Perhaps good news and bad news depending on how you want to look at it as many things are now – https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/herd-immunity-may-only-need-a-10-per-cent-infection-rate

Article now notes herd immunity may not need to be so high as initially alluded at 60%. Still most countries are far away even at 10% unless you want to apply some number adjustments via extrapolation or educated guess in terms of pervasiveness of the virus. We certainly have pockets which one could deduce is at herd immunity e.g. NYC – but what about the outskirts and surrounding cities/states/etc…. Where do you draw the circle? In terms of countries that have the most knowledge on where they are the largest test per capita is right now Bahrain and Luxembourg both near 30% per capita. They are kind of like a tale of two countries. You have Luxembourg fatality rate being much higher than the common flu (2.5%) and then you have Bahrain who is at 0.3%. Bahrain is growing in confirmation whereas Luxembourg has been relatively flat for the last month. Still both are well below 10% confirmed. Researching Bahrain – they have some very common sense guidelines for business from barbers to transportation. They focus on ventilation and opening up windows. https://www.moh.gov.bh/COVID19/Infographic

But even with all that their confirmations are growing but they are managing to keep the death rate low.

How exactly did they keep the death rate so low – https://www.thestar.com.my/news/world/2020/03/25/covid-19-bahrain-one-of-the-first-in-the-world-to-use-hydroxychloroquine-for-treatment

“The Kingdom of Bahrain is one of the first in the world to administer hydroxychloroquine to treat active Covid-19 cases, says the country’s Supreme Council of Health chairman Lieutenant-General Dr Shaikh Mohamed Abdullah Al Khalifa.

The Bahrain News Agency (BNA) quoted Dr Shaikh Mohamed, who is also the National Taskforce for Combating Covid-19 head, as revealing the information on Tuesday (March 24).

According to the news report, the drug is reported to have had a profound impact when used to treat the symptoms exhibited by active Covid-19 cases.

Bahrain first used the drug on Feb 26, following the registration of its first Covid-19 case on Feb 24.”

As with research you start looking into things and it takes you in a different path than you intended. I was really trying to get a handle on herd immunity and seeing which countries could be there and how far away we are from that. Only to end up examining Bahrain amazing job in death rate in face of increasing confirmations whereas Luxembourg was the opposite.

Luxembourg is following the WHO directives – https://msan.gouvernement.lu/en/dossiers/2020/corona-virus.html

“There is no specific treatment at this time, although research is ongoing. The treatment is therefore mainly symptomatic, i.e. it is similar to the treatment for a cough, respiratory problems or high temperature.”

“The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that no medications, including antibiotics, should be self-medicated to prevent or cure COVID-19.”

Ok well good luck with that advice…just the numbers here…..If you are around someone with Covid or initially getting symptoms of covid AND you don’t have any heart conditions I really don’t see why one wouldn’t take HCQ with Zinc. Waiting for the “experts” to tell you something while we see in our faces there is potentially life-saving value and limited downside (cost and severity of side effects) it is a no brainer in mind. Someone/some entity should be accountable for the lives not saved due to poor advice – worse yet and hopefully not – due to improper incentives vs. being ignorant.

With that I will move on to this paper – https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/fulltext

“In this multi-hospital assessment, when controlling for COVID-19 risk factors, treatment with hydroxychloroquine alone and in combination with azithromycin was associated with reduction in COVID-19 associated mortality. Prospective trials are needed to examine this impact.”

“This is a comparative retrospective cohort study evaluating clinical outcomes of all consecutive patients hospitalized at the Henry Ford Health System (HFHS) in Southeast Michigan being treated for COVID-19.”

“Overall crude mortality rates were 18.1% in the entire cohort, 13.5% in the hydroxychloroquine alone group, 20.1% among those receiving hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin, 22.4% among the azithromycin alone group, and 26.4% for neither drug (p < 0.001)”

“A review of our COVID-19 mortality data demonstrated no major cardiac arrhythmias; specifically, no torsades de pointes that has been observed with hydroxychloroquine treatment.”

Mutation for Covid is confirmed – good news it is just as equal in severity – bad news its more contagious – https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0092-8674%2820%2930820-5

This could push us to herd immunity.

“G614 is associated with potentially higher viral loads in COVID-19 patients but not with

disease severity.”

“G614 is associated with higher infectious titers of spike-pseudotyped virus”

“Our data show that over the course of one month, the variant carrying the D614G Spike mutation

became the globally dominant form of SARS-CoV-2.”

“Our global tracking data show that the G614 variant in Spike has spread faster than D614. We

interpret this to mean that the virus is likely to be more infectious, a hypothesis consistent with the

higher infectivity observed with G614 Spike-pseudotyped viruses we observed in vitro (Fig. 6), and

the G614 variant association with higher patient Ct values, indicative of potentially higher in vivo viral

loads (Fig. 5). Interestingly, we did not find evidence of G614 impact on disease severity; i.e., it was

not significantly associated with hospitalization status”

Brazil continue to lead in deaths – but also very high confirmations keeping the fatality rate still rather decent. Also note they are treating with HCQ whereas Mexico is following WHO directive. Big headlines is US confirmations at 53.6K. US deaths are not too bad at 678 compared to confirmation. Looks like a data issue with UK – I will need to look into in terms of confirmation.

The big states confirming FL, CA, TX, GA

Those states they have been ramping up testing. AZ is now confirming over 1% – other states still very far behind the reality of how many do have covid. Therefore there will be confirming a certain segment that does already have it. The rates for confirmation per test have been rising for all states more so in AZ.

County view it’s the same cohorts discussed before Miami Dade leads FL, Harris County leads TX, Maricopa leads AZ, and LA leads CA. So far no alarming death increases.

US is back down on its 7 day moving avg death. Italy has a had bit of resurgence in death. India and Russia has been on a plateau for awhile.

Even Sweden in their approach still confirming per capita less than 1%. There is a case that so much testing may be a poor capital allocation – depenind on cost of testing and the use of the data.

A global summary US does lead in deaths and confirmation. But our fatality rate is not the highest. We have tested on a per capita basis more than most countries. We therefore do have one of the highest confirmation per capita in the world – but yet that still sits at less than 1%.