Wow: “Dr. Bruce Aylward, International team lead for the World Health Organization-China joint mission on COVID-19 … told reporters that China’s mobilization to handle the virus outbreak showed how aggressive policy steps could curb the disease’s spread” https://youtu.be/-o0q1XMRKYM
Post Archive 2020
Doing more of this will save lives. We need to learn from the experience in China, Italy, etc. and intervene early! This lecture helps explain why: https://youtu.be/3RQBtA4dK9s?t=3629 https://twitter.com/sundarpichai/status/1237499299589582848
Best overall summary of the options and likely outcomes the world faces with COVID-19: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56
Prediction: this will be the last pandemic where we rely exclusively on public health to tell us if we are contagious or not, and to judge who is worthy of a test. https://twitter.com/BiomemeInc/status/1238164899810938880
Soon testing for the presence of any virus or bacteria will be nearly as easy and commonplace as checking your temperature. We’ll wonder how we ever tolerated so much uncertainty and blindness to the spread of disease.
Somewhere between 30% and 60% of people infected with Sars-CoV-2 show no symptoms, yet are still infectious. This means mass testing is essential. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00822-x
In Vò Italy, and entire village was cured in 2 weeks by testing every single person twice, and quarantining those who tested positive (70% of which had mild or no symptoms). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/20/eradicated-coronavirus-mass-testing-covid-19-italy-vo
South Korea has gotten the outbreak under control through rapid response and doing 15,000 tests a day and without instituting a severe lockdown. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/coronavirus-cases-have-dropped-sharply-south-korea-whats-secret-its-success
That countries like Canada and the US are having to severely ration tests is a massive failure of public health. https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid-testing-shortages-1.5503926
The virus-specific probes are easy to manufacture in bulk, and everything else needed (qPCR machines, swabs, reagents) could have been stockpiled after SARS, MERS. http://microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-591
Gates foundation funds study that shows painful and risky nasopharyngeal swabs are no better than self-administered nostril swabs at detecting Sars-CoV-2! https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200325005602/en/UnitedHealth-Group-Study-Clears-Path-Self-Administered-COVID-19
We should listen to our healthcare experts for sure! But what are we supposed to make of experts insistence on using a painful procedure when the FDA has now been convinced that the simple and comfortable alternative is just as effective? https://www.gatesfoundation.org/TheOptimist/Articles/coronavirus-interview-dan-wattendorf https://twitter.com/DrPeckPNP/status/1244062665535864832
The evidence is mounting that much of the spread of SARS-CoV-2 is asymptotic or presymptomatic: https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2020/04/14/coronavirus-boston-homeless-testing
This has significant implications: we must be regularly screening all healthcare workers and other essential workers if we want to control the spread. Eg: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30917-X/fulltext
Which in turn suggests that to be practical, we should leverage pooled-sample qPCR, eg: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.26.20039438v1
My family tested ourselves for SARS-CoV-2 at home, and I’m convinced it’s a taste of what’s to come soon for all of us. https://medium.com/@RickByers/the-dawn-of-personal-biotech-cb0af0d52e4c
COIVD isolation sign #23: my 10yo says “My Google home is my friend, it reads me love poems and remembers everything I tell it about myself” 😂
Finally, a fast and portable device is approved for SARS-CoV-2 testing in Canada! I’ve been learning about qPCR using this particular device myself, very exciting!
https://medium.com/@RickByers/the-dawn-of-personal-biotech-cb0af0d52e4c https://twitter.com/PbiDiagnostics/status/1280853710013333505
Best non-technical summary I’ve seen yet of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in development: https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/coronavirusvaccinetracker/
“We have to start accepting less accurate, widespread testing for groups. We have to stop muddling the messaging by focusing only on the most effective tests. With testing, just as with masks, more is sometimes better than perfect.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/opinion/coronavirus-testing-antigen-pooling.html
Reducing the sensitivity of SARS-CoV-2 tests to only 1% of today’s PCR tests is predicted to make very little difference to containing the disease. Yet testing every 3 days is dramatically more effective than even weekly testing! https://medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.22.20136309v2
@michaelmina_lab
For schools to be safe in the fall, we need a screening program which focuses on frequency, convenience and fast turnaround time of high-specificity tests but which can accept much lower sensitivity. Eg. see https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/opinion/coronavirus-tests.html, https://www.wired.com/story/a-wisconsin-city-experiments-with-a-faster-diy-covid-19-test/ https://twitter.com/RickByers/status/1290062606187675649
I ran my own 8-target respiratory virus qPCR panel at home the other day when I was feeling a little under the weather… They all came back negative and I’m fine today so was just allergies. It’s far from perfect, but still pretty darn cool to be able to do anything like this.
“You don’t need perfect tests to improve what’s going on — you need tests that are going to be substantially better than the performance art otherwise known as temperature checks and asking people every single day the same questions about symptoms” https://nationalpost.com/health/home-covid-19-tests-could-help-find-people-while-they-are-contagious-experts-say-health-canada-isnt-convinced
Prediction: by Christmas we will see many US schools and workplaces effectively using cheap antigen test strips like these as an essential component of a COVID-19 containment strategy. https://www.abbott.com/BinaxNOW-Test-NAVICA-App.html. Other countries will follow, but slower than they should.
The US may be struggling due to weak leadership, but it still puts countries, like my own country of Canada, to shame when it comes to applied innovation and the power of the free market.
This takes what was previously expensive but well validated lab tech (“LAMP” - similar to PCR) and brings it into the home in a disposable (~$50) form factor.
I predict this will be the first of many, and it’ll only get better and cheaper! https://twitter.com/Cal_Engineer/status/1329153702821761025
For those who have told me it’s just not possible to get reliable qPCR in a home/DIY setting, I admit there’s some truth to this. It can be finicky and I’ve found lots of ways to make mistakes. But… https://twitter.com/RickByers/status/1251640286880698372
Here’s the results of a dilution series I did using human B2M primers on my own nasal sample - showing 82% efficiency with simple dye PCR and 91% efficiency with TaqMan probes.
Prediction: home viral diagnostics will go from being largely unthinkable to commonplace over the next ~5 years. We will wonder how we lived without it, and why we didn’t do it sooner when we had the technology for ages. https://twitter.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1340379108069523460
In 2002 I did an 8 week road trip around all of north America with a box of map books and quarters for payphones. GPS receivers and cell phones existed, but they were clumsy and expensive. By 2010 I wouldn’t go out to a local restaurant without the GPS and maps in my iPhone. 😀
About 4 years ago I pitched an idea for a Google 20% project to do regular and convenient home viral surveillance. The feedback I got was “people won’t change their behavior as a result of knowing what cold viruses they are carrying”. 😂
Which strategy has been more effective at preventing unwanted pregnancies, absolute abstinence or the widespread availability of birth control?
Imagine if birth control was available only by proving to the government you were at high risk for pregnancy, and then only with reliable reporting of use to public health tied to your identity?
I can’t stop thinking about @michaelmina_lab’s empowerment arguments in https://youtu.be/L-RuvUkcyJI. I, for one, believe in empowering citizens to take calculated risks with their health and trusting everyone to be responsible.
Even though education is hard, and some people will let us down. The opposite philosophy seems worse. The responsibility to have and raise a child is a thought-provoking analogy.