Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

Interesting that cases seem to be increasing while deaths and death rate are still decreasing.

Has the virus mutated to be less deadly? Is it that death rate trails infection rate?

Hope the trend continues. And hope we get more insight into rate of significant permanent injury.

 

I have a friend who works in a metro Atlanta hospital. He said things quieted down for a bit, but I spoke I with him Sunday and he said they’re starting to fill up again. Didn’t get into specifics regarding capacity etc, but if he tells me more cases are coming in I’ll take his word.

 

It may be explained by the combination of increased transmission in the younger demographic (~30 yo) which has a much, much lower fatality rate , and better overall care.

I found this interesting...

Initial COVID-19 infection rate may be 80 times greater than originally reported | Penn State University

Please note that the excess ILI described in the article was from earlier in the outbreak and peaked in mid March. It doesn't directly support the current "more cases because more testing" hypothesis which has been debunked through other means.

 

Yeah, death rate per reported case dropping does stick out. Great news, wonder why exactly? Getting better at treating? Better testing leading to better treatment?

For the injury perspective, we just discussed that a little on this thread and then this was on BBC this morning. Not a lot of hard data but some troubling comments, especially with regard to neurological damage. Even the most basic data about the disease is ever changing as we learn more so any kind of data on long term issues will be sketchy. But, this certainly gets my attention.

How Covid-19 can damage the brain

 

I still want to know why some states like California and Florida have such a lower death rate than NY and NJ.

 

To be fair, quite a few scientists speculated that the warmer weather would slow the spread as is the case with the flu and other viruses in that family. That it's not slowing down is pretty scary. There could still be truth to the warmer weather helps slow the spread. It could be that so many people have Covid-19 now that more contacts are being made, thus the number of newly transmitted cases are rising. The two things are not mutually exclusive necessarily.

 

Inside the Florida model: How 'God's waiting room' could point the way to managing coronavirus

 

There are hospitals in our area on divert status with no ICU beds available. A Children's hospital has started to take adult Covid patients. Texas is at a peak for hospitalizations with 11 straight days of increases.

 

Good god, could we bust 40,000 new cases today?

 

We're exploding, along with Texas and Arizona.

 

Very little good news today.
New case highs in Georgia and California (5687 cases), Cases and deaths nationally are higher than last Tuesday, Florida had its second most deaths, and still an hour or two to go.

 

They didn’t close down early enough and opened too early with disregard for distancing and masks.

 

From reviewing the seroprevalence data from several studies, I believe the actual infection mortality rate is somewhere between 0.5-1.5%. So it makes sense that we are regressing to the mean since we are now catching a substantially higher amount of actual cases and of course the trend younger and better treatment are helping.

Here are some stats that may help. The CDC estimates that 30 million people get the flu per year. 30 million / 365 days is over 80k. However, the flu is seasonal so likely during flu season over 100k are getting infected and that is with many people getting flu shots. We know that covid is more infectious than the flu so when we were reporting 30-35k cases a day 2-3 months ago, the real number was probably 300k a day as most experts estimate we were catching 1 in 10. Now we are probably catching 1 out of every 2-5 (my uneducated guess).

 

A Coronavirus is from the family of viruses that cause colds. Colds are common in summer. Also, did you know that polio was a virus that spread in summer?

 

We can't go back in time and start taking the spread seriously, but we still can start a national campaign fully supported by all levels of government to wear masks, distance where possible, wash our hands, test and trace. We are throwing money at problems hand over fist and the bully pulpit doesn't cost a thing. But the guy that has the largest bully pulpit won't get on board so we have a fragmented communication plan running into partisan headwinds.

That is the part that has never made sense. We are better off if we control the spread. Less illness, death and job loss. Having a consistent message on how to control the spread would be a big help. The person with the most influence over that message won't get on board. It is mind numbing.

 

Bummer

 

Yes, colds are clearly just as prevalent in the summer as they are winter.

 

35k cases today so far, most since May 1.
Mostly young folks or not, things are in real danger of getting out of hand in some very populated important places.