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.
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Based on yesterday's news, I ordered a CO2 gas meter to assess how well ventilated spaces are that I'm in. I'll let you know how well it works; assuming it works well, I'll be carting it around with me to places outside the home that I have to travel (like the grocery store).
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This is a fantastic primer on COVID-19 immunology by Dr. Akiko Iwasaki of Yale University's School of Medicine. Watch it and learn how your body works in just 10 minutes.
Source:
Commentary: I never gave much thought to the mechanism of viral defense, but it took me by surprise that the body actually kills part of itself to save the rest, killing off infected cells. That explains why things like rest, lots of water, health-giving foods, no alcohol or other interfering substances, and vitamins make the difference in recovering from a viral infection - because you're literally having to replace cells your body killed off to stop the manufacturing of more virus particles.
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A new pre-print study from Italy indicates 3-4% of household cats and dogs infected by COVID-19. "SARS-CoV-2 originated in animals and is now easily transmitted between people. Sporadic detection of natural cases in animals alongside successful experimental infections of pets, such as cats, ferrets and dogs, raises questions about the susceptibility of animals under natural conditions of pet ownership. Here we report a large-scale study to assess SARS-CoV-2 infection in over 500 companion animals living in northern Italy, sampled at a time of frequent human infection. No animals tested PCR positive. However, 3.4% of dogs and 3.9% of cats had measurable SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody titers, with dogs from COVID-19 positive households being significantly more likely to test positive than those from COVID-19 negative households. Understanding risk factors associated with this and their potential to infect other species requires urgent investigation."
Source: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.21.214346v1
Commentary: This paper hasn't been peer-reviewed yet, so remember that. That said, it's interesting to note that the animals didn't test positive by the PCR methodology (stick a swab up your nose), but did test positive by serology (blood test). Yet another reason to take precautions against infection: keep your pets healthy too.
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Former CDC head Dr. Tom Frieden calls for standardization of COVID-19 data. "More important than the sheer number of Covid-19 tests administered is the number of tests processed within 48 hours, said Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many test results — he estimated maybe as many as three-quarters of tests conducted — are processed days after the swabs were taken. That tells the tested person whether they were infected at the time of testing, but can’t be used as an indicator of their current Covid infection status.
Other metrics that should be commonly collected and reported, the group said, include daily Covid-19 hospitalization rates per capita in each community and state; the percentage of licensed hospital beds occupied by confirmed or suspected Covid patients; the percentage of new cases among quarantined people; and the percentage of new cases with a known epidemiological link to previously confirmed cases.
But Frieden said the public has the right to know these key facts, many of which need to be broken down by age, sex, race, and ethnicity.
“If — and I admit it’s an if — if we can get states to report this, then we’re going to be in much better shape. And in the absence of strong national leadership, at least being on the same page is … something that can help us get our response to a much better shape,” he said.
“What gets measured can get managed. And what gets measured and reported publicly, can absolutely get better,” he said. “Right now, we’re not managing this response well at all.’’"
Source: https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/21/group-calls-for-standardized-data-collection-to-track-covid19/
Commentary: As an avowed practitioner of data science, Dr. Frieden's call is essential policy we need to implement in the United States for certain, and ideally globally. This is a global pandemic, and we need to work together as a single human race to squash it.
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Cause for celebration: hospital data is now available once again through a new system called HHS protect. COVID Exit Strategy is one of many publications using it to judge efforts.
Source: https://protect-public.hhs.gov/pages/hospital-capacity
Commentary: Across a substantial part of the southern United States, ICUs are at 70% capacity or higher. It should be abundantly clear that this battle is far, far from over.
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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.
2. Wear gloves and a mask when out of your home. Respirators are back in stock at online retailers, too.
3. Stay home as much as possible. Minimize your contact with others and maintain physical distance of at LEAST 6 feet / 2 meters. 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.
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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.