Coronavirus

Sweden’s response to the COVID-19 Pandemic has been very unusual and it’s justification for continuing the policy is magical thinking.   They have relied on voluntary social distancing and “herd immunity” to solve their pandemic problem.   There are few words to adequately describe the tragedy unfolding in Sweden so I’ll just let these tables and graphs speak for themselves. The figure above shows the progress of the infection in Sweden since the first case was confirmed on Feb 25 th .   Since then the number of confirmed cases per day (brown squares) has increased steadily with no signs of stabilization.   The first death was reported on March 13 th and with about a 10-day lag, it has tracked steadily upward every day since then.   The death count (shown as blue diamonds) is plotted on the right axis scaled to 16% of the case count on the left axis.   That means the fatality rate is roughly 16...

New York City (NYC) metro area has been one of the hardest-hit areas in the world during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Whether defined as the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) with 20.3 million, or the broader Combined Statistical Area (CSA) with 23.7 million it has the largest population in the United States and the activities of residents are closely intertwined.  All 31 counties in the CSA have been heavily infected by the coronavirus.  By itself, this CSA would be the most heavily infected country in the world with the heaviest death toll.  County Infections Infections Deaths Mortality Mortality % pop Count Count Rate % pop Bronx 2.28%          32,711            3,287 10.0% 0.23% Brooklyn 1.51%          38,964       ...

The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) attacks the human body primarily through the airways and the lungs.   Classic symptoms of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, are fever, cough, and shortness of breath .   But for many – perhaps as many as half of those infected there are few if any symptoms.   People who suspect they have been infected are asked to shelter in place and to check their temperatures every day.   But for those who do not develop a fever or obvious shortness of breath or cannot get a COVID-19 test due to shortages, they may ignore their problems for many days while the disease silently ravages their lungs.   A better diagnostic tool than a thermometer could be an oximeter that is widely available and not much more expensive than a thermometer and much more accessible than a COVID-19 test.   Oxygen saturation levels below 88% were found to be the most useful marker of critical illness in NY hospital admissions.   We now k...

With over 2.4 million COVID-19 cases and over 160,000 deaths globally, there is a lot of data that can be analyzed to better understand this virus as a function of age, co-morbidities, medical history (such as prior exposure to coronaviruses like SARS, and other vaccines like BCG), etc.   The two important factors that have been noted since the early days of this pandemic are age and gender and they continue to be the most important factors.   We look at the age and gender dependencies with the best single data set provided by the Spanish Health Department containing over 200,000 cases (or 0.4% of the total population) and over 20,000 deaths.   Spain has tested over 2.0% of its population which while short of a comprehensive sample does begin to give us some ideas about how the disease has affected the entire country.   We look at the probability of a random person acquiring the disease as a function of age.   We know that this sample is not truly random no...