This will be on the shorter side–we have another whole pork processing plant sending samples to us right now for emergency testing, on top of all of the “regular” cases.

Ebola:  Still holding steady at 6 patients, 4 of which have died.  They have 942 contacts identified, including transmission chains via sequencing, but follow up is abysmal and WHO frankly expects more.  But more of their resources are being pulled off Ebola and out of DRC because obviously. 

Coronavirus:–Antibody tests will be a work in progress for everyone.  Caution out there this week about the lack of specificity for SARS-CoV-2 and possible cross-reaction with other coronaviruses (again, a major cause of the common cold) may be well founded.

–Again, because I work for a company not named Gilead, my comments on remdesivir will be somewhat limited.  Two major announcements for them this week.  The first was the publication in the Lancet of the study in China that ended early.  You can look at the publication yourself with a quick Google search, but there is no obvious benefit in ~200 patients, which, as we mentioned, is NOT enough patients to be conclusive about obvious benefits.  That study was open label though–everyone got the drug, there was no comparison to standard of care (aka “randomized placebo controlled study” or the gold standard of medical evidence).  The OTHER remdesivir study in the news this week IS a fully enrolled, randomized, international, placebo controlled study of remdesivir.

That study met its primary objective, which means it is showing statistically significant reduction in severity with remdesivir.  That’s good.  That study has not been published–all we know about effect size is leaks in the media, and again, for a multitude of reasons, I will refrain from additional comment.

Hopefully, the effect size is also substantial.  At the very least, it is now the first trial proven drug with some clear evidence of benefit.  Humanity has that going for us now.  Is it enough to turn COVID into an inconvenience and not a “bed’s taken” crusher of entire healthcare systems?

Dunno yet.  Stay tuned.

–Speaking of pork plants and supply chains, Tyson was in the news this week, taking out full page ads in the New York Times to highlight the critical status of the food supply chain, which “is breaking” in their chairman’s words.  Then they spilled  a lot of ink, a lot, to inform you, dear public, how difficult it has been to balance their duty to distribute food across the nation and world with their deep and abiding concern for the safety and well-being of their workforce.  Just this week, and I mean that, they have offered $1,000 bonuses to all workers to get their lines moving again, and extolled the many efforts, now just installed (and I mean that too) to ensure worker safety, like more paid time off, health checks on entry, and temperature monitoring among others.

So I feel it is my duty to discuss a little more the reasons I heard caused me to have to emergently read through a few thousand samples from pork processing plants.  Reasons that may have contributed to a positive rate rivaling a cruise ship, and the entire county in which the plant is located declaring a state of emergency on Monday.

You can find similar stories by searching #Tyson I’m sure, if not worse. 

Now, I will admit all of this is second hand information passed to me, and these are allegations. I am not a journalist. But I am sure a journalist can do some interviews in this county and with the employees and see if what I heard is verifiable. What I was told is that to staff a particular plant, Tyson hires low wage employees in Chicago, and buses them down to the plant, where they stay for a week in company provided housing (dorm rooms) on site, and then get bused back on the weekend.  So while both involved states were under social distancing restrictions, gathering size restrictions, and travel only as necessary restrictions, Tyson was still loading its buses, and still filling its onsite dorm rooms.  Until someone got sick.  And then they had a problem.  I want to stress allegedly on all of that though. 

–I have high confidence that not every meat packer had a similar approach to common sense measures for employee safety.

–You may be interested in this thread from a Congressman who happens to be a farmer:  https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1254421817961349122 but one of the key takeaways is this (in the Twitter back and forth below the thread):“Some are worse than unnecessary – in SOME situations SOME of the regulations contribute to less safe and less healthy food. They make it so only giant factories can afford the cost of compliance, so small producers are stymied and farmers must ship live animals long distances.”

—Then ask yourself how Tyson was (allegedly) making up for the cost of that compliance.  And you can find a chart of stock buybacks Tyson has done here:  https://ycharts.com/companies/TSN/stock_buyback

–In other news, good resource here for case projections and possible re-open dates:  https://covid19.healthdata.org/

–Watch Georgia for the next 5 days after re-open, and probably for another week after that closely.

–As we mentioned long ago when this first broke out in China, the hard part of dealing with this virus will be the threat of the virus itself versus the threat of the quarantine.  There are something like 30 million Americans now unemployed, and I am certain it is as bad elsewhere in the world.   And the virus is not the cause, but the catalyst.  I know of more and more small businesses that will be closed permanently by the lockdown already, meaning some of those jobs lost are not coming back, at least soon.  There is already record demand on food banks across the country.  Today, armed protestors stormed into the Michigan state capitol building.  Rent strikes are being organized across the country.  Major retailers are filing bankruptcy.  And rumors of WalMart and Amazon warehouse strikes on May Day are going around.  Meanwhile, the trillions in relief have propelled the stock markets (majority owned by a shockingly small number of people) to a record month.

I don’t envy the political leadership the choice they must make between the still incompletely understood threat of the virus and the massive economic turmoil that is -thisclose- to becoming major social upheaval.  Far too many of them are “leaders” though–just re-read the “First the People” article I cited a couple updates ago.  And all this right before a long, hot American summer.  In an election year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84qWb8i_Q_A
(seemed appropriate)

–Expect an unusual year.

–Your chances of catching Ebola are still not zero, but still really small.  Your chances of catching coronavirus are still pretty good.  Keep those precautions rolling.

Love in the Time of Coronavirus:

<Paladin>