A lot of COVID-19 data sources have become decidedly less reliable since the beginning of 2022, through a combination of official case counts becoming poorer reflections of prevalence (thanks to less PCR testing) and fewer resources devoted to data tracking at public health departments from local agencies up to the CDC.
But one federal source has remained fairly consistent: the Household Pulse Survey. This project, run by the Census in collaboration with a variety of other government agencies, started in spring 2020 as a way to track how the pandemic was impacting Americans’ daily lives. Every two weeks, government researchers randomly survey U.S. adults with questions ranging from their employment status to mental health. As of this summer, the Household Pulse Survey also includes data on Long COVID prevalence.
For every question asked by the Household Pulse Survey, you can find results over time, by state, and for a variety of other demographics: race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexuality, etc. I appreciate that this source has continued measuring the pandemic’s impact, and I think journalists (myself included!) could be referencing it a lot more.
Omicron BA.4.6, a newer version of BA.4, is currently more prevalent in the Midwest than other regions of the country. Chart via the CDC, retrieved September 4.
Slow rise of BA.4.6 is worth watching: As I mentioned in today’s National Numbers post, a newer subvariant labeled BA.4.6 is gaining ground over other versions of Omicron in the U.S. BA.4.6 evolved from BA.4, and has an additional mutation in the virus’ spike protein that enables it to bypass protection from prior infections. It’s unclear whether BA.4.6 will be able to fully outcompete BA.5, which is currently causing the vast majority of U.S. COVID-19 cases—these two strains are similar enough that the competition may go slowly. So far, the subvariant has been more prevalent in the Midwest than other regions of the country, according to CDC data. Also worth watching: BA.2.75, a subvariant that is dominating some European countries but hasn’t shown up significantly in the U.S. yet.
Up to 4 million people may be out of work due to Long COVID: Last week, policy research organization the Brookings Institute published a new report discussing the massive impacts Long COVID is having on America’s labor force. The report utilizes recent data from the Household Pulse Survey (released in June) estimating Long COVID prevalence, in conjunction with research on how many long-haulers might be out of work due to their condition. The results: between two and four million Americans potentially lost their jobs (or are working significantly less) due to Long COVID, costing at least $170 billion a year in lost wages. Even the low ends of these estimates are staggering.
U.S. life expectancy declined again in 2021: Americans born in 2021 may expect to live for 76 years on average, according to the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System. This is the lowest life expectancy has been since 1996. CDC researchers attribute the sharp decline in the last two years to the pandemic and drug overdose deaths. Disparities in life expectancy have also increased: Native Americans born in 2021 may expect to live only 65 years on average and Black Americans may expect to live 71 years, compared to 76 years for white Americans.
Biobot expands wastewater surveillance for opioid tracking: In the last couple of months, we’ve seen wastewater used to track monkeypox and polio, in addition to COVID-19—suggesting the technology’s capacity for broader public health surveillance. This week, leading wastewater company Biobot announced a new initiative to track opioid use and other high-risk substance use through a similar platform to its current COVID-19 efforts. Tracking the opioid crisis was actually the original focus for Biobot’s founders pre-pandemic, so it’s notable to see the company expanding in this direction now.
New CDC report on drug overdose deaths during the pandemic: Drug overdose deaths increased by 30% from 2019 to 2020, according to a new CDC report compiling data from 25 states and D.C. But this increase was higher for Black and Native Americans: deaths among these groups increased by 44% and 39%, respectively. The full report includes more details on how overdose deaths disproportionately occurred in Black and Native populations, as well as the need for more easily accessible treatments for substance abuse.
CDC survey of public health workers: Another CDC report that caught my attention this week presented results from a national survey of state and local public health workers in 2021. Almost three in four of the workers surveyed were involved with COVID-19 response last year. The survey provides further evidence of burnout among public health workers: 40% of those surveyed reported that they intend to leave their jobs within the next five years.
COVID-19 testing options: COVID-19 Testing Commons is a research group at Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions that has compiled comprehensive information about COVID-19 tests available worldwide. You can search the database for tests by company, platform, type of specimen collected, regulatory status, and more. The group also recently compiled a report summarizing these testing options in the pandemic to date.
Congressional hearing on Long COVID: This week, Congress’s Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis held a hearing specifically about Long COVID. Congressmembers heard from Long COVID patient advocates and researchers about the impacts of this condition and the urgent need for more research and support. I highly recommend reading or listening to the testimony of Hannah Davis, cofounder of the Patient-Led Research Collaborative, for a powerful summary of these impacts and needs. (If you’re watching the video: her testimony starts at about 28:50.)
CDC recommends Novavax vaccine: The CDC has officially authorized Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine, following the FDA authorization that I mentioned in last week’s issue. Novavax’s vaccine is protein-based, which is an older type of vaccine but has been less common for COVID-19; some experts are hopeful that people who have hesitated with the mRNA vaccines may be more likely to get Novavax. Dr. Katelyn Jetelina has a helpful summary of this vaccine’s potential impact at Your Local Epidemiologist.
NYC prevalence preprint updated: I’ve linked a couple of times to this study from a group at the City University of New York, with the striking finding that an estimated one in five New Yorkers got COVID-19 during a two-week period in the BA.2/BA.2.12.1 surge. The researchers recently revised and updated their study, based on some feedback from the scientific community. Their primary conclusions are unchanged, lead author Denis Nash wrote in a Twitter thread, but the updated study includes some context about population immunity and NYC surveillance.
Two new White House/HHS reports about Long COVID and other long-term pandemic impacts will be released next month. Screenshot via Twitter.
This past Friday, the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services held a briefing previewing two major reports about Long COVID.
The reports, which the Biden administration plans to release in August, will share government resources and research priorities for Long COVID, as well as priorities for other groups impacted long-term by the pandemic, such as healthcare workers and people who lost loved ones to COVID-19. Friday’s briefing served to give people and organizations most directly impacted by this work (particularly Long COVID patients) advanced notice about the reports and future related efforts.
It was also, apparently, closed to the press—a fact that I did not learn until I had already publicly livetweeted half of the meeting. I later confirmed with other journalist friends that the White House and HHS press offices did not do a great job of communicating the meeting’s supposedly closed status, as none of us knew this beforehand.
lol, well, one of the govt officials on the briefing just said that this meeting is "closed to the press." this is news to me! but I'm gonna stop livetweeting to be respectful. looking forward to seeing the final reports in August!
Officials honestly didn’t share much information at this briefing that I didn’t already know, so it’s not as though I obtained a huge scoop by watching it. (For transparency’s sake: I received a link to register for the Zoom meeting via the COVID-19 Longhauler Advocacy Project’s listserv, and identified myself as a journalist when I signed up.)
Due to confusion around the briefing’s status and the fact that other attendees (besides myself) livetweeted it, I feel comfortable sharing a few key points from the call. If this gets me in trouble with the HHS press office, well… they’ve never answered my emails anyway.
Over ten federal government agencies have been involved in producing the reports, which officials touted as an example of their comprehensive response to this condition.
One report will focus on services for Long COVID patients and others facing long-term impacts from the pandemic. My impression is that this will mostly highlight existing services, rather than creating new COVID-focused services (though the latter could be developed in the future).
The second report will focus on Long COVID research, providing priorities for both public and private scientific and medical research efforts. Worth noting: existing public Long COVID research is not going well so far, for reasons I have covered extensively.
An HHS team focused on human-centered design has been pursuing an “effort to better understand Long COVID” (quoting from their web page). This project is currently wrapping up its first stage, and expects to publish a report in late 2022.
Some Long COVID patients and advocates would like to see more urgent action from the federal government than what they felt was on display at this briefing.
Here are a couple of Tweets from advocates who attended:
Just attended the @HHSGov & @WhiteHouse's webinar on #LongCovid. Happy to see recognition of patient-led expertise. I hope for fast, expedite action on the long-term health effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection: the pandemic is a mass disabling event, which requires the maximum urgency
1,000 hours of qualitative research is what they are sharing fro listening sessions…which may sound like a lot but is REALLY small. pic.twitter.com/9BEjXBJJiJ
— Kristin Urquiza @kdurquiza.bsky.social (@kdurquiza) July 15, 2022
Seeing and hearing a lot of frustration from the #LongCOVID community about that White House session.
CDC adds (limited) Long COVID data to its dashboard: This week, the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker added a new page, reporting data from a study of “post-COVID conditions” (more colloquially known as Long COVID). The study, called Innovative Support for Patients with SARS-CoV-2 Infections (INSPIRE), follows patients who test positive for up to 18 months and tracks their continued symptoms. Among about 4,100 COVID-positive patients in the study, over 10% still had symptoms at three months after their infections, and over 1% still had symptoms at 12 months. This is just one study among many tracking Long COVID, but it is an important step for the CDC to add these data to their dashboard.
Air change guidance by state: In recognition of the role ventilation can play in reducing COVID-19 spread, some states have put out recommendations for minimum air changes per hour (ACH), a metric for tracking indoor air quality. Researcher Devabhaktuni Srikrishna has compiled the recommendations on his website, Patient Knowhow, with a map showing ACH guidance by state. (I recently interviewed Srikrishna for an upcoming story about ventilation.)
COVID-19 is a leading cause of death in the U.S.: A new study from researchers at the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute confirms that COVID-19 was the third-leading cause of death in the U.S., in both 2020 and 2021. The researchers utilized death records from the CDC in their analysis, comparing COVID-19 to common causes such as cancer and heart disease. COVID-19 was a top cause of death for every age group over age 15, the study found.
COVID-19 disparities in Louisiana: Another notable study this week: researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park examined the roles of social, economic, and environmental factors in COVID-19 deaths in Louisiana, focusing on Black residents. “We find that Black communities in parishes with both higher and lower population densities experience higher levels of stressors, leading to greater COVID-19 mortality rate,” the researchers wrote. The study’s examination of environmental racism in relation to COVID-19 seems particularly novel to me; I hope to see more research in this area.
Tracking coronavirus variants in wastewater: And one more new study: a large consortium of researchers, led by scientists at the University of California San Diego, explores the use of wastewater surveillance to track new variants. Variants can show up in wastewater up to two weeks earlier than they show up in samples from clinical (PCR) testing, the researchers found. In addition, some variants identified in wastewater are “not captured by clinical genomic surveillance.”
Global COVID-19 vaccine and treatment initiative ending: The ACT-Accelerator, a collaboration between the World Health Organization and other health entities and governments, has run out of funding. This is bad news for low- and middle-income countries that relied on the program for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments—many of which are still largely unvaccinated, more than a year after vaccines became widely available in high-income countries. Global health equity initiatives will likely continue in another form, but funding will be a continued challenge.
I’m doing another post dedicated to Long COVID research this week, unpacking a noteworthy new data source. Also, I have an update about a Long COVID study that I shared in last week’s issue.
First: new data from the Household Pulse Survey suggests that almost 20% of Americans who got COVID-19 are currently experiencing Long COVID symptoms. The Household Pulse Survey is a long-running Census project that provides data on how the pandemic has impacted Americans, with questions ranging from job loss to healthcare access.
In the most recent iteration of this survey, which started on June 1, the Census is asking respondents about Long COVID: specifically, respondents can share whether they had COVID-related symptoms that lasted three months or longer. The first round of data from this updated survey were released last week (representing respondents surveyed between June 1 and June 13), in a collaboration between the Census and the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
The numbers are staggering. Here are a few notable findings, sourced from the NCHS press release:
An estimated 14% of all U.S. adults have experienced Long COVID symptoms at some point during the pandemic.
About 7.5% of all U.S. adults are currently experiencing Long COVID symptoms, representing about one in 13 Americans.
Out of U.S. adults who have ever had COVID-19, about 19% are currently experiencing Long COVID symptoms.
Older adults are more likely to report Long COVID than younger adults, while women are more likely to report it than men.
About 8.8% of Hispanic or Latino adults are currently experiencing Long COVID, compared to 6.8% of Black adults and 7.5% of White adults.
Bisexual and transgender adults were more likely to report current Long COVID symptoms (12.1% and 14.9%, respectively) than those of other sexualities and genders.
States with higher Long COVID prevalence included Southern states like Kentucky, Alabama, and Tennessee.
This study is a big deal. The Household Pulse Survey is basically the closest comparison that the U.S. has to the U.K.’s highly-lauded Office for National Statistics survey, in that the survey can collect comprehensive data from a representative subset of Americans and use it to provide national estimates.
In other words: two years into the pandemic, we finally have a viable estimate of how many people have Long COVID, and it is as large an estimate as Long COVID advocates warned us to expect. Plus, demographic data! State-by-state-data! This is incredibly valuable, moreso because the Household Pulse Survey will continue incorporating Long COVID into its questions.
Also, it’s important to note that Long COVID patients were involved in advocating for and shaping the new survey questions. Big thanks to the Patient-Led Research Collaborative and Body Politic for their contributions!
The US has finally counted #LongCovid, resulting in staggering numbers:
19% of adults who had COVID have LC (at least 3 months of symptoms).
Next, two more Long COVID updates from the past week:
Outcomes of coronavirus reinfection: A new paper from Ziyad Al-Aly and his team at the Veterans Affairs Saint Louis healthcare system, currently under review at Nature, explores the risks associated with a second coronavirus infection. They found that a second infection led to higher risk of mortality (from any cause), hospitalization, and specific health outcomes such as cardiovascular disorders and diabetes. “The risks were evident in those who were unvaccinated, had 1 shot, or 2 or more shots prior to the second infection,” the researchers wrote in their abstract.
NIH data now available for Long COVID research: The National Institutes of Health’s “All of Us” research program is releasing a dataset from almost 20,000 people who have had COVID-19 for scientists to study. The data come from clinical records, genomic sequencing, and patient-reported metrics; researchers can use them to examine Long COVID trends, similarly to the way in which Al-Aly’s team uses VA records to study COVID-19 outcomes.
And finally, a correction: Last week, I shared a paper published in The Lancet which indicated Long COVID may be less likely after an Omicron infection compared to a Delta infection. A reader alerted me to some criticism of this study in the Long COVID community.
Specifically, the estimates in the paper are much lower than those found by the U.K.’s ONS survey, which is considered more reliable. This Lancet paper was based not on surveys but on a health app which relies on self-reported, volunteer data. In addition, the researchers failed to break out Long COVID risk by how many vaccine doses patients had received, which may be a key aspect of protection.
Seeing some discussion about the long COVID Zoe app study published- worth noting that the ONS data has superseded this. The problem is the study doesn't stratify by no. of vaccine doses – which appears to be critical with omicron vs delta risks. 🧵 https://t.co/pJScaEN83I
Finally, as I noted last week, even if the risk of Long COVID is lower after an Omicron infection, the risk is still there. And when millions of people are getting Omicron, a small share of Omicron infections leading to Long COVID still leads to millions of Long COVID cases.
PCR testing has greatly declined in recent months; we need new data sources to help replace the information we got from it. Chart via the CDC.
Last week, I received a question from my grandmother. She had just read my TIME story about BA.4 and BA.5, and was feeling pessimistic about the future. “Do you think we’ll ever get control of this pandemic?” she asked.
This is a complicated question. And it’s one that I’ve been reflecting on as well, as I approach the two-year anniversary of the COVID-19 Data Dispatch and consider how this publication might shift to meet the current phase of the pandemic. I am not an infectious disease or public health expert, but I wanted to share a few thoughts on this; to stay in my data lane, I’m focusing on data that could help the U.S. better manage COVID-19.
The coronavirus is going to continue mutating, evolving past immune system defenses built by prior infection and vaccination. Scientists will need to continue updating vaccines and treatments to match the virus, or we’ll need a next-generation vaccine that can protect against all coronavirus variants.
Candidates for such a vaccine, called a “pan-coronavirus vaccine,” are under development by the U.S. Army and at several other academic labs and pharmaceutical companies. But until a pan-coronavirus vaccine becomes available, we’ll need to continue tracking new variants and the surges they produce. We also need to better track Long COVID, a condition that our current vaccines do not protect well against.
Eventually, COVID-19 will likely be just another respiratory virus that we watch out for during colder months and large indoor gatherings, broadly considered “endemic” by scientists. But it’s important to note—as Dr. Ellie Murray did in her excellent Twitter thread about how pandemics end—that endemicity does not mean we stop tracking COVID-19. In fact, thousands of people work to monitor and respond to another endemic virus, the flu.
Every time I tweet about this I get people in mentions saying “but we don’t take precautions for the flu!”
Those people are 100% WRONG!
Thousands of people work daily to monitor, prepare for, & respond to fluctuations in flu number and in the flu virus itself! It’s a HUGE task!
With that in mind, here are nine categories of data that could help manage the pandemic:
More comprehensive wastewater surveillance: As I’ve written here and at FiveThirtyEight, sewers can offer a lot of COVID-19 information through a pipeline that’s unbiased and does not depend on testing access. But wastewater monitoring continues to be spotty across the country, as the surveillance can be challenging to set up—and more challenging for public health officials to act on. Also, current monitoring methods exclude those 21 million households that are not connected to public sewers. As wastewater surveillance expands, we will better be able to pinpoint new surges right as they’re starting.
Variant surveillance from wastewater: Most of the U.S.’s data on circulating variants currently comes from a selection of PCR test samples that are run through genomic sequencing tests. But this process is expensive, and the pool of samples is dwindling as more people use at-home rapid tests rather than PCR. It could be cheaper and more comprehensive to sequence samples from wastewater instead, Marc Johnson explained to me recently. This is another important aspect of expanding our wastewater monitoring.
Testing random samples: Another way to make up for the data lost by less popular PCR testing is conducting surveillance tests on random samples of people, either in the U.S. overall or in specific cities and states. This type of testing would provide us with more information on who is getting sick, allowing public health departments to respond accordingly. The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics conducts regular surveys like this, which could serve as a model for the U.S.
More demographic data: Related to random sample testing: the U.S. COVID-19 response still needs more information on who is most impacted by the pandemic, as well as who needs better access to vaccines and treatments. Random sampling and surveys, as well as demographic data connected to distributions of treatments like Paxlovid, could help address this need.
Vaccine effectiveness data: I have written a lot about how the U.S. does not have good data on how well our COVID-19 vaccines work, thanks to our fractured public health system. This lack of data makes it difficult for us to identify when vaccines need to be updated, or who needs another round of booster shots. Connecting more vaccination databases to data recording cases, hospitalizations, and Long COVID would better inform decision-making about boosters.
Air quality monitoring: Another type of data collection to better inform decision-making is tracking carbon dioxide and other pollutants in the air. These metrics can show how well-ventilated (or poorly-ventilated) a space is, providing information about whether further upgrades or layers of safety measures are needed. For example, I’ve seen experts bring air monitors on planes, citing poor-quality air as a reason to continue wearing a mask. Similarly, the Boston public school district has installed air monitors throughout its buildings and publishes the data on a public dashboard.
Tracking animal reservoirs: One potential source for new coronavirus variants is that the virus can jump from humans into animals, mutate in an animal population, and then jump back into humans. This has happened in the U.S. at least once: a strain from minks infected people in Michigan last year. But the U.S. is not requiring testing or any mandatory tracking of COVID-19 cases in animals that we know are susceptible to COVID-19. Better surveillance in this area could help us catch variants.
Better Long COVID surveillance: For me personally, knowledge of Long COVID is a big reason why I remain as cautious about COVID-19 as I am. Long COVID patients and advocates often say that if more people understood the ramifications of this long-term condition, they might be more motivated to take precautions; I think better prevalence data would help a lot with this. (The Census and CDC just made great strides in this area; more on that later in the issue.) Similarly, better data on how the condition impacts people would help in developing treatments—which will be crucial for getting the pandemic under control.
More accurate death certificates: The true toll of the pandemic goes beyond official COVID-19 deaths, as the Documenting COVID-19 project has discussed at length in our Uncounted investigation. If we had a better accounting of everyone whose deaths were tied to COVID-19, directly or indirectly, that could be another motivator for people to continue taking safety precautions and protecting their communities.
If you are working to improve data collection in any of these areas—or if you know a project that is—please reach out! These are all topics that I would love to report on further in the coming months.
Chart from Curative showing test numbers and test positivity from their sitesChart from Curative showing testing data for Alexandria, Virginia (a current hotspot)Chart from Curative showing testing data for Houston, Texas (another current hotspot)
Curative provides testing trends and commentary to reporters: Last week, I talked to Isaac Turner, chief technology officer at Curative, a COVID-19 testing company with more than 15,000 locations across the country. Curative staff keep a close eye on trends in test positivity and cycle threshold values (a measure of how infectious someone with COVID-19 may be), and share this information with health agencies. While the company doesn’t have a public dashboard, they’re eager to share data with reporters on request and discuss testing trends. For example, Turner told me that in recent weeks, there has been “almost no surge in testing” even though COVID-19 cases have clearly risen across the country. To reach out, you can contact PIO Alana at alana.prisco@ketchum.com.
Walgreens COVID-19 testing dashboard: Another source for testing trends, as government sources become less reliable, is the Walgreens dashboard—incorporating data from COVID-19 PCR testing at more than 5,000 Walgreens locations across the country. In partnership with Aegis Services, many of these test samples are sequenced or identified as specific variants via S-gene target failure. The Walgreens dashboard has a shorter lag time than the CDC’s variant prevalence estimates, so it may be a useful way to see trends in advance.
Kids under 5 can finally get vaccinated: As of yesterday, the CDC has formally recommended versions of both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccines for children under age 5 after they received emergency use authorization from the FDA. This youngest age group can finally get vaccinated! I usually like to watch the FDA advisory committee meetings where new vaccines are discussed, but didn’t have the bandwidth to watch or report on the meetings this week; if you’d like to read up on them, I recommend the Your Local Epidemiologist and STAT News recaps.
Estimating lives saved by universal healthcare: A major new paper this week, by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health, estimates that if the U.S. had a single-payer universal healthcare system, the country may have saved 212,000 lives during the first year of the pandemic. They arrived at this estimate by analyzing data on Americans who lost their health insurance in 2020 or were already uninsured, combined with the impact of being uninsured on COVID-19 mortality. A universal healthcare system would have also saved over $100 billion in healthcare costs in 2020, the researchers found. Read more at Scientific American.
Long COVID may be less likely after an Omicron case: Another new study that caught my attention this week: researchers at King’s College London used the U.K.’s excellent statistics on Long COVID prevalence to compare the risks of long-term symptoms after a Delta infection to the risks after an Omicron infection. They found that the risk of Long COVID after an Omicron infection was about half the risk after a Delta infection, which is potentially pretty good news! Still, it’s still concerning that so many people are at risk for Long COVID after an Omicron infection considering the high case numbers driven by this variant, some outside researchers told NPR.
CDC study on COVID-19 risk for people with disabilities: And one more notable study: CDC researchers examined COVID-19 hospitalization rates among Medicare beneficiaries, comparing those who were on this healthcare plan due to disability to those on the plan due to age. They found that disability beneficiaries had 50% higher hospitalization rates, with the risk for hospitalization increasing with age in both groups. Also: Native American Medicare beneficiaries had the highest hospitalization rate of any racial or ethnic group.
CDC investigating deaths from Long COVID: Researchers at the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics are currently working to investigate potential deaths from Long COVID, according to a report from POLITICO. The researchers are reviewing death certificates from 2020 and 2021, looking for causes of death that may indicate a patient died from Long COVID symptoms rather than during the acute stage of the disease. There’s currently no death code associated with Long COVID and diagnoses can be highly variable, so the work is preliminary, but I’m really looking forward to seeing their results.
CDC reports on ventilation improvements in schools: And one notable CDC study that was published this week: researchers at the agency from COVID-19, occupational health, and other teams analyzed what K-12 public schools are doing to improve their ventilation. The report is based on a survey of 420 public schools in all 50 states and D.C., with results weighted to best represent all schools across the country. While a majority of schools have taken some measures to inspect their HVAC systems or increase ventilation by opening windows, holding activities outside, etc., only 39% of schools surveyed had actually replaced or upgraded their HVAC systems. A lot more work is needed in this area.
Results from the COVID-19 U.S. State Policy database: The Boston University team behind the COVID-19 U.S. State Policy database has published a paper in BMC Public Health sharing major findings from their work. The database (which I’ve shared in the CDD before) documents what states have done to curb COVID-19 spread and address economic hardship during the pandemic, as well as how states report COVID-19 data. In their new paper, the BU team explains how this database may be used to analyze the impacts of these policy measures on public health.
Promising news about Moderna’s bivalent vaccine: Moderna, like other vaccine companies, has been working on versions of its COVID-19 vaccine that can protect better against new variants like Omicron. This week, the company announced results (in a press release, as usual) from a trial of a bivalent vaccine, which includes both genetic elements of the original SARS-CoV-2 virus and of Omicron. The bivalent vaccine works much better than Moderna’s original vaccine at protecting against Omicron infection, Moderna said; still, scientists are skeptical about how the vaccine may fare against newer subvariants (BA.2.12.1, BA.4, BA.5).
Call center and survey from FYLPRO: A reader who works at the Filipino Young Leaders Program (FYLPRO) requested that I share two resources from their organization. First, the program has set up a call center aimed at helping vulnerable community members with their COVID-19 questions. The call center is available on weekdays from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Pacific time in both English and Tagalog; while it’s geared towards the Filipino community, anyone can call in. And second, FYLPRO has launched a nationwide survey to study vaccine attitudes among Filipinos; learn more about it here.
It’s been a somewhat slower week for COVID-19 news, so here’s something a little different: a reflection on a very old episode of Star Trek, in the context of post-viral illness.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, one of the new shows airing on Paramount+, has got me on a bit of a kick for the franchise. So, I’ve been rewatching The Original Series (TOS), which was one of my favorite TV shows in high school. (My girlfriend, who hasn’t seen any of the old Star Trek shows, has humored me by watching with me.)
Last week, we watched an episode I remembered as one of my favorites: The Naked Time, episode four in the first season. In this episode—which first aired in September 1966—a strange virus from an alien planet gets onto the Enterprise and infects a number of crew members. Once infected, crew members lose their inhibitions and behave as though emotionally naked; this leads to such iconic scenes as Spock “sobbing mathematically,” Sulu chasing his colleagues with a rapier, Uhura saying she’s neither fair nor a maiden, and so on.
Rewatching this episode two years into the pandemic, it struck me that Star Trek predicted—like it predicted iPads, cellphones, and so many other things—neurological symptoms triggered by a viral infection. While the Epstein-Barr virus was discovered in 1964, it would be decades before scientists understood how viruses like this one could cause fatigue, chronic pain, post-exertional malaise, and other similar symptoms.
Now, of course, the world is facing an epidemic of Long COVID, the most prevalent post-viral illness in history. Recent estimates from the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics suggest that two million people—or, 3% of the entire U.K. population—are living with Long COVID. And Long COVID is bringing renewed attention to other conditions like ME/CFS and dysautonomia, which have a lot of symptom overlap. It’s hard to deny that infectious diseases can have ramifications far beyond what we usually expect from a cold or the flu.
New statistics from the ONS show 2 million people in the UK are living with #LongCovid – 3% of the entire population. https://t.co/mUMUfLosR3
My girlfriend, who previously hadn’t seen most of TOS, has commented on how much early Star Trek episodes center around psychological dilemmas. Rather than watching phaser battles, we’re watching characters grapple with questions like, “How do you stop a hormonal teenager with infinite power?” and, “What would happen if Captain Kirk were split into good and evil halves?”
The Naked Time fits into this pattern, but it also feels more like a horror story than the others—especially when one watches it in the midst of a COVID-19 (and Long COVID) surge. Star Trek’s writers guessed, nearly 60 years ago, that an infectious disease could impact people’s minds. But here we are in 2022: Long COVID patients are still systematically discredited by doctors, unable to access treatment and financial support, and discarded by American leaders’ decision to “live with the virus.”
The episode also offers some lessons in infection control measures by showing us what not to do when confronted with a novel illness. The alien virus gets onto the Enterprise in the first place because a crew member, investigating dead scientists on an abandoned planet, takes off his hazmat suit to touch his face; without realizing it, he transmits the virus from an infected surface to his skin. And after this index case starts acting strangely on the ship, other crew members don’t isolate him until it’s too late. Funny how our basic public health measures haven’t changed since the 60s, either.
Anyway, because this is Star Trek, Dr. McCoy saves the day by quickly developing a cure for the virus. He has no trouble administering it to the crew—there’s no vaccine hesitancy on the Enterprise.
Still, this episode sticks with me, more now than when I first watched it years ago. With all the new technology we have now to fight COVID-19, the basic measures we can take to control a novel virus haven’t changed. And the stakes are higher than ever.
COVID-19 Data Dispatch 
?file=Graffiti_Love_Mankind.jpg){kind=link}