More Good News on Corona Virus

 Despite the never ending hysteria pumped out by the media, there's a lot of really good news about COVID 19 in the USA.

First, the number of deaths across the nation fell to 429 yesterday.  That's the lowest level in about two months.  We are back at roughly the lows experienced before the second wave of infections that hit America in early summer.

Second, the number of new cases yesterday was around 35,000.  That is the lowest level since mid-June.

Third, the death rate from new cases of the virus continues to be much lower than it was during the early days of the pandemic.  In April/May, when we were running at about 35,000 new cases per day, there were days as high as 2700 deaths.  Now, after America hit a high of 70,000 new cases per day about a month ago, we have less than 20% the number of deaths in April/May.  There are a few reasons why the deaths from the virus have declined to such a great extent.  Here are the top three:

    a.  In April/May, there were states -- particularly NY -- that were putting infected patients back into nursing homes.  That spread the disease quickly to extremely vulnerable populations and led to thousands of deaths.  Estimates are that there were 11,000 deaths in NY alone due to this.

     b.  Testing has expanded enormously.  As a result, many of the new cases found are ones that would never have been diagnosed in April/May.  People with asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic COVID infections weren't even tested in April.  Most likely, the death rate hasn't declined so much as the number of actual cases discovered through testing has increased.  When we only found the virus in the more severe cases, the death rate per new case was obviously higher.

     c.  There are therapeutic treatments that are more effective than was the case in April/May.  For example, because of better treatments, the percentage of those hospitalized who end up in the ICU has declined greatly from April/May.  Further, the percentage of those in the ICU who end up on ventilators has likewise declined greatly.  Both of these are indicators of more efficacious treatments.

The pandemic has not ended, that is for certain.  The situation in America, however, is much better than one would believe from the hysterical reporting in the media.  For example, right now in Connecticut, there are under 50 people in the hospital statewide due to the virus.  The majority of these patients have been in the hospital for weeks and are on ventilators.  New cases compared to tests given are running at less than 1%.  The virus is still here, but it is extremely close to being totally gone from the state.  In NY, the numbers are proportionally even better than those in CT.