Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average are 15.6 % LOWER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago and U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 1.8 % LOWER than the rolling average one week ago. Today’s posts include:
- U.S. Coronavirus New Cases are 29,536
- U.S. Coronavirus deaths are at 299
- U.S. Coronavirus immunizations have been administered to 72.8 doses per 100 people.
- The 7-day rolling average rate of growth of the pandemic shows new cases were little changed and deaths worsened
- India’s outbreak is a danger to the world. Here’s why.
- Reaching ‘Herd Immunity Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe
- Experts estimate that Covid-19 in India has left over a million dead so far
- India Is Counting Thousands Of Daily COVID Deaths. How Many Is It Missing?
- Will India’s devastating COVID-19 surge provide data that clear up its death ‘paradox’?
- Inactivation of SARS-CoV-2 in chlorinated swimming pool water
- Applying UV light to common disinfectants makes them safer to use
- A Record 34% Of All Household Income In The US Now Comes From The Government
- Russia, facing lags, turns to China to produce Sputnik shots
- Is it safe to open schools?
- And today, the additional headlines are telling.
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Hospitalizations Are The Only Accurate Gauge
Hospitalizations historically appear to be little affected by weekends or holidays. The hospitalization growth rate trend continues to improve.
source: https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/COVID19_3.html
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 lower.
In the scheme of things, new cases decline first, followed by hospitalizations, and then deaths. The potential fourth wave did not materialize likely due to immunizations.
Coronavirus News You May Have Missed
Is it safe to open? – New York Times
Fortunately, the available evidence indicates that schools can safely return to normal hours in the fall. Nearly all teachers have already had the chance to be vaccinated. By August, all children who are at least 12 are also likely to have had the opportunity. (The Pfizer vaccine is now available to people 16 and up, and federal regulators appear set to approve it for 12- to 15-year-olds in coming weeks.)
Few younger children — maybe none — will have been vaccinated by the fall. But data from both the U.S. and other countries suggests that children rarely infect each other at school. One reason is that Covid-19 tends to be mild for younger children, making them less likely to be symptomatic and contagious.
Even more important, this coronavirus rarely harms children. For them, the death rate resembles that of a normal flu, and other symptoms, like “long Covid,” are extremely rare. Covid presents the sort of small health risk to children that society has long accepted without closing schools. A child who’s driven to school almost certainly faces a bigger risk from that car trip than from the virus.
Of course, the risk from Covid is not zero, which is why many school districts are still grappling with what to do in the fall. Covid has so thoroughly dominated our thinking over the past 14 months that many people continue to focus on Covid-related issues — even highly unusual or uncommon ones — to the exclusion of everything else.
Covid does present a minuscule risk to children. And there will also be some teachers and other school employees who choose not to be vaccinated or who cannot receive a vaccine shot for health reasons; some of them may need to remain home if schools reopen.
For these reasons, a full reopening of schools will bring real, if small, costs and complications. Communities will have to weigh those costs against the enormous damage that closed schools are doing to American women.
[editor’s note: also read Blue states have been the slowest to reopen their schools, and parental frustration presents a political risk for the Democratic Party]
Russia, facing lags, turns to China to produce Sputnik shots – AP
Russia is turning to multiple Chinese firms to manufacture the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine in an effort to speed up production as demand soars for its shot.
Russia has announced three deals totaling 260 million doses with Chinese vaccine companies in recent weeks. It’s a decision that could mean quicker access to a shot for countries in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa that have ordered Russia’s vaccine, as the U.S. and the European Union focus mainly on domestic vaccination needs.
Earlier criticism about Russia’s vaccine have been largely quieted by data published in the British medical journal The Lancet that said large-scale testing showed it to be safe, with an efficacy rate of 91%.
Yet, experts have questioned whether Russia can fulfill its pledge to countries across the world. While pledging hundreds of millions of doses, it has only delivered a fraction.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said demand for Sputnik V significantly exceeds Russia’s domestic production capacity.
To boost production, the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which bankrolled Sputnik V, has signed agreements with multiple drug makers in other countries, such as India, South Korea, Brazil, Serbia, Turkey, Italy and others. There are few indications, however, that manufacturers abroad, except for those in Belarus and Kazakhstan, have made any large amounts of the vaccine so far.
Airfinity, a London-based science analytics company, estimates Russia agreed to supply some 630 million doses of Sputnik V to over 100 countries, with only 11.5 million doses exported so far.
Experts estimate that Covid-19 in India has left over a million dead so far – Slugger O’Toole
Several factors seem to be causing the current surge. There are elections in India and many parties have been holding mass rallies of hundreds of thousands of supporters, the ruling party has been very keen to downplay the current problems. There are also several religious festivals going on that attract millions of devotees. Also, their vaccination program has also only reached about 10% of the population.
The eventual Indian death toll could be 3 – 5 million or higher, which is on a scale equivalent to almost the entire population of Ireland being wiped out – a terrifying thought.
India Is Counting Thousands Of Daily COVID Deaths. How Many Is It Missing? – NPR
Across India, there are shortages of testing kits, hospital beds, medical oxygen and antiviral drugs as a severe second wave of the pandemic crushes the health infrastructure. The country has been breaking world records daily for new cases. On Friday, India’s Health Ministry confirmed 386,453 infections – more than any country on any day since the pandemic began.
Part of the reason for the huge numbers is India’s size: a population of nearly 1.4 billion. The rate of known coronavirus infections per capita is still less than the United States endured at its peak. In India, there have been nearly 19 million known infections since the start of the pandemic, or roughly 1.3% of the total population – compared with more than 32 million, or almost 10% of the U.S. population.
But survivors, funeral directors and scientists say the real numbers of infections and deaths in India may be many times more than the reported figures. The sheer number of patients has all but collapsed the health system in a country that invests less on public health — just above 1% of its gross domestic product — than most of its peers. (Brazil spends more than 9% of its GDP on health; in the U.S., the figure is nearly 18%.)
Across India, funeral pyres light up the night sky. Playgrounds and parking lots in the capital, New Delhi, have been converted into mass cremation grounds.
“The situation is very grim here. We are short of everything,” said Dr. Aniket Sirohi, a municipal health official in south Delhi. “I want to say to the world, ‘Help us, in any way you can.’ “
Sirohi is supposed to be working on malaria prevention. But since the pandemic began, he’s had the unenviable job of counting bodies. Each day, he goes to every crematorium and burial ground in his district of the capital, tallying deaths from COVID-19. Of his 11 staff members, five currently have COVID-19, he said.
“We are just doing the best we can. The morale is pretty shaken up,” he said. “I have not taken a single day off.”
Last year, at the height of the pandemic’s first wave in India, Sirohi said he was counting about 220 COVID-19 deaths a day. When NPR spoke to him Wednesday, he counted 702 for that day. He passes those numbers up the chain of command. But the death figures the government ultimately publishes for his region have been at least 20% lower than what he’s seeing on the ground, he said.
He attributed this disparity to administrative chaos. People from neighboring states flock to Delhi for medical treatment. Some die in Delhi and are cremated there but remain registered as residents somewhere else. They don’t get counted anywhere, he said.
Will India’s devastating COVID-19 surge provide data that clear up its death ‘paradox’? – Science
Girish Dayma, who helps oversee this research program run by a satellite of King Edward Memorial (KEM) Hospital in Pune, says the team’s surveys to date show that up to 40% of these villagers have antibodies for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. “When we started this serosurveillance, it was thought that the rural area was not much affected,” Dayma says. “The data are very much important to convince the policymakers that we need interventions in rural areas.”
Studies like KEM’s are also crucial to tracking India’s pandemic and determining whether, as some researchers believe, the horrific death toll is actually lower than expected from the rate of infections. Good data are scarce. Yesterday, hundreds of Indian researchers signed an appeal for the government to release what it has and collect more. “While new pandemics can have unpredictable features, our inability to adequately manage the spread of infections has, to a large extent, resulted from epidemiological data not being systematically collected and released in a timely manner,” they wrote.
The current COVID-19 surge, which first overwhelmed Maharashtra state and now is rolling through the rest of India, has humbled those who thought the country had bested the disease. In early February, with cases dropping below 10,000 per day, restrictions were dropped, political leaders staged massive rallies, and masks became a rare sight in many crowded locales. Some researchers even suggested that, because nearly half of people in several places had antibodies indicating previous infection, India might be approaching herd immunity.
But the devastating surge starting in late March gave the lie to that idea, with 10,000 cases alone in hard-hit Pune the day the KEM team visited Karandi. A few weeks later, India topped 350,000 cases in 1 day, setting a new world record. By then, many hospitals had become overwhelmed.
Debate has swirled over whether new variants or a waning of immunity are at work in the current explosion of cases, just how many people have become infected, and—most contentious—how many have died. Official figures suggest that, compared with other countries, India has recorded relatively few deaths given its count of COVID-19 cases. “We have been trying to find explanations for the low number of deaths in India since last year,” says a signatory of the appeal, microbiologist Gagandeep Kang from the Christian Medical College. “When we do not even have access to reporting of death by age, gender, and location, how do we construct a hypothesis or design a study?”
“The ‘Indian paradox’ really is quite puzzling,” says Prabhat Jha, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto. Explanations range from gross underestimates of deaths to demographic effects, environmental factors like abundant vitamin D from the Indian climate, and the country’s high percentage of vegetarians. But now, with hospitals struggling to find enough oxygen for their COVID-19 patients, crematoria running out of wood to burn the deceased, and media reports of intentional undercounting of deaths to make the current deluge look less dire, the seeming paradox may be disappearing.
A Record 34% Of All Household Income In The US Now Comes From The Government – ZeroHedge
Personal Current Transfer payments which are essentially government sourced income such as unemployment benefits, welfare checks, and so on. In March, this number exploded to a mind-blowing $8.1 trillion annualized, which was not only double the $4.1 trillion from February, but was also $5 trillion above the pre-Covid trend where transfer receipts were approximately $3.2 trillion. [fueled by the stimulus payments to people]
… Putting that number in perspective, in the 1950s and 1960s, transfer payment were around 7%. This number rose in the low teens starting in the mid-1970s (right after the Nixon Shock ended Bretton-Woods and closed the gold window). The number then jumped again after the financial crisis, spiking to the high teens. And now, the coronavirus has officially sent this number to a record 34%!
And that’s how creeping banana republic socialism comes at you: first slowly, then fast.
So for all those who claim that the Fed is now (and has been for the past decade) subsidizing the 1%, that’s true, but with every passing month, the government is also funding the daily life of an ever greater portion of America’s poorest social segments.
Who ends up paying for both?
Why the middle class of course, where the dollar debasement on one side, and the insane debt accumulation on the other, mean that millions of Americans content to work 9-5, pay their taxes, and generally keep their mouth shut as others are burning everything down and tearing down statues, are now doomed.
The “good” news? As we reported last November, the US middle class won’t have to suffer this pain for much longer, because while the US has one one of the highest median incomes in the entire world, with only three countries boasting a higher income, it is who gets to collect this money that is the major problem, because as the chart also shows, with just a 50% share of the population in middle-income households, the US is now in the same category as such “banana republics” as Turkey, China and, drumroll, Russia.
Inactivation of SARS-CoV-2 in chlorinated swimming pool water – bioRxiv
SARS-CoV-2 transmission remains a global problem which exerts a significant direct cost to public health. Additionally, other aspects of physical and mental health can be affected by limited access to social and exercise venues as a result of lockdowns in the community or personal reluctance due to safety concerns. Swimming pools have reopened in the UK as of April 12th, but the effect of swimming pool water on inactivation of SARS-CoV-2 has not yet been directly demonstrated. Here we demonstrate that water which adheres to UK swimming pool guidelines is sufficient to reduce SARS-CoV-2 infectious titre by at least 3 orders of magnitude.
Applying UV light to common disinfectants makes them safer to use – EurekAlert
Over 400 common disinfectants currently in use could be made safer for people and the environment and could better fight the COVID-19 virus with the simple application of UVC light, a new study from the University of Waterloo shows.
Benzalkonium chloride (BAK) is the most common active ingredient in many disinfectants regularly used in hospitals, households, and food processing plants to protect against a wide range of viruses and bacteria – including all strains of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 – but its toxicity means that it can’t be used in high concentrations. It also means that products containing BAK are harmful to humans and the environment.
Researchers at Waterloo discovered that the chemical’s toxicity could be fully neutralized using ultraviolet light (UVC) when tested on cultured human corneal cells.
CVS and Walgreens have wasted more vaccine doses than most states combined – News-Medical
Two national pharmacy chains that the federal government entrusted to inoculate people against Covid-19 account for the lion’s share of wasted vaccine doses, according to government data obtained by KHN.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded 182,874 wasted doses as of late March, three months into the country’s effort to vaccinate the masses against the coronavirus. Of those, CVS was responsible for nearly half, and Walgreens for 21%, or nearly 128,500 wasted shots combined.
CDC data suggests that the companies have wasted more doses than states, U.S. territories and federal agencies combined. Pfizer’s vaccine, which in December was the first to be deployed and initially required storage at ultracold temperatures, represented nearly 60% of tossed doses.
It’s not completely clear from the CDC data why the two chains wasted so much more vaccine than states and federal agencies. Some critics have pointed to poor planning early in the rollout, when the Trump administration leaned heavily on CVS and Walgreens to vaccinate residents and staff members of long-term care facilities. In response to questions, CVS said “nearly all” of its reported vaccine waste occurred during that effort. Walgreens did not specify how many wasted doses were from the long-term care program.
New SARS-CoV-2 variant (HMN.19B) confirmed in France – Eminetra
A new study published in the Journal of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Emerging infectious diseases We confirmed the emergence of a new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) mutant called HMN.19B from French virus clade 19B. The 19B virus clade, including the D614G variant, was prevalent in late 2019, but due to the new virus clade, it has been rarely observed since early 2020.
This variant is characterized by 18 amino acid mutations, including N501Y, L452R, H655Y. There is evidence that the mutant may spread more rapidly than other SARS-CoV-2 strains.
India’s outbreak is a danger to the world. Here’s why. – New York Times
With 44 percent of adults having received at least one dose, the United States has made great strides vaccinating its citizens, though experts say the country is far from reaching so-called herd immunity, when the virus can’t spread easily because it can’t find enough hosts. Vaccine hesitancy remains a formidable threat to reaching that threshold.
In much of the world, however, vaccines are still hard to come by, especially in poorer countries. In India, less than 2 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated. “If we want to put this pandemic behind us, we can’t let the virus run wild in other parts of the world,” Dr. Jha said.
Preliminary evidence suggests that the vaccines are effective against the variants, although slightly less so against some.
“For now, the vaccines remain effective, but there is a trend toward less effectiveness,” said Dr. Céline Gounder, an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist at Bellevue Hospital in New York.
Vaccine makers say they are poised to develop booster shots that would tackle especially troublesome variants, but such a fix would be of little help to poorer nations already struggling to obtain the existing vaccines. Experts say the best way to head off the emergence of dangerous variants is to tamp down new infections and immunize most of humanity as quickly as possible.
Dr. Michael Diamond, a viral immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis, said that the longer the coronavirus circulates, the more time it has to mutate, which could eventually threaten vaccinated people; the only way to break the cycle is to ensure countries like India get enough vaccines.
“In order to stop this pandemic, we have to vaccinate the whole world,” Dr. Diamond said. “There will be new waves of infection over and over again unless we vaccinate at a global scale.”
Screening healthcare workers could serve as early warning system for future viruses – EurekAlert
New research has shown that COVID-19 infections in healthcare workers during the first wave of the pandemic provided an accurate sample of the general population, suggesting that data from healthcare workers could be used to estimate the severity of future viruses more quickly.
The study, led by researchers from RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences in collaboration with IBM Research, is published in PLOS ONE.
The researchers analysed the infection data from healthcare workers and the progression of the first wave of the COVID-19 outbreak using the reported daily infection numbers in Ireland. Using similar data in four other countries (Germany, UK, South Korea and Iceland), computer models showed how the disease progressed in different countries related to their approach to testing, tracing and lockdown restrictions.
Healthcare workers in Ireland made up 31.6% of all test-confirmed infections while only representing 3% of the population. However, the researchers found that the healthcare worker data closely related to that of the entire population after using software to create a more accurate picture of how widespread the disease was.
This suggests that governments could use data from only healthcare workers to inform decisions on whether to implement restrictions, wide-scale testing and contact tracing for future viruses.
“As we have seen with the COVID-19 pandemic, implementing countermeasures early can save lives and reduce the spread of the disease,” said RCSI Professor of Chemistry Donal O’Shea, who led the work.
Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the U.S., Experts Now Believe – New York Times
Widely circulating coronavirus variants and persistent hesitancy about vaccines will keep the goal out of reach. The virus is here to stay, but vaccinating the most vulnerable may be enough to restore normalcy.
Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives.
Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.
Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.
How much smaller is uncertain and depends in part on how much of the nation, and the world, becomes vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves. It is already clear, however, that the virus is changing too quickly, new variants are spreading too easily and vaccination is proceeding too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon.
… as vaccines were developed and distribution ramped up through the winter and into the spring, estimates of the threshold began to rise. That is because the initial calculations were based on the contagiousness of the original version of the virus. The predominant variant now circulating in the United States, called B.1.1.7 and first identified in Britain, is about 60 percent more transmissible.
As a result, experts now calculate the herd immunity threshold to be at least 80 percent. If even more contagious variants develop, or if scientists find that immunized people can still transmit the virus, the calculation will have to be revised upward again.
Polls show that about 30 percent of the U.S. population is still reluctant to be vaccinated. That number is expected to improve but probably not enough. “It is theoretically possible that we could get to about 90 percent vaccination coverage, but not super likely, I would say,” said Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Cases and deaths continue to surge in India. But cases have remained stable for the past two weeks in Maharashtra, the state that includes Mumbai — a potentially encouraging sign.
Three thousand people partied without masks in a warehouse in England in a trial to see how social distancing could end.
After health officials in Brazil rejected Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine — with documents contending the inactivated cold viruses the vaccine uses are able to replicate — the vaccine’s backers threatened to sue for defamation.
Tokyo Games need 500 nurses; nurses say needs are elsewhere
The WHO added Moderna to a list of vaccines authorized for emergency use on Friday.
COVID-19 may not have appeared first in China, suggests new genomic study
Pfizer Exporting US-Made COVID-19 Vaccines to Mexico, Canada
National Poll Shows ‘Concerning’ Impact of COVID on Mental Health
EU Moves Closer To Allowing In Nonresident Vaccinated Travelers
The European Union recommends opening travel to foreigners.
European Union recommends members open borders to vaccinated travelers
India Crematorium Hangs ‘House Full’ Sign Outside After Running out of Room
‘Do not come home,’ Australia tells its citizens in India.
Johnson & Johnson COVID Vaccine Halted in Denmark Over Blood Clot Fears
Nepal halts all domestic and international flights in an effort to curb a huge spike.
WHO is closely monitoring 10 Covid variants as virus mutates around the world
More global Covid-19 cases reported in last 2 weeks than first 6 months of the pandemic, WHO says
Pfizer is discussing expedited approval for Covid-19 vaccine with Indian government
The following additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
COVID ‘Doesn’t Discriminate By Age’: Serious Cases On The Rise In Younger Adults
Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, estimates 10 million children could be vaccinated before the fall if the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is authorized for kids 12 and up.
The Miami elementary school where children are taught not to hug vaccinated parents and masking is discouraged has become a magnet for anti-vaccine activists.
Cross-contamination or out-of-spec? The CEO of Emergent BioSolutions, the company that botched 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine last month, has been offering up conflicting messages for the mix-up.
At the request of the company, FDA revoked the emergency use authorization for the Battelle Decontamination System, which used vaporized hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate N95 masks.
SARS-CoV-2 antibodies are detectable up to a year after infection, finds study
1.6 million US air passengers fly in a day for first time since March 2020
LA county reports zero COVID-19 deaths on Sunday
Why some older workers fared worse during Covid-19 than the Great Recession
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic With Hyperlinks
April 2021 ISM and Markit Manufacturing Surveys Continue To Show Strong Growth
March 2021 Construction Spending Marginally Improves
India COVID Crisis: Four Reasons It Will Derail The World Economy
India’s Covid-19 Crisis Leads To Black Market Price Explosion
Global Recovery 2021 And The Dark Legacies Of Smoot-Hawley
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. California and 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 at least 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.
Treatments with solid scientific support:
- Dexamethasone
- Proning, or turning someone on their stomach
- Remdesivir
- Baricitinib
Treatments with potential but limited evidence:
- ECMO, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation
- fluvoxamine
- Cyclosporine
- Famotidine
- Intravenous immunoglobulin
- Ivermectin
- Interferons
Drugs shown to be ineffective:
- The combination of lopinavir-ritonavir
- Hydroxychloroquine
- Insulin
- High dose zinc and vitamin C
- Convalescent plasma
- Monoclonal antibodies
- Tocilizumab
- Anti-coagulants
- A current scientific understanding of the way the coronavirus works can be found [here].
There is now a vaccine available – the questions remain:
- 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 solid evidence yet 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
minetra
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