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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Dose sharing cuts costs later. "Vaccines provide powerful tools to mitigate the enormous public health and economic costs that the ongoing SARS-CoV- pandemic continues to exert globally, yet vaccine distribution remains unequal between countries. To ex amine the potential epidemiological and evolutionary impacts of ‘vaccine na tionalism’, we extend previous models to include simple scenarios of stock piling. In general, we find that stockpiling vaccines by countries with high availability leads to large increases in infections in countries with low vac cine availability, the magnitude of which depends on the strength and duration of natural and vaccinal immunity. Additionally, a number of subtleties arise when the populations and transmission rates in each country differ depending on evolutionary assumptions and vaccine availability. Furthermore, the move ment of infected individuals between countries combined with the possibility of increases in viral transmissibility may greatly magnify local and combined in fection numbers, suggesting that countries with high vaccine availability must invest in surveillance strategies to prevent case importation. Dose-sharing is likely a high-return strategy because equitable allocation brings non-linear benefits and also alleviates costs of surveillance (e.g. border testing, genomic surveillance) in settings where doses are sufficient to maintain cases at low numbers. Across a range of immunological scenarios, we find that vaccine sharing is also a powerful tool to decrease the potential for antigenic evolution, especially if infections after the waning of natural immunity contribute most to evolutionary potential. Overall, our results stress the importance of equitable global vaccine distribution."
Source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.02.21258229v1.full.pdf
Commentary: There's less of a need for border controls with regard to the pandemic if everyone on both sides of the border is vaccinated. Sharing doses now cuts down on enforcement costs later.
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Just because you're outside doesn't mean it's safe, if there are crowds. "When the Milwaukee Bucks secured their first NBA championship win in 50 years two weeks ago, a sea of 100,000 fans roared outside the stadium in the city’s Deer District. Those in the largely unmasked crowd jumped as they held up their phones, snapping pictures and recording the victory.
Now, the Milwaukee health commissioner says the event may be the common factor in a surge of covid-19 cases. As of Tuesday, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services had identified almost 500 attendees who later contracted covid.
“We encourage anyone who has attended a large gathering, such as the watch party in the Deer District, get tested for covid-19 due to the increased risk of transmission,” Milwaukee Health Commissioner Kirsten Johnson said during a briefing Tuesday.
The news, first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is the latest report of a possible outdoor superspreader event as the highly contagious delta variant spreads rapidly throughout the country.
An outbreak in Provincetown, Mass., which probably began during packed events over the July Fourth holiday weekend, resulted in almost 900 cases as of Friday, The Washington Post reported."
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/05/milwaukee-bucks-superspreader-covid/
Commentary: It's no surprise that large crowds, even outdoors, are superspreader events. Think of it as we usually do: in a crowd, can you smell someone smoking? If so, then that's smoke that was in their lungs a few moments ago - which means it's contaminated air. Even if only 1 out of 100 people around you were smoking, if you're in a crowd of 100,000, you're breathing a lot of smoke, and outside air only would be effective if there were gale-force winds constantly blowing the smoke away.
The same is true for COVID-19, especially the Delta variant.
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Moderna holding the line. "The powerful protection offered by Moderna’s Covid vaccine does not wane in the first six months after the second dose, according to a statement released by the company on Thursday morning in advance of its earnings call.
But during the call, Moderna executives said they anticipated that boosters would be necessary this fall to contend with the Delta variant, which became common in the United States after the results were collected.
“We believe a dose three of a booster will likely be necessary to keep us as safe as possible through the winter season in the Northern Hemisphere,” said Dr. Stephen Hoge, the president of Moderna.
Germany, Israel and France have all decided to administer boosters to potentially vulnerable populations — such as older people or people with compromised immune systems or both — to bolster their immunity in the face of a Delta-driven surge in cases. The Biden administration is considering a similar strategy.
Scientists, though, have not reached a consensus on whether booster shots are needed to boost immunity in fully vaccinated people. On Wednesday, the World Health Organization called for a moratorium on boosters till the end of September. The group urged health leaders to focus instead on vaccinating 10 percent of people in all countries."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/05/world/moderna-vaccine-efficacy.html
Commentary: In the documentation, it cites that a half-dose of the Moderna vaccine as a third booster increased neutralizing antibody titers by 42x. I would expect us to need boosters as Delta and its variants, as well as Lambda, evolve further. We have done, globally, such a poor job of vaccinating and suppressing the disease that further, more dangerous mutation is inevitable.
For now, mask up and stay masked any time you're around other people you don't live with.
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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 people you don't live with, 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 and away from people you don't live with 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.