Lunchtime Pandemic Reading, 12-March-2021
The $16 trillion virus
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.
This is also available as an email newsletter at https://lunchtimepandemic.substack.com if you prefer the update in your inbox.
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The spread of P.1 in Brazil continues. "Q about Brazil:
“The situation in Brazil has worsened”, says @DrMikeRyan. “Very high incidence of cases and increasing deaths across the country, certainly a very very rapid increase in ICU bed occupancy with many areas around the country running out of ICU beds."
“There is very little resilience and capacity left in the system”, says @DrMikeRyan. % of respiratory patients testing positive for #covid19 is going up. Case fatality rate also rising reflecting “the pressure on the system and the lack of time that healthcare professionals have"
“We certainly would like to see Brazil going in a different direction”, says @DrMikeRyan. "But it's going to take a huge effort for that to happen.""
Source:
Commentary: Brazil is in rough shape right now, and unlike some of the wealthier nations, many poorer nations are struggling to even get access to vaccines. It's going to be a rough time for them in the next few months.
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How much has COVID-19 cost? In the United States, $16 trillion. "The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is the greatest threat to prosperity and wellbeing facing the United States since the Great Depression. This viewpoint aggregates mortality, morbidity, anxiety, and direct economic losses to estimate the total cost of the pandemic in the United States, on the optimistic assumption that it will be substantially contained by the fall of 2021. These costs far exceed those associated with conventional recessions and the Iraq War, and are in the same range as those associated with global climate change. However, increased investment in testing and contact tracing could have economic benefits that are at least a 30 times greater than the estimated costs of the investment in these approaches.
Since the onset of COVID-19 in March, 60 million claims have been filed for unemployment insurance. Prior to COVID-19, the the greatest number of weekly new unemployment insurance claims (based on data from 1967 on) was 695,000 in the week of October 2, 1982. For 20 weeks beginning in late March, 2020 new unemployment claims exceeded 1 million per week; as of September 20, new claims hover just below that amount.
Recessions feed on themselves. Workers not at work have less to spend, and thus subsequent business revenue declines. The federal government offset much of the initial loss due to the shutdown, which has averted what would likely have been a new Great Depression. But the virus is ongoing, and thus full recovery is not expected until well into the future. The Congressional Budget Office projects an estimated total of $7.6 trillion in lost output over the next decade.1
While putting a value on a given human life is impossible, economists have developed the technique of valuing “statistical lives”— that is measuring how much it is worth to people to reduce their risk of mortality or morbidity. This approach has been used on a standard basis in US regulatory policy and in discussions of global health policy.2
The estimated cumulative financial costs of the COVID-19 pandemic related to the lost output and health reduction is shown in Table 1. The total cost is estimated at more than $16 trillion, or roughly 90% of annual GDP of the United States. For a family of 4, the estimated loss would be nearly $200,000. About half of this amount is the lost income from the COVID-19-induced recession; the remainder is the economic impact of shorter and less healthy life.
Output losses of this magnitude are immense. The lost output in the Great Recession was only one-quarter as large. The economic loss is more than twice the total monetary outlay for all the wars the US has fought since 9/11, including those in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. (6).6 By another metric, this cost is roughly the estimate of damages (such as from decreased agricultural productivity and more frequent severe weather events) from 50 years of climate change. (7).7"
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7604733/
Commentary: When we consider the stimulus packages done so far, they are just a small fraction of the overall cost of a pandemic. The last point is critical - we need to think seriously about how to prepare for more pandemics in such a way that we aren't taken by surprise in the future. And that requires people and investment - but that's a small price to pay compared to the huge price tag that this pandemic has come with.
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Vaccine hesitancy along political lines. "Among those who responded to the survey, 73% of Black people and 70% of White people said that they either planned to get a coronavirus vaccine or had done so already; 25% of Black respondents and 28% of white respondents said they did not plan to get a shot. Latino respondents were slightly more likely to say they would not get vaccinated at 37%, compared with 63% who either had or intended to get a vaccine.
The findings come amid concerns in some states over who is getting vaccinated and who is not, with data in some states suggesting stark racial disparities. The pandemic has had an outsized impact on people of color, especially Black Americans.
While there was little racial difference in who wants the vaccine, there were sharp partisan differences, according to the poll.
Among Republican men, 49% said they did not plan to get the shot, compared with just 6% of Democratic men who said the same. Among those who said they supported President Trump in the 2020 election, 47% said they did not plan to get a coronavirus vaccine compared with just 10% of Biden supporters.
Similarly, compared with "big city" respondents, rural residents were more likely to say that they did not plan to take a coronavirus vaccine."
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/03/12/976172586/little-difference-in-vaccine-hesitancy-among-white-and-black-americans-poll-find
Commentary: It's good to see that racial differences aren't creating hesitancy (access is a different story). As for the political, I'm not surprised. I do hope they eventually come around.
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NOVOVAX vaccine comes online.
"CONCLUSIONS
• 100% protection against severe disease, including all hospitalization and death
• United Kingdom: 96.4% efficacy against original COVID-19, 86.3% efficacy against predominant variant (post-hoc)
• South Africa: 55.4% efficacy against predominant B.1.351 escape variant in HIV-negative participants"
Source: https://www.novavax.com/sites/default/files/2021-03/Novavax-Clinical-Trial-Data-Factsheet-2021-03-11-FINAL.pdf
Commentary: This is excellent news - a fourth, highly effective vaccine is now available. Every day, we take another step closer to eliminating the pandemic and bringing life closer to normal.
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A reminder of the simple daily habits we should all be taking.
1. Always wear the best mask available to you when out of your home and you'll be around other people. Respirators are back in stock at online retailers, too. Wear an N95/FFP2/KN95 that's NIOSH-approved or better mask if you can obtain it. If you can't get an N95 mask, wear a surgical mask with a cloth mask over it.
2. Get vaccinated as soon as you're able to.
3. Wash/sanitize your hands every time you are in or out of your home for any reason.
4. Stay home as much as possible. Minimize your contact with others and maintain physical distance of at LEAST 6 feet / 2 meters, preferably more. Avoid indoor places as much as you can; indoor spaces spread the disease through aerosols and distance is less effective at mitigating your risks.
5. Get your personal finances in order now. Cut all unnecessary costs.
6. Replenish your supplies as you use them. Avoid reducing your stores to pre-pandemic levels in case an outbreak causes unexpected supply chain disruptions.
7. Ventilate your home as frequently as weather and circumstances permit, except when you share close airspaces with other residences (like a window less than a meter away from a neighboring window).
8. Masks must fit properly to work. Here's how to properly fit a mask:
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Common misinformation debunked!
There is no mercury or other heavy metals in the Pfizer mRNA vaccine. https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/09/1013538/what-are-the-ingredients-of-pfizers-covid-19-vaccine/
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.
This is also available as an email newsletter at https://lunchtimepandemic.substack.com if you prefer the update in your inbox.
What are you learning about FL and their lax rules not having the comparatively significant impact public health experts expected?