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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Let's look at the weekend circuit. Dr. Scott Gottlieb: "Well, look, this isn't contained yet. That doesn't mean we can't go out and start doing things get back to some semblance of a normal life. But we need to do things differently. We need to define a new normal. So when we get back to work, we need to get back to work differently. When you look across the country. You see hospitalizations going up in many states, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, Arizona, you saw hospitalizations coming down about three weeks ago over a two week period, and in the last week, you're starting to see them pick up. Now that shouldn't be surprising. We expected cases to go up and hospitalizations to bump up as we reopened, but we need to understand this isn't contained and it's still continuing to spread. Or we might not be able to fully contain this until we get to a vaccine or better therapeutics."
Source:
This is a reminder that healthcare workers are a limited, vital resource. Whatever we can do to keep them safe and keep hospital beds empty by practicing distancing and staying safe is essential.
This pandemic is far from over.
Eric Rosengren, Boston Federal Reserve Bank: "Unfortunately, I think it's likely to be double digit unemployment through the end of Their sheer and full employment getting back down to the low levels of unemployment, we saw at the end of February, probably takes either a vaccine or other medical innovations that make it much less risky to go out. The principal reason for that is that industries that have been affected like retail, hotels, transport, are all industries that consumers have to be comfortable. So it's not just that you have to open up the businesses. Consumers have to be comfortable going back and shopping and going out on planes and into hotels."
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This is exactly right. Consumers are not comfortable resuming 'normal', nor should they be. Industries need to pivot to figure that out. As a marketer, I'll say this: show, don't tell. Put safety and cleanliness up front in big, bold ways. Show us your cleaning staff at work instead of hiding them in the back room. Show us your safety gear, share your cleaning solution recipes, show that you've done your homework.
A friend of mine works in personal care services and their industry is showing off a benzalkonium chloride cleaning solution that's scientifically less effective than straight out of the bottle peroxide. Little things like paying attention to science and using it to highlight what you're doing will go a long way towards restoring consumer confidence. Enforcing face masks of all customers and staff is equally important. Every self-righteous yahoo who thinks the rules don't apply to them loses you how many customers who don't want to show up in case said yahoo also doesn't practice basic personal hygiene? 10? 20? 100?
My local supermarket has posted an armed security guard at the door. No mask, no entry. That's the way to do it.
Show us caution. Show us care. Show us the steps you're taking, and we'll show up with our money.
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People are going back out and eating in restaurants. "This chart of restaurant bookings is disturbing. These same states are reopening and are either at high plateaus or increasing in cases. Not safe. #covid19"
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At this point no one should be dining in anywhere indoors, period. Want to support restaurants? Do takeout as often as your budget and health permit, and wear appropriate safety equipment when you do so.
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Science continues to evolve. This thread from Trevor Bedford of Bedford Lab indicates that the Washington State vintage of SARS-CoV-2 now looks like it came from British Columbia, not China. "On Feb 29, using the genetic sequence of the first community case of #COVID19 in Washington State, I made the claim that the Washington State outbreak descended directly from the Jan 15 arrival of the WA1 case with direct travel history to Wuhan. 1/18"
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These viruses were sampled from British Columbia between March 5 and 12, but outgroup relative to WA viruses, possessing the 17858G mutation but not the additional 17747T mutation possessed by the Washington State outbreak clade. 8/18
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This is powerful stuff from Bedford Lab, and my hat's off to them for their work. This is also a problem. Not the scientific discovery - that's important but expected. No, the problem is that people assume published science is immutably correct, and that's almost never the case - AND WE NEED THAT TO BE THE CASE. Science HAS to be wrong. Science has to improve over time.
But the mindset too many people share is "well, they said it was X, and now it's Y, and so you can't trust them!" idiocy. That's not how science works at all. That's not how reality works. Life is about change, and what was right yesterday may be wrong tomorrow.
Much of the misinformation and disinformation being spread now is based either on uncorrected early information or flat out fiction. Do your best to keep up with what's real and what's been proven true recently. And any scientist who comes forward and says, hey, I was wrong, here's updated information: believe them. Follow them. Listen to them. They're not afraid of being wrong, which by definition improves the likelihood of them being right.
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Hope for a culture change. "Going to work, or anywhere really, while sick has suddenly become taboo. It’s an act that puts coworkers, customers and companies at risk, as more people head back to their jobs during the early stages of COVID-19 recovery. It’s a new world of health hyper-vigilance, and employers will need to quickly adapt to the shift, experts say. In North America, especially in professional contexts, there’s been an “implicit expectation” that employees prioritize work over everything else, family, leisure, even their own health, said Vanessa Kimberly Bohns, an associate professor of organizational behaviour at Cornell University. “In the past, coming to work sick was a signal of that devotion — a signal that you were the ‘ideal worker,’ ” she said in an email. The sicker you were the stronger the message that you were a loyal, hard worker. “Now it just seems reckless and irresponsible.” The dynamic may even flip, she said, as workplaces continue to live under the threat of COVID-19. People who come to work sick may feel pressure to go home, be called out by other employees or managers, or shamed by peers."
Source: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/05/25/going-to-work-sick-was-a-sign-of-loyalty-now-that-its-reckless-companies-need-to-rethink-their-policies.html
I hope "working sick" as a culture is permanently dismantled.
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On a lighter note, penguins at art museums: "As we continue to stay at home, penguins around the world are having a blast. They're meeting whales in the aquarium, roaming the streets of Cape Town, South Africa, and even getting their first art history lesson. Penguins from the Kansas City Zoo recently paid a visit to the nearby Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, wandering the halls as they admired Baroque and Impressionist masterpieces. The three Humboldt penguins examined paintings by the likes of Caravaggio and Monet, surprising the museum's director with their artistic tastes."
Source: https://www.insider.com/penguins-visit-art-museum-for-the-day-2020-5
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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.
2. Wear gloves and a mask when out of your home. Consider wearing a face shield.
3. Stay home as much as possible. Minimize your contact with others and maintain physical distance of at LEAST 6 feet / 2 meters.
4. Get your personal finances in order now. Cut all unnecessary costs.
5. Donate any PPE you can. https://getusppe.org/give/
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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.