COVID-19 Megathread 5: The Trumps catch COVID-19

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Almost 80,000 new cases today alone. We're looking at somewhere north of or close to 90,000 new cases tomorrow (Friday is usually the highest day of the week).

The U.S. is quickly approaching the point of no return on averting a healthcare system collapse in a good number of states that are experiencingthe loci of these recent outbreaks.

Worldometers is reporting 73,000 new cases today.  Which is a record, but only narrowly more than the 72,000 from yesterday.  The reason you’re seeing a 78k increase in the total is the addition of almost 5,000 backlogged cases from Bexar County, TX.

I was surprised when you said Fridays are usually the highest day for cases, but I looked back at the data, and it seems you are right.  I wonder why that is, considering they are usually slightly lower than Tues-Thurs for deaths.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Yesterday did see the highest number of tests performed so far, at over 830,000. The national positivity rate is dropping a little.

The situation has been bad since March, but I keep saying today's Arizona is tomorrow's Connecticut. Look how much the Northeast has dropped.

I’m not seeing Arizona (or any state, really, and I live in Massachusetts) taking the kinds of measures the enables the northeast to recover in May.

It does seem like the virus eventually burns its self out once a certain immunity threshold is reached regardless of measures taken.  Sweden is down to average of 3 deaths per day now; it just look them a little longer than their neighbors.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

The numbers didn't explode as much as I expected yesterday, but we're still in the red relative to last week on all fronts.

Are we getting honest numbers anymore after the White House intervention in CDC tracking?

I believe the CDC tracking has nothing to do with the dailly tracking numbers from worldometers.  The CDC numbers are more “official”, but have always been a couple weeks behind.   My impression is that the worldometers numbers are actually crowdsourced.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

New York has set the example to everyone on how to handle the coronavirus properly:

Fauci holds up New York as model for fighting coronavirus — 'They did it correctly'

Kudos to Governor Andrew Cuomo!

Watch Del Tachi use this to smear Fauci as an evil partisan hack.
While Cuomo definitely didn’t do everything right, he is infinitely better than the Sunbelt Trio and Kemp the Killer.

Fauci probably could and would have praised Hogan or DeWine if he had wanted to give it the appearance of bipartisanship.... then again, it isn't his really job to always give credit to "both sides!" and there's definitely nothing praiseworthy about DeSantis or Kemp.

Why would you praise DeWine?  Cases in Ohio have more than tripled in the last month with no sign of slowing down.  They had a new record number of cases just yesterday.

North Carolina saw new record cases today.  Cases in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Illinois, and Minnesota have all approximately doubled over the last few weeks. 

If you are defining success by keeping cases low, it’s tough to say that anyone outside of New York and New Jersey have done a good job, and those states still have by far the highest death rates, which is probably a better metric anyway.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Oxford reporting that they are on track for a September release of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Where are you seeing this?
I am eagerly awaiting the full results of their Phase I trials to be published in the Lancet tomorrow.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Here’s the Lancet editor’s summary of the two vaccine results they are publishing today (Oxford and one from China)

https://marlin-prod.literatumonline.com/pb-assets/Lancet/pdfs/S0140673620316111.pdf

It looks like the Oxford vaccine produced a t-cell response in all subjects, and an antibody response in more than 90% of subjects.  No serious adverse effects reported.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Here's the full Lancet article about the Oxford vaccine:
Safety and immunogenicity of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2

Concluding paragraph:

In conclusion, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 was safe, tolerated, and immunogenic, while reactogenicity was reduced with paracetamol. A single dose elicited both humoral and cellular responses against SARS-CoV-2, with a booster immunisation augmenting neutralising antibody titres. The preliminary results of this first-in-human clinical trial supported clinical development progression into ongoing phase 2 and 3 trials. Older age groups with comorbidities, health-care workers, and those with higher risk for SARS-CoV-2 exposure are being recruited and assessed for efficacy, safety, and immunogenicity of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 given as a single-dose or two-dose administration regimen in further trials conducted in the UK and overseas. We will also evaluate the vaccine in children, once sufficient safety data have been accumulated in adult studies. Phase 3 trials are now underway in Brazil, South Africa, and the UK and will evaluate vaccine efficacy in diverse populations.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

The Republican party is a death cult.

https://twitter.com/stltoday/status/1285199041417158663

How is this not genocide?!
I am so damn tired of people such as Del Tachi and the other GOPers implying my health and life are expendable as a high school student.

If you're in high school, you're much much likelier to die of the flu or a car accident than COVID-19.  Colorado has less than 1 death per million people under age 35, and the odds of dying for those aged >75 are 100 times greater than those <55.  

Firstly, that’s with schools closed so that data is completely invalid for my age group.

If you are going to make this argument, it is worth noting that Sweden kept their primary schools open. Sweden has had almost 6,000 covid deaths, a per capita death toll just below Italy.  But only one death was a child under 19 (and I believe this one was actually below school-age).

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

According to worldometers, it looks like today was the first day since June 9 (six weeks ago) where the US saw a week-over-week drop in daily cases.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

For all the stories we heard about the dire state of the health care system in Houston, Harris County still has an CFR of less than 1%.  They have twice the cases of Mahattan but only 1/5th of the deaths.  CFR in Bexar Country (San Antonio) is even lower.

The real disaster in Texas is Hidalgo County, at the Southern tip of the state.  They have a CFR around 3%, way higher than any of the major TX cities, with 49 new deaths just reported today.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Is worldometers right that Kern County, CA is reporting over 1500 new cases today?  That’s insane.  Kern Co. has less a million people.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

Remaining locked down is not feasible in ANY community where there are enough ICU beds, and this has become obvious to 95%+ of all people. 

No, the point of lockdowns is to bring it down to a low enough level where a mitigation strategy of social distancing, and testing and tracing new cases can work. However, states like Florida stopped the lockdown too early so it didn't actually get to bring case numbers down to a manageable level and did not put in the work of building the infrastructure so that testing and tracing can contain flare-ups. So of course, there is a second spike, and of course then preventable deaths occur.

In a lot of states, the lockdown was not bringing cases down.  Look at the graphs of California or Texas or North Carolina or Arizona.  The lockdown in these places was supressing the rate of growth, but the infection was still growing.  Even Florida’s cases were almost completely flat under lockdown.  Under these conditions, where the lockdown never reduces cases, how do you know when to end it?  At a certain point, you need to accept that the lockdown was a failure and try a different tactic.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

A few weeks from now, there’s a good chance that those saying that Europe did so much better then the US at controlling the virus are going to look like Ron DeSantis bragging about how Florida responded better New York.

Spain has gone from averaging 300 cases/day a month ago to 2000 cases/day, and it looks like its second wave has just started growing.  Belgium, which already had the highest death rate in the world, has grown from 100 cases/day to 600 in the same time frame.  Even Germany has seen their cases double in the past two weeks.

Lockdowns do not prevent the spread of the virus, they just delay it.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

A few weeks from now, there’s a good chance that those saying that Europe did so much better then the US at controlling the virus are going to look like Ron DeSantis bragging about how Florida responded better New York.

Spain has gone from averaging 300 cases/day a month ago to 2000 cases/day, and it looks like its second wave has just started growing.  Belgium, which already had the highest death rate in the world, has grown from 100 cases/day to 600 in the same time frame.  Even Germany has seen their cases double in the past two weeks.

Lockdowns do not prevent the spread of the virus, they just delay it.

Spain has more than twice the population of Florida and yet only a fifth of the cases.

Sure, and Florida could have said the exact same thing to New Jersey in May.

The problem in Spain isn’t even the total number of cases right now.  It is that after everyone had hailed them as a model response in contrast to the US, they’ve seen their cases double every week for the last three or four weeks.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

A few weeks from now, there’s a good chance that those saying that Europe did so much better then the US at controlling the virus are going to look like Ron DeSantis bragging about how Florida responded better New York.

Spain has gone from averaging 300 cases/day a month ago to 2000 cases/day, and it looks like its second wave has just started growing.  Belgium, which already had the highest death rate in the world, has grown from 100 cases/day to 600 in the same time frame.  Even Germany has seen their cases double in the past two weeks.

Lockdowns do not prevent the spread of the virus, they just delay it.

Spain has more than twice the population of Florida and yet only a fifth of the cases.

Sure, and Florida could have said the exact same thing to New Jersey in May.

The problem in Spain isn’t even the total number of cases right now.  It is that after everyone had hailed them as a model response in contrast to the US, they’ve seen their cases double every week for the last three or four weeks.

I have said it before that DeSantis and the other southern governors had the privilege of seeing the mistakes made in New York/New Jersey and learn from them. Instead of that they tried to curry favor with Trump, ignored all warnings by the experts, and managed to make matters even worse.

Ok, but in that case Spain had the opportunity to see the mistake being made by all these places, including their own very drastic lockdown, and their cases are still doubling every week as of today.