Covid-19 Updates & Info

[Suliso]

It's been a long time since I've been to a restaurant (not counting take away) in Switzerland. Late September, I think. Terraces are now open again and indoors might be in few weeks. I probably wait till I'm actually vaccinated, though.

[JazzNU]

Brad Gilbert was raging about the galleries at the golf event yesterday. they were unmasked and there was no distancing.

It was about as rowdy as it's ever been at a golf tournament.

A bit more unnerving than plenty of other sporting events held thus far to me, because they were more on top of each other than many other events. And given this was in South Carolina with plenty of fans from there and nearby states, it's hard to get your mind to a place where you think the majority of the people even had one dose, let alone fully vaccinated.

[Suliso]

Golf is outside, NBA playoff games with a full house are likely to be more dangerous.

[JazzNU]

Golf is outside, NBA playoff games with a full house are likely to be more dangerous.

I doubt it. If you go by just outdoor vs. indoor, then sure. But the details of most NBA teams' rules and ticketing approach make their setup far from dangerous. PGA has next to nothing in place and so outdoors is great, but those people were on top of each other. And regardless of what perception is when you watch an NBA playoff game on TV, there haven't been any full houses as of yet, a few teams will be moving towards that in another week or two.


Here is a video of one of Phil's final shots if you missed why people were alarmed - https://twitter.com/SportsCenter/status ... 6928083968

[ti-amie]

That is a truly frightening video.

[Suliso]

That doesn't look good... Outdoors vs indoors can trump a lot, but on the other hand if you're literally screaming in each others face maybe not.

As for NBA I'm reading Dallas will have 12,000 people attending when the series go back to Texas in later this week.

[Deuce]

I have tickets to a baseball game and they stopped requiring a negative COVID test last week (we are vaccinated, otherwise I would consider not going, a test was required when the tickets were purchased). It is at 20% capacity only, though.

^ You need to test negative to purchase tickets... I don't know how that works if purchasing the tickets online - but even so, is there anything stopping you from purchasing the tickets with a negative test, then giving the tickets to someone else?
Or from contracting the virus a week after you purchased the tickets, but still before the date of the game?

By the way, I went to an eye exam last week and the optometrist asked if I wanted to take off my mask after asking if I was vaccinated. I wasn't expecting the question, so after a moment's hesitation, I told him he could if he wanted, but I'd keep mine on despite being fully vaccinated. So he said he'd keep his on as well.

Now, should I be more okay with people now that I'm fully vaccinated? Yes, I know this, but it's a process to get over the last year and my comfortability with basically strangers is going to be real gradual getting comfortable with them again.

And I can tell you I was THRILLED with my decision to keep my mask on, because when he was examining my eyes with one of the manual instruments and his face was a centimeter away from my face? I may have actually had a legitimate freak out had we not had our masks on. Like I wasn't thinking that far ahead in the least, but I should have. So, just if you're going into a setting with strangers or casual acquaintances and you're thinking of ditching the mask since you're vaccinated, I highly suggest thinking through the entire visit.

^ I agree...
But if the optometrist/dentist/doctor/hairdresser, etc. simply take people's word as to whether they are vaccinated or not - and the client also simply takes the word of the optometrist/dentist/doctor/hair dresser, etc., then it's all basically a crapshoot. Unless the two people know each other fairly well, and trust each other, if they merely say that they're vaccinated, it's essentially meaningless.

As one late nighte talk show host said last week in answer to the question "How can you tell which people are fully vaccinated, and which people are not?" - "Easy - the fully vaccinated people are the ones who are still wearing their masks!"

Golf is outside, NBA playoff games with a full house are likely to be more dangerous.

^ I would say that people being very close together outside - so that there is very little space between people for the air to scatter or dilute the virus particles - is just as dangerous as people sitting side by side at an indoor NBA game.

I haven't watched any basketball games, but I have watched hockey games in the past week in the U.S. where the seats are filled as they normally were before the pandemic - no masks, no physical distancing. They may only allow the arena to be 20% full - but if everyone is together, as I've seen, that defeats the entire purpose of allowing only 20% of capacity. The whole point of restricting capacity to a certain percentage is so that people from different households can have some space between them all!!

Here in Canada, hockey games are still completely without fans. Montreal is talking about possibly allowing 2500 fans next week (capacity is 22,000). I hope they don't do it.

[JazzNU]

There is space between ticketing groups at most NBA and NHL games. That will be the case for some places in general, for other places for another week or two before capacities percentages are raised or lifted entirely. Sometimes it is hard to tell on TV, people are not as close as they seem. For the most part right now, if you see a section where people look like they are very, very close together, that's going to be the one of the vaccinated seating sections of the arena, which is typically allowed to have full or near full capacity. Proof of vaccination along with ID required upon entry. And I have friends and friends of friends who have been, they do check and turn you away if you don't have it. My brother-in-law's friend had a photo of the front but not the back of the vaccine card and that wasn't enough.

Tickets are operating differently in large part. Mostly contactless. Mobile wallets and apps used for additional verification and screenings. You don't need to test negative to purchase tickets, you need to test negative to attend. Testing and screenings are done in close proximity to the game, not the time of purchase. And resell is not as traditional as before, many times you must resell your entire pod of tickets to another same sized group in the designated marketplace.

[Deuce]

Sounds like what is commonly referred to as being a 'logistical nightmare'. It's very likely that several 'infiltrators' (people who are either not fully vaccinated and/or who have not tested negative) have gotten around or through the screening, and will continue to. Anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers revel in trying to circumvent rules like this - and you can be sure that some of them are succeeding.

[mmmm8]

I have tickets to a baseball game and they stopped requiring a negative COVID test last week (we are vaccinated, otherwise I would consider not going, a test was required when the tickets were purchased). It is at 20% capacity only, though.

^ You need to test negative to purchase tickets... I don't know how that works if purchasing the tickets online - but even so, is there anything stopping you from purchasing the tickets with a negative test, then giving the tickets to someone else?
Or from contracting the virus a week after you purchased the tickets, but still before the date of the game?

I was confused then just realized you misunderstood my post. At the time I purchased the tickets, a negative test was required to ATTEND Yankees games. But now, they are not requiring tests anymore, so it won't be required at the time of the actual game I bought tickets to. The game is in early June.

No test was required to purchase, that wouldn't make sense.

[Drop-shot]

Fauci is also expressing doubt about the natural origin of this virus:
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/24/poli ... index.html

And yet another reason to doubt the "natural" theory is the accelerated mutation rate. The flu virus has been mentioned abundantly as one that mutates annually but you can cover that with the booster shots. How many mutations has COVID had in a year? Seems much more than normal, even to the extent that some of the vaccines are not effective against some strains (Astrazeneca - South Africa strain)

Again, they're all perfectly valid questions and observations that need answering. If this were a horse race, Lab-Virus is catching up to Natural Theory though the latter maintains a healthy lead... for now

[dryrunguy]

Here's the latest Situation Report. Haven't read it yet.

::

EPI UPDATE The WHO COVID-19 Dashboard reports 167 million cumulative cases and 3.5 million deaths worldwide as of 4:45am EDT on May 25. Global weekly incidence and mortality continue to decline, both for the third consecutive week. The weekly incidence decreased 14% from the previous week, and weekly mortality decreased by 2%.

Global Vaccination
The WHO reported 1.49 billion doses of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines administered globally as of May 24, and 700 million individuals have received at least 1 dose. Our World in Data reported 1.70 billion cumulative doses administered globally. The global cumulative total continues to increase at approximately 13% per week. Daily doses administered continue to increase, up to a new record of 28.4 million doses per day on May 22 before falling slightly to 28.1 million. The global increase is largely driven by Asia, which, in turn, is largely driven by China. Our World in Data estimates there are 395 million people worldwide who are fully vaccinated, corresponding to approximately 5.1% of the global population, although reporting is less complete than for other data.

UNITED STATES
The US CDC reported 32.9 million cumulative cases and 587,342 deaths. Daily incidence continues to decline, to the lowest levels since early in the pandemic. The current average daily incidence—22,877 new cases per day—is the lowest since June 14, 2020. The lowest daily incidence between the United States’ first and second surge was 20,733 on June 1, 2020, and the US could fall below that average in the coming days, if it continues on this trajectory. After falling below 500 deaths per day on May 20, daily mortality increased slightly, up to 508 on May 22 before falling back to 500.

US Vaccination
The US has distributed 357 million doses of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and administered 287 million. After more than a month of decline, the daily doses administered* has increased for 5 consecutive days, back up to 1.7 million doses per day. The increase over the past several days is due to an increase in the number of first doses administered—up from 554,890 individuals per day on May 12 to 882,463 on May 19, an increase of nearly 60% over that period. Approximately 953,000 people are achieving fully vaccinated status per day, down from a high of 1.8 million per day on April 12. If this level of interest is sustained from the first to the second dose, we could expect to see an increase in the number of fully vaccinated individuals each day starting in the next 2-3 weeks, once second doses are administered.

A total of 164 million individuals in the US have received at least 1 dose of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, equivalent to 49% of the entire US population. Among adults, 62% have received at least 1 dose, and 5.2 million adolescents aged 12-17 years have received at least 1 dose. A total of 131 million people are fully vaccinated, which corresponds to 39% of the total population. Among adults, 50% are fully vaccinated, and 2.0 million adolescents aged 12-17 years are fully vaccinated. Progress has largely stalled among adults aged 65 years and older: 85% with at least 1 dose and 74% fully vaccinated. In terms of full vaccination, 67 million individuals have received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, 53 million have received the Moderna vaccine, and 10.2 million have received the J&J-Janssen vaccine.
*The US CDC does not provide a 7-day average for the most recent 5 days due to anticipated reporting delays for vaccine administration. This estimate is the most current value provided.

Following updated guidance from the US CDC regarding recommendations for fully vaccinated individuals, US states are moving forward with efforts to relax or remove COVID-19 restrictions. However, US states vary widely in terms of vaccination coverage, and increased social interaction among unvaccinated individuals could increase risk of community transmission. The full vaccination coverage in states at the top of the rankings is nearly double the coverage in states at the bottom, ranging from 26.5% to 52.7%. There are 4 states currently reporting full coverage greater than 50%—Vermont (52.7%), Connecticut (51.6%), Maine (51.9%), and Massachusetts (50.5%)—and Rhode Island is nearly there with 49.9%. At the other end of the spectrum, there are 6 states reporting 31% or lower, including 2 with less than 30%—Mississippi (26.5%) and Alabama (28.7%). The median full vaccination coverage is 39%, and most states fall between approximately 34-44%.

There are some notable regional disparities as well. The top 6 states in terms of full vaccination coverage are all in the Northeast region. Conversely, the South represents the bottom 6 states and 9 of the bottom 12. Maryland (#9) is the highest-ranking state from the South, although it is among the northernmost states in the region, bordering the Northeast region. New Hampshire is the lowest-ranking state from the Northeast region, although at #22, it is still among the top half of all states. It is also #4 in terms of partial vaccination coverage. The states from the West and Midwest regions are largely scattered throughout the middle of the rankings. While the West represents 3 of the bottom 10 states—Idaho (#42), Utah (#43), and Wyoming (#44)—it also accounts for 2 of the top 10—Hawai’i (#7) and New Mexico (#8).

G20 BACKS VACCINE VOLUNTARY LICENSING On May 21, G20 leaders adopted a declaration pledging to bridge gaps in responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and to support voluntary licensing and technology transfers in order to boost vaccine production. Some view the Rome Declaration, adopted at the conclusion of a special summit on the COVID-19 pandemic hosted by Italy and the European Union's Executive Commission, as a snub to recent international discussions about waiving intellectual property rights for certain COVID-19 vaccines. Instead, G20 leaders reaffirmed their support for patent pooling through the WHO’s ACT-Accelerator, allowing pharmaceutical companies more flexibility in deciding what information to share. While the leaders supported technology pooling, they did not commit to additional financial resources for the scheme, which remains $19 billion short of its goal. Additionally, there are no commitments in the declaration to share vaccine stockpiles with low- and middle-income countries, although it does mention the COVAX facility as a means to do so. The Rome Declaration also lists 16 guiding principles for responding to the current pandemic and preparing for the next.

WORLD HEALTH ASSEMBLY The 74th World Health Assembly opened on May 24 with a focus on ending the COVID-19 pandemic and preparing for the next one. The meeting of the WHO’s decision-making body, this year held virtually, will run through June 1. In his opening remarks, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus paid tribute to the more than 100,000 healthcare workers who lost their lives fighting the COVID-19 pandemic on the front lines and called on member states to urgently invest in their health and care workers. Dr. Tedros also warned that no country is “out of the woods” in the pandemic, despite their vaccination rates, saying the pandemic will not end until transmission is controlled in every nation. He urged wealthier countries to help reach a goal of vaccinating at least 10% of the population of every country by September, and a “drive to December” to reach at least 30% by the end of the year.

In a video message, UN Secretary-General António Guterres laid out a 3-part plan to end the pandemic, calling on nations to more equitably distribute vaccines, diagnostics, and treatments; boost domestic primary health care and universal health coverage; and commit to transforming existing pandemic warning systems, with the WHO at the center of any global preparedness strategy. Member states are expected to receive 3 pandemic-related reports during the meeting, including one from the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, an independent review of the WHO's Health Emergencies Programme, and a review of how the International Health Regulations have performed during the pandemic.

NOVAVAX VACCINE PHASE 3 TRIAL RESULTS Last week, US pharmaceutical company Novavax posted complete results from a Phase 3 clinical trial testing its 2-dose recombinant protein SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate to the preprint server medRxiv, after releasing initial results in March. According to the results of the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study conducted in the United Kingdom, the vaccine, NVX-CoV2373, was 89.7% (95% CI, 80.2-94.6) effective in preventing COVID-19, with no hospitalizations or deaths reported, with post hoc analysis showing efficacies of 96.4% (73.8-99.5) and 86.3% (71.3-93.5) against the original strain and B.1.1.7 variant, respectively. According to some reports, Novavax is expected to apply for emergency authorization in the US in the coming weeks. Notably, the company has never brought a product to market. If it receives authorization, the company has pledged to provide 100 million doses to the US later this year and has promised 1.1 billion doses to COVAX for distribution in low- and middle-income countries. Indian vaccine maker Serum Institute is contracted to make most of the 1.1 billion doses, but backlogs there have Novavax seeking other options. Novavax recently reaffirmed its relationship with the South Korea Ministry of Health and Welfare and SK Bioscience Co. Ltd. to manufacture NVX-CoV2373 and explore expansion of the partnership, having previously entered into a licensing agreement with SK Bioscience to produce 40 million doses of its vaccine candidate.

Additionally, Novavax announced its participation in a mix-and-match clinical trial testing the potential of 7 SARS-CoV-2 vaccines as booster doses for vaccines from different manufacturers among people who are already fully vaccinated. The company also noted the UK National Health Service, Vaccines Task Force, and National Institute for Health Research are working to ensure participants in the Phase 3 clinical trial who received NVX-CoV2373 are entered into the NHS App, which helps vaccinees prove their vaccination status when traveling.

MODERNA VACCINE ADOLESCENT CLINICAL TRIAL Moderna announced this week that their SARS-CoV-2 vaccine trial in adolescents, TeenCOVE, has reached its primary endpoint. More than 3,700 adolescents aged 12 to less than 18 years old were enrolled in the trial. No cases of COVID-19 were recorded in vaccine recipients following two doses of the Moderna vaccine. With these results indicating an efficacy of 100% 14 days after both doses, Moderna also found approximately 93% efficacy following one dose of the vaccine. The company plans to send the trial data to regulators in early June. Moderna would be the second SARS-CoV-2 vaccine to be authorized for use in adolescents in the US, following Pfizer-BioNTech’s authorization earlier in May. Both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech are investigating vaccine safety and efficacy in children aged 6 months to 11 years, but those results are not expected for some time due to the need to adjust dosing amounts.

AFRICA COVID-19 MORTALITY People in Africa who become critically ill with COVID-19 are more likely to die than people in other parts of the world, according to a study based on data from 64 hospitals in 10 countries collected between May and December 2020 and published in The Lancet. Among 3,077 critically ill patients admitted to the hospitals—located in Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Libya, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, and South Africa—48.2% died within 30 days, compared with a global average of 31.5%, according to the study. The majority of patients were men (61%), and the overall cohort had an average age of 56 and few underlying conditions. People with pre-existing conditions had the highest risk of poor outcomes. Having chronic kidney disease or HIV/AIDS nearly doubled the risk of death, chronic liver disease more than tripled the risk of death, and diabetes also was associated with poor survival.

Notably, being male was not associated with increased mortality, an unexpected result, according to the African COVID-19 Critical Care Outcomes Study researchers. They noted this could be due to women having less access to care or biases in care when critically ill. Overall, the researchers posited scarce critical care resources and under-resourced facilities could have played a role in the deaths, as well as an apparent failure to use available resources and medical interventions. The researchers highlighted limitations to their study, including that the observations occurred primarily at university-affiliated, government-funded, and tertiary hospitals, so outcomes could be worse in lower-level, less-resourced hospitals across the continent. Another analysis published in The Lancet found that Africa’s second COVID-19 wave was more severe than the first. Taken together, these studies underscore the importance of improved epidemiological surveillance on the continent.

RESPIRATORY STATUS & MORTALITY RISK Researchers from the University of Washington and Rush University Medical Center (Illinois; US) found that respiratory symptoms may not be an accurate predictor of COVID-19 mortality risk. The presence of respiratory symptoms—such as coughing, wheezing, or difficulty breathing—may not necessarily correlate with respiratory compromise. Clinical measurements such as blood oxygen saturation and respiratory rate can provide a more objective assessment of respiratory compromise. The researchers evaluated data from more than 1,000 hospitalized COVID-19 patients and assessed COVID-19 mortality risk associated with both respiratory symptoms as well as oxygen saturation and respiratory rate.

The researchers found that blood oxygen saturation of 91% or lower was significantly associated with increased risk of COVID-19 mortality (compared to 92% or higher), ranging from 1.8 times the risk for 89-91% to 4.0 for less than 80%. Increased respiratory rate was also significantly associated with increased mortality. The risk of death was 1.9 times higher among individuals with respiratory rates of 23-24 breaths per minute (compared to 20 or fewer). Individuals with more than 32 breaths per minute were 3.2 times as likely to die. In contrast, the presence of respiratory symptoms or fever were not significantly associated with increased COVID-19 mortality.

LONG-TERM EFFECTS IN CHILDREN Most children with COVID-19 who develop a rare but potentially severe condition known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) experience symptom alleviation within 6 months, according to a small study published May 24 in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health. Researchers followed 46 children initially admitted with COVID-19-related MIS-C—also known as pediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome temporally associated with SARS-CoV-2—to Great Ormond Street Hospital (London; UK) between April 4 and September 1, 2020. Six months after discharge from the hospital, only 1 child still had systemic inflammation, 2 had heart abnormalities, and 6 had gastrointestinal symptoms. Eighteen of the children continued to have diminished exercise tolerance and 15 were experiencing emotional difficulties. The researchers emphasized that longer-term follow-up studies are needed to better characterize the natural history of MIS-C among children with COVID-19.

US COVID-19 EPIDEMIC IN UNVACCINATED INDIVIDUALS A report from The Washington Post breaks down national and state populations into vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals by assuming that all vaccinated individuals are fully immune and removes them from the population. While this is not necessarily the case, we expect this to be a reasonable approximation due to the low risk of breakthrough infection—and even lower risk for severe disease and death. With just the unvaccinated portion of the population remaining, the report estimates the per capita COVID-19 daily incidence, hospitalization, and mortality among unvaccinated individuals.

While the overall daily incidence is declining across the country, the Washington Post analysis says that COVID-19 “is spreading as fast among the unvaccinated as it did during the winter surge.” There are just fewer susceptible individuals due to vaccination. Similar trends are apparent for both hospitalizations and mortality. While nearly half of the US population has received at least 1 dose and nearly 40% are fully vaccinated, unvaccinated individuals remain at risk, and vaccination coverage is not yet sufficient to provide protection to the unvaccinated portion of the population. Vaccination coverage varies widely by state, and states with lower coverage still have substantial populations remaining to facilitate community transmission if effective protective measures are not in place.

CLINICAL TRIAL LANDSCAPE Since the beginning of the pandemic, many studies testing potential COVID-19 therapies have been too small to gather meaningful data or did not include a control arm. Researchers in Europe and the US are working to launch large-scale, randomized clinical trials of multiple drugs to evaluate whether they work to help people with COVID-19 are more likely to survivor or recover more quickly. The WHO is relaunching its multi-arm Solidarity trial to look at repurposed drugs meant to prevent immune system overreaction in COVID-19 patients, and the REMAP-CAP study is ongoing in Europe. In the US, the NIH-sponsored Accelerating COVID-19 Therapies and Vaccines (ACTIV) program is set to begin enrolling patients in ACTIV-6, a master protocol that will evaluate at least 4 different oral medications already approved to treat other diseases among people with mild to moderate COVID-19 who are not hospitalized. These trials are all designed to examine several treatment options simultaneously and efficiently, with built-in flexibilities and pooled control groups. The FDA recently released new guidance for these types of master protocols. One potential obstacle for these larger studies is enrolling sufficient numbers of patients, as some places are experiencing sustained declines in new COVID-19 cases.

SARS-COV-2 ORIGINS Many questions remain regarding the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. An article in the The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) says that 3 illnesses among personnel who worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV; China) in November 2019 are linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. Reportedly, the individuals’ symptoms were consistent with COVID-19; however, COVID-19 shares many common symptoms with other diseases, including seasonal influenza. The illnesses were previously listed in a fact sheet issued by the US Department of State, but the WSJ article indicates that additional details—including the number of cases and the timing of the illnesses—are contained in an “undisclosed U.S. intelligence report.” The WSJ article acknowledges that some government officials familiar with the intelligence report question the “supporting evidence for the assessment,” and to our knowledge, the report’s contents have not been released publicly. In a separate article, WSJ also investigated a potential link between illnesses at a Chinese mine in 2012 and the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in 2019.

As we have covered previously, it will be difficult to definitively determine the original source of SARS-CoV-2, whether from a natural spillover event, laboratory accident, or other events. Continued discussions about the possibility of a laboratory release has fueled calls for further investigations into activities at WIV. A previous investigation led by the WHO determined that the likelihood of the pandemic originating from a laboratory release to be “extremely low,” but in the absence of definitive evidence of another source, it is nearly impossible to rule it out. Rigorous, transparent, and independent investigations are an important step to understanding the origins of the pandemic, but myriad technical, practical, and political barriers remain that could impede these efforts.

OLYMPICS With the 2020 Summer Olympic Games scheduled to begin in July, Japan continues to combat one of its largest COVID-19 surges. Officials from hospitals in Osaka, Japan’s second largest city, are warning that the medical system could be on the verge of collapse. Some experts and health officials worry that the influx of tens of thousands of Olympic participants will further strain the already overburdened health system and potentially introduce new variants of concern into the population. The Japanese government recently opened 2 mass vaccination centers following Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga’s pledge to vaccinate the country’s entire elderly population of 36 million citizens by the end of July. Still, vaccination levels remain extremely low, with only around 2% of the population fully vaccinated.

In response to Japan’s ongoing surge, the US Department of State recently upgraded its travel advisory from a Level 3 (Reconsider Travel) to Level 4 (Do Not Travel). The US CDC also stated that even vaccinated travelers could be at risk of contracting and spreading SARS-CoV-2 due to the circulation of variants of concern. Notably, international spectators will not be permitted to attend the Olympics, but it is unclear if or how the Level 4 travel advisory could impact athletes’ travel from the US or other nations that consider US guidance.

https://covid19.who.int/

[ti-amie]

A very sobering look at the effect of WhatsApp especially in countries where there is distrust of media. Or people simply want to believe (although Mulder has seemingly been proven right).

When misinformation comes for the family WhatsApp
As my grandfather’s health deteriorated in India, my family turned to fake news.

By MEGHNA RAO
Meghna Rao is a writer and editor from Queens.

25 MAY 2021

Last July, my 80-year-old grandfather woke up in the middle of the night, unable to recognize any of the people in his small apartment in central Bangalore — not my aunt, not my uncle, not even my grandmother, his wife of sixty years.

My mother and I were helpless in Queens. Covid-19 cases were on their first ascent in India; we couldn’t risk traveling from New York to be by his side. For solace, we turned to our family WhatsApp group, a jumble of aunts, uncles, and cousins spread across India, the Middle East, and the U.S. — most of whom I have only met once or twice as a child.

Each night, we would go to bed hopeful, but in the morning, the news would be the same. My grandfather still had no recollection of who he was surrounded by, where he was, or why he was there. Finally, on his sixth day in a stupor, my aunt decided to drive him to the hospital. The doctors were as confused as we were. He hadn’t had a stroke or a head injury. It was as if a thief had robbed him of his memory and left without a trace.

Eventually, a doctor suggested a Covid-19 test. When the results came out positive, the doctors concluded that my grandfather was suffering from an extreme version of “brain fog.” My uncle shared the news with my mother, who called me. Yes, it was Covid-19, but we were lucky that he had none of the other symptoms. He could still breathe.

My family WhatsApp group panicked. In the summer of 2020, most members lived in countries where Covid-19 was still something that happened to other people: migrant laborers, health professionals, and domestic workers who couldn’t afford to take time off. These were all sad stories, but they were many degrees away.

My uncle, who works as a dentist in Brunei, proposed a solution on the family chat. An Indian student had purportedly found a remedy to Covid-19 by mixing black pepper powder, honey, and ginger juice. If ingested for five days straight, the tonic would rid any person of the virus.

“PLEASE CIRCULATE,” the message demanded. WhatsApp tagged it as a viral message that had been “forwarded many times.” My uncle received many emojis of brown clapping hands in return.

My grandfather, the traditional head of the household, had seemed invincible. He was born in Mangalore shortly after India’s independence, and had moved from country to country, spending decades learning Arabic and working as a secretary in a hospital in Abu Dhabi. By sixty, he had perfected a New York accent and taken a job as a clerk for a small NGO in Queens. We knew death would come for him some day, but we didn’t think it would be like this –– not from the virus that hopped from person to person like a hitman.

But the forwards grew worse, morphing in tone. My family, mostly Hindu and upper-caste, gravitated towards content that confirmed their beliefs. The virus was spread by meat-eaters, one message said. Upper-caste vegetarian diets would never have led to this.

The messages mutated from pseudo-scientific to xenophobic and bigoted. An aunt who lives on the outskirts of Bangalore forwarded a WhatsApp message listing a series of distances from Wuhan to Beijing, Milan, New York, and Iran, as if to claim that the virus had been an inside job. “All business areas of China are safe,” the message read. “Something is fishy.”

They were grasping at anything to explain my grandfather’s sudden case. The truth was far more mundane. My uncle left the house weekly to visit a dialysis center. My aunt, who works as a lawyer, had continued to meet with her clients. My grandfather interacted with both of them, unable to isolate in the cramped, city-center apartment. But it was far easier to drown in incendiary messages than to admit these things.

WhatsApp, with just over a reported half a billion users in the country, is India’s most popular messaging platform. During the pandemic, the app has become a stand-in for the country’s broken infrastructure. These days, as Covid-19 cases spread like wildfire, groups message day and night to organize extra oxygen tanks, connect people with ventilators, and source hospital beds. Others raise funds for the many Indians who can’t afford to make ends meet in quarantine. Businesses that shut their physical stores have turned to the platform to sell their goods and stay afloat.

But its ubiquity and myriad uses are also why misinformation on Whatsapp can be so potent. The messages I’ve been forwarded rarely link to reported articles. Few in India trust the news — misinformation easily masquerades as the truth. Though often touted as the world’s largest democracy, India recently ranked 142 out of 180 in the World Press Freedom Index. That’s the worst India has ranked since the organization began indexing the country in 2013. The report cited factors like police violence against reporters, attacks by those in disagreement with reported work, and corruption. Just in 2020, six journalists in India were killed.

Misinformation is not a new problem for WhatsApp, which launched in India in 2010. Some trace the roots of misinformatio’s spread to the 2014 prime minister campaign, when Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) went up against the dynastic Congress party. The BJP, which is the political arm of fringe Hindu extremist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), used WhatsApp as a means to push messages that furthered their agenda.

“We should be capable of delivering any message we want to the public, whether sweet or sour, true or fake,” BJP president Amit Shah said to a crowd in 2018, endorsing fake news as a means to spread an ideology and to influence and convert believers.

While misinformation can seem like a harmless game online, it has devastating repercussions in India. And the problem is not new. One of the first recorded cases of WhatsApp-linked violence in India was in 2017, when a mob killed seven people after widespread rumors of strangers abducting children.

Since then, the problem has only grown, expanding with the pandemic. In April 2020, a series of messages went viral about a Muslim missionary group that had gathered in Delhi despite the lockdown. In response, a young Muslim man was beaten, and assaulted with threats that he would be doused with fuel and set on fire.

Although the doctors had diagnosed my grandfather with Covid-19, they didn’t have a cure for his memory loss. Days into his hospitalization, he remained confused, and pandemic numbers continued to increase. An uncle who lives in a small, coastal town in Karnataka sent a lengthy message to my family group quoting an article by “Joseph Hope, editor-in-chief of The New York Times.” Hope praised Modi’s strategic management of India, painting him as a mastermind who would steer the country into the 21st century.

Neither the article — nor its supposed author — exist, but WhatsApp only flagged that the message has been “forwarded many times.”

Facebook, WhatsApp parent company, has poured money into India. In 2020, it invested $5.7 billion for a 9.9% stake into Reliance Jio, the Indian internet company that spearheaded the plummeting data prices that helped much of the country get online. Compared with the size of this investment, its attempts at fixing misinformation seem paltry. Most attempts have been small-scale product changes: It’s impossible to share messages with multiple groups if they have been forwarded more than five times, and hovering over messages reveals a small magnifying glass to cross-reference them on search engines.

To be sure, misinformation is not entirely WhatsApp’s burden to bear. WhatsApp is just a platform, and these behaviors unfold in other places, like ShareChat and YouTube. And there are many villains in this game. A new, draconian rule in India could force WhatsApp to break its encryption and make messages traceable. If WhatsApp is forced to comply, the company might be required to hire Indian officials to make decisions on what messages should be removed.

Facebook has also granted research awards to study the nature of misinformation, and created WhatsApp accounts like one for the World Health Organization, where messaging brings up a list of auto-generated options for news, vaccine updates, and health topics.

And yet, false messages continue to thrive on the platform.

After his 11th day of confusion, my grandfather woke up and asked where he was. Then, he asked for my grandmother. After that, he wanted his phone. The doctors filed papers to send him home; they had no time to observe him. Case numbers were growing and the hospital was running out of beds. Memory loss was mild compared to what they were seeing.

Our family rejoiced. For a few days, things returned to normal. The WhatsApp group was celebratory, peppered with news of upcoming vaccines and local heroes helping their communities. My grandfather called my mother over WhatsApp and asked her to distribute sweets to everyone he knew in Queens. He would foot the bill. My mother and I laughed at the suggestion. It was a strangely flamboyant gesture for a man I otherwise knew to be stoic.

But my grandfather grew stranger by the day. Sometimes, his clarity would be punctuated with lapses in memory. Then, on a phone call, with conviction, he shared with me the plot against India. Modi had built a strong country, he explained, and Covid-19 death numbers had been fudged to make the country seem poor and weak.

I was surprised to hear him repeat this textbook talking point of Internet conspiracy theorists. Unlike many others around him, my grandfather had been browsing the internet for decades. His issue wasn’t news literacy. In the 2000s, over an AOL connection in Queens, my grandfather was reading a range of international publications and forming his own opinions. He was one of the first people I had known to purchase a cellphone. He kept up with the technology’s evolution, downloading apps when they became available, and teaching himself how to change language settings on his phone so he could read things in Kannada.

But this new person was unrecognizable. Like many other Indians, his main portal into the internet had become Facebook and WhatsApp. His viewpoints morphed into a hodgepodge of viral WhatsApp messages.

As I watched him change, I couldn’t help but accept the obvious conclusion: Facebook does not care to fix its misinformation problem. Instead, it only wants to keep people glued to the platform.

My grandfather’s cognitive abilities have now deteriorated, and the brief spell of clarity he returned to over the summer has passed. He often experiences “sundowning,” where he spirals into a deep confusion each evening. He’s off WhatsApp now, less focused on the material and the political, his brain set on some far-out horizon.

There is little space to mourn where he has gone. Cases of Covid-19 have again ascended, this time steeper and quicker than before. The intensity of each new story eclipses the last.

Just in the past month, my grandmother’s cousin’s body was found dead and cold in her home in Kundapura; a friend’s uncle was transported to the pyres by his daughter-in-law in the back of a rickshaw. Another friend lost her father, her husband, and her son in three days, leaving her with no one to earn money for the home.

After my uncle lost his childhood neighbor to the virus, he sent a message to the family group. The message had a tag that it had been forwarded multiple times, and claimed to have been written by a woman who had traveled several times over the past year, and hadn’t gotten the virus.

“One reason why I could prevent Corona is , I apply coconut oil in the nose 4 times a day,” the message read. I can’t imagine how many times that must have been forwarded.

My family turns to WhatsApp for answers, and WhatsApp continues to fail them

https://restofworld.org/2021/covid-indi ... formation/

[ptmcmahon]

Golf is outside, NBA playoff games with a full house are likely to be more dangerous.

I doubt it. If you go by just outdoor vs. indoor, then sure. But the details of most NBA teams' rules and ticketing approach make their setup far from dangerous. PGA has next to nothing in place and so outdoors is great, but those people were on top of each other. And regardless of what perception is when you watch an NBA playoff game on TV, there haven't been any full houses as of yet, a few teams will be moving towards that in another week or two.


Here is a video of one of Phil's final shots if you missed why people were alarmed - https://twitter.com/SportsCenter/status ... 6928083968

Brooks Koepka, who was playing with Mickelson, complained that the crowd was "dinging" his injured knee in the swarming:

https://www.golfchannel.com/news/2021-p ... -crowd-pga

[Drop-shot]

Just so it doesn't seem like right-wing and fringe conspiracy groups are the only ones talking about this:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... -credible/