Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average are 20.9 % LOWER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago and U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 11.3 % LOWER than the rolling average one week ago. Today’s posts include:
- U.S. Coronavirus New Cases are 41,044
- U.S. Coronavirus deaths are at 732
- U.S. Coronavirus immunizations have been administered to 79.7 doses per 100 people.
- The 7-day rolling average rate of growth of the pandemic shows new cases improved and deaths improved
- 18 Scientists, Including One Who Worked With Wuhan Lab, Say COVID Lab Leak Theory Needs Study
- Exchange between Sen. Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci
- Your Immune System Could Be Hurting You as a Way of Signalling to Others
- Pfizer/BioNTech Vaccine Appears Not to Affect Sperm
- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Sounds Alarm on COVID Crisis, Says Country Is ‘on War Footing’
- Here’s how the United States beat the variants, for now.
- Delayed 2nd Pfizer/BioNTech shot boosts antibodies in elderly
- Is the CDC Leading on COVID or Leading From Behind?
- Trudeau Government Begins Work on Reopening U.S.-Canada Border
include($_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’].’/pages/coronavirus1.htm’); ?>
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
Exchange between Sen. Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci – YouTube
18 Scientists, Including One Who Worked With Wuhan Lab, Say COVID Lab Leak Theory Needs Study – Newsweek
A group of scientists is urging a reassessment of the origin of the coronavirus, as they don’t believe the possibility of a lab leak was given sufficient consideration.
A March report from a team of World Health Organization-led scientists found a lab leak to be the “least likely” hypothesis. However, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said the possibility requires “further investigation” because the team didn’t have access to enough raw data to adequately analyze the likelihood of any single hypothesis.
In a letter published Friday in the journal Science, 18 scientists wrote, “We must take hypotheses about both natural and laboratory spillovers seriously until we have sufficient data. Public health agencies and research laboratories alike need to open their records to the public.”
Scientists who traveled to China to investigate the origin of the outbreak faced criticism for basing their findings on what’s been perceived as a less than full picture of the earliest days of the pandemic. Knowing how the pandemic started could be vital in helping to prevent future health crises. Although the possibility that the virus originated in a lab has faced criticism, it hasn’t been entirely ruled out.
Many scientists have been vocal in expressing support for the theory that the virus transferred from animals to humans, and the March report found “zoonotic spillover” from an immediate host was “likely to very likely.”
Your Immune System Could Be Hurting You as a Way of Signalling to Others – Science Alerts
A major debate during the pandemic, and in infectious disease research more broadly, is why infected people die. No virus “wants” to kill anyone, as an epidemiologist once said to me. Like any other form of life, a virus’s goal is only to survive and reproduce.
A growing body of evidence instead suggests that the human immune system – which the science writer Ed Yong says is “where intuition goes to die” – may itself be responsible for many people’s deaths.
In an effort to find and kill the invading virus, the body can harm major organs, including the lungs and heart. This has led some doctors to focus on attenuating an infected patient’s immune response to help save them.
This brings up an evolutionary puzzle: what’s the point of the immune system if its overzealousness can kill the same people it evolved to defend?
The answer may lie in humanity’s evolutionary history: immunity may be as much about communication and behavior as it is about cellular biology. And to the degree that researchers can understand these broad origins of the immune system, they may be better positioned to improve responses to it.
The concept of the behavioral immune system is not new. Almost all humans sometimes feel disgust or revulsion – usually because whatever has made us feel that way poses a threat to our health.
And we aren’t alone in these reactions. Research shows that some animals avoid others that are showing symptoms of illness.
Trudeau Government Begins Work on Reopening U.S.-Canada Border – Bloomberg
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has begun preliminary internal discussions about reopening the border with the U.S., even as Canada remains well behind its neighbor in vaccinations.
Senior officials have begun to formally talk about options for how to proceed, three people familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition they not be identified. One question under consideration is whether to employ a two-track system in which quarantine and testing requirements would be relaxed for vaccinated travelers.
A separate official speaking on condition they not be named disputed there were any new developments or discussions on the border, saying there has been no discernible change in policy.
“We brought forward significant restrictions at our borders over a year ago to limit the spread of Covid-19 in Canada,” James Cudmore, director of communications for Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, said in a statement. “Every month, the federal government consults with public health officials to understand which modifications are required to the existing measures at our borders to keep our communities safe from Covid-19.”
“Minister Blair is in regular contact with his American counterparts about issues relating to our shared border. Until the conditions on both sides of the border change very substantively, the measures at our borders will remain intact,” Cudmore said.
Delayed 2nd Pfizer/BioNTech shot boosts antibodies in elderly – Reuters
Delaying the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech (PFE.N), COVID-19 vaccine beyond the originally recommended three-week gap used by the companies in clinical trials appears to induce a stronger antibody response in the elderly, UK researchers found. Shortly after the vaccine became available, UK health officials advised that the second dose should be given 12 weeks after the first to allow more people to get protected by a first dose early on. In a new paper seen by Reuters and expected to appear on medRxiv on Friday ahead of peer review, researchers found that among 175 people ages 80 to 99, those who got their second dose at 12 weeks had antibody responses that were 3.5 times higher than those who got it after three weeks. Antibodies are only one part of the immune system, and vaccines also generate T cells that fight infections. The peak T cell responses were higher in the group with a three-week interval between doses, and the authors cautioned against drawing conclusions on how protected individuals were based on which dosing schedule they received.
Is the CDC Leading on COVID or Leading From Behind? – Medscape
Minutes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued its new guidance Thursday that those fully vaccinated against COVID-19 can now (mostly) ditch their masks both indoors and out, Twitter and other social media lit up with reaction.
Some people posted closeups of their first unmasked smile, others posed with T-shirts reading “Fully Vaccinated (not an anti-masker).” Still others vowed to keep wearing their masks, and many wondered how many people would be maskless liars.
Meanwhile, many public health experts commented, too. Some see the new guidance as a sudden and unwise pivot in direction, while others welcomed what they see as progress.
The agency has taken its lumps during the pandemic. Problems early on with distribution of tests in March 2020 led to nearly the entire nation locking down. In July, the Trump administration stripped the CDC of its ability to track hospitalization data. In August, other federal officials posted testing guidance on the CDC website that contradicted what its own scientists were saying.
While those incidents all took place under then-President Donald Trump, the CDC under President Joe Biden has not been without its issues. In April, the agency released guidance for gathering outdoors that many found frustratingly confusing and woefully late compared with how people were actually behaving.
Now comes the new indoor mask guidance that is a sharp turn away from recommendations the CDC has long offered. It all leads many to wonder if the CDC is leading, following, or out of touch.
So it may not be a surprise, then, that a recent poll from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health found that only 52% of Americans say they have a great deal of trust in the CDC.
[editor’s note: interesting perspective and worth a full read]
Pfizer/BioNTech Vaccine Appears Not to Affect Sperm – Reuters
The COVID-19 mRNA vaccine from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE does not damage sperm, according to a study by Israeli researchers.
They collected sperm samples from 43 male volunteers before and roughly a month after the men were vaccinated. None of their sperm parameters – volume, concentration, or motility – had changed significantly after vaccination, the researchers reported on medRxiv ahead of peer review.
“These preliminary results are reassuring to the young male population undergoing vaccination worldwide,” the researchers said.
“Couples desiring to conceive should vaccinate, as vaccination does not affect sperm,” whereas previous studies have shown that coronavirus infection does affect sperm adversely, they added.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi Sounds Alarm on COVID Crisis, Says Country Is ‘on War Footing’ – Newsweek
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is sounding the alarm on the country’s worsening COVID-19 crisis as another 4,000 people died from the virus for a third consecutive day on Friday.
Modi said his government was “on a war footing” trying to contain the new strain of the coronavirus, which was first detected in India and is now popping up across the world.
The highly transmissible B.1.617 variant is sweeping the country, with the total number of coronavirus infections in India surpassing 24 million on Friday.
“The outbreak is reaching rural areas with great speed,” Modi told farmers during a virtual conference, according to Reuters. “I want to once again warn all…those who live in villages about corona[virus].”
The pandemic has presented India’s countryside with a dire reality as rural hospitals have become overwhelmed, dead bodies have washed up on the shores of the Ganges River and crematoriums have run out of wood for funeral pyres.
The prime minister’s address to those living in rural areas signaled the growing severity of the virus spread in India. While roughly two-thirds of Indians live in rural towns and villages where health care facilities and resources are limited, Modi has refrained from speaking on the pandemic’s impact in these areas.
Friday’s remarks mark the first time he has specifically referred to the coronavirus’ grip over India’s countryside since the second wave emerged in February.
“All departments of the government, all resources, our armed forces, our scientists, everyone is working day and night to counter COVID, together,” Modi said.
Here’s how the United States beat the variants, for now. – New York Times
On Dec. 29, a National Guardsman in Colorado became the first known case in the United States of a contagious new variant of the coronavirus.
The variant, called B.1.1.7, had roiled Britain, was beginning to surge in Europe and threatened to do the same in the United States. And although scientists didn’t know it yet, other mutants were also cropping up around the country. They included variants that had devastated South Africa and Brazil and that seemed to be able to sidestep the immune system, as well as others homegrown in California, Oregon and New York.
This mélange of variants could not have come at a worse time. The nation was at the start of a post-holiday surge of cases that would dwarf all previous waves. And the distribution of powerful vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech was botched by chaos and miscommunication. Scientists warned that the variants — and B.1.1.7 in particular — might lead to a fourth wave, and that the already strained health care system might buckle.
That didn’t happen. B.1.1.7 did become the predominant version of the virus in the United States, now accounting for nearly three-quarters of all cases. But the surge experts had feared ended up a mere blip in most of the country. The nationwide total of daily new cases began falling in April and has now dropped more than 85 percent from the horrific highs of January.
Experts still see variants as a potential source of trouble in the months to come — particularly one that has battered Brazil and is growing rapidly in 17 U.S. states. But they are also taking stock of the past few months to better understand how the nation dodged the variant threat.
They point to a combination of factors — masks, social distancing and other restrictions, and perhaps a seasonal wane of infections — that bought crucial time for tens of millions of Americans to get vaccinated. They also credit a good dose of serendipity, as B.1.1.7, unlike some of its competitors, is powerless against the vaccines.
Political ideology is real reason people remain unvaccinated, says Dr. Peter Hotez – CNBC
Dr. Peter Hotez argued that the real reason a number of Americans are not getting vaccinated is their political ideology.
“They’re tying their political allegiance to the political right, unfortunately. And we’re seeing this play out in the bottom ten states in terms of vaccination coverage,” which is half of the coverage seen in the top ten states, said Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital.
The top ten states with the highest rates of residents receiving at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose also chose President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Polls show that more than 40% of Republicans are not planning to get vaccinated.
Hotez told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” that regional flare-ups over the summer in the states with lower vaccination rates could lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ask Americans to wear masks again.
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Japan Vaccine Chief Blames Drug Approval System for Slow Inoculation Drive
The military commander overseeing Canada’s vaccination drive has quit.
The following additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
New Jersey will still require masks indoors despite new CDC guidelines
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic With Hyperlinks
April 2021 Sea Container Imports Having A Record Year
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 as the variants are continuing to look for ways around immunity.
- 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.
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.
include(“/home/aleta/public_html/files/ad_openx.htm”); ?>
