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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The B.1.1.7 strain may be contagious for longer. "These data offer evidence that SARS-CoV-2 variant B.1.1.7 may cause longer infections with similar peak viral concentration compared to non-B.1.1.7 SARS-CoV-2, and this extended duration may contribute to B.1.1.7 SARS-CoV-2’s increased transmissibility. The findings are prelimi70 nary, as they are based on seven B.1.1.7 cases. However, if borne out by additional data, a longer isolation period than the currently recommended 10 days after symptom onset may be needed to effectively interrupt secondary infections by this variant. Collection of longitudinal PCR and test positivity data in larger and more diverse cohorts is needed to clarify the viral trajectory of variant B.1.1.7. Similar analyses should be performed for other SARS-CoV-2 variants such as B.1.351 and P.1."
Source:
Source: https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/37366884/B117Trajectories_10Feb2021.pdf
Commentary: The increased window of transmission might indeed be why B.1.1.7 spreads so much faster - it's contagious for longer. That in turn means that shorter quarantines/isolation periods may not be effective for it. This strain is responsible for much of the new European wave, but is still neutralized by the current vaccines. Thus, getting shots in arms must be our highest priority globally to shut this down before it mutates further.
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Education patterns have changed. "Private schools and the state’s broad network of Catholic schools, some of which were struggling for survival as enrollment declined over decades, appear to be benefiting from decisions made by public school districts.
“We had an influx of students from the public sector wanting to come into our schools quite simply because we were open,” said Vincent de Paul Schmidt, the superintendent of schools in the Diocese of Trenton, which operates 42 schools. A spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Newark said its 74 schools had seen a similar uptick in admissions.
St. Gregory the Great Academy, a Catholic elementary school in Hamilton, N.J., near Trenton, has a waiting list for the first time since 2007. The principal, Jason C. Briggs, said 45 new students had registered next year for the school, which charges $5,775 in tuition.
“The interest in enrollment is shocking, to be honest,” Dr. Briggs said. “I have not even placed an ad.”
South Orange-Maplewood, a district of about 7,000 students, has had one of the most convoluted reopening rollouts in the state.
Last week, a judge overseeing a lawsuit the district brought against its teachers union, said sixth- and ninth-grade teachers should report to school later this month, joining the kindergarten through second-grade educators who had already returned.
The district, in a statement, called it “an important and critical step in the right direction.”
A representative from the union, which has cited building conditions for employees’ reluctance to teach inside schools, said that court-facilitated agreements on building repairs had not been completed."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/23/nyregion/new-jersey-schools-reopening.html
Commentary: The continued ugly reality is that the pandemic's impact is reinforcing economic inequality. For those families able to afford private instruction, their kids have made educational advances in the last year. For those families unable to afford private instruction, their kids have not. The gap between the haves and have nots has widened, which will accelerate social tensions even more in the years to come.
My hope is that the pandemic will force us all to rethink how education works, globally. Do we need in-person instruction to dump knowledge into people's heads? No. YouTube does that quite capably. Do we need in-person instruction to facilitate collaboration? It certainly helps, but it can be done over video. But more than anything, families need universal access to the Internet to make remote and hybrid school and work more tenable.
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Unsurprisingly, the pandemic made us gain weight. SIP = shelter in place, aka lockdown. "A total of 7444 weight measurements from 269 unique study participants (residing in 37 states and Washington, District of Columbia) were collected during the study period, with a mean (SD) of 28 (24) weight measurements per participant. Of 269 study participants, 130 (48.3%) were men and 207 (77.0%) were White individuals; and age data was available for 169 participants (62.8%) with a mean (SD) age of 51.9 (17.3) years. Baseline characteristics are displayed in the Table. As illustrated in the Figure, post-SIP participants experienced steady weight gain at a rate of 0.27 kg every 10 days (95% CI, 0.17 to 0.38 kg per 10 days; P < .001), irrespective of geographic location or comorbidities. These results translate into approximately 1.5 lb of weight gain every month (to convert kilograms to pounds, divide by 0.45).
Weight is a clinically relevant health outcome that is independently associated with all-cause mortality.5 It is also a helpful proxy for physical activity, another measurement associated with all-cause mortality.6 In analyzing weight trends around initial SIP, we found a significant increase in weight over the post-SIP period at a rate of roughly a pound and a half weight gain per month following SIP. Although this may not appear clinically important, prolonged effects as have occurred with the pandemic might lead to substantial weight gain.
It is important to recognize the unintended health consequences SIP can have on a population level. The detrimental health outcomes suggested by these data demonstrate a need to identify concurrent strategies to mitigate weight gain, such as encouraging healthy diets and exploring ways to enhance physical activity, as local governments consider new constraints in response to SARS-CoV-2 and potential future pandemics."
Source: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2777737
Commentary: So yes, we've all gained weight during the pandemic. Like social interactions, increased activity is something we have to make a conscious effort towards, rather than the serendipity of daily life's activities.
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Germany goes into Easter lockdown. "Germany is extending the current lockdown through to April 18, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced early Tuesday.
The country will enter an even stricter lockdown from April 1 to April 5 over the Easter holiday period, when shops, including grocery stores, will largely have to close.
Merkel warned that Germany needed to "break the exponential growth of the third wave." Case numbers have reached levels that authorities say will overburden intensive care units.
"We are in a very, very serious situation" due to the spread of coronavirus variants in the country, Merkel told the press conference.
"What we have is essentially a new pandemic," she said. The new virus is "significantly more deadly, significantly more infectious."
"It really makes you a bit wistful about what we could have already achieved," Merkel said, adding that the mutated virus has now "basically eaten up" earlier gains.
Germany would have to be "prudent and flexible" and was in a "race against time" to vaccinate its population, she said.
Patrick Sensburg, a member of the German parliament from Merkel's governing CDU party, told DW that it was a tough decision for politicians to extend Germany's lockdown until April 18.
"We are quite close to the Easter holidays, and a lot of people wanted to go on holidays. So for political leaders, it was quite hard to tell people 'no,'" Sensburg said.
"This was not an easy decision, but in the end, the numbers are too high in Germany," he said."
Source: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-imposes-strict-lockdown-over-easter/a-56948895
Commentary: What's driving the new wave in Europe? B.1.1.7. If other nations want to avoid the need for more lockdowns, they have to reverse some of the opening steps being taken now - as well as accelerate vaccination as much as possible.
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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.
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.