COVID-19 day 124 : 📈 1,622,612 cases; 97,087 deaths : 23 May 2020
Boris Johnson's delay in calling for a lockdown led to the UK having the most deaths in Europe (total not per capita); Herz files for bankruptcy protection; the Sunday NY Times front page
It’s day 124 since the first case of coronavirus disease was announced in the United States. On Sunday, we honor our war dead and unofficially kick off summer.
On Monday, we will mourn again. That’s when the official COVID-19 death count for the United States will cross 100,000.
A weekend light edition.
🦠Saturday, Johns Hopkins reported 1,622,612 (1,601,434) cases and 97,087 (96,007) deaths in the US, an increase of 1.32% and 1.12%, respectively, since Friday. A week ago, the daily numbers increased by 1.69% and 1.35%, respectively.
The seven-day average: 22,104 (22 577) cases and 1,190 (1,206) deaths
Percent of cases leading to death: 5.98% (6.0%).
Today’s case rate is 490.21 per 100,000; the death rate, 29.33 per 100,000.
One week ago, the case rate was 443.47 per 100,000; the death rate, 26.81 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.
🤓 Recommended reading
How the world’s premier public-health agency was handcuffed. The CDC has been absent with leave during the spread of covid-19. The Economist, 23 May 2020.
The case for letting the restaurant industry die. New Yorker, 22 May 2020
The inescapable pressure of being a woman on Zoom. Vox, 20 May 2020
Your quarantine experience, reviewed like a hotel. Washington Post, 15 May 2020
🔬 Research and medical news
Antimalarial drug touted by President Trump is linked to increased risk of death in coronavirus patients, study says. Washington Post, 22 May 2020.
An analysis of 96,000 patients shows those treated with hydroxychloroquine were also more likely to suffer irregular heart rhythms.Scientists Warn CDC Testing Data Could Create Misleading Picture Of Pandemic. NPR. 21 May 2020.
Total test numbers are wrong; antibody testing is being included with tests for active infections (PCR tests).The plight of essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lancet, 23 May 2020.
💃🏼 Life hack
WHO introduced advanced search for its COVID-19 information that incorporates natural language queries.
😎 Brighten your day
Astrology memes according to “shit kids say.” [Facebook link]
Sections (no jump links, sorry!)
1, Around the country; 2, Around the world; 3, Politics, economics and COVID-19;
4, Case count; 5, What you can do and resources
⓵ Around the country
It’s not just the print edition. The home page has an animation and the digital story might break your heart.
Outside of the northeast (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York), the hardest hit area of the country on a per capita death basis is the District of Columbia ( 60.50/100,000 population).
The region is not ready to open because the percent of tests that are positive remains above the federal guideline.
The latest celebrity coronavirus cases, a sports giant and the head of the Center for American Progress, are both from the DC-area.
⓶ Around the world
Just as there are stories in the US about how many people died because the federal response was muddled and late, that theme has now appeared across the pond.
New research by the Imperial College London and Oxford University used reverse modeling to estimate that 11,000 people had been infected on 02 March 2020, the first day that Boris Johnson held the Cobra meeting on Covid-19.
This new model estimates that COVID-19 infections soared from 200,000 to 1.5 million in the nine days before the country locked down. Consequently, the UK had more infections when it went into lockdown than France, Germany, Italy or Spain when they took that action.
As a result, the UK has the most identified deaths in Europe but not the most deaths per capita. That is Belgium (79.70 versus 54.15 per 100,000 population).
In addition, British statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter has estimated that only 5-15% of those who have died would not have lived to see 2021.
This flies in the face of one of the key arguments of the “lockdown sceptics”: that the virus is mainly killing off those that were on their way out anyway…
His reduced estimate was partly based on research carried out by University College London and published in The Lancet, showing that even among the over-85s with at least three comorbidities, we would still only expect 1 in 4 to die in the next year without coronavirus.
Please take a moment and share this newsletter with two other people! ✅
⓷ Politics, economics and COVID-19
✅ Saturday’s Axios newsletter focuses on the pandemic's effect on small business and the government's evolving response.
❌ Hertz files for bankruptcy protection.
⓸ Case count
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.
🌎 23 May
Globally: 5 103 006 cases (109 536 new) with 333 401 deaths (5 663 new)
The Americas: 2 282 488 cases (62 221 new) with 135 184 deaths (3 579 new)
Johns Hopkins interactive dashboard (11.00 pm Pacific)
Global confirmed: 5,313,816 (5,213,557 yesterday)
Total deaths: 342,141 (338,232 yesterday)
Recovered: 2,112,864 (2,058,237 yesterday)
🇺🇸 23 May
CDC: 1,595,885 (24,268 new) cases and 96,002 (1,852 new) deaths
Johns Hopkins*: 1,622,612 (1,601,434) cases and 97,087 (96,007) deaths
Seven-day average: 1,553,740 (1,531,627) cases and 93,291 (92,100) deathsState data*: 1,613,894 (1,591,475) identified cases and 91,261 (90,156) deaths
Total tested (US, Johns Hopkins): 13,784,786 (13,398,624)
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
⓹ 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.
📝 Subscribe to Kathy’s COVID-19 Memo :: COVID-19 Memo archives
🦠 COVID-19 @ WiredPen.com
🌐 Global news
📊 Visualizations: US, World