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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / COVID-19 Information: Some Longer Reads

COVID-19 Information: Some Longer Reads

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This post is in: 

Lots of informative pics in this Bored Panda post:

… In the times of the current crisis, keeping a safe distance is key. Even if countries are starting to ease restrictions on quarantine, it doesn’t mean it’s over. But how do we know, from the pictures alone, that people are doing what’s right? It turns out, we can’t.

Photographers Ólafur Steinar Gestsson and Philip Davali conducted an experiment for the photo agency Ritzau Scanpix. The Copenhagen-based artists photographed the same people chilling out outside on the same day. Their trick was to use two different perspectives—a wide angle and a telephoto lens. The pictures show a staggering difference in the distance between these people and make us rethink the things we take for granted…

Laurie Garrett retweeted this, or I wouldn’t have given it a second look. It’s actually informative:

… The coronavirus has touched almost every country on earth, but its impact has seemed capricious. Global metropolises like New York, Paris and London have been devastated, while teeming cities like Bangkok, Baghdad, New Delhi and Lagos have, so far, largely been spared.

The question of why the virus has overwhelmed some places and left others relatively untouched is a puzzle that has spawned numerous theories and speculations but no definitive answers. That knowledge could have profound implications for how countries respond to the virus, for determining who is at risk and for knowing when it’s safe to go out again.

There are already hundreds of studies underway around the world looking into how demographics, pre-existing conditions and genetics might affect the wide variation in impact…

The protestors who, for some reason, are *not* getting extensive favorable coverage from national media:


… Instead of wiping out Covid-19, societies may instead learn to live with it. Cities would slowly open and some freedoms will be returned, but on a short leash, if experts’ recommendations are followed. Testing and physical tracing will become part of our lives in the short term, but in many countries, an abrupt instruction to self-isolate could come at any time. Treatments may be developed — but outbreaks of the disease could still occur each year, and the global death toll would continue to tick upwards.

It’s a path rarely publicly countenanced by politicians, who are speaking optimistically about human trials already underway to find a vaccine. But the possibility is taken very seriously by many experts — because it’s happened before. Several times…

In 1984, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler announced at a press conference in Washington, DC, that scientists had successfully identified the virus that later became known as HIV — and predicted that a preventative vaccine would be ready for testing in two years.

Nearly four decades and 32 million deaths later, the world is still waiting for an HIV vaccine…

HIV poses very unique difficulties and Covid-19 does not possess its level of elusiveness, making experts generally more optimistic about finding a vaccine.

But there have been other diseases that have confounded both scientists and the human body. An effective vaccine for dengue fever, which infects as many as 400,000 people a year according to the WHO, has eluded doctors for decades. In 2017, a large-scale effort to find one was suspended after it was found to worsen the symptoms of the disease…

… [M]uch else about the pandemic is still maddeningly unclear. Why do some people get really sick, but others do not? Are the models too optimistic or too pessimistic? Exactly how transmissible and deadly is the virus? How many people have actually been infected? How long must social restrictions go on for? Why are so many questions still unanswered?

The confusion partly arises from the pandemic’s scale and pace. Worldwide, at least 3.1 million people have been infected in less than four months. Economies have nose-dived. Societies have paused. In most people’s living memory, no crisis has caused so much upheaval so broadly and so quickly. “We’ve never faced a pandemic like this before, so we don’t know what is likely to happen or what would have happened,” says Zoë McLaren, a health-policy professor at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. “That makes it even more difficult in terms of the uncertainty.”

But beyond its vast scope and sui generis nature, there are other reasons the pandemic continues to be so befuddling—a slew of forces scientific and societal, epidemiological and epistemological. What follows is an analysis of those forces, and a guide to making sense of a problem that is now too big for any one person to fully comprehend…

Reader Interactions

30Comments

  1. 1.

    Elizabelle

    Anne, you have been excellent at informing us.  Thank you very much.  And I loved, loved, loved the Studio Ghibli items last night.

  2. 2.

    Dread

    If there’s never a vaccine or a treatment for it, I don’t know what I’ll do. My wife is immuno-compromised and I have some risk factors.

    I can, thankfully, work from home. But I can’t keep my kids locked up forever. And I really don’t want to be in house arrest mode forever either.

  3. 3.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    They’ve been pointing out that lenses and framing trick the press does.  Like how the press tries to make the Shut Down protestor crowds or Trump’s rallies look huge when it’s only a few people.

    Even if a vaccine is developed, bringing it to fruition in 12-18 months would be a feat never achieved before.

    People who have by pass surgery are going home in three days. When I was a kid bypass was an heroic measure. We live in the age of miracles.  While the Orange Twaffle and his followers gave up like the useless losers they are, it’s not like the rest of the world isn’t giving it their best to make a miracle happen.

  5. 5.

    The Moar You Know

    The fastest time-to-vaccine on record is four years.

    The numbers of viral diseases where there is still no vaccine is too long to list, HIV being the biggest.

    The experience of both the dengue and SARS 1 vaccines is instructive in a very disheartening way.  They both made horrible diseases far worse.

    And then there’s this:

    Global metropolises like New York, Paris and London have been devastated, while teeming cities like Bangkok, Baghdad, New Delhi and Lagos have, so far, largely been spared.

    I’d be willing to chalk that up to an utter lack of medical care and infrastructure (esp. Baghdad) except one of those cities (Lagos) has one of the better reporting capabilities anywhere, developed during the Ebola outbreaks.  If there’s a race/ethnicity based difference in how this virus hits populations, this could slide into a real nasty world war within a few months of that news coming out, with China being the bad guy. So I am hoping that it’s just poor reporting, which is by far the likeliest explanation.

    ETA:  one of the reasons this has had such a dramatic impact on societies worldwide is social media/news.  Everyone on the planet knew within a couple of months what was going on.  The last lethal worldwide outbreak in 1917-1919, nobody even knew what a virus was.  And there was no widespread news to be had.

  6. 6.

    Jess

    I was wondering if the different mortality rates were connected with smoking habits, but there doesn’t seem to be a correlation. For example, the Iraqi smoking rates are 2-3 times higher than the Iranian rates.

  7. 7.

    Peale

    @Jess: thanks to some weird feckless French “study”, its possible that smokers end up with less severe symptoms. I am not buying it and I’m not planning on falling off the wagon and lighting up again based on French studies.

  9. 9.

    randy khan

    A few thoughts on the many items in this post.

    One angle that essentially can’t deceive you on spacing is from straight above.

    Photographers doing protests, etc., love the shots that show people close together and acting passionately.  Five people standing in the middle of a plaza just isn’t that interesting.  The bias towards excitement in news and related areas is hard to correct.

    I wonder if a factor in the relatively small impact of COVID-19 in some places is that not a lot of people travel to and from them from other countries.  (This could be totally wrong – it’s mere speculation.)  Places with big immigrant populations (something that does not describe Baghdad, for instance) seem to be getting hit fairly hard.

  10. 10.

    Brachiator

    Millions of U.S. workers without traditional bank accounts must wait weeks for federal relief paper checks during the pandemic. They are disproportionately black and Hispanic and often have little choice but to use expensive check-cashing services.

    For some, this adds insult to injury.  A good number of people who use paid tax preparers also take out refund anticipation loans or receive their refunds on a debit card.  Because the advance loans and debit cards are tied to a temporary bank account set up for the preparer, the Stimulus checks would go to this temporary bank account and not directly to the taxpayer, and the IRS had some trouble identifying the problem and correcting it.

    This system works well for normal times, but was exactly the wrong system in place at the wrong time when it came to the stimulus checks.

    BTW, the debit cards are generally a good way to get around (some) excessive check cashing fees.

    However, the absence of reasonable, affordable, and convenient banking in many lower income communities is a fucking crime.

  11. 11.

    zhena gogolia

    @Dread:

    I’m pretty depressed too. My husband keeps hope alive. He doesn’t read the newspaper or BJ, though.

  12. 12.

    Brachiator

    @patrick II:

    Does anyone give any credence to the British scientists who say they may have a vaccine ready this fall?

    No.

    Some journalists try to amp up the optimism.

    Bottom line is that I don’t care much what scientists say about whether a vaccine is around the corner. I just want them to keep on working.

  13. 13.

    The Moar You Know

    Does anyone give any credence to the British scientists who say they may have a vaccine ready this fall?

    @patrick II:  There was a SARS-1 vaccine that went all the way to human trials.  Problem was, it killed some patients with the same horrific ARDS syndrome we’re seeing with this version (which is basically SARS-2).  Nonetheless, that knowledge and process is still there and I think it’s the same people as referred to in the article.  So it is possible?  Well, anything is possible.  It is likely?  No.  Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and we just aren’t seeing that proof yet.

  15. 15.

    germy

    Last week, the White House said Dr. Fauci was too busy to testify before the House.

    But just now, Trump said he's preventing Fauci from appearing before the House because, "the House is a set up. The House is a bunch of Trump haters."

    — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 5, 2020

  16. 16.

    Brachiator

    @Jess:

    I was wondering if the different mortality rates were connected with smoking habits, but there doesn’t seem to be a correlation.

    This was looked at and not dismissed, but de-emphasized in looking at the China data. Men were far more likely to be smokers than women, and men were more likely to die from the virus than women.

    But later, it turned out that women survived more in most other countries as well, without regard to smoking habits.

  17. 17.

    Brachiator

    @germy:

    But just now, Trump said he’s preventing Fauci from appearing before the House because, “the House is a set up. The House is a bunch of Trump haters.”

    This drives me nuts.  Trump cannot put aside his pettiness for anything.

    What drives me even more nuts is that Trump supporters love this infantile behavior. They cannot see beyond Trump sticking it to his enemies.

  19. 19.

    Jess

    I hate this uncertainty. Fortunately, I’m employed and can work from home, so I’m going to assume we have at least another year of this and make all the necessary adjustments I can now. Including budgeting $ for food banks and such. If things turn around more rapidly, then yay. I’ve trudged through hard times before; I can do it again.

  20. 20.

    lol chikinburd

    Wisconsin’s stay-at-home order won’t last the week. Conservative justices on this morning’s Zoom hearing (yep) were full-cultist. Highlight from Roggensack saying the Green Bay outbreak was just meatpacking workers and not the “regular people of Brown County”. Slice us off the surface of the planet like a bruise from an apple.

  21. 21.

    Mike in NC

    Got home from errands a short time ago. Chuck Todd came on the TV talking about a rumor that the coronavirus task force may soon be disbanded. Absolutely crazy notion but it would be in keeping with Fat Bastard’s determination not to have to hear anything he dismisses as ‘fake news’.

    Brian Williams confirms the White House intends to ‘wind down’ the task force. WTF?

  22. 22.

    Dan B

    @patrick II: Since the Oxford research is a reboot of a successful SARS vaccine that was shelved due to the disappearance of SARS and because the head of research is the Regius Director of Medecine at Oxford I give it more credence.  Whether or not they will be successful is another matter.  And a more contagious and deadly version has spread across Europe (Los Alamos researchers published in the pre-peer review Biorxiv. sp?)  There are challenges.

  23. 23.

    rikyrah

    AL,

    I know that you sort of stumbled into the COVID-19 beat for BJ, but I really want to thank you. The information that you bring is read by far more than  reply.

  25. 25.

    Betty

    My pet theory about some places not being hit as hard is that the population may have built up antibodies to a different virus that gives them some protection. For instance, Dominica had a severe outbreak of Dengue Fever at the end of last year. We have had a total of 16 cases of Covod-19 with the first one being someone who came with it from the UK. This despite holding Carnival celebrations with hundreds of visitors from all over the US. You saw what happened to New Orleans from their Carnival activities. It’s anecdotal, but makes me wonder.

  26. 26.

    Ohio Mom

    Dread: Like your family, ours has some health issues that make us very wary. And I’m not expecting a vaccine any time soon.

    They aren’t that easy to develop. As mentioned above, there was a SARS-1 vaccine that had to be pulled; I remember the swine flu vaccine sometimes causing Guillian-Barre syndrome, and the rotavirus vaccine for infants being recalled in the late 90’s. That’s not to say I wouldn’t welcome a COVID vaccine, just that I won’t be surprised if there are many snags along the way.

    I keep wondering how much of my constant dread is fear about me or someone close to me catching the virus versus despair at living in a country with a failed (or is it sabotaged) federal government.

    Can those two things be teased apart? Maybe some social scientist is comparing emotional states of Americans to say, New Zealanders or South Koreans.

  27. 27.

    Calouste

    @Betty: I saw a report that some researchers think that having had the MMR vaccine might make COVID-19 less severe. That was based on both similarities between the viruses and differences in fatalities rates between countries that have different years for the general availability of the MMR vaccine.

  28. 28.

    Ohio Mom

    Calouste: Is there any reason to think that the MMR vaccine would confer protection that actually having had measles, mumps and rubella would not? Because I’m thinking that most of the oldsters dying from COVID probably had all three diseases as children.

  29. 29.

    Doug R

    @lol chikinburd: <blockquote>

    Wisconsin’s stay-at-home order won’t last the week. Conservative justices on this morning’s Zoom hearing (yep) were full-cultist. Highlight from Roggensack saying the Green Bay outbreak was just meatpacking workers and not the “regular people of Brown County”. Slice us off the surface of the planet like a bruise from an apple.</blockquote>

    Here in BC and Alberta, we’ve had major outbreaks tied to meat packing plants-at least 40 cases in one chicken plant and outbreaks at 3 more. In Alberta, 15% of their cases were from ONE beef plant near Calgary.

    Oil sands workers and meat packing workers with the virus have had family members that work at long term care homes as well.

    Just like Sweden, we’ll find out the hard way you can’t seal off one part of the population.

  30. 30.

    Matt McIrvin

    @The Moar You Know:

    If there’s a race/ethnicity based difference in how this virus hits populations,

    I’d guess it’s almost certainly NOT that. There just aren’t genetic differences between populations that cut off at national boundaries starkly enough. And we’ve got all kinds of people here in the US without huge apparent differences in how susceptible they are. Black and Hispanic Americans are getting sick in greater numbers just as you’d expect from them having the jobs that get labeled essential, and living in cities, and being generally less privileged.

    I think most of the differences between countries are down to public policy and behavior, and I suspect that very hot, sunny weather also cuts down the reproduction rate a bit, though obviously not enough to make the disease go away by itself.

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