Coronavirus

The new US administration has made re-opening schools a priority .  There are many benefits to re-opening school s and certainly, re-opening schools are more important than re-opening bars and many other businesses.  But there are many risks as well.  One of the risks is the susceptibility of kids to COVID-19.  Kids suffer far fewer fatalities and hospitalizations than older adults (although kids could suffer long term ill effects with COVID-19).  The question really comes down to how easily do kids acquire the virus and how easily do they transmit COVID-19 to others and fuel the pandemic.    In Florida, most schools and universities reopened in late August 2020.   Since then the number of daily confirmed cases per capita has risen steadily for all age groups.   College and university-aged (18-24yrs) students are most active and mobile and show the highest cases per capita – currently 30% above average.   High school students (14-1...

Before noon on January 20 th , President Trump will leave his office.  At that time the reported death toll from COVID-19 in the USA will be over 400,000 – the exact number depending on who does the tallying.  Worldmeter will show 412k – real-time, Johns Hopkins will show 402k – lagging by a day, and CDC will show lower – lagging by a couple of days.  All these estimates understate the real toll history will attribute to Trump - over 500k Americans died on his watch.     COVID-19 death reporting has time lags and other issues. 1.      Accurately assigning the correct cause of death is sometimes more art than science.   There are the underlying cause and the proximate cause issue.   Sometimes COVID-19 starts a chain of events that lead to death many months later from lung, heart, kidney, liver, or diabetes problems that are not uniquely attributable to COVID-19.   The US CDC separately defines confirmed and probable...

COVID-19 continues to rage in the USA.  Over the next 4 weeks, 92k Americans will die due to cases and hospitalizations already in the queue. Effective vaccines are available to slow the spread but distribution bottlenecks will likely delay herd immunity for many months.  In the meantime, the government has changed its guidance today to permit people 65+ and those with pre-existing conditions to get the vaccine now to reduce hospitalizations and the overall case fatality rate (CFR = deaths/cases).  This makes lots of sense.  The mRNA vaccines level the playing field for older Americans.  It probably doesn't reduce your chances of being infected by SARS-CoV-2, but if and when you do, you are more likely to be asymptomatic than without it.  That means you are more likely to survive the infection and your likelihood of dying from COVID-19 could decrease by roughly 95%.  This will reduce the extraordinary demand for hospital and heal...

The third wave in Florida has been a little more challenging to forecast for fundamental and political reasons.   The third wave in Florida began with the opening of the school year in September and began to be manifest as increased cases in early October (see figure below).   Hospitalizations began to rise two weeks later in late October (see figure below) and is now 3.66 times higher headed toward a new record.   Increased deaths did not manifest itself until early November (refer back to the first figure above).   All this was predictable.   The less predictable part was the longer lag time or slower transmission of the virus from kids to older adults and then to grandparents who are most susceptible to fatal outcomes (see figure below).   This last transfer did not take place in large numbers until December when the weather cooled, holiday gatherings occurred, and more activities moved indoors in Florida.   The mass inoculation of seniors 65+ tha...