Benjamin Mateus
The United States posted a record 74,987 new cases of COVID-19 Firday, amid a massive resurgence of the pandemic throughout the country. 42 states have seen a rise in cases over two weeks and only Maine and Delaware have demonstrated a decline.
The number of COVID-19 cases has swiftly and silently passed 14 million. Nearly 600,000 people have paid the price with their lives all due to the criminal negligence of political leaders who are more beholden to the financial oligarchs’ need to further enrich themselves than ensuring the safety and livelihood of billions of working people who toil every day to eke out a living.
Nurses and physicians on a COVID-19 unit in Texas [Credit: Miguel Gutierrez Jr.]
Yesterday saw a one-day high of 249,233 cases with 5,747 deaths. Brazil reported more than 2 million cases of COVID-19, while India had the dubious honor of being the third nation to exceed 1 million cases. The three countries combined account for nearly half of all global cases, with the United States representing 26.6 percent of all cases.
Florida, with 327,241 cases of COVID-19, third highest in the country, reported 13,965 new cases on Thursday and a one-day high of 156 fatalities. The state has had more than 100 deaths four days running. To place the catastrophe into context, the Orlando Sentinel wrote, “If coronavirus were a hurricane, it seemed to reach category five status over the weekend. More than ever, Florida needs decisive, resolute guidance to get through this storm.” The number of deaths on Thursday surpassed all the direct fatalities from all the hurricanes over the last two decades.
Texas also set a one-day high of 154 fatalities and the third day in a row of deaths above 100. Governor Greg Abbott has walked back his position to lock down the state, joining other Republican and Democratic governors to mandate unenforced and unenforceable mask policies. The defiance by many stems from the politicization of the pandemic and mistrust engendered in the advice provided by public health officials and the scientific community in general.
Texas has also exceeded 300,000 cases, bringing it in fourth place. Statewide, more than 3,637 people have died. Kinsa data, a company that uses Internet-based technology to track thermometer readings, shows that the rate of COVID-19 infections is moving fastest in Texas. According to the company, “This level of sustained, rampant disease transmission suggests that there is likely a lot more illness in the community than what has been reflected in the case numbers to date.” Though yesterday saw plateauing of cases with a drop in statewide COVID-19 hospitalization rates, it predicts that the situation is only growing direr.
States like Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and Oklahoma are facing the same predicaments as Arizona, Texas and Florida, who moved to open their communities to business and commerce earlier. Tulsa, Oklahoma, voiced concerns on Thursday about ICU capacity. The OSU Medical Center in downtown Tulsa has opened its COVID-19 ward to its first sets of patients since the Army Corp of Engineers built it last spring. St. Francis hospital informed the local Fox News channel that the current influx in patients would become unsustainable soon if the surge is not halted. Hillcrest Hospital issued a statement: “Today, our ICU bed capacity is at 90 percent full, and we consistently run at 90 to 95 percent across our metro hospitals.”
However, as the surge has become more entrenched, the White House has issued a directive to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in collecting the critical data on hospitalizations and report them to their local state departments or via a private portal that relays the data directly to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The use of the portal is also tied to the access of the federally supplied drug Remdesivir. The fiasco in the nation’s inability to create the necessary infrastructure for rapid broad testing is now further crippled in its response to manage the developing crisis by hiding the impact of the virus on community health care facilities.
In Kansas and Missouri, where cases are rising, according to NPR, the hospital data have suddenly gone missing or are incomplete. The Kansa Hospital Association notified its health department that its hospital data would be delayed while the Missouri Hospital Association explained that it no longer has access to data it uses to guide its mitigation efforts. The spokesperson for the Missouri Hospital Association said, “all evidence suggests that Missouri’s numbers are headed in the wrong direction. And, for now, we will have very limited situational awareness. That’s all very bad news.”
The Democrats have sent letters to the White House, the coronavirus taskforce, and HHS Secretary Alex Azar, demanding access to the data be restored. However, these toothless efforts are intended to win favors with their electorates, lacking any substantive initiatives. There is no serious policy to bring a real solution to the pandemic as it would require placing the fragile economy back into lockdown, with its implication on the markets. It should be underscored that on this issue, the Democrats and Republicans are united. Meanwhile, according to the Wall Street Journal, the US labor market recovery is losing its momentum as the surge in cases has led to uncertainties in employment and worries among consumers.
Questions among health care workers are once again turning to the shortage in personal protective equipment (PPE) used by nurses and physicians to treat patients at hospitals and clinics safely. Arizona has seen PPE demand climb 176 percent in June, 224 percent in California, 237 percent in Texas, and 240 percent in Florida, according to the Financial Times. Ali Raja, a co-founder of the volunteer organization #GetUsPPE and an Emergency Room physician, said, “I’ve heard from my friends in hospitals in Houston, where they’re wearing raincoats and ponchos instead of hospital gowns, any plastic barrier to separate them. We hear a lot from folks who are telling us that they’re just making do without because they have patients who are ill and need to be cared for.”
There is now much hope being placed on a vaccine that could provide immunity to the population. Moderna published the results of its phase one trial this week and is expected to launch its phase three trial soon. Yet, the struggle to find a treatment to treat the global population against the coronavirus is spinning into another point of national antagonism.
Concerningly, a recent preprint study by the Department of Infectious Diseases, King’s College London, followed patients after COVID-19 infection measuring their antibody titers over time. It writes that “in individuals that only develop modest antibody titers following infection, titers become undetectable or are approaching baseline after 50 days highlighting the transient nature of the antibody response towards SARS-CoV-2 in some individuals.” It is known that coronavirus infections tend to produce short-lived infections. This will be one facet of analysis for the Moderna vaccine trial, assessing titer levels of its subjects over time.
Given concerns about the possibility that herd immunity is potentially a flawed construct biologically with SARS-CoV-2, the push to open schools at a time when the seasonality of the virus also has become an issue of debate, this may be the development of a perfect storm scenario, all things considered.
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