The gadgets under are highlights from the free publication, “Smart, useful, science stuff about COVID-19.” To obtain publication points every day in your inbox, join here.
Why are SARS-CoV-2 an infection charges and COVID-19 hospitalizations dropping so quickly lately within the U.S.? A 2/17/21 story by Derek Thompson at The Atlantic studies that it’s a mix of higher social distancing, elevated mask-wearing, seasonality, a rising variety of folks within the U.S. who’ve developed antibodies after an infection with the virus (15% to 30% of U.S. adults), and the rising variety of folks within the U.S. who’ve been vaccinated in opposition to COVID-19. “We’re accelerating towards a second, someday this spring, when half of American adults ought to have some sort of coronavirus safety,” Thompson concludes.
For a fast dive into key outcomes from large-scale COVID-19 vaccine research carried out by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Novavax, Johnson and Johnson, and Gamaleya Sputnik V, see Yale College immunologist Akiko Iwasaki’s 2/7/21 Twitter thread that includes comparative tables, made by Yale Medical College college students. “All of the tables right here…point out the # COVID-related demise within the vaccinated because the right-most column (which is ZERO).” She provides: “With all these vaccines…we are able to deliver down the variety of extreme & deadly Covid. The variants are right here, however present vaccines nonetheless defend from extreme illness & vaccines for the variants are coming. We’ll get by way of this!”
A 2/16/21 story by Ariana Remmel for Nature contains bar charts that illustrate the frequency of negative effects reported to the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management amongst individuals who have acquired the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in opposition to COVID-19. The chart exhibits that fatigue is reported by 29% and 50% of individuals receiving their first- and second-dose, respectively; complications are reported by 26% and 42% of individuals receiving their first- and second-dose, respectively; and fever is reported by 7% and 25% of individuals receiving their first- and second-dose, respectively. Individuals report extra negative effects to this vaccine and to Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine than they do to flu vaccines, based on an infectious-disease specialist on the College of Washington College of Medication, the story states. The piece additionally states that the frequency of anaphylactic (extreme, allergic, and life-threatening) reactions to the Moderna vaccine is three per million doses, and it’s 30 per 3 million doses thus far for the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. All these people have “totally recovered,” per the story. Anaphylaxis is treatable if caught shortly, based on Paul Offit, a vaccine specialist at Kids’s Hospital of Philadelphia who’s quoted within the story. Remmel writes: “There isn’t a query that the present vaccines are efficient and secure. The chance of extreme response to a COVID-19 jab, say researchers, is outweighed by the safety it presents in opposition to the lethal coronavirus.”
Epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina of the College of Texas Well being Science Middle at Houston revealed a 2/14/21 post at her Your Local Epidemiologist site that summarizes the newest proof for medicine to deal with COVID-19. The submit relies on a 280-page report on COVID-19 therapy choices revealed 2/11/21 by the U.S. Nationwide Institutes of Well being. Two choices proven by research to work thus far: steroids referred to as corticosteroids (particularly, they defend in opposition to demise from extreme COVID-19 and reduce how lengthy it’s important to keep in an intensive care unit), and the anti-viral drug remdesivir (it’s protecting for hospitalized sufferers who want supplemental oxygen, aside from ventilators). The submit features a 12/10/20 chart revealed within the British Medical Journal that summarizes the experimental outcomes of lots of the medicine examined in opposition to COVID-19. The submit additionally summarizes the proof for “medicine which can be making headlines,” nevertheless it suggests there at the moment shouldn’t be sufficient proof to assist giving them to COVID-19 sufferers (e.g. ivermectin, arthritis drug tocilizumab, and bronchial asthma drug budesonide).
COVID-19 might need humbled Peter Diamandis, entrepreneur and founding father of the X Prize Basis, he suggests in a 2/12/21 blog post. Takeaway: regardless of high-quality pre-arrival and every day testing, a gathering of what seems like about 100 folks for a convention became a superspreader occasion that contaminated a few quarter of attendees. A bunch of audiovisual and manufacturing technicians who stored to themselves and reportedly wore masks all through the occasion was spared. Diamandis writes: “Masks Work.”
The “bona fide nerdy ladies” at Dear Pandemic (particularly, they’re an interdisciplinary all-female group of researchers and clinicians who work in nursing, well being coverage, and epidemiology amongst different fields) are actually publishing Spanish-language COVID-19 data at a Fb web page called Querida Pandemia.
The UnbiasedSciPod, a podcast co-hosted by Jessica Steier, a public well being researcher and knowledge scientist, and Andrea Love, an immunologist and microbiologist, posts some useful graphics at its Instagram web page, together with this one on 2/11/21 displaying up to date U.S. Facilities for Illness Management recommendations that pertain to individuals who’ve been vaccinated and later uncovered to somebody regarded as contaminated with SARS-CoV-2 or to have COVID-19. In case you fall inside two-weeks and three months of receiving your closing vaccine dose and haven’t any signs following contact with somebody who has the virus or COVID-19, you not are required to quarantine, per the submit. However you continue to “should proceed carrying a masks and training social distancing,” it states.
You may take pleasure in “I’ve never tried your idea, and now everything is on fire, and that’s how I know your idea is bad,” by Eli Grober (1/17/21) in McSweeney’s.
That is an opinion and evaluation article.
