Don't be an Alpha-Gal

ProMED tells the sad tale of a repatriated Arkansasan who started a BBQ restaurant and then came down with the tick-bourne meat allergy you may have heard of in a keto horror story somewhere:

Alpha-gal (galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose) is a sugar molecule found in most mammals, but not in humans. Kennedy said because the molecule is foreign to our bodies, when it gets introduced, say, through the saliva of a tick, it can result in serious allergic reactions to red meat and other mammal byproducts like milk or gelatin.

"So when a tick bites you, it injects saliva. Therefore, it's possible that's the route of first sensitization that's required for allergy," Kennedy said. "It is a vector-borne type of allergy that we didn't even know existed until 2007."

But how exactly does the illness manifest from the tick to human? Researchers aren't really sure.

"I wish we knew who would be at most risk, and that's another thing that needs to happen as far as the research goes," [Kennedy] said. "I've lived in Arkansas my whole life, and I can tell you I've had millions of tick bites, right? And I don't have alpha-gal. So why do my patients have it, when they get a tick bite? Is it the tick? Is it the person? What happens there?"

There is apparently some hope of recovery if you leave the range of the lone star tick and see an allergist.

Day 790: Two Shots are Better Than Four

Even the New York Times is pessimistic about a fourth shot (2nd booster) for anyone but the seriously ill or seriously old, but the Wall Street Journal one-ups them by dissing the first booster, too:

The FDA reportedly will authorize (but not recommend) the fourth shot for patients over 50. But if your immune system is healthy, three or even two doses of these mRNA vaccines should be sufficient.

Vaccine-induced protection against infection is short-lived and doesn’t get much of a boost from extra shots. Yet the initial two-dose regimen is enough to provide most patients excellent protection against severe disease—mediated by durable cellular responses, not the neutralizing antibodies that rise and wane quickly after vaccination.

Speaking of shots, the Chinese went gunning for Fido briefly, then allegedly backed off.

P.S. Massachusetts cases were up almost a tenth of a percentage point today.

Day 720: The Tiniest Victims

The news of the day was looking to be our poo again, but China has decided to cull a bunch of hamsters because eek, tailless rat COVID, of course:

Officials said on Tuesday that it was not clear that the virus had been transmitted to humans from imported hamsters. But they called on residents to surrender hamsters imported since Dec. 22 to be tested and euthanized to prevent any further spread.

“They’re excreting the virus, and the virus can infect other animals, other hamsters and also human beings,” said Thomas Sit, assistant director of Hong Kong’s Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation department. “We don’t want to cull all the animals, but we have to protect public health and animal health. We have no choice — we have to make a firm decision.”

Massachusetts cases were up about one and a twelfth percent again today. The MDPH is still putting the data in a random spot instead of the archive.

Day 300: Zombie Mink

The world is at 61 million coronavirus cases, with the #1 US at 13 million, #2 India at 9 million, #3 Brazil at 6 million, #4 Russia at 2 million, and #5 France at their heels, also with 2 million.

Mink are rising again from their hastily-dug, shallow graves in Denmark. The graves must therefore be guarded against intrusion from other wildlife. (American mink themselves are not native to Europe.)

In other mink news, the Netherlands have culled their 70th infected mink farm. France has also joined the growing list of European countries with infected mink farms.

Day 278: Mink Mutation

The world is at 48 million coronavirus cases. France has exceeded 1.5 million cases and at their current rate may take over Russia's #4 spot. In the US, Texas took over the top spot from California a few days ago, depending on who's counting. Florida remains a distant third.

On the animal front, a symptomatic Knoxville, TN tiger tested positive last week, and two other tigers are presumed positive. There are no plans to kill the tigers.

The minks are not so lucky; neovisicide rages on in northern Europe where Denmark now plans to cull their entire mink population over an unspecified mutant SARS-CoV-2 strain that has already infected humans. It may differ enough from the common strains to be an issue.

P.S. Massachusetts cases are up one percent today.

Day 243: No One Here Cares

As the world hits 34 million cases, local puritans continue to be surprised at college students' disregard for a disease that poses little threat to them personally. In this case the culprits were unmasked Boston College football players failing to be somber and socially distant in a "tightly packed locker room" after beating Texas State 24–21 in a comeback victory. Since dirty football players are expected to go to locker rooms after games and no grandmas are known to have been killed by COVID-negative athletes, it's not clear what their offense was or what exactly they weren't caring enough about.

In other young immortal news, a 48-year-old senior non-comm in the Army Reserve died of coronavirus, making him only the eighth US service member COVID death. The military’s COVID death rate is around 0.015%, with only one active duty serviceman having died (the sailor from Germ Boat #23).

NPR has been reporting on life in the fake school trenches. You'd think we'd have a hard number, but NPR could only provide an estimate that about 50% of school districts went virtual this fall. NPR is ominous about parents "reaching a breaking point", with moms leaving the remote workforce after failing to both work and parent full-time at home, leaving their kids at home alone with a computer while they go out to work, or paying for daycare to supervise their children's fake school day. The latter is most notable for recreating all the risks of school for the children and their stand-in teachers, at extraordinary expense to their parents. As if all of that weren't bad enough, a second NPR article reports on the compound consequences of parental unemployment and childhood social isolation.

In cute and furry news, a New York company, Applied DNA Sciences, has responded to the crowded COVID vaccine market by creating a vaccine for cats. It's already in clinical trials "upstate". PlagueBlog admires their ingenuity, and also hopes that this doesn't turn into another Lyme disease situation where a vaccine is available for pets but not for humans.

P.S. Massachusetts' cases were up two-fifths of a percentage point again today. The cities and towns data is out and shows some activity on Nantucket and in the north around Lawrence. (Maps tomorrow.)

Day 230: Should Fido Wear a Mask?

The Netherlands have jumped a couple of places past China (now #41) over the course of the week. Next up to surpass China are Guatemala and the United Arab Emirates. Michigan also surpassed Massachusetts this week, pushing us down to #18 in the US. Next up is Maryland, though Missouri and Wisconsin are moving faster at the moment.

Today's title question is an apparently serious one from Reader's Digest: Should Your Dog Be Wearing a Pet Mask? The answer, of course, is no. Dogs need to pant as well as breathe, and some of them have been bred to be dangerously bad at the latter even without a mask. Of course no one asks whether your cat should wear a mask because clearly your cat will refuse.

On the science front, not only does smoking protect you from COVID-19, but wearing glasses does as well, at least according to this report in JAMA Ophthalmology.

Massachusetts' cases are up a third of a percentage point today. Here's the graph of the cities and towns data from Wednesday; things are still happening in Williamstown and on the islands, as well as in Worcester, Lawrence, Revere, and New Bedford:

(Pop out.)

Day 221: Constitutional Issues

Sweden, a nation of ten million people, has finally surpassed China, a nation of one billion people and the source of the novel coronavirus, in case count, putting them at #38 and #39 respectively. In #3 Brazil, Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the president, has recovered from coronavirus with the help of hydroxychloroquine. In #41 the Netherlands, three more mink farms have been found infected and are being culled. (PlagueBlog hopes they don't do the same with people.)

Germ Boat #34 is HMS Queen Elizabeth, a UK aircraft carrier, currently grounded in Portsmouth over "fewer than ten" cases among the crew.

Here in the US, both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have "walked back" their promised national mask mandate over that pesky constitution thing. Also, the right to bear nerf arms is under attack in Colorado, where a 12-year-old's green nerf gun was spotted briefly during fake online school, leading to a police visit, a five-day suspension, and his eventual withdrawal from the Hitler Youth school.

Massachusetts' cases are up a seventh of a percentage point today.

Day 210: Even the Bunnies

Oman has gotten very close to the China point, but is still lagging behind at #35. The US is now well past 6 million cases, and Alabama is slowly working its way towards Massachusetts' #13 spot, where it may arrive in less than a week. Death tolls for the summer wave remain significantly lower than those from the spring.

Amnesty International reports on the gunning down of at least seven young men in Angola by security forces, apparently over mask and lockdown-related offenses.

The Times reports that the six minors who have died of coronavirus in the UK were all seriously ill:

Three were newborn babies with other severe health problems. The other three were aged 15 to 18 years old and also had “profound health issues”.

Calum Semple, professor in child health and outbreak medicine at the University of Edinburgh, who is the senior author of the study, said: “The deaths that we did observe were children with what we would describe as profound co-morbidities — not a touch of asthma, not cystic fibrosis.”

These children’s underlying illnesses would have been considered as “life-limiting”, he said. “We did not have any deaths in otherwise healthy school-aged children.”

Note that that was six minors out of about 70,000 hospitalized patients studied (only 651 of whom were minors). In total there have been about 41,000 deaths in the UK, some presumably out of hospital. The headline and text of the news article imply that the study covered all deaths of minors in the UK, though the actual research didn't explicitly claim to be exhaustive, nor did it include Northern Ireland or any overseas territories at all.

The Lancet preprints an American case of reinfection with a provably different coronavirus strain. It isn't the suspected Wisconsin case but a case in Nevada. The patient was symptomatic with his first strain for about a month beginning at the end of March, then relapsed at the end of May and was eventually hospitalized with hypoxia and pneumonia. No resolution of the second bout was reported.

The paper also notes that he may have been reinfected by a household member, and that he is 25 years old with no immunological issues to explain the reinfection (though it is otherwise silent on his health status and any comorbidities):

The individual associated with these cases possesses no significant conditions of an immunological nature that would imply facilitation of re-infection. They were not utilizing any immunosuppressive medications. The individual was negative for HIV by antibody and RNA testing (data not shown) and had no obvious cell count abnormalities.

According to a new preprint, rabbits are susceptible to coronavirus. While the three in vivo test subjects were asymptomatic, they did shed infectious virus from their twitchy little noses for up to seven days. The results are of some interest to rabbit farmers, though probably not a public health concern.

Nature reports on a promising drug for both original SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, one that was previously shown to be effective against the coronavirus that causes feline infectious peritonitis.

P.S. Massachusetts' cases are up a third of a percentage point today.

Day 206: The MDPH Punts the Ball

Mexico is #7 in total coronavirus cases, with 560,000 cases and 60,000 deaths, which is bad enough, but the Mexican press paints an even worse picture. Like the mother country, their counting skills leave something to be desired, and some estimates place their case counts and death toll at as much as three times higher than the public numbers. While their "cratering economy" is allegedly due in part to austere fiscal policies, most of it sounds coronaviral in nature.

On the science front, a Korean study showed 79% greater risk of severe COVID outcomes from the use of proton pump inhibitors (a class of antacid already known to be associated with pneumonia).

Also, a study out of UC Davis found likely animal hosts of SARS-CoV-2 based on their ACE2 sequences. Not surprisingly, many old world primates share our ACE2, but they also found "12 cetaceans (whales and dolphins), 7 rodents, 3 cervids (deer), 3 lemuriform primates, 2 representatives of the order Pilosa (giant anteater and southern tamandua), and 1 Old-World primate" to be highly correlated to our ACE2 insofar as binding SARS goes, and 57 other species (including cats) with medium propensity for binding the virus. Dogs were low propensity. The American mink, which has proven to be the most susceptible of all animals, got their lowest rating of potential for infection: very low, as did another animal known to be susceptible, the ferret. They discussed the inaccuracy of their ferret result, but not the much more impressive miss on the mink. Make of that what you will.

Upon reflection, PlagueBlog realizes it was foolish to have ever expected backdated numbers from the MDPH, which has instead tossed all the weekend's cases into today's totals. While that still only puts the case count up half a percentage point, we prefer to report the average over the past three days (recalling that Saturday was a bit wedged as well): by this accounting, cases were up only a fifth of a percentage point per day.

It seems that even Miskatonic University has submitted its COVID-19 safety plans to the Commonwealth.

Day 202: Not So Unexpectedly

Brazil has topped 3.5 million cases and India is a day or two away from three million cases. In the US, #3 Florida has somehow crept up on #2 Texas, and may surpass it soon. All of the top three states are barely over 10,000 deaths, with death rates per capita that are quite low compared to the first wave states.

The New York Times describes the ongoing economic plunge (after a slight blip last week) as "unexpected", though they're never surprised when coronavirus case numbers pop back up after a lull. The economy is still bleeding from a thousand not-so-tiny lockdown-inspired cuts, like Governor Cuomo closing the malls, of all things, in New York City over ventilation issues that somehow don't obtain elsewhere in the state or in New Jersey.

On the mink front, there's apparently been a reprieve of the mink of Denmark. Despite the discovery of a fourth infected farm in North Jutland, officials have decided to enforce strict sanitary measures rather than kill all the mink like they do in the Netherlands (now at 33 mink farms culled, for an estimated body count of 1.5 million mink). In fact, the Dutch neovisicidal maniacs have threatened the entire mink population of the country if COVID-19 persists into late August.

On the big brother front, your Fitbit knows whether you have COVID-19 before you do:

Since launching a study to see whether its wearable activity trackers could pick up on the early signs of a COVID-19 infection, Fitbit has enrolled over 100,000 participants across the U.S. and Canada and is now delivering its first, preliminary results 90 days later.

That includes at least 1,100 users who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. By tracking subtle changes in a person’s heart rate, breathing, physical activity and quality of sleep, Fitbit aims to develop an algorithm that can highlight potential cases before symptoms start.

So far, the company said its devices have been able to detect nearly half of COVID-19 cases at least one day before the participant reported any of the disease’s symptoms, such as fever, cough or muscle aches.

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

Day 200: American American Minks

The world is at 22 1/4 million cases. Sweden snuck past China a couple of days ago, but Panama is still behind. In New Zealand, some pretty sketchy rumors allege that the suspect cold storage facility has been cleared of direct involvement in the outbreak. A new patient seems to be in the works for the main cluster, and genomic data has identified a second strain among the 17 patients in the current outbreak. The second strain seems to have been traced already to a isolation facility for imported cases where the corresponding patient worked, though the route of transmission remains unknown.

In the US, three million people are now recovered from coronavirus. Despite a general slowdown of cases, Arizona has crept past New Jersey to the #7 spot. Massachusetts' cases are up a fifth of a percentage point again today, not to brag.

The Washington Post reports mink at two mink farms in Utah have tested positive for coronavirus, the first cases in American mink (Neovison vison) in the US. The testing was performed posthumously after “unusually large numbers of mink died at the farms,” and five deceased mink were found to have been infected. The suspected route of infection is from infected human farmworkers to the mink. No neovisicide is planned for the remaining animals, as the US is a civilized country. The article notes that the US mink industry has also been suffering from lack of demand from China, apparently due in some unspecified way to coronavirus travel restrictions.

Day 194: Canines and Cold Chains

New Zealand may have traced their outbreak to refrigerated shipping, as one of their four coronavirus cases worked in an Aukland cold storage facility. (Note that they are considering delaying elections over a 0.8 per million case rate.) China is also complaining again about COVID coming in on frozen seafood, though they don't say from where, and they do say they may have exported some of the contaminated imports.

Also in China, two more cases of COVID recidivism have come out. The more notable one involves a 68-year-old woman from Jingzhou who first tested positive on February 8th, recovered, and tested positive again on August 9th. Apparently she is ill enough this time to be receiving some unspecified treatment. News reports differ on whether she recovered from the first bout "a few months ago" or in late February, which would be over five months ago. The second case is of a man from Hulchun who was initially diagnosed on April 27th, recovered on June 16th, and tested positive on August 10th. He is also receiving treatment, though it's not clear from the report whether he initially sought treatment for COVID or for another condition.

A North Carolina dog who died of a sudden illness involving respiratory distress early last week has tested positive for COVID-19. A family member of the owner had tested positive previously, though the news reports do not note whether the human was ever symptomatic. The dog was an 8-year-old male Newfie. Autopsy results are still pending.

On the off-target vaccine front, a preprint reports somewhat promising results from BCG booster shots in a population that was immunized in childhood. A larger study of giving tuberculosis vaccine to adults in a naive population is underway in Australia, but results aren't expected until October (and may not be particularly significant unless their outbreak worsens before then).

Locally, the governor has backed off a bit on quarantining Rhode Islanders who live close to Massachusetts and tend to shop here (which is, practically speaking, all Rhode Islanders).

P.S. Massachusetts' cases were up a quarter of a percentage point today. To add insult to late reporting, the MDPH has buried the real case count even deeper (in an ethnicity pie chart) and removed the cases by county data altogether.

Day 193: Community Spread Spreads to New Zealand

Israel has passed the China point; the Ukraine is up next. Russia has launched a coronavirus vaccine called Sputnik V, to a mixed reception. Spain is experiencing a disturbing increase in cases, though with Spain it's always hard to tell whether the situation has changed on the ground or merely within their health ministry.

But the big news-maker is #136 New Zealand, which, after 101 days of no community spread, reports four new coronavirus cases in one family. Family member zero had not travelled abroad. Note that New Zealand is an island with a population of 5 million, who are now locked down due to a case rate of 0.8 per million.

In India, the economic downturn caused by unproven lockdowns is causing children to be taken out of school and put to work. And, in a story all too reminiscent of the cows-eating-people theory of mad cow disease, dogs are eating the insufficiently incinerated bodies of coronavirus victims in Adilabad, India—due (allegedly) to officials stinting on the wood and leaving funeral pyres unattended.

In the US, the governor of Guam has tested positive. Case rates are falling in Florida and Texas.

On the theatrical front, PlagueBlog continues to ignore news of weird COVID sex advice out of England (why is it always England?), but cannot ignore our domestic COVID theater: the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is requiring workers alone at home to wear masks to Zoom meetings. An Illinois school district has forbidden both wearing pajamas to "fake school" and Zooming from bed.

On the feline front, new research has uncovered two infected cats in Texas. A separate preprint shows asymptomatic spread in cats.

P.S. Massachusetts' cases are up a third of a percentage point today.

Day 181: HCQ Again and Again

The world stands at 17.2 million cases. The US at #1 is at 4.5 million, #2 Brazil at 2.5 million, #3 India at 1.6 million. Japan is having a bit of an outbreak (by Asian standards), with at least 1300 new cases today.

In the US, the news is already starting to report Texas taking the #3 spot away from New York (according to the numbers from Johns Hopkins), but at Worldometers, Texas still has a couple of days to go. Because of our blip upwards yesterday due to bad data, Pennsylvania is still about three days away from taking away Massachusetts' #10 spot. Also, GDP shrank a record 33% during the second quarter.

National Geographic reports on the sad demise of a COVID-positive German Shepherd with pre-existing conditions. "Buddy" had shortness of breath before the first American pug case was tested, and may even have been tested privately before the pug. But Buddy's test results were not confirmed by the USDA until June, and he did not pass away until mid-July. National Geographic claims to have consulted vets about Buddy's case, but apparently they didn't like what they heard; they seem quite cagey in giving the obvious explanation—Buddy died of cancer, possibly with COVID (as the conspiracy theorists say), but there's no evidence he was still symptomatic or even positive at the time of his death.

Medical records provided by the Mahoneys and reviewed for National Geographic by two veterinarians who were not involved in his treatment indicate that Buddy likely had lymphoma, a type of cancer, which would explain the symptoms he suffered just before his death.

A rather uninformative partial list of pet and zoo animal cases in the US is available from the USDA.

The hydroxychloroquine news just keeps on coming. BNO reported that the Ohio Board of Pharmacy was banning the prescription of HCQ (and chloroquine) for COVID-19. But then the Governor announced he was calling them off, because they're not doctors. (Doctors in the US are normally allowed to prescribe perfectly safe drugs for off-label uses.)

It's unclear how much this Twitter kerfluffle was influenced by the AAPS's motion for a preliminary injunction last week to release the large store of HCQ donated to the US by parties that were not mentioned (but PlagueBlog reminds readers that India is a major donor of HCQ to other countries), or by their supplementary filing.

P.S. Massachusetts cases are up a third of a percentage point today, due in part to the same reporting error from yesterday.

Day 167: Neo-Neovisicide

ProMED reports that a twenty-fourth mink farm in the Netherlands has been found infected (despite strict isolation protocols) and "will be cleared as soon as possible." About 20% of mink farms in the Netherlands have been infected and culled at this point, a number suspiciously close to the (human) level of infection one might expect from their government's original (human) herd immunity plans.

In Denmark, a second and third farm have been found infected. Over half of the herd of 5,000 mink at the third farm were positive, and all were slaughtered at the beginning of July. In addition, the family dog at the first Danish farm has tested positive, but apparently escaped the wholesale slaughter.

Massachusetts cases are up a fifth of a percentage point today. The MDPH cities and towns report was even more mauled than we at PlagueBlog Headquarters initially thought; they are no longer reporting test counts per person, but are now giving an actual total of all tests (so Boston jumped from 97,288 persons tested to 141,184 tests performed). They are also not reporting case rates any longer. (Some rate maps survive in the report, but the data is gone.) While case rates can be calculated from the case totals and public population information, the MDPH doesn't report the actual "denominators estimated by the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute using a modified Hamilton-Perry model" that they used, so a direct comparison with the rates they used to report would require some gymnastics not really merited by our current low numbers.

They are still reporting positivity (if you care for that sort of thing) as well as more "last 14 days" data (that was easily derived from the previous, fuller reports), and one useful thing having to do with percent positivity: whether it's going up or down. So here is our current take on the last 14 days:

(Pop out.)

Day 143: Counterfeit Hand Sanitizer

The FDA has issued a warning about nine hand sanitizers made in Mexico by Eskbiochem SA de CV. They range from contaminated with methanol to wholly composed of methanol; some were not tested but appear to have been presumed guilty by association. (It seems even hand sanitizer can get cancelled.) Methanol does have legitimate topical uses, and PlagueBlog suspects that if a toxic topical dose were involved the FDA would have been more specific about the danger.

On the animal front, a preprint examining the susceptibility of pets, livestock, and wildlife has found, not surprisingly, that cats are particularly susceptible. Pangolins and hamsters are also known to become infected, and the authors cited a case of human-to-pig transmission. Despite that case and a perhaps unsurprising theoretical susceptibility, pigs proved difficult to infect in the lab. Poultry was particularly resistant, and the second most resistant was the dog. (Cabbits and mink were not mentioned in the paper.)

Mink continue to fall ill. The latest outbreak is on a mink farm in Denmark, where the Danish jumped immediately to the final solution of neovisicide. The count of concentration camps infected mink farms in the Netherlands has reached fifteen; it seems the Dutch government intends to slaughter them all (if it has not done so already). An animal rights group appealed the decision, but the judge ruled against the innocent, mostly-recovered mink.

Massachusetts cases are up 0.14% today. That's about 150 new cases, and not nearly enough to keep Florida (with 100,000 cases total) from passing us in just a few days. Georgia edged Maryland out of the top ten states yesterday.

Day 127: Neovisicide

PlagueBlog is saddened to have correctly predicted the planned slaughter of no-longer-particularly-sick mink (Neovison vison) in the Netherlands, due to their suspected ability to transmit coronavirus back to humans, as well as pure speculation that they may turn into an animal reserve for the virus (which hardly seems to need one with humans keeping it going). The Guardian reports that the unnecessary and paranoid gassing of mink mothers and their new pups has already begun. The Guardian misreports that the mink were initially infected by the farmers. In fact, the source of infection doesn't seem to have been humans; it may have been farm cats. (PlagueBlog hopes they won't also be gassed.)

Elsewhere on the animal front, the South China Morning Post reports that man's best friend can detect coronavirus infections. French researchers trained eight Belgian Malinois shepherd dogs to sniff out the infected from their armpit sweat. (No dogs were endangered in the course of this experiment.) They even found two asymptomatic cases in the control sweat samples; the corresponding humans were retested and found to be positive.

Cases are up only 0.56% in Massachusetts; to celebrate the governor is letting restaurants open for outside dining on Monday, though the state's tangle of pandemic web pages don't seem to include any confirmation of that yet.

Day 124: A Snowball Effect

The stats are largely unchanged. Massachusetts cases are up 0.42% today, and there is both good and bad news about cities and towns day: it seems that the CDC's desire for probably cases has not yet affected the cities and towns data, but on the other hand, the MDPH's penchant for rearranging the data has mixed things up again. So any pretty pictures will be delayed until tomorrow.

On the mink front, coronavirus has been found at three more mink farms in the Netherlands, through mandatory mink testing. The report fails to mention whether the minks' contacts have been traced. It seems that coronavirus paranoia may lead to culling of the unfortunate and mostly recovered mink.

The US has a new first canine case, since the previous pug case was later retracted. The new patient is a German shepherd from New York State whose owners tested positive and showed symptoms, respectively. The dog showed respiratory symptoms, but is expected to recover. A second dog in the same household had antibodies.

An anti-vaxxer has tackled the far simpler challenge of debunking the "lockdown lunacy" at his blog. It's a long read, partly because every time you think you've gotten to the most damning evidence against lockdowns and the like, he comes up with something even more damning. His citations will be familiar to anyone who follows corona-science—that is, you don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to have heard most of it before. PlagueBlog had not heard the quote from which today's title was taken, though:

It is what is known in science as positive feedback or a snowball effect. The government is afraid of its constituents. Therefore, it implements draconian measures. The constituents look at the draconian measures and become even more hysterical. They feed each other and the snowball becomes larger and larger until you reach irrational territory. This is nothing more than a flu epidemic if you care to look at the numbers and the data, but people who are in a state of anxiety are blind. (Yoram Lass)

There was also a new-to-us paper in there, a contact study for an asymptomatic Chinese patient in a healthcare setting who managed not to infect 455 contacts. The blogger does leap to a conclusion here (that asymptomatic carriers are never infectious), though this patient may merely have been past the period of infectivity or otherwise atypical.

Day 115: The Minks Go on the Attack

Reuters reports a second case of mink-to-human COVID-19 transmission on mink farms in the Netherlands. The first case was reported last week, in an employee who'd been working without PPE before the mink epidemic was detected. The human has since recovered, but genetic testing puts the direction of transmission from the mink to the human rather than vice versa (as was initially suspected). No details of the new case are available.

Cats appear to be the current suspect in the initial infection of the mink, as some of the farm cats were found to have antibodies already. Cats are no longer allowed near the mink, and minks on all farms are getting antibody testing.

On the unspeakable front, it seems that about 50% of all coronavirus deaths in Europe have occurred among nursing home residents. The numbers were crunched by the Japanese, who remain immune to most of our coronavirus taboos, but here are the numbers as translated by ProMED:

Country	Total deaths	Deaths in nursing homes	% of deaths in nursing homes	Most recent data	Source
France	28 239	14 363 (3713 died in hospital)	50.9%	18 May 2020	Public Health Bureau
Spain	27 709	18 413	66.45%	18 May 2020	Spanish Broadcasting Corporation
UK	31 855	11 687	36.70%	10 May 2020	National Bureaus of Statistics, etc.
Germany	7935	2980	37.56%	18 May 2020	Robert Koch Institute
Sweden	2075	948	45.60%	28 Apr 2020	Health and Welfare Agency
Italy	N/A	2724	N/A	14 Apr 2020	National Institutes of Health

Even more unspeakable is Jeffrey Tucker's article at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) claiming that the lockdown hasn't saved any lives, and we only tell ourselves that it did because of the sunk costs fallacy. He specifically cites fuller nursing home death data as part of his argument that locking down everyone was an expensive and counterproductive distraction from protecting those populations that were actually at risk.

Some of his data comes from the International Long Term Care Policy Network (latest data here), which finds that 41% of all COVID-19 deaths occurred in nursing home residents. A report on the available US data on Medium comes to a similar estimate of 42%, with a higher guess at 52% when excluding the outlier of New York.

It is true than any flattening of the curve before vaccines or effective treatments only saves non-COVID-19 patients from dying from lack of medical care in an overwhelmed system. It merely postpones actual coronavirus deaths, or possibly even increases them as potential patients age, sicken, fatten, and otherwise become more susceptible to the disease. (Presumably some of them would have survived an earlier bout of COVID-19.)

But without seeing next winter's coronavirus numbers, PlagueBlog would not jump to the same conclusion that none of our unused hospital capacity would have been used in the economically happier case of no lockdown. He does have a point about deaths resulting from the counterproductive drop in care as well as from the general deterioration of mental health under lockdown, but that seems to have had more to do with the general panic than with the government's role in locking people down per se. It's not so clear who is to blame for the panic—possibly social media qua virtual mob.

AIER is apparently based in Massachusetts, and dedicates an entire article to the Commonwealth as a cautionary tale of bureaucratic micromanagement demonstrating incompetence in the face of the Invisible Hand.

P.S. Massachusetts cases were up 0.64% today, and Middlesex County was up only half a percent. Needless to say, Phase 2 of our multi-phase micromanagement plan has not been declared yet. The Atlantic has an article on this disturbing lack of peakiness to the peak; apparently the Commonwealth is a microcosm of a national plateau phenomenon.