Coronavirus dashboard for July 8: deaths in the South and West finally suggest increasing trend
Coronavirus dashboard for July 8: deaths in the South and West finally suggest increasing trend
Coronavirus death statistics have been plagued recently by State data dumps, where months of deaths have been released on a single day. In the past 2 weeks, both NJ and NY’s such releases had skewed the numbers. As of today, both are out of the 7 day statistics, so I thought I would update again.
One bit of good news, statistics-wise, is that the COVID tracker now has the ability to include hospitalizations (although FL still isn’t fully releasing its numbers). So here are hospitalizations per capita in the 4 US regions:
In the past few weeks, hospitalizations have continued to decline in the Northeast, stayed flat in the Midwest, risen slightly in the West starting 14 days ago, and increased by more than 50% in the South starting 19 days ago.
Has the bad news started to translate into deaths in the South and West? Maybe.
Here are deaths per capita in the Northeast and Midwest:
With the NJ and NY data dumps out of the 7 day average, the Northeast average has now decreased to 2.0 per million. This, believe it or not, still makes the Northeast the worst region, due to NJ (4.0 per million), MA (3.3), and RI (2.6). NY has declined to 1.5 per million, and is no longer even in the top 25 per capita. The jump in the Midwest in the past day is due to – sigh – a data dump by Illinois, which will slightly skew the national average for the next week.
Here are deaths per capita in the South and West:
The big question is, are the increases in the past 2 days the start of a trend? If so, then it would appear that deaths per capita in both the South and West bottomed a little over 2 weeks ago.
Even so, at 5.5 deaths per million, the worst State, Arizona, still has less than 10% the rate of deaths that NY had (close to 70) at the worst of the outbreak there. God willing, even with all of their reckless mistakes, Florida, Texas, and Arizona hopefully will never get that bad.
I am more interested in the current number of infectious cases than in the number of cumulative cases. So I take the number of cumulative cases for any particular date and subtract the number of cumulative cases from 15 days prior to that date. So my estimate is using 15 days for the period of infectiousness.
I am more interested in the deaths which occurred in the last 15 days than in the cumulative deaths. So I take the cumulative deaths for any particular date and subtract the number cumulative deaths from 15 days prior to that date.
Here are the statistics for New York state.
Date —————–Infectious Cases ————- Deaths in previous 15 days
03/01/2020 —————– 1 ——————————— 0
03/16/2020 ————- 1,373 ——————————- 12
03/31/2020 ———– 82,338 ————————— 1,929
04/15/2020 ———- 138,572 ————————– 10,251
04/30/2020 ———- 86,030 ————————— 6,418
05/15/2020 ———– 39,918 ————————— 3,868
05/30/2020 ———- 22,538 —————————- 1,427
06/14/2020 ———– 13,174 —————————— 674
06/29/2020 ———— 9,510 —————————– 276
The question is why did the number of cases rise very quickly from 1 March to 15 April and then begin to fall rapidly?
My working theory is that when Covid-19 arrives in virgin territory its predominant trait is that it spreads extremely rapidly. While it is spreading it is causing the deaths of the most vulnerable people. The most vulnerable include the elderly and others with serious underlying health issues. The rest of the population has only mild symptoms. Most don’t even see a doctor.
The US went into isolation in March and that slowed the spreading. But we have been slowly opening back up and New York’s statistics are still going down.
My working theory is that the number of deaths are still going down because the vulnerable are still isolating themselves. It is the least vulnerable people who are spending more time away from their homes. And they are only having mild symptoms.
Here are the statistics for the entire US
Date —————— Infectious Cases ———— Deaths in previous 15 days
03/01/2020 ——————- 30 —————————— 2
03/16/2020 —————- 4,316 —————————- 60
03/31/2020 ————- 180,418 ———————— 2,983
04/15/2020 ————- 420,816 ———————– 22,731
04/30/2020 ————- 397,138 ———————– 29,291
05/15/2020 ————- 337,217 ———————– 24,832
05/30/2020 ———— 299,335 ———————– 16,476
06/14/2020 ————- 285,014 ———————– 11,538
06/29/2020 ———— 466,797 ————————- 8,164
The ‘Number of Infectious’ is rising in the US but not in New York state. That may be happening because the situation in New York was so horrible that the residents there are still wearing masks and demanding that others wear them.
Summing up, the number of deaths is still unacceptable, but our situation is improving.
July 12, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,381,274)
Deaths ( 137,577)
India
Cases ( 871,499)
Deaths ( 23,078)
Mexico
Cases ( 295,268)
Deaths ( 34,730)
UK
Cases ( 289,603)
Deaths ( 44,819)
Germany
Cases ( 199,903)
Deaths ( 9,134)
Canada
Cases ( 107,589)
Deaths ( 8,783)
China
Cases ( 83,594)
Deaths ( 4,634)
Since 1970, the Dominican Republic has had the fastest growth in per capita GDP in the Western Hemisphere. However look to the difference with Cuba during the spread of the coronavirus. The point being that Cuba has had a far better healthcare system, though that is difficult to make clear in the United States.
July 12, 2020
Coronavirus
Dominican Republic
Cases ( 44,532)
Deaths ( 897)
Deaths per million ( 83)
Cuba
Cases ( 2,426)
Deaths ( 87)
Deaths per million ( 8)
Paul Krugman @paulkrugman
The rush to reopen will sicken or kill many Americans. On the other hand, it will be bad for the economy too 1/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/11/after-fastest-recession-us-history-economic-recovery-may-be-fizzling/
After the fastest recession in U.S. history, the economic recovery may be fizzling
Economists fear “stop-and-go” rebound. Some economists say the jobs picture will worsen, as companies settling in for a long recession.
8:04 AM · Jul 12, 2020
This was predictable and predicted. I warned about it here 2/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/opinion/coronavirus-depression.html
How to Create a Pandemic Depression
Opening the economy too soon could backfire, badly.
Simon Wren-Lewis warned about it in the UK 3/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/11/britain-economy-coronavirus-deaths
We can’t restart Britain’s economy until we get coronavirus under control
While deaths continue, most people will stay at home out of choice, whatever the government does
There was never a tradeoff between growth and deaths. All there was was a marshmallow test. And thanks to Trump and his party, we failed it 4/
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-07/12/c_139207391.htm
July 12, 2020
U.S. top infectious diseases expert Fauci sidelined by White House despite COVID-19 surge: report
Since COVID-19 broke out in the United States, the Trump administration and especially the president himself have had strained relations with the scientist over the country’s coronavirus policy.
WASHINGTON — Despite his leading role in the U.S. fight against COVID-19, top infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci has been sidelined by the White House, the Washington Post reported on Sunday. *
Citing a senior White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the Post reported that Fauci “no longer briefs Trump and is never in the Oval anymore.”
According to the report, Fauci had not spoken to Trump since “the first week of June.”
Since COVID-19 broke out in the United States, the Trump administration and especially the president himself have had strained relations with the scientist over the country’s coronavirus policy.
In recent days, with coronavirus infections and death surging in most U.S. states, Fauci, whose TV appearances were reportedly “scuttled” by the White House, had spoken more critical of the country’s response to the epidemic….
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/11/fauci-trump-coronavirus/
July 12, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,387,307)
Deaths ( 137,661)
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-07-12/High-blood-sugar-elevates-COVID-19-mortality-risk-Chinese-study-S3NvnFGrhm/index.html
July 12, 2020
High blood sugar elevates COVID-19 mortality risk: Chinese study
Patients with abnormally high blood sugar levels are more than twice as likely to die from COVID-19, researchers in China said on Saturday.
It is the first time scientists have been able to confirm that patients with hyperglycemia, but not diagnosed with diabetes, are at higher risk of death from COVID-19, they wrote in the journal Diabetologia.
The researchers examined death rates for 605 COVID-19 patients at two hospitals in Wuhan, China.
Having high blood pressure is “independently associated” with increased risk of death and complications from COVID-19, they wrote.
The study builds on previous research on diabetic patients.
One-in-10 COVID-19 patients with diabetes died in French hospitals, a far higher proportion than for patients without the condition, a May study in the same journal found.
Exactly why high blood sugar increases COVID-19 death rates remains unclear.
The authors of Friday’s study suggested that blood clotting, the weakening of blood vessel linings, and cytokine storm syndrome – an overreaction of the immune system – could all play a role.
The authors of the report urged hospitals to test all COVID-19 patients for glucose levels, as opposed to only those known to have diabetes.
The study, which looked at hospital patients admitted in January and February, had some limitations, experts not involved in the research said.
“This is a nice report but it is fully in line with expectations,” Naveed Sattar, a professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow who was not one of the study’s authors, said.
“What the authors cannot confirm is whether differential targeting of blood sugar levels in those admitted leads to differences in outcomes.”
More research involving randomized controlled trials is needed, Bernard Khoo, a professor of endocrinology at University College London, commented.
July 12, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,396,046)
Deaths ( 137,679)
July 12, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,413,079)
Deaths ( 137,782)
White House seeks to discredit Fauci as coronavirus surges
NBCNews – Josh Lederman and Kelly O’Donnell – July 12
The White House is seeking to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, as President Donald Trump works to marginalize him and his dire warnings about the shortcomings of the U.S. coronavirus response.
In a remarkable broadside by the Trump administration against one of its own, a White House official said Sunday that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things.” The official gave NBC News a list of nearly a dozen past comments by Fauci that the official said had ultimately proven erroneous.
Among them: Fauci’s comments in January that the coronavirus was “not a major threat” and his guidance in March that “people should not be walking around with masks.”
It was a move more characteristic of a political campaign furtively disseminating opposition research about an opponent than of a White House struggling to contain a pandemic that has killed more than 135,000 people, according to an NBC News tally.
Fauci, who runs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had been a leading member of the White House coronavirus task force and a key communicator with the public until the president soured on his sober assessments of the situation, which have increasingly conflicted with the more sanguine picture of a virus in retreat that the president has sought to paint.
In recent days, Fauci has deviated from Trump by disputing that the U.S. is “doing great” and by faulting the decision in some states to reopen too quickly and to sidestep the task force’s suggested criteria for when it’s safe to loosen restrictions. In a particularly alarming prediction, Fauci said he wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S. was soon adding 100,000 new cases a day — a figure that would reflect an abject failure to slow the spread.
Fauci declined to comment.
The coronavirus is surging nationwide, which Trump has repeatedly downplayed as the result of increased testing rather than growing numbers of infections. Florida on Sunday reported over 15,000 new cases, the most any state has reported in a single day since the pandemic began. The U.S. on Friday also surpassed 70,000 new coronavirus cases nationwide for the first time.
As physicians and scientists have learned more about the coronavirus, the medical consensus on how to treat it and limit its spread has evolved — and not just in the U.S. Many of Fauci’s assertions called into question by the White House official were based on the best available data at the time and were widely echoed by Trump, other members of the task force and senior White House officials.
“When you learn more, you change those recommendations,” Surgeon General Jerome Adams, another member of the task force, told CBS News on Sunday. “Our recommendations have changed.”
The list of Fauci’s comments compiled by the White House, first reported by The Washington Post, includes Fauci’s saying in January— weeks before the first reported COVID-19 death in the U.S. — that the virus was “not a major threat for the people in the U.S.” A month later, Trump told Americans that the virus would simply “disappear” like a “miracle.”
The White House declined to provide further comment. But the signs of its displeasure have been mounting. On Thursday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany declined to say whether Trump still has confidence in Fauci, and the president said of him the same day: “He’s made a lot of mistakes.”
“I disagree with him,” Trump said in a separate interview with Gray Television’s Greta Van Susteren last week.
Signs of tension between Fauci and the president are growing. Fauci said last week that he hadn’t seen Trump in person since June 2 and hadn’t briefed him in person in at least two months.
Fauci, who has served in the federal government for decades, can’t be directly fired by the president, and there were no signs that Trump was seeking to get rid of him altogether. Rather, the White House salvo appeared aimed at undermining the public’s trust in the renowned immunologist in hope that Americans will be more inclined to believe Trump’s far more optimistic version of events as the November election marches closer.
Fauci has enjoyed broad support from the public, which got to know the gruff-speaking doctor during his frequent appearances at the task force’s televised briefings — a mainstay of the early response to the pandemic that has since fallen largely by the wayside.
A New York Times/Sienna College poll last month found that 2 in 3 registered voters approved of Fauci, including half of Republicans and 4 in 5 Democrats. Trump, by comparison, enjoyed support of his handling of the crisis from only 1 in 4 voters in the same poll, including just 4 percent of Democrats.
Another member of the coronavirus task force, Dr. Brett Giroir, added to the pile-on, saying Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Fauci hasn’t always been correct.
“I respect Dr. Fauci a lot, but Dr. Fauci is not 100 percent right, and he also doesn’t necessarily, he admits that, have the whole national interest in mind. He looks at it from a very narrow public health point of view,” Giroir said.
Trump’s Health Officials Warn More Will Die as Covid Cases Rise
NY Times – July 12
Two of the Trump administration’s top health officials acknowledged Sunday that the country is facing a very serious situation with the onslaught of rising coronavirus cases in several states, striking a far more sober tone than President Trump at this stage of the pandemic in the United States.
Adm. Brett Giroir, an assistant secretary with the Health and Human Services department, and Dr. Jerome Adams, the surgeon general, both emphasized their concern about surging outbreaks, many of them in areas where people have not followed recommended public health guidelines to contain the spread of the virus. Their remarks were in sharp contrast to Mr. Trump’s contention just last week that 99 percent of the cases were “totally harmless” and his boast of the country’s low death rate from the virus.
“We’re all very concerned about the rise in cases, no doubt about that,” Admiral Giroir, the official who has been in charge of the administration’s coronavirus testing response, said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“We do expect deaths to go up,” he said. “If you have more cases, more hospitalizations, we do expect to see that over the next two or three weeks before this turns around.”
Still, Admiral Giroir and Dr. Adams offered up a few optimistic notes. Admiral Giroir said the percentage of positive test results was leveling off, and both officials said that doctors had better tools to treat people who become sick than they did at the start of the pandemic.
They steered clear of recommending widespread lockdowns in states with heavy caseloads where hospitals are becoming overwhelmed. Instead, they said those cities and states should consider closing bars and curtailing mass social gatherings, and they strongly urged the vast majority of people in those hard-hit areas to wear masks.
Masks have become a flash point in some areas of the country, especially among members of Mr. Trump’s political base. The president resisted wearing a mask for months, mocked some people who did, and only wore a mask in public for the first time on Saturday during a visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
“It’s really essential to wear masks,” Admiral Giroir said. “We have to have like 90 percent of people wearing the masks in public in the hot spot areas. If we don’t have that, we will not get control of the virus.” ….
Florida reports more than 15,000 new cases, a daily record for the US
NY Times – July 12
More than 15,000 new cases of the coronavirus were announced on Sunday in Florida, marking the highest single-day total of known cases in any state since the start of the pandemic.
Florida’s surge soared past the previous record, set in New York, of more than 12,000 cases in a day. That occurred in April, during the worst of the outbreak there, when testing was scarce. And Florida is reporting far fewer deaths than New York.
Florida also saw single-day records in the counties that include Florida’s largest cities, including Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, Fort Myers, West Palm Beach, Pensacola and Sarasota.
The U.S. outbreak is growing across 37 states. More than 60,000 new coronavirus cases were announced on Saturday, more than any day of the pandemic except Friday, when the country recorded more than 68,000 — setting a single-day record for the seventh time in 11 days. …
Cases are reaching alarming levels in the Midwest.
Some parts of the Midwest are beginning to look alarmingly like the South and West did just a month ago. Cases have been trending upward in every Midwestern state except Nebraska and South Dakota.
Minnesota announced its highest daily case totals since May on Sunday and Saturday. Ohio, which had been making progress fighting the virus, reported 1,525 new cases on Friday, exceeding the previous single-day record it had set back in April.
Across the Midwest, state and local officials are locked in contentious, partisan debates about reopening and masking ordinances that eerily echo those that occurred in the South and West just weeks before some emergency rooms began to fill to capacity and businesses were forced to close again. …
As Fauci becomes more vocal, Trump aides are moving to undercut him
NY Times – July 13
President Trump’s advisers undercut the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, over the weekend, anonymously providing details to various news outlets about statements he had made early in the outbreak that they said were inaccurate.
The move to treat Dr. Fauci as if he were a warring political rival comes as he has grown increasingly vocal in his concerns about the national surge in coronavirus cases. He has also noted his lack of access to Mr. Trump.
Aides to Mr. Trump released to The Washington Post and other news outlets a list of remarks Dr. Fauci made about the virus when it was in its early stages. It featured several comments White House aides had privately complained about for months.
An official told The Post that several other officials were concerned about how often Dr. Fauci had been wrong.
For example, White House officials pointed to a statement he made in a Feb. 29 interview that “at this moment, there is no need to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis.”
But they omitted a warning Dr. Fauci delivered right after.
“Right now the risk is still low, but this could change,” he said in the interview, conducted by NBC News. “When you start to see community spread, this could change and force you to become much more attentive to doing things that would protect you from spread.”
Dr. Fauci works for the Trump administration, but the list of his statements was laid out in the style of a campaign’s opposition research document.
A poll conducted for The New York Times by Siena College last month showed that 67 percent of Americans trusted Dr. Fauci when it came to the virus; only 26 percent trusted the president.
In an interview with FiveThirtyEight.com last week, Dr. Fauci said that a few states had the virus under control but that “as a country, when you compare us to other countries, I don’t think you can say we’re doing great. I mean, we’re just not.”
Last week, Mr. Trump told Fox News that Dr. Fauci had been wrong about many aspects of the pandemic. Dr. Fauci “is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes,” the president said.
Rich New Yorkers aren’t filling out the census. Poor New Yorkers may suffer
When the coronavirus hit New York City, many New Yorkers who had the wherewithal to leave the city did so. Thinned-out neighborhoods stopped producing as much garbage. Mail-forwarding requests shot through the roof.
That exodus came just as the once-a-decade census was getting underway. Now, census officials say wealthier neighborhoods in Manhattan are unexpectedly proving some of the hardest to reach.
Some of these census tracts include the city’s most exclusive stretches of real estate, like the Fifth Avenue corridor between 70th and 35th Streets, which the planning department said was “home to some of the lowest levels of self-response in the city.”
Only 46 percent of Upper East Side households have filled out their census forms, according to a June 25 report circulated by the Department of City Planning’s chief demographer, Joseph J. Salvo — well below the neighborhood’s final response rate in 2010, and short of the current citywide rate of almost 53 percent.
Only about 38 percent of households in Midtown Manhattan have filled out their census forms — the second-worst response rate in all of New York City, after North Corona, Queens, which is at about 37 percent.
The rate is only slightly better in the area encompassing SoHo, Tribeca and Little Italy, which is home to wealthy residents as well as many college students; those tracts have response rates of about 46 percent.
The undercount could have a dramatic effect, according to the department’s report. “Missing just one person in the city could reduce education funding by $2,295, and job training by $281,” it said.
Officials hope that many of the coronavirus evacuees will return by the end of October, the new extended deadline for final responses to the census.
Bleak Outlook in U.S. as Coronavirus Cases Soar in 39 States
Infections mounted in all but a handful of U.S. states, with worsening hot spots in the South and West and new ones emerging in the Midwest.
Some of the country’s biggest urban centers were seeing out-of-control growth.
Case numbers in the U.S. are rising in all but a handful of states.
More than 100,000 new cases were identified. Seven states set daily case records. Florida added more infections in a day than any state had previously.
And that was just over the weekend.
The U.S. outbreak — once centered in the densely packed northeastern hubs of New York and New Jersey — is now growing across 39 states, from the worsening hot spots in the South and West to those emerging in the Midwest. Restrictions on business operations, mass gatherings and mask-wearing have become debate fodder in an increasingly polarized election year.
As a new week begins, the country’s outlook is exceptionally grim. Case numbers are rising in all but a handful of states. Hospitals are running out of beds. And some of the country’s biggest urban centers — Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, Jacksonville, Fla. — have seen out-of-control growth with few concrete signs of progress.
“Put politics aside and wear a mask,” Mayor Lenny Curry of Jacksonville, a Republican, said on Twitter.
As new cases continue to mount in the Southeast and West, troublesome signs are emerging elsewhere in the country. The county that includes Oklahoma City has been averaging twice as many cases as it was just two weeks ago. Case numbers have started increasing again around Minneapolis after weeks of progress. And Wisconsin and Ohio are averaging more new infections than at any previous point in the pandemic.
In Miami-Dade County, Fla., six hospitals have reached capacity as virus cases spike. The increase in cases caused the mayor there to roll back reopening plans by imposing a curfew and closing restaurants for indoor dining.
The administration dismissal of the work of government medical staff began long before the work of Anthony Fauci was dismissed. The dismissal went far beyond the president and contributed to the inability we have shown to deal properly with the onset and spread of the coronavirus. After all, John Bolton had closed the NSC global health security division in May 2018.
However, the poor response we have shown to the coronavirus epidemic reflects on a generally poor public healthcare system in this country and we sorely need to consider this.
Looking to public healthcare systems, compare the workings of the Dominican Republic and Cuban systems, while considering that since 1970 per capita GDP growth in the Dominican Republic has been faster than any country in the Western Hemisphere, let alone not being constrained by continual sanctions as has the Cuban system:
July 13, 2020
Coronavirus
Dominican Republic
Cases ( 45,506)
Deaths ( 903)
Deaths per million ( 83)
Cuba
Cases ( 2,428)
Deaths ( 87)
Deaths per million ( 8)
July 12, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,413,995)
Deaths ( 137,782)
July 13, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,434,018)
Deaths ( 137,850)
[ Swoosh, and we experience another 20,000 cases. ]
July 13, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,438,025)
Deaths ( 137,871)
India
Cases ( 904,225)
Deaths ( 23,711)
Mexico
Cases ( 299,750)
Deaths ( 35,006)
UK
Cases ( 290,133)
Deaths ( 44,830)
Germany
Cases ( 200,239)
Deaths ( 9,137)
Canada
Cases ( 107,807)
Deaths ( 8,787)
China
Cases ( 83,602)
Deaths ( 4,634)
Always being careful but living in a relatively safe neighborhood where the only mandate is wearing a mask, I have gone to stores several times recently, to supermarkets in particular, and the environment has dramatically changed from before the epidemic began. I am finding a supermarket with ample products but lines of products have narrowed. Shoppers are fewer, buying less and supposing dress is telling on a general working day there are fewer office workers shopping.
I take this to mean far more shopping online, and daily online deliveries seem to be coming to every home in my neighborhood. I take this to mean that shopping patterns will be changed for quite a while and this will complicate an economic recovery.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/us/coronavirus-oregon.html
July 13, 2020
‘We’re Not an Island’: Rural Outbreaks Challenge Oregon’s Virus Success
Oregon was sandwiched between two states that had big coronavirus outbreaks but managed to keep its numbers low. Until it couldn’t.
By Kate Conger
July 13, 2020
Coronavirus
US
Cases ( 3,454,259)
Deaths ( 138,020)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/world/coronavirus-updates.html
July 13, 2020
California Imposing Sweeping Rollback of Reopening Plans Amid Case Surges
Trump’s ex-chief of staff Mick Mulvaney says U.S. has ‘inexcusable’ problems with COVID-19 testing
via @usatoday – July 13
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s former acting chief of staff criticized the country’s coronavirus testing on Monday and argued that any future relief package should focus on COVID itself as the “root cause” of the recession, rather than on remedies like stimulus checks.
“I know it isn’t popular to talk about in some Republican circles, but we still have a testing problem in this country,” Mick Mulvaney, who is currently the U.S.’ special envoy to Northern Ireland, wrote in an op-ed for CNBC.
Mulvaney described his family’s efforts to get tested for the coronavirus, noting that they had to wait up to a week to receive his son’s results, while being told his daughter didn’t meet the criteria for receiving a test, even though she was planning on visiting her grandparents.
“That is simply inexcusable at this point in the pandemic,” Mulvaney said. …
Experts: Dr. Fauci’s record is stellar
Sidelining him would be a mistake
via @BostonGlobe – July 13
Experts in Boston’s medical and public health community say Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, has a sterling reputation, and expressed faith in his work even as the White House appears to be trying to undercut his standing.
“In the infectious disease community, his reputation has always been stellar,” said Dr. Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious diseases specialist. “He has been a beacon for scientific thinking and evidence-based response to public health emergencies.”
An attempt to sideline Fauci could be “really damaging in our ability to control this pandemic,” said Bhadelia, an associate professor at the Boston University School of Medicine and medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit at Boston Medical Center.
President Trump’s advisers over the weekend anonymously provided details to various news outlets about statements Fauci had made early in the coronavirus outbreak that they said were inaccurate. The extraordinary move was akin to treating Fauci, the long-time director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as if he were Trump’s political rival. The controversial, divisive Republican president had also openly criticized Fauci last week, saying, “Fauci is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes.”
With the United States leading the world by a large margin in both cases and deaths, Fauci has grown more outspoken recently in interviews with his concerns about the virus, even as Trump has tried to push for states to reopen faster and has threatened to withhold federal money from school districts if they do not reopen in the fall.
Polls have shown the American public trusts Fauci’s advice over Trump’s when it comes to the pandemic.
Fauci, 79, has long had an excellent reputation. He is known for his work on the HIV/AIDS crisis and, more recently, the Ebola outbreak of 2014. President George H.W. Bush once cited him as an unsung American hero, and President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 2008. …
There is a decisive spreading of the coronavirus in the southern hemisphere now, the wintering hemisphere. This is a further sign of how careful we should be in encouraging school openings in fall. After all, we are in the midst of the initial outbreak and we so far have shown no collectively necessary discipline in protecting against infection.
Could we properly protect students and teachers?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/opinion/coronavirus-schools-bars.html
July 13, 2020
America Drank Away Its Children’s Future
As the school year looms, the pandemic is still raging.
By Paul Krugman
A brief history of the past four months in America:
Experts: Don’t rush to reopen, this isn’t over.
Donald Trump: LIBERATE!
Covid-19: Wheee!
Trump officials: Here’s our opposition research on Anthony Fauci.
And we’re now faced with an agonizing choice: Do we reopen schools, creating risks of a further viral explosion, or do we keep children home, with severe negative effects on their learning?
None of this had to happen. Other countries stuck with their lockdowns long enough to reduce infections to rates much lower than those prevailing here; Covid-19 death rates per capita in the European Union are only a 10th those in the United States — and falling — while ours are rising fast. As a result, they’re in a position to reopen schools fairly safely.
And the experience of the Northeast, the first major epicenter of the U.S. pandemic, shows that we could have achieved something similar here. Death rates are way down, although still higher than in Europe; on Saturday, for the first time since March, New York City reported zero Covid-19 deaths.
Would a longer lockdown have been economically sustainable? Yes.
It’s true that strong social distancing requirements led to high unemployment and hurt many businesses. But even America, with its ramshackle social safety net, was able to provide enough disaster relief — don’t call it stimulus! — to protect most of its citizens from severe hardship.
Thanks largely to expanded unemployment benefits, poverty didn’t soar during the lockdown. By some measures it may even have gone down.
True, there were holes in that safety net, and many people did suffer. But we could have patched those holes. Yes, emergency relief costs a lot of money, but we can afford it: The federal government has been borrowing huge sums, but interest rates have remained near historical lows.
Put it this way: At its most severe, the lockdown seems to have reduced G.D.P. by a little over 10 percent. During World War II, America spent more than 30 percent of G.D.P. on defense, for more than three years. Why couldn’t we absorb a much smaller cost for a few months?
So doing what was necessary to bring the coronavirus under control would have been annoying, but entirely feasible.
But that was the road not taken. Instead, many states not only rushed to reopen, they reopened stupidly. Instead of being treated as a cheap, effective way to fight contagion, face masks became a front in the culture war. Activities that posed an obvious risk of feeding the pandemic went unchecked: Large gatherings were permitted, bars reopened.
And the cost of those parties and open bars extends beyond the thousands of Americans who will be killed or suffer permanent health damage as a result of Covid-19’s resurgence. The botched reopening has also endangered something that, unlike drinking in groups, can’t be suspended without doing long-run damage: in-person education.
Some activities hold up fairly well when moved online. I suspect that there will be a lot fewer people flying cross-country to stare at PowerPoints than there were pre-Covid, even once we finally beat this virus.
Education isn’t one of those activities. We now have overwhelming confirmation of something we already suspected: For many, perhaps most students there is no substitute for actually being in a classroom.
But rooms full of students are potential Petri dishes, even if the young are less likely to die from Covid-19 than the old. Other countries have managed to reopen schools relatively safely — but they did so with much lower infection rates than currently prevail in America, and with adequate testing, which we still don’t have in many hot spots.
So we’re now facing a terrible, unnecessary dilemma. If we reopen in-person education, we risk feeding an out-of-control pandemic. If we don’t, we impair the development of millions of American students, inflicting long-term damage on their lives and careers.
And the reason we’re in this position is that states, cheered on by the Trump administration, rushed to allow large parties and reopen bars. In a real sense America drank away its children’s future.
Now what? At this point there are probably as many infected Americans as there were in March. So what we should be doing is admitting that we blew it, and doing a severe lockdown all over again — and this time listening to the experts before reopening. Unfortunately, it’s now too late to avoid disrupting education, but the sooner we deal with this the sooner we can get our society back on track.
But we don’t have the kind of leaders we need. Instead, we have the likes of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, politicians who refuse to listen to experts and never admit having been wrong.
So while there have been a few grudging policy adjustments, the main response we’re seeing to colossal policy failure is a hysterical attempt to shift the blame. Some officials are trying to blacken Dr. Fauci’s reputation; others are diving into unhinged conspiracy theories.
As a result, the outlook is grim. This pandemic is going to get worse before it gets better, and the nation will suffer permanent damage.
There are of course states in which grade schools open in August. Colleges often open in August. However, I am thinking of fall and a way to safely open then is as yet completely unclear.
Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine poised for final testing
via @BostonGlobe – July 14
A COVID-19 vaccine developed by Cambridge-based Moderna in a collaboration with the National Institutes of Health spurred immune responses in healthy patients who received it, although it caused mild side effects in many of them, according to the first published data about the small, early-stage clinical trial.
The vaccine, which was the first of at least 21 to enter clinical trials, produced antibodies in all 45 patients who began receiving two shots 28 days apart in March, said the study (*) in the New England Journal of Medicine. Three groups of 15 volunteers received varying dosages.
“These safety and immunogenicity findings support advancement of the mRNA-1273 vaccine to later-stage clinical trials,” the article said, using the identification number for the experimental vaccine.
The vaccine was developed by Moderna and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which ran the Phase 1 trial. Moderna reported some of the results in mid-May, and the vaccine is in mid-stage trials, with a final stage scheduled to start on 30,000 adults on July 27.
“No matter how you slice this, this is good news,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the US government’s leading infectious disease specialist, told the Associated Press.
Moderna, whose stock is up more than 200 percent this year as the firm has blitzed the media and fueled expectations, had drawn criticism for failing to share backup data. That’s what the journal published Tuesday.
It showed that after volunteers received a second shot, neutralizing antibodies were detected in all the participants who were evaluated, at levels far exceeding those in 38 patients with confirmed diagnoses of COVID-19.
The authors of the study, however, noted that they were unable to say how long that immune response lasted, a crucial question when weighing the effectiveness of a vaccine. The participants will be monitored for a year after they received their second shot to see if they remain immune.
Unlike traditional vaccines, which use a weakened or killed virus to stimulate an immune response, Moderna’s vaccine relies on genetic material called messenger RNA, or mRNA. The vaccine inserts portions of the coronavirus’s RNA into cells, which then manufacture a piece of the virus to generate antibodies.
The company, which has no products on the market — not extraordinary in the biotech world — set a drug industry record by producing its vaccine in 42 days after receiving the genetic sequence of the virus. But no messenger RNA vaccine has ever been approved to prevent any disease, although Moderna is one of several seeking to do so with the coronavirus.
The mRNA vaccines being tested include one developed by the drug giant Pfizer and the German biotech firm BioNTech.
More than half of the 45 participants who received Moderna’s vaccine reported side effects that included fatigue, chills, headache, body aches and pain at the injection site. This was more common after the second vaccination, particularly at the highest dose, but none of the side effects were considered serious.
The 45 volunteers in the early-stage trial in Seattle received dosages of 25 micograms, 100 micrograms, and 250 micrograms.
Dr. Tal Zaks, chief medical officer of Moderna, said the Phase 1 data “demonstrate that vaccination with mRNA-1273 elicits a robust immune response across all dose levels and clearly support the choice” of 100-micrograms in a prime and boost regimen as the optimal dose for the Phase 3 study.
“We look forward to beginning our Phase 3 study of mRNA-1273 this month to demonstrate our vaccine’s ability to significantly reduce the risk of COVID-19 disease,” he said.
The project has received $483 million from the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. It is one of at least four potential COVID-19 vaccines that have the backing of Operation Warp Speed, a federal government initiative to speed up the development of countermeasures against the virus.
Moderna on Tuesday posted details of its final-stage vaccine trial on an official government website, confirming that the widely anticipated trial was still on track to begin this month. Moderna said the trial is expected to begin on July 27 and will will enroll 30,000 adults at high risk of contracting the coronavirus.
Trial sites will begin registering people for the trial next week, said a Moderna spokesman.
* An mRNA Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 — Preliminary Report
NEJM – July 14
The Covid-19 Vaccine-Development Multiverse
Leaving in its wake more than 12 million infections, over 550,000 deaths, and an economic toll in the trillions of dollars to date, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has devastated the most vulnerable in our society — adults 65 years of age or older, persons with underlying conditions, and the economically deprived. A vaccine is urgently needed to prevent Covid-19 and thereby stem complications and deaths resulting from transmission of the disease.
Jackson et al. now report in the Journal preliminary findings from a phase 1 trial to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of an mRNA SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Phase 1 involves 45 healthy adults, 18 to 55 years of age, who were assigned to receive the candidate vaccine at one of three dose levels (25 μg, 100 μg, or 250 μg) given as two vaccinations 28 days apart. These preliminary findings represent the first of three reports of data from a phase 1 study of this candidate vaccine; a second report including similar data from adults older than 55 years of age and a final report summarizing the safety and durability of immunity for both study cohorts are also planned.
Traditional Vaccine Development Pathway.
The speed with which this vaccine has been developed is remarkable — from publication of the first SARS-CoV-2 sequences through phase 1 in 6 months, as compared with a typical timeline of 3 to 9 years (Figure 1). The rapid pace of development of vaccines against Covid-19 is enabled by several factors: prior knowledge of the role of the spike protein in coronavirus pathogenesis and evidence that neutralizing antibody against the spike protein is important for immunity; the evolution of nucleic acid vaccine technology platforms that allow creation of vaccines and prompt manufacture of thousands of doses once a genetic sequence is known6; and development activities that can be conducted in parallel, rather than sequentially, without increasing risks for study participants.
The safety and immunogenicity data in this preliminary report are promising, and they support continued development of this vaccine. However, we must bear in mind the complexity of vaccine development and the work still to be done before Covid-19 vaccines are widely available. …
An mRNA Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 — Preliminary Report
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in December 2019 and spread globally, causing a pandemic of respiratory illness designated coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). The urgent need for vaccines prompted an international response, with more than 120 candidate SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in development within the first 5 months of 2020. The candidate vaccine mRNA-1273 is a lipid nanoparticle–encapsulated, nucleoside-modified messenger RNA (mRNA)–based vaccine that encodes the SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) glycoprotein stabilized in its prefusion conformation. The S glycoprotein mediates host cell attachment and is required for viral entry; it is the primary vaccine target for many candidate SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. …
The Trump administration orders hospitals to bypass the CDC with key virus data
NY Times – July 15
The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, beginning on Wednesday, send all coronavirus patient information to a central database in Washington — a move that has alarmed public health experts who fear the data will be distorted for political gain.
The new instructions are contained in a little-noticed document posted this week on the Department of Health and Human Services’ website. From now on, H.H.S., and not the C.D.C., will collect daily reports about the patients that each hospital is treating, how many beds and ventilators are available, and other information vital to tracking the pandemic.
Officials said the change should help ease data gathering and assist the White House coronavirus task force in allocating scarce supplies like personal protective gear and the drug remdesivir.
Hospital officials want to streamline reporting, saying it will relieve them from responding to requests from multiple federal agencies, though some say the C.D.C. — an agency that prizes its scientific independence — should be in charge of gathering the information.
“The C.D.C. is the right agency to be at the forefront of collecting the data,” said Dr. Bala Hota, the chief analytics officer at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.
Public health experts have long expressed concern that the administration is politicizing science and undermining the C.D.C.; four of the agency’s former directors, spanning both Republican and Democratic administrations, said as much in an opinion piece published Tuesday in The Washington Post. The data collection shift reinforced those fears.
“Centralizing control of all data under the umbrella of an inherently political apparatus is dangerous and breeds distrust,” said Nicole Lurie, who served as assistant secretary for preparedness and response under former President Barack Obama. “It appears to cut off the ability of agencies like C.D.C. to do its basic job.”
In the US, renewed lockdowns, closed schools and uncertain federal support cloud hopes of a rapid rebound
The United States economy is headed for a tumultuous autumn, with the threat of closed schools, renewed government lockdowns, empty stadiums and an uncertain amount of federal support for businesses and unemployed workers all clouding hopes for a rapid rebound from recession.
For months, the prevailing wisdom among investors, Trump administration officials and many economic forecasters was that, after plunging into recession this spring, the country’s economy would accelerate in late summer and take off in the fall as the virus receded.
But failure to suppress a resurgence of confirmed infections is threatening to choke the recovery and push the country back into a recessionary spiral — one that could inflict long-term damage on workers and businesses, unless Congress reconsiders the scale of federal aid that may be required in the months to come.
The looming economic pain was evident on Tuesday as big companies forecast gloomy months ahead. Delta Air Lines said it was cutting back plans to add flights in August and beyond, citing flagging consumer demand. The nation’s biggest banks warned that they were setting aside billions of dollars to cover anticipated losses as customers fail to pay their mortgages and other loans in the months to come. …