Resetting public health, Unsustainable vaccine-only strategies, Masks in healthcare and more

Did you know that Covid is still bad for you (but you can buy me a Ko-Fi!)?

Aug 28, 2023

person in brown long sleeve shirt with white bandage on right hand — Photo by Steven Cornfield on Unsplash

Welcome to the latest issue of the Covid-Is-Not-Over newsletter! I hope you can all find some great resources for understanding the situation we find ourselves in and for spreading the word in your networks.

If there’s any message I’d like people to get from this very lightly-themed issue, it’s basically two things.

First, our public health institutions have failed us. Masks need to be restored to healthcare settings. Just relying just on vaccines to deliver us to “Covid is over” was always misguided and doomed to failure.

Second, the “maximum infection” strategy has horrendous and terrifying implications for our overall health: blood clots, blood pressure, immune system problems and just massive excess death.

The good news is that people seem to be talking about masks again. Some movement and interest among actresses like Jamie Lee Curtis, Hollywood studios, hospitals, cities and higher education all seem to indicate maybe there’s maybe an appetite for tightening and re-instituting some mandates in some contexts.

If you’re feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders these days, as usual I have a little bit of musical light at the end of the tunnel at the end of the post.

As most have probably noticed, there is no paid subscription option for this newsletter. As I’ve said before, I have no intention of going down that route. However, Substack does have an option where subscribers can pledge to subscribe “just in case” and a few kind subscribers have made that pledge. I’m humbled by this show of support and I very much appreciated the vote of confidence in what I’m doing here.

Given that there does seem to be some desire to show a bit of monetary support, what I’ve decided to do on a trial basis is to set up a “tip jar” on the Ko-fi platform. This will allow people to leave me a small gratuity. The tips start at $3.

I’m not anticipating a huge surge of income from using Ko-fi. I plan to spend what I do raise on popular science books for this ongoing project and to support artists on Bandcamp.

Drop a little something in the tip jar!

Public health reset urgently required by Geoffrey P. Johnston / The Kingston Whig-Standard

A hard public health reset is urgently required in Canada to protect the vulnerable and prevent the healthcare system from being overwhelmed by long COVID patients. Policymakers should immediately implement a pandemic action plan to save lives in the coming weeks and months.
First, updated COVID-19 booster shots should be made available as soon as possible to provide a measure of protection for the tens of millions of people whose vaccine immunity is waning.
Second, the federal government should send NK95 and N95 respirators to every Canadian household and distribute them in grocery stores, pharmacies and all federal buildings.
Third, public health officials should require that masks be worn in places where vulnerable people are present: grocery stores, pharmacies, schools, and public transit.
Fourth, provincial governments should immediately upgrade ventilation and air filtration in all public schools.
Fifth, the federal government should prioritize the funding of medical research and clinical trials for therapeutics to treat people suffering from long COVID.
Sixth, given that antigen rapid tests are notoriously inaccurate, provincial governments should immediately re-open testing clinics, offering the more accurate PCR tests. And community and provincial case counts should be reported on a weekly basis so that people can make informed choices.
Seventh, government should mandate ten paid sick days, so that sick workers do not spread the virus to co-workers and members of the general public.

COVID response confounds SARS expert by Geoffrey P. Johnston / The Kingston Whig-Standard

“I find it very distressing that we, as a society, aren’t willing to talk openly about COVID,” Dr. Dick Zoutman declared.
“The media are almost completely silent, and it’s really perplexing,” Zoutman said of the disappearance of COVID-19 from the headlines in the fourth year of the pandemic. “We are missing a huge opportunity to protect our loved ones, our children, our elderly, our vulnerable … by taking simple interventions.”

Is the Vaccine-Only Strategy Sustainable / John Snow Project

The long-term care and correctional facilities studies suggest a multi-layered approach to public health is essential and that a vaccine-only strategy is unsustainable long-term. There is growing evidence that government agencies recognize the necessity of a more comprehensive strategy, with a movement towards recommending multi-layered protections as the only way to avoid the risk of Long COVID.
We would like to see governments communicate the risks to the general public more effectively and inform people how they can take steps to protect themselves while living their daily lives. At the very least, people should be properly informed, so they are not unwittingly exposing themselves to potentially life-altering risks.

COVID-19 tied to dangerous blood clots in cancer patients by Jim Wappes / CIDRAP

The risk of developing venous thromboembolisms—potentially serious blood clots in the veins—is elevated among cancer patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and taking anticancer drugs, according to a study yesterday in JAMA Oncology.

Severe COVID-19 may lead to long-term innate immune system changes / National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Severe COVID-19 may cause long-lasting alterations to the innate immune system, the first line of defense against pathogens, according to a small study funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. These changes may help explain why the disease can damage so many different organs and why some people with long COVID have high levels of inflammation throughout the body. The findings were published online today in the journal Cell.

Omicron infection may leave seniors more susceptible to future COVID infections, say McMaster researchers / Brighter World

Researchers at McMaster University have found that rather than conferring immunity against future infections, infection during the first Omicron wave of COVID left the seniors they studied much more vulnerable to reinfection during the second Omicron wave.
The surprising finding from a study of 750 vaccinated seniors in Ontario retirement homes and long-term care settings suggests we don’t understand how some Omicron variants can evade the immune system, according to Dawn Bowdish, an immunologist who holds the Canada Research Chair in Aging & Immunity.

COVID Omicron carries 4 times the risk of death as flu, new data show by Mary Van Beusekom / CIDRAP

The risk of death from SARS-CoV-2 Omicron infection was four times higher than that from influenza in late 2022 and early 2023 in France, a Harvard Medical School researcher reports today in Epidemiology & Infection.

Study: China saw almost 2 million excess deaths just after zero-COVID policy ended by Stephanie Soucheray / CIDRAP

In JAMA Network Open, authors describe how the all-cause mortality rate in China increased after the nation lifted its "zero COVID" policy, resulting in an estimated 1.87 million excess deaths during the first 2 months following the end of the policy

COVID-19 May Trigger New-Onset High Blood Pressure, Study Finds by Madeleine Haase / Prevention

The analysis found that 21% of people hospitalized with COVID-19 developed high blood pressure, compared to 11% of those who were not hospitalized for COVID-19, per the news release. Meanwhile, 16% of people hospitalized with influenza developed high blood pressure, and only 4% of those with influenza but not hospitalized developed high blood pressure.
Researchers also found that people hospitalized due to COVID-19 were more than twice as likely to develop persistent hypertension, and those not hospitalized were 1.5 times more likely, compared to both groups of those with influenza (hospitalized and not hospitalized.)
Finally, the study found that those with the highest risk of developing high blood pressure were those with SARS-CoV-2 infections who were over 40 years old, Black adults, or those with preexisting conditions (such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary artery disease, or chronic kidney disease). Persistent high blood pressure was also more common among people infected with SARS-CoV-2 who were treated with low blood pressure medications and anti-inflammatory medications, both of which are known to raise blood pressure, during the pandemic.

I’ll end with a couple of articles that comprise a kind of case study on the fallout from the widespread abdication of masking in healthcare settings. Glenda Senack’s story is important and must be heard. What a shit show. The hospital administration should be ashamed.

Lung cancer patient says hospital COVID protection 'all wrong' after testing positive by Nicole Williams / CBC News

Masking and physical distancing policies at The Ottawa Hospital are "all wrong," says a pneumonia and lung cancer patient who tested positive for COVID-19 while receiving care at the hospital.
Glenda Senack, 65, went to The Ottawa Hospital (TOH)'s general campus Aug. 8 after developing a cough that made it difficult for her to breathe.
She was diagnosed with Stage 3 lung cancer last fall and doctors believed she had developed an aggressive form of pneumonia from radiation treatment.
Because she's immunocompromised, Senack was initially kept in a semi-private room with just one other patient.
She said that abruptly changed two days later when hospital staff moved her into a room shared with three other people — with no explanation.
Senack said she was within arm's reach of the patient beside her. Visitors would come into the room unmasked.
"That was all wrong," she said.
Just days later, Senack and another patient tested positive for COVID-19.

'Worst nightmare': Family calls for stricter mask policies after vulnerable Ottawa woman contracts COVID in hospital by Elizabeth Payne / Ottawa Citizen

Eight days later, the 65 year old tested positive for COVID-19. She had recently been moved to a room with three other patients, some of whom had unmasked visitors and one of whom tested positive for COVID-19 a day earlier.
It’s a situation her son, Charlie Senack, calls his worst nightmare. He is seeking answers about why there weren’t better precautions in place at the hospital to prevent Glenda from becoming infected, especially since she is immune-compromised as a result of cancer treatments. He and his family are calling for a return to stricter, and clearer, mask mandates in hospitals and across Ontario to help protect vulnerable people like his mother as another wave of COVID-19 begins to build. Senack has written to officials from the hospital and the province.

Here’s some additional recent articles on Covid and masking in healthcare.

As usual, for those that stick around to the end of the post, there’s a little musical reward. Robbie Robertson died recently, so here’s his band, The Band, with one of their best and most well-known songs, The Weight.

Barb H

I would like to see: Make all hospitals, long-term care and other health facilities require masking with proper respirators. Not baggy ones. And worn properly.

Once a few facilities lifted the need, most others in Canada immediately did the same. We shouldn’t have to risk getting Covid (or any additional disease) because we need to be in a healthcare facility.

It seems unbelievable this needs to be said, but here we are.

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Canada Healthwatch

Aug 29, 2023

There's lots of pressure on Health Canada and NACI right now to speed up approvals for future vaccines and there have been some policy tweaks that will make the time-gap between invention of updated vaccines and rollout shorter -- but this year's rollout will still be woefully slow. Pfizer and Moderna both submitted for HC approval for the XBB shots back in June. We won't have them until October. Imagine if we'd actually taken the low-season to focus on getting the public boosted with a (relatively) up-to-date vaccine. Would be a different picture going into Autumn. Instead we get this.

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