COVID-19 day 130 : 📈 1,746,019 cases; 102,809 deaths : 29 May 2020
Trump attacks China and WHO in one breath, Hong Kong in another; case study, Mongolia (no community transmission)
It’s day 130 since the first case of coronavirus disease was announced in the United States. It’s been difficult to focus on COVID-19 as the week came to a close, because of the death of George Floyd. (And a reminder that the world’s deadliest pandemic, which killed an estimated 2 million, didn’t start in Spain.)
🦠Friday, Johns Hopkins reported 1,746,019 (1,721,753) cases and 102,809 (101,616) deaths in the US, an increase of 1.41% (1.33%) and 1.14% (1.19%), respectively, since Thursday (Wednesday). A week ago, the daily numbers increased by 1.53% and 1.38%, respectively.
The seven-day average: 20,655 (20,638) cases and 972 (988) deaths
Percent of cases leading to death: 5.89% (5.90%).
Today’s case rate is 527.49 per 100,000; the death rate, 31.06 per 100,000.
One week ago, the case rate was 483.81 per 100,000; the death rate, 29.00 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
This op-ed in the Washington Post stitches together COVID-19 and the current outrage about the death of George Floyd. It is well-written satire. This is my only recommended reading for the day. Please give it your time.
If we talked about what is happening in Minneapolis the same way we talk about events in a foreign country, here’s how the Western media would cover it. The quotes and those “quoted” in the piece below are fictional…
Now, as the country marks 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus pandemic, the former British colony finds itself in a downward spiral of ethnic violence. The fatigue and paralysis of the international community are evident in its silence, America experts say.
How Western media would cover Minneapolis if it happened in another country. Washington Post, 29 May 2020.
Sections (no jump links, sorry!)
1, Around the country and the world; 2, Politics, economics and COVID-19;
3, Case count; 4, What you can do and resources
⓵ Around the country and the world
✅ Mongolia joins Vietnam as an example of a country that took this disease seriously in January and, consequently, protected both their citizens and their economies. Mongolia had “zero deaths … zero local transmissions” as of 18 May 2020
With a population of approximately 3,278,000, as of 29 May, Mongolia had zero deaths and 179 cases, according to the Johns Hopkins database.
Vietnam, with a population of approximately 97,339,000 had zero deaths and 328 cases, according to the Johns Hopkins database.
✅ For the sixth day in a row, the seven-day average has been fewer than 1,000 deaths per day (Johns Hopkins). It has only been three days for the COVID-tracking project.
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⓶ Politics, economics and COVID-19
❌ The biggest COVID-19 political news on Friday, both domestically and globally, was President Trump’s announcement that he would cut the US ties with the World Health Organization.
In a speech in the White House Rose Garden which was chiefly devoted to castigating China, and threatening new sanctions over its actions in Hong Kong, the president claimed that “China has total control over” the WHO.
Like this news story from The Guardian, most reporting was “this is what he said” not “does he have this authority” or “what does this mean.”
Foreign Policy follows the traditional “he said / she said” format, with predictable quotes from public health officials who served in the Obama Administration. [No wonder there is a sizable number of people who don’t trust news media.] I label this the “easy to write” story: just phone or email your contacts on “the other side” and you’ve written a “balanced” story that an editor can rubberstamp.
Partial and misleading context from the LA Times (emphasis and commentary added):
The U.S. is the largest source of financial support to the WHO and its exit is expected to significantly weaken the organization (what’s the source? who said? this is “trust me” reporting).
There is no source for either claim, and both are claims not fact.
Here are the numbers. The WHO assessment is based on a country's wealth and population. We are the third largest country in the world.
Assessed contributions have declined as an overall percentage of the Programme Budget and have, for several years, accounted for less than one quarter of the Organization’s financing… WHO assessed contributions are due and payable as of 1 January each year.
WHO Biennial Assessment (2020 USD & 2020 CHF)
Total assessment: 246,763,095 USD and 247,269,59 CHF
Total US assessment: 57,883,460 USD and 59,099,01 CHF which is 2020 assessment of $115,766,920 (we are six months late in this payment) and 2021 assessment of $115,766,924 (we account for approximately one-quarter of the WHO member assessment each year)
US balance outstanding 31 Dec 2019 (we are in arrears from 2019): 71,061,798 USD & 67,839,678 CHF
After attacking WHO and claiming it was too close to China, Trump then attacked Hong Kong.
We will take action to revoke Hong Kong’s preferential treatment as a separate customs and travel territory from the rest of China
✅ In positive news, public pressure on the Trump Administration led to a reversal of the decision to end COVID-19 related National Guard service at the 89-day mark.
⓷ 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.
🌎 29 May
Globally: 5 701 337 cases (107 740 new) with 357 688 deaths (4 354 new)
The Americas: 2 613 092 cases (56 647 new) with 151 212 deaths (2 800 new)
US: 1 675 258 cases (16 362 new) with 98 889 deaths (770 new)
Johns Hopkins interactive dashboard (11.00 pm Pacific)
Global confirmed: 5,930,096 (5,813,997)
Total deaths: 365,015 (360,397)
Recovered: 2,495,712 (2,418,865 )
🇺🇸 29 May
CDC: 1,719,827 (21,304 new) cases and 101,711 (1,265 new) deaths
Johns Hopkins*: 1,746,019 (1,721,753) cases and 102,809 (101,616) deaths
State data*: 1,737,124 (1,712,782) identified cases and 96,907 (94,462) deaths
Total tested (US, Johns Hopkins): 16,099,515 (15,646,041)
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.
⓸ 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