I agree it’s not exactly helpful. I would like to see maybe new cases in the last several weeks per capital. That data week over week would be useful.
I like the recovered number but am not as confident how accurate it might be. How do they know when someone at home had recovered?
I’ve been taking Maryland’s numbers and dropping them into a spreadsheet so I can run different calculations on them. It gives me a much better idea week by week over time how we’re doing.
I exchanged emails this morning with the owner of a small bakery. Her bakery is one of the vendors for the restaurant. I gave her the heads up that I’m looking for another job.
She said she & her husband are planning their exit strategy — to get out of the bakery and on to something else.
She said it’s been exhausting. The worry, the long hot days wearing a mask, and over-hearing her young employees chat about which big party they went to…its too much.
This coronavirus mutation has taken over the world. Scientists are trying to understand why.
By Sarah Kaplan and
Joel Achenbach
June 29 at 9:00 AM
When the first coronavirus cases in Chicago appeared in January, they bore the same genetic signatures as a germ that emerged in China weeks before.
But as Egon Ozer, an infectious-disease specialist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, examined the genetic structure of virus samples from local patients, he noticed something different.
A change in the virus was appearing again and again. This mutation, associated with outbreaks in Europe and New York, eventually took over the city. By May, it was found in 95 percent of all the genomes Ozer sequenced.
At a glance, the mutation seemed trivial. About 1,300 amino acids serve as building blocks for a protein on the surface of the virus. In the mutant virus, the genetic instructions for just one of those amino acids — number 614 — switched in the new variant from a “D” (shorthand for aspartic acid) to a “G” (short for glycine).
But the location was significant, because the switch occurred in the part of the genome that codes for the all-important “spike protein” — the protruding structure that gives the coronavirus its crownlike profile and allows it to enter human cells the way a burglar picks a lock.
And its ubiquity is undeniable. Of the approximately 50,000 genomes of the new virus that researchers worldwide have uploaded to a shared database, about 70 percent carry the mutation, officially designated D614G but known more familiarly to scientists as “G.”
A mutation affecting the virus’s spike protein changed amino acid 614 from “D” (aspartic acid) to “G” (glycine). Research suggests that this small change — which affects three identical amino acid chains — might make the spike protein more effective, enhancing the virus’s infectiousness.
“G” hasn’t just dominated the outbreak in Chicago — it has taken over the world. Now scientists are racing to figure out what it means.
At least four laboratory experiments suggest that the mutation makes the virus more infectious, although none of that work has been peer-reviewed. Another unpublished study led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory asserts that patients with the G variant actually have more virus in their bodies, making them more likely to spread it to others.
much more…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2020/06/29/coronavirus-mutation-science/?arc404=true
For anyone concerned about why COVID will bankrupt us all, I refer you to today’s NYT, “Two friends went for a virus test”. Same place, same time, same test. He paid $199 in cash; she used insurance, and was billed $6408.
I have a question about how states are reporting new cases. One thing that happened here in MA a couple weeks ago is that they started reporting positive antibody tests as new cases. Its clear from the detailed dashboard data on the state website what the breakdown is between new active cases and new antibody cases, but when the numbers get picked up by external sites such as worldometer, they are only picking up the total. I keep reading about how MA cases are going up. Well according to yesterday’s dashboard, 36% of the “new” cases were actually antibody tests. I guess they are new in the sense that they haven’t been counted before, but its not a new active infection. I don’t know if actual new cases are going up - the data is available but would require more work than I’m willing to do right now - but it just seems like its being misrepresented.
This has been the model for a long time (not just for Covid). Little incentives to reduce costs when you are only paying (directly) a small percentage of it. Docs/hospitals don’t have any incentives either.
And the US system is based much more on treatments than it is prevention. More money in the former. Impacts are seen in how US has done with Covid (along with other factors).
I agree that for areas with very low numbers of cases that the percentage increase can be misleading. But in most cases, an increase is just that. And I guess the question is, if cases are going up but not at a problematic level, what is stopping them from going up until they ARE at a problematic level? If cases are increasing exponentially, there will be a problem, and likely sooner than later.
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/27/coronavirus-testing-texas/
Testing in Texas, where have been told anyone can get a test, any time.
They didn’t say without a wait. You can get a test when you want but volume is volume. The sites can only process so many people an hour.
Crazy that we STILL can’t get quick testing with quick results.
In NY it is free.
From the POLITCO Pulse newsletter:
WHERE WE ARE ON COVID AS JULY LOOMS — It’s been nearly six months since the CDC first announced that a mystery pneumonia had spread in a Chinese market, and the nation has been transformed.
Lockdowns have been applied and lifted. Millions are out of work. More than 125,000 Americans are already dead, and weeks of declining cases have abruptly reversed, including record surges in Southern states.
— The optimistic take: We’re far better prepared to handle this upswing. There are many more supplies and tests than when Covid-19 first walloped America in March; hospital staff increasingly have the protective equipment that they initially lacked; and researchers are beginning to identify medications to treat coronavirus.
Those are also the messages amplified by the White House, including in its first coronavirus task force briefing since the end of April, POLITICO’s Alice Miranda Ollstein and David Lim report.
“We have made truly remarkable progress in moving our nation forward,” said Vice President Mike Pence at HHS on Friday. “We slowed the spread. We flattened the curve. We saved lives.”
Meanwhile, the fatality rate has fallen, and the surge of new cases is being driven by young Americans, who appear at far less risk of complications or death.
— The realistic take : We’re in serious trouble. The soaring number of cases can’t be explained solely by more testing, and health officials like infectious-disease expert Tony Fauci have warned that young Americans are bound to spread the virus to more vulnerable populations.
“The window is closing,” HHS Secretary Alex Azar said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We have to act, and people as individuals have to act responsibly. We need to social-distance. We need to wear our face-coverings if we’re in settings where we can’t social-distance, particularly in these hot zones.”
Even once-confident Republican governors have changed their tune. The outbreak “has taken a very swift and very dangerous turn in Texas over just the past few weeks,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said on Sunday. He has also acknowledged his regrets about re-opening bars, given that they became hotbeds of infection.
— The pessimistic take: This is setting up to be a reprise of February and March , with cases soaring now, hospitalizations and deaths likely to soon follow and President Donald Trump again dismissing basic realities about the virus, such as the protective power of masks, while instead stoking a culture war over their use.
Even senior Republicans are beginning to plead with Trump: Set an example for your skeptical followers.
“There are times when he could wear a mask or the vice president could wear a mask,” Sen. Lamar Alexander said on CNN on Sunday. “I think it would be a sign of strength.”
On the other side of the aisle, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other progressives have escalated their criticism of the White House’s recent lack of action. Prominent MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Friday, for the first time, called on Trump to resign for his handling of the outbreak.
— How SCOTT GOTTLIEB sees it: The former Trump appointee and FDA commissioner sounded a serious note on “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
“Deaths are actually coming down, but that’s not likely to stay that way,” Gottlieb said. “This spread is likely to seep into more vulnerable communities and we’re likely to see total daily deaths start to go back up again.”
“We have a hard six months ahead of us,” he added.
Among the biggest red flags:
THERE AREN’T ENOUGH CONTACT TRACERS YET — States are scrambling to contain Covid spikes without enough workers to track outbreaks, POLITICO’s Dan Goldberg and Alice Miranda Ollstein report.
— Case study: Arizona. “This [tracing] situation is a disaster,” Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.), whose Phoenix-area district is being swamped with new cases, wrote in a letter to local officials on Thursday. “From late March until early June, those who may have been exposed to an infected patient received no outreach at all from public health officials.”
— Experts’ goal this spring had been at least 100,000 contact tracers to safely reopen the country. But CDC Director Robert Redfield told Congress last week that fewer than 30,000 have been hired so far.
AND COMMERCIAL LABS ARE WORRIED ABOUT THE TESTING JUMP — The increasing demand for tests will likely strain supplies in the coming weeks, the president of the trade group that represents commercial labs said on Saturday.
“This significant increase in demand could extend turnaround times for test results,” said Julie Khani of the American Clinical Laboratory Association, which represents the labs performing the bulk of the nation’s coronavirus testing.
There definitely is. I often find more soap when I seek it out in the “men’s” when there are two one-room bathrooms.
…
Nothing is free. Either the hospitals are absorbing the costs (so higher fees for other things) or the insurance companies are (so our premiums will rise) or the state is reimbursing the testing cost (more taxes). Either way, we will all be paying for this pandemic monetarily for the rest of our lives, even if no one in our family gets sick.
Yes, everyone will be contributing to the pandemic’s effects on health care, some with dollars, some with their lives, some with both.
From the JHU Center for Health Security newslettter:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2020926?query=featured_home
Ensuring Uptake of Vaccines Against SARS-CoV-2 (NEJM)
As Covid-19 continues to exact a heavy toll, development of a vaccine appears the most promising means of restoring normalcy to civil life. Perhaps no scientific breakthrough is more eagerly anticipated. But bringing a vaccine to market is only half the challenge; also critical is ensuring a high enough vaccination rate to achieve herd immunity. Concerningly, a recent poll found that only 49% of Americans planned to get vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2.
=snip=
Although a vaccine remains months to years away, developing a policy strategy to ensure uptake takes time. We offer a framework that states can apply now to help ensure uptake of the vaccine when it becomes available — including consideration of when a mandate might become appropriate. Our approach is guided by lessons from U.S. experiences with vaccines for the 1976 “swine flu,” H1N1 influenza, smallpox, and human papillomavirus (HPV).
=snip=
SIX TRIGGER CRITERIA FOR STATE COVID-19 VACCINATION MANDATES.
Covid-19 is not adequately contained in the state.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices has recommended vaccination for the groups for which a mandate is being considered.
The supply of vaccine is sufficient to cover the population groups for which a mandate is being considered.
Available evidence about the safety and efficacy of the vaccine has been transparently communicated.
The state has created infrastructure to provide access to vaccination without financial or logistic barriers, compensation to workers who have adverse effects from a required vaccine, and real-time surveillance of vaccine side effects.
In a time-limited evaluation, voluntary uptake of the vaccine among high-priority groups has fallen short of the level required to prevent epidemic spread.
=snip=
Public trust has already been compromised by federal officials’ endorsement of hydroxychloroquine as a Covid-19 treatment without evidentiary support; the same must not occur for vaccines.
We need to redo the entire medical cost system. There is no reason for hospital to charge $65 for a pill of Tylenol, or a covid test costs 6K. Can’t blame medical insurance cost when they are being charged as a cash cow. The hospital is robbing Peter to pay for Paul. It’s a messed up system.
This is a site Iike. It shows (among many other useful metrics) a seven day average of cases per day, which is the same graph as cases in the last week. (with different y axis label, but it’s the same graph)
Good article on metrics that should be met before reopening and where states are now (as of June 24th) regarding this.
‘Every state is reopening. Just 7 meet these basic criteria to do so safely.’
‘Most states still need to reduce coronavirus cases and build up their testing capacity.’
Regarding re-opening, Cuomo is now rethinking allowing indoor dining - especially for NYC. I think not allowing would is a very wise decision. I hope it isn’t going to be allowed.