Here are three representative headlines from mainstream media last Friday:
“U.S. reports nearly 100,000 new cases in one day as infections surge in battleground states” – Washington Post
“Even as US coronavirus surge past 9 million, officials in many hard-hit states resist taking stronger action.” – Chicago Tribune
“The U.S. Hits the 9-Million Mark as Infections Keep Surging” – The New York Times
While New York City was the epicenter of COVID in the U.S. this past spring and part of the summer, on Friday, the same day The New York Times headlined the “Surging” “Infections,” the paper also had an article titled, “Virus Hospitalizations Are Up in N.Y.C. But This Time, It’s Different.”
The Times reported, “Patients with serious cases are spending less time in the hospital on average and are less likely to be put on ventilators. Fewer are dying.”
Dr. David Reich, President of Mount Sinai Hospital, stated that despite the rise in infections now as compared to August, “There is a much lower mortality rate.”
One of the key reasons for shorter hospital stays is the experience that doctors, nurses, and medical staff now have in getting a faster and more accurate diagnoses and far fewer of those admitted are seriously ill enough to require being hooked up to ventilators.
Second Wave… or Second Ripple?
On 6 September, CBS featured a story titled, “2nd wave of coronavirus could be weeks away, experts warn.”
On 26 September, NBC News posted this headline on its website: “Second COVID-19 wave could turn cracks in the hospital system into ‘earthquakes.’”
Dr. Mitchell Katz, Executive Director of NYC Health & Hospitals, the largest municipal health system in the country, compared the high rates of COVID hospitalizations last spring, which saw over 900 patients requiring ventilators in a day, to most recently when there were nine. He commented to The New York Times, “How can I call that a second wave?”
The Times noted, “A NYU/Langone Health study of more than 4,500 patients treated at its hospitals for Covid-19 from March to June found that outcomes began improving over time, even in the early months of the pandemic.”
Major Trend: Lower Death Rates Across the U.S. & England
Texas, which also was one of the hardest hit COVID areas in the country, has seen a similar significant drop in deaths and serious health issues from the virus. And not just recently.
On 13 August, a study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), titled, “Characteristics and Outcomes of COVID-19 Patients During Initial Peak and Resurgence in the Houston Metropolitan Area.” The study concluded that “a smaller proportion of surge 2 patients were admitted to the ICU (almost a 50 percent drop).” In addition, “Length of hospital stay was less (by over 2 ½ days).”
At the time of the study last summer, while the death rates in the greater Houston area had not dropped significantly, today is a different story. Dr. Robert A. Phillips, Chief Physician Executive at the Houston Methodist Hospital and the lead author of the JAMA study, confirmed, “The mortality rates are way lower now.”
Bio Space, which since 1985 has been providing news and information to the Life Science industry, reported on 27 October:
“The number of excess deaths in the United States is trending downward despite autumn upticks in COVID-19 incidents. For the first time since the COVID-19 epidemic began in the U.S., deaths have dropped below usual levels from prior years, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The most recent data (from the week ending October 10) showed excess deaths only 0 and 2.9 percent higher than historic data. These figures are based on death certificates and analyzed by the National Center for Health Statistics within the CDC.”
On 26 October, NPR reported, “Studies Point to Big Drop In COVID-19 Death Rates.” The article noted:
“Doctors around the country say that they’re doing a lot of things differently in the fight against COVID-19 and that treatment is improving. In March and April, you got put on a breathing machine, and we asked your family if they wanted to enroll you into some different trials we were participating in, and we hoped for the best,” says Khalilah Gates, a critical care pulmonologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. “Six plus months into this, we kind of have a rhythm, and so it has become an everyday standard patient for us at this point in time.”
Global Trend
In England, the trend toward lower death rates from COVID-19 has also been documented. Dr. John Dennis, Research Fellow in Medical Statistics at the University of Exeter Medical School, was lead author of a 3 August study that concluded:
“There has been a substantial mortality improvement in people admitted to critical care with COVID-19 in England, with markedly lower mortality in people admitted in mid-April and May compared to earlier in the pandemic… Possible causes include the introduction of effective treatments as part of clinical trials and a falling critical care burden.”
The New York Times reported, “By mid-June, clinical trials in England had proven that treatment with a cheap steroid drug, dexamethasone, reduced deaths of patients on ventilators by one-third and death in patients getting supplemental oxygen by one-fifth.”
The article continued, “Doctors also weren’t aware at first that the Covid-19 illness caused by the new virus caused life-threatening blood clots. Now patients are put on blood thinners early on in treatment when necessary.”
Bio Space, in the report cited above about declining death rates in the U.S., stated, “Globally, India and Brazil report steep, steady decreases in reported incidents, while cases in the U.K., France, Spain, Russia – all among the most affected countries – are increasing. Yet, despite the increases, mortality rates appear to be falling there, too.”
On 28 September, Reuters reported,
“Researchers in France estimate that country’s case fatality rate fell by 46% by the end of July compared with the end of May, driven by an increase in testing, improved medical care and a greater proportion of infections occurring in younger people, who are less likely to experience severe disease.”
On 16 September, AP reported,
“About 12 million people in South Africa have probably been infected with the coronavirus, but that startlingly high number has not caused a similarly high death rate.” According to South Africa’s health minister Dr. Zweli Mkhize, at that time last September “South Africa is also seeing declines in hospital admissions, people in intensive care units, and deaths attributed to COVID-19.”
As for the rest of the African continent, the BBC reported last week, “New deaths have been on a decline on the continent for two weeks now after being on an upward trend. The Africa CDC says there was a 15% decrease in news deaths the past week compared to the previous week.”
TRENDPOST: As noted frequently in the Trends Journal, Sweden did not lock down and its death rate from the virus is much lower than Spain, Italy, France, Spain, the U.K., etc. Yet, the Swedish coronavirus success story has been continually ignored by the mainstream media as their headlines blare “European Cases on the Rise.”
And, when they do report on Sweden, they do so in a derogatory manner, highlighting the negatives while eliminating the positive outcomes.