Let’s remember that the coronavirus is still a mystery

‘I find a gulf in perceptions between experts and nonexperts. Many Americans believe that we are now emerging from the pandemic and that, as President Trump says, we can see light at the end of the tunnel. Yet many epidemiologists, while acknowledging how little they know, are deeply apprehensive about a big second wave this fall, more brutal than anything we’ve endured so far. That mix of humility and apprehensiveness seems the best guide as we devise policy to survive a plague. Hope for the best while preparing for the worst.’

Read here (New York Times, May 20, 2020)

How pandemics end (NYT)

‘Will that happen with Covid-19? One possibility, historians say, is that the coronavirus pandemic could end socially before it ends medically. People may grow so tired of the restrictions that they declare the pandemic over, even as the virus continues to smolder in the population and before a vaccine or effective treatment is found.

“I think there is this sort of social psychological issue of exhaustion and frustration,” the Yale historian Naomi Rogers said. “We may be in a moment when people are just saying: ‘That’s enough. I deserve to be able to return to my regular life”.’

Read here (New York Times, May 10, 2020)

Sympathy for the epidemiologists: Paul Krugman

‘...the White House probably likes IHME [University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation] less today than it did yesterday: the institute just drastically revised its projected death total upward, from 72,000 to 134,000. Documents obtained by The New York Times suggest that modelers within the U.S. government have also revised death projections sharply upward...

‘So let me give a shout-out to the hard-working, much-criticized epidemiologists trying to get this pandemic right. You may take a lot of abuse when you get it wrong, which you unavoidably will on occasion. But you’re doing what must be done. Also, welcome to my world.’

Read here (New York Times, May 5, 2020)

In The NYTimes, only white leaders stand out

‘The New York Times recently published a list of “true leaders” in the fight against COVID-19. They spend exactly one sentence on Asia and the rest on white leaders that mostly did worse than Iran. The structural racism is mind-boggling, and it’s getting people killed.

‘According to the NYTimes, Iran Completely and Utterly Botched Its Response to the Coronavirus, but countries with higher mortality rates like Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Denmark are listed as true leaders. It makes no sense. It’s just racism, so structural that the Editorial Board can’t even see it. It’s built into the edifice of the paper itself.’

Read here (Medium, May 4, 2020)

The Covid-19 riddle: Why does the virus wallop some places and spare others?

This article delves into areas like age, cultural factors, heat and light, and early and strict interventions.

‘Time may still prove the greatest equalizer: The Spanish flu that broke out in the United States in 1918 seemed to die down during the summer only to come roaring back with a deadlier strain in the fall, and a third wave the following year. It eventually reached far-flung places like islands in Alaska and the South Pacific and infected a third of the world’s population.

“We are really early in this disease,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Research Institute. “If this were a baseball game, it would be the second inning and there’s no reason to think that by the ninth inning the rest of the world that looks now like it hasn’t been affected won’t become like other places.”

Read here (New York Times, May 3, 2020)

Covid-19’s race and class warfare

‘America has never been comfortable discussing the inequalities that America created, let alone addressing them. America loves a feel-good, forget-the-past-let’s-start-from-here mantra. But, this virus is exploiting these man-made inequalities and making them impossible to ignore. It is demonstrating the incalculable callousness of wealth and privilege that would willingly thrust the less well off into the most danger for a few creature comforts.’

Read here (New York Times, May 3, 2020)

Pandemic shakes France’s faith in a cornerstone: Strong central government

‘Critics blame France’s poor showing, at least in part, on the excessive centralization of the French state, embodied by a president, Emmanuel Macron, who has spoken of his belief in the “top-down’’ exercise of power and has employed martial language in describing the fight against the virus.

‘Like many leaders, Mr. Macron initially derived a boost from the crisis, but that has begun to fade. Nearly 60 percent of respondents described him as a “bad president” in one recent poll, while another poll showed confidence in the government’s management of the crisis declining steadily to 39 percent from 55 percent in the past month.’

Read here (New York Times, April 29, 2020, updated May 5)

In race for a Coronavirus vaccine, an Oxford group leaps ahead

‘In the worldwide race for a vaccine to stop the coronavirus, the laboratory sprinting fastest is at Oxford University. Most other teams have had to start with small clinical trials of a few hundred participants to demonstrate safety. But scientists at the university’s Jenner Institute had a head start on a vaccine, having proved in previous trials that similar inoculations — including one last year against an earlier coronavirus — were harmless to humans. That has enabled them to leap ahead and schedule tests of their new coronavirus vaccine involving more than 6,000 people by the end of next month, hoping to show not only that it is safe, but also that it works.’

Read here (New York Times, April 28, 2020)

Unified in coronavirus lockdown, India splinters over reopening

‘For five weeks, Indians of all stripes have united to zealously conduct a nationwide lockdown, the largest and one of the most severe anywhere. But as the central government has started lifting restrictions in areas with few or no known cases of the coronavirus, officials are now facing a new challenge: persuading fearful residents, and their leaders, to consider a partial reopening.’

Read here (New York Times, April 28, 2020)

In Italy, home is also a dangerous place that may be propping up the infection curve the lockdown was meant to suppress

‘Italy’s leading virologists now consider home infections, alongside clusters in retirement homes, to be a stubborn source of the country’s contagion. Living together in close quarters and the failure to move the infected into dedicated quarantine facilities have, they say, paradoxically propped up the curve of infections that “stay home” measures were designed to suppress.

‘The problem is one the Chinese government bludgeoned quickly. It ordered the roundup of all residents in Wuhan infected with the coronavirus, warehousing them in quarantine camps, sometimes with little care. While that approach may have helped contain the virus, ripping people apart from their homes is anathema to Western democracies, especially Italy, where tight-knit families are the rule.’

Read here (New York Times, April 24, 2020)

Give me liberty and give me death: Paul Krugman

‘…But Trump being Trump, he’s disavowing any responsibility, instead pressuring states to ignore the health risks and abandon the social distancing that has blunted the pandemic.

‘If you ask me, this isn’t just cruel, it’s politically stupid. As we’ve just seen, viruses move fast. A few days ago we were starting to see signs that Covid-19 might be peaking. But relax our vigilance, even a bit, and a second, bigger wave of deaths could easily happen well before the election.

‘But Trump and his allies don’t seem able to wrap their minds around the idea that it’s their job to solve problems, not shift the blame. And I don’t know about you, but I’m getting even more scared than I was.’

Read here (New York Times, April 21, 2020)

Could the power of the sun slow the coronavirus?

‘Dr. Merow said that although the lethal effects of ultraviolet light on viruses are well-known, he and his colleague were surprised to find a seasonal drop evident on a global scale... Dr. Merow said he and his colleague had mined existing studies on how environmental and ecological factors correlate with virus infection rates and used them in ecological modeling of the global repercussions. Global data on temperatures, humidity, the penetration through the atmosphere of sunlight’s ultraviolet rays, population ages and densities, and Covid-19 infection counts were combined into a computer model that mapped out the seasonal trends, he said. Dr. Merow noted that the study’s range of uncertainty was considerable, such that, depending on the location within the United States, the chance of seeing no viral slowdown in the summer ranged from 20 percent to 40 percent.’

Read here (New York Times, April 20, 2020)

Covid-19, ‘silent hypoxia’ and a simple way to identify patients sooner (even do it at home with a ‘pulse oximeter’)

‘We are just beginning to recognise that Covid pneumonia initially causes a form of oxygen deprivation we call “silent hypoxia” — “silent” because of its insidious, hard-to-detect nature...

‘There is a way we could identify more patients who have Covid pneumonia sooner and treat them more effectively — and it would not require waiting for a coronavirus test at a hospital or doctor’s office. It requires detecting silent hypoxia early through a common medical device that can be purchased without a prescription at most pharmacies: a pulse oximeter...

‘Pulse oximetry is no more complicated than using a thermometer. These small devices turn on with one button and are placed on a fingertip. In a few seconds, two numbers are displayed: oxygen saturation and pulse rate. Pulse oximeters are extremely reliable in detecting oxygenation problems and elevated heart rates.’

Read here (New York Times, April 20, 2020)

‘On cronies, cranks and the coronavirus’: Opinion piece by Paul Krugman

‘So where’s this [push to open up the economy quickly] coming from? I’ve seen some people portray it as a conflict between epidemiologists and economists, but that’s all wrong. No, this push to reopen is coming not from economists but from cranks and cronies. That is, it’s coming on one side from people who may describe themselves as economists but whom the professionals consider cranks...’

Read here (New York Times, April 14, 2020)

Misinformation: China… and now Russia

‘[T]he State Department recently accused Russia of using thousands of social media accounts to spread coronavirus misinformation — including a conspiracy theory that the United States engineered the deadly pandemic.

‘The Kremlin’s audience for open disinformation is surprisingly large. The YouTube videos of RT, Russia’s global television network, average one million views per day, “the highest among news outlets,” according to a U.S. intelligence report. Since the founding of the Russian network in 2005, its videos have received more than four billion views, analysts recently concluded.’

Read here (New York Times, April 13, 2020)

How the virus transformed the way Americans spend their money

‘In a matter of weeks, pillars of American industry essentially ground to a halt. Airplanes, restaurants and arenas were suddenly empty. In many states, businesses deemed nonessential — including luxury goods retailers and golf courses — were ordered closed.’

[NOTE: These figures, while they don't apply to many developing countries as a whole, give us a glimpse of how the more urbanised, consumerist parts of our economies may be affected. Also the patterns of spending give us an idea of what we may expect in large sections of the economy dependent on travel and tourism, including “medical tourism”, international students, retailing in malls, etc. They also tell us why we should now focus on basic needs.]

Read here (New York Times, April 11, 2020)

Behind Trump’s failure on the Covid-19 virus

‘An examination reveals the president was warned about the potential for a pandemic but that internal divisions, lack of planning and his faith in his own instincts led to a halting response…

‘During the last week in March, Kellyanne Conway, a senior White House adviser involved in task force meetings, gave voice to concerns other aides had. She warned Mr. Trump that his wished-for date of Easter to reopen the country likely couldn’t be accomplished. Among other things, she told him, he would end up being blamed by critics for every subsequent death caused by the virus.

‘Within days, he watched images on television of a calamitous situation at Elmhurst Hospital Center, miles from his childhood home in Queens, NY. where 13 people had died from the coronavirus in 24 hours.’

NOTE: On April 13, when NY Governor Cuomo said the ‘worst is over’, the total cases in New York was 195,031 with 10,056 deaths (NYT report of April 13)

Read here (New York Times, April 11, 2020)

Lockdown can’t last forever. Here’s how to lift it

‘Trying to see our way through the pandemic with this “suppress and lift” approach is much like driving a car on a long and tortuous road. One needs to hit the brakes and release them, again and again, to keep moving forward without crashing, all with an eye toward safely reaching one’s final destination.’

Opinion by Gabriel Leung, infectious disease epidemiologist and dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong.

Read here (New York Times, April 6, 2020)

White House airlifts medical supplies from China amid Covid-19 crisis: 22 planeloads scheduled

‘A commercial aircraft carrying 80 tons of gloves, masks, gowns and other medical supplies from Shanghai touched down in New York on Sunday, the first of 22 scheduled flights that White House officials say will funnel much-needed goods to the United States by early April as it battles the world’s largest coronavirus outbreak.

‘The plane delivered 130,000 N95 masks, 1.8 million face masks and gowns, 10 million gloves and thousands of thermometers for distribution to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, said Lizzie Litzow, a spokeswoman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Ms. Litzow said that flights would be arriving in Chicago on Monday and in Ohio on Tuesday, and that supplies would be sent from there to other states using private-sector distribution networks.

‘While the goods that arrived in New York on Sunday will be welcomed by hospitals and health care workers — some of whom have resorted to rationing protective gear or using homemade supplies — they represent just a tiny portion of what American hospitals need. The Department of Health and Human Services has estimated that the United States will require 3.5 billion masks if the pandemic lasts a year.’

Read here (New York Times, March 30, 2020)