Share this page!

Kashif Pirzada, MD Profile picture
Twitter logo
13 Jul, 6 tweets, 2 min read
Some startling articles indicating that India's true Covid death toll is undercounted by 6-10X. Perhaps 2-3 million have died already. This squares with anecdotal reports from friends of the truly devastating impact so far on every family in the country
economist.com/asia/2021/06/1…
This paper extrapolates from mortality figures and numbers reported by data journalists:
researchgate.net/publication/35…
This one is based on life insurance claims in Telangana, a southern Indian state:
thenewsminute.com/article/least-…
This one follows enterprising data journalists who visit morgues and funeral pyres, counting 10x the number on official tallies: bbc.com/news/world-asi…
Data from opinion polls shows that 17% of respondents in Northern India have lost family members, similar to polling in Chicago, placing India's fatality right likely near the US figure: 1800 deaths per million, 2.5 million dead.
This absolutely highlights the need to get vaccines to every corner of the planet as quickly as possible. Also on the continuing failures of anti-science populist governments throughout the world in responding to this crisis.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Kashif Pirzada, MD

Kashif Pirzada, MD Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @KashPrime

Kashif Pirzada, MD Profile picture
13 Jul
If I had to summarize what I think are the most basic things to keep everyone safe and the economy humming, it boils down to these elements:

1) Keep public masking
2) Push vaccination rates higher
3) Vaccine requirements in sensitive areas like borders, hospitals, schools Image
Basic measures have kept us safe so far, and the results are dramatic; we are performing much better than many of our closest, and less careful, neighbours and allies. More can be done, but we should be proud of what we've accomplished. Image
And it builds on another idea, that we are very close to herd immunity, that we can eliminate circulation of this virus when enough are vaccinated. We have to hold the line until younger kids can get the vaccine this fall
Read 7 tweets
Kashif Pirzada, MD Profile picture
11 Jul
Key questions we need to know the answers to asap:
1) Do fully vaccinated people get #LongCovid?
2) We know severe illness is less likely in kids, but how likely is it they get Long Covid? #longcovidkids

I’m going to try to dig through some studies in this 🧵
It seems getting long Covid post vaccination is possible if there is breakthrough symptomatic infection. It’s important to collect data on this because we’ve seen similar post-viral symptoms cause a lifetime of disability in many patients
businessinsider.com/nurse-coronavi…
Interesting study out of the UK that's collecting data from >4m contributors using an app called Zoe (@Join_ZOE). With that country facing a massive surge in cases, they are estimating 50k cases a day, and with that, 1k cases of Long Covid a day.
Read 7 tweets
Kashif Pirzada, MD Profile picture
8 Jul
There is a divide now in the vaccinated world; governments and experts (mostly conservative leaning) who want to 'let it rip' through the population, and those who are more cautious and want to keep case counts low. It's so secret that I favour keeping the lid on infections...
...Given how close to zero cases we are, and given how little we know of long term effects. If any government wants to run a population-wide experiment, it behooves them to have a public debate about the issue at least
cbc.ca/news/politics/…
We are spitting distance to herd immunity in Canada, the level where most activities will be extremely safe. We have the highest vax rates in the world. In a few weeks, 75% of adults will be fully vaccinated. There's no need to run crazy experiments here.
Read 5 tweets
Kashif Pirzada, MD Profile picture
6 Jul
Watching the UK, BC and elsewhere give up on containing Covid is frankly depressing. There is another way, herd immunity is achievable in most of Canada once kids <12 get their shots in Sept/Oct. We need to hold the line on masking, testing, tracing and isolating until then.
Why is it important to do this? Yes, vaccines likely lead to a mild illness in most vaccinated people, kids mostly get mild illness also, but just by the law of large numbers, many will still get seriously ill. Long Covid is also another big wildcard. scientificamerican.com/article/a-tsun…
The mathematics behind the herd immunity calculation by @dfisman is here:
Read 7 tweets
Kashif Pirzada, MD Profile picture
2 Jul
I outline here why BC and Alberta lifting mask mandates is reckless:
- Only 35% are fully vaxxed
- Kids <12 are unprotected
- Indoor spaces are dangerous without masks with an airborne virus
- Places that lifted mandates are backtracking ...
- It places the onus on small business owners to enforce mandates which will lead to conflict
- leaders really want to show that somehow its over, when it clearly is not, and is worsening in large parts of the world

Thanks to @AnitaSharma for the chance to speak.
Fully vaccinated people can transmit the virus to unvaccinated or partially vaccinated people, including children. Masks can help prevent this. This is from Singapore:
Read 15 tweets
Kashif Pirzada, MD Profile picture
21 Jun
A lot of concern about mixing the two mRNA vaccines. Due to the vagaries of global supply, most people who got Pfizer will be offered Moderna in the coming weeks. I'll show you why this is a great thing, and why its important to get your second shot as quickly as possible
A research group sequenced both vaccines from discarded vials, and found that the important spike protein encoding sections were almost exact matches to each other. Some minor differences in the 5' and 3' untranslated areas, used by cells for formatting

github.com/NAalytics/Asse…
If you look at the sequence between the start and stop codons (which tells cells where to start and stop encoding), its off by just one base pair at the end! Both match the spike protein sequence identified early on in the pandemic.
Read 11 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @KashPrime has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @KashPrime!

Read all threads by @KashPrime

:(