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.
You are welcome to share this.
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Guidelines on fully vaccinated travelers. "Fully vaccinated travelers are less likely to get and spread COVID-19.
People who are fully vaccinated with an FDA-authorized vaccine can travel safely within the United States:
Fully vaccinated travelers do not need to get tested before or after travel unless their destination requires it
Fully vaccinated travelers do not need to self-quarantine
Fully vaccinated travelers should still follow CDC’s recommendations for traveling safely including:
Wear a mask over your nose and mouth
Stay 6 feet from others and avoid crowds
Wash your hands often or use hand sanitizer"
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/travelers/travel-during-covid19.html
Commentary: Remember the vaccines reduce transmission, but don't eliminate it. The vaccines also stop death and serious harm, but are not 100% effective against mild cases. So keep your mask on if you're traveling.
Actually, just keep your mask on, period.
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Kids are different. "The hallmarks of COVID-19 are higher pathogenicity and mortality in the elderly compared to children. Examining baseline SARS-CoV-2 cross-reactive immunological responses, induced by circulating human coronaviruses (hCoVs), is needed to understand such divergent clinical outcomes. Here we show analysis of coronavirus antibody responses of pre-pandemic healthy children (n = 89), adults (n = 98), elderly (n = 57), and COVID-19 patients (n = 50) by systems serology. Moderate levels of cross-reactive, but non-neutralizing, SARS-CoV-2 antibodies are detected in pre-pandemic healthy individuals. SARS-CoV-2 antigen-specific Fcγ receptor binding accurately distinguishes COVID-19 patients from healthy individuals, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 infection induces qualitative changes to antibody Fc, enhancing Fcγ receptor engagement. Higher cross-reactive SARS-CoV-2 IgA and IgG are observed in healthy elderly, while healthy children display elevated SARS-CoV-2 IgM, suggesting that children have fewer hCoV exposures, resulting in less-experienced but more polyreactive humoral immunity. Age-dependent analysis of COVID-19 patients, confirms elevated class-switched antibodies in elderly, while children have stronger Fc responses which we demonstrate are functionally different. These insights will inform COVID-19 vaccination strategies, improved serological diagnostics and therapeutics."
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22236-7
Commentary: This is one of the reasons vaccine tests need to be done on children. Children react differently to COVID-19 and produce different immune system responses. These findings may also help target COVID-19 more effectively.
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Vaccine passports. "The Biden administration and private companies are working to develop a standard way of handling credentials — often referred to as “vaccine passports” — that would allow Americans to prove they have been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus as businesses try to reopen.
The effort has gained momentum amid President Biden’s pledge that the nation will start to regain normalcy this summer and with a growing number of companies — from cruise lines to sports teams — saying they will require proof of vaccination before opening their doors again.
The administration’s initiative has been driven largely by arms of the Department of Health and Human Services, including an office devoted to health information technology, said five officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the effort. The White House this month took on a bigger role coordinating government agencies involved in the work, led by coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients, with a goal of announcing updates in coming days, said one official.
The White House declined to answer questions about the passport initiative, instead pointing to public statements that Zients and other officials made this month.
“Our role is to help ensure that any solutions in this area should be simple, free, open source, accessible to people both digitally and on paper, and designed from the start to protect people’s privacy,” Zients said at a March 12 briefing.
The initiative has emerged as an early test of the Biden administration, with officials working to coordinate across dozens of agencies and a variety of experts, including military officials helping administer vaccines and health officials engaging in international vaccine efforts."
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/28/vaccine-passports-for-work/
Commentary: The vaccine passport is a logistical nightmare, but at the same time may be absolutely essential for reaching herd immunity. Why? If there's no real-world incentive to get vaccinated, people won't. But if you can't get on a plane, go to a conference, attend a concert, or even eat in certain restaurants, there's strong incentive to get it done.
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Rhe COVID Community Corps. "As America and the nations around the globe navigate the hurdles of waxing and waning infection numbers, the race to herd immunity through mass vaccination campaigns has intensified. Now, health officials in the United States are looking for new and creative ways to get shots into arms. A new venture, announced by the White House and being launched today, is called the "COVID-19 Community Corps." The project is an initiative spearheaded jointly between the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The concept of this program is to enlist the help of trusted voices in both local and national communities to help disseminate science-based information directly to the public in a more approachable manner. Most importantly, the Biden administration hopes this will be a successful mechanism to encourage communities across the country to get vaccinated. The administration will be providing its community partners with weekly scientific updates, social media suggestions, infographics, and tools that will help people find ways to get vaccinated. Doctors, nurses, various healthcare workers, and other entities (including Brief19) are now being approached to become founding members of the Community Corps, in order to develop a strong group of trusted voices with the goal of building vaccine confidence and sharing up-to-date information with the public. "
Source: https://brief19.com/2021/04/01/brief/breaking-news-the-department-of-health-and-human-services-and-the-centers-for-disease-control-and-prevention-launch-the-covid-19-community-corps
Commentary: We all have a role to play in communicating scientific and medical facts clearly and fairly. When it comes to the vaccines, the ones that have been approved by the US, UK, and EU are safe and effective. Keep spreading the word, and use your own influence to encourage others to do so.
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New waves in Chile. "Having negotiated early access to tens of millions of doses of Covid-19 vaccines, Chile has been inoculating its residents faster than any other country in the Americas and appears poised to be among the first in the world to reach herd immunity.
But experts say the country’s speedy and efficient vaccination drive — only Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Seychelles have vaccinated a larger share of their populations — gave Chileans a false sense of security and contributed to a sharp spike in new infections and deaths that is overloading the health care system.
The surge in cases, even as more than one-third of Chile’s population has received at least the first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, serves as a cautionary tale for other nations looking to vaccination drives to quickly put an end to the era of beleaguered economies, closed borders and social distancing. The rise in cases prompted a new set of strict lockdown measures that have restricted mobility for much of the country, affecting nearly 14 million people.
“When transmission rates are high, the vaccine does not rein in new infections right away,” said Dr. Denise Garrett, an epidemiologist at the Sabin Vaccine Institute in Washington. “And with the new variants, which are more contagious, we’re not likely to see a big impact until the vast majority of the population is vaccinated.”"
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/world/americas/chile-vaccination-cases-surge.html
Commentary: This is the danger of lifting restrictions too soon. The vaccine exists, but isn't in everyone's bodies yet.
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New waves in Michigan. "In a rural stretch of Michigan along the shore of Lake Huron, coronavirus outbreaks are ripping through churches, schools and restaurants where the virus has infected line cooks and waitresses. For more than a week, ambulances have taken several hourlong trips each day to rush severely ill coronavirus patients to hospitals in Detroit, Saginaw or Port Huron, where beds in intensive-care units await.
Even as the pandemic appears to be waning in some parts of the United States, Michigan is in the throes of a coronavirus outbreak that is one of the largest and most alarming in the country. Infection levels have exploded in recent weeks, in big cities and rural stretches alike.
Ann Hepfer, a health officer for two counties, is racked by worries: about spring break trips that are underway, and about the Easter gatherings that will take place this weekend, when families are fresh off their travels out of state.
“It makes me shudder,” she said. “I never thought we would see this at this time. I thought we would be over the hump.”
Michigan has more recent cases per capita than any other state, and has seen them soar in recent weeks, to more than 5,300 cases a day from about 1,000 on Feb. 21. The nation’s top three metro areas in recent cases per capita are all in Michigan: Jackson, Detroit and Flint.
“It is absolutely alarming,” Emily Toth Martin, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, said this week. “Looking at numbers yesterday felt like a gut punch. We’re going to have to go through this surge, and all this hard work again, to get the numbers down.”
Americans have entered a disconcerting phase of the coronavirus pandemic. They are surrounded by news that brings hope: More than 2.8 million vaccines are being administered every day on average, the country is fast approaching vaccine eligibility for all adults and a vaccine trial in adolescents has been a spectacular success.
Yet the uplifting developments have been tempered by increasingly ominous warnings about the national picture from public health officials. On Monday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she felt a sense of “impending doom” about a potential new surge in cases. President Biden said states should pause their reopening efforts, saying that the country was “giving up hard-fought, hard-won gains.”"
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/us/michigan-covid-outbreak.html
Commentary: Keep your mask on. The next wave of COVID-19 is here. Luckily, you don't have to do anything different than you've been doing all along.
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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.
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.