THE LATEST SCIENCE EXPLAINING COVID-19

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

           DAY USA   WORLD   Brazil      India   South Africa

June      9     1093    4732        1185       246         82

July     19       412    4606          715       675         85

           22     1205    7128        1293     1120        572

           26       450    4307         556       715        114
Aug      1    1462     6429       1191       765        193
            3       467     4430         514       514        213

            5     1362     6292       1394       849        345

          10       534     4813         593     1013        198
          12     1504     6556       1242       835        130
          16       522     4525         582       961        162
          18     1358     6312        1365    1089        280

          24       510     4356          679      854        100

          25     1290     5856        1215    1066        149

          30       369     4182         398       960          47
Sept     3     1094     5886          830    1083        174
            4     1033     5814          855    1066        115
            5       707     4822          646    1044        101
            6       432     4129          456    1008        110
            8       496     4477          516    1107          82
            9     1208     6222        1136    1168          82
           10    1090     5988          922    1213          97
           13      392     3905          389    1140          20
           14      480     4374          454    1054          52
           15    1197     6001        1090    1283        142

Summary:  See, I told you to come back instead of, like Trump, wishing away this pandemic.

The latest from Bob Woodward on President Donald Trump:  MONUMENTAL CATASTROPHIC LEADERSHIP FAILURE!  Watch that You Tube clip.






And speaking of The Donald, did you watch any of that 90-minute ABC Town Hall featuring our president?  How many times did he lie?  According to CNN, Trump made at least 20 false or misleading claims.

• Trump talked about  herd mentality.  Of course he meant herd immunity, but here is the situation today:
• According to that Worldometer chart above (you need to click on that link to find the details), 2% of Americans have now been infected with COVID-19.  

• For herd immunity, you need around 60% or more to have been infected.  
• Even if the asymptomatic rate is 50%, our current herd immunity today is only 4%.  
• Trump will need to kill off around a million Americans before we reach herd immunity.  As it is, we will "only" reach 200,000 sometime later this month.

But this is science day, so let me first applaud Scientific American, to which I actually subscribe, and have been for eons.  This magazine has been around for 175 years, and I'm just reading this particular issue to the right.  For the first time in history they felt compelled to be political.  Scientific American endorsed Joe Biden.  You can read the details, but here is a quick recap on why:

• The evidence and the science show that Donald Trump has badly damaged the U.S. and its people—because he rejects evidence and science. The most devastating example is his dishonest and inept response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which cost more than 190,000 Americans their lives by the middle of September.
• He has also attacked environmental protections, medical care, and the researchers and public science agencies that help this country prepare for its greatest challenges. That is why we urge you to vote for Joe Biden, who is offering fact-based plans to protect our health, our economy and the environment. These and other proposals he has put forth can set the country back on course for a safer, more prosperous and more equitable future.

For the past few years I have surmised that, for the first time ever, not the economy, not war, not civil unrest, but the environment, could well become the pivotal issue to make that marginal difference in determining our president on November 3.  In the midst of this pandemic, frustrated cities and the crippled economy, the environment could well influence just enough voters to give Biden the victory.  People remember forest fires and hurricanes.  Trump has failed, but as much as we have lowered emissions, mainly because we have reduced coal combustion, the USA continues to be the major carbon dioxide villain.

Now for some real science, from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, with lead researcher Daniel Jacobson to the right:

     A Supercomputer Analyzed Covid-19--New Theory

• An interesting new theory from their Summit supercomputer, the second fastest in the world.
• It still took more than a week.
• COVID-19 enters the body through ACE2 receptors in the nose and proceeds to other sites like the intestines, kidneys and heart.
• Then the virus tricks the body to go haywire.

• A bradykinin storm is released to kill you.
• For example, hyaluronic acid is produced in the lungs so that you feel like breathing through Jell-O.
• Ventilators sometimes don't help.
• This bradykinin hypothesis also damages the heart in one of five hospitalized patients.
• Causes inflammation in your brain with long term effects.
• Treatment with danazol, stanozolol and ecallantide can reduce bradykinin production.  
• Also, Vitamin D.  As you know, sunlight helps, plus fatty fish, mushrooms, egg yolks...and a UV lamp.
• A possible unified theory is beginning to develop.

That might have been too much science, so let me focus on the key matter of asymptomaticity, those who are infected with COVID-19, but show no or very mild symptoms, yet are just as capable of infecting you as those in the hospital.  So simply, what is the latest asymptomatic percent rate?  How really large is that blue area?

• The CDC reported 40%.  
• Tony Fauci says 40%-45%.  
• TIME magazine reports that up to 80%.  I also subscribe to TIME.
• Eight months into this pandemic, the astonishing answer is that they still don't know, but 50% or more is looming large. 

• Now, how can you run a contact tracing program if you might be missing half the infected?  
• The Hawaii Health Department just fired its top health administrators because they were not doing enough contact tracing, a necessary, but impossible task without sufficient testing.  Like the rest of the nation, quick tests here have been lacking.  We just completed a short period of surge testing.  With 60,000 of them, this brought our test total up to 260,000.  That's only 18% our population.  Can you imagine how many asymptomatic cases are walking around?

• The problem is actually much greater, for how effective is tracing if you can't test everyone...every week...for a month or more?  That would mean we would immediately need to have available billions of quick test kits.  So far, since the beginning of this pandemic, the USA has tested 94 million times, or roughly one in four Americans, total.
• Some professional sport teams frequently test, and the Big Ten, in deciding to actually play football this fall, will test DAILY.  For the masses?  School openings?  Only wishful thinking.  And it's not exactly free.

• Of course, an effective vaccine would be helpful.

• According to Donald Trump, and one of the companies the U.S. is financing, Pfizer, something will be available by November 3.
• Tony Fauci says end of the year, but it's not impossible by October.  He is still part of Trump's team.  While Trump now totally ignores him, it's good to maintain a kind of conscience up there.
• The World Health Organization says the middle of next year.

• Regardless, the latest info is that you will need to take TWO shots, meaning that the world will need 15 billion dosages.  
• Through these eight months, humanity is not even close to making a billion tests.  China leads with 0.17 billion tests.  USA?  0.094 billion.  These are just tests, not injections.  And, again, we're 8 months into this pandemic.  A vaccine to save Trump and have him around for four more years?  What a choice.
• To quote this article which was recently released:

Currently, there are seven vaccine candidates being tested in the US, three of which are nearing the final stages needed for Food and Drug Administration approval. Considering SARS-CoV-2 -- the virus that causes COVID-19 -- was only discovered eight months ago, the progress is actually happening at a faster clip than ever before in the history of infectious disease, despite Trump's claim that vaccine development is being intentionally stifled (vaccines take, on average, about 10.7 years to develop).

Robert Redfield, CDC Director, today told the Senate Appropriations Committee that this vaccination will be free.  People being what they are, will be swayed if a vaccine is just announced as available in October.  This is Trump's Hail Mary.  Will it work?  Maybe.

However, Redfield, the guy I said some time back would be the next to be fired, also told Congress that, to be realistic, the general public will not be able to take advantage of this Trump maneuver until the middle of next year.  Well, he didn't quite say it that way.  But yes, it is Redfield who also said:  why wait, there is already a better vaccine, it's called a mask.  If 95% wear a mask when they go out, this coronavirus will be overcome.  A vaccine at best will only be 70% effective, and perhaps 50%.  Let this sink in a while to appreciate what he said.

You haven't heard much about Dr. Anthony Fauci these days.  Well, here is proof that he has attained immortality status:

The idea to make a bobblehead of the nation's top infectious-disease expert came to Phil Sklar on a chilly March afternoon as he watched the news at home in Milwaukee. After just 13 months of operation, his magnum opus, the National Bobblehead Hall of Fame and Museum, near downtown, had closed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. In addition to running the museum, Sklar and his co-founder, Brad Novak, had since 2013 produced their own line of sports-related bobbleheads honoring star players and superfans. But with college and professional seasons suspended, nothing was happening to generate ideas for the figurines — or income for the museum.

Instead, Sklar and Novak spent their time watching Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, deliver televised public health updates. Soon they were seeing stories about merchandise — T-shirts, doughnuts, socks — bearing Fauci’s likeness. It was time, they decided, to give Fauci the “ultimate honor” of being turned into a bobblehead.

Appropriately:

Hurricane Sally made landfall near Gulf Shore, Alabama at 5:45AM EDT at 105 miles per hour.  Power outages, floods and such, but the last time I checked, no deaths.

She was at 85 MPH close to midnight, but shot up to 105 MPH in six hours, moving along at less than 3 MPH.  I can just about jog this fast, for maybe a mile.  No one has yet run a legal 2-hour marathon.  To do so, you would need to move at just under 14 MPH through 26.2 miles.

This is the first time in recorded history that the eighth named storm made landfall over the U.S so early.  Global warming?  Well, there were 9 total hitting land in 1916.  But the hurricane season is not over.  You've already forgotten most, but in addition to Sally, this year we have had Laura, Marco, Isaias, Hanna, Fay, Cristobal and Bertha.
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