Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average are 8.3 % LOWER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago and U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 19.4 % LOWER than the rolling average one week ago. Today’s posts include:
- U.S. Coronavirus New Cases are 10,329
- U.S. Coronavirus deaths are at 280
- Which vitamins and minerals help with COVID?
- First Close Look at Presumed Myocarditis Cases After COVID Vaccination
- How to Report a Vaccine Reaction Yourself
- Hospitals See Surge In Double-Lung Transplants As COVID “Honeycombs” Organs
- Factors Driving the Growing Racial Wage Gaps and Solutions to Close Them
- AMA Debates Value of Natural Immunity to COVID
- 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
Hospitals See Surge In Double-Lung Transplants As COVID “Honeycombs” Organs – ZeroHedge
As scientists start to assess the impact that COVID-19 has had on patients and the American medical system more broadly, Bloomberg reports that hospitals across the US have seen a surge in patients receiving single- and double-lung transplants.
Transplants are necessary for only the most serious COVID-19 cases. In these patients – pretty much always patients with comorbidities – COVID-19 ravages the lung tissue, leaving nodules in the lungs incapable of absorbing oxygen from the air and transmitting it to the blood stream. For many patients, the grueling procedure may be the only solution after experiencing the worst lung damage caused by the virus – when the body fails to properly respond to, and heal from, the hyper-inflammatory response provoked by COVID-19.
… A study published in the Lancet, the premier UK medical journal, aggregated what the scientific community has learned about the phenomenon. The report determined that “lung transplantation is the only option for survival in some patients with severe, unresolving COVID-19-associated ARDS.”
Between May 1 and Sept 30, 2020, 12 patients with COVID-19-associated ARDS underwent bilateral lung transplantation at six high-volume transplant centres in the USA (eight recipients at three centres), Italy (two recipients at one centre), Austria (one recipient), and India (one recipient). The median age of recipients was 48 years (IQR 41-51); three of the 12 patients were female. Chest imaging before transplantation showed severe lung damage that did not improve despite prolonged mechanical ventilation and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. The lung transplant procedure was technically challenging, with severe pleural adhesions, hilar lymphadenopathy, and increased intraoperative transfusion requirements. Pathology of the explanted lungs showed extensive, ongoing acute lung injury with features of lung fibrosis. There was no recurrence of SARS-CoV-2 in the allografts. All patients with COVID-19 could be weaned off extracorporeal support and showed short-term survival similar to that of transplant recipients without COVID-19.
First Close Look at Presumed Myocarditis Cases After COVID Vaccination – MedPage
Detailed records showed that people diagnosed with myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination tended to be men, and all were able to recover after a few days in the hospital.
Health officials around the globe are investigating the potential link between vaccines and inflammation of the myocardium, with the attention focused on the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna mRNA vaccines in particular.
Myocarditis had not been reported in clinical trials leading to the authorization of these vaccines.
Ahead of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting on Friday — during which CDC advisors are expected to review the several hundred cases of suspected myocarditis that have been reported by the public to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) — two case series and one in-depth case report were published online in Circulation.
None of these reports were able to definitively confirm or exclude a causal relationship between vaccination and myocarditis.
The first case series described eight patients from the U.S. and Italy who presented with chest pain and were diagnosed with acute myocarditis at an average of 3 days after getting an mRNA vaccine. All were otherwise healthy men ages 21 to 56 years.
Only one person experienced myocarditis after a first vaccination dose; this person had a previous infection from SARS-CoV-2.
Five of the eight patients had a fever within 24 hours of the injection (three with Moderna, five with Pfizer), with chest pain developing 48 to 96 hours later, reported a group led by Kathryn Larson, MD, of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
… These findings “could suggest a distinct vaccine-associated immunophenotype with a high likelihood for rapid recovery. However, it is not clear whether the observed differences reflect a potential (causal) pathologic immune response or rather appropriate healing responses to myocardial inflammation,” the authors wrote.
How bad is Delta? – New York Times
As each new coronavirus variant has emerged, people have feared that it would be a game-changer — resistant to the vaccines or vastly more serious. So far, though, all the variants have been much more similar to the original version of the virus than they have been different.
The vaccines are effective on all of them, and many of the early fears about severity of variant symptoms have not been borne out. That’s why some public-health experts use the term “scariants.”
Delta does appear to be worse than most, as I described in Monday’s newsletter. It may be the worst variant yet, in terms of contagiousness and severity. Yet it also seems to be in the same broad range as the earlier ones.
Consider this data from England, where Delta is already widespread. Covid-related hospitalizations of children have risen from their lows of a few weeks ago, but the increases are not large:
By The New York Times | Source: National Health Service in England
The best assumption seems to be that Delta will be modestly worse for children than earlier versions of the virus. “I haven’t seen data to make me particularly worried about Delta in kids,” Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, told me.Covid vs. car trips
This evidence suggests that serious versions of Covid will continue to be extremely rare in children.
As you can see here, some common activities — and several other diseases — have caused significantly more childhood deaths than Covid has:
By The New York Times | Source: Centers for Disease Control and PreventionThe same is true for infants:
By The New York Times | Source: Centers for Disease Control and PreventionDeath is not the only outcome that parents fear, of course. Yet “long Covid” and hospitalization have also been very rare in children. It’s just that society has been so focused on Covid that we have paid intense attention to the risks associated with it — even when they are smaller than other risks that we unthinkingly accept.
To take one example, we don’t use the phrase “long flu,” but it’s a real problem, including for children: One academic study has found that up to 10 percent of people who contract influenza later develop cardiac inflammation.
Serious forms of Covid are so rare in children that a few countries with better recent Covid track records than the U.S. — like Britain, Germany and Israel — may not even officially urge vaccinations for most children. The decision will be up to individual parents.
It’s true that children will face a higher risk of contracting Covid once they resume activities than they would on lockdown. The good news is that rates of Covid transmission in the U.S. have plummeted, which makes every activity safer than it would have been this past fall or winter.
Mind the Gap: Factors Driving the Growing Racial Wage Gaps and Solutions to Close Them – The Conference Board
Despite heightened awareness of pay disparities and efforts to address them, wage gaps between Black and White workers in the US have increased in the past decade, even when comparing workers with similar educational backgrounds. Underrepresentation of Black workers in high-paying occupations and industries is one source of these gaps.
How to Report a Vaccine Reaction Yourself – GreenMedInfo
- If you get a vaccine, including a COVID-19 vaccine, and your health deteriorates within hours, days or weeks of being vaccinated, the person who gave you the shot is required by federal law to file a report with the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)
- VAERS is the centralized vaccine reaction reporting system in the U.S., which was created under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986
- VAERS records the timing of the vaccination and onset of the adverse event; the age and current illnesses or medications taken by the person who reacted; past history of vaccine reactions; the name of the state where the person lives and other important information to help record and evaluate reported vaccine reactions
- The U.S. is operating under a public health emergency declaration and there is an even greater need to step up efforts to report vaccine reactions to VAERS, especially injuries and deaths, that occur after vaccination
- If the vaccine provider refuses to file a vaccine reaction report with VAERS, you can do it yourself
Which vitamins and minerals help with COVID? – News-Medical
A study published in the journal Inflammopharmacology reviewed recent data related to the role of vitamins and minerals in treating COVID-19 patients. The primary goal of the review is to highlight the possible therapeutic role of vitamins A, B, C, D, E and K, and micronutrients as immunity boosters in COVID-19 patients.
… Studies show that levels of sodium significantly decrease in COVID-19 patients, and low potassium levels can lead to an increase in ARDS and acute cardiac injury risk, which is a common complication in COVID-19.
Calcium eliminates viruses from the cells and reports show that severe COVID-19 patients have a lower calcium concentration compared to those with less severe disease.
Studies also report low phosphorus levels in severe COVID-19, which shows the importance of monitoring the serum phosphorus levels in critical COVID-19 patients.
Magnesium supplementation may be useful in coping with stress caused by the pandemic and post-traumatic stress disorder in COVID-19 survivors and HCPs. It also regulates various immune functions and plays a vital role in the immune response to viral infections.
Trace elements such as zinc, copper, manganese, and selenium also show antiviral activity by inhibiting viral replication in the host cells. Zinc acts as an active agent for immunity against H1N1 influenza, and there is evidence of a decline in ACE2 activity in rat lungs after Zn supplementation. In vitro data shows that Zn2+ cation inhibits SARS-CoV-2 RNA polymerase by suppressing its replication. Hence, zinc supplementation may be an adjuvant therapy in COVID-19 treatment.
[editor’s note: article worth a full read]
Delta variant will likely become dominant variant in the US, CDC director says – CNN
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Dr. Rochelle Walensky said she anticipates the Delta coronavirus variant that was first discovered in India will be the “predominant variant in the months ahead” in the United States.
The two-dose Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are highly effective against the variant, Walensky said, and studies are underway on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
The CDC elevated the Delta variant to a variant of concern this week. The variant, also known as B1.617.2, accounts for 99% of new coronavirus cases in the UK, according to the latest data from Public Health England.
Walensky also said “we’re doing everything we can” to meet President Biden’s goal of having 70% of US adults at least partially vaccinated by July 4. According to the CDC, only 53% of the population has received at least one dose of the vaccine.
“We’re really doing everything we can to meet people where they are. And to understand what their hesitancy is so that they can get information if they want to understand the safety, if they want to understand how these vaccines got to us so quickly, we’re doing all of that hard work right now,” Walensky said to CNN’s Ana Cabrera.
AMA Debates Value of Natural Immunity to COVID – MedPage
During the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates annual meeting, members debated whether natural immunity or previous infection with SARS-CoV-2 was sufficient for the merit of immunity credentials.
Gregory Pinto, MD, a delegate from New York, called for policy recommending “that vaccination credentials be provided on the basis of natural immunity or previous SARS-CoV-2 infection” during proceedings on the virtual “floor.”
He argued that there “is no indication that immunity derived from prior COVID infection is in any way inferior to that derived from vaccination.” Therefore, any immunity credentialing service ought to include natural immunity stemming from a prior infection, he said.
Ryan Englander, a delegate from Connecticut who spoke on behalf of the AMA’s Medical Student Section, disagreed with Pinto on whether natural immunity and immunity from a vaccine were equivalent.
He noted that natural immunity is difficult to gauge and the only technologies capable of determining such immunity are antibody titers and certain assays that aren’t commercially available. He also said that prior exposure to COVID is not as “robust” in protecting individuals against variants compared with vaccination.
Englander cited a clinical trial by Novavax, in which individuals with prior SARS-CoV-2 exposure were found to be just as likely to become infected with the South African variant as those who lacked such exposure.
… As for the science on natural immunity, he quoted a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, who often said, “‘in our current state of ignorance, we believe’ … and that’s what I think both people for and against [natural immunity] have said on the antibodies.”
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
UN: Millions driven from homes in 2020 despite COVID crisis
Big diamond found in Botswana, could be world’s 3rd largest
A huge backlog at China’s ports could spoil your holiday shopping this year
Maersk: ‘Unceasing congestion becoming a global problem’
Three-child policy: China lifts cap on births in major policy shift
Moscow Facing New Aggressive Coronavirus Variant, Mayor Says
Virus cases surge again in Russia, many from the Delta variant.
COVID-19 Cases Surge in Africa, Less Than 0.8% of Fully Vaccinated, Say Officials
Drop in Havana COVID-19 Cases Boosts Hopes Cuban Vaccines Working
The Palestinian Authority on Friday backed out of a vaccine exchange program with Israel, saying the doses it was receiving were expiring too quickly, according to The Associated Press.
Brazil Hurtles Toward 500K COVID Deaths as Debate Rages Over Real Number
US-Canada border restrictions extended to July 21
26 Top Medical Experts in Japan Urge Olympics Be Held Without Fans
Portugal orders Lisbon into a weekend lockdown as the Delta variant spreads.
99% of new coronavirus cases in UK are Delta variant
Isolated in the South Pacific, Fiji struggles as infections rise.
WHO says delta is becoming the dominant Covid variant globally
The following additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Hopeful Dads Can Relax About COVID Vax: No Link to Infertility
The Supreme court also unanimously that a Roman Catholic social-service agency could refuse to work with same-sex couples while screening potential foster parents.
President Biden signed a bill making Juneteenth a national holiday immediately. Most federal employees have today off.
A U.S. government program will fund the development of pills to treat Covid early in the course of infection.
How a heat dome is pushing extreme temperatures to new heights in the West
A family affair: Children and other relatives of Biden aides get administration jobs
CDC investigating TB cases linked to tainted bone repair product used in more than 100 patients
“Giant Mistake” – CDC Delays Emergency Meeting On Post-Vax Heart Inflammation Due To Juneteenth
Inflation breakout will drive 10-year Treasury yields above 2%: Wells Fargo
California launches Covid-19 vaccine digital record, but won’t require its use
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic and Recovery With Hyperlinks
11 June 2021 ECRI’s WLI Growth Rate Continues to Slow
Rail Week Ending 12 June 2021 – Continued Moderate Slowing In Intuitive Sectors
Pharmaceutical Cuts Soar In May After Falling To Record Low In 2020
Infographic Of The Day: How Powerful Is Your Passport In A Post-Pandemic World?
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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