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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In this interview with Dr. Scott Gottlieb, on distribution of remdesivir as a therapeutic: "Well, look, I think we need to get a better system in place, if the government's going to take control the supply of these kinds of therapeutics. And they don't necessarily have to do that they chose to do that they need to have a good system in place for allocation here. In this case, Gilead gave a half a million doses to the federal government, they distributed initially about 4000 in New York City, which is a city of them familiar with, I think they should have been trying to push out as many doses as fast as possible because more supplies coming into the market. There's no reason to hoard it or hold on to it. And so hopefully, when they start to contemplate the next therapeutic, and it will be more therapeutics in the fall or vaccine and how they allocate that they're going to have a better system in place based on clinical need."
Source:
This is alarming, to say the least. The US federal government has done an appallingly poor job of managing PPE and other critical supplies for the pandemic, going as far as to confiscate supplies from individual states. If they do the same with therapeutics and vaccines, they risk kill thousands or even millions more. Until the federal government has its act together, better to let states manage themselves.
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New forecasts from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation's Dr. Christopher Murray. "So our projections through till August 4 are up, we're up to 137,000 deaths that we expect to see. And that's the effect of two things going in opposite directions. Some goodish news coming out of New York and New Jersey, Michigan where the death cases and death numbers are are coming down faster than expected. Some other states where cases and deaths are going up more than we expected the Illinois and then Arizona, Florida, California as examples of that, and so it's the balancing of those There's driving our numbers. And then of course, we're seeing just explosive increases in mobility in a number of states that we expect will translate into more cases and deaths, you know, in 10 days from now. Well, what's driving the change is simply put the the rise in mobility, and that's the key driver. We're seeing in some states, you know, a 20 percentage point increase in just 10 days in mobility. And that will translate into more human contact more transmission."
Source:
In short, mobility assists the virus. Staying home hinders it. 20% more mobility leads to 20% more infection, which leads ot 20% more negative outcomes.
Keep yourself and others safe by staying away from other people as much as possible. If you're going to be out of home, go somewhere other people aren't. Yes, it's almost Memorial Day in the United States, the start of vacation season. What can you do to get a change of scenery without being near other people?
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Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton, on the most recent jobs report. "And there's many reasons for that the Bureau of Labor Statistics went to great effort to try to incorporate the loss in business formation we already saw in the month of March to make the estimates for those small businesses that they can't directly survey in the establishment server, those payroll numbers to try to capture that but you know, we know that the numbers accelerated in the month of April and there's just no way to do that the numbers the system was never designed to capture credit. Like this, the unemployment rate at 14.7%, the highest since the Great Depression. Also an understatement because we lost a lot of workers that were no longer participating in the labor force or classified as unemployed. Again, that's a residual of how we used to count the data not for a crisis like this, if you didn't look for a job in the five weeks covered by this particular survey for four weeks, you are not classified as unemployed. So ahead, yet another wave of layoffs in July, the same time that state and local governments will have to be making draconian cuts because they're short on their budgets. So you know, this is really going to be a real struggle to reopen. And even though a lot of the unemployment was said was temporary people are on temporary furloughs, and they think they're going to come back. The reality is that idea that we're not going to ramp up the economy enough over the summer with social distancing still prevalent to be able to sustain the kind of workforce we did in the past and many businesses will permanently shut her."
Source:
One of the key highlights in this interview is that the systems we have for tracking things like unemployment were not designed to handle a situation like this pandemic.
This whole interview is full of useful knowledge. I recommend watching the entire thing.
Expect a second economic shockwave in July. A lot of factors will be hitting all at once.
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Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt: "One way to think about this is that this one month, two months period has brought forth 10 years of forward change. So all of a sudden, the internet is no longer optional is fundamental to doing business to operate to live our lives, all sorts of much higher expectations as a result. For example, we need much better broadband in the rural areas. Another example would be telehealth. 80% of the visits to doctors are right now on telehealth, people have been wanting this to happen for years now using remote monitoring. We can actually measure everybody and do it remotely and then only if you have to use And to see the doctor. And by the way that's more convenient for you as a, as a patient."
Source:
Schmidt is exactly right. For good or ill, the pandemic has forced the world digital, and a fair percentage of things won't change back. Remote working is here to stay in some capacity - not full time, but certainly companies can no longer argue that it's impossible.
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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.
2. Wear gloves and a mask when out of your home.
3. Stay home as much as possible.
4. Get your personal finances in order now. Cut all unnecessary costs.
5. Donate any PPE you can. https://getusppe.org/give/
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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/?fbclid=IwAR1BsCnM8EzQkjPCOeyJO00xeOkzBPTlNSNdewV_0WBtDUbRBRizNrgljxg