Covid 7/1/20 | COVID 19 Information Page

I know many people don’t want to believe that covid is pervasive but the data has been indicating this for months as noted several times in the morning report. Once you accept that – then the more you test the more you will confirm – that’s a fact. It does not preclude that it is not still spreading but the testing – particularly the antibody test- DOES not mean covid is spreading more. CDC own estimates are now at 5-8% exposed – https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/06/25/883520249/cdc-at-least-20-million-americans-have-had-coronavirus-heres-who-s-at-highest-ri

“To date, 2.3 million Americans have had confirmed coronavirus infections, but by the CDC’s estimates, the real number could be at least 20 million.”

“"In the beginning, there wasn’t a lot of testing that was done of younger, asymptomatic individuals," Redfield said. "So I think it’s important for us to realize that we probably recognized about 10% of the outbreak by the methods that we used to diagnose between the March, April and May."

Big news and headlines across country about how bad Houston confirmations are rising does not put it into context that confirmations are still at less than 1% of the population confirmed. IF the CDC is right then we will confirm ~200K more which is 7X where we are now if we continue to test – and that’s just math. The metric to watch is hospitalization and deaths.

Once again let me reiterate yesterday conclusion the big confirmations are function of US human behavior to rising temps – we all went inside closed windows and recirculated the air to the point viral load hit a level to infect people. This is why Seattle and San Fran didn’t see a big rise as per the southern states and cities. Closing beaches and parks do not make sense. Policing beaches and parks to have social distancing is okay but the same folks hanging together in beach likely to hang together inside a house which is worse. In fact lets put a mandate the human population from morning to midafternoon has to be outside and my hypothesis is that we will reduce the spread plus end up being healthier – https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiaa334/5856149

“While it has been reported previously that UVC can inactivate aerosolized coronaviruses

[33], the present study is the first to demonstrate that simulated sunlight, with UVA and UVB levels

similar to natural sunlight, is also able to inactivate airborne coronaviruses.”

Unfortunately for the south humidity really didn’t have an impact vs. sunlight

“present study suggest that any such effect (humidity) would be relatively minor in comparison to the effect of sunlight.”

Vitamin D – sunlight – https://www.qnis.org.uk/blog/covid-vitamin-d/

“Between April and September, the sun shining on the skin can form vitamin D. However, sunshine must be at a steep angle, usually around lunchtime, when your own shadow is shorter than your body length.”

“this vitamin plays a vital role in the regulation of both the innate and adaptive immune systems; boosts our virus-fighting cells; and, dampens down the harmful overreaction of inflammatory responses, such as cytokine storms”

There IS a mechanical solution without mandating people to be outside that can likely be just effective. Fresh air HVAC system along with UVC filtration system plus taking vitamin D will likely give you all the above.

Another pervasive spread evidence – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2488-1

“42.5% (95% CI 31.5-54.6%) of the confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections detected across the two surveys were asymptomatic (i.e. did not have symptoms at the time of swab testing and did not develop symptoms afterwards).”

“We found no statistically significant difference in the viral load of symptomatic versus asymptomatic infections (p-values 0.62 and 0.74 for E and RdRp genes, respectively, Exact Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test). This study sheds new light on the frequency of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection, their infectivity (as measured by the viral load) and provides new insights into its transmission dynamics and the efficacy of the implemented control measures.”

I have confirmed from people I know in the medical community that the recent surge in Houston was more hispanic – https://abc13.com/6286162/?

“Numbers reported from Harris County and Houston show at least 9,100 of the 30,729 positive cases are attributed to Hispanics. That is the highest number linked to a certain race or ethnicity in the area.

A new report from the CDC said Hispanics are four times more likely to need to be hospitalized because of the virus than a white, non-Hispanic person.

"If you look at death rates, 37 percent, so a little more than one out of three deaths, are from Hispanics, but they only represent 18 percent of the population so they are over represented in deaths as well," Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist with UTHealth said.

“"They may be more likely to live in multi-generational households, so higher population and older seniors who would be at higher risk if they got infected," Troisi said.

She said that Hispanic and Latin people are predisposed to underlying health inequities.

"Like diabetes, which is higher among the Hispanic population, and we know that is a risk factor," Troisi said.

Several experts pointed out that Hispanics are typically falling under the "essential worker" category and have not been able to isolate throughout the pandemic.”

Good news! Go T-Cells! – https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-06-immunity-covid-higher-shown.html

“New research from Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital shows that many people with mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 demonstrate so-called T-cell-mediated immunity to the new coronavirus, even if they have not tested positively for antibodies”

“"Advanced analyses have now enabled us to map in detail the T-cell response during and after a COVID-19 infection. Our results indicate that roughly twice as many people have developed T-cell immunity compared with those who we can detect antibodies in."”

"Our results indicate that public immunity to COVID-19 is probably significantly higher than antibody tests have suggested," says Professor Hans-Gustaf Ljunggren at the Center for Infectious Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, and co-senior author. "If this is the case, it is of course very good news from a public health perspective."

T-cell analyses are more complicated to perform than antibody tests and at present are therefore only done in specialized laboratories, such as that at the Center for Infectious Medicine at Karolinska Institutet.

"Larger and more longitudinal studies must now be done on both T cells and antibodies to understand how long-lasting the immunity is and how these different components of COVID-19 immunity are related," says Marcus Buggert.

Brazil and US making up for the weekend lull both over 1K deaths

Wow didn’t expect this NY surge to the leader board in the US at 629 deaths. Several days reports celebrating NY low death numbers. I did a quick search and did not find any revision notice.