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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Here's an important thing to remember: all the protests happening over the last week will not show up in COVID-19 cases for at least a week. The upticks we're seeing all over the world and country are from opening up too soon.
Dr. Scott Gottlieb confirmed the same on Face the Nation. "We're going to see an uptick in other major cities where there have been these protests. It's hard to judge just how much right now and it's going to take a couple of weeks, we're probably going to have to get a few transmission cycles out to really judge what the impact was. I think what the protesters can do is try to take precautions, wear masks distance where they can and try to avoid, you know, things like getting in contact with elderly people, people who are vulnerable after attending these protests."
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Commentary: watch the numbers over the next 14 days to judge the impact of protests. What we're seeing now is likely the impact of the COVID-19 protests - in which a fair number of protestors wore absolutely no protective equipment at all.
With numbers going up in many places, it's time to reaffirm our commitment to the basics. Hand washing. Masks everywhere outside the home. Distancing of at least 6 feet. Avoiding crowds when possible. Avoiding indoor air when possible, wearing masks and gloves otherwise. Reducing time spent around people not in your household. Over the weekend, I saw many, many people behaving as though the pandemic were over. It's not. We're in the bottom of the second inning.
For those in the USA, check out COVID Exit Strategy for where your region is.
Source: https://www.covidexitstrategy.org/
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New Zealand is free of COVID-19. "Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Monday following confirmation that the country's last remaining case had recovered that all remaining domestic restrictions would be lifted at midnight local time. However, the border will remain closed to all but returning Kiwis.
Shaun Hendy, who heads Te Pūnaha Matatini, a scientific body advising the government on COVID-19, said locking down early with some of the world's toughest measures was "crucial" to New Zealand's success, as other countries struggle with slowing the virus' spread and rising death tolls."
Source: https://www.axios.com/new-zealand-no-coronavirus-cases-covid-19-free-1f209ae3-46e5-4343-b076-189bde8c3953.html
Commentary: taking actions early and aggressively based on science yields outcomes that align with scientific principles. Nations around the world should pay heed and adapt their strategies appropriately. Life is back to normal (save for international tourism) in New Zealand for the moment. What might it have been like in, say, the United States, if we had adopted similarly aggressive strategies?
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Meatpacking plants are seeing infection rates double. "But the number of coronavirus cases tied to meatpacking plants has more than doubled since then, topping 20,400 infections across 216 plants in 33 states, the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting found.
At least 74 people have died.
That’s despite widespread implementation of protective measures like temperature checks, plastic barriers and social distancing meant to curb the virus’ spread inside the plants. Some of the recent outbreaks happened at facilities that had taken such steps. Other plants have implemented no protective measures or have failed to enforce them.
One federal meat inspector in the Midwest told USA TODAY that workers in several plants she visits on the job were not wearing masks and practiced only limited social distancing. Some, she said, had also recently tested positive for COVID-19."
Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/06/06/meatpacking-plants-cant-shake-covid-19-cases-despite-trump-order/3137400001/
Commentary: the price of that cheeseburger is becoming more apparent; thus far it has been 74 lives since the executive order to declare meat an essential good under the Defense Production Act.
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Men may be hit harder by COVID-19 in part due to sex hormones. " In January, one of the first publications on those sickened by the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China, reported that three out of every four hospitalized patients were male. Data from around the world have since confirmed that men face a greater risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19 than women and that children are largely spared. Now, scientists investigating how the virus does its deadly work have zeroed in on a possible reason: Androgens—male hormones such as testosterone—appear to boost the virus’ ability to get inside cells.
A constellation of emerging data supports this idea, including COVID-19 outcomes in men with prostate cancer and lab studies of how androgens regulate key genes. And preliminary observations from Spain suggest that a disproportionate number of men with male pattern baldness—which is linked to a powerful androgen—end up in hospitals with COVID-19. Researchers are rushing to test already approved drugs that block androgens’ effects, deploying them early in infection in hopes of slowing the virus and buying time for the immune system to beat it back."
Source: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/why-coronavirus-hits-men-harder-sex-hormones-offer-clues
Commentary: the link between androgens and COVID-19 is still unclear, but for now, men should be taking precautions seriously. Wear masks and adhere to all distancing and hygiene guidelines.
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Beware those who meddle with data. "The Brazilian government has been accused of totalitarianism and censorship after it stopped releasing its total numbers of Covid-19 cases and deaths and wiped an official site clean of swaths of data.
Health ministry insiders told local media the move was ordered by far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, himself – and was met with widespread outrage in Brazil, one of the world’s worst-hit Covid-19 hotspots, with more deaths than Italy and more cases than Russia and the UK."
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/07/brazil-stops-releasing-covid-19-death-toll-and-wipes-data-from-official-site
Commentary: anyone changing the numbers to make their regime look better is only postponing the inevitable and making it harder to treat the disease. In the end, doing so will only cost more lives.
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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.