RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2020/04/correcting-recent-u-s-weekly-death-statistics-for-incomplete-reporting/

I am seeing an increasing number of people on social media pointing to the weekly CDC death statistics which show a unusually low number of total deaths for this time of year, when one would expect the number to be increasing from COVID-19. But what most people don’t realize is that this is an artifact of the late arrival of death certificate data as gathered by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

This first came to my attention as a tweet by some researchers who were using the CDC weekly death data in a research paper pointing out the downturn in deaths in early 2020 and had to retract the paper because of the incomplete data problem. A disclaimer at the CDC website points out the incomplete nature of recent data. While they say that the new totals could be adjusted either upward or downward, it appears that the adjustments are almost always upward (i.e. recent data have a low bias in reported deaths).

As a first attempt to possibly correct for this under-reporting problem, I downloaded the data two weeks in a row (approximately March 30 and April 5, 2020) to examine how the recent data changes as new death certificate data are obtained. I realize this is only one week’s worth of changes, and each week would provide additional statistics. But the basic methodology could be applied with additional weeks of data added.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/06/coronavirus-in-new-york-cuomo-suggests-deaths-may-be-at-apex/

Just under 600 more New Yorkers have died of the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday — a grim tally, but one that further suggests that contagion may have reached its apex in the state.

The contagion has now claimed 4,758 state residents, with 599 additional fatalities reported Monday, after 594 losses were logged Sunday and a record-high 630 on Saturday.

“The flattening — possible flattening — of the curve is better than the increases that we have seen,” said Cuomo in his daily Albany press briefing.

A total of 130,689 diagnoses have now been made in the state, a nearly five-digit rise from the 122,031 reported Sunday.

The governor first suggested on Sunday that the dreaded apex may be upon New York, as daily deaths dropped, though it remains to be seen just how long the rate will plateau before entering a sustained decline.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dramatic-reduction-in-covid-19-disaster-projections/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium

Readers who’ve been following along with me know I’ve been frustrated by the fuzziness of the coronavirus statistics. In particular, it is hard to nail down such crucial numbers as what a “confirmed case” is (e.g., is it a case of the virus or the potentially lethal disease caused by the virus?), and what counts as a “coronavirus death” (does it mean the virus or disease was merely present in the patient, that it played some contributory role in death, or that it was the proximate cause of death?).

I hope to have more on that soon. In the meantime, though, let me draw attention to a report by our Tobias Hoonhout that an influential model, on which the White House Coronavirus Task Force relies to project COVID-19 deaths and related statistics, has just been dramatically revised to lower its estimates. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation now projects 12 percent fewer deaths (81,766, down from 93,531). While estimates about daily deaths in the peak period have actually increased, it is believed the peak may come somewhat earlier and be shorter in duration.

What is truly gripping is the sudden reduction, from a projection made just three days earlier, of the estimate of how many hospital beds that will be needed at peak. On April 2, IHME predicted 262,092; on April 5, that was reduced to 140,823. The estimated needs for ICU beds and invasive ventilators were also slashed.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/06/progressive-lawmakers-keep-feeding-the-crime-virus/

No less an authority than former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton warns that the Legislature’s failure to truly fix last year’s botched criminal-justice reforms has set the city up for big trouble when the COVID-19 threat recedes.

“As we finally get rid of one virus, there’s going to be a second virus created by the Legislature, which is gonna be the crime virus,” he said Sunday.

As the top cop who began New York City’s decades-long success in driving down crime, and then returned to keep the miracle going under lefty Mayor Bill de Blasio, Bratton deserves a listen. If the Legislature’s leaders refuse to listen, maybe the voters will.

Bratton didn’t mince words: State lawmakers, he said, “put so much garbage in, they basically generate a lot of garbage coming out, and that reform package coming out is more of the same.”

Bratton also slammed de Blasio’s drive to dump dangerous Rikers Island detainees onto city streets amid the pandemic, echoing the worries of all five city district attorneys. Some compassionate releases make sense — but, as the DAs put it, “the city’s jail system is capable of appropriately managing the health needs of the remaining inmates.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-response-josh-hawley-plan-fix-relief-bill/

A lot is going wrong with the recent coronavirus bill.

T he COVID-19 relief bill was supposed to help workers affected by the crisis in two different ways. First, it offered loans to businesses to keep them solvent, promising the loans would be forgiven to the extent that these companies kept their employees on their payrolls. And second, workers who nonetheless lost their job would be eligible for expanded unemployment benefits.

The first approach should have had priority, because it keeps people attached to their employers and ready to go when this is over. That’s a key ingredient to a speedy recovery. Yet the bill’s business provisions have stumbled out of the gate, while the unemployment boost is proving more attractive than it probably should. Smoothing out the implementation of these measures should be a major short-term goal, and Congress should consider reforming, replacing, or supplementing them as soon as practicable. As it happens, Senator Josh Hawley already has a proposal in the latter spirit.

Immediately upon the bill’s passage, it was clear that these programs were less than ideal. Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute pointed out that the business rescue probably didn’t have enough funding to help all the businesses that needed it. And some Republican senators raised the alarm about the structure of the unemployment expansion: It gave out $600 per week on top of other benefits, which is more than many workers make if they stay on the job; and while it’s normally very hard to get unemployment if you leave a job voluntarily, the bill expanded eligibility to include those who had kids home from school or other COVID-related reasons for quitting. The senators thought the mismatch between unemployment benefits and wages was a “drafting error,” but it turned out to be an intentional kludge: States’ unemployment systems aren’t capable of implementing a complicated new benefit formula quickly, so the bill’s drafters resorted to the brute simplicity of $600.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/06/arkansas-gov-asa-hutchinson-resists-pressure-to-issue-stay-at-home-order/

“Given that Arkansas isn’t a densely populated area, the spread of the virus here has been below projections. People are socially distancing absent a stay-at-home order. Businesses and other organizations that remain open are responding with voluntary measures to slow the spread. ”

In a time when following the herd is lauded as courageous, Gov. Asa Hutchinson is exhibiting actual leadership.

U.S. Surgeon General Vice Admiral Jerome Adams issued a stern warning about the coming week. “Well, it’s tragically fitting that we’re talking at the beginning of Holy Week because this is going to be the hardest and the saddest week of most Americans’ lives, quite frankly. This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it’s not going to be localized. It’s going to be happening all over the country. And I want America to understand that.”

Adams continued, “It’s why we put out these ‘30 days to stop the spread’ guidelines. These are essentially our national stay-at-home order. And we’re working with governors to figure out their needs, their desires.”

https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2020/04/05/gilead-covid19-coronavirus-remdesivir/?

In response to intensifying demand, Gilead Sciences (GILD) has been ramping up production of its experimental remdesivir treatment that is being tested to combat the novel coronavirus.

The drug maker now has 1.5 million individual dosages that could be used for more than 140,000 patients and is supplying the medicine, which is being made available through clinical trials and special access programs, at no charge.

“Providing our existing supplies at no charge is the right thing to do, to facilitate access to patients as quickly as possible and in recognition of the public emergency posed by this pandemic,” Gilead chief executive officer Daniel O’Day wrote in an open letter released Saturday night. He added the 1.5 million doses will be donated for “broader distribution” following any potential future regulatory approvals.

In coming months, the company expects to increase supplies as raw materials become available and, as a result, has set an “ambitious goal” of producing more than 500,000 treatment courses by October and more than 1 million by the end of this year. Toward that end, Gilead said it is building a “geographically diverse” group of suppliers to expand global capacity for raw materials and production.

There is some evidence remdesivir, which previously failed to show benefit in Ebola virus patients, benefits Covid-19 patients, and the company has been working with researchers and several governments to get several clinical trials running. Results are expected this month.

https://www.city-journal.org/coronavirus-vaccine

The biopharmaceutical industry will be able to make a Covid-19 vaccine—probably a few of them—using various existing vaccine technologies. But many people worry that Covid-19 will mutate and evade our vaccines, as the flu virus does each season. Covid-19 is fundamentally different from flu viruses, though, in ways that will allow our first-generation vaccines to hold up well. To the extent that Covid does mutate, it’s likely to do so much more slowly than the flu virus does, buying us time to create new and improved vaccines.

Every virus has a genome composed of genetic material (either RNA or DNA) that encodes instructions for replicating the virus. When a virus infects a cell, it accesses machinery for making copies of its genomic instructions and follows those instructions to make viral proteins that assemble, with copies of the instructions, to form more viruses (which then pop out of the cell to infect new cells, either in the same host or in someone new).

There is a critical difference between coronaviruses and flu. The novel coronavirus genome is made of one long strand of genetic code. This makes it an “unsegmented” virus—like a set of instructions that fit on a single page. The flu virus has eight genomic segments, so its code fits on eight “pages.” That’s not common for viruses, and it gives the flu a special ability. Because the major parts of the flu virus are described on separate pages (segments) of its genome, when two different flu viruses infect the same cell, they can swap pages.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/05/corona-meltdowns/

As the coronavirus outbreak begins to reach its zenith, it remains unclear whether the measures taken to stem its tide will prove sufficient, insufficient, or an overreaction. What is certain, however, is that a number of individuals and entities have behaved shamefully and demonstrated no capacity for leadership or usefulness in this moment.

Nancy Pelosi: Gone are the mythologies that Nancy Pelosi was a pragmatic liberal voice of reason among the otherwise polarizing American Left, honed after years of paying her dues to the Democratic Party, as the mother of five dutifully ascended the party’s cursus honorum.

It does not matter whether her political and ethical decline was a result of her deep pathological hatred of Donald Trump. Who cares that her paranoia arose over the so-called “Squad” that might align with socialist Bernie Sanders to mesmerize Democrats to march over the cliff into McGovern-like oblivion? All concede that very few octogenarians have the stamina and clarity to put in the 16-hour work-days and transcontinental travel required by a Speaker of the House.

Instead, all that matters is that for a nation in extremis she is now puerile, even unhinged—and increasingly dangerous.

In retrospect, the public will remember how in fear and confusion she reversed course to spearhead impeachment, outsourced the task in the House of Representatives to its most incompetent and perfidious members—Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.)—and wasted weeks of the country’s precious energy and time as it was on the cusp of an epidemic.