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.  ...

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 onl...

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 Remdesi...

A couple of weeks ago we pointed out that schools have become the new breeding ground for COVID-19 .   More data have allowed us to understand the problem a little better.   While people of all ages can get infected with the novel coronavirus, it seems that the younger the person, the less likely they are to get infected or die from the disease.   Deducing the  real underlying susceptibility to the novel coronavirus is not easy given that the measured infection rate depends on how mobile each group is, how compliant each group of people is with mask-wearing, social distancing, and personal hygiene, and how thoroughly each age group is tested for the virus.   With all grades of K-12 back at school or online at roughly the same time in Florida, those in elementary, middle, and high school are 37%, 47%, and 72% as likely as the average Floridian to get infected, respectively.   Teens in high school (14-17 yrs old) have been trending higher while younger child...

Many students have been back to school for a month now and we are seeing new outbreaks of COVID-19 cases among young people in Florida and throughout the USA.   Fortunately, the June to August resurgence of COVID-19 cases among the general population has eased so that the overall case counts in Florida have not increased yet.   As we had pointed out before COVID-19 is far less deadly for children and young adults but their rates of infection may not be all that different.   From the graph below, children younger than 15 seem to be less likely to get infected but since many have been staying home until recently, and as a group they were thought to be less vulnerable and tend to be under-tested,   Thus it is not clear yet what their true infection rate is.   The age group with the highest infection rate is young adults 25-34 who have been most socially active and were largely responsible for the summer surge in deaths as they went to bars and beaches and transmit...

Daily COVID-19 new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have been falling for several weeks in Florida along with that for the USA as a whole .  The pandemic in the USA has not burned out and many states in the Midwest are experiencing flare ups.  In Florida, the daily new case count after falling for 6 weeks has just flattened out this week at a level 5 times higher than in May when Florida first tried to reopen (see figure below).   This has not deterred the governor from  doing his second COVID-19 victory tour  and encouraging counties to resume reopening, nursing homes to accept visitors, residents to celebrate Labor Day, and schools to reopen for physical classes and team sports. Will an early victory dance and complacency encourage the virus to surge again this fall in Florida and the USA?   The governor is betting that kids can go to school safely because they are less likely to get infected than adults.  We have shown that this...

COVID-19 cases that began to surge in the USA in June, peaked in July, and have continued to ease leading to lower hospitalizations and deaths (see figure below).  While infections continue to erupt in certain parts of the USA, the largest outbreaks in California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Arizona have all topped out leading to improving trends for the USA as a whole.  The 7-day rolling average of daily cases has fallen from a high near 70,000 in early August to near 40,000 recently.  The US can continue on this virtuous path if the President stops waffling about masks and tests.  It is far too early to declare victory because part of the decline in newly confirmed cases is due to a significant reduction in testing (see figure below).   The 7-day rolling average of daily tests peaked 4 weeks ago near 810,000 and has since declined 16% to near 680,000.   It is unclear whether this is being driven by a President that continues to be ambivalent about doin...