N.Y. Times data hold hope for pandemic curbs

The New York Times has released a county-by-county map of Covid in the United States.

Search the New York Times:
http://nytimes.com

If the data are sufficient, such a map may mean that the White House plan to use a county-by-county Big Data approach to rope off the Covid-19 contagion is doable. President Trump has sent a letter to governors outlining such an approach in order to begin scaling back massive social and economic shutdowns.

Trump favors Big Data approach to curbing epidemic
https://invisiblepaul.blogspot.com/2020/03/trump-favors-targeting-of-hot-spots.html

Chloroquine spells end of pandemic, infectious disease doctor reports

"I think it's the beginning of the end of the pandemic. I'm very serious."

Those were the words of Dr. Stephen Smith, a New Jersey infectious disease specialist, who treated a group of obese pre-diabetic and diabetic Covid-19 patients. Those who received hydroxychloroquine never required being put on a ventilator, as opposed to those who did not receive the drug, Smith told Laura Ingraham, a television commentator.

Smith said that though he had not conducted a randomized study, someone with statistical expertise had told him the chance of such a result occurring randomly was extremely low.

These patients, whose body mass index averaged 30 (obese), were not elderly but at great risk from the virus.

But it is necessary to monitor anyone who uses the drug with electrocardiograms, heart doctors warn, because in a few people the drug can trigger heart attacks.

Specifically, of 75 Covid patients, 21 were prediabetic (29.2%) and 34 were diabetic (47%). The average body mass index for his severely ill patients was 30.7 (a BMI of 25 or more indicates that a person is overewight).

The new results counterpoint New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's ban on use of the drug in the Covid-19 fight. He wanted to make sure there was enough available for lupus patients who rely on it.

Cuomo's order frustrated a plan by Dr. Mehmet Cengiz Öz of Columbia-Presbyterian in New York City to run randomized tests of the drug on Covid-19. But Oz reports that he had spoken with Chinese experts, who offered persuasive data on their results against the virus.

James R. Conant PhD, a San Diego mathematician, cautions, "Note that the only claim here is that choroquine might help mitigate symptoms. That is of course good news, but hardly 'an end to the pandemic.' It won't stop the spread of covid-19 and if the medical system is overwhelmed, as is currently the case in NYC, having additional treatment options will help, but the problem is not going to disappear.

Startling claim by Covid doc
https://www.foxnews.com/media/dr-stephen-smith-on-effectiveness-of-hydroxychloroquine-with-coronavirus-symptoms-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-pandemic

Ron Paul's charge repeated by Stanford expert: Fauci's Covid numbers have no scientific basis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UO3Wd5urg0

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University, repeated Dr. Ron Paul's charge that Dr. Anthony Fauci's Covid death rate has no scientific basis. In addition, he warned that universal quarantine will prompt economic collapse that will result in millions of deaths worldwide.

Bhattacharya is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a senior fellow at both the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute.

His March 24, 2020, article in the Wall Street Journal questions the premise that “coronavirus would kill millions without shelter-in-place orders and quarantines.” In the article he suggests that “there’s little evidence to confirm that premise—and projections of the death toll could plausibly be orders of magnitude too high.”

In the accompanying video of Uncommon Knowledge, Peter Robinson asked Bhattacharya to defend that statement and describe to us how he arrived at this conclusion.

For further information:
https://www.hoover.org/publications

Will plasma from the recovered curb crisis?Mass testing could widen pool of donors

New York medical authorities are ramping up efforts to try infusing desperately ill Covid patients with plasma donated by those who have recovered from the viral disease.

Long Island mom goes from isolation to donor
https://nypost.com/2020/03/30/coronavirus-diary-long-island-mom-out-of-isolation-donates-plasma-for-victims/

Blood scientist sees promise in approach
https://www.foxnews.com/media/ny-blood-center-beth-shaz-plasma-coronavirus

Because such treatment is in the early phase, doctors do not yet know how effective this treatment may be.

Dr. Beth Shaz, chief medical and scientific officer at the New York Blood Center, said that currently "we have a handful of donors" but that the plasma treatment looks promising.

"You have to be at least 14 days after [having] symptoms," she said in a broadcast interview. "With the first cases in the New York area [confirmed] on March 1, we are just beginning to get there."

Shaz also said that once mass testing becomes available, many people who have had only mild Covid-19 symptoms will become part of the pool of potential plasma donors. The plasma from recovered persons provides antibodies that fight the Covid virus.

The New York Post has reported about a Long Island mother, Diana Berrent, who became one of the first people in New York to donate her blood plasma for treatment efforts.

"Take my blood. Take my plasma," Berrent said in the first-person story. "Swab my nasal passage over and over again. If it can potentially save a single life it would be nothing less than a miracle."

Houston Chronicle flubs Covid facts

The Houston Chronicle helped smear Ron Paul without checking the relevant data. I refer you to a previous InvisibleMan post:

Politifact's bogus case against Paul
https://invisiblepaul.blogspot.com/2020/03/do-faucis-virus-claims-add-up-facebook.html

Ron Paul on Covid 'hoax'
https://invisiblepaul.blogspot.com/2020/03/ron-paul-on-coronavirus-hoax.html

The Chronicle was accurate about the fact that Politifact had accused Paul. But it did no work to check on the credibility of Politifact, nor did it check the figures. Nor did it publish the fact that Fauci had given out two widely disparate figures for the death rate. In his medical journal article, he put the Covid death rate as about the same as that of flu.

The Chronicle then said that Paul was "incorrect," but did not add that in that case Fauci must have been incorrect.

From the Chronicle:

8:15 a.m. Former Texas congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul falsely claimed that the common flu is more deadly than COVID-19, according to PolitiFact.

Paul made the incorrect statement in a statement on his website after Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country's top infectious disease expert, said that the new coronavirus is at least 10 times more deadly than the flu, which is correct based on the World Health Organization's current data.

Paul, who is a doctor, called Fauci "the chief fearmonger of the Trump Administration."

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Hospital death rate for Covid is 13.3%,nearly doubling influenza percentage

As of today, the number of Covid-19 deaths in New York State is reported at about 2,000, with the total number of Covid-19 hospitalizations there put at about 15,000.

Although in a few cases people may have died of the virus without reaching a hospital, the difference is not enough to affect the ratio.

This puts the mortality rate for Covid-19 patients admitted to New York hospitals at 13.3%, which may be compared with a national mortality rate of 6.9% for hospitalized flu patients last season.

These figures show that Covid-19 is more lethal than flu, but the question to be asked is whether it is so much worse than the flu rate as to justify drastic shelter-in-place orders. But, the rate of admission for Covid-19 tends to surge suddenly, overwhelming care-givers and punching up the mortality rate as some patients are left untreated.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has reported a decrease in the use of ventilators and an increase in the number of discharges.

I was unable to locate figures for the number of Covid-19 hospitalizations nationally.

The number of people who contracted influenza last season was put at 35.5 million, though comparing that with projected Covid-19 numbers is a dicey proposition.

A CDC web page says:

CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza (Table 1). The number of influenza-associated illnesses that occurred last season was similar to the estimated number of influenza-associated illnesses during the 2012–2013 influenza season when an estimated 34 million people had symptomatic influenza illness.

There are no figures available online that give the total number of U.S. hospital admissions for Covid-19 that would reveal a deaths/admissions rate.

A basic issue however is the stealth technique used by the Covid-19 virus to quietly infect a population and then to suddenly overwhelm hospitals -- a situation which tends to push up the mortality rate as medics strain to keep up.

The flu death toll contrasts with between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths in a best-case scenario, or 2.2 million in a worst-case scenario.

Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, has said that she is "very worried about every city in the United States," adding,  "I think everyone understands now that you can go from five to 50 to 500 to 5000 cases very quickly."

Birx said, "I think in some of the metro areas we were late in getting people to follow the 15-day guidelines."

Birx said the projections by Dr. Anthony Fauci that U.S. deaths could range from 1.6 million to 2.2 million deaths is a worst-case scenario if the country did "nothing" to contain the outbreak, but said even "if we do things almost perfectly," she still predicts up to 200,000 U.S. deaths.