Friday, August 06, 2021

Gift From The Stigmatized


James Suroweicki is one of the American writers I admire and not just for "The Wisdom of Crowds." In his articles in The New Yorker, Wired and elsewhere, he brings common sense to bear on the vagaries of science, including how the media cover science and health.

This week he published an excellent essay on how the mass media, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, have been selling fear in their coverage of CDC data indicating that vaccinated people can spread the delta variant.

"Covid vaccines are incredibly effective," Suroweicki notes. "The media’s overhyping of new research from the CDC is making people think otherwise...The problem was not what the press wrote about, but rather how it wrote about it, and even more,  how it hyped it." 

He continues:  "First, it’s just actively misleading. (It) makes people thinking about getting vaccinated (think) that there’s no point to doing so. 

"Second, the current news environment is not a neutral news environment. It’s an environment in which antivaxxers are working assiduously to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt about vaccines, and every overhyped, poorly written tweet, every misstatement by a public-health official, quickly becomes fodder for their message."

So there in a nutshell is what is wrong with this week's news cycle. Too many people are over-reacting to a minor indication that the delta variant can be spread by vaccinated people and that we even might get sick ourselves.

While both things are technically true, neither matters in the big picture. Yes we can spread it but far less efficiently than unvaccinated people, who are the whole reason this even matters. 

And yes we might get sick but only with the symptoms of a minor cold. Plus the chances of that happening are infinitesimal. 

Everyone needs to calm down and read the news more critically, as Surowiecki is doing. Responsible people like him have been  trying to tamp down the latest panic all week.
 

***

Let's consider something concrete that is being done about a far greater problem than Covid-19 will ever be: addiction. Journalist Maia Szalavitz, author of "Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids," and other books, is a leading writer on addiction.

Currently she is celebrating "harm reduction," an approach to treating addicts that shows promise. She and the rest of us who pay attention to the issue have known about it for many years now.

Harm reduction seeks to reduce the negative effects of health behaviors like drug and alcohol use, smoking, eating disorders, and sex addiction without necessarily banning the problematic  behavior completely. 

The idea is to reduce. not eliminate the problematic behavior in the short term, while the patient can talk it over with his support network.

For some people it works, and I know several special, special people who are currently trying programs devoted to this approach. I feel a lot of gratitude to those who practice this form of treatment.

I also want to highlight this wonderful quote from Szalavitz: "Harm reduction is a gift from some of the most stigmatized people in the world. And it will continue to have influence beyond drugs: Epidemiologists promote harm reduction to combat Covid while minimizing pandemic fatigue."

How does this work? 

Dr. Monica Ghandi, the wonderful infectious diseases and HIV doctor at UCSF, explains: 

"Harm reduction aims to decrease new infections just like strategies that don't involve harm reduction. But #harmreduction takes into account the actual real-world conditions of life (need for contact, for work, for school) when forming policy to mitigate a pathogen's effects."

All of us need regular contact with other people -- in school, at work, in coffee houses, at playgrounds and on and on. We need these things as desperately as we need to protect our health and the health of those who are most vulnerable to viruses.

So there we have two huge topics brought together -- addiction and Covid. Think about that. 

***

Two more Covid-related issues:

There are some legitimate concerns about the adverse effects of the Covid vaccines, particularly the reported increase of Myocarditis in young males (~age 16) after getting the vaccine. Most recover quickly upon getting treatment from their cardiologists, but this is certainly an issue for parents of boys to stay informed about.

Another question I get frequently is why the FDA has not officially approved any of the vaccines yet. The agency just says it is reviewing the data, which only relatively recently has hit critical mass, and it will make a decision soon on Pfizer and then Moderna. I would expect both to receive full approval probably this month.

***

I've been so distracted by the need to speak out on the panic over delta this week that I haven't yet had enough energy to address the far bigger story of climate change that threatens us right here right now.

Please read these two stories:
 

1. Major Atlantic Current May Be On The Verge Of Collapse, Scientists Warn (Forbes) 


2. Human-driven planetary warming threatens to collapse a system of currents in the Atlantic Ocean that regulate weather across the globe, a new study has finds. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a section of the Gulf Stream, has long worked to stabilize climate conditions, but scientists warn that the system is slowing down. [HuffPost]


***

THE HEADLINES:

* The Costs of Selling Covid Fear -- Covid vaccines are incredibly effective. The media’s overhyping of new research from the CDC is making people think otherwise. (James Suroweicki/Elemental) 

 * Could the Covid Vaccine (and Others) Prevent Alzheimer’s? (Commentary (WSJ) 


 * Japan COVID cases hit 1 million as infections spread beyond Tokyo (Reuters)


* New Jersey to require masks in schools as Delta variant spreads (Reuters)


* Experts Predict What The Next Covid-19 Variants Will Be Like -- We’ve never seen anything like SARS-CoV-2 before. We’ve never had a pandemic of this scale with so much global mixing. (HuffPost)

* A new mandate calls for all California health care workers to be fully vaccinated by the end of September. (LA Times)

* Over half of Australia in lockdown as Delta spreads (Reuters)


* In California, the number of people getting vaccinated against Covid-19 across the state has grown substantially, with 41 percent more people receiving their shots last week compared with two weeks before, (LA Times) 


* CNN Fires Three Employees For Coming To Work Unvaccinated (NPR) 


 * The climate news is about to get a lot worse (WP) 


 * One of the Coldest Places on Earth Is On Fire -- The smoke from the fires in Russia’s northeast is so thick it has blotted out the sun, plunging vast swaths of the region into darkness during the brief summer. (WSJ)  


* Major Atlantic Current May Be On The Verge Of Collapse, Scientists Warn (Forbes) 


* Human-driven planetary warming threatens to collapse a system of currents in the Atlantic Ocean that regulate weather across the globe, a new study has finds. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a section of the Gulf Stream, has long worked to stabilize climate conditions, but scientists warn that the system is slowing down. [HuffPost]


* Homes flooded, fields and roads damaged as heavy rain hits North Korea (Reuters) 


 * No Work, No Food: Pandemic Deepens Global Hunger -- Relentless waves of the virus, combined with crises caused by conflict and climate change, have left tens of millions of people around the world on the brink of famine. (NYT) 


* Forest Fires Burn Through Greece, Threatening Ancient Athens Sites

 (Reuters) 

* Wildfire explodes to third-largest in California history (AP)

* Turkish blaze approaches power plant as wildfires enter 10th day (Reuters)


* Lake Oroville, one of California’s largest reservoirs, hit a record-low elevation point this week. (SF Chronicle)

* The full picture of Trump's attempted coup is only starting to emerge (CNN)


* Resurgent Taliban take provincial capital, kill Afghan gov't spokesman (Reuters)



* Salesforce.com accepted a $2.7 million payment from one of Donald Trump’s political committees the day after the then-president incited a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol ― and a few days before Salesforce claimed it would not permit its services to be used “in any way that could lead to violence.” But it's again sending emails from Trump's "Save America" committee. [HuffPost] 


* Sell This Book! Corporate publishing wants to turn all readers into renters. (The Nation)

* Hiroshima by John Hersey (New Yorker)

* Skunk Forced To Bluff Way Through Encounter With Dog After Realizing There’s Nothing Left In Chamber (The Onion)

***

"Two More Bottles Of Wine"
Song by Emmylou Harris
Written by Delbert Ross Mcclinton

We came out west together with a common desire 
The fever we had might've set the west coast on fire 
Two months later got trouble in mind 
Oh my baby moved out and left me behind 
But it's all right 'cause it's midnight 
And I got two more bottles of wine 
The way he left sure turned my head around 
Seemed like overnight she just up and put me down 
Ain't gonna let it bother me today 
I been workin' and I'm too tired anyway 
But it's all right 'cause it's midnight 
And I got two more bottles of wine 
I'm sixteen hundred miles from the people I know 
I've been doin' all I can but opportunity sure come slow 
Well I'd be in the sun all day 
But I'm sweepin' out a warehouse in west L.A. 
But it's all right 'cause it's midnight 
And I got two more bottles of wine
I'm sixteen hundred miles from the people I know 
I've been doin' all I can but opportunity sure come slow 
Well I'd be in the sun all day 
But I'm sweepin' out a warehouse in west L.A. 
But it's all right 'cause it's midnight 
And I got two more bottles of wine
Yes, it's all right 'cause it's midnight 
And I got two more bottles of wine
Yes, it's all right 'cause it's midnight 
And I got two more bottles of wine

-30-
at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)