COVID-19 day 94 : 📈 869,172 cases; 49,963 deaths : 23 April 2020
COVID-19 day 94 : 📈 869,172 cases; 49,963 deaths : 23 April 2020
Dairy farmers in FL, GA work with grocery chains to donate milk; focus on deaths in care homes; might state officials that clamor to re-open be thinking about unemployment checks?
It’s day 94 since the first case of coronavirus disease was announced in the United States. Another magic (divisible by 100) marker to come Friday. This is the somewhat-light-due-to-cat-bite edition.*
Some days, it’s not possible to process the crazy.
Why are Republican governors clamoring to "open" their states for business? Why is Trump? Here's one theory: unemployment compensation (which Congress has supplemented).
If there is a stay-at-home order or "essential business" limit... then the unemployed are eligible for unemployment comp. BUT IF there is no mandate that a business be closed... suddenly unemployment claims vanish if someone is worried about working because that is a choice, it's "voluntary".
Think about the meat packing plants that have been demonstrated to be breeding grounds for the virus. (There’s another report in this edition.) I know that each state's unemployment comp laws are different, but this seems like a reasonable Occam's Razor explanation.
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Thursday, Johns Hopkins reported 869,172 (842,629) cases and 49,963 (46,784) deaths in the US, an increase of 3.15% and 6.8%, respectively, since Wednesday. A week ago, the daily numbers increased by 4.97% and 7.43%, respectively.
That case rate is 262.59 per 100,000; the death rate is 150.94 per million.
One week ago, the case rate was 202.85 per 100,000; the death rate was 100.56 per million.
🤓Recommended reading
That Discomfort You're Feeling Is Grief. Harvard Business Review, 16 April 2020. Interview with David Kessler, co-author with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, On Grief and Grieving.
🔬Research and medical news
All available evidence to date suggests that the virus has a natural animal origin and is not a manipulated or constructed virus.
Origin of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus causing COVID-19. WHO Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Situation Report – 94, 23 April 2020.
Special Report: As virus advances, doctors rethink rush to ventilate. Reuters, 23 April 2020.
Remdesivir, a drug thought to be one of the best prospects for treating Covid-19, failed to have any effect in the first full trial… It is one of the drugs Donald Trump claimed was “promising”.
First trial for potential Covid-19 drug shows it has no effect. The Guardian, 23 April 2020.
🎦Recommended viewing / listening
In this episode, KNKX’s Will James talks with western Washington researchers “who saw the alarming first signs of a problem” and health care providers “who had to muddle through life-or-death decisions with little information to go on.”
Episode 10: Learning As We Go. KNKX, Transmission podcast, 22 April 2020.
* About the cat bite. Tawna made an awful sound, like she was in pain. She was looking out the window. I put my right hand on her back and left on her chest, then peered out. Spotted the black cat in the bushes about the same time Tawna chomped. Mike says he’s not personally experienced a bite this deep. Antibiotics will be at the drug store Friday morning, the after-hours nurse promised. Currently on ice, typing one-handed. Heh.
⓵ Around the country
California: How is it that San Francisco has not had its hospitals overrun? Has had a fraction of the deaths that have faced NYC? On 15 March, with St. Paddy’s Day parades (and boozing) as a nightmare vision, regional health officials gathered with their legal teams to pound out the nation’s first stay-at-home order.
And they were able to move swiftly because they had a secret weapon: a decades-long alliance seeded in the early days of the AIDS epidemic that shields them from political blowback when they need to make difficult decisions… County health officers in California have immense power to act independently in the interest of public health, including the authority to issue legally binding directives. They don’t need permission from the governor or mayors or county supervisors to act.
Florida & Georgia: Dairy farmers and grocery store chains are joining forces for good. Farmers have cows that have to be milked daily; grocery milk plants have excess milk because food service sales have evaporated. In Florida, it’s Publix. In Georgia, it’s Kroger’s Atlanta Division.
Iowa: Tyson Foods has closed its largest pork processing plant after pressure from public officials. The Black Hawk County health department has linked the Tyson plant to half of the county’s COVID-19 cases.
New Jersey estimates that 40% of its deaths are related to care homes. Last week, “the bodies of 17 residents were found in a makeshift storage area” in New Jersey.
Pennsylvania: In the southeastern corner of Pennsylvania, on the Delaware River, 43 men volunteered to live and work in a factory that makes the raw material for PPEs. For 28 days.
In the US, last week the CDC changed its guidance on reporting deaths related to COVID-19 to include presumed positive individuals. But states do their own thing, as the Washington Post story illustrates.
All 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands have identified COVID-19 cases and all have at least one death.
⓶ Around the world
Almost half of all cases in the world - more than 1.2 million – are in the European Region, WHO reported on Thursday.
Of the 10 countries across the globe who have reported the highest number of new cases in the past 24 hours, six are in the European Region…
According to estimates from countries in the European Region, up to half of those who have died from COVID-19 were resident in long-term care facilities. This is an unimaginable human tragedy…
This pandemic has shone a spotlight on the overlooked and undervalued corners of our society.
In Europe, nursing home cases are not included in official statistics. At one point in time, France included them but the WHO report specifically mentions that they are no longer included. This means that the official death toll is as much as 50% too low.
Fully a third of the cases are in the United States, which accounts for 4.25% of the world’s population.
The number of affected countries/territories/areas jumped from 29 at the end of February to 208 today. Although early reports tied the outbreak to a seafood (“wet”) market in Wuhan, China, analyses of genomic data suggest that the virus may have developed elsewhere.
⓷ Politics, economics and COVID-19
State officials report testing capacity bottlenecks; shortages of materials such as swabs; and insufficient staff to trace infections.
Over 26.5 million Americans have sought unemployment benefits over the last five weeks, confirming that all the jobs gained during the longest employment boom in U.S. history have been wiped out as the novel coronavirus savages the economy.
Rick Bright is not going quietly into the dark.
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.
🌎 23 April
Globally: 2 544 792 confirmed (73 657 - new) with175 694 deaths (6689 - new)
The Americas: 957 402 confirmed (32 111 - new) with 47 812 deaths (3038 - new)
Johns Hopkins interactive dashboard (11.00 pm Pacific)
Global confirmed: 2,710,238 (2,629,801)
Total deaths: 190,872 (183,454)
Recovered: 743,151 (713,537)
🇺🇸 23 April
CDC: 828,441 (802,583) cases and 46379 (44,575) deaths
Johns Hopkins*: 869,172 (842,629) cases and 49,963 (46,784) deaths
State data*: 861,756 (829,168) identified cases and 44,132 (42,217) deaths
Total tested (US, Johns Hopkins): 4,684,300 (4,482,434)
View infographic and data online: total cases, cases/100,000 and deaths/million.
* Johns Hopkins data, ~11.00 pm Pacific.
State data include DC, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands
See US (state/territory) total cases, cases/100,000 and deaths/million as infographics.
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 Daily Memo :: Daily Memo archives
🦠 COVID-19 @ WiredPen.com
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