Coronavirus, by
the Numbers, As I See It. Mid November
The number of new cases has been increasing at an accelerated rate. At the end of September, the new cases per day was 40,000 increasing by around 2% per day. By the end of October it peaked at 101,000 while growing an average of 4% per day. Now in mid November we have hat 9 days of over 100,000 and it is growing at 6% per day, hitting 161,000 yesterday, Nov 11.
Even if the percentage increase does not increase any more, we are projecting out to 400,000 new cases per day by month’s end. If only 1% die, that will be 4,000 dead per day. This puts the one estimate of 400,000 dead by Feb 1 as optimistically low. https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america?view=total-deaths&tab=trend
For a comparison, on April 8th, 2020, there weren’t 400,000 cases in the whole country.
Only one state is officially in decline in active cases, Georgia. I believe this is due to Georgia was not tracking recovered cases very well and her real number of active cases is close to 55,000, not 150,000. But they seem to be working that problem.
ALL states have had increases in new case numbers. Comparing Oct 27 to Nov 9 against Oct 12 to Oct 26, we have the following increases.
The least growth:
Louisiana 13.15%
Hawaii 13.97%
Mississippi 14.73%
South Carolina 16.49%
North Carolina 18.01%
Tennessee 21.48%
Alabama 22.13%
Arkansas 25.51%
Montana 28.06%
Nebraska 29.94%
The most growth:
Ohio 91.13%
Illinois 104.41%
New Hampshire 105.90%
Kansas 108.44%
Connecticut 108.75%
Colorado 116.31%
Michigan 128.94%
Minnesota 137.60%
Iowa 159.92%
Maine 239.03%
There are many studies on why the virus is increasing so quickly now. One is that people have been having outdoor events and have now moved indoors. While still maintaining the 6 feet and mask guidelines. However time and ventilation is also a factor. Spending 3 hours indoors with an infected person has a higher percentage chance of transmission than 3 hours out doors with the same person.
This has been corroborated by case tracking in my county, Montgomery in Pennsylvania
Another study shows that 80% of the infections come from “super spreader” events. Which is defined as 1 person infecting 6 or more in a single event. The White House Rose Garden event is an example. One person infected 12, then cased a bloom of cases that infected others.
Minimizing contact is the only true answer, wherever possible. The guide lines are just that, guidelines. They reduce the percentages, but not to zero.
In other news: Pfizer has announced 90% efficacy in their early vaccine trials. The trial involved some 40,000 participants, 94 in the control group contracted the virus, while the inoculated group on had 9.
VP Pence announced that Pfizer was part of “Operation Warp Speed”, where the US Government provided seed money to various companies to develop the vaccine. However this was repudiated by Pfizer. 8 companies have received 11 billion dollars in an attempt to develop a vaccine, Pfizer is not one of them.
Pfizer, a pharmaceutical company based in Ireland, is developing a vaccine without US Government assistance. The US government does have a contract to buy 100 million doses for 2 billion dollars from Pfizer. With an option to buy 500 million more.
I think it speaks volumes of the lack of interest by the administration that their Covid Czar doesn’t know where they are spending billions of dollars.
A clinical trial with Hydroxychloriquine has been completed showing no more efficacy than placebo by testing 479 patients. All the patients in the trial that were all demonstrating respiratory symptoms due to Covid. Hopefully this will put that debate to rest.
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