All my various postings tracking the COVID-19 pandemic through the end of 2022.
Source: Amazon.com
An article in yesterday’s New York times provides some national perspective on this year’s Halloween. (Can Halloween Be Saved? Yes, Experts Say. Here’s How, by Aimee Ortiz.)
Continue reading Post #851: New York Times article offers some perspective on safe Halloween
The A-word being Aerosol or Airborne.
Ah, at this point I’m so tired of this topic, I’ll just let you read the grudging and limited extent of the change in CDC guidance. You can find it on the CDC website, at this link.
I particularly like this bit of weasel-wording, emphasis mine:
There is evidence that under certain conditions, people with COVID-19 seem to have infected others who were more than 6 feet away.
Continue reading Post #850: The CDC says the A-word, but it still doesn’t get it
I rarely just ditto a published article on this blog, but this one, in The Atlantic, is the most sophisticated discussion of COVID-19 spread and contact tracing that I’ve seen to date.
Briefly, this Atlantic article is about “k” or “dispersion”, the measure of how lumpy or “clustered” the spread of COVID-19 is. The fact that most of the spread isn’t due to one-person-at-a-time spread. Most spread is due to “clusters”, where one person infects many people, all at the same time. And to the point, it’s about what that should imply for everything from contact tracing, to how the government goes about trying to bring the pandemic under control.
It’s also incredibly timely, because the large cluster of cases arising around or during the recent White House Rose Garden ceremony is normal for COVID-19 spread. Within that group of top Republican supporters, we did NOT see one person a day showing up as infected, each day, over the course of a dozen days. As if each person had passed it along, one at a time. That would have matched the stylized pattern for (e.g.) seasonal flu. Instead, we saw the 15-and-counting individuals (so far) showing up all at once, all apparently infected at more-or-less the same time, with one or a few closely-related events.
We’ll never know the actual count of people ultimately infected via that event, because the White House won’t allow anyone else to do contact tracing, and will not do any contact tracing itself. Just another way in which the Republican leadership expresses its contempt for the CDC guidance on containing this disease (Post #848).
The title of that Atlantic article reads like a typical piece of clickbait. (“Use this one trick to lose tons of belly fat!”.) And it’s tough going in spots. But for me, at least, it was well worth the time it took to read it through.
The piece is about how some countries “get it”, with respect to the prevalence of COVID-19 clusters, and have modified their approach to the pandemic accordingly.
But not the U.S. And because the U.S. response hadn’t really taken clusters into account as the main mechanism of disease spread, our response remains something of a … well, I’ll let you fill in the blank there.
Continue reading Post #849: A must-read on patterns of COVID-19 spread
These days, you have to find the rays of sunshine wherever you can. This post is about two aspects of the COVID-19 infection of the President and numerous Republican luminaries that I find funny. Or, at least, mildly entertaining. All things considered.
Continue reading Post #848: Two amusing (?) absurdities of the current COVID-19 situation.
This is an update of a recent post in which I calculated the approximate odds the President’s hospitalization and death from COVID-19. The calculation starts from the observed rates of hospitalization and death for the 70-79 year old population of Virginia, then makes appropriate adjustments.
I’m updating that to remove one large adjustment, dealing with COVID-19 infections in Virginia that are never formally diagnosed. These tend to be people who have no or negligible symptoms of COVID-19. That adjustment is obsolete, now that the President and First Lady are known to be symptomatic (fever, dry cough). Clearly, at this point, had they been ordinary Virginia citizens, they would have been tested for COVID-19. Hence, the large pool of low-severity cases that never received a formal COVID-19 diagnosis in Virginia is now irrelevant, and needs to be removed from the calculation.
Best guess, I now think the odds look something like this:
How much less? Tough to say, but the key here is that this was diagnosed at more-or-less the earliest possible moment, and treatment began immediately. Treatment includes the two best drug options currently available, such as they are.
Continue reading Post #846: The Presidential odds after contracting coronavirus, updated.
Walter Reed. Source: Wikipedia.
I’m going to point out something that I think is obvious, regarding the President’s move Walter Reed hospital today. I’m only doing this because the news media merely seem to be echoing what they’ve been told by the White House. And not really giving it much thought. Moving the President to Walter Reed now may be as much for the purpose of controlling information as it is for providing health care. Continue reading Post #845: On medicine versus panic: The Presidential Suite at Walter Reed
Source: COMMENTARY: COVID-19 transmission messages should hinge on science.
Those being “aerosol” and “airborne”.
Near as I can tell, the President’s illness is being attributed to flying on Air Force One with Hope Hicks. Which means that sitting around in a well-ventilated enclosed space, talking, without masks, was enough to allow the disease to be transmitted.
But I’m not holding my breath. Based on what I read, the President already attributed Hope Hicks’ infection to being hugged a lot, by military and police. Or something. So — purely out of thin air, and with no evidence whatsoever — the President has already made up a story to explain Hicks’ infection as being unrelated to aerosol spread.
What will it take, before the CDC can say the A-words? It’s not clear to me that’s ever going to happen under this administration.
Edit: Adjusted for a better estimate of undiagnosed cases as a fraction of total, by age.
Best guess, I think the odds look something like this:
How much less? Best guess, conditional on early administration of remdesivir and other anti-virals, the true odds might be well under half of what is shown.
I’m just trying to get across two points. First, by far, the most likely outcome is that there will be no publicly-identifiable health consequences, given the circumstances. And, second, if that happens, it doesn’t mean that the President is somehow blessed, or that this isn’t a deadly disease. It will mean that he’s average, given his age, physical condition, prompt diagnosis, and high-quality medical care.
Details follow.
Continue reading Post #833: The Presidential odds after contracting coronavirus.
Source: The Patch.
This is my proposal for a simple set of rules that allows for safe trick-or-treating during the pandemic. Obviously, this is for families and homeowners / candy givers who choose to participate this year. Continue reading Post #832: Trick-or-Treat 2020, the Simplified Rules
Source: The Patch.
We have a Town government that makes a big deal out of our “small town” nature. I’m not quite so sure they follow through on that in every instance. But they do enough to give that statement some credibility.
This year, in this pandemic, Town government needs to do something that can only be done by a government, in a small town: Step up and save trick-or-treating this year, in the Town of Vienna.
So I guess this is a plea to our “One Vienna” Mayor Colbert. We need a Town of Vienna guideline for what we should be doing. (Why the italics on should? That’s the whole point of this posting.)
This year, we need a new tradition that works in the changed world we are in. We need one recommended, agreed-upon, safe approach that that lets kids go Trick-or-Treating, and that doesn’t end up causing yet more division and strife among the citizenry. We need one official guide on how to Trick-or-Treat in the Town of Vienna this year.
Why? Let me cut to the chase: Are you a bad parent if you take your kids Trick-or-Treating? Or are you a bad parent if you forbid your kids to go Trick-or-Treating? How are your kids going to feel if you make them stay home, but other kids on the block went trick-or-treating and brought home gobs of candy? And what are the respective parents, of those two sets of children, going to say to each other afterwards?
We need some simple, common-sense leadership here, so that we’re all on the same page. We need an endorsed protocol, for the COVID-19 world. Without that, as I discuss below, we’re already beginning to squabble over Trick-or-Treating. And that’s just about the last thing we need.
Detail follows. Continue reading Post #831: Madam Mayor, please step up to save Trick-or-Treating in Vienna this year.
