Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average are 43.6 % HIGHER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago and U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 4.2 % HIGHER than the rolling average one week ago. Today’s posts include:
- U.S. Coronavirus New Cases are 4,909
- U.S. Coronavirus deaths are at 27
- We’ve probably missed a window’ for providing booster shot for delta variant
- The progressive increase in transmissibility and virulence of emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants could lead to a significantly more deadly pandemic
- Flu jab protects against some of the severe effects of COVID-19, including ICU admissions, sepsis, and strokes, the largest study of its kind suggests
- Doctors Might Have Been Focusing on the Wrong Asthma Triggers
- New research examines the elimination of the B.1.362 + L452R variant in Israel
- Fitbit readings highlight lingering physiological, behavioral changes after COVID-19 infection
- Care home residents are at risk of COVID-19 even after being fully vaccinated
- Fauci: There ‘Should Be More’ COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates
- Uptick in severe respiratory virus cases among young children, CDC says
- The soaring market that threatens to derail the economic recovery
- Plus many 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
The emergence of new variants of concern (VOC) has slowed down progress against the COVID-19 pandemic in 3 ways: 1. by increasing the transmissibility of the virus and hence the reproduction number; 2. by increasing immune escape capabilities of the virus and decreasing effectiveness of available vaccines; and 3. by increasing the pathogenicity of the infection.
The initial wild-type SARS-CoV-2 strains in Ontario, Canada, was first replaced by alpha, beta, and gamma VOCs with the N501Y mutation and then by the delta variant during the period between February to June 2021. Although there have been reports of enhanced virulence of VOCs having the N501Y mutation, there is a lack of comprehensive analyses that demonstrate increased virulence of the delta variant.
Researchers from Toronto University, Canada, recently showed that these emerging VOCs were linked to increased virulence, as determined by hospitalization risk, ICU admission, and mortality. This study is currently available on the medRxiv* preprint server.
They created a retrospective cohort of patients testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 in Ontario and screened for VOCs between February 3 and July 1, 2021. Case data was gathered from the Ontario provincial Case and Contact Management (CCM) database. All PCR positive COVID-19 specimens with a cycle threshold (Ct) ≤ 35 were screened for the N501Y mutation using the real-time PCR assay from the Public Health Ontario Laboratory. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) was performed on 5% of specimens regardless of the presence of mutations.
[editor’s note: this post worth a full read]
The flu vaccine may provide vital protection against COVID-19, new research being presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), held online this year, concludes.
An analysis of patient data from around the world strongly suggests that the annual flu shot reduces the risk of stroke, sepsis and DVT in patients with COVID-19. Patients with COVID-19 who had been vaccinated against flu were also less likely to visit the emergency department and be admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU).
Immunising the world against COVID-19 is a daunting challenge and, although production and distribution of vaccines increases daily, some countries are not expected to vaccinate large numbers of their population until the start of 2023.
Recently, several modestly-sized studies suggested that the flu vaccine may provide protection against COVID-19 – meaning it could be a valuable weapon in the fight to halt the pandemic.
Ms Susan Taghioff, of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, USA, and colleagues carried out a retrospective analysis of data on tens of thousands of patients from around the world to find out more.
In the largest study of its kind, the team screened de-identified electronic health records held on the TriNetX research database of more than 70 million patients to identify two groups of 37,377 patients.
When school is voluntary – New York Times
… The problem with remote school is that children learn vastly less than they do in person, according to a wide range of data about the past year and a half.
Rand Corporation, a research group, found that students attending remote classes learned less English, math and science than students attending in-person school.
An analysis by Opportunity Insights, a group based at Harvard, found that student achievement lagged with remote learning — and lagged the most for lower-income students.
A study in the Netherlands found that “students made little or no progress while learning from home.”
Individual teachers also say they notice the difference. As Meghan Hatch-Geary, a decorated high school English teacher in Connecticut, told Education Week, her students who struggled the most last year were those who remained fully remote.
Remote schooling, in other words, may be more akin to dropping out than it is to attending in-person school. “Many education experts say in-person instruction is the best way to help hasten an academic recovery for those who fell behind and to address emotional and social consequences after two disrupted school years,” Erin Richards of USA Today has written.
In response to the evidence, some school districts will mandate in-person attendance this fall — often with exceptions for the small share of families who are immunocompromised in a way that specifically puts them at greater Covid risk. Chicago, New York City and Washington, D.C., as well as much of Florida, Illinois and New Jersey, have taken steps in this direction.
The leaders of these districts have been encouraged by data showing that reopening schools did not lead to frequent Covid outbreaks, even before vaccines were widely available. (The C.D.C. emphasized this point last week, when urging schools to reopen and emphasizing the value of in-person learning.)
As Meisha Porter, the New York City schools chancellor, told the publication Chalkbeat: “We know our schools have been safe and we need our children back … Nothing, absolutely nothing, replaces the interaction and the learning that happens between a student and teacher in our classrooms.”
But most districts will continue to let parents choose between remote and in-person school, according to the national association of school superintendents.
Fauci: There ‘Should Be More’ COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates – Epoch Times
President Joe Biden‘s top medical adviser, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said there should be more COVID-19 vaccine mandates at the local level.
“I have been of this opinion, and I remain of that opinion, that I do believe at the local level, Jake, there should be more mandates,” Fauci, who has become perhaps the federal government’s public face regarding its COVID-19 response, told CNN on Sunday in reference to vaccine mandates. “There really should be. We’re talking about [a] life-and-death situation. We’ve lost 600,000 Americans already, and we’re still losing more people.”
Fauci then said that if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fully approves the COVID-19 shots, it would trigger “a lot more mandates” at the local level. Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, did not elaborate on what he believed a vaccine mandate should look like at the local level.
“I think the hesitancy at the local level of doing mandates is because the vaccines have not been officially, fully approved, but people need to understand that the amount of data right now that shows a high degree of effectiveness and a high degree of safety is more than we’ve ever seen with emergency use authorization,” he added.
Uptick in severe respiratory virus cases among young children, CDC says – Yahoo
Doctors are warning about the spread of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, among infants and young children, NBC reports.
Why it matters: RSV, which usually spikes during winter months, is unexpectedly spreading, particularly in Southern states. The virus can cause severe illness in kids and older adults and kills as many as 500 children under 5 each year, per NBC.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a health advisory last month about the spread of RSV in parts of the south.
The big picture: Due to masking and social distancing over the last year during the worst parts of the pandemic, there was a drop in respiratory illnesses like RSV, but that break appears to be over, Axios’ Marisa Fernandez reports.
“My speculation is that because we suppressed its normal circulation time during the winter, it’s sort of making up for lost time now,” Dr. Claudette Poole, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at Children’s of Alabama in Birmingham, told NBC.
If a child is diagnosed with RSV, doctors advise parents to monitor their breathing. Very young babies and children with underlying lung conditions or weakened immune systems are especially vulnerable to RSV.
The bottom line: “We usually talk about RSV in the winter, but we need to be on the lookout now, even in the summer,” Dr. Diana Peterson, a pediatrician at Ochsner Hospital for Children, told NBC.
The soaring market that threatens to derail the economic recovery – Politico
Wall Street investors have bought into the Federal Reserve’s assurances that higher inflation won’t last, but a looming trend will test their composure over the coming months: soaring home and rental costs.
With home prices already up about 15 percent from last year and rents soaring at nearly triple their normal rate in just the first six months of 2021, there’s growing concern that housing costs could soon begin to nudge inflation higher. Since shelter makes up about one-third of a key inflation measure, that could undermine the Fed’s message that recent price spikes, which have showed up in everything from airline tickets to ride shares, will slow.
Housing costs could eventually boost inflation by as much as 2 percentage points by the end of next year, though the effects could be felt sooner, according to a forecast from Fannie Mae, the government-run company that stands behind half the country’s mortgages. A gradual buildup beginning later this year could spook markets and feed calls for the Fed to push borrowing costs higher, a move that could choke off economic growth as Democrats fight to hold onto control of Congress.
Officials at the Fed and in President Joe Biden’s administration say they expect the supply-chain bottlenecks that have stoked inflation to begin to ease later this year as the economy fully reopens. But housing-driven inflation could also start to rise as higher rents slowly cycle into the official tracking of price increases, a process that may have been delayed because leases are traditionally annual.
“The outlook for rents is key,” said Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management. “With rents going up as the economy reopens, we will continue to see more upward pressure on overall inflation.”
For now, financial markets have shrugged off the recent spurt in inflation, given signs that it is tied to temporary factors that will subside as the country emerges from the pandemic. Instead, investors have grown more worried about long-term growth with the emergence of contagious variants of the coronavirus.
[editor’s note: also read China’s Credit Impulse Just Bottomed With Profound Implications For Global Economies And Markets]
Care home residents are at risk of COVID-19 even after being fully vaccinated – EurekAlert
Care homes need to be vigilant for outbreaks of COVID-19, even after residents have received two doses of the vaccine, according to new research being presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) held online this year.
Long-term care facilities, such as care homes with elderly residents with multiple underlying conditions, are at high risk of COVID-19 outbreaks and many vaccination campaigns have initially focused on care home residents and the staff looking after them. An outbreak in a French care home, however, raises questions about how effective the vaccine is in the elderly.
Martin Martinot, of the Hopitaux Civils de Colmar, Colmar, France, and colleagues studied an outbreak of COVID-19 that began in a care home in eastern France a month after a campaign to double vaccinate residents and staff with the Pfizer-BioNTech jab had ended.
Seventy (75%) of the residents and 38 (52%) of the staff were fully vaccinated by mid-February 2021.
Tests on samples of blood taken by the researchers on April 6 showed that all but one of the fully vaccinated residents had antibodies against COVID-19.
The outbreak started on March 15 and, over the next seven weeks, 24/93 residents (26%) and 16/73 staff (22%) were infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Infected residents were older, with an average age of 91, than the uninfected residents, where the average age was 87.
Twelve out of the 24 infected residents had not been fully vaccinated. None of the infected staff had been vaccinated. Analysis showed that the unvaccinated residents were three times more likely to develop COVID-19 than those who had had two doses of the vaccine.
The estimated effectiveness of the vaccine in the elderly residents was 68%. This is lower than previously reported.
Review of scientific evidence supports zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2 with zero biological evidence for laboratory leak scenario – News-Medical
Coronaviruses have been long known to possess pandemic potential. SARS-CoV-2 is the 9th documented human coronavirus and the 7th human coronavirus identified in the last 20 years. The vast majority of human viruses and all previous human coronaviruses have clear zoonotic origins. There are many signatures of prior zoonotic events linked to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, which shows clear similarities to SARS-CoV spilling over into humans in Guangdong province, China, in November 2002 and in 2003.
In both cases, humans infected early in the outbreak worked in or lived near animal markets. By definition, zoonotic spillover selects viruses that are capable of infecting humans. Available epidemiological data suggests that the Huanan market, Wuhan, was a major epicenter of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Two of the three earliest cases of COVID-19 documented, and 28% of all COVID-19 cases reported in December 2019 had direct links to this market that sells wild animals.
Examination of the locations where the earliest cases were detected shows that most of these cases cluster around the Huanan market, and these areas were also the first to experience pneumonia deaths in January 2020. No epidemiological link was found to any other area in Wuhan, including the BSL-4 campus of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which is the subject of speculation. Laboratory escapes of viruses documented to date almost exclusively involved viruses that were brought into labs specifically due to their known ability to infect humans.
While there are clear epidemiological links to animal markets in Wuhan, no evidence currently exists to confirm that SARS-CoV-2 has a lab origin or that any early SARS-CoV-2 cases had any links to the WIV.
There is also no evidence to show that WIV possessed or studied a SARS-CoV-2 progenitor before the COVID-19 pandemic. The suspicion about SARS-CoV-2’s lab origins stems from the fact that it was first detected in a city with a major virological lab investigating coronaviruses. Wuhan, the largest city in central China, has multiple animal markets and is well connected to other Chinese as well as international cities. The virus’s link to Wuhan is more likely due to the fact that such pathogens need heavily populated areas to spread rapidly and get established.
[editor’s note: I do not believe the silver bullet will ever be found that conclusively shows the origin of COVID-19]
‘Unrecognizable.’ Lake Mead, a lifeline for water in Los Angeles and the West, tips toward crisis – Yahoo
Lake Mead, a lifeline for 25 million people and millions of acres of farmland in California, Arizona, Nevada and Mexico, made history when it was engineered 85 years ago, capturing trillions of gallons of river water and ushering in the growth of the modern West.
But after years of an unrelenting drought that has quickly accelerated amid record temperatures and lower snowpack melt, the lake is set to mark another, more dire turning point. Next month, the federal government expects to declare its first-ever shortage on the lake, triggering cuts to water delivered to Arizona, Nevada and Mexico on Jan. 1. If the lake, currently at 1,068 feet, drops 28 more feet by next year, the spigot of water to California will start to tighten in 2023.
The crisis, said Eric Kuhn, former general manager of the Colorado River Conservation District, can no longer be ignored. “According to Merriam-Webster, a drought is a temporary condition,” he said. What is happening, he suggested, is something more permanent and troubling. “This is aridification.”
As fires sweep over large swaths of the West and scorching temperatures fry others, the scarcity of water is a less visible but perhaps the most pressing consequence of climate change confronting the states that depend on Lake Mead.
First to be hit are locals along the Nevada-Arizona border near Las Vegas, who rely on the lake for tourism, fishing and recreation. Ramps are closed. Jammed boats are towed from newly shallow waters. Fishermen scour to figure out where to catch striped bass. The iconic lake’s predicament is marked by a “bathtub ring” of calcium deposits that highlight the rocky edge where water once flowed.
[editor’s note: this post worth a full read. also read Amid dangerous heat wave, Death Valley closes in on record-high temperatures]
Gottlieb: ‘We’ve probably missed a window’ for providing booster shot for delta variant – The Hill
Scott Gottlieb, a former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner who sits on Pfizer’s board of directors, said on Sunday that the nation has “probably missed a window” for providing a booster shot to protect against the more infectious delta variant of COVID-19.
Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Gottlieb said that many people who were vaccinated early, including those in elder care homes and front-line health care workers, may begin showing a decline in immunity, pointing to a recent Israeli study that found vaccine efficacy fell among these groups.
“If you go out and get vaccinated right now, that vaccine’s going to carry you through the fall and the winter. What we’re really talking about is people who were vaccinated a while ago, where there may be some declining efficacy,” Gottlieb said, adding that the delta variant could potentially “overwhelm their residual antibodies.”
Last week, Pfizer announced that it planned to seek FDA authorization for a third dose of its COVID-19 vaccine, saying another dose provided five to 10 time more antibodies when administered six months after a second dose.
According to Gottlieb, regardless of whether the FDA approves the third shot, the application needed to be made now in order to have it ready in time for the 2021-2022 COVID-19 season.
“I think, quite frankly, we’ve probably missed a window in terms of providing boosters for the delta variant. The delta variant’s likely to play out really over the months of August and September, maybe in October. This wave of infection will have passed us,” Gottlieb said on Sunday. “But you still want to consider boosters for people going forward, particularly vulnerable elderly people in nursing homes, people who we know are more vulnerable to the infection.”
China’s Slowing V-Shaped Economic Recovery Sends Global Warning – Bloomberg
China’s V-shaped economic rebound from the Covid-19 pandemic is slowing, sending a warning to the rest of world about how durable their own recoveries will prove to be.
The changing outlook was underscored Friday when the People’s Bank of China cut the amount of cash most banks must hold in reserve in order to boost lending. While the PBOC said the move isn’t a renewed stimulus push, the breadth of the 50 basis-point cut to most banks reserve ratio requirement came as a surprise.
Data on Thursday is expected to show growth eased in the second quarter to 8% from the record gain of 18.3% in the first quarter, according to a Bloomberg poll of economists. Key readings of retail sales, industrial production and fixed asset investment are all set to moderate too.
The PBOC’s swift move to lower banks’ RRR is one way of making sure the recovery plateaus from here, rather than stumbles.
The economy was always expected to descend from the heights hit during its initial rebound and as last year’s low base effect washes out. But economists say the softening has come sooner than expected, and could now ripple across the world.
“There is no doubt that the impact of a slowing China on the global economy will be bigger than it was five years ago,” said Rob Subbaraman, head of global markets research at Nomura Holdings Inc. “China’s ‘first-in, first-out’ status from Covid-19 could also influence market expectations that if China’s economy is cooling now, others will soon follow.”
Doctors Might Have Been Focusing on the Wrong Asthma Triggers – The Atlantic
All around the country, doctors have spent the pandemic wondering why their patients with asthma were suddenly doing so well. Asthma attacks have plummeted. Pediatric ICUs have sat strangely empty. “We braced ourselves for significant problems for the millions of people living with asthma,” says David Stukus, Scarlett’s doctor at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. “It was the complete opposite. It’s amazing.” (Fears about people with asthma getting more severe COVID-19 infections haven’t been borne out either.) Studies in other countries, including England, Scotland, and South Korea, also found big drops in hospital and doctor’s-office visits for asthma attacks.
The massive global experiment that is the pandemic is now leading doctors to rethink some long-held assumptions about the disease. Asthma is a chronic condition that occasionally flares up, leading to 3,500 deaths and 1.6 million emergency-room visits a year in the United States. These acute attacks can be triggered by a number of environmental factors: viruses, pollen, mold, dust mites, rodents, cockroaches, pet dander, smoke, air pollution, etc. Doctors have often scrutinized allergens that patients can control at home, such as pests and secondhand smoke. But patients have stayed at home for a year and suffered dramatically fewer asthma attacks—suggesting bigger roles for other triggers, especially routine cold and flu viruses, which nearly vanished this year with social distancing and masks.
With life in the U.S. snapping back to normal, asthma doctors and patients are facing another new reality. Masks are going away; schools will be reopening in the fall. The pandemic unexpectedly reduced asthma attacks, and now doctors and patients have to navigate between what they know is possible in extraordinary conditions and what is practical in more ordinary ones.
The most compelling evidence that asthma attacks truly did go down during the pandemic exists because of a stroke of good luck. Back in 2018, Elliot Israel, a pulmonologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, began asking Black and Hispanic or Latino adults with asthma to track their attacks at home for a study called PREPARE. (These groups have disproportionate rates of severe asthma, compared with white patients.) Israel intended to compare two different ways of using long-term asthma medication, such as inhaled steroids. His team enrolled its last participant—patient No. 1,201—in March 2020. The COVID-19 shutdowns began a week later.
Fitbit readings highlight lingering physiological, behavioral changes after COVID-19 infection – Fierce Healthcare
Newly published data from a longitudinal study of Fitbit users describe activity, sleep and resting heart rate changes triggered by COVID-19 infection that often last weeks and months after the first signs of symptoms.
The duration of the impact varied widely from person to person but was most persistent when measuring individuals’ resting heart rates, researchers from Scripps Research Translational Institute (SRTI) wrote in JAMA Network Open.
Specifically, after initially experiencing brief moments of reduced resting heart rate, Fitbit users with COVID-19 logged elevated resting heart rates that lasted an average 79 days after the onset of their symptoms. Participants’ step counts and sleep quantity, meanwhile, returned to normal after an average 32 and 24 days, respectively.
“Long-term COVID symptoms marked by autonomic dysfunction and cardiac damage following COVID-19 infection have been noted for up to six months after symptom onset, but to date have not been quantified, to our knowledge,” the researchers wrote. “Wearable devices provide a way to continuously track an individual’s physiological and behavioral metrics beginning when healthy (i.e., before infection), during the course of infection and recovery back to baseline.”
The researchers also noted that the resting heart rates of some participants with COVID-19 (13.7%) remained more than five beats per minute greater than their baseline for more than 133 days after symptom onset. Compared to other participants, these individuals more frequently reported symptoms such as coughing, body aches and shortness of breath during their initial illness.
“Our data suggest that early symptoms and larger initial [resting heart rate] response to COVID-19 infection may be associated with the physiological length of recovery from this virus,” they wrote.
These findings are the latest from the DETECT Study, SRTI’s ongoing research effort to glean COVID-19 insights from wearables like Fitbits, Apple Watches or Garmins.
New research examines the elimination of the B.1.362 + L452R variant in Israel – News-Medical
Is it possible to completely get rid of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants? New research led by Neta S. Zuckerman of Sheba Medical Center in Israel suggests it’s possible. Their report details the upsurge of a B.1.362 variant harboring the L452R mutation that eventually disappeared due to vaccination efforts and the presence of more robust variants.
Variants can easily circulate worldwide because of mutations that make it more difficult for the immune system to detect and neutralize the virus. For example, L452R is a mutation found in the Delta and Epsilon (B.1.429) variant that helps SARS-CoV-2 with immune evasion and increased infectivity. L452R on the Epsilon and Delta variant has previously shown to have a 6.7 and a 5.8-fold reduction in neutralizing activity.
This study demonstrated a X4-fold decrease in neutralization capacity of sera derived from fully vaccinated individuals against the B.1.362+L452R variant, suggesting that it is this mutation that accounts for the impact on the neutralization potential of the different variants that carry the L452R mutation,” explained the research team.
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Cubans protested food and medicine shortages. “I have never ever seen anything like the protests today,” The Times’s Frances Robles, who has covered Cuba since 1994, tweeted.
Protests May Reduce Olympic TV Audience
Suspected Assassins Of Haitian President Moïse Trained By US, Linked To Pro-Coup Oligarchy
A 90-year-old unvaccinated Belgian woman who died in March represents the first known case of someone contracting two COVID-19 variants at once.
The following additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Less than 10 percent of U.S. hospitals offer ECMO, an intensive treatment for gravely ill Covid patients.
Carnival Vista returns to Galveston after first trip since start of the pandemic
‘Fear on top of fear’: Why anti-gun Americans joined the wave of new gun owners
Richard Branson and his Virgin Galactic crew safely back from space, ushering in a new era
Pfizer expected to brief U.S. officials in coming days on the need for a booster shot
Top U.S. commander in Afghanistan steps down, marking a symbolic end to 20 years of war
Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, MD, requested a federal investigation into the approval of Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug, aducanumab (Aduhelm) and the relationship between the company and the agency.
The European Medicines Agency spotted a potential connection between very rare heart inflammation and the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, but says the vaccines’ benefits still outweigh their risks.
Risk of malaria and dengue could rise in the U.S. over the next several decades if greenhouse gas emissions continue their upward trend.
Fifty-two percent of unvaccinated adolescents and 56% of parents of unvaccinated adolescents said, when asked in April, that they intended to get the vaccine for themselves or their adolescent children, respectively.
A new report published in the journal Science Translational Medicine estimates that potentially 16.8 million Americans were infected but not officially diagnosed with severe acute respiratory syndrome 2 (SARS-CoV-2) by July 2020. In addition, the results suggest there were nearly five undetected coronavirus cases for every diagnosed coronavirus infection in the first six months of the pandemic.
Mississippi Urges High-Risk Residents to Wear Masks, Avoid Crowds
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic and Recovery With Hyperlinks
Older Millennials Experience Pandemic Hardships Unequally
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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