COVID Transmissions for 7-24-2020

Jul 24, 2020

Greetings from an undisclosed location in my apartment.

It has been 250 days since the first documented human case of COVID-19. Big round number, that.

Housekeeping note:

Just headlines today, enjoy the weekend.

I am working on some partnerships to improve the distribution, quality, and profile of the newsletter. I am open to suggestions on ideas for partners, so feel free to get in touch.

As has become usual, glossary terms are bolded words with links to the running newsletter glossary.

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Now, let’s talk COVID.

COVID in Brazil:

The outbreak in Brazil is very bad, especially in Sao Paulo, one of the most densely populated places in the world. Science magazine has an epidemiological study on the Brazil outbreak, which shows how disease control measures can actually get things back to a modicum of containment even after there’s a wild outbreak. Check the paper out here, it’s pretty approachable: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/07/22/science.abd2161

Surface transmission:

I still get a lot of questions about how risky surfaces are for the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. I feel like surfaces are really not the threat that they were initially portrayed to be; don’t get me wrong, they can still harbor the virus, but they’re not the main driver of transmission. A while back, the NYTimes walked through some of the evolving thinking on surface transmission, and I think it’s still a good read: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/28/well/live/whats-the-risk-of-catching-coronavirus-from-a-surface.html

I may do a future in-depth about surface transmission if there is interest. Leave a comment!

Reinfection:

I’m going to talk about reinfection more. However, I want to highlight the degree to which Apoorva Mandavilli of the NY Times is killing it with her articles lately, and share this piece about the potential of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/health/covid-antibodies-herd-immunity.html

What am I doing to cope with the pandemic? This:

Watching

Too many cooking shows.

Cooking

If you like cooking but dislike actual use of heat, here’s how that garlic scape pesto I shared a while back turned out:

So the penne (whole wheat, cooked until just al dente) and the mozzarella (smoked kosher mozzarella from…somewhere…) are an addition, but more or less I followed the NYTimes Cooking recipe: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015301-garlic-scape-pesto

The garlic scapes I had on hand were super sharp, so I changed the ratio for garlic scapes:basil a bit just to make sure it wouldn’t be a punch in the face, but this was essentially the same.

Join the conversation, and what you say will impact what I talk about in the next issue.

Also, I welcome any feedback on structure and content. I want this to be as useful as possible, and I can only make that happen with constructive comments.

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