• U.K. Announces 449 More Coronavirus Deaths - the Fewest for a Fortnight as Leading Expert Argues Britain's Crisis Peaked Before Lockdown and Claims Fatality Rate Could Be as Low as 0.1%

    The U.K. has today announced 449 more coronavirus deaths - the fewest for a fortnight - taking Britain’s total death toll to 16,509. Connor Boyd, Sa, Blanchard, and Stephen Matthews write in the Daily Mail that England declared 429 deaths and a further 20 were confirmed across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. And 4,676 more people have tested positive for the virus, taking the total number of patients to 124,743. Professor Carl Heneghan, a leading expert at the University of Oxford, has argued the peak was actually about a month ago, a week before lockdown started on March 23, and that the draconian measures people are now living with were unnecessary. He said data shows infection rates halved after the government launched a public information campaign on 16 March urging people to wash their hands and keep two meters (6’6”) away from others. He said ministers “lost sight” of the evidence and rushed into a nationwide quarantine six days later after being instructed by scientific advisers who he claims have been ‘consistently wrong’ during the crisis.

  • It’s Time to Admit Our COVID-19 “Exit Strategy” Might Just Look Like a More Flexible Version of Lockdown

    As the COVID-19 curve starts to flatten in Australia and New Zealand, people are rightly wondering how we will roll back current lockdown policies. Australia’s federal health minister Greg Hunt says Australia is looking to South Korea, Japan and Singapore to inform our exit strategy. New Zealand is relaxing some measures from next week.Toby Phillips writes in The Conversation that a long-term solution – a vaccine – is many months, probably years, away. In the meantime, we must rely on social distancing policies to contain the epidemic – and begin to accept the idea that an “exit strategy” may really look more like a more flexible version of lockdown.

  • This Isn’t the First Global Pandemic, and It Won’t Be the Last. Here’s What We’ve Learned from 4 Others Throughout History

    The course of human history has been shaped by infectious diseases, and the current crisis certainly won’t be the last time. However, we can capitalize on the knowledge gained from past experiences, and reflect on how we’re better off this time around. We must be ever prepared for the emergence of another pandemic, and learn the lessons of history to navigate the next threat.

  • The Next Pandemic Might Not Be Natural

    Germs have killed more people than all the wars in history, and people have been trying to make use of them throughout all those wars. In the U.S., we have seen small-scale bioterrorist attacks – the Rajneeshee poisoning of restaurants in 1986 and the Amerithrax letters that were mailed in 2001. Still, the years running up to this current coronavirus pandemic not only saw the gutting of U.S. national health institutions but also a cultural groundswell of science denial in the anti-vaccination movement. Today the United States in particular is paying for that denial in livelihoods and lives. The warnings were clear. If 9/11 was a “failure of imagination,” then history will no doubt judge the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19 as a failure of courage, compassion, and, most of all, competence.

  • International Air Travel as an Indicator of COVID-19 Economic Recovery

    It seems likely that routine international air travel may not resume until the end of June at the earliest. Paul Rozenzweig writes that that, more than President Trump’s wishful thinking, is a true indicator of what economic recovery will look like. As any good student of law and economics would say, the best indicator of commercial expectations can be found in commercial enterprises—the market signals that indicate what businesses truly anticipate. And if any enterprise is likely to be a leading indicator of economic expectations, it seems that the airline industry is a good candidate.

  • How Will the Pandemic Affect National Security Innovation

    The second week of March was an inflection point for many across the world. Rachel Olney writes that as a founder of a tech company with commercial and defense customers, she has concerns for the early-stage companies with defense applications. With the massive economic downturn came panicked investors trying to determine which companies in their portfolios would survive. “They reached out to learn how much cash we have, if we can do layoffs, and if we would ultimately survive,” she writes. “My experience was not unique.”

  • U.S. COVID-19 Total Tops 700,000; Cases Spike in Russia, Parts of Asia

    As COVID-19 cases in the United States passed 700,000 yesterday, researchers published early findings that suggest, as expected, the disease is more widespread than case numbers reflect. And in international developments, outbreak totals climbed in parts of Asia, including Japan, Indonesia, and Singapore, as well as in Russia. U.S. cases reached 726,645 cases, with nearly 39,000 deaths. The global total stands at 2,310,572 cases from 185 countries, with 158,691 deaths. Testing issues continue to hobble state’s plans to ease off stay-at-home orders, while the American Association for Clinical Chemistry in a statement yesterday said supply chain issues, such as personal protective equipment, swabs, and reagents are obstacles to scaled-up testing.

  • Israel Launches New “Contactless” Roadside CPVID-19 Testing Booths Which Have Zero Contact between Nurse and Patient

    Israel has launched a network of new ‘contactless’ roadside covid-19 testing booths which have zero contact between nurse and patient. The Daily Mail reports that the country has offered to share the design, which is relatively cheap and easy to produce, with other countries as part of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. The booths, produced by healthcare companies together with civilian and military partners, provide an entirely sealed, sterile environment for the medic, and can be quickly disinfected between patients. Tests are carried out using two rubber gloves which are attached to the outer wall with airtight seals. Results are processed in a matter of hours and reported directly via the patient’s electronic health record.

  • Abbott Launches COVID-19 Antibody Test

    Abbott has launched its third test for coronavirus (COVID-19) and will start shipping it in the U.S. The test is a serology test – also called an antibody test – which could be a critical next step in battling this virus. Abbott says its test helps to detect the IgG antibody to SARS-CoV-2. An antibody is a protein that the body produces in the late stages of infection and may remain for up to months and possibly years after a person has recovered. Detecting these IgG antibodies will help determine if a person was previously infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. The new antibody test is to be used on Abbott’s ARCHITECT i1000SR and i2000SR laboratory instruments, which can run up to 100-200 tests an hour.

  • Factors Associated with Hospitalization and Critical Illness among 4,103 Patients with COVID-19 Disease in New York City

    Little is known about factors associated with hospitalization and critical illness in COVID-19 positive patients. Christopher M. Petrilli et al. write in medRxiv that they conducted a cross-sectional analysis of all patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 treated at a single academic health system in New York City between 1 March 2020 and 2 April 2020, with follow up through 7 April 2020. Primary outcomes were hospitalization and critical illness (intensive care, mechanical ventilation, hospice and/or death). The researchers’ conclusions: Age and comorbidities are powerful predictors of hospitalization; however, admission oxygen impairment and markers of inflammation are most strongly associated with critical illness.

  • Coronavirus: The Puzzle of Why the Risk of Death Is Greater for Men and for the Elderly

    For COVID-19, age and sex appear to be strong predictors of who lives and who dies. Jeremy Rossman writes in The Conversation that the fatality rate for the disease is estimated to be 0.66%, according to data from China. In other words, 0.66% of people who are formally diagnosed with COVID-19, die. But the rate varies dramatically for different age groups, ranging from 0.0016% for children under ten to 7.8% in people over 79. Similar rates are seen in New York city. One explanation is that the ability of the human immune system to fight off pathogens declines over time and is significantly reduced in those over 70. But it is also possible that the reason why more men and elderly people are dying from COVID-19 is more simple. We know that the risk of fatal COVID-19 disease is almost twice as great if the person has underlying health conditions. Most of these health conditions show increasing prevalence with age, such as hypertension, which increases in occurrence from 7.5% in those under 40 to over 63% in those over 60. This increasing rate of predisposing health conditions could directly increase the risk of severe COVID-19 disease.

  • After Repeated Failures, It’s Time to Permanently Dump Epidemic Models

    Since the AIDS epidemic, people have been pumping out such models with often incredible figures. For AIDS, the Public Health Service announced (without documenting) there would be 450,000 cases by the end of 1993, with 100,000 in that year alone. The media faithfully parroted it. There were 17,325 by the end of that year, with about 5,000 in 1993. SARS (2002-2003) was supposed to kill perhaps “millions,” based on analyses. It killed 744 before disappearing. CDC predicted 1.4 million would die from Ebola, but the final death toll was 8,000. Michael Fumento writes in Issues & Insights that Oxford University Neil Ferguson predicted 200 million bird flu deaths, and 50,000 BSE death – but the actual number of deaths were 440 and 200, respectively. In the current crisis, Ferguson is the author of the most alarming model, and the one most influential in the implementation of the draconian quarantines worldwide, projecting a maximum of 2.2 million American deaths and 550,000 United Kingdom deaths unless there were severe restrictions for 18 months or until a vaccine was developed. “Assuming it’s possible to model an epidemic at all,” Fumento writes, “any that the mainstream press relays will have been designed to promote panic.”

  • Study Examines How Hong Kong Managed First Wave of COVID-19 Without Resorting to Complete Lockdown

    Hong Kong appears to have averted a major COVID-19 outbreak up to March 31, 2020, by adopting far less drastic control measures than most other countries, with a combination of border entry restrictions, quarantine and isolation of cases and contacts, together with some degree of social distancing, according to a new observational study published in The Lancet Public Health journal. The study suggests testing and contact tracing and population behavioral changes — measures which have far less disruptive social and economic impact than total lockdown — can meaningfully control COVID-19. The public health measures implemented to suppress local transmission in Hong Kong are probably feasible in many locations worldwide, and could be rolled out in other countries with sufficient resources, researchers say. However, the researchers caution that because a variety of measures were used simultaneously, it is not possible to disentangle the individual effects of each one.

  • Two Months of COVID-19 Lockdown Will Cost France €120 Billion, Report Says

    France’s nearly two-month-long coronavirus lockdown is expected to cost the country some €120 billion in lost revenue while “forced savings” are estimated to reach €55 billion, the state-funded French Economic Observatory said on Monday. “During the lockdown, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was cut by 32 percent, corresponding to five points of GDP for the whole of 2020,” the state-funded French Economic Observatory (OFCE) wrote. The observatory went on to say that “almost 60 percent of the drop in national income was absorbed by public administrations” and 35 percent by businesses. France’s economic recovery depends on how much the French spend once lockdown is lifted, it said. France24 notes, however, that although the French are expected to have shored up €55 billion in so-called forced savings during the planned 17 March to 11 May lockdown period – meaning they will have spent less than they earned – they are not expected to spend these savings “completely or rapidly” once lockdown is lifted given the continuing uncertainties over Covid-19.

  • The Totalitarian Temptation Resisted

    In Hungary, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Russia, the Philippines, and other countries, strongman leaders are taking advantage of a distracted international community to reinforce authoritarian agendas. Josef Joffe writes that, in contrast, national emergencies in the West do not breed despots, nor the grasping security state. Joffe argues that those who predict that the coronavirus epidemic will facilitate an authoritarian takeover, ignore four critical points – all of which contribute to making Western democracies resilient in the face of challenges such as an epidemic and other crises.