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.
---
With current case loads and 3-week lag, by Christmas we may be seeing 3,000 deaths per day in the United States.
"UTTERLY SOBERING—cases rising so fast that we will likely see 3000 deaths a day by end of year. That is one 9/11 death toll *per day*!"
Source:
Commentary: We may likely see more, if case loads and hospitalizations in particular continue to increase at the pace they are.
Stay home. Stay safe.
---
Mass testing is needed to put a stop to COVID-19. " If we could have 10 to 20 million of these tests every single day across all of America, that would be enough to stop the outbreaks across the United States. It doesn't take a lot. 10 million might sound like a lot to the average person, but actually it's really not a huge number of the tests. The US government, if it wanted to act in a coordinated and thoughtful fashion about what are the best strategies to fight this virus, could produce the manufacturing capacity for what I estimate to be less than .01 percent of the cost that this virus is actually taking across our country in terms of a dollar sign.
Testing is not going away just because there's a vaccine. We still have so much to learn about how well [the vaccines] will work. I am very encouraged by the recent results of 90 percent [and] 94 percent efficacy and the phase three trials, but we don't know how well they'll work three months after people get vaccinated, or four or five or six months. We also will see a slow rollout. These vaccines have to go up to billions of people across the world. The US will get a fraction of those. So over the next six months or so, we will start to see them become more available in the US, but they won't be in nearly enough supply to really limit spread until we start to get towards the summer, I imagine."
Source: https://www.wgbh.org/news/national-news/2020/11/23/harvard-epidemiologist-10-20-million-rapid-at-home-tests-per-day-would-be-enough-to-stop-the-outbreaks-across-the-united-states
Commentary: Mass testing has worked in China, Korea, New Zealand, and other nations which have tamed COVID-19. While none have stamped it out entirely, ubiquitous mask usage, mass testing, and contact tracing have allowed these nations to reopen safely. That is the formula, vaccine or no vaccine, for success.
---
Part of the problem, not part of the solution. "Tyson Foods Inc., which says it produces 20% of the beef, pork and chicken in the U.S., has suspended managers at an Iowa plant accused of participating in a betting pool on how many employees would become ill with COVID-19.
President and CEO Dean Banks also announced on Thursday the company has launched an investigation led by former Attorney General Eric Holder into the allegations.
The suspensions come one day after the family of a deceased employee filed a lawsuit claiming "fraudulent misrepresentations, gross negligence, and incorrigible, willful and wanton disregard for worker safety at its pork processing facility in Waterloo, Iowa."
"We are extremely upset about the accusations involving some of the leadership at our Waterloo plant," Banks said in a statement.
"We have suspended, without pay, the individuals allegedly involved and have retained the law firm Covington & Burling LLP to conduct an independent investigation led by former Attorney General Eric Holder.""
Source: https://www.npr.org/2020/11/19/936905707/tyson-managers-suspended-after-allegedly-betting-if-workers-would-contract-covid
Commentary: If you're betting on whether workers will get sick, you know there's a problem and you're actively refusing to do anything about it.
---
More on superspreaders. "A long-standing question in infectious disease dynamics concerns the role of transmission heterogeneities, driven by demography, behavior and interventions. Based on detailed patient and contact tracing data in Hunan, China we find 80% of secondary infections traced back to 15% of SARS-CoV-2 primary infections, indicating substantial transmission heterogeneities. Transmission risk scales positively with the duration of exposure and the closeness of social interactions and is modulated by demographic and clinical factors. The lockdown period increases transmission risk in the family and households, while isolation and quarantine reduce risks across all types of contacts. The reconstructed infectiousness profile of a typical SARS-CoV-2 patient peaks just before symptom presentation. Modeling indicates SARS-CoV-2 control requires the synergistic efforts of case isolation, contact quarantine, and population-level interventions, owing to the specific transmission kinetics of this virus."
Source: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/11/23/science.abe2424
Commentary: We still don't know why the spread of the disease lacks uniformity. Some people are far, far more contagious than others, about 15% of people who have it. Unfortunately, without a clear model of that, we can't know who poses the highest contagion risk.
---
How's holiday air travel in the US? About 50% of normal compared to the same time last year.
Source: https://www.tsa.gov/coronavirus/passenger-throughput
Commentary: What we see when we chart this out is that as we approach the holidays, more and more people are flying. During the peak of the "Second Wave" this summer, air travel was still down, year over year, by about 75%. AS we approach Thanksgiving in the US, it's down -57% in terms of passenger volume.
The pandemic is going to be very, very bad after Thanksgiving. Be prepared for additional restrictions, and plan ahead accordingly.
Don't plan on going anywhere for Christmas and New Year's, either.
---
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. Always wear a mask when out of your home and if going to a high risk area, wear goggles. 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, 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.
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.
6. Participate in your local political process. For Americans, go to Vote.org and register/verify your vote.
7. Ventilate your home as frequently as weather and circumstances permit.
---
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
---
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.