Posts from the ‘covid19’ Category

Covid-19 Update | March 25 at 11:45 PM

Today’s Corona Virus update is brought to you by Mylan Pharmaceuticals, makers of Plaquenil (hydroxychloroquine). So right after I posted last night’s update, we had two more cases of CoVID-19 in Bay County. So I’m going to throw a few numbers out there as to why its not a big deal. The cases per million in Bay County now stand at 19 per million. If Bay County were a state, we would rank 51st in cases per million right behind West Virginia. And now for the but were not testing folks… we have done 57 tests and 3 have been positive, which is a 5% positive test rate. South Korea, who tested everyone that asked, had a 4% positive test rate. So if we were only testing people who had a high likelihood of having it, the positive rate would be greater than 10%. Next, on the state level not really much change, except that we had been having 200-240 new cases a day for 4 days in a row and today we had almost 500 new cases. Why? Those days we had been doing 2-3000 tests and today we did 7000 tests, so the positive test rate actually declined from 9% to 8% due to all the negative tests even though the raw number of positive tests was the highest ever. So the numbers can lie if you don’t look at them all together. Other encouraging developments nationally are the death rate in the US is really low. We have 3 deaths per million, even though the case rate is 200 per million nationally. Even in South Korea they have a death rate of 2 death per million and same in Germany. I think having the world’s best health care system is paying dividends here. And yes I know New York is a mess, Dr. Birks said 60% of all new cases are from metro NYC. Continue to pray for them and their health care workers. Also, there is evidence out there, be it anecdotal, that the combination of plaquenil and azithromycin may be effective in preventing hospitalization. I sure know that if I tested positive, I’d want to try it. The news reports of it somehow being dangerous is ludicrous. The regimen is 10 days of plaquenil and 5 days of azithromycin. I have patients with inflammatory disease on plaquenil for years with no issues. The azithromycin is being used to prevent bacterial pneumonia which can be a complication of a viral respiratory tract infection. Signaling from both the President and our Governor is that they want to be back to business in most parts of the country the week after Easter. I believe this is going to be doable for large swaths of the country. There is a growing number of articles I’ve come across suggesting that there are a large number of asymptomatic infections and the idea is that potentially the case fatality rate is much lower than it appears. Currently, we only know the status of cases that receive tests. There could be significant herd immunity building up in the nation right now. The other issue I’ve been reading about is that people are coming around to the idea that much like other corona viruses, this one is going to have seasonality and improve in the late spring and summer. Dr. Fauci spoke of this today at the White House Press Briefing. He also warned that without a vaccine we may see improvement in the summer, just to have it peak again in the winter. I hope that’s not true, but there will be a blood test available to see if you were exposed and if you have immunity to it very soon. That’s all for today folks!

Covid-19 Update | March 24 at 7:31 PM

Still no community spread in Bay County. 1 positive out of 41 tests, so running a 2% positive rate. Florida has an additional 240 cases and only 2 additional deaths. Despite a huge amount of additional testing, in the last 5 days our state has consistently increased by 200-240 cases per day. When a curve isn’t flattening the number of new cases would increase every day. We have basically gone 550,770,990,1210,1430 which on a percent basis is 40%, 29%, 22%, 18%, 15%; this means unless we get an influx of New Yorkers or Louisiaians, Florida has flattened the curve. We have managed to do this with a common sense approach. Closing schools, social distancing campaigns, dine in restaurant closures, and keeping those at risk isolated. I wasn’t a fan of closing the beaches, but it has been effective at preventing out of area guests from coming. I would have preferred a well-enforced domestic travel ban, but I guess its easier to close attractions than keep people from coming here. The nation’s curve is not flattening and of course we see the horror show going on in New York. Prayers for all of the New Yorkers and I hope to see their curve flattening soon. I am going to throw this out there as the Medical Association is starting a PR campaign to remind everyone that most of your area health care providers are providing telemedicine. It is typically covered by insurance, so call your providers office and ask, I know it is being offered. Also, most of the local medical clinics are open and seeing patients. We are all taking precautions to provide social distancing, hand hygiene, and pre-appointment screening for respiratory illnesses. Medical offices are part of what is defined as essential services and in most cases are cleaner and safer than both chain pharmacies (think CVS) and grocery stores. I am feeling better about the country’s situation now that the stimulus bill in the Senate is looking positive and the President’s approach is going to be region-by-region and not one size fits all. Things are looking up for sure.

Covid-19 Update | March 23 at 9:30 PM

Time for my Corona Virus Update. So first with the data. Still only one case in Bay County. We have had 1 positive test, 33 negative, and 2 pending. At a 3% positive test rate, I’m going to go ahead and call BS on the people claiming there are asymptomatic carriers here. The one positive case is a guy from Texas and the only other cases from the Panhandle are all to the West. So we do not have any objective evidence of community spread in Bay County. There is no reason for otherwise healthy people to be worried to gather with other healthy people they know in our area. If you are immune compromised or over 65, by all means take extra precautions. If you are sick with a cough or fever, stay home and don’t go to work. And definitely stay out of Okaloosa county, they are having cases in their community. The other places in Florida with active community cases are the West Palm to Miami area, the Gainesville area, and the Naples area. Florida hot spots (around 100 cases per million) are still no New York City. The New York area is the absolute worse area in America for the virus at over 1000 cases per million. It’s as bad as Italy, so pray for them and their health care workers. The good news today is that the President made clear he is not going to treat the country as a whole the same way. He and the CDC has smartly suggested we do BOTH: flatten the curve and limit economic damage. They are focusing their strict isolation on hot spots within the state and nation. And using resources at the CDC for contact tracing to prevent future hot spots.

Governor Desantis is doing the same thing so our community can have limited business interruption. The only people needing to isolate indoors are the sick, the elderly and immune compromised; otherwise go outside and enjoy your community. Social distancing is a good idea, especially with people you don’t know. Definitely wash your hands and don’t touch your face. And the big one, don’t travel to a region with a lot of cases. Let’s keep our area safe and corona virus free.

Covid-19 Update | March 22 at 10:43 AM

Daily Update on corona virus. We did have our first case of corona virus in Bay County yesterday. It was not a Bay County resident and he didn’t contract it here. Okaloosa County is up to 12 cases now, so it has all of a sudden blown up with cases. Outside of Okaloosa county, most of the Panhandle is still very low on the number of cases and are not hot spots. The governor is considering a statewide lock down and here’s the reason that is a really bad idea. We are a large and diverse state. Using data from DOH there are only 4 counties with case rates above 60 per million. The national average is 74 per million. It is very easy to place those 4 counties on lockdown. Also, look at whether draconian lockdowns have worked. Italy is the first country to go one hard lockdown 2 weeks ago and Lombardy has been on lockdown for 3 weeks. They continue to have higher numbers of cases and deaths every day. Here in the US, yesterday we had fewer new cases than the day before for the first time and we have two consecutive days of fewer deaths. So what we are doing is working short of requiring everyone to stay home. Here’s the other why. The business community cannot survive it. Some people have businesses that can work from home. Most of those people do work for the businesses that can’t. If a business like mine is required to stop operating, we have cash on hand to pay expenses for about a month. After one month, we would run out of cash. So a business like mine, if the governor orders it non-essential and shut, would then be forced to immediately lay off most of its workers and stop paying all of those other businesses that work from home. Those work from home businesses won’t realize they aren’t going to get paid by my business for a month when their invoice goes unpaid. The money they were counting on to pay their bills then isn’t there and its a cascade that cripples the American economy. Even before the ripple down to the work from home businesses, economists expect jobless claims to come in at 2-3 million this week. Last week it ticked up but it was before several states did what I am referring to by going on lockdown. For a frame of reference, during the worst week of the great recession of 2008 the highest number for jobless claims was 1.5 million. Poverty and joblessness will kill more Americans than corona virus and its all due to a response that has been harsher than necessary fueled by media driven hysteria and fear. I am not saying that corona virus isn’t bad. It is bad. It is almost as virulent and lethal as the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic; it will kill somewhere in the ballpark of 50,000- 500,000 Americans. I think there are major flaws in the study that I initially cited as up to 2 million. We can and should do the common sense approaches of at risk people staying home, anyone sick staying home, keeping schools closed to prevent community spread (which is bad for the economy but necessary), and a robust public health campaign to remind people about hand hygiene and social distancing, and those that can work from home doing so. Many people think I am saying it is nothing to worry about and that is not the case. I am saying we can do BOTH, which is flatten the curve and not wreck the economy. We just can’t freak out every time the media tells us there about more cases and deaths. These will be more, but new cases are already declining.

Covid-19 Update | March 20 at 1:04 AM

A little C.S. Lewis to put things in perspective:

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us are going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

Covid-19 Update | March 19 at 10:16 PM

OK people, I’m going to leave you all with another update and this time I’ll go with good news. Florida is actually doing pretty well all things considered. Our region still has no community spread. The 4 cases in Leon County and 1 case in Jackson County reported today were all travel related. There are still no cases in Bay County. Also some interesting statistics to share are that 6 states and the district of Columbia have 63% of all of the cases in the nation. New York and New Jersey are the biggest hot spots. Followed by Washington state, the District of Columbia, California, Colorado, and Massachusetts. Florida has a high number of raw cases at 432, but with a population of 21.5M we only have a case rate of 20 per 1 million, well below the national average of 44 per 1 million. For a frame of reference, New York has a case rate of 293 per 1 million. If we remove the 2 counties with the most cases in Florida (Broward and Miami-Dade) our case rate declines to 14 per 1 million. Congratulations to everyone from W. Virginia with only 2 cases and case rate of 1 per million. I’m also happy to report and share an article from Bloomberg highlighting the success the Japanese have had in containing corona virus without having to close down businesses and public spaces. It can be done without martial law and preservation of civil liberties. And it doesn’t have to crush the economy. Its a good read and proves we have alternatives to the path we are currently on.

Covid-19 Update | March 18 at 10:55 PM

After an amazing day on the beach with some of my favorite people, that even included my kids, I’ve checked the data and am ready to come back on with my corona virus update. So we have a case in Walton County and another in Okaloosa County. The good news is the Walton County case is a vacationer and is travel related. The Okaloosa case is also travel related. So again, the key is in all of Northwest Florida not a single case of community spread. Florida is over 300 cases and 2/3 of them are Miami, Naples, W Palm, and Ft. Lauderdale. No surprise to me, but the stock market continues to fall. This may be due to a study made public by the Imperial College of London. If you want to hear good news, STOP READING RIGHT NOW. So unlike our CDC that is probably to scared too tell the public some hard truths. The Imperial College put its data right out there. These policies of extreme social distancing, school closures, case isolation, and home quarantine are only effective if we keep them up for 3 months. Then, this only buys us time through the summer until we have 1 of 2 choices. Implement these policies once again or have a peak in November that is 50% less severe than if we didn’t engage in the initial 3-month pseudo-economic shutdown. To some degree, we are being lied to by being told this is for 2 or 4 weeks. This is a 12-week program. It prevents our health care system from being inundated with millions of cases that require ICU care and flattens the curve dramatically, but as soon as we let up, the cases will rise and the Imperial College notes it will take 12-18 months to develop a vaccine that is safe and effective. I encourage you all to read the article and decide for yourselves. It’s by Ferguson et. al. and it was published 2 days ago.

So if we do nothing the economy would have little impact, but 2.2 million Americans (primarily over 65) will die. If we do one 12-week pseudo-shutdown, we have a recession with millions of unemployed and huge government debt that we will never be able to repay and we let it peak in the late fall and just over 1 million Americans die. Or we do a second major economic shutdown again in the fall to prevent another peak and bring on a full blown depression but save the most lives from the virus and about 500,000 Americans die. I don’t think any of us are jumping up and down for options 1,2, or 3; but it would be nice if our media and government would give it to us straight and let us decide which option we would prefer. Here is serious food for thought and I’m not advocating for any specific option: how many people will die from lack of economic opportunities due to the shutdowns and the long lasting effects they have on the economy? How will this affect the young people who have potentially the most years left to live as they bear negative interest rates and higher tax burdens for decades? Things to consider as the 12-week shutdown gives us a lot to contemplate, especially if we end up getting asked to do this all again in the fall.

Covid-19 Update | March 17 at 12:31 PM

The lack of domestic travel restrictions is just mind boggling to me. While the President tells healthy Americans in areas with no cases to stay home, I have friends telling me of people flying into Destin and Panama City Beach from New York, Denver, and other hot spots. My advice to everyone is to do your own research, make up your own minds, and exercise your best judgment to do what is right for you and your family. Now I’m turning off the TV and internet and enjoying the rest of this week with friends and family on the most beautiful Beaches in the world. Best of luck to all of you out there as well.