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.
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New CDC guidance on masking. Short version: indoors? Wear a mask, vaccinated or not. Outdoors? If you're alone or only with members of your household, no mask needed. Vaccinated people can do pretty much anything outdoors with no mask EXCEPT larger gatherings. Unvaccinated people should wear a mask any time they're going to be around other people except members of their household.
Source:
Commentary: This is very clear and easy to understand, the way all medical communications should be.
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J&J vaccine is safe. "On April 13, 2021, CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended pausing use of the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine after reports of thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) among vaccine recipients.
On April 23, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices concluded that the benefits of resuming Janssen COVID-19 vaccination among persons aged ≥18 years outweighed the risks and reaffirmed its interim recommendation under FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization, which includes a new warning for rare clotting events among women aged 18–49 years.
Resuming use of the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine will ensure flexibility, choice, and improved access. Education about TTS risk with Janssen COVID-19 vaccine is critical."
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7017e4.htm?s_cid=mm7017e4_w
Commentary: The extremely rare events around the J&J vaccine mean that if you do have a choice and you're in the risk group, take a different vaccine. If you have to choose between no vaccine and the J&J, take the vaccine. It's MUCH MUCH safer than the disease, on the order of thousands of times safer.
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COVID-19 affects your guts. "Exacerbated pro‐inflammatory immune response contributes to COVID‐19 pathology. However, despite the mounting evidence about SARS‐CoV‐2 infecting the human gut, little is known about the antiviral programs triggered in this organ. To address this gap, we performed single‐cell transcriptomics of SARS‐CoV‐2‐infected intestinal organoids. We identified a subpopulation of enterocytes as the prime target of SARS‐CoV‐2 and, interestingly, found the lack of positive correlation between susceptibility to infection and the expression of ACE2. Infected cells activated strong pro‐inflammatory programs and produced interferon, while expression of interferon‐stimulated genes was limited to bystander cells due to SARS‐CoV‐2 suppressing the autocrine action of interferon. These findings reveal that SARS‐CoV‐2 curtails the immune response and highlights the gut as a pro‐inflammatory reservoir that should be considered to fully understand SARS‐CoV‐2 pathogenesis."
Source: https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/msb.202110232
Commentary: This is one of the reasons why the vaccine is so important. COVID-19's virus, SARS-CoV-2, hides out all over the body. It suppresses your immune responses in some ways, and creates crazy inflammatory responses in others. It's one of the reasons why people who have had COVID-19 should still get vaccinated - depending on where it's lodged in your body and what it affected, you might have a less robust immune response compared to the vaccine.
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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.