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Kai Kupferschmidt Profile picture
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6 Apr, 11 tweets, 3 min read
15 Monate lang habe ich jetzt intensiv über diese Pandemie berichtet.
Ich habe mich in die Arbeit gestürzt, weil genau das hier mein Job ist. Aber auch weil es die Chance war etwas zu tun, sich nicht so nutzlos zu fühlen.
Ich habe mit Forscherinnen und Ärzten gesprochen, Artikel geschrieben, getwittert, einen Podcast gestartet, habe Panels moderiert, Pressekonferenzen gelauscht und Interviews gegeben.
Ich war häufig frustriert, gestresst, manchmal traurig.
Aber in dieser ganzen Zeit habe ich das schiere Ausmaß des Leids, das dieses winzige Virus verursacht hat, ziemlich erfolgreich von mir ferngehalten.
Drei. Millionen. Tote. Wie beginnt man das zu begreifen?
Ich habe mich mit aller Macht dagegen gestemmt.
Inzidenzen und Impfstoffkandidaten, Moleküle und Medikamentenstudien: arbeiten, arbeiten, arbeiten.
Bloß nicht zur Ruhe kommen.
Bloß nicht die Gefühle zulassen.
Ich glaube, das ist eine ganz normale Abwehrreaktion. Und sie ist mir leichter gefallen, weil ich in meinem Umfeld zum Glück keinen schlimmen Krankheits- oder gar Todesfall zu beklagen hatte.
Aber vergangene Woche hatte ich einen Tag frei, habe einen alten Freund gesehen. Also mal ein paar Stunden keine Arbeit. Und ich habe die Dokuserie meines Freundes @carlgierstorfer gesehen: Charité intensiv (ardmediathek.de/sendung/charit…)
Und plötzlich ging das nicht mehr.
Wir haben versucht danach eine Episode unseres @pandemiapodcast aufzunehmen und mussten das mehrfach abbrechen, weil wir schlicht und einfach heulen mussten. (Die Folge kommt vermutlich heute raus.)
Ich glaube, dass das uns allen noch
bevorsteht.
Wir sind mitten in einer furchtbaren Katastrophe und ob wir es uns eingestehen oder nicht: wir sind davon alle ein wenig traumatisiert und wir werden Worte finden müssen für das, was wir veloren haben.
Ich habe versucht meine Gedanken für @uebermedien und @riffreporter einmal aufzuschreiben hier:

riffreporter.de/de/wissen/coro…
Und ich empfehle jedem, der sich ernsthaft auseinandersetzen möchte mit dieser Pandemie sich die Doku-Serie anzuschauen: ardmediathek.de/sendung/charit…
Und unser @pandemiapodcast dazu und außerdem über die Recovery-Studie, die in dieser Pandemie vermutlich hunderttausende Leben gerettet hat, ist jetzt auch online:

viertausendhertz.de/pan22/

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More from @kakape

Kai Kupferschmidt Profile picture
7 Apr
"I want to start by stating that our safety committee the pharmacovigilance risk assessment committee of the European Medicines Agency has confirmed that the benefits of the AstraZeneca vaccine in preventing #COVID19 overall outweigh the risks of side effects”, says Emer Cooke.
“The PRAC, after a very in depth analysis, has concluded that the reported cases of unusual blood clotting following vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine should be listed as possible side effects of the vaccine”, says Cooke.
“Based on the current available evidence, specific risk factors such as age, gender, or previous medical history of clotting disorders have not been able to be confirmed as the rare events are seen in all ages, and in men and women”, says Cooke.
Read 18 tweets
Kai Kupferschmidt Profile picture
2 Apr
My colleagues and I have decided to spend a few episodes of our @pandemiapodcast talking about the search for an HIV vaccine and parallels and differences with #covid19.
First episode (in German) here, a few thoughts (in English) to come:

viertausendhertz.de/pan21/
@pandemiapodcast It’s worth noting that we are coming up on 40 years since the first report appeared on what would turn into the devastating AIDS pandemic. On 5 June 1981, @CDCMMWR reported on 5 young men in Los Angeles with a rare pneumonia caused by a fungus, 2 had died

cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/m…
@pandemiapodcast @CDCMMWR One month later, there were 26 similar cases reported in @CDCMMWR (cssh.northeastern.edu/pandemic-teach…).
As Tony Fauci told us:
"At that point, it dawned upon me, we have a really serious problem. And this is very likely a new disease, likely a virus."
Read 10 tweets
Kai Kupferschmidt Profile picture
31 Mar
“Our position has not changed”, says @EMA_News head Emer Cooke about AZ vaccine. “According to the current scientific knowledge, there is no evidence that would support restricting the use of this vaccine in any population."
@EMA_News I asked about numbers for Europe:
62 cases of cerebral venous thromboses so far, says Cooke with 9,2 million people vaccinated with AZ.
"If we look at the age-adjusted exposure, we calculate a risk of one per 100,000 in the under 60s."
@EMA_News CVST is much more common in women in general and about 2/3 of AZ vaccinees in Europe were women, says Peter Arlett. "this is why it is at this stage, difficult to disentangle the fact that there has been a preponderance of reports of this very rare potential side effect in women"
Read 8 tweets
Kai Kupferschmidt Profile picture
29 Mar
Preprint suggesting a HIT-like mechanism for rare thromboses in some AZ vaccinees is out now.
Important for scientists to discuss the data.
For everyone else, not used to reading case reports: This sounds scary, but remember that this is very very rare.
researchsquare.com/article/rs-362…
ResearchSquare also posted this editorial note with it:
And story from @GretchenVogel1 and me that tries to put this in context as much as we can right now is here:

sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/r…
Read 5 tweets
Kai Kupferschmidt Profile picture
28 Mar
Just a reminder that this pandemic, far from being over, is gathering steam once again globally with cases going up across the world.
Yes, vaccines are starting to help. Half a billion doses have been given. But we are a LONG way from vaccinating ourselves out of this problem.
While vaccines are being rolled out, we need to keep using the tools from the last year: #physicaldistancing, test, trace, isolate, etc.
Fatigue and new variants are making the job harder, immunity from vaccines is slowly making it easier.
We have to hold on.
In the meantime deaths keep rising.
At the current pace we will reach 3 million deaths in early May. If the trend continues we will reach that sad milestone in April already.
Vaccinating those most at risk around the globe equitably would do a lot to keep that number lower.
Read 4 tweets
Kai Kupferschmidt Profile picture
27 Mar
For the past two weeks, my colleague @GretchenVogel1 and I have been trying to understand what researchers know so far about the rare cases of serious blood clotting observed in people that got the AstraZeneca #covid19 vaccine.

Our story is up here:
sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/c…
@GretchenVogel1 I believe that this is an important story but it is also a complicated one, that is easy to misconstrue. So before you comment or share, please read the whole piece or at least the thread that I‘m gonna attempt later, after I finally get some lunch…
sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/c…
@GretchenVogel1 Okay, let’s do this. Let’s start with caveats:
This is ongoing research. There is a lot we don’t know yet. But as in all things #covid19 we're rapidly learning more.
The paper by Greinacher and others has been submitted to a preprint server but not yet published or peer-reviewed.
Read 23 tweets

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