Coronavirus

Florida just reported 110k new COVID-19 cases for the past week – nearly equal to the all-time high we had predicted Florida will set by early August.   FL continues to lead the USA higher in COVID-19 cases although Texas Governor Abbot is trying very hard to catch up by banning mask and vaccine mandates .   The Delta variant is so ferocious even CA and NY are seeing exponential growth as are nearly all 50 states in the USA.   But Florida continues to lead and may be a harbinger for what will happen to the USA in August. There are several reasons why Florida is doing so well in this race to the bottom: 1.      FL has been very welcoming to all variants since Governor DeSantis removed all local COVID-19 mitigations on May 3 . 2.      FL stopped daily reporting and possibly tracking of COVID-19 cases on June 3 – suggesting the pandemic is over. 3.      The Governor stopped responding to the COVID-19 crises ev...

T he CDC in the USA continues to lag the best-in-class by requiring minimal genetic testing and tracking of COVID-19 cases compared to the UK or Israel.   This has led to slower identification and monitoring of COVID variants and how mutations can change their infectiousness and speed of spread.   To date, the CDC monitors only a limited sample of those who are fully vaccinated and have serious hospitalizations and deaths, dropping their initial request for states to monitor all “breakthrough” cases.   This data is only voluntary - passive reporting by the county health departments that decide to participate.   This has led to erroneous conclusions about the speed and seriousness of the current COVID-19 Delta surge. One very bad statistic that is often quoted is this: As of July 12, of the more than 159 million fully vaccinated people in the USA only 5,189 were hospitalized and 1,063 died from COVID-19.  The conclusion is that only 0.0033% of those fully vacc...

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began a year and a half ago, there has always been a debate about how serious COVID-19 really is compared with common seasonal flu which kills tens of thousands each year.   Even after more than 600,000 Americans have died and as cases are soaring again the hope is that the death rate in the USA will not be as bad now that half of all Americans have been fully vaccinated.   The coincident death rate (daily deaths divided by daily new cases) allows us to gauge how deadly a disease is but it has several shortcomings principally due to the fact that deaths lagged infections by a couple weeks as hospitals and doctors struggle to save patients’ lives.  As reported death counts have an additional problem since some counties and states take several weeks to fully record and report the cause of death.  But since reported death rates are a convenient measure of disease severity and effectiveness of treatment we proposed to use a lagged case fatal...

  There is no doubt that COVID-19 vaccines are working beautifully to drive down COVID-19 cases in the USA.   With 170M Americans or 51% having had at least one dose of the vaccine, cases in the USA have dropped to a 14-mo low of 5 per 100,000.    However, there is a significant subpopulation of the USA, 10M or 3%, who may not be fully protected by the vaccines.   These include those (>6M) that are taking immunosuppressive drugs such as steroids used to treat organ transplants, cancers, or other medical conditions, and those who have compromised immune systems due to blood cancers and other diseases.   The original clinical trials for vaccines specifically excluded people who were taking immunosuppressive drugs to get their impressive 95% efficacy results.   Real-life studies were equally impressive since less than 3% of those sampled were immunocompromised.   More targeted real-life studies with immunocompromised patients show more dis...

Covid-19 daily cases started rising again about 4 weeks ago signaling the beginning of a fourth wave in the USA.   However, over the last week cases have resumed declining cutting short the fourth wave.   Is this a real indication of light at the end of the tunnel or are we just seeing the headlight of the oncoming train? 42.2% of the USA has been vaccinated with at least one shot to date (green part of the graph below).   This seems to be too low to meet the 70%+ threshold that is generally believed to be the vaccination level needed for herd immunity.   However, we have always asserted that while rigorous herd immunity with vaccines is the most desirable goal, effective human immunity may be reached earlier and allow the USA to flatten the COVID-19 infection curve.   Effective human immunity is a combination of natural immunity gained through infection by the SARS-COV-2 virus, vaccine immunity, and behavior immunity due to citizens rigorously practicing maski...

Covid-19 mRNA vaccines work very well in real life.   But as more data are analyzed it appears that certain groups of people such as seniors (65+) do not benefit as much from the vaccine.   We have been tracking the vaccine’s real-life efficacy through Florida’s Seniors First program to vaccinate everyone over 65 years old first.   As of April 19 th , 3.6M seniors or 80% have been vaccinated with 2.9M (64%) completing the two-dose regime.   The pace of senior vaccinations has slowed recently and this may be linked to the plateau and now rise in relative infection for seniors (see figure below).   There are several possible explanations for this observed phenomenon: 1.      Vaccine hesitancy expressed by 27% of Americans in recent polling,   Note that 80% of Florida seniors have already gotten their shot so polling answers may be more political posturing rather than reality.   Nevertheless, at some point before 100%, we will r...

The good news is that there are now 3 approved COVID-19 vaccines in the USA with more than enough doses to allow all American adults to be vaccine eligible by May 1 st .  Two of the vaccines, Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, have already proven to be very effective in the field.  These are two-dose vaccines that can take 6 weeks to achieve full protection.  One way to track real-life efficacy is through Florida’s Seniors First program to vaccinate everyone over 65 first.  As of March 13 th , 2.93M seniors or 65% have been vaccinated with 1.75M (39%) completing the two-dose regime.  If the vaccine is effective, the number of daily cases, hospitalizations, and deaths should all come down.  The graph below tracks the relative susceptibility of Floridians by age to SARS-CoV-2 infections.   Seniors have always been more careful to mask-up and social distance since the first COVID-19 cases appeared in Florida and killed hundreds of seniors last spring.  ...