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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Today's issue is the Anthony Fauci special. After 3 hours of testimony (more than half of which was Senators talking to hear themselves talk and political posturing, thank goodness for transcripts where you can skip right past their hot air), Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Robert Redfield, and other actual experts weighed in on the current situation.
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On the current situation: "I am also quite concerned about what we are seeing evolve right now in several of the states. As you know, in four of the states, in Florida, Texas, California, and Arizona, more than 50% of the new infections are in those areas where we’re seeing surges. The things we need to do, I think you alluded to in your question to me. We’ve got to make sure that when states start to try and open again, they need to follow the guidelines that have been very carefully laid out, with regard to checkpoints. What we’ve seen in several states are different iterations of that, perhaps maybe in some, going too quickly and skipping over some of the checkpoints. But even in states in which the leadership, in the form of the governors and the mayors, did it right with the right recommendations, what we saw visually in clips and in photographs of individuals in the community, doing an all or none phenomenon, which is dangerous. And by all or none I mean, either be locked down or open up in a way where you see people at bars, not wearing masks, not avoiding crowds, not paying attention to physical distancing.
I think we need to emphasize the responsibility that we have, both as individuals and as part of a societal effort to end the epidemic, that we all have to play a part in that. And I think if you look at the visuals, what we saw were a lot of people who maybe felt that because they think they are invulnerable, and we know many young people are not, because they’re getting serious disease. That therefore, their getting infected has nothing at all to do with anyone else, when in fact, it does. Because if a person gets infected, they may not be symptomatic, but they could pass it to someone else, who passes it to someone else, who then makes someone’s grandmother, grandfather, sick uncle, or a leukemic child on chemotherapy, get sick and die. We’ve got to get that message out, that we are all in this together, and if we are going to contain this, we’ve got to contain it together.
We recommend masks for everyone on the outside, anyone who comes into contact in a crowded area. You should avoid crowds where possible, and when you’re outside and not have the capability of maintaining distance, you should wear a mask at all times."
On probable outcomes:
"I can’t make an accurate prediction [on outcomes], but it is going to be very disturbing, I will guarantee you that. Because when you have an outbreak in one part of the country, even though in other parts of the country, they’re doing well, they are vulnerable. I made that point very clearly last week at a press conference. We can’t just focus on those areas that are having the surge. It puts the entire country at risk. We are now having 40 plus thousand new cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day, if this does not turn around. And so I am very concerned.
I can’t make an estimation because that would have to be modeled out because when models are done and that’s where those original numbers came from, senator. As I’ve said, very often models are as good as the assumptions that you put into the model. And those assumptions often change depending upon what your response is. So I would really be hesitant to give a number that will come back and either be contradicted or overblown or under blown. But I think it’s important to tell you and the American public, that I’m very concerned because it could get very bad."
On the refusal of elected officials to listen to experts, and whether the pandemic is worse because of it:
"Yes, because the disregard of recommendations that come from authorities, only because it’s a recommendation. I think the attitude of pushing back from authority and pushing back on scientific data is very concerning. We’re in the middle of a catastrophic outbreak, and we really do need to be guided by scientific principles."
On what does and doesn't work for containment:
"Yeah. In addition, Senator, outdoor better than indoor. Bars, really not good. Really not good. Congregation at a bar inside is bad news. We’ve really got to stop that right now when you have areas that are surging like we see right now. But an answer to your question a little bit more granular, outdoor is always better than indoor. If you’re outdoor distanced, as Bob said, wear a mask if you can, but you can have some social interaction. The one point I want to make very briefly is that we should not look at the public health endeavors as being an obstruction to opening up. We should look at it as a vehicle to opening up so that you don’t want to just restrict everything, because people are not going to tolerate that. So you can get outdoors, you can interact. Wear a mask, try to avoid the close congregation of people, wash your hands often, but don’t just make it all or none. We’ve got to be able to get people to get out and enjoy themselves within the safe guidelines that we have, so make public health work for you as opposed to against you."
On shutdowns:
"One of the things that became clear, when we shut down as a nation, in reality, only about 50% of the nation shut down with regard to other things that were allowed. In many of the European countries, 90-95% of all activities were shut down, so that is one of the reasons why you saw, particularly in Italy, which shut down to a much greater extent than we did, the cases came way down in a sharp curve downward and then stayed. So it’s not only masks, it’s the fact that the countries in Europe and the other countries you have there had a much more uniform response. We’re a very heterogeneous country, and we had a heterogeneous response depending whether you are in the Northeast, Southern, West or what have you. So there’s a number of other factors, probably some that we still don’t even understand."
On the road ahead:
"One of the things that I would like to see is an appreciation on the part of our entire nation, of the importance of responding, as a nation as a whole, and not have a situation where when you have a challenge such as we have right now, we have very disparate responses. We’ve got to do it in a coordinated way because we are all in this together. The other thing I’d like to do now is to cement in our minds, as we bridge to the future, the fact that we cannot forget that what was thought to be unimaginable, turned out to be the reality that we’re facing right now. So it relates to the kind of appreciation that outbreaks happen and you have to deal with them in a very aggressive, proactive way."
Source:
Commentary: Procedurally, I'd like to see Senate hearings function like Reddit AMAs where questions get whittled down to the actual question and eliminate the hot air, so that experts can spend more time testifying.
Did we learn anything new? Yes. The guidance is now wear a mask outside the home always. Some states have guidance like "wear a mask if you can't distance"; that should now be upgraded to "wear a mask outside your home, without exception".
The other fact I didn't have a handle on was compliance. Most other nations got to 90% compliance with shutdowns, whereas America got to 50%, and we see this in the fact that we never really got out of the first wave, while others have.
The messaging around the 3Ws is one I think works well:
- Wear a mask
- Wash your hands
- Watch your distance
That's easy to remember, easy to share. Share it as much as you can.
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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.
2. Wear gloves and a mask when out of your home. Consider wearing a face shield if you can't breathe at all through a mask.
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.
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.