Lunchtime pandemic reading.
Standard disclaimer: this is a roundup of informative pieces I've read that interest me on the severity of the crisis and how to manage it. I am not a qualified medical expert in ANY sense; at best I am reasonably well-read laity. ALWAYS prioritize advice from qualified healthcare experts over some person on Facebook.
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What a difference 21 days makes. Almost all of the United States is now in uncontrolled spread.
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Planetary situation report. "It's now a six months since the World Health Organization declared coronavirus, a global emergency and back then, very few people had any idea just how virulent it was going to be. In southern Australia, authorities declared a state of disaster this weekend after a big spike in cases. For the people of Melbourne. It's back to strict lockdown and an 8pm curfew. And there are setbacks in Britain to our assessment is that we should now squeeze that brake pedal, squeeze that brake pedal in order to keep the virus under control. So millions in normal In Britain, who had been getting back to something like normal are facing fresh restrictions. Across Europe with an uptick in infections mask wearing is now strictly enforced even at the beach. French and German officials are so worried they started free COVID testing at airports. While in Berlin, a huge right wing crowd fed up with all the restrictions marched in protest.
But Europe's infection rate about 8000 new cases a day is dwarfed by the disaster unfolding in India 50,000 new cases a day especially in poor and overcrowded slums, which puts India on course to overtake the United States as having the worst outbreak on Earth. South Africa is facing a crisis too, with three times as many COVID deaths as it had a month ago. And in a radical concession to COVID. Saudi Arabia has cut the number of pilgrims Running to Mecca and this year's hods from 2 million to a scant and socially distance 10,000. These recent upticks in Europe followed broad loosening of the restrictions and public health officials think that people just stopped being careful enough."
Source:
Commentary: India is particularly concerning. Why? So many products, especially pharmaceuticals and medications, are made in India, either wholly or in part. Many, many supply chains run through India and China, and while we saw some end-user supply chain disruptions in the early part of the year, China got a handle on their outbreak and contained it. It does not look like India will be able to follow suit as easily.
What does this mean for you? A large number of agricultural and pharmaceutical products could be at risk if India isn't able to get their outbreak under control. If you haven't been keeping your medicine chest and pantry stocked, now is a good time to restock. Supply lines are stable for the moment for products like acetaminophen, ibuprofen, etc. Make sure you have enough on hand (without hoarding) to let you go a month or two without needing to resupply. The same is true for your prescription medications.
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Dr. Scott Gottlieb. " I think we should try to open the schools, we should lean forward here because of all the reasons why it's important to get kids back into the classroom here in Connecticut, we probably will have the opportunity to open schools, the positivity rates very low, they have good testing and tracking in place. But we need to prevent outbreaks in the schools. There's a lot we don't know about this virus, the virus probably hasn't infected that many kids relative to flu, certainly. And so we don't want to see this become epidemic and children. I think this is complicated by the fact that there's inflammation on both sides of this debate to really sort of inform the debate and harden positions. We've seen schools open in other countries successfully without outbreaks, albeit with a lot of precaution put into place and we've seen some are camps opened here with pretty dense outbreaks. There was a report out of the CDC in Georgia where summer camps opened. 58% of the campers were tested 76% were infected. We saw schools open in Israel, that triggered large outbreaks in those schools and may have been behind a resurgence in the epidemic in that country. So there's anecdotes and experiences on both sides of this debate. I think to counsel enough caution, that if we do reopen schools, I think we should try to I think many parts of the country will have that opportunity. We should take every precaution to try to prevent outbreaks. And that also includes protecting teachers teachers need to be thought of as frontline workers in these situations and given given proper protective equipment and ways to keep themselves safe in the classroom.
I think we can be optimistic perhaps that we're going to have probably a less significant flu season than we anticipated. Flu isn't epidemic in the southern hemisphere and maybe we found a happy medium between strict lockdowns and just Getting this spread unfettered. And we've found sort of the middle ground that we'll keep this at bay when you look at certain states like Connecticut and some others as well, I'm just happened to be familiar with Connecticut, where they've taken a mix of options to keep this at bay targeted mitigation with universal masking."
Source:
Commentary: One of the interesting things to note was that early on, we saw Hong Kong's flu season come to an abrupt end as that nation masked up and distanced. Hopefully, as we enter the fall and winter, people will maintain their diligence about COVID-19 and in doing so, also cut short the Northen Hemisphere flu season as well. The worst case scenario is that people get lax and incur a double whammy of flu and COVID-19 - a combination that would be disastrous.
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COVID-19 present a wide spectrum of outcomes. "The list of lingering maladies from COVID-19 is longer and more varied than most doctors could have imagined. Ongoing problems include fatigue, a racing heartbeat, shortness of breath, achy joints, foggy thinking, a persistent loss of sense of smell, and damage to the heart, lungs, kidneys, and brain.
The likelihood of a patient developing persistent symptoms is hard to pin down because different studies track different outcomes and follow survivors for different lengths of time. One group in Italy found that 87% of a patient cohort hospitalized for acute COVID-19 was still struggling 2 months later. Data from the COVID Symptom Study, which uses an app into which millions of people in the United States, United Kingdom, and Sweden have tapped their symptoms, suggest 10% to 15% of people—including some “mild” cases—don’t quickly recover. But with the crisis just months old, no one knows how far into the future symptoms will endure, and whether COVID-19 will prompt the onset of chronic diseases.
Researchers are now facing a familiar COVID-19 narrative: trying to make sense of a mystifying illness. Distinct features of the virus, including its propensity to cause widespread inflammation and blood clotting, could play a role in the assortment of concerns now surfacing. “We’re seeing a really complex group of ongoing symptoms,” says Rachael Evans, a pulmonologist at the University of Leicester.
Survivor studies are starting to probe them. This month, researchers across the United Kingdom including Evans launched a study that will follow 10,000 survivors for 1 year to start, and up to 25 years. Ultimately, researchers hope not just to understand the disease’s long shadow, but also to predict who’s at highest risk of lingering symptoms and learn whether treatments in the acute phase of illness can head them off.
Although scientists hope they’ll learn how to avert chronic symptoms and help patients currently suffering, this latest chapter in the COVID-19 chronicle has been sobering. The message many researchers want to impart: Don’t underestimate the force of this virus. “Even if the story comes out a little scary, we need a bit of that right now,” Iwasaki says, because the world needs to know how high the stakes are. “Once the disease is established, it’s really hard to go backward.”"
Source: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/brain-fog-heart-damage-covid-19-s-lingering-problems-alarm-scientists
Commentary: The whole article is a necessary read. COVID-19, because of the way it attacks the body through ACE2 receptors, can and does attack many different systems at once. It may get in through the respiratory system, but it doesn't stay there. It will take months, perhaps even years to understand why some people get sick and stay sick.
Don't play the odds. Protect yourself, protect others.
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Singapore taking travel seriously. "Singapore will make some incoming travellers wear an electronic monitoring device to ensure that they comply with coronavirus quarantines as the city-state gradually reopens its borders, authorities said on Monday.
From August 11, the devices will be given to incoming travellers, including citizens and residents, from a select group of countries who will be allowed to isolate at home rather than at a state-appointed facility.
Similar measures using electronic wristbands to track peoples’ movements during quarantine have been used in Hong Kong and South Korea.
Travellers to Singapore are required to activate the device, which use GPS and Bluetooth signals, upon reaching their home and will receive notifications on the device which they must acknowledge.
Any attempt to leave home or tamper with the device will trigger an alert to the authorities.
Hong Kong in March introduced a scheme for incoming travellers to use a slim electronic wristband, similar to a tag worn by hospital patients, to enforce quarantines for arriving passengers. South Korea has also used such wristbands connected to smartphone apps for those who violate quarantine.
Singapore, which has not given details on what the device will look like, said in a statement that it will not store any personal data and does not have any voice or video recording function.
Under the Infectious Diseases Act, punishments can be fines of up to S$10,000 ($7,272) or imprisonment of up to six months, or both. It has also revoked the work passes of foreigners who flouted the rules."
Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-singapore-wearable-idUSKBN24Z0D9
Commentary: Contrast this with the voluntary quarantines and reporting in the United States and it becomes clear why some countries are more successful at containing COVID-19 than others. However, one does not need a punitive-only solution; suppose while you were traveling you earned $X per day to keep a tracker on, and if you took it off, you forfeited the prize and the authorities were notified? Americans in particular love prizes, giveaways, and contests - perhaps there's a different, but equally effective angle. An idea to propose to legislators in your locale.
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A reminder of the simple daily habits we should all be taking.
1. Wash/sanitize your hands every time you are in or out of your home for any reason. Consider also spraying the bottoms of your shoes with a general disinfectant (alcohol/bleach/peroxide) when you return home. Remember that cleaners are never to be ingested or injected.
2. Wear a mask when out of your home and if going to a high risk area, wear goggles. Respirators are back in stock at online retailers, too.
3. Stay home as much as possible. Minimize your contact with others and maintain physical distance of at LEAST 6 feet / 2 meters. Avoid indoor places as much as you can; indoor spaces spread the disease through aerosols and distance is less effective at mitigating your risks.
4. Get your personal finances in order now. Cut all unnecessary costs.
5. Replenish your supplies as you use them. Avoid reducing your stores to pre-pandemic levels in case an outbreak causes unexpected supply chain disruptions.
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Common misinformation debunked!
There is no genomic evidence at all that COVID-19 arrived before 2020 in the United States and therefore no hidden herd immunity:
Source:
There is no evidence SARS-CoV-2 was engineered, nor that it escaped a lab somewhere.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/01/29/experts-debunk-fringe-theory-linking-chinas-coronavirus-weapons-research/
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/05/anthony-fauci-no-scientific-evidence-the-coronavirus-was-made-in-a-chinese-lab-cvd/
There is no evidence a flu shot increases your COVID-19 risk.
Source: https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/no-evidence-that-flu-shot-increases-risk-of-covid-19/
Source: https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa626/5842161
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A common request I'm asked is who I follow. Here's a public Twitter list of many of the sources I read.
https://twitter.com/i/lists/1260956929205112834
This list is biased by design. It is limited to authors who predominantly post in the English language. It is heavily biased towards individual researchers and away from institutions. It is biased towards those who publish or share research, data, papers, etc. I have made an attempt to follow researchers from different countries, and also to make the list reasonably gender-balanced, because multiple, diverse perspectives on research data are essential.