On a day following the announcement of 1,485 coronavirus deaths in the US—the highest single day mortality figure since May—the New York Times drops a piece suggesting that the real death toll of Covid-19 is over 200,000 this year. That’s more than 60,000 deaths higher than the current official death count and, if true, means one in three coronavirus deaths are not officially counted. The hidden number of deaths is particularly high in the South which has suffered the brunt of the pandemic surge in the summer months. Florida’s peak of “excess” deaths occurred in mid-July and has since seen a significant decline.
We haven't seen you since March.
And by “you,” we mean a week with less than one million new unemployment insurance filings. But this past week, new claims finally fell below the seven-figure mark to 963,000. The numbers from the US Department of Labor also show 604,000 fewer workers are seeking long-term unemployment benefits compared to a week ago. The combined stats indicate hiring is continuing to outpace layoffs in America despite the CDC’s alarming Covid-19 fall outlook, no congressional stimulus deal (yet), and fresh concerns from some economists that the positive trends are at risk.
The Russian vaccine is not ready for prime time.
With great fanfare Vladimir Putin announced “Sputnik V” two days ago, allegedly the first nationally approved Covid-19 vaccine in the world. But, scientists have begun to drill down on the merits of the vaccine, and significant questions have emerged. For starters, fewer than a hundred people were given the vaccine during the final phase trials; a remarkably small sample to determine broad safety and efficacy for the vaccine (even if one of the test subjects was Putin’s daughter). There is no data to support that Sputnik V provides long-term disease immunity, and the pharmaceutical company charged with the vaccine currently has the capacity to produce only 1.5 million doses per year. "In some ways, the approach reported to be taken in Russia is to have a phase 3 trial on the whole population," says Brian Oliver, who leads the Respiratory Molecular Pathogenesis Group in Australia.
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