact. It’s also a driver of pandemic risk,” Peter Daszak, a zoologist who chaired the study, told journalists at its launch.
Outbreaks of influenza viruses and new pandemic strains have emerged largely because of “incredibly dense production of poultry and pigs in some parts of the world, driven by our global consumption patterns”, he added.
Breeding cattle for beef is another well-known cause of deforestation and ecosystem destruction in Latin America.
The study warned that pandemics will emerge more often, spread faster, cost more and kill more people than COVID-19 without bold action to halt the habitat destruction that helps viruses hop from wildlife to humans.
It also urged governments to step up efforts to avert pandemics, instead of responding after they hit.
[editor’s note: Never let a good crisis go to waste. This has nothing to do with the coronavirus pandemic and everything to do with the green movement.]
Antibody drugs seem to work. But the virus is moving faster than we can make them – STAT
The Covid-19 pandemic teaches one lesson, over and over: The virus is moving faster than we are.
That difficult message was driven home Wednesday evening with news that an antibody cocktail developed by the drug maker Regeneron – the same cocktail used to treat President Trump – reduced infected patients’ need to visit the doctor, virtually or in person, or go to the hospital by 57%.
Those are encouraging results – and, if authorized, the cocktail could be an important tool in beating back the virus. But right now, there are only 50,000 doses available, a pittance in comparison with the number of infections across the country.
“It is deeply unfortunate that we head into fall without enough doses of this drug,” Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, tweeted after Regeneron released its news. “Many of us were talking about this as early as March. Regeneron did extraordinary work to secure their own manufacturing, but we needed a concerted industrial effort to get the supply we needed.”
Indeed, Gottlieb penned op-eds in the spring and summer calling for a government-backed effort to manufacture the antibodies in large volumes – akin to the massive effort to develop experimental, and still unproven, Covid-19 vaccines. He reiterated that action needs to be taken now to accumulate sufficient supply to treat high-risk patients.
Roche to make hundreds of millions of COVID-19 rapid tests monthly: CEO – Reuters
Swiss drugmaker Roche plans to boost rapid COVID-19 antigen test production to hundreds of millions monthly, including possible saliva tests, Chief Executive Severin Schwan said on Thursday, acknowledging the fierceness of the pandemic’s second wave took him by surprise.
Schwan said Roche’s production of so-called PCR tests for the new coronavirus, which are more accurate than the antigen tests and have been a testing mainstay since the pandemic began, will likely never exceed “double digit” millions monthly, due to capacity limits.
Consequently, as coronavirus cases soar globally and European countries including Germany and France introduce new restrictions, they are turning more to antigen tests from Roche, its South Korean partner SD Biosensor Inc., and rivals like Abbott Laboratories and Siemens Healthineers to keep up with demand now outstripping supply.
“The market is totally sold out,” Schwan said on a call with journalists, adding Roche is now scrutinizing antigen tests that rely on saliva — rather than the uncomfortable nasal swab — for their accuracy, in hopes of adding them to its lineup.
Two weeks ago, Schwan said he expects Roche to meet its full-year sales growth targets, in large part because he did not see a renewed “healthcare lockdown” where hospitals turn away non-emergency cases and patients avoid doctor visits.
Is There Any Safe Way to Socialize Inside This Winter? – Time
Any time you invite someone into your home, you’re increasing your risk of catching or passing on the virus, since people can be infectious without showing symptoms. It’s still best to see people outdoors or virtually.
But if you do decide to have an indoor gathering, try to replicate the things that make outdoor hangs safer, suggests Dr. Beth Thielen, an assistant professor of pediatrics and infectious disease at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Pick as large a space as you can and open windows for ventilation. You should also keep the group small and try to wear masks the whole time, Thielen says.
If it’s too cold to open all the windows, switch up which ones are open, says Lidia Morawska, a World Health Organization consultant and aerosol expert from Australia’s Queensland University of Technology. Studies have shown that people sitting downwind of an infected person are the most likely to get infected, so mixing up airflow may help neutralize risk. “Don’t stay in one place. Mix. Move. Change how you open the windows,” Morawska suggests.
The length of your exposure matters too, Miller says. “If you have really high levels [of particles in the air] but you’re breathing them for a shorter time, your risk is going to be lower,” she says. Miller says she’s invited friends over for 30-minute catch-up sessions, ideally wearing masks, to get in some socializing without spending too long together.
[editor’s note: this post is worth a full read. It goes on to talk about going into public places, quarantine pods, your kids playing with friends, and family gatherings.]
Is Your Supermarket a COVID-19 Hotspot? – Medscape
Among 104 workers at one Boston-area supermarket, 20% had positive viral assays for SARS-CoV-2, of whom three-quarters were asymptomatic, researchers said.
An adjusted analysis found employees with direct exposure to customers were five times more likely to test positive, albeit with a wide confidence interval (aOR 5.1, 95% CI 1.1-24.8), reported Justin Yang, MD, of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, and colleagues in Occupational & Environmental Medicine.
Moreover, the prevalence of anxiety among the workers was 24%, with a depression prevalence of 8%, they noted.
Yang’s group noted that essential workers, such as first responders and people working in retail, cannot participate in risk reduction strategies, and thus have higher potential risk of exposure. Not only that, but “they may become a significant source of transmission for the community they serve.”
But while much of the research has focused on healthcare, very few examined other essential workers. And while previous studies reported SARS-CoV-2 infections in supermarkets, “no study has examined SARS-CoV-2 exposure risks or psychological stress among grocery retail essential employees.”
The supermarket workers analyzed in the current study had undergone three days of clinical evaluation and nasopharyngeal swab testing in early May 2020. Demographic information, SARS-CoV-2-related exposure, symptoms within the last 1-2 weeks, personal protective equipment usage and mental health surveys were covered on a paper-based questionnaire prior to screening. The mental health screening tools included the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and General Anxiety Disorder-7.
One boy with COVID-19 likely led to 116 positive cases at a Wisconsin summer camp, CDC report shows – USA Today
One boy who arrived at a southeastern Wisconsin summer camp unknowingly infected with COVID-19 likely spread the virus to 116 people, a new report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows.
Between July 2 and Aug. 11, one infected camper who had tested negative before arriving led to COVID-19 diagnoses for nearly 80% of the camp’s attendees, according to the report that was released Thursday.
On July 28, state health officials tested nearly all attendees at a faith-based camp for boys after a small group of children who were in close contact with the boy became sick or tested positive. At least one confirmed case was found in every dormitory room and yurt over the course of the outbreak, the report said.
The CDC did not identify the camp but described it as a boys’ overnight summer school retreat that included 152 high school-aged boys, counselors, and staff members from 21 states and territories and two foreign countries.
All illnesses were mild to moderate, and no hospitalizations or deaths occurred, the CDC said.
Regeneron halts trial of COVID-19 antibody drug in sickest hospitalized patients – The Hill
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals said Friday it has paused a clinical study of its antibody drug to treat some of the sickest COVID-19 patients because of a potential safety concern.
The recommendation from an independent monitoring board marks the second time a clinical trial of an experimental coronavirus antibody drug has been paused because of safety issues.
Regeneron said it is pausing enrollment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients receiving mechanical ventilation or intense oxygen after the independent monitoring committee observed “a potential safety signal and an unfavorable risk/benefit profile at this time.”
The monitoring board recommended collecting additional data on the patients already enrolled.
The pause does not impact other studies of Regeneron’s antibody drug, which is under consideration for emergency use authorization in mild-to-moderate outpatients at high risk for poor outcomes.
Earlier this week, the company said a separate study definitively showed a significant reduction in viral load and the need for further medical visits.
Hospital Bills for Uninsured COVID Patients Are Covered, but No One Tells Them – Medscape
TriStar, like most major health systems, participates in a program through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in which uninsured patients with COVID-19 have their bills covered. It was set up through the pandemic relief legislation known as the CARES Act.
But TriStar doesn’t tell its patients that upfront. Neither do other hospitals or national health systems contacted by WPLN News. There’s no requirement to, which is one of the program’s shortcomings, said Jennifer Tolbert of KFF, who studies uninsured patients. (KHN is an editorially independent program of KFF.)
“This is obviously a great concern to most uninsured patients,” Tolbert said. Her research finds that people without insurance often avoid care because of the bill or the threat of the bill, even though they might qualify for any number of programs if they asked enough questions.
Tolbert said the problem with the COVID-19 uninsured program is that even doctors don’t always know how it works or that the program exists.
“At the point when the patient shows up at the hospital or at another provider site, it’s at that point when those questions need to be answered,” she said. “And it’s not always clear that that is happening.”
Among clinicians, there’s a reluctance to raise the issue of cost in any way and run afoul of federal laws. Emergency rooms must at least stabilize everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, under a federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA. Asking questions about insurance coverage is often referred to as a “wallet biopsy,” and can result in fines for hospitals or even being temporarily banned from receiving Medicare payments.
Surge in virus threatens to reverse global economic rebounds – AP
The resurgence of coronavirus cases engulfing the United States and Europe is imperiling economic recoveries on both sides of the Atlantic as millions of individuals and businesses face the prospect of having to hunker down once again.
Growing fear of an economic reversal coincided with a report Thursday that the U.S. economy grew at a record 33.1% annual rate in the July-September quarter. Even with that surge, the world’s largest economy has yet to fully rebound from its plunge in spring when the virus first erupted. And now the economy is slowing just as new confirmed viral cases accelerate and rescue aid from Washington has dried up.
If many consumers and companies choose – or are forced – to retrench again in response to the virus as they did in the spring, the pullback in spending and hiring could derail economic growth. Already, in the United and Europe, some governments are re-imposing restrictions to help stem the spread of the virus.
COVID Policy after a Vaccine – Newsweek
Conventional wisdom holds that after the launch of a COVID vaccine, infections will disappear quickly and we will get back to a pre-COVID economy. However, a vaccine may have little effect on infections-though mortality may drop dramatically. It is important to not let the large number of new infections remaining after a vaccine’s introduction drive the government’s continued response, a risk that is greater under a President Biden than under a President Trump.
Demand for the vaccine will likely be higher the more it reduces infection risk and the lower the risk of side effects. A high vaccine demand is almost certain among essential workers, whose jobs put them at greater risk of infection, and among the elderly or other vulnerable populations. Past evidence suggests lower-risk populations will have less demand for a vaccine, and likely will be more sensitive to any potential side effects and therefore may wait for better safety data from large-scale vaccine adoption by higher-risk populations.
These predictable demand patterns imply that infections may not fall much, or may even rise, immediately after a vaccine is introduced. However, a vaccine will drive down mortality substantially. The high-risk population older than 65 makes up less than 12 percent of COVID infections but 85 percent of mortality from the disease. After a vaccine launches, infections will likely continue among the large low-risk population, but mortality will decline among the small high-risk population.
When vaccination rates are larger among the small number of people at high risk than they are for the massive pool of people at low risk, infection rates will drop less than mortality rates. After all, the seasonal flu is vaccine preventable and comparable in case fatality risk for low-risk COVID populations. Yet people still choose not to get the seasonal flu vaccine, and there are about 30 million estimated yearly flu infections, compared to about 8 million confirmed COVID cases since March.
[editor’s note: this post is worth a full read – it is what I call a “think piece” which may or may not be true]
CDC lifts no-sail order, clears industry to plan return – CNBC
… the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced it will replace its nearly 8-month old no-sail order with a less restrictive “Conditional Sailing Order.”
The no-sail order expires Saturday. The new conditional order will remain in effect until either Nov. 1, 2021, the expiration of the Department of Health and Human Services’ declaration of a public health emergency or when CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield decides to end it.
… The CDC change doesn’t mean cruising in the U.S. will resume next week, or potentially anytime soon, especially as new cases of the coronavirus continue to spike.
The new order establishes a framework that will help the industry implement safety measures that will enable it to resume operations in U.S. waters in a phased approach, the CDC said in a statement. Before restarting passenger operations in any commercial form, the companies will face tests from the CDC on how safe their protocols are, the agency said.
“This framework provides a pathway to resume safe and responsible sailing,” Redfield said in a statement. “It will mitigate the risk of COVID-19 outbreaks on ships and prevent passengers and crew from seeding outbreaks at ports and in the communities where they live.”
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Already slowing eurozone growth now points to double-dip recession
Coronavirus dims Mexico’s bright Day of the Dead celebration
Taiwan just passed the 200-day mark without a single locally transmitted case of COVID-19.
Germany’s finance minister called November the “month of truth” for the nation’s pandemic numbers.
Spain Enters 6-Month State of Emergency to Tackle Pandemic
Skin Symptoms Common in COVID ‘Long-Haulers’
Sweden’s Fauci Says COVID Won’t Be Eradicated With Herd Immunity
Trump Was Criticized for His COVID Leadership, but Now Europe Faring Worse
Schools are staying open in Europe’s new lockdowns, a reversal from the spring.
The pandemic has reached ‘an alarming juncture’ in the Middle East, the W.H.O. warns.
A new nationwide lockdown in France prompts an exodus from Paris.
Crude attacks target the health authorities in Germany.
Monaco will introduce a curfew to curb spread of Covid-19
EU will fund transfer of Covid-19 patients across borders as hospital systems feel strain
Coronavirus-positive health workers asked to keep working in Belgium
China’s most-controlled region is facing the country’s biggest coronavirus outbreak in months
Taiwan just went 200 days without a locally transmitted Covid-19 case. Here’s how they did it
Europe tried a scalpel on the second wave. Now it’s going back to the sledgehammer
The following are additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Exxon to cut 14,000 global jobs, including 1,900 in U.S., as pandemic hurts demand
MGM Resorts considering midweek closures of some Strip casinos
Walmart pulls guns and ammo from store displays, citing potential “civil unrest”
Chicago has now banned indoor restaurant dining.
One patient has suffered from “COVID toes” for 6 months and counting.
A judge in El Paso County, Texas, ordered a two-week shutdown of nonessential services starting at midnight Friday amid growing hospitalizations in the COVID-19 crisis.
Halloween reminder: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises against traditional trick-or-treating this year.
IHOP may close up to 100 locations nationwide
Long Island ‘Superspreader Events’ Threaten To Undo Its Success At Controlling Virus
Georgia Republican Drew Ferguson tests positive for COVID-19
Federal appeals court rules Minnesota must separate late-arriving mail-in ballots
US sets weekly record with over 500,000 new COVID-19 cases
In Texas, Mask-Wearing at Polls Won’t be Enforced Amid Expected Voter Recor
C.D.C. advisers consider measures that would provide early vaccine access to many people of color.
Clemson’s star quarterback tests positive for the virus.
Delta Air Lines pilots may escape furloughs if they approve a cost-cutting deal the company and the union unveiled late Thursday.
Covid-19 tests given to cats, dogs, dolphins and more animals
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic With Hyperlinks
23 October 2020 ECRI’s WLI Marginally Continues To Improve
Final October 2020 Michigan Consumer Sentiment Improves
October 2020 Chicago Purchasing Managers Barometer Modestly Declines
September 2020 Real Expenditures Improved
COVID-19 Update 27 October 2020: U.S. Vs EU27
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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