March 13. Progress and Data on Coronavirus Findings

March 13.  Progress and Data on Coronavirus Patients

Beware, we are only two days away from the Ides of March.  The Dow is close to 22,222.  Trump will declare a National Emergency at high noon.  Let’s see what real time effects that has.  The National Emergency will open access to $50 billion of FEMA funds.  This will go to State and Local governments.

It is now leaking out that last month, the CDC was having four large scale infection scenarios modeled by experts.  This is part of the answer to my continuing question:  “What do they know that they are not telling us about.”  

At the end of this week, still less than 15,000 Americans have been tested.  A lot less than the million to four million tests that were promised.

Sanjay Gupta of CNN said that while we had 100,000 ICU (intensive care unit) beds, we may need 200,000.

Irvine and Laguna Beach have closed schools for a month, as have many school districts, and several states.  

There are 55 million kids in school.

15 million kids get school breakfast.

30 million rely on meals daily for school lunch.

40 million Americans depend on food stamps through SNAP programs.

25% of employees do not have paid sick leave.

60 million are employed by small businesses.

Nancy Pelosi was on TV backing the Families First CoronaVirus Response Act.  It gives free Coronavirus testing including for the uninsured.  Since the current protocol is to be tested for flu and strep throat first, are those also paid for?  The bill also includes two weeks paid sick leave.  It has 3 months of paid family or medical leave.  It includes student meals, SNAP, food banks, and seniors’ meals, and more Medicaid funding.  It waives the Trump food stamp work requirement.  The Senate cancelled its Recess, to act on these important bills.  Pelosi is negotiating with Steve Mnuchin.  Trump tweeted that he supports this bill.

A lot of new data appeared yesterday and today, which we will present here.

Among the immunosuppressive factors for Americans, 25 million have asthma, and there is being elderly (6.1 million over 80, 22.7 million in their 70s), 16 million have chronic pulmonary disease (COPD), and 30 million have diabetes.

The virus was said to last a couple of hours on surfaces.  There have been much longer estimates.  Another today says up to two days.

Among cases, 80% do not require hospitalization, 15% are acute, and 5% critical.  Ventilators with oxygen supply are required.

The value of air traffic from European countries banned by Trump, called Shengun, excluding only the UK and Ireland, is $26 billion yearly.

A study of the high Coronavirus death rate from Italy, yielded vulnerability data.  Most startling, but not before mentioned, was that the male to female deaths were 80% to 20%.  The mean age of deaths was 81.  For women, it was 83.4 years.  For men, 79.9 years.  Italy has the oldest population of in Europe.  Two-thirds had diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, or were former smokers.  They died of Acute Respiratory Disease, or pneumonia.

Age wise, the deaths were distributed as follows:

> 90.      14.1%

80-89.    42.2%

70-79.    32.4%

60-69.      8.4%

50-59.      2.8%.

This is not the same as the vulnerability of each age group, as a percentage of those that got the Coronavirus in the age group.

The multiplying number R0 which determines the rate of spread of a virus is the number of people infected by each case.  That is determined to be 2.76-3.25.

A study of 56,000 cases in China that tested positive, showed which symptoms were most common:

87.9% had fever;

67.7% had dry cough;

38.1% had fatigue;

33.4% sputum production;

18.6% shortness of breath;

14.8% muscle or joint pain;

13.9% sore throat;

13.6% headache;

11.4% chills;

5%      nausea or vomiting;

4.8%   Nasal congestion;

3.7%.  Diarrhea.

Running nose and sneezing is not listed.  Note that fever and dry cough are the only ones that show up in the majority of cases.

In Orange County closings, Disneyland employs 31,000 and is the leading employer in the County.  UC Irvine is next largest, having 36,742 students.  It’s workforce is 16,460, plus 8,254 student employees.  This totals 24,714.  The faculty and staff still continue their teaching and research on the campus, only lecture courses are no longer in person.

Today the US number of cases passed 2,000, being 2,174.  Subtracting the 66 ship cases gives 2,108 land cases.  Yesterday, there were 1,597 land cases, giving a difference of 511 cases.  The increase ratio is 511/1597 = 32.0%.  This is similar to other days.

California now has 282 cases.  Since testing became more available in March, California had been adding about 20 a day.  Yesterday, however, it added 50 cases.  There are 11,400 people self monitoring in California.

An LA Times article on the administration modeling said that there could be a 100 million cases, with a half a million deaths.  No wonder there is a rush to cancel schools, sports, entertainment, and all gatherings.  Not to mention panic buying of cleaning supplies.  But toilet paper and water escape me.

We have to commit to serious social distancing as well in order to beat this, and to flatten the curve of patients overwhelming the health care system.  Get your flu and pneumonia shots in order to lessen the burden on the health care system, and save anxiety on yourself.

About Dennis SILVERMAN

I am a retired Professor of Physics and Astronomy at U C Irvine. For two decades I have been active in learning about energy and the environment, and in reporting on those topics for a decade. For the last four years I have added science policy. Lately, I have been reporting on the Covid-19 pandemic of our times.
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