Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average are 11.8 % LOWER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago and U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 8.1 % LOWER than the rolling average one week ago. Today’s posts include:
- U.S. Coronavirus New Cases are 14,042
- U.S. Coronavirus deaths are at 398
- Seattle scientist digs up deleted coronavirus genetic data, adding fuel to the covid origin debate
- Could polio vaccines induce cross-reactive antibodies that target SARS-CoV-2?
- Model Suggests COVID Deaths, Mostly From the Unvaccinated, Could Reach 1K a Day in 2022
- Falling short: Why the White House will miss its vax target
- CDC extends eviction moratorium through July
- Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine linked to rare blood disease – Israeli study
- Factors Driving Growing Racial Wage Gaps and Solutions to Close Them
- 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
Falling short: Why the White House will miss its vax target – AP
A half-dozen officials involved in the vaccination campaign, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the missed target candidly, pointed to a combination of factors, including: the lessened sense of urgency that followed early success in the vaccination campaign; a decision to reach higher than a play-it-safe lower goal; and unexpectedly strong recalcitrance among some Americans toward getting a shot.
Nonetheless, the White House says it’s not letting up on its vaccination efforts. Biden will be in North Carolina on Thursday urging Americans to roll up their sleeves as part of a nationwide “month of action” to drive up the vaccination rate before the holiday. The White House is continuing to roll out increasingly localized programs to encourage specific communities to get vaccinated.
A drop-off in vaccination rates was always expected by the White House, but not as sharp as has proved to be the case. The scale of American reluctance to get vaccinated remains a source of global curiosity, particularly as many nations are still scrambling for doses to protect their most vulnerable populations.
When the 70% goal was first announced by Biden seven weeks ago, on average more than 800,000 Americans were getting their first vaccine dose each day — down from a high of nearly 2 million per day in early April. Now that figure is below 300,000.
Paradoxically, officials believe the strong response to the early vaccination campaign has served to reduce motivation to get a shot for some. One of the most potent motivators for people to get vaccinated was the high rate of COVID-19 cases and deaths. Now that those figures have dropped to levels not seen since the onset of the pandemic, officials say it’s become harder to convince Americans of the urgency to get a shot — particularly for younger populations that already knew they were at low risk of serious complications from the virus.
Separately, two officials involved in the crafting of the 70% goal said officials knew 65% would have been a safer bet, but they said the White House wanted to reach for a figure closer to experts’ projections of what would be needed for herd immunity to bring down cases and deaths. Aiming for the higher target, the officials said, was seen as adding to the urgency of the campaign and probably increased the vaccination rate above where it would have been with a more modest goal.
Other officials said the White House, which has always cast the vaccination campaign as “hard,” nevertheless failed to grasp the resistance of some Americans to getting a shot when it set the 70% goal.
Seattle scientist digs up deleted coronavirus genetic data, adding fuel to the covid origin debate – Seattle Times
An American scientist has incited a new skirmish over the origin of the coronavirus, reporting that he has retrieved potentially significant genetic data about SARS-CoV-2 that had been stored and later deleted from a digital archive at the National Institutes of Health.
Jesse Bloom, a computational biologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, posted his findings on the preprint server bioRxiv, where papers that have not yet been peer-reviewed or published in a journal have been landing by the thousands since the start of the pandemic.
The scientific significance of Bloom’s research remained unclear Wednesday, but it stirred instant online reaction, favorable and unfavorable alike, among scientists who have been debating the flurry of theories about the initial coronavirus outbreak.
“I recognize this is a hot-button topic,” Bloom said in an interview with The Washington Post. “It’s not a highly traditional scientific study, but at least it has some new data and new information.”
Bloom, who retrieved the data through Google Cloud, does not claim that it advances one theory or another, but he contends it bolsters evidence that the virus was circulating in Wuhan, China, before a December outbreak of covid-19, the illness caused by the virus, that was linked to a market selling live animals.
What is not in dispute is that raw data was deleted from a database at the NIH. Processed forms of the same data were included in a preprint paper from Chinese scientists posted in March 2020 and, after peer review, published that June in the journal Small.
The NIH released a statement Wednesday saying that a researcher who originally published the genetic sequences asked for them to be removed from the NIH database so that they could be included in a different database. The agency said it is standard practice to remove data if requested to do so. The NIH statement did not identify the scientist who requested that the material be excised from the agency’s sequence read archive, known as the SRA.
Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine linked to rare blood disease – Israeli study – Jerusalem Post
A spokesperson from Shamir Medical Center stressed that the study of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine’s connection to a rare disease should not deter vaccinations.
The Pfizer coronavirus vaccine has been linked to an increased chance of developing thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), a rare blood disorder, Israeli researchers said Monday.TTP is an autoimmune disease that causes blood clots to form in various organs of the body. According to the National Institutes of Health, these clots can limit or block the flow of oxygen-rich blood to key organs like the brain, kidneys and heart, resulting in serious health problems.
Researchers from the Institute of Hematology at Shamir Medical Center said they were alerted to the problem after seeing a sudden increase in TTP in the country – four cases detected in one month compared to two or three cases per year.The medical team said they found a “chronological connection” between the vaccination of the patient and the onset of symptoms of the disease. They stressed that these are both new patients and patients whose disease flared up after a long period of remission.The Health Ministry is currently evaluating the research and until the evaluation is complete, the doctors were asked not to interview.As a result of their research, the medical team, led by Dr. Maya Koren-Michowitz, head of the Hematology and the Translational Hemato-Oncology Laboratory, recommended that people who have had TTP only get vaccinated with special permission from their doctor – and if they do vaccinate, to have a follow-up clinical evaluation.
Factors Driving Growing Racial Wage Gaps and Solutions to Close Them – The Conference Board
Last week, Americans commemorated Juneteenth against a backdrop of renewed urgency around the nation’s racial divides. From the grassroots to the C-suite, the past decade—and the last year in particular—has seen a growing focus on the stubborn racial disparities that persist in the US economy.
Yet, despite increased attention on the topic, a new report from The Conference Board finds that wage gaps have only widened between Black and White workers in recent years, even those of otherwise comparable backgrounds and qualifications. The report reveals:
- How deeply rooted labor-market segmentation has constrained the earnings of even highly educated Black workers.
- Why the rise of the tech industry in particular—where Black workers are especially rare—has been a key driver of racial wage gaps over the past decade.
- The role of geographic mismatch in this tech divide.
- How leaders in high-growth sectors can expand their access to Black talent.
We encourage you to read the full report, Mind the Gap: Factors Driving Racial Wage Gaps and the Solutions to Close Them, for our exclusive data, nuanced analysis, and real world recommendations on this critical issue. We also encourage you to read The New York Times’ coverage of this important report.
Could polio vaccines induce cross-reactive antibodies that target SARS-CoV-2? – News-Medical
The study shows that “poliovirus vaccination raises antibodies that cross-react with SARS-CoV-2, with the primary target of these antibodies being the RdRp of poliovirus and coronavirus.” Antisera from immunized individuals prevent SARS-CoV-2 CPE in cell cultures. The antisera successfully reduced RNA replication by inhibiting RdRp activity.
These findings may imply that childhood vaccinations elicited antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in younger individuals and thus reduced their susceptibility to the virus. This harmonizes with studies that indicate a possible role for the anti-tuberculosis BCG, MMR (targeting measles, mumps and rubella) and poliovirus vaccines in protecting against SARS-CoV-2 infection.
The study also draws attention to the potential importance of RdRp as a therapeutic target. Anti-RdRp antibodies apparently inhibit SARS-CoV-2 CPE by preventing its adsorption or internalization into the host cell, mediated by viral genome-RdRp interactions. Thus, other SARS-CoV-2 protein antigens than the immunodominant spike may be suitable for vaccine development.
“We suggest IPV immunization may induce adaptive, generally long-term, and specific immunity to poliovirus and SARS-CoV-2 infection.” The authors are continuing their investigation via a larger clinical trial to test the usefulness of this vaccine in the prevention of COVID-19.
The possibilities are bright, as the poliovirus vaccine is a decades-old vaccine with abundant safety data, and established pharmacological standards. Manufacturing and toxicity data are also readily available. In the light of significant vaccine hesitancy directed at the newly developed COVID-19 vaccines and the shortfall in vaccine supplies, the researchers suggest that the utility of the poliovirus vaccine be re-examined in this light.
Study finds virus was ‘highly human adapted’ – EurekAlert
In a paper published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, Australian scientists describe how they used high-performance computer modelling of the form of the SARS-CoV-2 virus at the beginning of the pandemic to predict its ability to infect humans and a range of 12 domestic and exotic animals.
Their work aimed to help identify any intermediate animal vector that may have played a role in transmitting a bat virus to humans, and to understand any risk posed by the susceptibilities of companion animals such as cats and dogs, and commercial animals like cows, sheep, pigs and horses.
The scientists, from Flinders University and La Trobe University, used genomic data from the 12 animal species to painstakingly build computer models of the key ACE2 protein receptors for each species. These models were then used to calculate the strength of binding of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to each species’ ACE2 receptor.
Surprisingly, the results showed that SARS-CoV-2 bound to ACE2 on human cells more tightly than any of the tested animal species, including bats and pangolins. If one of the animal species tested was the origin, it would normally be expected to show the highest binding to the virus.
“Humans showed the strongest spike binding, consistent with the high susceptibility to the virus, but very surprising if an animal was the initial source of the infection in humans,” says La Trobe University Professor David Winkler.
The findings, originally released on the ArXiv preprint server, have now been peer reviewed and published in Scientific Reports (Springer Nature).
CDC extends eviction moratorium through July – The Hill
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday announced a one-month extension to the nationwide pause on evictions put in place amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The eviction moratorium, which was set to expire this month, will now last through July under the new order, which is expected to be the final extension, the CDC said.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a historic threat to the nation’s public health,” the CDC said in a statement. “Keeping people in their homes and out of crowded or congregate settings — like homeless shelters — by preventing evictions is a key step in helping to stop the spread of COVID-19.”
The CDC order was enacted in September under then-President Trump and subsequently extended by Congress and President Biden.
The federal moratorium allows tenants who have lost income during the pandemic to protect themselves from eviction by declaring under penalty of perjury that they have made their best effort to pay rent and would face overcrowded conditions if evicted.
Model Suggests COVID Deaths, Mostly From the Unvaccinated, Could Reach 1K a Day in 2022 – Newsweek
Recent modeling suggests the U.S will hit 1,000 deaths per day again in 2022, according to a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Currently, the United States had under 500 daily COVID-19 deaths since late May,
About 63 percent of vaccine-eligible Americans have received one dose and 53 percent have been fully vaccinated. Experts predict that preventable deaths will continue as unvaccinated populations experience bursts of the virus in fall and winter.
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Of young adults who had mild COVID-19 during the first wave in Norway, more than half still had symptoms 6 months later.
The U.S. will send 3 million Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses to Brazil.
Founders of South African Bitcoin Exchange Vanish Following Alleged $3.6 Billion USD Hack
Japan’s vaccination campaign remains sluggish before the Olympics and may be attributed in part to a shortage of doctors and nurses in the country.
Resurgent SARS-CoV-2 infections in England linked to Delta variant
Scientists from the Queen’s University, Canada, have recently uncovered the broad-spectrum antiviral activity of epigallocatechin gallate, a bioactive compound from green tea, against highly pathogenic coronaviruses found in humans and animals. The compound prevents viral infection by interfering with virus-host cell attachment. The study is currently available on the bioRxiv* preprint server.
UK reports highest increase in COVID-19 cases since February
Africa Facing ‘Extremely Brutal’ COVID Wave, Delta Variant in 14 Countries
Millions could be suffering from long Covid, British study suggests
The following additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Why were early Chinese COVID cases purged from a gene sequencing database?
John McAfee, software pioneer turned fugitive, dead at 75
What should I know about the delta variant?
The Biden administration plans to extend the national moratorium on evictions through July.
Millions become millionaires during Covid pandemic
Missouri is a cautionary tale for other states, holding the dubious honor of having the highest rate of new COVID infections in the country.
U.S. border protection agents have confiscated shipments of contraband remdesivir (Veklury) being smuggled to Mexico.
Biogen said it’s working to speed up the confirmatory trial that’s required for aducanumab (Aduhelm), the newly approved Alzheimer’s drug, to stay on the market.
Women vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy (or during the first 2 postpartum months) are being studied in the new MOMI-VAX study.
University of California is ending affiliations with hospitals that impose religious restrictions on care such as abortions, euthanasia, and assisted suicide.
Keeping homes and cities cool in extreme heat: Tips from Tucson
Study finds no evidence for remdesivir’s benefit in severe COVID-19 patients
The updated analysis, which included the more than 380,000 US COVID-19 deaths in 2020 and used 2018 life expectancies as a comparison, indicates that COVID-19 reduced overall life expectancy by 1.31 years (up from the initial estimate of 1.13 years lost) to 77.43 years. The reductions in average lifespan are more than three times as large for Latinos (3.03 years) and twice as large for the Black population (1.90 years) compared to whites (0.94 years).
Democrats block GOP bill to lift mask mandate on public transportation
San Francisco Will Mandate COVID-19 Vaccinations for Every City Employee
You know about the Covid delta variant — now there’s ‘delta plus’
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic and Recovery With Hyperlinks
June 2021 Kansas City Fed Manufacturing Remains Strong
19 June 2021 New York Fed Weekly Economic Index (WEI): Index Declined
Headline Durable Goods New Orders Improved In May 2021
Third Estimate 1Q2021 GDP Unchanged At 6.4%. Corporate Profits Improve.
19 June 2021 Initial Unemployment Claims Rolling Average Modestly Declines
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 update daily – sifting through the posts on the internet. I try to avoid politically slanted posts. This daily blog is not an echo chamber for any party line – and will publish controversial topics unless there are clear reasons why the topic is false. And I usually publish conflicting topics. It is my job to provide information so that you have the facts necessary – and then it is up to readers to draw conclusions. It is not my job to sell any point of view.
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.
- Older population countries will have a significantly higher death rate as there is relatively few hospitalizations and deaths in younger age groups..
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 remains 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.
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