Coronavirus, the Mid June Edition
5,235. My spreadsheet posted this number without comment, my internal music did not do a fanfare. Out of habit, I then looked at the calculated* number of active cases. And noted in satisfaction that the total dropped into the high 600,000's.
Then it truly hit me.
5,235. On Memorial Day, the official count of new Covid cases, NATION WIDE, was just 5,235!
Whoa....
I know I am over emphasizing this. But you have to understand, I am a numbers guy. Numbers tell me stories. And I have been reading this story 15 months. I have now turned a page to reveal the final chapter. The American medical system, the hero of this story, after dealing with tragedy, loss, adversity, and incompetency, is working towards the final win. To use a military metaphor, this is D-Day at Normandy. We are now on the ground and working towards the final defeat of the villain of this story.
Then for an epilogue, a Marshall plan, to save the rest of the world. This time with the help of strong allies.
Let me put this in context. First of all, having a plunge in new cases over a weekend, especially a holiday weekend, is not new, but an aberration of of the statistical accumulation and reporting. (boy, was that pompous...) More people caught C-19 than was reported. They will cycle through the system of testing and reporting through the rest of the week. Typically Thursdays have spikes in the numbers. And by Thursday, the number had risen to 17,821. Which was down 22% from the previous Thursday at 22,800.
But the last time I saw a number of new cases with only 4 digits, even on a Sunday, was...
...
Never...
I didn't start logging "New Cases" until Sept. 2020. I did a switch over from reported "Active Cases" to "New Cases" to put some realism into inflated numbers that was reported as currently infected. On Sept 21, 2020, we had 36,372 new cases. At that time the new case number was increasing about 2%, per day. That is a doubling rate of 36 days. 30 days later, the number of new cases was 63,663, and increasing by 3% per day, now doubling every 24 days.
The peak was on January 8th, when the CDC reported 301,000 new cases, of which, around 2,800 would die.
When I first started, my wife asked me why I am doing this? My reply was, "How can I not do it?" It was later I realized that just keeping this to myself was a bit of perverse masochism. And so I started putting out out my reports, first as an email blast to friends, but eventually on the more formal blog post format.
And for the record, looking back at semi-official sources, the last time we saw a 4 digit number of new cases, was Mar 23, 2020. At that time the number of new cases was growing about 25% per day.
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On June 6th, the estimated number of cases plunged below 500,000. Down from a million 3 weeks earlier. The last time we had that few active cases was April 10th, 2020. By Thursday, June 10th, the number was 428,000.
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The variants of C-19 will no longer be named after their location where first identified, like Kent, South Africa, Brazil or India, but by Greek letters. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta. So we no longer stigmatize the Africans, Brazilians or Indians, but the Greeks are fair game. ;)
There is an official variant identification, like for South Africa, but B.1.351 just doesn't roll off the tongue like "Beta".
Is this going to work? Or will it be Pi in the Psi? Or is Alpha nothing? Or will it Eta way at them?
I think I'll need to put a a Kappa on this.
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An update on the Seychelles Islands, population 98,000. Since it is an island and as close as possible to an isolated experiment with human subjects.
Recap: For most of 2020, The Seychelles shut down all travel, and from what I can see in the charts, had just one case of C-19 until December, 2020. From Dec to April they had between 0 to 50 new cases reported daily. From then to the end of April they fought the virus with lock downs and managed to vaccinate 62% of their population. On April 28, with only 610 active cases, they removed restrictions. Their vaccination rate was the highest in the world, and they had a vested interest in rebooting their tourist industry, they reopened the country.
And the cases exploded 175% to 1,068 in 6 days.
Then it got worse. The day after I reported on this, on May 5th, they added another 500 new cases in a single day. For comparison, if that percentage was applied to the USA, it would be like adding another 1,500,000 new cases in a single day. As mentioned above, the USA peaked at 301,000 in a single day.
It has declined since, to between 100 to 200 cases a day. Their vaccination rate is now 67%.
This comparison gives evidence that the shutdowns in the USA did prevent a massive pandemic. Back in Mar, 2020, we were projecting 8 million cases by the end of May. "Flattening the curve" reduced that to "only" a million.
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The controversy on if the the virus was a natural mutation or not is gaining traction in the media. First, to be clear, there is no new evidence bring this to the forefront.
Other than it "just happened", the theories are:
1) China created and released this virus deliberately
While China has zero regard for their people, they are not stupid. If this was an intentional release, they would have released it anywhere but next to one of their labs.
2) China created and released this virus accidentally.
Various geneticist's have done forensics on the virus and have found no evidence of tampering.
3) China was studying an unmodified version of the virus and it was released accidentally.
This could be true. There is no evidence one way or the other. China has not been very forthcoming to the investigators. If it is true, then China looks like bunch of idiots.
4) The US created the virus and released it in Wuhun to blame China as part of it's ongoing war with China.
....
So you'll hear more about this in the news, but what you won't hear is anything new.
As a side note, the above theories have been suggested for all of the disease outbreaks in the last 20 years. So nothing new there either.
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New Jersey has published information on "Breakthrough" cases of C-19. IE, people that have been vaccinated but got it anyway.
.06% of the vaccinated group got C-19 anyway. So 6 in 10,000 totaling 1,319 cases. 505 had symptoms, 92 were hospitalized, 14 died. The number of actual cases is probably higher for those who had C-19, but didn't seek help, as they had minor symptoms or did recognize them.
Compared to the expected 95% efficacy rate, this is excellent news. .06% is about 80 times better than 5%. Even if the number of "Breakthrough" cases is 10x that number, the efficacy rate is still much better than advertised.
72% of New Jersey is fully vaccinated and their new case numbers are around 200 per day, down from 400 per day 3 weeks ago.
I object to the media term "Breakthrough" cases. It reeks with hyperbole. It implies the virus is chiselling away at the vaccine wall. But what can you do?
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The Texas Experiment continues. The numbers now reflect the population differences. PA has 40% the population of Texas. The numbers represent the average daily new cases.
WeekEnding Texas PA12/14/2020 14,412 10,493 <- PA's worst week
1/11/2021 22,927 8,732 <-Texas's worst week
3/1/2021 7,113 2,614 <-Texas removes all restrictions
3/8/2021 5,413 2,487
3/15/2021 4,437 2,492
3/22/2021 3,647 2,976
3/29/2021 3,443 4,019
4/5/2021 2,816 4,063
4/12/2021 3,467 4,336
4/19/2021 3,013 4,782
4/26/2021 3,095 3,821
5/3/2021 3,106 3,190
5/10/2021 2,200 2,299
5/17/2021 2,075 1,762
5/24/2021 1,666 1,342
5/31/2021 1,234 794
6/7/2021 1,197 487
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The final data is in on traffic deaths in 2020. It was noted earlier that fatalities per mile were up, but overall miles traveled was down, so overall the roads were safer.
It turns out this was wishful thinking. Both deaths per mile AND total fatalities on the roads were up in 2020.
Total fatalities was up 8% (42,060) in 2020 over 2019, and the fatality rate per 100 million miles traveled is up 24%. People are taking advantage of the reduced traffic to drive at insane speeds.
One example is in Minnesota. In 2019, they issued 500 tickets for drivers going over 100mph. In 2020 that number was 1,068.
* the sum of the last 21 days of new cases, times 6% for serious and ICU cases
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