Headlines

Senate Dems ready tactics to muck up Supreme Court confirmation

Supreme Court to face major cases on Obamacare and religion

Former Trump economist: Biden tax plan would kill 3 million jobs

Sharpton: ‘I was glad’ Barrett’s children attended the ceremony ... ‘because I didn’t see too many people of color’ in audience’

North Korea accuses South Korea of illegally crossing boundary

U.S. has a ‘long way to go’ before herd immunity with less than 10% showing coronavirus antibodies

Tens of thousands attend Prayer March 2020 led by Franklin Graham

[Lindsey] Graham: Confirmation could get to the Senate floor ‘around’ October 26

Poland looks to toughen already stringent abortion laws

The September market swoon accomplished much of what market corrections are supposed to do

Latest Flynn document dump poses threat to Dems

Coney Barrett mentored first blind female Supreme Court clerk in U.S. history ...

STAND UP FOT AMERICA!

Herd Immunity

Is herd immunity the only real solution to the increasing infection rate of the COVID-19 pandemic? Well many epideniologists think so ... and I am beginning to agree. The current hot spots in the USA are Florida, Texas and California ... replacing New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, all three of which might be approaching some sort of plateau in daily new cases ... each generating only a few hundred cases per day while the hot spots are in the thousands. (There are other states that could be placed in each group ... only to complicate things ... so we will ignore them here.)

To normalize things between these states we will look at new daily cases per million of population ... see: World Meters. Here they are today:

                                Total

                     Cases per 1 million

New York               22,843

New Jersey             21,128

Massachusetts       17,064

Florida                    22,350

Texas                      15,315

California               12,799

Total USA              14,351

As been demonstrated in various blood tests for this virus’ antibodies, the number of asymptomatic cases can be as much as twenty or more times diagnoses cases. Therefore we can see from the above that New York, New Jersey and Florida might really have as many as 400,000 cases per million (40%) of population. Now, herd immunity is estimated to be achieved at 50-60% ... so, we might be getting close to herd immunity in these three states. (Maybe why these states, excepting the special case Florida might be slowing down.) And Texas, California and Massachusetts still have a way to go ... as does the overall USA. (Caveat: our much more extensive testing now might have reduced this multiplier between asymptomatic and diagnosed cases to well below 20.)

(We are not dealing with coronavirus death rates here because therapeutics have gotten a whole lot better ... and we have also learned to concentrate mitigation efforts on nursing homes. Texas, California and Florida are still doing worlds better than the other three on this count.)

STAND UP FOR AMERICA!

Headlines

‘It’s something we’re looking at’: Pompeo floats ban on TIKTOK

Cuts to basic services loom as coronavirus sends states into fiscal crisis

North Carolina Dem. took $1-2 million from PPP program after publically criticizing it

Virus: Daily deaths plummet despite record cases

Huntsman loses GOP primary in Utah

Coronavirus live updates: Brazil’s Bolsonaro tested after feeling unwell, Novavax gets U.S. funds for vaccine

Georgia governor authorizes National Guard

Chinese media: America ‘helpless underdeveloped country’

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms tests positive for COVID-19

Herd immunity strategies called into question after coronavirus antibody studies in Spain

Journos waste entire briefing asking McEnany about Confederate flag

Report: Nearly all NYC June shooting victims were minorities

Politics Infects Medicine

There is increasing evidence that politics are infecting the science of medicine. Let me cite just a few incidences:

- A few weeks back four antibody studies (Santa Clara, LA, New York State and Miami/Dade) suggested that coronavirus infections were far higher than previously thought. This meant that death rates were close to those of the seasonal flu ... and we were approaching herd immunity in our hot spots ... not good news for those wishing to keep us locked down. So, why have more such studies disappeared from our news cycles? They must be being performed.

- That famous YouTube video of the two California doctors urging us to rethink our lockdown polices has all but been wiped off the Internet.

- Reported COVID-19 death statistics and resultant model projections are starting to go back up ... after plummeting for three months. Even though hospital and ICU coronavirus admissions are generally going down, many doctors are saying they are being pressured to list COVID as a cause of death in unrelated mortalities. Is this politically or monetarily motivated ?

- There is surprising negative media coverage against seemingly positive developments in the battle against this virus:  Trial results from therapeutics like  remesivir, hydroxychlorquine and other new treatments ... and their pooh-pooling of the Swedish herd-immunity strategy.

- There is a clear red-State, blue-State divide in how to reopen our economy. Libs are clearly more draconian in their ukases and have an extended timetable. Is this medically motivated or just to display hostility to the Orangeman?

Antibody Study

Another antibody study (in Los Angeles) has been released that suggests that actual COVID-19 infections might be as much as 55 times higher than the diagnosed cases. This agrees with the recent Stanford study in Santa Clara that put the multiplier at between 48x and 82x ... see: Herd Immunity.

Now, New York State is performing its own antibody tests this week and, if its results also agree with these asymptomatic multipliers, we might not only be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but, at least on the major East Coast and Midwest areas of the US, we might be achieving herd immunity ... meaning we are almost out of the tunnel.

Let’s look at where I live ... Massachusetts. As of today, diagnosed cases here total almost 40,000. Multiplying this by 55 suggests we might have as many as 2.2 million diagnosed and undiagnosed cases. The current population of the Bay State is 6.98 million ... meaning that the overall infection rate here might be 38% ... obviously much higher in and around Boston.

Again, the high end of herd immunity approximations is 90% ... which means that the number of cases in major East Coast and Midwest metropolitan areas might be rapidly approaching herd immunity ... and that mortality rates here might be almost the same as the seasonal flu (0.1%) ... much lower than previously thought. The major delta seems to be the much more rapid speed of COVID-19 infections in cities with higher personal proximity particularly in public transportation systems.

I suspect we will know better soon.

Herd Immunity

I have learned not to trust any of the data points surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic ... so, dear reader, understand what you will now read might be hokum ... not as much hokum involved in the Irani and Chinese virus statistics ... but nonetheless somewhat suspect.

So let’s dive in. Stanford University has completed an antibody study of 3,300 volunteers (unfortunately not randomized) in Santa Clara County, California (in the heart of Silicon Valley) and the results are mind blowing. This study found that the number of people that had antibodies to this virus was between 48 and 82 times the number that actually had been reported to have been infected with COVID-19. Wow!

So before we go any further, read the following: Newsweek Article.

This study also reveals that the actual infection rate as a proportion of this particular population currently is between 2.5% and 4.5% ... clearly not high enough to achieve herd immunity there. However, let’s look at New York State where the latest reported case count is about 250,000. If the actual case count is 48 times higher (the lower multiplier in the above-reported rage) then the actual New York number (including asymptomatics) would be 12 million in the state versus an estimated population of 19.44 million ... or 62% ... zeroing in on a herd immunity percentage of between 65% and 80% (quoting Dr. Oz) ... particularly if one focuses in on the greater New York City area.

If the number of new cases in the greater NYC area falls off a cliff in the next week or two, I think we will be able to conclude that this area has achieved a semblance of herd immunity and that there was some validity to the Stanford study.

But why there is such a disparity between the COVID-19 infection rate tn California versus New York will still be a mystery.

Epidemiology

Today, dear reader I am going to play an epidemiologist. Given how poorly they have performed to date, I don’t see how I could do any worse. I also realize that many of my assumptions here will be wrong ... but, hopefully, they will be offsetting errors.

Way back on February 5th, I published a blog that, using data from a Taiwan newspaper, I estimated that China’s coronavirus numbers were off by a factor of 10 for reported cases ... and by a factor of 100 for deaths ... see: Straight Skinny. (I am now backing off this 100x mortality factor and now estimate it was more like 50x.) Current “official statistics” have China cases at 81,907 and deaths at 3,336. We know that these are fudged numbers and that the real statistics should be more like 820,000 cases and 115,000 deaths. One more adjustment: a German investigation has shown that there are about three asymptomatic cases for every symptomatic one ... see: Reason.com Article. Ergo, China’s actual cases were likely more like 2,460,000. This would place China’s mortality rate at 4.5% ... close to what it allows in its “official” numbers.

Now let is look at things from a different angle:

Wuhan, China (an urban area of some 21 million people) now seems to achieved herd immunity since things have been reopened there completely.

Coronavirus might produce herd immunity at about a 33% penetration rate (a number developed during previous pandemics)

Meaning 7 million people in Wuhan might have been infected ...including asymptomatics

Assuming 66% were asymptomatic (German study) ... or 2.3 million exhibited symptoms

Assume  mortality rates for symptomatic coronavirus patients approximates 1% ... 10x seasonal flu rates

Meaning that there had been about 230,000 deaths in Wuhan

So one model says 115,000 actual deaths ... the other one comes up with 230,000 deaths ... exactly twice that number. Let’s split the difference ... guessing the actual number of Chinese deaths was 172,000! This is a little over 0.01% of the total Chinese population.

This would suggest that we might have that same mortality proportion here in the US ... with similar mitigation rules as China ... producing around 52,000 (+ or - 17,000) COVID-19 deaths ... or even more on the downside due to our better testing and therapeutics. We’ll see if I should take up this new profession ... or slink away in shame!

Afterward: Dt. Oz said on TV last night that herd immunity took 65-70% being infected. My numbers might still work out if one assumes that  9 or 10 million fled Wuhan before it was shut down.

COVID-19 Functions

In the following, “f” means “function of”

pandemic = f(herd immunity, number of herds)

herd immunity = f(infection rate, mortality rate, vaccination rate, vaccination efficacy)

infection rate = f(testing coverage, transmissibility, quarantine efficacy, mitigation actions)

mitigation actions = f(social distancing, protective gear, cleaning protocols)

mortality rate = f(infection rate, treatment efficacy, susceptibility profiles)

treatment efficacy = f(research science, validation testing, production delays, logistics)

quarantine efficacy = f(disease duration, isolation rules/duration, enforcement)

COVID-19 Questions

- What country has executed the most effective strategy in combating this pandemic? And what was it?

- How many celebrity grandstanders have claimed to have been infected with coronavirus, when they weren’t ... just to grab some headlines?

- How come epidemiologists are producing such a wide range of pandemic predictions with their “models?” One would think that this process should be settled science after we have been through a number of pandemics?

- Why did we ... and the rest of the world ... not shut down our economies during the much more severe Spanish flu in 1918-19?

- Is coronavirus a STD?

- What are the real Chinese infection and death numbers? 10-fold higher ...or even greater than that? What punishment might be levied on China for the worldwide consequences of this duplicity?

- Why are all the American job losses only in the private sector ... while government workers seemingly are immune to layoffs? And will these same government workers also be receiving the $1,200 @ coronavirus stimulus checks for (not) being unemployed? We might also add to this bonanza class retired people (like myself) who have had no interruptions to our income? And private sector employees who have not been let go from their jobs?

- What percentage of our population needs to be infected/recovered with or vaccinated against coronavirus to provide us herd immunity? Does this differ with different diseases (a function of transmissibility)?

Herd Immunity

I heard a new coronavirus term today on CNN’s Michael Smerconish show -- “herd immunity.” This refers to the fact that viruses, such as our current gift from the Chinese Communists, are bound to spread across the world and there is really no stopping them.

The only rational strategy is to slow a new virus down (“flatten the curve”) to avoid overburdening our healthcare facilities ... and trying to protect our more vulnerable populations such as, in this case, our older people.

It seems to this observer that this is the precise path that the Trump administration is following ... augmented with a rush for a vaccine and an effective treatment for those seriously afflicted. And on top of these medical approaches, Trump’s administration is fighting to minimize the damage to our economy ... which could be considerable. But for this, we need some bipartisan politics ... seemingly more difficult than creating a COVID-19 vaccine.