Lunchtime pandemic reading.
Standard disclaimer: this is a roundup of informative pieces I've read that interest me on the severity of the crises and how to manage them. I am not a qualified medical expert in ANY sense; at best I am reasonably well-read laity. ALWAYS prioritize advice from a qualified healthcare provider who knows your specific medical situation over advice from people on the Internet.
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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"Getting vaccinated then getting a mild covid infection, and interpreting that as the vaccine failing, is like having a bad car crash, being uninjured because you were wearing a seat belt - and then saying the seatbelt failed because it didn't stop the crash."
Source:
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Loss of taste and smell less severe in Omicron, may suggest complications. "Interpretation: The prevalence of anosmia or dysgeusia in SARS-CoV-2-infected patients did not decrease significantly during infection with the Omicron variant, but severity was reduced, and vaccination demonstrated a protective effect. Additionally, the findings suggest that the presence of smell or taste alterations is likely to be an important indicator of viral invasion of the nervous system, and an urgent need exists to explore early intervention to reduce prevalence and protect neurological function."
Source: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4226774
Commentary: If you've experienced COVID with loss of smell or taste, be extra vigilant about Long COVID. Those symptoms could be markers of much deeper invasion in your body; talk to your physician about mitigation measures.
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Don't just swab the nose. "I had learned last winter to swab inside of throat cheek and then nose-gross I know but better to have the earliest accurate diagnosis of whether or not I have and can spread #COVID19 to others who might not fare well miss work..school..."
Source:
Commentary: Super important to use tests properly - SARS-CoV-2 continues to change where it likes to hide out.
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16+ million Americans have Long COVID. "While headlines across the world bolster about increased job growth recovery from 2020, a silent goliath is driving job loss. The United States (U.S.) Census Bureau added four questions to the 2022 household pulse survey about Long Covid. From the responses, they have estimated that more than 16 million Americans aged 18-65 have Long Covid right now. This data is supported by additional investigations from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis & a study in The Lancet, which estimated 17 million Americans have Long Covid. These staggering numbers furthermore estimate that 4-5 million of those with Long Covid are out of work due to their condition, while several million others have had to reduce their work hours. And, this is not confined to only the U.S. The Bank of England estimated that 1% of the entire workforce aged 16-64 is not working due to suspected Long Covid. Unfortunately, there are few clinics around the world that provide Long Covid support, and many physicians are still aiming to better understand the etiology of the condition. Last year, I talked with several Long Covid advocacy groups to bring awareness to the condition (read here). A year later and few questions have found their answers.
The estimates of Long Covid prevalence range from around 12-20% according to multiple studies. It’s still unknown why some individuals suffer from Long Covid, while others do not. Despite most questions left unanswered some research studies have begun to hit the surface of this complex condition."
Source: https://www.drswanda.com/post/long-covid-molecules-mitochondria
Commentary: Give that some thought. Long COVID is disabling, sometimes to the point where someone cannot work or live their normal life. What's happening now with COVID is that by not taking precautions, we are creating a MASSIVE class of people with medical disabilities, on a scale we've not seen before - and that will have substantial economic and health effects for decades to come.
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Almost a quarter million dead from a preventable disease now. "Although the daily death rates have ticked down slightly from August, updated federal data shows that the U.S. is still losing hundreds of Americans to COVID-19 every day, and 225,000 people in the U.S. have been lost to the virus since the start of 2022.
On average, more than 350 American deaths related to COVID-19 are still reported each day, and over the last seven days, the U.S. has reported nearly 2,500 deaths, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
However, totals remain much lower than during prior COVID-19 surges, such as in January 2021, when an average of 3,500 people were reported lost to the virus on a daily basis."
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/225000-americans-died-covid-19-start-2022-viral/story?id=90339579
Commentary: Almost none of those 225,000 deaths needed to occur.
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Beware the fall without precautions. "Health officials in the United Kingdom and the European region as a whole are seeing early signs of rising COVID activity, patterns that US experts closely watch as a harbinger of how the next months might unfold.
Disease modeling experts have warned of a rise in infections in Northern Hemisphere countries as cooler weather brings more people indoors, as schools resume, and as vaccine protection wanes.
In Britain, Susan Hopkins, MBBCh, chief medical officer at the Health Security Agency, in a statement yesterday said COVID-19 rates are still low, but data from the past 7 days shows a rise in hospitalizations and a rise in positive tests reported from the community.
"For those eligible, the time to get your autumn booster is now. Getting a booster will give your immune system time to build up your protection against being severely ill from COVID-19 as we move into winter," she said.
Virologists are closely monitoring steady diversification in the Omicron variant. The BA.5 subvariant is still dominant, but scientists have identified new sublineages that have mutations that might allow them to partly escape immunity from BA.5-induced immunity.
Thomas Peacock, PhD, a virologist at Imperial College London, told the London-based Guardian that BA.2.75.2 and BQ.1.1 still account for less than 0.5% of sequenced sample in the United Kingdom, but they are growing fast. Peacock said a fall and winter COVID wave could be driven by a mixture of variants.
In a snapshot of COVID activity in the European region, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said it has observed increasing transmission over the past 2 weeks. COVID is becoming more widespread in some countries, especially affecting people ages 65 and older. Though levels are still low, the rising activity is starting to affect hospital and intensive care unit indicators, with limited reported impact on mortality.
"Changes in population mixing following the summer break are likely to be the main driver of these increases, with no indication that they are caused by changes in the distribution of circulating variants," the ECDC said, adding that the epidemiologic patterns it's seeing are consistent with earlier forecasts.
Since the first week of September when doses of the new updated booster rolled out, 4.4 million people have received it, the CDC said."
Source: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/09/european-countries-see-early-signs-autumn-covid-19-rise
Commentary: If you haven't had COVID in the last 3 months, and it's been more than 3 months since your last booster, now is the time to get your fall booster. It'll provide good coverage through most of the holiday season into early January.
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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 people you don't live with, even after you've been vaccinated. P100 respirators are back in stock at online retailers, too and start around US$40 for a reusable respirator. 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. Verify your mask's NIOSH certification here: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/usernotices/counterfeitResp.html
3. Get vaccinated as soon as you're eligible to, and fulfill the full vaccine regimen, including boosters. Remember that you are not vaccinated until everyone you live with is vaccinated. For COVID, if you received an adenovirus vaccine (J&J/AstraZeneca), consider getting an mRNA single shot booster (Pfizer/Moderna) if available. If it's available, choose Moderna as your first choice for both vaccine and booster, Pfizer as your second choice. However, remember that any vaccine is better than no vaccine.
4. Wash/sanitize your hands every time you are in or out of your home. Sanitize the bottom of your shoes with a simple peroxide spray using ordinary drugstore/supermarket peroxide in a spray bottle. If you've come in close contact with others (rubbing or brushing up against them, hugging, etc.) consider showering and washing your clothes as well.
5. Stay out of indoor spaces that aren't your home and away from people you don't live with as much as practical. Minimize your contact with others and avoid indoor places as much as you can; indoor spaces spread disease through aerosols and distance is less effective at mitigating your risks.
6. Aim to have 3-6 months of living expenses on hand in case the pandemics give another crazy plot twist to the economy, or you know, a global war breaks out.
7. Replenish your supplies as you use them. Avoid reducing your stores to pre-pandemic levels in case an outbreak causes unexpected supply chain disruptions.
8. 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).
9. Masks must fit properly to work. Here's how to properly fit a mask:
10. If you think you may have been exposed to COVID-19, purchase several rapid antigen tests and/or acquire them from your healthcare provider or government. This will detect COVID-19 only when you're contagious, so follow the directions clearly. https://amzn.to/3fLAoor
If you think you may have been exposed to monkeypox, contact your healthcare provider about available testing.
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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/
Source: https://www.smh.com.au/national/are-we-ignoring-the-hard-truths-about-the-most-likely-cause-of-covid-19-20210601-p57x4r.html
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
I declare no competing interests on anything I share related to COVID-19 or monkeypox. 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 or monkeypox, nor do I financially benefit in any way from sharing information about COVID-19 or monkeypox.
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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.