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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CDC recommending rollbacks to mask policies. "Federal health officials will recommend Tuesday that even people who’ve had their Covid-19 shots wear masks in indoor settings in some places, a major setback in the progress in the U.S. epidemic that reflects a surging coronavirus variant and the country’s ongoing struggles to increase vaccination rates.
The expected change to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s earlier guidance, reported by several media outlets, comes as the Delta variant — the most transmissible version of the pathogen yet, by far — is igniting outbreaks and driving hospitalizations up in states with low vaccination rates, like Missouri, Arkansas, and Florida. The variant is also responsible for seemingly increasing numbers of breakthrough infections.
Just two months ago, the CDC said that fully vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks indoors, citing evidence that the immunizations prevented many cases entirely and left those who still got infected “less likely to … transmit [the virus] to others.”
But in addition to spreading more efficiently, Delta seems to have at least some ability to evade the immune response people generate after being vaccinated. Multiple studies have indicated that immunized people are still broadly protected against severe Covid-19 and death, but there is emerging evidence that Delta can cause breakthrough cases at higher rates than other virus versions.
Delta’s general transmissibility stems at least in part from changes in its genome that allow it to build up much higher levels of virus in the upper airway, leading to people emitting more virus for longer periods of time, meaning they are more likely to infect others."
Source: https://www.statnews.com/2021/07/27/cdc-recommend-masks-indoors-even-for-those-vaccinated-against-covid-19/
Commentary: When half the team walks off the basketball court before the game is over, it should not surprise anyone that the opposing team starts racking up points. With only about half the population of the USA fully vaccinated, we've done the equivalent, and now everyone is losing.
Play it safe. Mask up, no matter what your vaccination status, any time you're indoors, and avoid indoor spaces where you have to remove your mask, like restaurants, bars, etc. People might be done with COVID-19, but COVID-19 is not done with us.
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COVID aftereffects for everyone. "There is growing concern about possible cognitive consequences of COVID-19, with reports of ‘Long COVID’ symptoms persisting into the chronic phase and case studies revealing neurological problems in severely affected patients. However, there is little information regarding the nature and broader prevalence of cognitive problems post-infection or across the full spread of disease severity.
We sought to confirm whether there was an association between cross-sectional cognitive performance data from 81,337 participants who between January and December 2020 undertook a clinically validated web-optimized assessment as part of the Great British Intelligence Test, and questionnaire items capturing self-report of suspected and confirmed COVID-19 infection and respiratory symptoms.
People who had recovered from COVID-19, including those no longer reporting symptoms, exhibited significant cognitive deficits versus controls when controlling for age, gender, education level, income, racial-ethnic group, pre-existing medical disorders, tiredness, depression and anxiety. The deficits were of substantial effect size for people who had been hospitalised (N = 192), but also for non-hospitalised cases who had biological confirmation of COVID-19 infection (N = 326). Analysing markers of premorbid intelligence did not support these differences being present prior to infection. Finer grained analysis of performance across sub-tests supported the hypothesis that COVID-19 has a multi-domain impact on human cognition.
Interpretation. These results accord with reports of ‘Long Covid’ cognitive symptoms that persist into the early-chronic phase. They should act as a clarion call for further research with longitudinal and neuroimaging cohorts to plot recovery trajectories and identify the biological basis of cognitive deficits in SARS-COV-2 survivors.
This study confirms the hypothesis that individuals who have been infected with COVID-19 have persistent objectively measurable cognitive deficits after carefully controlling for pre-morbid IQ, pre-existing medical conditions, socio-demographic factors and mental health symptoms. Multiple studies are now using the online assessment technology reported here to investigate the neural correlates of cognitive deficits in people who have survived SARS-COV-2 infection, relate them to clinical outcomes and track at scale how they change over time."
Source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(21)00324-2/fulltext#seccesectitle0013
Commentary: COVID-19 effectively makes us dumber. What's powerful about this study is that we see cognitive declines across EVERY kind of symptomatic infection; the more severe, the sharper the decline, but EVERYONE is impacted.
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The Delta strain is now 92% prevalent in the USA.
Source:
Commentary: Delta took less than 3 months to become the dominant strain despite originating on the other side of the planet. It's not messing around - it's substantially more infectious.
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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 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. Verify your mask's NIOSH certification here: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/usernotices/counterfeitResp.html
3. Get vaccinated as soon as you're able to, and fulfill the full vaccine regimen. Remember that you are not vaccinated until everyone you live with is vaccinated. If you received an adenovirus vaccine (J&J/AstraZeneca), consider getting an mRNA single shot booster (Pfizer/Moderna) if permitted.
4. Wash/sanitize your hands every time you are in or out of your home.
5. Stay out of indoor spaces that aren't your home as much as practical. Minimize your contact with others and avoid indoor places as much as you can; indoor spaces spread the disease through aerosols and distance is less effective at mitigating your risks.
6. Get your personal finances in order now. Cut all unnecessary costs.
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:
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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. 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, nor do I financially benefit in any way from sharing information about COVID-19.
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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.