Thread by @DrTomFrieden

Covid Epi Weekly: People are tired of fighting the virus, but the virus isn’t tired of infecting people

As parts of Europe and the US show, turn your back on Covid and it will come back to bite you. Cases trending up again in many states, likely to hit 50,000/day in October.
1/9

2/9 Trends in positivity are getting harder to track. Per Covid Tracking Project, only 9 states documented to follow best practice of reporting antigen & PCR tests separately. (States should also report unduplicated people positive/tested, crossreferencing the two types of test.)

3/9 What starts in the young doesn’t stay in the young. @MMWR reports young adult infections were followed a week or two later by infections in people over 60. We are all connected. The sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can move forward more safely. bit.ly/369yrOu

4/9 Hotspots:
Universities
Meat packing
Jails, prisons
Homeless shelters
Agricultural workers wapo.st/2RYmeUH

Meat packing factories are driving spread in many communities, with persistent failures in prevention, response, and transparency. bit.ly/369jtZa

5/9 Spread in Orthodox areas of NYC is concerning. Given crowding and alienation from government, spread within community is a near-inevitability; wider spread in NYC can be prevented if NYC does much better at rapid isolation and effective contact tracing bit.ly/3j346ow

6/9 In crowded indoor spaces, Covid can spread widely, but this is much less common than with measles. Covid is spread by particles – some large, some small. It's a continuum, not a dichotomy. Depends on index case, mask, activity (singing, shouting), ventilation, people exposed.

7/9 For 8 months the US government has ignored, sidelined, & undermined public health and scientific recommendations. They have taken the tools we have to fight Covid and broken them. Masks. Testing. Effective communication. Contact tracing. Strategic closures. Careful reopening.

8/9 Operation Warp Speed has gotten some things right: multiple vaccines, manufacturing in parallel with studies, good CDC guidance on vaccine preparation. If vaccine studies are stopped early, could lose essential information on effectiveness in the elderly and safety in all.

9/9 Vaccines are our most important tool. We can only hope the Administration doesn’t break this tool also by meddling with the science and approval process. Administration errors cost lives and jobs. Politicizing vaccination would be the most dangerous and costly mistake yet.