PlagueWatch 2020-23 - Coronavirus

[freshmanjs]

This is simply a terrible assumption. Virtually every single person will have a different amount of knowledge based on their level of interest and access to information, and a good journalist in a lengthy in-depth article must cover all the bases for anyone that is new to the issue or has missed pertinent parts. Some people will not even begin to pay attention until it affects them personally. Re the vaccine, I, for one, have paid no attention to this aspect of the crisis. Let me know when it's ready. But if I wanted to jump in, this article would be valuable to bring me up to speed.

You didn’t know that a lot of doses would be required or that it would be logistically complicated to deploy? I guess you’re right. I vastly overestimated the baseline knowledge of the readership.

[dudog84]

You didn’t know that a lot of doses would be required or that it would be logistically complicated to deploy? I guess you’re right. I vastly overestimated the baseline knowledge of the readership.

What's "a lot"? I know from travel vaccines and such that 2 is often required. Would expect no less for COVID. As stated, I have not followed the vaccine race, but I don't have to to know it will be logistically complicated to deploy.

[freshmanjs]

What's "a lot"? I know from travel vaccines and such that 2 is often required. Would expect no less for COVID. As stated, I have not followed the vaccine race, but I don't have to to know it will be logistically complicated to deploy.

If the intent of the article was to inform on the state of play / outlook for vaccines (assuming the author was competent), the article would have covered things like:
- What are the leading vaccine candidates?
- What technology / format are those candidates using?
- What are the pros/cons of those formats vs. others?
- What testing has already been completed? what testing is left to do? how long will it take? what will it tell us?
- What is the deployment plan (or if there isn't a good one, explore that)?
- What pre-approval manufacturing is being done? How many doses?
- What is the manufacturing capacity?
- What is the funding requirement? How much of that has been covered to-date?

To your question on what is a lot of doses? - if she had provided some real insight into the number of doses required, that would have been useful. Instead, she left it at the level of: it's a lot and it will be hard, so don't feel good about it.

If you had a desire to get up to speed on the vaccine situation, this article would be a particularly unhelpful starting point.

[tbyers11]

Obviously, I'm expressing an opinion as many posters on this board do.

I reached that opinion because the author rehashes a bunch of points that everyone who is paying attention already knows with a frame that tells people to reverse any comfort they feel about a vaccine.

Her points are:

- A vaccine is likely to limit serious disease rather than all disease. I don't know that she is correct about this, but even if she is, that's fine. That'll work. Let's get it.
- A lot of doses will be required and that is logistically complicated. Yes, obviously. A lot is being done about that. A balanced article about the real issues here might actually be useful.
- The 2009 flu vaccine only ended up being used in 20% of the population because demand was low, as the disease had become much less prevalent. PLEASE let us have that problem again now. That would be fantastic!
- Flu mist is scary because it's alive. This isn't really true and also isn't relevant, as none of the major Covid-19 candidate vaccines use the live mist format.
- If there is a vaccine, some portion of the population will refuse to take it. Yes, this is well traveled ground. If vulnerable people and those who opt in get the vaccine, then the societal problem will be greatly reduced and some people will die who refused a vaccine. That situation would allow for normal life to resume.

The emphasis on negative aspects of a positive development, the throwing in of irrelevant scary statements and obvious statements framed as if they are insightful, leads me to my opinion that she's going for scare clicks. She is open about her intent to influence opinions about how optimistic to be. That is the frame of her article.

Hi - I have a PhD in viral immunology and worked in the field for 20 years, the last 10 with a large company that makes vaccines and I currently work in R&D for flu vaccine development. There are a lot of questions on many posts in response to the Atlantic article. Since freshmanjs listed many of them here I'll give responses to the best of my knowledge here

A vaccine is likely to limit serious disease rather than all disease. - Yes, the COVID-19 vaccine as with many vaccine is not likely to provide sterilizing immunity but will hopefully reduce death, hospitalizations and severe cases greatly. If the "death rate" could drop from say 1% to 0.1% and the hospitalization rate from 15% to 1.5% that would be great. SARS-CoV-2 is not going to disappear a few months after a vaccine is available but if we can manage it like the other respiratory viruses that circulate (flu, RSV, parainfluenza, common corona, rhino) would be the goal

A lot of doses will be required and that is logistically complicated - It seems very likely that the first COVID vaccine approaches in the pipeline will require 2 doses with the second one occurring about 3-4 weeks after the first. And then subjects would likely have their peak Ab response about 2 weeks after the second dose. So vaccine Ab immunity will peak about 6 weeks after first dose. Anytime that a vaccine requires 2 dose it is logistically much more difficult but it is not a failing of these first COVID vaccine approaches it is common that vaccine to naive (unencountered) viruses require 2 doses

The 2009 flu vaccine only ended up being used in 20% of the population because demand was low, as the disease had become much less prevalent - Not as much of the 2009 "swine" flu H1N1 vaccine was used as was produced is true, but it wasn't due to that strain of flu becoming less prevalent. The H1N1 pdm/A/California strain that appeared in 2009 was the exact H1N1 strain in the seasonal flu vaccine for 7 years (meaning it was most prevalent circulating strain). The swine flu vaccine process began in April (after it was discovered) in March and large amounts of doses were made by Oct/Nov which is impressive. However, that specific vaccine was not needed as much as was thought because pre-existing T cell immunity from previous (but different H1N1) seemed to lessen the severity of the disease in most people

Flu mist is scary because it's alive. - FluMist is live but it attenuated through cold temperature adaptation. It only replicates at around 33C when the human body is 37C. So while there is risk with any live vaccine, FluMist was quite safe. I do have issue with the NYT article about how live, intranasal vaccines would be preferable for coronavirus. While it is a true statement that intranasal administration of a live vaccine would theoretically be preferred because it is more likely to induce IgA Abs (the type associated with mucosal response in the lungs), the reality is that has no one has effectively proved that in dozens of years in human flu vaccine research. FluMist did show better response in kids (we gave it to our son when he younger) it was largely thought that improvement was due to enhanced T cell responses to FluMist and not to IgA Abs. VaxArt (mentioned in the NYT article) has been trying an oral flu vaccine approach for awhile but AFAIK have not gotten to a phase 3 efficacy trial yet. IgG Abs induced by intramuscular administration seem likely to work well enough for COVID-19 (early results are promising but not yet definitive

Other thoughts on timing and manufacturing supply chain: This is an issue not be given enough attention in the rightfully optimistic articles about Ph 1 success. Moderna is supposed to start their Phase 3 efficacy trial next week. If everything works perfectly it will take 3 months to know if the trial was successful. Not all 30,000 people can get the vaccine on Day 1. Normally it would take 2 months to enroll this many people. Assume they streamline it to 1 month. As I said above it will take about 6 weeks to reach peak Ab response with a 2 dose regimen. So in an efficacy trial that would be the bare minimum time to determine if the vaccine is better at preventing/reducing disease than the placebo. So that's 10 weeks. Need some time to compile the data and present to FDA. This would normally take months but even if it fast tracked that's 2 weeks and about 3 months total.

However, as the Atlantic article pointed out we have to manufacture 100 million doses, which is a huge undertaking. For my company it takes normally 5-6 months of highly entwined processes to make, fill vials, package, and distribute 100 million doses of flu vaccine. The filling, packaging, and distribution requires a lot of expertise but that expertise can be bought. The tricky part is upscaling your manufacturing processes from say thousands of research grade doses to millions of manufacture grade doses. This process can theoretically go quicker with mRNA but can be fraught with lots of pitfalls. Moderna has contracted with Lonza to do this but who knows. In addition to the technical and logistical difficulties, normally you don't start manufacturing a vaccine at risk (before FDA licensure). Not a sound financial strategy. Now Operation Warp Speed is likely to help provide $$$ to start these processes at risk but I'd say we have 1-2 months minimum from licensure to having say 10 million doses available.

Deciding who gets these doses and how to distribute these doses should be underway by the federal government right now. But I have seen no efforts on this front. NIH/FDA have experience in the running trial and regulatory approval but not in distribution. That is generally left to the individual companies. That doesn't seem like a good idea for COVID.

So in summary. I am more optimistic than the tone of the Atlantic article that we will have effective vaccines. I agree with Jesse Goodman (former FDA official quoted in the Atlantic article) that we are probably 5 months from say 10 million doses of a vaccine. This won't be wrapped up by Christmas. Not even close. However, I think that with the second wave of companies (that are a few months behind Moderna/Pfizer) we will have hundreds of millions of vaccine available by late spring early summer 2021. Enough to vaccine all in US that want it. If enough people get the vaccine, I think we could have a situation where COVID-19 is a bit more like a normal respiratory virus public health situation by fall 2021. However, sadly we won't really know if that is the case until we get through the 2021 flu season. So, in my opinion there is a likely path at the end of the tunnel I just don't think it is quite as close as some articles make it seem.

[richardjackson199]

Hi - I have a PhD in viral immunology and worked in the field for 20 years, the last 10 with a large company that makes vaccines and I currently work in R&D for flu vaccine development. There are a lot of questions on many posts in response to the Atlantic article. Since freshmanjs listed many of them here I'll give responses to the best of my knowledge here

A vaccine is likely to limit serious disease rather than all disease. - Yes, the COVID-19 vaccine as with many vaccine is not likely to provide sterilizing immunity but will hopefully reduce death, hospitalizations and severe cases greatly. If the "death rate" could drop from say 1% to 0.1% and the hospitalization rate from 15% to 1.5% that would be great. SARS-CoV-2 is not going to disappear a few months after a vaccine is available but if we can manage it like the other respiratory viruses that circulate (flu, RSV, parainfluenza, common corona, rhino) would be the goal

A lot of doses will be required and that is logistically complicated - It seems very likely that the first COVID vaccine approaches in the pipeline will require 2 doses with the second one occurring about 3-4 weeks after the first. And then subjects would likely have their peak Ab response about 2 weeks after the second dose. So vaccine Ab immunity will peak about 6 weeks after first dose. Anytime that a vaccine requires 2 dose it is logistically much more difficult but it is not a failing of these first COVID vaccine approaches it is common that vaccine to naive (unencountered) viruses require 2 doses

The 2009 flu vaccine only ended up being used in 20% of the population because demand was low, as the disease had become much less prevalent - Not as much of the 2009 "swine" flu H1N1 vaccine was used as was produced is true, but it wasn't due to that strain of flu becoming less prevalent. The H1N1 pdm/A/California strain that appeared in 2009 was the exact H1N1 strain in the seasonal flu vaccine for 7 years (meaning it was most prevalent circulating strain). The swine flu vaccine process began in April (after it was discovered) in March and large amounts of doses were made by Oct/Nov which is impressive. However, that specific vaccine was not needed as much as was thought because pre-existing T cell immunity from previous (but different H1N1) seemed to lessen the severity of the disease in most people

Flu mist is scary because it's alive. - FluMist is live but it attenuated through cold temperature adaptation. It only replicates at around 33C when the human body is 37C. So while there is risk with any live vaccine, FluMist was quite safe. I do have issue with the NYT article about how live, intranasal vaccines would be preferable for coronavirus. While it is a true statement that intranasal administration of a live vaccine would theoretically be preferred because it is more likely to induce IgA Abs (the type associated with mucosal response in the lungs), the reality is that has no one has effectively proved that in dozens of years in human flu vaccine research. FluMist did show better response in kids (we gave it to our son when he younger) it was largely thought that improvement was due to enhanced T cell responses to FluMist and not to IgA Abs. VaxArt (mentioned in the NYT article) has been trying an oral flu vaccine approach for awhile but AFAIK have not gotten to a phase 3 efficacy trial yet. IgG Abs induced by intramuscular administration seem likely to work well enough for COVID-19 (early results are promising but not yet definitive

Other thoughts on timing and manufacturing supply chain: This is an issue not be given enough attention in the rightfully optimistic articles about Ph 1 success. Moderna is supposed to start their Phase 3 efficacy trial next week. If everything works perfectly it will take 3 months to know if the trial was successful. Not all 30,000 people can get the vaccine on Day 1. Normally it would take 2 months to enroll this many people. Assume they streamline it to 1 month. As I said above it will take about 6 weeks to reach peak Ab response with a 2 dose regimen. So in an efficacy trial that would be the bare minimum time to determine if the vaccine is better at preventing/reducing disease than the placebo. So that's 10 weeks. Need some time to compile the data and present to FDA. This would normally take months but even if it fast tracked that's 2 weeks and about 3 months total.

However, as the Atlantic article pointed out we have to manufacture 100 million doses, which is a huge undertaking. For my company it takes normally 5-6 months of highly entwined processes to make, fill vials, package, and distribute 100 million doses of flu vaccine. The filling, packaging, and distribution requires a lot of expertise but that expertise can be bought. The tricky part is upscaling your manufacturing processes from say thousands of research grade doses to millions of manufacture grade doses. This process can theoretically go quicker with mRNA but can be fraught with lots of pitfalls. Moderna has contracted with Lonza to do this but who knows. In addition to the technical and logistical difficulties, normally you don't start manufacturing a vaccine at risk (before FDA licensure). Not a sound financial strategy. Now Operation Warp Speed is likely to help provide $$$ to start these processes at risk but I'd say we have 1-2 months minimum from licensure to having say 10 million doses available.

Deciding who gets these doses and how to distribute these doses should be underway by the federal government right now. But I have seen no efforts on this front. NIH/FDA have experience in the running trial and regulatory approval but not in distribution. That is generally left to the individual companies. That doesn't seem like a good idea for COVID.

So in summary. I am more optimistic than the tone of the Atlantic article that we will have effective vaccines. I agree with Jesse Goodman (former FDA official quoted in the Atlantic article) that we are probably 5 months from say 10 million doses of a vaccine. This won't be wrapped up by Christmas. Not even close. However, I think that with the second wave of companies (that are a few months behind Moderna/Pfizer) we will have hundreds of millions of vaccine available by late spring early summer 2021. Enough to vaccine all in US that want it. If enough people get the vaccine, I think we could have a situation where COVID-19 is a bit more like a normal respiratory virus public health situation by fall 2021. However, sadly we won't really know if that is the case until we get through the 2021 flu season. So, in my opinion there is a likely path at the end of the tunnel I just don't think it is quite as close as some articles make it seem.

Dr. Chris Ohl, Wake Forest's lead ID expert on Covid predicted earlier this month that things should be getting back to normal by July 4, 2021. So he largely agrees with your timeline. Nobody knows, but he thinks it's helpful for people to have a realistic endpoint so he made his best prediction.

[rsvman]

I read through the article. I didn't think it was that bad, actually. The person they quoted about potential for misted live-virus vaccine is a friend of mine I used to work with at Vanderbilt many years ago. She is an influenza expert. Many of the trials that allowed FluMist to go to market were carried out at Vanderbilt by a team that included her, Bill Gruber, Peter Wright, and others.

FluMist was never dangerous. At all. Period.

When thinking about live attenuated vaccines, there are a few things of importance; perhaps the most crucial point was not mentioned in the article (Dr. Neuzil probably thought it was too complex for a lay article) and that is this: How stable is the attenuation?

Once you put a live, replication competent vaccine virus into a human body, it replicates. Virus can make many, many copies of themselves. In some past vaccines, with multiple rounds of replication the attenuation would go away, yielding a wild-type virus. This was case, for example, with oral polio vaccine. Oral polio vaccine attenuation was actually highly unstable. It reverted to wild type virus with alarming frequency. It was also spread very easily in the community, which actually helped contribute to herd immunity (even "unvaccinated" people were getting vaccinated!). The good news was that even wild type polio infection was benign in the vast majority of people who contracted it. Thus, we were able to get away with using an unstable vaccine for many years, and achieving herd immunity by having the vaccine spread all over the community. Babies and children vaccinated with oral polio vaccine would shed it in their stools for weeks to months. Because of this, for many years we had small numbers of children getting what was known as "VAPP" (vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis), generally between 3 and perhaps 10 or 11 kids per year in the U.S., averaging about 5 or 6 per year. I actually took care of one of these kids when I was at Vandy. This is the reason that we moved away from oral polio vaccine and now exclusively use the injectable vaccine (which is not live).

On the other hand, we have been using live measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella vaccines for long periods of time without any real problems.


Back to FluMist. There is a lingering belief that the vaccine could be spread to others, but there have been no reliable case reports of this. The original studies looking at the potential for spread were done in daycare centers, to maximize the chances that spread would occur. They gave half the toddlers in the daycare the vaccine. They did nasal samples for vaccine virus every day in every kid, looking to see how long it was shed and whether it would spread. The official report of the research says that there was one child who did not receive vaccine who developed infection with the vaccine virus, but in truth it was probably a labeling error. Kid A, who got the vaccine, tested, on consecutive days, positive, positive, positive, negative, positive, positive. Kid B, who did not receive vaccine, tested, on consecutive days, negative, negative, negative, positive, negative negative. So on that one day, the vaccinated child suddenly stopped shedding for one day, but started up again the next? And the unvaccinated kid, supposedly infected with the vaccine virus, shed it for only one day and then cleared it? And that day just happened to coincide with the day the vaccinated kid cleared it transiently? Yeah, right. The samples were labelled incorrectly (in my opinion). So, bottom line, even toddlers in a daycare couldn't figure out how to share it with others. And, the attenuation was incredibly stable.

The reason FluMist fell out of favor was not because it was dangerous but because there was a problem that led to inefficient protection from H1N1 for one season. The problem was solved by the company by the next year, but by then the horse was out of the barn.

It is not at all clear to me that a live attenuated vaccine misted up the nose would be superior to other forms of vaccines for SARS-CoV-2, although the argument could be made that allowing a replication-competent vaccine virus to replicate generally produces a broader response, usually including some T-cell responses to internal proteins, which could be helpful as most viral mutations take place in the outer proteins.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, live attenuated viral vaccines. So, the next concern is will the vaccine produce immunity without making the recipient ill? That's a fine line to walk; attenuate the virus too much and it will be tolerated fine but not produce significant immunity. Attenuate it not enough and it will make people sick.

Finally, will it be spread to others? The general public would see spread as bad, and it probably mostly is, because if we had a live virus vaccine we would not give it to people who are severely immune suppressed. If it spread around readily we could not control who would get "vaccinated," and that could lead to disastrous consequences.


Sorry if this was too long. Talk about walking a fine line....if I gloss over stuff too much it won't have any meaning but if I go too deeply into it, nobody will want to read it and/or it will be really difficult to understand. I hope this was on that line, providing information that is understandable and helpful without being overly technical and ridiculously boring.

[sagegrouse]

Sorry if this was too long. Talk about walking a fine line...if I gloss over stuff too much it won't have any meaning but if I go too deeply into it, nobody will want to read it and/or it will be really difficult to understand. I hope this was on that line, providing information that is understandable and helpful without being overly technical and ridiculously boring.

I am happy to read yours and TByers posts, no matter the length. This is really good staff.

Some questions: I remember Fauci saying that the US government and the pharma/biotech industry would take financial risks and start manufacturing during Phase III trials. Also, the Gates Foundation was to put big bucks into production facilities. Are these things happening?

[cspan37421]

I want to pick on McDonalds as much as the next guy, but what they're doing is probably the best they can do without having armed security at each location to forcibly remove maskless people. Putting them in a separate waiting area away from everyone else isn't that bad a solution.

Agreed - mostly. I actually have come full circle on McD. Like Jim Gaffigan*, I'll cop to going there. Not just for the consistency in food (even if mediocre), but consistency in cleanliness. Until this year, I regularly put on a fair number of interstate miles, and they have been, IME, kept consistently cleaner than other fast food options.

* https://youtu.be/KYKGFujJp6Y

[Skydog]

Wear a mask or don’t come in. Simple as that.

Would be a very easy decision for me. To paraphrase Jerry Maguire, 'You lost me at "refuses to wear a mask"'.

I believe you're trying to be loyal, but to be frank, she is showing no consideration for you being an "older folk". I'm sure you have other options who would love to provide you a safer service.

Pretty simple:
1) Tell your housekeeper to please put on a mask before entering your home and stay clear of you and your family.

2) Clean your own home. If you're like most of us, you have plenty of time on your hands these days. You and your family are too important to take a chance like that.

Stay safe.

I'm sorry I mentioned the mask issue because that is a separate issue I've already discussed earlier in the thread. Suffice it to say that it takes a long time for me to trust someone to be in my home when I'm not there. With this particular long time housekeeper/friend I can leave out money, pain meds if I have them, personal notes with passwords, and have 100% confidence they are safe. Bringing in and training a new person now is just not something I want to go through.

But in any case what I really wanted to hear is what y'all think about the general, theoretical argument that the older the service professional the safer it is to hire them for tasks inside your house, due to the narrower range of asymptomatic spread windows for older persons. I have never seen this point made anywhere else, but it seems real and significant to me, especially if age difference is significant. That 28yo plumber might be asymptomatically contagious for a month, the 55yo probably a tenth of that.

(jv001 - I live alone right now so any risk I'm taking is just to myself. And I do fine with the household basics - laundry, dishes, cooking, changing bedding, picking up after myself, etc. I'm no Felix but neither am I an Oscar. I just would rather get help from a professional with the mopping, dusting and other deeper cleaning tasks.)

[tbyers11]

I am happy to read yours and TByers posts, no matter the length. This is really good staff.

Some questions: I remember Fauci saying that the US government and the pharma/biotech industry would take financial risks and start manufacturing during Phase III trials. Also, the Gates Foundation was to put big bucks into production facilities. Are these things happening?

I recall the Gates Foundation saying that awhile back but haven’t seen anything official.

The US government did give Pfizer money to produce 100 million doses last week. The government will own these doses. Looks like this is the first “at risk” funding specifically for manufacturing that the government has given out.

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2020/...9-vaccine.html

[YmoBeThere]

But in any case what I really wanted to hear is what y'all think about the general, theoretical argument that the older the service professional the safer it is to hire them for tasks inside your house, due to the narrower range of asymptomatic spread windows for older persons. I have never seen this point made anywhere else, but it seems real and significant to me, especially if age difference is significant. That 28yo plumber might be asymptomatically contagious for a month, the 55yo probably a tenth of that.

It's a nice theoretical argument, but fails in practical implementation. I work in insurance where we deal with risk mitigation. This would not pass muster from that standpoint. You would have to implement pre-visit testing in my mind to have a real mitigation measure. And it is the testing not their age that is the mitigation technique.

This makes me think of some of the early assessments of the benefits of non-N95 masks. Those evaluations/thought processes revolved around providing a high level of protection to the wearer. Turns out we needed reframe our thought processes to source control. That isn't to say that there isn't a benefit to the mask wearer(surgical/other). It just isn't sufficient for the front line medical worker to safely do their job on a regular basis exposed to known cases that the orginal thought processes were framed around. The only way your argument is helpful is if you know when someone last tested negative. That still leaves the gaping hole of who they've been around since their negative test.

[dudog84]

I'm sorry I mentioned the mask issue because that is a separate issue I've already discussed earlier in the thread. Suffice it to say that it takes a long time for me to trust someone to be in my home when I'm not there. With this particular long time housekeeper/friend I can leave out money, pain meds if I have them, personal notes with passwords, and have 100% confidence they are safe. Bringing in and training a new person now is just not something I want to go through.

But in any case what I really wanted to hear is what y'all think about the general, theoretical argument that the older the service professional the safer it is to hire them for tasks inside your house, due to the narrower range of asymptomatic spread windows for older persons. I have never seen this point made anywhere else, but it seems real and significant to me, especially if age difference is significant. That 28yo plumber might be asymptomatically contagious for a month, the 55yo probably a tenth of that.

(jv001 - I live alone right now so any risk I'm taking is just to myself. And I do fine with the household basics - laundry, dishes, cooking, changing bedding, picking up after myself, etc. I'm no Felix but neither am I an Oscar. I just would rather get help from a professional with the mopping, dusting and other deeper cleaning tasks.)

Still a non-starter for me, but with this new explanation, just embrace your inner Oscar a bit for the next 6-9 months. But don't let it become a habit!

[rsvman]

I'm sorry I mentioned the mask issue because that is a separate issue I've already discussed earlier in the thread. Suffice it to say that it takes a long time for me to trust someone to be in my home when I'm not there. With this particular long time housekeeper/friend I can leave out money, pain meds if I have them, personal notes with passwords, and have 100% confidence they are safe. Bringing in and training a new person now is just not something I want to go through.

But in any case what I really wanted to hear is what y'all think about the general, theoretical argument that the older the service professional the safer it is to hire them for tasks inside your house, due to the narrower range of asymptomatic spread windows for older persons. I have never seen this point made anywhere else, but it seems real and significant to me, especially if age difference is significant. That 28yo plumber might be asymptomatically contagious for a month, the 55yo probably a tenth of that.

(jv001 - I live alone right now so any risk I'm taking is just to myself. And I do fine with the household basics - laundry, dishes, cooking, changing bedding, picking up after myself, etc. I'm no Felix but neither am I an Oscar. I just would rather get help from a professional with the mopping, dusting and other deeper cleaning tasks.)

Unfortunately, as intuitive as your argument seems to be, I am aware of no clinical data that prove your assertion. I have heard anecdotes about people even well into their 70s becoming asymptomatically infected.

[sagegrouse]

Unfortunately, as intuitive as your argument seems to be, I am aware of no clinical data that prove your assertion. I have heard anecdotes about people even well into their 70s becoming asymptomatically infected.

We had a newspaper report that a 94YO tested positive here, in a facility which has had a number of deaths, but had no symptoms.

[JasonEvans]

I may have missed it, but this story that came out on Friday could actually be a big deal in terms of making places safe.

Dogs Can Sniff Out Coronavirus Infections, German Study Shows

Eight dogs from Germany’s armed forces were trained for only a week and were able to accurately identify the virus with a 94% success rate, according to a pilot project led by the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. Researchers challenged the dogs to sniff out Covid-19 in the saliva of more than 1,000 healthy and infected people.

“We think that this works because the metabolic processes in the body of a diseased patient are completely changed,” Maren von Koeckritz-Blickwede, a professor at the university, said in a YouTube video about the project. “We think that the dogs are able to detect a specific smell.”

Dogs, which have a sense of smell around 1,000 times more sensitive than humans, could be deployed to detect infections at places such as airports, border crossings and sporting events with the proper training, according to the researchers.

-Jason "FWIW, I have heard some skepticism about this story so take it with a grain of salt" Evans

[freshmanjs]

Yesterday’s 56,130 was the lowest daily new case number since July 6. Encouraging!

[budwom]

Yesterday’s 56,130 was the lowest daily new case number since July 6. Encouraging!

might it be the "sunday reporting effect?"

[freshmanjs]

might it be the "sunday reporting effect?"

It’s lower than the the prior 2 Sundays.

[OldPhiKap]

Is the source of the numbers the same? I thought CDC was no longer the one gathering the figures but lost track of that story.

[freshmanjs]

Is the source of the numbers the same? I thought CDC was no longer the one gathering the figures but lost track of that story.

It’s funny no one was questioning the source when Jason posted that it was the highest number a few days ago.

All good news must be recast as bad news!

All from worldometers. How the underlying government tracking has changed if at all is not clear. But do note the highest daily total was also after the change.