COVID UPDATE 11/6 4:38PM PST

The USA is still awaiting the official answer to the question of who will be the next President, and it is increasingly becoming apparent that it will be Joe Biden. 

As the country waits, unfortunately, COVID cases climb.

The USA has recorded several days this week of new infections totaling over 100K per day, and deaths are also unfortunately rising.

This brings up the importance of the public continuing to heed the advice of doctors and medical experts, who continue to remind us all that physical distancing is still very important. In fact, a new study just published today in "Science Advances" show that approximately 59K lives could have been saved in America if social distancing was imposed only two weeks earlier than it was in May.

The study is explained here from CNN -

"More than 1 million US Covid-19 cases and more than 59,000 deaths could have been prevented by early May if mitigation steps had been implemented two weeks earlier, according to a modeling study published Friday in Science Advances.

Sen Pei, a research scientist at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and colleagues built a Covid-19 transmission model that looked at all US counties from February 21 through May 3.

Broad coronavirus transmission control measures were announced March 15, they wrote. The study found that starting interventions such as social distancing and business closures a week earlier, on March 8, led to 600,000 fewer confirmed cases and 32,000 fewer deaths. Beginning such interventions two weeks earlier, on March 1, resulted in more than 1 million fewer confirmed cases and more than 59,000 fewer deaths.

Pei and colleagues wrote that they recognize that protracted shutdowns are a burden, but said it’s vital to balance a return to social and economic activity with avoidance of viral spread. South Korea, Vietnam, New Zealand and Germany “have shown that such a balance may be achievable; the strategies adopted in these countries could be used to guide policies in the US and elsewhere.”

“Our results demonstrate the dramatic impact that earlier interventions could have had on the COVID-19 pandemic in the US,” the authors wrote. “Looking forward, the findings underscore the need for continued vigilance when control measures are relaxed.”

​And, they write, “rapid detection of increasing case numbers and fast re-implementation of control measures is needed to control rebound outbreaks of COVID-19.”

The researchers note their experiments are based on idealized assumptions. It’s complicated to initiate and implement social distancing rules during an outbreak, and compliance might lag, they write.

But, “given that more effective control of COVID-19 has been maintained to date in countries such as South Korea, New Zealand, Vietnam and Iceland, these cases and deaths could have been averted, not merely postponed.”

Click here to read the update page on CNN.
And click here to read the study in Science Advances.

Please be safe, keep a mask on, and please stay physically distant when possible, friends.

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