COVID Transmissions for 4-9-2021
Total vaccine availability can't come soon enough
Greetings from an undisclosed location in my apartment. Welcome to COVID Transmissions.
It has been 508 days since the first documented human case of COVID-19. 508 was the year that Clovis I made Paris the capital of the Kingdom of the Franks. Right now the two countries in the world with the most recorded active cases of COVID-19 are France and the US.
In today’s newsletter I focus on three stories that are rather US-centric, but that may portend the global situation to come. They are about case numbers, variants, and vaccines.
As usual, bolded terms are linked to the running newsletter glossary.
Keep COVID Transmissions growing by sharing it! Share the newsletter, not the virus. I love talking about science and explaining important concepts in human health, but I rely on all of you to grow the audience for this, which you can do by using this button here:
Now, let’s talk COVID.
The trend in the US is flat, but at a high level
New cases in the US for the past month have been relatively flat, but in the tens of thousands, which isn’t great:
This plateau is despite accelerating vaccination efforts, and each of these represents at this point a case that was preventable. Even though the death rate in the US at this point is lower than at the start of the pandemic, every long-term outcome, including death, that results from these cases is something that we could have avoided. Worse, this means we in the US have a reservoir of cases that we might share with the rest of the world.
So, I find that pretty depressing.
President Biden moves up universal adult vaccine availability to 4/19
The headline really says it all. President Biden has moved up the date for universal vaccine availability for adults from 5/1 to 4/19, a sign of how successfully the vaccination campaign is operating. Fuller story here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-vaccine-adult-eligibility-biden-april-19/
B.1.1.7 variant has come to dominate US cases
According to the CDC, most new US cases are now due to the B.1.1.7 variant, as reported here by the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/07/us/politics/coronavirus-variants-cdc.html
This could be a tipping point, of sorts, in the history of this disease. The US hosts the most active COVID-19 cases of any country in the world, so if new cases are being dominated by this variant, I think it is a good bet that B.1.1.7 will eventually become the globally dominant variant if it is not already.
This is still a variant about which many things are unclear. The NY Times article states very confidently that this variant is 60% more contagious and 67% deadlier than ancestral lineages, but when you read the supporting information it becomes apparent that these estimates are not as firm as the article portrays. For one thing, the study supporting that contagion number gives a range from 43%-90% more contagious and says there’s no evidence that the variant is any deadlier. The article supporting the idea that it is deadlier is not yet peer-reviewed, which isn’t such a bad thing, but the estimate for relative deadliness is a heavily adjusted estimate. It is meant to control for age and comorbidities and thus give us a sense of some sort of “inherent” deadliness of the variant by balancing these features out. Except, age and comorbidities are pretty important for COVID-19 prognosis, so I’m not sure that this adjustment really represents the genuine population effect. I don’t know how I feel about that. Without the adjustments for age and comorbidities, the relative risk of death is between 10% more and 48% more, with the mean coming in around 27% more. That sounds more accurate to me.
Either way, I do think this variant is something we can’t just ignore. Luckily, vaccines against COVID-19 prevent disease from this variant as well. So the solution is to get vaccinated, something that is becoming more accessible in the US every day.
What am I doing to cope with the pandemic? This:
Running
The weather has been absolutely beautiful (and my kitchen isn’t entirely set up yet) so this section is about going outside two days in a row now. I went running yesterday, as I typically do on Thursdays, and managed to get through 4 miles in a time that, last year, I might have done 3. Exercise works! Especially if you stick to it.
Also, I got this picture in the park:
You might have some questions or comments! Send them in. As several folks have figured out, you can also email me if you have a comment that you don’t want to share with the whole group.
Join the conversation, and what you say will impact what I talk about in the next issue.
Also, let me know any other thoughts you might have about the newsletter. I’d like to make sure you’re getting what you want out of this.
Part of science is identifying and correcting errors. If you find a mistake, please tell me about it.
Though I can’t correct the emailed version after it has been sent, I do update the online post of the newsletter every time a mistake is brought to my attention.
No corrections since last issue.
See you all next time.
Always,
JS
"This could be a tipping point, of sorts, in the history of this disease. The US hosts the most active COVID-19 cases of any country in the world, so if new cases are being dominated by this variant, I think it is a good bet that B.1.1.7 will eventually become the globally dominant variant if it is not already."
What about P.1 and B.1.351? Are they less contagious than B.1.1.7 to such an extent that they will be outcompeted?
I do not blame you for not taking Cuomo at this word. Unfortunately, his is not the only state government making such claims. Here are links to the official vaccination pages of New Jersey, California and Texas (I picked these three as New Jersey is next to New York, and California and Texas have large populations - not a very scientific approach, admittedly):
https://covid19.nj.gov/pages/finder
https://myturn.ca.gov/
https://dshs.texas.gov/coronavirus/immunize/vaccine-hubs.aspx
Whether these states are suffering from a lack of supply or a lack of distribution capacity, it seems clear that there is a serious issue related to getting vaccines into arms that has nothing to do with how many people are eligible.