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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Beware disinformation. "Geert Vanden Bossche has recently published a letter in which he argues that the vaccination campaign against COVID-19 is going to precipitate a public health disaster because the vaccines will select for viral variants that can escape their protection and drive them towards higher virulence. His claims are speculative, he offers no evidence to support his arguments, and makes several comments which are blatantly incorrect. The core of his argument relies on the assumption that COVID-19 vaccines do not have a significant effect on transmission. This has been repeatedly confirmed to be false in multiple studies. Furthermore, even if his assumptions about the effects of the vaccine on transmission are true, his conclusions are incorrect based on established precedent from Marek’s disease, a viral illness of birds with a vaccine that does not strongly affect transmission- but it still shows meaningful public health benefits in the populations of chickens where it is used. The vaccines will absolutely be critical to ending the pandemic, and fortunately the modular nature of the technology allows for rapid reformulation and adjustment as necessary (and thus far, though precautions are being taken with novel variants to produce vaccines specific to their set of problematic mutations, there isn’t significant enough evidence to suggest that total reformulation of the vaccines is needed), but no issues raised in this letter warrant a re-evaluation of our current COVID-19 vaccination policy."
Source: https://www.deplatformdisease.com/blog/addressing-geert-vanden-bossches-claims
Commentary: The original video was sent to me by a friend over the weekend, and immediately raised red flags (not the least of which was because the video creator is a noted anti-vaxxer). The anti-vaccine movement has ramped up to a feverish frenzy despite the complete lack of credible evidence that the COVID vaccines do anything they're not supposed to. Be very cautious about what material you believe, and as the kids say these days, "ask for the receipts" - in this and several other cases, ask for studies, research, and papers that either have been submitted for or have passed peer review to support their claims. Every wild claim I've seen from anti-vaccine folks has exactly zero publications in credible, independent journals (like the New England Journal of Medicine, for example) to back up the claim.
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Risk is as high as ever for the unvaccinated. "The rosy national figures showing declining case numbers led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to loosen mask recommendations last week and President Biden to advise people to take off their masks and smile.
But adjustments for vaccinations show the rate among susceptible, unvaccinated people is 69 percent higher than the standard figures being publicized. With that adjustment, the national death rate is roughly the same as it was two months ago and is barely inching down. The adjusted hospitalization rate is as high as it was three months ago. The case rate is still declining after the adjustment.
Unvaccinated people are getting the wrong message, experts said.
“They think it’s safe to take off the mask. It’s not,” said Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University. “It looks like fewer numbers, looks like it’s getting better, but it’s not necessarily better for those who aren’t vaccinated.”
The adjusted rates in several states show the pandemic is spreading as fast among the unvaccinated as it did during the winter surge. Maine, Colorado, Michigan and Washington state all have covid-19 case spikes among the unvaccinated, with adjusted rates about double the adjusted national rate. The adjusted rates of Minnesota, Oregon and Pennsylvania are slightly lower.
Oregon’s current surge is driven in part by a covid-19 variant known as B.1.1.7, which is 50 percent more contagious, said Tom Jeanne, a deputy state epidemiologist and a senior health adviser, in an interview.
It is characterized by outbreaks traced to social gatherings with unvaccinated people and no masks.
“They’re at very high risk for infection,” Jeanne said."
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/interactive/2021/covid-rates-unvaccinated-people/?tid=ss_tw
Commentary: If you're vaccinated, you are substantially safe from the effects of COVID-19. If you or someone you know is not vaccinated, risks are still very high. You know who isn't vaccinated en masse? Children ages 11 and under. Remember that a household is vaccinated or not; if one person in your household is not vaccinated, you must behave as though no one in your household is vaccinated to keep that person safe until they're eligible for a vaccine.
And if you are eligible, vaccines are available in your area, and haven't gotten vaccinated, please go do it as soon as you can.
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Nice job, folks. "SARS-CoV-2 has intricate mechanisms for initiating infection, immune evasion/suppression and replication that depend on the structure and dynamics of its constituent proteins. Many protein structures have been solved, but far less is known about their relevant conformational changes. To address this challenge, over a million citizen scientists banded together through the Folding@home distributed computing project to create the first exascale computer and simulate 0.1 seconds of the viral proteome. Our adaptive sampling simulations predict dramatic opening of the apo spike complex, far beyond that seen experimentally, explaining and predicting the existence of ‘cryptic’ epitopes. Different spike variants modulate the probabilities of open versus closed structures, balancing receptor binding and immune evasion. We also discover dramatic conformational changes across the proteome, which reveal over 50 ‘cryptic’ pockets that expand targeting options for the design of antivirals. All data and models are freely available online, providing a quantitative structural atlas."
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-021-00707-0
Commentary: This is yet again another positive example of what happens when we band together. People letting researchers use the computation power of their home computers created the largest supercomputer in the world, and that research will help create even more effective vaccines in the future. Nice job.
If you'd like to participate, you can sign up for free here: https://foldingathome.org/
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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.
3. Wash/sanitize your hands every time you are in or out of your home.
4. Stay 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:
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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.