As more local lockdowns begin, the hard truth is there’s no return to ‘normal’ [comment on Britain]

‘As well as the risk Covid poses to individuals, our actions affect others including vulnerable and elderly people. Think of it as a chain of infections – if you are a part of this and it gets passed on, others may become ill and die because of your role in that chain. A wedding in Maine resulted in more than 170 people contracting the virus, and seven people dying. None of those who died attended the wedding...

‘Nine months after South Korea and Senegal started building diagnostic capacity, it is comically depressing that the UK government, one of the richest in the world, does not have a functional testing system that returns results within 24 hours. In addition, given that we know the virus spreads easily through households, those who test positive should have the offer to isolate in external facilities (such as hotels). The “14-day isolation” measures for people entering the UK are also a box-ticking exercise where given the lack of screening or monitoring, a constant stream of infections keep coming into the country. It’s like trying to empty a bucket under a tap.’

Read here (The Guardian, Sept 21, 2020) 

Facts v feelings: How to stop our emotions misleading us -- Tim Harford

‘The pandemic has shown how a lack of solid statistics can be dangerous. But even with the firmest of evidence, we often end up ignoring the facts we don’t like...’ This is also shown in evidence from two other areas: (1) Coffee and breast cysts and (2) Climate change. They should inform our reaction to Covid-19 and other matters...

‘When it comes to interpreting the world around us, we need to realise that our feelings can trump our expertise. This explains why we buy things we don’t need, fall for the wrong kind of romantic partner, or vote for politicians who betray our trust. In particular, it explains why we so often buy into statistical claims that even a moment’s thought would tell us cannot be true. Sometimes, we want to be fooled. Psychologist Ziva Kunda found this effect in the lab, when she showed experimental subjects an article laying out the evidence that coffee or other sources of caffeine could increase the risk to women of developing breast cysts. Most people found the article pretty convincing. Women who drank a lot of coffee did not...

‘Scientific evidence is scientific evidence. Our beliefs around climate change shouldn’t skew left and right. But they do. This gap became wider the more education people had. Among those with no college education, 45% of Democrats and 23% of Republicans worried “a great deal” about climate change. Yet among those with a college education, the figures were 50% of Democrats and 8% of Republicans. A similar pattern holds if you measure scientific literacy: more scientifically literate Republicans and Democrats are further apart than those who know very little about science.’

Read here (The Guardian, Sept 10, 2020)

How the race for a Covid-19 vaccine is getting dirty

‘Political pressure has been mounting for scientists to deliver an economy-saving result, and reports of corner-cutting emerge daily... Nor is it just politicians who are in a hurry. On 2 August, Steven Salzberg, a computational biologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, suggested in Forbes magazine that a promising vaccine be rolled out to a wider pool of volunteers before clinical trials had been completed, triggering an outcry (and some sympathy) that prompted him to recant the next day. Meanwhile, a research group with links to Harvard University continues to defend its publication in July of a recipe for a DIY Covid-19 vaccine – one that only the group’s 20-odd members had previously tested.’ 

Read here (The Guardian, August 30, 2020)

Why do Covid fatalities remain low when infection numbers are rising?

‘Most statistics indicate that although cases of Covid-19 are rising in many parts of Europe and the United States, the number of deaths and cases of severe complications remain relatively low. For example, patients on ventilators have dropped from 3,000 at the epidemic’s peak in Britain to 70. At the same time, the number of cases in the UK have begun to rise in many areas.’

Questions: (1) What lies behind this trend? (2) Does that indicate that the worst may be over? (3) Is the Covid-19 virus becoming less deadly?

Read here (The Guardian, August 23, 2020)

Almost half of UK charities for world's poorest set to close in a year – Survey

‘Nearly half of the UK’s small charities working with the world’s poorest people expect to close within the next 12 months due to lack of financial support, a survey has found. Despite most of them seeing a spike in demand for their services during Covid-19, 15% of the charities will be forced to shut their doors within the next six months, and 45% within a year, according to data from the Small International Development Charities Network (SIDCN).’

Read here (The Guardian, August 6, 2020)

‘We could see this tsunami of people coming’: Inside the secret world of intensive care

“When dealing with patients at the extremes of life,” writes Aoife Abbey, a doctor at University Hospital Coventry in her memoir The Seven Signs of Life, “there is an onus on doctors to be alert for the time when the burden of treatment outweighs the expected benefit for a patient. It is imperative that medicine knows when it is time to work with death, if it is to work at all. Intensive care, perhaps more than any other speciality, is defined by this specific sort of responsibility.”

‘During these months of treating Covid-19 patients, Abbey has seen patients come in with severe acute respiratory failure. Some patients stood to benefit from intensive care, while for others the escalation of treatments, including invasive forms of ventilation, were not deemed to be in their best interest. The established ethical frameworks used to make these kinds of decisions have remained the same when treating patients with Covid-19.’

Read here (The Guardian, July 30, 2020)

The world needs a 'people's vaccine' for coronavirus, not a big-pharma monopoly: Helen Clark and Winnie Byanyima

‘Current distribution plans for the Oxford vaccine are an alarming reminder of what happens when you leave a public resource in the hands of a single company. Around 300m doses have been promised for developing countries by the end of this year – a welcome step, but one that pales in comparison with the 400m doses that will go to the US and UK. The Netherlands, Italy, France and Germany have secured another 400m doses between them. The EU and other rich nations are also pushing their way to the front of the queue. Many middle-income countries, such as those in Latin America, where the scale of the outbreak is frightening, may be completely locked out of these arrangements.’

Read here (The Guardian, July 23, 2020)

Ignoring effects of Covid-19 on women could cost $5tn, warns Melinda Gates

‘The failure of leaders to take into account the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on women, and their roles in lessening its harm, will mean a long, slow recovery that could cost the world economy trillions of dollars, Melinda Gates has warned. Even a four-year delay in programmes that promote gender equality, such as advancing women’s digital and financial inclusion, would wipe a potential $5tn (£4tn) from global GDP by 2030. “As policymakers work to protect and rebuild economies, their response must account for the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on women, and the unique roles women will have to play in mitigating the pandemic’s harm,” Gates said in a paper published on Wednesday.’

Read here (The Guardian, July 15, 2020)

WHO’s Covid-19 inquiry is a shrewd move in a sea of disinformation

‘In the week in which the US formally announced its intention to quit the WHO, the organisation’s announcement of the two figures who will lead its review of the pandemic and its response feels significant.

‘Given Trump’s record of denigrating female leaders, and of racist dog-whistles, it is striking that the review will be chaired by two highly regarded and independent-minded women leaders, one of them from Africa – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel laureate and the former president of Liberia, and Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand.’

Read here (The Guardian, July 10, 2020)

US buys up world stock of key Covid-19 drug remdesivir

‘The US has bought up virtually all the stocks for the next three months of one of the two drugs proven to work against Covid-19, leaving none for the UK, Europe or most of the rest of the world. Experts and campaigners are alarmed both by the US unilateral action on remdesivir and the wider implications, for instance in the event of a vaccine becoming available. The Trump administration has already shown that it is prepared to outbid and outmanoeuvre all other countries to secure the medical supplies it needs for the US.’

Read here (The Guardian, June 30, 2020)

‘You have to take action’: One hospital cleaner’s journey through the pandemic

‘Two years ago, Ernesta decided she wanted to improve things for the cleaners at Lewisham hospital. She believed they deserved better pay and better treatment. She joined the union, persuaded her colleagues to join, too, and they began to organise themselves. In a long campaign to improve their working lives – a campaign that has persevered through a pandemic – the cleaners have won various battles, but they still have more to fight. In the past three months, their vulnerability has also been made distressingly clear. Cleaners from all over the country have died from Covid-19 – two of those who died worked down the road from Lewisham at St George’s hospital in Tooting. The pandemic has revealed what was always obvious to Ernesta: a hospital can’t function without its cleaners. They are as vital to its purpose as any of the other frontline staff, and equally at risk.’

Read here (The Guardian, June 30, 2020)

The end of tourism?

‘Coronavirus has also revealed the danger of overreliance on tourism, demonstrating in brutal fashion what happens when the industry supporting an entire community, at the expense of any other more sustainable activity, collapses. On 7 May, the UN World Tourism Organisation estimated that earnings from international tourism might be down 80% this year against last year’s figure of $1.7tn, and that 120m jobs could be lost. Since tourism relies on the same human mobility that spreads disease, and will be subject to the most stringent and lasting restrictions, it is likely to suffer more than almost any other economic activity.’

Read here (Guardian, June 18, 2020)

I'm an ICU doctor treating coronavirus patients. But somehow I'm not angry

‘Sometimes I wonder if my lack of anger means I don’t care enough; if I’ve been worn down by ventilators being turned off, patients dying, families asking for a final call. Perhaps emotions overwhelm and suffocate each other in such a situation, leaving no air for something as indulgent as anger. Perhaps my anger couldn’t compete with the humility of knowing that until early March, I and every doctor I knew had predicted that this virus posed little threat beyond a bad seasonal flu. Like my better judgment, perhaps my anger had lost.’

Read here (The Guardian, June 11, 2020)

‘Are you immune?’ The new class system that could shape the Covid-19 world

‘...experts predict that if survivors are found to be immune, they could perform a range of jobs and services – such as volunteering in hospitals and nursing homes, caring for coronavirus patients and working in shops and food processing plants – risk-free. And, depending on how authorities, business and society at large respond, they could also be entitled to greater freedoms.’

Read here (The Guardian, June 10, 2020)

From drug dealers to loan sharks: how coronavirus empowers organised crime

‘At the outset, Covid-19 and the lockdown disoriented organised crime and its activities as much as the rest of us. But organised crime is not only adapting to the present, it is preparing to carve a lucrative future out of the crisis... Disruption to supplies, diversion of police resources and collapsing businesses all create opportunities.’

Read here (The Guardian, June 7, 2020)

Are we underestimating how many people are resistant to Covid-19?

‘One thing seems clear: there are many reasons why one population is more protected than another. Theoretical epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta of the University of Oxford thinks that a key one is immunity that was built up prior to this pandemic. “It’s been my hunch for a very long time that there is a lot of cross-protection from severe disease and death conferred by other circulating, related bugs,” she says...

‘Socioeconomic status, climate, culture and genetic makeup could also shape vulnerability, as could certain childhood vaccines and vitamin D levels. And all of these factors can vary between countries.’

Read here (The Guardian, June 7, 2020)

Governments and WHO changed Covid-19 policy based on suspect data from tiny US company

‘The World Health Organization and a number of national governments have changed their Covid-19 policies and treatments on the basis of flawed data from a little-known US healthcare analytics company [Surgisphere], also calling into question the integrity of key studies published in some of the world’s most prestigious medical journals [The Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine].

‘Data it claims to have legitimately obtained from more than a thousand hospitals worldwide formed the basis of scientific articles that have led to changes in Covid-19 treatment policies in Latin American countries. It was also behind a decision by the WHO and research institutes around the world to halt trials of the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine. On Wednesday, the WHO announced those trials would now resume.’

Read here (The Guardian, June 3, 2020)

K number: What is the coronavirus metric that could be crucial as lockdown eases?

‘K sheds light on the variation behind R. “Some [infectious] people might generate a lot of secondary cases because of the event they attend, for example, and other people may not generate many secondary cases at all,” said Dr Adam Kucharski, an expert in the dynamics of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “K is the statistical value that tells us how much variation there is in that distribution.” But unlike R, K numbers are not intuitive. “The general rule is that the smaller the K value is, the more transmission comes from a smaller number of infectious people,” said Kucharski.’

Read here (The Guardian, June 1, 2020)

Why we might not get a coronavirus vaccine

‘When the prime minister, Boris Johnson, told a No 10 press briefing that a vaccine was “by no means guaranteed”, his chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, agreed, but added: “I’d be surprised if we didn’t end up with something.” Many scientists share that view... In all likelihood, a coronavirus vaccine will not be 100% effective.’

Read here (The Guardian, May 22, 2020)

Why are Africa's coronavirus successes being overlooked?

‘Take the two African countries I have called home – Senegal and Ghana... Senegal is in a good position because its Covid-19 response planning began in earnest in January, as soon as the first international alert on the virus went out... As a result, this nation of 16 million people has had only 30 deaths... Ghana, with a population of 30 million, has a similar death toll to Senegal, partly because of an extensive system of contact tracing, utilising a large number of community health workers and volunteers, and other innovative techniques such as “pool testing”, in which multiple blood samples are tested and then followed up as individual tests only if a positive result is found. The advantages in this approach are now being studied by the World Health Organization.’

Read here (The Guardian, May 21, 2020)