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.
---
It is legal for businesses to ask customers if they are vaccinated. "As more and more people have gotten vaccinated across the U.S. against COVID-19, mask-wearing and social-distancing guidelines have grown more relaxed. In mid-May 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that fully vaccinated people can go mask-less in most spaces, along with a number of caveats that resulted in confusion from health experts.
Questions grew about whether businesses could ask customers if they had been vaccinated against COVID-19, particularly if it violated privacy laws surrounding the disclosure of one’s health information.
We learned that this is not the case. Businesses do not violate HIPAA regulations by asking customers if they are vaccinated or not.
According to the CDC, HIPAA’s privacy rule “established a set of national standards to address the use and disclosure of individuals’ health information—called ‘protected health information’ – by organizations subject to the Privacy Rule—called ‘covered entities’ – as well as standards for individuals’ privacy rights to understand and control how their health information is used.” Basically, HIPAA’s laws govern how certain entities handle patients’ private healthcare information.
What entities fall under HIPAA’s privacy rules? According to the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS), they are:
Health care providers (including doctors, clinics, psychologists, dentists, chiropractors, nursing homes, or pharmacies)
Health plans (including health insurance companies, HMOs, company health plans, and government programs that pay for healthcare, such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the military and veterans health care programs)
Healthcare clearinghouses (including entities that process nonstandard health information they receive from another entity into a standard (i.e., standard electronic format or data content), or vice versa.)
Private businesses like restaurants or grocery stores are not subject to HIPAA’s rules, so they can ask customers entering about their vaccination status."
Source: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/businesses-vaccinated-covid19/
Commentary: And of course, if someone does not want to describe their vaccination status, they are under no compulsion to do so, BUT the business is equally free to deny them services. That's the nature of free enterprise in a private market.
---
For people concerned about breakthroughs and why numbers seem to be alarmingly high, it's a math issue. "How can "most" infections occur in vaccinated individuals and still represent very high vaccine effectiveness?
Not hard when most people are vaccinated.
It's all about fractions and denominators"
Source:
/photo/1
Commentary: There WILL be more breakthroughs among vaccinated people than unvaccinated. Why? There are MORE vaccinated people.
---
In the USA, Delta is now the dominant strain. "There's an alarming jump in COVID-19 cases across the U.S. New infections are up by more than 120% nationwide in the past month and the CDC director says the Delta variant accounts for 83% of infections. While nowhere near the highs of the pandemic, a fourth — and mostly preventable — wave is appearing.
Across the country, vaccination rates have plunged since mid-April and the more contagious Delta variant has exploded.
"CDC has released estimates of variants across the country and predicted the Delta variant now represents 83% of sequenced cases. This is a dramatic increase, up from 50% for the week of July 3. In some parts of the country, the percentage is even higher, particularly in areas of low vaccination rates," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in a Senate hearing on Tuesday.
In Florida, hospitals are preparing for the worst. At Miami's Jackson Health System, there's been a 111% jump in COVID patients over the last two weeks, meaning most visitors will be banned. About 95% of patients with the virus who are being treated there are unvaccinated."
Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-delta-variant-new-cases-cdc/
Commentary: It's quite something to see a strain like Delta overtake its competitors so quickly. A year ago, we were first talking about the D614G strain, and that it was faster than the original 19A/20A wildtypes. We should thank our lucky stars that the pandemic didn't start out with Delta, or else we'd have a very different story to tell today.
---
More folks saying mask up, regardless of vaccination status. "Time to return to indoor mask policies in states that are surging. It happened sooner than I expected, but when hospitalization trends look like this, something has to change.
Yes, it's perhaps unfair to vaccinated people, but with no way to differentiate a policy for all is the only practical way.
We also need to ramp up testing (again) and carefully prepare for school reopening. Mitigation measures must remain in schools: masks, ventilation, access to testing.
Clarification on tweet 2: unfair because some people may have gotten vaccinated with the understanding they could stop wearing a mask."
Source:
Commentary: I see no reason not to wear masks indoors, period. We're still not confident about vaccinated individuals' ability to spread Delta (vaccines work well at suppressing spread of Alpha and the older strains but we have no data on Delta yet). With kids under 12 still not vaccinated, caution costs us nothing.
---
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 other people, even after you've been vaccinated. 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. Remember that you are not vaccinated until everyone you live with is vaccinated. If you received an adenovirus vaccine (J&J/AstraZeneca), consider getting an mRNA single shot booster (Pfizer/Moderna) if permitted.
3. Wash/sanitize your hands every time you are in or out of your home.
4. Stay out of indoor spaces that aren't your home as much as practical. Minimize your contact with others and 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:
---
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
---
Disclosures and Disclaimers
I declare no competing interests on anything I share related to COVID-19. 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, nor do I financially benefit in any way from sharing information about COVID-19.
---
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.