Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average are 7.1 % LOWER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago and U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 26.1 % LOWER than the rolling average one week ago. Today’s posts include:
- U.S. Coronavirus New Cases are 12,845
- U.S. Coronavirus deaths are at 145
- CDC says vaccine link to heart inflammation is stronger than previously thought
- Ex-FDA commish Stephen Hahn joins Flagship, a venture group that spawned Covid-19 vaccine maker Moderna
- New York Benefits Most, South Dakota Least From 70% Vaccination
- Top Chinese virologist: Speculation surrounding Wuhan lab is baseless
- Anti-Vaccine Activists Use A Federal Database To Spread Fear About COVID Vaccines
- Researchers develop more reliable rapid tests for COVID-19
- Sweden makes COVID vaccines in powder form
- Study finds a quarter of people with COVID-19 had new medical problems after
- Being vaccinated doesn’t mean you must go maskless. Here’s why.
- US Businesses Face Historic Difficulty Finding Qualified Workers
- Plus a lot more headlines …
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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 and Recovery News You May Have Missed
Ex-FDA commish Stephen Hahn joins Flagship, a venture group that spawned Covid-19 vaccine maker Moderna – Endpoints
That revolving door between the FDA and industry is spinning even faster than usual.
Whatever the reality of the relationship, or the merits of the EUA, public perception is likely to be toxic.
Hahn was grievously wounded after standing next to Donald Trump, who appointed him as the FDA commissioner, and falsely saying that convalescent plasma could increase Covid sufferers’ chance of survival by 35%. He later said he misspoke, though emails made it clear that he had intended to make that claim going in.
Just this morning Flagship unveiled a massive expansion of its Fund VII, adding $2.3 billion as investors continue to pour massive amounts into biotech and new drug development. Flagship spawns companies like Moderna in its labs, and the upside on that hit was worth billions in stock. That in turn increases the need for a steady inflow of new execs.
Moderna helped revolutionize the world of vaccine development, racing Pfizer and BioNTech to the finish line with a radically fast-paced development program, all assisted by regulators at every turn. The success of that vaccine has upended the vaccine industry forever. And it may ultimately benefit Hahn as well.
[editor’s note: is this Hahn’s reward from Flagship for providing government contracts. It is obvious this employment is wrong]
Top Chinese virologist: Speculation surrounding Wuhan lab is baseless – The Hill
Leading Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli denounced the Wuhan lab COVID-19 origin theory as baseless and said there is no evidence to back it up.
Speaking to The New York Times on Monday in an impromptu conversation, Shi, 57, argued, “How on earth can I offer up evidence for something where there is no evidence?”
“I don’t know how the world has come to this, constantly pouring filth on an innocent scientist,” she added via text message.
When asked if the Wuhan Institute of Virology could possibly have held the source of the COVID-19 virus before the pandemic began, Shi stated that there was no possibility of that occurring, the Times reports.
According to Shi, the Chinese government’s refusal to allow an independent investigation to be carried out or for her lab to share data has only fueled speculation around the virus’s origins.
The Times notes that before the pandemic, Shi was lauded as a symbol of China’s progress in scientific research, collecting samples from bats in caves in order to learn how viruses could jump from the animals to humans. She was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology in 2019 for contributions to the scientific field.
Shi, known for being blunt according to the Times, has responded harshly to criticisms and suggestions that the virus could have originated from her lab. In an interview last year, she demanded an apology from former President Trump for making such a suggestion and told online commenters to “shut your stinky mouths” when they also brought up the theory.
The politicization of the question behind COVID-19’s origins has cut down her enthusiasm for discovering its origins, leading her to concentrate on vaccine development and researching features of the virus.
US Businesses Face Historic Difficulty Finding Qualified Workers – The Conference Board
Attracting qualified workers is a growing challenge, according to a new survey from The Conference Board. Industry and manual services workers are an especially hot commodity, with 80 percent of organizations that hire such workers reporting that it is somewhat or very difficult to find qualified employees, up from 74 percent before the pandemic. And 49 percent of industry and manual services organizations report that it is somewhat or very difficult to retain workers, up from 30 percent before the pandemic.
“Before the pandemic, industry and manual services workers were high in demand and short in supply. As the economy reopens, this trend is resurfacing—and fast,” says Frank Steemers, Senior Economist at The Conference Board. “This poses a growing challenge to companies that are looking to attract and retain this cohort of the US workforce. On the flip side, it bodes well for the workers themselves, accelerating wage growth and offering more employment opportunities.”
For more findings from this research, read: The Reimagined Workplace a Year Later: Human Capital Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Sweden makes COVID vaccines in powder form – YouTube
Anti-Vaccine Activists Use A Federal Database To Spread Fear About COVID Vaccines – NPR
… Known as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, the database includes hundreds of thousands of reports of health events that occurred minutes, hours or days after vaccination. Many of the reported events are coincidental — things that happen by chance, not caused by the shot. But when millions of people are vaccinated within a short period, the total number of these reported events can look big.
… In fact, VAERS has played a major role in the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. The data is regularly appropriated by anti-vaccine advocates, who use the reports to claim falsely that COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous. They are aided by the fact that the entire VAERS database is public — it can be downloaded by anyone for any purpose.
“There’s very little control over what can be accessed and what can be manipulated,” says Melanie Smith, director of analysis at Graphika, a company that tracks vaccine misinformation online. She says that she sees VAERS data being shared across a wide variety of anti-vaccine social media channels. “I would say almost every mis- and disinformation story that we cover is accompanied by some set of VAERS data.”
… The most commonly cited statistic among anti-vaccine groups is death following vaccination. Graphics from anti-vaccine proponents frequently tick off the number of deaths directly reported in VAERS — without noting the reports there have not been investigated or verified as causally linked to an immunization. Those numbers even made it onto the show of Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson last month. In a segment on the supposed dangers of COVID-19 vaccines, Carlson incorrectly claimed the system had recorded thousands of unexplained deaths. “It’s clear that what is happening now is not even close to normal,” he told his audience.
The problem, says Saad Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, is that many of those deaths in the VAERS database were caused by other illnesses that happened around the same time as the immunization and had nothing to do with a vaccine: “Vaccines decrease your risk of COVID-19,” Omer notes. “They don’t make you immortal.”
[editor’s note: VAERS database should be considered anecdotal as reporting is not mandatory and the volume of real health events is subject to misleading extrapolations on all sides of the issue]
New York Benefits Most, South Dakota Least From 70% Vaccination – Bloomberg
Vaccinating more people against Covid-19 is always going to be a good thing but the benefits vary widely by state, according to a new computer simulation whose results are charted below. New York would get the biggest reduction in cases from getting 70% of its population fully vaccinated vs. 50%, followed closely by Florida and North Carolina, while South Dakota would see the smallest benefit, the simulation says.
The Legal Stakes of a Lab Leak – MedPage
In 2012, researchers at the Rotterdam laboratory of virologist Ron Fouchier, PhD, noticed that an artificially created variant of the H5N1 avian flu virus began to spread among ferrets. H5N1 is a highly pathogenic virus that targets poultry but only rarely sickens people. Spread among ferrets was highly problematic because ferrets are a model for human-to-human flu transmission. Virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo observed a parallel occurrence. These findings ignited a worldwide debate about whether research that causes viruses to become more dangerous, known as gain-of-function research, should be openly published in scientific journals.
… What would be the aftermath in a world where Chinese research actions were shown to be the source of the mistaken release of SARS-CoV-2? Negligence is defined as an action that departs from the standard practice and harm is the result. It seems likely that if SARS-CoV-2 was man-made, releasing it to the world was not part of the plan. Many in Wuhan and in China suffered and died. If the creation of SARS-CoV-2 was a conspiracy, the benefits of such a plan cannot be understood. Most likely, SARS-CoV-2 escaped through a mistake or a breach. These actions are negligent.
… Consider as a round number that 1 million Americans have died from COVID-19. If SARS-CoV-2 was released through negligence, the families of these 1 million Americans could bring a class-action wrongful death claim against the laboratories in Wuhan and the Chinese government. As a round number, a wrongful death claim might pay $1 million per person. The total settlement value would therefore be $1 trillion dollars — the entire amount of U.S. debt owed to China.
If a judgment were issued against China, the obvious problem would be how to collect the money. There is no international court of civil wrongs and China might simply object based on a lack of jurisdiction on the part of the court. On the other hand, the U.S. could decide that the most straightforward way to collect the debt from China would be to begin to seize Chinese assets. If a ship from China docked at a U.S. port, the court could send the bailiff to seize the ship. Chinese funds in U.S. banks could be frozen. The U.S. could request neighboring countries to seize Chinese assets on the basis of pre-existing collaboration agreements.
… The U.S. is not completely blameless, however. Our concern over the funding of gain-of-function research was brief. America did fund and collaborate on what was inarguably gain-of-function research on coronavirus. American scientists worked with Chinese counterparts and many such collaborations are easily accessible in the medical literature. The highly ironically named “Operation Warp Speed” told a false story that speedy vaccine development occurred because of super-human insight based on de novo hard work. Many scientists already knew this virus very well. Coronavirus gain-of-function research is another example of the insufferable hubris that infects morally careless scientists, and we are all the losers as a consequence.
CDC says vaccine link to heart inflammation is stronger than previously thought – The Hill
Last Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that there is a stronger correlation between the coronavirus vaccine and heart inflammation.
Males under the age of 30 may face heart complications after receiving a full shot, Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, said during a Food and Drug Administration advisory group, NBC News reported.
Although it has not been officially confirmed to be an associated problem, the agency is investigating 226 cases of myocarditis, the inflammation of the myocardium in the heart, and pericarditis, the inflammation of the pericardium, among young, vaccinated men. Myocarditis and pericarditis share the same symptoms, including fever, fatigue, shortness of breath and a particular type of chest pain.
In most cases, an investigation would have been warranted if there were fewer than 100 cases, NBC News reported.
[editor’s note: also read CDC reports rare cases of heart inflammation in young men after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination]
Being vaccinated doesn’t mean you must go maskless. Here’s why. – News-Medical
If you are indoors with other people you know to be vaccinated, you can dispense with masks. Want to cook dinner for a group of vaccinated friends you haven’t seen for several months? Carpe diem — and don’t worry about wearing masks or sitting spaced apart.
But if you are in a mixed crowd — say, a grocery store — and don’t know who’s vaccinated, wear a mask, even though your personal risk is low. If the workers are wearing masks, it’s a matter of respect to wear one yourself. Some people may be nervous about being there — those who are immune-compromised, for example, or can’t get vaccinated for some other health reason — and they won’t know if you’ve had your shots.
“Forget about the medical benefit,” says Bradley Pollock, associate dean for Public Health Sciences at the UC-Davis School of Medicine. “If you are wearing a mask, people who are not vaccinated don’t need to feel uncomfortable around you. So, it’s kind of a courtesy issue.”
The presence of children is another good reason to mask up. Most kids ages 12 to 16 haven’t been vaccinated yet, and those under 12 can’t be, yet. They’ll probably have to wear masks in school this fall.
Researchers develop more reliable rapid tests for COVID-19 – EurekAlert
Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) have developed two rapid diagnostic tests for COVID-19 that are nearly as accurate as the gold-standard test currently used in laboratories. Unlike the gold standard test, which extracts RNA and uses it to amplify the DNA of the virus, these new tests can detect the presence of the virus in as little as five minutes using different methods.
One test is a COVID-19 molecular diagnostic test, called Antisense, that uses electrochemical sensing to detect the presence of the virus. The other uses a simple assay of gold nanoparticles to detect a color change when the virus is present. Both tests were developed by Dipanjan Pan, PhD, Professor of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine and Pediatrics at UMSOM and his research team. Dr. Pan has a joint appointment at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC).
“These tests detect the presence of the virus within 5 to 10 minutes and rely on simple processes that can be performed with little lab training,” said Dr. Pan. They do not require the extraction of the virus’s RNA – which is both complicated and time consuming.
They also are more reliable than the rapid antigen tests currently on the market, which detect the virus only in those with significantly high viral levels. “These two newer tests are extremely sensitive and can detect the presence of the virus, even in those with low levels of the virus,” Dr. Pan said.
Study finds a quarter of people with COVID-19 had new medical problems after – The Hill
A quarter of people who had COVID-19 sought care for new medical problems at least a month after their diagnosis, according to a large study published on Tuesday, indicating the prevalence of long-haul COVID-19.
The research conducted by nonprofit FAIR Health determined from private health insurance claims that 23.2 percent of COVID-19 patients — amounting to more than 450,000 people — sought care for at least one post-COVID-19 symptom at least 30 days after diagnosis.
The study analyzed health records from almost 2 million people who were diagnosed with COVID-19 between February and December 2020 and tracked whether they developed new symptoms until February 2021. FAIR Health said the research is the largest to its knowledge looking into long-haul conditions among COVID-19 patients.
The most common new post-COVID-19 condition reported by the hundreds of thousands of patients was pain — including nerve inflammation and aches and pains — with more than 5 percent, or almost 100,000, reporting the symptom.
Breathing difficulties, high cholesterol, malaise and fatigue as well as high blood pressure were the next most common conditions. Intestinal symptoms, migraines, skin problems, heart abnormalities, sleep disorders and mental health conditions were also reported.
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Why Are Hordes Of Wealthy People Hitting The Escape Button And Heading To Montana?
Novavax set for India launch with Serum Institute as manufacturing partner
Covaxin output may hit 100 million doses per month by November
Full Hospitals in Afghanistan Close Doors to New Patients as COVID-19 Surges
Fake coronavirus tests may have helped fuel Indian outbreaks.
US donates batch of Johnson & Johnson vaccines to Mexico
UK could see hundreds of Covid-19 deaths a day, government scientific adviser says
The following additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Study: People in five states were infected before first coronavirus cases were confirmed
Shi Zhengli, a top Chinese virologist, insists that the coronavirus did not leak from her Wuhan lab. China’s secrecy has made her claims unverifiable.
Significant disparities in COVID-19 vaccination rates were seen at an Ohio health system, with lower likelihood of immunization among clinical nurses and support staff, as well as among Black and Hispanic employees overall.
Aaron Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH, who resigned from FDA’s Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee following approval of aducanumab (Aduhelm), says the agency has “reached a new low” in a New York Times op-ed.
The CDC suspended the import of dogs from more than 100 countries, citing rabies risk.
Celltrion announced positive trial results for its COVID-19 antibody therapy, stating that the drug was safe and reduced treatment duration by 5 days.
Meanwhile, AstraZeneca said its monoclonal antibody cocktail failed to prevent symptomatic COVID-19 in people recently exposed to the virus.
Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s top international news anchor, announced that she has been diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
The Vatican warned bishops in the U.S. not to deny communion to politicians who support abortion rights, but the bishops have forced a debate anyway.
Exposure to the rhinovirus, the most frequent cause of the common cold, can protect against infection by the virus which causes COVID-19, Yale researchers have found. In a new study, the researchers found that the common respiratory virus jump-starts the activity of interferon-stimulated genes, early-response molecules in the immune system which can halt replication of the SARS-CoV-2 virus within airway tissues infected with the cold.
Hospitals Sued Patients Over Medical Debt Through the Pandemic
Transplant Recipients May Require Third Dose of COVID-19 Vaccine
Migraine Linked to More COVID-19 Infections, Symptoms
Federal watchdog to examine NIH grants, likely including Wuhan funding
CDC Designates COVID Delta Variant as ‘Variant of Concern’
California Mask Mandate Ends As COVID Restrictions Eased on June 15
The White House will host a large July 4 event, marking Biden’s promise of a return to normalcy.
FAA will continue zero-tolerance policy for unruly passengers as long as the problem continues
US sees lowest weekly number of new Covid-19 cases in children in a year
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic and Recovery With Hyperlinks
April 2021 Business Inventories Remain Normal For Times Of Economic Expansion
May 2021 Headline Industrial Production Improves
June 2021 Empire State Manufacturing Index Declines
May 2021 Producer Price Final Demand Inflation Continues To Rise
Headline Retail Sales Slowed in May 2021
COVID: Did A Delayed Second Dose Give The Delta Variant An Evolutionary Helping Hand?
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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