COVID-19 day 143 : 📈 2,023,347 cases; 113,820 deaths : 11 June 2020
Trump to hold first post-lockdown campaign rally in Tulsa next Friday; Arizona's largest health care system warns it could exceed capacity; German study validates mask effectiveness in reducing cases
It’s day 143 since the first case of coronavirus disease was announced in the United States. State departments of health reports crossed the 2 million case mark today.
Arizona is in trouble. Since the end of May, cases have exploded. Gov. Doug Ducey (R) lifted the state’s stay-at-home order on 15 May.
The reported number of cases for the past seven days: 8,511
The previous seven: 4,900
The prior seven: 2,448
And the prior seven: 2,641
The per capita case rate today is 429.5 per 100,000. It was 276.5 on 01 June and 109.4 on 01 May. On 07 June, 13% of tests were positive. On 17 May, only 6% were positive. These case numbers are not being driven by an increase in number of people tested.
Last week, Dr. Cara Christ, Arizona Department of Health Services director, asked hospitals to “prepare for crisis care, and to suspend elective surgeries if they are experiencing a shortage of staff or bed capacity.”
Also last week, Arizona's largest health system — Banner Health — “said ICU bed occupancy was growing, and that if current trends continued would exceed capacity.” The next day, Banner Health announced its nine ECMO machines, a specialty device to help patients breathe, were all occupied.
🦠Thursday, Johns Hopkins reported 2,023,347 (2,000,464) cases and 113,820 (112,924) deaths, an increase of 1.14% (1.06%) and 0.79% (0.83%), respectively, since Wednesday (Tuesday). A week ago, the daily numbers increased by 1.14 % and 0.97%, respectively.
The seven-day average: 21,478 (21,053) cases and 831 (970) deaths
Percent of cases leading to death: 5.63% (5.64%).
Today’s case rate is 611.28 per 100,000; the death rate, 34.39 per 100,000.
One week ago, the case rate was 565.75 per 100,000; the death rate, 32.69 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.
🔬 Research and medical news
[W]e find that face masks reduced the cumulative number of registered Covid-19 cases between 2.3% and 13% over a period of 10 days after they became compulsory. Assessing the credibility of the various estimates, we conclude that face masks reduce the daily growth rate of reported infections by around 40%.
Face Masks Considerably Reduce COVID-19 Cases in Germany: A Synthetic Control Method Approach. IZA – Institute of Labor Economics, June 2020.
And in today’s Situation Report, WHO references its 05 June updated guidance on masks:
WHO advises governments to encourage the use of fabric masks for the general public in areas of widespread transmission in settings where 1m physical distance cannot be maintained, and as part of a comprehensive approach to reduce transmission. WHO continues to support and advise decision makers on how to apply a risk-based approach when considering the use of masks for the general public.
🏥 In Chicago, a woman in her 20s has received a double-lung transplant at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago as part of her recovery from COVID-19. “Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of Northwestern’s lung transplant program, said organ transplantation may become more frequent for victims of the most severe forms of covid-19.”
This is the first known surgery of this kind in the US. In Austria in May, a 45-year-old woman stricken with COVID-19 received a lung transplant. In February, a 59-year-old man in China received a double lung transplant after becoming ill with COVID-19 in January.
Surgeons perform first known U.S. lung transplant for covid-19 patient. Washington Post, 11 June.
Sections (no jump links, sorry!)
1, Around the world; 2, Politics, economics and COVID-19; 3, Case count; 4, What you can do and resources
⓵ Around the world
⓶ Politics, economics and COVID-19
📣United Airlines to require passengers complete a health assessment before boarding and to pledge to wear a mask. .
❌ Again, you cannot make this stuff up.
Steve Huffman, a Republican state senator in Ohio, has been fired from his job as an emergency room doctor after asking earlier this week whether the “colored population” is being hit harder by the coronavirus pandemic because they “do not wash their hands as well as other groups.”
I remember when I moved to Philadelphia after graduate school. I was stunned at the overt racism I witnessed, which was very different from the racism of south Georgia. I naively thought racism evaporated after you crossed the Mason-Dixon line.
What’s incredible to me today, in 2020, is that men like Huffman are so lacking in self awareness and professional curiosity (there are reams of analyses on his question) that they think it’s “safe” to give the inside voice a public forum.
🆘 At a press conference on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said that “it's possible that Congress will need to do more in terms of the $600 unemployment insurance.” We don’t know how many people might be receiving this supplemental insurance because states aren’t reporting data to the Labor Department. We do know that at least 10 million people have received money from the fund, which expires the end of July.
In addition, “[w]e're not thinking about raising [interest] rates -- we're not even thinking about thinking about raising rates,” he said.
Millions of people won't get their old jobs back, “and there may not be a job for them for some time,” said Powell during the news conference… Powell reiterated that some demographic group, notably women, black and Hispanic workers, are bearing the brunt of the unemployment crisis.
❌ The Trump campaign is holding its first post-lockdown rally on 19 June in Tulsa, OK. In an interview with Seattle station KUOW, Tamara Keith of NPR talked about the campaign requiring attendees to sign a waiver should they contract COVID-19. Masks will not be required, she said.
The symbolism of holding a rally on Juneteenth in Tulsa, home of “one of the worst episodes of racial violence in US history” in 1921, isn’t tone deaf. It’s a feature.
Juneteenth is a commemoration of the end of slavery. On 19 June 1865, 2+ years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Union soldiers finally told the people of Texas that slaves were free.
Trump is planning additional rallies in Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and Texas.
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 reports containing weekend data.
🌎 11 June
Globally: 7 273 958 cases (128 419 new) with413 372 deaths (5 347 new)
The Americas: 3 485 245 cases (70 071 new) with189 544 deaths (3 681 new)
US: 1 968 331 cases (17 235 new) with 111 978 deaths (1 208 new)
Johns Hopkins interactive dashboard (11.00 pm Pacific)
Global confirmed: 7,514,559 (7,360,239)
Total deaths: 421,458 (416,201)
Recovered: 3,542,237 (3,454,80)
🇺🇸 11 June
CDC: 1,994,283 (20,486) cases and 112,967 (834) deaths
Johns Hopkins*: 2,023,347 (2,000,464) cases and 113,820 (112,924) deaths
State data*: 2,013,851 (1,991,613) identified cases and 107,811 (106,877) deaths
Total tested (US, Johns Hopkins): 21,933,301 (21,467,820)
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
📊 Visualizations: US, World
🌐 Global news(at WiredPen)
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