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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A landmark new study from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine showcases the various risk factors that lead to negative COVID-19 outcomes in one of the largest studies of its kind.
Source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20092999v1.full.pdf
Source:
Age, organ transplants, obesity... what this does a good job telling is that if you have any major health issues of any kind, COVID-19 is probably going to hit you harder.
The challenge for many in the United States (this is a UK study) is that about half the US population fits in at least one high risk category. This makes "isolating the at-risk" challenging.
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Why aren't kids hit hard by COVID-19? The Lancet offers perspective. "The immune preparedness of children to any novel pathogens, including, SARS-CoV-2 might be based on several factors. First, in the early phases of infection, natural antibodies play a most important role. Natural antibodies, mostly of IgM isotype and generated independently of previous antigen encounters, have a broad reactivity and a variable affinity. Second, children have the ability to rapidly produce natural antibodies with broad reactivity that have not yet been selected and shaped by the reaction to common environmental pathogens. Evolution has endowed a survival advantage to children to combat known and unknown pathogens. The adult is also well protected by the balance of cells with high and low specificity. With ageing, malnutrition, immunosuppression, and co-morbid states, our immune system loses the ability to adapt to novelty. Although vaccines are the way forward, in emergency situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the investigation and use of immune tools that nature has endowed to children might improve management outcomes."
Source: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4642(20)30135-8/fulltext
In short, the healthier your immune system, the better you fare. And kids are generally healthier than mature adults. This isn't rocket science, but it's a testament to how well suited COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 are to our modern world. The disease takes special advantage of everything we do wrong in modern society.
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Should schools have shut down? Dr. Scott Gottlieb says we don't know yet. "“It might be that thousands of kids are actually getting coronavirus, tens of thousands of kids, and we just aren’t seeing it because the kids are getting a very mild illness or they’re getting no illness at all,” Gottlieb said on “Squawk Box.” “But they’re still vectors, they’re still passing on the virus.” Gottlieb said there are so far “mixed studies” on the rate of infection for children. He said some suggest kids are not getting infecting at high rates, while others suggest they are getting infected with “sub-clinical illness” and largely remaining asymptomatic."
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/07/scott-gottlieb-kids-with-undetected-coronavirus-could-be-spreading-it.html
The reality is we still don't know, so we can't draw conclusions other than from other respiratory diseases. The common cold and influenza spread like mad in schools; there's no reason to believe children would change their behaviors around other children with a new, novel disease. Thus, until solid, peer-reviewed evidence is available, erring on the side of caution and closing schools was and is a good public health choice.
That in turn means parents should be planning for the kids to be home for a good deal longer - possibly (likely) for the remainder of calendar year 2020.
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US weekly jobless claims hit 3.17 million, for a 7-week total of 33.5 million.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/07/us-weekly-jobless-claims.html
To put some context, the labor force in February 2020, with 3.5% unemployment, was 164.5 million. Combined with the 5.78 million people who were unemployed at the time, the US unemployment rate is now 23.9%. We are within 1% of the peak of unemployment in the Great Depression (24.9%) - with 3 times as many people.
What do we do about this? In the short term, there are still companies and businesses hiring. In fact, in the industry I work in, marketing, the top open position - marketing manager - has increased the number of openings by about 25% in the last few weeks in the US.
Keep an ear out for your friends and loved ones if they're looking. Share openings that are relevant to your personal social networks. My friend Mitch Joel once said, of networking and connections, "it's not who you know - it's who knows you". Be the person in your network that knows the people around you, and can connect them to opportunities. Be the source, the curator, the first to know by being the first to share job opportunities.
So remember that. There are still companies and businesses hiring. Find them, get connected to them, and help get the people in your network re-situated.
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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.
2. Wear gloves and a mask when out of your home.
3. Stay home as much as possible.
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/?fbclid=IwAR1BsCnM8EzQkjPCOeyJO00xeOkzBPTlNSNdewV_0WBtDUbRBRizNrgljxg