🦠 COVID-19 | The deniers: pandemic, climate risk and racism.
📊 Daily Data Brief: (June 07, 2020, 22:47 GMT) (❗️Previous data: June 05, 2020, 10:31 GMT)
Cumulative case: 7,078,580 (+356,968) cumulative cases
Active cases: 3,220,567 (+157,760) (this is the number of currently infected patients)
Total Deaths: 404,961 (+11,413)
Serious/Critical Cases: 53,663 (+1,796)
Recovered: 3,453,052 (+187,795)
Source: Worldometers
1) Seven-day rolling average of new deaths (updated daily as ECDC releases). Major update with per country graphs now available (Link) (US, UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Nordic Comparison)
Showing a chart from the FT today highlighting the worrying situation in Brazil, Mexico, India and Russia and Iran (NEW❗️). Also the FT comparative charts now allow up to 6 countries
2) Rt estimate per State (US) and per country (NEW❗️). This is a new resource link in the data section from a team which has led accuracy in modelling fatalities in the US for the past few weeks. (Link)
Once again we are faced with a familiar narrative, one where a majority (including leaders) find questioning the truth more comfortable than accepting the uncertainty. However, never has it been as startling as it has with this pandemic and in particular when systemic racism and the ensuing protests erupted in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis.
Whilst scientists have tried to put a number on the likely increased death toll resulting from the protests (for example Trevor Bedford or Marc Lipsicht), one infers from their threads and others that we do not know with certainty.
And maybe it raises a bigger question. It appears that as our world has become more complex, and uncertainty about the future rises (COVID-19 but also climate risk), it has brought with them the more frequent emergence of conspiracy theories and the opportunistic use of the “fake news” moniker for news or emerging facts we do not want to see or accept. And whilst this is deeply frustrating and at times depressing, it is also rooted in a very human trait. While Chomsky will keep faith and hope in human capabilities, Foucault will see a dire inevitability for our species.
The hopeful will see in this crisis, and the protest against systemic racism, that whilst uncertainty is ambient we have substantial power within us individually and collectively to change and progress whilst the deniers are more likely to cause deaths and destruction. They believe that dealing and objectively accepting uncertainty is a positive. Other will prefer looking the other way and offering ‘law and order’, at a time they cannot deliver it without radically changing our society to a darker past.
The Corona Daily starts rather softly with a video on protests and vaccines with Scott Gottlieb. Then we publish a thoughtful and long thread trying to reconcile public health risk versus importance of battling systemic racism.
Reporting on one of the leading deniers, the Washington Post writes about Brazil’s president Bolsonaro limiting COVID-19 data release as the crisis worsens in his country. Brian Resnik for VOX writes a balanced and thoughtful article on the individual trade-offs involved in participating or not in the protests around the world following the death of George Floyd.
Craig Timberg reports on an Italian researchers’ paper which support universal masking.
Another article on the long term and worrying emerging observation on severe COVID-19 patients once they are taken off ventilators.
Finally, an essay and interview of Bruno Latour discussing whether and how shielding against the virus might result in population building a shield against global warming going forward.
❗️💉 Video of the day (including transcript): Scott Gottlieb (former Food Drug and Administration director) commenting on effect of protest on second spike in the US as well as reporting on the soundness of the White House Warp Speed vaccine programme omitting traditional but proven vaccine platform like the one being pursued by Sanofi in the COVID-19 vaccine ‘race’.
Protests, particularly as the largest ones are happening in existing hotspots states like Minnesota, Washington DC and Michigan will likely result in an uptick in deaths. The rebound in in case numbers will only become visible in a couple of weeks from now. It will be difficult to distinguish uptick due to protests per se as opposed to due to general re-opening. (Link)
🛑 Running thread (June 5 till June 7): “Protests’ spread and their politicisation” by Nicholas A Christakis (Sterling Professor of Social & Natural Science at Yale).
There has been a number of threads on protests and COVID-19 over the week-end, but NA Christakis is the one the Corona Daily wants to put forward as it has been both the most complete and the most balanced.
NA Christakis has also attempted in it to differentiate the citizen’s view point about the rightfulness and importance of the protests with the public health risk they posed. Once again, as common during this pandemic the analysis of protests during this crisis have been politicised. As a likely “rebound’ in cases occur (using a ‘personal framing’ proposed by Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust), the singling out of which events has driven this uptick will be very politicised (is it the irresponsible large scale protests or the pre-mature reopening for example).
From his first tweet in the running thread, Christakis attempts to depoliticise:
He also rightly points out, that the police and justice actions vis-a-vis protesters will also impact the severity of the “rebound”:
For me the two important tweets in the thread, are the ones where Christakis succeeds where other public health experts and scientists commenting on the protests might have initially failed or dangerously erred. Commenting on a Political article by Dan Diamond “Suddenly, Public Health Officials Say Social Justice Matters More Than Social Distance”, Christakis writes:
Making the distinction between the epidemiologist’s view point and the personal one upfront is key. Others have only made the distinction after being criticised. Opponents will seize on this asynchrony to the detriment of public health and science, and ultimately will weaken the public adherence to the public health guidance. The Right (‘R’) and the Left (‘L’) will also seize on the likely rebound as Christakis highlight in his last tweet.
I highly recommend reading the whole thread and the references in it. (Twitter thread)
🇧🇷 Terrence McCoy writes “As coronavirus deaths in Brazil surge, Bolsonaro limits the release of data” in the Washington Post. If you cannot limit the spread of COVID-19, it seems that the Brazilian leader believes that limiting the publication of data is a viable strategy. Just as Brazil was closing the gap on the macabre ‘race’ to fail its citizens (at least on a per capita basis), the Brazilian health ministry stopped publishing cumulative case numbers on its website. I doubt that the public will be fooled. (Link)
🛑 Brian Resnik writes “What public health experts want critics to know about why they support the protests” for VOX. Resnik starts his intelligent article by speaking about Meredith Blake who even though she has asthma decided to break her 12 week lockdown to protest for the end of systemic racism in Boston:
“Blake works with public health professionals and ER doctors every day, and knew joining a crowd was dangerous — for both herself and the community. But she made a careful calculation: Covid-19 is a huge risk, and to her, the protests were worth it.”
It is an individual decision, with collective consequences for both the pandemic and systemic racism. It is not necessarily ignoring one or the other, but more balancing the two at a time where the science on mass-gathering virus spread is still incomplete and the protest cannot only be look through a public health prism. As Eleanor Murray, a Boston University epidemiologist is quoted in the article:
“One thing I’ve been telling people is that the guidance hasn’t really changed from a public health perspective. It’s always been ‘stay home as much as possible, except for essential activities.’ But the definition of essential is not a scientific one — it’s a sociological one. ... Protesting police violence is an essential activity for a lot of people.”
Resnisk also puts his own dilemma candidly:
I’m scared about the pandemic. I’m scared about a new wave exploding. But as a white man of some privilege, I feel it’s not for me to judge if the protests are worth it.
Abraar Karan (medical doctor at Harvard Medical School) also tweeted along the same lines:
As most agree, whatever happens, it will be politicised and people at an individual level whilst thinking also about solidarity (solidarity in fighting the pandemics and solidarity about desired futures) will decide whether to participate, support or condemn the protests.
For now, it seems that the risks of causing more deaths has not deterred them in protesting. Maybe it is a sign of the strength of the protest rather than the irresponsibility of the protesters. It is hopeful rather than depressing. This is also what NA Christakis and Andy Slavitt (Ex-Obama health care head) believe:
Resnick article does credit to the momentous consequence of the current protest. An urgent read.
(Link)
😷 Craig Timberg writes “How do masks change human behavior? An Italian scientist who has studied cow sociability decided to find out” in the Washington Post. Timberg articles follows the publication by Massimo Marchiori (University of Padua) of “COVID-19 and the Social Distancing Paradox: dangers and solutions” in the pre-print server ArXiv. The research was building on previous work Marchiori had done on proximity behaviours on cows and footballer, this time applied to the behaviour of mask wearers.
As Timberg laments in the middle of the article:
Wearing masks — or not — also has taken on partisan dynamics as President Trump has refused to be photographed with one on even as he’s ordered his staff to wear masks at The White House.
Marchiori’s research using a wearable device to monitor behaviour is supportive of universal masking:
“Without masks, people adopt a counter-intuitively dangerous strategy, a paradox that could explain the relative lack of effectiveness of social distancing. Using masks radically changes the situation, breaking the paradoxical behavior and leading to a safe social distance behavior. In shortage of masks, DIY (Do It Yourself) masks can also be used: even without filtering protection, they provide social distancing protection. Goggles should be recommended for general use, as they give an extra powerful safety boost. Generic Public Health policies and media campaigns do not work well on social distancing: explicit focus on the behavioral problems of necessary mobility are needed.”
(Link)
🦠 Dan Hurley writes “Some covid-19 patients taken off ventilators are taking days or even weeks to wake up” in the Washington Post. Hurley looks at emerging data from patients becoming critically ill with COVID-19 and requiring a ventilator. It is both a reminder of how much more we need to learn about SARS-CoV-2 and some of the worrying early observation data from patients once they are taken off a ventilator:
“When they do regain consciousness, many face the need for months of cognitive and physical rehabilitation, and some might never return to their previous level of functioning.”
The subtitle of Hurley’s article quotes in its subtitle Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medicine who treats disorders of consciousness:
‘It’s a big deal,’ says a Weill Cornell neurologist. The consequences range from mental fog, and mild memory lapses, to severe neurological problems.
Another ominous uncertainty and potential long term side-effect of COVID-19. (Link)
🌍 Jonathan Watts interviews Bruno Latour: 'This is a global catastrophe that has come from within' for the Guardian. This is an interview of the French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist Bruno Latour who had written early in the crisis on (in French and translated in English) an essay titled: “What protective measures can you think of so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model?”). Interestingly, Latour had singled out five countries which were both skeptics on the reality of the pandemic and the reality of the climate risk:
“They are not so naïve as to believe the great modernist dream of the universal distribution of the ‘fruits of progress’, but what is new is their willingness to not even give the impression of believing in it. 3 These are the ones proclaiming every day on Fox News and who govern all the climate-sceptical states on the planet, from Moscow to Brasilia, and New Delhi to Washington via London.”
It is somewhat prescient to see that the climate deniers were also the pandemic deniers, and unfortunately as shown in one of the graph above, their population have suffered a greater death toll than other nations.
He was also at the time, urging people in lock-down to rethink, or re-imagine what a new world could look like by questioning what these shelter-at-home orders have either taught us or shown us:
“Hence the primary importance for using this time of imposed isolation in order to describe, initially one by one, then as a group, what we are attached to; what we are ready to give up; the chains we are ready to reconstruct and those that, in our behaviour, we have decided to interrupt.”
Latour is actually worried in his essay that whilst population could re-imagine a reset, the climate deniers might feel even more empowered (or maybe desperate) as well to silence and double down on the previous regime when and if COVID-19 allows them to do so without exacting an insupportable death toll.
Jonathan Watts runs his interview of Latour more than two months following the essay above. While it is not the core of the interview, Latour makes an interesting observation about the interface of Science and the public which the Corona Daily has previously covered extensively:
“The public are learning a great deal about the difficulty of statistics, about experiment, about epidemiology. In everyday life, people are talking about degrees of confidence and margin of error. I think that’s good. If you want people to have some grasp of science, you must show how it is produced.”
Most of the interview focuses on Latour discussing his initial essay, but also on what to expect during this first re-opening from the climate deniers as well as a summary assessment of what we have learned and how we can start building a more sustainable future.
Both the essay and the interview are thought provoking and urgent reads. One cannot expect COVID-19 to do all the work. (Link)