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Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
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21 Mar, 13 tweets, 6 min read
‘UNPRECEDENTED CATASTROPHE’—“People are going around saying Brazil is going to collapse,” critical care doctor Pedro Carvalho said. “But we’ve collapsed already—completely collapsed”.

Brazil’s #P1 variant driven #COVID19 surge is beyond comprehension. 🧵
theguardian.com/world/2021/mar…
2) This piece by @tomphillipsin is a must read.

Brazil stares into the abyss as Covid intensive care units fill up everywhere.

As Covid-sceptic president continues to spurn lockdown calls, medics describe situation as terrifying and ‘well beyond chaos’
3) “Covid intensive care units in virtually all of Brazil’s 26 states and the federal district containing the capital, Brasília, are now either at, or perilously close to capacity, the institute said, warning: “The situation is absolutely critical.”
4) Meanwhile, Bolsonaro’s ally says “Our situation isn’t all that critical. Compared to other countries, it’s actually quite comfortable,” said Ricardo Barros, Bolsonaro’s leader in the lower house, on Wednesday as 2,798 fatalities and a record 90,830 new cases were reported.
5) “It’s not chaos – we’re well beyond chaos,” admitted the 39-year-old physician who said all 20 of his ICU beds were occupied after a month-long surge in admissions.
6) Maksud suggested a “complete lockdown” was probably the only way to stop the virus’s rampage, although Bolsonaro has resisted that idea, apparently fearful of the impact it might have on his hopes of re-election next year.
7) With 212 million citizens, Brazil is home to 2.7% of the world’s population but has suffered more than 10% of its Covid deaths.
8) The data doesn’t lie. Cases, hospitalizations, mortality spike. It’s all there for the world to see. Many choose to ignore. Please don’t look away. We need to focus on the crisis in Brazil, lest we let it happen to us too.
9) Has Brazil’s healthcare system collapsed under the new #COVID19 #P1 wave? By all these countless other headlines and testimonies—anyone can see it has.
10) And now, Rio de Janeiro suspended its vaccination campaign—it had run out of vaccine supplies.

"This is a disaster, a total disaster. Who is to blame for all this? I think our leaders, our politicians suck."

Sobering—HT @MattRiversCNN #COVID19
cnn.com/2021/03/20/ame…
11) On the ground report from Brazil by @MattRiversCNN. It has gotten much much worse since...
12) Vaccines coming months and months from now is too little too late. Inking deals for vaccines when ICU beds are >90% full is the WORST MANAGEMENT OF A PANDEMIC for any country.
13) the next worry for Brazil: because hospitals are now overloaded, will #COVID19 mortality soar even more? Because studies show Covid mortality rates are even higher than normal when hospitals are stretched beyond capacity.

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More from @DrEricDing

Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
23 Mar
THIS IS WILD—the NIH is expressing “concern” about information released by AstraZeneca on initial #COVID19 vaccine trial data. “AstraZeneca may have included outdated information from trial, which may have provided an incomplete view of the efficacy data”
nih.gov/news-events/ne… Image
2) Yeah, NYT picked up on this NIH statement released just **after midnight** (unusual in itself). nytimes.com/2021/03/22/wor…
3) “Companies sponsoring drug or vaccine trials typically wait for the monitoring board to run analyses and conclude that the study has yielded an answer before they announce trial results....”
Read 8 tweets
Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
23 Mar
BREAKING—“A new pandemic”—Germany 🇩🇪 announces strict Easter lockdown. "What we have is essentially a new pandemic," Merkel said. The new variant #B117 is "significantly more deadly, significantly more infectious."

I’ve warned a new #COVID19 wave coming.
dw.com/en/germany-imp… Image
2) “German federal and state leaders have agreed on a radical shutdown over the Easter holidays.
Germany is extending the current lockdown through to April 18, German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced on Tuesday.
3) “The country will enter an even stricter lockdown from April 1 to April 5, over the Easter holiday period when shops, including grocery stores, will largely have to close.
Talks between leaders of 🇩🇪’s 16 federal states and Merkel lasted until the early hours of the morning”
Read 14 tweets
Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
23 Mar
‘ONE NEAT TRICK’ for #COVID19 vaccine:

Yes, sounds clickbait-y, but there actually was a special technique developed to enhance the vaccine to be more effective—by adding a “double proline” (2-P) to stabilize the spike.

Took years to discover it! Neat.
cen.acs.org/pharmaceutical… ImageImage
2) “Graham’s lab had a template to work from because they’d spent several years designing an experimental mRNA vaccine for MERS.
But there’s a third, more subtle secret to their success: a tiny but oh-so-important tweak to a critical viral component called the spike protein.”
3) “Viruses multiply by dumping their genes into our cells and hijacking our cellular machinery to crank out new virus particles. But first, they need a doorway into our cells. Coronaviruses are studded with spikes, which grab hold of proteins decorating our cells like doorknobs.
Read 21 tweets
Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
23 Mar
What caused plummet in business—#COVID19 or lockdowns?

@Austan_Goolsbee’s shutdown study:

“By comparing counties w/ & without restrictions, only 7% points of the 60% point overall decline in business activity can be attributed to legal restrictions."

➡️Virus was the reason.🧵 Image
2)
 “Comparing consumer behavior within the same commuting zones but across boundaries with different policy regimes... While overall consumer traffic fell by 60% points, legal restrictions explain only 7 of that.”
nber.org/papers/w27432 Image
3) “Traffic started dropping before the legal orders were in place; was highly tied to the number of COVID deaths in the county; and showed a clear shift by consumers away from larger/busier stores toward smaller/less busy ones in the same industry.”
Read 12 tweets
Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
22 Mar
SCHOOLS: Belgian Prime Minister says that schools are a hotbed of contamination and that children transmit the virus to their parents.

As result? 50% of all #COVID19 hospitalizations in 🇧🇪 are now under age 48 (parents of school children). This is affirmed by the Belgian leader.
2) Belgium 🇧🇪 Prime Minister also says: “The track & trace analysis shows that infections occur mainly in two places: in school and at work,” De Croo said at a press conference at the end of the Consultative Committee meeting.

brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-a…
3) “It has therefore been decided, where schools are concerned, that “the ministers of education need to come up by Monday with a list of measures to limit, to the maximum, the risk of infection,” he explained.”
Read 12 tweets
Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
22 Mar
NO BLOOD CLOT RISK—In new AstraZeneca #COVIDVaccine trial in the US, Peru, and Chile:

➡️ No effects on blood clots observed in the 21,583 who were vaccinated, even with 60% of the people having some type of co-morbidity.

Really reassuring! 🧵 #COVID19
astrazeneca.com/media-centre/p… Image
2) 79% efficacy for symptomatic #COVID19 overall—100% efficacy for severe disease is amazing.

Even better - 80% efficacy in elderly. That’s super good that efficacy didn’t drop in the elderly. (In contrast, natural infection’s protection against reinfection plummets in elderly)
3) “This AstraZeneca-led US Phase III trial included two doses administered at a four week interval. Previous trials have shown that an extended interval of up to 12 weeks demonstrated greater efficacy, which was also supported by immunogenicity data...”
Read 5 tweets

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