What is the state of COVID-19 in America? @DrLaPook speaks with scientists to learn where we stand in containing the coronavirus and if the country can start finding a new sense of normal, Sunday. https://t.co/QZZ5KWwP8R pic.twitter.com/GK2IAC5RFk
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 5, 2022
In early May 2020 I was asked by neighbors who knew I was an epidemiologist what I thought was going to happen. I said this would probably last years and would change the world as we knew it. They never asked me again. They wanted it over in weeks. That’s how denial works.
— Diego Bassani, PhD (@DGBassani) March 6, 2022
It's too early to declare SARSCoV2 an endemic virus. We are still deeply in the pandemic phase no matter how many governments tell people to ditch their masks. Now is the time to build better public health infrastructure ↓ https://t.co/r32lypFfL1
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) March 6, 2022
The lessons learned from 1918 flu fatigue, according to historianshttps://t.co/fI0V11MSW6
— Global Health Observ (@GlobalPHObserv) March 5, 2022
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It has happened before with TB, malaria and AIDS
The Global North will 'move on' and the Global South will be left to deal with an 'endemic' killer infection@NASAdoc @Boghuma @Fredros_Inc & I wrote our first piece @TheAtlantic https://t.co/KkPDF85RfL pic.twitter.com/AZFlqM1S5s
— Madhu Pai, MD, PhD (@paimadhu) March 4, 2022
Chinese city of Qingdao reports Omicron outbreak among students https://t.co/2i3V56RhG4 pic.twitter.com/lJk0z2jqtk
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 6, 2022
Hong Kong residents urged not to panic ahead of COVID mass testing https://t.co/3UReTZwv1U pic.twitter.com/2DNqZnj43b
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 6, 2022
Hong Kong reported 31,008 new COVID-19 cases and 153 deaths on Sunday as the city’s chief secretary said residents should not worry about a looming mass testing scheme, with details to be announced and authorities ensuring a steady supply of food.
The global financial hub is clinging to a “dynamic zero” coronavirus strategy as a massive spike in infections pushed hospitals, isolation centres and funeral parlours beyond capacity. Health experts said around 15% of the city’s 7.4 million residents are already infected…
As infections and deaths hit record highs, Hong Kong has implemented its most draconian restrictions, with restrictions on public gatherings of more than two people, most venues closed and flights banned into the city from countries including the United States and Britain…
The former British colony has had more than 470,000 COVID infections. Most of the roughly 1,800 deaths have been in the past two weeks, many of them unvaccinated elderly residents as infections have spread in hundreds of nursing homes.
The surge in infections has crippled manpower in the healthcare system, for public transport, mall operators as well as postal services, supermarkets and pharmacies…
Hong Kong reported 37,529 new coronavirus infections on Saturday and 150 deaths, as the city clings to a "zero-COVID" strategy despite spiralling cases that have spread through care homes and overwhelmed healthcare facilities. https://t.co/dnEotv2P5p
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) March 5, 2022
HK’s Covid death rate is among the world’s highest
Over half (>680 out of 1341) of the recent deaths are elderly in care homes, many unvaccinated, fuelled by fear of side effects, objection by family members & mistrust in govt @primroseriordan @imandylin2 https://t.co/qTMF2jcaAN
— Chan Ho-him (@ThomasHHChan) March 5, 2022
… After two years of keeping coronavirus at bay, some Hong Kong residents were lulled into complacency, many were suspicious of government vaccination campaigns after pro-democracy protests were crushed while others were confused by conflicting advice.
But the Omicron variant has ripped through the Asian financial hub and the elderly are at the highest risk of death.
Infectious disease experts have criticised the government and parts of the media for spooking Hong Kong’s elderly with scare stories but have warned that even if pensioners get inoculated immediately, it may be too late to slow the number of deaths…
“The Hong Kong government probably made a mistake in its early vaccination strategy . . . officials at that time suggested [elderly people] who suffered from chronic illnesses to consult a doctor first and wait till their illnesses stabilised before they get the shot,” David Hui, a respiratory disease expert at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a government adviser, told the Financial Times.
“This created the misconception among many that, if they have [chronic illnesses], they should postpone getting vaccinated.”
Local media amplified the fears and as recently as last month were publishing sensationalist reports about people who had died from unrelated causes after taking the vaccine.
Many elderly people were initially advised by doctors to avoid getting the jab, according to Stephanie Law, a managing director of Culture Homes, a nursing home group. “The doctors were quite concerned they would be responsible for any consequences,” Law added.
An opt-in policy, that has since been reversed, for the vaccine in nursing homes made matters worse, while the requirement that family members consent to a jab accentuated the problem. “Their relatives also bear some responsibility,” said Ivan Hung, a government pandemic adviser and infectious disease professor at HKU.
More than 750 care homes are battling outbreaks but vaccine outreach programmes have been suspended because of strict protocols for medical staff administering the shots. Some nursing home staff are working while sick and many homes do not have the room to isolate sick residents, stoking the virus’s spread…
Another factor that health officials will struggle to overcome is a deep distrust of government, which has worsened since the introduction of a draconian national security law in 2020 to stifle dissent.
Sit Pui-yu, whose mother died during the Sars epidemic that claimed 299 lives in Hong Kong in 2003, lives alone in a public housing apartment in Kowloon. The 71-year-old fears catching the virus but believes officials are “whitewashing” concerns about the vaccine.
“Even if every single person in Hong Kong is vaccinated, I will not get jabbed,” he insisted. “Why should I kowtow to the government?”
Taiwan is easing mask mandates & lifting other Covid precautions on Monday https://t.co/MPbSjD2ulD pic.twitter.com/OvpLinpzj1
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) March 6, 2022
Long covid, but for geopolitics:
U.S. intelligence experts say Putin's 2 years of extreme pandemic isolation may be a factor in his wartime mindset. They're also debating whether his ambitions & appetite for risk have been altered by his extended time in a Covid bubble https://t.co/3fhNARym9q
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) March 5, 2022
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This *excellent* article came out at the beginning of February, but I never did find the right time & space to give it the post it deserved. Belatedly, “Meet the scientist at the center of the covid lab leak controversy”:
Shi Zhengli has spent years at the Wuhan Institute of Virology researching coronaviruses that live in bats. Her work has come under fire as the world tries to understand where covid-19 came from. https://t.co/g0CbIoQur8
— MIT Technology Review (@techreview) March 3, 2022
… The [Wuhan Institute of Virology] holds a critical place in the story of the covid-19 pandemic. A leading center for coronavirus research, it was the first facility to isolate the new virus, and the first to sequence its genome. One of its labs, led by virologist Shi Zhengli, focuses on coronaviruses that live in bats, and has spent years sequencing viral genomes, isolating live viruses, and—through genetic mixing and matching—trying to understand how they may evolve to gain the ability to infect humans. Over the past 18 years, her team has collected more than 20,000 samples from bat colonies across China.
Shi’s work, which has earned her the nickname China’s bat woman, has been at the center of controversy. Some have suggested that her bat samples could be the source of the covid-19 virus, which scientists call SARS-CoV-2. They have claimed that the virus could have hitched a ride to Wuhan by infecting one of her team members in their fieldwork collecting samples from bats. Or, some speculate, the live viruses her team cultured in the lab, including—more worryingly—the ones they created by genetic tinkering, could be the source of the pandemic…
As Shi showed me around her lab, she pointed to the deep freezers where the team kept tens of thousands of bat samples in chemical soups. She told me how virus-containing samples are kept frozen in the field, either on dry ice or in liquid nitrogen, before being transferred to dedicated, double-locked deep freezers in the Wuhan lab. Only designated personnel can access those samples; they need approval from two senior staff members, each of whom is in charge of a separate key to the two locks. All access to the samples is logged.
The core of her research over the past 18 years, she explained, has been to look for bat viruses that are closely related to SARS-CoV-1, and to understand how they could evolve new features that allow them to infect humans. She talked me through that process, which begins with testing each bat sample to see if it contains a coronavirus—using the same PCR-based technique as many covid-19 tests. All coronaviruses contain a gene that encodes an enzyme called RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, or RdRp, which helps viruses replicate by making more copies of their genomes. If the characteristic RdRp shows up in a bat sample, it’s a telltale sign that a coronavirus is present.
At first glance I was concerned by the sheer size of Shi’s collection of more than 20,000 bat samples. But she explained that on average only 10% contain coronaviruses, and only 10% of those are closely related to SARS-CoV-1: in all its years, the team has identified approximately 220 such viruses. The findings, say virologists such as Edward Holmes of the University of Sydney, have provided valuable insight into the evolutionary history of coronaviruses and the way they generate genetic variants.
Whenever the team found a bat relative of SARS-CoV-1, Shi says, she asked the same questions: How threatening is it to other animal species, including humans? What would it take for the virus to become one that, like SARS-CoV-1, can cause major epidemics?…
And the team keeps doing that work. The pandemic has lent extra urgency to one aspect of its research: determining the exposure risks that rural people face. In previous studies, Shi and her colleagues found that up to 4% of people living close to bats and working closely with wildlife in southern China were infected with dangerous animal-borne viruses, including coronaviruses; the infection rate was 9% among butchers. The Laotian and French team that discovered close relatives of SARS-CoV-2 found that one in five people who’d had direct contact with bats and other wildlife had coronavirus antibodies.
Such findings suggest that viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 might be spreading over a massive geographic range, stretching at least 3,000 miles from Japan to Cambodia. A combination of population growth, wildlife trade, rampant deforestation, and improved transportation in those places has made it increasingly easily for animal pathogens to cross over to humans.
Robertson, the University of Glasgow virologist, says this is a clear and immediate threat: “It’s quite terrifying, really, to think how we can fuck this up by not finding out where [those viruses] are and risk more spillover.”…
Grantee @janeqiuchina was interviewed by @bbcworldservice for her recent story on Shi Zhengli, China's "bat woman" who studies coronaviruses at Wuhan Institute of Technology. Listen to the conversation on Science in Action: https://t.co/DPTF3YWwYN
— Pulitzer Center (@pulitzercenter) March 5, 2022
This is a classical example of how ignorant and toxic the lab leak discussion is online.
Act 1:
You have a renowned science journalist doing all the hard work to investigate, research, track down scientists to interview and then writes her own independent article. https://t.co/ui5VBl8crw— Philipp Markolin, PhD (@PhilippMarkolin) February 12, 2022
Act 3:
Lab leak LARPers swarm in and baselessly insinuate that it is a 'puff piece' because the author is 'bought off by the CCP' and her article is truly a conspiracy and its message were dictated by the CCP. These trolls just make nonsense up on the fly. Influencer buys it. pic.twitter.com/nGc2sGsGSj— Philipp Markolin, PhD (@PhilippMarkolin) February 12, 2022
to debunk conspiracies about her article and ad hominems directed at her for the foreseeable future.
This is not only unnecessary but also emotionally draining and serves as a deterrent for others who want to 'stick with the science' and not strategically navigate online hate
— Philipp Markolin, PhD (@PhilippMarkolin) February 12, 2022
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Blood type & other blood proteins implicated in Covid severity. Genomic analysis produces a "shortlist" of causative factors involving who gets severe disease https://t.co/QdkJVoiqoW pic.twitter.com/rI01QU8qUG
— delthia ricks ?? (@DelthiaRicks) March 3, 2022
Eleven blood markers, including the ABO protein that determines blood group, were implicated in severe COVID outcomes in a genomic analysis of clinical data.
After examining more than 3,000 blood proteins against those found in hospitalized and severe COVID cases, six proteins had a causal link with increased risk of hospitalization and five proteins were linked to COVID-related need for respiratory support, death, or both, with odds ratios ranging from 1.12 to 1.35.
Another 17 blood proteins had a causal association with reduced risk of severe COVID, reported Alish Palmos, PhD, of King’s College London, and colleagues in PLoS Genetics…
Specifically, they highlighted that the ABO protein was implicated in severe COVID, which suggests that blood groups play a key role in people developing severe disease.
“Our study does not link precise blood group with risk of severe COVID-19 but since previous research has found that proportion of people who are group A is higher in COVID-19 positive individuals, this suggests that blood group A is a more likely candidate for follow-up studies,” said co-author Christopher Hübel, PhD, also of King’s College London, in a statement…
Palmos’ group identified six blood markers that were “significantly casually associated” with COVID-related hospitalization, with an increase in odds of hospitalization ranging from 7% to 19%, the authors wrote. Notably, fatty acid hydrolase 2 (FAAH2) had the strongest association (OR 1.19, 95% CI 1.12-1.25).
Five proteins were linked to an increased need for respiratory support, death from COVID, or both, with an increase in odds of severe outcomes ranging from 12% to 35%. Glucosaminyl (N-Acetyl) transferase 4 (GCNT4) had the strongest association (OR 1.35, 95% CI 1.26-1.44).
The authors also identified nine proteins linked to a relative 7% to 20% decreased risk of COVID-related hospitalization. Likewise, eight blood markers were associated with a lower risk of severe COVID, ranging from an 11% to 27% decrease. In both instances, the strongest association was for platelet endothelial cell adhesion molecule (PECAM-1, OR 0.80, 95% CI 0.73-0.87 and OR 0.73, 95% CI 0.63-0.83, respectively)…
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We don’t need any more commentators agonizing over why people are still (!!) wearing masks.
It’s to avoid getting sick.
Even if I’m 99.9% sure I’ll survive (not everyone is!), maybe I don’t wanna get sick? Or make others sick?
Not wanting to get sick is actually very normal!
— Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) March 5, 2022
I understand that some people will be very offended by my decision to withhold from them my wet exhalations and an unhindered view of my nostrils and mouth but as a personal preference I’d rather avoid respiratory infections than welcome every stranger to get all up in my airways
— Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) March 6, 2022
A new analysis by @nycHealthy & @Yale has produced a mind-blowing graph.
The green line is actual # of deaths from covid in NYC. Purple line is the # of deaths that would have occurred without vaccines.
Approx 48,000 lives saved in our city. Stunning. pic.twitter.com/LPF0YuR7Jx
— Mark D. Levine (@MarkLevineNYC) March 4, 2022
I've been thinking a lot lately about what a difference it might have made if we'd had capable leaders tell the public the truth about pandemics from the beginning. Nothing gets to be normal, they average 2 years (so many are longer!), they are traumatic, & there's no going back.
— Laura Seay (@texasinafrica) February 12, 2022
At a pre-shutdown faculty meeting, I explained that at the then-current rate of spread, we could see 1.5-2 million people infected in a matter of weeks, & that 1% of those could die. I know most of the room thought I was exaggerating. Traumatic realities are hard to absorb.
Students brought up Covid in our current events time that whole semester. I tried to gently prepare them for how bad it could get. One complained to my chair after I told them that most of us would likely know someone who became seriously ill or died of covid before it ended.
(I was not reprimanded; my chair saw it as a matter of academic freedom. But he definitely didn’t believe me.)
Traumatic events produce a whole range of psychological responses. Denial is a big one. So are growing anxiety, depression, & fatalism. Hope is in short supply right now.
I think about my cousin who is afraid to vaccinate her family. They are watching her father-in-law choke to death from covid after 3 months in the hospital. They trust conservative media. It lied to them. Will this change their views? Not if the messages they hear don’t change.
I don’t know if preparing people for the worst would have worked at the time. Inconceivable future events are, well, inconceivable. But it wouldn’t likely have been as bad as the mess we’re in now, created by poor leadership & failures at every turn…
COVID-19 Coronavirus Update: Saturday / Sunday, March 5-6Post + Comments (16)