Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average are 12.2 % LOWER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago and U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 24.8 % LOWER than the rolling average one week ago. Today’s posts include:
- U.S. Coronavirus New Cases are 13,707
- U.S. Coronavirus deaths are at 305
- Examining America’s Culpability for COVID
- An R&D investment with a big return
- Johns Hopkins’ Dr. Marty Makary: Americans have an ‘entirely distorted perception’ of Covid risk
- Chip shortage could worsen after COVID-19 outbreak shuts down company in Taiwan
- The US says it recovered a large portion of Colonial Pipeline ransom
- The Complex Ethical Morass of COVID-19 Human Challenge Trials
- Federal Judge Claims the COVID Vaccine Kills More People Than Mass Shootings Do
- U.S. report concluded COVID-19 may have leaked from Wuhan lab
- How the ‘alpha’ coronavirus variant became so powerful
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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
The Complex Ethical Morass of COVID-19 Human Challenge Trials – MedPage
Two institutions in England have launched COVID-19 human challenge trials, which will deliberately infect participants with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Despite the approval of these trials by European regulators, debates have continued over whether the ethical justification is sufficient.
The studies, conducted at Imperial College London and the University of Oxford, are in their initial stages and have recruited participants ages 18 to 30 who have no risk factors for severe COVID-19 illness.
But the trials do have one major difference. The Oxford trial will investigate how much protection is needed to avoid reinfection, meaning its participants have already had COVID-19. The trial at Imperial College London, however, will infect people who have not been previously exposed.
Human challenge trials have been highly contested since the start of the pandemic, when they were publicized as studies that could fast-track development and production of vaccines. These types of trials can provide critical insights about a pathogen faster than standardized clinical trials, making the argument for conducting them during a public health emergency attractive.
However, some bioethicists say that using these studies to research COVID-19 is still not justified based on the availability of vaccines to prevent infection, uncertainties about the long-term effects of disease, and the lack of a rescue treatment for participants who fall seriously ill.
Arthur Caplan, PhD, director of the division of medical ethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City, said that challenge trials are needed to answer certain questions quickly. For example, in regions where there are new outbreaks, these trials could be used to test vaccine efficacy against a new variant, answer questions about mixing vaccine doses, or test new immunizations.
“There are basic insights that we could get about coronaviruses from challenge trials,” Seema Shah, JD, a bioethicist at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, told MedPage Today. The trial at Oxford, for example, might give scientists more information about who is protected against COVID-19 reinfection, and how exactly they are protected.
Shah said that gaining knowledge about protection, such as whether it is related to the mucosa in a patient’s nasal passage or the antibodies in their bloodstream, could be critical in developing better tests or vaccines. But providing a sound ethical justification is necessary.
An investment with a big return – New York Times
How has the Senate managed to find a rare area of bipartisan agreement and put together a major bill to finance technology and manufacturing? A brief bit of history helps answer that question.
The U.S. government used to devote a much larger share of the country’s resources to investing in the future. Every year from the 1950s through the ’70s, federal spending on research and development equaled at least 1 percent of G.D.P. The share peaked above 2 percent in the 1960s.
The government made these R. & D. investments because the private sector often did not do so on its own. The investments involved basic science and early commercial development, which tend to be unprofitable for any single company. But the returns for society can be enormous.
The R. & D. boom in the second half of the 20th century led directly to the development of jet airplanes, satellites, semiconductors, the internet, M.R.I.s and lifesaving drugs to treat cancer, heart disease and other illnesses. It helped create world-leading industries, with good-paying jobs, in digital technology, pharmaceuticals, higher education and more.
In recent decades, though, the U.S. has pulled back from making these investments. The reasons are complex, but Americans’ increased cynicism — about the future in general and the role of government in particular — certainly plays a role. Today, the federal government spends less than 0.7 percent of G.D.P. on R. & D.
Some other countries spend significantly more:
U.S. report concluded COVID-19 may have leaked from Wuhan lab – Reuters
A report on the origins of COVID-19 by a U.S. government national laboratory concluded that the hypothesis of a virus leak from a Chinese lab in Wuhan is plausible and deserves further investigation, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday, citing people familiar with the classified document.
The study was prepared in May 2020 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and was referred to by the State Department when it conducted an inquiry into the pandemic’s origins during the final months of the Trump administration, the WSJ report said.
Lawrence Livermore’s assessment drew on a genomic analysis of the COVID-19 virus, the Journal said. Lawrence Livermore declined to comment on the Wall Street Journal report.
… U.S. intelligence agencies are considering two likely scenarios – that the virus resulted from a laboratory accident or that it emerged from human contact with an infected animal – but they have not come to a conclusion, Biden said.
A still-classified U.S. intelligence report circulated during former President Donald Trump’s administration alleged that three researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became so ill in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, U.S. government sources have said.
How the ‘alpha’ coronavirus variant became so powerful – Economic Times
In December, British researchers discovered that a new variant was sweeping through their country. When it arrived in other countries, the variant, now known as Alpha, tended to become more common in its new homes as well. By April, it had become the dominant variant in the United States, and it has remained so ever since.
Alpha’s swift success has left scientists wondering how the variant conquered the world. A new study points to one secret to its success: Alpha disables the first line of immune defense in our bodies, giving the variant more time to multiply.
“It’s very impressive,” said Dr. Maudry Laurent-Rolle, a physician and virus expert at the Yale School of Medicine who was not involved in the new study. “Any successful virus has to get beyond that first defense system. The more successful it is at doing that, the better off the virus is.”
The report was posted online on Monday and has not yet been published in a scientific journal.
Alpha has 23 mutations that set it apart from other coronaviruses. When the variant started to surge in Britain, researchers began inspecting these genetic tweaks to look for explanations as to why it was spreading faster than other variants.
A lot of researchers focused their attention on the nine mutations that alter the so-called spike protein that covers the coronavirus and allows it to invade cells. One of those mutations helps the virus bind more tightly to cells, potentially improving its chances of a successful infection.
But other scientists have focused on how Alpha affects the human immune response. Gregory Towers, a virus expert at the University College London, and his colleagues grew coronaviruses in human lung cells, comparing Alpha-infected cells with those infected with earlier variants of the coronavirus.
Social media, news websites hit by major internet outage – Reuters
Multiple outages hit social media, government and news websites across the globe on Tuesday morning, with some reports pointing to a glitch at U.S.-based cloud computing services provider Fastly.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the issue affecting the sites.
Fastly said it was investigating “the potential impact to performance with our CDN services,” according to its website.
Most of Fastly’s coverage areas were facing “Degraded Performance”, the website showed.
Separately, Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) retail website also seemed to be down. Amazon was not immediately available to comment.
Nearly 21,000 Reddit users reported issues with the social media platform, while more than 2,000 users reported problems with Amazon, according to outage monitoring website Downdetector.com.
Amazon’s Twitch was also experiencing an outage, according to Downdetector’s website.
Websites operated by news outlets including the Financial Times, the Guardian, the New York Times and Bloomberg News also faced outages.
[editor’s note: (0845ET): All of Fastly’s services appear operational, and the global CDN disruption has been resolved. According to ZeroHedge, There are many similarities between this outage and an issue with Cloudflare last year. The point here is to have the entire internet rely on a single point of failure like Fastly and Cloudflare could be something hackers may exploit. Please note that Econintersect uses Clouldflare – not for content delivery but for security and hacking.]
US says it recovered large portion of Colonial Pipeline ransom – Financial Times
US officials said they have recovered $2.3m worth of the ransom payment made to hackers who shut down the Colonial Pipeline last month and disrupted the country’s fuel supplies for several days. Justice department officials said on Monday that they had identified a virtual wallet used by suspected Russia-based ransomware group DarkSide from which they seized the funds in a rare instance of a ransom recovery. The pipeline, which supplies almost half of the motor fuel consumed on the US east coast, was shut down for five days following the hack by DarkSide, triggering a run on petrol supplies as motorists rushed to fill their tanks. “Ransomware attacks are always unacceptable, but when they target critical infrastructure, we will spare no effort in our response,” Lisa Monaco, the US deputy attorney-general, said. “Following the money remains one of the most basic, yet powerful tools we have.” Joseph Blount, Colonial’s chief executive, told The Wall Street Journal that the company had paid a ransom in bitcoin worth $4.4m because it was “the right thing to do for the country” amid a growing debate over whether there should be a blanket ban on making payments to hackers. Blount, who is due to testify at a congressional hearing this week, thanked the FBI on Monday for its “swift work and professionalism in responding to this event”.
Federal Judge Claims the COVID Vaccine Kills More People Than Mass Shootings Do – Slate
On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez, a George W. Bush nominee, held that California’s long-standing ban on assault weapons violates the Second Amendment. The ban has been affirmed by the people of California, through both legislation and a ballot initiative, over the past 32 years. Benitez, however, derided the state’s interest in prohibiting these exceptionally dangerous weapons, condemning the ban as a “failed experiment.” His decision began with a now-infamous analogy comparing AR-15s to the Swiss Army knife, praising the semi-automatic rifle as “a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment.”
But this dubious comparison is just the tip of the iceberg: Benitez’s 94-page opinion is riddled with bizarre and unsupported claims—even more so than his previous decision blocking the ban on the kind of high-capacity magazine used in the Thousand Oaks shooting. Below are five of the opinion’s most alarming and unbelievable assertions, from COVID misinformation to outlandish speculation that AR-15s are necessary to stop rape.
[editor’s note: entertaining post – think the Judge’s rationale will not hold up in the review process]
Repeated low-dose dose exposure to SARS-CoV-2 may protect against severe COVID-19 – News-Medical
Emerging variants of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) are causing a third wave in Europe, and an interesting development has been observed.
As transmissible variants and vaccinations have increased, several European countries have experienced a second and third wave of the pandemic without a proportional increase in disease severity and mortality.
A promising development has prompted a study premised on an additional factor that can influence how the virus affects the population.
The concept of having a higher immune defense against the virus is predicated on SARS-CoV-2-specific T cells, which progressively develop based on natural exposure to low viral doses.
Recent studies have suggested that low-dose viral particles enter the respiratory and intestinal tract and can induce the T cell memory response without inflammation occurring, resulting in varying degrees of immunization. This lack of inflammatory response could be the cause of a disproportionate level of COVID-19 rates and disease severity and mortality in the population.
A recent analysis of German data found a decline in fatality rates from COVID-19 in all age groups, including older age groups. This can also be confirmed by the surveillance reports by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), who have relayed that a majority of European countries have experienced high rates of COVID-19 in 2021 without a proportional increase in mortality rates.
The hypothesis of low-virus doses leaking from masks which may reduce disease severity in those who are subsequently infected, has been proposed to explain the possible increase in the rates of asymptomatic infections.
The Italian authors of this paper, published in the journal Viruses, have taken this hypothesis and expanded it to include viral particles suspended in the air or on inanimate objects as a possible source of T cell immunity due to the repeated low-dose exposure, potentially explaining virus immunity found in non-infected individuals.
Disease severity trends
COVID-19 distribution in Italy from February 2020 to April 2021 illustrates an increase in asymptomatic and paucisymptomatic cases, whereby more individuals with the infection either presented with no symptoms or a few symptoms such as malaise (seen in Figure 1).
Chip shortage could worsen after COVID-19 outbreak shuts down company in Taiwan – The Hill
A COVID-19 outbreak has shut down a Taiwan-based chip-testing company, which could worsen the global chip shortage, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
Taiwan’s Centers for Disease Control announced in a statement on Sunday that King Yuan Electronics Co. shut down their main plants on Saturday after a reported 182 cases among foreign workers.
Taiwan’s government ordered 2,000 overseas workers at the company to enter a 14-day quarantine, according to Bloomberg.
King Yaun spokesperson Aaron Chang told Bloomberg that the company resumed operations on Sunday night at lower production levels, with full production expected after the quarantined employees return.
“The company sees no major impact on annual finances and businesses,” Chang said.
Examining America’s Culpability for COVID – Newsweek
Early in the pandemic, Chinese authorities blamed COVID-19 on a pangolin in a Wuhan wet market, claiming the virus was transmitted from bats to an intermediate host animal to humans. They have yet to produce a pangolin infected with the virus. Lying to the world is nothing new for the communist government. But Western governments, journalists and scientists, not to mention American research institutions and social media companies, were, with few exceptions, willing dupes.
Now the same groups are engaged in a concerted campaign to blame COVID-19 on an accidental lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But this new theory simply transfers a slim line of information from one silo to another, and its proponents rigorously refuse to ask tough but necessary questions.
The first dots to connect are the coordination, money and cooperation between American institutions and the Wuhan Institute. University of North Carolina researchers established a partnership with the institute years ago. Along with Wuhan virologist Dr. Shi Zhengli, they reported as early as 2015 that they had succeeded in transferring spike proteins from a bat virus to a SARS virus and significantly increased the virus’s pathogenicity. This is the “gain of function” research some American government and research scientists wanted to conduct without the full knowledge of other U.S. government institutions.
What about the money? Zhengli’s 2015 study, titled “A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence” and published in Nature, reported funding from the NIH, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the EcoHealth Alliance. It also included a note in its acknowledgements:
Experiments with the full-length and chimeric SHC014 recombinant viruses were initiated and performed before the [gain of function] research funding pause and have since been reviewed and approved for continued study by the NIH. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
There was indeed a pause in NIH funding for gain-of-function research beginning in 2014. But by 2015, this grant had been “reviewed and approved for continued study.” In 2017, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded $6.5 million to EcoHealth Alliance, another funder of the Wuhan research. Just last year, the president of EcoHealth Alliance orchestrated the scientists’ letter that insisted on the natural origins of COVID-19, closing down independent discussion of the origins and leading Facebook and Twitter to ban dissenting scientists.
[editor’s note: I have been waiting for an article like this one – I do not understand why the mass media swept this topic under the rug]
Johns Hopkins’ Dr. Marty Makary: Americans have an ‘entirely distorted perception’ of Covid risk – CNBC
The case fatality rate for Covid in the U.S. has become “much different” now that the disease is circulating more among younger populations, said Makary.
For those younger Americans, he said, the case fatality rate of Covid has become similar to seasonal flu. “Right now, we’ve got 1/50th the number of daily cases of this virus” compared with cases of flu during a mild season in the U.S., he added.
The seven-day average of new daily Covid cases in the U.S. is around 15,800, according to a CNBC analysis of Johns Hopkins University data. That’s down more than 60% from roughly a month ago, when the U.S. average of new daily coronavirus infections was around 45,000. The highest single day of new cases in the U.S. was 300,462 on Jan. 2.
The sharp drop in Covid cases has coincided with more Americans receiving vaccines. As of Monday, nearly 64% of U.S. adults had received at least one vaccine dose and 53% are fully vaccinated, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The country’s seven-day average of new daily reported Covid deaths is around 460, according to CNBC’s analysis of JHU data. That’s down 21% from a week ago. The highest single day of new fatalities in the U.S. was 4,477 on Jan. 12.
People “need to be careful if they’re unvaccinated and not had the infection, but we need to move on at some point,” said Makary, author of many books, including “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care — And How to Fix It.” It’s now in paperback with a new Covid section.
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
China’s imports grow at fastest pace in decade as materials prices surge
France, Spain join list of countries open to vaccinated Americans
The U.K.’s RECOVERY trial found that aspirin was no help in hospitalized COVID-19 patients.
Mr. Trudeau, tear down this wall: Canadian health officials issued a pandemic border policy exemption to the National Hockey League, allowing U.S.- and Canada-based NHL teams to play, if needed, during the Stanley Cup playoffs.
China State Media Calls Wuhan Lab Leak Theory ‘Pathetic Story’
Sinovac says China has approved its vaccine for use in children as young as 3.
Harris takes on graft in Guatemala and tells migrants ‘do not come’
US working closely with Canada on travel across the border, secretary of state says
The following additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
The Justice Department said it had seized most of the Bitcoin ransom that Colonial Pipeline paid to hackers last month.
The F.D.A. approved a drug to treat Alzheimer’s, the first in almost 20 years. Experts are divided over whether it works.
Joints for jabs? The Washington state Liquor and Cannabis Board said this week it will allow state-licensed cannabis retailers to “provide one joint to adult consumers who receive COVID-19 vaccination at an in-store vaccination clinic.”
Nearly 200,000 Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses will expire June 23 in Ohio, Gov. Mike Dewine said. “For Ohioans who have been waiting to get their vaccine, I urge you to take action now,” DeWine said in a news release.
A large trial for the Novavax vaccine is about to end in the U.S., and the biotech company’s research president said it anticipates filing for authorization in the U.S. in the third quarter, NPR reported.
Carnival announces July cruises with COVID vaccine requirement
State-run veterans nursing homes in New Jersey widely misappropriated federal COVID-19 relief funds, a Wall Street Journal investigation found, with multiple senior managers who earned too much to qualify for hazard pay getting the money anyways.
Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings announced plans to defy Florida’s “vaccine passport” rule by requiring passengers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 when it sets sail from the state’s ports.
Pandemic-induced declines in greenhouse gas emissions did not slow carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, which in May reached the highest level since accurate measurements started in 1958.
No point vaccinating those who’ve had COVID-19: Findings of Cleveland Clinic study
Risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission aboard aircraft is low: A review of evidence
Aerospace giant Boeing tested two kinds of ionization technologies — like those widely adopted in schools hoping to combat covid — to determine how well each killed germs on surfaces and decided that neither was effective enough to install on its commercial planes. Boeing noted in its conclusion that “air ionization has not shown significant disinfection effectiveness.”
Pfizer starting test of COVID-19 vaccine in children under 12
Hospital Workers Walk Out Over Mandatory COVID Vaccination. The walk out follows a lawsuit against the Texas hospital filed by more than 100 nurses claiming it is “forcing its employees to be human ‘guinea pigs’ as a condition for continued employment.”
Fauci says U.S. must vaccinate more people before Delta becomes dominant Covid variant in America
U.S. Republicans vow to oppose Yellen’s G7 tax deal, casting doubt on its future
Report shows lowest number of new Covid-19 cases in children in nearly a year
Pfizer to trial smaller doses of its Covid-19 vaccine in children 11 years old and younger
Around half of Americans support requiring proof of vaccination to return to work, poll finds
CDC study finds vaccinated people have milder disease in rare breakthrough infections
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic With Hyperlinks
April 2021 Headline JOLTS Job Openings Again At Series High
Why The Global Chip Shortage Is Hard To Overcome
April 2021 Trade Balance Improves
April 2021 Consumer Credit Expanded
May 2021 Small Business Optimism Pauses As Labor Shortage Slows Growth
Yellen And The Big Push To Offshore US Labor
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.
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