Category: Coronaplague

“A Grim Measure of Covid’s Toll: Life Expectancy Drops Sharply in U.S.” (NYT):

American life expectancy fell by one year, to 77.8 years, in the first half of 2020.

Thursday’s data gives the first full picture of the pandemic’s effect on American expected life spans, which dropped to 77.8 years from 78.8 years in 2019. It also showed a deepening of racial and ethnic disparities: Life expectancy of the Black population declined by 2.7 years in the first half of 2020, slicing away 20 years of gains. The life expectancy gap between Black and white Americans, which had been narrowing, is now at six years, the widest it has been since 1998.

“I knew it was going to be large but when I saw those numbers, I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” Elizabeth Arias, the federal researcher who produced the report, said of the racial disparity. Of the drop for the full population, she said, “We haven’t seen a decline of that magnitude in decades.”

The last time a pandemic caused a major decline in life expectancy was 1918, when hundreds of thousands of Americans died from the flu pandemic. Life expectancy declined by a whopping 11.8 years from 1917 to 1918, Dr. Arias said, bringing average life spans down to 39 years.

So… coronavirus was nowhere near as deadly as the last truly bad flu, yet the “scientists” in charge of life expectancy calculations apparently did not budget for even a moderately bad flu pandemic, such as 1957. They assumed that human population could be expanded from 2 billion (1920) to 8 billion (2020) without any virus evolving to take advantage of this expansion in hosts (and the hosts clustering themselves together in cities). They assumed this against a continuous stream of publications from the WHO and others that a pandemic was likely. (See Paper titled “Stockpiling Ventilators for Influenza Pandemics” for example; also Pandemic Influenza Preparedness And Response (WHO, 2009, which incidentally tells governments to do the opposite of what governments have done in response to COVID-19: don’t close borders unless you’re an island and don’t tell the general public to wear masks))

Is it possible to make these scientific conclusions, one about life expectancy and one about the likelihood of future respiratory virus pandemics, consistent somehow?

From the no-longer-failing NYT:

As promised, Joe Biden has shut down the coronavirus. And, not only has he shut down coronavirus in the U.S., he’s defeated this pathogen on a planetary scale.

Should we credit the science-informed leadership of Joe Biden, Dr. Jill Biden, M.D., and Dr. Anthony Fauci, no longer told what to say by Donald Trump? Credit double-masking instead? (we can’t credit vaccines, right, because the downturn started before any significant number of folks were vaccinated)

And, if coronavirus is not, in fact, beaten, when does it start up again? (I recognize that #Science is supposed to be done retroactively, i.e., wait for the data to come in and then offer an explanation for the curve shape, but I would also be interested in 2019-style #Science in which the scientist offers a hypothesis and then tests that with later-arriving data)

If you’re confused, don’t feel bad. A medical school professor friend reminded me the other day that physicians still can’t explain why influenza is seasonal.

And, for those who are curious to know how unmasked folks in the Florida Free State are doing relative to the global average…

Compare to opposite-end-of-the-spectrum California, where 40 million people have cowered in place for an entire year:

And the never-masked never-shut South Dakotans:

What about the wicked never-masked never-shut Swedes?

Atul Gawande, who works in Boston (though maybe soon in D.C., since he was tapped by President Biden to join Dr. Jill Biden, MD on a COVID-19 advisory board), writes in New Yorker: “Inside the Worst-Hit County in the Worst-Hit State in the Worst-Hit Country”.

How much can we trust a scientist like Dr. Atul Gawande, MD, MPH and the science-informed editors of the New Yorker? The article turns out to be about North Dakota, which enjoyed a year of relative freedom (mask law from November 14, 2020 to January 18, 2021) and experienced a lower death rate tagged to COVID-19 than 9 other states. Maskachusetts, in particular, where Dr. Gawande actually lives, has had a higher death rate than North Dakota despite a year of shutdown and masks.

How about the “Worst-Hit Country”? Can we rely on this Person of Science’s statement that the U.S. is the country that has been worst-hit by COVID-19? Statista says no. There are 7 countries, e.g., Belgium, Slovenia, and the UK, that have had a higher death rate.

How are Americans supposed to put their trust in #Science when there are at least two obvious falsehoods in the article’s headline? Or maybe there are three falsehoods, actually! The NYT page on North Dakota allows one to sort the counties of ND by death rate. Ward County, featured in Dr. Gawande’s article, is nowhere near the top: 274 deaths per 100,000, a little higher than the state average of 191, but nowhere near the worst in ND.

So… the headline contains three assertions from a scientist. All three assertions are false, as measured by the outcome that is most upsetting to humans (i.e., death). Said scientist will soon be telling Americans what they can and cannot do… #BecauseScience.

From my 1993 trip through North Dakota on the way to Alaska:

“2 Tigers at Indiana Zoo Test Positive for COVID-19” (NBC, February 8):

Fecal samples for the tigers, Bugara and Indah, were collected for testing and came back positive with the virus.

“Bugara, the male Sumatran tiger, has been experiencing a dry cough, and Indah, the female Sumatran tiger, has not shown symptoms at this time,” staff veterinarian Dr. Kami Fox said in a statement issued Saturday. “Both tigers are being watched for any additional clinical signs and remain together in their enclosure.”

The source of infection is not yet known and zoo staff are working with the Allen County Department of Health and the State Board of Animal Health to identify potential sources, according to officials.

It seems fair to assume that nobody got within 6′ of these tigers (a reasonable rule along with don’t bring a slingshot to a tiger fight).

If tigers got infected while (a) outdoors, and (b) more than 6′ away from any infected human, why do we have confidence in our social distancing strategy?

A COVID-19-free tiger in the National Zoo back in the 1980s:

Related:

• Adley explains COVID-19 and works in the tigers

From our nation’s greatest scientist… “Fauci: Vaccines for Kids as Young as First Graders Could Be Authorized by September” (ProPublica, Feb 11):

Children as young as first graders may be able to get the coronavirus vaccine by the time school starts in September, presuming trials are successful in those age groups, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview with ProPublica.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has been “really advocating to try and make these trials happen with the same urgency that they happen for adults,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, who is vice chair of its committee on infectious diseases.

It’s essential to act expeditiously, O’Leary said. “I would love to see a vaccine available for all children in time for the next school year.”

So a top pediatrician wants to stick kids as soon as the paperwork is dry from the laser printer. What do the folks who make vaccines say? From moderna (headquartered in the office building that formerly housed the MIT AI and CS labs; also, some of the precursors to the vaccine are being supplied by an MIT AI-lab spinoff that received $1.1 billion from the Trump administration):

If the product is not approved, what is it?

Moderna is committed to safety and ensuring that people have accurate information about the investigational Moderna COVID‑19 Vaccine, including how it is accessed and administered.

The effects are still being investigated, in other words, and the vaccine will actually become illegal to use if Uncle Joe declares that coronaplague is no longer an emergency, but if you’re old/fat/sick and worried about dying from COVID-19 maybe you still want it.

How about children? As noted in Maskachusetts: When people aren’t scared enough, change the Covid-19 dashboard, nobody under age 18 had ever died of/with COVID-19 in a heavily plagued state of 7 million through mid-August 2020. But it would appear that we need to revise Is it ethical for a physician to vaccinate a healthy 20-year-old against COVID-19? from age 20 down to age 6.

(For the record, as a somewhat old (57), somewhat fat (6′ tall and wallowing right about 200 lbs.) person I am mildly enthusiastic about vaccines for myself. On the other hand, when the dust settles, I think that the President of Tanzania will prove to have offered the wisest prediction: “If the white man was able to come up with vaccinations, he should have found a vaccination for Aids, cancer and TB by now,” said Mr Magufuli (BBC). Consistent with this leader’s prediction, I think that our fight with coronavirus will work out roughly the same as our fight with influenza. The BBC article itself is interesting. Tanzanians are stupid because they aren’t putting all of their energy, resources, and cash into fighting COVID-19. But roughly half of Tanzanians live on less than $2/day. If you lived on $2/day, would coronaplague be your #1 focus?)

[Update: I showed this post to a medical school professor friend. Who’s more like to be correct, Anthony Fauci or the President of Tanzania? “The Tanzanian.” Does it make sense to vaccinate schoolchildren against COVID-19? “Not from a medical point of view. We have no idea what these vaccines will do to their immune systems in the long run. It makes sense to vaccinate old people who have a substantial risk of being harmed by COVID-19.” Could vaccinating children cut down on the ability of the virus to mutate? “Yes,” he replied. “The more times the virus is replicating, the more potential for mutation.” (Which also means we’ll need border closures forever because inevitably there will be some countries where vaccination is uncommon and coronavirus is allowed to do whatever it wants?)]

A young healthy vaccinated unionized schoolteacher finally feels safe enough to return to work in Los Angeles:

Photo by Phill Magakoe and actually from “South Africa Halts Use of AstraZeneca Vaccine” (NYT):

South Africa halted use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford coronavirus vaccine on Sunday after evidence emerged that the vaccine did not protect clinical-trial participants from mild or moderate illness caused by the more contagious virus variant that was first seen there.

Scientists in South Africa said on Sunday that a similar problem held among people who had been infected by earlier versions of the coronavirus: the immunity they acquired naturally did not appear to protect them from mild or moderate cases when reinfected by the variant, known as B.1.351.

Remember that (1) Republicans are idiots because they don’t believe in evolution; (2) We need to stay shut down only until the vaccines become available because the virus can never evolve its way around the vaccines and therefore vaccines will terminate the pandemic.

(Corollary to the above: The Swedish MD/PhDs who, back in February 2020 said that coronavirus would be with us forever and therefore you shouldn’t take any public health measures that you couldn’t keep in place for decades, were definitely wrong.)