Having neutered the CDC, Trump goes to work on the FDA

President Trump’s never-ceasing efforts to protect Americans from the scourge of scientific truth have moved from the CDC – which led the response to all other epidemics in the last 50 years and was revered worldwide, but has now been silenced and intimidated by Trump’s almost daily attacks on it – to the FDA, which has so far been left fairly independent (although it’s doubtful that the fact that the FDA let the virus get out of control in February through not approving tests other than the CDC’s flawed one isn’t related to administration pressure on them. Trump was very concerned in February – and still is – that letting the country know what a serious danger they faced would tank his beloved stock market. He made this concern very public, and took control of the coronavirus response away from the CDC in late February after an official made a speech warning Americans that the epidemic was going to be bad. He gave control to noted medical expert Mike Pence. That sure worked out well).

As we all know, Trump has been putting fierce pressure on the FDA to fast track approval of a coronavirus vaccine, although so far Stephen Hahn, the FDA Commissioner, has been resisting it.

So on Friday, Trump announced that the FDA would no longer require pre-market approval for certain tests, including Covid-19 tests – i.e. he is stripping the FDA of the power to verify that a test actually works and is safe before it is unleashed on the market.

Of course, the administration touted this move as required to increase testing, since so many experts have pointed to lack of adequate testing as probably the biggest hindrance to the US’ full recovery, both in public health and the economy. But what’s likely to happen? One test will be distributed that will later be shown to give wrong results more often than right results. And since I’m sure people who get tested don’t even ask which test is being used, let alone the company that manufactures it, they’re going to distrust all tests – so if they’re feeling well, they won’t get tested, even though they may be spreading the virus.

Of course, the results of approving a vaccine before it can be proven to be both safe and effective would be even more damaging. There are so many popular figures – including Trump before 2016 – who tried to demagogue people’s fears about vaccine safety, that there’s already a large percentage of the population that will probably refuse any vaccine. And if a vaccine is widely distributed that later proves to be unsafe or simply ineffective, this would substantially set back the prospects of any future vaccine being accepted enough to produce herd immunity.

Of course, both of these possible disastrous results have one thing in common: They won’t be known until after the election. Trump understands that he’s recklessly endangering the health and lives of many Americans by neutering the FDA, but that’s not his number one concern.

The numbers

These numbers are updated every day, based on reported US Covid-19 deaths the day before (taken from the Worldometers.info site, where I’ve been getting my numbers all along). No other variables go into the projected numbers – they are all projections based on yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total Covid-19 deaths, which was 4%.

Note that the “accuracy” of the projected numbers diminishes greatly after 3-4 weeks. This is because, up until 3-4 weeks, deaths could in theory be predicted very accurately, if one knew the real number of cases. In other words, the people who are going to die in the next 3-4 weeks of Covid-19 are already sick with the disease, even though they may not know it yet. But this means that the trend in deaths should be some indicator of the level of infection 3-4 weeks previous.

However, once we get beyond 3-4 weeks, deaths become more and more dependent on policies and practices that are put in place – or removed, as is more the case nowadays - after today (as well as other factors like the widespread availability of an effective treatment, if not a real “cure”). Yet I still think there’s value in just trending out the current rate of increase in deaths, since it gives some indication of what will happen in the near term if there are no significant intervening changes.

Week ending	Deaths reported during week/month	Avg. deaths per day during week/month	Deaths as percentage of previous month’s
March 7	18	3
March 14	38	5
March 21	244	35
March 28	1,928	275
Month of March	4,058	131
April 4	6,225	889
April 11	12,126	1,732
April 18	18,434	2,633
April 25	15,251	2,179
Month of April	59,812	1,994	1,474%
May 2	13,183	1,883
May 9	12,592	1,799
May 16	10,073	1,439
May 23	8,570	1,224
May 30	6,874	982
Month of May	42,327	1,365	71%
June 6	6,544	935
June 13	5,427	775
June 20	4,457	637
June 27	6,167	881
Month of June	23,925	798	57%
July 4	4,166	595
July 11	5,087	727
July 18	5,476	782
July 25	6,971	996
Month of July	26,649	860	111%
August 1	8,069	1,153
August 8	7,153	1,022
August 15	7,556	1,079
August 22	7,770	1,110
August 29	8,082	1,155
Month of August	32,310	1,042	121%
September 5	8,105	1,158
September 12	8,454	1,208
September 19	8,819	1,260
September 26	9,199	1,314
Month of Sept.	36,689	1,223	114%
Total March – September	225,770

Red = projected numbers

I. Total deaths

Total US deaths as of yesterday: 180,605

Deaths reported yesterday: 423

Yesterday’s 7-day rate of increase in total deaths: 4% (This number is used to project deaths in the table above; it was 4% two days ago. There is a 7-day cycle in the reported deaths numbers, caused by lack of reporting over the weekends from closed state offices. So this is the only reliable indicator of a trend in deaths, not the three-day percent increase I used to focus on, and certainly not the one-day percent increase, which mainly reflects where we are in the 7-day cycle).

II. Total reported cases

Total US reported cases: 5,874,358

Increase in reported cases since previous day: 32,669

Percent increase in reported cases since 7 days previous: 6%  

III. Deaths as a percentage of closed cases so far in the US:

Total Recoveries in US as of yesterday: 3,167,164

Total Deaths as of yesterday: 180,605

Deaths so far as percentage of closed cases (=deaths + recoveries): 5%

For a discussion of what this number means – and why it’s so important – see this post. Short answer: If this percentage declines, that’s good. It’s been steadily declining since a high of 41% at the end of March. But a good number would be 2%, like South Korea’s. An OK number would be 4%, like China’s.

IV. 7-day average of test positive rate for US: 6.2%

For comparison, the recent peak for this rate was 27% in late July, although the peak in late March was 75%. This is published by Johns Hopkins (recent rate for New York state: .8%. For Texas: 15.8%. For Florida: 14.5%.  For Arizona: 8.6%).

I would love to hear any comments or questions you have on this post. Drop me an email at tom@tomalrich.com