Category Archives: Social Distancing

Throw Away Your Mask After COVID Vaccination or Not, What about the Mutations and Infection after Vaccination?

As our national mortality statistics reach over 500,000 and a third vaccine has been approved by the FDA I thought that we should examine the use of masks, etc. after vaccinations. This is an important question especially considering the increasing findings of more viral mutants.

Recently, a spirited discussion was sparked on social media: is it acceptable to relax masking 14 days after the second COVID-19 vaccine dose? Doctor Vinay Prasad and Doctor David Aronoff, in this post will discuss the advice as to whether to continue wearing masks as well as social distancing, etc. after one completes their vaccination.

Doctor Prasad starts off by noting that having spent some time thinking about the topic, and discussing with colleagues, I have reached two conclusions. First, it is a tradeoff with residual uncertainties, and reasonable people can disagree. But also, I favor the view that generally, 14 days after vaccination, we can relax some restrictions.

The caveats

It is important to be upfront with the caveats. Everything I say applies to average people in the community — I am not speaking about enhanced precautions in high-risk settings like nursing homes or medical centers. My argument is contingent on there being no “vaccine escape,” that is, no mutation in the coronavirus that markedly reduces vaccine efficacy. If that happens, may God help us. I am not sure we will make it.

Finally, my argument is appropriate for most places and most times, but if health systems are overwhelmed, e.g., as we saw in places like southern California or New York City, it might be reasonable to temporarily increase precautions. Additionally, my guiding principle does not apply to businesses, such as grocery stores or pharmacies, which can and will enforce their own policies.

Now, having said that: for most people, once you get 14 days out of your second dose of vaccine, I believe you can ease up on masking or another restriction, such as visiting a loved one for lunch or having more than one person visit a nursing home at the same time, or a small gathering of vaccinated people for dinner without masks.

The data

There are three lines of evidence that I wish to offer for my claim. First, consider the efficacy of the vaccine. The efficacy of the two mRNA vaccines is superb, offering 95% reduction in the rate of acquisition of symptomatic COVID-19 in randomized trials. That is a remarkable result. But the key statistic here is one step beyond the vaccine efficacy. If you get two doses of the vaccine, and if you remain asymptomatic 14 days after the second dose, what is the probability you will develop COVID-19? For Moderna, the answer is there is a 99.92% chance that you won’t. Only 12 cases occurred after this time in 14,550 actively vaccinated people in the trial, while the control arm experienced nearly 3.5% cumulative incidence. For Pfizer, only eight cases occurred amongst people who had completed a second dose and went 7 days without symptoms, again a 99.95% chance of not getting COVID if one remained asymptomatic a week after the second dose. In other words, if you get 14 days past the second dose, and feel fine, the likelihood you will get COVID-19 in these studies is very low. Some argue that in the real world — where folks are not as motivated as trial participants — the rate of SARS-CoV-2 acquisition might be higher, and thus relaxing rules riskier. But this logic cuts both ways: if people in the real world are less compliant, then the rules might be relaxed no matter what we say.

Next, consider the risk of spreading SARS-CoV-2 to others. That risk is in part driven by symptomatic infections which are exceedingly rare after second doses. Risk of spreading is diminished by the brisk immune response that occurs after symptomatic infection once someone is vaccinated. In the Moderna study, there were 30 cases of severe COVID overall and zero in the vaccination arm. Less symptomatic and less severe COVID will result in a lower propensity to propagate SARS-CoV-2. Moreover, studies of both recombinant antibody products speed viral clearance from airways. If the body is primed to manufacture anti-spike antibodies through vaccination, there is likely a similar rapid clearance and subsequent reduction in infectiousness occurs.

What about asymptomatic infection and so-called silent spread? In the Moderna trial, swabs taken from asymptomatic participants as they were receiving dose 2 showed a roughly 60% reduction in PCR positivity. It is likely that a second dose and longer asymptomatic period will result in greater reduction in PCR positivity. Preliminary data from AstraZeneca’s ChAdOx1 vaccine also showed reduced in asymptomatic PCR detection. In short, it is highly likely that receipt of vaccination and a 14-day asymptomatic period afterward results in both personal protection and reduced likelihood of ongoing viral propagation.

Third, what is the effect size of masks? More correctly — what is the effect size of masks 14 days after a vaccine with 95% efficacy? What is the effect of masks if PCR positivity is only 1 in 1,000 amongst asymptomatic people? I think we must confront a forgotten truth. Masks make sense not because we have perfect randomized controlled trial data showing they protect the wearer, or others, but based on bio-plausibility, and the precautionary principle, they were a reasonable public health measure to incorporate.

Authors of a 2020 update to the Cochrane review wrote, “Compared to no masks there was no reduction of influenza-like illness (ILI) cases (risk ratio 0.93, 95% CI 0.83-1.05) or influenza (risk ratio 0.84, 95% CI 0.61-1.17) for masks in the general population, nor in healthcare workers (risk ratio 0.37, 95% CI 0.05-2.50).” But the truth is none of these trials perfectly fits the moment. And we never did a cluster RCT of cloth masks — as they are used in the politically torn U.S. — to clarify the effect size with SARS-CoV-2.

The truth is I wear a cloth mask and I quite like it. But I have seen no data that can tell me the added benefit of masks 14 days after vaccination with 95% efficacy. It’s the biological equivalent of asking what happened before the Big Bang. If you ask, what is the evidence that it’s safe to stop wearing a mask, I say, what is the evidence that it’s still beneficial?

This same line of thinking applies to other restrictions that could be eased instead. What evidence supports restricting nursing home visitors, if all parties are vaccinated and masked? What evidence supports banning a small dinner, if everyone has had the vaccine? There is no evidence that supports these continued prohibitions.

Knowing these three facts allows us to put it all together. Is it reasonable to tell someone that, if they are asymptomatic 14 days after the second vaccine, they are highly unlikely to get COVID-19, and also less likely to spread the virus — both by having less severe disease, less asymptomatic carriage, clearing virus faster, stronger antibody responses, and fewer symptomatic cases? Absolutely, is my view.

It is then reasonable to say that the theoretical benefit of the mask may be so small that easing up on its use is fine. Alternatively, you might keep the mask, but ease up on something else, and, to be honest, most people might actually prefer a different concession. You might choose to see family instead, or have a gathering with your vaccinated friends. Getting vaccinated is like getting a stack of tickets at Chuck E. Cheese — you get to decide what to trade them in for!

The politics/sociology

Some contend my stance will undermine efforts to normalize masks, send mixed messages to the public. That’s possible, but it is also possible that my message empowers and excites people to get vaccinated, which is the only viable path out of the nightmare we find ourselves in. I think the less scientists manipulate their statements while trying to guess the response the better. I have tried to be fully transparent in my thinking on this topic. None of us knows the second or third order effects. If we distort the facts and bang on harder about prolonged mask use or other restrictions, will the world actually be better? Or will we provoke a deep backlash that has been brewing for some time? Do we risk losing some folks who might otherwise get vaccinated? I am not an incarnation of God, so I don’t know. I worry that the likes and retweets on social media encourage the fearful message rather than the correct one.

Public health experts have reminded me to talk about despair. We are all facing it, and when you clamp down on a society with restrictions, a free society can only bear it for so long. There must be a path out of it, and easing restrictions — particularly when the burden may outweigh the unproven, theoretical, and at best highly marginal benefit — is a great way to renew optimism. Folks who spend time doing boots on the ground public health share their view with me that this is a great place to start.

The last objection I want to discuss is that my policy is not the safest policy. It is not absolute safety. Indeed, I acknowledge this is true. But I disagree that wearing a mask is absolute safety. I disagree that only one nursing home visitor is the safest policy, and only having a picnic outside is safest. Only truly becoming a hermit is absolute safety. Lock yourself in home, and get all foodstuffs delivered. When you go out, always wear an N95, and do this even a year or two after vaccination. After all, who knows if the vaccine will wear off? None of us really wants absolute safety. We seek reasonable safety, and I will defend the proposition that is achieved merely by a prolonged asymptomatic period after second vaccination and after that something can be relaxed — and there are several options.

The end of COVID

COVID-19 will someday no longer be the topic of daily and breathless news coverage. The virus may always circulate, and some people may always get sick, but the real end will be when we stop thinking about it every moment of every day. That’s how this pandemic will end. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

People need to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel because there is.

Vaccination in the absence of viral escape is the way out of this. Once a person is a sufficient time and distance away from the second shot, and if they are feeling well, we can start to view them differently. They are less a vector for the transmission of a plague, and more a real person — with hopes and wants and desires and seeking connection. In such a moment, if they remove their mask to share a smile with me, I can promise you, I will lower my mask, and smile back.

And Opposing View-Now Is Not the Time to Relax COVID Restrictions

Doctor David Aronoff counters the argument with the facts that the COVID-19 pandemic has now raged on for more than a year. In the U.S., we have documented more than 24.5 million cases and 400,000 COVID-19-related deaths, with between 3,000 and 4,000 people dying each day. The CDC projects we will reach nearly 500,000 total deaths within the next month. COVID-19-related hospitalizations remain at an all-time high. America continues to suffer through a third wave of disease activity that has dwarfed the peaks of the Spring and Summer of 2020.

And, while COVID-19 is beating down on us, it could be worse, believe it or not. We have learned much about how the SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads, easily, through our breath from one person to another. Most nefarious has been the extent to which transmission occurs silently, moving from infected individuals who feel well, look well, and have no idea that they are infected. However, we know that maintaining our distance from others protects against transmission, as does the use of cloth face-coverings. It has been through social distancing and mask use that we have, in the absence of vaccination and herd immunity, been able to limit the damage done by this horrible infectious disease.

Clearly, vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 are the light at the end of the tunnel, assuming that viral mutations do not escape our vaccines sooner than we can put out the fire. With estimates that more than 60% of the population will need to have immune protection against SARS-CoV-2 to benefit from herd immunity, we have a long way to go. While less than 10% of the U.S. population has been formally diagnosed with COVID-19, a recent estimate suggested that by November of 2020 we were at about 15% of the U.S. population immune to the virus. And while that figure may now exceed 20%, this leaves more than 250 million Americans without immune protection, and falls short of the roughly 200 million people who might need to be immune for herd immunity to take hold.

Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH, has authored a thoughtful, evidence-based commentary, making a strong case for why we can relax some restrictions following successful immunization against SARS-CoV-2. He succinctly lays out an argument about why and how immunization, in the absence of vaccine-escaping virus mutants, will confer strong enough protection to render tight adherence to wearing masks and other restrictions unnecessary. And, while I think he has the right idea (I would love to see more people’s faces right now and share a meal with my friends), it is premature to suggest that now is that time. It is OK for us to hold differing opinions (that’s what we do). Two well-intentioned scientists can both look at the same data and reach different policy conclusions. So, let me focus on the case for keeping our masks on, even as we roll our sleeves up. The same logic holds for other restrictions.

First, given how active COVID-19 is right now we need to be doing everything in our power to slow its spread. Lives hang in the balance. I really like the Swiss Cheese model of pandemic defense, popularized by Australian virologist Ian Mackay, PhD, which demonstrates the concept that each measure we implement to interrupt the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is imperfect yet when layered together they cooperatively reduce transmission risk.

Even immunization is not a perfect defense. Thus far, SARS-CoV-2 vaccination has not been shown to eliminate the risk that someone will get infected or pass the virus on to others. Studies published to date on the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccines show clear protection against developing symptomatic COVID-19. But they also show that some vaccinated people still develop symptomatic disease. And, given what we know about the disease in non-immune people, symptomatic infections represent a fraction of total infections. This predicts that despite immunization some people will develop asymptomatic infection. Do I think that SARS-CoV-2 immunization will significantly protect people against both asymptomatic and symptomatic COVID-19? Yes. Do I think the risk to an individual will be zero following successful immunization? No. Stated differently, removing masks from vaccinated people (or relaxing social distancing) is likely to increase the risk for propagating COVID-19 compared to maintaining these restrictions. And, even if that incremental risk is small, why take it, given where we are with the disease now?

There will be a time when immune people can let their guards down, allowing even non-immune people to do the same (a benefit of herd immunity). But that time is not now.

The issue of wearing masks has been a contentious one, not helped by mixed messaging from leaders in the federal and state government. This has translated into story after story of difficulty convincing people of the public health benefit of wearing face-coverings. What we do not need are more people out and about in public spaces without masks, which sends the wrong message at the wrong time. We cannot know if an unmasked person is unvaccinated or simply an anti-masker. Why provide fuel for people to skirt mask policies based on stating they have been vaccinated, when they might not have been? And the same holds for hosting dinner parties or participating in other gatherings.

To safely advise people that once they are immunized, they can leave their masks at home and relax other infection control measures we need to record sustained decreases in disease activity, hospitalizations, and deaths, to the point where leading infectious disease and public health experts are comfortable recommending that we can de-escalate these interventions. We also need to ensure widespread vaccine uptake, particularly among Black, indigenous, and people of color, who have been disproportionately harmed by COVID-19. Recent data show that Black Americans, for example, are getting vaccinated at lower rates than white Americans.

We remain in the thick fog of a true healthcare emergency and need to be doing all we can, especially the simple things, to shut it down. Now is not the time to let up on masking, even for the relatively few who have been immunized. Abandoning mask-wearing and social distancing, even in immunized persons, is not the right thing to recommend, yet. We need masks on and sleeves up.

COVID-19 Variants: ‘The Virus Still Has Tricks Up Its Sleeve’

Now more on the counterpoint reported by Molly Walker who interviewed Dr. Warner Greene as followed: We are honored to be joined once again by Dr. Warner Greene. He’s senior investigator at Gladstone Institutes and a professor at University of California San Francisco. As we’ve discussed, COVID-19 variants are very much in the news. Can we go over what is the latest news about the variants, even today? What do we know about them and what’s the latest that’s been happening?

Variants are very much in the news. What we’re seeing is the slow but steady evolution of the coronavirus. There are now four major variants that are of concern. And, in fact, they call them variants of concern. The first recognized was the U.K. variant, recognized in the south of the United Kingdom. It has an increased transmission efficiency. And there are some reports that it may be somewhat more virulent, particularly in men over the age of 60.

Of even greater concern is the South African variant, which contains mutations that confer resistance to certain monoclonal antibodies, like one of the two monoclonal antibodies developed by Regeneron. The Eli Lily monoclonal antibody doesn’t seem to work against the South African variant and vaccine efficiency is also reduced with the South African variant.

Similarly, the Brazilian variant has basically the same set of mutations that are conferring antibody resistance, causing real concern. What it means for the vaccines, etc.: I think that both the South African and the Brazilian variants are a major concern. And it is possible that those variants as they spread, and they are in the United States now, we may need to revise the vaccines to account for these types of variants. That’s not clear yet, but better to be prepared, in case we do need to revise the vaccine.

And then there’s a fourth type of variant, which is just kind of emerging, less well-studied at this point, but out of California. So clearly there, the virus is searching for a lock and key mechanism trying to search for ways to allow itself to replicate better. We’re applying immune pressure. So, it’s mutating away from some of that immune pressure, and that’s why this antibody resistance is emerging.

So, what types of mutations does the SARS-CoV-2 virus have to go through to make it a variant?

Well, for example, the South African variant has 27 mutations, nine of which occur in the spike protein. The spike is the protein on the surface that binds to the ACE2 receptor and allows entry and fusion into the host cell. And, of course, that’s where most of the vaccines are focused, is on the spike. That’s where the monoclonal antibody therapeutics are focused, on the spike. And so the virus is looking for ways to avoid these types of immune pressures and it’s making mutations in its receptor binding domain and the internal domain that confer resistance to certain types of neutralizing antibodies.

Given that recent studies from Novavax and Johnson & Johnson last week found somewhat reduced clinical efficacy of vaccines against these variants, what type of booster modification is required for vaccines in order to better combat them with the mRNA and the viral vector vaccines? Is it different, is it the same?

I think the booster that, for example, Moderna and Pfizer are now working on is to take the genetic sequence of the variant and use that as the immunogen. So, there is a mutation at position 484 that is absolutely key for this loss of antibody protection. You would introduce an RNA that now has that same mutation at position 484 into the vaccine to create a vaccine that is really tailored to take that particular type of virus out. And that mutation is shared between the South African and the Brazilian variants.

And so it wouldn’t require a different type, depending on the type of vaccine, it would just be the same type of reformulation. It wouldn’t be mRNA, different than a viral vector, it would just be a different formula. It’s not anything to do with the type of vaccine. It still would be an mRNA-based vaccine. It would just contain a different RNA or more likely it will be a multi-valent vaccine that would be original virus, as well as a new virus.

It’s not clear exactly how that would be administered. It may be that we want to boost immunity against the old virus, as well as the new virus, so we would use a multi-valent approach in that case. But the mRNA vaccine platform is quite amenable to this type of updating. That’s a real advantage, much more so than the adenoviral vectors, the virus-delivered vaccines. It’s a more complicated process there.

If we could just look at the vaccines as we have them now against this wild-type strain, if for some reason we didn’t have any boosters, what type of progress could we make against the pandemic? Can we vaccinate our way out of the pandemic, even if we don’t have these boosters? Have these variants prevented that?

To be clear, these variants, the Brazilian and the South African variants, are only compromising the neutralizing antibody response against the coronavirus. The T-cell immune response presumably is fully intact and remains unevaluated. So it’s quite possible that these vaccines will stand up better than we expect or predict. Clearly the U.K. variant does not appear to be a threat, although the recent acquisition of the neutralizing mutation at 484 causes concern that the virus is evolving. Even the U.K. variant is evolving.

I would say that the one thing that is disturbing to me, or that causes me pause is the story in Manaus, Brazil. Manaus is in the Amazon basin, they had a huge outbreak in the spring. It was thought, as reported, that there would probably be herd immunity within the community up to about 75%. Then this variant comes in to the community and it’s just sweeping through, causing re-infection or what appears to be re-infection.

Now did the original immunity wane and these people were all sensitive? Is it just that the variant is able to avoid both the T-cell and the antibody response that was present in the herd in Manaus? That kind of real-time experiment is concerning in terms of the spread of this virus. And I think data like that and what’s going on in South Africa is what’s really prompting the vaccine companies to get prepared now. We don’t know the full dimensions of the problem, but better to overprepare at this point in time.

So, given what happened in Brazil, do you think that’s evidence of viral escape?

Certainly, the South African and Brazilian variants, the mutations they are acquiring in their spike protein are examples of escape from the antibody neutralization. These are mutating principal antibody-binding sites that are responsible for neutralization, so that these variants are emerging under the influence of immune pressure. It’s harder to get around the T-cell immunity though, because T-cell immunity differs from person to person based on the composition of our HLA genes and our immune response. And T-cells are really the major defense mechanism against viruses, so let’s hope that our T-cells fill in for any gaps that the antibodies might come up a little short on.

I’m not sure exactly what has happened in Manaus, whether there was really ever herd immunity, whether it’s waned, but I do know that the variant there is hitting hard. So, that’s a big question mark. I think Brazil holds the answers to a lot of the future of this pandemic. We need to understand precisely what is going on there.

What do we need to be studying in Brazil specifically? And what type of data would we need to be looking at and tracking, what types of real-world studies and epidemiological studies would you like to see out of what’s happening in Brazil to help us going forward?

I would like to know whether or not there was real herd immunity. Before this new variant began to spread, was there clear evidence of a good antibody response and retention of durable antibody responses against the original strain of “wild-type” virus. So, if, in fact, there was an intact immune response, and this virus was able to overwhelm that response, well that’s not good news, but if the response had waned or had never really developed fully, then that’s a less daunting problem.

Now on the positive side, you look at the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, it’s not the world’s best at preventing you from becoming infected with or developing minor respiratory symptoms. But even with the South African variant, this vaccine protects you from severe disease, having to go to hospital and dying. And frankly, that’s what we want from a vaccine. That is fantastic. You may have a runny nose or a mild upper respiratory tract infection, but you’re not going to develop life-threatening pneumonia and require hospitalization, intubation, etc. And I’d sign up for that type of vaccine any day.

All we have from the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are these kinds of in vitro and in lab studies that if you expose them to these variants, this is what they’ll do, but do we need some type of clinical efficacy? Would you say at this point that we don’t have evidence of clinical efficacy against the variants with these two vaccines that are currently being distributed?

Exactly. The mRNA vaccines are not being tested extensively in areas where the variants are prospering, but one of the trial sites for Johnson & Johnson was in South Africa. So, they were able to see how their vaccines stood up against that variant and it fared very well in terms of prevention of serious disease.

When do you think that we are going to get these types of studies? Is that something that we’re going to see as the vaccine trials kind of evolve, and are we going to be able to get that from the mRNA vaccines? Are we just going to not know what their clinical efficacy is until we get a booster, we’re just going to only have the lab evidence?

It’s likely that the virus is probably replicating at higher levels or more virus is replicating in terms of country here in the United States than almost anywhere else in the world, in terms of the breadth of cases that we’ve had, etc. We just simply do not have the genomic surveillance types of apparatus to necessarily detect these variants. For example, we’re just now detecting the California variants. There may be many variants in the United States. We do know that the Brazilian, as well as the South African, variants are in the United States, and it’s possible that there is community spread of these variants. So, we just have to really ramp up our sequencing efforts to really track what’s happening within our pandemic within the country and what types of viruses that we’re dealing with.

And it’s in that kind of setting as variants begin to hold sway. For example, it’s suggested that the U.K. variant will become dominant in the United States by March. So, our prediction is that the current vaccines will do very well against that variant. Now, if that variant is replaced by, for example, a South African variant, which is more immunologically daunting, well then, we’re going to have to see how the mRNA vaccines hold up against that. And it’s that kind of real-world information that’s going to inform whether or not we need to boost the immune system with a third shot.

Are the variants occurring in regions due to the similarities in the genome of the regional population, causing the viral RNA to mutate in a specific direction, and do antigen tests pick up variants?

No, the antigen tests will not pick up the variants. You really have to do the sequencing to find these mutations. So, it’s clear that the virus has a set of mutations and it’s trying different combinations. All the virus wants to do is to replicate better. The U.K. variant has one mutation in the receptor binding domain, which confers tighter binding to the ACE2 receptor and a higher level of transmission by 40% to 70%. And that’s the variant that may become dominant here in the United States by March. In contrast, the South African and the Brazilian variants, they not only have the same mutation that the U.K. variant does, they’ve added to it. They’ve added at least two additional mutations that really take out these neutralizing antibodies.

Now, did these two variants arise independently? Some would say yes. I don’t think that we know precisely because one person coming from South Africa carrying the virus could seed the virus in Brazil. So, we don’t know, but there are subtle differences. The virus is working toward a solution here for avoiding the antibodies.

Now, another question is, is the virus throwing everything at us right now that it’s got? Is this it and can we expect a pretty much static situation from here on out? And, you know, I don’t think so. I think the virus still has tricks up its sleeve, and will continue to evolve as we put additional immune pressures on it. So, that would be my guess, but we’re right at the cusp of the evolving science. And to think that where we were a year ago with no defense, no innate or no intrinsic immunity to this virus, and nothing really therapeutic or preventive. And now we’re in a situation where we have multiple, highly effective vaccines. It’s a true triumph of science.

Can you go into how else the virus could mutate? Is there any way that it could mutate that T-cell immunity that we have that would be compromised? Is that possible or is it just not that complex a virus?

Yeah, there may be the emergence of escape mutations that escape a cytotoxic T-cell, CD8 T-cell responses, or CD4 helper T-cell responses. We could certainly see that and it’s much harder to monitor for those types of immune reactions. So, certainly, like you get immune escape against antibodies, you can have immune escape against T-cell immunity as well.

California man tests positive for COVID-19 weeks after second jab: report

Edmund DeMarche reported that a California man said he was diagnosed with COVID-19 three weeks after he received his second dose of the vaccine, reports said.

CBS Los Angeles reported that Gary Micheal, who lives in Orange County’s Lake Forest, found out he had the virus after being tested for an unrelated health concern. His symptoms are relatively minor, the report said.

He received the Pfizer vaccine, the report said. Patch.com reported that he got his first dose on Dec. 28 and his second jab on Jan. 18.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious-disease scientist, said the latest evidence indicates that the two vaccines being used in the U.S. — Pfizer’s and Moderna’s — are effective even against the new variants.

A doctor interviewed in the CBS report said that he was not surprised to hear about Michael’s diagnosis.

“I think I’ve heard of six or seven independent cases over the last three weeks of individuals that have been vaccinated with different timelines that have tested positive, and I think we’re going to continue to see that more and more,” Dr. Tirso del Junco Jr., chief medical officer of KPC Health, told the station.

Fauci has estimated that somewhere between 70% and 85% of the U.S. population needs to get inoculated to stop the pandemic that has killed close to 470,000 Americans.

And Now Four people in Oregon who received both doses of vaccine test positive for coronavirus

Minyvonne Burke reported that four people in Oregon have tested positive for the coronavirus after receiving both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, health officials said.

There are two cases each in Yamhill and Lane counties, the state’s Health Authority said in a series of tweets on Friday. The cases are either mild or asymptomatic.

“We are working with our local and federal public health partners to investigate and determine case origin,” the agency said. “Genome sequencing is underway, and we expect results next week.”

The agency referred to the individuals who tested positive as “breakthrough cases,” meaning that they got sick with the virus at least 14 days after receiving both doses.

The Health Authority said more breakthrough cases could pop up.

“Clinical trials of both vaccines presently in use included breakthrough cases. In those cases, even though the participants got Covid, the vaccines reduced the severity of illness,” the agency said in a tweet.

“Based on what we know about vaccines for other diseases and early data from clinical trials, experts believe that getting a Covid-19 vaccine may also help keep you from getting seriously ill even if you do get the virus. … Getting as many Oregonians as possible vaccinated remains a critical objective to ending the pandemic.”

The agency’s announcement came the same day its health officer said there has been a decline of daily Covid-19 cases over the past several weeks. As of Friday, there were 149,576 cases in the state, according to the department’s count.

“These decreases are a testament to the actions all Oregonians are taking to slow the spread of Covid-19 and the sacrifices made – thank you,” health officer Dean Sidelinger said at a news conference Friday.

Another breakthrough case was reported in North Carolina, according to NBC affiliate WCNC-TV in Charlotte. The state’s Department of Health and Human Services told the outlet that the person had mild symptoms and did not need to be hospitalized.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that quarantining is not necessary for fully vaccinated people within three months of having received their last doses as long as they do not develop any symptoms.

They do, however, still need to practice certain safety measures such as wearing face masks, social distancing, and avoiding crowds or poorly ventilated spaces.

“Fully vaccinated” means at least two weeks have passed since a person has completed their vaccination series and now we have the addition of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine, which is a single dose with less effectivity but about the same activity of our yearly flu vaccine.

So, as I have said before, continue to wear your masks, whether one, two, three or whatever the number of masks that we are going to be advised with future “scientific” evidence.

Pandemic fears are boosting demand for trustworthy news; And What Have We Learned from Sweden’s Experience?

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During these last few months of the pandemic one of my concerns is the lack consistent reliable data with which the media pundits of all sorts deliver their predictions and many times with false knowledge and predictions. Question, what is the correct social distancing length? Studies keep on changing! One of the key features of the web is its ability to turn regular people into citizen journalists. The cost of publishing text on the web is almost nil. The barriers to entry in the media industry are low, too. And many readers are not picky about where their news comes from: the stories that go viral can come from amateur scribes or veteran ones, media startups or established outfits. But this is not always the case. New research suggests that when a crisis hits, readers turn to reliable sources.

In 2018 Paul Resnick and James Park, two researchers at the University of Michigan, devised a pair of tools for measuring the popularity of English-language news stories on Facebook and Twitter. The first, dubbed the “Mainstream Quotient”, measured the proportion of highly-shared links that came from mainstream news sources, such as the New York Times, the BBC and, yes, The Economist. The second, the “Iffy Quotient”, measured the share originating from less trustworthy sources, based on ratings provided by NewsGuard, a company that tracks misinformation published online.

Both indices have shifted significantly during the pandemic. Beginning in February, when the coronavirus started to spread outside China, traffic to traditional media outlets and news sites surged, whereas dodgier sites attracted fewer readers. The Mainstream Quotient rose steadily during this period, a phenomenon Messrs Resnick and Park call a “flight to quality”. The Iffy Quotient, meanwhile, tumbled. The drop was particularly steep during March, when many countries instituted lockdown measures (see chart).

The researchers argue that consumers seek out reliable news sources during times of uncertainty, in the same way that fearful investors turn to gold. Whether these patterns will last remain unclear. The Iffy Quotient has already started to creep back up, for both Facebook and Twitter. And recent efforts by social-media platforms to crack down on fake news may prove only temporary. Once the pandemic subsides, demand for unreliable news may return to pre-covid levels. For now, at least, the flight to quality has taken off.

Pandemic Spike in Telehealth Levels Off

Crystal Phend of MedPage pointed out that Telehealth’s early bonanza during the pandemic has given way to persistently elevated use in primary care, a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report showed.

Analysis of Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) data showed an increase in Medicare primary care visits from 0.1% of all primary care in February to 43.5% in April, representing an increase from about 2,000 to 1.28 million telehealth visits per week.

Meanwhile, there was a “precipitous” drop in in-person visits for primary care in mid-March as COVID-19 took hold in the U.S., then a rise from mid-April through May, according to the report from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.

Use of telehealth in primary care “declined somewhat but appears to have leveled off at a persistent and significant level by the beginning of June,” the report noted. It still accounted for 22.7% of Medicare beneficiaries’ primary care visits as of June 3rd.

Overall, weekly primary care visit rates have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.

“Based on early experience with Medicare primary care telehealth at the start of the COVID-19 public health emergency, there is evidence that Medicare’s new telehealth flexibilities played a critical role in helping to maintain access to primary health care services — when many beneficiaries and providers were concerned with transmission of COVID-19,” the authors noted. “The stable and sustained use of telehealth after in-person primary care visits started to resume in mid-April suggests there may be continued demand for telehealth in Medicare, even after the pandemic ends.”

The findings overall match those from healthcare provider databases suggesting a 60% to 70% drop in health care office visits, partially offset by telehealth visits, with the start of the pandemic. Drug market research firm IQVIA has reported from physician surveys that about 9% of patient interactions were via telehealth prior to the pandemic but 51% during the shutdown, with expectation of a 21% rate after the pandemic, the HHS report noted.

There have been calls for Medicare to make the loosened rules around telemedicine permanent, and some legislative movement in that direction, but private insurers have signaled the opposite.

Fred Pelzman, MD, an internal medicine physician at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City (and MedPage Today columnist), said an informal survey of his patients indicated they would be willing to do up to 50% of their care via video tools.

“We went from a handful of video visits in our practice to several thousand over the course of the months,” he said. “It’s a great way to take care of people, kept a lot of people safe, we think. What has happened is that as we started to open our practice back up again and offer appointments, the floodgates have opened and patients are declining video visits.”

Those patients opting for in-person visits tend to be older, braving what feels like a quiet time in the pandemic for the state to take care of necessary visits, he noted. “I think ultimately that we’ll plateau. It will probably come down a little more.”

The study included Medicare FFS Part B claims from January through May 2020 for primary care services along with preliminary Medicare Part B primary care claims data up to June 3. Primary care services included evaluation and management, preventive services, and advance care planning.

Telehealth usage increased most in urban counties early in the pandemic and saw smaller declines in May compared with rural counties across the country. Among cities, Boston had the greatest proportion of primary care visits by telehealth (73.1%) and Phoenix the lowest (37%).

Notably, the rate “was not strongly associated with differences in COVID-19 severity across cities as measured by rate of hospitalizations per thousand Medicare FFS beneficiaries,” the report pointed out.

I read an article predicting that telehealth visits are the future of medicine. This is truly worrisome due to the many incorrect diagnoses as well as poor control of chronic diseases that I have seen coming through my office alone. Physical diagnosis is made by looking at the patient, listening to the patient, hearing what the patient is really saying, touching the patient and using the different diagnostic tools such stethoscopes, ophthalmoscopes, otoscopes, percussion hammers, etc. to make the correct diagnoses and to follow our patients. How is that done virtually? The only ones benefitting the most from these virtually visits are the practices and the electronic medical record companies selling the practices additional software to utilize telehealth. And patients are finding that not all telehealth “visits” are paid for by their insurance companies.

How Did Sweden Flatten Its Curve Without a Lockdown?

One expert credits a “good-enough strategy”; others worry that it won’t last. Who is correct?

Kristina Fiore, Director of Enterprise & Investigative Reporting, MedPage reported that

Despite never implementing a full-scale lockdown, Sweden has managed to flatten its curve, prompting its health leadership to claim victory — but others question the cost of the strategy, as the country has a far higher death toll than its Scandinavian neighbors.

In late July, Sweden’s 7-day moving average of new cases was about 200, down from a peak of around 1,140 in mid-June. Its daily death totals have been in the single digits for two weeks, well below its mid-April peak of 115 deaths in a single day.

However, on a per-capita basis, Sweden far outpaces its Scandinavian neighbors in COVID deaths, with 567 deaths per million people compared with Denmark’s 106 deaths per million, Finland’s 59 deaths per million, and Norway’s 47 deaths per million. The Swedish figure is closer to Italy’s 581 deaths per million.

While the positive trends have led Anders Tegnell, PhD, chief epidemiologist at the Swedish Public Health Agency and architect of Sweden’s coronavirus strategy, to state that the “Swedish strategy is working,” others have criticized the approach, including two dozen Swedish academics who published a recent USA Today editorial.

“In Sweden, the strategy has led to death, grief, and suffering,” they wrote. “On top of that, there are no indications that the Swedish economy has fared better than in many other countries. At the moment, we have set an example for the rest of the world on how not to deal with a deadly infectious disease.”

The Swedish Public Health Agency has not openly stated that herd immunity was its goal, though many suspect that this was the intention. Tegnell told reporters last week he thought the recent trends indicated that immunity was now widespread in the country. But with rates of antibody positivity around 10%, that seems impossible. (Officials at the agency did not respond to MedPage Today‘s request for comment.)

So how has Sweden managed to get its outbreak under control?

Behavior Change

While Sweden didn’t officially lock down, many in the country have described a locked-down “feeling” that has eased in the summer months.

At the start of the outbreak, only high schools and universities closed; daycare and elementary schools have been open. Businesses have also remained open, but typically at reduced hours, and restaurants have functioned at reduced capacity.

Swedes have been asked to keep their distance in public, refrain from non-essential travel, and work from home when possible. Gatherings of more than 50 people are also banned. People age 70 and over are advised to stay away from others as much as possible.

Masks were never required and aren’t commonly worn.

This response hasn’t changed over time, through the June surge and into today’s decline, so there’s no definitive explanation for the flattening, though, and experts have several theories.

“Swedes in general have changed their behavior to a great extent during the pandemic and the practice of social distancing as well as physical distancing in public places and at work has been widespread,” said Maria Furberg, MD, PhD, an infectious diseases expert at Umea University Hospital in northeastern Sweden.

“During the months of March to early June, all shops were practically empty, people stopped dining with friends, and families stopped seeing even their closest relatives,” Furberg told MedPage Today. “A lock-down could not have been more effective. Handwashing, excessive use of hand sanitizers, and staying home at the first sign of a cold became the new normal very quickly.”

Mozhu Ding, PhD, an epidemiologist at the famed Karolinska Institute, said the decline is “likely to be a combination of measures taken by individuals, businesses and a widespread information campaign launched by the government.”

“Even without a strict lockdown order, many businesses allowed employees to work from home, and universities are offering distance courses to the students,” Ding told MedPage Today. “Individuals are also taking personal hygiene more seriously, as items like hand sanitizers and single-use gloves are often sold out in pharmacies and grocery stores.”

Immunity

Experts told MedPage Today there weren’t clear data to prove Tegnell’s assertion of widespread immunity in Sweden.

Furberg said there is likely “some sort of unspecific immunity that protects parts of the population from contracting COVID-19” but it’s not necessarily secondary to SARS-CoV-2 exposure.

For instance, a study by the Karolinska Institute and Karolinska University Hospital recently found that about 30% of people with mild or asymptomatic COVID showed T-cell-mediated immunity to the virus, even though they tested negative for antibodies.

“This figure is [more than] twice as high as the previous antibody tests, meaning that the public immunity to COVID-19 is probably much higher than what antibody studies have suggested,” Ding told MedPage Today. “This is of course very good news from a public health perspective, as it shows that people with negative antibody test results could still be immune to the virus at a cellular level.”

Indeed, T-cell immunity is coming into focus as a potentially important factor in COVID infection. A paper published in Nature in mid-July found that among 37 healthy people who had no history of either the first or current SARS virus, more than half had T cells that recognized one or more of the SARS-CoV-2 proteins.

Another 36 people who had mild-to-severe COVID-19 were all found to have T-cell responses to several SARS-CoV-2 proteins, and another 23 people who had SARS-CoV-1 (the virus responsible for the SARS outbreak in 2003) all had lasting memory T cells — even 17 years later — that also recognized parts of SARS-CoV-2.

It could be that T cell immunity is the result of a previous infection with common cold coronaviruses, but this hasn’t yet been established; nor is it certain that T cell immunity is driving Sweden’s decline in COVID cases.

Path Forward

Summertime is another factor that may account for the decline, which began around late June — not directly because of the weather, but social factors related to it.

Swedes are “outdoors more, and students are not at school,” said Anne Spurkland, MD, a professor of immunology at the University of Oslo in Norway.

Also, “perhaps Sweden has finally gotten better control over the disastrous spread of the virus in nursing homes which to some extent can explain their relatively high death rates,” Spurkland told MedPage Today. About half of Sweden’s 5,730 deaths occurred among those in elder care homes.

Norway is still requiring that Swedes quarantine for 10 days when coming into Norway, and Denmark has not fully reopened its borders to its neighbor yet either.

That doesn’t bode well for the Swedish economy. If the goal of avoiding a lockdown was to spare economic woe, its success has been limited.

According to Business Insider, “international tourism and trade are decimated. … Sweden’s National Institute of Economic Research predicts Sweden’s GDP will fall 5.4% in 2020, after predicting a 1% rise [in] December 2019. It also expects unemployment to rise around three percentage points, to 9.6%, between the end of 2019 and the end of 2021.”

Spurkland said it’s still “too early yet to conclude whether the Swedish approach was the wisest over all,” as it remains to be seen whether Norway and other countries that did lock down will avoid a second wave of infections in the fall.

Yet she cautions that choosing to take on a higher case load may have health consequences far beyond the immediate infection.

“What we have learned these months is that COVID-19 is not only about death, it is also about ill health,” Spurkland said. “Quite a number of people going through the infection have long-term symptoms, that may be stopping them from resuming their daily life. We do not know yet how large a proportion of those who get the virus will fall into this category, but it is certainly a concern.”

“So, when deciding on taking a herd immunity approach to handle a totally new virus we do not know anything about,” she said, “the Swedish government has also unknowingly put the general population at risk for much long-term ill-health caused by the virus.”

Furberg doesn’t see it that way: “I am very proud of the way Swedes have adapted to the restrictions and regulations and I believe the Public Health Agency of Sweden has picked a good-enough strategy for our country.”

What Americans Need to Understand About the Swedish Coronavirus Experiment

Sweden made headlines for never shutting down. Here’s what’s really happening there.

Matthew Zeitlin pointed out that Tooutsiders, life in Stockholm, Sweden, appears perfectly normal: Walk down a cobblestone street, and you may see two friends sitting at a cafe enjoying the spring air or a group of kids kicking a soccer ball in the park. Cars and bicyclists may zip by; a family may walk past you on their afternoon stroll.

Whereas most of the Western world has been in lockdown for weeks, Sweden has opted to forgo any sort of shelter-in-place policy in response to the coronavirus and instead allow businesses and parks to stay open and groups of under 50 to gather.

That’s not to say the country hasn’t been proactive at all. The policy in effect in Sweden is similar to what had been implemented in much of the United States before shelter-in-place orders were issued — and the one that will soon be in place in states that reopen. The Swedish government has recommended that people wash their hands frequently, maintain social distance, work from home if they can, and those who are elderly or more susceptible to Covid-19 stay home. The government recommended that universities switch to online teaching; they quickly followed course. Social distance is required by law in restaurants, and bar service is banned. The government changed its sick leave rules to encourage anyone who is feeling symptoms to stay home. “Instead of saying ‘close down all of society,’ we have looked at society and closed down… aspects of society,” where the disease is most likely to spread, Anders Tegnell, the epidemiologist at Sweden’s Public Health Agency in charge of recommending policy to the government, told The Daily Show. “I think that’s had a great effect.”

Sweden may not be so much an alternative, as a glimpse of the future.

Sweden’s approach has been hailed by critics of American and European pandemic policies as a less restrictive — and less economically devastating — alternative to state or national shutdowns, but it’s also been lambasted by others as an unnecessarily risky strategy that has led Sweden to have the highest Covid-19 death toll among the Nordic nations. As more and more areas of the United States reopen, Sweden may not be so much an alternative as a glimpse of the future.

As of Sunday afternoon, the country had 25,921 confirmed cases and3,220deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. These are much higher figures than those of the country’s neighbors, but lower than those in some other wealthy Western European countries on both an overall and population-adjusted basis. Sweden also has suffered problems familiar to residents of countries that have had more severe outbreaks and stricter policies. Nursing homes have been hard hit, and Tegnell described Sweden’s failure to protect nursing home residents as its greatest shortcoming so far. Immigrant and ethnic minority communities also have suffered, due in part to their larger households. Just over half of all households in Sweden in 2016 consisted of only one person, while immigrants were substantially more likely than native-born residents to live in overcrowded conditions or multigenerational household.

Even with the less aggressive containment measures, the economic effects of the virus have been severe for the country. Sweden’s National Institute for Economic Research projected that gross domestic product would contract by 7% in 2020 and the unemployment rate would rise to just over 10%. The large fall in consumer and business confidence, the institute said in a release, point “to a rapid and severe downturn, not least in large parts of the service sector.”

“The economy will shrink both due to a drop in exports and is already contracting due to lower consumption. But the underlying causes differ: The export sector is mostly affected by the international situation, whereas the drop in consumption is directly related to the government’s recommendation of social distancing,” said Lina Maria Ellegård, an economist at Lund University.

In the first three months of the year, the Swedish economy contracted by less than 1% — less than the United States’ fall — but the production of both goods and services declined in March. The car industry — one of Sweden’s major export sectors — along with real estate, hospitality, and restaurants led the way.

That’s because even without lockdowns or orders, the behavior of Swedes still changed — to an extent. According to data collected by Google and Apple, Swedes have cut back on their travel to places like stores and restaurants and decreased their use of transit-like buses substantially, though not as dramatically as their Nordic neighbors in Denmark. Still, travel over the Easter holiday fell by 90%, Tegnell said on The Daily Show.

Multiple experts in Sweden I spoke to agreed that because a recommendation made by Swedish leadership is culturally viewed as more of a demand, the freedoms allowed have not resulted in free-for-alls. “There’s a basic misconception that there’s one big huge after-ski party,” said Lars Trägårdh, a Swedish historian. “That’s not true.”

Sweden’s voluntary restrictions policy is made possible by the high levels of trust throughout Swedish society. “We have a lot of social trust and a lot of trust in the institutions, and the institutions have confidence in the citizens,” said Trägårdh. “That’s why we decided to have this voluntary approach as opposed to one that’s more hardcore.”

The photos circulating online don’t fully represent the broader reality on the ground either. “I’ve seen pictures in the newspapers and news media of what looks to be crowded restaurants in Stockholm. What I’ve seen is mostly pretty sparse restaurants. Every other table is empty, and there’s very little business,” said Bo Becker, an economist at the Stockholm School of Economics. “Life doesn’t go on as usual, but maybe the lockdown is less severe than in other countries.”

But even if Sweden’s policy of allowing businesses to open and people to move out and about is not that different from some policies American states have or will soon implement, there’s been one major difference: the schools. Schools for children up to age 15 have remained open, all the way down to daycares and preschool. “That makes a world of difference,” Trägårdh told me. “It’s a gender issue.”

Sweden has one of the highest rates of female participation in the labor force for rich countries. Forcing young children to stay home would put many mothers in a bind or even knock them out of the workforce entirely.

“Closing down schools works well if you are in a well-to-do, middle-class family that has a house and a garden and can afford to have one person staying at home,” Trägårdh said. “That may not look like a doable proposition if you are a single parent or do not make a lot of money.”

Shutting down daycare and schools could increase risk as well, Erik Angner, a philosopher and economist at Stockholm University, explained, by leading working parents to turn to their own parents for help. “If you close daycares, then either one parent has to stop working or grandma or grandpa shows up,” he said. But since the elderly are most at risk, it was even more important to keep schools and daycares open

As other countries work through their peak infections, they will have to figure out how to reach a new status quo where the disease’s spread is still slow but restrictions can be lightened. “Now that everybody else is starting to shift toward opening up, people are talking about Sweden,” said Trägårdh. “Other Nordics are realizing you can’t keep schools closed forever. We’re in the long run here. It’s not a 60-meter race, it’s more like a marathon.”

While Sweden has a higher death rate than its Nordic neighbors and other wealthy European nations like Germany, it has been lower than rates in the Netherlands, France, and the United Kingdom. According to the Financial Times’ figures, Sweden has seen an 18% jump in excess deaths since the start of the outbreak, while Denmark has seen a 5% rise. Excess deaths in England and Wales are up 37%.

“The data out of Finland, Norway, and Denmark looks much better,” said Angner. “But everything will hinge on what will happen next.”

There’s some evidence that Sweden has managed to take the heaviest blow from the virus already — about a fourth or fifth of the population of Stockholm may have been infected, which would put the infection rate at a level similar to that found in New York City, which has had many more deaths and been under a near-total lockdown for almost two months. On Tuesday, health officials in Stockholm said the number of new deaths linked to Covid-19 was slowly decreasing from one week to the next.

The Swedish example carries both optimistic and pessimistic tidings for the United States as it embraces a partial, scattered reopening cheered on by the White House. It suggests that, even without punitive mandates, people can and will take measures to keep themselves safe from the disease. But even though people are protecting themselves without formal orders, the economy will be only slightly better off than it was under lockdown. Meanwhile, the American push to reopen is being driven by distrust of the government combined with the absence of robust safety-net programs to stem the economic bleeding. In the American context, Sweden’s example may be no example at all.

As a paper that was just accepted for publication, written by this author and two coauthors, we need reliable data to evaluate our progress as well as our failures to predict, based on appropriate statistical models and in order to lead us all in the correct path for future strategies for this pandemic and future crises.

3 States See Record High in Daily Coronavirus Infections After Reopening; and What About the Rest of the World?

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Many were waiting whether lockdowns were the answer to this pandemic, especially when we learned that Sweden didn’t mandate lockdowns or self-quarantines. But low and behold we learn of the spike in infections and deaths at the end of last week. In the article by Meghan Roos, 6/12/2020, In Sweden, Where No Lockdown was Ever Implemented, there was an increase one day spike of 1,474 on Thursday, 6/11/2020. Swedish health officials reported 49,684 infections and 4,854 deaths by Friday 6/12/2020. This country now has one of the highest per capita fatality rates in the world with an estimate 10 per cent of all COVID-19 cases resulting in death, accounting to date from John Hopkins University.

Now, as Nick Visser reported that Texas, Arizona and Florida all reported their highest daily increases in new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, even after all three states implemented and later lifted stay-at-home orders meant to stop the spread of infections.

State officials in Florida reported 2,783 new cases, in Texas, 2,622, and in Arizona, 2,392. All three states have seen social distancing regulations relaxed for weeks, and most businesses have been allowed to reopen in some capacity.

The figures come amid ongoing efforts by President Donald Trump and other Republican leaders to downplay the ongoing spread of the virus. At least 21 states have seen rates of new cases increase over the last two weeks as a majority of the country reopens.

At the same time, Trump has been pushing misleading claims that infections are only increasing because there’s more testing, going so far as to claim Monday, without evidence, that “if we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.”

The president is also preparing to hold a massive rally in Oklahoma this weekend with 20,000 attendees at an indoor arena, despite pleas from local officials and health professionals that the event could quickly lead to a renewed outbreak in the state. Infection rates in Oklahoma rose 68% in the second week of June.

“I’m extremely concerned,” Bruce Dart, the executive director of the Tulsa health department, told the Tulsa World. “I think we have the responsibility to stand up when things are happening that I think are going to be dangerous for our community, which it will be. It hurts my heart to think about the aftermath of what’s going to happen.”

Other state leaders have pushed back their own reopening efforts as cases have surged, including the governors of Utah and Oregon.

But in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said he was not considering another shutdown despite the surge in cases. He also rolled out the White House’s misleading talking point that cases were rising only because of increased testing.

“We’re not rolling back,” DeSantis said during a press briefing, according to the Miami Herald. “The reason we did the mitigation was to protect the hospital system.”

“You have to have society function,” he added. “To suppress a lot of working-age people at this point I don’t think would be very effective.”

In Arizona, some health officials were already reporting a strain on hospitals’ intensive care capacity due to a spike in coronavirus cases, even as Gov. Doug Ducey (R) said any concern was “misinformation” and said the facilities were prepared to handle an influx in patients.

And in Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said that, despite his own state’s figures, hospital capacity remained “abundant.”

“The more Texans protect their own health, the safer our state will be and the more we will be able to open up for business,” he said Tuesday.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, said that, despite the attempts to alleviate any concern, some states jumped the gun on reopening before meeting White House criteria on case levels.

“There certainly were states that did not strictly follow the guidelines that we put out about opening America again,” Fauci said in an interview with NPR. “Clearly there were states that ― left to their own decision about that ― went ahead and opened to a varying degree … certainly before they got to the benchmarks that they needed to get.”

Recent news report is that multiple Florida hospitals have run out of ICU beds as the Coronavirus cases continue to spike.

In This State, the Virus Is ‘Spreading Like Wildfire’

Jenn Gidman noted that as states start to reopen, as well as the recent ongoing protests, amid the pandemic, there’s a red flag rising out of the Southwest. Business Insider reports the coronavirus outbreak “is going very badly” in Arizona, with more than 4,400 new cases over the weekend, bringing the total number of cases in the state to more than 37,500 as of Sunday, with nearly 1,200 deaths. Per Healthline, there’s been a 300% increase in reported cases since May 1. Tucson.com reports that in just one week (from May 31 to June 6), the state saw its biggest week-to-week increase yet: 7,121 new coronavirus patients, or about a 54% increase from the previous week. Meanwhile, the Arizona Republic reports that hospitalizations are on the rise as well, with two straight weeks of statewide hospitalizations surpassing 1,000 daily—the highest number since state reporting began in the beginning of April. Will Humble, a former director of the state’s Department of Health Services, says the spike is “definitely related” to the state’s stay-at-home order being dropped on May 15, per Newsweek. More on the Grand Canyon State:

Eyewitness to tragedy: CBS 5 talked to one doctor who works at two Phoenix hospitals, and he described what he’s been seeing in ERs and ICUs. “He asked if he could make a call in the hospital,” he says of one elderly patient. “It was very tragic to hear him say goodbye to his godkids and grandchildren, who you could really tell loved him.”

Texas Governor Says ‘No Reason Today to Be Alarmed’ As Coronavirus Cases Set Record

One question that I have is if states or cities declare a lockdown whether people will adhere to the lockdown? Laurel Wamsley reported that Texas has seen a recent uptick in the number of COVID-19 cases, with a record level of new cases and hospitalizations announced Tuesday. People are seen here Monday along the San Antonio River Walk.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced on Tuesday the state’s highest-ever number of new COVID-19 cases: 2,622.

He also reported a second record high: 2,518 people hospitalized with the virus in Texas, up from 2,326 a day earlier.

Despite the concerning uptick in people sick with the virus, Abbott said that the reason for his news conference was to let Texans know about the “abundant” hospital capacity for treating people with COVID-19. He and other officials spent much of the briefing touting the state’s hospital bed availability.

Disclosing the new record high number of hospitalizations related to COVID-19, Abbott emphasized that figure is “really a very small percentage of all the beds that are available.” Texas has so far been spared the high case numbers in other populous states. While it’s the second-largest state by population, Texas currently ranks sixth in terms of cumulative case numbers.

Before releasing the number of new cases, Abbott delved into what he said accounted for the previous daily high on June 10, which had 2,504 new cases. The governor said that spike could be largely attributed to 520 positive tests of inmates in Texas prisons being reported at once as well as a data error in a rural county.

He said there are also reasons for why Tuesday’s new case count was so high: tests results coming from an assisted living facility near Plano; a county south of Austin where positive cases seemed to be reported in batches; and 104 cases in one East Texas county that appear to be primarily from tests at a prison.

But he also pointed to uncareful behavior as a possible driver in some of the new cases. Abbott said there were a number of counties where a majority of those who tested positive for the coronavirus were under the age of 30, which he attributed to people going to “bar-type” settings or Memorial Day celebrations and not taking health precautions.

Abbott said that measures such as wearing masks, hand sanitizing and social distancing are what make it possible to reopen the state’s economy and Dr. John Hellerstedt, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, struck the same note.

“The message is we are seeing some increase in the number of COVID patients in the state. We expected this,” he said. “But we are seeing it occurring at a manageable level. I really want to stress that the continued success is up to the people of the state of Texas.”

Despite Abbott’s emphasis on the importance of masks, he has barred Texas cities from implementing any rules that would require face coverings. Abbott signed an executive order on April 27 that says while individuals are encouraged to wear face masks, “no jurisdiction can impose a civil or criminal penalty for failure to wear a face covering.”

On Tuesday, the mayors of nine Texas cities — including Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth and El Paso — sent a letter to the governor asking for the authority to set the rules and regulations on the use of face coverings.

“A one-size-fits-all approach is not the best option. We should trust local officials to make informed choices about health policy. And if mayors are given the opportunity to require face coverings, we believe our cities will be ready to help reduce the spread of this disease,” they wrote. “If you do not have plans to mandate face coverings statewide, we ask that you restore the ability for local authorities to enforce the wearing of face coverings in public venues where physical distancing cannot be practiced.”

Abbott said Tuesday that judges and local officials have other tools available for enforcement such as issuing fines for gatherings that don’t follow state protocols.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler extended a stay-at-home warning on Monday amid the news of rising cases – but that warning could only be advice to residents and not an order due to the state’s preemption.

“People are confused,” Adler told NPR’s Steve Inskeep on Tuesday. “They just don’t know at this point if it’s really important to wear face coverings or not, because I think they’re feeling like they’re getting mixed messaging — not only from state leadership but from national leadership. So, we’re just not getting the vigilance that we need on these efforts.”

And the Surges In COVID-19 Cases Cause Friction Between Local Leaders, Governors

In Austin, Adler said, you’ll see most everyone wearing a mask in grocery stores but not in restaurants or music clubs: “When we started opening up the economy and when the governor took away from cities the ability to make it mandatory, more and more people stopped wearing them.”

Adler said he agreed with Abbott that face coverings are key to reopening parts of the economy, even if they’re unpleasant for wearers.

“I know it’s inconvenient. I know it’s hot. I know it’s a nuisance,” Adler said. “And it’s hard to do, and people don’t like it. But at the same time, our community has to decide just how much we value the lives of folks in our community that are over 65 and older. We have to decide how much we value the lives of the communities of color that are suffering disproportionately because of this virus.”

Florida Officials Spar Over Rising COVID-19 Cases

Greg Allen reported that in Florida, where there’s a surge of new COVID-19 cases, officials are divided over what to do about it. The state saw 2,783 new cases Tuesday. It was the third time in the past seven days that Florida set a new daily record.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Republican officials, including President Trump, say the rising number of new cases was expected and is mostly the result of increased testing. Florida is now testing more than 200,000 people a week, more than double the number tested weekly in mid-May.

But local officials and public health experts are concerned about other statistics that show that the coronavirus is still spreading in Florida. The state’s Department of Health reports that the number of people showing up in hospital emergency rooms with symptoms of the flu and COVID-19 is rising. Also, worrisome — the percentage of people who are testing positive for the virus is going up, total positive residents are 63,374 with 11,008 hospitalizations and 2,712 deaths.

In Palm Beach County, health director Alina Alonso says the rising positivity rate is a clear sign that the new cases can’t just be attributed to increased testing. Since Palm Beach County began allowing businesses to reopen, Alonso says, the percentage of people testing positive has jumped from 4.9% to 8.9%. “The fact that these are going up means there’s more community spread,” she says. “The virus now has food out there. It has people that are out there without masks, without maintaining distancing. So, it’s infecting more people.”

Alonso say the number of people hospitalized for the coronavirus has also gone up in Palm Beach County. “The numbers are very concerning to the hospitals,” she says. So far, the number of deaths from COVID-19 has remained low. But Alonso says deaths lag behind new recorded cases by about six weeks. She thinks the number of deaths will also rise. “We need to be cautious at this time. Wait a little bit until we see whether or not that happens,” she says. “If we go forward without waiting to see what is going on … by the time we get those deaths, it will be too late.”

Palm Beach County currently isn’t requiring residents to wear face coverings when in public places. County commissioners are now considering following the lead of Broward and Miami-Dade counties and making face masks mandatory.

In Tallahassee, DeSantis held a news conference where he responded to concerns about the rising positivity rate. Much of it, he said, is related to outbreaks among farmworkers and people in prison. Among the incidents he highlighted — a watermelon farm near Gainesville where, out of 100 workers tested, 90 were positive. DeSantis said, “When you have 90 out of 100 that test positive, what that does to positivity — that’s huge numbers.” Some of the other localized outbreaks among farmworkers, he noted, were in Palm Beach County.

DeSantis said there’s no reason to consider rolling back the rules allowing businesses to reopen at the moment. He has encouraged the resumption of sports events and attended a NASCAR race in Homestead, Fla., on Sunday with a few hundred other spectators. And he successfully lobbied for Florida to host President Trump’s acceptance speech at a Republican National Convention event in Jacksonville. That gathering is expected to draw thousands.

Democrats have become increasingly critical, saying DeSantis is ignoring important data that favor a more cautious response. Florida’s top elected Democrat, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, said, “Refusing to acknowledge the alarming patterns in cases, hospitalizations and positivity is not only arrogant but will cost lives, public health and our economy.”

Asymptomatic coronavirus transmission appears worse than SARS or influenza — a runner can leave a ‘slipstream’ of 30 feet

Quentin Fottrell reported that the WHO currently estimates that 16% of people are asymptomatic and can transmit the novel coronavirus, while other data show that 40% of coronavirus transmission is due to carriers not displaying symptoms of the illness. One study says that asymptomatic transmission “is the Achilles” heel of COVID-19 pandemic control. How worried should you be about asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19?

hours earlier that transmission of the novel coronavirus in carriers who don’t show apparent symptoms happened in “very rare” cases.

Maria Van Kerkhove said it was a “misunderstanding to state that asymptomatic transmission globally is very rare,” and that her comments during a WHO news briefing had been based on “a very small subset of studies.” “I was just responding to a question; I wasn’t stating a policy of WHO,” she said.

The WHO currently estimates that 16% of people with COVID-19 are asymptomatic and can transmit the coronavirus, while other data show that 40% of coronavirus transmission is due to carriers not displaying symptoms of the illness.

Public-health officials have advised people to keep a distance of six feet from one another. Face masks are designed to prevent the wearer, who may be infected with COVID-19 but have very mild or no symptoms, from spreading invisible droplets to another person and thereby infecting them too. But “there’s nothing magic about six feet,” said Gregory Poland, who studies the immunogenetics of vaccine response in adults and children at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and is an expert with the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

“The virus can’t measure,” he told MarketWatch. “For example, the viral cloud while speaking will extend 27 feet and linger in the air for about 30 minutes. This is more like influenza in the sense that people transmit the virus prior to experiencing any symptoms and some people, of course, will not get sick.”

Asymptomatic transmission “is the Achilles’ heel of COVID-19 pandemic control through the public-health strategies we have currently deployed,” according to a study by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco published May 28 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“Symptom-based screening has utility, but epidemiologic evaluations of COVID-19 outbreaks within skilled nursing facilities … strongly demonstrate that our current approaches are inadequate,” researchers Monica Gandhi, Deborah Yokoe and Diane Havlir wrote.

Brazil is on track to lead the world in coronavirus cases and deaths, and it still doesn’t have a plan for tackling the outbreak

Amanda Perobelli reported that Brazil could surpass the US in coronavirus cases and deaths by the end of July, according to estimates from the University of Washington.

The country recorded a daily record of 34,918 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, according to Reuters. And despite the growing number of cases, the country has not created a plan to tackle the outbreak. Brazil could surpass the US in both coronavirus infections and deaths by the end of July, according to the main coronavirus tracking model from the University of Washington.

The country, which has yet to impose a national coronavirus lockdown, is on its way to registering more than 4,000 daily deaths, The Washington Post reported, citing the university. As of Tuesday, Brazil had more than 923,000 coronavirus infections and more than 45,000 deaths. Experts told Reuters the true number of cases was most likely higher.

As The Post noted, the country doesn’t have the same infrastructure to help it handle such a large outbreak as the US. But that hasn’t stopped President Jair Bolsonaro from largely dismissing the crisis the novel coronavirus is causing. In fact, he’s even attacked governors who chose to impose restrictions and threatened to host large barbecues in spite of public-health advice, The Post reported.

Brazil has not initiated a national testing campaign, has not implemented a national lockdown, and is dealing with insufficient healthcare expansion. Reuters reported that that country counted 34,918 new daily coronavirus cases on Tuesday.

In a report in early May, Carlos Machado, a senior scientist with Brazil’s Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, and his team warned that without a lockdown in Rio de Janeiro, the outcome would be “in a human catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.” He now says had his warnings been taken seriously, the outcome would not have been so bleak.

“From the point of view of public health, it’s incomprehensible that more-rigorous measures weren’t adopted,” Machado told The Post. “We could have avoided many of the deaths and cases and everything else that is happening in Rio de Janeiro. It was an opportunity lost.”

Scientists in the country told The Post that the country was veering into unknown territory. “We are doing something that no one else has done,” Pedro Hallal, an epidemiologist at the Federal University of Pelotas, told The Post. “We’re getting near the curve’s peak, and it’s like we are almost challenging the virus. ‘Let’s see how many people you can infect. We want to see how strong you are.’ Like this is a game of poker, and we’re all in.”

Bolsonaro’s approach has been to ignore the problem and sideline health experts

Reuters reported that senior officials leading Brazil’s coronavirus response had claimed the outbreak was under control.

“There is a crisis, we sympathize with bereaved families, but it is managed,” said Braga Netto, who spoke during a webinar held by the Commercial Association of Rio de Janeiro.

The World Health Organization’s regional director Carissa Etienne said Brazil was a major concern, Reuters reported. “We are not seeing transmission slowing down” in Brazil, Etienne said. Etienne said the country accounted for about 4 million coronavirus cases in the Americas and about 25% of the deaths.

The Post described Bolsonaro’s approach as being to ignore and sideline health experts. The Brazilian president fired Luiz Henrique Mandetta, his first health minister, after disagreements on social distancing, and then he fired his replacement, Nelson Teich, because he disagreed with the use of chloroquine as a treatment for coronavirus.

Similar to US President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro has boosted the use of hydroxychloroquine in the past. On Monday, the US Food and Drug Administration revoked the emergency-use authorization issued for the antimalarial drug.

One expert said even the public in Brazil did not heed public-health advice to limit the spread of the virus and continued to congregate without any safety measures implemented.

“It was a failure,” Ligia Bahia, a professor of public health at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, told The Post. “We didn’t have enough political force to impose another way. The scientists alone, we couldn’t do it. There’s a sense of profound sadness that this wasn’t realized.”

Presently there is only one country that has declared it COVID-19 cleared, that is Montenegro. New Zealand has declared their country COVID-19 free and then two cases turned up as two people from Europe who traveled to New Zealand tested positive and are now quarantined.

Look at the recent world numbers where the total cases are 8,174,327 with 443,500 deaths. Way too many!

When will it all be over?

Mood darkens in Sweden as high death rate raises tough questions over lack of lockdown, and Now A Second Wave and a Possible Kids’ Epidemic!

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Richard Orange noted that Sweden, in deference to the rest of the countries believing in the strategy to lockdown their populace, decided not to use stay-at-home or lockdowns except for the elderly. Sweden’s opposition has attacked the government for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with the stubbornly high death rate fueling questions over the decision not to impose a lockdown.

Jimmie Akesson, the leader of the populist Sweden Democrats, first called for Anders Tegnell, the architect of Sweden’s less restrictive coronavirus strategy, to resign. The attacks continued in heated televised leaders’ debate on Sunday night.

“The strategy in Sweden was not to try to hold back the infection, but instead to try to limit it at the same time as protecting risk groups,” Mr Akesson wrote in a debate article in the Dagens Nyheter newspaper.

“By that measure, it has failed miserably. Anders Tegnell should therefore resign. Only then will he show the Swedish people that he takes responsibility for the mistakes FHM [Public Health Agency of Sweden] has made.”

During a party leaders’ debate on Sunday evening, Ebba Busch-Thor, leader of the Christian Democrat party, blamed Sweden’s strategy – and by extension the government that allowed it – for some of the 4,659 deaths due to the virus.

“What we can say about Sweden is that many of those who are mourning over those they have lost this spring are doing so because Sweden knowingly and deliberately allowed a large spread of the infection,” she said.

Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the Moderate Party, the biggest party on the Centre-Right, held back from joining Mrs. Busch-Thor’s attack on the strategy, instead attacking the implementation of it.

“I had no problem with the strategy. It was a bit slow but, when it was in place, I had nothing against it,” he said. “But the government didn’t put any power behind the words.”

The Prime Minister, Stefan Lofven, continued to back Sweden’s strategic decision not to impose a lockdown, instead laying the blame for the death rate on failures within elderly care.

“I think the strategy is the right one,” he said. “But it has transpired that that very many people, in certain areas, have died in elderly care. There’s no doubt that elderly care needs to be improved.”

Mr Akesson faced an immediate counter-attack from Johan Carlsson, the director of FHM, who dismissed his call as “almost pathetic”.

Dagens Nyheter’s political commentator Ewa Stenberg wrote on Sunday that the debate marked an end to the “borgsfred”, or “castle truce”, in Sweden.

“The tone was harsh and quite contrary to how it was when the virus hit the country. Then all the parties backed the government’s decision to let the Public Health Authority take the lead,” she wrote.

However, the return of political opposition does not yet seem to reflect a loss of support for the government among the public.

Kids During Lockdown: Is Another Epidemic About to be Revealed?

Ingrid Walker-Descartes noted that even in non-pandemic years, the summertime “back-to-school” rush of appointments in many pediatric practices can be a logistical challenge. This year could be even more hectic after many families delayed routine appointments during quarantine. Hoping to return to their routines, children and teens will need vaccines, physical exams for sports clearances and school forms, and all the regular developmental and emotional surveillance that is so important to keep them healthy.

As pediatricians, we should be adding another layer to our checklists in these visits this year. For many children, this visit may be the first time in weeks or months that someone outside their immediate family has had eyes on them.

We must be careful to listen, very carefully, to what the children and parents tell us, both in their words and in other signs. How has the family coped with the stress of being stuck at home? Are there financial struggles? Food insecurity? Other stresses? As a child abuse pediatrician, I know all of these things can put tremendous stress on a family, and ultimately can lead to a child being maltreated or abused. We have a real opportunity right now to intervene and provide critical support to families, and to protect children.

Sadly, we know from previous disasters that during these times of intense emotional and economic stress, rates of child abuse and neglect increase. Injuries and deaths among infants due to abusive head trauma increase during times of economic stress, and scattered reports among physicians at children’s hospitals in various states are reporting that is happening now, too. For example, a hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, and a hospital in Philadelphia, are reporting an increase in the number of severe physical abuse cases. Many times, this abuse occurs when a parent or caregiver is frustrated or at the “end of their rope,” and in a moment of anger, makes a devastating choice that injures a child.

For the past few months, during sheltering in place, children have lacked many of the people who often step forward as protectors — the aunt they may confide in, a teacher who sees a bruise, or a physician who notices an injury where there reasonably should be none. Reports to child abuse hotlines and child protective services have declined during the pandemic, but this is not necessarily because fewer children are being injured. We know that teachers and school counselors are the most frequent reporters of suspected abuse, and for months children have not had access to these trusted protectors. Many of them have not seen their pediatrician, either. These combined realities have left some of our most vulnerable children without several much-needed layers of protection.

As a pediatrician who specializes in diagnosing abuse and protecting children from further abuse, I am well versed in talking with children to understand what happened to cause their injuries. Some may convey lessons learned from their choices made due to curiosity or naivete. Others struggle to elaborate on marks or scars made in anger by a caregiver. Post COVID-19, it will be important for all pediatricians to have a careful approach as they are talking with families, listening and observing to understand what children experienced during the pandemic, and how we can help them and their families be safe and healthy.

Some families may benefit from a referral to a nutrition program, caregiver support program, parental counseling, or other resources. In other cases, a pediatrician may notice a sign of potential abuse that should be reported to the relevant child protection agencies. This is always difficult, but it can be the first step to making sure a child is safe and protected while a family gets the support they need.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recently provided a webinar guide on how to identify child abuse during the pandemic, and additional resources are provided on the AAP website, including a list of child abuse programs across the country to help support you in this difficult role.

The stress on families and children will not end when the stay-at-home orders lift. Let’s be prepared to help all our children emerge healthy and strong, and ready to learn.

CDC wants states to count ‘probable’ coronavirus cases and deaths, but most aren’t doing it

Reinhard, Emma Brown Reis Thebault and Lena H. Sun reported that fewer than half the states are following federal recommendations to report probable novel coronavirus cases and deaths, marking what experts say is an unusual break with public health practices that leads to inconsistent data collection and undercounts of the disease’s impact.

A Washington Post review found that the states not disclosing probable cases and deaths include some of the largest: California, Florida, North Carolina and New York. That is one reason government officials and public health experts say the virus’s true toll is above the U.S. tally as of Sunday of about 1.9 million coronavirus cases and 109,000 deaths — benchmarks that shape policymaking and public opinion on the pandemic.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention works closely with a group of health officials called the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists to issue guidelines for tracking certain illnesses. The guidelines are voluntary, though states generally comply. The goal: solid comparisons between states and accurate national statistics that inform public health decision-making.

In April, as coronavirus infections multiplied and laboratory testing was limited, the CSTE and the CDC advised states to count both probable cases and deaths — where symptoms and exposure pointed to infection — along with those confirmed by tests.

Yet weeks after the guidance was handed down to standardize coronavirus reporting, a Post review found states as of early June counting cases and deaths in all sorts of ways.

At least 24 states are not heeding the national guidelines on reporting probable cases and deaths, despite previously identifying probable cases in other national outbreaks, including H1N1 flu during the country’s last pandemic in 2009.

The failure of many states to document probable coronavirus cases and deaths is “historic in many ways because there are lots of probable case classifications and probables are regularly and normally reported on,” said Janet Hamilton, the CSTE executive director. “We are definitely concerned about the undercounting of covid-19 deaths and cases.”

New Jersey says it began reporting probable cases and deaths to the CDC on May 15 but does not disclose them publicly on its website. Georgia says it tracks the information internally but is not reporting those numbers on its website or to the CDC.

“We do have intentions of sharing them but not yet,” said Nancy Nydam, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Public Health, who said as of late May the department had tracked 1,658 probable cases and potentially dozens of probable deaths.

Officials in Montana, Rhode Island and the District of Columbia say they haven’t reported any probable cases or deaths because they have not had any, citing low numbers or the wide availability of testing.

Seven states did not respond to The Post’s requests for a breakdown of cases and death counts. Five of those are not reporting probable cases or deaths, according to data the CDC began publishing June 2. South Dakota reports probable deaths but not cases.

Officials in the remaining 17 states say they are reporting probable and confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths on their websites and to the CDC. Some states distinguish between probable and confirmed while others group them.

In some states not reporting probable cases, officials cite the demands of an unprecedented crisis in which Americans press for daily updates from public health data systems that are chronically underfunded and outdated.

In Washington state, where many of the nation’s first deaths occurred, health department spokeswoman Lisa Stromme Warren said documenting probable cases and deaths “is one of many urgent priorities.” The state has identified about 100 people whose death certificates list covid-19 but were never tested, so they are not included in the public death count or reported to the CDC.

“We suspect that we are actually more likely to be undercounting deaths than overcounting them,” Katie Hutchinson, the health department’s health statistics manager, said during a recent briefing.

CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said that the agency is working with health departments to improve the flow of data. “In pandemic circumstances, such as with covid-19, collecting complete information on each case is challenging,” Nordlund said. “The current case and deaths counts reported to CDC are likely an undercount.”

During the H1N1 flu pandemic, states initially counted probable and confirmed cases individually. But about three months into the outbreak, the CDC said those individual counts represented “only a fraction of the true burden” of the disease. The agency stopped collecting individual case reports and instead began publishing estimates based on hospitalizations, symptoms and other data.

The CDC is planning to come up with similar estimates for the coronavirus but has no immediate plans to stop counting individual cases. “CDC is actively working on a model to address and assess the true burden of covid-19 in the U.S.,” Nordlund said.

All eyes on numbers

For government officials assessing how quickly to reopen the economy and individuals deciding what risks to take, their daily judgment calls are based, in part, on the case and death counts publicized on television and computer screens.

That has propelled the pandemic counts into the contentious political arena, where some allies of President Trump and conservative voices on social media have claimed that the covid-19 death toll is inflated. The debate over whether counts of probables are crucial or misleading extends beyond the nation’s capital.

In Illinois, two Republican lawmakers and three businesses have sued the Democratic governor over coronavirus disaster orders. A spokeswoman for the health department, Melaney Arnold, said the state is not divulging probable deaths on its website “because there is concern from the public that the number of deaths is being inflated. . . . We need the public to have confidence in the data and therefore are reporting only those deaths that are laboratory confirmed.”

The state website lists about 5,700 deaths as of June 5, excluding the approximately 185 probable deaths tracked internally as of that day and reported to the CDC.

But a resident looking at a state chart and then turning to the CDC might not find the same numbers. The newly posted CDC table does not reflect the probables that officials in some states said they have reported. Officials say that’s because the reports sent to the CDC include those with confirmed cases in one figure and because the national update can run slightly behind state websites.

Since the 1950s, CSTE has recommended which diseases states should track and what those reports to the federal government should look like. The CDC works closely with the epidemiologists’ council and adopts its guidelines to “enable public health officials to classify and count cases consistently across reporting jurisdictions,” according to the CDC website.

States usually follow these recommendations and report the incidence of dozens of different diseases to the CDC, with some exceptions. A state may not report cases of a disease that does not occur within its borders, yet may track another illness found only in its part of the country.

Hawaii, for example, does not report Lyme disease, as every other state does, but it does report hallucinogenic fish poisoning.

“It’s more of a handshake agreement between the states and CDC that we will send you the data in this way so that you can then aggregate it,” said Kathy Turner, Idaho’s deputy epidemiologist. “In general, there’s no argument. We all do it because we realize the importance of being able to look at a disease on a national level.”

Some reportable diseases rarely result in deaths, so CSTE directives have typically focused on how to count cases, not fatalities. Then came the coronavirus and a mushrooming death toll. The CDC acknowledged in early April that the death count was an “underestimation” because it included only fatalities in which the virus was laboratory confirmed. Testing shortages, people dying at home or in nursing homes, and spotty postmortem testing meant victims were overlooked.

“When the outbreak first started and we were all just counting lab-confirmed cases by default, it became clear that we were not going to be able to describe the burden of the pandemic because so many people were not being tested,” said Turner, lead author of the CSTE statement on covid-19.

“We usually don’t approach a death separately from a case, but in this situation, we decided it was needed,” she said.

The CSTE recommended reporting probable and confirmed cases and deaths on April 5. The CDC’s written response to the recommendations, which was shared with The Post, said the agency “concurs” and that adoption by states is “very important” for covid-19 record-keeping. On April 14, the CDC noted on its website that the national tally includes probables, although the agency did not at that time provide a state-by state breakdown. The CDC also modified the form states use for coronavirus reports, adding boxes that can be checked to indicate a “lab-confirmed” case or “probable” case.

Probable cases were defined as showing symptoms and having contact with an infected person, or meeting one of those criteria and testing positive for coronavirus antibodies, rather than for the virus itself. Probable deaths meant those who were never tested for the virus but whose death certificates listed covid-19 as the cause of death or a significant condition contributing to death.

The CSTE statement also says that confirmed and probable counts should be included in the tallies “released outside the public health agency,” which could mean a state website or written report, according to the organization.

“When states are using different approaches, it always begs the question: ‘Why does one state choose one over another? Why a more conservative approach over a more sensitive one?’’’ asked Lorna Thorpe, director of the division of epidemiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. “That’s the reason we have standards and guidance that are technically sound.”

Information varies

The erratic reporting of coronavirus cases and deaths means that what residents can learn about the extent of the pandemic in their community varies widely.

Ohio was one the first states to begin disclosing probable cases and deaths in early April. “It usually is a given when CSTE makes a recommendation like that,” said Brian Fowler, chief data officer for the Ohio Department of Health. “When they made that recommendation, we looked at it and said, okay, well this is what we need to use.”

As of June 5, Ohio’s website showed 2,117 confirmed deaths and 222 probables. By breaking out the numbers separately, Fowler said, “you can’t be accused of hiding information and you can’t be accused of inflating numbers — it’s all out there.”

The transition to counting probables was not “a huge lift,” Fowler said. Epidemiologists at the health department were already reviewing all suspected coronavirus cases.

Some health officials were candid about how adding probable deaths would boost the overall tally. “I want to make sure that everyone understands that these are not new deaths,” Indiana Health Commissioner Kristina Box said at an April 20 news conference. “Rather, we are capturing the deaths that have occurred really since this pandemic began.” Box suggested other states would do the same: “Indiana — like every other state — will include these deaths in our reporting in order to better capture the toll that covid-19 has truly taken.”

One week earlier, Michigan officials had said they intended to begin disclosing probable cases and deaths. When the state finally began doing that on June 5, more than 5,000 cases and 200 deaths were added to coronavirus totals.

California’s state health department is reviewing the process to track probable deaths and “working to provide as much data as possible about COVID 19 while ensuring that the data are valid and useful for understanding the pandemic,” according to a May 20 email to The Post.

Hilda Solis, a supervisor in Los Angeles County who represents a heavily Hispanic and impoverished district, said she was surprised that the state is not following national recommendations on counting coronavirus deaths. She has called for more post-mortem testing by the medical examiner. “A lot of people are dying at home. Poor people are dying at home. Homeless people are dying,” said Solis, a former U.S. labor secretary under President Barack Obama. “I do believe covid-19 is being underreported and that we need to take more responsibility.”

The scale of undercounting that results from reporting only confirmed cases became clear when New York City on April 14 added more than 3,700 probable deaths to its numbers, sending the city’s tally over 10,000.

The city that sits at the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States still is not counting probable cases, however. New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat praised for his command of daily news briefings during the pandemic, has indicated skepticism about recording probable cases. “Probable is different than confirmed,” he said at a news conference in late May. “Probable is ‘probable, but I have to check, I don’t know, I have to do further testing.’ We’ve had many cases that were probable coronavirus and turned out not to be coronavirus and that’s why they call them probable.” Covid-19 websites for New York and New Jersey include probable deaths at nursing homes, but those numbers are not included in the states’ overall death totals. A spokesperson for North Carolina’s health department said the state is not reporting probables because of wariness about the reliability of antibody tests, and because of concerns that the CSTE’s definition of a probable case is overly broad. Officials in Florida did not respond to repeated requests for comment about why the state isn’t following federal guidelines.

People behind ‘probables’

Behind each probable death is a person. Barnes O’Neal, 83, checked into the Brightmoor Nursing Center in Georgia in March to recover from a 10-day hospitalization. Less than a month into his stay at the facility about 40 miles south of Atlanta, a coronavirus outbreak forced a lockdown. O’Neal developed a fever and pneumonia. His daughter, Natalie Turner, pleaded with her father’s caretakers and the state health department for a coronavirus test. She said she wanted his illness on the record.

On April 20, just hours after Turner had spoken with him by phone, O’Neal died. He was never tested, but Turner said his doctor told her there was “zero doubt” it was covid-19 and wrote it on her father’s death certificate.

Still, her father, a frequent volunteer at the local soup kitchen, would not be included in the death toll on the state website because he was never tested. “It’s just important to me because my dad’s life counted,” Turner said. “I feel like there’s a face behind every statistic, and that’s forgotten many times.”

And now the pandemic’s overall death toll in U.S. has exceeded 100,000, but what are the real numbers?

Second U.S. Virus Wave Emerges as Cases Top 2 Million

Emma Court and David Baker noted that a second wave of coronavirus cases is emerging in the U.S., raising alarms as new infections push the overall count past 2 million Americans. Texas on Wednesday reported 2,504 new coronavirus cases, the highest one-day total since the pandemic emerged. A month into its reopening, Florida this week reported 8,553 new cases — the most of any seven-day period. California’s hospitalizations are at their highest since May 13 and have risen in nine of the past 10 days.

A fresh onslaught of the novel coronavirus is bringing challenges for residents and the economy in pockets across the U.S. The localized surges have raised concerns among experts even as the nation’s overall case count early this week rose just under 1%, the smallest increase since March.

“There is a new wave coming in parts of the country,” said Eric Toner, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “It’s small and it’s distant so far, but it’s coming.”

Though the outbreaks come weeks into state reopenings, it’s not clear that they’re linked to increased economic activity. And health experts say it’s still too soon to tell whether the massive protests against police brutality that have erupted in the past two weeks have led to more infections.

In Georgia, where hair salons, tattoo parlors and gyms have been operating for a month and a half, case numbers have plateaued, flummoxing experts.

Puzzling differences show up even within states. In California, which imposed a stay-at-home order in late March, San Francisco saw zero cases for three consecutive days this week, while Los Angeles County reported well over half of the state’s new cases. The White House Coronavirus Task Force has yet to see any relationship between reopening and increased cases of Covid-19, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn said on a podcast.

But in some states, rising numbers outpace increases in testing, raising concerns about whether the virus can be controlled. It will take a couple of weeks to know, Toner said, but by then “it’s going to be pretty late” to respond.

Since the pandemic initially swept the U.S. starting early this year, 2 million people have been infected and more than 112,000 have died.

After a national shutdown that arrested the spread, rising illness had been expected as restrictions loosened. The trend has been observed across 22 states in recent weeks, though many increases are steady but slow.

In New York, the state hardest hit by Covid-19, Governor Andrew Cuomo only recently started reopening by region. New York City, the epicenter, began the first of four phases Monday.

“We know as a fact that reopening other states, we’re seeing significant problems,” Cuomo said Tuesday. “Just because you reopen does not mean you will have a spike, but if you are not smart, you can have a spike.”

Experts see evidence of a second wave building in Arizona, Texas, Florida and California. Arizona “sticks out like a sore thumb in terms of a major problem,” said Jeffrey Morris, director of the division of biostatistics at University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.

Arizona Spike

Arizona’s daily tally of new cases has abruptly spiked in the last two weeks, hitting an all-time high of 1,187 on June 2.

This week, its Department of Health Services urged hospitals to activate emergency plans. Director Cara Christ, told a Phoenix television station that she was concerned about the rising case count and percentage of people tested who are found to be positive.

Valleywise Health, the public hospital system in Phoenix, has seen an increase in Covid-19 cases during the past two weeks. It’s expanded its intensive-care capacity and those beds are 87% full, about half with Covid patients, according to Michael White, the chief medical officer.

White said Valleywise has adequate protective gear for staff, but hospitals aren’t getting their entire orders. A surge in Covid cases could put that supply under stress, he said.

The increase in transmission follows steps to resume business and public life as well as the riots and protests.

“Within Phoenix, we’ve been more relaxed than I’ve seen in some of the other parts of the country,” White said, with some people disregarding advice to wear masks and maintain six feet of distance from others. “People are coming together in environments where social distancing is challenging.”

Texas on Wednesday reported a 4.7% jump in hospitalizations to 2,153, the fourth consecutive daily increase. The latest figures showing an escalation came as Governor Greg Abbott tweeted a public service announcement featuring baseball legend Nolan Ryan urging Texans to wash their hands and to not be “a knucklehead.”

Abbott was criticized for an aggressive reopening last month. Mobile-phone data show activity by residents is rebounding toward pre-Covid levels, according to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s PolicyLab.

That could reflect a perception that the virus wasn’t “ever a big threat,” said Morris, who recently moved to Philadelphia after 20 years in Houston.

Florida’s health department said in a statement that it attributes the increase in cases to “greatly expanded efforts in testing,” and noted that overall positivity rates remain low, at about 5.5%.

Bucking the trend is Georgia, which was the first U.S. state to reopen. Covid cases there have plateaued. Despite local outbreaks in the state, “their sea levels did not rise,” said David Rubin, director of the PolicyLab, which has been modeling the virus’ spread. “They’ve kind of held this fragile equilibrium.”

Creeping In

California was the earliest state to shut down its economy over the coronavirus, after one of the nation’s first outbreaks in the San Francisco Bay Area. It has been slower than most to reopen.

Even so, the state has also seen the number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 rebound in the past two weeks, as commerce accelerates. Case counts are climbing too, although officials attribute that to increased testing and say it’s a sign of preparation.

In part, rising numbers represent the virus spreading into places that largely avoided the first round of infections, including rural Imperial County in California’s southeastern desert. Yet the contagion remains present in places that bore the brunt of the first wave, including Los Angeles County. Hospitalizations there are lower than at the start of May, but deaths remain stubbornly high, with 500 in the past week alone.

Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County public health director, said the region has likely not seen the end of the first wave. And despite concerns about infections coming out of mass demonstrations in the sprawling city, she thinks the reopening of the economy will have a bigger impact.

“We’re not at the tail end of anything,” Ferrer said. “We never had a huge peak. We’ve kind of been within this band. We’re not in decline, we’re kind of holding our own in ways that protect the health-care system.” But, she added, “go to Venice and see the crowds, and you’ll understand why I have concerns.”

Another Onslaught

The U.S. has long been bracing for another wave, but future outbreaks are likely to take a different shape. Social distancing and mask-wearing, as well as careful behavior by individuals, are likely to have staying power even as economies reopen.

Experts are steeling for autumn, when changes in weather and back-to-school plans could have damaging repercussions.

“The second wave isn’t going to mirror the first wave exactly,” said Lance Waller, a professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta. “It’s not snapping back to exactly the same thing as before, because we’re not exactly the way we were before.”

Daniel Lucey, a fellow at the Infectious Diseases Society of America, compared the virus’ new paradigm with a day at the beach: The U.S. has been bracing for another “high tide” like the one that engulfed New York City. Today is a low tide, but “the waves are always coming in.”

People are Truly Stupid- People are furious over 2020 graduation ceremonies, the latest coronavirus political battleground

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Lilly Altavena reported that people are furious about not being able to have their graduation ceremonies. How silly! Keiv Soliman doesn’t want to receive his diploma joined on-stage by a hologram of his principal.

But as the coronavirus continues to cast a shadow on American traditions, making large gatherings like graduation ceremonies dangerous, a virtual ceremony might be the Highland High School senior’s only chance at pomp and circumstance.

Soliman’s school, in Gilbert, Arizona, is staging an elaborate virtual graduation ceremony, where Highland seniors will be filmed walking across a stage to receive their diploma.

Their principal will read student names from a different room. Using “holographic technology,” video editors will then edit the ceremony to make it appear as if everyone was in the same room together.

But Soliman’s friends don’t want a studio-produced graduation, he said. They want a real ceremony. Soliman started a petition, which has more than 600 signatures so far, asking for an in-person ceremony — with masks and social distancing.

“You can’t really replace the real thing with anything but the real thing,” Soliman said.

Graduation ceremonies have become a political battleground for schools, students and parents in the wake of school closures caused by the coronavirus. Some believe they can have a ceremony safely while others are accusing the high-schoolers and their parents of being selfish during a global pandemic.

“This is much bigger than a graduation ceremony,” said Reed Burris, a Gilbert resident opposed to in-person ceremonies. “You should be pushing for people to stay inside.”

Soliman’s petition is one of more than 500 on Change.org, pleading for the preservation of in-person ceremonies across the U.S.

Not the real thing, but… Students will cross the finish line to high school with a lap at the Daytona 500In Knoxville, Tennessee, district leaders backpedaled on a plan to hold graduation without guests when parents revolted.

“There’s a lot more involved in these ceremonies than a student getting a paper diploma and turning their tassel,” Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs said.

The discourse shares similarities with the fervent demonstrations staged for and against reopening America’s businesses, as well as the debate over the use of masks in public places. The rancor underscores an increasingly fractured conversation around COVID-19.

Uncertainty looms over ceremonies

Arizona’s stay-at-home order expires Friday. The governor isstill encouraging social distancing, but nothing in his new order appears to forbid gatherings.

The Arizona Department of Health Services recommended on Monday “that mass gatherings (such as graduations, concerts) are not held at this time.”

Even still, the agency outlined steps for attendees and organizers to take if they planned to forge ahead with a ceremony:

Anyone sick should stay home.
Attendees should stay six feet away from each other.
Anyone in a high-risk group should not attend, including older adults and anyone with a serious underlying medical condition.
Attendees should not touch their eyes, nose or mouth and should use hand sanitizer after leaving the event. They should also wash their hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds upon returning home.
Attendees should cover their faces at the event.
They should not borrow or rent graduation regalia.

Major Arizona school districts have either postponed ceremonies or have decided to hold virtual ceremonies.

Chandler Unified, the second-largest school district in the state, wrote to families on May 5 that the district is working on a plan to hold graduation ceremonies at each high school “while still adhering to the recommended CDC guidelines.”

At the ceremonies, students would be seated six feet apart and the audience would likely be limited. The ceremonies would be livestreamed for families to watch.

One superintendent in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin, initially resisted the idea of a virtual graduation because it made the emotional event seem so impersonal.

Back in early April, Wauwatosa School District Superintendent Phil Ertl said he hoped to just keep pushing back the date of an in-person ceremony for as long as it took to do it safely. But by early May, his district had gone the route of many others, with a planned video celebration set for June 7.

“We are also still hanging on to July 26 in hopes that we can do something in person,” Ertl said this week. “So much is changing. To cancel that date right now doesn’t make sense to me.”

Pleas for the show to go on

People in at least nine school districts across Arizona have started Change.org petitions to hold in-person graduation ceremonies.

After Arizona Gov. DougDucey announced that businesses could start to reopen, a group of Arizona seniors made a video pleading for an in-person ceremony.

“There are ways we can make this happen,” one of the students in the video said. “We deserve a graduation.”

The video was posted on Twitter and received nearly 100 retweets. But some who responded to the tweet scoffed at the idea.

“You’re asking to put your friends’ parents at risk of dying so you can feel accomplished for a completely normal and baseline accomplishment,” one Twitter user responded.

Others have tried to come up with alternatives to graduation.

Beth Obermeyer, who works with high school students at New Foundation church in Goodyear, held driveway graduations for seniors. Using a megaphone, church staff surprised students by showing up on their driveway and holding impromptu celebrations, six feet apart.

“We were trying to think of a way to make our high school seniors feel better because they’ve had such a rough spring,” Obermeyer said.

No prom, either: So, these families toasted a high school couple in their own backyard prom

In Great Falls, Montana, district officials said they did not want the coronavirus to end the tradition of graduating seniors’ ringing a school bell. Officials are leaving the bell in the school’s parking lot for students to ring.

If students choose to ring the bell, they are asked to maintain social distancing, wear the supplied disposable gloves and sanitize hands before and after ringing the bell. The school is setting up a hand-sanitizing station.

‘We’re not taking this lightly’: Small Montana school to be among first in US to reopen

Some have said schools are being too cautious.

A group of Mountain View High parents in Mesa, Arizona, are throwing a senior salute parade for grads. Seniors on May 16 will line up six feet apart on the sidewalk of a Mesa street for cars to drive by in celebration.

Destinee Mack, a parent and one of the event’s organizers, initially asked the district if parents could drop their student off in the high school’s parking lot so the students could safely line up.

Mesa Public Schools denied that request, Mack said. Mesa did not respond to a request for comment.

“I do think there’s a risk, but I do also think that if we follow the social distancing protocols . I think we can still do this in a socially responsible way,” Mack said.

Harvard epidemiologist: Beware COVID-19’s second wave this fall

Len Strazewski writer for the AMA questioned whether sunshine and warm weather bring an end to face masks, physical distancing and other pandemic mitigation tactics? Several states may be easing stay-at-home orders, but the joy of the release of COVID-19 restrictions may be short-lived. And that is what we saw last weekend here in Ocean City, Maryland. The crowds were amazing!

People believe the talk of the second wave, which I became more aware when one of my cosmetic surgery patients, scheduled for her surgery rescheduled for September just cancelled her surgery due to her belief that there would be a second wave of the COVID-19 disease.

Featured updates: COVID-19

Track the evolving situation with the AMA’s library of the most up-to-date resources from JAMA, CDC and WHO.

Summer may slow the spread of the coronavirus a bit, but it will back by fall with a second wave that looks a lot like the first wave, said a leading epidemiology researcher. And the immunity that will bring a real end to the pandemic may be a long time coming.

Marc Lipsitch, DPhil, is professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. He discussed the prospects for mitigating a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and the potential approaches to faster development of a vaccine, with JAMA Editor-in-Chief Howard Bauchner, MD, on Dr. Bauchner’s podcast, “Conversations with Dr. Bauchner.”

“Almost every government is talking about lifting control measures. Not every government, but many, because of the economic burdens. Given the fairly high caseloads that we have in the United States, that’s a really risky thing to do right now,” Lipsitch said.

“I hope that the summer weather will help,” he added, but his research indicates that the warmer weather will only reduce transmission rates by about 20%. “That’s only enough to slow it down, but not enough to stop it.”

Jurisdictions may learn more about which tactics work best in mitigating transmission during this period and may learn whether some mitigation tactics such as school closings are valuable.

“But the downside,” Lipsitch warned, “is that many jurisdictions will have a plan to open up but not a plan to reclose, leading to more situations like New York, New Orleans and Detroit where there’s extreme strains on the heath care.”

Learn more with the AMA about the four signposts to safely reopen America. Also consult the AMA’s new physician practice guide to reopening.

Stay up to speed on the fast-moving pandemic with the AMA’s COVID-19 resource center, which offers a library of the most up-to-date resources from JAMA Network™, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the World Health Organization. Also check out the JAMA Network COVID-19 resource center.

Serological studies

Testing will be important, Lipsitch said, and medical researchers need to learn more about infection rates. Preliminary research indicates that rates may vary widely around the country and a real understanding may have to wait until comprehensive serological testing, he explained.

Local leaders will need to understand more about who gets infected before they can make good decisions about openings and staying open. Sociological factors such as poverty and transportation maybe important determinants in understanding infection and serological surveys may help in understanding who gets infected and which intervention and mitigation tactics are most valuable.

Fall will be difficult

Lipsitch said that despite hopes that summer will bring continued relief from the spread of the virus, “fall will be very much like the spring,” and the usual pattern of coronaviruses is likely continue with new transmission peaking in November and cases peaking in December.

“We will have a harder time controlling coronavirus in the fall … and we will all be very tired of social distancing and other tactics. The hard thing will be to keep enough of it to protect our ICUs and keep the number of cases from flaring up,” he said.

Controlling the virus may call for a return to the tactics that have worked in spring and a continued focus on maintaining resources such as personal protective equipment and increasing viral testing.

Illinois mandated ‘Stay-at-home’ orders, nearby Iowa didn’t: here’s what happened

Healthday reporter, Dennis Thompson noted that Statewide stay-at-home orders appear to help slow the spread of COVID-19 above and beyond other steps like banning large gatherings and closing non-essential businesses.

That’s the suggestion from a new cross-border study.

Certain counties in Iowa—one of five states that didn’t issue a stay-at-home order for its citizens—experienced a 30% greater increase in COVID-19 cases compared to counties right across the border in Illinois, which did issue such an order, the researchers reported.

“It does line up with a lot of other evidence that’s coming up from other national studies,” said senior researcher George Wehby, a professor of health management and policy with the University of Iowa College of Public Health. “Overall, there’s evidence the more restrictive measures were associated with greater declines in COVID case growth.”

For this study, Wehby and a colleague compared COVID-19 rates for counties on either side of the Iowa/Illinois border. “Border counties serve as nice controls because they tend to be somewhat similar,” Wehby said.

As the pandemic unfolded, Iowa issued a series of social distancing orders. The state banned gatherings and closed bars and restaurants, then closed non-essential businesses, and then closed all primary and secondary schools.

But Iowa did not issue a broad shelter-in-place order directing residents to stay home unless absolutely necessary, a step taken by Illinois on March 21.

The researchers found that the addition of a stay-at-home order was associated with a slower growth of cases in seven Illinois counties compared with eight neighboring counties in Iowa.

Within a month of the Illinois stay-at-home order, that state had nearly five fewer COVID-19 cases per 10,000 residents in border counties, compared with their neighbors across the line in Iowa, according to the report published online May 15 in JAMA Network Open.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, said, “It is not surprising that when a stay-at-home order is issued that you see a decrement in cases. The virus requires social interaction to transmit and a stay-at-home order delimits social interaction.” Adalja was not involved with the new study.

“However,” he continued, “the key metric is not necessarily the number of cases but the hospital stress load induced by the cases. Stay-at-home orders ideally should be issued with the primary aim of preserving hospital capacity.”

It’s important to know which social distancing measures work best as the world refines its response to COVID-19, Wehby said.

“Understanding what might be working more or less is a key question,” Wehby said. “This study only adds a little more information into the bucket of evidence that needs to be accumulated.”

For some unknown reason, stay-at-home orders appear to be associated with less transmission of the coronavirus, according to these results.

“These shelter-in-place or stay-at-home orders, there is something about them that seems to add above and beyond just closing restaurants,” Wehby said.

“Do people behave differently even when they go out under a stay-at-home order?” Wehby pondered. “Are you more cautious? Do you keep a larger distance? Are you more likely to wear a mask or avoid being close to people? People with more health risks, are they more likely to stay home following these orders?”

A COVID-19 survivor’s warning: Don’t rush back to normal. It doesn’t exist

The problem with recovery from COVID is that it may never be normal. Cortlynn Stark of the Kansas City Star reported that Stacy Jackson given birth five times. She’s not being dramatic. She could barely breathe.

“My body felt like someone had beat me and drugged me and then hung me up and beat and drugged me again,” Jackson said.

She had COVID-19.

Two of her uncles also later tested positive and were hospitalized. One of them, Marvin Jackson, died.

After nearly being placed on a ventilator, her kidneys beginning to fail, and spending five days unconscious, Jackson survived. Now she has a warning for Kansas City: Don’t rush to go back to normal. It doesn’t exist.

A positive test

Stacy Jackson started to feel sick on March 23. By the 26th, she tried to see her primary care physician. Staff asked Jackson, who also has Type 2 diabetes, over the phone if she was running a temperature. Jackson didn’t know, so staff came out with a thermometer to take her temperature. It was 104 degrees. Her doctor couldn’t see her.

From there, she went to the emergency room at Truman Medical Center. She was given a cocktail of drugs to help, what she called the “COVID super pack,” and a test for the coronavirus. Her test results would be ready in two days.

March 27 was her 21st wedding anniversary. Jackson and her husband had already taken the day off. She spent the day in bed, sick. She lost her senses of taste and smell. Her appetite was gone. Jackson spent the next day in bed as well.

Two days after her anniversary, she received her positive test result. Her condition continued to deteriorate and she went back to the hospital for a couple hours.

“I was scared to death,” Jackson said.

It was still in the early days of the virus in Kansas City. Fewer than 300 people had tested positive in the metro and no one in the city had died of it, according to statistics tracked by The Star.

By March 31, Jackson was struggling to breathe. Nearly 500 people across the metro had tested positive. “I just told myself, ‘you’re not gonna die,'” Jackson said. She told her husband he had to take her back to the hospital. He dropped her off outside. He couldn’t go in, of course. Health care facilities had already begun limiting visitors.

Jackson said she thinks the lack of oxygen took a toll on her brain as the disease took its toll on her mentally and physically. She was placed in the ICU and was in and out of consciousness from March 31 to April 4. Sometime during those five days, she became aware of two doctors in her room talking to each other: She may have to be put on a ventilator.

“I remember shaking my head no,” Jackson said. In a phone call a month later, she said she worried that if she was put on a ventilator, she wouldn’t survive. A study of patients in a New York placed on ventilators found that just 3% left the hospital alive. A quarter of them died. About 72% were still in the hospital.

On April 5, her fever broke and she started becoming more responsive. But every time she got up, “it was like running around Kansas City seven times,” Jackson said. By this time, more than 700 people tested positive in the metro.

For the first time since March 31st, she was able to call her husband. But talking was still painful. “He said ‘babe don’t talk, I’m just so glad I’m able to hear you,'” Jackson said. She left the hospital three days later.

A solitary battle

Jackson is used to being surrounded by family. But she hadn’t seen her mother since before Kansas City’s stay-at-home order went into effect on March 24. The month before, her mother, who lives at an assisted living facility in Overland Park, was in the hospital battling the flu and pneumonia. Jackson was by her side.

“We are a face to face family,” Jackson said. “When people are stricken with disease in our family, we pray together.” But no one could be by her side. Or the sides of her two sick uncles.

COVID-19 is isolating. Instead of family members by her hospital bed, she was surrounded by nurses and doctors—genuine and caring, she said—covered in personal protective equipment. One nurse, Jackson said, told her that if she left the hospital, she would be one of the first to leave the COVID-19 dedicated floor alive.

Her uncle Marvin Jackson died on April 23—one of three to die that day and one of 106 people to die across the metro since the outbreak began.

Never the same

When Jackson left the hospital on April 8, staff played the “Rocky” theme song for her. At home, four of her six children and her husband were waiting for her.

Her oldest two children have their own apartments in Kansas City. The middle two were home from college. Her youngest, twin boys, are seniors in high school. She was on oxygen support for two weeks. But she’s worried about reopening.

Beginning May 15, Kansas City businesses can reopen under a “10/10/10” rule. In Kansas, Gov. Laura Kelly’s phased reopening plan last week includes rules that businesses opening must maintain 6 feet of separation between customers and limit gatherings to less than 10. On the Missouri side, Gov. Mike Parson ordered businesses to maintain social distancing, but did not limit social gatherings.

“We’re risking millions of lives for comfortability,” Jackson said. “We need to stop the madness. I would rather have a light bill that I can’t pay than lose my life.”

She wants people to take the virus seriously and respect the severity. With most of her immediate and large family in the Kansas City area, they often have large gatherings of up to 45 people at her home.

Not anymore.

Jackson said her family would often rent out four tables at a Japanese steakhouse on the County Club Plaza.

Not anymore.

And even though she has cable, and a number of streaming services, she would still go to movie theaters.

Not anymore.

“We can’t go back to the way it was,” Jackson said. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to go back to a restaurant and feel safe.”

She couldn’t throw the usual Mother’s Day brunch for her aunts, cousins and sister-in-law either. By May 9, the day before Mother’s Day, 2,900 people tested positive and 146 people in the metro died of COVID-19. More than 1.3 million people across the country tested positive and more than 78,000 people have died.

“I value life a little bit more and how precious life is,” Jackson said. “We could be gone in the blink of an eye. We need to do everything in our power not to make it worse.”

Jackson is thankful to be alive.

74% of people are worried social distancing will not be followed as lockdown is eased

A University College London reported on a study that nearly eight in 10 people are worried about COVID-19 infections rising and people not adhering to social distancing as lockdown is eased, according to UCL’s COVID-19 study.

The study, launched in the week before the lockdown, is the UK’s largest on adult wellbeing and mental health during the coronavirus epidemic and has over 90,000 participants who report their feelings about the lockdown, government advice, along with wellbeing and mental health.

It is funded by the Nuffield Foundation with additional support from Wellcome and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Findings are broken down by age, gender, income, those living with children, those who are keyworkers and those living in rural areas and whether people live alone or not.

This week’s findings, which focus on how people have been feeling between 4-10 May, find that economic concerns about recession and unemployment levels rising also rank highly. Additionally, around one in three people express concern about pollution increasing, social cohesion decreasing, and crime levels rising.

Lead author, Dr. Daisy Fancourt (UCL Epidemiology & Health Care) said: “Our findings show that concern about increasing cases of COVID-19 are consistent across all ages, but concern about hospitals becoming overwhelmed is higher in younger adults, while concern about people not adhering to social distancing is higher in older adults.

“Concerns about unemployment and recession are consistent across ages, but concern about crime rising is higher in older adults, while concern about pollution increasing and social cohesion decreasing is slightly higher in adults under the age of 30.”

This week’s report also finds that half of people do not feel in control of their future plans with 23% of people and 39% of people feeling the same about their mental health and employment respectively.

Dr. Fancourt (UCL Epidemiology & Health Care) added: “This week we also found 50 % of our participants do not currently feel in control of their future plans, and many feel unable to manage their mental health and are worried about their future employment.

“However, in terms of physical health, eight out of ten people feel in control and the same can be said for their marriage or relationship. When we compare ‘sense of control’ across age groups, younger adults report feeling less in control across all domains. “The study team has also received support from Wellcome to launch an international network of longitudinal studies called the COVID-MINDS Network. Through the network, dozens of scientists and clinicians are coming together internationally to collate results from mental health studies running in countries around the world and compare findings. The initiative will support the launching of new mental health studies in other countries and show whether actions taken in specific countries are helping to protect mental health.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with this study, that is, as the lockdowns are eased, people will not take responsibility for their actions and ignore social distancing. As I mentioned from the beginning, people are stupid and are only concerned about what they want rather what is best for the general public and this disease. I do understand that many want to get back to work so that they can save their businesses and support themselves, their family and their employees.

And lastly, Happy Memorial Day Weekend and remember why we celebrate this day and those who gave their lives to protect us, our country and our freedoms!