{"id":4022,"date":"2020-04-27T09:24:12","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T16:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/springwaterwealth.com\/?p=4022"},"modified":"2020-04-27T09:24:12","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T16:24:12","slug":"winning-the-war-against-the-virus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/springwaterwealth.com\/winning-the-war-against-the-virus\/","title":{"rendered":"Winning the War Against the Virus"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Work on a vaccine is underway<\/h4>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Over the weekend, President Trump\u2019s tweets indicated he may be abandoning the daily briefings offered his White House Coronavirus Task Force.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve been diligently watching the briefings, as we have, you may be relieved to learn this.\u00a0 While a wide variety of health policy experts and senior members of the administration have shared valuable information and updates on the governments\u2019 massive efforts to combat the virus, the briefings have become far too partisan and combative.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Testing<\/strong>
\nWe\u2019re now many weeks into this pandemic and the fundamental challenge remains the same.\u00a0 There is simply not enough testing happening to identify: those who were infected and are currently ill; those who were infected, were only mildly symptomatic and recovered; those who were infected and who were completely asymptomatic; and those who have not been exposed at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

New Cases<\/strong>
\nThe Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington posits that, in order to corral Covid-19, states need to keep the rate of new cases of infection per day below one per million people.\u00a0 In Washington, which has a population of 7.6 million people, new cases per day need to be below 8.\u00a0 In Oregon, which has population of 4.2 million, new cases per day need to be below 4.\u00a0 In California, which has a population of nearly 40 million, new cases per need to be below 40.\u00a0 Only a handful of states would meet the IHME threshold.\u00a0 To put things in perspective, yesterday The Washington State Department of Health<\/a>The Washington State Department of Health<\/a> reported 202 cases, the Oregon Health Authority<\/a>Oregon Health Authority<\/a> reported 58 cases yesterday, and the California Department of Health<\/a>California Department of Health<\/a> reported 1,074 new cases.<\/p>\n

The only way to identify cases, of course, is to test people for infection.\u00a0 While testing has increased, the rate of testing has stagnated nationally.\u00a0 As of yesterday, there have been 5.4 million tests completed across the United States, which has a population of about 328 million people.\u00a0 Washington has conducted 170,000 tests; Oregon, 49,000 tests; and California, 526,000 tests (source: The COVID Tracking Project).<\/p>\n

How many tests need to be conducted to get ahead of the virus?\u00a0 The World Health Organization suggests that a positive test rate of 10% would be sufficient.\u00a0 The Wall Street Journal reports that the United States has a positive test rate of 20%.\u00a0 The Harvard Global Health Institute believes at least 500,000 tests per day in the US are required to identify cases of Covid-19 and trace their contacts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you look at data at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>, you will see that testing is not nearly high enough to meet the desired levels.\u00a0 Dr. Debora Birx, the Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House Task Force, said yesterday on network television that US will need a breakthrough in testing to screen large numbers of individuals quickly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Contact Tracing<\/strong>
\nThere is another major issue, and that is contact tracing.\u00a0 Once a new case is identified, health officials have to identify everyone with whom that person had contact in the prior two weeks.\u00a0 Estimates for the number of contract tracers that will be needed come from Johns Hopkins, The National Association of State and Territorial Health Organizations, Scott Gottlieb (the former Commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration) and Andy Slavitt (the former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), and they range from 100,000 to 300,000.\u00a0 The Wall Street Journal reports that the nation\u2019s local public health departments employ between 130,000 and 160,000 people, and only a fraction do contract tracing.\u00a0 So, health authorities will have to hire and train tens of thousands of workers who will just do contract tracing.<\/p>\n

The Economy Remains Largely Shackled<\/strong>
\nYou might wonder why we continue to write so much about the health aspects of this pandemic.\u00a0 Why don\u2019t we focus more on the economy and the stock market?\u00a0 Because, until we gain some level of control over the virus, the economy will be crippled.\u00a0 There will be no meaningful resumption of normal economic activity until the health crisis has abated and it\u2019s safe to return to work.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Markets<\/strong>
\nThe Dow Jones Industrial Average ended Friday up 260 points, or 1.1%.\u00a0 The S&P 500 Index rose 39 points, or 1.14%.\u00a0 The Dow is up 28% since March 23, but down 17% for the year.<\/p>\n

Final Thought<\/strong>
\nDuring World War II, when the US and the Allies were waging a seesaw battle against Germany and the Axis powers, some of the brightest scientists in the US, the United Kingdom and Canada came together under the Manhattan Project.\u00a0 The result of their efforts was the development of the first nuclear weapons.\u00a0 The Allies\u2019 use of these weapons turned the tide of the war and was critical to their victory.<\/p>\n

We need this kind of undertaking to develop widespread, accurate testing, contact tracing, treatments, and, ultimately, a vaccine.\u00a0 While perhaps not well-known, these efforts are well underway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Keep the faith.<\/p>\n

PLEASE SEE<\/strong> important disclosure information at www.springwaterwealth.com\/blog-disclosure\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Work on a vaccine is underway Over the weekend, President Trump\u2019s tweets indicated he may be abandoning the daily briefings offered his White House Coronavirus Task Force.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve been diligently watching the briefings, as we have, you may be relieved to learn this.\u00a0 While a wide variety of health policy experts and senior members […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,6,152,11],"tags":[158,50,66,86,87,107,140],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/springwaterwealth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/springwaterwealth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/springwaterwealth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/springwaterwealth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/springwaterwealth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/springwaterwealth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/springwaterwealth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/springwaterwealth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/springwaterwealth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}