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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Private businesses may ask your vaccination status. "As mask-wearing and social distancing guidelines relax for fully vaccinated people, businesses are navigating how to implement new policies in their stores. Many businesses are ending mask requirements only for fully vaccinated customers.
Vaccine opponents, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., are using the occasion to resurrect the false claim that the HIPAA federal privacy law protects individuals from being asked about their vaccination status.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, is a law that prevents health care professionals from sharing private health information without the patient's permission.
But experts agree the interpretation of HIPAA cited by Greene and others online is inaccurate. The law has no bearing on who can ask or answer questions about health status outside a health care setting, they say.
Alan Meisel, a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Pittsburgh, told USA TODAY at the time that HIPAA’s rules apply only to sharing information between "covered entities." The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services describes covered entities as “health plans, health care clearinghouses, and those health care providers that conduct certain health care transactions electronically.”
Meisel said the claim that HIPAA protected people from being asked about their vaccine status is “utter nonsense.”
“It in no way prohibits business owners and other individuals from asking people if they have been vaccinated,” he wrote in an email to USA TODAY. “In fact, it doesn’t even prohibit healthcare entities mentioned above from asking people if they have been vaccinated.”
Georgetown University law professor Lawrence Gostin agreed, saying, "Non-health care businesses are not subject to HIPAA."
While businesses and individuals maintain the right to ask others for vaccination status, that does not mean anyone has to provide that information.
According to Gostin, when a business asks an employee or customer for their vaccination status, that "individual then has a choice whether to provide proof of vaccination. If the person does not, then he or she can be excluded from entering the premises."
In short, HIPAA doesn't have any effect outside a health care setting."
Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/05/19/fact-check-asking-vaccinations-doesnt-violate-hipaa/5165952001/
Commentary: Private businesses are permitted to conduct their business however they want, outside of existing regulations. If a business asks your vaccination status and a person refuses to provide it, that business is entitled to decline doing business with that person (at the cost of lost revenue from that customer).
Please share this specific article anywhere someone is making false claims that vaccination status is protected healthcare information. It is not except in a healthcare setting.
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Get vaccinated, get a date? "WH COVID response adviser Andy Slavitt announces partnerships with dating apps to incentivize vaccinations:
“People who display their vaccination status are 14% more likely to get a match. We have finally found the one thing that makes us all more attractive.”"
Source:
Commentary: And a reminder that people providing that information are doing so voluntarily.
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UK data indicates strongly that B.1.617.2 is overtaking B.1.1.7 and is much more contagious. "Based on importations and local cases of B.1.617.2, we estimated that the R of B.1.617.2 was 1.64 (95% CI: 1.61–1.67) in the UK assuming no change in generation interval. This would suggest that the majority of sequenced cases in the UK would consist of this variant by mid-May 2021, under the assumption that non-B.1.617.2 variants continue to decline at 3% per day as they did in late April 2021. ● We obtained similar conclusions – but poorer fits to the data – if we assumed 5"
Source: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/988203/S1240_CMMID_COVID-19_Working_Group_Modelling_importations_and_local_transmission_of_B.1.617.2_in_the_UK__13_May_2021.pdf
Commentary: Previous variants have had R numbers ranging from 1.1 - 1.4 in the wild; that the new variant's R number is as high as it is now with countermeasures in place emphasizes just how contagious it is. The solution? Vaccination. We need vaccines in arms as fast as possible around the world.
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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, 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.
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 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/
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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Disclosures and Disclaimers
To be clear, 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.
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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.