Contact Tracing’s Long, Turbulent History Holds Lessons for COVID-19

To get the COVID-19 pandemic under control and keep it from flaring up again, contact tracing is critical, but persuading everyone who tests positive to share where they’ve been and with whom relies on trust and cooperation. Amy Lauren Fairchild, Lawrence O. Gostin, and Ronald Bayer write in The Conversation that contact tracing’s long, contested history shows how easily both can be shattered. Looking back at the reasons for resistance to contact tracing as the U.S. struggled to contain epidemics in the past can help us understand the first signs of pushback against contact tracing in the COVID-19 response, as well as the public health consequences.

COVID-19 Could Cause Psychosis

Scientists have now observed that COVID-19 can apparently trigger a wide range of psychiatric symptoms, in addition to neurological ones. It was already known that many patients complain of smell and taste disorders. Strokes, epileptic seizures, paralysis, headaches, and even brain infections have also been reported. Katherine Rydlink writes in Der Spiegel [in German] that several studies now suggest that COVID-19 can also trigger psychosis. A survey of British doctors, the results of which were published in the specialist journal Lancet Psychiatry, showed that around 31 percent of the 125 patients with COVID-19 reported that they had psychiatric disorders. Ten patients suffered from a new onset of psychosis, six from dementia-like disorders, and four patients were diagnosed with an affective disorder, that is, manic or depressive episodes.

Disinformation Campaigns Are Murky Blends of Truth, Lies, and Sincere Beliefs – Lessons from the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has spawned an infodemic, a vast and complicated mix of information, misinformation and disinformation. The notion of disinformation often brings to mind easy-to-spot propaganda peddled by totalitarian states, but the reality is much more complex. Though disinformation does serve an agenda, it is often camouflaged in facts and advanced by innocent and often well-meaning individuals. This mix of information types makes it difficult for people, including those who build and run online platforms, to distinguish an organic rumor from an organized disinformation campaign.

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Using Epidemiological Models to Explain Spread of Social Unrest, Rioting

Do social unrest and riots spread as infectious diseases do? Researchers used the SIR epidemiological model, known for modeling infectious disease spread, and applied it to social unrest. The SIR technique separates the population into susceptible, infectious, and recovered individuals. “Within a rioting context, someone ‘susceptible’ is a potential rioter, an ‘infected individual’ is an active rioter, and a ‘recovered person’ is one that stopped rioting,” explained one researcher. “Rioting spreads when effective contact between an active rioter and a potential rioter occurs.”

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Of (Flawed) Models and Policy Decisions; and a New Hydroxychloroquine Skirmish

Last week, in the face of the increase in the number of infections in Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, and, around the world, in Israel and Brazil – although, as Derek Thompson notes, the number of infected individuals needing hospitalization, and the number of deaths, have not increased correspondingly — questions were again raised about the right balance of risk and benefits of measures such as economic lockdowns. Beda M. Stadler, John Lee, and Christopher Snowdon forcefully argue that the decision to impose devastating lockdowns was driven by panic – worse, by an uninformed panic: “An early maintained but exaggerated belief in the lethality of the virus reinforced by modelling that was almost data-free, then amplified by further modelling with no proven predictive value,” in Lee’s words. Olga Yakusheva offers a counterargument.

We live in a politically polarized time – a time when many feel an even stronger need to avoid what Leon Festinger called “cognitive dissonance.” Elliot Aronson and Carol Tavris write that “when people feel a strong connection to a political party, leader, ideology, or belief, they are more likely to let that allegiance do their thinking for them and distort or ignore the evidence that challenges those loyalties.” The result is that a great many Americans now see the life-and-death decisions of the coronavirus as political choices rather than medical ones — for example, whether or not to wear face masks or maintain social distance.

Another example is whether or not hydroxychloroquine should be used to treat COVID-19-infected patients. The issue came to the fore after President Trump heard about the drug on Fox News, and began aggressively to promote it as the biggest “game changer” in medical history. A reluctant FDA in March  issued an emergency authorization to use the drug in COVID-19 patients, but two weeks ago revoked its authorization after all controlled clinical trials — randomized, double-blind trials – have concluded the drug offered no benefits to COVID-19 patients, while increasing the risk of heart problems. Laurie McGinley and Josh Dawsey write that the White House is again pushing for the reauthorization of the drug following a study – criticized by several scientists as flawed – which says some early-infection patients have benefitted from the drug.

The Fatal Mistakes Which Led to Lockdown

On the basis of what were fateful decisions about economic lockdowns as a proper response to the coronavirus made? And why is there such resistance to efforts to go back, cautiously and intelligently, but in a determined fashion, back to semblance of normalcy? Dr. John Lee writers in The Spectator that those who insisted on lockdowns and who now question economic and social reopening explained that they are being “guided by science.” In fact, he writes, “they are doing something rather different: being guided by models, bad data and subjective opinion. Some of those claiming to be ‘following the science’ seem not to understand the meaning of the word.” The decision-making leading to lockdowns was of exceedingly low quality, as is the resistance to economic and social reopening. The reason for both? “An early maintained but exaggerated belief in the lethality of the virus reinforced by modelling that was almost data-free, then amplified by further modelling with no proven predictive value. All summed up by recommendations from a committee based on qualitative data that hasn’t even been peer-reviewed.” Lee concludes: “Mistakes were inevitable at the start of this. But we can’t learn without recognizing them.”

Is the COVID-19 Pandemic Cure Really Worse than the Disease? Here’s What Our Research Found

The coronavirus pandemic catapulted the country into one of the deepest recessions in U.S. history, leaving millions of Americans without jobs or health insurance. There is a lot of evidence that economic hardship is associated with poor health and can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, mental health problems, cognitive dysfunction and early death. All of that raises a question: Is the U.S. better off with the public health interventions being used to keep the coronavirus from spreading or without them? In a new working paper, Olga Yakusheva, Associate Professor in Nursing and Public Health at the University of Michigan, writes in The Conversation that she  and a research team of health economists from U.S. universities set out to answer that question from a humanitarian perspective. They estimate that by the end of 2020, public health measures to mitigate COVID-19 – including business lockdowns, school closings, etc. —  would save between 900,000 and 2.7 million lives in the U.S. The economic downturn and loss of income from shelter-in-place measures and other restrictions on economic activity could contribute to between 50,400 and 323,000 deaths, based on an economic decline of 8%-14%.