• Amid Talk of Reopening, Fauci Warns U.S. Not There Yet with COVID-19

    In an interview yesterday with the Associated Press, Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said opening up the nation on May 1 is “a bit overly optimistic.” His comments come a day after President Donald Trump announced a new reopening task force, meant to help guide the country back to economic health after the national COVID-19 30 April physical distancing campaign ends. In a heated back-and-forth with reporters, yesterday Trump said that only the president has the ability to call the shots on when and how to reopen the country. But Fauci said yesterday, “We have to have something in place that is efficient and that we can rely on, and we’re not there yet.” Meanwhile, governors yesterday and yesterday continued to outline their plans for reopening.

  • 5 Burning Questions about Tech Efforts to Track COVID-19 Cases

    The pitch from technology companies goes something like this: We can tap phone data to track Covid-19 infections in U.S. communities and swiftly warn people about potential exposure, all without ever compromising anyone’s privacy. Casey Ross writes in STAT that Apple and Google turned heads a few days ago when they announced a joint effort to bolster this public health service — a task known as contact tracing — by building software into smartphones that relies on Bluetooth technology to track users’ proximity to one another. Facebook is participating in a similar effort led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While their brands give them instant credibility in the business world, infectious disease experts aren’t convinced the technology offers a tidy solution to such a complicated public health problem.

  • EU to Unveil Virus Exit Plan, Hoping to Avoid Chaos and Medical System Collapse

    The European Union moved Wednesday to head off a chaotic and potentially disastrous easing of restrictions that are limiting the spread of the coronavirus, warning its 27 nations to move very cautiously as they return to normal life and base their actions on scientific advice. Lorne Cook writes in The Times of Israel that with Austria, the Czech Republic and Denmark already lifting some lockdown measures, the EU’s executive arm, the European Commission, was rushing out its roadmap for members of the world’s biggest trade bloc to coordinate an exit from the lockdowns, which they expect should take several months. Some 80,000 people have now died in Europe from the disease — about two-thirds of the global toll.

  • The Curve Appears to be Flattening — Now What?

    In his previous article, “How Will We Know When the COVID-19 Pandemic is Getting Better,” published on 26 March, Kenny Lin outlined 4 signs in the data we should look for: 1) Decrease in rate of growth of daily cases; 2) Decrease in absolute number of daily cases; 3) Decrease in rate of growth of daily deaths and absolute number of daily deaths; and 4) Decrease in hospital admissions and ventilator utilization. In a 13 April article in Medium, Lin writes that the good news is that #1, the number of new daily COVID-19 cases in the United States, seems to have plateaued at approximately 30,000/day across the country. In some states such as Michigan, the number of new daily cases appears to be declining. Now is not the time to let up, he says. That time is coming, but it is not here yet.

  • Two Million Could Lose Jobs in U.K. in the Coronavirus Lockdown

    Britain should prepare for tough times ahead, the chancellor warned yesterday as the financial watchdog predicted that the lockdown could leave more than two million people unemployed and shrink the economy by 35 per cent. Oliver Wright, Philip Aldrick, and Gurpreet Narwan write in The Times that in a bleak forecast, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said that net public sector borrowing would reach £273 billion, the largest single-year deficit since the Second World War. However, economists suggested that the damage could be even worse. They said the OBR’s prediction that the economy would bounce back quickly as soon as restrictions were lifted, resulting in an annual reduction in GDP of up to 13 per cent, was too optimistic.

  • Jury Still Out on Swedish Coronavirus Strategy

    Over the past few weeks, a huge amount of energy has been spent trying to prove Sweden’s more lenient approach to the coronavirus a failure. Freddy Sayers writes in Unherd that liberal news outlets in the U.S. have commissioned opinion pieces from Right-wing Swedish commentators accusing the country of a pivot to national chauvinism; President Trump has talked about the Swedish “herd” approach and how “they are suffering very, very badly“; and Twitter is full of apocalyptic charts that are shared thousands of times and which seem to prove beyond doubt that the Swedes should have locked down better, and sooner. The truth is, the Swedish epidemic is far from the out of control disaster its critics would like to believe. A clearer way of looking at death numbers in Sweden and other countries, courtesy of the excellent Our World in Data, is the daily trend of deaths per million. Here you get a good sense of the trajectories. All of the countries listed, except Sweden, have full national lockdowns. And yet Sweden is roughly in the middle of the pack. This is quite remarkable in itself, when set against the dominant narrative that lockdowns are the only thing capable of ‘flattening’ these curves and preventing tragedies that are many times worse.

  • Top Israeli Prof Claims Simple Stats Show Virus Plays Itself Out after 70 Days

    A prominent Israeli mathematician, analyst, and former general claims simple statistical analysis demonstrates that the spread of COVID-19 peaks after about 40 days and declines to almost zero after 70 days — no matter where it strikes, and no matter what measures governments impose to try to thwart it. Prof. Isaac Ben-Israel, head of the Security Studies program in Tel Aviv University and the chairman of the National Council for Research and Development, told Israel’s Channel 12 that in Israel, about 140 people normally die every day. To have shuttered much of the economy because of a virus that is killing one or two a day is a radical error that is unnecessarily costing Israel 20 percent of its GDP, he charged. He said the policy of lockdowns and closures was a case of “mass hysteria.” Simple social distancing would be sufficient, he said.

  • COVID-19 & World Commerce | Tracking NYC COVID-19 Cases | Eradicate COVID-19 by Decree?, and more

    ·  The Cold Political Calculation Behind Donald Trump’s WHO Funding Suspension

    ·  The Coronavirus Crisis Will Change the World of Commerce

    ·  Trump Aide Peter Navarro Warned of a Deadly Pandemic Emerging from China—in 2006

    ·  As the Coronavirus Spreads, Conspiracy Theories Are Going Viral Too

    ·  Viktor Orban Can’t Eradicate the Coronavirus by Decree

    ·  Did the Coronavirus Escape from a Chinese Lab? Here’s What the Pentagon Says

    ·  Pentagon Bristles at Anti-American Rhetoric in Foreign Coronavirus Reports

    ·  How China Deceived the WHO

    ·  How the World Health Organization’s Failure to Challenge China over Coronavirus Cost Us Dearly

    ·  How the Hunt for a Coronavirus Vaccine Could Go Horribly Wrong

    ·  China’s Initial Coronavirus Outbreak in Wuhan Spread Twice as Fast as We Thought, New Study Suggests

    ·  Why We Can’t Trust Positive COVID Test Counts to Track the Pandemic in NYC

  • The Challenge of Proximity Apps For COVID-19 Contact Tracing

    Around the world, a diverse and growing chorus is calling for the use of smartphone proximity technology to fight COVID-19. In particular, public health experts and others argue that smartphones could provide a solution to an urgent need for rapid, widespread contact tracing—that is, tracking who infected people come in contact with as they move through the world. Proponents of this approach point out that many people already own smartphones, which are frequently used to track users’ movements and interactions in the physical world. But it is not a given that smartphone tracking will solve this problem, and the risks it poses to individual privacy and civil liberties are considerable.

  • Bluetooth Signals from Your Smartphone Could Automate COVID-19 Contact Tracing While Preserving Privacy

    Imagine you’ve been diagnosed as Covid-19 positive. Health officials begin contact tracing to contain infections, asking you to identify people with whom you’ve been in close contact. The obvious people come to mind — your family, your coworkers. But what about the woman ahead of you in line last week at the pharmacy, or the man bagging your groceries? Or any of the other strangers you may have come close to in the past 14 days? Researchers are developing a system that augments “manual” contact tracing by public health officials, while preserving the privacy of all individuals. The system enables smartphones to transmit “chirps” to nearby devices could notify people if they have been near an infected person.

  • The Defense Production Act and the Failure to Prepare for Catastrophic Incidents

    When early data from Mexico suggested that a new strain of influenza, H1N1, might have a mortality rate between 1 and 10 percent in April 2009, the U.S. government sprang into action. Washington anticipated that the H1N1 virus might lead to a public health catastrophe as bad or worse than what is happening today with COVID-19. Jared Brown writes that the lessons of 2009 were not learnt – or implemented. “The executive branch’s ad-hoc application of the Defense Production Act’s authorities to this pandemic is Exhibit A of how our government, across multiple Republican and Democratic administrations and throughout the national security enterprise, has failed to develop or adapt the Act’s tools for the threats of the 21st century,” he writes.

  • Studies: Hand Sanitizers Kill COVID-19 Virus, E-Consults Appropriate

    In a study yesterday in Emerging Infectious Diseases, Swiss and German researchers found that alcohol-based hand sanitizers recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) are effective in killing the novel coronavirus. The authors noted that while 30 seconds is the recommended time to rub hand sanitizers into the skin and was the time used in this study, most people don’t use them for that long. And a study yesterday in the Annals of Internal Medicine with important COVID-19 ramifications found that 70.2 percent of 6,512 electronic consultations (e-consults) made by 1,096 referring clinicians to 121 specialists were appropriate. While e-consults can increase patient access to specialists, minimize travel, reduce the time between referral and specialist feedback, and lower unnecessary in-person clinic visits—which is essential during the COVID-19 pandemic—data on their appropriateness and utility have been limited.

  • Head Lice Drug Ivermectin Being Studied as Possible Coronavirus Treatment

    An antiparasitic drug sometimes used to treat head lice has undergone preliminary studies for use in the fight against the coronavirus — and has shown promising results, according to reports. Yaron Steinbuch writes in the New York Post that while recent reports have focused on the anti-malarial hydroxychloroquine as a possible miracle treatment, experts have expressed cautious optimism that ivermectin also could be used for COVID-19, ABC News reported. Ivermectin — which was developed in the 1970s and 1980s — was first used to treat tiny roundworms called nematodes in cattle, then for river blindness in humans, and most recently to rid people of head lice, ABC News reported. The drug’s antiparasitic prowess has landed it on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines. And recently, a team of Australian scientists has studied ivermectin in vitro in connection with the coronavirus pandemic.

  • Coronavirus Cases: Mathematical Modeling Draws More Accurate Picture

    Mathematical modeling can take what information is reported about the coronavirus, including the clearly underreported numbers of cases, factor in knowns like the density and age distribution of the population in an area, and compute a more realistic picture of the virus’ infection rate, numbers that will enable better prevention and preparation, modelers say. “Actual pandemic preparedness depends on true cases in the population whether or not they have been identified,” says one researcher. “With better numbers we can better assess how long the virus will persist and how bad it will get. Without these numbers, how can health care systems and workers prepare for what is needed?”

  • Here’s How We Extricate Ourselves from This Lockdown

    No politician or public-health expert can say when the novel coronavirus pandemic, and attendant lockdowns and social distancing, will end. But there is a roadmap—actually, a competing array of them—for extricating the United States from social isolation. Olivia Messer writes for the Daily Beastthat public-health experts surveyed by the Daily Beast said there were three main things authorities need to be able to provide—effectively, affordably, and with quick results—to the American public before it’s safe to send at least some people back to work and into public life.