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Category: Health

Unlike New York, Seattle’s approach to Covid-19 mirrored Epidemic Intelligence Service’s guidelines

Unlike New York, Seattle’s approach to Covid-19 mirrored Epidemic Intelligence Service’s guidelines

Charles Duhigg writes: The first diagnosis of the coronavirus in the United States occurred in mid-January, in a Seattle suburb not far from the hospital where Dr. Francis Riedo, an infectious-disease specialist, works. When he heard the patient’s details—a thirty-five-year-old man had walked into an urgent-care clinic with a cough and a slight fever, and told doctors that he’d just returned from Wuhan, China—Riedo said to himself, “It’s begun.” For more than a week, Riedo had been e-mailing with a…

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Global Covid-19 death toll could be 60% higher than reported

Global Covid-19 death toll could be 60% higher than reported

Financial Times reports: The death toll from coronavirus may be almost 60 per cent higher than reported in official counts, according to an FT analysis of overall fatalities during the pandemic in 14 countries. Mortality statistics show 122,000 deaths in excess of normal levels across these locations, considerably higher than the 77,000 official Covid-19 deaths reported for the same places and time periods. If the same level of underreporting observed in these countries was happening worldwide, the global Covid-19 death…

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A Japanese island shows what happens when a coronavirus lockdown is lifted too soon

A Japanese island shows what happens when a coronavirus lockdown is lifted too soon

Time reports: Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido offers a grim lesson in the next phase of the battle against COVID-19. It acted quickly and contained an early outbreak of the coronavirus with a 3-week lockdown. But, when the governor lifted restrictions, a second wave of infections hit even harder. Twenty-six days later, the island was forced back into lockdown. A doctor who helped coordinate the government response says he wishes they’d done things differently. “Now I regret it, we should…

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Prof. Neil Ferguson defends UK Coronavirus lockdown strategy

Prof. Neil Ferguson defends UK Coronavirus lockdown strategy

  Swedish epideomiologist Johan Giesecke has claimed that the UK was wrong to implement its lockdown measures, and singled out Professor Neil Ferguson’s Imperial College study for being too pessimistic in its worst-case prediction of 500,000 corona deaths. In an interview for LockdownTV, Freddie Sayers speaks to Prof Ferguson to get his response to Giesecke’s critique.

SARS-CoV-2 acts like no pathogen humanity has ever seen

SARS-CoV-2 acts like no pathogen humanity has ever seen

Science reports: In Brescia, Italy, a 53-year-old woman walked into the emergency room of her local hospital with all the classic symptoms of a heart attack, including telltale signs in her electrocardiogram and high levels of a blood marker suggesting damaged cardiac muscles. Further tests showed cardiac swelling and scarring, and a left ventricle—normally the powerhouse chamber of the heart—so weak that it could only pump one-third its normal amount of blood. But when doctors injected dye in the coronary…

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Private gain mustn’t be allowed to elbow out the public good

Private gain mustn’t be allowed to elbow out the public good

By Dirk Philipsen Adam Smith had an elegant idea when addressing the notorious difficulty that humans face in trying to be smart, efficient and moral. In The Wealth of Nations (1776), he maintained that the baker bakes bread not out of benevolence, but out of self-interest. No doubt, public benefits can result when people pursue what comes easiest: self-interest. And yet: the logic of private interest – the notion that we should just ‘let the market handle it’ – has…

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Are female leaders more successful at managing the coronavirus crisis?

Are female leaders more successful at managing the coronavirus crisis?

The Guardian reports: On 1 April, the prime minister of Sint Maarten addressed her nation’s 41,500 people. Coronavirus cases were rising, and Silveria Jacobs knew the small island country, which welcomes 500,000 tourists a year, was at great risk: it had two ICU beds. Jacobs did not want to impose a strict lockdown, but she did want physical distancing observed. So she spelled it out: “Simply. Stop. Moving,” she said. “If you don’t have the bread you like in your…

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U.S. missing as world leaders agree action on Covid-19 vaccine

U.S. missing as world leaders agree action on Covid-19 vaccine

The Guardian reports: Global leaders have pledged to accelerate cooperation on a coronavirus vaccine and to share research, treatment and medicines across the globe. But the United States did not take part in the World Health Organization initiative, in a sign of Donald Trump’s increasing isolation on the global stage. The cooperation pledge, made at a virtual meeting, was designed to show that wealthy countries will not keep the results of research from developing countries. The meeting also represented a…

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Trump expands battle with World Health Organization far beyond aid suspension

Trump expands battle with World Health Organization far beyond aid suspension

The Washington Post reports: President Trump and his top aides are working behind the scenes to sideline the World Health Organization on several new fronts as they seek to shift blame for the coronavirus pandemic to the world body, according to U.S. and foreign officials involved in the discussions. Last week, the president announced a 60-day hold on U.S. money to the WHO, but other steps by his top officials go beyond a temporary funding freeze, raising concerns about the…

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When confronting a pandemic, we must save nature to save ourselves

When confronting a pandemic, we must save nature to save ourselves

Sahir Doshi and Nicole Gentile write: The COVID-19 pandemic has brutally and tragically exposed the extent to which the health and well-being of every family in America depends on the health and well-being of nature—both here at home and around the world. Nature is connected to human health, from the inherent mechanisms through which ecosystems regulate the emergence of new pathogens to the health benefits of spending time outdoors. But in our destruction of earth’s natural resources, we are losing…

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Brazil becoming coronavirus pandemic hot spot as testing falters

Brazil becoming coronavirus pandemic hot spot as testing falters

CNBC reports: Cases of the new coronavirus are overwhelming hospitals, morgues and cemeteries across Brazil as Latin America’s largest nation veers closer to becoming one of the world’s pandemic hot spots. Medical officials in Rio de Janeiro and at least four other major cities have warned that their hospital systems are on the verge of collapse, or already too overwhelmed to take any more patients. Health experts expect the number of infections in the country of 211 million people will…

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Brazilian chloroquine study halted after high dose proved lethal for some patients

Brazilian chloroquine study halted after high dose proved lethal for some patients

The Guardian reports: A Brazilian study investigating whether the anti-malaria drug chloroquine was effective in treating patients with Covid-19 was halted on safety concerns, after a high dose of the drug proved lethal for some patients. Chloroquine, and a related drug, hydroxychloroquine, in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin, has been touted as a potential treatment for coronavirus by Donald Trump despite a lack of evidence. The findings were published as a letter in the journal Nature raised alarm about serious…

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‘Archbishop’ of group peddling bleach as coronavirus ‘cure’ wrote to Trump this week

‘Archbishop’ of group peddling bleach as coronavirus ‘cure’ wrote to Trump this week

The Guardian reports: The leader of the most prominent group in the US peddling potentially lethal industrial bleach as a “miracle cure” for coronavirus wrote to Donald Trump at the White House this week. In his letter, Mark Grenon told Trump that chlorine dioxide – a powerful bleach used in industrial processes such as textile manufacturing that can have fatal side-effects when drunk – is “a wonderful detox that can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body”. He added…

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Hundreds of people volunteer to be infected with coronavirus in ‘human challenge’ vaccine study

Hundreds of people volunteer to be infected with coronavirus in ‘human challenge’ vaccine study

Nature reports: Momentum is building to speed the development of coronavirus vaccines by intentionally infecting healthy, young volunteers with the virus. A grass-roots effort has attracted nearly 1,500 potential volunteers for the controversial approach, known as a human-challenge trial. The idea is also gaining traction with US politicians. The effort, called 1Day Sooner, is not affiliated with groups or companies developing or funding coronavirus vaccines. But co-founder Josh Morrison hopes to show that there is broad support for human-challenge trials,…

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The attributes that make SARS-CoV-2 the perfect pathogen

The attributes that make SARS-CoV-2 the perfect pathogen

David Shaywitz writes: Who bears responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic? While a detailed forensic accounting will ultimately reveal the contribution of people and institutions to the current crisis, we must take care not to lose sight of the most important culprit: the unique character of the virus itself. To a first approximation, a virus can be defined by two parameters: R0 (“R-naught”) is the basic reproduction number, which measures how transmissible the virus is. Meaning: If you’re a typical patient…

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Checking blood for coronavirus antibodies – 3 questions answered about serological tests and immunity

Checking blood for coronavirus antibodies – 3 questions answered about serological tests and immunity

Testing blood provides answers about who has been infected. Sean Gallup/Getty Images News via Getty Images By Aubree Gordon, University of Michigan and Daniel Stadlbauer, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Coronavirus testing in the United States is moving into a new phase as scientists begin looking into people’s blood for signs they’ve been infected by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This technique is called serological testing. Virologist Daniel Stadlbauer helped develop a serological test to detect SARS-CoV-2…

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