January was the worst month of the pandemic, with nearly 98,000 U.S. deaths attributed to COVID-19. That surge came as no surprise to many in the public health community who predicted such an increase after family and friends gathered during the holidays. At the peak of the recent surge, more than a quarter million new cases per day were being ... READ MORE >
fitted curve
Coronavirus update: Vaccination begins
Pfizer’s modified-RNA vaccine has received emergency-use authorization for people 18 and older, and shipments of the vaccine have begun. The first round of vaccinations will likely be distributed to health care workers and nursing home residents and their caregivers, according to state guidelines. This represents an extraordinary achievement by the ... READ MORE >
Coronavirus update: More records to be broken as human toll mounts
The human toll of the novel coronavirus continued to mount in the week after Thanksgiving, with no signs of slowing down. A record 237,000 new U.S. cases were reported on Dec. 4 and a record 2,921 people died from the COVID-19 disease on Dec. 3, according to the Worldometers database. New infections in the United States are now averaging approximately ... READ MORE >
Coronavirus update: Ethical aspects of vaccinations
The successful release of one or more vaccines presents society with the issue of who gets vaccinated first and then the succeeding phases of distribution. This will challenge our society to the core. Recent difficult conversations around race and economic inequality boil just beneath the surface of this challenging topic. The answer to this question ... READ MORE >
Coronavirus update: The beginning of the end
The number of potential coronavirus vaccines has increased to three with Oxford/AstraZeneca announcing on Monday that that their technology is potentially 62% effective with two full doses and 90% effective if one gets a half a dose followed by a full dose. Moreover, the vaccine requires distribution and storage at normal temperatures, which will be ... READ MORE >
Coronavirus update: A worsening emergency, as seen in five charts
It took seven days for the novel coronavirus to infect another million people in the United States, with cases growing from 10 million on Nov. 6 to 11 million on Nov. 13. At the current rate of spread – and unless state and local governments insist on social-distancing practices – the RSM model shows a million new cases being contracted every five ... READ MORE >
Coronavirus update: Constructing a plan for containment
The number of newly reported coronavirus infections in the United States breached 100,000 on a single day in the past week, a milestone that came as the seven-day average of infections moved above 86,000 per day. That brings the cumulative number of coronavirus cases to 9.6 million since the first was reported in January, according to the Worldometer ... READ MORE >
Coronavirus update: Rushing toward a third peak
Coronavirus infections in the United States have surged to new highs over the past week as the long-awaited third peak of its spread arrived well before the onset of winter. The resurgence spooked investors, who sent equity markets and the dollar tumbling on Monday. The numbers are hard to explain away. RSM’s model implies that infections will surpass ... READ MORE >
Coronavirus update: The economic benefits of increased testing and tracing
As global cases of COVID-19 top 40 million and infections in the United States again breach 50,000 per day, the specter of a second wave in Europe and the United States hangs over the domestic economy. This points to significant economic scarring as the country heads into the final weeks of 2020. The economists David Cutler and Lawrence Summers of ... READ MORE >
Coronavirus update: Regarding immunity and the severity of infection
Early in the pandemic, public health officials warned that there is no prior immunity from the novel coronavirus. The global data on infections has backed that up and is a grim reminder of how little is known about the disease. In only nine months, more than a million lives have been taken among the 37 million who have been infected. Now, signs of a ... READ MORE >