Will There Be A Post COVID 19 Famine?

Given that it has already disrupted food production in sensitive regions of the world will there be more people dying of hunger than of the COVID 19 virus?

By: Ringo Bones

The charity group Oxfam and the United Nations recently issued a warning that more people could eventually die of hunger than from the COVID 19 virus. Starvation warnings are now posted in vulnerable parts of the world and these regions are not necessary, at the moment, experiencing armed conflict. But could starvation eventually take more lives than from the COVID 19 virus?

According to Oxfam, COVID 19 is already disrupting food production in poorer parts of Africa currently not experiencing armed conflict. And basing on recently imposed lockdown measures, COVID 19 could complicate the delivery of food aid and the resulting economic downturn due to the coronavirus lockdown caused runaway unemployment will make charitable fundraising activities much more difficult. The UN says up to 122-millon people worldwide could be facing starvation by the end of 2020. And according to Oxfam, up to 12,000 people a die could die of hunger by the end of 2020. By way of comparison, the global death peak of COVID 19 back in April 2020 was only 10,000 deaths per day, which is quite a sobering statistic any way you put it.

The recent Oxfam briefing also reveals the world’s ten worst hunger hotspots, places such as Venezuela and South Sudan where the food crisis is most severe and getting worse as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic. It also highlights emerging epicenters of hunger – middle income countries such as India, South Africa and Brazil – where millions of people who were barely managing have been tipped over the edge by the pandemic.

Hydroxychloroquine: The Drug Of Choice Of Right Wing Populists?

Given that it is touted by Presidents Donald Trump, Jail Bolsonaro amongst others, is the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine the drug of choice of right wing populists in the treatment of COVID 19?

By: Ringo Bones

Brazilian strongman President Jair Bolsonaro recently used it after recently registering positive for COVID 19 and US President Donald Trump and his far right inner circle – like former NY City Mayor Rudi Giuliani – had been promoting it as an effective cure for the coronavirus. Originally for malaria and lupus, hydroxychloroquine was originally shortlisted by the Solidarity Trial – an international clinical trial launched by the WHO and other partners to help find an effective treatment for COVID 19. It was hoped that one or more treatments under trial, including hydroxychloroquine, will result in improving clinical outcomes in COVID 19 patients and save lives. But hydroxychloroquine trials were eventually stopped as of June 17, 2020 as evidence showed it did not result in the reduction of mortality of hospitalized COVID 19 patients when compared with standard care. Given that it has been proven to do nothing against COVID 19, why is it that some people – especially those in the far right populist wing – still insist that hydroxychloroquine is the only effective cure against COVID 19?

Conspiracy theories tend to be grounded in unusual coincidences or misunderstood science and they use highly emotional language to appeal to others. In a time when public mistrust is at an all-time low, it is important to counter false information with clear, high-quality evidence. Although not a conspiracy theory, the hype around hydroychloroquine started in March 14, 2020 when a Google Word document was circulated on Twitter touting the potential use of repurposing the old anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a possible COVID 19 cure. The document claimed to be written in consultation with prestigious medical schools and scientific institutions and by March 16 it had gone viral on Twitter. Unfortunately, it was only realized much later that the author of the document was actually a blockchain investor, who had inaccurately claimed to write it in consultation with medical schools and scientists.

The global hype around hydroxychloroquine had already been set in motion before the first clinical study testing it on COVID 19 patients was even published on March 17, 2020 with the study only finding a 50-percent improvement in the extremely small sample size of 14 patients with COVID 19 taking hydroxychloroquine alone. These authors have now been criticized for not randomly assigning patients to treatment groups, their small sample size and lack of a control group to compare with the treatment group with, meaning that the positive results could easily have occurred by chance.

However, by March 19, 2020 – US President Donald Trump, in conjunction with former NYC Mayor Rudi Giuliani, were promoting the potential of the drug at press conferences, incorrectly stating it had already been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat the COVID 19 virus. The FDA then had to release a statement cautioning people against using the drug off label. Later, when President Trump stated that he was taking a two week course of hydroxychloroquine, despite any evidence showing it could prevent COVID 19, there was widespread concern from healthcare professionals about the dangerous example this could set. A recent study confirmed a huge surge in hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine prescription fills – likely due to off label prescriptions for COVID 19.

Since then, hospitals now have to deal with the additional burden of treating people poisoning themselves after taking the drug, with one man fatally poisoning himself with a fish tank cleaning additive made with the same active ingredient as chloroquine. The bias towards this drug is even derailing clinical trials of other closely related COVID 19 treatment regimens. While studies done within cell dishes in labs show that both hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine can inhibit the virus, as with any medicine while studies in humans tend to be much more inconsistent. The largest study of the drug was published in The Lancet on May 22, 2020 stating that the drug increased the risk of death in hospitalized COVID 19 patients. This paper has now been famously retracted because of serious concerns about the verification of the data sources, study design and analysis used. While the verdict on hydroxychloroquine is far from clear, now is not the time for anyone to be taking this drug off label.

Air Pollution: Anathema To COVID 19 Sufferers?

Given that they already have compromised respiratory systems, does COVID 19 sufferers in cities with high levels of air pollution more likely to die that their counterparts in clean air locales?

By: Ringo Bones

Public health policymakers have been warning us for decades that polluted air is a serious threat to people with compromised respiratory systems – like ones suffering from asthma and related preexisting chronic lung conditions. Since the year 2000, about a million people die annually in Mainland China’s urban centers where the air quality falls far below the acceptable guidelines set by the World Health Organization. But since the advent of the COVID 19 pandemic, does polluted air spell the death knell to COVID 19 sufferers?

A recently published research from the Harvard University School of Public Health shows that COVID 19 sufferers living in cities with severe levels of air pollution are more likely to die than ones living in regions with much cleaner air. Even though pollution levels in cities have declined since lockdown measures were enforced. Polluted cities COVID 19 death rates are up to a third higher compared to cities with cleaner air and stricter enforced clean air policies.

Given that the Trump administration had rolled back the EPA’s Clean Air Act back in 2017, the increased levels of COVID 19 deaths in the United States could be attributable to increased pollution levels in major metropolitan areas. The Harvard study now highlights the importance of clean air laws when it comes to formulating public health policy.

Does 5G Internet Networks Cause And Help Spread COVID 19?

Given that the belief is straight out off Trump’s climate change denial playbook, does the belief that 5G internet networks causes COVID 19 more dangerous than the pandemic itself?

By: Ringo Bones

The dismissal of the pandemic as a hoax and questioning of scientific experts is straight out of President Trump’s, and other right-wing populist demagogue’s, playbook of climate change denial that got them elected in the first place. The 5G theory about radio waves transmitting or activating the virus, for example, is a reworking of long running conspiracy fears about mind control experiments, subliminal messaging and supposed United States military weapons projects that has since been a staple of Hollywood’s TV and movie industry way before the runaway mid 1990s success of The X-Files. Add to that an utter lack of how science works of most of Trump’s supporters and it is no longer a mystery that the belief that 5G internet networks causes and spreads the COVID 19 virus is very popular in the United States at the moment. 

The 5G coronavirus conspiracy theories are particularly challenging to debunk by normal educated people with a working grasp of science – never mind tenured government scientists - because they bring together people from very different parts from the political spectrum. On the other hand, they attract the far-right Trump supporters who see them as part of a technological assault by big government and the “rich liberal elite” on the freedom of individuals. On the other, they appeal to the well established “anti-vaxxer community” who are often allied with those distrustful of Big Pharma. Getting COVID 19 from 5G internet networks is probably like someone getting smallpox from lighting a 1950s era flashlight into their face.

Sewage Epidemiology: Viable COVID 19 Early Warning System?

Could a sewage-based coronavirus test provide faster and better results than existing medical tests?

By: Ringo Bones

Current rapid coronavirus antibody tests recently got a bad rap after providing a lot of false-positive results, but could testing a city or community’s sewer system for the COVID 19 virus provide faster and more accurate results? Scientists led by UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology are working on a standardized test to “count” the amount of coronavirus in a wastewater sample. The test could pick up COVID 19 infection spikes up to 10 days earlier than with existing medical based tests. Newcastle University’s Prof. David Graham and his colleagues have now developed a way to quantify the genetic material from the coronavirus.

Early in the COVID 19 pandemic, research revealed that people infected with the virus “shed” viral material in their feces. That insight prompted an interest in “sewage epidemiology”. A somewhat similar test used by Chinese epidemiologists working with Italian health authorities during the spring of 2020 produced test results showing that coronavirus could already had been present in Italy near the end of December 2019. The researchers want to fine tune and reproduce this test before it can be rolled out as part of a COVID 19 alert system.

Dexamethasone: Possible COVID 19 Cure?

Given the drug’s ability to reduce deaths among patients on ventilators and on oxygen, is dexamethasone a promising COVID 19 cure?

By: Ringo Bones

Given that a working COVID 19 vaccine is probably still months away, this “miracle drug” is already widely available around the world for years. Primarily used to reduce inflammation in a range of conditions caused by an overactive immune system like arthritis, asthma and some skin conditions and an added bonus that the drug is not astronomically expensive when as little as UK£5 per patient could save a patient on a ventilator or on oxygen due to COVID 19, dexamethasone was recently labeled as a “miracle drug” after the anti-inflammatory drug showed promising results after being tested as part of the world’s biggest trial of existing treatments to see if they could also work against coronavirus.

In a trial led by a team from Oxford University, about 2,000 hospital patients were given dexamethasone and compared with more than 4,000 who were not. For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 40-percent to 28-percent. For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25-percent to 20-percent. The researchers said this was equivalent to one life being saved for every eight patients on a ventilator and one life being saved for every 20 to 25 patients being treated with oxygen. Chief investigator Prof. Peter Horby said it was “the only drug so far that has been shown to reduce mortality – and reduce it significantly.”

UK Heath Secretary Matt Hancock told the commons that 240,000 doses of the drug are in stock and on order. Dexamethasone works by dampening down the reaction of the body’s immune system to COVID 19, which can often be more harmful than the virus itself. And given the initial results of the trial, some experts even said that COVID 19 deaths in the UK could have been cut by half of the June 16, 2020 total of 42, 153 if UK hospitals started using dexamethasone by the beginning of March 2020.