Pandemic Matters

 #Sonua Shah, "How to Define a Plague," The Nation, August 10/17, 2020.

"The  pandemic, in popular discourse, is an act of external aggression, an assault by an 'invisible' enemy that 'attacks' people so savagely."

"The majority of pathogens that have emerged since 1940 originated in the bodies of animals , not because they invaded us, but because we invaded their habitats." "Smallpox is the only human pathogen that we've eradicated through a purposeful campaign of vaccination, yet it ravaged human population for centuries before we succeeded." "In this story, pandemics would be cast as both a biological reality and a social phenomenon shaped by human agency." "Instead of blaming outsiders and waiting for magic bullet cures, we could work to enhance our resistance and reduce the probability of pathogens reaching us in the first place."

#Jamie Duchamme, "When COVID Doesn't Go Away," TIME, August 17/24, 2020.

"A July 24 report from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that out of about 300 nonhospitalized but symptomatic COVID-19 patients, 35% were still experiencing symptoms like shortness of breath and fatigue up to three weeks after diagnosis. But there is emerging evidence that some are sick for months, not just weeks. Dr. Michael Poluse, who is studying long-term COVID-19 outcomes at the University of California, San Francisco, says about 20% of his research participants are still sick one to four months after diagnosis." "If even 10% of the more than 5 million (and counting) confirmed COVID-19 patients in the U.S. suffer symptoms that last this long, half a million people are already or could become ill for the foreseeable future." (Note the numbers used here are as of August).

#Bioloist Carl Bergstorm and biostatistician Natalie Dean pointed out in a New York Times oped in May, that without a vaccine, most of the population -- 60% to 85% by some estimates -- must become infected to reach herd immunity, and the virus's high mortality rate, means that millions will die. If herd immunity is reached during an ongoing pandemic, the high number of infected people will continue to spread the virus, and ultimately, more people than the herd immunity threshold will become infected.

Scientists don't know the extent to which people who recover are immune from future infections. Proactive mitigation like social distancing and wearing masks flatten the curve by reducing the rate that active infection generates new cases. This delays the point at which herd immunity is reached and also reduces casualties.

#The White House's leading physician, Sean Conley, acknowledged at a news conference on Sunday, October 4 that he intentionally withheld information about Trump's blood oxygen levels plummeting in order to put a positive spin on the president's condition. "I was trying to reflect the upbeat attitude the  team, the president, that his course of illness has had." "I didn't want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction."

Trump has been treated with a steroid, the antiviral drug remdesivia, and a cocktail of monoclonal antibodies that have not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Medical experts called it a kitchen-sink approach that suggests the president is in worse shape than the White House has been claiming.

#Sasha Abramsky, "Dangers..." The New Yorker, July 27, 2020.

"The New York Times reports that the country's five largest cluster of coronavirus infections are in prisons and jails." "At the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona where several hundred immigrants are being held by Immigration and Customs, the number of confirmed positive test results increased more than 400 percent from June 1 to June 14."

#Bernrd J. Clark III, The New Yorker, July 6-13, 2020.

Clark quotes Elizabeth Kolbert, a New Yorker staff writer, as writing that by mid-May,  Iceland had tested 15.5 per cent of its population for COVID-19, which amounts to sixty thousand people. Meanwhile, the U.S. had tested only 3.4% of  its population -- eleven million people.

ADDENDUMS:

*The Washington Post's contributing columnist, Leana Wen, says: "Trump has touted the daily testing he and his aides receive as the reason they don't feel the need to follow other precautions, such as wearing masks and avoiding crowds." "How any more people will test positive as a result of this cluster of infections, and will the American people be informed?"

*The White House's handling of the period between the appearance of symptoms in one of the president's aides, and the confirmation of Trump's coronavirus infections is what experts have considered to be a case study in irresponsibility and mismanagement.

#Zeke Emanuel, a prominent bioethicist who served in the Obama administration, tweeted: "You do not give a patient - much less the President of the United States -- a drug that is not yet approved by the FDA (to say nothing of one with 'mild symptoms').

#According to a new study released by Cornell University, which analyzed over 38 million articles in English-language media around the world, the American president is this planet's most toxic source of misinformation about the pandemic.