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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India is making horrendous missteps. "India's government has decided to leave the import of COVID-19 vaccines to state authorities and companies, two government officials told Reuters, a decision that may slow acquisitions of shots as a second wave of the pandemic rips through the country.
They said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government would instead aim to support domestic vaccine makers by guaranteeing purchases from them. The government this month paid Indian producers in advance, for the first time, for vaccine doses.
Under fire for his uneven handling of the world's worst COVID-19 surge, Modi has opened vaccinations for all adults from next month but supplies are already running short.
After cases began soaring this month, Modi's government urged Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson to seek permission to sell their shots in India, and he relaxed rules for them.
But the sources said New Delhi was now leaving it to India's states and firms to sign deals with foreign drugmakers while it buys half the output of Indian producers - the Serum Institute, now manufacturing the Anglo-British AstraZeneca vaccine, and Bharat Biotech, the maker of a home-grown shot.
The worst-hit state, Maharashtra, has said it will float a global tender to import vaccines. It is the most affluent state in India but many poorer ones may fall behind without financial support from the federal government to buy doses from abroad."
Source: https://sg.news.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-indias-federal-government-wont-083125605.html
Commentary: This is a terrible misstep. As the United States learned, a coordinated federal response is necessary to deal with a crisis as big as a pandemic. You can't just leave it up to subnational entities and hope for the best.
Why should the rest of the world care about India? It's a huge country with a gigantic population. That means more opportunities for the virus to mutate and defend itself against our vaccines. There's the humanitarian angle, of course. But here's the big one: India makes 20% of all pharmaceuticals in the world, 60% of all vaccines, and anywhere between 40-60% of all pharmaceutical ingredients. Go into your medicine cabinet and see where your vitamins, supplements, and medications are made, and I'd guarantee that 75% of it either is from India directly or has India in its supply chain.
If India is overwhelmed, a substantial part of your everyday medicines will be impacted. Keep an eye on India's pandemic.
I said months ago to make sure you've got some extra supplies on hand of medications you need. Hopefully, you've kept those supplies replenished. If not, go ahead and top off what you've got on hand - anything you need, pharmaceutical or vitamin or whatever, make sure you've got 2 months' supply on hand.
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With America's vaccine usage plateauing, why isn't America sharing with the world? Contractually forbidden. "The contracts the Trump administration signed with the vaccine manufacturers prohibit the U.S. from sharing its surplus doses with the rest of the world. According to contract language Vanity Fair has obtained, the agreements with Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Janssen state: “The Government may not use, or authorize the use of, any products or materials provided under this Project Agreement, unless such use occurs in the United States” or U.S. territories.
The clauses in question are designed to ensure that the manufacturers retain liability protection, but they have had the effect of projecting the Trump administration’s America First agenda into the Biden era. “That is what has completely and totally prohibited the U.S. from donating or reselling, because it would be in breach of contract,” said a senior administration official involved in the global planning effort. “It is a complete and total ban. Those legal parameters must change before we do anything to help the rest of the world.”"
Source: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/04/why-the-us-still-cant-donate-covid-19-vaccines-to-countries-in-need
Commentary: This is unfortunate, because as we've stated many other days, there are no countries when it comes to COVID-19. There is only us, the human race, all 7+ billion of us, and it's very much a situation where we need to put the fires out everywhere. It's no good to put out the fire at your house when every house around you is burning, throwing sparks and coals onto your house.
What can be done? If you're an American citizen, lobby your elected representatives to legislate a change to these contracts. America is on track to have plenty of vaccine for everyone who wants one, and we're about to struggle to persuade people to get one. If we have extra, we should be deploying it overseas to help put out fires in other places. Do it at cost, make it taxpayer neutral if you must, but get it out the door. A vaccine not in someone's arm does nothing.
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SARS-CoV-2 is a beast. "SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus whose success as a pathogen relies on its abilities to repurpose host RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) and to evade antiviral RBPs. To uncover the SARS-CoV-2 RNA interactome, we here develop a robust ribonucleoprotein (RNP) capture protocol and identify 109 host factors that directly bind to SARS-CoV-2 RNAs. Applying RNP capture on another coronavirus HCoV-OC43 revealed evolutionarily conserved interactions between coronaviral RNAs and host proteins. Transcriptome analyses and knockdown experiments delineated 17 antiviral RBPs including ZC3HAV1, TRIM25, PARP12, and SHFL and 8 proviral RBPs such as EIF3D and CSDE1 which are responsible for co-opting multiple steps of the mRNA life cycle. This also led to the identification of LARP1, a downstream target of the mTOR signaling pathway, as an antiviral host factor that interacts with the SARS-CoV-2 RNAs. Overall, this study provides a comprehensive list of RBPs regulating coronaviral replication and opens new avenues for therapeutic interventions."
Source: https://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/fulltext/S1097-2765(21)00327-0
Commentary: This is vital research as we dig deeper into how SARS-CoV-2 works. We still don't know the intricacies, and understanding the mechanics will help us create future, even better vaccines. What this study is doing is the equivalent of x-raying a lock to see how it works, then helping design ways to break the lock so it no longer functions.
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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 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.