Thread by @jeremyfaust

🧵Here's what I've been reading this week, related to COVID,

Five articles/stories that I think matter (see @Brief_19 for a lot of this).

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1. What might work/will work:

A vaccine!

New Phase 1 data shows safety and a good immune response.

nejm.org/doi/full/10.10…

2. What definitely works/matters:

Universal screening for COVID in nursing homes. Upshot: they found a LOT of cases that appeared asymptomatic, but some became serious.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jamai…

3. What does NOT work:

Hydroxychlorouine (HCQ). Data from the first ACTUAL clinical trial testing HCQ shows no benefit, and more patients randomized to receive it ended up in comas/on ventilators.
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

Extra: Another negative study:
acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M2…

4. Data transparency matters:

The White House tells hospitals to bypass sending COVID data to the CDC and instead send it to them. Why would they want that? The National Health Safety Network has done good work on this.

Politicians controlling data=bad
nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/…

5. Semantics matter:

Is SARS-CoV-2 airborne?

Not clear.

We know masks are one of handful of things we can do to slow the spread. But no study has shown airborne transmission to be THE driving force.

My colleagues at @harvardmed wrote about this well.
jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/…

That's the top 5.

A lot of this (though not all) is over at @Brief_19, where a brain trust of front line doctors is hard at work to bring you high quality, readable content.

brief19.com
brief19.com/subscribe/

Hope this is useful! (fin).