Lunchtime pandemic reading.
Standard disclaimer: this is a roundup of informative pieces I've read that interest me on the severity of the crises and how to manage them. I am not a qualified medical expert in ANY sense; at best I am reasonably well-read laity. ALWAYS prioritize advice from a qualified healthcare provider who knows your specific medical situation over advice from people on the Internet.
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 just got back from another marketing conference, and the organizers just sent out the following email:
"I'm writing today with a quick heads-up: We've received word that several people who attended last week's MarketingProfs B2B Forum in person in Boston have since tested positive for COVID-19. Thus far, cases appear to be isolated and mild. Even so, we encourage you to get tested for your own peace of mind (and to keep those around you safe). Real talk: We are all very tired of COVID-19. We don't want to talk about it anymore. But in the spirit of full transparency—and because we've always got your back—we felt we should let you know. Hope you are safe and healthy. And we very much enjoyed hosting you last week in Boston."
Friends, this is how you do it. This is how you demonstrate responsibility and care for your community. I've been to several other conferences this year and none of them notified us after the fact if attendees tested positive - and I know for sure people did. At INBOUND, the person sitting next to me tested positive two days later.
When an organization sets the example, be sure to support them however you can. The only way we improve public health is by rewarding those folks who do it right in a very public, visible way.
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Long COVID shows vascular microfractures. "Fourteen vasculature transformation blood biomarkers were significantly elevated in Long-COVID outpatients, versus acutely ill COVID-19 inpatients and healthy controls subjects (P < 0.05). A unique two biomarker profile consisting of ANG-1/P-SEL was developed with machine learning, providing a classification accuracy for Long-COVID status of 96%. Individually, ANG-1 and P-SEL had excellent sensitivity and specificity for Long-COVID status (AUC = 1.00, P < 0.0001; validated in a secondary cohort). Specific to Long-COVID, ANG-1 levels were associated with female sex and a lack of disease interventions at follow-up (P < 0.05).
Long-COVID patients suffer prolonged, diffuse symptoms and poorer health. Vascular transformation blood biomarkers were significantly elevated in Long-COVID, with angiogenesis markers (ANG-1/P-SEL) providing classification accuracy of 96%. Vascular transformation blood biomarkers hold potential for diagnostics, and modulators of angiogenesis may have therapeutic efficacy."
Source: https://molmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s10020-022-00548-8
Source: https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.220492
Commentary: COVID - long COVID in particular - is demonstrating some surprising damage inside the body. We've known it's thrombotic and vascular in nature, inflammatory in nature, but to now see more clearly that it's causing micro-fractures in blood vessels is a new twist.
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Some gender oddities. "Ontario, Canada, healthcare systems saw an uptick in healthcare use by adult COVID-19 survivors—especially women—starting 2 months after people were infected, placing more demand on an atrophied healthcare workforce, finds a study with implications for long COVID and hospital resources long term published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ).
Researchers from ICES (formerly the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences) followed 531,702 people in Ontario starting 2 months after they were tested for COVID-19 from Jan 1, 2020, to Mar 31, 2021, a period in which COVID-19 vaccines weren't widely available.
Overall, the average days in the hospital per person-year rose 47% for women and 53% for men. Women who tested positive for COVID-19 had 1.98 more healthcare visits per person-year than those who tested negative, with 0.31 more home-care encounters and 0.81 more days in long-term care but no difference in emergency department (ED) visits. About 1% of infected women had 6.48 more days in the hospital and 28.37 more home-care visits."
Source: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/10/study-highlights-burden-long-covid-health-systems
Commentary: There's no current explanation about why women have needed more healthcare visits after a COVID infection than men.
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New, stronger variants. "The #Omicron evolutionary tree is expanding rapidly, and all 5 of the Omicron greatgrandchildren are capable of evading much of the immune response against #SARSCoV2 and -- sadly -- some of the protection provided by prior #COVID19 illness or early forms of #vaccines ."
Source:
Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-nightmare-xbb-covid-variant-that-beats-our-immunity-is-finally-here
Commentary: BQ.1.1 and XBB are showing to be the strongest of the new crop of variants. Get your bivalent booster, and keep your mask on.
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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. P100 respirators are back in stock at online retailers, too and start around US$40 for a reusable respirator. 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 eligible to, and fulfill the full vaccine regimen, including boosters. Remember that you are not vaccinated until everyone you live with is vaccinated. For COVID, if you received an adenovirus vaccine (J&J/AstraZeneca), consider getting an mRNA single shot booster (Pfizer/Moderna) if available. If it's available, choose Moderna as your first choice for both vaccine and booster, Pfizer as your second choice. However, remember that any vaccine is better than no vaccine.
4. Wash/sanitize your hands every time you are in or out of your home. Sanitize the bottom of your shoes with a simple peroxide spray using ordinary drugstore/supermarket peroxide in a spray bottle. If you've come in close contact with others (rubbing or brushing up against them, hugging, etc.) consider showering and washing your clothes as well.
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 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 pandemics give another crazy plot twist to the economy, or you know, a global war breaks out.
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 several rapid antigen tests and/or acquire them from your healthcare provider or government. This will detect COVID-19 only when you're contagious, so follow the directions clearly. https://amzn.to/3fLAoor
If you think you may have been exposed to monkeypox, contact your healthcare provider about available testing.
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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 or monkeypox. 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 or monkeypox, nor do I financially benefit in any way from sharing information about COVID-19 or monkeypox.
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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.