COVID-19 day 129 : 📈 1,721,753 cases; 101,616 deaths : 28 May 2020
Two more data sources report 100,000 US deaths; "small business" loans have gone to public companies that paid no income tax; PA GOP didn't tell Democrats when state legislator tested positive
It’s day 129 since the first case of coronavirus disease was announced in the United States. The CDC and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control reported more than 100,000 deaths today.
Here’s another 100,000 deaths commemorative front page and interactive graphic:
As we approach my three-month anniversary (!) of sending this daily missive (01 June 2020), I’m evaluating the best way to move forward so that this conversation remains relevant (and I get more sleep!). In those early days, there was an information deficit. Then there was an information glut, accompanied by many people “flooding the zone with 💩”. And now we wait to see what the summer brings.
Like the historian Heather Cox Richard, whose date-as-headline model I adapted for this newsletter, I believe there is merit in a daily journal or report. (Also, see the Watergate Journal - a blog-on-paper before there was such a thing.)
Going forward, I am leaning towards a daily report that is more focused. Rather than the shotgun approach of “what’s happening” in science, the US, the world, I will probably pick one. Unless, of course, there is breaking news of some sort. I would like to do more “One big thing” mini-essays. (Not daily!)
I will continue the numbers reports; Mike (my husband) has automated the data gathering and manipulation so that mostly I “copy and paste” from Excel here.
I understand that my attempt to filter the flood has helped many of you manage the flood. I am considering the Axios approach: provide summaries here that link to more detail at WiredPen. For example, I am toying with the idea of one blog post each week for the US, updated daily, that provides key news for each state. With states listed in alphabetical order, of course.
‼️Please tell me what you’d like to see: respond to this email, comment on the newsletter on the website, or talk to me @kegill on Twitter. Or you can answer this updated reader survey! ✅
🦠Thursday, Johns Hopkins reported 1,721,753 (1,699,176) cases and 101,616 (100,418) deaths in the US, an increase of 1.33% (1.09%) and 1.19% (1.52%), respectively, since Wednesday (Tuesday). A week ago, the daily numbers increased by 1.64% and 1.35%, respectively.
The seven-day average: 20,638 (21,046) cases and 988 (997) deaths
Percent of cases leading to death: 5.90% (5.91%).
Today’s case rate is 520.16 per 100,000; the death rate, 30.7 per 100,000.
One week ago, the case rate was 476.52 per 100,000; the death rate, 28.61 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
“When we proposed testing everyone in a census district, it was met with enormous obstacles. Where? Everything’s shut. Who? There’s no volunteers. There’s no protocols, there’s no supplies, there’s no labs. There’s no systems to get data back to people,” Havlir recalled. “And think of the paradox of this. We’ve told people to shelter in place, to stay home, and now we’re saying, ‘Oh no, please come out and get a test.’”…
The testing project is proving to be a national model, because of the challenges the organizers overcame and what it showed about the spread of Covid-19…
Jacobo, an affordable housing advocate who lives in the census tract and served as the Latino press secretary for Bernie Sanders’ presidential run, likened the effort to political work. “This was really employing a campaigning methodology, thinking of it as if it were a ballot measure or a candidate we were pushing, but really it was the testing,” he said. “What that translates into is door knocking on all 1,400 doors of this census tract, flyering all 1,400 homes in this census tract, and phone banking.”
When hard data are ‘heartbreaking’: Testing blitz in San Francisco shows Covid-19 struck mostly low-wage workers. STAT News, 28 May 2020.
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
✅ California. All registered voters will be able to vote-by-mail in the November election to avoid the risk of COVID-19 (contracting or spreading). California has been moving towards 100% vote-by-mail for several years, so this step is not as great as it would be for many. Colorado, Oregon and Washington vote by mail, with voting centers in each county for those who need assistance.
✅ Massachusetts. The 124th Boston Marathon, which had been rescheduled from 20 April to 14 September, has been canceled. There will be a virtual race between 07 and 14 September; “participants who provide proof that they completed 26.2 miles within six hours during that period will receive a medal, runner's bib and shirt.” This is the second time the race has been canceled or postponed; the first was “in 1918 when a military relay race was held during World War I.”
As of Thursday, 12,634 COVID-19 cases have been reported in Boston; 627 patients have died.
❌ Pennsylvania. On March 24, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen distributed a memo directing DOJ officials to “consider prosecuting certain ‘purposeful exposure or infection of others with COVID-19’ under federal terrorism-related statutes.”
The same day, news organizations reported that a 57 year old man was “facing charges of terroristic threats, simple assault by physical menace, disorderly conduct and harassment” for “deliberately” coughing near a man wearing a mask at the grocery store. The man was not infected; he was merely a bully.
But what if the purposeful exposure is secret? Here’s what we learned this week.
Reportedly, the Pennsylvania Republican caucus was aware that a state House member had tested positive for COVID-19. At least one GOP House member went into quarantine.
But no one told the Democratic caucus. So House members who had been in committee meetings sitting near someone who had been infected or exposed did not know they should be in quarantine. The state attorney general, a Democrat, does not seem inclined to charge anyone with a crime.
✅ Washington. Bloomberg Businessweek plans to track businesses in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood for “as long as” a year to gain insight into what “cities will look like on the other side of the Covid crisis.” There are currently six stories.
⓶ Around the world
Pay close attention to the Y axis as this isn’t a linear scale. That uptick in cases in South Korea reflects less than 20 cases and the uptick in deaths, about 1. On the other hand, the US is adding 20,000 new cases a day but new deaths have fallen to about 1,000 a day.
⓷ Politics, economics and COVID-19
This should make you very angry. Contact your Congressman.
Reuters has discovered that “110 publicly traded companies have each received $4 million or more in emergency aid” from the “small business” fund Congress passed. Not what most of us think of as “small business,” eh?
Of the almost 110 recipients of $4 million or more, Reuters found some 46 paid no U.S. corporate tax for the last year. There are many reasons for this, not all to do with tax avoidance.
TWELVE that received more than $104 million in loans “used offshore havens to cut their tax bills.”
One is one too many.
“This pandemic has laid bare a corporate culture in large companies to avoid paying taxes in profitable years but come to the government for handouts in a crisis,” [Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)] said in response to Reuters’ reporting.
Don’t buy Zagg phone accessories ever again.
⓸ Case count
There is a lag between being contagious and showing symptoms, between having a test and getting its results. There is also a lag in reports of cases and deaths making their way into daily results; this lag is visible in predictable declines for both in weekend reports.
🌎 28 May
Globally: 5 593 631 cases (104 505 new) with 353 334 deaths (4 221 new)
The Americas: 2 556 479 cases (60 254 new) with 148 412 deaths (2 584 new)
US: 1 658 896 cases (24 886 new) with 98 119 deaths (590 new)
Johns Hopkins interactive dashboard (11.00 pm Pacific)
Global confirmed: 5,813,997 (5,695,155)
Total deaths: 360,397 (355,688)
Recovered: 2,418,865 (2,351,177)
🇺🇸 28 May
CDC: 1,698,523 (19,680) cases and 100,446 (1,415) deaths
Johns Hopkins*: 1,721,753 (1,699,176) cases and 101,616 (100,418) deaths
State data*: 1,712,782 (1,690,216) identified cases and 95,714 (94,462) deaths
Total tested (US, Johns Hopkins): 15,646,041 (15,192,481)
Take with a grain of salt. The CDC and at least 11 other states have begun combining the number of tests for active infections with the number of antibody tests, which boosts the total number of tests and thus drops the percentage who test positive.
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
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.
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