Joyous news on the SARS-CoV-2 front this morning. Not! Scientists have evidence that the virus spreads rapidly in white-tailed deer and that it's widespread in the US deer population. A recent survey of road-kill deer and deer killed by hunters found that 40 percent of the white-tailed deer in the Northeast and Midwest had covid antibodies. One concern is that white-tailed deer could become a covid reservoir, that is, that they could carry the virus indefinitely and spread it back to humans periodically. At one point, the prevalence of covid in deer in Iowa was 50 to 100 times the prevalence in humans there. Genetically, the variants in deer match the variants humans have. Remember the minks from last spring? Minks caught covid from humans, the virus mutated while in minks, with the variant passed back to humans. It's becoming clear that the viral level of wildlife needs to be monitored.
The city of Utrecht in the Netherlands has canceled its annual Sinterklaas party; yes, they are canceling Santa Claus. The Netherlands is also about to become the first western European country since the summer to impose a partial lockdown. Bars, restaurants, and non-essential shops must close after 7:00 pm in a lockdown projected to last three weeks. At the same time, Austria is about to place unvaccinated people in lockdown. Germany is offering free covid tests again, and doctors will be given greater financial incentive to vaccinate people. [Off-the-wall observation from the peanut gallery: In the US, we offer financial incentives to the people being vaccinated; Germany offers the incentive to the people doing the vaccinating.] Germany will consider visitors from Austria "high risk" and subject to quarantine on arrival unless they have been vaccinated or recently recovered from covid. Denmark again considers the coronavirus a "socially critical disease." A senior clinical lecturer at Exeter University College of Medicine and Health describes the situation in Europe, saying, "To really control it, it has to be multi-layered ... avoid crowds, avoid poorly ventilated placed, be immunized, wear your mask." A lot of those aren't happening or aren't happening enough.
Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, warns that for the US to avoid a fifth wave of covid we must learn from the current situation in Europe. Europe has a large proportion of unvaccinated people in each country, but this is far from the big picture. Belgium is 74 percent fully vaccinated but has the tenth highest case load in the world. To achieve any sort of herd immunity from the Delta variant may require 90 to 95 percent of the population to be fully vaccinated. Topol offers the following factors contributing to the current European surge. First, European countries were slow to start vaccinating teens. Children and teens have been the driving spread in the US and the UK. Second, vaccines are waning in their immunity against the Delta variant. The AstraZeneca vaccine declined below the anti-spike antibody threshold (it stopped working well) after about 96 days. The same happened after 257 days with the Pfizer vaccine. Finally, Europe relaxed or abandoned mitigation measures too quickly.
The US thinks that it is immune to what is happening in Europe, but the following factors suggest it is not. Only 58 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated, and a low proportion of those eligible are actually getting booster shots. We were also slow in starting to vaccinating children and teenagers. Mitigation measures have been weakened or ended, and there are very, very few cheap, rapid home tests available. To avoid a fifth wave similar to what is happening across the Atlantic, we must strongly promote primary vaccination and boosters, counter misinformation and disinformation, accelerate and expand vaccine mandates, distribute medical quality masks and home testing kits, and approve and use the antivirals developed by Moderna and Pfizer. Think we can do all that and in time? Neither do I.
Over two million at-home covid tests have been recalled in the US due to a higher-than-acceptable number of false positive test results. At least false positives are better than false negatives. In other words, it could be worse. The chair of the medicine department at the University of California, San Francisco says he has decided to go back to his normal life while accepting the risks of covid. He says the virus will never go away, but it can be a manageable virus similar to seasonal influenza. He says he will again play poker, unmasked, with a group of fully vaccinated friends. He does admit that he might wear a mask in supermarkets or on planes for the rest of his life; such is one way of managing the risk.
What are your ways to manage the risk? I'm still thinking about mine.
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