Corona-zona

 Here are the numbers for the week just ended: All the numbers are headed in the right direction, and the one-week and four-week change are both negative, indicating that we're over a hump.  The one-week increase in vaccinations last week was 1.58%, whereas this week it's 2.58%, indicating that we are picking up the pace on that front.  You might remember that last week there was concern that different numbers weren't adding up.  For example, some hospital stats were still increasing even though new cases were falling.  More Reliable This week, there is more confidence that the downward trend is genuine. Hospital usage is trending down (although utilization remains high).  New cases per 100K 7-day average is trending down for every county except Apache and Graham. As noted in an earlier post , those counties contain reservations, which have been getting hammered since summer.  Variance is decreasing on several of the measures too. Here is positive test percent for that las

While researching a post from yesterday, I had the great misfortune of calling the ADHS COVID-19 "Hotline" at 844-542-8201. I was trying to ask if there is a residency requirement in Arizona for getting the vaccine.  The experience left my head spinning and my blood pressure elevated.  I would like to think this system was not designed to frustrate callers to the point of giving up, but it sure seems that way. Whether it was or not, the overall message it sends it is: Hang up and go away! What Happens When you call you are treated to many announcements about how there are no appointments available, what to do if you're 75 or older and having trouble getting vaccinated, links where you can go on the web to find out this or that.  All this information is repeated.   Next comes a bunch of announcements about what information you cannot get on this line, which is substantial.  No information about test results or appointments or information about availability at test locat

With more demand for vaccine than supply, people are trying to go where the vaccine is to get their immunization. The hotspot was Florida, where they would apparently jab anyone who walked up.  Reports are that 37,000 non-residents traveled to Florida got shots before the state noticed the problem and established a residency requirement . I tried to find out if Arizona has a residency requirement for vaccinations by calling their help line at 844-542-8201. Suffice it to say that this system is not designed to allow you to actually ask a human a question (more about that in an upcoming post). So I don't know if Arizona is a possible vaccine tourism destination or not. Of course, if you're rich you have options. For $55K, an outfit called Knightsbridge Circle will fly you to Dubai in style, get you a shot, and put you up for 30 days while you wait for your booster.   I read about another swanky travel company promoting a similar package but with a vacation to an exotic destinat

 In America we're pretty lucky. Our COVID-19 tests only require reaming of orifices above the belt.   That's changing in China. They are switching to tests based on anal swabs . This is apparently more accurate than the traditional nasal swabs. In the near future I fully expect to see a headline that says "China Experiences Acute Shortage of  Sample-Taking Personnel."   Image by wixin lubhon from Pixabay

 As noted in an earlier posts ( here and here ), despite a lot of fanfare, "Operation Warp Speed" was all hype. In a   story  by CNN yesterday Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips, chief clinical officer of a 51-hospital system, describes the shitshow:  It feels like the feds' plan stopped at the state borders, and the states expected the feds' plan to stop at people's arms. I think having a federal plan would absolutely stop the kind of "Hunger Games" approach to every individual state, every individual county scrambling for their own set of rules. The story notes that the incoming Biden team plans to ramp-up vaccinations.  What does the ramp look like so far? The following chart (from here ) shows cumulative doses per 100 people in the UK, US, and Canada: Since this is the number of people out of 100 who have received vaccine, it can be interpreted as a percent. The UK (11%) is doing quite a bit better than us (7%). Canada (2%) is doing quite a bit worse. The lin

I recently spoke with a friend who expressed concern about getting the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine because of the possibility of having an allergic reaction to it. Is this a reasonable concern? Not if you put it in the context of other things you do every day that carry a higher risk.   The latest  information from the CDC says that the rate of  anaphylaxis from the Pfizer vaccine is 6.2 per million, which works out to a 1 in 161,290 chance. For the Moderna vaccine the rate was even lower at 2.1 per million, which is 1 in 476,190. Other Risks The National Safety Council publishes a handy list of the risk of dying from various everyday activities. For some reason the latest data are from 2018, but it's probably safe to assume that the risks haven't changed a lot in three years. Here are some of the things in a given year that are more likely to kill you than experience  anaphylaxis from either vaccine: Dog attack: 1 in 118,776 Hornet/wasp/bee sting: 1 in 53,989 Gun accident: 1 in 9,07

Back in October I thought to myself, well, one thing Trump did right was getting the vaccine developed and planning for its distribution. Now it's looking like the Operation Warp Speed was mostly just another grift. The first step of the con was getting people to overestimate the administration's role in vaccine development and production. Vaccine makers did develop and test their products in record time. But other than easing some regulatory burdens the administration had little to do with that. One of the big players, Pfizer-BioNTech didn't even take the government money being offered. The next step was convincing us there was a solid plan for distribution. On January 8, there were reports that Biden's pandemic team planned to order release of stockpiles which were being held for second doses. They did this citing expected improvement of reliability of the supply chain from manufacturers. Four days later the Trump administration, in an obvious attempt to upstage thei

Here are the numbers for the previous week: All these numbers look encouraging except the vaccinations.  According to experts , 50%-80% of the population will need to be vaccinated before the pandemic can be brought under control.  If we only vaccinate 1.58% of the population per week, it will take us between 6 and 11 months to reach those levels. Are These Numbers Reliable? Here are a couple of grains of salt to season this week's encouraging-looking numbers. First, something seems to be very messed up with Arizona's testing stats, and possibly their other numbers too.   Have a look at the following, a screenshot of positive test percent  over the last 180 days from the ASU Biodesign Dashboard (data source is ADHS): Back in the fall, daily percent positives (Xs) were staying pretty close to the seven-day average (maroon line). But right around Thanksgiving the numbers start to go haywire, with a drastic increase in variance. On January 3 they even report 140% positive tests! T

As we have all heard, common symptoms of COVID-19 are loss of smell (anosmia) and taste (dysgeusia). Could such symptoms provide a fast and cheap method of screening people for infection? Some scientists think so.  One study  showed that two-thirds of people who have not yet admitted to a hospital for treatment but have tested positive for the virus self-reported that they lost their sense of smell.  Another study  is a "meta-analysis" that aggregates the results of many studies of the same thing—the proportion of people testing positive for COVID-19 who also have anosmia.   About three-quarters of people who are positive for the virus also fail the smell-test.  Only about half of the people who are positive self-report loss of smell, which is why the smell-tests are better.  So anosmia it's not a universal symptom but it's a very common one. Is there a scientific way of measuring whether people have lost their sense of smell? It turns out that there is a gold-standar

  In a previous post , I reported on research studying how well different kinds of masks block SARS-CoV-2 aerosols. The research is still under review, but used a very cool design that you can read about in the previous post if you're interested. None of the masks did a great job on their own, especially the ones we see everyone wearing. Cotton masks had 7.5% efficiency, and blue procedure masks  came in at 15.8%.   But the research found that the performance of all of them could be boosted by use of an appliance called a mask fitter or mask brace .  They boosted the filtration efficiency of inexpensive melt-blown polypropylene procedure masks  up north of 90%! This got my attention. So I decided to obtain and test Fix the Mask and Badger Seal. Both work by pressing the mask down around your nose and face, where masks tend to gap and leak. I have not received any incentives to do these reviews. The mannequin in the pictures below is not masked because I thought the components of th

  The pandemic has been disrupting supply chains since early summer. We all remember having trouble getting things like paper products, baking supplies, staples like rice and canned soup.   Some of that was due to hoarding and some was due to disrupted transportation systems. But some of the shortages are a lot more complex than that. They result from shifts in demand. The shortage mentioned in the picture above is a good example. Actually, there is no shortage of aluminum but a shortage of aluminum cans . People are not going going to restaurants to drink soda, or bars to drink beer. Instead they are buying canned beverages to consume at home. Manufacturers were caught flat-footed, resulting in a shortage of cans.  This has hit local breweries particularly hard. They've lost business at their brewpubs, so to stay afloat they've turned to canning their products. But they are competing with the brewing and soft drink giants, who are themselves struggling to meet increased deman

  Lately we've been hearing a lot of news and fretting about mutations in SARS-CoV-2. There are variants associated with the UK, South Africa, and Brazil.   Current thinking is that these versions are more contagious.  I've heard two theories for why this may be true. One is that the virus might be better at reproducing inside the body, creating a higher viral load, meaning the victim would shed more viral particles when contagious. This makes it more efficient at getting from victim to victim. A second is that mutations improve the "spike protein" the virus uses to bind to a cell, allowing it to inject its payload and hijack the cell's machinery. This makes the virus more efficient at invading cells once it has entered your airway.   One study summary I read says that there are not only spike protein changes but other changes too, which taken together make the virus a more efficient invader.  This includes possible changes that may help the virus evade antibodie

  Last night Colorado Governor Jared Polis appeared on the PBS Newshour talking about pandemic-related matters.  The interviewer noted that Colorado had a rough November but now all the numbers are going in the right direction.   In Arizona we had a relatively good November, but then all the numbers started going in the wrong direction— really wrong.  Arizona  regained the dubious title  it held in July as the worst place in the world for COVID-19.  This made me wonder how the two states compare overall from December to now. So I fired up the CDC Socrata API and ran some queries.  Here are new cases and new deaths per 100K people* seven-day moving average (AZ in blue and CO in orange throughout): As of last weekend, Arizona's case rate is over three times higher, and its death rate was over five times higher than Colorado's!   The question is, why?  Polis attributes it to good behavior of his constituents: "Well, Coloradans are doing the right thing. That means wearing t

A new controversy over "immunity passports" is coming soon to a screen near you.  With vaccinations ramping up, we are entering a partially-immune world, and will remain there for at least several more months.  What should happen to people who have achieved immunity either through infection or vaccination? The idea  behind immunity passports is that These documents would certify that the passport-holder had mounted a positive immune response to the virus and was presumed to be resistant to further infection. Passport-holders might safely be released from public health restrictions and allowed to return to work or study, and to live a more normal everyday existence. At first glance, it looks like a reasonable idea. Give people a "get out of quarantine free" card and they can help re-energize businesses that have been hit hard by the pandemic and begin the process of economic recovery. The measure is under discussion in several jurisdictions around the world, includin

I'm starting this as weekly feature on Sundays, giving a summary of top numbers on the pandemic.  The table is hopefully self-explanatory. Public health people I know point out that there has been high variability in the case counts over the last several weeks, as well as irregularity in ADHS reporting patterns. You can see an illustration of this for positive test percentage at the bottom of this previous post . This raises questions about how reliable the state's numbers are, and underlines the importance of relying on averages. There are some indications that things maybe leveling-off or even that numbers are trending downward, but given questions about the reporting process it's too soon to draw that conclusion. Update 2/21/21 The data table was updated to correct a calculation error in statewide new cases. Image by Shutterbug75 from Pixabay

  This week the CDC released a report on COVID-19 trends among people 24 and younger. It contains good news for those of us, especially beleaguered parents, who want to see their kinds back in school. Reviewing data from March 1 to December 12 of last year, they found that the prevalence of cases decreases with age. Here is a pie chart based on numbers in the report:  Moreover, they found that there doesn't appear to be much difference between infection rates in counties that did offer in-person instructions and those that did not: As of December 7, nearly two thirds (62.0%) of U.S. kindergarten through grade 12 (K–12) school districts offered either full or partial (hybrid with virtual) in-person learning. Despite this level of in-person learning, reports to CDC of outbreaks within K–12 schools have been limited, and as of the week beginning December 6, aggregate COVID-19 incidence among the general population in counties where K–12 schools offer in-person education (401.2 per 10

The phrase "herd immunity" pops-up regularly in public discussion of COVID-19.  The idea is that if enough people get infected, recover, and become immune (or get immunity through vaccination), the pandemic will end because the virus will have nowhere left to spread.   There was a huge argument—sorry, row —in the UK last spring when officials implied they might protect old people and let nature take its course with everybody else. Sweden flirted with the strategy by foregoing lockdowns, but has seen  no benefit .  Letting people get sick is just dumb.  Right now in Arizona there is about a 7% chance that if someone gets infected they will wind up in the hospital.  The do-nothing strategy is based on the incorrect notion  that only old people can be harmed by COVID-19. According to a paper by David Jones and Stefan Helmreich in The Lancet , the phrase "herd immunity" has its origins in the early 1900s.  It was used by livestock veterinarians to describe a strategy

  As noted at the end of a previous post , there were problems earlier this week with an AzDHS website meant to allow members of the second (1B) priority group to register for vaccinations. The system was so overwhelmed with users that it crashed. When users did get through they found that the site did not work properly on mobile or tablet browsers. People trying to use the alternative phone-based registration system reported 40 minute hold times. As it turns out, this is not the first time the state's reservation system has experienced problems. According to an article in the Phoenix New Times published on December 31, many people in the smaller and earlier (1A) group had trouble with it. Some Phoenix area health care workers, according to the article, were directed to a vaccination center in Snowflake and some actually made the trip. The article goes on to describe finger-pointing between the county, state, and hospital systems. There was an array of incompatible computer system