outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Just made a quick jaunt back to the mid-2010s in the ol' time machine to see if folks from our very recent past could make heads or tails of this headline:

Trump 'enthusiastic' over unproven coronavirus therapeutic, MyPillow creator says

I'm a Tar Heel born
I'm a Tar Heel bred
And when I die I'll be a Tar Heel dead

The Daily Tar Heel isn’t holding back this morning. pic.twitter.com/BZmuhAvMQD
— Susan Worley (@TarheelSoup) August 17, 2020
― mookieproof, Monday, August 17, 2020 2:06 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

just announced: shutting down all in-person classes

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02400-7

This, on the immune response and what it means for the possibility of a vaccine, is reassuring.

Scotty has said the vaccine will be mandatory in Australia.

Scotty doesn't know

Vaccine maker says scotty doesn't have a contract for any vaccine.

Following on from Matt's link.

A first case of #COVID19 reinfection from HKU, with distinct virus genome sequences in 1st and 2nd infection (142 days apart). Kudos to the scientists for this study.

This is no cause for alarm - this is a textbook example of how immunity should work.

(1/n) https://t.co/oekESn0Uhq

— Prof. Akiko Iwasaki (@VirusesImmunity) August 24, 2020

Can anyone speak to the validity of the tweet that xyz just posted? Sounds right and is reassuring but i dunno the Prof in question.

She's quoted here too: https://time.com/5882907/covid-19-reinfection/

The NYT, on the other hand, is reporting this as if it's crushing news

Why would it be crushing news, the ENTIRE GOAL is to arrive with minimal death and long-term illness toll at the point where the virus is endemic instead of pandemic and everybody's walking around with partial immunity bolstered every year by vaccination but people still get mild cases every year. There's no other endpoint! We are not going to make the virus extinct! The Spanish flu is still around, you've probably gotten it!

Cos it's the NYT

This shit is maddening. The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine isn't some Trump-created snake oil!

They've been saying this whole time that they were hoping to start distributing vaccines in September/October, if everything went well.

just made a dental appointment for NYC; i suppose i gotta do this shit sooner or later and waiting until there's a tested vaccine means i will have no molars.

xp

nope. they are *still recruiting* for phase III trials *in the UK* (and brazil iirc) until september.

and the US generally requires phase III trials to take place *in the US* to approve drugs for use in the US.

that vaccine is not snake oil, but "They've been saying this whole time that they were hoping to start distributing vaccines in September/October" is not true.

(unless "they" is literally donald trump)

Whoops - you're right. They were targeting the end of the year.

I wonder if they’d even accept the fast-tracking? The risk seems pretty high to get a two month jump.

Right. The US is very litigious! I wouldn’t want preapproval from a corrupt administration that will hopefully be gone in January. And it’s not like they’ll have spare doses gathering dust.

the emergency use authorization for convalescent plasma yesterday was alarming in this regard -- it won't be much of a hassle for us as it's a therapy given in the hospital setting where demands for unproven treatments generally are fewer and easier to deal with -- but if they use the same logic to expedite marketing of a vaccine it could be a huge deal

Just got my first injection as part of the Phase 3 Moderna vaccine trial. Obv i will never know if it's placebo or real thing but glad to be taking part.

i guess the nightmare scenario is another one of these https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/05/01/vaccine-swine-flu-coronavirus/. if that happened again in a world with Qanon, populism, misinformation, etc. it would do far more harm to public trust in the idea of vaccination than it did back in 1976. the "sporadic deaths" bit seems unlikely if they're basing expedited approval on approval in the UK after successful completion of UK trials. but the "total chaos" part seems very likely.

Xpost the negative: ive been here 6 fuckin' hours. I was quoted 2! Welp...work is lost for today

Positive: $150 for today

if you want to see some insane (and interesting) face masks then this newsletter is fun https://rodolfor.substack.com/

The reported second-positive case referenced above, can that asymptomatic patient still infect others, despite being apparently immune from the effects of the illness himself?

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/24/astrazeneca-denies-white-house-is-fast-tracking-its-covid-19-vaccine-400963

A friend wrote this piece exploring the history of plague and its effects on language. He's a poet and writer, but also has a law degree as well as a degree in Ancient Languages...Commercials Correspondent for the Believer, etc. etc. He's kind of one of the weirdest and most brilliant people I know! And this is no different, interesting reading.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/ascend-secrets-speaking-pandemic/

wow, that's fantastic!

thx table, smashing that "print" button.

has anyone read "on immunity" by eula bliss? i'm about to get to the front of the hold queue at the library for it.

Religious anti science wankers with the title of Archbishop are starting to complain to the Australian government are complaining that the oxford vaccine (and the long used vaccine for rubella) use cell lines derived from aborted foetuses.

Of course they are just ‘asking questions’ and saying of course they would get the vaccine ‘if it were the only option’ whilst sewing the seeds of doubt amongst the credulous.

I presume the aborted foetuses that these mitred pricks are talking about are embryonic stem cells.

Fuck these clowns and their stupid fucking hats.

The whole stem cell argument is so obviously bonkers and about controlling women's bodies. It infuriates me.

meanwhile, in "too late, dollar short"...

https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2020/08/24/judge-rules-for-florida-teachers-against-school-reopening-order

that LARB essay is amazing

cosign

so i don't think i understand why or how COVID plateaus in a big city so continually and precisely? like NYC - according to the gothamist daily, which i take as gospel - has had a constant of between 300 and 200 new cases and 15 to 5 deaths more or less every day for what feels like a month. How does that trickle continue and what are the projections for it to stop? Feels like there were 100 models for how this was going to play out in the US this summer but i'm seeing none for the fall.

I mean there’s just a lot of people

too much too much too many people

Feels like there were 100 models for how this was going to play out in the US this summer but i'm seeing none for the fall.

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Monday, August 24, 2020 4:06 PM (thirty-nine minutes ago)

This has consistently been the most accurate model:
https://covid19-projections.com/

Glad y'all dug that essay. Watch that name, he truly is a genius.

has anyone read "on immunity" by eula bliss? i'm about to get to the front of the hold queue at the library for it.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Monday, August 24, 2020 1:49 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah! i remember it being very good

I read it earlier this year & found it really thoughtful on what drives “our” attitudes to public health, and it solidified some things I had been thinking about science communication and trust in experts (Michael Gove and Laurie Anderson otm basically). Plus I learned some cool facts (see unpopular TIL thread I started because I didn’t think there was anything shocking about my being 35 when I learned the origin of the term conscientious objector)

so i don't think i understand why or how COVID plateaus in a big city so continually and precisely? like NYC - according to the gothamist daily, which i take as gospel - has had a constant of between 300 and 200 new cases and 15 to 5 deaths more or less every day for what feels like a month.

Same with London, I can only assume it's down to lifestyle changes, social distancing and mask wearing but I don't really understand it.

I have massive skepticism about the US Covid numbers since that push from the administration to manipulate the stats in July. Apparently five days ago the CDC returned to collecting the stats.

use https://covidtracking.com/data/charts. they merge stats from individual states/counties, etc. which means that any effort to juice things requires a lot more thumbs on a lot more scales.

otm

serious question: who is still using the CDC/HHS numbers? all the serious analysis i've seen involves aggregating state data, doing some basic data quality cleanup, and trying to make it consistent and comparable. ie, what the federal government should have been from day 1. i can understand why some people would still look to them now, but imo until trump is out of office they should not be your first source.

i think the CDC/HHS are the only source of national hospitalization/ICU utilization data, so it's a problem that they can't be trusted, see july 15 on here https://www.covidexitstrategy.org/daily-log. but for counts and deaths you can just ignore them.

some really interesting stuff in this CovidTracking blog post from July 28:

https://i.imgur.com/Q01lRQ4.png

We compared hospital data published by the HHS with the same numbers as reported by states, and found substantial discrepancies. On average, the HHS reported 24 percent more patients hospitalized with COVID-19 than did the states.

...

Once again, there are several possible reasons for the discrepancies between state and federal datasets.

• In some states, hospitals may be reporting data to the HHS but not to their state public health authorities; we know that in California and Texas, the states are not receiving complete data from some percentage of hospitals, because the states have posted warnings on their COVID-19 dashboards to that effect. (We don’t know if those same hospitals are reporting complete data to HHS.)

• States may be posting lower numbers because their definitions of COVID-19 hospitalizations are more restrictive than the federal definitions. The HHS reports data on all COVID-19 hospitalizations, including suspected cases. But some states may omit suspect or probable cases from their figures. Other states may, like Florida, only report patients with a primary diagnosis of COVID-19, which potentially excludes patients who entered the hospital for another condition, then tested positive after admission and became seriously ill with COVID-19.

• States that get current hospitalization data from their state hospital associations, may not be reporting any hospitalization data from Veteran’s Association and other federal hospitals. We are currently conducting outreach to states to determine how widespread this practice is.

• We may be seeing some combination of hospitals double-reporting in error as they get up to speed with the new reporting requirements, and data-entry errors in others cases, but this probably does not explain the national, unidirectional discrepancy between HHS and state reporting.

So what does this all mean for people trying to interpret the data? Until we see the data stabilize at the state level and understand more about the reasons why the state and federal datasets for current COVID-19 hospitalizations don’t match up, we would urge caution in using either state-reported or HHS hospital data in isolation to understand local outbreaks or the burden on healthcare systems.

The sudden change in federal guidelines on coronavirus testing came as a result of pressure from the upper ranks of the Trump administration, a federal health official close to the process tells CNN. https://t.co/nSDJfhlr1I

— CNN (@CNN) August 26, 2020

all that is solid melts into air