Coronavirus Special Coverage

A collection of news posted throughout the week for those that want signal, not noise.

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COVID-19: key developments for Tuesday, May 19, 2020

There are nearly 5 million global cases.  There have been over 323,000 deaths around the globe, up more than 23,000 from last week. There are over 1.5 million cases in the US. There has been a slight downtrend in case growth and daily deaths in the US for the last few weeks. Cases and deaths have declined dramatically in NY, but cases are rising in 17 states.

Many non-ICU COVID-19 patients go on to develop a pulmonary embolism (PE)—a clot in the lungs. PEs are serious and in this case are caused by COVID-19-induced hypercoagulability. Most COVID-19 patients are now being treated with anticoagulant medicines in an attempt to prevent these kinds of clots from forming. What’s notable here is that patients who are not sick enough to need ICU care are still developing very serious sequelae.

Over 100 million people are back in lockdown in the northeast of China.

If we want to tailor our pandemic response, we need to use serosurveys and do it meaningfully. The tests need to be extremely accurate. We need these tests at the individual level to understand if a person has been exposed, whether or not they need a vaccine (once developed), and whether or not they need a booster. At the community level these tests tell us how prevalent the disease is in a given population and also give us an accurate picture of the infection fatality rate. We need to scale up this testing and govern the data properly.

It looks like those who are re-testing positive aren’t necessarily infectious:

Why can’t young people get with the social distancing program? Their brains are immature. Sensation seeking, peer pressure, reward seeking, and poor impulse control are all part of the problem.

Florida’s COVID-19 data chief get ousted for refusing to manipulate the data:

People seem to be producing a robust immune response to the infection. This is good news in the vaccine-development arena. Scientists are now working on understanding if the immune response differs significantly between groups who had mild illness versus groups who had severe illness.

All 50 states will begin to reopen in some capacity by the end of the month. 17 states are experiencing an uptick in cases, and many states anticipate increased growth trends as a result of reopening. The US Administration plans to release funding to states to the tune of 11 billion dollars for increased testing and contact tracing.

Mexico moves to reopen despite rising case numbers and deaths.

Brazil continues to struggles as pandemic worsens:


  • 2 Comments

    • Vaylon

      The disruption to the meat supply chain is beginning to show up here in Mississippi. At Walmart today, ground beef was $15 a pound.

      11 |
      • Stephanie ArnoldContributor Vaylon

        That’s wild. I can’t (won’t) buy it at that price. Veggie burgers it is!

        6 |