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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Weekly jobless claims at 1.877 million. "Filings for unemployment insurance claims totaled 1.877 million last week in a sign that the worst is over for the coronavirus-related jobs crisis but that the level of unemployment remains stubbornly high.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for 1.775 million new claims. The Labor Department’s total nevertheless represented a decline from the previous week’s upwardly revised total of 2.126 million. Filings under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program totaled 623,073.
Continuing claims, which provide a clearer picture of how many Americans remain unemployed, totaled 21.5 million, a gain of 649,000 over the past week, also worse than Wall Street expected.
The insured unemployment rate, which is a simple measure of those collecting benefits compared with the total labor force, rose 0.5 percentage points to 14.8%."
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/04/weekly-jobless-claims.html
While many have created the perception that everything's opening up, that the pandemic is over, the jobs data indicates this is clearly still not the case. Continue to support your communities and highlight hiring where you can to help those displaced find new work.
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COVID-19 is reinforcing racial stereotypes. "Despite their fears of infection, and statistics showing Black communities are among the hardest hit, many Black men feel wearing a mask is a bigger threat than the coronavirus. Just as they are more likely than white people to be stopped and frisked, to be pulled over for traffic violations, and to be charged with drug crimes, Black individuals also appear more likely to be targeted by police for simply wearing masks. In a heartbreaking calculus, many are choosing not to wear them at all.
“Which death do they choose? Covid-19 or police shooting?” asked Vickie Mays, a distinguished professor of health policy and management at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health who studies health disparities and has been tracking incidents where Black men wearing masks were harassed. “We have African Americans who have been dragged out of stores, who have been ordered by police and store guards to pull their masks down or take their masks off.”"
Source: https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/03/which-deamany-black-men-fear-wearing-mask-more-than-coronavirus/
There's a super-easy solution for this. If you see anyone, anywhere discriminating against someone based on the color of their skin, you step in with your smartphone video on and livestreaming. Make sure it's a live-stream - even if your phone gets taken away, the cloud video will remain. If you've never gone live before, try it out on your phone with YouTube Live, Facebook Live, whatever. Then approach and with civility, ask that the discriminator stop, ESPECIALLY if it's around a public health matter. No one should be told to take off their mask for any reason.
But keep the cameras rolling.
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Humidity and SARS-CoV-2 seem to have an inverse relationship. "Previous research has identified a relationship between climate and occurrence of SARS‐CoV and MERS‐CoV cases, information that can be used to reduce the risk of infection. Using COVID‐19 notification and postcode data from New South Wales, Australia during the exponential phase of the epidemic in 2020, we used time series analysis to investigate the relationship between 749 cases of locally acquired COVID‐19 and daily rainfall, 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. temperature, and 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. relative humidity. Lower 9 a.m. relative humidity (but not rainfall or temperature) was associated with increased case occurrence; a reduction in relative humidity of 1% was predicted to be associated with an increase of COVID‐19 cases by 6.11%. During periods of low relative humidity, the public health system should anticipate an increased number of COVID‐19 cases."
Source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tbed.13631
This is important, especially in places that are naturally low humidity, like the American southwest. Low humidity helps the virus spread. If you go into a low humidity environment, especially indoors, be sure you are fully geared up.
And with summer and air conditioners running that remove humidity from the air, doubly so.
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Second wave earlier? Via Dr. Scott Gottlieb and Morgan Stanley: "Morgan Stanley's update today to its Covid model sees a an R of ~ 1.01 and epidemic doubling time ~ 61 days, reflecting a U.S. epidemic that continues to slowly expand. They cite states including AR, AZ, NC, WA, AZ, UT, TX; where new cases and/or hospitalizations are rising again"
Source:
An R of 1.01 means that we still don't have this under control. In fact, it means that COVID-19 is continuing to grow. Only once R is below 1.0 does it mean the pandemic is shrinking.
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A movement is afoot to declare the COVID-19 a people's vaccine. "Vaccine sovereignty is consequently not just focused on nationalistic impulses articulated by the state. It also captures how non-state actors, such as pharma companies and universities, reinforce systems of power that place profit before people. Consequently, the call for a “people’s vaccine” signed by a range of global leaders and supported by the Open Society Foundations, which I work for, serves as a form of counter-power to the vaccine sovereignty evident in the Oxford-AstraZeneca deal.
A people’s vaccine seeks to ensure mandatory worldwide sharing of all COVID-19-related knowledge, establish a global and equitable rapid manufacturing and distribution plan fully-funded by wealthy nations, and guarantees that Covid-19 tests, diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines are provided free to everyone, everywhere.
Momentum for a people’s vaccine is growing, reinforced by a number of initiatives such as the Free the Vaccine campaign that includes the involvement of university medical students led by Universities Allied for Essential Medicines. (Both the campaign and UAEM are supported by the Open Society Foundations.) In addition to being about ensuring access to a Covid-19 vaccine, these initiatives also seek to dismantle the biomedical system upon which the Oxford-AstraZeneca deal was built."
Source: https://www.statnews.com/2020/06/04/oxford-astrazeneca-covid-19-deal-reinforces-vaccine-sovereignty/
Petition your elected officials to vote to make any COVID-19 vaccine a public good, a people's vaccine. Make sure the vaccine data is available to anyone and everyone, because the sooner we stop the disease, the sooner we can start rebuilding our economies.
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Lives and livelihoods are intertwined. "The more Covid-19 infections a country has, the worse its economy performs."
Source:
No surprise here. You can't disentangle health and the economy. A sick population is an unproductive population.
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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.