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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How fast can Delta change the course of your pandemic experience? Just ask the Netherlands.
Source:
Commentary: Delta wins because it is crazy contagious. Keep unvaccinated people away from it.
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Experts strongly suggesting the UK not throw its hands up in the air and surrender to COVID-19. "Increasing social mixing gradually rather than abruptly would delay the peak and reduce the size of the third wave of COVID-19 in England.
This is according to a new analysis by the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team. They say that there is uncertainty around the potential magnitude of the third wave, which will also depend on factors including how effective the vaccine proves against the Delta variant, and levels of vaccine coverage.
The team estimate that if social mixing only gradually increases after the government’s step 4, between 19th July – 1st September, the third wave will be both delayed and reduced in size compared with a scenario where social contacts increase abruptly following step 4.
The report, along with work from the University of Warwick and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), is informing England’s ‘roadmap’ out of lockdown, has been reviewed by SPI-M and SAGE, but not yet by a peer-reviewed journal.
With the Delta variant now dominant across all regions of England, the researchers explored the impact of three different scenarios, including a sudden increase in contact rates on 19th July, a more gradual increase over a six-week period, and step 4 being delayed until 16th August. The analysis also accounted for the uncertainty in key parameters, notably the effectiveness of vaccines against the Delta variant.
Across all scenarios explored, the team estimated that lifting restrictions on 19th July in the context of Delta could lead to a significant but highly uncertain third wave of hospitalisations and death with the total number of deaths ranging from 9,400 (estimate range: 4,600 to 19,800) in the most optimistic, to 115,800 (estimate range: 81,700 to 143,600) deaths in the most pessimistic scenario.
They found that the scenario where contact rates increase gradually after step 4 on 19th July led to substantially lower numbers of hospitalisations and deaths than the other scenarios examined.
Professor Neil Ferguson, from the School of Public Health at Imperial College London, said: “The lifting of mandatory restrictions on 19th July is a calculated risk. If individuals remain cautious in the face of rising levels of infection, our analysis suggests that the third wave will be substantially smaller than if contacts immediately revert to pre-pandemic levels. However, a large third wave of infections is inevitable if mandatory restrictions are lifted. It is much harder to predict what this will translate into in terms of hospitalisations and deaths. The link between cases and hospitalisations has been weakened but not severed.”"
Source: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/226213/magnitude-third-wave-highly-uncertain-suggests/
Commentary: Simply giving up is a terrible strategy.
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New research on mRNA vaccines and pregnancy. Vaccines highly effective and safe. "As mass vaccination campaigns against COVID-19 accelerate worldwide, there remains only limited evidence regarding vaccine effectiveness (VE) among pregnant women. Pregnant women have been shown to be at risk for severe COVID-19, resulting in adverse obstetrics outcomes, and their immune system is known to undergo alterations during pregnancy. Phase III clinical trials of the approved mRNA COVID-19 vaccines excluded pregnant women, yet current guidelines encourage offering the vaccine to pregnant women. In this study, we examine data from Israel’s largest healthcare organization to evaluate the effectiveness of the BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine among pregnant women.
10,861 vaccinated women were matched to an identical number of unvaccinated controls. Estimated VE from 7 through 28 days after the second dose was 97% (95% CI 91%-100%) for any documented infection, 96% (86-100%) for infections with documented symptoms, and 85% (32%-100%) for COVID-19-related hospitalization. Only one event of severe illness was observed in the unvaccinated group, and no deaths were observed in either group -- insufficient incidence for estimating VE for these outcomes.
The BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine was found to have high VE among pregnant women. Since high VE has been reported as one of the strongest predictors of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among pregnant women, the high VE estimates found in this study have the potential to increase vaccine acceptance in this group. In addition, the present VE estimates are similar to those reported in the general population for the same variants, suggesting that it may be possible to infer the VE for pregnant women from studies in the general population for both current and future variants."
Source: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-665725/v1
Commentary: Excellent but unsurprising news that pregnant women are reacting well to the vaccine and that it's highly effective in them.
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Indonesia as a new epicenter. "Indonesia has overtaken India as Asia's new epicenter for the coronavirus pandemic, with daily infections exceeding 40,000 for two straight days and officials warning that the delta variant is spreading outside the most populous island of Java.
Southeast Asia's largest economy on Tuesday reported 47,899 new infections, a record high, up from 40,427 the previous day. India's cases, meanwhile, dropped to 32,906 from 37,154.
More alarming is that despite having more daily infections, Indonesia's population of 270 million population is just a fifth of India's. Indonesia now has around 132 cases per million people, compared with India 26 as of Sunday, according to ourworldindata.org.
While the daily death toll on Tuesday was less than half India's 2,020, Indonesia's per capita count is higher -- average 3 per million people, compared with less than one in the south Asian country.
The figures do not take into account Indonesia's poor record of testing and tracing. The Southeast Asia's case positivity rate -- the percentage of confirmed infections vs people tested -- has hovered around 30% over the past week, while the figure for India's 2%.
Health Minister Budi Sadikin said Tuesday that bed occupancy rates for COVID-19 patients in 12 provinces have exceeded 70% -- half of them on Java and the rest on other major Indonesian islands. In the nation's capital, Jakarta, the occupancy rate is close to 90% despite the recent conversion of some facilities into hospitals just for the coronavirus."
Source: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Coronavirus/Indonesia-overtakes-India-to-become-Asia-s-COVID-epicenter
Commentary: We need to get vaccines to the entire planet, and quickly. Every time you have a major epicenter like this, new variants emerge, and as we've seen, each new generation of successful variants gets stronger and faster. Vaccinating the planet should be our species' top priority right now if we don't want the vaccines to be nullified quickly by future variants emerging from epicenters of uncontrolled spread.
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A reminder of the simple daily habits we should all be taking.
1. Wear the best mask available to you when you'll be around other people, even after you've been vaccinated. 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, and fulfill the full vaccine regimen. Remember that you are not vaccinated until everyone you live with is vaccinated. If you received an adenovirus vaccine (J&J/AstraZeneca), consider getting an mRNA single shot booster (Pfizer/Moderna) if permitted.
3. Wash/sanitize your hands every time you are in or out of your home.
4. Stay out of indoor spaces that aren't your home as much as practical. Minimize your contact with others and 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 basis in fact that COVID-19 vaccines can shed or otherwise harm people around you.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid19vaccine-reproductivepro-idUSL1N2MG256
There is no mercury or other heavy metals in the Pfizer mRNA vaccine.
Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/09/1013538/what-are-the-ingredients-of-pfizers-covid-19-vaccine/
There is no basis in fact that COVID-19 vaccines pose additional risks to pregnant women.
Source: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2104983
There is no genomic evidence at all that COVID-19 arrived before 2020 in the United States and therefore no hidden herd immunity:
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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/
Source: https://www.smh.com.au/national/are-we-ignoring-the-hard-truths-about-the-most-likely-cause-of-covid-19-20210601-p57x4r.html
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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Disclosures and Disclaimers
I declare no competing interests on anything I share related to COVID-19. I am employed by and am a co-owner in TrustInsights.ai, an analytics and management consulting firm. I have no clients and no business interests in anything related to COVID-19, nor do I financially benefit in any way from sharing information about COVID-19.
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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.