Social distancing in Siberia: "please keep the length of one small bear from each other" https://t.co/H52cerWj8V
— max seddon (@maxseddon) April 20, 2020
US nurses protest outside White House to demand protective gear for medical staff https://t.co/mk05jDIk6s pic.twitter.com/xPOhtvlbdt
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) April 21, 2020
Where we stand w/#COVCID19 today:
Country trends show Europe & USA levelling off.
Disturbing upwards: Russia, Brazil, Turkey.
Global numbers top 2.5 million cases w/>176,000 deaths.The #pandemic is moving southward: next week you will see Africa & LAmerica rising caseloads. pic.twitter.com/JKHjiDh5iW
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) April 21, 2020
The coronavirus is far deadlier than official numbers show. A New York Times analysis of 11 countries found that at least 28,000 more people have died in the last month than is reflected in official Covid-19 death counts for those nations. https://t.co/2n8zkdx0Pa
— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 21, 2020
U.S. coronavirus deaths top 45,000, doubling in little over a week: Reuters tally https://t.co/zfWlyOARA6 pic.twitter.com/JY5AFXF6Se
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 22, 2020
the rate of infection is slowing, and testing hasn't ramped up appreciably, so this is not terrible news: distancing measures are working https://t.co/5COhtxYvjs
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) April 22, 2020
Health officials are watching Iowa closely. Here’s why and some comps.
MN: 97 new cases today
IA: 482 news cases today (more than CA, FL and TX)Iowa’s expected peak is still 17 days away. That is the latest date of any of the 50 states. MN’s peak was a week ago.
— Seth Kaplan (@Seth_Kaplan) April 21, 2020
— Seth Kaplan (@Seth_Kaplan) April 21, 2020
I had a great conversation with @DrewQJoseph @statnews for this nice piece about #SARSCoV2 #HCoV19 #COVID19 #coronavirus immunity. Also featuring smart commentary from @stgoldst, @michaelmina_lab, @TheMenacheryLab, and @Jana_Broadhurst. https://t.co/kFp3wCx89y
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) April 21, 2020
Autopsies reveal first confirmed U.S. coronavirus deaths occurred in Bay Area in February https://t.co/L9RR6FyWkg
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) April 22, 2020
“There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview with The Washington Post's @bylenasun. https://t.co/ZNbRSuLXDP
— Robert Costa (@costareports) April 21, 2020
Coronavirus lingers for as long as three weeks in the bodies of patients with severe disease, Chinese researchers have reported. https://t.co/RfVEQb3IsL
— CNN International (@cnni) April 22, 2020
Big news on the Coronavirus testing front: FDA approves first at-home kit https://t.co/Z1FXXsI2vx
— Jayne Miller (@jemillerwbal) April 21, 2020
The newest test (Abbott) had greater than 15% miss rate on samples of actual virus. Those numbers were replicated.
This is the same test that is being widely deployed across the country and being touted as the major solution to allow for reopening. https://t.co/8ggTEyV4hr
— Ryan Marino, MD (@RyanMarino) April 22, 2020
We use this test in our centers and have been concerned from day one about sensitivity. We've tested in parallel with our central lab's Roche machine so far. Again another preprint and who knows the validity of the study, although the Cleveland clinic is reputable.
— Christian Molstrom (@cmolstrom) April 22, 2020
A couple of weeks ago, @sxbegle reported some doctors were worried too many #Covid19 patients were being put on ventilators. Today a new analysis & @NIH treatment guidelines concur. https://t.co/htTAH4zIxb
— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) April 21, 2020
Coronavirus vaccine to be tested in UK from Thursday, government announces https://t.co/2R273qKwk6
— The Independent (@Independent) April 21, 2020
The true extent of Britain’s COVID-19 death toll was more than 40% higher than the government’s daily figures indicated as of April 10, according to data that put the country on track to become among the worst-hit in Europe. https://t.co/ujBQo1Am3z
— Idrees Ali (@idreesali114) April 21, 2020
sweden is using a very risky strategy to achieve herd immunity (without concrete evidence of how covid-19 antibodies persist), and the risks are evident in the numbers: https://t.co/tyFLunnVwO
— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) April 22, 2020
Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day in shadow of pandemichttps://t.co/6f7wVfCTZy pic.twitter.com/jydCle2isc
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) April 21, 2020
China reports 30 new coronavirus cases in mainland, up from day earlier https://t.co/MjqLYkjl0Q pic.twitter.com/BGCZKEJVou
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 22, 2020
A #Wuhan study of 105 #COVID19 cases & their 392 household contacts shows an attack rate of 16% — meaning, 84% of family membs did not get infected. Wuhan set up quarantine centers for mild symptom indivs., allowing them to stay away from their families.https://t.co/82pq9HV1gR
— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) April 21, 2020
Indonesia has banned all citizens from traveling to their hometowns for Eid al-Fitr celebrations in an effort to contain the spread of novel coronavirus. https://t.co/PDHfu48DRw
— CNN International (@cnni) April 22, 2020
Coronavirus in India: Desperate migrant workers trapped in lockdown https://t.co/Hwg2AfJPng
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) April 21, 2020
Coronavirus crisis tests Putin's grip on power in Russia https://t.co/SliDH4rGw6
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) April 21, 2020
'No doctor can save us': Fears are mounting for the millions of people driven from their homes by war and unrest who now live packed into refugee camps and informal settlements where, without testing, the new coronavirus can spread unchecked. https://t.co/3MEmA2iTll
— AP Middle East (@APMiddleEast) April 22, 2020
.@UN warns #coronavirus #pandemic threatens to double the number of people facing ‘acute food insecurity,’ by @ereguly @geoffreyyork https://t.co/Er9hDKyivg via @globeandmail #COVID19 #GlobalHealth #sdoh
— André Picard (@picardonhealth) April 21, 2020
President Bolsonaro made an address to the crowd interspersed with fits of coughing while joining a protest against Brazil's lockdown pic.twitter.com/YmkU058p9H
— QuickTake by Bloomberg (@QuickTake) April 21, 2020
WaterGirl
Anne Laurie, I can only imagine how much time it takes for you to do all this research and pull these posts together every single day, and I imagine it takes even longer than that. Truly a service to all of us here on Balloon Juice. Thank you.
gkoutnik
Yes, thanks. A regular stop in my morning routine. “Look for the helpers…”
David C
Good morning to my go-to daily blog series. I would be cautious about quoting the IHME projections.
“The IHME projections are based not on transmission dynamics but on a statistical model with no epidemiologic basis. Specifically, the model used reported worldwide COVID-19 deaths and extrapolated similar patterns in mortality growth curves to forecast expected deaths. The technique uses mortality data, which are generally more reliable than testing-dependent confirmed case counts. Outputs suggest precise estimates (albeit with uncertainty bounds) for all regions until the epidemic ends. This appearance of certainty is seductive when the world is desperate to know what lies ahead. However, the underlying data and statistical model must be interpreted cautiously. Here, we raise concerns about the validity and usefulness of the projections for policymakers.”
https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2764774/caution-warranted-using-institute-health-metrics-evaluation-model-predicting-course
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s numbers for today. 50 new cases, total 5,532; one death, total 93. 103 patients recovered, total 3,452. 1,987 cases remain active — 43 in ICU, of whom 25 are on aided respiration.
Noteworthy from the Guardian’s liveblog:
YY_Sima Qian
Disappointing about the false negative rate of the Abbott rapid PCR test (against actual viral sample!), but not surprised. There are no magical bullets against COVID-19. If some solution seems to be too good to be true (be it treatment, vaccine or test), it probably is.
How much money has been spent on yet another “game changer”, that ultimately proves to be of very limited vale…
Amir Khalid
I looked at Singapore’s numbers as reported by Worldometer: worryingly high, especially since they have 1/5 of Malaysia’s population. They’ve been hit hard by the contagion in ther migrant-worker dorms.
Baud
I was hoping to see a bear in that first tweet.
Barbara
@David C: since the US is already 3/4 of the way to experiencing the total number of predicted number of deaths under IHME, then yes, it appears that it will turn out to be inaccurately low.
JAFD
Ms. Laurie, want to add my thanks to WaterGirl’s
Re David C’s comment: First; There is a hellova lot about this <BLTEEP> virus, that no one knows yet. some ‘known unknowns’ and a s###load of ‘unknown unknowns’.
Second, some of our world’s best and brightest people – I once was courting a grad student in biophysics, a couple of decades ago, she and her friends made me feel dumb – are working on solving this.
Three, I’ve adopted a ‘blue-light special’ attitude about reports of ‘gee whiz fantastic near future stuf’. Let me know when it’s on sale at K-Mart, then I’ll think about it. Till then it’s just a distraction,
Love, luck and lollipops. Have great day !
prostratedragon
A few weeks ago some here wondered whether CPAP machines could be used in place of ventilators for support of COVID patients. The article from the tweet above says that there’s been success in that treatment for some who are not the most compromised, which would ease the expense and the pressure on hospital equipment greatly:
debbie
@YY_Sima Qian:
That’ll never change. There’s too much money to be made. //
rivers
Yes, thank you, Anne Laurie. You were doing this long before other reporters were paying attention. I just looked back and saw that you began your Covid-19 posts in January. I always used to read them, but at that point I thought that it would never affect me. Yeah, I know, denial is also a contagious disease.
I’d be interested in knowing what first drew your attention to the subject.
Amir Khalid
@Amir Khalid:
Singapore’s total case number is very high, nearly twice Malaysia’s, and they are nowhere near flattening their curve. Their far smaller number of recovered cases must be due to having more patients still in the early stages.
satby
@JAFD: take care of yourself JAFD! I share your opinion that waiting to see what shakes out and is demonstrably reliable is when I can get cautiously optimistic.
debbie
Re: the Science Magazine article embedded in a tweet here yesterday. I haven’t seen anything yet, but has it been at all discredited yet? There’s stuff in it that’s really disturbing.
David C
@Debbie: The information that’s in the Science article is very plausible and is indicative of multi-organ injury that comes from exciting the immune system too much and when pathologies in one organ system affect other organ systems. For example, clotting disorders lead to microthrombi, causing local tissue necrosis, causing more inflammatory cytokines.
As the article notes, we need to take a systems approach.
This whole series has been such a great source of information – not the least because Anne finds reliable sources of information, which is important when we are still in the fog of a pandemic.
debbie
@David C:
Thanks. A teammate died last week. She was tested and was told she was negative but that a blood clot had been found in her lungs. She died the next day. I’m think that was a false negative. I’m going to go ahead and let other team members know they should act accordingly.
Amir Khalid
@debbie:
Science is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. That seems about as legit as one can get. The article’s description of the many ways coronavirus can attack vital organs is indeed disturbing, but it’s not making any far-out claims of fact.
rikyrah
Thanks for the post
I appreciate having news and information in one place
rikyrah
The President of Brazil ????
WereBear
Thank you, Anne Laurie! I’m one of those who gets less anxious with more information, and this is a tremendous help :)
kindness
The Germans developed a test for it early one. South Korea has one as well. Trump refused to buy them. I wonder how they stack up against this new test?
Anne Laurie
@rivers: Pandemics have always been one of my fascinations / terrors — I was unspeakably boring here during the Ebola crisis. When I started doing this, back in late January, it was purely for my own satisfaction. I figured I’d give it up when you guys started rolling your eyes…
Little did I know we’d be here, three months later, universally riveted. I’d have been perfectly happy with my solitary browsing, really!
Miss Bianca
@Anne Laurie: I add my mite of praise to the hosannas here, AL. I remember when I used to read your COVID-19 round-ups with a kind of morbid fascination and that damned American “it can’t happen *here* – at least not like *that*!” mental blindness.
Was that only two months ago?
VOR
@prostratedragon: One of the problems with CPAP machines for COVID is leaks around the mask will spew live virus around the room, thus endangering health care workers.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
Thanks. I absolutely value your opinion.
terben
Here is a brief synopsis of the situation in Australia from the Department of Health (times are UTC+10):
As at 3:00pm on 22 April 2020, there have been 6,649 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia. There have been 4 new cases since 3:00pm yesterday.
Of the 6,649 confirmed cases in Australia, 74 have died and 4,761 have been reported as recovered from COVID-19. More than 452,000 tests have been conducted across Australia.
dnfree
@Anne Laurie: thanks also from me. I’m an information nerd, and your sources are varied and well-vetted. Amazing how many must-read front-pagers there are here.
Slappy Kincaid
Part of the plateau in US cases may be social distancing, but I’ve seen more than one epidemiologist point out that part of the rise in US cases leveling off is primarily a function of maxxed out testing capacity–we can only process so many tests per day, which means we’ve reached the maximum number of cases that can be diagnosed in a day (25k-30k). The telling stat is the percentage of positive tests. The countries that have leveled off, like Germany, have about 2%-7% positive tests. The US is 20%-25%. Britain is closer to 30%. It points to a continuing high rate if infection.
And Governor Kemp is about to kick that rate up higher.
low-tech cyclist
“Than the one we just went through“?? Seriously, dude? Did you phone in to the WaPo from August or something?? Because back here in April, this thing’s still killing thousands of people a day.
Laura Too
This is one of the first places I check every morning. I open tabs for most of the stories so I can read them throughout the day as I take breaks from my household chores. Anne Laurie, I can’t tell you how valuable it is! Both from a health perspective and a mental one. Like WearBear I do better with more information and worked very hard from the beginning to stay safe and protect people around me. I was way ahead of the pack thanks to you!
BRyan
Adding my thanks, Anne Laurie — your work is my first stop in the morning.
I went to the laundromat this morning at 6 AM. (And yes, about now I am questioning my decision not to replace my washer and dryer a few years back.) There were three people plus the cleaning lady already there. Not a single mask to be seen. (Except mine, so I figure I raised the caliber/IQ of the clientele upon my arrival, maybe.) One woman looked at me and said snarkily, “I guess we’re all supposed to be afraid of germs now.”
(Me, silently, “No, bitch, only the ones that can kill you.”)
But it did make me wonder, is it possible the people aren’t following the progress of this pandemic enough to take it seriously? Between the goofballs protesting demanding backoff of the lockdowns, the governors who actually are backing off the lockdowns, and a real lack of evidence of masks or social distancing here locally (Dewine country), i’m beginning to think people aren’t taking it seriously, and I just don’t get it. Denial? Ignorance? General lack of awareness? How is it possible?
Sister Golden Bear
Just getting to this on the West Coast, but I wanted to add my thanks as well, Anne. It’s been one of the first things I read every morning, and based on it, I was already preparing for a pandemic here before shit hit the fan in CA.
@VOR:
One solution I’ve heard about, but don’t know the details, involves placing some sort of hood over the patient’s head. Although as a CPAP user, it seems like problem actually would be from the exhaust port of the CPAP unit (since you both inhale/exhale into the CPAP nosepiece. But potentially that could solved by placing filtering material at the exhaust port.
WaterGirl
@low-tech cyclist:
I had the exact same thought, though you worded it 10x better than I could have.
frosty
@Anne Laurie: Let me also thank you for your obsession with pandemics. This is one of my first reads every day. So much info in one place!
Slappy Kincaid
@low-tech cyclist: If it COVID reignites at the same time as the annual flu season, it will likely be worse than what is happening now. Consider the double burden on the medical system of 50-60k COVID hospitalizations/deaths plus 40-50k influenza hospitalizations/deaths in November-February. They can barely keep up with the COVID19 cases now.
ziggy
@Slappy Kincaid: I am hopeful that the rate of flu vaccination will be extremely high. With any luck, there will be a bountiful supply of that vaccine, along with heavy public education to get people in for vaccinations. If enough people are vaccinated, we will have herd immunity effects for that. Along with less transmission from social distancing and cleanliness measures. Last year there was a shortage of flu vaccines at the time when Covid-19 was just starting to come to light.
Still waiting to see what kind of Covid transmission we have already had in the population. With new early deaths discovered, this could be much higher than originally thought, along with the many new mutations that are being found. These will affect both transmission and lethality. It’s very hard to predict what will happen.
MoCA Ace
The first two… gotta be living in a cave to not be aware of what is happening.
Mohagan
@WaterGirl: A big second thank you on my part to AL. Thank you for all the work, and great pieces of these posts. Not only the sheer work, but the selection and editing (dare I say curating)! When you first started doing these early in the year, I read them but they were something of a curiosity since the virus seemed so far away. Now of course the posts are required first thing in the morning reading. Thank you for also being prescient about what was coming.
Mohagan
@rivers: Ditto!
joel hanes
Testing is plagued by lack of capacity, by inadequately-characterized rates of false negatives and false positives, by guidelines that skew the sampling of the population, and by the multiplicity of different tests available, which are not apples-to-apples comparable. For these reasons, I view the “confirmed cases” numbers as better than garbage, but not a lot better than garbage.
Numbers with high error bars confound modeling.
https://xkcd.com/2295/
So my provisional assumption is that all the models are wrong in ways that we won’t be able to identify for a long time. That’s why I’m watching the reported numbers for deaths, which are a relatively-solid trailing indicator, and rely on fewer assumptions.
Having a 30% assurance that next week will be the “peak” is not all that useful in deciding what to do today. Having an 80% assurance that, for the last two weeks, fewer people in my area have been dying each day of COVID-19 allows us to evaluate the measures that were imposed, and maybe begin to make some plans.
joel hanes
@BRyan:
i’m beginning to think people aren’t taking it seriously, and I just don’t get it. Denial? Ignorance? General lack of awareness? How is it possible?
Fox “News”
Like climate-change denial, opposition to abortion, and 2nd Amendment absolutism, coronavirus denial has become a tribal marker for the right-wing nutjobs; they cannot re-evaluate without re-evaluating the sunk costs in their own identity signifiers. Some of them will double down even as it kills their family members.
joel hanes
@ziggy:
I am hopeful that the rate of flu vaccination will be extremely high.
I suspect, not happily, that the rate of vaccination will be below that in a normal year. I know of no way to get vaccinated while preserving social distancing, and I suspect that many people who are staying home will not choose to have it done.
The mitigating good news is that social distancing probably works even better on the flu than it does on SARS-CoV-2, and so the rate of infection should be muted.
The schools are the joker in this deck, but those of us who are beyond the age when we have school-age kids in the house can benefit.