Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average are 5.0 % LOWER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago. U.S. hospitalizations due to COVID-19 are now 13.2 % LOWER than the rolling average one week ago. U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 7.1 % HIGHER than the rolling average one week ago. Today’s posts include:
- U.S. Coronavirus New Cases are 68,071
- U.S. Coronavirus hospitalizations are at 48,870
- U.S. Coronavirus deaths are at 1,536
- U.S. Coronavirus immunizations have been administered to 21.7 % of the population
- The 7-day rolling average rate of growth of the pandemic shows new cases worsened, hospitalizations unchanged, and deaths significantly worsened [note: this is a sign of trend reversal – could the new variants be impacting COVID case growth?>
- Plunging demand for COVID-19 tests may leave US exposed
- What can we learn from Africa’s experience of Covid?
- Tech giants ban the sale of N95 masks, citing rules that scientists say are outdated.
- Obesity Specialist Says BMI Is A ‘Good Measure’ For Vaccine Priority Group
- Younger U.S. military personnel are rejecting vaccines
- Experts in warning over COVID’s mental health toll on German youth
The recent worsening of the trendlines for new cases is behind us which was attributed to going back to college/university, cooler weather causing more indoor activities, mutation of the virus, fatigue from wearing masks / social distancing, holiday activities, and some loosening of regulations designed to slow the coronavirus spread.
My continuing advice is to continue to wash your hands (especially after using the toilet as COVID first sheds in your stool), putting down the toilet seat (as flushing the toilet releases a plume), 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. Finally, studies show eating right (making sure you are supporting your immune system) and adequate sleep increase your ability to fight off COVID.
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Hospitalizations Are The Only Accurate Gauge As Reporting Is Not Affected By Holidays
The 4 day Thanksgiving holiday period put the first wobble in the trends. Over weekends and holidays, the number of new cases and deaths decline. Over weekends, this is not a problem for week-over-week rolling averages as weekends are compared against the previous weekend. But when a holiday falls within a working week, a non-working day is compared to a working day which causes havok in the trends.
However, hospitalizations historically appear to be little affected by weekends or holidays – the daily counts do not vary significantly from day-to-day.
The hospitalization growth rate trend is improving.
For the Thanksgiving and the end of the year holiday period – roughly, it seems each appears to have added around 5 % to the rate of growth of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.
Historically, hospitalization growth follows new case growth by one to two weeks.
As an analyst, I use the rate of growth to determine the trend. But, the size of the pandemic is growing in terms of real numbers – and if the rate of growth does not become negative – the pandemic will overwhelm all resources.
The graph below shows the rate of growth relative to the growth a week earlier updated through today [note that negative numbers mean the rolling averages are LOWER than the rolling averages one week ago]. As one can see, the rate of growth for new cases peaked in early December 2020 for Thanksgiving, and early January 2021 for end of year holidays – and the rate of growth is now contracting.
In the scheme of things, new cases decline first, followed by hospitalizations, and then deaths.
It is up to each of our readers to protect themselves and others by washing hands, wearing a mask, avoiding crowds, and maintaining social distancing.
Will The New Variants Cause The Next Spike?
Maybe and maybe not. It all depends on vaccinations:
- the more people that are vaccinated reduces the pool of people that can be infected. Today we have removed over 21 % of the population from being infected which theoretically should reduce the infection rate by 21 % [it is unproven whether the vaccines prevent a vaccinated person from being a carrier of the virus even though showing no signs]. If the vaccines are shown to stop transmission, then in theory it would reduce the infection rate by double the percent vaccinated [in this case you prevent your own infection and do not pass it along to another].
- it is also unknown what the effective rate of the current vaccines is against mutations that seem to appear almost daily. As an example, if the effective rate drops to 60%, it means the 21 % reduction in the infection rate discussed above is almost cut in half. The South African and Brazilian variant is somewhat immune to the current vaccines.
- The pandemic should be over immediately if everyone could be vaccinated today. The problem is that every day brings a new mutation (which would not appear if the pandemic was stopped). The longer the immunization process takes – the more ineffective the vaccine will become.
- It is not clear whether the vaccine prevents those vaccinated from spreading the virus. It seems to be well documented that it normally stops the virus from taking hold and when it does not – the infection is mild.
Coronavirus News You May Have Missed
Today, Econintersect published two summary articles for news over this past week.
FDA Authorizes Johnson & Johnson’s One-Shot COVID-19 Vaccine – NPR
A third COVID-19 vaccine is on the way, and this one requires only one shot for immunization.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine for emergency use Saturday, a day after a panel of advisers to the agency voted unanimously (22-0) in its favor.
“The authorization of this vaccine expands the availability of vaccines, the best medical prevention method for COVID-19, to help us in the fight against this pandemic, which has claimed over half a million lives in the United States,” said a statement by Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was tested in an international study of about 40,000 people, half of whom got the vaccine and half of whom got a placebo. The study found the company’s vaccine to be 66% effective overall in preventing moderate to severe COVID-19 disease. For disease judged severe or critical, the effectiveness was 85%. The study was conducted in the U.S., South America and South Africa.
The main study included in the company’s application found that 28 days or more after immunization, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine prevented hospitalizations and deaths related to COVID-19.
The overall efficacy figures are lower than Pfizer’s 95% in preventing COVID-19 disease and 94% for Moderna. But direct comparisons are challenging because of differences in the clinical trials and emergence of new strains of the coronavirus.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine “is very effective … at preventing severe disease after a single dose and it induces the kind of response, so-called cellular immune response, that looks like it’s going to have fairly long-lived memory, which is all good,” Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’s advisory panel, told NPR’s Scott Simon on Weekend Edition Saturday. “This certainly provides protection against what you care about, which is hospitalization, ICU admission and death. It’s virtually 100% effective at doing that.” Offit is also director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
As the pandemic has drawn on, the coronavirus has mutated. Variants first seen in South Africa and Brazil, where the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was tested, developed mutations that help them evade the immune response prompted by previous infections with the original form of the virus and vaccines designed against it. Some of the variants, including one first identified in the U.K, are more contagious.
In the South African portion of the Johnson & Johnson study, the company’s vaccine was 64% effective in preventing moderate to severe disease. In the Latin American region, the vaccine was 61% effective.
The FDA’s analysis of the safety data found that “a favorable safety profile with no specific safety concerns” for the vaccine. As part of the vaccine study more than 6,000 people were asked about their reactions, and the most common side effects they reported were pain at the injection site (49%), headache (39%), fatigue (38%) and muscle pain (33%).
Johnson & Johnson’s COVID Vaccine Approval May Help U.S. Reach Herd Immunity by Early Fall – Newsweek
… Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, considers the Johnson & Johnson vaccine a “game-changer.” Since full protection is achieved after one shot, there isn’t the logistical challenge that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have of making sure people return for their second dose.
Along with preventing additional hospitalizations and loss of life, the authorization of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine could help put America on its return to a degree of normalcy.
“Herd immunity is a population concept, so whatever limits transmission of the virus in the population is what matters,” Vincent Racaniello, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Columbia University, told Newsweek. “Right now, there is little evidence that one [Pfizer or Moderna] vaccine dose can limit virus transmission in the population.”
When creating his late summer, early fall timeline for reaching herd immunity, where 70 to 85 percent of Americans are inoculated, Fauci told Newsweek he factored in people having both doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
About 14 percent of Americans received at least one dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, but only 6.5 percent of Americans have received both, according to the most recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data.
Without Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose shot, America’s current rate of vaccinations would mean the country wouldn’t reach herd immunity until the end of November or early December.
Tech giants ban the sale of N95 masks, citing rules that scientists say are outdated. – New York Times
Small mask producers, who have recently begun making N95s and other medical grade masks and are largely shut out by hospital networks, had hoped to sell their high-filtration products online, where Americans do much of their shopping. But tech giants — such as Google, Facebook and Amazon — have not made that easy, even as scientists have urged people to upgrade their face coverings to those that can block the tiny pathogens that cause infection.
Google and Facebook ban the sale of medical-grade masks, and Amazon limits their availability to shoppers — policies born during the early months of the pandemic, when hospitals were scrambling to obtain protective gear.
But some public health experts and mask manufacturers say these rules are outdated, especially given the spread of more infectious coronavirus variants and the abundance of domestically made masks that are gathering dust in warehouses across the country. The restrictions, they say, may hinder the country’s ability to limit new infections in the months before vaccinations become more widely available.
“Even though cases are coming down right now, we need people to be wearing high-filtration masks to prevent any sort of super spreading resurgences, particularly with these new variants,” said Dr. Abraar Karan, a researcher at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School who has been pushing for a national program to subsidize and distribute high-filtration masks to the public.
The e-commerce platforms say they are taking their cues from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which continues to recommend that N95s be prioritized for medical personnel amid a national shortage.
But mask-making behemoths, like 3M and Honeywell, have drastically increased their production to meet the needs of medical workers, and China, which abruptly cut off exports during the early months of the pandemic, is once again flooding the United States with lower-priced N95s.
Coronavirus evolving: How mutations arise and new variants emerge – Knowable
[editor’s note: this post is an informative info-comic that deserves a full read]
Plunging demand for COVID-19 tests may leave US exposed – AP
Just five weeks ago, Los Angeles County was conducting more than 350,000 weekly coronavirus tests, including at a massive drive-thru site at Dodger Stadium, as health workers raced to contain the worst COVID-19 hotspot in the U.S.
Now, county officials say testing has nearly collapsed. More than 180 government-supported sites are operating at only a third of their capacity.
“It’s shocking how quickly we’ve gone from moving at 100 miles an hour to about 25,” said Dr. Clemens Hong, who leads the county’s testing operation.
After a year of struggling to boost testing, communities across the country are seeing plummeting demand, shuttering testing sites or even trying to return supplies.
The drop in screening comes at a significant moment in the outbreak: Experts are cautiously optimistic that COVID-19 is receding after killing more than 500,000 people in the U.S. but concerned that emerging variants could prolong the epidemic.
“Everyone is hopeful for rapid, widespread vaccinations, but I don’t think we’re at a point where we can drop our guard just yet,” said Hong. “We just don’t have enough people who are immune to rule out another surge.”
U.S. testing hit a peak on Jan. 15, when the country was averaging more than 2 million tests per day. Since then, the average number of daily tests has fallen more than 28%. The drop mirrors declines across all major virus measures since January, including new cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
Officials say those encouraging trends, together with harsh winter weather, the end of the holiday travel season, pandemic fatigue and a growing focus on vaccinations are sapping interest in testing.
“When you combine all those together you see this decrease,” said Dr. Richard Pescatore of the health department in Delaware, where daily testing has fallen more than 40% since the January peak. “People just aren’t going to go out to testing sites.”
But testing remains important for tracking and containing the outbreak.
What can we learn from Africa’s experience of Covid? – The Guardian
Though a hundred thousand people have died, initial predictions were far worse, giving rise to many theories on ‘the African paradox’ … But the death toll is still lower than experts predicted when the first cases were reported in Egypt just over a year ago.
… Many other theories have been proposed for what researchers have called “the African paradox. The most controversial is probably that poverty protects: the idea being that people living in crowded settings such as townships, where social distancing is harder to achieve, may have been more exposed to coronaviruses related to the one that causes Covid-19 – including four that cause the common cold – and acquired some immunity to Covid-19 as a result. There is some evidence for such cross-protection, but the theory hasn’t stood the test of time. “If it was that these four coronaviruses protected you, we would see it in the slums of Mumbai and the favelas of Brazil, but we don’t,” says Karim. Infection with original variants of the Covid-19 virus doesn’t even necessarily protect against the new variant first described in South Africa, he says.
The Texas-based wound care nurse Linda Benskin has made the case that high levels of vitamin D – which is made mainly in the skin when it is exposed to UVB radiation in sunlight – is protecting Africans against Covid-19, and on those grounds more than 200 scientists and medics signed an open letter in December, urging governments to act to boost vitamin D levels in other populations. The World Health Organization (WHO) remains unconvinced, however, and has placed suggestions that vitamin D supplements effectively treat Covid-19 (it doesn’t mention prevention) on its “Mythbusters” page. There, the idea rubs shoulders with the theories that hot, humid climates and antimalarial drugs related to hydroxychloroquine are protective – both unsupported, according to the WHO.
Then there is the category of theory for which the jury is still out – that Africans’ genetic background may be playing a role, for example by influencing the prevalence of the ACE-2 receptor that the virus uses to break into human cells, or that African immune systems have been primed to fend off the virus, either by other kinds of vaccines or by high levels of infection with parasitic worms.
Though it’s once again hard to demonstrate, most experts do seem disposed to agree that experience with other serious infectious diseases including Ebola – of which there are active outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Guinea – prepared African populations to deal with Covid-19. “The government succeeded in quickly creating consensus on measures that were, a priori, drastic and unpopular,” says Amadou Sall, who heads up the Pasteur Institute in Dakar, Senegal, of that country’s swift response to the first wave. “Contact tracing in countries like [the UK] is a theory,” says Nkengasong. “In our countries it’s a reality.” Jamet highlights the flipside of that: MSF’s skills have been in demand across Europe, she says, where “expertise in epidemic management has been completely lost”.
For now, then, the African paradox persists. “We don’t have an explanation for why the impact has been lower,” says Karim. “It remains for me an unanswered question.”
Experts in warning over COVID’s mental health toll on German youth – Euronews
Psychiatrists, psychologists, and pediatricians in Germany have voiced growing alarm that school closings, social restrictions, and other precautions are magnifying the fear, disruption, and stress of the pandemic among Germany’s 13.7 million children and teenagers, raising the prospect of a future mental health crisis.
“We don’t have any long-term studies yet, but there’s lots of anecdotal evidence of a crisis-driven rise in hospitalisations and overflowing psychologists’ practices,” Julia Asbrand, a professor of child and youth psychology at Berlin’s Humboldt University, told The Associated Press.
A recent survey by the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf found that about one child in three is suffering from pandemic-related anxiety or depression or is exhibiting psychosomatic symptoms like headaches or stomach aches. Children from poorer and immigrant families are disproportionally affected, according to the survey.
Pollina, who immigrated from Russia with her family in 2019, worries about forgetting much of her German since she only speaks Russian at home. She’s one of 150 youngsters from underprivileged families who, before the pandemic, regularly spent time after school at a youth support programme on the eastern outskirts of the German capital.
… University students are also feeling the strain of lockdown restrictions, as their courses have been moved online, at the expense of face-to-face instruction.
A recent survey commissioned by the education technology company Chegg, found that 70 per cent of British students say their mental health has deteriorated during the pandemic. In Brazil, that figure was 76 per cent and 75 per cent in the US. The study polled 17,000 students in 21 countries.
Psychology professor Asbrand worries that the mental health of children and teenagers has not gotten enough attention during the pandemic. Together with other professionals in the field, she wrote an open letter to the government this month to push for youth needs to get better addressed in the ongoing health crisis and prioritised when society reopens.
Obesity Specialist Says BMI Is A ‘Good Measure’ For Vaccine Priority Group – NPR
Several cities across the country that count obesity as an underlying condition have opened COVID-19 vaccine appointments to people with a body mass index of 30 or higher — the medical benchmark for obesity.
While BMI isn’t a foolproof standard by which to assess potential health risk factors, obesity medicine physician Dr. Fatima Stanford told NPR, “overall, it’s a good measure” in this case.
It would be dangerous for people with obesity to not get vaccinated, she said, given that obesity is a risk factor for both severe illness and hospitalization from COVID-19.
“We’re talking about two inflammatory conditions. We have chronic inflammation associated with obesity, the disease, not playing well with the acute inflammatory process of COVID-19,” said Stanford, who works at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital.
More than 42% of adults in the U.S. have obesity, one of the country’s most prevalent chronic diseases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Obesity is more common in Black people, and slightly more common in Hispanic people, compared to white people. Black and Hispanic people have been suffering from COVID-19 at disproportionately higher rates.
“BMI by itself is an arbitrary cutoff, but it’s a decent population-wide measure,” Stanford said. “It’s important though if you’re talking with physicians and their work with individual patients to not use BMI as the sole cutoff for how we navigate treatment strategies for patients that have this disease of obesity.”
As awareness grows about the negative health outcomes from COVID-19 for people with excess weight, Stanford said she’s seeing an uptick in patients at her hospital who are looking for ways to address their own obesity.
The brain is the body’s biggest decision-maker between all the body’s organs in regulating weight, she said.
Younger U.S. military personnel are rejecting vaccines. – New York Times
Americans who go into the military understand the loss of personal liberty. Many of their daily activities are prescribed, as are their hairstyles, attire and personal conduct.
So when it comes to taking a coronavirus vaccine, many troops — especially younger enlisted personnel as opposed to their officers — see a rare opportunity to exercise free will.
“The Army tells me what, how and when to do almost everything,” said Sgt. Tracey Carroll, who is based at Fort Sill, an Army post in Oklahoma. “They finally asked me to do something and I actually have a choice, so I said no.”
Sergeant Carroll, 24, represents a number of members of the military — a largely young, healthy set of Americans from every corner of the nation — who are declining to get the shot, which for now is optional among personnel. They cite an array of political and health-related concerns.
But this reluctance among younger troops is a warning to civilian health officials about the potential hole in the broad-scale immunity that medical professionals say is needed for Americans to reclaim their collective lives.
“At the end of the day, our military is our society,” said Dr. Michael S. Weiner, the former chief medical officer for the Defense Department, who now serves in the same role for Maximus, a government contractor and technology company. “They have the same social media, the same families, the same issues that society at large has.”
Roughly one-third of troops on active duty or in the National Guard have declined to take the vaccine, military officials recently told Congress. In some places, such as Fort Bragg, N.C., the nation’s largest military installation, acceptance rates are below 50 percent.
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Mexico expected to ask Biden to share vaccines: report
New Zealand’s largest city enters its second lockdown in February.
Palestinians, waiting for vaccines, go into another lockdown.
Find out which countries are welcoming US tourists back
How the Czech Republic slipped into a Covid disaster, one misstep at a time
Hit by coronavirus, Philippine beach resorts target local long-stay tourists, digital nomads
The following additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Indigenous leaders fear deaths undercounted
Asian Americans face hate crimes, attacks over COVID-19
Publix COVID vaccine deal with Florida raises questions
Cleaning supplies are buy 4, get 1 free right now
Nevada state officials blame data entry errors for inaccurate COVID-19 case counts
Biden: Undocumented immigrants should get vaccine without ICE targeting them
More Texas Voters Approve of Biden’s COVID-19 Handling Than Trump’s: Poll
The House passes Biden’s $1.9 trillion aid plan. Now it goes to the Senate.
Some colleges and universities are planning for a ‘more normal’ fall semester.
The N.B.A. is investigating after Jeremy Lin said he was called ‘coronavirus’ on court.
North Carolina will send 3,500 prisoners home early to avoid the virus.
Pandemic insurance helped the sports world offset cancellation losses. Good luck getting it in 2021.
It’s the US’ deadliest avalanche season in years. Experts say Covid is partially to blame
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic With Hyperlinks
March 2021 Economic Forecast – A Small Step Back
Coronavirus Disease Weekly News 28February 2021
Coronavirus Economic Weekly News 28February 2021
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.
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 when recovering from COVID-19. Herd immunity does not look like an option without immunization 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 significantly higher death rate as there is relatively few hospitalizations and deaths in younger age groups..
- 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.
What we do or 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. Unfortunately, early in the pandemic, many health experts — in the U.S. and around the world — decided that the public could not be trusted to hear the truth about masks. Instead, the experts spread a misleading message, discouraging the use of masks.
- Current thinking is that we develop 5 months of immunity from further COVID infection.
- The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have an effectiveness rate of about 95 percent after two doses. That is on par with the vaccines for chickenpox and measles. The 95 percent number understates the effectivenessas it counts anyone who came down with a mild case of Covid-19 as a failure. But turning Covid into a typical flu — as the vaccines evidently did for most of the remaining 5 percent — is actually a success. Of the 32,000 people who received the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine in a research trial, only one contracted a severe Covid case.
- To what degree do people who never develop symptoms contribute to transmission? Research early in the pandemic suggested that the rate of asymptomatic infections could be as high as 81%. But a meta-analysis, which included 13 studies involving 21,708 people, calculated the rate of asymptomatic presentation to be 17%.
- The accuracy of rapid testing is questioned – and the more accurate test results are not being given in a timely manner.
- Can children widely spread coronavirus? [current thinking is that they are a minor source of the pandemic spread]
- Why have some places avoided big coronavirus outbreaks – and others hit hard?
- Air conditioning contributes to the pandemic spread.
- It appears that there is increased risk of infection and mortality for those living in larger occupancy households.
- Male patients have almost three times the odds of requiring intensive treatment unit (ITU) admission compared to females.
- Outdoor activities seem to be a lower risk than indoor activities.
- Will other medical treatments for Covid-19 ease symptoms and reduce deaths? So far only remdesivir, Bamlanivimab,
and Regeneron) are approved for treatment. What drugs work? Arthritis drugs tocilizumab and sarilumab could cut relative risk of death of those in intensive care by 24%
- A current scientific understanding of the way the coronavirus works can be found [here].
There is now a vaccine available – the questions remain:
- how effective it will be in the general population,
- will there be any permanent side effects that will appear months from now,
- how long immunity will last [we can currently say we do not know if it will last more than 4 months],
- there is no evidence the vaccine will block transmission
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 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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