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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Commentary: I hope an enduring lesson from this pandemic is that we go to look for credible data when we have scientific and medical questions. Yesterday, I went looking for information about food allergens for dogs and found what many people find for COVID-19 information: a host of wildly conflicting content out there on the general web. So I flipped over to Google Scholar and looked for the same kind of rigor that we look for with COVID-19 information - rigorous, scientifically valid studies. I found what I was looking for - a clinical study of protein-based allergens (#1 offender? duck meat) that I can now use to make decisions with.
That's something I hope we all take away from this pandemic - a willingness to delve into real scientific and medical information, rather than rely even on credible news media outlets alone. Not the crazy conspiracy theorist "do your own research" BS that inevitably leads to quackery, but finding credible, peer-reviewed research we can trust because the research was done properly and vetted independently.
Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27425427/ in case you're interested.
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Why is it taking so long for pediatric COVID-19 vaccines? "What’s happening behind the scenes? I believe the main reason data on coronavirus vaccines in children under 12 remain under embargo is that we became victims of our own success. For the first three months that the trials testing coronavirus vaccines in children under 12 were live (starting in late March and April), there simply were not enough coronavirus infections for the vaccines’ benefits to be detectable.* The early months of these trials precisely coincided with the lowest rates of coronavirus recorded at any time in the US since the pandemic began—a fact that was likely in no small part due to the success of the adult vaccination campaign here. By June, daily case counts had dropped 95% from the January peak.
This means that only the occasional harms of the vaccine were being detected early in the trial. Imagine if the authorities reported that this summer? My belief is that rather than risk the consequences of having to explain all of this to a risk-averse public, it was determined that the trials needed to be expanded so as to pick up more infections in the placebo group. That way, when the vaccinated and placebo groups were compared, the benefits of the vaccine would actually be apparent.
This is almost what was reported in the media, but not quite. In July, we were told that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked the vaccine companies to expand their trials to include more children in order to “detect rate side effects.” That just does not make any sense."
Source: https://insidemedicine.bulletin.com/212567207599593/
Commentary: The reality of the clinical trials process is that you need enough people enrolled for the data to be statistically valid. By the time kids started getting Delta at scale, the trials were already underway collecting much less data than they could have been.
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New data shows 11% of kids end up with long COVID. "More than 10 percent of Israeli children who were diagnosed with the coronavirus show signs of suffering from the so-called long COVID, the Health Ministry announced Monday.
According to the data, gathered from a follow-up survey of parents of 13,864 children aged 3-18 who had recovered from the virus, 11.2% reported symptoms of long COVID.
Of those who reported long-term symptoms, 1.8% of children under 12 and 4.6% of those aged 12 to 18 were still suffering from symptoms six months after the illness, the survey found, noting that the probability increased with age.
Among those 12 to 18, chances of long COVID were higher among those who had coronavirus symptoms. However, researchers also found long COVID even among 3.5% of the children who were asymptomatic when they tested positive.
More than 200,000 children under 18 have tested positive in Israel, with about half of them asymptomatic, the survey said.
“The meaning of this is that there are currently thousands of children in Israel suffering from long-term effects,” the statement said."
Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/more-than-10-of-israeli-kids-who-got-virus-now-suffer-from-long-covid-study/
Commentary: 1 in 9 odds for your kid ending up with long COVID are not great odds. Get them vaccinated if you can, and keep them protected as best as possible if you can't.
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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 people you don't live with, 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. Verify your mask's NIOSH certification here: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/usernotices/counterfeitResp.html
3. 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.
4. Wash/sanitize your hands every time you are in or out of your home.
5. Stay out of indoor spaces that aren't your home and away from people you don't live with 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.
6. Aim to have 3-6 months of living expenses on hand in case the pandemic gives another crazy plot twist to the economy.
7. Replenish your supplies as you use them. Avoid reducing your stores to pre-pandemic levels in case an outbreak causes unexpected supply chain disruptions.
8. 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).
9. Masks must fit properly to work. Here's how to properly fit a mask:
10. If you think you may have been exposed to COVID-19, purchase a rapid antigen test. This will detect COVID-19 only when you're contagious, so follow the directions clearly. https://amzn.to/3fLAoor
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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:
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/
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.