Here are some of the things we still have to learn, as reflected in recent news stories.
Covid-19 is still here, with a new variant, and a new symptom: pinkeye
Nationally, covid-19 deaths are around 150 per day, down from 300-500 per day during the previous 12 months. The virus is down but not out. And the latest variant, XBB.1.16, dubbed Arcturus, is growing in the U.S. and has a new common symptom: pinkeye. Here’s a report from India, where the variant caused a spike in infections before moving on to the rest of the world:
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/conjunctivitis-among-42-kids-experts-on-ten-common-covid-symptoms-amid-current-surge-11682171015647.html <https://www.livemint.com/news/india/conjunctivitis-among-42-kids-experts-on-ten-common-covid-symptoms-amid-current-surge-11682171015647.html>
Gathering thousands of people indoors will spread the disease
Most of the time, no one tracks cases after such events, so the super-spreaders or just regular spreaders never become news. But if you’re the CDC, gathering 2000 of your best and brightest for a four-day conference, while ignoring testing and, I presume, turning a blind eye to fresh air ventilation, then the resulting 35 cases (as of a week ago) can attract attention. Did the agency respond by saying, oops, maybe we should have been more careful? No. But take heart, they will "conduct a rapid epidemiological assessment … to determine transmission patterns.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/05/02/covid-outbreak-cdc-annual-conference/
Ventilation, Ventilation, and More Ventilation
Here is a news article interviewing doctors from Canada and India, who share this view:
"Both experts strongly believe that the easiest and the most 'painless' way of avoiding future infections is by upgrading indoor air quality systems in every building. It works! There are studies that show children that go to schools with good ventilation are 75 percent less likely to get sick.”
https://news.yahoo.com/covid-19-emergency-over-who-statement-reaction-doctors-205917048.html
See the previous blog post (April 27, 2023 blog post) for more information.
And there is hope that some national actions may finally be taken, although they will take several years to roll out.
"The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE)—an independent body that [recommends] indoor air quality standards—will soon release new measures in response. Many states and institutions will then accordingly upgrade their systems in order to meet the new air quality standards. This is crucial to reducing viral transmission of respiratory illnesses in closed spaces."
https://observer.case.edu/the-post-pandemic-existence-are-we-ready-for-it/
Yes, it does matter if you keep getting Covid-19 over and over
"Having COVID-19 more than once is worse than having it just once. “It’s not really surprising,” Al-Aly says. If you get hit in the head twice, he says, it will be worse than one blow. People with repeat infections were twice as likely to die and three times as likely to be hospitalized, have heart problems or experience blood clots than were people who infected only once. In a surprising twist, vaccination status didn’t seem to have an impact "
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01371-9?
If you’re sick, stay home from work!
Of course the CDC has not learned this lesson, and has stuck to their erroneous go-back-after-five-days policy even though they knew that a large portion of the people would still be contagious. (See June 30, 2022 blog post.) They decided a contagious worker was better than no worker at all. In a study, about half of health care workers agreed with them.
These aren’t the only things we have to learn; I’ll be talking more about this in a future blog, but this is it for today . . .
Now You Can Search This Blog!
We have added a “search” bar for this blog - scroll all the way down
to the very bottom of a blog page to find the search bar.