I am an optimistic realist. I believe in our capacity to harness technology to improve the world and offset almost any kind of problem. The progress of scientific innovation is stunning and there is much to be grateful for. However, it is not a time to pat ourselves on the back.
Two years in, and messages like this were swiftly ignored and continue to be downplayed. We are not through the woods yet.
Here is a comparison of actual Walgreens stock with what happens when you try to buy a rapid test for COVID. Impossible to do with @Uber, @Postmates, or @Instacart. Thousands of extra tests could be delivered in San Francisco if delivery services updated their catalogues.
Actual catalogue (<500 Abbott tests available in all of San Francisco Walgreens)
Rapid tests aren’t even SHOWN on the list of items that can be ordered.
Spent several hours today attempting to get a rapid test. Tried Instacart, which failed, then went to Walgreens, Safeway, called two CVSes, checked online catalogues and attempted to see in-store inventories at each pharmacy, and finally was able to schedule a test at a clinic.
The test is tomorrow, and I have to walk to the clinic again, at which point the results will take 48-72 hours to turn around.
While on the East Coast for most of this year, testing was much easier. Resources existed for free next-day PCR text delivery, and NYC had pop-up testing sites everywhere.
Eagerly awaiting 2022’s global COVID policy… happy holidays y’all!
Hopefully, this year: 1) rapid tests can be received by every US household free of cost and same-day / next-day 2) we can update vaccines beyond the wildtype, Wuhan sequence 3) “COVID is airborne” is understood globally and accepted by WHO 4) better therapeutics 5) better masks
6) better ventilation and filtration systems in schools and workplaces 7) more global vaccine equity 8) more awareness and emphasis on prevention and treatment of long-COVID / viral-driven ME/CFS 9) more funding for therapeutics outside of monoclonals and Pfizer/Merck
@postmates, @ubereats, @instacart, @uber and @lyft could make a major impact on the pandemic by working with @walgreens, @cvspharmacy, and others to deliver rapid antigen tests to people’s doors. Shocked how difficult it is to get a rapid Ag test delivered in San Francisco.
Biden’s 500 million rapid tests won’t be available until mid January. By that point in time omicron will already have done most of its damage in populated cities and tens of thousands of people will be dead in the US.
It’s been 2 years since the pandemic started, and we still don’t have a centralized and easy way to nationally order rapid tests? Let alone receive them for free?
I am concerned about sub-threshold neutralizing antibodies tied to disease enhancing antibodies leading to greater persistence of COVID. Those with long COVID are canaries in the coalmine and we should be directing far more attention to the pathogenesis underlying these cases.
For example, we know omicron is ~40x less potently neutralized by antibodies against the original SARS-CoV-2 strain, which we based our vaccines off. So our strategy is a booster to boost levels 25x, breaking past this threshold.
But what happens when those antibodies wane? Where are the studies examining the disease-enhancing thresholds for Group IV and other infection-enhancing antibodies?