Day 165: Even the Cans

Fox News reports on an aluminum can shortage caused by less soda drinking from fountains and more at home, making some soda varieties scarce. This may not seem like the most important coronavirus news of the day, but PlagueBlog feels that it beats overwrought stories about "record high" death tolls in states where they can still easily enumerate the dead in a brief news article. Let us know when you have 21 pages of obituaries down there.

PlagueBlog readers may recall the theory that previous infection by other coronaviruses has provided some stealth immunity to SARS-CoV-2. A group of Italian researchers turned this theory on its head with their June commentary in BMJ Global Health, in which they theorized that previous infection by other coronaviruses (or by SARS-CoV-2 itself) actually makes COVID-19 worse. Mild cases occur in the immunologically naive, while severe cases, they postulate, are caused by antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), a phenomenon in which viral infection and reproduction are aided by binding to antibodies. ADE is known from HIV and other coronaviruses, and has already been mentioned as a potential roadblock to COVID-19 vaccine development.

As if that wasn't bad enough, Reuters reports on some depressing projections from British scientists of up to 120,000 deaths from COVID-19 next winter. That's in addition to their record 45,000 so far, which was already the third-highest death toll in the world and the second-highest death rate per capita among non-city-states (after Belgium).

Massachusetts cases are up a quarter of a percentage point today.