Early and systematic tracking of high-risk contacts helped Uttar Pradesh step up the fight against Covid-19

‘The state of Uttar Pradesh continues to be one of the high-burden states and reported 474 054 cases and 6940 fatalities as of 27 October 2020. Being the most populous state of India, with a population of more than 199 812 341 (as per 2011 census), its fight against COVID-19 has been particularly challenging. When the cases surged post lifting of restrictions, as part of its surveillance response activities with support from WHO, the state government put in place a mechanism to evaluate the status and quality of contact tracing to guide policy level decision making for an informed public health response.

‘The World Health Organization (WHO)- National Public Health Surveillance Project (NPSP) team of medical officers along with 800 field monitors undertook a massive exercise to assess the status and quality of contact tracing amongst the 58 000 laboratory-confirmed cases of COVID-19 in 75 districts across the state during two weeks from 01-14 August 2020...

‘This massive effort led to identification of several cases that would not have been otherwise detected and helped in containing the further spread of the disease. Quality assessment exercise also enabled improved data collection and allowed authorities to make evidence-based decisions on containment measures. The government also deployed more teams to strengthen surveillance activities in districts with high-case load.

‘Acknowledging the key role of contact tracing as an essential public health tool for controlling disease outbreaks, Dr Roderico Ofrin, WHO Country Representative to India shares that systematic tracking of contacts through a proper mechanism is key, along with a well-trained health workforce to implement the surveillance activities.

“The UP government’s strategic response to COVID-19 by stepping up contact tracing efforts is exemplary and can serve as a good example for other states”, he adds.’

Read here (WHO, Nov 12, 2020)

Even with a vaccine, Covid-19 will last for years in the US, expert says

‘I think, even if the vaccine or several vaccines are invented in the next few months, which is likely, we still have challenges in manufacturing, distributing and persuading the public to accept the vaccine. And those challenges will take about a year. And, meanwhile, the virus is still spreading, and it will continue to spread until we reach a threshold of about 40 to 50 percent of Americans who are infected. Right now, we're only at about 10 percent. That threshold is known as the herd immunity threshold.

‘So, that will take us into 2022. So, from my perspective, the first period during which we're confronting the biological and epidemiological impact of the virus, and we're living in a changed world, wearing masks, physical distancing, school closures, and so on, will last until sometime in 2022. And then we're going to begin a second period, when we are recovering from the psychological, social and economic shock of the virus. And this has been seen for thousands of years with other epidemics. And that will take a couple of years for us to rebuild our economy and recover.

‘And so, sometime in 2024, I think, life will slowly begin to return to normal, with some persistent changes.’

Read here (PBS News Hour, Nov 12, 2020)

One in 5 Covid-19 survivors will develop mental illness, a new study found—So we asked an expert why

‘Covid-19 is an infectious disease that causes respiratory illness, but its effects can go way beyond that. A large study from Oxford University in the UK found that survivors are at a higher risk of developing mental illness, such as anxiety and depression. They are also more likely to develop dementia, according to the research, which was published in The Lancet Psychiatry on November 9.

‘The researchers analyzed electronic health records of 69 million people in the US, including more than 62,000 people who had COVID-19. They found that 20% of those infected with the coronavirus were diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder within 90 days—about twice as likely as for other groups of patients with other illnesses in the same time frame.’

Read here (Health, Nov 11, 2020)

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)

Breaking down Moderna’s Covid-19 patent pledge: Why did they do it?

‘Last month, Moderna Therapeutics, one of the global leaders in the race to produce a COVID-19 vaccine using mRNA, made the following statement regarding enforcement of its patents: “We feel a special obligation under the current circumstances to use our resources to bring this pandemic to an end as quickly as possible. Accordingly, while the pandemic continues, Moderna will not enforce our COVID-19 related patents against those making vaccines intended to combat the pandemic. Further, to eliminate any perceived IP barriers to vaccine development during the pandemic period, upon request we are also willing to license our intellectual property for COVID-19 vaccines to others for the post pandemic period.”

‘This post examines why Moderna made this patent pledge by examining its mRNA technology, go-to-market status, patent landscape, and market position.’

Read here (IP Watchdog, Nov 11, 2020)

Covid outbreak data on US carrier shows a plethora of initial symptoms among the symptomatic, only 5.3% fever : NEJM

‘Among the crew members who had symptomatic Covid-19 (confirmed or suspected), headache was the most common symptom reported at any point during illness (occurring in 68.0%), followed by cough (59.5%), nasal or sinus congestion (43.8%), and altered sense of taste or smell (42.3%) (Figure 3). The predominant symptoms reported at the onset of illness were cough (32.8%), headache (31.0%), and altered sense of taste or smell (24.1%). Shortness of breath at any point during illness was reported by 20.3% of the crew members with symptomatic cases, and 7.0% noted shortness of breath as an initial presenting symptom. In addition, 26.2% of the crew members with symptomatic Covid-19 reported chest pain or chest pressure at some point during their illness. Fever was reported as an initial presenting symptom by 5.3% of the crew members with symptomatic Covid-19, and fever at any point during illness was reported by 13.2%. Measured temperature readings showed that 2.8% of the crew members who had Covid-19 had a recorded temperature of 100.0°F or above, as compared with 0.3% of the crew members who did not have Covid-19. Among the crew members with Covid-19 for whom pulse oximetry data were available, approximately 0.5% had readings below 95% while breathing ambient air, with 0.08% below 94% and none below 90%.’

Read here (New England Journal of Medicine, Nov 11, 2020) 

How Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine could be cold comfort for some Asian nations

‘With tropical heat, remote island communities and a dearth of ultra-cold freezers, many Asian countries aren't betting on Pfizer's experimental vaccine solving their COVID-19 crisis any time soon. The world cheered on Monday (Nov 9) when Pfizer announced its shot, jointly developed with BioNTech SE, was more than 90 per cent effective based on initial trial results. Yet health experts cautioned that the vaccine, should it be approved, was no silver bullet - not least because the genetic material it's made from needs to be stored at temperatures of minus 70 degrees Celsius or below.’

Read here (Channel News Asia, Nov 10, 2020) 

Who are the candidates in the Covid-19 vaccine race?

‘Almost 200 Covid-19 vaccine candidates are being studied by scientists around the world. Of these, 44 are already in clinical trials, which means they are being tested on humans. The Straits Times highlights some of the prominent candidates in the Covid-19 vaccine race.’

Read here (Straits Times, Nov 10, 2020)

How Trump sold failure to 70 million people

‘The president convinced many voters that his response to the pandemic was not a disaster. The psychology of medical fraud is simple, timeless, and tragic... The narratives and tactics Trump used to persuade people to trust him as a sole beacon of truth—amid a sea of corrupt, lying scientists and doctors—draw on those of cult leaders, self-proclaimed healers, and wellness charlatans as much as those of authoritarian demagogues. They have proved effective over centuries...

“Reason is not involved in the process.” The draw is the personality of the healer, and “subsequent success is ensured by mass suggestion.”... If the nation’s public-health and scientific communities assume that the appeal of a quack was some transient aberration—something that will end when Trump is out of office, and that can be remedied with yet more facts—then the Biden administration will fail to reach millions of Americans, no matter how soundly it recites statistics. Its warnings and mandates will go unheeded and become fodder for charismatic outsiders who tell people what they want to hear...

‘There are ways to serve as a confident, optimistic leader without making up nonsensical promises. Hope can be conferred with promises to take care of people, and to be there for them. Reassurance can be offered by guaranteeing that no one will go into debt because they had to go to the hospital, and that people will have paid sick leave and job security so they can stay at home when necessary. If the public-health community does not do more to give people hope and reassurance in the face of this disaster, it will see people defect to those who will—even when they know the promises are too good to be true.’

Read here (The Atlantic, Nov 10, 2020)

Independent UN experts decry Covid vaccine hoarding: ‘No one is secure until all of us are secure’

‘The only way to fight the COVID-19 crisis is to make affordable vaccines available to everyone, independent UN human rights experts said on Monday, underscoring that in an interconnected and interdependent world, “no one is secure until all of us are secure”...  “This pandemic, with its global scale and enormous human cost, with no clear end in sight, requires a concerted, human-rights based and courageous response from all States”, four UN experts together with members of a human rights working group said in a statement on universal access to vaccines.’

Read here (UN News, Nov 9, 2020)

First ‘milestone’ vaccine offers 90% protection

‘The first effective coronavirus vaccine can prevent more than 90% of people from getting Covid-19, a preliminary analysis shows. The developers - Pfizer and BioNTech - described it as a "great day for science and humanity". Their vaccine has been tested on 43,500 people in six countries and no safety concerns have been raised. The companies plan to apply for emergency approval to use the vaccine by the end of the month.’

Read here (BBC, Nov 9, 2020) 

Could a cheap iodine mouthwash really help to beat Covid?

‘We all probably have a sense-memory of iodine: the blood-like drop to purify a camping can of stream-water or the inky dab with which your grandmother stained your grazed knee. It feels like an old-fashioned, primitive home remedy, yet could it also be an intriguing new weapon against our most modern threat: coronavirus?

‘One of the world’s leading authorities on infection in the mouth and nose believes the answer is yes. Stephen Challacombe is a professor of oral medicine at King’s College London, with a specialism in the immunology of the mucous membranes. His decades of experience meant that when the pandemic hit, his mind went immediately to one — literal — solution. Iodine mouthwash. “Yes. I have no doubt that this should be used,” Challacombe says, “and had it been, it would have saved lives.”

‘Bottles of this form of iodine, called povidone-iodine, also known by the most common brand Betadine, used to be on sale in British chemists, before the public began to favour fluoride rinses. It is still popular as a sore-throat gargle in many European countries, America, Australia and Far East countries such as Japan. When the pandemic struck, Challacombe and his colleagues wrote to the British Dental Journal reminding the scientific world of its potential.’

Read here (King's College Journal, Nov 9, 2020)

How Biden plans to change the US pandemic response

‘President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris say they will move the US Covid-19 pandemic response in a dramatically different direction... Here are five ways Biden says the US coronavirus response will change when he's President. (1) Increased testing and contact tracing. (2) Additional investment in vaccines and treatments. (3) Mandatory masks and more PPE. (4) A push for 'clear, consistent, evidence-based guidance'. (5) Rejoining WHO and searching for future threats.

‘There were dauntingly high new case numbers last week, and by the time Biden takes office January 20, the influential University of Washington Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation model projects there will be more than 372,000 Covid-19 deaths -- that's 135,000 more than the current total...’

Read here (CNN, Nov 9, 2020)

‘Mutant coronavirus’ seen before on mink farms, say scientists

‘The coronavirus mutation causing concern in Denmark has arisen before in mink, scientists have revealed. The mutated virus has been detected retrospectively in mink at a farm in the Netherlands, but it did not spread to humans, said a leading Dutch expert...

‘The genetic data from Denmark was released on an international database a few days ago, with some scientists questioning why it had not been released sooner. "I think that it is most disappointing that the data have only just reached the light of day," said Prof James Wood, head of the department of veterinary medicine at the University of Cambridge, UK...

‘Six countries have reported coronavirus outbreaks at mink farms: the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Sweden, Italy and the US.’

Read here (BBC, Nov 9, 2020)

Coronavirus: The Swiss Cheese Strategy -- Tomas Pueyo

‘There are the four layers to stop the spread of the virus: Fences, Bubbles, Contrafection, and Test-Trace-Isolate. None of them is perfect. All have holes that let infections pass. But together they form an impenetrable defence.

‘An infection might be able to pass one layer, or even two. But if there are several, the odds that the infection goes through every layer undetected becomes minuscule. Imagine, for example, that a country has a Fence that catches 80% of infections, no Social Bubbles, Reduced Contagiousness that eliminates 95% of infections, and a test-trace-isolate that neutralizes 50% of infections. Together, these layers catch 99.5% of cases. If the transmission rate R is 3 (the number of people infected by a source), it will be reduced to 0.015! Every infected person only infects an additional 0.015 people, killing the epidemic within a few weeks.’

Also...

• How the US and the EU failed to control the virus, and how comparable countries succeeded.
• How you can make sense of all the necessary measures with one simple idea.
• Why the West’s testing and contact tracing is largely useless — and what they can do about it.
• The questions that journalists and the People must ask politicians to keep them accountable.
• How you can stop the virus in your own community, without the need of your government.

Read here (Medium, Nov 9, 2020) 

Memo for President Biden: Five steps to getting more from science

‘The list of needed actions is long, but here we highlight five that the Biden administration should take swiftly. We call not for a return to business as usual but for fundamental, sometimes counter-intuitive changes that will strengthen the use of science in US policy and by the research community more broadly... (1) Let an oft-overlooked White House office [Office of Science and Technology Policy] lead the pandemic response. (2) Make advisory processes more independent. (3) Expedite scientific-integrity legislation.  (4) Give public universities tough love and lots of support. (5) Refocus science funding.

Read here (Nature, Nov 8, 2020)

Counties with worst virus surges overwhelmingly voted Trump

‘US voters went to the polls starkly divided on how they see President Donald Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. But in places where the virus is most rampant now, Trump enjoyed enormous support. An Associated Press analysis reveals that in 376 counties with the highest number of new cases per capita, the overwhelming majority — 93% of those counties — went for Trump, a rate above other less severely hit areas.

‘The US broke another record in the 7-day rolling average for daily new cases, hitting nearly 90,000. The tally for new cases Thursday was on track for another day above 100,000, with massive numbers reported all around the country, including a combined nearly 25,000 in Texas, Illinois and Florida. Iowa and Indiana each reported more than 4,000 cases as well.

‘Thirty-six percent of Trump voters described the pandemic as completely or mostly under control, and another 47% said it was somewhat under control, according to AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 110,000 voters conducted for the AP by NORC at the University of Chicago. Meanwhile, 82% of Biden voters said the pandemic is not at all under control.

‘The pandemic was considered at least somewhat under control by slim majorities of voters in many red states, including Alabama (60%), Missouri (54%), Mississippi (58%), Kentucky (55%), Texas (55%), Tennessee (56%) and South Carolina (56%).’

Read here (AP, Nov 6, 2020) 

India tops global survey on Covid-19 vaccination intent; rising hesitancy in many other countries

‘Indians are the keenest on getting vaccinated whenever a Covid-19 vaccine is available, even as people in 10 out of 15 countries showed a growing reluctance about getting vaccinated, according to a global survey. 

‘In the World Economic Forum/Ipsos survey of 18,526 adults from 15 countries, 73 per cent said they would get a Covid-19 vaccine if available, down from 77 per cent in August. While vaccination intent has remained unchanged at 87 per cent in India since August, it has declined in 10 of the 15 countries surveyed, most of all in China, Australia, Spain, and Brazil.

‘Globally, the two main reasons for not wanting to get a Covid-19 vaccine are concerns about side effects (cited by 34 per cent) and concerns about clinical trials moving too fast (cited by another 33 per cent). In India also, 34 per cent respondents.’

Read here (Deccan Herald, Nov 6, 2020)

Covid-19 a ‘perfect storm’ for organ trafficking victims

‘Fewer transplants means a huge unmet demand for organs... Rising inequality pushing disadvantaged to take desperate measures... Social media facilitates trade’

Read here (SciDev, Nov 5, 2020)

China seeks to flip the script on Covid blame game

‘Chinese state media is advancing a possible alternative explanation for the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, one that claims that the contagion may have first arrived in China from abroad in imported frozen foods. Chinese officials quoted in the reports suggest  “cold chain food contamination” could debunk the widely held belief that the novel coronavirus first emerged from a wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, from where it reputedly made its lethal global spread.’  

Read here (Asia Times, Nov 4, 2020) 

Denmark to cull millions of minks over mutated coronavirus

‘Denmark, the world's biggest producer of mink fur, said Wednesday it would cull all of the country's minks after a mutated version of the new coronavirus was detected at its mink farms and had spread to people. The mutation "could pose a risk that future (coronavirus) vaccines won't work the way they should," Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told a press conference, adding: "It is necessary to cull all the minks."

“The mutated virus could thereby have serious negative consequences for the whole world’s response to the ongoing pandemic,” she said. Danish police estimated that between 15 and 17 million minks would need to be put down. Twelve people are currently registered as infected with a mutated form of the coronavirus in Denmark, according to news wire Ritzau. The mutated virus is reported to respond weakly to antibodies.’

Read here (The Local, Denmark, Nov 4, 2020)

Lung damage found in Covid dead may shed light on ‘long Covid’: Study

‘A study of the lungs of people who have died from COVID-19 has found persistent and extensive lung damage in most cases and may help doctors understand what is behind a syndrome known as ‘long COVID’, in which patients suffer ongoing symptoms for months. “The findings indicate that COVID-19 is not simply a disease caused by the death of virus-infected cells, but is likely the consequence of these abnormal cells persisting for long periods inside the lungs,” said Mauro Giacca, a professor at King’s College London who co-led the work. In a telephone interview, Giacca said that, while his research team found no overt signs of viral infection or prolonged inflammation in other organs, they discovered “really vast destruction of the architecture of the lungs”, with healthy tissue “almost completely substituted by scar tissue”.

Read here (Reuters, Nov 4, 2020)

The wisdom of pandemics

‘Viruses are active agents, existing within rich lifeworlds. A safe future depends on understanding this evolutionary story...

‘Researchers since then have uncovered evidence that pathogens exert ‘the strongest selective pressure to drive the evolution of modern humans’. Among the drivers, look to evidence that prehistoric pandemics played a role in selecting for ancestral traits and behaviours that we recognise as human today. Scientists following another thread in this evolutionary narrative describe viral nucleic acids insinuating themselves into our genetic codes. The biologist David Enard at Stanford University in California and colleagues have concluded that ‘viruses are one of the most dominant drivers of evolutionary change across mammalian and human proteomes’...

‘As we become more deft at exploring the nested, dynamically complex relationships among viruses, bacteria, fungi and ourselves, we’ll come closer to grasping how pandemics emerge from a rupturing and rearranging of these relationships. From this deep linking of Aion with Chronos, we can already see the outlines of the wisdom that pandemics offer us. What we’re beginning to faintly understand is this: if we wish to survive as a species, we must gather all of our knowledge from multiple perspectives – however fragmented and partial – and actively engage in conversations with the world we inhabit and that gives us life. Only then will we begin to understand ourselves, and live up to our name, the wise ones, Homo sapiens sapiens.’

Read here (Aeon, Nov 3, 2020)

Polls reform panel hails govt review of electoral process for Covid-19 era

‘The Electoral Reform Committee (ERC) today welcomed the government's willingness to review create laws concerning elections during the pandemic. Its chairman Tan Sri Abdul Rashid Abdul Rahman said it is high time a comprehensive review be conducted on existing laws for the electoral process, whether it is for by-elections or for a general election. “This is especially to determine if elections can be suspended in times of crises, including those related to health, public disorder, natural disaster, or in situations which threaten national security,” he said in a statement.’

Read here (Malay Mail, Nov 3, 2020)

Winning trust for a vaccine means confronting medical racism

‘Just about every minority group residing in the United States can point to what feels like a reasonable basis for suspicion. For African Americans, there is not only the notorious Tuskegee study, which withheld syphilis treatment from rural Black men, but also experiments that used enslaved women to perfect surgical techniques and studies that tested new drugs in poor neighbourhoods without adequate consent. The Latino community can point to a syphilis study in Guatemala that was even more unethical than the Tuskegee one, and to pharma companies basing tests of the first versions of birth control pills, which caused significant side effects, in Puerto Rico (and also in Haiti). Attempting to pass smallpox to Native Americans via contaminated blankets is an infamous episode in Colonial-era history, and the US government has underfunded the Indian Health Service since its 1955 founding, depriving reservation dwellers of what should have been guaranteed medical care.’

Read here (Wired, Nov 2, 2020)

Daisy Chain: Can a Cornish town adapt to survive another lockdown?

‘When the remote town of St Just, Cornwall, was locked down in March, the small community worried that its economy wouldn't survive. But one town councillor, Daisy Gibbs, rallied an army of volunteers to form 'the Daisy chain', an informal support network to ensure every household in the district had support. Inspired by her imagination and resilience, filmmaker Sky Neal followed the Daisy Chain for seven months, as local businesses adapted and the community pulled together to realise a more sustainable future. However, as a second wave of restrictions threatens, the town has to dig deep to find the resilience they need to ensure their future. Can they re-invent their local economy to survive and thrive beyond Covid?’

View here (The Guardian, Nov 2, 2020)

Addressing Malaysia’s nutrition crisis post Covid-19: Time for nutrition-focused social protection

• With stunting and wasting at 21.8 and 9.7% respectively in 2019, Malaysia was experiencing a malnutrition crisis even prior to COVID-19.
• The COVID-19 pandemic has directly resulted in a severe economic crisis that will exacerbate food and nutrition insecurity.
• People who are already exposed to critical food and dietary deprivations before COVID-19 are most vulnerable to food insecurity.
• Food and nutrition insecurity are linked to malnutrition, where children in households with food insecurity were more likely to be malnourished.
• Beyond the consequences for individuals and families, food and nutrition insecurity has been linked to long-term economic effects such as higher health care expenditures, lower educational achievement, lost productivity, lower earnings in adulthood and increased risk of poverty later in life.
• Strengthening child-sensitive and nutrition-focused social protection is essential to reducing vulnerability, building resilience, and mitigating the impacts of COVID-19 crisis and should be a top policy priority

Download PDF here (Unicef, Nov 2020)

Covid-19: A global survey shows worrying signs of vaccine hesitancy

‘We [a group of prominent scientists] recently surveyed 13,426 people in 19 countries. We included two of Africa’s most populous and visible nations, Nigeria and South Africa, which are among the most affected by COVID-19 on the continent. Overall, we found that 71.5% of participants said they would take a “proven safe and effective vaccine” while 14% would refuse it outright. An additional 14% said they would hesitate to take the vaccine.

‘But that average figure is deceptive. It was raised by favourable responses from two Asian countries that also recorded very high trust in government health recommendations. More than 80% of Chinese respondents and 75% of South Koreans said they would accept a vaccine. South Africans came closer than any other country to the 70% standard, at almost 65%. But only 46.3% of Nigerians said they would do so. This is slightly higher than the results we found in Spain, Sweden, Poland, Brazil and Ecuador.’

Read here (IPS News, Nov 1, 2020)

Sungai Buloh Hospital Covid-19 team gets global health awards recognition

‘The Covid-19 team at Sungai Buloh Hospital, Selangor has been recognised at the Global Health Awards (GLA) 2020 recently for its unwavering efforts to fight the pandemic. Health director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah congratulated the head of Sungai Buloh Hospital Infectious Disease Department Dr Suresh Kumar, and Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Department head Dr Shaiful Azman Zakaria, as well as the hospital's Covid-19 team as a whole for the recognition.

‘According to the Global Health Awards website, the regional Asia-Pacific awards aim to recognise companies in a variety of regional and global markets that have maintained consistently high standards in delivering quality care and pushed the boundaries of delighting their customers at every stage and in every interaction.’

Read here (Malaysiakini, Nov 1, 2020)

Long-term symptoms of COVID-19 ‘really concerning’, says WHO chief

‘The WHO Director-General described the vast spectrum of COVID-19 symptoms that fluctuate over time as “really concerning.” They range from fatigue, a cough and shortness of breath, to inflammation and injury of major organs – including the lungs and heart, and also neurological and psychologic effects. 

‘Symptoms often overlap and can affect any system in the body. “It is imperative that Governments recognize the long-term effects of COVID-19 and also ensure access to health services to all of these patients,” he said. “This includes primary health care and when needed specialty care and rehabilitation.”

Read here (UN News, Oct 30, 2020)

Taiwan just went 200 days without a locally transmitted Covid-19 case. Here's how they did it

‘As much of the world struggles to contain new waves of the Covid-19 pandemic, Taiwan just marked its 200th consecutive day without a locally transmitted case of the disease. Taipei's response to the coronavirus pandemic has been one of the world's most effective. The island of 23 million people last reported a locally transmitted case on April 12, which was Easter Sunday. As of Thursday, it had confirmed 553 cases -- only 55 of which were local transmissions. Seven deaths have been recorded.’

Read here (CNN, Oct 30, 2020)

Human Rights Watch: “Whoever finds the vaccine must share it” — Strengthening human rights and transparency around Covid-19 vaccines

‘The Covid-19 pandemic has shown that the fates of people all over the world are interconnected: protecting one country’s people and its economy from the impacts a deadly infectious disease is impossible unless the people of other countries are also protected. Governments have a critical role to play in funding efforts to develop safe and effective vaccines. But no amount of funding will guarantee equitable access without decisive collective action and global cooperation to challenge the profit-driven and opaque systems that have determined access to lifesaving treatments and vaccines in the past.

‘Governments should continue to fund Covid-19 vaccines, especially to ensure access for low- and middle-income countries. While doing so, they should take all possible measures, including directing and conditioning funds in ways that are aligned with their human rights obligations to share the benefits of scientific knowledge and its applications widely, and ensure participation, transparency, and accountability in vaccine research, development, and manufacturing.’

Read here (Human Rights Watch, Oct 29, 2020)

Why many white men love Trump’s coronavirus response

‘Some 82 percent of Republicans approve of Trump’s coronavirus response—a higher percentage than before the president was diagnosed with the virus. This is despite the fact that more than 220,000 Americans have died, and virtually every public-health expert, including those who have worked for Republican administrations, says the president has performed abysmally.

‘Experts offer a few different explanations for the spell that Trump has cast over his supporters. The simplest is that Trump voters like Trump, and as is often the case with people we like, he can do no wrong in their eyes. “We might just as easily ask why Trump opponents think he is doing a horrible job with the pandemic,” says Richard Harris, a political scientist at Rutgers University.’ In academic terms, this is called “my-side bias”—objective reality looks different through the lens of your home team...

‘Shana Kushner Gadarian, a political scientist at Syracuse University, pointed out that understanding the failures of Trump’s pandemic response might require intimate knowledge of other countries’ public-health systems—a tall order for the average person...

‘But another prominent scholar of the American right believes Trump support among men, in particular, is rooted in something more psychological. Many white men feel that their gender and race have been vilified, says the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. Their economic prospects are bad, and American culture tells them that their gender is too. So they’ve turned to Trump as a type of folk hero, one who can restore their sense of former glory. Exposing themselves and others to the coronavirus is part of that heroism.’

Read here (The Atlantic, Oct 29, 2020) 

Why schools probably aren’t Covid hotspots

‘Data gathered worldwide are increasingly suggesting that schools are not hot spots for coronavirus infections. Despite fears, COVID-19 infections did not surge when schools and day-care centres reopened after pandemic lockdowns eased. And when outbreaks do occur, they mostly result in only a small number of people becoming ill. However, research also shows that children can catch the virus and shed viral particles, and older children are more likely than very young kids to pass it on to others. Scientists say that the reasons for these trends are unclear, but they have policy implications for older children and teachers.’

Read here (Nature, Oct 29, 2020)

NEJM paper on Iceland throws into question Imperial College team results: Antibodies stable after 4 months. Also death rate 0.3%, 44% not diagnosed

‘Our results indicate that antiviral antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 did not decline within 4 months after diagnosis. We estimate that the risk of death from infection was 0.3% and that 44% of persons infected with SARS-CoV-2 in Iceland were not diagnosed by qPCR.‘

Read here (NEJM, Oct 29, 2020)

Read here the BBC story on Imperial College study that says antibodies drop rapidly  

Artificial intelligence model detects asymptomatic Covid-19 infections through cellphone-recorded coughs

‘In a paper published recently in the IEEE Journal of Engineering in Medicine and Biology, the [MIT] team reports on an AI model that distinguishes asymptomatic people from healthy individuals through forced-cough recordings, which people voluntarily submitted through web browsers and devices such as cellphones and laptops.

‘The researchers trained the model on tens of thousands of samples of coughs, as well as spoken words. When they fed the model new cough recordings, it accurately identified 98.5 percent of coughs from people who were confirmed to have Covid-19, including 100 percent of coughs from asymptomatics — who reported they did not have symptoms but had tested positive for the virus.’

Read here (MIT News, Oct 29, 2020)

Cate Blanchett: ‘Covid-19 has ravaged the whole idea of small government’

In this extract from her essay collection Upturn, the actor considers the disruptions of the pandemic and the renewed fervour for social and economic justice...

‘For the arts, I fear the good old days of root and soil porous gateway-ism are a thing of the past. The relationship between artist and audience has changed fundamentally. The tools of the future on hand today, from selfies to Zoom, are just awkward attempts to grab back the surface appearance of connectivity. Real connectivity will need to find a new way. The good news is, it will – and it will be fascinating and illuminating and confronting.’

Read here (The Guardian, Oct 29, 2020)

We need fresh ideas to handle the Covid recession — Jeyakumar Devaraj

‘What is the most appropriate budget for Malaysia to navigate the economic recession that the Covid pandemic has precipitated? This is the crucial issue we should be discussing so that appropriate solutions can be found. Each country needs to develop a national consensus on how the finite financial capacity of the nation should be deployed to limit the health and economic fallout of the ongoing pandemic. Unfortunately, we in Malaysia have been distracted by political intrigues for far too long.

‘The PSM would like to share our analysis of the current recession and put forward a set of ideas on how we should tackle the economic fallout of the Covid Pandemic. We need a clear understanding of the situation we are in so that we can plan coherently for the coming year...’ 

The analysis and suggestions come under seven headings:

1. We cannot “talk up” the economy
2. Pumping in more credit into the system is not going to work
3. The government has to take the lead role in managing the economy and protecting the rakyat
4. This is not going to be a V-shaped recession
5. More targeted relief for the poorest families
6. A “Green New Deal” for Malaysia
7. The government should use “debt monetisation” as one of the methods to raise funds for the programs mentioned above.

Read here (The Malay Mail, Oct 28, 2020) 

Antibodies ‘fall rapidly after infection’

‘Levels of protective antibodies in people wane "quite rapidly" after coronavirus infection, say researchers. Antibodies are a key part of our immune defences and stop the virus from getting inside the body's cells. The Imperial College London team found the number of people testing positive for antibodies has fallen by 26% between June and September. They say immunity appears to be fading and there is a risk of catching the virus multiple times. The news comes as figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the number of Covid-19 deaths in the UK rose by 60% in the week of 16 October.’

Read here (BBC, Oct 28, 2020)

Read here NEJM paper on Iceland which throws into question this

It’s hard to enforce pandemic health rules on Halloween. Just look at what happened in 1918

‘Just as the state of the pandemic varied, so too did the precautions that cities took for Halloween. Newspaper articles in the digital archive of the Influenza Encyclopedia, produced by the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan, provide a glimpse at the range of Halloween safety protocols in major cities nationwide.

‘One thing they make clear: it’s already hard enough to enforce safety protocols on a day like Halloween, but that challenge gets even more intense during a pandemic.’

Read here (Time, Oct 28, 2020) 

Coronavirus: Fact checks on immunity and related matters

‘A large study out of the UK suggests immunity after a COVID-19 infection reduces fast, especially among older people. This is a quick fact check on the following: (1) How long am I immune after a COVID-19 infection? (2) Why does research on immunity differ? (3) Do people who have recovered from a COVID-19 infection continue to use protective measures? (4) Do some people, who have had a COVID-19 infection, show no immunity?’

Read here (DW, Oct 28, 2020)

A flu shot might reduce coronavirus infections, early research suggests

‘In the new study, Mihai Netea, an infectious disease immunologist at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, and his colleagues combed through their hospital’s databases to see if employees who got a flu shot during the 2019–2020 season were more or less likely to get infected by SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19. Workers who received a flu vaccine, the researchers found, were 39 percent less likely to test positive for the coronavirus as of June 1, 2020. While 2.23 percent of nonvaccinated employees tested positive, only 1.33 percent of vaccinated ones did. Netea and his team posted their findings on the preprint server MedRxiv on October 16.’

Read here (Scientific American, Oct 27, 2020)

Finance Covid-19 relief and recovery, not debt buybacks

‘In the face of the world’s worst economic contraction since the Great Depression, a sense of urgency has now spread to most national capitals and the Washington-based Bretton Woods institutions. Unless urgently addressed, the massive economic contractions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and policy responses to contain contagion threaten to become depressions.

‘Nevertheless, many long preoccupied with developing countries’ debt burdens and excessive debt insist on using scarce fiscal resources, including donor assistance, to reduce government debt, instead of strengthening fiscal measures for adequate and appropriate relief and recovery measures.

‘Most debt restructuring measures do not address countries’ currently more urgent need to finance adequate and appropriate relief and recovery packages. In the new circumstances, the debt preoccupation, perhaps appropriate previously, has become a problematic distraction, diminishing the ‘fiscal space’ for addressing contagion and its consequences...

‘Despite her earlier reputation as a ‘debt hawk’, new World Bank Chief Economist Carmen Reinhart recognizes the gravity of the situation and recently advised countries to borrow more: “First fight the war, then figure out how to pay for it.” Hence, in these COVID-19 times, donor money would be better utilized to finance relief and recovery, rather than debt buybacks.

‘Multilateral development finance institutions should resume their traditional role of mobilizing funds at minimal cost to finance development, or currently, relief and recovery, by efficiently intermediating on behalf of developing countries. They can borrow at the best available market rates to lend to developing countries which, otherwise, would have to borrow on their own at more onerous rates.’

Read here (IPS News, Oct 17, 2020) 

Back to intensive care, where I notice one major change

‘When I first reported from a Covid intensive care unit in April, I was left haunted by what I'd seen. All but one patient had been on a ventilator, in a medically induced coma. It was eerily quiet, just the rhythmical sound of machines pumping air into lungs.

‘The medical teams were at a loss to know how best to treat a savage condition which was ravaging victims' lungs and other organs. Lives hung in the balance, often for weeks on end. In early April, two out of three ventilated patients did not survive.

‘Today, in this intensive care unit (ICU) at the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle upon Tyne, only one of the five patients is on a ventilator. The others are sitting up, engaging with the nurses, reading or watching TV.’

Read here (BBC, Oct 27, 2020)

US Covid-19 cases are skyrocketing, but deaths are flat—so far. These 5 charts explain why

 ‘In just the last two weeks, the global daily tally for new COVID-19 cases has jumped more than 30%, according to TIME’s coronavirus tracker, which compiles data from Johns Hopkins University. The steep upward trend is driven by viral waves in Europe and the United States that started in August and mid-September, respectively. On Oct. 23, the daily case count in the U.S. reached a new record high, suggesting that this wave will be worse than the one that swept the country over the summer.

‘But despite this rapid uptick in cases, the daily death count in the U.S. is not yet rising at the same rate, and remains at lower levels than in April. At face value, a lower case-to-fatality rate suggests that fewer people who test positive for the virus are dying from it. But the virus hasn’t necessarily become less lethal; it isn’t mutating quickly enough for that to be the case.

‘What’s happening now is not a result of how the virus treats humans, but rather how humans are treating the virus—that is, how we test for it, how we avoid it and how we combat it. The following five charts explain how human-driven factors are, at least for the moment, keeping deaths from spiking as high as they did early in the pandemic, even as cases rise dramatically...’

Read here (Time, Oct 26, 2020)

Trump team just announced its surrender to the pandemic: Jeffrey Sachs

‘The Trump administration has announced its unconditional surrender to the Covid-19 pandemic. "We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas," White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" on Sunday. Donald Trump has surrendered without ever joining the battle. I have no doubt he will be remembered as the greatest presidential failure in American history...

‘Trump surrounded himself with fools and knaves who echoed his false belief that the choice was Covid versus the economy. This includes three types of advisers who led Trump to his likely imminent political demise and to our nation's mass suffering... The first group were the evangelical preachers who were more interested in packing their pews than in saving their parishioners who caught the disease in their megachurches... The second group was the Murdoch media empire with the "thought leadership" ― if one can call it that ― of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and the nihilism of Fox News... The third group was those who would stand up and oppose the overwhelming scientific consensus on NPI's, thereby bolstering Trump in his conviction to do nothing.’

Read here (CNN, Oct 26, 2020) 

Coronavirus: How the world of work may change forever

‘More than seven months have passed since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic. Hundreds of millions of people have lived through lockdowns. Many have made the abrupt shift to working from home; millions have lost jobs. The future looks uncertain. We don't know when, or if, our societies might return to normal – or what kind of scars the pandemic will leave.

‘Amid the upheaval, BBC Worklife spoke to dozens of experts, leaders and professionals across the globe to ask: what are the greatest unknowns we face? How will we work, live and thrive in the post-pandemic future? How is Covid-19 reshaping our world – potentially, forever?

‘We’ll roll out these important views from some of the top minds in business, public health and many other fields in several articles over the next few weeks. We'll hear from people including Melinda Gates on gender equality, Zoom founder Eric Yuan on the future of video calls, Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler on what’s next in travel and Unesco chief Audrey Azoulay on the ethics of artificial intelligence.’

Read here (BBC, as at Oct 26, 2020)

More mass testing in China after 137 Covid-19 cases in Xinjiang: All new cases asymptomatic

‘Mass testing began on Saturday evening to cover 4.75 million residents in and around Kashgar, Xinjiang province, after a 17-year-old garment factory worker tested positive for the virus. The new cases - all asymptomatic - were linked to a factory in Shufu county where the girl and her parents worked, the Xinjiang health commission told a press briefing on Sunday.’

Read here (Channel News Asia, Oct 26, 2020)

China's battle against Covid-19

‘A moving 30-minute feature film [released on the Martin Jacques Youtube channel] about how China fought Covid-19. Mainly filmed in Wuhan, it captures the agony of the city and the heroic efforts of the healthcare workers, both those from Wuhan and those who came from all over to China as volunteers to offer their support.’

View here (Martin Jacques, Oct 25, 2020)

Emerging humanitarian Covid-19 crisis in Sabah: Bridget Welsh & Calvin Cheng

‘Sabah’s Covid-19 situation transcends health. A crucial part of this is recognising the difficult economic circumstances on the ground. Many of these are the product of failings in policy in the past, with the crisis bringing deep vulnerabilities to the surface. Socio-economic conditions are worsening with the lockdown. Even before 2020, Sabah’s economy had been in a tight spot. The state’s relatively high reliance on commodity-related economic activity (roughly half of the Sabah economy in 2019 was derived from commodity agriculture and mining), along with a sizable tourism sector, means that a large share of Sabah’s economy is subject to the whims of the global economy.’

Read here (Malaysiakini, Oct 25, 2020)

Malaysia set for emergency measures to avert snap polls amid Covid-19 pandemic

‘Malaysia's Cabinet was locked in a special meeting on Friday (Oct 23) morning to decide on emergency measures to ensure that the upcoming budget session in Parliament does not result in snap elections amid the resurgent wave of coronavirus infections. Sources with knowledge of these options told The Straits Times that an "economic emergency" could be proclaimed to ensure that government spending to curb Covid-19 - which has seen total cases doubling this month alone - is not jeopardised by an increasingly unstable political atmosphere. "It will not be similar to the curfews and military presence we had after the 1969 race riots.’

Read here (Straits Times, Oct 23, 2020)

Stop wiping down groceries and focus on bigger risks, say experts on coronavirus transmission

“To the best of my knowledge, in real life, scientists like me — an epidemiologist and a physician — and virologists basically don’t worry too much about these things,” said David Morens, a senior adviser to the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony S. Fauci... 

‘But public confusion about the coronavirus and surfaces is understandable, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “Scientists really haven't really done a very good job of explaining how you get evidence for different types of transmission or different transmission routes.” Finally, she said, it’s important to remember that “viruses have to have a host and they can’t replicate without one. So … the main place that’s going to be the source of virus in anybody’s household is going to be the people in it and not the surfaces or the physical environment.” “Even if there’s virus kicking around on certain things,” she said, “that risk can really be mitigated practically by washing your hands.”

Read here (Washington Post via MSN, Oct 23, 2020)

Covid-19 blood plasma therapy has limited effect, study finds

‘It has been touted as a breakthrough treatment by Donald Trump, and there are hopes that blood plasma containing coronavirus antibodies may help British patients during the second wave of Covid-19 as well. But a study, which is published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on Friday, suggests “convalescent plasma” has only limited effectiveness and fails to reduce deaths or stop the progression to severe disease.

‘The research involved 464 adults with moderate Covid-19 who were admitted to hospitals in India between April and July. Approximately half received two transfusions of convalescent plasma, 24 hours apart, alongside standard care, while the control group received standard care only. One month later, 19% of those who received the plasma had progressed to severe disease or had died of any cause, compared with 18% in the control group. Plasma therapy did, however, seem to reduce symptoms, such as shortness of breath and fatigue, after seven days.’

Read here (The Guardian, Oct 23, 2020)

Face masks go hi-tech amid the Covid-19 pandemic, from one with a translator to another that monitors vital signs

‘A Japanese start-up has created a face covering that allows people to have a conversation while keeping up to 10 metres apart – and also acts as a translator. A Singaporean face mask has sensors that monitor temperature and blood oxygen levels, while a company in South Korea has made an air purifier mask.’

Read here (South China Morning Post, Oct 23, 2020)

Johns Hopkins calls for papers on Covid-19 and systemic racism

‘The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security’s journal, Health Security, issued a call for papers for an upcoming Special Feature on systemic racism in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic (scheduled for May/June 2021). The COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts on health, economies, and social structures have disproportionately impacted racially marginalized populations. Racial and ethnic minority communities are experiencing elevated COVID-19 morbidity and mortality, stemming in part from ineffective response efforts and longstanding barriers to accessing healthcare and public health programs and services. Evidence-based and peer-reviewed research is urgently needed to examine the root causes and impacts of systemic and pervasive racial and ethnic inequities in the context of COVID-19 as well as how systemic racism manifests in the practice of health security, including in preparedness for, response to, and recovery from COVID-19. The journal is actively encouraging submissions from women, underrepresented minority scholars in health security, and scholars with disabilities.’

Read here (Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Oct 23, 2020)

Why is coronavirus so deadly?

1. Master of deception: ‘In the early stages of an infection the virus is able to deceive the body. Coronavirus can be running rampant in our lungs and airways and yet our immune system thinks everything is a-ok.’
2. It behaves like a 'hit and run' killer: ‘The amount of virus in our body begins to peak the day before we begin to get sick. But it takes at least a week before Covid progresses to the point where people need hospital treatment.’ 
3. It's new, so our bodies are unprepared: ‘This lack of prior-protection is comparable to when Europeans took smallpox with them to the New World, with deadly consequences.’
4. It does peculiar and unexpected things to the body: ‘Covid starts off as a lung disease (even there it does strange and unusual things) and can affect the whole body.’ Like “corrupting” lung cells, clotting blood and causing runaway inflammation.
5. And we're fatter than we should be: ‘Covid is worse if you are obese, as a generous waistline increases the risk of needing intensive care, or death.’

Read here (BBC, Oct 23, 2020)

Non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) measures that work, lag time, population compliance and more: The Lancet

‘A recently published article in Lancet Infectious Diseases has taken a look at potential associations between country-level reproduction numbers (R) and non-pharmaceutical interventions introduced and lifted throughout the course of the pandemic.

‘Increases in R were associated with relaxing of the following measures: school closures, public event bans, bans on gatherings greater than ten people, stay-at-home orders and other movement restrictions. However, the only significant associations for increases in R above 1 were school reopening and lifting bans on gatherings over 10 people. 

‘Authors noted that the full effect of introducing or lifting non-pharmaceutical interventions took 1-3 weeks on average from the date of implementation. Authors made further recommendations regarding the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions by national governments, noting that other factors, such as population compliance, also influence the success of non-pharmaceutical interventions and may not be fully captured in the study.’

Read here (The Lancet via Johns Hopkins University, Oct 22, 2020)

China wants to supply the world with its coronavirus vaccine

‘China plans to rapidly ramp up its capacity to produce a vaccine for the coronavirus (Covid-19), state media CCTV has announced. It plans to dominate vaccine supply domestically and globally, despite the fact Western nations are unlikely to acquire a Chinese vaccine. It will be pushed to the rest of the world instead. China's vaccine was developed in almost the same way as the "Oxford vaccine" in the UK, using virus enhancement techniques to create an inert but powerful antibody response, which if used with a second booster shot could offer several years of immunity, even against mutant strains, according to Chinese scientists.’

Read here (Asia Times, Oct 21, 2020)

NUS start-up develops 60-second breath test to detect Covid-19

‘Researchers in Singapore have developed a breath test to detect COVID-19 within a minute, said the National University of Singapore (NUS) on Tuesday (Oct 20). The test, which detects volatile organic compounds (VOC) in a person’s breath, achieved more than 90 per cent accuracy in a clinical trial involving 180 patients.’ 

Read here (Channel News Asia, Oct 20, 2020)

Vietnam is fighting Covid without pitting economic growth against public health

‘The motto for the first phase was that if we stay alive, the question of wealth and the economy can come later. Ordinary people did suffer, such as the gig economy workers: whenever I order a Grabcar (a south-east Asian version of Uber) these days, the vehicle that arrives is always newer and more expensive that what I’m used to; as a driver explained, those who used to pick me up in their cheaper cars have had to sell them to stay afloat, leaving only those with deeper pockets left in the market.

‘But now the government has shifted its anti-Covid strategy towards the economy. The tactics for the second wave are more sophisticated. Contact tracing is still prompt and aggressive but lockdown and isolation are more selective; international flights have been opened for foreign workers, such as engineers from South Korea’s LG, who are needed to keep the economy functioning.’

Read here (The Guardian, Oct 20, 2020)

World’s vaccine testing ground deems Chinese Covid candidate ‘the safest, most promising’

‘Brazil is one of the world’s top COVID-19 vaccine testing grounds. Now officials there say that CoronaVac, the experimental COVID-19 vaccine from Chinese developer Sinovac, is the safest of the coronavirus immunizations evaluated in the country so far.

“The first results of the clinical study conducted in Brazil prove that among all the vaccines tested in the country, CoronaVac is the safest, the one with the best and most promising rates,” São Paulo Gov. João Doria told reporters in Brazil on Monday.’

Read here (Fortune, Oct 20, 2020)

What fans of ‘herd immunity’ don’t tell you

‘First, it makes no mention of harm to infected people in low-risk groups, yet many people recover very slowly. More serious, a significant number, including those with no symptoms, suffer damage to their heart and lungs. One recent study of 100 recovered adults found that 78 of them showed signs of heart damage. We have no idea whether this damage will cut years from their lives or affect their quality of life...

‘Second, it says little about how to protect the vulnerable. One can keep a child from visiting a grandparent in another city easily enough, but what happens when the child and grandparent live in the same household? And how do you protect a 25-year-old diabetic, or cancer survivor, or obese person, or anyone else with a comorbidity who needs to go to work every day?...

‘Third, the declaration omits mention of how many people the policy would kill. It’s a lot...If these restrictions are simply eased — as opposed to eliminating them entirely, which would occur if herd immunity were pursued — deaths could rise to as many as 571,527. That’s just by Feb. 1. The model predicts daily deaths will still be increasing then.

‘Will we have achieved herd immunity then? No.’

Read here (New York Times, Oct 19, 2020)

Covid-19 has exposed the catastrophic impact of privatising vital services

‘The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the catastrophic fallout of decades of global privatisation and market competition. When the pandemic hit, we saw hospitals being overwhelmed, caregivers forced to work with virtually no protective equipment, nursing homes turned into morgues, long queues to access tests, and schools struggling to connect with children confined to their homes. People were being urged to stay at home when many had no decent roof over their heads, no access to water and sanitation, and no social protection. 

‘For many years, vital public goods and services have been steadily outsourced to private companies. This has often resulted in inefficiency, corruption, dwindling quality, increasing costs and subsequent household debt, further marginalising poorer people and undermining the social value of basic needs like housing and water. We need a radical change in direction.’

Read here (The Guardian, Oct 19, 2020)

Big Pharma is not willing to help us defeat Covid-19

‘For months, experts have repeatedly told us that no one is safe from coronavirus until we are all safe. If that is true, we should be going all out to ensure the world’s resources are used to bring treatments and vaccines to the whole world as soon as possible. Several initiatives have attempted just that, but efforts have been stymied by the self-interest of big business, and by the leaders of rich countries who are terrified of undermining rules designed to keep their countries at the top of the pecking order.

‘A recent ground-breaking proposal by India and South Africa could change all that. Those governments have lodged a proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) to suspend international patent laws for an extended period, allowing countries to share technology and produce their own versions of patented medicines, treatments and protective equipment without being held to ransom by the corporations which own those patents. It is a game-changer, which challenges one of the most shameful aspects of modern trade rules.’

Read here (Aljazeera, Oct 18, 2020)

Use emergency funds for Sabah’s Covid-19 fight as donations will be slower, doctors tell federal govt

‘The federal government should allow emergency funds to be used for resources and equipment to tackle Sabah’s Covid-19 situation, the Malaysian Medical Association said today. MMA president Professor Datuk Dr Subramaniam Muniandy cautioned that waiting for donations for Sabah’s Covid-19 fight would not be time-effective when there is an urgent need for more medical resources in the state.’

Read here (Malay Mail, Oct 18, 2020)

Covid-19 virus survives on skin five times longer than flu virus: Study

‘The Covid-19 virus remains active on human skin for nine hours, Japanese researchers have found, in a discovery they said showed the need for frequent hand washing to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. The pathogen that causes the flu survives on human skin for about 1.8 hours by comparison, said the study published this month in the Clinical Infectious Diseases journal.’

Read here (Straits Times, Oct 18, 2020)

‘No longer groping in the dark’: NCID doctors share how Covid-19 is being treated in Singapore

‘So far, 28 people have died of COVID-19 in Singapore - one of the lowest mortality rates in the world. In the US, where there have been about 8 million cases, more than 200,000 people have died. As of Saturday (Oct 17), 37 COVID-19 patients remain hospitalised in Singapore, with none in intensive care. More than 99 per cent of those infected have been discharged, while there are 41 in community care facilities.

‘But it wasn't always like this. Three National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) consultants told CNA how treatment of the novel coronavirus has evolved here and how NCID has kept the number of critical cases low.’

Read here (Channel News Asia, Oct 18, 2020)

Frozen food package polluted by living coronavirus could cause infection: China’s CDC

‘China's disease control authority said on Saturday (Oct 17) that contact with frozen food packaging contaminated by living new coronavirus could cause infection. The conclusion came as the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) detected and isolated living coronavirus on the outer packaging of frozen cod during efforts to trace the virus in an outbreak reported last week in the city of Qingdao, the agency said on its website.

‘The finding, a world first, suggests it is possible for the virus to be conveyed over long distances via frozen goods, it said.’

Read here (Straits Times, Oct 17, 2020)

When will Covid-19 end? History suggests diseases fade but are never truly gone

‘Whether bacterial, viral or parasitic, virtually every disease pathogen that has affected people over the last several thousand years is still with us, because it is nearly impossible to fully eradicate them. The only disease that has been eradicated through vaccination is smallpox. Mass vaccination campaigns led by the World Health Organization in the 1960s and 1970s were successful, and in 1980, smallpox was declared the first – and still, the only – human disease to be fully eradicated. So success stories like smallpox are exceptional. It is rather the rule that diseases come to stay.’

Read here (Channel News Asia, Oct 17, 2020)

The long shadow of the pandemic: 2024 and beyond

‘Even when the world returns to ‘normal,’ the legacy of Covid-19 will transform everything from wages and health care to political attitudes and global supply chains...

‘One impact of the Covid-19 pandemic may be that society will begin to take scientists and scientific information more seriously. In medieval times, the manifest inability of rulers, priests, doctors and others in positions of power to control the plague led to a wholesale loss of faith in corresponding political, religious and medical institutions, and a strong desire for new sources of authority.

‘It is possible that the inability of our political institutions to fight the virus will have similar implications. The public’s expectation of effective state action will likely rise in the immediate and intermediate periods, if deaths continue or accelerate. And if the response continues to be incompetent, confidence in existing political institutions will fall. The many failures of American government at every level in confronting the pandemic, especially when compared with other countries, may result in a shift in political preferences aimed at undoing the existing order.’

Read here (Wall Street Journal, Oct 16, 2020)

Civil society organisations call for strong support for TRIPS waiver to combat Covid-19

‘Nearly 380 civil society organisations (CSOs) have urged Members of the World Trade Organization to strongly support the adoption of a draft decision proposed by India and South Africa for a waiver from certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement to combat the worsening COVID-19 pandemic.

‘India and South Africa have submitted a proposal (IP/C/W/669) to the WTO TRIPS Council on a “Waiver from certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement for the prevention, containment and treatment of COVID-19”.

‘In their letter to the WTO Members, the CSOs said that in a global pandemic where every country is affected, a global solution is needed. According to the CSOs, adoption of a Waiver at the WTO level will suspend implementation, application and enforcement of the relevant provisions of the TRIPS Agreement in relation to prevention, containment, and treatment of COVID-19.

‘It enables an expedited, open and automatic global solution to allow uninterrupted collaboration in development, production and supply, and to collectively address the global challenge facing all countries. “It’s time for governments to take collective responsibility and put people’s lives before corporate monopolies,” the CSOs emphasised.’

Read here (InfoJustice, Oct 16, 2020)

Young and healthy? You may have to wait until 2022 for a Covid-19 vaccine, experts warn

‘Young and healthy people should be prepared to wait their turn for immunization, experts warned this week. The World Health Organization’s chief scientist suggested that the delay could last well over a year for some among the young and healthy. “People tend to think, ah, on the first of January or the first of April, I’m going to get a vaccine and then things will be back to normal,” Soumya Swaminathan said in an online WHO question-and-answer session on Wednesday. “It’s not going to work like that."

Read here (Washington Post, Oct 16, 2020)

WHO study says remdesivir did not cut hospital stay or mortality in Covid-19 patients. Same with hydroxychloroquine, anti-HIV drug combination lopinavir/ritonavir and interferon

‘Gilead Sciences Inc's GILD.O remdesivir had little or no effect on COVID-19 patients' length of hospital stay or chances of survival, a clinical trial by the World Health Organization (WHO) has found. The antiviral medication, among the first to be used as a treatment for COVID-19, was one of the drugs recently used to treat U.S. President Donald Trump’s coronavirus infection.

‘The results are from WHO’s “Solidarity” trial, which evaluated the effects of four potential drug regimens, including remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, anti-HIV drug combination lopinavir/ritonavir and interferon, in 11,266 adult patients across more than 30 countries. The study found the regimens appeared to have little or no effect on 28-day mortality or the length of the in-hospital course among patients hospitalized with COVID-19, the WHO said on Thursday.’

Read here (Reuters, Oct 16, 2020)

Singapore, Hong Kong agree to set up air travel bubble for leisure travel without need for quarantine: Ong Ye Kung

‘Singapore has announced its first two-way air travel bubble with Hong Kong, paving the way for leisure and other forms of travel between both places. This means that people will be able to travel between the two locations without the need to be quarantine, subject to conditions, including testing negative for Covid-19. Details are still being worked out, but people could be travelling between both places in several weeks.’

Read here (Straits Times, Oct 16, 2020)

Early tests mean Covid-19 patients detected at ‘more infectious’ phase: Noor Hisham

‘Health Ministry director-general Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said swift action to detect Covid-19 cases may have led to patients being detected at an earlier, highly infectious phase of the disease. However, he does not rule out the possibility that the high level of infectivity may be due to the virus’ D614G mutation. He said this in response to a question from the media asking why patients’ samples from the current third wave have a lower cycle threshold value (Ct) when tested, compared to samples from the first two waves of the outbreak in Malaysia.’

Read here (Malaysiakini, Oct 16, 2020)

Is this new CMCO really necessary? – P Gunasegaram

‘Is the re-imposition of the conditional movement control order (CMCO) really, really necessary, especially in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor and Putrajaya? This is a fair question considering the government’s mishandling of the Covid-19 outbreak in Sabah for political reasons by allowing unrestricted movement within Sabah and between there and the peninsula during the recent state election.

‘Is the latest decision to re-impose controls in the three areas related to political reasons, specifically to restrict movement during a time when a change in government is possible with Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim claiming he has a majority in Parliament? Let’s see...’

Read here (The Vibes, Oct 15, 2020)

China got better. We got sicker. Thanks, Trump

‘Public health expert Dr. David Katz argued in a New York Times op-ed and in an interview with me back in March that we needed a national plan that balanced saving the most lives and the most livelihoods at the same time. If we just focused on saving every life, we would create millions of deaths of despair from lost jobs, savings and businesses. If we just focused on saving every job, we would cruelly condemn to death fellow Americans who deserved no such fate.

‘Katz argued for a strategy of “total harm minimization” that would have protected the elderly and most vulnerable, while gradually feeding back into the work force the young and healthy most likely to experience the coronavirus either asymptomatically or mildly — and let them keep the economy humming and build up some natural herd immunity as we awaited a vaccine.

‘Unfortunately, we could never have a sane, sober discussion about such a strategy. From the right, said Katz, we got “contemptuous disdain” for doing even the simplest things, like wearing a mask and social distancing. The left was much more responsible, he added, but not immune from treating any discussion of economic trade-offs in a pandemic as immoral and “treating any policy allowing for any death as an act of sociopathy.”

Read here (New York Times via Salt Lake Tribune, Oct 15, 2020)

People with blood-group A more susceptible to severe Covid-19

‘Using a pragmatic approach with simplified inclusion criteria and a complementary team of clinicians at the European Covid-19 epicenters in Italy and Spain and scientists in the less-burdened countries of Germany and Norway, we performed a GWAS that included de novo genotyping for Covid-19 with respiratory failure in approximately 2 months. We detected a novel susceptibility locus at a chromosome 3p21.31 gene cluster and confirmed a potential involvement of the ABO blood-group system in Covid-19.’

Read here (New England Journal of Medicine, Oct 15, 2020) 

Covid-19 pandemic – Philosophical approaches: Abstract

‘The paper begins with a retrospective of the debates on the origin of life: the virus or the cell? The virus needs a cell for replication, instead the cell is a more evolved form on the evolutionary scale of life. In addition, the study of viruses raises pressing conceptual and philosophical questions about their nature, their classification, and their place in the biological world. 

‘The subject of pandemics is approached starting from the existentialism of Albert Camus and Sartre, the replacement of the exclusion ritual with the disciplinary mechanism of Michel Foucault, and about the Gaia hypothesis, developed by James Lovelock and supported in the current pandemic by Bruno Latour. The social dimensions of pandemics, their connection to global warming, which has led to an increase in infectious diseases, and the deforestation of large areas, which have caused viruses to migrate from their native area (their "reservoir") are highlighted below. The ethics of pandemics is approached from several philosophical points of view, of which the most important in a crisis of such global dimensions is utilitarianism which involves maximizing benefits for society in direct conflict with the usual (Kantian) view of respect for people as individuals. 

‘After a retrospective of the COVID-19 virus that caused the current pandemic, its life cycle and its history, with an emphasis on the philosophy of death, the concept of biopower initially developed by Foucault is discussed, with reference to the practice of modern states of control of the populations and the debate generated by Giorgio Agamben who states that what is manifested in this pandemic is the growing tendency to use the state of emergency as a normal paradigm of government. An interesting and much debated approach is the one generated by the works of Slavoj Žižek, who states that the current pandemic has led to the bankruptcy of the current "barbaric" capitalism, wondering if the path that humanity will take is a neo-communism.  Another important negative effect is desocialization, with the conclusion of some philosophers that we cannot exist independently of our relationships with others, that a person's humanity depends on the humanity of those around him. 

‘The last section is dedicated to forecasting what the world will look like after the pandemic, and there are already signs of a change of paradigm, including the sudden disappearance of the ideology of the "wall": a cough was enough to make it suddenly impossible to avoid the responsibility that every individual has towards all living beings for the simple fact that he is part of this world, and of the desire to be part of it. The whole is always involved in part, because everything is, in a sense, in everything, and in nature there are no autonomous regions that are an exception.

‘The COVID-19 pandemic seems to restore the supremacy that once belonged to politics. One of the virtues of the virus is its ability to generate a more sober idea of freedom: to be free means to do what needs to be done in a specific situation.’

Read here (Academia.edu, Oct 14, 2020)

YouTube bans coronavirus vaccine misinformation

‘Alphabet Inc’s YouTube said on Wednesday it would remove videos from YouTube containing misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines, expanding its current rules against falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the pandemic.

‘The video platform said it would now ban any content with claims about COVID-19 vaccines that contradict consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization. YouTube said in an email that this would include removing claims that the vaccine will kill people or cause infertility, or that microchips will be implanted in people who receive the vaccine...

‘Andy Pattison, manager of digital solutions at the World Health Organization, told Reuters that the WHO meets weekly with the policy team at YouTube to discuss content trends and potentially problematic videos. ‘

Read here (Reuters, Oct 14, 2020)

How anti-ageing drugs could boost Covid vaccines in older people

‘Unlike fine wine, the human body does not improve with age. Hearing fades, skin sags, joints give out. Even the body’s immune system loses some of its vigour. This phenomenon, known as immunosenescence, might explain why older age groups are so hard-hit by COVID-19. And there is another troubling implication: vaccines, which incite the immune system to fight off invaders, often perform poorly in older people. The best strategy for quelling the pandemic might fail in exactly the group that needs it most...

‘[Eric] Verdin [president and chief executive of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California] agrees that supporting the older immune system should be a priority. “I think the net result of all this will be renewed interest in understanding the defect in the immune response in the elderly.” That has implications not only for the coronavirus, but also for a host of other diseases, including other viral infections and even cancer. “COVID-19 has brought to the front something that a lot of people have ignored.”

Read here (Nature, Oct 14, 2020)

Europe, which thought it had the virus tamed, faces a resurgence: Averaged over 100,000 new cases per day last week

‘From France to Russia, from Britain to the Czech Republic, European leaders are confronting a surge in coronavirus cases that is rapidly filling hospital beds, driving up death tolls and raising the grim prospect of further lockdowns in countries already traumatized by the pandemic. The continent, which once compared favorably to the United States in its handling of the pandemic, is being engulfed by a second wave of infection. With an average of more than 100,000 new infections per day over the past week, Europe now accounts for about one-third of new cases reported worldwide.’

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

Covid reinfection: Man gets Covid twice and second hit 'more severe'

‘A man in the United States has caught Covid twice, with the second infection becoming far more dangerous than the first, doctors report. The 25-year-old needed hospital treatment after his lungs could not get enough oxygen into his body. Reinfections remain rare and he has now recovered. But the study in the Lancet Infectious Diseases raises questions about how much immunity can be built up to the virus.’

Read here (BBC, Oct 13, 2020)

WHO head calls herd immunity approach ‘immoral’

‘The head of the World Health Organization has ruled out a herd immunity response to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a large portion of a community becomes immune to a disease through vaccinations or through the mass spread of a disease. Some have argued that coronavirus should be allowed to spread naturally in the absence of a vaccine. But WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus said such an approach was "scientifically and ethically problematic".’

Read here (BBC, Oct 13, 2020)

NIH: 80% of Malaysia’s 157 coronavirus fatalities had at least one underlying medical condition; 72 per cent male; those aged 60-69 the largest group at 30.6 per cent

NIH: 80% of Malaysia’s 157 coronavirus fatalities had at least one underlying medical condition; 72 per cent male; those aged 60-69 the largest group at 30.6 per cent

‘More than 80 per cent of Covid-19 deaths in Malaysia reportedly had at least one underlying medical condition, said ICR. ICR also found that significantly more men in Malaysia succumbed to Covid-19 at 72 per cent, compared to women at 28 per cent.

‘More than 65 per cent of Malaysia’s coronavirus deaths were aged 60 years and above. Those aged 60 to 69 years formed the largest age group among Malaysia’s Covid-19 fatalities at 30.6 per cent, followed by people aged 70 to 79 years at 21 per cent, and those aged 50 to 59 years at 19.1 per cent. Adults aged 80 years and above comprised 14 per cent of coronavirus deaths in Malaysia.’

Read here (Code Blue, Oct 13, 2020)

Fact check: Does the WHO now agree with Donald Trump on ending lockdowns?

‘The president's tweet followed news reports in recent days that David Nabarro, a special envoy for the WHO director-general, had spoken out against lockdowns. Some news outlets reported remarks by Nabarro in an interview with Spectator TV on Thursday to suggest the WHO itself had reversed a pro-lockdown stance. But that is not the case.

‘As was reported by various outlets, Nabarro did tell Spectator TV: "We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus" and "we really do appeal to world leaders, stop using lockdown as your primary control method."... Nabarro said a number of approaches are needed to ensure there is a robust defence to quickly suppress outbreaks if there is an uptick in cases. The "backbone to controlling this kind of thing is always testing, contact tracing and isolation," at a local level, he said. The second is dealing with small spikes locally, and ensuring the public is on side and practicing disease prevention measures such as physical distancing.’

Read here (Newsweek, Oct 13, 2020)

The Covid-19 pandemic and the $16 trillion virus

‘The estimated cumulative financial costs of the COVID-19 pandemic related to the lost output and health reduction are shown in the Table [in the story]. The total cost is estimated at more than $16 trillion, or approximately 90% of the annual gross domestic product of the US. For a family of 4, the estimated loss would be nearly $200 000. Approximately half of this amount is the lost income from the COVID-19–induced recession; the remainder is the economic effects of shorter and less healthy life.’

Read here (JAMA Network, Oct 12, 2020)

Indonesia aims to start administering coronavirus vaccines in early November

‘Indonesia is aiming to start administering coronavirus vaccines in early November by relying on supply from Chinese drugmakers, as the world's fourth most populous country fights a health crisis that may result in its first recession in more than two decades. The Coordinating Ministry for Maritime and Investment Affairs on Monday (Oct 12) said 100,000 doses will be supplied by CanSino Biologics, the first Chinese company to test a Covid-19 vaccine on humans, in November.’

Read here (Straits Times, Oct 12, 2020)

China's Qingdao orders citywide Covid-19 testing following new infections

‘China's Qingdao city said on Monday (Oct 12) it will conduct Covid-19 tests for the entire population of more than 9 million people over five days after new cases appeared linked to a hospital treating imported infections. The city reported six new Covid-19 cases and six asymptomatic cases as of late Oct 11. Most of the cases were linked to the Qingdao Chest Hospital.’

Read here (Straits Times, Oct 12, 2020)

Health DG responds to open letter to PM from ‘MOH specialist’

Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah responds to the open letter of Dr Tachdjian to the prime minister "Covid-19: Wake up, enough talk, take action". ‘Even though it is not directed to me, but as the director-general of Health, I have to understand what this "Health Ministry (MOH) staffer" is trying to relay, regardless of the person's rank, grade, or profession. It occurred to me when it was said that the doctor was an "MOH specialist" it would surely attract everyone's attention to read it...’

Read here (Malaysiakini, Oct 12, 2020)

Sabah's serious Covid-19 situation: Bridget Welsh

‘Beyond case numbers and widespread infection, there are other indicators of the growing intensity of Covid-19 in Sabah. Foremost is the stark number of unlinked cases, cases that show no clear tie to another infected patient. An estimate by Dr Amar-Singh places the most recent unlinked cases as high as 91 percent. This indicates that the virus is in the community and being spread untraceably in the community.

‘Second, the strain of the virus reported in Sabah is among one of the most infectious, contributing to higher rates of transmission. Third, even more troubling is the fact that more people are dying – a toddler last week, more women (who disproportionately are less mobile within Sabah and should be less at risk) and those without underlying health conditions...

‘The time for a “normal” response has passed. The normal response has repeatedly disadvantaged Sabahans as federal authorities lack adequate appreciation of the realities on the ground. It is important to understand those federal failures surrounding Covid-19 add to the deep resentments and divisions that already exist.’

Read here (Malaysiakini, Oct 11, 2020)

Wake up, enough talk, take action: An open letter to the PM from ‘MOH specialist’

‘Wake up dear Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin – you are a self-proclaimed “abah” (father) that wishes to “rotan” (cane) his rakyat for misbehaving and not following standard operating procedure (SOP). You fail to realise that the saddening facts of this Covid-19 wave listed down above are not due to Covid-19, but rather the failure of your administration to prioritise the health of the rakyat above all else...’

Read here (Malaysiakini, Oct 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)

Coronavirus may stay for weeks on banknotes and touchscreens

‘The new coronavirus may remain infectious for weeks on banknotes, glass and other common surfaces, according to research by Australia’s top biosecurity laboratory that highlights risks from paper currency, touchscreen devices and grab handles and rails.

‘Scientists at the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness showed SARS-CoV-2 is “extremely robust,” surviving for 28 days on smooth surfaces such as glass found on mobile phone screens and plastic banknotes at room temperature, or 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit). That compares with 17 days survival for the flu virus.’

Read here (Bloomberg, Oct 11, 2020)

Anthony Fauci calls White House event ‘superspreader’, tempers presidential praise of an experimental drug

‘The US government's top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci has said the event held at the White House Rose Garden on September 26 was a "superspreader" event that led to multiple people, including President Donald Trump, being infected. "I think the data speak for themselves. We had a superspreader event in the White House," Fauci told CBS News Radio. "And it was in a situation where people were crowded together and were not wearing masks," he added.

‘Asked about the president's praise for an experimental COVID-19 treatment he received as "a cure," Fauci said calling it such would be misleading as it still hasn't been proven. "We don't have any indication – I think you really have to depend on what you mean by a cure because that's the word that leads to a lot of confusion," he said.’

Read here (DW, Oct 10, 2020)

How Singapore helped with US President Trump's Covid-19 treatment

 ‘When it comes to fighting against the Covid-19 pandemic, Singapore has been punching above its weight. Blood samples from three patients here were used to develop the experimental antibody cocktail used to treat US President Donald Trump after he tested positive for the coronavirus.

‘The National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) had responded to a collaboration request from US biotechnology firm Regeneron - the company which developed that antibody cocktail - with no claim of intellectual property right over the treatment.’

Read here (Straits Times, Oct 10, 2020)

Covid-19 death rates are lower worldwide, but no one is sure whether that’s a blip or a trend

‘The mortality rate of the coronavirus has been a moving target since the outbreak began. Early reports out of China put it as high as 7 percent. But that was based mostly on hospitalized patients, and by the time the wave hit the United States, epidemiologists believed it was closer to 2 to 3 percent. Now, factoring in asymptomatic infections, as well as mild cases that might not be part of official tallies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts the mortality rate at 0.65 percent.

‘Public health officials cite multiple reasons for the lower death rates: They note a shift in the demographics of who is being stricken with the virus, with younger people making up the bulk of new infections. More widespread testing is capturing a more diverse range of people and illness, and improved treatment strategies that include antivirals and steroids are saving more lives. But some researchers speculate there may be more to the story...’

This story is behind a paywall.

Read here (Washington Post, Oct 9, 2020)

How a bizarre claim about masks has lived on for months

‘The “masks make you sicker” idea underscores how online misinformation is like an ocean liner: Once it’s headed in one direction, it’s difficult to turn around. The advice on masks changed seven months ago, but some people have stuck with what experts were saying in the confusing early days. One doctor’s criticisms of masks—which he now recants—live on in Twitter threads. And as people find new ways to share incorrect information, through posts, photos, and videos, social-media platforms are struggling to catch and remove all the hokum. Before long, the conspiracy theories break free of Facebook and infect reality.’

Read here (The Atlantic, Oct 9, 2020)

What strength really means when you’re sick

‘The metaphors that Trump and others use when talking about COVID-19 are making the pandemic worse... Equating disease with warfare, and recovery with strength, means that death and disability are linked to failure and weakness. That “does such a disservice to all of the families who have lost loved ones, or who are facing long-term consequences,” says Megan Ranney, an emergency physician at Brown University. Like so much else about the pandemic, the strength-centered rhetoric confuses more than it clarifies, and reveals more about America’s values than the disease currently plaguing it.’

Read here (The Atlantic, Oct 9, 2020)

Uncertainty is hope

‘As her husband continued to fail, with his odds of survival lessening and his end drawing near, she realized, “When things are overwhelmingly hard and scary, and the prognosis is generally not good, sometimes hope lies in the unknown,” she told me. It took me a few minutes to grasp what she meant as she continued, “Uncertainty and unpredictability — suddenly and surprisingly — are where there’s an opening for hope.” She summed up her hard-earned wisdom this way: “Uncertainty is hope.” Uncertainty can be hope. I might add that uncertainty can also be possibility, which I needed all those years ago, as much as we do right now.’

Read here (New York Times, Oct 8, 2020)

New test detects coronavirus in just 5 minutes

‘Researchers have used CRISPR gene-editing technology to come up with a test that detects the pandemic coronavirus in just 5 minutes. The diagnostic doesn’t require expensive lab equipment to run and could potentially be deployed at doctor’s offices, schools, and office buildings. “It looks like they have a really rock-solid test,” says Max Wilson, a molecular biologist at the University of California (UC), Santa Barbara. “It’s really quite elegant.”

Read here (Science, Oct 8, 2020)