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 early confusion in the pandemic likely seeded it across the United States. "A chaotic effort to return hundreds of Americans to the United States in the earliest days of the coronavirus outbreak — including bureaucratic infighting over whether flights out of Wuhan, China, were an “evacuation” or “repatriation” — put the evacuees, federal officials and even U.S. communities at risk, a government watchdog concluded.
The U.S. government-led missions, which included an operation to evacuate Americans from a virus-stricken cruise ship off the coast of Japan in February 2020, were plagued by “serious fundamental coordination challenges,” the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report requested by Congress and released Monday.
The episodes have already been the focus of a whistleblower complaint that sparked a pair of investigations, including a review conducted by lawyers at the Department of Health and Human Services. Those prior reports documented safety lapses, including health officials being told to remove protective gear when meeting with the Wuhan evacuees to avoid “bad optics.”
The GAO detailed a subsequent clash in February 2020 between health and diplomatic officials over whether coronavirus-positive Americans evacuated from the virus-laden Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan should have been flown back to the United States. While CDC officials did not approve of including infected Americans on the return flights, citing their risk of spreading the virus to uninfected passengers, ASPR officials ignored the disease agency’s recommendation and insisted the virus-positive evacuees should be brought back on the same planes, the watchdog said."
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/04/19/coronavirus-response-wuhan-cruise-ship/
Commentary: If this crisis has taught us anything, it is that science and politics must be decoupled as much as possible. If you're American, lobby your elected officials today to transform these federal departments into independent agencies that do not have political appointees as their heads. Agencies like the FDIC and the Federal Reserve Bank function much better and are more resistant to political pressure.
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Public health should be a funding priority. "Congress has poured tens of billions of dollars into state and local public health departments in response to the coronavirus pandemic, paying for masks, contact tracers and education campaigns to persuade people to get vaccinated.
Public health officials who have juggled bare-bones budgets for years are happy to have the additional money. Yet they worry it will soon dry up as the pandemic recedes, continuing a boom-bust funding cycle that has plagued the U.S. public health system for decades. If budgets are slashed again, they warn, that could leave the nation where it was before the coronavirus: unprepared for a health crisis.
“We need funds that we can depend on year after year,” said Dr. Mysheika Roberts, the health commissioner of Columbus, Ohio.
When Roberts started in Columbus in 2006, an emergency preparedness grant paid for more than 20 staffers. By the time the coronavirus pandemic hit, it paid for about 10. Relief money that came through last year helped the department staff up its coronavirus response teams. While the funding has helped the city cope with the immediate crisis, Roberts wonders if history will repeat itself.
After the pandemic is over, public health officials across the U.S. fear, they’ll be back to scraping together money from a patchwork of sources to provide basic services to their communities — much like after the Sept. 11 attacks and the SARS and Ebola outbreaks."
Source: https://apnews.com/article/pandemics-public-health-columbus-ebola-virus-coronavirus-pandemic-c3d25e5687e5cb2bf2877c111364df44
Commentary: One of the things the pandemic has done very well is illustrate which nations are science-led and which nations are not. Regardless of what happens in any given nation, look at how various nations have coped with the global crisis, and give consideration to emigrating to the best nations in terms of not only how the nation's government responded, but also its citizens. COVID-19 was a massive, global test of compassion and science-based leadership, and many nations failed both tests.
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WHO asking for IP licensing for low and middle income nations for vaccines. "WHO and its partners are seeking to expand the capacity of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to produce COVID-19 vaccines and scale up manufacturing to increase global access to these critical tools to bring the pandemic under control.
WHO will facilitate the establishment of one (or more, as appropriate) technology transfer1 hub(s) that will use a hub and spoke model (REF) to transfer a comprehensive technology package and provide appropriate training to interested manufacturers in LMICs. This initiative will initially prioritize the mRNA-vaccine technology2 but could expand to other technologies in the future.
The intention is for these hubs to enable the establishment of production process at an industrial or semi-industrial level permitting training and provision of all necessary standard operating procedures for production and quality control. It is essential that the technology used is either free of intellectual property constraints in LMICs, or that such rights are made available to the technology hub and the future recipients of the technology through non-exclusive licenses to produce, export and distribute the COVID-19 vaccine in LMICs, including through the COVAX facility. Preference will be given to applicants who have already generated clinical data in humans, as such clinical data will contribute to accelerated approval of the vaccines in LMICs.
It is anticipated that WHO will work with funders and donors to mobilize financial support to establish the hubs and, as they are being established, to support the transfer of technology to selected manufacturers in LMICs, taking into consideration the need to establish permanent vaccine production capacity in regions where this is currently mostly absent. This broader objective will ensure that all WHO regions will be able to produce vaccines as essential preparedness measures against future infectious threats."
Source: https://www.who.int/news-room/articles-detail/establishment-of-a-covid-19-mrna-vaccine-technology-transfer-hub-to-scale-up-global-manufacturing
Commentary: Disease knows no borders, doesn't care about copyrights, and ignores socioeconomic status. Poorer countries need vaccines, and richer countries need poorer countries to get vaccinated to reduce mutations and permanent reservoirs of COVID-19. The platitude we were all saying a year ago has never been more true: we are all in this together as one species.
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Beware UV-C lights that don't meet specifications. "The COVID‐19 pandemic provided a commercial opportunity for traders marketing a range of ultraviolet (UV) radiation products for home use disinfection. Due to concerns about the efficacy of such products and the potential for harmful levels of UV exposure to people, a range of products were purchased from on‐line trading platforms. Spectral irradiance measurements were carried out to determine whether the products could be effective against the SARS‐CoV‐2 virus and whether they were likely to exceed internationally agreed exposure limits. It was concluded that many of the devices were not effective and many of those that were potentially effective presented a risk to users."
Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/php.13423
Commentary: The UV-C light I have sterilizes primarily by generating toxic ozone gas, which is why I use it in a contained environment on my masks. I do not use it anywhere that living creatures will be breathing because ozone is toxic. I don't know if it generates the correct wavelength or not for the light to sterilize itself, but the ozone generated certainly does. Here's my setup: a power bank with an AC outlet, a plastic container (plastic blocks UV-C light), my masks, and a blanket to cover it. When it's done sterilizing (30 minute exposure) I take the whole thing outside and vent it in the great outdoors.
UV-C light is dangerous to living cells, so don't just plop it in a room and turn it on. You'll cause significant and severe damage to your skin and eyes. Only use it in a controlled environment!
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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, and fulfill the full vaccine regimen.
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.