Stanford study suggests indoor dining presents huge Covid-19 infection risk

‘According to the New York Times, the study followed the movement of 98 million people to and from indoor public spaces, then calculated traffic to each spot visited as well as how long people stay and each venue’s square footage. Using the area’s infection rate, they then used “standard infectious disease assumptions” to determine how the illness spread across cities.

‘Stanford computer scientist Jure Leskovec, the senior author of the report, tells the Times that “restaurants were by far the riskiest places” for new infections, “about four times riskier than gyms and coffee shops, followed by hotels,” he says. It’s news that jibes with another recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which said in September that a study of adults across 11 U.S. cities who tested positive for the novel coronavirus were twice as likely to have dined out within the last two weeks than those who tested negative.’

Read here (Eater San Francisco, Nov 11, 2020)

The anti-lockdown scientists’ cause would be more persuasive if it weren’t so half-baked

‘The [Great Barrington] declaration, which calls for an immediate resumption of “life as normal” for everyone except the “vulnerable”, is written by three science professors from Harvard, Oxford and Stanford, giving it the sheen of academic respectability. But there is much to set alarm bells ringing. It makes claims about herd immunity – the idea that letting the virus rip among less vulnerable groups will allow a degree of population-level immunity to build up which will eventually protect the more vulnerable – that are unsupported by existing scientific evidence... And what are scientists doing fronting a campaign whose back office is run by a thinktank that flirts with climate change denial?’

Read here (The Guardian, Oct 11, 2020)

Stanford University epidemiologist John Ioannidis calls out media for panicking the public over COVID-19, reasons that ‘flattening the curve’ may make things worse for overall health system

‘Flattening the curve to avoid overwhelming the health system is conceptually sound—in theory,’ he wrote in a paper in March. ‘A visual that has become viral in media and social media shows how flattening the curve reduces the volume of the epidemic that is above the threshold of what the health system can handle at any moment. Yet if the health system does become overwhelmed, the majority of the extra deaths may not be due to coronavirus but to other common diseases and conditions such as heart attacks, strokes, trauma, bleeding, and the like that are not adequately treated,’ he continued. ‘If the level of the epidemic does overwhelm the health system and extreme measures have only modest effectiveness, then flattening the curve may make things worse… Instead of being overwhelmed during a short, acute phase, the health system will remain overwhelmed for a more protracted period. That’s another reason we need data about the exact level of the epidemic activity.’

Read here (Straight, April 10, 2020)

Response to COVID-19 in Taiwan: Big data analytics, new technology, and proactive testing

This paper published in the JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) network, covers how Taiwan (1) recognised the crisis (2) managed it (3) communicated to the public about it. It concludes:

‘Taiwan’s government learned from its 2003 SARS experience and established a public health response mechanism for enabling rapid actions for the next crisis. Well-trained and experienced teams of officials were quick to recognize the crisis and activated emergency management structures to address the emerging outbreak.

‘In a crisis, governments often make difficult decisions under uncertainty and time constraints. These decisions must be both culturally appropriate and sensitive to the population. Through early recognition of the crisis, daily briefings to the public, and simple health messaging, the government was able to reassure the public by delivering timely, accurate, and transparent information regarding the evolving epidemic. Taiwan is an example of how a society can respond quickly to a crisis and protect the interests of its citizens.’

Read here (JamaNetwork, March 3, 2020)

Read related article in Stanford.edu here