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.
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What happens when inequality means unequal care? Essential workers become a potential source of infection. "One farm in Tennessee distributed Covid-19 tests to all of its workers after an employee came down with the virus. It turned out that every single one of its roughly 200 employees had been infected.
In New Jersey, more than 50 workers had the virus at a farm in Gloucester County, adding to nearly 60 who fell ill in neighboring Salem County. Washington state’s Yakima County, an agricultural area that produces apples, cherries, pears and most of the nation’s hops, has the highest per capita infection rate of any county on the West Coast.
The outbreaks underscore the latest pandemic threat to food supply: Farm workers are getting sick and spreading the illness just as the U.S. heads into the peak of the summer produce season. In all likelihood, the cases will keep climbing as more than half a million seasonal employees crowd onto buses to move among farms across the country and get housed together in cramped bunkhouse-style dormitories.
Aside from the most immediate concern -- the grave danger that farmhands face -- the outbreaks could also create labor shortages at the worst possible time. Produce crops such as berries have a short life span, with only a couple of weeks during which they can be harvested. If a farm doesn’t have enough workers to collect crops in that window, they’re done for the season and the fruit will rot. A spike in virus cases among workers may mean shortages of some fruits and vegetables at the grocery store, along with higher prices."
Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-29/every-single-worker-has-covid-at-one-u-s-farm-on-eve-of-harvest
A couple of key takeaways here.
First, lobby your elected officials for universal healthcare. At this point, if we want this fire to be put out for good, we need to make sure that anyone who needs care can get it.
Second, consider doing respectful stocking up (limit purchases to what's permitted) of frozen fruits and vegetables. Many stores have recovered from the early days of the pandemic and are back in business, so now is a good time to top up your supplies.
Third, while fomite (particle) contagion of COVID-19 is relatively low risk, it's still a non-zero possibility. Obviously, you're much more likely to catch it from breathing the same indoor air as an infected person in the store, but if you have the means, it doesn't hurt to spray down food with a 1% peroxide solution before washing it.
Please remember that no cleaner should ever be ingested. Of the ones on the market, however, peroxide decays the fastest and turns into water and oxygen. Other cleaners like benzalkonium chloride (Lysol) and bleach stick around and are harder to wash off food.
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Patients with HIV are at no greater or lesser risk of contracting COVID-19 or its outcomes than the general population. "HIV-infected individuals should not be considered protected from SARS-CoV-2 infection or as having lower risk of severe disease. Indeed, those with low CD4 cell counts might have worse outcomes than individuals with restored immunity. Globally, they should receive the same treatment approach as that applied to the general population."
Source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhiv/article/PIIS2352-3018(20)30164-8/fulltext
I'm not sure why anyone would think that HIV would potentially lessen the danger of SARS-CoV-2. They're very different viruses. As the article notes, HIV's effects may amplify the effects of COVID-19, but it's good to see some clinical data on the topic rather than speculation.
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What happens when we politicize science? Via the Lancet: "However, the unfavorable outcome of the study provoked the animosity of those who support using chloroquine to treat COVID-19, first in the USA, and then in Brazil. Micheal Coudrey, an American political activist with 256 700 Twitter followers referred to the study as “a left-wing funded study that intentionally administered extremely high doses and used a less-safe version of the drug hydroxychloroquine, then used this as a pretense to indicate that chloroquine was ineffective and dangerous”. Soon after, Brazilian president's son Eduardo Bolsonaro (who has 2 million Twitter followers) called it “a fake study aimed at demonizing the drug”.
In another inflamed tweet, Eduardo Bolsonaro claimed that the study's authors were affiliated to the party funded by former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and asked for an investigation. Soon after, Lacerda started to receive death threats through social media and had to request police protection, which was kept for more than 2 weeks. “When the paper was published in JAMA, the threats stopped” revealed Lacerda, indicating that publishing the study in a peer-reviewed high-impact journal may have shielded the researcher and his family."
Source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30383-2/fulltext
There is no circumstance that justifies any kind of threat, much less a death threat, against a scientist. Criticism? Yes. Peer review? Yes. Retraction if they're wrong? Absolutely. Tarnished reputation if the science is especially bad? Sure. But as the article concludes, politics has no business interfering with science, especially when science is the only thing that will get us out of this pandemic with as few casualties as possible.
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Pandemic lockdowns are having massive ripple effects in developing nations and poor economies. "Most countries in the developing world still require their citizens to stay at home, except to duck out for essentials. But few of the world’s poorest can work from home. And without work, many cannot eat. Thus, covid-19 imperils one of the greatest achievements of recent decades—the stunning reduction in global poverty.
“Almost overnight people go from having income to having no income,” says Carolina Sánchez-Páramo of the World Bank. Less income often means less food. The World Food Programme (WFP) predicts a doubling of acute hunger by the end of 2020. David Beasely, its boss, worries that the world could see “multiple famines of biblical proportions” within a few months.
Some kinds of lockdown could cost more lives than they save. A report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimates that if restrictions prevent vaccinations, in Africa 140 will die for every covid-19 death prevented."
Source: https://www.economist.com/international/2020/05/23/covid-19-is-undoing-years-of-progress-in-curbing-global-poverty
In the country I live in, there is a real, legitimate debate about the impact of the lockdown, and we're starting to see economic data about it. Putting aside politics, our goal is straightforward: avert as much loss of life and years lost of life as possible. Do as much good for people as possible. But the question is, which path of action will lead to this?
If you starve, if you commit suicide, if you are murdered by criminals or even your own law enforcement, you are just as deceased as if you had a fatal outcome from COVID-19. It may sound counterintuitive, but for poor nations where people have to choose between eating and illness, they have to make that choice. My country is like that. 37 million people where I live had severe food insecurity before the pandemic started. As a poor nation, we have to make that ugly choice between feeding people and massive illness.
Wealthier nations have taken substantial steps to mitigate the impact of the pandemic, such as universal basic income for citizens and grants for businesses that help them stay afloat. Those nations, not coincidentally, have seen good outcomes in the pandemic because it's much easier for someone to stay at home if there's food consistently on the table.
What poor nation do I live that this sounds so dire, you wonder?
The United States of America.
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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. Avoid indoor places as much as you can.
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.