Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average are 95.2 % HIGHER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago and U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 31.4 % HIGHER than the rolling average one week ago. Today’s posts include:
- U.S. Coronavirus New Cases are 32,105
- U.S. Coronavirus deaths are at 258
- Aspirin intake reduces mortality risk in COVID-19 patients
- Delta variant ripping around the world at a scorching pace, driving a new spike in cases, death: WHO
- J&J, AstraZeneca explore modifying Covid vaccines in response to rare blood clot issue
- Most fully vaccinated people who get Covid delta infections are asymptomatic, WHO says
- Biden Executive Order Targets Competition to Lower Drug Prices
- States with low vaccination numbers had Covid-19 case rates last week 3 times higher than others where people are fully vaccinated
- Mainstream Media Is Wrong: Vaccine Hesitancy Is Not Highest Among Republican Men And Trump Isn’t To Blame
- Immunized but banned: EU says not all COVID vaccines equal
- FDA To Warn About Post-COVID Vax Guillain-Barré Syndrome
- Which Came First: Low Testosterone Levels or Severe COVID-19?
- Plus many more headlines …
include($_SERVER[‘DOCUMENT_ROOT’].’/pages/coronavirus1.htm’); ?>
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
Delta variant ripping around the world at a scorching pace, driving new spike in cases, death: WHO – The Economic Times
The Delta variant is ripping around the world at a scorching pace, driving a new spike in cases and deaths, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said, warning that the variant, now in over 104 countries, is expected to soon be the dominant COVID-19 strain circulating worldwide.
Addressing a press briefing on Monday, he said that last week marked the fourth consecutive week of increasing cases of COVID-19 globally, with increases recorded in all but one of WHO’s six regions, adding with concern that after 10 weeks of declines, deaths are increasing again.
“The Delta variant is ripping around the world at a scorching pace, driving a new spike in cases and death,” the Director-General of the World Health Organisation said.
“Delta is now in more than 104 countries and we expect it to soon be the dominant COVID-19 strain circulating worldwide,” he said adding that the world is watching in real-time as the COVID-19 virus continues to change and become more transmissible.
“My message today is that we are experiencing a worsening public health emergency that further threatens lives, livelihoods and a sound global economic recovery. It is definitely worse in places that have very few vaccines, but the pandemic is not over anywhere,” he said, underscoring that the world should battle together to put out this pandemic inferno everywhere.
J&J, AstraZeneca explore modifying Covid vaccines in response to rare blood clot issue – CNBC
- J&J and AstraZeneca are conducting early research into whether potential modifications of their Covid-19 vaccines could reduce or eliminate the risk of rare, but serious, blood clots associated with the shots.
- The blood clotting, which some scientists are now calling vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia, or VITT, has been linked to both shots.
Immunized but banned: EU says not all COVID vaccines equal – AP
After Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor and his wife received two doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine in Nigeria, they assumed they would be free to travel this summer to a European destination of their choice. They were wrong.
The couple — and millions of other people who have been vaccinated through a U.N.-backed effort — could find themselves barred from entering many European and other countries because those nations don’t recognize the Indian-made version of the vaccine for travel.
Although AstraZeneca vaccine produced in Europe has been authorized by the continent’s drug regulatory agency, the same shot manufactured in India hasn’t been given the green light.
EU regulators said AstraZeneca hasn’t completed the necessary paperwork on the Indian factory, including details on its production practices and quality control standards.
But some experts describe the EU move as discriminatory and unscientific, pointing out that the World Health Organization has inspected and approved the factory. Health officials say the situation won’t only complicate travel and frustrate fragile economies but also undermine vaccine confidence by appearing to label some shots substandard.
As vaccination coverage rises across Europe and other rich countries, authorities anxious to salvage the summer tourism season are increasingly relaxing coronavirus border restrictions.
Earlier this month, the European Union introduced its digital COVID-19 certificate, which allows EU residents to move freely in the 27-nation bloc as long as they have been vaccinated with one of the four shots authorized by the European Medicines Agency, have a fresh negative test, or have proof they recently recovered from the virus.
While the U.S. and Britain remain largely closed to outside visitors, the EU certificate is seen as a potential model for travel in the COVID-19 era and a way to boost economies.
FDA To Warn About Post-COVID Vax Guillain-Barré Syndrome – MedPage
The FDA will issue a warning that Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine may trigger Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) in a small number of people, an agency spokesperson told MedPage Today on Monday.
Of the 12.5 million Americans who received this vaccine, about 100 people reported having GBS in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Of these reports, 95 of them were serious and required hospitalization, and there was one reported death, an FDA official said.
GBS is an acquired demyelinating polyneuropathy that often begins in the lower extremities and ascends over time with loss of reflexes, causing muscle weakness, or in the most severe cases, paralysis. Some cases start a few days or weeks after respiratory or gastrointestinal viral infection. Often, GBS is reversible.
No similar signal has been identified with the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines.
“Although the available evidence suggests an association between the Janssen vaccine and increased risk of GBS, it is insufficient to establish a causal relationship,” the FDA said in a statement. “Importantly, the FDA has evaluated the available information for the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine and continues to find the known and potential benefits clearly outweigh the known and potential risks.”
The warning comes days after the Pharmacovigilance Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC) of the European Medicines Agency recommended a change to the product information for AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine, alerting prescribers and patients to potential risk of GBS.
Review details clinical signs of SARS-CoV-2 infection in domestic and wild cats – News-Medical
…In 54% of the cases, the cats were asymptomatic. They were identified because their owners were diagnosed with COVID-19. So the researchers, out of curiosity, screened the cats for the disease and interestingly found them to be COVID-19 positive.
In the remaining 46% of the cases, the cats showed clinical symptoms associated with COVID-19 infection. Among these infected felids, 26 survived, and six died owing to the infection.
One of the reports indicated that cats developed shortness of breath and tachypnea. They were also diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and Mycoplasma haemofelis infection.
One of the cats that died from the disease showed clinical symptoms such as nasal discharge and neurological signs such as head pressing. The necropsy symptoms indicated that the cat developed bacterial meningoencephalitis.
The cats infected with COVID-19 were also diagnosed with anemia, thrombocytopenia, and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. An ultrasound examination showed a bronchointerstitial pattern in the lung.
Additionally, tissue analysis revealed signs of severe pulmonary edema, hemorrhage, and congestion in the infected cats. Some of the other symptoms, such as vomiting, mouth ulcers, and diarrhea, were also reported.
Immune System “Clock” Developed That Accurately Predicts Illness and Mortality – SciTechDaily
You’re as old as your immune system.
Investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging have built an inflammatory-aging clock that’s more accurate than the number of candles on your birthday cake in predicting how strong your immune system is, how soon you’ll become frail or whether you have unseen cardiovascular problems that could become clinical headaches a few years down the road.
In the process, the scientists fingered a bloodborne substance whose abundance may accelerate cardiovascular aging.
The story of the clock’s creation will be published today (July 12, 2021) in Nature Aging.
“Every year, the calendar tells us we’re a year older,” said David Furman, PhD, the study’s senior author. “But not all humans age biologically at the same rate. You see this in the clinic — some older people are extremely disease-prone, while others are the picture of health.”
This divergence, Furman said, traces in large part to differing rates at which people’s immune systems decline. The immune system — a carefully coordinated collection of cells, substances, and strategies with which evolution has equipped us to deal with threats such as injuries or invasions by microbial pathogens — excels at mounting a quick, intense, localized, short-term, resist-and-repair response called acute inflammation. This “good inflammation” typically does its job, then wanes within days. (An example is that red, swollen finger you see when you have a splinter, and the rapid healing that follows.)
As we grow older, a low-grade, constant, bodywide “bad inflammation” begins to kick in. This systemic and chronic inflammation causes organ damage and promotes vulnerability to a who’s who of diseases spanning virtually every organ system in the body and including cancer, heart attacks, strokes, neurodegeneration and autoimmunity.
[editor’s note: the immune system degradation as we age is the primary reason the older population got hit harder with COVID]
Mainstream Media Is Wrong: Vaccine Hesitancy Is Not Highest Among Republican Men And Trump Isn’t To Blame – ZeroHedge
The media elite has been telling us for months that the vaccine hesitancy rate is highest among Republicans, in particular, the men. The press alleges that the MAGA-hat-wearing-uneducated-conspiracy-theorists GOP are to blame for the continuing pandemic. But, guess what? The media lied. It’s young, healthy people who don’t want to get vaccinated.
After six month of shots in arms, the vaccine hesitancy can be measured largely by who has not gotten one yet. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported recently that:
Vaccination coverage and intent among adults are lowest among those aged 18-39 years.
The official data shows that, from March to May, one quarter of these young adults said they were unsure about getting vaccinated and another quarter said they will not get it
The CDC doesn’t even mention political affiliation as a factor. Among the 18 to 39-year-olds, the rates were lowest for those who were younger, black, poorer, less educated, uninsured and living outside metropolitan areas.
However, the media elite have not let these facts stand in the way of a good story. To continue the blame-the-Republicans narrative, the press use public opinion polls as a basis of their reports. That’s how we’re still seeing so many stories on Republican hesitancy despite the CDC saying it’s not the case.
Most fully vaccinated people who get Covid delta infections are asymptomatic, WHO says – CNBC
- Covid hospitalizations are rising in some parts of the world, mostly where vaccination rates are low and the highly contagious delta variant is spreading.
- In the U.S., officials have said virtually all recent Covid hospitalizations and deaths were occurring among unvaccinated people.
- Some studies have shown that those infected with Covid after vaccination produce much less virus than those who are unvaccinated, reducing the risk of passing the virus to others.
When you compare states with high vaccination rates to states that are lagging, the difference in the number of people getting Covid-19 is staggering.
Over the past week, states that have fully vaccinated more than half of their residents have reported an average Covid-19 case rate that is about a third of that in states which have fully vaccinated less than half of their residents, according to a CNN analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas are the only states to have fully vaccinated fewer than 35% of their residents. Average daily case rates in each state were among the 10 worst in the country last week.
Vermont leads the nation with about 66% of its population fully vaccinated — and while case rates there increased compared to last week, the state still had the lowest case rate in the country last week, with an average of less than one new case per 100,000 people each day.
States that have fully vaccinated more than half of their residents reported an average of 2.8 new Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people each day last week, compared to an average of about 7.8 cases per 100,000 people each day in states that have vaccinated less than half of their residents.
“We really need to get more people vaccinated, because that’s the solution,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Monday on “CBS This Morning.” “This virus will, in fact, be protected against by the vaccine.”
Which Came First: Low Testosterone Levels or Severe COVID-19? – MedPage
Low testosterone levels in men with symptomatic COVID-19 were associated with a greater risk of severe illness or death, according to Italian researchers.
Their case-control study found that, among men admitted to the emergency department of a Milan Hospital during the first wave of the pandemic, the lower the level of testosterone the higher the likelihood they would need intensive care, intubation, and long hospital stays.
In addition, after accounting for disease severity, low testosterone was associated with a 33% higher risk of death, reported Paolo Capogrosso, MD, of Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan, Italy, during a presentation at the European Association of Urology virtual annual congress.
The more severe the illness, the lower the average testosterone level:
- Mildly symptomatic and discharged home (3.9 nmol/L)
- Admitted into the internal medicine unit (3.0 nmol/L)
- Admitted to the ICU (1.0 nmol/L)
- Deceased because of COVID-19 (0.7 nmol/L)
“This study outlines that testosterone levels in men with COVID-19 deserve clinical attention, although it remains to be established whether testosterone is simply a marker of health or measuring it may help to target a very high-risk population, while establishing counteractive therapeutic measures,” Capogrosso concluded at the session.
Which came first — the low testosterone levels or COVID-19 — wasn’t clear from these data, said the study’s senior author, Andrea Salonia, MD, of University Vita-Salute San Raffaele and a urologist at the IRCCS Ospedale San Raffaele, in a release accompanying the study.
Could aspirin intake reduce mortality risk in COVID-19 patients? – News-Medical
Scientists from the Michigan State University, USA, have conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to compare mortality rate in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients who are aspirin users or non-users. The Findings reveal that the use of aspirin is associated with a significant reduction in overall and in-hospital mortality rates. The study is currently available on the medRxiv* preprint server.
… The study highlights the potential importance of aspirin intake in reducing mortality risk among hospitalized and non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Apart from anti-inflammatory and anti-platelet effects, aspirin is known to have antiviral effects against seasonal and pathogenic coronaviruses, such as human coronavirus-229E and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). Moreover, aspirin has been used as one of the therapeutic interventions in COVID-19 patients.
As mentioned by the scientists, the current study has some limitations. Because of the non-availability of clinical trial data on aspirin, the current analysis has included only observational studies. Moreover, the majority of selected studies are single-centered studies conducted in the USA and China. Thus, the findings may not be generalized to the global population.
Biden Executive Order Targets Competition to Lower Drug Prices – MedPage
President Biden’s executive order on improving competition in the prescription drug arena and other economic markets was interesting not just for what was in it, but also for what wasn’t there, according to one expert.
“The policy does nothing to restrain the cost of the priciest Part B drugs by policies such as using AMP [average manufacturer price] rather than ASP [average sales price] to reimburse hospital outpatient clinics, as the MMA [Medicare Modernization Act] allows, or proposing legislation to impose an inflation penalty on Part B drugs,” Marsha Simon, PhD, president of Simon & Co., a consulting firm specializing in pharmaceutical issues, said in an email to MedPage Today. “The latter proven policy is largely responsible for reducing the cost of drugs to state Medicaid programs by 50% and is included in the House leadership and Senate bipartisan bills.”
In addition, “despite losses in the lower courts, this administration has pursued the Trump policy of clawing back 340B savings from safety-net hospitals when a better alternative would be to share savings between the hospitals and the Medicare program,” said Simon.
The 340B program is one in which drugmakers are required to sell their products at lower prices to hospitals that treat a lot of low-income patients. “Why pursue a policy that reimburses safety-net hospitals less than those that serve fewer low-income seniors and persons with disabilities?” Simon said.
The executive order, signed last Friday, contained a number of provisions dealing with drug pricing
[editor’s note: this post deserves a full read]
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Both France and Greece will enact a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all healthcare workers.
Air cargo cost differential with ocean halved: IATA
Top US commander to exit Afghanistan amid Taliban surge
WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, criticized COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers for focusing on developing booster shots instead of working on distributing shots to countries with lower access.
One shot of the Sputnik V vaccine triggers strong antibody responses
WHO Says Countries Should Not Order COVID-19 Boosters While Others Still Need Vaccines
French president orders COVID-19 health pass for restaurants, cafes
Regional Curfews Imposed in Spain to Curb COVID Surge
The death toll rises to 92 in a fire that gutted a hospital coronavirus ward in Iraq.
The following additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Wildfires threaten homes, land across 10 Western states
New Covid-19 cases in the U.S. are rising, driven mostly by the Delta variant. Here’s the data for every state.
U.S. officials told Pfizer they needed more data about potential booster shots. Experts say they aren’t necessary right now.
Lumber Wipes Out 2021 Gain With Demand Ebbing After Record Boom
Most Voters Reject Biden’s ‘Door-to-Door’ COVID-19 Vaccine Push
Texas Gov To Arrest Dem Lawmakers Who Fled State On Private Jet To Block Voting Rights Bill
‘The Crown,’ ‘The Mandalorian,’ ‘WandaVision’ lead Emmy nominations with most nods
A study in JAMA Network Open confirmed that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine reduced risk of COVID-19 infection in pregnant women.
Why genetic anomalies in COVID-19 cases could hold the key to developing new treatments.
Air Pollution Makes Severe COVID Worse
New COVID-19 cases up 94 percent in two weeks: NYT
California rule bans K-12 students from campus if they refuse to wear masks
COVID-19 case count spikes hit almost every state
Jill Biden will travel to Tokyo to attend the opening of the Summer Olympics.
New Emails Sheds More Light on Fauci’s Connections to Wuhan Lab That Might Have Created COVID
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic and Recovery With Hyperlinks
Bond Yields Send An Economic Warning
San Francisco’s Tallest Residential Building Is Sinking
June 2021 CPI: Year-over-Year Inflation Largest Increase Since 2008
April 2021 Loan Performance: First Annual Decrease in US Overall Delinquency Rate Since March 2020
It’s Baaack: COVID Variant Roils Markets
Federal Speech Rulings May Embolden Health Care Workers To Call Out Safety Issues
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.
include(“/home/aleta/public_html/files/ad_openx.htm”); ?>
