1/23/21 - smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19
VACCINES:
1) Ethicists say that you should get a COVID-19 vaccine if you are offered one, writes freelance science journalist Melinda Wenner Moyer for The New York Times (1/21/21). Some of the reasons, according to the piece's sources: 1) “there’s no reason to believe that if you forgo your dose, it will go to someone with a higher risk,” Wenner Moyer writes; 2) people often under-estimate their risk for getting COVID-19; and 3) other people benefit from any individual getting vaccinated: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/opinion/covid-vaccine-ethics.html.
2) Here’s how you should think about your immunity to the new coronavirus after you receive your first of a two-dose vaccine, according to a 1/14/21 BBC Futures story: “Pretend it didn’t happen.” In other words, assume you have acquired no immunity to SARS-CoV-2 after that first dose. “…Most vaccines require booster doses [2nd doses] to work,” writes Zaria Gorvett. Your immune system’s first response to a vaccine typically activates B cells, which make antibodies, and T cells of various types, including memory T cells that stick around. The problems are that B cells are short-lived, and the body makes few memory T cells until “the second meeting” with a virus or other pathogen, the story states. The 2nd dose or booster is a re-exposure that increases the number of memory T cells, the number and quality of memory B cells, and the quality of antibodies to a pathogen, according to an Imperial College London immunologist quoted in the piece. The story also states the % effectiveness of various vaccines some number of days after the first dose: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210114-covid-19-how-effective-is-a-single-vaccine-dose.
3) Katherine Foley at Quartz reports that it could take years for researchers to know for sure whether getting a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 prevents you not only from getting sick from the virus but also from getting infected with the virus. But a drop in the spread of infection following more widespread vaccination this year could be an indicator that the vaccines confer this type of immunity, called sterilizing immunity (1/11/21): https://qz.com/1954762/can-you-spread-covid-19-if-you-get-the-vaccine/.
4) Vaccine (and masking) lessons can be drawn from reported SARS-CoV-2 infections among three members of U.S. Congress who sheltered in a crowded room among some unmasked colleagues during the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, writes Ben Guarino at The Washington Post (1/13/21). All 3 representatives had received just one of their two-dose shots against the virus — one received it on Dec. 29 while the other two received it on Jan. 4, Guarino reports. The two vaccines being administered in the U.S. require two doses to confer their full protection. “Early protection against COVID-19 may occur from about 12 days after dose one,” a Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health physician and epidemiologist is quoted as saying. People “should not really consider themselves protected “until after a week or two following dose two,” he adds: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/13/capitol-riot-lockdown-coronavirus-vaccine/.
5) For health care professionals, infectious disease specialist Dr. Paul Sax at Harvard Medical School has provided answers to frequently asked COVID-19 vaccine questions in The New England Journal of Medicine. Topics addressed include how the vaccines work, effectiveness, safety, availability; whether one vaccine is preferable to another for certain patients; guidance for immunocompromised patients; second-dose issues; guidance for people with COVID-19 or a possible case; and more. The replies are useful for all of us (updated 1/11/21): https://www.nejm.org/covid-vaccine/faq.
PUBLIC HEALTH:
6) Advice for avoiding new coronavirus variants per this piece by Tara Parker-Pope at The New York Times (1/19/21) includes upgrading to two- or three-layer masks for errands and shopping, spending time indoors only with people from your own household, cutting back on grocery store visits and time spent in stores, avoiding crowds and not entering a store if you arrive only to find it crowded, remaining socially distant, washing hands frequently, and not touching your face. But most of us still don’t need N95 medical masks, according to Dr. Ashish K. Jha at the Brown University School of Public Health, the story states. Office and grocery store workers might consider a KF94 masks, Jha is quoted as saying. They resemble N95s but have ear loops rather than elastic head loops: https://nyti.ms/39QJD2V.
7) A computer-simulation study of airflow inside passenger cars that was published 1/1/21 in Science supports advice to keep windows open while riding with others inside a motor vehicle, writes Emily Anthes for The New York Times (1/16/21). Anthes, the author of a 2020 book on the air inside buildings, writes that the study simulated air flow in a "Toyota Prius driving at 50 miles per hour, with two occupants: a driver in the front left seat and a single passenger in the back right.” In the cold weather, it’s uncomfortable to keep all 4 vehicle windows open in a sedan. Fresh air flows in a way that creates “a barrier between the driver and the passenger” if each opens the window opposite them rather than the one next to them, the research suggests, according to the story: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/16/health/coronavirus-transmission-cars.html.
SCIENCE:
8) In-person classes for schoolchildren and adolescents have not resulted in higher disease rates in the U.S. counties where such classes are held, according to Michelle Fay Cortez’s story for Bloomberg on a report by scientists with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). “CDC recommends that K-12 schools be the last settings to close after all other mitigation measures have been employed and the first to reopen when they can do so safely,” according to the report (1/13/21): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-13/covid-19-outbreaks-aren-t-driven-by-in-person-classes-cdc-says
9) There’s not a lot of solid research yet on the transmissibility and other pandemic effects of new variants of SARS-CoV-2. An Oxford University epidemiologist quoted in a 1/15/21 story by Kai Kupferschmidt in Science says that a new variant called P1 and identified in Brazil “might have nothing to do with the new surge in infections; people’s immunity might simply be waning.” And a World Health Organization (WHO) physician and epidemiologist is described as saying that changes in human behavior remain the driving force behind the pandemic's resurgence. “Even if [a] variant plays a crucial role it might be driving the boost because it is transmitted more easily, like B.1.1.7, not because it can evade the immune response,” Kupferschmidt writes. He writes later in the piece, “So far, the virus does not appear to have become resistant to Covid-19 vaccines,” according to a WHO vaccinologist: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/new-coronavirus-variants-could-cause-more-reinfections-require-updated-vaccines.
10) A graphics-heavy piece by Jonathan Corum and Carl Zimmer at The New York Times (1/18/21) explores the genetics and mutations behind the recently identified SARS-CoV-2 variant commonly referred to as B.1.1.7: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/health/coronavirus-mutations-B117-variant.html.
11) For Knowable magazine, Greg Miller explores research about conspiracy theories, what makes them so psychologically compelling, and why it is so hard to convince people they are wrong. Conspiracy theories, including those about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 vaccines, are a result of people’s ways of interpreting a world in which they can rarely have firsthand knowledge of events and must inevitably accept a great deal of information on trust. The problem: This also opens the door to bad information, especially if the “facts” are repeated over and over. Once conspiracy theories have taken root, they are nearly impossible to eradicate, so researchers say that the best strategy is to keep dangerous conspiracy theories from taking hold in the first place — and they’re exploring ways to tackle that, Miller reports (1/14/21). Thanks to Knowable for helping me draft this entry: https://knowablemagazine.org/article/mind/2021/the-enduring-allure-conspiracies.
HEALTH CARE:
12) The term “Long Covid” or “COVID Long Haulers” is often used to describe people whose COVID-19 symptoms linger beyond five or so weeks or endure for months after their initial illness and/or negative virus-test results. In this 1/21/21 tweet, Nisreen Alwan, a public health specialist at the University of Southampton, shares UK Office for National Statistics figures indicating that Long Covid is widespread across all ages and among both males and females. The prevalences range from one in four to one in eight, depending on age ranges:
13) For an intimate sense of what long haulers go through, check out this engaging, first-person piece by New York Times reporter Laura Holson about her harrowing experience with Long Covid: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/21/magazine/long-covid-nightmare.html.
14) This essay by infectious disease epidemiologist Syra Madad and Dr. Theodore Long, both with NYC Health + Hospitals, details how this health-care system's outpatient COVID-19 recovery centers are helping COVID-19 long-haulers, aka people with Long COVID. “Any patient with a referral is welcome, from those who just need extra help getting back to baseline, to those who are completely debilitated by chronic pain, or can’t get out of bed or catch their breath,” the authors write. Similar centers exist in other systems in New York and associated with hospitals including Penn Medicine in Philadelphia, the University of Texas Medical Branch, and the University of California, Davis, the essay states. More research on long haulers also is needed to figure out how to help them. In addition, “we must develop criteria for clinical care, so that providers all around the country can follow best practices,” Madad and Long write (1/18/21): https://knowablemagazine.org/article/health-disease/2021/how-help-covid19-longhaulers.
15) Want to look up the capacity of your local hospital these days? The Covid Tracking Project updates a map every Monday with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that illustrates by zip code the number of adult COVID-19 patients, the percent inpatient beds used by COVID-19 patients, and the percent inpatient beds used by all patients: https://covidtracking.com/data/hospital-facilities.
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RIP Sharon Begley, one of the best science and medical journalists of our time: https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/17/sharon-begley-path-breaking-science-journalist-dies/.
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