Editorial Comment By  Mark R. Payne DC

Every day we are bombarded with the bad news in the war on Covid 19.  Here are just a few that I googled just now for this article. I’m sure you get my drift here.

1. “Coronavirus updates: Seven-day average case total in the U.S. sets record for 27th straight day https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/05/coronavirus-update-us/

2. “New US record of highest single-day coronavirus case total set in Florida” https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-07-05-20-intl/h_14088621c03c826b24501f7fc8827661

3. “The outlook worsens in much of the U.S. as July begins with a crush of cases.” https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/coronavirus

4. “New Normal: How Will Things Change In Post Pandemic World”  https://www.npr.org/2020/04/27/845322553/new-normal-how-will-things-change-in-post-pandemic-world

 Every day we are bombarded with the message. This Covid virus is awful. Just awful. And it’s terrible. Just terrible.  And the media hits you with it. Every. Single. Minute. And even if it’s not exactly the end of the world, we are certainly being told that the end of the world we’ve always known and we better all just hunker down and get ready for the new normal. (Can you feel my sarcasm here…?)

But sarcasm aside, make no mistake. This stuff IS bad.  I’m in NO WAY minimizing Covid 19 or suggesting we take it lightly.  But sometimes, there’s genuine good news out there that’s just as important as all the scary headlines.  So, before you start digging a basement beneath the floor of your existing Covid-19 bunker, here’s some good news that probably won’t make it to your cable network.

There’s a new study underway by Wake Forest Baptist Health, a teaching and research hospital in Winston-Salem, NC. The results are shining an interesting light on the Covid-19 pandemic.  I became aware of this study over the holiday weekend when I ran across a great article dated 7-2-2020, by Steve Harrison and Claire Donnelly, reporters for WFAE 90.7 FM in Charlotte.  I have borrowed heavily from their article and ask their forgiveness as I wanted to share this with our friends and colleagues as soon as possible. I encourage everyone to link to and read their original work. https://www.wfae.org/post/wake-forest-covid-study-death-rate-severity-symptoms-lower-first-thought#stream/0

  First some background.

A. In early April, the hospital received $100,000 in funding from the NC state assembly to study both symptoms and blood findings from former patients of the Wake Forest Baptist Health system willing to participate in the project.

B.  The study is known as the Covid-19 Community Research Partnership.

C.  As of 6-30-2020, the study had enrolled 18,456 participants and has a stated goal of surveying over 500,000 volunteers.

D.  The state’s interest in the project was to gather information relevant to the management of the pandemic in North Carolina, including strategies for reopening the economy.

E. This study did not seek to determine whether or not patients might currently have the virus, but instead used a simple home blood test (finger prick) to determine which patients had already been exposed to the virus and were now producing antibodies. Additionally, the study used a questionnaire to determine the nature and severity of any symptoms the participants might have experienced. 

F. When the study began in early April, only around 1% of participants had been exposed to the virus.

G.  By mid May the picture was changing rapidly with “about 5%” of participants having been infected and now producing antibodies.

H. By June 21st, over 14% of participants were testing positive for antibodies, which was a 14 fold increase of the number of those who had been exposed and were now expressing immunity. And that’s only over about an 11 week period. That percentage is expected to continue to increase exponentially as more and more of the general public is exposed to the virus. But as you will see this rapid increase in exposure does NOT appear to be a bad thing as you might expect.

‘Harrison and Donnely interviewed John Sanders MD MPH, the chief of infectious disease at Wake Forest Baptist, who explained that this rapid increase is sort of a “double edged sword” in that while the number of infections is going up rapidly,  “... the vast majority of these people have very few or no symptoms.”  (emphasis ours)

In the interview, Sanders was quoted on three key points to keep in mind:

 1) the death rate is “lower than we have estimated”

 2) “The severity of symptoms is lower than we estimated” and 3) “the vast majority of people who were infected are going to do fine.” (emphasis ours)

 3) Finally, Sanders noted the robust nature of the data gathered so far, stating that “This data is as large and as significant as any other data that has been released from any other system in the world.” (emphasis ours)

This is a big study folks. And it’s getting bigger by the day. And even though this isn’t technically the type of peer reviewed study we normally cover here at Science In Brief, it is much too big a data set to ignore. Plus I just happen to think it’s something that people need to hear right now.

Here’s What It All Means.  

As of this writing here are the “official” numbers from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS).  The state has recorded a total of 74,529 confirmed cases out of a total of 1,051,846 completed tests which works out to an infection rate of 7.08% among those who have actually tested positive for the Covid 19 virus.  Of those infected, a total of 1,398 Covid related deaths have been recorded which gives us an “official” death rate of about 1.87%. First off, that’s a far cry from the doomsday numbers of 8-10 percent fatalities we were hearing in the early days of the pandemic. But actually it gets even better because these “official” numbers almost certainly aren’t telling us the whole story.

Wikipedia says there were 10,488,084 people in North Carolina as of 2019. Soooo, IF the Wake Forest Baptist data set turns out to be representative of the state as a whole, that means roughly 14 percent of North Carolinians have already encountered the virus and are now showing immunity! That works out to somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,470,000 people who have already encountered this virus, recovered fully, and are now demonstrating antibodies. Compare that number to the “official” figure of only 74,529 positive tests and you can see that the virus is far more widespread than previously thought and contrary to the knee jerk logic of the media, this is actually a good thing. Yes, people are getting exposed in large numbers and that will no doubt be devastating for the most vulnerable in the population. And while we don’t know yet exactly how these numbers will work out over the whole state, we do know that the vast majority are doing very well, recovering quickly and developing natural immunity. And the very best news of all is that all this data is starting to kick all those early, doomsday, death rate predictions, so many of us heard about back in the early spring, right to the curb.

 So now, just one more bit of arithmetic and we’re done. Promise.

Obviously we know the number of Covid related deaths (1398) with a pretty high degree of certainty. When we divide those 1398 deaths by the projected number of people who have may have already encountered the virus and are now showing immunity (1,470,000), the death rate plummets down to just 0.09%! IF these numbers hold anywhere close to true, that could put the lethality rate very close to that of seasonal flu which is widely reported at just 0.10%.  To be fair, this last bit is just my “back of the envelope” calculations and not a part of the Wake Forest Baptist study.

So, here’s my take on this.  In spite of the rising numbers of cases right now, things are actually getting better. We aren’t out of the woods quite yet and as always, more research is needed. But hopefully, if you took the time to read this far, you may find it encouraging that while yes, there is a lot more virus in the community than previously thought, the vast majority of folks are doing fine and Covid 19 may ultimately prove to be not nearly so lethal as we had previously thought.  I thought it appropriate to share this news at a time  when the media seems hell bent on putting the worst possible face on everything. We certainly still have a lot to learn about this pandemic, but I remain optimistic. I hope you will be as well. Stay safe.

For those of you who are interested, I have also done a video presentation on this subject. Here’s the link. https://youtu.be/4xeSIXDff1U. 

Best regards,

Mark R. Payne DC

Editor/Publisher Science In Brief

 References

Original Article by Harrison and Donnelly https://www.wfae.org/post/wake-forest-covid-study-death-rate-severity-symptoms-lower-first-thought#stream/0

Source for statistics NCDHHS website.  https://covid19.ncdhhs.gov/dashboard

Original Article by Harrison and Donnely- https://www.wfae.org/post/wake-forest-covid-study-death-rate-severity-symptoms-lower-first-thought#stream/0

Source for infection and death rate calculations. Casio Model MS-80TV Calculator. Input by yours truly. ;-)