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Posts from the ‘covid19’ Category

Apr 9

Covid-19 Update | April 9 at 11:34 PM

Tonight’s coronavirus update is brought to you by Tito’s Vodka, a great way to start one of many three days weekends this month. So, we have 34 cases total in Bay County, now including our Congressman, my colleague, and friend Neal Dunn. He is doing well and will do excellent I am sure, but prayers for him for a speedy recovery. I want to let you all know that Mario Pulido has put out a great update from the clinical side here in Bay County and I encourage all to go check it out. We are still on track for falling well under the newer IHME estimate of 60,000 deaths in the US and 4,000 in Florida. A couple of studies have come out showing interesting results. So, in Iceland, they have reported the results of their population-wide coronavirus testing. 10% of everyone in Iceland was tested. Of the 36,223 tests, 1,648 were positive, they had 40 hospitalizations and six deaths. So about 5% of all tested, many who were asymptomatic, tested positive. If you got coronavirus you had a 0.3% case fatality rate. A German study looking at random samples from both asymptomatic and symptomatic individuals revealed a prevalence of either a positive throat swab or a blood antibody test of 15%. They also calculated a case fatality rate at 0.4%. Seasonal flu is at 0.1%. We are at or nearing the national peak in this epidemic, which is centered around the New York City and Detroit metro area. 62% of all cases and deaths in the nation come from here. Elsewhere in the nation, hospitals sit empty waiting for all the patients that fortunately do not appear to be coming. The 250-bed army field hospital that was set up in Seattle at Everbank Field was dismantled today after treating zero patients. A hospital in Oklahoma City was shut down due to the lack of non-coronavirus patients they would typically rely on to keep their other employees busy. And a deeper look at the March unemployment numbers shows that after restaurant and hospitality, it was healthcare services that had the next most layoffs. A source I have at a large hospital system in central Florida says they are losing $2.5 M per day that they remain open with no elective surgeries to keep their ORs busy. All of the surgical techs, nurses, and anesthesiologists are furloughed. COVID-19 is not a surgical disease, but it overwhelmed NYC and Detroit and our preparation destroyed the economics of all the hospital systems that didn’t have COVID patients. Deaths have plateaued in New York, which has allowed a plateau to form in nationwide deaths (1,971 on 4/7, 1,940 on 4/8, and 1,900 today). As long as those numbers slowly trend down, total deaths will be under 50,000 and this will resemble a bad flu season from a mortality standpoint. Keep following local, state, and national leaders, but let’s all be prepared for an end to these lockdowns at the end of the month and get everybody back to work again. Stay safe everybody!

Apr 8

Covid-19 Update | April 8 at 8:48 PM

Tonight’s coronavirus update is brought to you by HCA, the hospital system with a lot of empty beds right now. So first, let’s talk about the IHME hospital use and mortality model that the White House has used to make its recommendations to keep up strict social distancing through the end of April. It has now been edited twice in the last 3 days and maybe they are going to finally get it right. The bottom line on this model is that their death estimate is down to 60,000 (from 100k) and their resource utilization model shows that pretty much every state outside of NY, NJ, MA, MI, and CT have plenty of existing ICU beds to deal with this health crisis. The original call for business closures and healthy people staying at home was because our hospitals were going to be overrun nationwide, like in Italy, and we all needed to do this to flatten the curve. Some of this was about the number of deaths, but I think the overriding factor was our healthcare system couldn’t withstand the onslaught of patients. Well, we’re here at the peak of the epidemic per all the experts this week and outside of Detroit and the NYC metro area, we aren’t seeing it. 9,100 of the country’s 14,700 deaths (62%) are from NY, NJ, CT, and MI. This has been a problem largely confined to a few metro areas. We have great data here in Florida to really drive some points home. Today we had just 27 deaths in the state (the new IHME model estimated 56 today) and total new cases were 951 (just a 6% increase in total cases). It looks like we peaked here two days ago and our hospital’s ICUs and beds in the state continue to sit empty. Total bed availability statewide is 44% and ICU bed availability is 39% as of tonight. In the three counties with nearly 60% of all of our state’s cases and deaths (Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach), they have even slightly higher bed availability. Hospitals across the nation are already having to furlough employees as they have canceled all of their elective procedures, patients being told to stay home empty out their outpatient imaging and lab services, and even primary care offices sit empty. Due to faulty modeling, we instituted policies to prepare for an onslaught of COVID-19 patients that never came. In many ways, COVID-19 has done far less to harm our health care system nationwide than the orders to stop normal hospital activity. The good news is there is time to fix the damage. The media is still hell-bent on reporting what I call “fear porn” and keeping everyone on lockdown (captive audience = ratings). Social distancing and school closures are one thing, but people under 65 who are healthy really should be allowed to work in the very near future. Assuming we have continued good news for the rest of the week and this weekend, we are very near the time to tell the county commissioners to open the beaches for business (short term rentals are banned through the month, so Spring Breakers aren’t coming). It will be more than safe for locals to enjoy. Call your state Senator and state Representative and the Governor’s office and tell them you are ready to get back to work. Call your Congressman, US Senators, and even the White House has an email address and tell them we are ready to get back to work, get this economy moving again, and make America fearless and great once again. I appreciate the likes and even the dissent, but if you agree it’s about to be time for action. Let them all know, it’s not as bad as we thought, thankfully. We did what we thought was necessary but it’s time to move on with our lives. Have a great night and I’ll be back again tomorrow.

Apr 7

Covid-19 Update | April 7 at 11:32 PM

Tonight’s corona virus update is brought to you by the St. Andrew’s Bay Yacht Club, a great place to pick up a Cove Burger to go! So, let’s start local tonight and then go global. Bay county has 25 cases of CoVID-19 and we have a 7% positive test rate. This is very low, meaning it’s not because we haven’t been getting people tested. It’s because there aren’t many older, immune compromised, or health care workers with symptoms which would lead to testing. If we weren’t getting enough people tested there would be a much higher rate of positive tests. Florida has a 10% positive test rate. New York has a 42% positive test rate, just to give you an idea of how much more prevalent it is there. With only one case in the last few days, we sit at 147 cases per million, which is back to lower than the average case rate of all 50 states. We are also lower than most every county in Florida, so we are safer in Bay County than anywhere else! On the state level, Florida sits at 686 cases per million. South Florida’s big three counties still account for almost 60% of the entire state’s cases and deaths. Despite this fact, all of the state hospitals and even those in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach county have 30-40% of their hospital and ICU beds empty, awaiting an onslaught of CoVID-19 cases that have yet to make it to their doors. On a national level, the IHME model overshot its estimate for a third day in a row. They estimated 2140 deaths and the number came in at 1970. Their total number of deaths didn’t even match the lowest estimate in their range. Their lowest estimate of deaths through August is 49,000 meaning we are on track to do even better. This is despite the astonishing revelation at today’s White House Task Force briefing in which Dr. Birx admitted that they are counting any person that dies with a positive CoVID-19 test as a CoVID-19 death, regardless of the true cause of death. This is not normal. A person with CoVID-19 that dies of respiratory failure or sepsis or multisystem organ failure is and should be appropriately called a CoVID-19 death, but a heart attack or stroke in a patient with CoVID-19 would not typically be tagged as a death from the virus. It certainly wouldn’t be counted as a flu death. What is happening here is the models are off. They shut down the economy based on flawed models and now everything has to be counted as CoVID-19 so they don’t look stupid. I have had faith in the numbers until today. Now we have to question everything. We have become the anti-China. China likely lied about their numbers on the downside and we have basically admitted to lying about the deaths on the upside. Good news is even with the extremely generous classification of all death with CoVID-19 as caused by the virus, we are still below the models. We are easily on track to being open for ALL business in May. I am blessed to be considered essential, but for those who aren’t I feel your pain and I am on your side. We can and have saved a significant number of lives by agreeing to follow the government’s recommendations this month, but our lives and the economy need to restart this May and not even consider doing this again in the fall. Look out for another update tomorrow night!

Apr 6

Covid-19 Update | April 6 at 9:46 AM

So, I took an extended weekend away and have re-examined data. Just an FYI, I had pulled my money out of the stock market about 3 weeks ago and today, I’m putting it all back in. The data is looking good. The last day I looked was April 1st and today I put in the data from yesterday. So, since it’s not really on the mainstream media feeds and panic seems to be the norm, where’s this good news data? Well, the highly cited University of Washington model seems to be getting it wrong. They have revised down their death estimate and severely revised down their hospital resource utilization numbers. Yesterday, New York even reported their hospital census statewide decreased by 600 beds. During the 4-day period between April 1 and 5th, not a single state doubled their number of cases. And the national average was 57%. Here’s where the numbers get really interesting. It’s because of staying at home and/or closing non-essential businesses, right? Not really. The average incubation time for CoVID-19 is 5 days, so for these orders to have an impact on number of cases, they would have had to have had at least 3 days to have an impact. If you look at the % increase in the 14 states with no orders to close non-essential services OR have a statewide stay at home order imposed on or before April 1st, those states had an increase of 54%, so below the national average. The lower end of death estimates on the University of Washington model now sits at 49,000 nationwide and we are trending on the lower side. They had predicted 1745 deaths yesterday with a range of 1166-2775; we had 1165. New York and New Jersey still account for half of all cases in the US and over half of the deaths. LA and MI are having serious problems right now, and will be the epicenter of the next wave of deaths. Detroit and New Orleans both have high population density, poverty, and obesity as serious issues that will lead to bad outcomes. At the state level, Florida continues to do relatively well despite our large population of elderly. We are at 580 cases per million, almost half of the national average and Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade make up 58% of all of the cases and 55% of all of the deaths in the state. Backing up to local news, Bay county has 24 cases with a case rate of 141 per million, which is still among the lowest in the state and we did just barely pass West Virginia but are below the average rate of cases of every other state in America. If you are taking the recommended precautions you are going to be more than fine. From a risk perspective, getting behind the wheel of a car is still far more dangerous for the average American than CoVID-19. Have a great day, watch less news, and enjoy all of the outdoor recreational opportunities that Governor Desantis has encouraged all healthy Floridians to continue to do.

Apr 6

Covid-19 Update | April 6 at 7:34 PM

Evening update. The IHME model relied on by the White House Task Force for the second day in a row has severely overestimated CoVID deaths. They actually changed the model on April 5th and cut hospital resource use by nearly 50% and deaths by 15%. Despite the revisions down we sit 36 hours later and the total deaths in the US sit at 10,789. IHME projected 12539 today with the range from 11256-14281. They didn’t even hit within the range after recalibrating yesterday. And for Florida we have the same finding. IHME estimated 313 deaths by end of day and we sit at 254, at least that is in their range of 252-415. This is the model that was used to get many governors and the President to go along with Stay-At-Home orders. I’m not saying this isn’t a problem in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Louisiana, Massachusetts, DC, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Michigan, but the change from a local-regional approach to an all hands on deck national approach was predicated on this model, which isn’t turning out to be even close to the reality. We need to respect our local, state, and national officials; but we need more people asking how long we are willing to sacrifice productivity when the virus is receding before most of these recent stay at home orders would have even had an effect. Additional food for thought: Even the flawed IHME model shows the lower range of deaths is 49,000; of these 50% of the deaths are in patients in such poor health they were going to die of another cause by year end. At what point do we just accept 25,000 people will have the bad luck to succumb to CoVID-19 earlier than their time, which is 7 out of 100,000 Americans. Is it worth 2 weeks of economic pain, 4 weeks? 12 weeks? Do we do this again in the fall when upper respiratory viral illnesses re-emerge and there still isn’t a vaccine? Cancel school for next year?

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Apr 1

Covid-19 Update | April 1 at 10:16 PM

Tonight’s corona virus update is brought to you by Tito’s Vodka. So, I have had a clinical suspicion about an unreported health effect of corona virus and a consumer report today gives the first proof of it. Sales of liquor are up 75%, beer is up 55%, and wine is up 62%. So, for sure corona virus is bad for American livers! It’s been a really busy day for reports on CoVID-19. We’ll start with the Governor’s “Safer-at-Home” order and at first, I was concerned it was a shelter-in-place order. But when you read the actual order, it’s pretty much keep doing what we’ve been doing. Read last night’s update and I went over the White House Task Force’s 30 days to Slow the Spread and it’s exactly the same. You can go outside to exercise, walk, get groceries, go to the gas station, go see your doctor… you can be with other people in groups of 10 or less. Older people and those with serious medical conditions should stay at home. It garnered a lot of media attention, but it doesn’t really change anything. As far as how the state as a whole is doing, we have increased new cases by 15% each day for the last 3 days. This means the curve is flattening. Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties have above the national average of cases per million (654) and over 60% of all cases in the state. Bay County now has 13 cases and 5 of them have been tagged to Panama City. Is this concerning? Yes. Bay County now has 76 cases per million, which is still among the lowest in the state and it’s still a lower rate than every state average in the country. So, we are still in a better place than almost anywhere in America. An infectious disease physician was on the national news tonight and reported some very interesting anecdotal information. He has treated 80 CoVID-19 patients in the hospital and every patient requiring ICU care was diabetic and their average BMI is over 30. So please make sure if you are staying inside all day, watch your diet and get some exercise. There is a huge correlation between obesity, diabetes, and bad outcomes. Deaths are on the rise. This is to be expected because deaths lag the numbers of cases by about a week. I would assume we will see 1-2,000 deaths in the US a day for at least the next month. We are on track for 100,000 deaths; and most of these deaths will be in the urban areas in people who are older and/or severely overweight. There has never been a better reason to eat right, stop smoking, quit drinking, and start walking 3 miles a day. Nothing else really to talk about except I am probably taking a few days off for some “me time”. If something major changes, I’ll jump on and post an update, but it may be Monday before I dig into the data again.

Mar 31

Covid-19 Update | March 31 at 9:52 PM

Time again for the corona virus update brought to you by Snickers. Not going anywhere for a while? Grab a Snickers! So tomorrow begins the 30 days to Slow the Spread. These guidelines are to follow the directions of state and local authorities; to stay home if you are sick or if someone in your household has tested positive for CoVID-19; to stay home if you are an older person or if you have a serious underlying medical condition. For those not affected by these recommendations, it is suggested to work from home if possible, avoid social gatherings of more than 10 people, avoid discretionary travel, and practice good hygiene. Also included is not going to restaurants or bars and not visiting nursing facilities, which is already barred in Florida at this time. These are the recommendations from the CDC and the White House Task Force and are fantastic common-sense recommendations to flatten the curve. Now some analysis. Nothing major in the US. NY/NJ still bad; deaths there are increasing as this lags behind new cases. Dr. Birx showed the cases of each state graphed and the two lines that were not at all like the others were NY and NJ. The other point I keep hearing from the White House task force is their concern are the major metro areas. They know density is the biggest risk factor for a lot of cases and overwhelming the healthcare system and resultant deaths. They won’t come out and say less populated areas don’t have to be as diligent, but reading between the lines and looking at the data it’s clear that all the areas above the national average of cases per million are the densely packed cities. NYC metro, Miami, New Orleans, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, DC, and Detroit all have high rates of cases. Seattle and San Francisco have been singled out as cities that responded to outbreaks early and flattened their curves dramatically. Moving down from national level to state level. Gov. Desantis is not giving in to the media pressure and hysterical populace pressure to “lockdown” the state. He instituted a stay at home order for the counties with rates of CoVID-19 which are near the national average in South Florida. He recognizes that Florida is not requiring stricter measures and we are already effectively flattening the curve in Florida. He reported hospitals in the state are at 37% of their maximum capacity at this time and our state is well equipped to respond to any surge in hospitalized patients. Despite the data, the media and all of Florida’s Congressional Democrats are calling for a statewide lockdown. I suggest the governor impose a lockdown on those Congressional districts and prove you get the elected officials you deserve. We have 2 new cases of corona virus in Bay County. Their locations have not yet been published by DOH but I’ll let you all know once that data becomes public. Even with those two cases, we are still lower than all 50 states in cases per million at 47 (the national average is 570). So, if you are under 65 and healthy its ok to go out and run errands or enjoy the great outdoors as long as you social distance. You are still being responsible according to the CDC. Don’t let your social media feed make you feel like you are literally killing an older or sick person if you leave your house. Enough for one night. I’ll give you all more tomorrow.

Mar 30

Covid-19 Update | March 30 at 9:14 PM

It’s time for the corona virus update. Tonight’s update is brought to you this evening by the CW’s Supernatural, where they have a virus that turns people into demons. Save us Sam and Dean! Available on Netflix. More cases and more deaths, but none in Bay County so I’m calling it a good day. Governor Desantis made a great decision today by placing the counties with the most cases per capita into a shelter-in-place order. That is Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and Monroe Counties. This plus the mandatory quarantine on those from NY, NJ, and LA is the kind of targeted measures that will keep Floridians safe but permit some level of commerce to continue. Sadly, we are seeing the layoffs throughout the nation and after 3.3 million unemployment claims last week, I would expect to see an even higher number this week. From a rate of growth perspective, the nation’s cases increased by 15% today, which is the same rate of growth as yesterday. Florida cases have a rate of growth that has declined for 4 consecutive days now (29%, 26%, 23%, 15%). This is a win in my book and validates the governor’s strategy. We are so fortunate to have a governor who works great with the White House and will get our citizens what they need. Not much new to report today, we are so lucky to be where we are, so many other parts of the country are less fortunate. Continue to pray for those patients and health care workers and fingers crossed that we have another day with no real bad news. Good night folks!

Mar 29

Covid-19 Update | March 29 at 11:05 PM

So, I snagged this graph from a PhD on Twitter. He’s looking at data compiled by the CDC and I guess the last week of all causes of death in the US was March 7. That was just as the hand washing, don’t touch your face campaign was starting up, and the nursing home outbreak in Washington state had already begun. Could just good hygiene have saved lives? These researchers are going to keep following the all-cause mortality.

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Mar 29

Covid-19 Update | March 29 at 8:49 PM

Tonight’s corona virus update sponsored by the West Marine, where you can get all your Shell Island wet sand only accessories! So, two new reported cases in Bay County, bringing our grand total up to 6. Our cases per million are now 35 and that is still lower than the average of every state in the nation. And Panama City is still CoVID-19 free. The state data includes city of residence and 2 are from PCB, and one case each from Lynn Haven, Southport, and Youngstown. The last case is the tourist from TX who is still the only reported hospitalization. Nothing new to report at the state level. The number of new cases has increased slightly each of the last 3 days, but as a percent of total cases it is decreasing (29%, 26%, 23%) each of the last three days. The same has occurred in the nation as well. For the last 4 days there have been 18-20,000 new cases, but as a percent of total cases it has gone down 4 straight days (29%, 22%, 18%, 15%). Also, we had a decrease in the number of deaths in the nation today (255 today is the fewest since 235 on March 24th). I watched Trump’s Task Force Briefing today and he is going to extend the social distancing measures through the end of April. He and the doctors on the task force noted they foresee this peaking in two weeks so I doubt these good numbers today will hold up. It could just be its Sunday and that tends to be a day when maybe things get put off until Monday, but I didn’t see anything out of local, state, or national reporting today that was alarming. The University of Washington study estimating the number of US deaths at 81,000 was cited during the briefing. I’ve been following their model and today is the first day that US deaths are below their predicted number. The other takeaway is they mentioned metro areas several times and all of the hot spots are in densely populated areas. This is my personal opinion on the matter: I think they are hesitant to move forward with quarantines on cities because it will drive the urbanites out into the suburbs and exurbs and spread virus so rather than nationally messaging that its ok for some localities to go about your normal routine and others have to stay locked down, they decided to keep status quo because it seems to be working. So, in our area, it’s still very low risk to catch CoVID-19. People over 65 and immune compromised, stay home if you can. Practice hand hygiene and don’t touch your face. If you have a fever or cough, stay home until you get better. It’s probably fine to spend some time with small groups of people (<10) you know haven’t traveled and aren’t sick. And that’s all for tonight peeps. Let’s all have a safe, healthy, and productive week!

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