Wed, Apr 28, 2021|Whitney Tilson

Pandemic dashboard; We need to match the U.K.; Vaccination update; Operation Warp Speed; Excess Deaths; India's Covid Surge Is Most Ferocious Yet; Long COVID

I continue to closely follow the pandemic, sending lengthy e-mails to my coronavirus e-mail list roughly once a week. If you'd like to receive them, simply send a blank e-mail to: cv-subscribe@mailer.kasecapital.com.

Below is the e-mail I sent yesterday...

1) Here's the headline: The news in the U.S. continues to be good, but there are alarming trouble spots around the world, most notably in India and Brazil.

As the U.S. continues to reopen, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are roughly flat (source):

These numbers are still too high, however. More than 44,000 Americans remain hospitalized and nearly 700 are dying every day.

Our goal should be to match the U.K., which, as you can see in the chart below, is the only large country that's vaccinated a higher percentage of its citizens than we have (which it has accomplished by prioritizing first doses, as I've long called for the U.S. to do – though it's a moot point now).

As you can see in these charts (source), the U.K.'s cases and daily deaths are down to almost zero:

2) The number of doses being administered per day has fallen 19% from the peak of 3.4 million two weeks ago (source):

At first glance, this might appear to be bad news, but it's actually a mixed bag. On the plus side, with 231 million doses administered, the low-hanging fruit has been picked: 42% of Americans have received at least one dose (including a remarkable 80% of those over age 65!) and 29% are fully vaccinated (68% of those over 65).

We are among the world leaders in vaccinating our citizens (source):

The results of our widespread vaccinations, especially among the elderly, are amazing, as they are leading the decline in hospitalizations (source) (this FT article has similar charts for many other countries as well):

On the negative side, declining vaccinations reflect the persistent – and extremely dangerous and misguided – vaccine hesitation, especially among conservatives and those who live in rural areas, as this recent poll shows (source):

Vaccinated or Inclined to Get Vaccinated

As a result, we have hard work to do to reach herd immunity: Nation Faces 'Hand-to-Hand Combat' to Get Reluctant Americans Vaccinated. Excerpt:

Now that President Biden has met his goal to have all adults eligible for the coronavirus vaccine, health officials around the country are hitting what appears to be a soft ceiling: More than half the nation's adults have received at least one dose, but it is going to take hard work – and some creative changes in strategy – to convince the rest.

State health officials, business leaders, policymakers and politicians are struggling to figure out how to tailor their messages, and their tactics, to persuade not only the vaccine hesitant but also the indifferent. Officials in many states are looking past mass vaccination sites and toward having patients get vaccinated by their own doctors, where people are most at ease – a shift that will require the Biden administration to ship vaccine in much smaller quantities.

White House and state health officials are calling this next phase of the vaccination campaign "the ground game," and are likening it to a get-out-the-vote effort. The work will be labor intensive – much of it may fall on private employers – but the risk is clear: If it takes too long to reach "herd immunity," the point at which the spread of the virus slows, worrisome new variants could emerge that evade the vaccine.

"If you think of this as a war," said Michael Carney, the senior vice president for emerging issues at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, "we're about to enter the hand-to-hand combat phase of the war."

Hopefully this breaking news today will encourage more people to get vaccinated: CDC Eases Mask Guidelines for Vaccinated People Outdoors. (I've stopped wearing a mask outdoors.) Excerpt:

People who are fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus don't need to wear face masks when walking, hiking, biking, running alone or at small outdoor gatherings, federal health officials said, taking a major step to ease pandemic restrictions while encouraging more people to get shots.

The same applies to dining at a restaurant outside, and to small outdoor gatherings that include some unvaccinated people, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.

We need to avoid more tragic stories like this one: Anastacia Kelley Couldn't Convince Her Friend to Get the COVID-19 Vaccine. Now It's Too Late.

3) I've been very critical of how the Trump administration handled the pandemic, but it deserves a great deal of credit in one area: vaccine development via its Operation Warp Speed, which initially provided various companies funding of $10 billion (and later much more).

The result has been vaccines that are nothing short of a miracle, both in how quickly they were developed and how effective they've proven to be.

Some argue that the Trump administration simply did what any administration would have, but that's not clear to me – just look at the results in Europe, where many governments tried to save money by driving hard bargains with the pharma companies and bought only the bare minimum number of doses...

4) As we approach victory, we mustn't forget those who've died – so many needlessly. This data shows that the excess deaths in the U.S. last year were an all-time high above normal levels: How Covid Upended a Century of Patterns in U.S. Deaths. Excerpt:

The U.S. death rate in 2020 was the highest above normal since the early 1900s – even surpassing the calamity of the 1918 flu pandemic.

A surge in deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic created the largest gap between the actual and expected death rate in 2020 – what epidemiologists call "excess deaths," or deaths above normal.

Aside from fatalities directly attributed to COVID-19, some excess deaths last year were most likely undercounts of the virus or misdiagnoses, or indirectly related to the pandemic otherwise. Preliminary federal data show that overdose deaths have also surged during the pandemic.

5) It's bizarre and tragic that tens of millions of Americans are turning down vaccines – and we have the best ones! (see: The mRNA Vaccines Are Looking Better and Better) – when much of the rest of the world is desperate for them because of widespread suffering and deaths, especially in Brazil (per my earlier e-mails) and now India, as these articles highlight: India's Second COVID Wave Is Completely Out of Control and India's COVID Surge Is Most Ferocious Yet. Excerpt:

India is in the grip of a COVID-19 surge that has hit with more speed and ferocity than any seen before in the more than yearlong coronavirus pandemic. It has overwhelmed New Delhi's chronically underfunded government hospitals and turned securing a private-hospital bed into a nearly impossible feat.

India's surge came after loosening restrictions and public complacency set in, with highly contagious variants now spreading around the globe potentially serving as an accelerant. The outbreak threatens to extend the pandemic itself, driving world-wide numbers to new highs and creating an enormous viral pool that could become a breeding ground for new and potentially dangerous mutations...

India's coronavirus surge shows no signs of abating. The number of confirmed infections among its population of over 1.3 billion has continued to rise each day since India first recorded the highest ever number of cases – more than 314,000 infections – on Thursday. It was the world's biggest ever single-day jump of new infections.

In response, this is good to see – but we need to do much more! U.S. to Share AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine Doses With World.

6) Two more articles about the troubling phenomenon known as "long COVID":

Best regards,

Whitney