The Pandemic Blog

I’m fairly sure Trump is being paid off by the Biden campaign, since he’s a far more effective advocate for Biden than any Democrat. Exhibit A: You’ll be pleased to hear that Trump has finally discovered the real cause of our excessive Covid deaths (which BTW I heard today on NPR will likely hit 400,000 early next year, no matter who wins on Tuesday. MAGA!): it’s doctors and nurses in hospitals! This is of course very big news, since most of us thought that these people – who literally risk their lives every day, and many of whom have already paid the ultimate price – were trying to prevent Covid deaths, not increase them. But no, Trump has discovered – through his intrepid research, to be sure – that these doctors and nurses are actually doing their best to inflate the Covid deaths numbers by classifying non-Covid deaths as Covid, because – and here’s the best part – the doctors and hospitals get paid more for Covid deaths! I am really glad Trump brought this up. This terrible v...

This morning I heard an outrageous report on NPR; a few hours later, Kevin Perry emailed me a link to the written article . I’ll let you read the article, but the gist of it is that the Department of Homeland Security compiles daily data on hospital utilization rates, ventilator use, etc. for the entire country. But this data is only made available to state governments, and even then only for their state. For the rest of us – including researchers, planners in other states, etc. – weekly summaries need to suffice. Now why would DHS (the most compromised government agency, in my opinion, and that’s saying a lot nowadays. I would write at the bottom of their sign “A wholly owned subsidiary of Trump and Putin, Inc.”) not be doing all they can to get this data out, you might ask (perhaps laughing sardonically)? Here’s one clue from the article: This kind of visibility into data could help policymakers decide how best to curb the spread of the virus. McPheeters and colleagues at Vanderb...

The Wall Street Journal published an article today that led off with: A large English study showed the number of people with Covid-19 antibodies declined significantly over the summer, suggesting that getting the virus might not confer long-lasting immunity from future infection. The survey of 365,000 adults in England who tested themselves at home using a finger-prick test showed the proportion of people testing positive for Covid-19 antibodies declined by 26.5% between June 20—12 weeks after the peak of infections in the country—and Sept. 28. It later continued: Doctors don’t yet know whether antibodies confer any effective immunity against reinfection by Covid-19. But even if they do and the results of this survey are confirmed, it suggests the prospect of  widespread long-term herd immunity  to the virus will be difficult to achieve. Herd immunity occurs when enough people in a population  develop an immune response , either through previous infection or va...

Every now and again, when pushed to the wall by events, a senior White House official makes an honest statement – and doesn’t get fired for it by Trump. This happened yesterday, when Chief of Staff Mark Meadows stated on CNN that “We’re not going to control the pandemic.” This is 100% true, if you take “We” to mean the current administration, which is why we need a different administration to step in as soon as possible. The WaPo article continues He compared the virus to the flu and said the administration is making efforts to contain it, even as the Trump campaign faces criticism for holding large campaign rallies while coronavirus cases are on the rise. Of course, this is nonsense. The administration isn’t making serious efforts to contain the virus, but is making serious efforts to undermine the measures that are needed if we are going to contain it, including mask wearing and widespread testing (and of course, the latest coronavirus relief bill looks destined to go nowher...

The Times reported today that four members of Vice President Pence’s inner circle tested positive for the novel coronavirus this past week, including his chief of staff Marc Short. I didn’t find that at all surprising, given that – at least at the top levels – White House staff members make it a badge of honor not to comply with sensible guidelines like mask wearing. But what I did find surprising was the article’s statement “The decision by Mr. Pence, who leads the White House Coronavirus Task Force, to continue campaigning is certain to raise new questions about how seriously the White House is taking the risks to their own staff members and the public from the pandemic that has killed more than 224,000 people in the United States.” At this point, who could possibly have a question about how serious the WH is taking risks to their staff members and the public? They’re not taking this seriously at all. In fact, the president’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Scott Atlas, is all for...

I need to confess that I’m responsible for the recent drastic increase in new Covid-19 cases in the US. It has been about a week since I last looked at the numbers and updated my spreadsheet (although I was certainly reading about the increase in news stories). If I’d been doing that every day like I used to, this would never have happened. To prove that point, I was updating my spreadsheet at least every 2-3 days lately (before that, I updated it every day), and the numbers hardly changed at all in the last month or so – and if they changed at all then, they went down. But I didn't do that for a week, and now the country's going to hell in a handbasket. I apologize for this. Here’s what I found this morning: ·         As you probably know, the US logged a record number of new cases on Friday, surpassing the previous record set in July. More importantly, the 7-day percentage increase in cases grew from 5.1% on October 17 to 5.4% yesterday. That m...