https://theconversation.com/5-covid-19-myths-politicians-have-repeated-that-just-arent-true-141972
The number of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. has jumped to around 50,000 a day, and the virus has killed more than 130,000 Americans. Yet, I still hear myths about the infection that has created the worst public health crisis in America in a century.
The purveyors of these myths, including politicians who have been soft peddling the impact of the coronavirus, aren’t doing the country any favors.
Here are five myths I hear as director of health policy at the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center that I would like to put to rest.
President Donald Trump and plenty of pundits predicted early on that COVID-19 would prove no more lethal than a bad flu. Some used that claim to argue that stay-at-home orders and government-imposed lockdowns were un-American and a gross overreaction that would cost more lives than they saved.
By the end of June, however, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that national antibody testing indicated 5% to 8% of Americans had already been infected with the virus. With over 130,000 confirmed COVID-19-related deaths – and that’s likely an undercount – the case fatality rate is around 0.49% to 0.78% or about four to eight times that of the flu.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who also downplayed COVID-19 as the death toll grew, calling it a “little flu,” announced on July 7 that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.
At one point, the idea that COVID-19 case numbers were high because of an increase in testing made intuitive sense, especially in the early stages of the pandemic when people showing up for tests were overwhelmingly showing symptoms of possible infection. More testing meant health officials were aware of more illnesses that would have otherwise gone under the radar. And testing predominately sick and symptomatic people can result in an overestimate of its virulence.
Now, with millions of tests conducted and fewer than 10% coming back positive, the U.S. knows what it is facing. Testing today is essential to finding the people who are infected and getting them isolated.
Unfortunately, Trump has been a leading purveyor of the myth that we test too much. Fortunately, his medical advisers disagree.
Given the current spike in infections after reopening the economy, more people are arguing that the lockdowns were unsuccessful in crushing the virus and shouldn’t have been implemented at all. But what would the country look like today if state governments had tried to build herd immunity by letting the disease spread rather than promoting social distancing, prohibiting large gatherings and telling the elderly to stay home?
Most epidemiologists who study pandemics believe that reaching herd immunity could only be achieved at enormous cost in terms of illness and death. About 60% or 70% of Americans would have to become infected before the spread of the virus diminished. That would result in 1 to 2 million U.S. deaths and 5 to 10 million hospitalizations.
These are horrific, yet conservative estimates, given that mortality rates would surely rise if that many people were infected and hospitals were overrun.
It is not surprising that many people are confused by the proliferation of predictions about the course of the virus. How many people become infected depends on how individuals, governments and institutions respond, which is hard to predict.
Faced with the warning early in the pandemic that 1 to 2 million Americans could die if the U.S. simply let the coronavirus run its course, federal and state governments imposed restrictions to constrain the spread of the virus. Then, they relaxed those restrictions as new cases ebbed and pressure mounted to reopen the economy.
Now, they must consider reimposing some of those restrictions as infection rates rise in a majority of states, including Texas, Arizona, Florida and California. The models were based on data and assumptions at that time, and likely influenced responses which in turn changed underlying conditions. For example, new cases of COVID-19 are rising in the U.S., while fatalities are falling. This reflects a shift in infection rates toward younger populations, as well as improved treatment as providers learn more about the virus.
Just like an investment disclaimer that past returns do not guarantee future performance, modeling a pandemic should be seen as suggestive of what might happen given current information and not a law of nature.
Sadly, the myth here is that we have contained the virus enough to buy time to prepare for a second wave. In fact, the first wave just keeps getting bigger.
A second wave would require a trough in the first wave, but there is little evidence of that from either an epidemiologic or economic perspective.
During the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, the weekly UK death toll from influenza and pneumonia, shown here, reflected three clear waves. Taubenberger JK, Morens DM. 1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics. Emerg Infect Dis. 2006;12(1)
The U.S. recorded a record number of new cases during the first week of July, exceeding 50,000 per day for four straight days. The rising number of cases led several states to halt or roll back their reopening plans in hopes of stemming the spread of the virus.
Meanwhile, most consumers are reticent to return to “normal” economic activity: Fewer than one-third of adults surveyed by Morning Consult in early July were comfortable going to a shopping mall. Only 35% were comfortable going out to eat, and 18% were comfortable going to the gym. For almost half of the population, an effective treatment or vaccine may be the only way they will feel comfortable returning to “normal” economic activity.
COVID-19 is an immediate threat that requires a unified, science-based response from governments and citizens to be successful. But it is also an opportunity to rethink how we prepare for future pandemics. Some misinformation is inevitable as a new virus emerges, but perpetuating myths for political or other reasons ultimately costs lives.
Nationwide, state and local government leaders are warning of major budget cuts as a result of the pandemic. One state – New York – even referred to the magnitude of its cuts as having “no precedent in modern times.”
Declining revenue combined with unexpected expenditures and requirements to balance budgets means state and local governments need to cut spending and possibly raise taxes or dip into reserve funds to cover the hundreds of billions of dollars lost by state and local government over the next two to three years because of the pandemic.
Without more federal aid or access to other sources of money (like reserve funds or borrowing), government officials have made it clear: Budget cuts will be happening in the coming years.
And while specifics are not yet available in all cases, those cuts have already included reducing the number of state and local jobs – from firefighters to garbage collectors to librarians – and slashing spending for education, social services and roads and bridges.
In some states, agencies have been directed to cut their budget as much as 15% or 20% – a tough challenge as most states prepared budgets for a new fiscal year that began July 1.
As a scholar of public administration who researches how governments spend money, here are the ways state and local governments have reduced spending to close the budget gap.
State and local governments laid off or furloughed 1.5 million workers in April and May.
They are also reducing spending on employees. According to surveys, government workers are feeling personal financial strain as many state and local governments have cut merit raises and regular salary increases, frozen hiring, reduced salaries and cut seasonal employees.
Washington state, for example, cut both merit raises and instituted furloughs.
A survey from the National League of Cities shows 32% of cities will have to furlough or lay off employees and 41% have hiring freezes in place or planned as a result of the pandemic.
Employment reductions have met some resistance. In Nevada, for example, a state worker union filed a complaint against the governor to the state’s labor relations board for violating a collective bargaining statute by not negotiating on furloughs and salary freezes.
Most of the employee cuts have been made in education. Teachers, classroom aids, administrators, staff, maintenance crews, bus drivers and other school employees have seen salary cuts and layoffs.
The job loss has hurt public employees beyond education, too: librarians, garbage collectors, counselors, social workers, police officers, firefighters, doctors, nurses, health aides, park rangers, maintenance crews, administrative assistants and others have been affected.
Residents also face the consequences of these cuts: They can’t get ahold of staff in the city’s water and sewer departments to talk about their bill; they can’t use the internet at the library to look for jobs; their children can’t get needed services in school.
Most of these cuts have been labeled temporary, but with the extensions to stay-at-home orders and a mostly closed economy, it will be some time before these employees are back to work.
As another way to reduce costs quickly, a National League of Cities survey shows 65% of the municipalities surveyed are stopping temporarily, or completely, capital expenditure and infrastructure projects like roads, bridges, buildings, water systems or parking garages.
In New York City, there is a US$2.3 billion proposed cut to the capital budget, a fund that supports large, multiyear investments from sidewalk and road maintenance, school buildings, senior centers, fire trucks, sewers, playgrounds, to park upkeep. There are potentially serious consequences for residents. For example, New York housing advocates are concerned that these cuts will hurt plans for 21,000 affordable homes.
Suspending these big money projects will save the government money in the short term. But it will potentially harm the struggling economy, since both public and private sectors benefit from better roads, bridges, schools and water systems and the jobs these projects create.
Delaying maintenance also has consequences for the deteriorating infrastructure in the U.S. The costs of unaddressed repairs could increase future costs. It can cost more to replace a crumbling building than it does to fix one in better repair.
In many states, the new budgets severely cut their aid to local governments, which will lead to large local cuts in education – both K-12 and higher education – as well as social programs, transportation, health care and other areas.
New York state’s budget proposes that part of its fiscal year 2021 budget shortfall will be balanced by $8.2 billion in reductions in aid to localities. This is the state where the cuts were referred to in the budget as “not seen in modern times.” This money is normally spent on many important services that residents need everyday –mass transit, adult and elderly care, mental health support, substance abuse programs, school programs like special education, children’s health insurance and more. Lacking any of these support services can be devastating to a person, especially in this difficult time.
As teachers and administrators figure out how to teach both online and in person, they and their schools will need more money – not less – to meet students’ needs.
Libraries, which provide services to many communities, from free computer use to after-school programs for children, will have to cut back. They may have fewer workers, be open for fewer hours and not offer as many programs to the public.
Parks may not be maintained, broken playground equipment may stay that way, and workers may not repave paths and mow lawns. Completely separate from activists’ calls to shift police funding to other priorities, police departments’ budgets may be slashed just for lack of cash to pay the officers. Similar cuts to firefighters and ambulance workers may mean poorly equipped responders take longer to arrive on a scene and have less training to deal with the emergency.
To keep with developing public safety standards, more maintenance staff and materials will be needed to clean and sanitize schools, courtrooms, auditoriums, correctional facilities, metro stations, buses and other public spaces. Strained budgets and employees will make it harder to complete these new essential tasks throughout the day.
To avoid deeper cuts, state and local government officials are trying a host of strategies including borrowing money, using rainy day funds, increasing revenue by raising tax rates or creating new taxes or fees, ending tax exemptions and using federal aid as legally allowed.
Colorado was able to hold its budget to only a 3% reduction, relying largely on one-time emergency reserve funds. Delaware managed to maintain its budget and avoided layoffs largely through using money set aside in a reserve account.
Nobody knows how long the pandemic, or its economic effects, will last.
In the worst-case scenario, budget officials are prepared to make steeper cuts in the coming months if more assistance does not come from the federal government or the economy does not recover quickly enough to restore the flow of money that governments need to operate.
Many public health professionals and politicians are urging or requiring citizens to wear face masks to help slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Some Americans have refused, wrongly claiming mask decrees violate the Constitution. An internet search turns up dozens of examples.
“Costco Karen,” for instance, staged a sit-in in a Costco entrance in Hillsboro, Oregon after she refused to wear a mask, yelling “I am an American … I have rights.”
A group called Health Freedom Idaho organized a protest against a Boise, Idaho, mask mandate. One protester said, “I’m afraid where this country is headed if we just all roll over and abide by control that goes against our constitutional rights.”
As one protester said, “The coronavirus doesn’t override the Constitution.”
Speaking as a constitutional law scholar, these objections are nonsense.
It is not always clear why anti-maskers think government orders requiring face coverings in public spaces or those put in place by private businesses violate their constitutional rights, much less what they think those rights are. But most of the mistaken objections fall into two categories:
Mandatory masks violate the First Amendment right to speech, assembly, and especially association and mandatory masks violate a person’s constitutional right to liberty and to make decisions about how to their own health and bodily integrity.
They’re not mutually exclusive claims: A lawsuit filed by four Florida residents against Palm Beach County, for example, argues that mask mandates “interfere with … personal liberty and constitutional rights,” such as freedom of speech, right to privacy, due process, and the “constitutionally protected right to enjoy and defend life and liberty.” The lawsuit asks the court to issue a permanent injunction against the county’s mask mandate.
Responding to a reporter who asked why President Donald Trump appeared unconcerned about the absence of masks and social distancing at a campaign rally in Tulsa, Vice President Mike Pence said: “I want to remind you again freedom of speech and the right to peaceably assemble is in the Constitution of the U.S. Even in a health crisis, the American people don’t forfeit our constitutional rights.”
The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, press, petition, assembly and religion.
There are two reasons why mask mandates don’t violate the First Amendment.
First, a mask doesn’t keep you from expressing yourself. At most, it limits where and how you can speak. Constitutional law scholars and judges call these “time, place, and manner” restrictions. If they do not discriminate on the basis of the content of the speech, such restrictions do not violate the First Amendment. An example of a valid time, place and manner restriction would be a law that limits political campaigning within a certain distance of a voting booth.
Additionally, the First Amendment, like all liberties ensured by the Constitution, is not absolute.
All constitutional rights are subject to the goverment’s authority to protect the health, safety and welfare of the community. This authority is called the “police power.” The Supreme Court has long held that protecting public health is sufficient reason to institute measures that might otherwise violate the First Amendment or other provisions in the Bill of Rights. In 1944, in the case of Prince v. Massachusetts, for example, the Supreme Court upheld a law that prohibited parents from using their children to distribute religious pamphlets on public streets.
Some anti-maskers object that masks violate the right to liberty.
The right to liberty, including the right to make choices about one’s health and body, is essentially a constitutional principle of individual autonomy, neatly summarized as “My body, my choice.”
The 1905 case of Jacobsen v. Massachusetts shows why mask mandates don’t violate any constitutional right to privacy or health or bodily integrity. In that case, the Supreme Court upheld a smallpox vaccination requirement in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The court said that the vaccination requirement did not violate Jacobsen’s right to liberty or “the inherent right of every freeman to care for his own body and health in such way as to him seems best.”
As the court wrote, “There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good. On any other basis, organized society could not exist with safety to its members.” In a 1995 New York case, a state court held that an individual with active tuberculosis could be forcibly detained in a hospital for appropriate medical treatment.
Even if you assume that mask mandates infringe upon what the Supreme Court calls “fundamental rights,” or rights that the court has called the “very essence of a scheme of ordered liberty,” it has consistently ruled states can act if the restrictions advance a compelling state interest and do so in the least restrictive manner.
As the Jacobsen ruling and the doctrine of time, place and manner make clear, the protection of all constitutional liberties rides upon certain necessary – but rarely examined – assumptions about communal and public life.
One is that is constitutional rights – whether to liberty, speech, assembly, freedom of movement or autonomy – are held on several conditions. The most basic and important of these conditions is that our exercise of rights must not endanger others (and in so doing violate their rights) or the public welfare. This is simply another version of the police power doctrine.
Unfortunately, a global pandemic in which a serious and deadly communicable disease can be transmitted by asymptomatic carriers upsets that background and justifies a wide range of reasonable restrictions on our liberties. Believing otherwise makes the Constitution a suicide pact – and not just metaphorically.
Turn on the TV news, or look at a news website, and you’ll see charts, graphics, and dashboards that supposedly indicate the latest with COVID-19 – statistics revealing the number of tests, cases, hospitalizations and deaths, along with where they happened and whether they are rising or falling.
Different stories are told depending on the dashboard. But one thing is certain: These indicators lag behind the actions we take, or don’t take, on COVID-19. As researchers who focus on public health, we can tell you that a fully accurate, real-time snapshot of the progress of the virus isn’t possible.
There are many reasons for this. Here’s one: diagnostic testing data are incomplete. Someone infected with COVID-19 must first come in contact with the virus either through the air or (less likely) environmental surfaces. Symptoms show between two and 14 days later. But at least 40% of those infected will never manifest symptoms, or show such mild ones they don’t even suspect they have COVID-19. So they may never get tested, which means they won’t show up in the total number of tests, or the total number of cases.
Another example: because of the lack of testing availability – a widespread problem in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic – not everyone who should be tested gets a test.
And another: the tests themselves are not perfect. Up to one-third who get a negative result may actually be infected. This happens because they are tested before they have a viral load sufficient enough for detection. Or maybe the sampling is not adequate. Or perhaps the test itself simply failed.
This is why problems arise when we use case numbers to determine disease levels in a community. Case counts actually reflect what was happening in a community weeks earlier. Four weeks, for instance, could elapse between the time a person is exposed to the virus and when they are reported as a case. Even the best testing results often take a week to report to public health authorities, and longer to appear on dashboards. Some testing results, seriously delayed, may take ten days or more.
Other factors impact the metrics. Laboratory results, often released in batches, may introduce artificial variation in case numbers. Someone who tested two days ago, then got a result back immediately, might be added on the same day as someone who was sick two weeks ago, but whose test results were delayed. To smooth out these variations, it helps to look at a rolling seven-day case average.
Hospitalization is a clearer metric for assessing the level of community disease. Those who are seriously ill, in most cases, will be hospitalized whether previously tested or not. Data suggests roughly one in five infected persons are hospitalized. Individuals seem to do okay for the first week, with more life-threatening symptoms showing in the second. That means hospitalizations represent exposures that happened three or four weeks earlier.
Again, a seven-day rolling average evens out artificial variations. There is one caveat for this: Though hospitalization is a useful metric, only about 20% of infected people need it. That means hospitalization numbers alone underestimate the number of people infected and what age groups they represent.
The death numbers are not a reliable indicator either. In some states, to count as a COVID-19 death, the deceased must have had a test reporting positive. In other states, probable cases are reported.
As clinicians learn how to better treat COVID-19, fatality rates are dropping. Deaths, the longest lagging indicator, reflect people who were infected six or eight weeks earlier. When comparing one region to another, deaths are best expressed as rates – a ratio of deaths to population.
Another issue: News reports do not always clearly distinguish between diagnostic testing, which shows if you currently have COVID-19, and antibody testing, which shows if you had it in the past, and now harbor antibodies that can fight it. So far, however, antibody testing has not provided a useful picture of who has been infected and who has not. Once that happens, it could provide researchers and clinicians with some indicators on how widely the virus has spread.
Though the dashboards are ubiquitous on television, none of these frequently used indicators they feature is perfect. Still, taken together, they provide a reasonable approximation of COVID-19 transmission in communities. But as authorities make decisions, they should take into account the numbers are weeks old.
What does this mean to you? Understanding these limitations may help you understand your risk. We are still in the midst of a pandemic that is not under control. Being educated will help all of us from becoming a part of tomorrow’s lagging indicators.
Trump said more Covid-19 testing ‘creates more cases.’ We did the math
The counter-narrative began almost instantly. After the U.S. count of Covid-19 cases began an inexorable rise in June, the White House sought to assure Americans that the increase was, basically, an illusion, created by an increase in testing for the novel coronavirus.
In a June 15 tweet, President Trump said testing “makes us look bad.” At his campaign rally in Tulsa five days later, he said he had asked his “people” to “slow the testing down, please.” At a White House press conference last week, he told reporters, “When you test, you create cases.”
And in an interview with Fox News that aired Sunday, Trump could not have been clearer: “Cases are up because we have the best testing in the world and we have the most testing.” Basically, the president was arguing that the U.S. had just as many new cases in June and July as it did in May but, with fewer tests being done in May, they weren’t being detected; with more testing now, they are.
A new STAT analysis of testing data for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, however, shows with simple-to-understand numbers why Trump’s claim is wrong. In only seven states was the rise in reported cases from mid-May to mid-July driven primarily by increased testing. In the other 26 states — among the 33 that saw cases increase during that period — the case count rose because there was actually more disease.
May had brought signs of hope that the U.S. had gotten its Covid-19 outbreak under control, with about 20,000 new cases reported per day after April highs closer to 30,000. But by late June, the daily count climbed to about 40,000, and now it’s at about 70,000. The STAT analysis shows that spread of the virus, far more than testing, explains that increase.
Epidemiologists and infectious disease experts have disputed the White House claims for weeks, citing rising hospitalization numbers and deaths. It’s hard to argue that extremely sick people, let alone dead people, had been obscured by low levels of testing but suddenly revealed by higher levels.
Without a doubt, many cases of Covid-19 in March, April, and May weren’t picked up. In late June, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield told reporters that as many as 90% of cases had been missed; that is, although there were 2.3 million confirmed cases in the U.S. then, some 20 million people had probably been infected. But that reasoning applies today, too: Despite months of government claims to the contrary, not everyone who wants, or should have, a test is getting one.
Simple math belies the “it’s just because of more testing” claim — with some fascinating exceptions.
Using data from Covid Tracking, STAT looked at the number of people tested and the number who tested positive for the disease (cases) in every state and Washington, D.C. We did that for three dates: in mid-May, mid-June, and mid-July. (Due to reporting anomalies, the dates selected sometimes differed by a day or two between states.)
For each date, we calculated the number of cases found per 1,000 tests — a measure of the disease’s prevalence. For example, in Florida on May 13, that rate was 32. On June 13 it was 75. On July 13 it was 193. On May 13, Florida tested 15,159 people; on July 13, it tested 65,567. So indeed, the number of tests has increased.
But the number of cases per thousand, which is independent of the number of tests, has skyrocketed. On May 13, Florida recorded 479 cases; on July 13, it found 12,624. If the prevalence of Covid-19 were the same in July as in May, Florida would have found only 2,098 cases. In other words, 10,526 of the July 13 cases are not due to increased testing, but, instead, to the increased prevalence of disease.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, however, echoes Trump’s explanation, telling a Saturday press briefing that his state’s soaring caseload is largely the result of more testing of people with no or minimal symptoms. “We’re now capturing a lot of those folks,” he said.
In fact, Florida has seen a sevenfold increase in cases in the past month, said Youyang Gu, who developed a well-respected, machine-learning-based model of Covid-19 whose projections have been quite accurate. “In the same time span, the number of tests only increased by a factor of two,” he said. “Obviously, if you double the testing but the number of cases increased sevenfold, then the virus is clearly spreading.”
Other states with soaring cases tell the same story as Florida.
In Arizona, the case-finding rate rose from 90 in May to 140 in June to 208 in July. Of its 2,537 cases on July 12, 1,441 were due to increased prevalence.
South Carolina has also experienced a steep rise in prevalence as its case count quintupled: Of the 2,280 cases on July 9, 1,869 were due to rising prevalence, not more testing. Texas and Georgia are similar: rising case counts well beyond increases in testing. In all, 26 states that did more testing in July than in May found more cases because Covid-19 was more prevalent. In 15 of them, the number of cases per 1,000 people tested had more than doubled.
Seven states (Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin) meet the three criteria needed to support Trump’s claim that we’re seeing more cases only, or mostly, because we’re doing more testing. The criteria are doing more tests in July than in May, finding more cases on a typical day in July than May, but seeing the number of cases per 1,000 tests decline or remain unchanged from May to July.
Take Missouri. It’s reporting more cases, but not because the virus is exploding there (despite those crowded holiday scenes at Lake of the Ozarks). Its case finding rate has been pretty stable or even declining, from 48 in mid-May to 44 in mid-July. By tripling its number of daily tests, Missouri is finding roughly triple the number of cases.
California comes close to meeting the three criteria, but doesn’t quite. Its number of daily tests more than quadrupled from May to July, from roughly 32,000 to 137,000. But the rate of cases being found has risen, though only about 10%, from 55 to 61 per 1,000 tests. So a big reason — but not the main reason, as in Missouri — more cases are being found is that more testing is being done. Washington is similar: more testing, more cases, but also slightly greater prevalence of disease in mid-July compared to mid-May; its worsening situation is real.
New York tells the opposite story: more testing found fewer cases. The state nearly doubled its daily tests from May 13 (33,794) to July 12 (62,418). But its cases fell from 2,176 to 557. If the case rate had not dropped (by 86 %), New York’s expanded testing would have found 3,995 cases on July 12.
In fact, 16 states plus the District of Columbia are like New York. They tested much more, but found fewer cases in July than May — in most, not only “fewer” in the sense of fewer cases per 1,000 but fewer in absolute terms. New Jersey reported 10,246 tests and 1,144 cases on May 14, and 20,846 tests with a mere 393 new cases on July 14. Again, the virus hasn’t disappeared, but the expansion of testing, far from “creating” cases, has brought good news: In these states, it’s much less prevalent than it was two months ago.
A rising number of Americans — now nearly one in three — don’t believe the virus’ death toll is as high as the official count, despite surging new infections and hospitalizations, per this week’s installment of the Axios-Ipsos Coronavirus Index.
Between the lines: Republicans, Fox News watchers and people who say they have no main source of news are driving this trend.
Why it matters: It shows President Trump’s enduring influence on his base, even as Americans overall say they are increasingly dissatisfied with his handling of the virus and political support is shifting toward Joe Biden.
What they’re saying: “We live in highly tribal and partisan times, and people are more likely to believe cues and signals from their political leaders than the scientists or the experts,” says Cliff Young, president of Ipsos U.S. Public Affairs.
By the numbers: Overall, 31% of Americans say they believe the number of Americans dying is lower than the number reported, up sizably from 23% when we asked the same question in May.
Here’s what’s driving the shift in Week 17 of our national survey:
Where you get your news has a strong correlation to your faith in the numbers.
The big picture: The survey shows most Americans are digging in for a long fight against the virus, even if they have conflicting views about what to believe.
This survey finds the highest overall use of face masks since the pandemic began — with 99% of Democrats and 75% of Republicans now saying they’re wearing a mask sometimes or all of the time when they go out.
1 big finger wag: Most Americans blame someone other than themselves for the crisis.
• Scientists are expressing cautious optimism that a vaccine can be ready to go by the late spring of 2021, although it’s unclear how much longer it would take to distribute the vaccine widely.
• Two possible vaccines are in phase 3 clinical trials; once those trials are completed, they would be candidates for approval. Another eight vaccines have begun phase 2 trials. And more than 100 other vaccines that haven’t begun clinical trials are in the pipeline.
• The Food and Drug Administration recently produced guidelines for the minimum effectiveness of vaccines seeking the agency’s approval. Vaccine officials say these guidelines are important to ensure public confidence in vaccines.
More than four months into the coronavirus pandemic, how close is the U.S. and the world to a safe and effective vaccine? Scientists say they see steady progress and are expressing cautious optimism that a vaccine could be ready by spring of 2021.
As of early July, there were roughly 160 vaccine projects under way worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
Generally, a vaccine trial has several phases. In an initial phase, the vaccine is given to 20 to 100 healthy volunteers. The focus in this phase is to make sure the vaccine is safe, and to note any side effects.
In the second phase, there are hundreds of volunteers. In addition to monitoring safety, researchers try to determine whether shots produce an immune-system response.
The third phase involves thousands of patients. This phase continues the goals of the first two, but adds a focus on how effective the vaccine is. This phase also collects data on more unusual negative side effects.
In ordinary circumstances, these phases take years to complete. But for coronavirus, the timeline is being shortened. This has spurred more public-private partnerships and significantly increased funding.
Here’s a rundown of the 13 vaccine candidates that are furthest along in the clinical phases:
Coronavirus vaccines that are the furthest along:
The three vaccine candidates that are furthest along are both in phase 3.
One is being developed by researchers at Oxford University in the U.K. It uses a weakened version of a virus that causes common colds in chimpanzees. Researchers then added proteins, known as antigens, from the novel coronavirus, in the hope that these could prime the human immune system to fight the virus once it encounters it.
Another candidate in a phase 3 trial is being developed in China. It uses a killed, and thus safe, version of the novel coronavirus to spur an immune reaction.
And on July 15, the biotech company Moderna, which is partnering with the National Institutes of Health, announced that it would be moving to phase 3 within two weeks.
Two others have made it as far as phase 2, while eight others are finishing their phase 1 trials while also beginning phase 2 trials.
These candidates are being developed by a mix of corporations and institutions in several countries. These efforts seek to leverage a range of different technologies.
One uses RNA material that provides the instructions for a body to produce the needed antigens itself. This is a relatively untested approach to vaccination, but if it works, it has aspects that could make it easier to manufacture. Another approach is similar, but uses DNA instead of RNA.
One U.S. biotech firm, Novavax, is receiving federal funding to produce a vaccine that uses a lab-made protein to inspire an immune response.
Beyond these, another 10 vaccine candidates are in phase 1 clinical trials, while another 140 haven’t reached the clinical phase yet.
Having so many potential vaccines this far along is impressive, experts say, given the short time scientists have known about the novel coronavirus.
“Overall, the pace of development and advancement to Phase 3 trials is impressive,” said Matthew B. Laurens, associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health. “The public-private partnerships have been highly successful and are achieving goals for rapid vaccine development.”
In addition, the fact that several types of vaccine approaches are being tested means we aren’t putting all of our eggs in one basket.
“We will need several candidates should any one of these experience difficulties in manufacturing or show a safety signal when implemented in larger numbers of people,” Laurens said.
Meanwhile, at a time of rising public skepticism of government and vaccines, the Food and Drug Administration recently released additional guidelines on vaccine effectiveness. The new guidance requires vaccines to prevent or decrease the severity of the disease at least 50% of the time if they are to win the agency’s approval.
The FDA guidelines “reaffirmed the very rigorous FDA process for approving any vaccine. That gives a great deal of reassurance that this was going to be handled by the book,” said William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “The more we talk about doing things fast, the more the public thinks, ‘They’re probably cutting corners.’”
In early April, Kathleen M. Neuzil, director of the University of Maryland’s vaccine center, told PolitiFact that if all went well, there might be five or six vaccines in trials within six months. Now, three and a half months later, there are two to three times that number.
Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and other officials have remained consistent in their estimation of the timeline: 12 to 18 months from the start of the pandemic, or roughly the late spring of 2021.
Schaffner told PolitiFact that he continues to see the first quarter of 2021 as a reasonable target. “I think that’s where the needle is pointing,” he said.
It remains to be seen how fast vaccines can be manufactured and distributed once approved for general use. Officials are also grappling with which Americans will get access first. So it’s unclear how long a person would have to wait to get vaccinated.
Laurens said he is not overly concerned about the distribution, because that is something that officials have long experience with. “Well-established programs exist for vaccine distribution, including for seasonal vaccination of large numbers of individuals,” he said.
Another hopeful sign, Schaffner said, is that the coronavirus itself seems to be relatively stable. There had been concern that the novel coronavirus, like many other viruses, is mutating over time. If the virus changes enough, that could become a problem that bedevils vaccine researchers.
But so far, that hasn’t happened. Even if evidence emerges that mutations are making the virus more transmissible, or that a new variant is making people sicker, that shouldn’t affect the vaccine process. “The central core of the virus would remain the same,” Schaffner said.
During the past month, there has been relatively little news about how much progress is being made on particular vaccines. Schaffner is not worried by the relative quiet.
“In a vaccine trial, if there’s an adverse safety finding, the guillotine comes down and that trial is stopped,” he said. “So quiet is good, because we’d know if something bad happens.”
Confused about the risks of dying from the coronavirus or of catching it from someone who seems healthy? We all are, and the dizzying differences in scientific opinion are now linked to political perspectives. Progressives cite evidence that loosening restrictions would cost lives and offer little benefit to the economy, while conservatives embrace evidence that the risks are low. We offer a guide to help navigate the tangle of numbers and suggest a way forward.
Google and many others display the number of cases and deaths (3.6 million and 138,840, respectively, by July 17). This invites a simple calculation for understanding the risk: divide the number who have died by the number who have been diagnosed. So, the chance of dying if infected is about 3.9%. Right? Well, not so fast. Six months into the pandemic, neither the number of deaths nor the number of people infected is known.
Some argue that deaths have been overemphasized since people who die of COVID are mostly older and sicker. Others suggest deaths have been overcounted since if a patient tests positive for COVID-19, it will likely be listed as the cause of death even if the person succumbs to another illness or, in some jurisdictions, dies due to an accident or suicide. Others argue that deaths have been undercounted.
Missing from the tally on any given day are those who died before testing was available, those who died shortly before or after but whose death has not yet been reported, or who died as an indirect result of the epidemic such as failing to seek medical care for fear of going to the hospital.
One carefully designed recent analysis compared deaths this year to the number of people who die during a “normal” year. The analysis concluded that through May, almost 100,000 people died from COVID-19 in addition to 30,000 who died from other causes related to the pandemic.
In short, uncertainty remains about the number of deaths due to COVID-19, which is supposed to be the easy part.
Estimating the number of people who have been infected is harder still. Most infected people are never formally diagnosed and never become one of the “cases” in the news. The limitations of the tests and the difficulty of attracting a representative population to be tested make it hard to estimate the true number of infections. The preferred test (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction-based tests) uses RNA technology to see if the virus is present in nasal or oral swabs. It is a good test, but still may miss infections in up to 30% of cases.
A second type of test uses blood samples to look for an antibody called immunoglobulin (Ig)G that implies the person was previously infected. Based on IgG test results, the CDC assumes that 5% to 8% of the population has been infected. That would mean 24 million Americans have already had COVID-19 or a very similar illness. That is more than 10 times the number of confirmed cases.
The number is consequential: a higher infection rate for the same number of deaths implies that the virus is less deadly. A review by a prominent epidemiologist considered 23 population studies with sample sizes of at least 500 people and found the percentage who have positive antibodies ranged from 0.1% to 48% — a 480-fold difference. Although the study was robustly criticized and at odds with highly cited, peer-reviewed research, it has appeared in over 30 news outlets, and the range of estimates allows people to pick a number that justifies their political position.
Contributing to this uncertainty is the FDA decision to, in a hurry to catch up for lost time, temporarily relax its standards for approving tests. Among over 300 antibody tests currently on the market, data on only a handful are publicly available, and some are being recalled.
The other number we need to know is how many people are spreading the infection without knowing it. Estimates are all over the place. Some major employers, including Stanford Healthcare, have systematically tested all of their employees and found very few infected people who do not have symptoms. In contrast, a CDC study of young, healthy adults working on an aircraft carrier found that 20% of those infected reported no symptoms.
So here we are, months into the epidemic without consensus on the basic information about how many people are infected, the risk of death for those infected, or the risk of asymptomatic transmission. In contrast to official agencies that use transparent methods to report the weather or the unemployment rate, trust in our official health statistics agencies has broken down as reports continue to emerge form myriad sources with conflicting methodologies and motivations.
The time has come to activate impartial groups, like the National Academy of Medicine, to build consensus on how to monitor the epidemic. We know the risks are serious. As cases have started to rise, whether or not the number of U.S. deaths is higher or lower than 130,000, the risk of inaction is too high.
We are staying near home, wearing masks, and treating COVID-19 as a serious threat to public health.
HENRY KOTULA 