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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Inoculating against misinformation about vaccines.
"WORRIED ABOUT VACCINE MISINFO: here what worries me the most—because folks get sick naturally anyway, will these people blame the vaccine when the do? Human nature to search for why, even if doesn’t make sense. My worry is many of these people might blame #COVID19 vaccine."
Source:
Commentary: The reality is that if you give 10 million people ANYTHING, especially in high risk populations, you'll have lots of natural deaths and illnesses, with or without a pandemic. But the anti-vax crowd will seize on any scrap of information to justify their scientifically bankrupt position. If you gave 10 million people glasses of pure water, you'd have deaths because people just die, period.
Bear that in mind as news about vaccine rollouts happen over the next few months, and do not be dissuaded in getting a vaccine that has passed clinical trials, ESPECIALLY vaccines that have passed clinical trials in multiple nations. Pfizer's vaccine, for example, was created in Germany and is manufactured in Belgium. The EU is rigorous about controls for its citizens on everything (there's very little "organic" food in the EU because food standards make pretty much everything organic or at least safe to eat anyway) and what they administer to their citizens should be more than good enough for other nations.
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How soon will we be out of the woods? "And here’s my estimate of how many people in U.S. can be vaccinated at various times in 2021. It’s based on statements made by Pfizer, Moderna, & Op Warp Speed, and assumes we have enough vaccine to vaccinate 20M by Jan 2021, 150M by June, & the entire country by December."
Source:
Commentary: This doesn't take into account the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, which can scale to substantially more doses. That said, even just using the existing projected vaccine amounts, by October 2021, we will have (assuming people get off their butts and get the shots) vaccinated enough people to create real herd immunity and stop COVID-19.
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Don't eat at restaurants. "COVID-19 outbreaks have affected restaurants throughout Los Angeles County, from a Panda Express in Sun Valley to the University of California’s Bruin Cafe. If you live in Los Angeles, you can access health department reports about these outbreaks online.
But in most of the country, diners are left in the dark about which restaurants have been linked to outbreaks of the virus.
Restaurants appear to be among the most common places to get infected with the COVID-19 virus, but contact tracing in most areas has been so lackluster that few health departments have been able to link disease clusters to in-person dining.
When California Healthline contacted the health departments serving the 25 most populous counties in the U.S., only nine could confirm they were collecting and reporting data on potential links between restaurants and COVID cases.
As of Monday, 13 of the 25 counties hadn’t announced changes to their indoor restaurant dining policies, despite record-setting numbers of new COVID infections in the U.S."
Source: https://californiahealthline.org/news/failed-contact-tracing-at-restaurants-leaves-diners-in-the-dark/
Commentary: Get takeout. It still supports the business, and it doesn't put you at risk.
Contact tracing across the board has failed, because the sheer volume of cases has overwhelmed public health departments. There simply aren't enough contact tracers to identify all the affected people.
Work off the very basic premise that every single person around you is infected. Minimize your contact with them. ALWAYS wear a mask outside your home.
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A smart idea: economic stimulus tied to vaccination. Get the shot, get the dough. "The solution is simple: Pay people to take a covid vaccine. The vaccines are likely to arrive at the same moment Washington is, belatedly, taking up much-needed stimulus legislation. The timing couldn’t be better: Money would go into Americans’ pockets just when the U.S. economy can begin fully reopening with a vaccinated population that can go about their daily lives without fear of catching the disease or infecting others.
To that end, the federal government should pay every American $1,500 to get vaccinated. Send proof of vaccination, receive a $1,500 check or money via direct deposit.
Cash payments would function as a double-stimulus. They would provide relief to struggling Americans, as the stimulus earlier this year did, but they also would accelerate the reopening of the economy. That’s worth the cost. The key variable that has been missing from the stimulus debate in Washington has been not money but time. Time really matters: The sooner Americans get relief, the better. The sooner the federal government can reduce spending on enhanced unemployment insurance, on the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses and on state and local aid, the better. And the sooner the federal government can start getting revenue from income taxes for people who are back to work and from businesses that are reopening at full capacity, the better.
So, despite the price of approximately $383 billion if every American adult over 18 took advantage of the program, this would be the fiscally responsible thing to do — in addition to its being a life-saving boon for public health.
Would $1,500 encourage more people to get vaccinated? It turns out there’s evidence that financial incentives do increase vaccination rates. A study in India found that giving lentils at each vaccination and a set of plates during the final vaccination increased the vaccination completion rate by a factor of six."
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/23/pay-americans-coronavirus-vaccine-john-delaney/
Commentary: I plan on getting vaccinated. I hate needles. I try to avoid them as much as practical. But my livelihood in part depends on my ability to go out and speak publicly, and that means butts in seats at conferences and events. So I'll do it because I have to. But if the government also wants to pay me for it? Sign me up. I can wipe my tears with 15 Benjamins.
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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. Remember that cleaners are NEVER to be ingested or injected. If you come in physical contact with others, wash your clothing upon returning home.
2. Always wear a mask when out of your home and if going to a high-risk area, wear goggles. Respirators are back in stock at online retailers, too. When going indoors to a place that isn't your home, wear the best protective mask available to you.
3. 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.
4. Get your personal finances in order now. Cut all unnecessary costs.
5. Replenish your supplies as you use them. Avoid reducing your stores to pre-pandemic levels in case an outbreak causes unexpected supply chain disruptions.
6. 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).
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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/
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.