Covid-19 – Page 9 – artdiamondblog.com

Locking Down Against “Out of Control” COVID in China Is “Not Worth Sacrificing . . . Our Freedom”

(p. A7) After Leona Cheng tested positive for the coronavirus late last month, she was told to pack her bags for a hospital stay. When the ambulance came to her apartment in central Shanghai to pick her up two days later, no one said otherwise.

So Ms. Cheng was surprised when the car pulled up not to a hospital but to a sprawling convention center. Inside, empty halls had been divided into living areas with thousands of makeshift beds. And on exhibition stall partitions, purple signs bore numbers demarcating quarantine zones.

Ms. Cheng, who stayed at the center for 13 days, was among the first of hundreds of thousands of Shanghai residents to be sent to government quarantine and isolation facilities, as the city deals with a surge in coronavirus cases for the first time in the pandemic. The facilities are a key part of China’s playbook of tracking, tracing and eliminating the virus, one that has been met with unusual public resistance in recent weeks.

Footage circulating on Chinese social media on Thursday [April 14, 2022] showed members of one Shanghai community protesting the use of apartment buildings in their complex for isolating people who test positive for the virus. Police officers in white hazmat suits could be seen physically beating back angry residents, some of whom pleaded with them to stop.

. . .

Ms. Cheng said she had once admired the government’s goal of keeping the virus out of China. It meant that for more than two years, she could live a normal life, even as cities and countries around the world had to lock down.

Now, she’s not so sure.

“This time I feel it is out of control and it’s not worth controlling the cases because it is not so dangerous or deadly,” she said, referring to the highly contagious Omicron variant. “It’s not worth sacrificing so many resources and our freedom.”

For the full story, see:

Alexandra Stevenson. “Covid Patient In Shanghai Describes Life In Isolation.” The New York Times (Saturday, April 16, 2022): A7.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 15, 2022, and has the title “‘Too smelly to sleep’: Thirteen days in a Shanghai isolation facility.”)

Pre-Covid Federal Pandemic Plans Did Not Include Lockdowns

(p. A19) California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the first statewide U.S. stay-at-home order on March 19, 2020. All U.S. states and most other countries have long since abandoned lockdowns as oppressive, ineffective and exorbitantly expensive. But why did free countries adopt such a strategy to begin with?

. . .

Stay-at-home orders weren’t part of the script in pre-Covid federal pandemic plans. The idea of “flattening the curve” through what are known as “layered non-pharmaceutical interventions” can be traced to an influential 2007 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance paper, updated in 2017. Contemplating a severe pandemic with a 2% case fatality rate, the CDC recommended now-familiar strategies, such as masking, surface disinfection and temporary school closings.

Yet aside from suggesting limits on mass gatherings, the CDC paper makes no mention of closing workplaces. Instead, it concludes that such a severe pandemic could warrant recommending that employers “offer telecommuting and replace in-person meetings in the workplace with video or telephone conferences.” The closest it comes to lockdowns is recommending “voluntary home quarantine” for people with an infected family member.

. . .

When Western nations were confronted with Covid-19, they seemed to believe the Communist Party’s unproven claims about the efficacy of lockdowns. In the end, every other country got some variant of the virus and some variant of China’s official response. The world has learned to live with the former, as politically accountable leaders found they couldn’t maintain draconian restrictions forever. The people of China will be forced to endure the latter indefinitely.

For the full commentary, see:

Eugene Kontorovich and Anastasia Lin. “Covid Lockdowns Were a Chinese Import.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, March 24, 2022): A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 23, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

More Than Six Million Have Died From COVID-19 Worldwide

(p. A13) Though many global coronavirus trends are rapidly improving as countries emerge from surges driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant, the grimmest metric hit a tragic milestone on Monday [March 7, 2022].

The number of known Covid-19 deaths around the world surpassed six million, according to data from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

“Six million is really unfathomable,” said Beth Blauer, the data leader for the Coronavirus Resource Center at Johns Hopkins. “These are real lives.”

. . .

Public health experts agree that six million is a vast undercount and that the true devastation will never be precisely known. In Yemen, where a civil war has been raging for years, the government has reported only 2,100 deaths since the start of the pandemic while its population of 30 million is 99 percent unvaccinated.

“There’s a lot that we don’t know in places that don’t necessarily have the same infrastructure for fundamentally understanding the pandemic and reporting,” Dr. Blauer said.

. . .

. . . the United States, with ample vaccine supply, has suffered the highest known total — more than 950,000 deaths — and failed to inoculate as much of its population as other wealthy nations.

. . .

. . . stark vaccination disparities between countries remain, leaving the entire world vulnerable to the threat of a new, deadly variant. Vaccination rates continue to lag in low-income countries, where only 14 percent of the population has received at least one dose of a vaccine. In high- and upper-middle-income countries, 79 percent of the population has received at least one dose.

For the full story, see:

Adeel Hassan. “Number of Known Coronavirus Deaths Surpasses 6 Million Globally as Omicron Recedes.” The New York Times (Tuesday, March 8, 2022): A13.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 7, 2022, and has the title “The pandemic’s official global toll surpasses 6 million known virus deaths.”)

BioNTech Is Running Clinical Trials for mRNA Cancer Vaccines

(p. C2) Scientists are . . . advancing mRNA vaccines and therapies to treat cancer, which poses a particular challenge because tumor cells arise from the body’s own cells and can easily deceive the immune system into thinking they are normal. Cancer patients today receive varying types of treatments, but they involve therapies manufactured outside the body. The mRNA researchers believe that the body’s own immune system can be used against cancer if it’s given the right tools.

BioNTech, now a household name for its Covid-19 vaccine with Pfizer, was founded in 2008 to pursue mRNA cancer treatments. The German company says that even at a low dose, a strong enough mRNA treatment can be developed to prompt immune cells to make certain proteins and to train the rest of the immune system to recognize and target tumor cells that express these same proteins. “It needs to be louder and more aggressive for cancer because the immune system needs stronger persuasion to attack something that appears to resemble a normal cell which it should respect and not attack,” said Özlem Türeci, BioNTech’s chief medical officer.

The company’s pipeline includes at least 10 cancer vaccines in human clinical trials using mRNA for skin, pancreatic, ovarian and other tumors. Two of its most advanced programs in mid-stage clinical studies, one for melanoma and the other for head and neck cancer, harness mRNA to make specific proteins seen with these cancers that will prompt a vigorous response from the patient’s immune system. Research from BioNTech published in 2020 in the journal Nature showed that the treatment caused the lesions of melanoma patients to shrink.

Some of BioNTech’s other cancer treatments are tailored to individual patients. A tumor is removed surgically and then shipped to the company’s laboratories, where researchers sequence the DNA and search for proteins, using machine learning to decide which ones are needed for that individual’s therapy. To address how quickly cancer can spread in the body, BioNTech designs and develops these clinical-trial treatments in just four to six weeks—a potentially lifesaving turnaround time for more pressing cases.

For the full essay, see:

Jared S. Hopkins and Felicia Schwartz. “Can the Technology Behind Covid Vaccines Cure Other Diseases?” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, February 5, 2022): C1-C2.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the essay has the date February 4, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

Covid Policy Should Have Taken Account of Costs of Lockdowns and Mandates

(p. A17) Reducing the incidence of disease isn’t necessarily desirable if excessive prevention, in the form of lockdowns or school closures, is more costly to society than the damage done by an illness. We don’t close highways to minimize accidental deaths, despite the existence of dangerous drivers. Yet this is exactly what we’re doing when the government intervenes to limit the spread of communicable diseases by, for instance, mandating vaccines that don’t prevent transmission.

. . .

In early 2020, University of Chicago economists estimated that about 80% of the total damage from Covid came from prevention efforts that hindered economic activity, and only 20% from the direct effects of the disease itself. This analysis motivated me and others to recommend that initial efforts to stop the spread should focus on older people, who are at higher risk of severe illness and not as active in the economy as younger people. This would allow younger people to keep the economy going while limiting the spread of the disease among those most at risk from it. Some in the public-health community, like the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration, eventually saw the light.

My Chicago colleague Casey B. Mulligan has found that total monthly Covid-related harms fell from 2020 to 2021, even as the number of deaths rose. In tax terms, this is an effect not unlike that of the Laffer curve—a lower rate may increase revenue because of growth in the tax base. Similarly, vaccines and treatments reduced the costs associated with getting sick—call it the “disease tax”—but also increased social and economic activity, allowing the infection to spread. Even if the disease tax is paid by more people, the costs are outpaced by the overall benefit derived from the subsequent tsunami of economic activity.

For the full commentary, see:

Tomas J. Philipson. “An Economic Evaluation Of Covid Lockdowns.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, January 20, 2022): A17.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 19, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

During Pandemic, Delayed Medical Procedures Rose from 4.6 to 6 Million in England’s Socialized Healthcare System

(p. A8) LONDON — Lara Wahab had been waiting for more than two years for a kidney and pancreas transplant, but months had passed without any word. So last month she called the hospital, and got crushing news.

There had been a good match for her in October [2021], the transplant coordinator told her, which the hospital normally would have accepted. But with Covid-19 patients filling beds, the transplant team could not find her a place in the intensive care unit for postoperative care. They had to decline the organs.

“I was just in shock. I knew that the N.H.S. was under a lot of strain, but you don’t really know until you’re waiting for something like that,” she said, referring to the National Health Service. “It was there, but it sort of slipped through my fingers,” she added of the transplant opportunity.

Ms. Wahab, 34, from North London, is part of an enormous and growing backlog of patients in Britain’s free health service who have seen planned care delayed or diverted, in part because of the pandemic — a largely unseen crisis within a crisis. The problems are likely to have profound consequences that will be felt for years.

The numbers are stark: In England, nearly 6 million procedures are currently delayed, a rise from the backlog of 4.6 million before the pandemic, according to the N.H.S. The current delays most likely impact more than five million people — a single patient can have multiple cases pending for different ailments — which represents almost one-tenth of the population. Hundreds of thousands more haven’t been referred yet for treatment, and many ailments have simply gone undiagnosed.

For the full story, see:

Megan Specia. “In Britain, an Ever-Growing Backlog of Non-Covid Care.” The New York Times (Thursday, January 27, 2022): A8.

(Note: bracketed year added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated January 27, 2022, and has the title “‘I Feel Really Hopeless’: In U.K., Millions See Non-Covid Health Care Delayed.”)

Excessive Hygiene from Masking, Distancing, and Deep-Cleaning, Can Increase Allergies and Auto-Immune Diseases

(p. A17) The idea that exposure to some infectious agents is protective against immune-related disorders isn’t new and comes with significant scientific heft. The so-called hygiene hypothesis is constructed from epidemiologic evidence, laboratory studies and clinical trials that, put together, support the notion that an excessive emphasis on antisepsis is implicated in misalignments of the immune system that risk disease.

Allergic and autoimmune diseases are far less common in communities with less hygiene, and autoimmune disorders increase in children who migrate from areas with less emphasis on hygiene to areas with more emphasis. They are less common in agricultural communities, where exposure to dirt and animals is common, compared with neighboring communities with shared genetics but little farming. Children who attend daycare early in life—runny noses, colds and all—have less asthma and fewer allergies. Animal studies, laboratory experiments and small trials in humans all point in a similar direction: Avoiding exposure to some microbes prevents the immune system from training well and predisposes to autoimmune diseases.

. . .

This isn’t a paean to infections and poor hygiene but a reminder of the importance of balance. When I prescribe antibiotics, they have to be strong enough to treat my patient’s infection. But if I overtreat, I run the risk of giving the patient colitis (inflammation of the colon) without additional benefits. Current hygiene policies and practices need rebalancing.

. . .

The extreme concern for hygiene at the onset of Covid-19 was intuitive and understandable. The virus was spreading fast, information on routes of transmission was limited, and we as a society tried to protect one another from infection. But policies that were easy to support two years ago need re-evaluation. Distancing, deep-cleaning and masking aren’t “more is better” kinds of goods.

On the other side of the balance, health risks from extended intensive hygiene are credible. As Omicron recedes and we internalize the paucity of Covid-19 benefits from some hygiene practices, we should balance those against the benefits we lose by shielding our immune systems from normal exposures—and the ones we withhold from children by preventing the exchange of microbes through play and smiles.

For the full commentary, see:

Eran Bendavid. “Covid and the ‘Hygiene Hypothesis’.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, February 2, 2022): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date February 1, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

Natural Immunity Is Stronger and Lasts Longer Than Immunity from Covid Vaccines

(p. A17) Public-health officials ruined many lives by insisting that workers with natural immunity to Covid-19 be fired if they weren’t fully vaccinated. But after two years of accruing data, the superiority of natural immunity over vaccinated immunity is clear. By firing staff with natural immunity, employers got rid of those least likely to infect others. It’s time to reinstate those employees with an apology.

For most of last year, many of us called for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to release its data on reinfection rates, but the agency refused. Finally last week, the CDC released data from New York and California, which demonstrated natural immunity was 2.8 times as effective in preventing hospitalization and 3.3 to 4.7 times as effective in preventing Covid infection compared with vaccination.

Yet the CDC spun the report to fit its narrative, bannering the conclusion “vaccination remains the safest strategy.” It based this conclusion on the finding that hybrid immunity—the combination of prior infection and vaccination—was associated with a slightly lower risk of testing positive for Covid. But those with hybrid immunity had a similar low rate of hospitalization (3 per 10,000) to those with natural immunity alone. In other words, vaccinating people who had already had Covid didn’t significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization.

Similarly, the National Institutes of Health repeatedly has dismissed natural immunity by arguing that its duration is unknown—then failing to conduct studies to answer the question. Because of the NIH’s inaction, my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I conducted the study. We found that among 295 unvaccinated people who previously had Covid, antibodies were present in 99% of them up to nearly two years after infection. We also found that natural immunity developed from prior variants reduced the risk of infection with the Omicron variant. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of the two-dose Moderna vaccine against infection (not severe disease) declines to 61% against Delta and 16% against Omicron at six months, according to a recent Kaiser Southern California study. In general, Pfizer’s Covid vaccines have been less effective than Moderna’s.

The CDC study and ours confirm what more than 100 other studies on natural immunity have found: The immune system works. The largest of these studies, from Israel, found that natural immunity was 27 times as effective as vaccinated immunity in preventing symptomatic illness.

None of this should surprise us. For years, studies have shown that infection with the other coronaviruses that cause severe illness, SARS and MERS, confers lasting immunity.

For the full commentary, see:

Marty Makary. “The High Cost of Disparaging Natural Immunity.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, January 27, 2022): A17.

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 26, 2022, and has the title “The High Cost of Disparaging Natural Immunity to Covid.”)

The Israeli preprint study mentioned above is:

Gazit, Sivan, Roei Shlezinger, Galit Perez, Roni Lotan, Asaf Peretz, Amir Ben-Tov, Dani Cohen, Khitam Muhsen, Gabriel Chodick, and Tal Patalon. “Comparing Sars-Cov-2 Natural Immunity to Vaccine-Induced Immunity: Reinfections Versus Breakthrough Infections.” medRxiv (2021): doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415.

Democrat-Praised “Whistleblower” Rick Bright, Not Trump Admin, Delayed Molnupiravir by Months at Peak of Pandemic

(p. A17) When Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics announced on Oct. 1 [2021]that their new antiviral pill reduced Covid hospitalizations by roughly half, some in the media blamed Donald Trump. An Axios headline: “Before Merck backed COVID antiviral, Trump admin turned it down.” In fact, Trump officials pushed for government funding to accelerate the development of the drug, molnupiravir. They were opposed by a career official, Rick Bright, whom Democrats praised as a “whistleblower.”

Mr. Bright joined the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority in 2010 and became Barda’s director in 2016.

. . .

Emory had licensed molnupiravir to Ridgeback, which in April 2020 requested $100 million from the government to fast-track studies in humans. Mr. Bright says Trump officials ordered Barda officials “to fund the Ridgeback proposal as quickly as possible, and preferably within 24 hours.” But he said “Ridgeback had not followed the proper procedure for receiving BARDA funding.” Barda declined the request, and Ridgeback collaborated with Merck, which put its own capital at risk.

After Mr. Bright’s reassignment, Barda funding for trials, manufacturing and advance purchases of monoclonal antibodies proved critical in accelerating their development. Molnupiravir would likely have been available much sooner had Barda provided funding as Trump officials urged last spring.

For the full commentary, see:

Allysia Finley. “Who Slowed Merck’s Covid Remedy?” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, October 11, 2021): A17.

(Note: ellipsis, an bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date October 10, 2021, and has the same title as the print version.)

Large Retailers Chartered Ships to Avoid the Most Crowded Ports

(p. A1) Global supply-chain delays are so severe that some of the biggest U.S. retailers have resorted to an extreme—and expensive—tactic to try to stock shelves this holiday season: They are chartering their own cargo ships to import goods.

Port delays, Covid-19 outbreaks and worker shortages have snarled the flow of products between Asia and North America, threatening the supplies of everything from holiday decorations and toys to appliances and furniture. It is taking roughly 80 days to transport goods across the Pacific, or twice as long as before the pandemic, retail and shipping executives said.

Walmart Inc., Home Depot Inc., Costco Wholesale Corp. and Target Corp. —some of the biggest U.S. retailers by revenue—are among the companies that are paying for their own chartered ships as part of wider plans to mitigate the disruptions, a costly and unattainable option for most companies.

For the full story, see:

Sarah Nassauer and Costas Paris. “Retailers Charter Ships to Ensure Supplies.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, October 11, 2021): A1 & A6.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date October 10, 2021, and has the title “Big U.S. Retailers Charter Private Cargo Ships Amid Port Delays.”)

To Get “Free” Covid Pills from 60 Miles Away You Pay Private Uber to Deliver

(p. 1) Just after 1 p.m. on Tuesday last week, my phone buzzed with a text message from my mother: “Well, came down with cold, aches, cough etc over wknd.” She had taken an at-home coronavirus test. It was positive.

Having spent the past year writing about Covid-19 vaccines and treatments for The New York Times, I knew a lot about the options available to people like my mother. Yet I was about to go on a seven-hour odyssey that would show me there was a lot I didn’t grasp.

. . .

(p. 3) In the end, my scramble to find a prescriber turned out to be unnecessary. In the early evening, my mother got an unexpected call from a doctor with her primary care provider. She told the doctor about her symptoms and about the Rite Aid I had found with Paxlovid in stock.

The doctor told her that he was surprised that we had been able to track down Paxlovid. He phoned in a prescription to the Rite Aid.

Now we just needed to pick up the pills before the pharmacy closed in about an hour.

Uber came to the rescue. I requested a pickup at the Rite Aid and listed the destination as my mother’s home, some 60 miles away.

Once a driver accepted the ride, I called him and explained my unusual request: He’d need to get the prescription at the pharmacy window and then drive it to my mother’s. I told him I’d give him a 100 percent tip.

The driver, who asked me not to use his name in this article, was game. He delivered the precious cargo just after 8 p.m. My mother swallowed the first three pills — the beginning of a five-day, 30-pill regimen — within minutes of the driver’s arrival.

. . .

. . . the fact that the process was so hard for a journalist whose job it is to understand how Paxlovid gets delivered is not encouraging. I worry that many patients or their family would give up when told “no” as many times as I was.

I was also reminded that even a “free” treatment can come with significant costs.

The federal government has bought enough Paxlovid for 20 million Americans, at a cost of about $530 per person, to be distributed free of charge. But I spent $256.54 getting the pills for my mother. I paid $39 for the telemedicine visit with the provider who told my mother that she would need to visit in person. The rest was the Uber fare and tip. Many patients and their families can’t afford that.

President Biden recently called the Pfizer pills a “game changer.” My experience suggests it won’t be quite so simple.