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 2.3 % LOWER than the rolling average one week ago. Today’s posts include:
- U.S. Coronavirus New Cases are 33,789
- U.S. Coronavirus deaths are at 607
- U.S. Coronavirus immunizations have been administered to 76.2 doses per 100 people.
- The 7-day rolling average rate of growth of the pandemic shows new cases improved and deaths improved
- Biden confronts limits of big government with COVID-19
- Demand For Ass Implants Booms During Pandemic
- Vaccine patent waivers face more hurdles despite Biden support
- Scientists train bees to identify coronavirus infection
- Vaccinated Germans enjoy new freedoms
- U.S. states are turning down hundreds of thousands of doses as demand plummets
- Facebook winning war on COVID vaccine lies, hoaxes and conspiracies. Twitter and TikTok? Not so much, report says
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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 improving.
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
Today, Econintersect publish two summary posts on coronavirus news this past week:
Biden confronts limits of big government with COVID-19 – The Hill
Picking up where the Trump administration left off, Biden oversaw a massive effort to ramp up production and distribution of coronavirus vaccines that has resulted in 57 percent of U.S. adults receiving at least one dose just over a year after the U.S. locked down due to the virus.
However, the administration is limited in its ability to get as many Americans as possible vaccinated, something that is critical to moving the country toward a level of normalcy, and to usher the country and indeed the world past the pandemic.
A survey this week from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only nine percent said they hadn’t been vaccinated but planned to do so, suggesting it will be more difficult to reach a threshold in which 70 to 80 percent of the country has been vaccinated.
“The White House is in a bit of a bind,” one Democratic strategist acknowledged. “Because people will blame them for not properly addressing how to achieve herd immunity as much as people praised them for the vaccine rollout.”
Biden himself this week said he believed the next 100 days of his presidency will be “harder” because the situation is “beyond my personal control.”
… Tom Frieden, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director under the Obama administration, commended the Biden administration’s response to the virus overall but said officials could do more to single out states not doing a good job and to increase availability of vaccines globally.
“The plain truth is that the federal government doesn’t have unlimited control over state governments,” Frieden said. “Health is largely done at the state level and if you’re not willing to call out states that aren’t doing a good job and to lift up states that are doing a good job because of the politics then you’re leaving on the table one of the main tools you have to try to improve the response in the U.S.”
… “I don’t think any voter is going to believe that Biden has not treated Covid with the urgency that it deserves,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne. “It was his first legislative priority and he has made public health a hallmark of his public profile as president.
“I think at this point, it’s less about what the president and his team can do and more about how the culture and the temperature of the country right now dictates social norms around vaccination,” Payne said.
U.S. states are turning down hundreds of thousands of doses as demand plummets. – New York Times
Several states are turning away Covid vaccine doses from their federal government allocations, as the daily average of coronavirus vaccine doses administered across the United States has fallen below two million for the first time since early March. Experts say the states’ smaller requests reflect a steep drop in vaccine demand in the United States.
Wisconsin officials have asked for just 8 percent of the 162,680 doses the federal government had set aside for the state next week, according to The Associated Press. In Iowa, officials asked for just 29 percent of the state’s allocated doses. And in Illinois, the state is planning to request just 9 percent of its allotted doses for everywhere, except for Chicago, for next week, The A.P. reported.
North Carolina, South Carolina, Washington State and Connecticut are also scaling back on their vaccine requests.
As demand falls and the spread of the virus slows in the United States, the Biden administration is under increasing pressure to share vaccine doses with countries like India, which has been ravaged by a catastrophic surge. About 83 percent of shots have been administered in high- and upper-middle-income countries, while only 0.3 percent of doses have been given in low-income countries.
Dr. Amesh A. Adalja, an infectious disease physician at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said that a shift in U.S. demand was expected. After people who were most eager to be vaccinated had shots, he said, the rollout of vaccines “was going to be a much more challenging prospect.”
Scientists train bees to identify coronavirus infection – The Hill
A group of Dutch scientists is enlisting the help of an unusual group of participants for a new kind of rapid COVID-19 test: bees that have been specially trained to detect the virus.
Researchers at insect technology start-up InsectSense and Wageningen University in the Netherlands announced in a press release this week that they had trained more than 150 bees in a study to identify samples containing the virus that causes COVID-19 based on its scent.
The group said that as part of the study, the bees were given a sugar water solution reward each time they were exposed to an infected sample, upon which the bees extended their tongues to receive the solution.
The bees, which because of their sensitivity to smells can be trained within just a few minutes to detect volatiles and odors, then associated the reward with positive samples, and began sticking out their tongues after being exposed to the COVID-19 scent alone, the researchers said.
The scientists noted that the study indicated overwhelmingly promising results, with only a small number of false positives and false negatives recorded.
According to the press release, InsectSense has developed a prototype machine that can train bees to detect the virus, which the scientists hope can be adopted in low-income countries where access to materials for polymerase chain reaction tests is limited.
The nation’s leading social media companies pledged to put warning labels on COVID-19 and COVID vaccines posts to stop the spread of falsehoods, conspiracy theories and hoaxes that are fueling vaccine hesitancy in the USA.
With the exception of Facebook, nearly all of them are losing the war against COVID disinformation. That’s the conclusion of a new report shared exclusively with USA TODAY.
As the pace of the nation’s immunizations slows and public health agencies struggle to get shots in arms, Advance Democracy found that debunked claims sowing unfounded fears about the vaccines are circulating largely unfettered on Twitter and TikTok, including posts and videos that falsely allege the federal government is covering up deaths caused by the vaccines or that it is safer to get COVID-19 than to get the vaccine.
Twitter began labeling tweets that include misleading or false information about COVID-19 vaccines in March. It also started using a “strike system” to eventually remove accounts that repeatedly violate its rules.
Yet none of the top tweets on Twitter using popular anti-vaccine hashtags like #vaccineskill, #novaccine, #depopulation and #plandemic had labels as of May 3, according to Advance Democracy, a research organization that studies disinformation and extremism.
Demand For Ass Implants Booms During Pandemic – ZeroHedge
In the early days of the virus pandemic, things didn’t look so hot for the field of plastic survey. Hospitals were overrun with COVID-19 infections and banned all elective procedures, limiting plastic surgeries. But sometime after, when the economy reopened, and hospitals allowed elective surgeries, demand for butt implants soared.
Bloomberg, citing data from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), says there were broad declines for minimally invasive and surgical cosmetic procedures during 2020. Botox and soft-tissue fillers remained popular with consumers. But it was buttock augmentation, or butt implants were a massive hit among consumers. Cosmetic procedures for the implants last year were up 22%, from 970 to 1,179.
Dermatologist Ava Shamban said the lockdowns likely triggered those with flat buttocks to receive implants after spending their days surfing Instagram and seeing influencers and models with “higher, tighter rounder assets. “
The typical butt implant is not cheap, costing more than $5,000, and has a durability life of approximately ten years. ASPS doesn’t provide data on the average age or gender of those who received buttock augmentation during 2020, but we would assume it was bored millennials who still had a job. Unless stimulus checks were spent on ass implants, there are no data points supporting this.
Vaccinated Germans enjoy new freedoms – DW
German residents who are considered fully immune to the coronavirus will no longer be subject to nightly curfews and restrictions on meeting people starting Sunday.
Anyone who has had both doses of the vaccine or who has recovered after falling ill will be able to meet with others in the same category in private without any restrictions.
The fully immune also won’t need to show proof they tested negative to enter shops and be in quarantine after travel, except in specific cases — for example, if they enter from an area where a variant of the virus is rampant.
However, they will still be required to adhere to social distancing measures, including wearing masks in shops and on public transport.
Berlin’s mayor Michael Müller admitted that it was going to be “damn difficult to check” whether people were exempt from the rules or not.
Is India’s coronavirus death ‘paradox’ vanishing? – Science
… Debate has swirled over whether new variants or waning immunity are at work, 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, Vellore.
“The ‘Indian paradox’ really is quite puzzling,” says Prabhat Jha, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto. Explanations include underestimates of deaths, demographic effects, and environmental factors like abundant vitamin D from the Indian climate. But now, with hospitals struggling to find enough oxygen for their COVID-19 patients, crematoria overwhelmed, and media reports of intentional undercounting of deaths to make the current deluge look less dire, the seeming paradox may be disappearing.
In India’s first wave, which ran from June through November 2020, cases never went above 100,000 per day. Hospitals struggled—the KEM intensive care unit in Pune for a time relied on raincoats instead of proper gowns—but few reached capacity with severely ill patients.
Even then, it was hard to nail down the magnitude of infections and death. “We rely on reporting of positive cases, which obviously leaves big gaps because a large percentage of people are asymptomatic, and a lot of people don’t have access to testing,” says Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist at the World Health Organization and a native of India. For mortality, she notes that only 20% of death certificates list a cause.
The notion of an Indian paradox surfaced as early as April 2020 and remains largely speculative despite frequent references by the health minister. One convincing study looked at 450,000 people who sought COVID-19 tests between June and the end of 2020 in 12 of the most populous Indian cities, including New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata, and Chennai. Led by Jha, it found that seropositivity over time jumped from about 17.8% to 41.4%, implying a huge increase in cases. Yet even after factoring in 30% underreporting of COVID-19 deaths—the worldwide average—the team calculated about 41 deaths from COVID-19 per 100,000 population, they reported in March on medRxiv. That mortality rate is less than half the corresponding U.S. figure.
Other studies, however, suggest the demographics of the outbreak could explain the anomaly. One thorough study looked at reported COVID-19 cases and deaths last spring and summer in two southern Indian states, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, that are home to about 10% of the country’s population. The researchers reported that older adults—the group at greatest risk of dying—accounted for relatively few of India’s infections (Science, 6 November 2020, p. 691). Only 17.9% of the deaths in the study were in people age 75 or older, compared with 58.1% in that age bracket in the United States.
One reason is that India’s population skews young. In 2011, the most recent census year, 45% of the population was 19 years or younger, and only 4.8% was 65 or older. And infection rates in the old were unusually low, perhaps because those who survive to old age in India are often wealthier and better able to socially distance, the researchers argue.
[editor’s note: good summary article on India’s death rate and deserves a full read]
Vaccine patent waivers face more hurdles despite Biden support – The Hill
[editor’s note: This reminds me of the negotiations in Paris to end the Vietnam War. The Americans stayed in hotels whilst the North Vietnamese rented houses. The author of this article thinks vaccines are a short term issue whilst I see it as a long haul issue which will continue for many years – or even decades]
The Biden administration made a splash this past week when it backed a temporary waiver of international patent protections for COVID-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The sudden announcement delighted U.S. progressives and drug pricing advocates, but roiled the pharmaceutical industry, sending stock prices tumbling.
Yet the move by administration officials was largely symbolic, and carefully worded.
Numerous hurdles need to be overcome before the intellectual property (IP) waiver can be turned into policy. And despite the immediate pushback from the pharmaceutical industry, experts are skeptical of just how big of an impact it will have on those companies.
“I think the IP issue is an important one, but I think, frankly, opening up IP is really just one part of a much larger effort,” said Tom Frieden, who was director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the Obama administration.
“It may signal to parts of the society that the government is serious about it, it may signal to industry that the government is serious about it, but it is not in itself going to make any difference in a short term in terms of vaccine access,” Frieden said.
It will be many months before the WTO even votes on the matter, and if a waiver passes it will likely be even longer before manufacturing can be scaled up to develop enough vaccines to have a meaningful impact in the global fight against the coronavirus.
In an interview with The Washington Post, the head of the WTO said she would press member countries to reach an agreement on the waiver petition no later than December, setting up a vote on the final language at the body’s Dec. 3 meeting.
The lengthy timeline raises questions about the effectiveness of an IP waiver, especially since it might only be narrowly tailored for the length of the global pandemic.
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Even with more vaccines on the horizon, much of the world will most likely keep waiting for doses.
Spain is set to lift most of its lockdown restrictions
Pakistan, battling a third virus wave, entered a partial lockdown ahead of the Eid holiday at the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
Italy is planning to lift quarantine restrictions for some travelers as early as mid-May in an effort to revive the tourism industry, said Luigi Di Maio, the foreign minister.
Ascents of Mount Everest begins, as Nepal’s outbreak worsens down below.
India turns to ex-army medics as COVID surge sparks calls for lockdown
Spain rings in end of coronavirus curbs with boisterous street parties
South Africa picks up first cases of coronavirus variant from India
In this Indian state, one in every two people tested is positive for Covid
The following additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Getting Women Back To Work Is Key To A Strong Recovery, Labor Secretary Says
Businesses jumping into vaccination effort see it as win-win
Progressives Blast GOP Calls to End $300 Weekly Unemployment
Cases plunge in Puerto Rico, prompting a gradual rollback of restrictions.
Norwegian Cruise Line threatens to skip Florida over proof-of-vaccination ban.
Vaccines won’t give you genital herpes
Trader Joe’s drops senior hours at many stores
Mother’s Day spurs new TSA record
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic With Hyperlinks
Many Small Businesses In The Services Sector Are Unlikely To Reopen
COVID-19s Effects On Dual-Earner Households
Coronavirus Disease Weekly News 09May 2021
Coronavirus Economic Weekly News 09May 2021
US-Backed Vaccine Patent Waiver: Pros And Cons Explained
Warning to Readers
The amount of politically biased articles on the internet continues. 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. 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.
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 12 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 effectiveness as it counts anyone who came down with a mild case of Covid-19 as a failure.
- 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
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