Tag Archives: lockdown easing

The AstraZeneca vaccine update

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AstraZeneca’s vaccine is back in the news, and not happily. The company handed a group of US medical experts data on its effectiveness, but when the experts looked at it, they said, “Guys, this isn’t new data. This is the old stuff.”

Except that if they’d really used those words, they’d have said “aren’t new data,” because experts use the word enough to remember that data are plural. All experts. Even experts in knitting and basketball manufacturing. The word data is in a category that includes nonbinary people who prefer to be called they instead of he or she. Those of us who are over the age of a thousand struggle to get the pronouns and the verbs right. 

In case you’re interested, data is made up of lots of itty-bitty little datums.

No, sorry, that’s wrong too. A single datum has to have at least one friend before it become data.

Where were we?

Irrelevant photo: Blackthorn.

Basically, the experts were saying that AZ had cherry-picked its data to make the vaccine look like it was 79% effective. What the experts saw was between 69% and 74% effectiveness.

The craziness of all this is that a vaccine with 69% effectiveness is still damn good, and the advantage of AZ’s vaccine is that it’s easy to transport and store, so it doesn’t have to match the effectiveness of the fussier ones to be useful.

AZ said it had released interim data and that its later data (which rhymes if you pronounce your Rs the English-English way, like silent Hs) was consistent with it. Sorry: with them. It then released the lata data to the experts.

None of this is about the vaccine’s safety, but Dr. H. Cody Meissner, an infectious-disease expert at Tufts University School of Medicine who serves on a board that advises the US Food and Drug Administration on vaccine approvals, said, “You know the anti-vaccine community is going to use this as fodder to argue that pharmaceutical companies are always deceptive.” 

He said board members would be even more careful than usual to scrutinize AZ’s  data from here on, and “I will make sure I don’t skip a word.”

Which is probably not the response AZ was hoping for.

 

Yeah, but what about the AZ vaccine’s safety? 

A number of countries put the AstraZeneca vaccine on hold for fear that it was linked to a very rare blood clotting problem, cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. AZ’s recent US trial involved 21,000 people and turned up no safety concerns, although when a problem’s extremely rare it could easily not show up in a sample of that size. Or of ten times that size.

But even if the vaccine does, very rarely, cause cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, the risk of not using the vaccine is much greater than the risk of using it. Either all or most (or, hell, I’ve lost count; let’s just say many) countries that put it on hold have by now started to use it again. 

 

Magical Covid solutions that may turn out to be real

I try not to write about Covid solutions that are still in the trial stage, because we may never hear of them again, but every so often I can’t stop myself, so let’s talk about protease inhibitors. They’re antiviral treatments in pill form that can be used in the early stages of an infection to keep the virus from multiplying.

What’s a protease inhibitor? It’s a–

Would you mind if I duck that question? We can all live perfectly full lives (and pretend we understand this) without understanding this fully. So a protease inhibitor is a thing–probably one that inhibits proteases–and it’s already been used to treat other viruses, including HIV and hepatitis C. It’s also been used to treat Covid, but up to now it has to be delivered into the blood stream slowly, so its use has been fairly limited.

As someone or other said, “This is really a potential game changer.”

One of the unexpected side effects of the pandemic has been that experts and politicians are required to use the phrase game changer at least once a week. By now, we’ve changed games so often that we don’t know if we’re playing cards or jump rope, or possibly that game involving horses, mallets, and a the head of a dead goat. But as long as we’re changing games, I should mention that they’re exploring the possibility that the treatment could also be used in people who’ve been exposed to Covid but who haven’t yet developed it.

Folks, this really does sound–ack–game changing. Have you got your goat’s head? The price is only going to go up, so if there’s room in your freezer you might want to buy now.

Because Covid’s protease doesn’t mutate much (at the moment, anyway), this would work against all the current variants.

All this made me so happy that I made myself an extra cup of tea this morning. 

Yes, I live close to the edge.

 

The lockdown report

England’s current lockdown rules are scheduled to ease up on March 29. People will be able to get together outdoors in limited but larger groups. People will be allowed to leave home for non-essential reasons. (Hands up: How many of you remembered that we haven’t been allowed to do that? I just thought there wasn’t much non-essential to do.) 

But non-essential shops and services (barbers, hairdressers, that kind of thing) won’t reopen until April 12, along with bars and cafes that have outdoor seating. (No eating or drinking indoors yet.)

Why is April 12 safer than March 29? The virus is afraid of even numbers. It’s all been worked out by people who know what they’re doing. Unfortunately, they had to run their recommendations past Boris Johnson’s government, which threw all the cards in the air and picked them up in random order. Still, some semblance of sanity may still be in there.

Okay, I’ll admit: That was unfair. The idea is to take this thing in stages and only go to the next, more open, stage if Covid stays below some unspecified level. 

The travel industry had been hoping that foreign travel would get the green light, but it hasn’t–or at least overseas vacations haven’t. Or holidays, as you’d say if you’re British. You can’t “leave England to travel to a destination outside the United Kingdom, or travel to, or be present at, an embarkation point for the purpose of travelling from there to a destination outside the United Kingdom” without a reasonable excuse.

Is that clear enough? It means you can’t leave, travel to, be present at, or consider the possibility of thinking about getting ready to go somewhere else. And if that didn’t cover all the possibilities, it’s because I nodded off after one of the ors.

But in spite of all the repetition, there are exceptions, and they’re hidden in that bit about reasonable excuses, which in spite of being outside the quotation marks is a quotation, but one that went wandering and doesn’t belong in that particular spot. 

If you need to travel for work or study, to vote, or for legal obligations, you’re okay. If you need to be present at a birth. If you’re visiting a dying relative or close friend. If you’re getting married. If you have a medical appointment. If you–well, a few other things. 

The reasonable excuse that’s raising eyebrows is that you can travel to get a second home ready to sell or rent. Or you can travel if you just have to buy or rent one. Or to do a few other things with one. Because if you have the money to buy, sell, rent, or hand Christmas lights on a second home, you’re more important than someone who’s hoping to stay in a youth hostel in Spain for a week or two. And if you’re more important, you’ll have the sense not to import some new Covid variant.

That’s being called the Stanley Johnson clause, after the prime minister’s father, who traveled to his villa in Greece to make it, he said, Covid proof. I don’t think he’s told the rest of us how that’s possible. But no, it wasn’t so he could sit in the sun and drink himself senseless. 

Sorry–I suckered myself into a stereotype there. I have no knowledge of what Johnson Sr’s drinking or sunbathing habits are. 

What’s a villa? “1. A country estate. 2. The rural or suburban residence of a wealthy person.” Or in British real estate-speak, “3. A detached or semidetached urban residence with yard and garden space.”

For Stanley Johnson, we can, I think, rule out the real estate-speak definition.

I’m happy to report that protests will be exempt from the rules banning large gatherings, but the organizers will have to work out (or encourage, or some other vaguely related verb) social distancing and mask wearing. That sounds surprisingly reasonable, although it leaves a worrying gap that allows for breaking up spontaneous demonstrations, even if people wear masks and keep their distance. 

Social not-much-distancing: it’s the pandemic update from (mostly) Britain

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Since this is the news from Britain, we’ll start in Florida: The commissioners of Palm Beach County voted that people (with a few reasonable exceptions, such as babies) have to wear masks in public spaces where social distancing isn’t possible. But before they could vote on that, they had to listen to people telling them that they’d be throwing out god’s wonderful breathing system, that they were obeying the devil, and that they were imposing a communist dictatorship and dishonoring the American flag.

I tell you, it makes me proud to be an American.

*

Here in Britain, we’re also at our best. We had a heatwave, and–

I have to interrupt myself here. In Britain, you know it’s hot weather when you wear short sleeves. If you do that for two days in a row, you’re looking at a heatwave.

So we’ve had a heatwave and it hit just after lockdown eased up. 

“Our hibernation is beginning to end,” the prime minister told us jubilantly.  

Whoopy doo.

Irrelevant photo: Fields in Cornwall.

What did he mean, though? It wasn’t all that clear, but that’s okay because ever since his external brain, Dominic Cummings, broke his own rules on lockdown by driving 30 miles to make sure he could still see well enough to drive (no, I didn’t make that up; he did), people have been a little skeptical about the rules anyway. And the more lockdown has eased, the hazier we’ve gotten on what the limits are and how seriously we take them.

So what happened? In the first couple of days, people flocked to parks, beaches, and rivers, jamming in together because what the hell they’d be outside and the virus was on the wane and the lockdown was over, sort of, and we’d all be fine. 

Or maybe they flocked to all of the above because they figured no one else would and they could enjoy the beauty of the British countryside in safety, but once they found a few thousand other people had done the same thing they didn’t want to turn around and go home. Or maybe it was because they’d been cooped up since forever and were understandably losing their minds. 

Or all of the above. It’s easy for people who have elbow room to criticize. But there were problems. One was that public toilets aren’t open yet–or at least a lot of them aren’t–so some people acted like a litter of eight-week-old puppies. Minus the paper on the floor. 

Last Wednesday and Thursday, beaches were packed. Forget keeping two meters from each other, and forget one meter. People were everywhere. Drinking was involved. Fights were involved. Broken glass was involved. A few stabbings were involved. If singing was involved, no one’s mentioned it, but it’s hard to separate singing and drinking in Britain.

When people went home, their trash–which, being responsible citizens, they’d instructed to follow–stayed behind, because who wants to leave the cooling sea breeze? So the beach was a mess when they left. And even at a beach where the toilets were open, people still had that litter of puppies problem. I’m not sure why. It might have had something to do with the drinking, but there’s me, speculating again.

Cleaning crews complained that they were being abused and intimidated for trying to empty overflowing trash cans. 

As I type this, the weather’s turned, so the problem at the beaches might just be a two-day glitch. If it had stayed hot, though? I wouldn’t bet on it.

In Brixton–a mostly black area of London–a street party ended in violence when police moved in to break it up. On the evening news, a resident noted that the police hadn’t moved in that aggressively on overcrowded beaches with mostly white crowds. 

As far as I can tell, he was right.  

Yeah, it all makes me proud to be British as well.

*

Enough about people. They’re a difficult species. Let’s talk about science.

A small and still tentative survey of Covid-19 antibody tests in use around the world shows that their accuracy seems to depend on when they’re done. In the first week after people develop symptoms, they spot only 30% of infected people. Between eight and fourteen weeks, they spot 70%. After that, they catch 90%. 

I’m not sure why I think you need to know that, but you just might.

Long term, the tests will give some indication of whether having had the disease means a person is immune.

*

Last month, the British government bought 10 million antibody tests. They were going to play an “increasingly important role,” someone or other said. I’ve lost track of what they were going to play an important role in has been lost, but that’s okay because most of us don’t take the bloviating seriously.

Oh, wait. They’d play an important role in understanding the spread of the disease. 

I’m not questioning that whatever data they gather will help scientists understand the beast we’re facing. What I doubt is that science had any impact on the government’s actions. Forgive me, but pretty much everything’s politics, perception, and possibly a cousin in the business.

So the government sent the tests out and asked–or told; I’m not sure how much weight their words carry–medical organizations and care centers to have staff use them. But in a letter to the BMJ (which I think used to be the British Medical Journal but is now just the BMJ–it could stand for Beautiful Mango Jam for all I know)–

Sorry. Should we start that over? Fourteen senior academics published a letter in the Beautiful Mango Jam to say that the tests are burdening the National Health Service while proving fuck-all.

They didn’t say “fuck-all.” These are senior academics. They only talk that way in private, when they think their mics are off.

They did say that since we don’t know whether having antibodies isn’t the same as having immunity, you can’t change your behavior based on the test results. So the test offers no benefits to either the staff or the organizations they work for. It does, however, give the government a chance to brag about how many tests they’ve sent out. 

*

Sweden’s handled the virus differently than most European countries. It didn’t go into lockdown. It took a few steps–discouraging gatherings of more than 50 people, for example–but basically it advised people to keep some distance from each other and trusted them to have good sense.

I don’t know about you, but I’m losing whatever faith I once had in humanity’s good sense.

Any chance that had of working was undercut by the government’s early advice, which implied that people who didn’t show any symptoms weren’t contagious. If someone in the family’s sick, they said, a kid showing no symptoms can still go to school. No problem.

The country also had the usual lack of protective equipment, and government  guidelines for what to use and how to use it kept changing, depending on what protective equipment was available.

The rate of testing has been low and contact tracing has been pretty nearly abandoned. 

According to Anders Bjorkman, a professor of infectious diseases at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, “They did not want to put it bluntly, but seeking herd immunity was always inherent in the Swedish strategy.” In other words, let the disease spread, let some people die, and wait for herd immunity to build in the population that’s left. 

By most estimates, it takes 50% to 60% of the population becoming immune for the herd to be protected. It also takes a disease that people become immune to, and it hasn’t been solidly established that Covid-19 is cooperative enough to fall into that category.

Sweden now has the highest number of Covid cases in Scandinavia (the other Scandinavian countries went into lockdown), and the highest number of deaths. For one week at the end of May and the beginning of June, its mortality rate was 5.29 deaths per million inhabitants per day–the highest in Europe. The UK limped in a sorry second with 4.48. 

Our prime minister just hates it when someone comes in ahead of us. He likes world-beating systems. 

So how’s Sweden doing with herd immunity? In Stockholm, 7.3% of the residents had developed covid-19 antibodies by late April. In the rest of the country, the numbers were lower.

*

A day or two after the street party in Brixton was broken up, Liverpool won the Premier League game. I think that’s football, but my sports allergy kept me from watching the actual game. Or knowing anything about it. What matters is that it made people in Liverpool happy. 

So happy that they gathered in a huge honkin’ crowd to celebrate, to throw bottles at the police, and to throw fireworks at the Liver Building, setting a balcony on fire. 

They know how to have a party in Liverpool. 

[Late addition: The next paragraphs were based on the assumptions that (a) because the Liver Building is in Liverpool, it would be pronounced like the city and (b) because the Liver Building is spelled like liver it would be pronounced like liver. Silly me. It’s pronounced Lye-ver.

[Well of course it is. It’s a place name. This is England. Take nothing for granted. My thanks to April Munday for catching that. I’ve left it all in because why should I pretend I know what I’m doing here?]

Why does Liverpool have a building named after the organ that cleans the blood? I can only answer that by asking why Liverpool’s named Liverpool.

According to WikiWhatsia (I can’t be bothered going any deeper), Liverpool’s “name comes from the Old English liver, meaning thick or muddy, and pol, meaning a pool or creek, and is first recorded around 1190 as Liuerpul.”

I don’t want to piss off anyone from Liverpool. I’m sure your city’s got a lot going for it. All I’m saying is that if you’d run the name past a focus group before making any impulsive decisions, you might’ve come up with something entirely forgettable.

But we were talking about the building, which isn’t called the just Liver Building, thanks, it’s the Royal Liver Building, so it was named after a monarch’s liver, not yours or mine. I’m not sure if that makes me feel better or worse about it. I don’t like to think much about my liver, but then I don’t like to think much about anyone else’s either. 

It was built between 1907 and 1911 as offices for the Royal Liver Group and still houses the head office of the Royal Liver Assurance. 

And it gets worse. Each tower is topped by mythical Liver Birds.

I might just jog up north and throw some fireworks myself.