Written by Steven Hansen
The U.S. new cases 7-day rolling average are 38.1 % HIGHER than the 7-day rolling average one week ago and U.S. deaths due to coronavirus are now 65.1 % HIGHER than the rolling average one week ago.
Today’s posts include:
- U.S. Coronavirus New Cases are 168,343
- U.S. Coronavirus deaths are at 849
- Is this the fourth wave?
- One Vax Dose and Done? Evidence Mounts in Previously Infected
- COVID Survivors Who Don’t Get Vaccine Over Twice as Likely to Get Reinfected
- Why scientists are talking about viral load and the delta variant
- Dr. Anthony Fauci: Expect ‘a flood’ of COVID-19 vaccine mandates after full FDA approval
- Small businesses aren’t happy with who’s applying for their open jobs
- No, Most COVID Infections Are Not Occurring in Vaccinated People
- CDC: Vaccination May Cut Risk of COVID Reinfection in Half
- Princess Cruises tightening restrictions as delta variant spreads
- ‘Unprecedented’ fraud penetrated rollout of COVID-19 small business loans, watchdog warns
- What we know about how the pandemic affected Social Security
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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
Is this the fourth wave? – National Geographic
The national seven-day average for new cases just passed 100,000. That’s higher than the average number of new cases at the peak of the second wave last summer.
‘Unprecedented’ fraud penetrated rollout of COVID-19 small business loans, watchdog warns – ABC
At the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic, when offices and restaurants began shuttering, the federal government scrambled to keep small businesses afloat — ultimately spending over a trillion dollars to help protect the American Dream for millions of workers and business owners.
But even before the first checks went out, alarm bells went off.
The person ringing those bells the loudest was Hannibal “Mike” Ware, the inspector general of the Small Business Administration. The veteran internal watchdog says he participated in a series of meetings with Trump administration officials and SBA program analysts that were laced with “testy exchanges” about how to expeditiously dispense funds without leaving them vulnerable to fraudulent claims.
His warnings went unheeded, Ware said, and the fallout has taken him “from a black-haired guy to a gray-haired guy.”
“My frustration level was extremely high,” Ware told ABC News in a recent interview. And now, a year and half later, he said “the magnitude of the fraud we are seeing is unheard of — unprecedented.”
As small businesses emerge from the pandemic, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Economic Injury Disaster Loans (EIDL), two key relief programs passed as part of the congressional CARES Act, are winding down. But for all the jobs they’ve rescued, their legacies may be tarnished by unprecedented amounts of fraud — a reality that experts fear may impair efforts to pass future emergency relief programs.
“In terms of the monetary value, the amount of fraud in these COVID relief programs is going to be larger than any government program that came before it,” Ware said.
Small businesses aren’t happy with who’s applying for their open jobs – Yahoo
Small businesses aren’t happy with who’s applying for their open jobs.
Why it matters: Companies everywhere are struggling to find workers to fill open positions. And despite many employers raising wages to attract talent, these hiring issues persist.
Go deeper: Of those surveyed, 63% said they were currently hiring or trying to hire. Of this group, 89% said there were few or no “qualified job applicants.”
Meanwhile, a record high net 39% said they increased pay. And a net 26% said they planned to increase pay within the next month.
A modest 8% citied “labor cost” as their top problem.
Between the lines: You might think that if labor cost isn’t a top problem, then the solution is for employers to raise pay endlessly until those qualified applicants come.
But as ADP chief economist Nela Richardson recently explained to Axios, raising pay for new applicants often means having to raise pay for existing employees, which is costly.
Also, raising pay now gives employers less flexibility down the road as employers would rather avoid having to cut pay down the road.
Princess Cruises tightening restrictions as delta variant spreads – The Hill
Princess Cruises announced Thursday that the company will take measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus on its ships as the delta variant continues to surge across the globe.
On Thursday, the company announced that passengers would be required to wear masks and provide a negative COVID-19 test to board, according to USA Today.
“As Princess Cruises continues with its successful restart of cruise operations the line is adapting to the evolving science around worldwide public health by advising booked guests of temporary changes in onboard mask and pre-cruise testing requirements for cruises in the United States,” the cruise line said in a statement, according to the news outlet.
Cruise ships can be a hotbed for the spread of disease due to limited space, closeness of rooms and the vast amounts of people onboard. In the beginning of the pandemic, several ships’ passengers were forced to remain onboard and quarantine during a coronavirus outbreak, for fear that they would spread the disease to more people on land.
The company will also require all of its passengers and crew members to be vaccinated against the coronavirus in addition to wearing masks in shared spaces including elevators, shops, the casino and upon embarkation and disembarkation, USA Today noted.
[editor’s note: also read Norwegian Cruise Line asks judge to block Florida vaccine law]
One Vax Dose and Done? Evidence Mounts in Previously Infected – MedPage
Small lab study adds to the debate about whether two COVID vaccine doses are necessary for all
People with previous COVID-19 infection had higher antibody levels after one dose of Pfizer vaccine compared with uninfected people after two doses, a small lab study of 59 people showed.
Not only that, but IgG levels did not increase after the second dose among those previously infected, which could indicate that one dose of vaccine may be sufficient for this population, reported James Moy, MD, of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, and colleagues
“This study highlights the potential for recommending a single dose for previously infected individuals and may be useful for discussions surrounding vaccination strategy,” the authors wrote in a JAMA Network Open research letter.
Offering one dose of vaccine instead of two to those previously infected with COVID-19 is hotly contested, with some experts conceding it’s likely that previously infected individuals only need one dose, but that it would be challenging from a programmatic standpoint.
Indeed, Moy’s group urged performing “baseline serological testing” for previously infected individuals, but CDC and the agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) argued that this would be next to impossible to do for the entire country.
How will the pandemic end? The science of past outbreaks offers clues. – National Geographic
The answer depends on many factors, perhaps the most critical being the global nature of the crisis.
… At that stage, SARS-CoV-2 will become a circulating virus that’s “less consequential as we build immunity,” says Saad Omer, an epidemiologist and director of the Yale Institute for Global Health. (Read more about how we’ll live with COVID-19 as an endemic disease.)
Only two diseases in recorded history that affect humans or other animals have ever been eradicated: smallpox, a life-threatening disease for people that covers bodies in painful blisters, and rinderpest, a viral malady that infected and killed cattle. In both instances, intensive global vaccination campaigns brought new infections to a halt. The last confirmed case of rinderpest was detected in Kenya in 2001, while the last known smallpox case occurred in the U.K. in 1978.
Joshua Epstein, professor of epidemiology in the New York University School of Global Public Health and founding director of its Agent-Based Modeling Laboratory, argues that eradication is so rare that the word should be wiped from our disease vocabulary. Diseases “retreat to their animal reservoirs, or they mutate at low levels,” he says. “But they don’t typically literally disappear from the global biome.”
Most causes of past pandemics are still with us today. More than 3,000 people caught the bacteria that cause both bubonic and pneumonic plague between 2010 and 2015, according to the WHO. And the virus behind the 1918 flu pandemic that ravaged the globe, killing at least 50 million people, ultimately morphed into less lethal variants, with its descendants becoming strains of the seasonal flu.
As with the 1918 flu, it’s likely the SARS-CoV-2 virus will continue to mutate, and the human immune system would eventually adapt to fend it off without shots—but not before many people fell ill and died. “Developing immunity the hard way is not a solution that we should be aspiring to,” Omer says.
Finding ways to slow the spread of a disease and manage its effects is by far the safer path, experts say. Today, for instance, pest control and advanced hygiene keep the plague at bay, while any new cases can be treated with antibiotics.
For other diseases, such as the flu, vaccines can also make a difference. The available COVID-19 vaccines are highly safe and effective, which means getting enough people vaccinated can end this pandemic faster and with lower mortality than natural infections alone.
No, Most COVID Infections Are Not Occurring in Vaccinated People – MedPage
Misinformation and misunderstanding about vaccine efficacy have abounded recently, potentially sparked by what seemed to be worrying data out of Provincetown, Massachusetts, reported last week by the CDC.
The agency’s investigation revealed that 74% of the 469 COVID-19 cases in that outbreak occurred in fully vaccinated people.
But that doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination mean that three-quarters of vaccinated people are getting COVID.
In addition to this being one particular outbreak, as vaccination rates increase overall, a larger proportion of cases will occur in the vaccinated — it’s just simple math.
Katelyn Jetelina, PhD, MPH, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, explained the concept of base rate bias back in June after the Israeli health minister said that about half of infections were occurring in vaccinated people.
“The more vaccinated a population, the more we’ll hear of the vaccinated getting infected,” Jetelina wrote, noting that 85% of Israeli adults were vaccinated at the time.
If there were four COVID cases out of 100 people, for example, with two occurring in vaccinated people and two occurring in unvaccinated people, that would be 50% of cases occurring in vaccinated people.
But the more important number to look at would be infection rates among the separate groups — which would be a 13% infection rate in the unvaccinated, and a much smaller infection rate of 2% in the vaccinated.
That would strongly indicate that vaccines are working.
CDC: Vaccination May Cut Risk of COVID Reinfection in Half – Medscape
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that everyone get a COVID-19 vaccine, even if they’ve had the virus before. Yet many skeptics have held off getting the shots, believing that immunity generated by their previous infection will protect them if they should encounter the virus again.
A new study published today in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report pokes holes in this notion. It shows people who have recovered from COVID-19 but haven’t been vaccinated have more than double the risk of testing positive for the virus again, compared with someone who was vaccinated after an initial infection.
The study looked at 738 Kentucky residents who had an initial bout of COVID-19 in 2020. About 250 of them tested positive for COVID-19 a second time between May and July of 2021, when the Delta variant became dominant in the US.
The study matched each person who’d been reinfected with two people of the same sex and roughly the same age who had caught their initial COVID infection within the same week. The researchers then cross-matched those cases with data from Kentucky’s Immunization Registry.
They found that those who were unvaccinated had more than double the risk of being reinfected during the Delta wave. Partial vaccination appeared to have no significant impact on the risk of reinfection.
Among those who were reinfected, 20% were fully vaccinated, while 34% of those who did not get reinfected were fully vaccinated.
The study is observational, meaning it can’t show cause and effect; and the researchers had no information on the severity of the infections. Alyson Cavanaugh, PhD, a member of the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service who led the study, says it is possible that some of the people who tested positive a second time had asymptomatic infections that were picked up through routine screening.
COVID Survivors Who Don’t Get Vaccine Over Twice as Likely to Get Reinfected: CDC Study – Newsweek
A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed COVID-19 survivors who are unvaccinated are more than twice as likely to get reinfected with the virus, the Associated Press reported.
Friday’s report encourages those who aren’t yet to get vaccinated as growing laboratory evidence shows that people who once had COVID-19 get a dramatic boost in virus-fighting immune cells when they’re vaccinated.
“If you have had COVID-19 before, please still get vaccinated,” said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC‘s Director. “Getting the vaccine is the best way to protect yourself and others around you, especially as the more contagious delta variant spreads around the country.”
What we know about how the pandemic affected Social Security – CNBC
- The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic prompted new fears about Social Security’s trust funds and benefits.
- More than a year into the pandemic, some of those concerns have abated as the U.S. economy has rebounded.
- One age cohort is not expected to take as big a benefit cut. Meanwhile, all beneficiaries could be poised for a higher cost-of-living adjustment next year.
Dr. Anthony Fauci: Expect ‘a flood’ of COVID-19 vaccine mandates after full FDA approval – USA Today
As soon as the Food and Drug Administration issues a full approval for a COVID-19 vaccine, there will be “a flood” of vaccine mandates at businesses and schools across the nation, Dr. Anthony Fauci told USA TODAY’s editorial board on Friday.
Mandates aren’t going to happen at the federal level, but vaccine approval will embolden many groups, he predicted.
“Organizations, enterprises, universities, colleges that have been reluctant to mandate at the local level will feel much more confident,” he said.
“They can say, ‘If you want to come to this college or this university, you’ve got to get vaccinated. If you want to work in this plant, you have to get vaccinated. If you want to work in this enterprise, you’ve got to get vaccinated. If you want to work in this hospital, you’ve got to get vaccinated.'”
Fauci doesn’t see more lockdowns in the nation’s future. They were issued early in the pandemic to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed, known as “flattening the curve.”
Why scientists are talking about viral load and the delta variant – NBC
What sets delta apart, experts say, is how much virus is produced by those who are infected — a measure known as viral load.
… While the CDC’s findings indicate that vaccinated people who get infected with the delta variant may be able to spread the virus as easily as unvaccinated individuals, vaccines have been shown to protect the vast majority of breakthrough infections from serious illness, hospitalization and death.
But beyond Ct values, studies have found characteristics of delta and the disease it causes that suggest this variant belongs in a league of its own.
The Chinese researchers who studied viral loads in people infected with the delta variant also observed that the incubation period with delta patients was shorter compared to the original strain. With previous variants, the virus was detectable in infected individuals an average of six days after exposure, but with the delta variant, that window was shortened to four days.
The change in incubation period could indicate that the delta variant is better able to invade cells and can replicate faster than previous variants, which can help the virus spread. The shorter window also makes contact tracing even more of a challenge for public health departments that are already overburdened.
More research is needed, but there are also indications that the delta variant may cause more severe disease. A study published June 14 in the journal The Lancet examined the impact of the delta variant in Scotland, where it was the dominant strain. The researchers found that the risk of hospitalization from Covid-19 was roughly doubled for patients infected with delta, compared to people infected with the alpha variant, which was previously the dominant strain worldwide.
The following are foreign headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
Dangerous Price of COVID Rules for Women, Children in Africa
Google billionaire Larry Page has been granted New Zealand residency
The following additional national and state headlines with hyperlinks to the posts
White House Press Secretary: ‘We’re Not Going to Lock Down Our Economy or Our Schools’
Déjà vu? Consumers scramble for covid tests in hard-hit areas
Donald Milton on Aerosol Transmission of COVID-19
Florida reports record high number of new COVID-19 cases
Federal workers who lie about vaccination status could be fined, removed
Federal workers who lie about vaccination status could be fined, removed
California’s COVID Rates Are Worse in Summer 2021 Than Same Time Last Year
Law Professor with COVID Antibodies Sues Over Vaccine Mandate
JP Morgan Issues Employee Mask Mandate, Regardless of Vaccination Status
South Dakota Reported 68 Percent Rise in COVID Cases Days Before Sturgis Rally Began
An Arkansas judge temporarily blocks the state’s ban on mask mandates
New data suggest J. & J. vaccine works against Delta and recipients don’t need a booster shot.
Biden extends payment pause for student loan borrowers through January
Jennifer Aniston defends staying away from the unvaccinated
Today’s Posts On Econintersect Showing Impact Of The Pandemic and Recovery With Hyperlinks
June 2021 Consumer Credit Continues To Expand And Was Well Above Expectations
68% Of Companies Worried About Exodus Of Talent, 81% Facing Pushback, 59% Cite Burnout
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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