Coronavirus - There Is Light In The Darkness

The last two weeks have been filled with good news regarding the fight against coronavirus. The LA Times reported that during the 7-day period from 2/26-2/19/21, 2000 new coronavirus cases were running at 2,000 a day vs early January when they were at 15,000 a day. Considering all the talk about variants - South African, UK, even Californian, it appears the vaccinations and herd immunity are overpowering the potential negative consequences.

And regarding the vaccinations, according to the CDC, 66.5 million vaccine doses have been administered in the US and 20.6 million people have received both doses. That is a lot people. It is so many in fact that according to ourworldindata.com, we now rank at # 4 in the world in terms of total doses per hundred people after Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. Trust me, I was very surprised too after all the negative news we are hearing about supply shortages.

Finally, it appears that the FDA'S approval of Johnson and Johnson's 1-shot coronavirus vaccine is imminent. Not only will this add more vaccine supply to the world's epic fight, but needing only one shot will greatly improve the simplicity of giving the shot and getting people fully vaccinated more quickly.

All this is good news, especially for international travelers. I had mentioned months ago my "fear" that countries my start insisting on vaccine passports before allowing people to travel into their countries. One passport for people who are vaccinated, one for people who are not. Last week, the UK officially advocated to the G8 that vaccine passports should be a thing. Perhaps they want to pressure anti-vaxers into vaccinating.

Which leads me to, yes there are still issues with people protesting the virus, others refusing to take it, a few cases of sabotaging supplies, and an overall shortage of supplies, but the fight is going in the right direction. I am looking forward to putting the virus era behind us.

Take care and be safe.

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Coronavirus A Step Backwards

Since my post a week ago, there has been little positive news on the coronavirus front. The US had one day of 85,000 new cases and another of 80,000.  Worse than these rising statistics is an article by CNBC stating that a study found coronavirus antibodies declining quickly after someone has recovered from the virus raising questions about herd immunity. 

Regarding vaccine news one poll reported that less than 50% of Americans would get vaccinated for the virus if a vaccine became available. In Russia, their much trumpeted vaccine released in August is being rolled out at a much slower place than originally claimed. Cases are rising in Russia.

I mentioned last week how the death rate had been rising at a much slower rate than the infection rate, but Wisconsin and Florida each had a day of over 60 coronavirus-related deaths in a single day.

European rates - infections, deaths, hospitalizations, are all spiking, but so is the anger against new rounds of safety restrictions. Protests are breaking out in Northern Italy and Spain.

Then two days ago, Walmart's CEO said customers are starting to stock up again. Please no more toilet paper shortages.

Taking my daily walk yesterday, I remarked to my wife how cold it was. It was 59 degrees at 9 am. That is winter weather in Los Angeles. My wife said she is going to break out the thermals and gloves tomorrow.  My boys have asked me to unbox the space heaters.

How does the cold relate to covid?

In Los Angeles, you can only eat outside at restaurants and workout outside (inside gyms are still closed). As it gets colder, people will not want to eat outdoors. People will huddle together indoors or more restaurants will close.

To give an example of how easily the virus can spread check out what happened on a recent set:

Each person had to take a rapid covid test before they left their car and joined the crew. A crew member asked where the woman went that was in the car next to mine.

His partner said, "She had to go to the restroom."

The crew member rolled his eyes, "Her test came back inconclusive."

Once she returned, they tested her again, and then sanitized the restroom while they waited for the results. Fortunately, the second test came back negative.

Should she have been forced to stay in her car until her results came back? Probably. But when you have to go, you have to go. Tricky situation.

If she had been covid positive and someone had followed her into the restroom before it was cleaned…14 day quarantines for everyone?

Take care and be safe.

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Coronavirus Cases Up Deaths Down

Coronavirus infection numbers are going up worldwide.

India had over 60,000 new cases reported from 10/10 to 10/11. Europe is having a tsunami of new infections. As a whole, the continent reported 100,000 new infections last Friday with France having the largest increase - 20,000. The Spanish Prime Minister instituted a partial 15-day lockdown on Madrid after the city had an increase of 12,788 new covid cases. That is three times as many as Los Angeles. 

Speaking of Los Angeles, we had 970 new cases and 3 deaths yesterday.  This is compared to one of Los Angeles' worst reporting days - July 14 when there were 4,244 new cases and 73 deaths. 

This leads me to my second point, the number of deaths per the number of infections is down in the U.S.

According to worldometers.info, the worst daily death toll in the U.S. was April 21, with 2,748 deaths. The last day the U.S. reported over 1,000 coronavirus deaths in one day was on September 23 at 1,116. On October 10, the US reported 723. 

While the deaths have dropped by 2/3rds, unfortunately our infection rate remains high: April 21 26,875, September 23 41,868, October 10 54,235. It's not all bad. The worst day was July 24 with 78,893.

So if we look at new cases vs deaths for each of those 3 days: April 21 10.22%; September 23 2.67%; and October 10 .92%.

The good news (although none of this is really good news) is that more people are surviving who become infected. The bad news is over 50,000 people a day are still being infected with the Coronavirus across the country.

Whether the factor for decreasing death rate is medical professionals being more familiar with treating the disease, the disease becoming less virulent, or new medicines, it is good to know that if you do become infected, your chance of survival is pretty good.

In conclusion, the coronavirus is still running rampant. Even though people have a better chance of surviving an infection today than they did a couple of months ago, many people report long term mental and physical effects during what can be a lengthy recovery. Take care and be safe.

Here is an interesting side note I learned while I was researching this blog post:

Per John Hopkins University, the country with the most deaths per 100,000 people is not the U.S. We are number 6 even with the improved statistics above. Nor is it India, Brazil, or the United Kingdom. The dark title goes to Peru. To put their numbers in perspective, the U.S. mortality rate is 65.64 per 100,000, Peru is almost twice that at 104.11. Why?

The Associated Press reported that Peru's high numbers were due to using coronavirus rapid antibody tests the Peruvian government purchased from China. 

The government took this option because the test kits were cheaper and samples did not have to be sent to a lab to determine the results. It sounded like a good option, unfortunately it was too good to be true.

First, antibody tests are tests that determine whether or not a patient's body had developed antibodies to defeat the virus rather than a test that would determine if they were currently infected. The problem is that it can take days before a person's body develops antibodies to fight the virus. When these rapid antibody tests came back negative, patients would be sent home or let into work or school under the assumption they were not infected.

The other two issues with these tests were that some providers administered the test improperly and it was learned that many kits were faulty. 

Sad.

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