Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average are 14.2 % LOWER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago. U.S. hospitalizations due to COVID-19 are now 13.8 % LOWER than the rolling average one week ago. U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 18.8 % LOWER than the rolling average one week ago. Today’s posts include:
- U.S. Coronavirus New Cases are 50,237
- U.S. Coronavirus hospitalizations are at 40,212 (not updated today)
- U.S. Coronavirus deaths are at 719
- U.S. Coronavirus immunizations have been administered to 27.0 % of the population
- The 7-day rolling average rate of growth of the pandemic shows new cases improved, hospitalizations improved, and deaths improved. The best monitoring tool, hospitalizations, has been showing continuous improvement.
- Humidity in breath makes cotton masks more effective at slowing the spread of COVID-19
- America could soon be swimming in COVID-19 vaccine
- Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Neutralizes Brazil Variant in Lab Study
- Hospital data: Worst of the third wave is over
- What’s Next for Remote Work in a Post Pandemic World
- New CDC guidelines a blow for ailing airline industry
- CDC researchers found a dose-response relationship (but nonlinear) between excess body weight and COVID-19 severity
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Hospitalizations Are The Only Accurate Gauge
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.
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 it now shows that the coronavirus effect is now shrinking.
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 27 % of the population from being infected which theoretically should reduce the infection rate by 27 % [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 27 % 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
One year ago this week, the world began to shutdown as the global pandemic hit.
In just two months, the United States could be swimming in COVID-19 vaccine. Literally swimming. The 500 million 0.5 or 0.3-milliliter doses expected to be shipped by then are enough to fill a 55,000-gallon swimming pool.
As hard as it is to imagine now as people frantically call, click and line up to get vaccinated, the nation is close to shifting from a situation of scarcity to one of abundance.
“It’s not a switch that flips, but it’s a sliding scale that happens differently community by community,” said Andy Slavitt, White House senior advisor for the COVID Response Team. “This is not something that will start at some magical day in the future. It has begun today, and it’s something that we have to make sure we’re addressing.”
With a plentiful supply of vaccine, there will be more urgency to convince the reluctant to accept it, experts say. Otherwise, the abundance of vaccine will become a stagnating surplus that threatens to undermine the nation’s ability to move beyond the pandemic.
“When we start to have more vaccine available, we’re really going to be in bad shape because what we’re going to see is a lot of people who don’t want to get vaccinated,” said Bernadette Boden-Albala, dean of the public health program at the University of California, Irvine.
So far, about 18% of all Americans have been immunized against COVID-19. Boden-Albala thinks there will be vaccine surpluses in some areas as soon as early April.
Then, the challenges will start.
“If we’ve got whole states in this country that don’t want to mask and don’t want to socially distance, then I’m very concerned we’ll have people there who don’t want to be vaccinated either,” she said.
COVID-19’s Biggest Legacy: What’s Next for Remote Work in a Post Pandemic World – Conference Board
When COVID-19 suddenly forced millions of Americans to work from home (WFH), employees and employers alike feared confusion, dislocation, and lost productivity. Instead, remote work is one of the rare pandemic experiments that nearly all agree went better than expected. Survey data confirms it: By and large, we’ve been well equipped, motivated, and more productive working from home.
Vaccines will soon make returning to the office feasible nationwide. But will we? As explored in our new report COVID-19’s Biggest Legacy, the evidence points to the remote-work surge becoming a permanent revolution. In a survey of HR leaders, nearly half said their firms weren’t willing to hire any remote employees at all before the pandemic. By last September, that number had dropped to just 12%.
Most strikingly, 10% of HR leaders said they were willing to hire fully remote employees based anywhere in the world, and an additional 26% would hire such staff anywhere in the US. That combined 36%—triple the pre-COVID proportion—signals a permanent embrace of WFH’s potential: Beyond saving on office space, companies can recruit from a much-expanded talent pool—and capitalize further by tailoring salaries to regional differences in cost-of-living and median wages.
Of course, a permanent embrace is also hard to reverse. Business leaders now face a defining decision: how—and if—to adopt remote work in a post pandemic world. Don’t miss COVID-19’s Biggest Legacy, which brings together all the trends, datapoints, and danger areas you need to decide with confidence.
Hospital data: Worst of the third wave is over – USA Today
Detailed data released this week by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services illustrates just how much the nation’s hospitals have recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic’s third wave.
Although more than 1,500 Americans are dying from COVID-19 every day, the new data show COVID-19 patients comprising a smaller and smaller share of hospital admissions around the country, most drastically in the West and South, regions hit hard by the disease through the holidays.
“Overall we are seeing the numbers of COVID patients in our hospitals at the lowest levels in more than a year,” said Bart Buxton, CEO of McLaren Health Care in Michigan, in an email. “We currently have fewer than 80 patients total in our 15 hospitals with SARS-COV-2 primary diagnosis and very few of those patients are in our ICUs.”
Dr. Nicholas Mark, a critical care physician in Seattle, says he’s also seen improvement. “Things have definitely gotten much better over the last few months.”
… Intensive care units have become less strained, as well. The number of hospitals reporting ICUs at or above capacity has fallen by more than 50% since early January. There were 138 hospitals reporting full intensive care units as of March 4, down from 324 the week of Jan. 8-14 – the lowest level since the week of Nov. 6-12.
… The number of hospitals reporting ICUs filled exclusively with patients confirmed or suspected of having COVID-19 has fallen from 35 to four since early January.
March and April are critical months in stopping another Covid-19 surge, CDC director says – CNN
The next two months could determine whether the US will experience another surge in coronavirus cases, according to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
After months of devastation, steep decreases have been reported in Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations. More people are getting vaccinated, and the government on Monday released guidance on safe activities for fully vaccinated people.
But now infection numbers have plateaued at very high levels — with the US averaging 60,000 new cases daily in the past week. Multiple governors have eased safety measures despite health officials’ warnings. Spring break events are kicking off across the country, threatening the potential for further spread of the virus.
Experts project the country is about to see another dangerous Covid-19 spike.
“There is so much that’s critical riding on the next two months,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told the National League of Cities on Monday. “How quickly we will vaccinate versus whether we will have another surge really relies on what happens in March and April.”
The spike will be fueled by the B.1.1.7 variant, first spotted in the United Kingdom, and will come over the next six to 14 weeks, said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.
Women Report Worse Side Effects After a Covid Vaccine – New York Times
… In a study published last month, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed safety data from the first 13.7 million Covid-19 vaccine doses given to Americans. Among the side effects reported to the agency, 79.1 percent came from women, even though only 61.2 percent of the vaccines had been administered to women.
Nearly all of the rare anaphylactic reactions to Covid-19 vaccines have occurred among women, too. C.D.C. researchers reported that all 19 of the individuals who had experienced such a reaction to the Moderna vaccine have been female, and that women made up 44 of the 47 who have had anaphylactic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine.
“I am not at all surprised,” said Sabra Klein, a microbiologist and immunologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “This sex difference is completely consistent with past reports of other vaccines.”
In a 2013 study, scientists with the C.D.C. and other institutions found that four times as many women as men between the ages of 20 and 59 reported allergic reactions after receiving the 2009 pandemic flu vaccine, even though more men than women got those shots. Another study found that between 1990 and 2016, women accounted for 80 percent of all adult anaphylactic reactions to vaccines.
In general, women “have more reactions to a variety of vaccines,” said Julianne Gee, a medical officer in the C.D.C.’s Immunization Safety Office. That includes influenza vaccines given to adults, as well as some given in infancy, such as the hepatitis B and measles, mumps and rubella (M.M.R.) vaccines.
The news isn’t all bad for women, though. Side effects are usually mild and short-lived. And these physical reactions are a sign that a vaccine is working — that “you are mounting a very robust immune response, and you will likely be protected as a result,” Dr. Klein said.
CDC researchers found a dose-response relationship (but nonlinear) between excess body weight and COVID-19 severity. – Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report
What is already known about this topic?
Obesity increases the risk for severe COVID-19-associated illness.
What is added by this report?
Among 148,494 U.S. adults with COVID-19, a nonlinear relationship was found between body mass index (BMI) and COVID-19 severity, with lowest risks at BMIs near the threshold between healthy weight and overweight in most instances, then increasing with higher BMI. Overweight and obesity were risk factors for invasive mechanical ventilation. Obesity was a risk factor for hospitalization and death, particularly among adults aged <65 years.
What are the implications for public health practice?
These findings highlight clinical and public health implications of higher BMIs, including the need for intensive management of COVID-19-associated illness, continued vaccine prioritization and masking, and policies to support healthy behaviors.
New CDC guidelines a blow for ailing airline industry – The Hill
… While the CDC issued a number of recommendations that allow vaccinated and low-risk people more freedom to gather, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said Monday that the agency’s advice on travel remains the same for both vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans: Don’t do it.
… Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University and former Baltimore health commissioner, called the guidance on Monday “far too cautious.”
“A lot of families are separated from one another and need to travel to see one another. I’m really befuddled by why the guidance around travel was not changed. Travel is very low risk — imagine if you’re traveling in your individual car or even by plane — whenever everyone is wearing masks, the risk of coronavirus is very low,” she said.
Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine Neutralizes Brazil Variant in Lab Study – Reuters
The COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE was able to neutralize a new variant of the coronavirus spreading rapidly in Brazil, according to a laboratory study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Monday.
Blood taken from people who had been given the vaccine neutralized an engineered version of the virus that contained the same mutations carried on the spike portion of the highly contagious P.1 variant first identified in Brazil, the study conducted by scientists from the companies and the University of Texas Medical Branch found.
The scientists said that compared to neutralization of a previous less contagious version of the virus from last year (USA-WA1/2020), the vaccine-induced response against the P1 virus and the UK variant virus known as B.1.1.7 were “roughly equivalent.”
Geometric mean titers (GMT) of neutralizing antibodies against the USA-WA1/2020 virus, the spike of the UK B.1.1.7 variant, and the P1 variant were 532, 633, and 437, respectively.
In contrast, GMT against three engineered versions of the South African B.1.3.5 variant were 195, 485, and 331, respectively.
The spike, used by the virus to enter human cells, is the primary target of many COVID-19 vaccines.
In previously published studies, Pfizer had found that its vaccine neutralized other more contagious variants first identified in the United Kingdom and South Africa, although the South African variant may reduce the proportion of antibodies elicited by the vaccine that are protective.
Pfizer has said it believes its current vaccine is highly likely to still protect against the South African variant. However, the drugmaker is planning to test a third booster dose of their vaccine as well as a version retooled specifically to combat the variant in order to better understand the immune response.
Humidity in breath makes cotton masks more effective at slowing the spread of COVID-19 – Eurekalert
Researchers have come up with a better way to test which fabrics work best for masks that are meant to slow the spread of COVID-19. By testing those fabrics under conditions that mimic the humidity of a person’s breath, the researchers have obtained measurements that more accurately reflect how the fabrics perform when worn by a living, breathing person.
The new measurements show that under humid conditions, the filtration efficiency — a measure of how well a material captures particles — increased by an average of 33% in cotton fabrics. Synthetic fabrics performed poorly relative to cotton, and their performance did not improve with humidity. The material from medical-procedure masks also did not improve with humidity, though it performed in roughly the same range as cottons.
This study, conducted by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute, was published in ACS Applied Nano Materials.
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
China launching health certificate program to facilitate international travel. The health certificate, which runs on Tencent’s WeChat messaging app, will include a user’s Covid-19 test and vaccination history, and is intended to enable international travel, according to a report by the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua. The service currently only works for Chinese citizens.
British COVID Variant Overrun Italian ICUs Hard Hit by First Virus Wave
Kremlin denies Russia undertaking disinformation campaign against covid vaccines
The following additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
The House of Representatives is expected to pass President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan on Wednesday. The package includes $1,400 checks, billions for vaccines and money to reopen schools.
Vaccine ‘passports’? Airlines are asking the White House to develop credentials that can prove an individual was vaccinated before they board a flight.
A third of Republican voters say they “definitely won’t” take a COVID-19 vaccine, which could pose a challenge to reaching herd immunity.
More than 60 million people in the U.S. have received at least their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, with about half having been fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.
FDA detailed a laundry list of reasons on why not to use ivermectin for COVID-19, including that it’s “not an anti-viral” and that overdose could cause “seizures, coma and even death.”
As part of the ACTIV protocol, NIH launched the last of its phase III anticoagulant trials, now testing 2.5 mg of apixaban (Eliquis) for discharged patients following a diagnosis of moderate-to-severe COVID-19.
Fauci Upbeat on COVID-19 Vaccinations for US Teens by Autumn, Younger Children Next Year
More Than Half of Americans over 65 Have Gotten COVID Vaccine: Poll
Texas Mask Mandate Lifted ‘Too Soon’ As U.K. COVID Variant Spreads
More Than 6,000 Californians Receive Low COVID-19 Vaccine Dose Alert – The dosing problem occurred on February 28 and March 1 at the Oakland Coliseum vaccination site, according to a state health official.
Cruz’s claim that millions of illegal immigrants would receive stimulus payments is not true, although some people who overstay their visas might be eligible for a stimulus payment based on their tax filings.
A new study finds that younger students have fallen behind on reading skills.
A year later, who is back to work and who is not?
Researchers at the Buck Institute analyzed data from the COVID-19 Symptom Tracker app used by 3 million people in the United Kingdom, adding the use of immunosuppressant medication, use of a mobility aid, shortness of breath, fever, and fatigue to the list of symptoms and comorbidities that increase the risk for severe COVID-19. Results are published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
While receiving just one dose of a two-dose SARS-CoV-2 vaccine tends to decrease infections in the short-term if it produces a strong immune response, it may increase the potential for the virus to “escape” therapies in the longer-term if one-dose vaccinal immunity is weak, reports a new modeling study
… airborne pollen can account for, on average, 44 percent of the variation in infection rates, with humidity and air temperature also playing a role in some cases. During intervals without lockdown regulations, infection rates were on average 4 percent higher with every increase of 100 grains of airborne pollen per cubic meter.
A new study of the U.K. and South Africa variants of SARS-CoV-2 predicts that current vaccines and certain monoclonal antibodies may be less effective at neutralizing these variants and that the new variants raise the specter that reinfections could be more likely.
White House announces supply increase of 600,000 additional doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccine
Some Covid-19 “long-haulers” may originally have no symptoms at all, study suggests
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic With Hyperlinks
December 2020 Loan Performance: Delinquencies Shrink For The Fourth Straight Month
February 2021 Small Business Optimism Improves Slightly
Resilience Of Community Banks In The Time Of COVID-19
Even Before COVID-19, US Nursing Homes Were Filling Empty Beds With Psychiatric Patients
States Drop COVID-19 Mask Mandates But Still Expect People To Mask Up. Will They?
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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