Good news: masks

A new poll finds that more than 90% of Americans wear masks in public to prevent spreading Covid-19 to others.

More than nine in 10 U.S. adults (93%) said they sometimes, often or always wear a mask or face covering when they leave their home and are unable to socially distance, including more than seven in 10 — 72% — who said they always do so.

Bad news: Teen vaccines

Data from the National Immunization Survey shows (after some math by researchers) that “Approximately 70% of U.S. adolescents are not up to date on routine vaccinations for HPV, meningococcal disease and tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis by the age of 17 years.”

130,000 reasons wearing masks is important

New numbers from statisticians studying Covid-19 find that — with winter coming and the country in the next wave of the virus — if everyone wore a mask while in public, it could save 130,000 lives.

Specifically, the paper projected that there could be some half a million Covid-19-related deaths in the U.S. by the end of February, and that some 130,000 of those tragedies might be forestalled with universal mask use.

Of course, “The exact numbers are impossible to predict,” but the point is pretty clear.

Didn’t anybody ask first?

So after all the hubbub about importing drugs from Canada, the law was passed, and Florida asked for bids to participate in the program.

Not a single company is interested.

A spokesperson for the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration said the state is exploring its options. “The agency remains confident it will find a qualified vendor soon.”

Impending Covid-19 vaccine: a grain of salt

We’ll probably know by early December if at least one Covid-19 vaccine is safe and effective. Of course, it will take a while to get it out to most people.

But… keep in mind, this Conversation article reminds us, that because of the way the trials are set up, knowing a vaccine is “safe and effective” doesn’t mean “effective against severe and fatal cases.” It’s possible a vaccine will only protect people from mild cases.

Trials testing severe disease or death alone as an endpoint would need much more time and money to be completed. So designing these first phase 3 trials has been a balancing act: being able to show whether some degree of protection is achieved while delivering these results in the most timely manner.

That said, some good vaccine news

AstraZeneca/Oxford University’s vaccine is looking good: It “prompts immune response among old as well as young adults.”

Record after record

The U.S. has seen three record-setting (or close-to-record-setting) days of Covid-19 cases in a row. “[H]ospitalizations are rising, too, and deaths, which lag furthest behind those other indicators, are beginning to tick up.”

The average new cases per day over a seven-day period was 68,954 on Sunday, according to the Covid Tracking Project, beating the previous record of 66,844 set on July 23.

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said, “I think we are right now at the cusp of what is going to be exponential spread in parts of the country.”

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said, “We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics, and other mitigation areas.”

Donald Trump tweeted that the current outbreak is a “Fake News Media Conspiracy.”

Saving you a click

“If You Can Smell This, You’re Drinking Too Much Caffeine, Study Finds” — the answer: a weak cup of coffee.

Yep, if you’re olfactory sense can detect even a weak cup of coffee nearby (like a dog smelling bacon from six miles away), it means you might be drinking too much coffee.

Note: Like many articles, this one uses “caffeine” and “coffee” interchangeably.

Mythbusting, Twinkie-style

Biologists and mycologists analyzed some very, very old Twinkies.

[T]he new research suggests that even when fungi colonise Twinkies’ outsides, they don’t necessarily eat through their insides […] likely because the fluff part is so sugary that it wasn’t hospitable to the type of fungi that ate the Twinkie’s slightly less sweet golden shell.

Diamonds are forever, not Twinkies