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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India is in significant trouble. Hospitals are where US hospitals were over the winter, running out of oxygen as case loads explode.
Source:
Commentary: The only way to stem an in-progress outbreak is with lockdowns. That's it. Lockdowns and mandatory mask usage. Vaccines are fire prevention; they don't help when the fire is already in progress. The same is true for any place experiencing an outbreak - they must shut down and get people away from each other.
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The church singing case study is now peer-reviewed and published. "An outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection occurred among church attendees after an infectious chorister sang at multiple services. We detected 12 secondary case-patients. Video recordings of the services showed that case-patients were seated in the same section, up to 15 m from the primary case-patient, without close physical contact, suggesting airborne transmission."
Source: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/6/21-0465_article
Commentary: 15 meters is 49 feet. That's an astonishing amount of distance for the virus to travel and still successfully infect someone. Video recordings from inside the church corroborate witnesses' descriptions of events - the bottom line is that ventilation of indoor spaces is key to keeping the virus under control.
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Legitimate experts still have tons of unanswered questions. "“My top ‘I wish we knew’ about Covid is by far what drives long Covid,” said Akiko Iwasaki, a virologist and immunologist at Yale University. The condition has been given a formal name, post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, or PASC. (Sequelae is a fancy word for after effects.)
Significant numbers of people who contract the disease report debilitating and varied symptoms weeks and months after recovering. Brain fog. Deep fatigue. Shortness of breath. Why this happens is a mystery.
Iwasaki noted that other chronic syndromes are triggered by viral infections. “I think we have a unique opportunity to understand once and for all how acute viral infection can lead to long-term symptoms so we can design better therapy against this debilitating disease and potentially other viral-induced chronic fatigue syndrome,” she said.
Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious diseases physician at the Medical University of South Carolina, wonders if factors that put people at risk of developing long Covid can be identified, so that the risk can be lessened. And Andersen, of Scripps Research Institute, would like to know the frequency at which long Covid occurs and how cases break down by age and severity of symptoms during the initial infection."
Source: https://www.statnews.com/2021/04/20/we-know-a-lot-about-covid-19-experts-have-many-more-questions/
Commentary: It will take years - possibly decades - to unravel the many mysteries around COVID-19 and its virus, SARS-CoV-2. The good news is that if we keep research funded and scientists can continue dedicating time and effort towards it, those research efforts will pay substantial dividends - and not just for COVID-19. Just as we are seeing "peace dividends" of mRNA vaccine platforms being used to start developing new vaccines for things like HIV, we will see advances in virology and disease states from all the COVID-19 research. The pandemic is like a world war. It's a massive effort by our entire species to battle against a foe that affects everyone, and it's my sincere hope that we all keep collaborating and sharing our research, our technology, and our insights. To do so would accelerate research into diseases by an order of magnitude, and that means positive outcomes for so many more things than just COVID-19. We have paid a high price over the last year to fight this disease. Let's make sure we get a solid return on our investment by continuing to mine our efforts for more dividends.
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We are approaching a billion doses of vaccine administered worldwide. "910M doses of #Covid19 vaccine have been administered worldwide, according to the Bloomberg tracker. 23% of those have been given in the US. @CDCgov estimates 212M doses have been given in the US; 65% of people 65 & up have been fully vaxed, & nearly 26% of the entire population."
Source:
Commentary: I don't think we've ever, in human history, rolled out something this big, this fast. Yes, there are imperfections. There are inequities. There are mistakes. But in general... dispensing this much medicine to this many people is a herculean effort and the fact that we as a species are doing this in 1/10th the time it normally takes for such processes is astonishing. Kudos to the entire scientific and medical community for making this happen.
Do your part. Encourage everyone you know to get fully vaccinated as soon as they're eligible, as soon as vaccines are available in your area.
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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.