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AVAC's weekly COVID News Brief provides a curated perspective on what COVID news is worth your time.
“The report ([link removed]) found that content from 10 ‘superspreader’ sites sharing health misinformation had almost four times as many Facebook views in April 2020 as equivalent content from the sites of 10 leading health institutions, such as the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
-- NBC News ([link removed])


** Latest Global Stats
------------------------------------------------------------
August 20, 2020
Confirmed Cases
22,497,390 Recovered
14,378,514 Deaths
789,455
Source: Center for Systems Science and Engineering, Johns Hopkins University ([link removed])


** Table of Contents
------------------------------------------------------------
* If You’re in a Hurry (#hurry)
* What Do We Know Now Seven Months In? (#seven)
* Researchers Push Back on Plasma Approval (#plasma)
* Disparities (#disparities)
* Waiting for the “Umbrella of Protection” From a Vaccine (#waiting)
* Vaccine for Children and Pregnant Women (#pregnant)
* Vaccine Trials Spread Across the Globe (#globe)
* Vaccine Nationalism (#nationalism)
* Ethics and Community Engagement in COVID Research and Response (#ethics)
* Getting a Vaccine to the People (#getting)
* What We Know About Immunity This Week (#immunity)


* Good News and Bad News in Testing (#testing)
* Impact on Mental Health (#impact)
* This Week in Information, Disinformation and Access to Information (#disinfo)
* US President Backs Another Unproven “Cure” (#cure)
* Mutations Travel the Globe (#mutations)
* Pricing and Profit (#pricing)
* COVID-washing (#washing)
* Need for Sustained Research (#need)
* Disruption of Non-COVID Research (#disruption)
* COVID and HIV (#hiv)
* Lockdowns Affect Condom Access (#condoms)
* Pouf Coronavirus (#pouf)


Medscape ([link removed]) reports, “The COVID-19 pandemic has spread so rapidly since the first US case was reported January 20 that it's now the third-leading cause of death in the country, Dr. Thomas Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told CNN. ‘COVID is now the No. 3 cause of death in the US―ahead of accidents, injuries, lung disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and many, many other causes,’ Frieden said. The CDC says heart disease and cancer are the first and second leading causes of death.”

Pulse Nigeria ([link removed]) reports, “In its latest forecasts, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington said the death toll [in sub-Saharan Africa] could rise to between 85,688 (best case scenario), and 180,273 (worst case scenario) by December 1 depending on measures implemented by governments. The global health research organisation said at least 73,085 coronavirus-related deaths could be prevented on the continent if 95 percent of its population adhere to mask-wearing and other prevention measures…. The largest numbers of deaths are projected to occur in South Africa, Zambia, Kenya, Malawi, and Zimbabwe.”

The Economist ([link removed]) reports, “Millions more are going to die before the COVID-19 pandemic is over. That is the stark message of Bill Gates…. Most of these deaths, he said, would be caused not by the disease itself, but by the further strain on health-care systems and economies that were already struggling…. To mitigate that risk, Mr. Gates is calling on rich countries to buy vaccines for poor ones. This is not entirely altruistic: if some countries remain reservoirs for the disease, it will continue to pop up again in others. If vaccines are priced high enough in rich countries to cover the fixed costs of production—clinical trials, building factories and so on—then the marginal cost of supplying poor countries would be relatively modest: of the order of $10bn-12bn in total.”

Al Jazeera ([link removed]) reports, “The spread of the novel coronavirus is being increasingly driven by people aged in their 20s, 30s and 40s who are unaware they are infected because they have no or mild symptoms, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned. Because many people from this age range are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms of COVID-19, they unknowingly pass on the virus to others….”



** If You’re in a Hurry
------------------------------------------------------------

* Watch a STAT ([link removed]) video about how pandemic stress can lead to “time blindness” and understand why you may not know what day it is today.
* Read a STAT ([link removed]) roundup of what we know seven months in and what some of the outstanding questions are.
* Read the New York Times ([link removed]) on how top US researchers pushed back on a proposed US FDA emergency use authorization for plasma treatment.
* Read about the need for—and lack of—data on pregnant and breastfeeding women and children in vaccine trials in STAT ([link removed]) .
* Read the Washington Post ([link removed]) about an amfAR study ([link removed]) that looked at the impact on residential segregation in the pandemic’s spread.
* Read about the latest on herd immunity in the New York Times ([link removed]) .
* Read about a new saliva test in the Washington Post ([link removed]) .
* Then read The Atlantic ([link removed]) on a testing plan from Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina.
* Read Forbes ([link removed]) on a new report ([link removed]) from AVAAZ about disinformation “superspreaders” on Facebook.
* Confused about all those ads on social media for gloves and masks and supplements? Read Fast Company ([link removed]) on “COVID-washing.”




** What Do We Know Now Seven Months In?
------------------------------------------------------------

In STAT ([link removed]) , Helen Branswell and colleagues look at what we know about the virus and disease seven months in and what key questions remain to be answered. Among what we know: when it comes to children, “it’s complicated…. Black and Latino children were hospitalized at higher rates than white children. And like adults, children with other health conditions—obesity, chronic lung diseases, or infants who were born premature—are at higher risk than otherwise healthy children.” We also know, “Essentially, the closer you are to someone infectious and the longer you’re in contact with them, the more likely you are to contract the virus, which helps explain why so much transmission ([link removed]) occurs within households.” We know,
“Vaccine development can be accelerated. A lot.” We don’t know “for how long that immune response lasts…. We don’t know how strong it is…. The sheer range of outcomes for people who get COVID-19—from a truly asymptomatic case, to mild symptoms, to moderate disease leading to months-long complications, to death—has befuddled infectious disease researchers.”



** Researchers Push Back on Plasma Approval
------------------------------------------------------------

Many doctors, politicians and private citizens have hoped that plasma from recovered COVID patients could be an effective treatment for COVID, but the New York Times ([link removed]) reports, “last week, just as the Food and Drug Administration was preparing to issue an emergency authorization for blood plasma as a COVID-19 treatment, a group of top federal health officials including Dr. Francis S. Collins and Dr. Anthony S. Fauci intervened, arguing that emerging data on the treatment was too weak, according to two senior administration officials…. Donated by people who have survived the disease, antibody-rich plasma is considered safe. President Trump has hailed it as a “beautiful ingredient” in the veins of people who have survived COVID-19. But clinical trials have not proved ([link removed]) whether plasma can help people fighting the coronavirus…. Several top health officials—[led
by Collins, Fauci and Lane]—urged their colleagues last week to hold off, citing recent data ([link removed]) from the country’s largest plasma study, run by the Mayo Clinic. They thought the study’s data to date was not strong enough to warrant an emergency approval.”



** Disparities
------------------------------------------------------------

Washington Post ([link removed]) reports that US “counties with the highest percentage of White residents have had the lowest rates of coronavirus ([link removed]) infections, even as infections have increased with the reopening of some states’ economies, an indication that residential segregation is a significant factor in the pandemic’s spread…. That doesn’t mean White people have more immunity but rather that they have been better able to limit their exposure than have Black people, Latinos and Native Americans, who have been disproportionately infected ([link removed]) by the novel coronavirus and killed by COVID-19, the disease the virus causes.” The study
([link removed]) by amfAR argues, “their higher rate of infection is due to ‘poverty and living in densely occupied households, living in localities with greater air pollution, lack of health insurance and being employed in jobs that increase exposure to’ the coronavirus.”

The COVID Racial Data Tracker ([link removed]) “advocates for, collects, publishes, and analyzes racial data on the pandemic across the United States. It’s a collaboration between the COVID Tracking Project and the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research ([link removed]) .”



** Waiting for the “Umbrella of Protection” From a Vaccine
------------------------------------------------------------

In a Bloomberg Quick Takes ([link removed]) video interview, “Dr. Fauci says life may not return to normal for some time even after we get a vaccine depending on its effectiveness. He stressed that we will need to follow public health measures as well to fully thwart the virus.” Fauci says it will take time for the community to develop the needed “umbrella of protection.”

For an inside look at COVID vaccine development with Dr. Barney Graham, the Deputy Director of the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center, join an AVAC webinar on the NIH/Moderna mRNA-1273 Candidate and COVID-19 Vaccine Development on August 25. Details here. ([link removed])



** Vaccine for Children and Pregnant Women
------------------------------------------------------------
STAT ([link removed]) reports, “as potential COVID-19 vaccines speed their way through development, manufacturers and US regulators have largely delayed testing in children and women who are pregnant, raising the possibility that experts will lack critical safety and efficacy data in those populations when there’s a pressing need to inoculate them…. Manufacturers that are testing the vaccines in clinical trials have so far not included pregnant women or women who are breastfeeding. And only one of the vaccine makers that may end up supplying the American market, AstraZeneca, has started to test its vaccine in children.”



** Vaccine Trials Spread Across the Globe
------------------------------------------------------------

Miami Herald ([link removed]) reports, “Cuba will start testing its own COVID-19 vaccine candidate next week, according to the official Cuban registry of clinical trials. The vaccine, Soberana 01, was produced by the state-run Finlay Institute of Vaccines and will be tested during a phase I and II trial involving 676 adults between 19 and 80 years old. The results will not be published until February 2021.”

Reuters ([link removed]) reports, “US drug developer Novavax Inc said it started a mid-stage study of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine in South Africa, as the country experiences a surge in coronavirus cases…. Novavax expects its vaccine, once approved, would be supplied to South Africa through a deal signed earlier this year with the Serum Institute of India to develop and commercialize NVX-CoV2373.”

Reuters ([link removed]) also reports, “Pakistan’s drug regulator greenlit the country’s first Phase 3 clinical trial for a potential COVID-19 vaccine, which is being developed by China’s CanSino Biologics (CanSino) and Beijing Institute of Biotechnology…. CanSino last month said it was in talks for opportunities to launch Phase 3 trials in Saudi Arabia, Russia, Brazil and Chile.”

Metro News ([link removed]) reports, “Turkey is in talks with Russia, Germany and China about conducting Phase 3 trials for coronavirus vaccines developed in those countries, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said….”



** Vaccine Nationalism
------------------------------------------------------------

BBC ([link removed]) looks at plans to manufacture and deliver vaccine for 7 billion people. Noting, “it's not easy to get international co-operation, because many rich countries are already doing bilateral deals with drug companies to make sure they can secure supplies if the magic formula is found,” the article quotes GAVI’s Berkley: "I think we need all countries to be thinking about this in a globally minded way, partially because it's the right thing to do but also because it's a self-interest issue. If you have large reservoirs of virus circulating in surrounding countries, you can't go back to your normal trade, travel or movement of people. It's really important to have that mindset: we're not safe, unless everybody is safe."
ABC News ([link removed]) (Australia) reports, “The announcement that the Australian Government was at the "front of the queue" with UK-based drug company AstraZeneca ([link removed]) to secure Oxford University's potential COVID-19 vaccine sent a wave of collective relief across the nation. And according to those in the know, that's exactly what it was supposed to do.”

Financial Times ([link removed]) reports, “The World Health Organisation has urged wealthier member states to join its COVID-19 vaccine facility by the end of the month, amid fears it may not raise enough money to fund the global inoculation programme. The mechanism, known as Covax, aims to ensure the equitable global distribution of 2bn doses of effective vaccines by the end of 2021 but the initiative has so far failed to build momentum.”



** Ethics and Community Engagement in COVID Research and Response
------------------------------------------------------------

CNN ([link removed]) reports, “The multi-billion-dollar effort to get a coronavirus vaccine on the market could see delays because researchers haven't recruited sufficient numbers of minorities to join the clinical trials…. Of the 350,000 people who've registered online for a coronavirus clinical trial, 10 percent are Black or Latino, according to Dr. Jim Kublin [of the COVPN]…. Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, gave the Moderna trial, the first in Phase 3 in the United States, a "C" grade for recruiting minorities. ‘From the first week I saw the numbers, and they were not as encouraging as I would have liked,’ Collins told CNN.”

An article in Developing Country Bioethics ([link removed]) looks at “how stakeholder engagement can be adapted for the conduct of COVID‐19‐related clinical trials in sub‐Saharan Africa.” The authors conclude, “Stakeholder engagement in the designing, implementing, monitoring, and disseminating COVID‐19 clinical trials is an important ethical consideration for collective societies like those in sub‐Saharan Africa, and the stakeholder engagement needs to be promoted and monitored by clinical trial regulators. The GPP‐EP is a good framework for guiding stakeholder engagement in COVID‐19 clinical trials. Guidelines that are cognizant of the sociocultural context of the region increase the stakeholder engagement. Documented successes with COVID‐19 clinical trials will help in achieving stakeholder engagement in future trials to be conducted in the region.”

Contagion Live ([link removed]) asks, “has civil society had proper democratic input on the restrictions introduced by nation states worldwide to curb coronavirus transmission? What explains the ongoing antagonism between the public and public health?” This debate is discussed in a journal article “COVID-19 zugzwang: Potential public health moves towards population immunity… published in Public Health in Practice ([link removed]) that “argues that scientific appraisal of the various SARS-CoV-2 interventions introduced in the initial wave of COVID-19 has been stifled by fear based responses to the complex competing ethical priorities societies face, alongside politicization of scientific concepts.”

In an interview in The Nation ([link removed]) (Kenya) vaccine researcher Walter Jaoko says, “I research human beings and I need people to participate in testing new drugs. When there are rumours and misinformation, it scares them away.” He also says, “Africa cannot afford to work in isolation, we must collaborate with other scientists in the world to find solutions. We should take risks and sacrifice. It is not morally right to wait for others to do research and remain bystanders.”

The Guardian ([link removed]) reports, “Sweden’s light-touch approach to COVID-19 has come under renewed criticism after emails show the country’s chief epidemiologist appearing to ask whether a higher death rate among older people might be acceptable if it led to faster herd immunity.”



** Getting a Vaccine to the People
------------------------------------------------------------

Bloomberg ([link removed]) reports, “The annual US flu vaccine campaign has been cast into disarray by COVID-19, with people staying away from pharmacies, schools, offices, hospitals and other places where they typically get their shots. But with fears of a flu surge colliding with the coronavirus pandemic ([link removed]) , health authorities are looking at how one vaccine effort can inform the other.” As Public health experts looks for new ways to increase flu vaccine uptake, one expert says, ““This whole model that we’re building can then be moved into COVID.” The article notes, “federal health authorities have offered little detail about their plans for administering [COVID] vaccines. The US has said that it will likely rely on the private sector to distribute the shots, and last
week extended a contract to health-care supplier McKesson Corp potentially worth more than $300 million. But the government has said almost nothing about who will get the shots first, where they’ll be given, and how to make sure they get to hard-to-reach and vulnerable communities.”

CNBC ([link removed]) reports, “Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has backtracked on comments he made saying that he planned to make coronavirus vaccinations as mandatory as possible…. The Australian leader has since said, however, that there are no mechanisms in place to ensure coronavirus vaccinations are compulsory for Australian citizens. “We can’t hold someone down and make them take it,” Morrisson told 2GB later in the day. He also sought to stress that any potential vaccine would be required to pass all trials and “be as safe as any other” existing immunizations in Australia before being administered.”

CNN ([link removed]) reports, “Frontline healthcare workers, emergency services personnel and the most vulnerable to the virus should be the first to get any eventual coronavirus vaccine, experts recommend in a new report…. People working to make and distribute the vaccine should also be first in line to get one, the team at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security recommends. ‘The primary reason for including these candidate groups within Tier 1 is that their prioritization would likely avert the greatest overall harm,’ the Center's report reads…. In the second tier should come health workers not directly involved in the coronavirus response; pharmacy staff; people living far away from health care; electricity, sanitation and other key workers; delivery staff; deployed military; and police.” CIDRAP ([link removed]) says, “The framework emphasizes three broad
ethical values: promoting public health and economic and social well-being; justice, fairness, and equality; and legitimacy, trust, and a sense of community ownership of vaccine policy.” Read the full report. ([link removed])



** What We Know About Immunity This Week
------------------------------------------------------------

New York Times ([link removed]) reports, “To achieve so-called herd immunity—the point at which the virus can no longer spread widely because there are not enough vulnerable humans—scientists have suggested that perhaps 70 percent of a given population must be immune, through vaccination or because they survived the infection. Now some researchers are wrestling with a hopeful possibility. In interviews with the New York Times, more than a dozen scientists said that the threshold is likely to be much lower: just 50 percent, perhaps even less. If that’s true, then it may be possible to turn back the coronavirus more quickly than once thought. The new estimates result from complicated statistical modeling of the pandemic, and the models have all taken divergent approaches, yielding inconsistent estimates. It is not certain that any community in the world has enough residents now immune to the virus to resist a second wave.”

A separate Times ([link removed]) article says, “Scientists who have been monitoring immune responses to the virus are now starting to see encouraging signs of strong, lasting immunity, even in people who developed only mild symptoms of COVID-19 ([link removed]) , a flurry ([link removed]) of new ([link removed]) studies ([link removed]) suggests ([link removed]) . Disease-fighting antibodies, as well as immune cells called B cells and T cells ([link removed]) that are capable of recognizing the virus, appear to persist months after infections have resolved—an encouraging echo of the body’s enduring response to
other viruses.”



** Good News and Bad News in Testing
------------------------------------------------------------

Washington Post ([link removed]) reports on a new saliva test developed by Yale and funded by the National Basketball Association. The test was granted emergency use authorization by the US FDA. Data from a study of the test that has not been peer reviewed. “Comparing the results of saliva tests to the more common method, called polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, the scientists found that the test ([link removed]) was just as accurate.” The test is expected to be cheap and easy to use. One of the researchers tweeted ([link removed]) more information about the test and said, “Our mission is to remove capitalism from surveillance. We want to make available cheaper tests, and we believe that companies shouldn't overly profit from this. That is why we offer our protocol for free, and we are working with labs to implement cost and time
saving steps.”

The Atlantic ([link removed]) examines a testing plan from Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina who “has become an evangelist for a total revolution in how the US controls the pandemic. Instead of restructuring daily life around the American way of testing, he argues, the country should build testing into the American way of life. The wand that will accomplish this feat is a thin paper strip, no longer than a finger. It is a coronavirus test. Mina says that the US should mass-produce these inexpensive and relatively insensitive tests—unlike other methods, they require only a saliva sample—in quantities of tens of millions a day. These tests, which can deliver a result in 15 minutes or less, should then become a ubiquitous part of daily life. Before anyone enters a school or an office, a movie theater or a Walmart, they must take one of these tests. Test negative, and you may enter the public space.
Test positive, and you are sent home. In other words: Mina wants to test nearly everyone, nearly every day.”

AP ([link removed]) reports, “Potential accuracy issues with a widely used coronavirus test could lead to false results for patients, US health officials warned. The Food and Drug Administration issued the alert Monday to doctors and laboratory technicians using Thermo Fisher’s TaqPath genetic test…. The warning comes nearly a month after Connecticut public health officials first reported ([link removed]) that at least 90 people had received false positive results for the coronavirus. Most of those receiving the false results were residents of nursing homes or assisted living facilities.”


** Impact on Mental Health
------------------------------------------------------------

Politico ([link removed]) reports “One in four young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 say they've considered suicide in the past month because of the pandemic, according to new CDC data that paints a bleak picture of the nation's mental health during the crisis. The data also flags a surge of anxiety and substance abuse, with more than 40 percent of those surveyed saying they experienced a mental or behavioral health condition connected to the COVID-19 emergency…. Researchers, in the study, recommended that any community-level intervention and prevention efforts include strengthening economic supports to reduce financial stress, and to address racial disparities in health care. They also suggest expanding access to social supports, comprehensive treatments and harm reduction services.”

Financial Times ([link removed]) reports, “The coronavirus pandemic is severely debilitating the mental health of young Britons as cases of depression are on the rise, official figures show. About one in five adults in Great Britain experienced either moderate or severe depressive symptoms in June this year, almost double the level recorded before the pandemic.”

STAT ([link removed]) reports, “Many people have joked that they’ve lost their sense of time during the COVID-19 pandemic—but the underlying idea, known as time blindness, is a real phenomenon.” The phenomenon is explained in a STAT video at the link.



** This Week in Information, Disinformation and Access to Information
------------------------------------------------------------

A JAMA ([link removed]) study “evaluated the readability of online information about COVID-19 provided by government and public health agencies and departments” and found on most sites readability did not meet the standards of 8^th grade readability recommended by the US CDC and US NIH. The authors write, “We found that official information about COVID-19 exceeded the recommended reading level, exhibited complex syntax, and used technical terminology…. Nonadherence to readability standards may have a greater influence in communities with lower health literacy, potentially exacerbating the disparate effects of the pandemic. As such, efforts should focus on the urgent development of plain-language COVID-19 resources that conform to established guidelines for clear communication and are more accessible to all audiences.”

The New York Times ([link removed]) reports, “The private health care technology vendor that is helping to manage the Trump administration’s new coronavirus database has refused to answer questions from top Senate Democrats about its $10.2 million contract, saying it signed a nondisclosure agreement with the federal Department of Health and Human Services.”

Forbes ([link removed]) reports on a new report ([link removed]) from AVAAZ that “states that pages from the top 10 sites sharing misinformation and conspiracy theories about health received almost four times as many views on Facebook as the top 10 reputable sites for health information. NBC News ([link removed]) says, “The report found that content from 10 ‘superspreader’ sites sharing health misinformation had almost four times as many Facebook views in April 2020 as equivalent content from the sites of 10 leading health institutions, such as the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Retraction Watch ([link removed]) reports, “The retraction of a Trojan horse paper on the novel coronavirus has called into question the validity of another article in the same journal which found that hydroxychloroquine is effective against COVID-19. The sting article, “SARS-CoV-2 was Unexpectedly Deadlier than Push-scooters: Could Hydroxychloroquine be the Unique Solution? ([link removed]) ... Their goal: to highlight a concerning paper in the Asian Journal of Medicine and Health, which they and others suspect of being a predatory publication—one that is happy to take money to publish anything, while pretending to perform peer review. That paper was a 2020 article titled “Azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine accelerate recovery of outpatients with mild/moderate COVID-19
([link removed]) ,” whose authors included several hydroxychloroquine partisans, among them a member of the French parliament….”



** US President Backs Another Unproven “Cure”
------------------------------------------------------------

Axios ([link removed]) reports, “To the alarm of some government health officials, President Trump has expressed enthusiasm for the Food and Drug Administration to permit an extract from the oleander plant to be marketed as a dietary supplement or, alternatively, approved as a drug to cure COVID-19, despite lack of proof that it works…. The experimental botanical extract, oleandrin, was promoted to Trump during an Oval Office meeting in July. It's embraced by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and MyPillow founder and CEO Mike Lindell, a big Trump backer, who recently took a financial stake in the company that develops the product.”



** Mutations Travel the Globe
------------------------------------------------------------

Bloomberg ([link removed]) reports, “Southeast Asia is facing a strain of the new coronavirus that the Philippines, which faces the region’s largest outbreak, is studying to see whether the mutation makes it more infectious. The strain, earlier seen in other parts of the world and called D614G…. The strain has been found in many other countries and has become the predominant variant in Europe and the US, with the World Health Organization saying there’s no evidence the strain leads to a more severe disease. The mutation has also been detected in recent outbreaks in China.



** Pricing and Profit
------------------------------------------------------------

A Rolling Stone ([link removed]) article looks at the possibility of Pharma profits from COVID. Matt Taibbi writes, “What Americans need to understand about the race to find vaccines and treatments for COVID-19 is that in the US, even when companies appear to downshift from maximum greed levels—and it’s not at all clear they’ve done this with coronavirus ([link removed]) treatments—the production of pharmaceutical drugs is still a nearly riskless, subsidy-laden scam.” He uses the example of the price of remdesivir: “Gilead, a company with a market capitalization of more than $90 billion, making it bigger than Goldman Sachs, develops an antiviral drug with the help of $99 million in American government grant money. Though the drug may cost as little as $10 per dose to make, and is being produced generically in Bangladesh at about a fifth of the list price, and costs about a third less
in Europe than it does in the US, Gilead ended up selling hundreds of thousands of doses at the maximum conceivable level, i.e., the American private-insurance price—which, incidentally, might be about 10 times what it’s worth, given its actual medical impact.”



** COVID-washing
------------------------------------------------------------

Fast Company ([link removed]) reports “An onset of consumer goods that feed off the fear of coronavirus reveals a disheartening reality: There’s no better time for capitalism to shine than during a pandemic. From dietary supplements to juices to pants (yes, pants) and bedsheets, brands are employing a cruel kind of marketing to sell their products. The strategy, unique to the year 2020, might be dubbed “COVID-washing.” Like greenwashing before it, where companies convey misleading information that their products are sustainable, COVID-washing draws in consumers by conveying the false impression that a certain product can cure or repel COVID-19.”

Another Fast Company ([link removed]) article examines “countless antimicrobial products to flood the market recently, including bags ([link removed]) , masks ([link removed]) , and clothes ([link removed]) ” that purport to protect from COVID. Do these products actually protect you, or are they just exploiting your anxiety to sell you expensive products you don’t need? The answer, like everything coronavirus-related, is complicated. To figure out whether antiviral products are worth the expense, it is important to
understand how the virus spreads, but that’s not so clear-cut. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there has not been a single documented case ([link removed]) of a person getting sick with the coronavirus from a contaminated surface, which would seem to preclude the need for products treated with antiviral substances. And yet, at the same time, the agency offers lots of recommendations about disinfecting surfaces to reduce the spread of COVID-19. On the surface, this seems like conflicting information. But Mark Shrime, a professor of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, explains that it isn’t. While we like to think of illnesses in black and white, Shrime says that there is actually uncertainty when it comes to understanding all diseases, and particularly with
COVID-19, so sometimes it makes sense to be extra cautious. “Remember, we’ve only known about this virus for eight months, and we’re still learning about it,” he says. “Science exists in a shroud of uncertainty, and as scientists, we’re comfortable with the fact that the answer is sometimes not yet clear.”


** Need for Sustained Research
------------------------------------------------------------

Jerusalem Post ([link removed]) reports, “A long term study from Ben-Gurion University ([link removed]) of the Negev on epidemic outbreaks found that while research on infectious coronavirus disease surges after an outbreak, it drops substantially upon virus containment, which in the long term prevents a full understanding of coronavirus management and prevention. One of the paper’s authors says, ‘There has been no sustained research into these types of infections, merely peaks following specific outbreaks. That pattern has left us woefully unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic. If we want to be ready for the next pandemic, we must maintain a steady pace of research, even after the current pandemic subsides.
The path to understanding is a marathon, not a sprint.’"



** Disruption of Non-COVID Research
------------------------------------------------------------

Medscape ([link removed]) reports, “A new analysis of the extent of disruption shows that the average rate of stopped trials nearly doubled during the first 5 months of 2020, compared with the 2 previous years. ‘Typically, clinical research precedes clinical practice by several years, so this disruption we're seeing now will be felt for many years to come,’ said Mario Guadino, MD, from the Weill Cornell Medicine, New York City. The analysis was published online ([link removed]) July 31 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology…. Once stopped (as opposed to paused), restarting a trial is a tricky prospect, said Guadino. ‘You can't stop and restart a trial because it creates a lot of issues, so we should expect many of these stopped trials to never be completed.’"



** COVID and HIV
------------------------------------------------------------

Carlos Del Rio writes in NEJM Journal Watch ([link removed]) , “The available literature suggests that, at least in Europe and North America, HIV does not increase the risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection or predispose to poor outcomes from COVID-19. Most of the studies document a high prevalence of comorbidities among persons with HIV with severe COVID-19, suggesting that this may be the major driver of morbidity and mortality just like it is among persons without HIV. The study from South Africa is concerning, and future studies will be important to determine if HIV is a risk factor for increased COVID-19 mortality in low- and middle-income countries.”



** Lockdowns Affect Condom Access
------------------------------------------------------------

New Zimbabwe ([link removed]) reports the country’s “anti-coronavirus lockdown has had an unintended consequence: a spike in unwanted pregnancies as contraceptives became unavailable. The spread of HIV is looming too…Women bear the brunt of that failure, say women’s rights activists.’Shortages of contraceptives help to undermine women’s reproductive health rights,’ says Celesile Sithole of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), a human-rights NGO based in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city.”



** Pouf Coronavirus
------------------------------------------------------------

US NIH director Francis Collins tweeted ([link removed]) a video of he and his wife performing a musical number. Collins said, “Since Camp Fantastic, a summer camp for kids with cancer, has to go virtual this year, my wife, Diane, and I made this #COVID19 ([link removed]) parody on “Puff, the Magic Dragon” to let the kids know we’re with them in spirit during these challenging times. #NIH ([link removed]) . Favorite lyric: “Nasty little viruses don’t care for anyone.” NIH-approved message of hope: "hope is on the scene, we’ll beat corona virus when we have that vaccine.”

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