The USA is likely heading towards European of daily COVID cases and if there is not stronger targeted mitigation this could get quite bad in the December-January timeframe according to Dr. Scott Gottlieb.
The antibody drugs will not be able to solve this problem. The vaccines that are near emergency use approval will need two shots per person to provide immunity.
The antibody based drugs are potentially near term game changers. However, we still need social distancing, masks, tracking, tracing, hygiene solutions and using air filtration.
The number of detected cases could exceed 300,000 per day in the USA. France is currently at 60,000 cases per day but France has about one fifth of the US population. The number of actual cases is about 5 times higher. Testing is still not finding all of the cases.
SOURCE- CNBC, Dr Scott Gottlieb
Written by Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
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A good public health system puts a fence at the top of the cliff, rather than stationing an ambulance at the bottom. Taiwan had a pandemic office that was looking for this kind of thing, and one of the guys working in it happened to set his alarm wrong, couldn't get to sleep again, and caught the rumours from Wuhan on a chat page before it even became public. They sent a team to Wuhan to check it out themselves, then shut the border straight away and started an active contact tracing program. In the US, Obama had also set up a pandemic office after SARS, but Trump doesn't believe in 'big government', and disbanded it. He followed standard procedure – Ebola, ban the Africans, terrorism, ban the Arabs, everything else, ban the Mexicans, job done. Banning the Chinese didn't work though, because the virus was flooding in from Italy by then, and while state authorities were trying to organise countermeasures, Trump was telling everyone it was just a flu, it'll be over soon. People will cooperate if they're getting clear believable messages. Like the Good Book says, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
Rick, try watching less fake news.
"a compliant society"
"Yes, your descendants will do well as part of China."
I would not say compliant, I would just say that more people in Australia are willing to sacrifice a little for the longer term good of everyone. We call it "common sense" here. I guess it's not so `'common" in the US, at least under Trump.
2017-2018 US influenza deaths around 61,000. 2020 Covid deaths 242,000 and now climbing rapidly. Total for 2020 likely to approach 300,000. 5X a bad influenza season. Why make crap up?
How do mineral resources lead to low covid rates?
Actually the number of cases matters greatly.
The more cases there are, with a diminishing number of deaths, means the virus is becoming even less lethal.
If there were 100 billion more "cases" and the same number of people actually dying, then the mortality rate drops below ridiculous things like dying while making a yolo video.
The consequences you project do not follow reason.
And the number of healthy young people is certainly less than half the overall population. More like 25%. The benefit vs risk for them is almost certainly positive, and is massively positive for the rest.
And it would be voluntary, so neurotic cowards with no civic responsibility, or comprehension of, or faith in science can opt out.
The chance that a vaccine will do more harm than good assuming viral exposure later, is microscopic. Even if a vaccine does not work great, there is a very good chance that it will reduce the servility of the infection. None of these vaccines will give you coronavirus, though you may have some of the symptoms for a coupe days. And other than the Chinese and the Russian vaccines, I don't think any of the vaccines are live.
This is little different than a war. We would be asking for volunteers for that too. The difference is that none or very very few of the volunteers would die. And unlike 99% of the wars we have fought, you would truly be saving tens or hundreds of thousands of your countryman's lives.
I do not consider anyone "disposable". The risk that anyone in good health and low age will die of the vaccine is bordering on ludicrous. Their health would be checked. It would not be a matter of just taking their word of being healthy. Blood work and vitals first.
So you don't care about your parents and grandparents? Just useful for inheritance "on their way out" apparently.
It depends on what period of time you are looking at on where we are importing infections from. Initially it was definitely air travel for sure. Cruise ships are not a means of importing new cases but rather a great way to incubate and spread cases you already had (my opinion and to be fair may be debatable). At least in the south, cross border transmission is not an insignificant factor at this time (Mexico, central and south America have it bad). Locally, we are seeing many cases that are directly attributable to travel to Mexico for family events and the like. Before anyone gets their panties in a wad, we are seeing a similar rate of home-grown cases from people attending the same kinds of events. The main factor appears to be human behavior ie likelihood to take precautions or not. Most people's guard is down when they are with family.
It has nothing to do with our health system and everything to do with the way people disregard safety precautions. Deaths per population is not a good measure of the effectiveness of a health system because it does not normalize for the populaces ability to avoid getting sick in the first place which appears to be highly variable. A better measure would be deaths per case:
data from worldometers looking at yesterdays totals (11/8/20)
Country Total Cases Deaths Deaths/case
USA 10,288,480 243,768 0.0237
Australia 27,658 907 0.0328
Canada 264,113 10,522 0.0398
New Zealand 1,982 25 0.0126
S. Korea 27,427 478 0.0174
Taiwan 577 7 0.0121
Looks to me like we are doing well for a western country who has not had previous widespread exposure to SARS or MERS. Canada, Canadians, and Americans who hate their own country like to talk about how Canada's health system is so superior to that of the USA however these numbers do not support that. Just say'n lol.
edited to make chart look pretty as written spacing is not reflected in published spacing. Wanted things to line up good.
We are still learning new things about COVID infections. Recently we have seen that many people with COVID infections develop antiphospholipid antibodies, a known pro-coagulation factor. Every day we are understanding more and more about what makes this (and possible other) virus deadly. If this blog and forum has taught me one thing over the years it is that we (humans) are very intelligent and given enough time we will figure most anything out. Whenever a pressing issue comes up, our brightest people and resources get diverted to solving the issue and we overcome it. Every time. Keep the faith folks. We are on track for this to soon be a bad memory and we will probably have gained knowledge that puts us ahead of the curve for the next bad virus that hits as well as us probably being able to treat things like influenza better.
Covid is just about extinct in Australia. We view the rest of the world with surprise. Good govt, a compliant society and a ton of luck have got us to this point.
I'd call it common sense government, by consensus. New Zealanders are used to the government keeping out agricultural pests, like foot and mouth disease. We saw what happened when that got away in the UK a few years ago, and we can see the results when something slips through, like German wasps, or the varroa bee mite. We let the 1918 flu into Samoa, four years after we took the islands off Germany. It killed a fifth of the population there. Then last year, there was a measles outbreak here, after anti-vax head cases lowered the herd immunity. The disease spread to Samoa and killed 87 kids. I can't buy an assault rifle here -but I could have last year, before that Australian came over and killed 52 Muslims at prayer. Australia banned assault rifles years ago, after their first big massacre. It took two here – there was a shooting spree twenty miles from here, thirty years ago.
The NZ goverment treated me, three weeks in hospital and a year on drugs, after I caught TB. No charge. They helicoptered me off a mountain when I broke a leg, and patched me up. No charge. They did the same for a friend from Maryland when he broke his back – he just got his NZ residency last week. I don't mind paying taxes for that. Health costs here are still less than half the USA's.https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/OECD_health_expenditure_per_capita_by_country.svg/1200px-OECD_health_expenditure_per_capita_by_country.svg.png
Did the USA get its infections via the Mexico or Canada borders? Or was the route of infection airline flights and cruise ships in a way that has nothing to do with it being an island or not?
Now most of the European countries? They can use the "not an island" excuse.
Not UK or Ireland though, they've got no excuse.
2020 Covid, given the environment it operates in, is more infectious than 1918 Flu with the environment it operated in.
You get a point from me just because you have the basic literacy to use the word "sow" and not "sew" or "so" as so many ignorant cretins do.
With momentum like this in EU
France 60k per day
Poland almost 30k
Italy, Spain 40k
and like they said, true numbers could be many times of that, so many people will have it that we are talking here about true herd immunity being achieved quite soon
If US will be at 300k per DAY detected (possibly 5x more undetected), same will happen, even before vaccine will be widely available. 99% will recover, these people will be blocking virus transmission, making a lot of holes in virus transmission chains
News Flash! It's cold and flu season.
China isn't an island, and started the virus off. Their death rate per million is 3. They had some advantages – an earlier brush with SARS, and being a dictatorship – but the secretive attitude of the government had them getting off the mark rather behind Taiwan. I didn't cite them because you probably won't believe their statistics. Hong Kong is at 14 deaths per million population. The USA is at 733. Quite a few countries did try an early, hard lockdown – South Africa and Peru, for example – but couldn't afford to pay their people to stay home for long enough. Canada had a federal lockdown, though it could have closed the US border earlier. Their death rate is well below half of the USA's, and they're not having the same explosive increase.https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/covid-19-in-the-u-s-how-do-canada-s-provinces-rank-against-american-states-1.5051033
So the healthy half of the population should be treated as disposable and used as a test rats for unproven vaccines? So potentially sabotaging an entire healthy generation for the benefit of a generation on the way out. Go figure! I wonder which half of the population are you?
New Zealand locked down hard and early, and had only twenty deaths attributed to the virus, mostly in rest homes. During the lockdown, the overall death rate from all causes, including car accidents and other viruses, went down. 'During alert levels 3 and 4, public health experts found 548 fewer people died compared to the same period last year. Otago University epidemiologists discovered the number of deaths dropped most noticeably near the end of level 4.' Air pollution, which affects frail old people most, was also down. In contrast, overall death rates in Europe have been well up, more than the numbers attributed to the virus. If they also had some reduction in flu and accident deaths, it's likely that unattributed deaths outside hospitals killed more people than the official figures show. https://www.health.org.uk/news-and-comment/charts-and-infographics/understanding-excess-deaths-countries-regions-localities
'It's been revealed a maintenance worker at Rydges Hotel who contracted the virus used a lift just minutes after a guest who later tested positive for the same strain.
Microbiologist Siouxie Wiles told Morning Report surface contamination is possible, but it has only been recorded a few times internationally.
She said there had also been a case overseas where a person took the lift to their apartment, became ill with Covid-19 and didn't leave their apartment for two weeks.
The illness spread to other residents in the same apartment complex and it was thought the source was the lift button.
"So this is something that has been documented. It's thought that maybe touching the lift button is the most likely thing but it seems to be quite a rare thing."
She said it was possible the Auckland case was a combination of surface contamination and a potentially contaminated environment.'
Rydges Hotel was being used for managed isolation of returning New Zealanders. The maintenance worker was the only the second known instance of the disease spreading beyond quarantine in three months. The origin of the other case has not been determined, but the infection cluster it started has been stopped. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/424077/catching-covid-19-in-lift-shows-how-sneaky-virus-is-microbiologist-siouxsie-wiles
Wow six upvotes? Coroners are in charge of coronavirus tests on people who are alive?
Those countries you mentioned are all islands or in South Korea’s case, a peninsula with a DMZ so effectively an island.
pure propaganda
You are just piggishly ignorant. First of all, the IFR is at least 10x higher than you claimed. If the IFR was .04% only 120k would have died even if 300 million Americans already had it, which is obviously wrong. The real IFR is closer to .7%,
Vaccines as a class are very safe. There has never been a vaccine with a death rate anywhere near as high as COVID. Human challenge trials enable you to test safety and efficacy fast. These vaccines have already been proven as safe as you can reasonably determine given that long-term results are obviously not an option unless you plan on waiting years, which makes the whole effort pointless.
The only downside is the health risks to HCT patients in the experimental group, which even with a very large trial is far less than the death rate of COVID.
IFR is 0.6-0.8%, with variation based on a region's age profile. Summer cases were younger.
What, if anything, would convince you that you are incorrect? Deaths like we saw in NY in Spring?
In the current states were the cases are growing there is minimal resistances to the spread of the virus. Most of the people don't believe is mask or social distancing so the cases will grow until most of the non-compliant population is infected. The biggest problem is that the hospitals will be overwhelmed and the death rate will increase.
One solution is to review the current status of the vaccines and if deemed safe enough then start an aggressive vaccination program. I know this will upset some people but you either get vaccinated by a needle or vaccinated by the virus. Those are your only choice.
I most certainly doubt that. I have yet to read of any contact-related infections from COVID. I think virologists have concluded it is strictly passed by air to the respiratory system. And quite efficiently at that.
Hey, they will reap what they sow.
^ Your first sentence…an accurate and honest assessment of where we stand in COVID vaccine research.
Such ideas are the result of the dumbing down of science in people's education. Random actions taken out faith or some other random beliefs.
Don't go to Texas and Florida right now. Huge death counts relative to population, and if the new infection numbers are any indication, those mortality number will be rocketing in 7-10 days.
It absolutely is, where have you been for the last 3/4 of a year? The COVID virus has adapted itself quite well by spreading through the air and targeting the respiratory system. Highly infectious means it raises the number of possible infections and thus deaths. Evolution really screwed us on this.
I'm not sure that Covid is more infectious than Spanish flu. I'm thinking that Covid is spreading faster due to our more mobile society. I'm into genealogy and prone to snooping around graveyards. I found a family section that had over 20 deaths (all same surname) in 1917/1919 period…….all ages from pre-teens to elderly. This was in a small town in Arkansas. My guess is that the disease was brought in by a returning WW1 soldier.
Il dit « 60 000 » cas par jour. C’est pas le coroner qui établit le nombre de cas. Idiot, va
They are treating it very seriously. Only time will tell if they have been serious enough. One nice thing is that with so many vaccines in the works, even if it gets out, I bet one or two will still be effective against that as well, and probably most to some degree.
Given limited doses, it'd probably be more effective to first vaccinate all healthcare workers who aren't already immune, especially any working with covid patients or with the elderly or others at very high risk.
That would build a wall of immune people around at-risk people in nursing homes, for example, giving the greatest reduction of critical cases and deaths for a given number of doses.
Possibly some smallish groups can be identified that have disproportionately more superspreaders – worth targetting early. Airline pilots and attendants? Waiters? People who deal with a large number of people in relatively close quarters.
As volume of doses ramps up, possibly give vaccinations earlier in states with the lowest R numbers – give them a better chance to drive faster toward zero new cases. That also incentivizes other states to work toward low R number by other means.
A lot of people won't be happy about such a policy, but maybe making them unhappy about that will move a some people away from anti-vax positions. "Wait – I know I said I didn't want it, but now you're telling me I wouldn't be allowed to get it anyhow? That's not fair!"
1918 was a bad flu season – killed about 675,000 Americans. Covid is less deadly, but more infectious. The Spanish flu killed about 5,000 people per million of the population, whereas in the US at the moment, the covid death toll is 730 per million. It hasn't finished yet, though. In South Korea the death rate per million is 9, in Australia 35, in New Zealand 5, in Taiwan effectively 0. Do you think maybe you should do something about your health system ? This won't be the last pandemic, and it's far from the most devastating – the Spanish flu killed kids and healthy young people just as easily as old codgers.
If the Danish had a sense of responsibility they would shut their borders and stop flights leaving there. Shut the 6 million Danes down for a couple of weeks instead of risking disruption for the whole world.
I am French and the Figures are wrong because French Coroners are mixing all causes of death when a covid clusters. The main cause of death is ignored for the benefit of Covid .
The figures lye
doesn't matter how many cases there are. The key number is how many deaths. Did we have daily tickers for how many people have the cold or flu? No. With an IFR of 0.13% COVID19 is on par with a bad flu season. All stats are showing this.
I was under the impression that mass production of the Astra Zeneca vaccine at Oxford has already begun. The production is largely government sponsored I believe. If it doesn't work – proves dangerous in the trials – they will just have to dump it
Human challenge trials are supposed to start in the UK in January.
I also think that they should start with the vaccinations already. They are in stage 3 testing, and so far no real problems, so vaccinate fit volunteers and try to stem the spread.
Everything in the US is antithetic to controlling the Epidemic. Lack of central planning, focus on personal freedom. We have come to cherish this way of life, but they are not the face of everything. Everything we value has its price and its time. Countries that have less of them are overall doing way better in dealing with the epidemic.
There most likely won't be any vaccines available until early next year. The challenge beyond that is that vaccines don't provide 100% protection. We're likely to see something closer to 50% reduction in cases for the population as a whole and varying for different cohorts as we see with annual flu vaccinations.
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/vaccines-work/vaccineeffect.htm
The information on other Coronaviruses indicates that they have a significant seasonal component. Argentina and South Africa also saw large seasonal trends, but these examples are confounded by the relative late arrival of the virus. We were fortunate in the Spring that we caught it on the waning side. But unfortunately that advantage has been largely squandered.
Even if we had vaccinations for the entire population, it won't get this under control by itself. We need universal masking and to shutdown bars and indoor dining. The data isn't settled but it appears to me that schools are also hot zone for often undetected spread. The restart of schooling across the US and Europe correlates closely for the surge we are seeing. Keeping them open in the face of this surge is simply reckless.
The US Army model seems to be tracking the outbreak most accurately:
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/covid-forecasts/ . With that we're facing 300k cases per day by the beginning of December and many more by the end of the month.
Somebody here caught covid just by touching an elevator button, after a woman in quarantine had used it. HIV is far less catchy, but you don't get over it. You'll die with it, if not of it.
Anything in phase 3 doesn't have just "little safety testing". I would just give it to healthy people until the testing is complete, however. They are the active people going all over spreading it, whether they know or not.
No, the main risk is that you will feel crummy for a few days and then it does not work anyway. But I think we have a bunch of winner vaccines. Most probably work, though some might not last as long as others or they have more of the unpleasant symptoms.
We almost certainly have effective vaccines now…we just have to prove it. Did you see that they have a new variant in Denmark? Hopefully that one will be shut down before it spreads. We need these vaccines to work.
The tools we have today are far more advanced now than even 10 years ago. And I think we are learning very fast.
I am hoping eradication rather than merely taming is possible in the next few years.
Your kidding right? Lets inject a bio active agent into millions of people with little safety testing.
Especially for a virus with a 0.04% ifr.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG???
They should just start mass production of ALL of the phase 3 vaccines now and start vaxxing people.
The world really needs better health bureaucrats. They should have authorized human challenge trials for vaccine candidates by March and had them done by June.
The world could have had COVID wrapped by October, but instead we have "medical ethics."
HIV is a much nastier virus that caught us with much more primitive tech and it's fully controllable nowadays.
Yeah, it took decades to achieve that, but this one will also be tamed, and much sooner.
It won't be as quick as we would like, but it will happen.
There is no virus that has had the attention of medicine as this one now has. Not even HIV.
There are a lot of interesting things in the works: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-significant-covid-drug-breakthrough.html
We need to get the young healthy people roaming around vaccinated immediately. There is only a trivial chance that any of them would die with or without the vaccine. But if most of them are vaccinated, they will not be spreading the virus to the susceptible. The rest can wait to be vaccinated when all the tests are complete. Use anything in Stage 2. Preferably all of the vaccines. The downside is very small. The upside is the preservation of tens of thousands of lives, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives.
Voluntary bases…of course. Encouraged.