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 provides interim guidance on serology testing: "In the current pandemic, maximizing specificity and thus positive predictive value in a serologic algorithm is preferred in most instances, since the overall prevalence of antibodies in most populations is likely low. For example, in a population where the prevalence is 5%, a test with 90% sensitivity and 95% specificity will yield a positive predictive value of 49%. In other words, less than half of those testing positive will truly have antibodies. Alternatively, the same test in a population with an antibody prevalence exceeding 52% will yield a positive predictive greater than 95%, meaning that less than one in 20 people testing positive will have a false positive test result."
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/lab/resources/antibody-tests-guidelines.html
This is a big deal because a lot of people are pinning hopes on serology testing. The reality is that very few people in the broad population have been infected, which means that serology testing is currently not accurate. Don't trust a positive antibody test just yet is the interim guidance.
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Vietnam so far has logged zero deaths. "A new academic report on Vietnam’s response to the pandemic, written by Prof. Thwaites and about 20 doctors and scientists, concluded that the early lockdown plus the extensive testing, contact tracing and mandatory quarantines for people who had come into contact with anyone who had tested positive were behind Vietnam’s success in preventing COVID-19 deaths. It said the tracing and quarantine measures were “especially effective given [that] nearly half of those infected did not develop symptoms.” By the beginning of May, more than 200,000 people had been put into quarantine in government buildings, military camps, hotels or at home."
Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-with-zero-pandemic-deaths-vietnam-sets-the-standard-for-covid-1/
Vietnam took a different tack than many other nations; those quarantined were isolated away from their homes, and isolation was strictly monitored.
Japan has ended its state of emergency as well. "Japan yesterday declared at least a temporary victory in its battle with COVID-19, and it triumphed by following its own playbook. It drove down the number of daily new cases to near target levels of 0.5 per 100,000 people with voluntary and not very restrictive social distancing and without large-scale testing. Instead, the country focused on finding clusters of infections and attacking the underlying causes, which often proved to be overcrowded gathering spots such as gyms and nightclubs."
Source: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/japan-ends-its-covid-19-state-emergency
What do these nations, as well as Singapore, have in common?
1. Ubiquitous usage of masks. Masks everywhere, for everyone.
2. Near-universal compliance with government instructions.
3. Universal healthcare to make testing and treatment free, encouraging people to seek help.
4. Governments run by officials that strictly adhered to science first.
Any nation that wants to emerge from the pandemic sooner rather than later needs to embody these characteristics as much as possible.
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There is no evidence recent mutations of SARS-CoV-2 are more transmissible or more deadly. "The COVID-19 pandemic is caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which jumped into the human population in late 2019 from a currently uncharacterised reservoir. Due to this extremely recent association with humans, SARS-CoV-2 may not yet be fully adapted to its human host. This has led to speculations that some lineages of SARS-CoV-2 may be evolving towards higher transmissibility. The most plausible candidate mutations under putative natural selection are those which have emerged repeatedly and independently (homoplasies). Here, we formally test whether any of the recurrent mutations that have been observed in SARS-CoV-2 to date significantly alter viral transmission. To do so, we developed a phylogenetic index to quantify the relative number of descendants in sister clades with and without a specific allele. We apply this index to a carefully curated set of recurrent mutations identified within a dataset of over 15,000 SARS-CoV-2 genomes isolated from patients worldwide. We do not identify a single recurrent mutation convincingly associated with increased viral transmission. Instead, recurrent SARS-CoV-2 mutations currently in circulation appear to be either neutral or weakly deleterious. These mutations seem primarily induced by the human immune system via host RNA editing, rather than being signatures of adaption to the novel human host. There is no evidence at this stage for the emergence of more transmissible lineages of SARS-CoV-2 due to recurrent mutations."
Source: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.21.108506v1
There's a crazy amount of misinformation floating around about the virus. People saying it's been around for almost a year, that it's more infectious now, etc. Science is proving these claims untrue.
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An interesting twist: in Switzerland, companies must pay a share of rent for employees working from home. "German-language paper Tages-Anzeiger reports that Switzerland’s top court has ruled that employers are required to contribute to employees’ rent payments if they are expected to work from home. The company argued that they had not reached an agreement with the employee ahead of time and therefore was not obligated to cover part of his rent. The court rejected this argument and added that the employee could even request rent compensation retroactively after leaving the company. Whether an employee did or did not rent an additional room or a larger apartment to work from home was also irrelevant according to the court’s ruling. The judges estimated a monthly compensation of CHF150 ($154) for the employee’s rent to be justified. This is the first time Switzerland’s highest court has dealt with the topic of rent allowances for employees working from home. Thomas Geiser, a professor of labor law at the University of St Gallen, told the paper that the verdict is not surprising as the “law obliges employers to reimburse their employees for all expenses incurred to carry out their work”. Geiser points out that the decision applies to employees who work from home upon the employer’s request. However, employees that work from home on their own behest may not receive rental compensation."
Source: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/court-decision_companies-must-pay-share-of-rent-for-employees-working-from-home/45781126
This throws an interesting twist into the whole work-from-home transition. Would companies still save more on commercial real estate if they had to pay a part of employees' rent? Possibly. In the United States, employees who work from home full time are permitted to either write off their dedicated workspace on their taxes, or be reimbursed by their companies.
If you're working from home in a dedicated space, talk to your company about reimbursement and other financial benefits.
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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.