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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An excellent thread by Jeremy Konyndyk that makes a helpful analogy between opening up and a swimming pool. "Alright. There is a LOT of chatter on this website bashing those who are saying most of the country still isn't ready for a safe reopening. So, as we approach what would normally be summer pool season, here's a short analogy about pooping and accountability.
Imagine you're at the pool, and a kid poops in the water. It happens a few times every summer. What happens next? Everybody clears the pool. That's the initial step to protect people from the poop.
But it's not the end of the story. There's a next step - some poor soul on pool staff has to go fish out the poop. It's a pretty thankless job. Then they have to shock the pool with chlorine to kill off bacteria. And then everyone waits half and hour or so til it's safe to swim again.
If the lifeguards tell everyone to clear the pool, but the pool staff declines to actually get rid of the poop, what happens? No one can go back in. The poop is still there. Limbo. Whose fault is it that it's not safe to go back in the water? Who is accountable?
Do you focus on the people saying "clean up the poop before we can go back in safely!"? Or do you focus on the staff whose job it is to clean up the poop? And what would you think if the staff started saying - look, just get back in. Be a warrior.
The answer is pretty obvious.
So right now, our country is a big swimming pool with a poop problem. But NO ONE is saying "never go back in the pool." They're saying - please clean out the poop first. Everyone wants to get back in the pool. Everyone wants to reopen the country. And if you're frustrated that we can't, please hold the right folks accountable. The problem isn't the people saying we need to reopen *safely*. It's the people saying needn't bother with that part."
Source:
Use this thread (I removed the overtly political parts above) or the originals to share with people who are skeptical about why we can't open up broadly right now. The danger is still very real, very present. There is still a lot of poop in the pool.
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Why? It only takes one person to set off an outbreak. This, from Seoul:
"KCDC Seoul nightclub outbreak update: 153 people in total so far infected. 90 club goers infected. 63 friends, family and colleagues caught COVID19 from them. More than 46,000 people have been tested for covid19 in connection with these cases. One single cluster and 46,000 people tested(multiple tests are practiced for one person)."
Source:
Imagine that. 153 infections from a single individual going out to nightclubs.
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In the CDC's latest models, every model forecasts at least 100,000 deaths by June 1. "This week’s national-level forecasting includes 12 individual forecasts, and all indicate an increase in deaths in the coming weeks. Predicted rates of increase differ among the forecasts, depending on assumptions about the strength and coverage of social distancing behaviors. he National Ensemble Forecast suggests that the number of cumulative reported deaths are likely to exceed 100,000 by June 1st. tate-level ensemble forecasts indicate that states with low numbers of deaths reported to date are not likely to see a rapid rise in the coming weeks, while states with high numbers of deaths reported to date are likely to see substantial increases."
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/forecasting-us.html
Give that some thought. In the US, we are effectively saying that in the next 15 days, 1,000 people will die per day from COVID-19 under the most conservative, best-case scenario estimate.
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A peer-reviewed study found that social distancing reduces cases of COVID-19 35 times more than other measures. "State and local governments imposed social distancing measures in March and April of 2020 to contain the spread of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). These included large event bans, school closures, closures of entertainment venues, gyms, bars, and restaurant dining areas, and shelter-in-place orders (SIPOs). We evaluated the impact of these measures on the growth rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases across US counties between March 1, 2020 and April 27, 2020. An event-study design allowed each policy’s impact on COVID-19 case growth to evolve over time. Adoption of government-imposed social distancing measures reduced the daily growth rate by 5.4 percentage points after 1–5 days, 6.8 after 6–10 days, 8.2 after 11–15 days, and 9.1 after 16–20 days. Holding the amount of voluntary social distancing constant, these results imply 10 times greater spread by April 27 without SIPOs (10 million cases) and more than 35 times greater spread without any of the four measures (35 million). Our paper illustrates the potential danger of exponential spread in the absence of interventions, providing relevant information to strategies for restarting economic activity."
Source: https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00608
In short, distancing measures work. Keep it up.
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An excellent visualization of COVID-19's interaction with climate and how they'll feed off each other in a negative feedback loop.
Source: https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/9eb33408ad6bbc2f5e1ed6a1fdfc4fe5/covid-climate-hazards/index.html
From simple things like understaffed fire departments unable to contain wildfires to the likelihood of keeping people indoors at home during warmer summer months, these two phenomena will reinforce each other.
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One of the consequences of poor COVID-19 management in the US? Americans will be uniformly unwelcome in the rest of the world until we get it under control. "But none of the plans account for Americans or other foreign nationals who have residency in any of the corona corridor countries, according to a European Union travel expert who helped draft the plan who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity until the report is officially released. Access to previously restricted areas will be granted solely on a passport basis to ensure people aren’t traveling clandestinely to third-party countries to get to a Greek island or Italian beach when they open up. This means that if you have an American passport—as travelers from the U.S. aren’t included—you will be unwelcome no matter which country you are coming from or how long you’ve been there."
Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/with-coronavirus-american-travelers-are-about-to-find-out-what-its-like-to-be-the-pariah
Americans should probably not plan to leave their home states for any kind of leisure travel anyway. Stay close to home.
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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/
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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.