Greetings from an undisclosed location in my apartment. Welcome to COVID Transmissions. It has been 569 days since the first documented human case of COVID-19. Look, we can do this! We need to keep vaccinating, though, and get the population really protected, but we CAN do this. The data show it to be true.
It seems to me that, in addition to preventing death and hospitalization, we need to figure out how to prevent and manage conditions to like PASC and MIS-C, and soon. It would be nice to know, among other things, whether we're seeing these conditions with the same frequency following vaccine breakthrough infections. The Pfizer EUA review memorandum specifically states, "Additional evaluations will be needed to assess the effect of the vaccine in preventing long-term effects of COVID-19, including data from clinical trials and from the vaccine’s use postauthorization," but I haven't seen anything yet.
Another issue is testing. Potentially we could have treatments that prevent a mild infection from developing into more severe disease -- this is what the antivirals currently being trialed by Merck and Pfizer are hoped to do, I believe. So we need to be able to detect infections ASAP. But we're still stuck with mostly just PCR tests that take days or antigen tests that aren't that accurate, at least on an individual level. What is being done, or can be done, to make more, better, and faster testing widely available?
It seems to me that, in addition to preventing death and hospitalization, we need to figure out how to prevent and manage conditions to like PASC and MIS-C, and soon. It would be nice to know, among other things, whether we're seeing these conditions with the same frequency following vaccine breakthrough infections. The Pfizer EUA review memorandum specifically states, "Additional evaluations will be needed to assess the effect of the vaccine in preventing long-term effects of COVID-19, including data from clinical trials and from the vaccine’s use postauthorization," but I haven't seen anything yet.
Another issue is testing. Potentially we could have treatments that prevent a mild infection from developing into more severe disease -- this is what the antivirals currently being trialed by Merck and Pfizer are hoped to do, I believe. So we need to be able to detect infections ASAP. But we're still stuck with mostly just PCR tests that take days or antigen tests that aren't that accurate, at least on an individual level. What is being done, or can be done, to make more, better, and faster testing widely available?