COVID-19 is humanity's perfect viral storm. America has fumbled. It is a total FUBAR in the United States of America while countries like Sweden and South Korea are flatlining. Your article makes me starkly aware that this is as much a societal problem as it is a pandemic, for Americans at least.
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If #10 is “longhaulers who suffer long-term effects of Covid-19”, may I add something to Article #3
"Covid-19 affects the whole body ..."
Absolutely, we have to consider COVID-19 as a muti-symptom disease. I watched the news today about the shortage of antibiotics to combat MDR (Mult-Drug-Resistant) antibiotics. As America's ICU beds expand with COVID-19+ patients, this will put a selective-pressure on MDR bacteria to thrive & weaponize their cell walls. Already too much government money &stocks are going into anti-viral research leaving the antibiotic pipelines dry and needed drug companies bankrupt. Even our "heavy guns" like the carbapenems will be ineffective at that point. And, with no money for new antibiotics, even more patients will perish from COVID-19's late-stage infections. This is the link to the study. The FUBAR will continue with the coming cold weather. Flu shots will be a must.
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If I may interject on a few of your other points as a biologist and healthcare worker, Article #4: ”Younger children suffer, too.” Since most of the studies about children transmitting less than adults are epidemiological studies, it is not known if it has a biological mechanism or societal one with certainty. Meaning, are children less contagious because they have been sequestered during the summer months? Kids don’t go to bars and march in BLM rallies without a guardian. As you wrote, it will be morbidly interesting to see if the states that re-open schools will suffer another surge in the Winter. Yes, Winter is coming and it’s worse than the White-Walkers. Perhaps the data showing a shift in the curve from older people testing positive for COVID-19 toward younger cohorts is evidence of this morbid hypothesis. This ties into Article #8, asymptomatic children can be the next superspreaders. The South Korean study has shown that only children under the age of 10 have a lower risk than adults. However, teenagers in this study were more contagious than their parents. Hmmm….
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As for your last Article #9, the vaccine is almost certain, I agree, but I don’t think this is the magic bullet Americans hope for. Like a genie’s wish granted, it has a dark underbelly. On the other side of the Pacific, Asian nations, albeit homogeneous for the most part, do their part on both fronts to combat our 1st Post-Modern pandemic. Attacking the disease only with science without combating social inequality will shift the virus from rich to poor and back and forth like rings around deadly posies shaped like a bloom of a coronavirus.
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Isn’t it evident America clamped down too soon and too hard in March? People can get tired and frustrated causing politicians to cave causing the CDC to keep silent. Like a Mafia reaching the Oval Office, Trump has deprived the WHO of funding, and is it a surprise they are shaking in their extorted lab coats? The second coronavirus surge happened like an overgrown prairie ripe for a wildfire wiping out those trailing behind the mob like so many dead & dying buffalos of the Wild West being trampled. And now, we are looking for a vaccine rather than protecting America’s weakest links as our savior. Frankly, America has become tiresome to me though I am a naturalized citizen and would never live in South Korea anymore even if they have universal healthcare and have nearly flatlined..
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Robert, you write about our pandemic with deadly precision. It is heartbreaking and terrifying to read and think of 154,000 data points lost in the U.S. of A today. It is all too real that some of our politicians, bureaucrats, doctors, and scientists are asleep at America's wheel while driving the death toll higher each week. Honestly, I feel ashamed to be an America each day we move further away from flatlining as we should have like the well-behaved citizens of foreign nations.
I never felt so helpless in my sorry life …
Welcome to the new normal.
Amen. Aye-Men?