I have long been a proud member of the Palo Alto Fellowship Forum, a group that meets weekly for lunch with outstanding speakers.   When I moved from the Bay area a few years ago, I had to go "inactive" but with the Covid pandemic, they are now meeting via Zoom (who isn't?)  which has allowed me to attend once again on a semi-regular basis.

One of our members is Robert Brooks, who yesterday gave a brief talk about the status of vaccine research and testing.   Here is the summary statement from the program chairman:

Our own Robert Brooks updated us on current status of COVID-19 and progress on vaccinations in development. The good news is that it is very highly probable that at least one or more vaccines will prove to be safe and effective. His view on general availability, in line with those of Doctors Gottlieb, Redfield, and Fauci, is before the middle of 2021. The bad news is that the World is not doing well with containing the disease at this time. The United States and Sweden are not doing well at all.

He discussed three general types of vaccines in development: Messenger RNA types (Moderna, Pfizer); Inactivated viral (some Chinese); and Adenoviral (Oxford/AstraZeneca, J&J, Merck, some Russian). Disadvantages of the first type are that they have not been used before, their autoimmunity may be too high (resulting in allergic reaction), and low temperature storage is critical. They are easily scaled up in production. The disadvantages of the second type are that they are expensive and slow to manufacture. The third type uses a “trojan horse” common virus (such as rhinovirus) to enter the cell with codes for making proteins of the COVID-19 virus to build immunity. They may be somewhat less effective if the host (you-me) already has the trojan horse virus and resists, and side effects may result from the specific trojan horse virus used.  

Brooks' bio is solid: He is adjunct professor in the Stanford School of Medicine, and founder and CEO of Virobay, which IPO'd in 2014, but died in 2018.   I found to my surprise that there are over 6,000 failed bio-tech companies listed in https://biopharmguy.com/links/company-by-name-defunct.php     This compares not too favorably with US automobile manufacturers (only around 1,100), and computer PC makers (less than 500)...   

Here's some of the slides that he used:

His first point was that this pandemic hasn't gone away, and in some key countries, is again rising

His second point was that most of the states in the USA are 'again in trouble' to a degree

His third point was that people have been intimidated by the conflicting claims re vaccines

        

He then took us through a series of possible vaccine types, and closed with this somber calendar prediction

A reader responds

 Dan Thomas has long been one of the nation's top business strategists.   I have referenced him in earlier blog-posts, notably "Yes, Matilda, the ship has sailed" on August 19.   He was the leader for the Aug 4 post about "Some say the ship has sailed" as well.   And we all know too well that the bulk of colleges that have tried to open in recent weeks have experienced nearly all of the ills that his team described.

Unsolicited, I got this message from Dan this morning.   Blew me away . . . and I thought it is worth sharing with more folk.

Hi Chuck-

 

I have been remiss in not sharing my thoughts with you about the Covid-19 work you have done. It is, in short, stunning.

 

In many ways it is the highest and best use of the visual presentation of data. It shows us things we cannot see by looking at the numbers. It unlocks insights that are profound.

 

I know that you, Scott and Art did a lot of work to get the visuals to where they are today. That was a great public service by all of you.

 

I only wish more people, especially those in leadership positions would look at it and USE it.

 

Best regards,

 

Dan

 

Dan Thomas

Focus, Inc.

Palo Alto, CA

TRUST--whom do YOU trust these days?

Remember the 'trusted handshake"?   

Trust--it used to be that a "man kept his word."   And then it became, "HE is a man who keeps his word" which implies that such an example had become more of an exception than the rule.  Women weren't 'in the parable" which may say something all by itself.

A great Forbes article recently caught my attention.  Let me show some extracts:

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/keldjensen/2018/04/15/women-trust-and-the-business-world/#6a27e3411b78

In the U.S., trust is a hard thing to come by. Recent studies have shown that only 1/3 of Americans trust other people – the lowest level recorded since the General Social Survey first began tracking it in 1972. 

A 50-year decline in trust continues. Most Americans say they don’t trust any branch of government. Non-governmental institutions have shed credibility, too. The media is widely scorned and distrusted. Organized religion continues its long decline. Even the police and military — revered by most of the public for decades — have seen some erosion in their numbers as well. We are a country with few establishment heroes.

As a rule, women tend to be more trusting than men. The most successful business negotiators have traditionally been women – likely due to their tendency to display higher levels of trust and empathy than their male counterparts.

Here are some fascinating (and disturbing) graphs about Trust in our institutions

These are stunning numbers if we really stop and consider them.   Organized religion, down from 68% to 38% in fifty years.   Banks, down from 60% to 30%.  Congress, never a favorite, down from 40% to a shocking 10%.    Our news sources, either television or the departing newspapers, down from 40% by nearly half.    

And the metrics re the presidency started a free-fall in 2004 or so, and while they show modest recovery of late, it is at the expense of a much more polarized citizenry than any in US history.

Trust, in our little rural county, has seriously eroded in the eight years we've lived here.  I'm in Kevin McCarthy/Devon Nunes land, a very conservative 'red county' in a very blue state (CA).  

Today, folk we know who are liberal, or as in our case, moderate (self-described), are afraid to speak out--not true until Trump was elected.   This divisiveness is shocking, appalling, and certainly guaranteed to make it harder to 'govern' responsibly for anyone crazy enough to get in the political arena.   But the 'political arena' is extending into Kiwanis, the local churches, and the schools, plus hair salons, bars, and gyms struggling with pandemic restrictions.   

And our town is 89% Hispanic, with the lowest county per capita income in California's 58 counties.   Trust, for many (most?) of these hardworking parents about what the state or federal government will do for them during the Covid pandemic and its terrible economic overlay, is (to put it mildly) modest.   And agricultural people, like them, in our county and the adjacent two (Fresno and Kern), produce half of California's food, which itself is by a factor of two the largest food producing state in America.   

Not surprisingly, perhaps, those three counties are the leaders for Covid deaths in CA counties on a per capita basis.  Trust?   In what?   Fairness?  Empathy?    Equal opportunity?

How might we imagine a future where trust is rekindled?

Who will lead such a re-kindling?  How?   When?

What're the odds you know (or knew) someone?

 I still hear, in too many Covid conversations, something like this: "Well, I don't know if this is real or not.   I don't know anyone who's had it."   Some go on to say, "I don't know anyone who knows anyone who..."

Others, fixated on denial, latch onto the President's words, such as yesterday: "Only 6% of the Covid deaths 'really count'--all the rest had underlying conditions"   So, instead of 180,000 dead Americans, the number is maybe 10,000 'real deaths'--all the rest would have died by now of indigestion or cancer or severe asthma.    Not even counting car accidents (which, not incidentally, are way down because no one is driving now).

So I thought it might be worth asking "How many does it take, and how close to your home, to make you a believer?"    And the answer comes out, usually, to be something like "in our block, or in our extended family" or "in my xxxx group (e.g. Kiwanis, church, workplace).    

And, if you think about it, that says there is probably a number that matters--a different number for each person, to be sure, but a number for which you say, "Hummn" or something like that.

I'm going to assert that the number is somewhere between 1 in 20 and 1 in 30.    If 5% of the people in your town/county have it, odds are good that one of them is known to, and maybe even close to, you.

Which says that more than 5,000 Confirmed Cases per 100,000 population might begin to wake folk up.

Where are we finding such numbers?   Well, for starters, there are 3,142 counties in America, and only 61 of them as of this morning--a mere 2% of them--have such a number.   

Original HOTSPOTS--Connecticut, Illinois , Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Delaware--not only don't have any counties with 1 in 20--they don't even have any counties with 1 in 30 people confirmed.  

The leaders early--New York and New Jersey--have one county with 1 in 25, and 4 counties with 1 in 30 between them.   The most populous state--California--once seemingly immune, has struggled of late, but it has only one county out of 58 with 1 in 20 (and one with 1 in 25, and one more with 1 in 30).  

So the point is--if I go chatting about 'how awful it is" in nearly all of my home state, it mostly elicits statements like the opening to this post, certainly for folk who aren't busy studying all these details. 

If we broaden the 'search' to 1 person per 25, it adds another 63 counties.   Move the marker to 1 in 30, adds another 118 counties.   So, all told, 8% of America's counties have at least 1 in 30 confirmed cases.  And in the 92% who don't, it can seem 'far away' perhaps--even ridiculous to worry about.

By contrast, the 1918 flu pandemic seemed 'up close and personal'     It killed 675,000 Americans in a year and a half (which, not incidentally, Covid could easily match at current rates), but the country was not quite one-third as populous, and at some point, estimates are that 28,000,000 Americans were infected (again, a number that Covid might conceivably reach).   That means that 1 out of 4 people got the virus, and at that level, you HAD to know someone closely who was a victim.

Such absolute numbers today would still be only 1 in 12 that 'get it' and only 1 in 400 odds of dying.

The other thing that was different was that the 1918 pandemic was agnostic about its victims--it tackled everyone of all ages, whereas Covid to date is still mainly a killer for oldsters.   Indeed, setting aside the asinine arguments about 'kids don't get it' and 'kids don't transmit it' so let's open the schools willy-nilly kinds of statements, the fact is pretty clear that Covid is a great culling device for oldsters.  

How so?   Well, when the numbers began, something like 1.1% were aged 0-17; and all told, from 0-44 was 47% of the total.   Today, that number has increased to 62%.   Ages 45-64 were 28%, which has hardly changed at 27%.  Folk over 65 were 22.5% of the total then; they are now 11% of the total.    Here is a picture of the current distribution by age.

But note what happens when we compute the ratios for the oldsters.   Oldsters are 30% of the deaths, but the rate of death, should they contract Covid, is that it kills more than half of them.    This has largely gone UNREPORTED, but it is the basis on which much of the administration's argument rests.

Another nuance here is that 40% of the Covid deaths in the US to date are said to have been in the 1% of the population living in 'old folks homes' such as assisted living or nursing homes.    I cannot find supporting statistics for this--if true, it would say that every person over 85 who died, plus half of those over 75, were living in a nursing home, which is just clearly bullshit.

But that is the sorry fact with which we are dealing.  Hard numbers are difficult to come by; some claim that morticians are cheating the system, labelling deaths as Covid because of back-room payments while others insist that many deaths (more than 200,000 over "normal") were actually undiagnosed Covid.  

To dig deeper, into ethnic or economic impacts, or to do contact tracing, is fraught with more issues.

However we slice the onion, though, the odds are getting better that you will know someone affected by this terrible pandemic, if not now, certainly in the not too distant future.