COVID-19 day 115 : 📈 1,417,889 cases; 85,906 deaths : 14 May 2020
One big thing: when will COVID-19 go away and what does that mean for society? Cases rising in Brazil; US, Russia and the UK are now 1-2-3
It’s day 115 since the first case of coronavirus disease was announced in the United States. In terms of total case numbers, which has crossed the 300,000 mark, the world looks like this:
⓵ One big thing
At the Financial Time’s Global Boardroom digital conference on Wednesday, Soumya Swaminathan, the chief scientist at the World Health Organization, reported that:
“It will be four or five years before Covid-19 is under control, the World Health Organization’s chief scientist predicted on Wednesday, in a bleak assessment of the difficulties that lie ahead. Many factors will determine how long and to what extent the virus remains a threat, including whether it mutates, what containment measures are put in place, and whether an effective vaccine is developed…
In a WHO media briefing, also on Wednesday, Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, elaborated in questioning at the end of the event:
“This virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities and this virus may never go away. HIV has not gone away.
Earlier, Ryan focused on the tension between economics and health.
"If you reopen in the presence of a high degree of virus transmission, then that transmission may accelerate….
"If that virus transmission accelerates and you don't have the systems to detect it, it will be days or weeks before you know something has gone wrong," he said. "That has more danger for the economic system than it actually has on the health system in a sense…
"We should not be waiting to see if opening of lockdowns has worked by counting the cases in the ICUs or counting the bodies in the morgue. That is not the way to know something has gone wrong," he said. "The way to know the disease is coming back is to have community-based surveillance, to be testing and to know that the problem is coming back and then be able to adjust your public health measures accordingly."
❌ News reports continue to position politicians and pubic health professionals as opposing teams (a la soccer or football) and pay little to no regard for how we plan to behave.
The European Union pushed on Wednesday for a gradual reopening of borders within the bloc that have been shut by the pandemic, saying it was not too late to salvage some of the summer tourist season while still keeping people safe.
But public health experts say extreme caution is needed to avoid new outbreaks. Ryan said opening land borders was less risky than easing air travel, which was a “different challenge”.
✅ Behavioral data imply that governments telling people to stay home may not have been the hammer to the economy that politicians publicly state that it was.
As FiveThirtyEight points out, in many states, we stayed home before stay-at-home orders.
If you look at movement data in a cross-section of states President Trump won in the southeast in 2016 — Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Kentucky — 23 percent of people were staying home on average during the first week of March. That proportion jumped to 47 percent a month later across these six states… Almost uniformly across these states, people started staying home beginning on March 14.
In only one of these six, Louisiana, did the stay-at-home order coincide with a change in movement. Louisiana was first.
Polls consistently show widespread support for staying at home (08 May, 07 May, 01 May, 23 April, 14 April, 30 March).
Here’s what else the polls are telling us: Americans are generally uninterested in returning to normal, and they tend to believe federal health experts, who continue to warn against a swift reopening of the economy. (08 May)
The adage “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink” applies here.
Governments can lift restrictions on public activities, even with modifications to improve physical distancing, but that does not mean most of us are ready to pay the psychological - and potentially health - price of visiting that establishment.
🏥 In late April, Jean Twenge, professor of Psychology, San Diego State University, asked 2,032 U.S. adults how often they felt sad or nervous in the last month.
2020: 28% would screen positive for serious mental illness, compared to 3.4% in 2018
2020: 70% met criteria for moderate to serious mental illness, compared to 22% in 2018.
This doesn’t necessarily mean we should open up the economy to preserve mental health… It does mean policymakers need to be prepared for a potentially unprecedented number of Americans needing mental health services. Just as hospitals risked running out of ventilators during a surge of COVID-19 patients, the mental health care system might be quickly overwhelmed.
The findings of this study are preliminary. Mental distress among U.S. adults during the COVID-19 pandemic, PsyArXiv Preprint.
‼️Money is an easy way to measure things. It is not an accurate measurement of motivation, happiness, or societal and personal values.
⓶ Case count
🦠Thursday, Johns Hopkins reported 1,417,889 (1,390,746) cases and 85,906 (84,136) deaths in the US, an increase of 1.95% and 2.10%, respectively, since Wednesday. A week ago, the daily numbers increased by 2.31% and 3.05%, respectively.
The seven-day average: 22988 (23163) cases and 1770 (1749) deaths
Percent of cases leading to death: 6.06 % (6.05 %).
Today’s case rate is 428.36 per 100,000; the death rate, 25.95 per 100,000.
One week ago, the case rate was 379.75 per 100,000; the death rate, 22.86 per 100,000.
Note: numbers in (.) are from the prior day and are provided for context. I include the seven-day average because dailies vary so much in the course of a week, particularly over a weekend
There is a lag between being contagious and showing symptoms, between having a test and getting its results. The virus was not created in a lab and the weight of evidence is it was not released intentionally. Although early reports tied the outbreak to a seafood (“wet”) market in Wuhan, China, analyses of genomic data in January suggested that the virus might have developed elsewhere.
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🌎 14 May
Globally: 4 248 389 cases (77 965 - new) with 292 046 deaths (4 647 - new)
The Americas: 1 819 553 cases (37 989 - new) with 109 121 deaths (2 617 - new)
Lesotho reported its first case of COVID-19.
Johns Hopkins interactive dashboard (11.00 pm Pacific)
Global confirmed: 4,444,670 ( 4,347,921 - yesterday)
Total deaths: 302,493 (297,220 - yesterday)
Recovered: 1,588,858 (1,549,343 - yesterday
🇺🇸 14 May
CDC: 1,384,930 (20,869 - new) cases and 83,947 (1,701 - new) deaths
Johns Hopkins*: 1,417,889 (1,390,746) cases and 85,906 (84,136) deaths
State data*: 1,407,507 (1,382,304) identified cases and 80,084 (78,343) deaths
Total tested (US, Johns Hopkins): 10,341,775 (9,974,831)
View infographic and data online: total cases and cases and deaths/100,000.
* Johns Hopkins data, ~11.00 pm Pacific.
State data include DC, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands
⓷ What you can do
Stay home as much as possible, period.
Digestive problems may be a symptom.
Resources
👓 See COVID-19 resource collection at WiredPen.
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🦠 COVID-19 @ WiredPen.com
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