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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A reminder, as many scientists are now focused on the increased transmissibility of the new COVID-19 virus variants, that all existing countermeasures work on the new variant if you use them.
Wear a mask.
Watch your distance.
Wash your hands.
Walk out of indoor spaces that aren't your home as fast as you can.
And please, stop going to gatherings. Especially this New Year's Eve.
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More evidence accumulating that the SARS-CoV-2 variant, B.1.1.7, has a different transmission rate.
"Below report also includes data on secondary attack rate for old UK variants vs new variant VOC 202012/01:
Secondary attack rate measures transmission risk per-contact, so above suggests difference between groups spreading old and new variant isn't down to one group simply having more contacts. This is consistent with data from our recent pre-print.
In other words, it seems the new variant VOC 202012/01 has a different ’T’ to the old one."
Source:
Commentary: The big question now is, just how much faster does B.1.1.7 spread? Early models have said 56% faster, but the modelers have cautioned that the models are still new and early, and need more data to zero in.
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And implications. "Bill Hanage, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who was not involved in the study, said that it presented a compelling explanation of the past and potential future of the variant.
“The overall message of it is solid and consistent with what we’ve been seeing from other sources of information,” he said in an interview. “Does this matter? Yes. Is there evidence for increased transmission? Yes. Is that going to impact the next few months? Yes. Those are all, I think, pretty solid.”
The variant, which came to the attention of British researchers earlier this month, has been rapidly spreading in London and eastern England. It carries a set of 23 mutations, some of which may make it more contagious.
Dr. Davies and his colleagues found more evidence that the variant does indeed spread more rapidly than others. For example, they ruled out the possibility that it was becoming more common in some regions of the U.K. because people in those places move around more and are more likely to come into contact with each other. Data recorded by Google, indicating the movements of individual cellphone users over time, showed no such difference.
The researchers built different mathematical models and tested each one as an explanation for the variant’s spread. They analyzed which model of the spread best predicted the number of new cases that actually were confirmed, as well as hospitalization and deaths.
The researchers concluded that the variant is able to spread to more people on average than other variants are. Dr. Davies cautioned that their estimate of 56 percent more contagious was still rough, because they are still gathering data about the variant’s most recent spread. “I think when we get more of that curve, we’ll be more certain,” he said.
To look at the impact of the current rate of vaccinations, the researchers made a model in which 200,000 people were vaccinated each week. That pace was too slow to have much effect on the outbreak. “That kind of pace wouldn’t really be able to support much relaxation of any of the control measures,” Dr. Davies said.
But when they raised the vaccinations to 2 million a week, they saw a reduction in the peak burden on I.C.U.s. Whether the U.K. can ramp up vaccinations by a factor of 10 is unknown.
As of Tuesday, the variant had not been identified in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Given the small fraction of U.S. infections that have been sequenced, the variant could already be in the United States without having been detected,” they warned.
The United States is vaccinating its citizens more slowly than expected. That could potentially become a problem if the variant in the U.K. became widespread in the United States as well.
“You need to be able to get whatever barriers to transmission you can out there as soon as possible,” Dr. Hanage said."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/health/coronavirus-uk-variant.html
Commentary: This is the race we're running. Vaccine versus virus - and the virus has a new trick up its sleeve. We need to move as quickly as practical on vaccination and get it into as many people as possible to begin shutting down the virus before the mutation has a chance to pick up steam. Given how fast D614G spread - in a couple of months, overtaking the original virus - we likely have about a month to really knock out vaccinations before B.1.1.7 becomes the dominant form and greatly accelerates infections.
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Where has the new B.1.1.7 variant been found?
"Denmark
Singapore
Australia
Netherlands
Sweden
Spain
Switzerland
Lebanon
France
Israel
Italy
Japan
Iceland
Belgium
Germany
HK
Ireland
Canada"
Source:
Commentary: With it present in Canada, it has almost certainly reached the United States as well. The new variants are traveling quickly and spreading even faster. Thankfully, thus far there is no increase in disease severity or in effectiveness of countermeasures, but the virus has now undergone two significant mutations in a year that have increased its transmissibility, first the D614G mutation and now the SN501 (B.1.1.7) mutation.
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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 or injected. If you come in physical contact with others, wash your clothing upon returning home.
2. Always wear a mask when out of your home and if going to a high-risk area, wear goggles. Respirators are back in stock at online retailers, too. When going indoors to a place that isn't your home, wear the best protective mask available to you.
3. 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.
4. Get your personal finances in order now. Cut all unnecessary costs.
5. Replenish your supplies as you use them. Avoid reducing your stores to pre-pandemic levels in case an outbreak causes unexpected supply chain disruptions.
6. 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).
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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.