Day 332: Boiling Frogs

The world is at 82 million cases, with the US nearing 20 million. Massachusetts remains at #18 among the states, with cases up one and a sixth percent today.

The vaccine frenzy is even more frenzied in the UK, where an anonymous doctor rails against it in "Boiling the bioethical frog", an article that links plenty of the science behind his own "vaccine hesitancy".

Also on the cure is worse than the disease front, AlJazeera reports on stillbirths caused not by the COVID pandemic itself, but by the reaction to it.

Day 326: Bowing Down to The Science

As Christmas fast approaches, the world is at 79 million cases. The US is approaching 19 million cases, with a third of a million deaths. COVID deaths are a contributing factor in our record-breaking annual death toll of over 3 million all-cause deaths. Massachusetts has risen to #18 among the states; our cases are up 1.5% today.

COVID variant B.1.1.7. continues to freak out UK and their neighbors, but its true scientific significance remains unclear.

Today Bruce Pardy complains in the Financial Post about that not-so-true science known as "The Science" before which we all must genuflect, whatever heretical beliefs we may maintain in private (or on blogs):

Scientific groupthink is now in vogue. Doctors who question the wisdom of pandemic lockdowns run the risk of being censored and cancelled. Thankfully, some are made of sterner stuff, such as Matt Strauss, a critical care physician and assistant professor of medicine at Queen’s University, and an early signatory of the Great Barrington Declaration. The declaration is a statement now endorsed by over 12,000 medical and public health scientists and over 38,000 medical practitioners expressing concerns about the science of prevailing COVID-19 policies. It asserts that lockdowns are producing devastating effects on short- and long-term public health that are disproportionate to the threat from the virus. As Strauss wrote in The Spectator in October, “mandatory government lockdowns amount to a medical recommendation of no proven benefit, of extraordinary potential harm, that do not take personal values and individual consent into account.”

Day 319: The End of Anti-vaxing?

Massachusetts cases were up 2% today and have exceeded 300,000; we are officially eyeing Alabama's #18 spot. While Florida has doubled down on allowing dining, California has gone freakishly far by banning outdoor dining, leading to outright rebellion and, of course, lawsuits. In a similar post-COVID spirit, Planet Fitnees calls a tool a tool in their loud protests of Boston shutting down gyms.

It's not clear whether the feverish "together-apart" celebration of the Pfizer vaccine will spell the end of anti-vaxing. The news cycle is a harsh mistress and has already jumped on an adverse reaction in Alaska. PlagueBlog can hardly imagine that the same innumerates who couldn't tolerate the 99.9% survival rate of COVID-19 will be able to put up with an equally miniscule rate of vaccine side-effects, but you never know.

Day 318: Alas, Phase 3

The world is at 73.6 million cases. The US at 17 million; #2 India is quickly approaching 10 million and #3 Brazil is slowly approaching 7 million. Late last week, Massachusetts edged out Colorado to return to #19 in state case totals. (Massachusetts cases were up one and a quarter of a percent yesterday and are up one and a third of a percent today.)

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts rolled back to Phase 3 Step 1 last week, and this week several cities and towns (Arlington, Boston, Brockton, Lynn, Newton, Somerville, and Winthrop) rolled all the way back to Phase 2 Step 2. Several more are expected to follow us over the cliff soon, while others have already declared their intention to keep the gyms and barstools open.

Day 315: The Pandemic Before the Pandemic

There's been a notable development in the collection of COVID-19 cases from 2018. Retrospective cases have been popping up for a while now, but the latest is special because it's a retrospective case of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in December. The patient was a four-year-old from the Milan area with no travel history, picked up (and a specimen preserved) by measles surveillance. More details on the case are available from the CDC letter.

Massachusetts cases were up 1.9% today.

Day 314 Retrospective in Numbers

The world had achieved 71 million total cases on December 11th, with 16 million of them in the US, along with 300,000 deaths. Massachusetts held steady at #20 in the US, with 280,000 cases, over 11,000 deaths, and a 2% increase in cases for the day.

The Biogen conference made the news again, with new genetic evidence that the event that never should have happened led to 333,000 cases in "at least 29 other U.S. states, Australia, Sweden and Slovakia."

Day 310: Unshared Streets

The world is at 67 million cases and 1.5 million deaths. The US is at 15 million cases, and California has taken back the #1 spot from Texas. Massachusetts has surged back to #20, with 11,000 deaths total; our cases are up 1.9% today.

Also in Massachusetts, in a particularly poorly-formatted web update, the people's republic city of Cambridge has announced they are unsharing their shared streets as of December 4th due to the onset of snow. Because of the general failures of communism sharing, they do not plan to reshare the streets under the same terms come spring.

Day 300: Zombie Mink

The world is at 61 million coronavirus cases, with the #1 US at 13 million, #2 India at 9 million, #3 Brazil at 6 million, #4 Russia at 2 million, and #5 France at their heels, also with 2 million.

Mink are rising again from their hastily-dug, shallow graves in Denmark. The graves must therefore be guarded against intrusion from other wildlife. (American mink themselves are not native to Europe.)

In other mink news, the Netherlands have culled their 70th infected mink farm. France has also joined the growing list of European countries with infected mink farms.

Day 291: The 0.1 Percent

Today's big news is 0.1% of North Dakotans dying "with" COVID-19. Recently there have also been more mink, more vaccines, and more immunity.

Massachusetts cases are up one and a third percent today.

Day 290: The Cassandra Who Cried COVID

A "Northeastern University computational social scientist" predicts 10,000 cases a day in Massachusetts in December unless we repent "take steps now." The steps were unspecified in the news story.

Both yesterday and today, Massachusetts cases were up one and one-seventh percentage points.

Day 288: The War on Thanksgiving

The world is at 54 million cases, with the US accounting for 11 million of them. Mexico is moments away from the million case mark. Moldova, a nation of only 4 million people (barely an accounting error in China's census) recently surpassed China to take 60th place in international total case counts.

In the US, the latest target of hand-wringing is the approaching Thanksgiving holiday. Vermont has preemptively cancelled it. Massachusetts is reopening a field hospital (sadly still not on Corey Hill, but back at the DCU Center in Worcester) to handle the anticipated tryptophan COVID casualties. New Yorkers are already announcing their intent to flout Governor Cuomo's Thanksgiving dinner limit, and a recent survey indicates that 40% of Americans plan to join them at celebrations with more than 10 people.

Massachusetts cases are up 1.7% today.

Day 287: The Long Haul

MedPage Today calls for more clarity and less credulousness over presumed COVID "long haul" cases:

First, we need clear definitions. What counts as impaired memory? Can we measure it with available scales? And, what is needed to diagnose someone with prior COVID? Some people report long COVID symptoms with negative PCR and Ab tests to SARS-CoV-2. Of course, there can be false negatives, but there can also be true negatives. How can we separate the two to better understand this problem?

A paper in Nature analyzes the sample bias in "numerous observational studies" of COVID risk factors:

Numerous studies have reported risk factors associated with COVID-19 infection and subsequent disease severity, such as age, sex, occupation, smoking and ACE-inhibitor use1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10. But to make reliable inference about the causes of infection and disease severity, it is important that the biases which induce spurious associations in observational data are understood and assessed. Bias due to confounding remains well-understood and attempts to address it are typically made (bar rare exceptions e.g. ref. 11). But the problem of collider bias (sometimes referred to as selection bias, sampling bias, ascertainment bias, Berkson’s paradox) has major implications for many published studies of COVID-19 and is seldom addressed.

A collider is most simply defined as a variable that is influenced by two other variables, for example when a risk factor and an outcome both affect the likelihood of being sampled (they “collide” in a Directed Acyclic Graph, Fig. 1a). Colliders become an issue when they are conditioned upon in analysis, as this can distort the association between the two variables influencing the collider. [...]

As illustration, consider the hypothesis that being a health worker is a risk factor for severe COVID-19 disease. Under the assumption of a higher viral load due to their occupational exposure, healthcare workers will on average experience more severe COVID-19 symptoms compared to the general population. The target population within which we wish to test this hypothesis is adults in any occupation (or unemployed); the exposure is being a health worker the outcome is COVID-19 symptom severity. The only way we can reliably estimate COVID-19 status and severity is by considering individuals who have a confirmed positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for COVID-19. However, restrictions on the availability of testing especially in the early stages of the pandemic mean that the available study sample is necessarily restricted to those individuals who have been tested for active COVID-19 infection. If we take the UK as an example (until late April 2020), let us assume a simplified scenario where all tests were performed either on frontline health workers (as critical vectors for disease among high-risk individuals), or members of the general public who had symptoms severe enough to require hospitalisation (as high-risk individuals). In this testing framework, our sample of participants will have been selected for both the hypothesised risk factor (being a healthcare worker) and the outcome of interest (severe symptoms). Our sample will therefore contain all health workers who are tested regardless of their symptom severity, while only non-health workers with severe symptoms will be included. In this section of the population, health workers will therefore generally appear to have relatively low severity compared to others tested, inducing a negative association in our sample, which does not reflect the true relationship in the target population (Fig. 2b). It is clear that naive analysis using this selected sample will generate unreliable causal inference, and unreliable predictors to be applied to the general population.

The cities and towns data came out yesterday. The map colors are toned down a bit (things were getting fairly dark), and bear even less of a relationship to the grey/green/yellow/red color scheme the state has been using to declare some of us "red" since that, too, has changed. Instead of continuing to use simple case rates for the colors and just increasing the case rate cutoffs so the entire state is not red, the MDPH now does a complicated calculation involving population size, absolute case numbers, case rates, and positivity (the most nonsensical, dependent variable of all) that takes an entire page of the report to explain.

There's nothing particularly notable this week, unless it's the relatively low case rates in a couple of the Stop the Spread cities: Taunton, Randolph, and Marlborough are currently below the state average in daily case counts.

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P.S. Massachusetts cases were up 1.6% today.

Day 286: Big Bad Data

The autumn wave has brought new countries into the million case club, most recently #10 Italy. In the US, curfews and lockdowns are spreading: Starting tomorrow, New York City will sleep at 10pm along with the rest of the state, and indoor dining is off the table in San Francisco. Forbes is tracking them all.

In pre-2020 epidemiology, locking down was always the wrong decision. In late 2020, lockdowns are often excused with bad logic or bad data; the Wall Street Journal has gone into some depth over the bad mask compliance data coming out of the IMHE and ending up in journals like Nature:

More than 100 news outlets trumpeted the study’s findings in the days following its publication—“The Price for Not Wearing Masks: Perhaps 130,000 Lives” was the New York Times’s headline—and a few hundred more articles have been written since. Reporting was often paired with calls for a national mask mandate, echoing President-elect Biden and now Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious-disease official. The study was also invoked by Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, to push for stricter masking requirements. Recognizing the potential importance, Nature Medicine rushed the study into print after an expedited peer-review process that took only seven days to complete.

Unfortunately, the IHME modelers’ findings contained an error that even minimal scrutiny should have caught. The projected number of lives saved, and the implied case for a mask mandate, are based on a faulty statistic. Using a months-old survey, IHME modelers assumed erroneously that the U.S. mask-adoption rate stood at only 49% as of late September, and therefore had plenty of room to increase to “universal adoption,” defined as 95%, or to a more plausible 85%. According to more recent survey findings, however, America’s mask-adoption rate has hovered around 80% since the summer.

P.S. Massachusetts cases were up 1.5% again today.

Day 285: Virtual Veterans' Day

In honor of Veterans' Day, some Holyoke Soldiers' Home news: the culprits former officials accused of wrongdoing pled not guilty last Thursday to the resulting criminal charges. The Commonwealth is seeking a new superintendant and contemplating renovations. Their COVID victims were honored in the city of Holyoke's virtual Veterans' Day celebration.

In other local news, Massachusetts cases are up 1.5% today.

Day 284: Mink Reprieve

Opposition leader Jakob Ellemann-Jensen has put a wrench in the gears of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's neovisicide plans for the country. The illegal and inhumane culling of all mink in the country has been called off. Some old US mink news has come out of the reporting frenzy about the mink mutation:

The American Veterinary Medical Association said at least 8,000 minks have died of infection with Sars-CoV-2 on farms in Utah. And nearly 3,400 mink are reported to have died from the coronavirus at a mink farm in Wisconsin. It added that the infection seems to be deadlier among older minks.

AlJazeera has more on our mink.

Massachusetts human cases are up one and a quarter percent today.

Day 283: Pfizer Pats Pback

The world is at 51 million coronavirus cases, with one and a quarter million deaths. In the US, Texas is well in the lead with more than a million cases. Despite our ongoing second wave, Massachusetts recently fell to #22 in case counts, having been displaced by the rapid rise of Minnesota.

The big news of the day is Pfizer's press release praising their vaccine candidate for being "more than 90% effective in preventing COVID-19 in participants without evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 infection in the first interim efficacy analysis".

On the COVID only comes out at night front, more places are joining the curfew craze. Denver is explicitly restricting residents' movement after 10pm. (In Massachusetts the restrictions are mainly on businesses, not people.) New Jersey is closing restaurant dining at 10pm as well as indoor food and drink service at "bars, clubs and lounges". PlagueBlog is jealous that they have bars, clubs and lounges.

P.S. Massachusetts cases were up three quarters of a percentage point today.

Day 282: Man Walks Dog

We are not alone in our nonsensical nocturnal COVID curfew. In Czechia, a man was caught walking a stuffed dog as a way around their 9pm curfew. Upon being caught, he claimed to be joking and was let off with a warning.

Massachusetts cases are up one percent today.

Some locals are annoyed that, for this week's cities and towns report, the Commonwealth has defined "red" down to the point that not every town in the state is red, so the map is still marginally useful for detecting hot spots. Out of respect for these incensed innumerates, PlagueBlog has used the same color scale this week as last week for easier comparison. As our color scale was finer than red-yellow-green, our map is still marginally useful in its darkened state.

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Day 281: Curfew Smurfew

The world has exceeded 50 million coronavirus cases, with the US pulling its weight at 10 million cases, with a recent rate of over 100,000 a day. India's 8.5 million cases are nothing to cough at, either.

The PlagueBlog mobile SUV was out tonight after 10pm, and our news team noticed very little curfew compliance.

Massachusetts cases were up one and three-eighths of a percentage point today.

Day 280: Pandemic Theater

The Boston Herald reports that Harvard epidemiologist Julia Marcus called Governor Baker's new unscientific 24/7 outdoor masking rule "pandemic theater" on Twitter. She also wrote about the dangers of quarantine fatigue in the Atlantic back when it was a new thing.

Despite the MDPH having moved their weekly reporting time from Wednesdays at 4pm to Thursdays at 5pm, the Massachusetts cities and towns data for this week is still not available today (Friday at noonish), so maps will be delayed.

P.S. Massachusetts cases were up one and a quarter percentage points today, partly due to delayed reporting of October cases from "a national laboratory".

Day 279: More Mink

The election isn't the only thing that's dragging on. In mink news, there is much panic and a bit less reasonable skepticism about their SARS-CoV-2 mutation. North Jutland has been locked down to prevent its spread.

A COVID Mary has been found—an asymptomatic immunocompromised cancer patient who shed virus for 70 days. She tested positive fourteen separate times

Massachusetts cases were up one and one seventh of a percentage point today. It was also our last day to breathe free here, and the state seems to have switched from abusing the SMS emergency alert system to merely sending out annoying texts and phone calls about the coming curfew and post-scientific masking policy.

Day 278: Mink Mutation

The world is at 48 million coronavirus cases. France has exceeded 1.5 million cases and at their current rate may take over Russia's #4 spot. In the US, Texas took over the top spot from California a few days ago, depending on who's counting. Florida remains a distant third.

On the animal front, a symptomatic Knoxville, TN tiger tested positive last week, and two other tigers are presumed positive. There are no plans to kill the tigers.

The minks are not so lucky; neovisicide rages on in northern Europe where Denmark now plans to cull their entire mink population over an unspecified mutant SARS-CoV-2 strain that has already infected humans. It may differ enough from the common strains to be an issue.

P.S. Massachusetts cases are up one percent today.

Day 277: Welcome to Efrafra

PSA: The CDC says the infected can vote in person today.

Greg Cochran blogs briefly at West Hunter; the meat is in the comments. On his COVID-19 post yesterday, Free Parameter, he made a passing reference to the rabbit disease myxomatosis, a.k.a. white blindness, which inspired a commenter to compare our SARS reactions to the rabbit military dictatorship of Efrafra in Watership Down:

Woundwort thinks that the white blindness is a disease used by humans to harm rabbits (shades of how some think COVID-19 is a Chinese-made weapon), so he tries to stop it by keeping his rabbits underground, out of human sight.

Although his theory’s off, his measures would limit Efrafra’s exposure to natural reservoirs of myxomatosis. [...]

[But] he’s too strict, too cruel. No Efrafran rabbit will report feeling sick, because they’ll be punished. And if they did, their Owsla officer would likely try to keep it a secret, for the same reason. White blindness will become deeply entrenched at Efrara before Woundwort even knows it’s there.

That’s the irony of being a totalitarian dictator: you want obedient underlings, but instead you get skilled liars. To fight disease you need clear information about where it began and how far it’s spread, and Woundwort has set up an incentive structure that ensures he’ll never get it.

A real-life parallel happened in 2002, when SARS broke out in Guangdong in China. The province had a 12% economic growth target to hit, come hell or high water, and “negative news” was suppressed by the state. As a result, the disease snowballed and became far more devastating than it had to be.

It is left to the reader to draw the obvious parallels to SARS-CoV-2.

Like the weekly data, Massachusetts' daily numbers are now coming out later, in perpetuity. While we wait, here's last week's long-awaited map, with a notable increase in the orangeness of the percent change panel (showing the area of increasing case counts):

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P.S. Massachusetts cases were up two thirds of a percentage point today.

Day 276: Massachusetts Overreacts to Autumn

It's a sad day for both science and civil liberties in Massachusetts, where the innocent populace are about to be subjected to both a curfew and an outdoor mask requirement—regardless of whether anyone else is around. The overreaction is in response to a relatively minor and inevitable uptick in cases (up just half a percentage point today) due to the onset of autumn and the fact that you cannot hide forever from a communicable disease.

PlagueBlog hopes that neither measure will survive the inevitable legal challenges, but notes that the innocent victims of our satanic panic four decades ago have never been exonerated, so recommends against holding your breath (especially in a mask). Now is also not the time to read the latest research on just how scientifically baseless and potentially dangerous casual and ersatz mask use is.

Day 275 Retrospective: England Locks Down

Prime Minister Boris Johnson is planning a new lockdown starting Thursday and allegedly ending December 2nd, though there's still a chance that fellow Conservatives will vote it down on Wednesday. Pubs and restaurant dining rooms in England will be closed.

Massachusetts cases were up seven tenths of a percentage point today, and Massachusetts deaths exceeded 10,000 in total.

Day 274: White Halloween

The post-apocalyptic COVID landscape is the perfect setting for a white Halloween during which practically immune children are afraid to go trick-or-treating outdoors because of coronavirus. Also on Halloween in Massachusetts, the ever sketchy New England travel bubble was dealt another severe pinprick by the tit-for-tat addition of Connecticut to our quarantine list.

Massachusetts cases were up nine-tenths of a percentage point today.

Day 273 Retrospective: SNOVID-19

On Day 273, the US recorded 101,000 cases (by the Worldometers count), setting a local record, if not a world record. BNO also noted a weekly record of 500,000 cases. Despite some shuffling of the higher ranks (and plenty of panic), Massachusetts remained at #21 in US case counts. Cases were up about 1%.

"SNOVID" appears to have been coined by oldgrimalkin on Reddit, in honor of the unseasonable snowfall in Massachusetts on the day before Halloween. Also of coronaviral note on the 30th were a confirmed COVID case and a presumptive case in two captive Tennessee tigers. The victims, while seemingly recovered and unlikely to get within six feet of anyone, remain in quarantine.

Day 271: Reverse Marathon

India at 8 million cases is gaining on the USA's 9 million and change, while #5 France is planning a new lockdown for Friday. Most notable in the recent surpassers of #55 China is #54 Austria, a nation of only 9 million people none of whom are in the habit of eating bats.

Most notable among recent cancellations is the "postponement" of the second Boston Marathon to fall victim to COVID. It matters not that Massachusetts has fallen to #21 in case counts behind #20 Indiana despite our alleged COVID backsliding (otherwise known as "autumn"). Speaking of the weather, Chicago will "suspend" indoor dining starting on Friday, making for no dining out at all considering their climate.

The ever sketchy New England travel bubble has been dealt a severe pinprick by the addition of Massachusetts to Connecticut's quarantine list.

Day 268: Doubling Down

Thursday's cities and towns data (for Wednesday) reveals a slowdown of tourism COVID cases on Nantucket and the Cape. The red city rate (8 cases per 100k per day) remains below the state average (still 9 cases per 100k); this week's big outlier was Lawrence at 46 cases per 100k per day. (Middleton at 62 cases is just another small town outlier.) The data also includes county-level summaries for most real counties, plus the fake COVID county of Dukes and Nantucket.

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Day 264: More COVID Fatigue

On the COVID fatigue front, the Commonwealth seems to have tired of Wednesday as cities and towns day, and now will be releasing the data on Thursdays, allegedly by 4pm.

Day 262 Retrospective

Monday was notable for the COVID alert messages from the Commonwealth that were intended for residents of "red" cities, but went out to inappropriate people in wildly inappropriate numbers. Here at PlagueBlog headquarters, we got several alerts for both Everett and Chelsea, despite not being located in Everett or Chelsea, nor having set foot in Chelsea since before the plague began. PlagueBlog notes that spamming the wrong people is a good way to get your message ignored.

Day 257: In the Red

Since last we met, the US has exceeded 8 million cases, and several small-to-middling countries have passed the China point, including Portugal, a nation of ten million (only 1/144th its size). Despite the best efforts of Maryland and Indiana, Massachusetts remains at #20 among the states in case count.

Speaking of Massachusetts, there has been much hand-wringing today over the increasing "redness" of the state. It's not about politics but about cities and towns with average daily case rates of 8 or more (per 100,000) over the past two weeks. In fact at 9 cases per 100k the whole state is currently in the red, with outliers having case rates of up to 100, so the current rating system doesn't say much about a particular town's performance. Bigger, denser cities have more cases for the obvious reasons.

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Day 251: More Great Barrington

Brazil (at #3) has reached 5 million cases; #2 India is approaching 7 million, and at a pace that puts it in position to overtake the US eventually.

Governor Whitmer has been digging up Spanish Flu laws in an attempted end-run around last week's state supreme court decision striking down a 1945 law and her coronavirus restrictions along with it. PlagueBlog senses that this is not the right legal or temporal direction to be going in, and that the "burn your masks" lawyer will be back before their supreme court sooner rather than later.

AIER, after letting slip their involvement in the Great Barrington Declaration, has been reporting on the reaction to it, from scientists, the media, and the social media peanut gallery. Off-Guardian was not involved in the declaration, but assembles a lot of prior art of scientists and health care workers recommending against lockdowns.

Yesterday's weekly cities and towns data was the twenty-sixth such missive from the state. That's half a year, and the weekly reports only started in April. The coronavirus drama in Boston has actually been going on for 251 days since our first case, which is more than two-thirds of the year. Although the news just keeps on coming so does the COVID fatigue, so PlagueBlog will be reducing our publication schedule for the foreseeable future.

On to the data: while in recent weeks the Stop the Spread cities (with dotted borders) haven't been consistently ahead of other cities and large towns in case counts, this week you can see they're hotspots, along with Nantucket and the usual random smattering of small town outliers:

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Day 250: The Day the Movies Died

Wisconsin surged past Massachusetts yesterday, pushing us down to the #20 slot in case count. Though Maryland is at #21, Indiana is moving faster and may catch up soon.

Technically speaking, the movies will die tomorrow, when Regal closes all theaters in the US and UK. Parent company Cineworld is also closing all theaters, though this only affects the UK. They blame the lack of content coming out of studios, who have been holding back their big titles in hopes of better revenues post-pandemic. (PlagueBlog warns that there may never be a time after the pandemic.) Regal is the second-largest US movie theater chain. The largest chain, AMC, has kissed and made up with Universal Studios and plans to remain open.

The New York Post reprinted the Great Barrington declaration last night, and it's now surpassed 100,000 signatures.

On the irony watch, Father John Jenkins, President of Notre Dame and target of his own home-grown Stasi after he failed to wear a mask to the Rose Garden super-spreading ceremony, has added injury to insult by testing positive for COVID. A faculty no-confidence vote against him has been postponed for the moment, and students are circulating petitions for his removal.

Massachusetts' case numbers are delayed today, as is the weekly towns and cities data. In other local news, the mayor of Boston announced a delay in the phased reopening of Boston's public schools for off-line education, over a minor increase in the positivity rate here. Some have attributed our rising positivity to a drop in testing the well for COVID, rather than to any meaningful change in the local coronavirus situation.

P.S. Massachusetts' cases were up two-fifth of a percentage point today.

Day 249: Neo-Neo-Neovisicide

The reprieve for Danish mink has been called off, and now they're getting even more culled than the unfortunate Dutch mink. Besides recovered mink at infected farms, they're also culling every mink on farms within 5 miles of any infected farm, because somehow they pose a threat to humans. PlagueBlog hopes they don't kill all the human patients in hospitals within five miles of an infected hospital.

In England, the recent underreporting of 16,000 COVID cases has been traced to...Microsoft Excel:

Public Health England (PHE) collected data from commercial firms that analysed the swab results to see who tested positive or not, and receved the information in files with the values separated by commas.

Using comma separated values (CSV) in files is common practice for handling data.

PHE loaded the files into Microsoft Excel spreadsheet templates to be entered into a central system used for government contact tracing and reporting dashboards.

However, the PHE developers used the original binary .XLS file format for Excel which first appeared in 1987.

[...]

BBC reported that thanks to the old file format being used, each Excel template was limited to recording around 1400 cases.

Any further cases than that were ignored by template, and led to 15,841 going unreported between September 25 and October 2 which may have led to people being unaware of COVID-19 exposure in that time.

Massachusetts' cases are up about a third of a percentage point today. In other local news, Falmouth High School went virtual yesterday after an unknown number of virtually immune students "attended a party this weekend in Woods Hole while not wearing masks and not practicing physical distancing." As usual there was much hand-wringing from the puritan administrators of the school.

Day 248: The Great Barrington Declaration

Today Japan, a nearby island nation with less than a tenth of the population of China, has exceeded China in cases, taking on the #45 spot.

The Great Barrington Declaration is only surprising in that the authors had to travel in secret to Great Barrington, MA (a little town in the Berkshires featuring a weird castle, Bard College, and a perfectly average 14-day case rate) to formulate it. The declaration's "Focused Protection" amounts hiding grandma while acquiring herd immunity through normal living for healthy, low-risk young people and school children. They were also interviewed briefly on LockdownTV. The general public as well as other scientists and health care workers are encouraged to sign the declaration.

The Michigan Supreme Court struck down the Emergency Powers of Governor Act (the target of the petition from a week and a half ago) on Friday, though it's still unclear to the Governor whether and for how long her now-illegal orders stand. The attorney behind the case says to "burn your masks".

Massachusetts' cases are up almost two-fifths of a percentage point today.

Day 247: Stasi Fail

India made the BNO News with 100,000 COVID deaths, though by Worldometer's standards they've been there for a few days now. Nepal, a nation of fewer than 30 million souls (that is, 1.4 billion fewer than China), bordering China (due to the latter's occupation of Tibet), now, somehow, has reached the #44 spot, with more cases than #45 China.

On the because it worked so well for Germany front, the University of Notre Dame's Stasi-style snitch-on-a-classmate website has been repurposed by enterprising students to snitch on the university president for not wearing a mask to the Rose Garden super-spreader event. (It seems the "super" spreading may have happened at the debate prep, instead, where the now-infected Trump, Bill Stepien, Kellyanne Conway, Hope Hicks, and Chris Christie were present.)

Business Insider is optimistic about President Trump's condition, so here's a little humor about it from "Whiskey Fueled Tirade" at DuffelBlog: Walter Reed medics tell President to return during sick call hours:

Medics and corpsmen at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center responded with the poise and compassion characteristic of their profession when the president arrived at the military’s flagship hospital earlier last evening.

“I told him the same thing I tell everybody when they show up all sad-faced and mopey while we’re closing the clinic,” Spc. Will Farmer, a medic assigned to the hospital, said as he smoked a cigarette near the executive sick call entrance. “Take some Motrin, drink water, and come back at 0430 when sick call starts hours if you really think you need to be seen. I see it all the time. Last week some supreme court lady was trying to get an appointment after sick call hours.”

“He’s probably just trying to get out work, or a debate or something.”

In science news, ProMED reports on several papers suggesting Parkinson's Disease may be one of those allegedly unusual long-term COVID-19 sequelae. Although parkinsonism is better known as as a consequence of other viral infections like the flu, and so far there seems to be only the one case report from Israel, it is something to watch out for.

Massachusetts' cases were up about half a percentage point again today. In other local news, Patriots quarterback Cam Newton has tested positive. Today's game has been postponed until Monday after an opposing team member also tested positive. Also, Worcester has cancelled Halloween, apparently in accordance with CDC guidelines suggesting that virtually-immune children do boring stuff at a distance to avoid COVID instead of trick-or-treating.

Day 246: Even the Rose Garden

The world is at 35 million coronavirus cases, with #3 Brazil nearing 5 million. Japan (#45) is asymptotically approaching the China mark, while #46 Nepal and #47 Czechia chug along behind them. In the US, Missouri has taken the #18 spot from Massachusetts, and #20 Wisconsin is only a couple of days away from beating us as well.

The New York Times reports on the growing cluster of cases tentatively attributed to the Rose Garden ceremony for Amy Coney Barrett (or, more likely, the indoor reception that followed).

P.S. Massachusetts' cases were up half a percentage point today.

Day 245: Even the God Emperor

President Trump tweeted (of course) that he and the First Lady tested positive for COVID-19, following news that an aide, Hope Hicks, was infected. The meme-imperial couple are "well", which PlagueBlog takes to mean asymptomatic. Their quarantine schedule may affect the second debate. The Vice President and Second Lady have tested negative.

P.S. Massachusetts' cases are up four-sevenths of a percentage point again today. (That's 761 cases, keeping us just barely ahead of Missouri for another day.)

P.P.S. NBC has updates on the President's "low-grade fever" and trip to Walter Reed, as well as Melania's "mild cough and headache."

Day 244: Even the Neanderthals

An article in Nature claims that The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals. But not all post-Neanderthals have it; the particularly problematic genes seem to be more common in South Asians than in any other out-of-Africa group. (Africans rarely carry Neanderthal genes.)

MedPage Today reports that ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) wasn't as universal a failure for COVID patients as previously suspected. (It made ventilators look helpful.) It turns out that only about 40% of patients died in hospital afterwards. However, the follow-up on the allegedly surviving 60% wasn't really solid or long-term enough to be entirely convincing.

Forbes reports that Mississippi's mask mandate expired peacefully in its sleep last night.

Massachusetts' cases are up four-sevenths of a percentage point today. While the general grouping of our "red" cities (Lawrence, Framingham, Revere, New Bedford, and the Islands) hasn't changed much, things are getting a little more infected. (Also, maps from last week have been corrected due to PlagueBlogger error.)

(Pop out.)

Day 243: No One Here Cares

As the world hits 34 million cases, local puritans continue to be surprised at college students' disregard for a disease that poses little threat to them personally. In this case the culprits were unmasked Boston College football players failing to be somber and socially distant in a "tightly packed locker room" after beating Texas State 24–21 in a comeback victory. Since dirty football players are expected to go to locker rooms after games and no grandmas are known to have been killed by COVID-negative athletes, it's not clear what their offense was or what exactly they weren't caring enough about.

In other young immortal news, a 48-year-old senior non-comm in the Army Reserve died of coronavirus, making him only the eighth US service member COVID death. The military’s COVID death rate is around 0.015%, with only one active duty serviceman having died (the sailor from Germ Boat #23).

NPR has been reporting on life in the fake school trenches. You'd think we'd have a hard number, but NPR could only provide an estimate that about 50% of school districts went virtual this fall. NPR is ominous about parents "reaching a breaking point", with moms leaving the remote workforce after failing to both work and parent full-time at home, leaving their kids at home alone with a computer while they go out to work, or paying for daycare to supervise their children's fake school day. The latter is most notable for recreating all the risks of school for the children and their stand-in teachers, at extraordinary expense to their parents. As if all of that weren't bad enough, a second NPR article reports on the compound consequences of parental unemployment and childhood social isolation.

In cute and furry news, a New York company, Applied DNA Sciences, has responded to the crowded COVID vaccine market by creating a vaccine for cats. It's already in clinical trials "upstate". PlagueBlog admires their ingenuity, and also hopes that this doesn't turn into another Lyme disease situation where a vaccine is available for pets but not for humans.

P.S. Massachusetts' cases were up two-fifths of a percentage point again today. The cities and towns data is out and shows some activity on Nantucket and in the north around Lawrence. (Maps tomorrow.)

Day 242: Not Taking COVID Seriously

Despite the recent lockdown, Israel is reported to have the highest weekly infection rate in the world and a daily death rate higher than the US. Though this wasn't their first lockdown, their plan seems to be to continue with socialism lockdowns until it finally works.

Massachusetts cases were up two-fifths of a percentage point today. Missouri (#19) is on the rise and may pass #18 Massachusetts in another day or two. Another steady climber at more than 2,000 cases a day is #21 Wisconsin.

In local news, BU is working itself up to suspend 20 underage students for attending an outdoor "beer party", not because underage drinking is illegal (it is) or because they were anywhere near the limit on outdoor gatherings in Boston (they weren't), but because they "won’t take COVID-19 seriously." (PlagueBlog would not be here blogging today if, back in the day, we'd gotten tossed out of institutions of higher education for taking beer more seriously than AIDS.)

Day 241: One Million Deaths

The news has settled on today as the day to declare a million coronavirus deaths worldwide. COVID-19 now rivals the largely forgotten Hong Kong flu in fatality, and has only 99 million deaths to go to equal the Spanish flu. (Some put the death toll of the Spanish flu at only 50 million, but 'tis the season to put the worst possible spin on everything.)

Florida let 'er rip on Friday and people are still complaining about the bars being packed there since reopening. Dr. Fauci is very concerned.

Massachusetts' cases are up a third of a percentage point today.

Day 240: Madrid Rebels

BNO News has declared a million coronavirus deaths worldwide, while (at the time of writing) Worldometers remains a few hundred deaths short of that milestone. But #2 India has reached six million cases.

Spain (at #7) is having a flare-up in Madrid, with more than double the country-wide average cases per fortnight (and more than seven times the average in the UK). The national health minister called for Madrid to lock down, but the regional government has refused to do so, apparently out of economic concerns. While much of the increase can be attributed to better testing and the death rate is down, ICU capacity in Madrid remains a concern.

In local news, Nantucket's COVID wave continues. Tourists are part of the problem, though some of the new cases are among locals and haven't been traced yet.

P.S. Massachusetts' cases are up four ninths of a percentage point again today.

Day 239: More Vitamin D

The world has reached 33 million coronavirus cases, and is very close to one million deaths (prompting the WHO to prognosticate the next million deaths). India is about to reach 6 million cases, though their death rate is minuscule with not even 95,000 deaths so far. Now #43, Poland has crossed the China line.

The well-known benefits of Vitamin D continue to appear in studies, including this PLOS ONE article that concluded:

The association between lower SARS-CoV-2 positivity rates and higher circulating 25(OH)D levels remained significant in a multivariable logistic model adjusting for all included demographic factors (adjusted odds ratio 0.984 per ng/mL increment, 95% C.I. 0.983–0.986; p<0.001). SARS-CoV-2 positivity is strongly and inversely associated with circulating 25(OH)D levels, a relationship that persists across latitudes, races/ethnicities, both sexes, and age ranges. Our findings provide impetus to explore the role of vitamin D supplementation in reducing the risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 disease.

Unfortunately, impetus is far from proof of the efficacy of vitamin D supplementation, though this study did go pretty far in separating out vitamin D levels from other confounding factors.

Fortunately, a previous study (dated next month but previously PlagueBlogged) already showed the efficacy of administration of vitamin D in treating hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

Massachusetts' cases are up four ninths of a percentage point today.

Day 238: Wantonly or Recklessly

On the international COVID scene, the news puts Spain at 700,000 cases after a week of about 10,000 cases a day (fueled by improved testing). Worldometers already has them at 735,000 cases (and at #7); #11 France is also experiencing record case counts, bringing them close to 500,000 cases total. Hospitalization and death rates there are also three to four times higher now than in August. Lower down on the list, #44 Poland is rapidly approaching the China mark.

In domestic news, Virginia Governor Dr. Ralph Northam and his wife have tested positive for coronavirus. He claims to be asymptomatic; they may have caught it from the hired help at the Executive Mansion.

In Michigan, 500,000 residents are petitioning to revoke the open-ended Emergency Powers of Governor Act, one of two Michigan laws permitting the Governor to declare a state of emergency. If they succeed (either by the legislature voting in favor of it or, failing that, by ballot initiative), the remaining law will require that a state of emergency be renewed by the legislature on a monthly basis. It seems the Republican legislature is expected to approve the petition, but it may take up to 100 days for the government to certify at least 340,047 of the signatures.

The New York Times reports the Massachusetts grand jury indictment of superintendent Bennett Walsh and medical director Dr. David Clinton, formerly of the Holyoke Soldiers' Home.

Each man was indicted on five counts for two charges; the specific charges were for caretakers who “wantonly or recklessly” permit or cause bodily injury and abuse, neglect or mistreatment of an older or disabled person.

P.S. Massachusetts' cases were up three sevenths of a percentage point again today.

Day 237: Variolation

In world news, the recent Israeli lockdown is getting tighter after the first week of lockdown produced 7,000 cases a day and stressed hospital capacity. Unemployment there is currently at 11%.

The Guardian reports a "nearly 100% accuracy" rate for COVID sniffer dogs in Helsinki, and it's also cheaper and easier than laboratory testing. The exact mechanism is unknown, but a prior study suggests the sweat of the infected smells different.

Here at PlagueBlog Headquarters, we've been intentionally ignoring the variolation story for a couple of weeks now as too silly to report, but it made ProMED earlier this week so here goes nothing: A "perspective" in the New England Journal of Medicine compares "universal facial masking" to variolation. While it's interesting as an admission that dose matters, as well as an implied admission that SARS-CoV-2 is getting through your face masks, it's less interesting in its examples of masking successes in crowded, germy settings like hospitals and ships. In reality, any of the host of COVID precautions can reduce viral loads, and the degree of reduction is poorly understood for novel approaches like universal mask usage or lockdowns. PlagueBlog is duly impressed that 2020, the year that keeps on giving, has managed to produce a vaccination technique that's even less reliable than the 15th-century institution of variolation.

Massachusetts' cases were up three sevenths of a percentage point today. Yesterday's cities and towns data shows the usual pattern of small town outliers, tourism COVID, and above-average case rates in some of the larger cities, though not in all of the Stop The Spread cities (the ones with dotted outlines):

(Pop out.)

Day 236: Think of the Children

The world has reached 32 million cases. Massachusetts' cases were up two fifths of a percentage point today. Despite no appreciable change in our coronavirus status in the past two months, the governor of Maine has finally relented and will now allow Massachusetts residents to visit without a COVID-19 test. The governor has provided no sane reason for the change, though there seem to be some hallucinatory reasons:

Maine health officials said Massachusetts now resembles other exempt states like Connecticut, New York and New Jersey in terms of COVID-19 prevalence and positivity rate.

PlagueBlog is unsure how that can represent a change, unless the tri-state areas numbers have recently been getting worse.

Nature reports on a rise in stillbirth rates in some countries (none of which are the US) and attributes it entirely to COVID panic interfering with routine prenatal care. Note that the CDC has yet to report any overall change in the stillbirth rate in the US, though they have reported, inconclusively, again, about the risks of COVID-19 infection in pregnant women.

A report out of Sweden found little difference in pregnancy outcome between COVID-19 patients and uninfected patients in labor. There was slightly more pre-eclampsia among the infected and a bit more induction among the uninfected, but otherwise the deliveries and infants were similar or the same. They also noted that 65% of infected mothers were asymptomatic.

Day 235: Still Not Dining In

PlagueBlog apologizes for the COVID fatigue that ate days 231–234. In the meantime, the world has reached 31.5 million cases, with the US (still #1) at 7 million cases, #2 India at 5.5 million cases, and #3 Brazil at 4.5 million cases. The United Arab Emirates (#41) and Guatemala (#42) have surpassed the ever-dropping China point (#43). In the US, Michigan has reached 130,000 cases, pushing us (that is, Massachusetts) down to #18.

Indoor dining has still not come to New York City, although it is currently scheduled to return on September 30th at 25% capacity. According to the New York Post, that's not enough to replace the outdoor dining capacity that's quickly going the way of summer weather. They note that 87% of bars and restaurants in the city were already unable to make their August rent, and a third of those made no payment at all. An estimated 150,000 hospitality industry workers are still out of work, although COVID-19 rates remain below 1% across the state. This story made Hacker News, where it was compared to the Onion article Study Finds Most Restaurants Fail Within First Year Of It Becoming Illegal To Go To Them.

The LA Times warns of a coming "tsunami" of hotel closures:

Nationwide, it’s not clear how many hotels are behind on their loan payments. But figures are available on hotel loans that have been bundled and sold to investors as commercial mortgage-backed securities. Payments on 16.77% of those loans are more than 30 days late, according to Fitch Ratings — up dramatically from less than 2% before the industry began feeling the pandemic’s financial effects.

P.S. Massachusetts' cases were up a seventh of a percentage point today. They were up a third of a point on Friday, nearly half a point on Saturday, two sevenths of a point on Sunday, and a fifth of a percentage point on Monday.

Also, PlagueBlog feels the need to warn Cambridge residents and their neighbors that the Cantabrigian pointless outdoor mask requirement comes back into effect at midnight tonight (although "midnight on September 22, 2020" is embarrassingly imprecise, even by COVID panic standards).

Day 230: Should Fido Wear a Mask?

The Netherlands have jumped a couple of places past China (now #41) over the course of the week. Next up to surpass China are Guatemala and the United Arab Emirates. Michigan also surpassed Massachusetts this week, pushing us down to #18 in the US. Next up is Maryland, though Missouri and Wisconsin are moving faster at the moment.

Today's title question is an apparently serious one from Reader's Digest: Should Your Dog Be Wearing a Pet Mask? The answer, of course, is no. Dogs need to pant as well as breathe, and some of them have been bred to be dangerously bad at the latter even without a mask. Of course no one asks whether your cat should wear a mask because clearly your cat will refuse.

On the science front, not only does smoking protect you from COVID-19, but wearing glasses does as well, at least according to this report in JAMA Ophthalmology.

Massachusetts' cases are up a third of a percentage point today. Here's the graph of the cities and towns data from Wednesday; things are still happening in Williamstown and on the islands, as well as in Worcester, Lawrence, Revere, and New Bedford:

(Pop out.)

Day 229: No Comment

Massachusetts' cases were up a quarter of a percentage point again today.

Day 228: Can the Neighbors Tell?

The US has reached 200,000 dead. Michigan is creeping up to Massachusetts in case count. Massachusetts' cases are up a quarter of a percentage point today, along with more grousing from the neighbors about Boston College's coronavirus outbreak.

Forbes reports on the partly-rolled-out Sara tracking project from Mitre.

Day 227: No Lifeline

Israel will be locking down again for three weeks starting Friday. The timing (for the high holidays) is both unfortunate and precautionary.

The Atlantic reports on the poor performance of Tenet in the US and what it means (DOOM!) for movie theaters in general:

If things were already looking bleak for American cinemas, the immediate future now looks catastrophic. This past weekend, the total domestic box office was less than $15 million—Indiewire estimates that sum amounts to $5,000 per theater, which isn’t enough to pay for basic operating costs. As studios grow more skittish about releasing major films, those numbers will only dwindle. Tenet was supposed to be the industry’s lifeline; for now, Hollywood has nothing else to pin its hopes on.

Here in Massachusetts, cases were up a fifth of a percentage point.

Day 226, Otherwise Known As 1600000000

The world has reached 29 million cases. The Unix Epoch has reached 1600000000. The Australian government is under fire for a double standard that keeps the average person from attending their parents' funerals but lets Tom Hanks tramp into the country unimpeded.

Commentary in BMJ Global Health speculates that ADE (antibody-dependent enhancement) contributed to the severity of cases in Italy. It's fairly speculative, with no evidence that ADE is increasing the disease burden, and no way to distinguish between that case and one that would look the same such as previous immunity to other coronaviruses reducing the disease burden elsewhere. PlagueBlog would have thought we were beyond such basic speculation at this point, but apparently we are not.

An interesting paper in Science uses the genetics of SARS-CoV-2 to investigate flaws in the early pandemic response in the US and Europe:

Our results suggest that rapid early interventions successfully prevented early introductions of the virus into Germany and the US from taking hold. Other, later introductions of the virus from China to both Italy and to Washington State founded the earliest sustained European and North America transmission networks. Our analyses demonstrate the effectiveness of public health measures in preventing onward transmission and show that intensive testing and contact tracing could have prevented SARS-CoV-2 from becoming established.

There's also a University of Arizona press release about the paper.

Massachusetts' cases are up two ninths of a percentage point today.

Day 225: Even the Peeps

Another day, another criticism of the Sturgis study. Or two.

Halloween peeps have been "paused" (as the kids say) for this year due to coronavirus, so that Just Born, the peep company, can focus on their Easter and year-round candy lines. Halloween peeps are scheduled to return next fall.

The Boston College outbreak has grown to 81 students, with lots of complaints about poor planning and communication of the school's COVID response. Overall, Massachusetts' cases are up four ninths of a percentage point today.

In non-COVID news, the City of Somerville has tweeted a case of West Nile virus.

Day 224: 9/11

Aside from the obvious analogy of a misdirected overreaction (in the wars on terror and coronavirus), 9/11 and COVID also share flight from Manhattan and an economic threat to the World Trade Center.

On the science front, the Lancet questions improbable fomite research, while others question the Lancet paper about Sputnik V:

“There are very strange patterns in the data,” Enrico Bucci, a biology professor at Temple University in the U.S. who has published an open letter highlighting the concerns told The Moscow Times.

“By strange patterns I mean there are duplicate values for different [groups of] patients … which cannot be,” Bucci said, in reference to results concerning the production of antibodies by groups of patients who had been tested with different formulations of the vaccine.

The cities and towns data for this week has a few tiny town outliers (most notably Montgomery), but also some activity in the bigger cities, in Williamstown (where Williams College is mostly in session, albeit with a reduced course load and activities), and on the Cape and islands:

(Pop out.)

P.S. Massachusetts' cases were up a third of a percentage point again today.

Day 223: Danger of Suffocation

In #6 Columbia, police killed an unmasked lawyer using a stun gun, leading to riots that killed seven more innocent civilians. In #26 Canada, a flight was grounded when a 19-month-old child refused to put on his mask. According to the airline, it was the three-year-old who refused to wear a mask, but the parents maintain the three-year-old was under the mask, and only the 19-month-old refused. (Children under 2 are not required to wear masks in Canada, due to the danger of suffocation.) The hostile toddlers were removed from the plane, but the flight crew apparently refused to fly after the commotion.

Snopes takes on the question of the alleged 260,000 COVID cases from the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, but doesn't fully debunk it.

In local news, 13 Boston College swimmers have tested positive for COVID-19. The affected teams are, as the kids say nowadays, "paused." Massachusetts' cases are up a third of a percentage point today.

Day 222: On the Brink

The world has reached 28 million coronavirus cases. Portugal had a bit of a spike today with 646 confirmed cases, the highest since April 20th.

Time reports that the daycare industry is on the brink of collapse:

Millions of American parents, who are already struggling to shell out an average of about $10,000 per toddler per year for childcare, may wonder why their daycare center is in such dire financial straits. But the industry as a whole was barely profitable even before the pandemic hit.

Unlike call centers that were able to cut down on building expenses by downsizing or going remote or retail stores that skimped on staffing, daycare facilities went into the pandemic with little fat to trim. State regulations require that they keep high adult-to-child ratios, maintain ample square footage for space to play and learn, and in some places, hire staff that are trained in early childhood development. These measures are important: Research indicates that early childhood education shapes everything from adult brain volume to reading proficiency. “That has an impact on our future labor force and their economic potential, which ultimately is tied to our country’s economic potential,” explains Katica Roy, a gender economist.

But childcare providers perform this crucial service for pennies on the dollar. The average daycare operator grosses just $48,000 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whereas the standard daycare worker makes just $24,000. Usually these jobs come with little or no paid time off, and no employee-sponsored healthcare.

It's one of those industries where COVID-unemployment pays better than having a job, so hiring back unemployed workers is proving to be something of a challenge.

The largest fake numbers of the pandemic so far are those being modeled for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, a harmless outdoor event in South Dakota that has, allegedly, infected about half the number of people who attended (260,000 vs. 500,000). The state of South Dakota has attributed only 124 cases and one death to exposure at the rally, and the governor has expressed some ire at being the target of extreme COVID modeling.

Here in Massachusetts, the state labor relations board has ruled that teachers in the Andover school system accidentally went on an illegal strike back on August 31st when their union got about half of them to refuse to enter schools for training on safety grounds. Also, cases were up about 0.15% today.

Day 221: Constitutional Issues

Sweden, a nation of ten million people, has finally surpassed China, a nation of one billion people and the source of the novel coronavirus, in case count, putting them at #38 and #39 respectively. In #3 Brazil, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the president, has recovered from coronavirus with the help of hydroxychloroquine. In #41 the Netherlands, three more mink farms have been found infected and are being culled. (PlagueBlog hopes they don't do the same with people.)

Germ Boat #34 is HMS Queen Elizabeth, a UK aircraft carrier, currently grounded in Portsmouth over "fewer than ten" cases among the crew.

Here in the US, both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have "walked back" their promised national mask mandate over that pesky constitution thing. Also, the right to bear nerf arms is under attack in Colorado, where a 12-year-old's green nerf gun was spotted briefly during fake online school, leading to a police visit, a five-day suspension, and his eventual withdrawal from the Hitler Youth school.

Massachusetts' cases are up a seventh of a percentage point today.

Day 220: Labor Day

It's a holiday here at PlagueBlog Headquarters. The biggest news is that, as usual, practically everyone is deficient in Vitamin D and would be doing better every day in every way if they just took a whole lot more of it. (PlagueBlog recommends 4,000 IU a day or more.) A couple of recent studies consider it in coronavirus in particular, but the answer is the same as for every other ailment: more is better.

Massachusetts' cases are up a fifth of a percentage point today.

Day 219: Death in Mexico

India has reached #2. The New York Times reports that #8 Mexico has racked up 122,000 excess deaths, in addition to their 67,000 official coronavirus deaths. They even ran out of death certificates in several areas of the country.

Massachusetts' cases are up three-tenths of a percentage point today.

Day 218: But Will They Fix the Toilet?

The world has reached 27 million coronavirus cases. Despite breaking another daily record, India remains at #3 behind Brazil.

In Massachusetts, cases are up about a third of a percentage point today. Also in local news, eleven students were "dismissed" from Northeastern University in Boston for failing to socially distance themselves in their temporary dorm space at an unnamed Westin in Boston (presumably the Westin Copley Square, as the Westin Waterfront is further away and rumored to be completely closed). Their tuition and housing fees for the semester will not be refunded.

Speaking of which, Pew Research reports that a majority of American young adults are living with their parents for the first time since the Great Depression. That's 52% of 18–29-year-olds. There are more gory details at the link.

The Mises Institute contemplates America's new landlord, the CDC. PlagueBlog seriously doubts that the CDC will address tenants' plumbing issues in a timely manner.

Day 217: The Vaccine

India has also reached 4 million cases, is still setting daily records, and is looking to take over the #2 slot from Brazil any minute now. The news is all over #4 Russia's "Sputnik V" vaccine, especially the Lancet paper that no one actually links to.

New Zealand has had their first COVID-19 death of the winter, a man in his 50's who was part of the Aukland community outbreak. An editorial out of Britain looks at the coronavirus moral panic (or failure of nerve, as the author puts it) from a non-crackpot perspective, not that crackpots haven't made the same arguments (when they're not talking about Bill Gates' microchips).

In the US, Salongate continues to entertain; PlagueBlog has heard rumors of constituents stringing up curlers and hair dryers outside her house. In New York City, there's now a $2 billion class action lawsuit against Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio over the ongoing ban on indoor dining in the city.

The New York Times reports on layoffs becoming permanent. Bloomberg reports that stocks are down.

P.S. Massachusetts cases are up a sixth of a percentage point today.

Day 216: More Zombies

Yesterday's data change at the MDPH not only raised 4 COVID-19 victims from the dead, but also set Massachusetts back about 7,750 cases. A mysterious lack of such CDC-based corrections in other states means that Massachusetts is suddenly #16 in case counts, newly behind #13 Alabama, #14 Ohio, and #15 Virginia, with #17 South Carolina close behind. [They surpassed us as well later in the day.]

The cities and towns data considers only confirmed cases, so should not be affected by this change. Watch this space.

P.S. Massachusetts' cases are up a third of a percentage point today. Some cities and towns are up a bit as well this week, but the increase doesn't particularly correspond to the Stop the Spread cities any more. The map:

(Pop out.)

Day 215: Is That Even Legal?

It's not the first time we at PlagueBlog Headquarters have asked ourselves whether some random governmental action allegedly against coronavirus is legal, but this one is an all-caps kind of moment: The CDC Issues Sweeping Temporary Halt On Evictions Nationwide Amid Pandemic. You can read some kind of preliminary copy of the order here. (It's in Courier, so it must be official.) It's effective from publication later this week to December 31st. No compensation to landlords is included, though one imagines that banks will not want to foreclose on such properties and become the unfortunate landlords themselves.

PlagueBlog eagerly awaits the coming lawsuits.

P.S. Massachusetts' cases were down 6% today due to a change in the definition of probable case that the state has applied retroactively. (Worldometers seems to have dug up the revised numbers, reporting 22 deaths and 288 new cases, which is up about a quarter of a percentage point as usual.)

Day 214: Pinteresting

Russia (at #4) has hit one million cases, while #2 Brazil is nearing 4 million. Belgium has taken over China's #37 spot. In the US, #14 Alabama is creeping up on Massachusetts and may beat us tomorrow if they're unlucky. (Massachusetts' cases are up about a quarter of a percentage point again today.)

Pinterest has eaten the $90 million fee to get out of their future lease of a future office building in San Francisco, the latest in an ongoing flight from the city not paralleled in similar markets elsewhere.

On the drug front, a paper in Clinical Medicine Journal extols the virtues of heparin against COVID-19. Although they merely speculate about its benefits, they do cite a preprint of a retrospective study that provides some evidence of its antiviral and anti-inflammatory effects in the wild.

Day 213: No Health Service

India is making the news in its press to reach #2 in case counts by breaking all daily records with almost 80,000 cases yesterday. They also recently beat Mexico to become #3 in total deaths. (To be fair, Mexico has less than 10% of the population of India.) Elsewhere over the weekend, Oman and Kuwait surpassed China, leaving #38 Belgium as the last straggler, currently only six cases behind China.

In Britain, the NHS (National Health Service, though an alternate interpretation of the acronym is included in the title of this post) is even further behind on providing health care than usual, with the Telegraph reporting a two-year wait for a phone call from a specialist. The Daily Mail appears confused by Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jenny Harries admission that the evidence for masks is weak.

In Australia, a Perth resident is on his way to jail for sneaking out of a quarantine hotel to infect visit his girlfriend using a ladder and an accomplice. His lawyer claims the quarantine rules were "confusing." PlagueBlog recommends rethinking the legality of any plan that requires a ladder and an accomplice, unless home repair is also involved.

Also in Australia, there appears to be a black market for the experimental feline infectious peritonitis drugs PlagueBlog covered last week. GS-441524 in particular is being produced in China for illegal sale to Australian cat owners, who spend up to $5000 (Australian) per cat to save their lives. Government warnings about the dangers of the unapproved drugs fall on deaf ears, since the alternative is a dead cat, and no drug companies seem interested in producing the drug for legal sale in any cat market, never mind the Australian one. There does appear to be some interest in using GS-441524 against COVID-19 in people, however, as it is closely related to remdesivir.

In local news, the Commonwealth has mandated flu vaccine for students, including college students, this fall, leading to a bit of a backlash from parents. Considering that 80% of minors in Massachusetts already get the flu vaccine (never mind mandatory vaccines), the reaction seems a bit misplaced. PlagueBlog is more concerned about the largely unvaccinated college population depleting needed vaccine supplies than anything else.

P.S. Massachusetts' cases are up a quarter of a percentage point today.

Day 212: Nothing Much

Massachusetts’ cases are up 0.16% today. That is all.

Day 211: 25 Million Strong

The world case count has hit 25 million, and Romania has made the jump past China to #34 in cases. Massachusetts' cases are up a third of a percentage point again. A wedding in Millinocket, Maine continues to make the news as a bit of a superspreading event.

The New York Times meanders around the topic of coronavirus testing, dissing the CDC's decision to stop testing asymptomatic people while dreaming of tests that are faster or more informative than the current binary PCR results. In particular, a PCR test can give some indication of viral load:

The PCR test amplifies genetic matter from the virus in cycles; the fewer cycles required, the greater the amount of virus, or viral load, in the sample. The greater the viral load, the more likely the patient is to be contagious.

This number of amplification cycles needed to find the virus, called the cycle threshold, is never included in the results sent to doctors and coronavirus patients, although it could tell them how infectious the patients are.

In three sets of testing data that include cycle thresholds, compiled by officials in Massachusetts, New York and Nevada, up to 90 percent of people testing positive carried barely any virus, a review by The Times found.

On the pie-hole front, a forthcoming meta-analysis in the open access journal Obesity Reviews found that the obese were 46% more likely to come down COVID-19, 113% more likely to be hospitalized for it, 74% more likely to end up in the ICU, and 48% more likely to die of it. The researchers didn't have much new to say about why, but they did hit the irony button pretty hard with their concerns that the pandemic response is exacerbating the worldwide obesity problem:

In addition to COVID‐19's critical economic constraints, its impacts on diets may pose lifelong risks to populations around the globe. Food habits developed during this period, particularly the intake of ultraprocessed foods, represent a major health risk.