1 June 2020 – Monday – #78

You remember Marie Antoinette’s famous words, yes? “Let them eat prawns!”

“Let them eat cake” is attributed to Marie Antoinette

Or was it cake? The oligarchs never catch a break with fake attributions.

I only mention this because the price of prawns has dropped precipitously here in Catalonia as restaurants closed their doors during the Covid-19 pandemic. A kilo of prawns ran about a hundred euros when I arrived on the first of January. Now it’s thirty six euros. This explains why the paella I bought para llevar from Morryssom, one of my local tapas bars, came with a juicy prawn.

“Everybody has been talking about not being able to go to a restaurant, but clearly there is also the less visible side of this story, namely the special suppliers who have been suffering heavily because of the coronavirus.”

Paco Pérez, Spanish chef, owner of several Michelin star restaurants

The Catalan fishermen are lucky that the prices of prawns and oil dropped simultaneously. They still can turn a profit. The viability of their businesses, however, depends on which price goes up first, prawns or gas. The Spanish prawn market provides a glimpse into nightmarish supply chain and economic disruptions due to Covid-19.

Two months ago I wrote about the enormous economic implications of Covid-19. Now we’re getting to see the markets play out. Countries that either avoided lockdowns or are easing Covid-19 restrictions successfully are about to find out how much help markets need to come back to life, and how much life is left in them.

I don’t pretend to understand European politics yet, but it looks to me like Europe will be more generous in helping about member countries now than it was after the 2008 financial meltdown. Spain and Italy will receive the most help.

EU sources said that Spain may be getting a total of €140 billion to help shore up its economy, which is expected to contract by anywhere between 9% and 13% as a result of the coronavirus lockdown, according to the latest estimates by the Bank of Spain.

El Pais, “Spain could get €140 billion from EU’s Covid-19 recovery plan,” 27 May 2020.

There is a trade-off for member countries. By raising unprecedented debt to provide Covid-19 bailouts, the EU effectively centralizes power in the region. That comes, of course, with centralized policy objectives. None other than ArtForum takes issue with the lack of educational and cultural support in the package.

This seems like child’s play compared to the US, which is having a more scary time bringing back its markets than Europe. First, it seems like the US may have opened up too early. I use rt.live to track individual states.

R values for US states, 31 May 2020.

A couple of weeks ago there were four states with R of 1.0 or greater. Now there are ten states (see above). Covid-19 also is overloading ICUs in some states.

How is it possible the US opened too early or isn’t following relaxation guidelines? How hard is it for the US to do what so many other countries have accomplished? This chart illustrates the kind of ideological mishmash that’s dividing the US. It’s a manifestation of the country’s lack of leadership.

The Bulwark, “The Curious Case of the People Who Want to “Reopen” America—But Not Wear Masks,” 14 May 2020.

Trump’s lack of interest in Covid-19 and intense interest in re-election prevents anyone from providing the leadership that would help the country line up behind a common objective, even one as simple as let’s get the economy going. Crises requires a leader who can stick to a simple message for several months. Trump is not that leader.

Hopefully the rt.live numbers are a blip. Hopefully I’m wrong about the US relaxing Covid-19 restrictions too early. Even if I am wrong, though, the big flaming issue now facing the US is that Covid-19 has re-opened the Pandora’s box of America’s original sin: racism.

Covid-19 set the stage to re-open this Pandora’s box by killing low-wage workers and minorities disproportionately, and by putting 20% of the workforce out of a job. The murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police is the catalyst that blew the lid of this Pandora’s box. Riots across the US have continued for five days.

The riots combined with the lack of leadership is distressing to watch from across the Atlantic. The US has found itself facing the quadruple whammy of systemic racism, pandemic, economic collapse, and poor leadership. Not an enviable position for a nation that was the leader of the free world.

I’m going to end today with a video U.S. Senator Chris Murphy recorded Saturday night. While the White House message in May was essentially the same as “let them eat cake,” there are skilled politicians who understand the issues, can frame them coherently, and have a way forward. Please have a listen to Sen. Murphy.

31 May 2020 – Sunday – #77

When the house is on fire, sometimes you forget your Covid-19 mask.

Atlanta’s Mayor asks protestes to get Covid-19 tests

I wrote yesterday about how Covid-19 exacerbates America’s institutional racism. I don’t want to sound too alarmist or conspiratorial, but it also may have created the pretext for Trump to use the military to take control the US. Why lose an election when you don’t have to have one in the first place, right?

It seems like a president would ask the FBI or other law enforcement agencies monitor civil unrest, not the military. But the military and National Guard are planning to deploy military forces to quell civil outbreaks.

In addition to Minnesota, where a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd, the military is tracking uprisings in New York, Ohio, Colorado, Arizona, Tennessee, and Kentucky, according to a Defense Department situation report. Notably, only Minnesota has requested National Guard support.

The Nation, “Exclusive: The US Military Is Monitoring Protests in 7 States,” 30 May 2020

While America burns, I’m turning my attention to Covid-19 science today. Let’s start with a quick European tour.

First Spain. Doctors in Madrid have measured a Covid-19 seroprevalence of 20% using an antibody test, a seroprevelance higher than the 10%-14% the government measured earlier in Madrid. The new study had 17% positive for IgG and 3% positive for IgM. IgM shows up 4-6 days after infection and disappears, while IgG shows up later and persists. People who presented with IgM were followed up with a PCR test to determine whether they still had an active infection.

The earlier Spanish study tested 60,000 people all around Spain and had a result of 5% positive over the entire country. From that, I calculated herd immunity would be achieved after 0.7% of the population died. The Madrid part of the Spanish test appears to be 1/2 to 3/4 of the new Madrid test. If the entire Spanish study was off by the same, then herd immunity would be achieved after 0.35%-0.5% of the population died. For comparison, the Spanish Flu killed about 0.5% of the US population.

If you believe the original Spanish test, Covid-19 is a little more virulent than the Spanish Flu. If you think the Spanish test was off in Spain by the same ratio it appears to have been off in Madrid, then Covid-19 is a little lest virulent than the Spanish Flu.

Second England. Prime Minister Johnson announced UK would start easing Covid-19 restrictions on Monday. Johnson wants to get the economy moving again. He’s touting a new best-of-breed Test-and-Trace system to control further outbreaks.

[Chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick] Vallance pointed out there are still around 54,000 new cases a week, which he called “a significant burden of infection”. He also stressed the importance of the new test-and-trace system working effectively, to keep the pandemic under control.

The Guardian, “Groups of up to six people allowed to meet in England from Monday,” 28 May 2020.

Scientists are worried UK easing on Monday is too soon. They also are worried the new Test-and-Trace system isn’t ready.

“I think at the moment, with relatively high incidence and relaxing the measures and also with an untested track and trace system, I think we are taking some risk here.”

John Edmunds, Professor of Infectious Disease Modelling, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 29 May 2020.

It turns out, the scientists have a good reason to be skeptical of the new Test-and-Trace system. Here’s a report from one of the trainees for the new system.

Over the next few days I learned more about my job from watching the news than I did from those who were supposed to supervise me. I still did not feel qualified to do it. Then it was announced by Hancock that we were going live the next day. On my chat there was a message from a supervisor asking the more experienced members of our chat to help those who needed help. The blind leading the blind!

The Guardian, “Why I quit working on Boris Johnson’s ‘world-beating’ test-and-tracing system,” 30 May 2020.

Good luck, England! I’m sure it will all go swimmingly!

Third France. French scientists are looking for France’s so-called patient zero. Scientists like to find where an epidemic starts to understand how it progressed and possibly thwart a second wave. The first case appears to be much, much earlier than expected.

A team of researchers in the city of Colmar in northeastern France announced in a release last week that it had identified two X-rays, from Nov. 16 and Nov. 18, showing symptoms consistent with the novel coronavirus.

NBC News, “New evidence in race to find France’s COVID-19 ‘patient zero’,” 15 May 2020.

You might remember I mentioned that Seth Abramson speculated Trump went to Walter Reed hospital in November because he thought he had Covid-19. And again, I don’t want to sound alarmist or conspiratorial, but US intelligence knew in November there was a Covid-19 problem and this French case confirms it was spreading outside China that early. And again, I don’t want to sound alarmist or conspiratorial, but did Trump know about it and decide he’d be better off politically with a Covid-19 outbreak?

I realize I’m stepping into misinformation territory there. Did I tell you my next book, Trans Librarian Save Planet (which is about a trans librarian who saves the planet) is about misinformation?

I’m going to put my hands on the car and step away from Europe to look at more general science stories.

If you want to dig into Covid-19 transmission, here are two studies, one from last month which is mostly about surface spread, the other from last week which is mostly about air transmission.

Masks reduce airborne transmission of Covid-19 by blocking source of transmission.

At this point, no one should be surprised that the main benefit of masks is to block the source of the transmission, not protect the wearer.

Here’s the latest from Derek Lowe on Covid-19 vaccines. Some quick observations. I’m seeing reports about adverse reactions to the CanSino’s Ad5-nCoV and the Moderna vaccines. Getting a viable candidate that people tolerate is not a cakewalk. Second is that it seems like most of the vaccines are targeting the Spike glycoprotein, so hopefully that approach works. This paper Derek points to makes it seem like a good candidate. Last, as you might expect, most of the large pharma companies are acquiring vaccine candidates from smaller firms. That’s typical for the industry. I was interested that Pfizer has acquired four Covid-19 vaccine candidates. I wonder what that says about the economics of vaccines.

Gail pointed out Post-Viral Fatigue and Post-Viral Fatigue Syndrome. It’s so early in the Covid-19 pandemic that it’s hard to sort out whether fatigue symptoms are long term, but the early Covid-19 related fatigue symptoms appear similar to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and other viral responses.

I’ve been wondering when wearables would provide Covid-19 value. The first payoffs look close. Stanford researchers have used Fitbit heart data to predict Covid-19 infections in 11 of 14 patients studied. Small sample, but useful if you can predict 75% of the time when someone is getting sick. Another study uses Oura ring data to predict Covid-19 infection.

[R]esearchers at WVU’s Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute reported that Oura ring data, combined with an app to measure cognition and other symptoms, can predict up to three days in advance when people will register a fever, coughing or shortness of breath. It can even predict someone’s exact temperature, like a weather forecast for the body.

The Seattle Times, “Wearable tech can spot coronavirus symptoms before you even realize you’re sick. Here’s how,” 28 May 2020.

A wearable Covid-19 detector would be a game changer for Test, Track, and Quarantine.

Last but not least, Kim shared an article about how scientists are coming to see Covid-19 as a vascular disease rather than a respiratory disease. The SARS-CoV-2 virus behind Covid-19 spreads differently from SARS, which causes a respiratory disease, because of the proteins used to spread.

Benhur Lee, MD, a professor of microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, says the difference between SARS and SARS-CoV-2 likely stems from an extra protein each of the viruses requires to activate and spread. Although both viruses dock onto cells through ACE2 receptors, another protein is needed to crack open the virus so its genetic material can get into the infected cell. The additional protein the original SARS virus requires is only present in lung tissue, but the protein for SARS-CoV-2 to activate is present in all cells, especially endothelial cells.

elemental+, “Coronavirus May Be a Blood Vessel Disease, Which Explains Everything,” 29 May 2020.

If Covid-19 is a vascular disease, it has significant treatment implications. Low-cost, highly available drugs like statins and ACE inhibitors become candidates to manage Covid-19 patients.

Thanks for reading. Stay safe. It feels extra crazy out there with civil unrest layered on top of a pandemic. Check in with your minority friends and, if you don’t have any, it’s an important time to make some!

30 May 2020 – Saturday – #76

I’m a little unsure where to start today. I wanted to focus on Covid-19 science, but overnight it seems like US democracy hit the third rail. The police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis last week has triggered widespread social upheaval, far larger than earlier Covid-19 protests by gun-toting right-wing groups in Michigan’s capitol and elsewhere.

George Floyd being murdered by Minneapolis Police

As just one example of many, here’s a Yahoo News reporter capturing the protest outside the White House last night.

Floyd’s unnecessary death was an egregious example of systematic racism in the US and caps a month of extraordinary events. The resulting civil unrest might be better understood in the context of the US response to Covid-19. It comes after Covid-19 has exposed the cost of America’s institutional racism.

Before Floyd’s murder, reports showed the disproportionate toll Covid-19 has taken on Black Americans. Due to income and wealth inequity, Black Americans have systematically less access to the US healthcare system.

The latest overall COVID-19 mortality rate for Black Americans is 2.4 times as high as the rate for Whites and 2.2 times as high as the rate for Asians and Latinos.

APM Research Lab, ‘The Color of Coronavirus: Covid-19 Deaths by Race and Ethnicity in the U.S.,” 27 May 2020

Then there is America’s justice system. The release of non-violent offenders and older inmates from US prisons has been almost non-existent. While the US is not particularly different from the rest of the world in releasing prisoners during the Covid-19 pandemic, US prison inmates are disproportionately Black.

In the United States, more than 20,000 inmates and 6,400 correctional staff have tested positive for the virus, with over 300 deaths. Ohio’s Marion Correctional Institute has one of the highest Covid-19 infection rates in the world – more than 80 percent of the prison’s 2,500 inmates have tested positive.

Human Rights Watch, “Covid-19 Prisoner Releases Too Few, Too Slow,” 27 May 2020

It’s easy for the administration to claim the US treated prisoners like the rest of the world in order to sweep justice system racism under the rug. It’s easy to run a science experiment on prisoners to see how Covid-19 herd immunity develops. The right thing would have been to release more prisoners and reduce Covid-19 deaths.

Instead, while Trump’s pals Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort are both serving out their terms at home, Scottie Edwards, a 73 year old African American weeks shy of completing his prison sentence, died of Covid-19 in jail.

It’s early to assess the impact of Covid-19 on Black income and wealth, but early signs aren’t good. That adds to the institutional stress on Black communities.

It’s bad enough that Covid-19 has exacerbated systematic racism in US healthcare and justice systems. Just before Floyd’s death last week, Amy Cooper made a racially charged 9-1-1 call in Central Park. It went viral.

This is the context in which to judge the leadership from the White House after Floyd’s murder and the resulting social unrest.

Here’s what Trump tweeted as the social unrest escalated.

Twitter says Trump’s response to social unrest in Minneapolis violates its rules about glorifying violence.

All I need to tell you about what Trump tweeted is that he lifted a racially provocative phrase from the segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace that advocates using violence against protesters.

Compare that to Trump’s tweet earlier in May about white people with guns protesting Michigan’s Covid-19 lockdown.

This, in a nutshell, is US leadership today. The institutional racism the administration fosters helps explain why the US has three times higher per capita Covid-19 mortality than Germany. How hard would it have been for Trump to provide better healthcare to everyone and to release prisoners who weren’t his pals?

It gets worse.

Trump also is pulling out of WHO in the middle of a pandemic. My guess is that Trump is setting the stage to leave the U.N. He believes that the US has an advantage in bilateral deals rather than in multilateral deals. I’m sure Trump’s decision to exit WHO is what prompted the German Chancellor to postpone unilaterally the next G7 meeting. She’s waiting to see whether Trump leaves the White House or the G7 becomes the G6 because the US will negotiate only bilaterally. In any event, the withdrawal from WHO is shortsighted when the US has no idea what country has a viable Covid-19 treatment or vaccine.

I’m going to end today with what I’d planned to start with. The writer and AIDS activist Larry Kramer died last week. His activism was key to advocating for HIV research. He was a controversial and passionate figure in the gay movement.

My friend Deborah suggested watching The Normal Heart, the film Kramer adapted from his play of the same title. This is one of the best AIDS dramas and I commend it to anyone living through a plague. To my young gay friends, I especially hope you take the time to learn about a vital force in American gay life.