COVID-19 news & status

2021 Week 3 stats

Thank you for the stats Rig.

Rig, am I to understand that basically Covid is behind approximately 1/3 of all deaths at the moment?
eg in week 1 21/57

And yet, total deaths don't seem to be above the usual level, or actually quite a bit less?

Annie, that is the way it looks, but you have to wait for things to settle down to get a truer read. The CDC takes weeks and weeks to settle the death data down as reporting comes in from the various states, so each week as we move forward the total deaths for say week 2 will steadily increase. Their initial reporting of a given week seems to be somewhere around 60% of the final number that it will have.  Shoot, they continue to update death info for weeks going all the way back to the beginning of 2020, but after a while these changes become onesey-twosey adjustments, vs >10K you see in the first few weeks. Don't have any solution to this, it is their data to get out.

Commentary IMO:
Your conclusion is probably right that Covid is being credited with too many deaths. As I understand the stats, the Covid deaths column contains all people who died who were found to have a Covid infection, whether it was the primary cause of death or not. That's why "Underlying" is in red in the chart. So someone who falls off a 10 story building while being asymptomatic with the covid virus will show up here. At one point last year, there was a study that showed that Covid could be identified as the single, or primary cause of death in only 6% of the cases shown. Total deaths for 2020 were up a good bit from what would be expected from a simple data forecast, but I don't think they look like anything close enough to put the nation and world under such extreme measures as we have seen. And the focus remains on face masks (now "wear two"), stay home, maintain distance from others when out, hand washing, and of course take the vaccine. Still no mention/discussion from the powers that be on what you can do to build your immune system, while all the other measures mostly will reduce your immune system's ability to fend off infections.
End IMO Commentary

Meanwhile, in Ohio Gov Dee-Whine has canceled our curfew as Covid hospitalizations have come down below the magic 2500 number for 10 days in a row. Bars are now fully open!

And on ye olde data integrity front here is the latest from Ohio Department of Health:
"*ODH is currently reconciling COVID-19 deaths, including about 650 in today’s count. This primarily impacts deaths occurring from November to December 2020. Deaths will be shown by the date of death. Newly reported deaths will be higher during the next few days as ODH completes this reconciliation." Ohio Covid
Yesterday at Dewine's press conference, they announced that there are some 4,000 deaths that were newly discovered from mostly November-December that have not been analyzed.

Covid News
Jo~ Bid~n's 100 days suddenly gets longer: Masks thru next year
"President Biden said wearing face masks “through the next year” will save a significant number of lives from the coronavirus."
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Nation of India scrubs Pfizer vaccine application "for now":India Pfizer vaccine
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Bid~n pushes for more rapid testing:The Hill: Push for rapid tests
"The administration said the move will allow 61 million at-home or point-of-care tests to be available by the end of the summer. In addition, the White House awarded a $230 million contract to boost the number of rapid tests in circulation, though many of them won’t be available until the second half of the year."  Note: The contract was awarded to Australian firm Ellume to build a US production facility Ellume contract

Meanwhile further down in the Hill article is this:
"One company working on rapid tests, Innova Medical Group, says it could be making millions of its tests available to the United States right now if the FDA would grant authorization. Instead, the company is making tests in a California plant and shipping them overseas."

So much I could say here, just shaking my head.

New Zealand's first 70 border workers have today been vaccinated for Covid-19. The nurses vaccinating the border workers got their jabs yesterday.

It's our largest ever immunisation programme, beginning with 12,000 people in Auckland, then Wellington on Monday and Christchurch on Wednesday, before the rest of the country.

The first delivery will be to high risk groups - for example, border workers, MIQ workers, front line health workers, or people over the age of 80.

Glad the jabs are starting.

As here, it will be a while before ordinary citizens get a crack at the vaccine.

Also hear that WHO and the CDC changed some parameters for a positive DX. Basically with the changes, you will hear of less positive DX.

I haven't yet found anything on CDC changing guidelines. As I've said before, I expect this to happen and it will dramatically affect the "cases" counts.

Here is the 1/20/2021 WHO release. Much like its predecessor doc, it doesn't tell me much, just makes reference to following test manufacturer's IFU (instructions for use) and a lot of jargon that to my eye is annoyingly double speak. From the docuument:
"WHO guidance Diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2 states that careful interpretation of weak positive results is needed (1). The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient’s viral load. Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT technology.

WHO reminds IVD users that disease prevalence alters the predictive value of test results; as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases (2). This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity.

Most PCR assays are indicated as an aid for diagnosis, therefore, health care providers must consider any result in combination with timing of sampling, specimen type, assay specifics, clinical observations, patient history, confirmed status of any contacts, and epidemiological information. "

So, I found the Perkin Elmer IFU and looked at the interpretation of results section and soon found my eyes glazing over. I don't know enough about what's happening here to interpret what it says.

Yes hard to understand everything.

Looks like I didn't post Week 4 data, so here are Weeks 4 and 5
Week 4:


Week 5

Thank you for the update.

Links courtesy of MDA Weekly Link Love:
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/JAHA.120.019259
"CONCLUSIONS
A substantial proportion of US COVID‐19 hospitalizations appear attributable to major cardiometabolic conditions. These results can help inform public health prevention strategies to reduce COVID‐19 healthcare burdens."

A mainstay on finding the culprit is to find out "qui bono" or who benefits.  Maybe we should blame it all on Nintendo, Electronic Arts, et al. Or maybe not.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/covid19-coronavirus-pandemic-video-games-entertainment-media/

Interesting and not so novel idea. Fresh air is good for you. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/02/bad-air/618106/

Interesting stuff, but not that surprising in my eyes.

Texas governor just lifted the state wide mask mandate.

That's interesting Pedi. Do you know what your percentage of those who've been vaccinated is at this point?

Not sure what PA is, but I know most who are looking can't find slots.

I think he made the decision based on hospital admissions.

Interesting. Our Gov De-Whine seems to also be using hospital admissions for more and more of his decisions. I wonder if this is the new trend across the country.

Texas is one of 16 states now without a statewide mask mandate.
Texas-isnt-alone

It is an interesting trend.

The Texas mask announcement seemingly has encouraged people to put some pressure on Gov. Dewine about reopening Ohio, including at least one prominent Republican who looks like he might be the R "heir apparent" for the Gov job or our soon to be open Senate seat . Y'day Dewine announced his objective for allowing Ohio to go back to normal.

from article wrote:COLUMBUS — The finish line in Ohio’s fight against the coronavirus has finally been drawn.
The state can fully reopen when it reports 50 new cases per 100,000 people for two weeks, Gov. Mike DeWine said in a special address Thursday night. This metric is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s definition of “moderate incidence.”

Dewine OH objective

Not sure what # he'll use for OH population, the last I've seen is 11,689,100. So that translates to 5845/week or 835/day. our 7 day rolling daily average is currently right at 2000. The last time we were at the Gov's # was the end of last June. It's going to be a long time.

On the data reporting front, after ODH had 4K deaths that were discovered for Nov/Dec that fouled up their reporting for the last month, they now will only be reporting Covid deaths maybe 2x/wk rather than daily. The deaths number has now been 17189 for three days. The 17189 is -157 from the 17346 they reported on Monday. So either their data is pretty fouled up, or we have a miracle here in Ohio.

Haven't hear that we are anywhere near getting back to normal. Of course i haven't looked either.

Today's announcement from Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern: The government has purchased enough of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for every New Zealander to receive two doses. ie 10million doses.

Wow Annie, that is good news. It will be interesting to see how they go about vaccinating there. My guess it will be much better thought out and more organized than it is here, at least in my state.