Coronavirus

The US government's response to the novel coronavirus has been poor from day one.  And now Mark Meadows, the White House Chief of Staff says the federal government has given up trying to control the Pandemic .  This admission of defeat is highly irresponsible and borders on the criminal.  Governments are elected to serve and protect the people and when they fail to do their number one job, they should be voted out.   The President and his national security advisors knew in early January, and the President  understood the seriousness of the novel coronavirus by late January – way before the public or other government officials knew.  (1)   Even if he did not want to panic the public, he should have convened a meeting of federal officials, governors, and top local officials secretly and warned them about the coming crisis.   A Manhattan Project for the Pandemic should have been set up in January to help the USA deal with this crisis.   He downplayed the virus.   (2)   The Pres

Last month we were concerned that the leveling off of new daily cases in Florida and the USA was only temporary.  Over the last four weeks of steadily increasing daily case counts (see red squares in the figure below), we are increasingly concerned that we are seeing the beginnings of the third wave as temperatures cool and indoor activities resume in northern USA (Wisconsin is especially bad now).  We are also concerned that the pressures to reopen schools for in-person learning, reopen the economy before Election Day, and the increasing numbers of maskless, crowded rallies are exacerbating the normal seasonal rise in cases.  Some of the increasing cases could be due to improved testing.   After stalling for 2 months testing has improved as schools and businesses reopen and want to keep ahead of increased infections by increasing testing.   This has again picked up an increasing number of asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic cases.   If this were the only reason for the recent incre

President Trump announced that he tested positive for COVDI-19 on October 1 st .   Since then at least seven other attendees of a Rose Garden ceremony for Amy Barrett on September 26 th have tested positive for the virus.   We wish them all speedy and full recoveries.   However, the prognosis for each of them varies widely depending on their age, gender, and general health.   The exponential age and gender behavior of COVID-19 patients has remained roughly the same since we first published our version of the graphic below 6 months ago .   Improved testing and identification of asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic cases mostly among younger adults have improved the overall case fatality rate (CFR = deaths/cases), but have not changed the strong exponential age dependence.   Better healthcare treatments in terms of logistics (avoiding bed, equipment, and supply shortages that plagued Italy early on) and the introduction of newer therapeutics such as Remdesivir , steroids , and clonal a