Busy day at work, so just some quick updates:
(1) There is a commonly quoted rule of thumb that 80-85% of COVID19 cases are mild, and the rest severe and life-threatening. But how constant is that ratio really?
I was emailed a copy of a report (in Hebrew) by a group that was consulted for our national COVID19 planning. In the section on expected hospital load was a table with a breakdown of hospital and ICU admissions by age bracket, apparently taken from a CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6912e2. Screenshotting the table here:
Needless to say, these are data early in the epidemic (when the group had to make its recommendations). But if we use ICU admissions as a proxy for the number of severe cases, then we see a clear increase with age, the way it is seen for mortality.
(2) Elsewhere on the CDC site, one finds a report about the conditions and challenges at meat processing plants https://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6918e3
Some quotes:
During April 9–27, aggregate data on COVID-19 cases among 115 meat or poultry processing facilities in 19 states were reported to CDC. Among these facilities, COVID-19 was diagnosed in 4,913 (approximately 3%) workers, and 20 COVID-19–related deaths were reported. Facility barriers to effective prevention and control of COVID-19 included difficulty distancing workers at least 6 feet (2 meters) from one another (2) and in implementing COVID-19-specific disinfection guidelines.* Among workers, socioeconomic challenges might contribute to working while feeling ill, particularly if there are management practices such as bonuses that incentivize attendance.
Facility challenges included structural and operational practices that made it difficult to maintain a 6-foot (2-meter) distance while working, especially on production lines, and in nonproduction settings during breaks and while entering and exiting facilities. The pace and physical demands of processing work made adherence to face covering recommendations difficult, with some workers observed covering only their mouths and frequently readjusting their face coverings while working. Some sites were also observed to have difficulty adhering to the heightened cleaning and disinfection guidance recommended for all worksites to reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission.
Solutions to structural and operational challenges that some facilities adopted included adjusting start and stop times of shifts and breaks to increase physical distance between workers. Outdoor break areas were added at some facilities to decrease contact between workers. Some facilities installed physical (e.g., plexiglass) barriers between workers; however, this was not practical for all worker functions. Symptom and temperature screening of workers was newly instituted in some facilities and improved in others.
Sociocultural and economic challenges to COVID-19 prevention in meat and poultry processing facilities (Table 2) include accommodating the needs of workers from diverse backgrounds who speak different primary languages; one facility reported a workforce with 40 primary languages. This necessitates innovative approaches to educating and training employees and supervisors on safety and health information. In addition, some employees were incentivized to work while ill as a result of medical leave and disability policies and attendance bonuses that could encourage working while experiencing symptoms. Finally, many workers live in crowded, multigenerational settings and sometimes share transportation to and from work, contributing to increased risk for transmission of COVID-19 outside the facility itself. Changing transportation to and from the facilities to increase the number of vehicles and reduce the number of passengers per vehicle helped maintain physical distancing in some facilities.
(3) Lockdowns — useful as they undeniably are in densely populated urban regions — are not something that can be maintained forever. In the “hammer and dance” strategy of Tomas Pueyo, the “hammer” — the lockdown to break the epidemic’s back — is supposed to be hard and short, followed by a maintenance phase — the “dance” — that favors such social distance measures as yield the maximum reduction for minimal economic cost. (Face masks are one example.)
There are increasing signs that lockdowns in the US are fraying. Bethany Mandel, who lives in New York, speaks for many who express a sense that politicians of a certain stripe now keep “moving the goalposts” way beyond the original justification for lockdowns, and that they are completely oblivious to the staggering and still mounting economic costs for those who do not have guaranteed government paychecks. “We are tired of being treated like children,” one reads numerous times in the comments.[*]
Days ago, a hairdresser in Texas who had reopened her business made a tearful plea that she not be punished for wanting to feed her children. She was convicted to seven days in prison and a $7K fine. Now in a dramatic turn of events, not only have both the state Attorney-General and the Governor criticized the “excessive” punishment (the lockdown over hardressing salons ends Friday anyhow), but the state’s Lt.-Gov. donated the money from his own pocket and offered to serve the 7-day sentence himself as a proxy for the woman.
(4) DIE WELT looks at what it calls the “Coronavirus Model Pupil,” Georgia (the country, not the US state). The country, knowing it could ill afford such a calamity, locked down proactively rather than reactively, and is now exiting. (Possibly the most prescient thing it did was cut air links to China before they even saw their first case.) Now, despite a social culture much like Italy, it got a sum total of 610 cases, with just 9 (nine) dead.
(5) Finally, hard-hit Belgium is reopening after a few false starts. Summarizing the report from De Standaard (in Dutch):
- starting May 10, every household can receive and host four designated people (a fixed list of four). Recommended to sit outdoors. No travel distance limitation
- May 11, shops will open. One customer per 10m^2 (110 sq.ft.) floor area. Wearing a mask is recommended but not mandatory; generally recommended in situations where 1.5m (5ft) distance cannot be maintained (e.g. on public transit). If lines develop, elderly, handicapped, and care workers get priority
- public transit in principle reserved for people who have no private means of transportation (cars, motorcycles). In practice, this will not be enforced
- restaurants, cafés, cultural centers remain closed for now
- public sports events are put off until July 31
[*] Without engaging in partisan political rhetoric: one reason the lockdown in Israel was largely successful, and saw a compliance well above what one might expect of our garrulous nation, was that we were treated like adults. Economic trade-offs were honestly discussed, including the limits to how long we could lock down before irreparable damage to our economy would ensue — and we were given a realistic time horizon from the start. At no point was there a sense of “bait and switch”.
UPDATE: via the Jerusalem Post, this interesting paper in the Journal of Medical Virology has an interesting theory about why the SARS-nCoV-2 coronavirus may elicit potentially fatal “cytokine storm” so much more often than seasonal influenzaviruses: https://doi.org/10.1002/jmv.25866
We have applied mathematical modeling to investigate the infections of the ongoing COVID‐19 pandemic caused by SARS‐CoV‐2 virus. We first validated our model using the well‐studied influenza viruses and then compared the pathogenesis processes between the two viruses. The interaction between host innate and adaptive immune responses was found to be a potential cause for the higher severity and mortality in COVID‐19 patients. Specifically the timing mismatch between the two immune responses has a major impact on the disease progression. The adaptive immune response of the COVID‐19 patients are more likely to come before the peak of viral load, while the opposite is true for influenza patients. This difference in timing causes delayed depletion of vulnerable epithelial cells in the lungs in COVID‐19 patients while enhancing the viral clearance in influenza patients. Stronger adaptive immunity in COVID‐19 patients can potentially lead to longer recovery time and more severe secondary complications. Based on our analysis, delaying the onset of adaptive immune responses during early phase of infections may be a potential treatment option for high risk COVID‐19 patients. Suppressing the adaptive immune response temporarily and avoiding its interference with the innate immune response may allow the innate immunity to more efficiently clear the virus.
Spin, strangeness, and charm 