Coronavirus: And College Campuses

I've spent much of my life in Southern California, but also spent time in North Carolina. As some colleges are going back to in person learning, I figured I'd write a blog post about 3 universities in those states and the current impact of COVID-19.

The LA Times (Aug 24) writes the following about USC: 

In the past seven days 43 cases have been identified and more than 100 students placed in a 14-day quarantine due to exposures, the memorandum from Dr. Sarah Van Orman, chief health officer for USC Student Health, said. 

The university is testing students who are symptomatic and those who have had contact with positive individuals, as well as some asymptomatic students. All of the positive cases were related to students living off campus, the statement said. 

USC resumed instruction almost entirely online Aug. 17 and is limiting access to campus. But many students remain in private apartments and houses off campus, where they have reported some parties and gatherings of people from different households, a situation one public heath expert called a “recipe for disaster.” 

Coronavirus: Kidney and Heart Damage

As more and more people recover from COVID-19, there are studies that are looking into potential long-term health problems. I've looked at this in various other blog posts. If interested, you can read a couple other posts on the topic here and here. 

Let's explore additional articles that have come up around health problems for those who recover from the virus. 

CNBC (Aug 3) reported:

Approximately 10% to 50% of patients with severe Covid-19 that go into intensive care have kidney failure that requires some form of dialysis, the American Society of Nephrology Covid-19 Response Team reports.

At Mount Sinai 46% of patients that were admitted to the hospital with Covid-19 since the beginning of the pandemic had some form of acute kidney injury; of those, 17% required urgent dialysis.

. . . Surprisingly, 82% of patients that got an acute kidney injury had no history of kidney issues; 18% did. More than a third of patients that survived did not recover the same kidney function they had before contracting the virus.

. . . The study, conducted Feb. 24–May 30, tracked a population of nearly 4,000 patients with a median age of 64.

An article from Science Magazine (Jul 31) does additional exploration into the topic of health problems:

Coronavirus: Michael Levitt - 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Michael Levitt, an American-British-Israeli biophysicist who won the 2013 Nobel prize for chemistry and came up with a forecast on how the coronavirus would spread and eventually peter out in China. He was very accurate in his forecast, which got him some fame. 

Back in March, I came across this Jerusalem Post (Mar 20) article via someone who posted it on Facebook:

But on February 7, something changed. “The number of new infections started to drop linearly and did not stop," Levitt said. "A week later, the same happened with the number of the deaths. This dramatic change in the curve marked the median point and enabled better prediction of when the pandemic will end. Based on that, I concluded that the situation in all of China will improve within two weeks. And, indeed, now there are very few new infection cases.”

. . . In Wuhan, where the virus first emerged, the whole population theoretically was at risk of becoming infected, but only 3% were.

The Diamond Princess cruise ship represented the worst-case scenario in terms of disease spread, as the close confines of the ship offered optimal conditions for the virus to be passed among those aboard . . . “Those are extremely comfortable conditions for the virus and still, only 20% were infected. It is a lot, but pretty similar to the infection rate of the common flu,” Levitt said.

A few days later, the Los Angeles Times (Mar 23) also had their own article about Michael Levitt:

Three weeks later, Levitt told the China Daily News that the virus’ rate of growth had peaked. He predicted that the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in China would end up around 80,000, with about 3,250 deaths.

. . . In Iran, the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases per day remained relatively flat last week, going from 1,053 last Monday to 1,028 on Sunday. Although that’s still a lot of new cases, Levitt said, the pattern suggests the outbreak there “is past the halfway mark.”

California Loves to Tax the Wealthy

I have to admit that I've been focused on coronavirus and have largely failed to keep up with what is going on in Sacramento. Then I was listening to a Joe Rogan podcast and heard that he plans to leave California for Texas. He mentioned a number of reason, which included that Los Angeles is too crowded and that the state was going to increase taxes.

Newsweek (Jul 27) reported:

In May, the comedian landed an exclusive $100m deal with Spotify that will see his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, removed from all other platforms and only be available on the audio streaming service. Seeing as its one of the world's most popular podcasts, this is a pretty big deal.

Rogan's new $100m Spotify deal would be subject to a 13.3 percent income tax in California—but Texas is one of the seven U.S. states that forgo individual income taxes. This means that Rogan's relocation could see him save $13 million in tax breaks. 

Coronavirus: Food Insecurity

While blogging about COVID-19, I've spent time looking at food mainly from the supply side. Some examples can be found here, here, and here. Though the virus has swept through meat processing plants and farm land, it doesn't appear like we will see a serious supply problem in the near future. Yes, we do have stories about meat shortages, but I don't think that has had a major issue on the ability on Americans to consume.

I happened to come across this Bloomberg article via the LA Times (Jul 29) that reported the following regarding demand:

Food insecurity for U.S. households last week reached its highest reported level since the Census Bureau started tracking the data in May, with almost 30 million Americans reporting that they’d not had enough to eat at some point in the seven days through July 21.

That seems like a lot of people. Yet, I was curious about how that compared to prior data points. CNN (Jul 31) provided a bit of comparison:

Before the pandemic, there were an estimated 37.2 million Americans who were potentially food insecure, according to Katie Fitzgerald, chief operating officer of Feeding America, a national network of 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries and meal programs.

Coronavirus: Sports and Athletes' Health

As sports in the United States begin, the LA Times (Jul 27) had the following about coronavirus and the potential for long-term health issues for those who might come down with the virus.

“Yeah, that’s discussed,” Clippers star Kawhi Leonard said. “If you do get it, will it affect you to be able to play again? Everyone knows it hits everybody’s body different. But I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. I can’t really say what’s going to happen to players.”

. . . How exactly the coronavirus endangers the heart is not yet known, [Dr. Jonathan Kim, the chief of sports cardiology at Emory University] said. Return-to-play recommendations published in May by the American College of Cardiology’s sports and exercise cardiology council cited research showing that acute cardiac injury had been found in 22% of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 . . . 

. . . In the lungs, “the best available data suggests that it’s probably no more than 5% of individuals with COVID will go on to develop scarring or a fibrotic condition,” said James Hull, a sports respiratory specialist in London who has worked with the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health. “But I’m talking about people who’ve been hospitalized. The signal of people getting long-term fibrotic lung manifestations, and who have not been hospitalized, is going to be very, very low.”

Coronavirus: nearly 100 healthcare workers have died in Yemen

When it comes to coronavirus, I believe there are certain countries that one has to mourn for more than others. One of those countries is Yemen. This is a country that is in the middle of a civil war with major Middle East powers involved; Saudi Arabia and Iran. Due to the war, the country is in chaos with great need for humanitarian assistance. 

Then came COVID-19. According to Worldometer, the case counts and deaths are not that significant. As I'm writing this, there are only 1,796 confirmed cases and 512 deaths. Those are not significant numbers for a country with a population of 30 million. If we look at countries with populations around that size, we can see that Peru has 464,000 cases, Saudi Arabia has 286,000, and Canada has 119,000. Yet, we know that Yemen's numbers are simply due to a lack of testing and proper accounting of deaths. 

Coronavirus: Farmers and the virus

A lot of early attention regarding coronavirus was placed on meat processing plants. When it comes to our food though, there are also farms. One might think that farms would not be a significant cause of the virus spread. Farms are outdoors. One would think it would be easy to keep social distancing. The problem with farms and COVID-19 is actually living conditions and migration.

Here are some of the articles that I've come across over the last few months.

Bloomberg via MSN (May 29):

All of the roughly 200 employees on a produce farm in Tennessee tested positive for Covid-19 this month. In New Jersey, more than 50 workers had the virus at a farm in Gloucester County, adding to nearly 60 who fell ill in neighboring Salem County. Almost 170 were reported to get the disease at a tomato and strawberry greenhouse complex in Oneida, New York.

There are as many as 2.7 million hired farm workers in the U.S., including migrant, seasonal, year-round and guest-program workers, according to the Migrant Clinicians Network. While many migrants have their permanent residence in the U.S., moving from location to location during the warmer months, others enter through the federal H2A visa program. Still, roughly half of hired crop farmworkers lack legal immigration status, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

. . . In Oregon, a farm worker often may move a half dozen times during the summer, working for new growers and housed in new labor camps as they shift from harvesting cherries to strawberries to blueberries to pears, said Dale of the Northwest Workers’ Justice Project.

Coronavirus: Meat Processing Plants

Back in May, I wrote a couple articles (here and here) about the impact of coronavirus on the food supply. At the time, there were some dire warnings about our food supply. Like I've said on various topics related to COVID-19 such as Sweden, it is too early to tell how it will turn out, but it currently looks like those initial dire warnings that I highlighted in those posts won't occur. I will admit that when I go grocery shopping late at night that the shelves aren't filled, but they're not empty. I can generally get what I want even if there are only a handful of items left of a specific product. And honestly, I'm not sure if the shelves are near empty due to food shortages, the late hour of shopping or people still filling up their pantries. Considering in Los Angeles (where I am) locked down in mid-march, I doubt the pantry idea is the reason why the shelves are near empty for some food items.

Yet, though we haven't had a worst case scenario occur in our food industry that doesn't mean that coronavirus hasn't taken a toll on the food industry. Here are some articles that I've collected since those May blog posts.

Coronavirus: Sweden's Daily Deaths in Decline

Sweden's approach to the coronavirus is controversial. Their approach is perhaps just slightly more restrictive than those seen in Brazil and Mexico. And the least restrictive in Western Europe. This has lead many, such as myself, to keep an eye on what is happening in the country. Let's see what various news articles have to say since my last post on the country in late May.

Business Insider via Yahoo(Jun 3) reported that Sweden had some regrets regarding their approach:

Anders Tegnell, Sweden's state epidemiologist, told Swedish radio station Sveriges Radio on Wednesday that while the country would have implemented tougher restrictions, they would still likely not have been as strict as in many countries. "If we were to encounter the same illness with the same knowledge that we have today, I think our response would land somewhere in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done," Tegnell said, according to Bloomberg.

The New York Times via Yahoo (Jul 8) reported that Sweden's approach did little for their economy when compared to other countries:

Implicit in these approaches is the assumption that governments must balance saving lives against the imperative to spare jobs, with the extra health risks of rolling back social distancing potentially justified by a resulting boost to prosperity. But Sweden’s grim result — more death and nearly equal economic damage — suggests that the supposed choice between lives and paychecks is a false one: A failure to impose social distancing can cost lives and jobs at the same time.

Business Insider via Yahoo (Jul 9) reported a day after the New York Times that daily deaths had fallen off "dramatically":

Yet coronavirus deaths in Sweden have fallen dramatically in recent days, and are now approaching zero. Between June 30 and July 6, Sweden recorded fewer than five deaths per day on all days but one.

The decline in newly diagnosed cases has been even more dramatic. In late June, Sweden diagnosed more than 1,800 people per day as COVID-19 positive. Today, just two weeks later, only one-sixth of that number are testing positive on a daily basis.

. . . Experts pointed to a host of reasons for the shifting numbers. They credited myriad factors, including the arrival of summer, with fewer people in offices creating more distance, and Sweden quietly taking steps to protect people in care homes. Johan Carlson, the director-general of Sweden's public health agency, credited the "effect of us keeping up the social distancing" for the decline.

Coronavirus: Finally in North Korea

It took nearly 7 months for the coronavirus to finally hit North Korea. Okay, that is likely nonsense, but the country finally admitted that the virus has struck the country. 

Per the  New York Times (Jul 27):  

On Sunday, North Korea claimed that a man had crossed into the country from the South, and that he was likely infected with the virus. South Korean officials went in search of any defectors who had gone missing, and by Monday they had zeroed in on the 24-year-old man, identified only by his family name, Kim. 

 . . . The South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that the man had been wanted by the South Korean police for questioning after a fellow North Korean defector accused him of raping her last month. 

 . . . He had never been tested for the virus, Yoon Tae-ho, a senior official at the South’s national disease-control headquarters, said on Monday, and he was not known to have been in contact with a coronavirus patient. ​The South Korean health authorities have tracked down two people who had frequent contact with the defector while he was in the South, and both tested negative, he said.

Coronavirus: Los Angeles and the Poor

Back in April, I wrote a blog post about Los Angeles and questioned if Los Angeles was really doing that well when it came to controlling the coronavirus spread and also noted the divide in testing between rich and poor. Here's a part of what I wrote:

"Another Los Angeles Times article looks into the potential divide between testing that is going on between rich and poor neighborhoods. It mentions how wealthy neighborhoods like Bel-Air and Brentwood have high number of cases while poor neighborhoods like El Monte and Watts have fewer cases:

But those disparities do not mean the virus that causes COVID-19 is spreading more widely through rich neighborhoods than in poorer ones, public health officials and experts say. Rather, they are probably skewed by uneven access to testing and, in some instances, by wealthy residents who traveled internationally and had some of the earliest confirmed infections. There is also one fact in the article that stands out. Only 21,000 people have been tested in Los Angeles county. Yet we know that 51,809 (at the time I wrote this) have this virus in New York City. I've read articles about how

California and Washington are doing so much better at controlling the virus than New York. Yet when you read how Los Angeles county has done fewer tests than the number of cases in New York City, it makes you question if Los Angeles county is really doing that great of a job."

Coronavirus: WHO warns of spread in Africa

I last wrote about coronavirus in Africa on April 19th. At the time, WHO issued a warning that there could be 10 million cases within 3 to 6 months. We are heading towards 4 months since that announcement and there are, per Worldometer, no where near 10 million cases. It would admittedly be hard to have 10 million confirmed cases when there have been fewer than 10 million tests conducted (once again, per Worldometer). 

ANOTHER WHO WARNING

The fact that there are fewer than 1 million confirmed cases hasn't prevented the WHO from issuing an additional warning.