For some reason the media seems to want to pump us up with doom and gloom about the COVID 19 pandemic. I don't believe that's healthy for us to focus on. Harvard agrees with me. They published a study in 2016 which concluded your level of positivity controls your level of health. (BTW for you extra downers who want to claim positivity isn't a word Merriam-Webster says it is) As Dr. Laura Kubzansky, professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard says "having a sense of optimism and purpose—seems to be predictive of health outcomes". So let's look for the good!
I'm writing this on April 22, 2020 and as of today the Johns Hopkins COVID 19 tracker lists 76,070 American's as recovered! We should also expect to see that number rapidly increase over the next few weeks as the it takes a while to be declared recovered. The CDC says that after the patient feels no more symptoms they have to take 2 COVID-19 tests 24 hours a part, and of course be negative, to be moved to the recovered column.
So when we look at countries where it hit first, we see more people have recovered. For example Spain only had 208,000 cases compared to our 834,000. Yet they're already up to 85,915 recoveries and Italy has had a total of 187,000 cases with 54,543 recoveries.
More good news from CNN who reports that patients who were taking part in a clinical trial of COVID-19 patients suffering with severe respiratory symptoms and fever, were able to leave the hospital on average after less than a week of treatment, with the drug remdesivir. The World Health Organization had organized these trials last month.
More good news from Los Angeles where researchers at the Univ of Southern California (the fake USC) have discovered the percentage of people who have the antibody in their system indicates that many more people have already had COVID-19 than is currently thought. Channel 4 LA reports 442,000 potential cases compared to the 14,000 cases they had on the books. If true the mortality rate is a fraction of what it's been projected so far. Also if this is true for the entire country and not just southern California then the dreaded 2nd wave the CDC Director is predicting this Fall won't be anywhere near as bad.
And finally for those of us in the midlands of South Carolina we live in the most densely populated area of the state which sadly means more people will probably get sick. But the good news is two fold! First is when you look at cases per 100,000 people, if you had over 1000 cases that would be only 1% of the population. For example in areas of Georgia like Randolph county they're at 2136 per 100,000. They means 2% of the people in that county have been diagnosed with it. The worst county in SC is Clarendon with 356 per 100,000. That's only because they don't have 100,000 people in the county. There's only 120 people who have actually been confirmed with it. Richland is down at 158 per 100,000 and Lexington is at 92 per 100,000. The state as a whole is currently at 86 per 100,000! And well over 95% who get sick will be fine in 3 or 4 weeks. The other good news is Dr Fauci and others believe that heat and humidity disrupt the virus. "The concept that when you're dealing with a respiratory born virus, that when you get from the cold to the warm weather there's a diminution in spread, that is not unreasonable because we see that with influenza". And if COVID-19 behaves like other coronaviuses like SARS then it's really in trouble when it gets hot. As a 2011 study concluded, virus viability was rapidly lost (>3 log10) at higher temperatures and higher relative humidity.
So where else would you rather be this Summer than Famously Hot (and humid) Columbia?!?!