COVID-19 Megathread 6: Return of the Omicron

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/us/susan-moore-black-doctor-indiana.html?

Black Doctor Dies of Covid-19 After Complaining of Racist Treatment

“He made me feel like a drug addict,” Dr. Susan Moore said, accusing a white doctor of downplaying her complaints of pain and suggesting she should be discharged.

Dr. Moore’s experience highlighted what many Black professionals said they regularly encountered. Education cannot protect them from mistreatment, they say, whether in a hospital or other settings.

Born in Jamaica, Dr. Moore grew up in Michigan. She studied engineering at Kettering University in Flint, Mich., according to her family, and earned her medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical School.

She was no stranger to the challenges of getting proper medical care, said Mr. Muhammed, her 19-year-old son. She had sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease that attacks the lungs, and was frequently treated at hospitals.

Damn, RIP Dr. Moore.

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A bit off topic from vaccinations, but race/ethnicity data disaggregation is important when drawing conclusions about infection, hospitalization, and mortality rates. The same logic applies when deciding who should be vaccinated first.

https://whyy.org/articles/without-data-theres-no-equity-deficient-asian-american-covid-19-data-masked-community-wide-disparities/

‘Without data, there’s no equity’: Deficient Asian American COVID-19 data masked community-wide disparities

“It doesn’t matter if you’re from Kenya or Jamaica, you get categorized as Black,” said Yi. “But in New York, one of the largest immigrant communities here is the Carribean Black community. So it’s not adequate anymore to [ask for] race and ethnicity. We have to be thinking about country of origin.”

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I'm pretty strict about wearing a mask myself, but by the end of May I'll be fully vaccinated. After that I don't plan on wearing a mask unless the business mandates it or I'm feeling sick.

I don't think that is unreasonable.

I've already received my first dose, but I will still wear my mask in public so long it's necessary for public health. I don't mind anyway as it's seemed to eliminate the cold and flu. I don't think it's necessary year-round, but it'd be nice if we had seasonal masking (maybe something like from October to March).

This. I don't see why we'd need masks during the summer once almost everyone's vaccinated, unless there are super contagious variants spreading around.

https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/verify/verify-why-experts-say-you-still-need-to-wear-a-mask-after-being-vaccinated/530-05a9b36d-97e5-42d6-8937-d7c78a650ed1

So here’s why you’ll still need that mask:

It will take a little while for the vaccine to kick in. It takes two weeks from your Johnson & Johnson shot or your last Moderna or Pfizer shot.

The vaccines do not 100% protect you from getting COVID-19, just like the flu. If you get the flu shot, you could still get it. And, the virus is changing.

“We don’t know about all the variants that are being seen,” said Dr. Koletar. “Nobody likes to wear masks….but when we go out it's important to wear a mask. We’re getting there.”

Another thing to keep in mind is that even though you are vaccinated you could be an asymptomatic spreader. Experts are concerned you can still get it, not have symptoms, and spread it.

So we can verify even if you’ve been vaccinated, you still need to wear a mask.

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After age, COVID vulnerability is almost 100% about social class, not ethnic background (except maybe Native Americans without high school diplomas, though I suspect economic issues like lack of reliable utilities on reservations are driving that).  

I'm pretty sure most of the differences we see across racial groups are due to differences in average socioeconomic status and educational attainment. But there are still some interesting differences across racial groups, even after controlling for education.

1) Black Americans with post-secondary education have noticeably higher mortality rates than their White counterparts, while 2) Latinos have noticeably lower mortality rates than Whites and Blacks at every educational level. Meanwhile, 3) Asian/PI Americans' mortality rates resemble those of Latino Americans, but with drastically lower mortality rates at the Less-than-HS and postgraduate levels. (AIAN should be fairly obvious.)

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race#age

These stats aren't super meaningful for people under 50, but it's still interesting to look at. I wonder how much of the lower mortality rates among Latinos and Asians can be explained by older foreign-born Latinos/Asians being more likely to be family reunification immigrants who live with their children and grandchildren.

Age-adjusted mortality for Asians is slightly lower than for whites (but still much higher than non-age adjusted). There are probably significant disparities among different Asian groups- I've heard Filipinos have particularly high mortality rates.

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95% of the left isn't like this but there is a small, very vocal group who want permanent online schooling and permanent masks.

"Permanent" masks is obviously the lesser of these two evils, although I doubt anyone would seriously propose a year-round mandate if it did become "permanent". I can see seasonal/wintertime mandates guidelines being a thing.

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And if I see someone walking around on the street without a mask, I don't know if they're vaccinated, so I just assume they're a dick who doesn't care about other people.

Now that a majority of the country has received at least one vaccine, this isn't really logical.

You aren't fully immune until 2 weeks after your 2nd dose, unless you're part of the J&J crew.

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Getting my first Pfizer dose on Friday. It might sound odd, but quite a number of people around me reported feeling sicker than media have made it seem. Some took more than a day or two to recover. Hearing these kinds of stories get me nervous, admittedly.

I've had both Pfizer shots and they weren't bad (YMMV, of course).  The first one just made sleepy starting about 3 hours later, lasting the rest of the afternoon.  The second one made me tired and achy the next day, but it wasn't nearly as bad as a case of the flu.  I was fine the day after that except for a mildly sore arm that lasted a few more days.

My symptoms were similar, except I was also feverish and experiencing chills 12-24 hours after my 2nd shot.


This news is probably a few days old, but I don't think it was ever mentioned here.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/michigan-hospitals-are-preparing-for-latest-covid-spike-to-be-worse-than-april-2020/ar-BB1fCkZo?

But the key difference between Michigan's latest COVID spike and previous surges is that the U.K. variant B.1.1.7 has become the dominant strain among patients—a change that has also resulted in a vastly different patient profile.

"Michigan is number one in the country, unfortunately, for a lot of COVID categories right now, and one of them is the number of identified B.1.1.7 cases," Dr. Liam Sullivan, an infectious disease physician at Spectrum Health, told Newsweek.

Since B.1.1.7 was first identified, it has been proven to be more transmissible than all previous coronavirus strains. And while more than 3.38 million vaccines have been administered to more than 41 percent of Michigan's population, vaccine eligibility in the state only expanded to include those over age 16 last month, leaving many young people vulnerable to infection. It's created what Sullivan called "the perfect storm."

"Unfortunately, what's happened in Michigan is we've let our guard down and this strain is taking full advantage of that situation. It's sort of a perfect storm," he said. "You've got things opening up, people letting their guard down from COVID fatigue, hope about the vaccination—thinking that the vaccine is going to provide herd immunity a lot faster than it's going to provide herd immunity—and then you got this strain circulating and I think it's a perfect storm."

"We're seeing more severe disease in younger adults....They're getting hospitalized at rates that are 60 to maybe 100 percent higher than they did during our fall/winter wave, so that changes the character of who you see in the hospital—a lot more young folks who are really sick. Our ICU is of a younger population now than it was in the winter," Parekh told Newsweek.

While hospitalizations are reaching April 2020 levels, the patients filling those same beds are decades younger than those being treated a year ago.

Earlier this week, Michigan hit a record high for COVID-19 hospitalizations in children when 49 kids were hospitalized on Monday with either confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19.

"If you look at the statistics, the number of elementary school kids and middle school kids that have gotten sick with this virus has increased compared to previous [figures], and they are now transmitting the virus more than they did previously," Sullivan said. "Now, you have this younger age population, transmitting this virus more readily to other people who are more vulnerable to getting sick from this disease."

While younger people account for more of Michigan's hospitalizations, hospital officials say that the change in demographic is proof that the COVID vaccines work.

"We just looked at all of our admits recently, and out of all of them, the average was about 56 years old," Donaldson said. "It's really skewed down, which to me, indicates this vaccine is working because that older population, for the most part, is protected."

Compared to the fall, the number of hospital admissions has increased in nearly every age group up to 59, but when looking at data for individuals 60 and above, they've either flatlined or begun declining compared to the state's last COVID surge.

"There's not as much virus spread going on amongst [the older age group] and that's probably largely reflective of the fact that a lot of them have been vaccinated," Sullivan said. "They're being protected, and therefore, we're not seeing hospitalizations in them as much, which is good, because no matter how you cut it, the number one risk factor for hospitalization and death from COVID-19 is age."

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COVID Linked to Long-Term Erectile Dysfunction

The results only examined tissues from only four men — two with a history of COVID infection, and two without — who underwent penile prosthesis surgery to treat erectile dysfunction. That’s a very small sample size and may or may not be generalizable to the greater population, but the work builds on separate research, published earlier this year in the journal Andrology, which found that men who had previously had COVID were six times as likely as other men to develop erectile dysfunction.

“Our research shows that COVID-19 can cause widespread endothelial dysfunction in organ systems beyond the lungs and kidneys,” said University of Miami Miller School of Medicine researcher and author Ranjith Ramasamy, in a statement. “The underlying endothelial dysfunction that happens because of COVID-19 can enter the endothelial cells and affect many organs, including the penis.”

https://futurism.com/neoscope/covid-linked-long-term-erectile-dysfunction

More bad news.

All the more reason to get vaxxed ASAP and keep wearing masks in crowded environments, especially if it's worse with repeated COVID-19 infections.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/21/us/american-life-expectancy-report.html

U.S. Life Expectancy Plunged in 2020, Especially for Black and Hispanic Americans

The 18-month drop, the steepest decline since World War II, was fueled by the coronavirus pandemic.

July 21, 2021
Updated 3:59 p.m. ET

CHICAGO — Life expectancy in the United States fell by a year and a half in 2020, largely because of the deadly coronavirus pandemic, a federal report said on Wednesday, a staggering drop that affected Hispanic and Black Americans more severely than white people.

It was the steepest decline in life expectancy in the United States since World War II.

From 2019 to 2020, Hispanic people experienced the greatest drop in life expectancy — three years — and Black Americans saw a decrease of 2.9 years. White Americans experienced the smallest decline, of 1.2 years.

The numbers can vary from year to year, providing only a snapshot in time of the general health of a population: If an American child was born today and lived an entire life under the conditions of 2020, that child would be expected to live 77.3 years, down from 78.8 in 2019.

The last time life expectancy was so low was in 2003, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the agency that released the figures and a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Wonder what happened to Asians, Native Americans, and Other/Mixed Race.

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I have posted this elsewhere:

http://generational-theory.com/forum/thread-6002-post-78058.html#pid78058

Some conclusions that I draw...
 
1. It may surprise many of us that Hispanic populations have overtaken non-Hispanic whites, let alone blacks, in life expectancy. That may reflect culture. Hispanic culture seems much more optimistic and life-affirming than the non-Hispanic mainstream.

(snark not related to this thread on Talk Elections)

2. So what causes the higher life expectancy among Hispanic-Americans despite being poorer as a whole? First, not smoking as much. The second-lowest state in the percentage of smokers is California, which has a surprisingly-large Mormon population (that is part of it; Utah is 51st among the States and the federal district in consumption of tobacco products, and California is a distant 50th), and Hispanics account for much of the low smoking rate in California. Not smoking offsets the effects of air pollution in infamously-smoggy L.A. Texas, which has some very poor populations as in states to its east from Oklahoma in the west to North Carolina and Georgia in the east, is below average in tobacco use and the states to its east are all above average. (Missouri, Kentucky, and West Virginia fit this pattern, too of poverty and heavy smoking). Texas Hispanics, largely Mexican-Americans, are really-light smokers. That explains much. Another factor is that Hispanics have more tightly-knit communities. One is not alone, which explains how Mexican-Americans were much less-likely than others to die during a heat wave in Chicago in 2015. Someone was looking out for elderly Hispanics to make sure that they had fans and could keep their windows open. Blacks and poor whites often got neglected... and died for that neglect.

3. The strengths of Hispanic communities depend upon them being close to each other. With COVID-19 that may have been too close in housing, let alone many workplaces (as in food-processing places in which many of them work) or in the hospitality business and retailing in which they see everyone, infected or not. COVID-19 ravaged Hispanics as it did not ravage non-Hispanic whites or even blacks. Non-Cuban Hispanics vote heavily Democratic irrespective of economic status, and if they endured a disproportionate number of deaths from COVID-19, then that made have made the 2020 vote closer in Arizona and Nevada than many of us expected.

On a related note...

I'm pretty sure most of the differences we see across racial groups are due to differences in average socioeconomic status and educational attainment. But there are still some interesting differences across racial groups, even after controlling for education.

1) Black Americans with post-secondary education have noticeably higher mortality rates than their White counterparts, while 2) Latinos have noticeably lower mortality rates than Whites and Blacks at every educational level. Meanwhile, 3) Asian/PI Americans' mortality rates resemble those of Latino Americans, but with drastically lower mortality rates at the Less-than-HS and postgraduate levels. (AIAN should be fairly obvious.)

I would attribute 1 to systemic anti-black racism within US society that contributes to increased stress among black Americans, and 2 to cultural factors that are peculiar to Hispanophone Latin America (strong family ties, celebratory attitude towards life and living) and their diaspora, although there might be some survivorship bias-like impact from the successful immigrant experience that persists for a couple generations?

3 is harder to explain, because idk why it would only apply to the least and most educated Asians/PIs. My best guess is that the relative recency of the Asian immigrant experience means that the "less than HS" Asian population is disproportionately elderly family reunification immigrants who live in multigenerational households with their adult children, while postgraduate educated immigrants tend to be more in touch their home countries' cultures, and likely to follow public health/social distancing protocol?

It's also possible that postgraduate Asians/PIs are more likely to work from home due to being less likely to be in clinical healthcare fields. But who knows.

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Updated map of counties that have fully vaccinated 70+% of all eligible residents.

Glad to see Starr County, TX is in the green zone

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And the "Masks don't work" and "COVID is not airborne" people are not even the same people you're debating on this issue--these are the people who claim vaccines are not necessary. So you're further positioning yourself with the antivax crowd.

There's a huge difference between being realistic about vaccines' (slightly lower) chances of protecting against the Delta strain- which would still only cause mild COVID-19 in the small percentage of vaccinated people who do get infected- and subscribing to the belief that Fauci is teaming up with Bill Gates to implant 5G microchips to track when 300 million people go to the bathroom. (Obviously I don't know what the actual conspiracy theories entail.)

You can simultaneously be pro-masking and also encourage everyone who isn't already vaccinated to do so.

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Look at the positive side - masks can become a fashion statement. Buy some masks that match your aesthetics. If we’re going to be stuck with them for months/years, might as well look good.

I can't look at the positive side. I have never gotten used to the sight of masks, and I never will.

Nor will I. They are not zero cost, they limit social interaction, they make life much harder for people with glasses, and they serve as a constant visual reminder of the pandemic.

I have no plans to start wearing one again.

1. A mask only limits social interaction if you let it.
2. You can fix the fogging issue by using the trick with soap film, and it's still unlikely we will need outdoor mask mandates where this would be a problem.
3. Omicron doesn't care about your feelings, it will come for you all the same.

I'm a 31 year old skinny guy in good health. If it "comes for me" I probably won't even be symptomatic. Don't care.

I was a 25 year old skinny guy in good health when I came down with COVID-19 like symptoms last March and had to stay home from work for 2 weeks. Thankfully I'm fully vaxxed now and have gotten my booster shot, but yeah. Getting sick ain't fun.

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Masks are definitely not costless. 

I have been forced to teach wearing a mask this semester, and it is a total pain in the ass.  The worst of it is during student presentations.  Half of the students don’t speak loudly enough to be heard in the back of the class wearing a mask, and I have to constantly be asking them to speak louder.

Last year, we were allowed to use face shields, but for some reason my university decided to ban them this semester despite the fact that we also have a vaccine mandate (which is a very good thing!) for all faculty and students.

My girlfriend is a teacher and she's got these masks that have a transparent screen so you can see the lips moving.  You have to use a little spray to keep them from fogging up but otherwise they are a godsend.  They're also very comfortable, you just have to mess with the wires to keep your nose from smudging up against the screen.

I see people all over Seattle wearing those uncomfortable, scratchy blue medical masks that you get for like a penny apiece at the drugstore, and it always baffles me.  There are incredibly comfortable and attractive masks available online for only a dollar or two apiece.  The masks I wear are very comfortable, look snappy and fit great.  I'll sometimes spray a little bit of cologne on the inside of the mask about half an hour before I go out so the mask will smell really good all night too.

Cool! Where do you buy/order those transparent screen masks?

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Let us wait to see what long-term effects Omicron has before we deem it trivial. Previous incarnations of COVID-19 have consequences other than death. Diabetes, organ damage, cognitive loss, stillbirths, and sexual dysfunction are not to be taken lightly.  

COVID-19 is no simple disease. Prevention is usually simple. I'm taking no risk with omicron.

Those are all complications that result from severe illness due to oxygen deprivation, same thing with the clotting that occurs (and is the case in any sort of severe pneumonia.)

Mild cases don't often have much complications, but this constant barrage of of alarmist, sensationalist doomsday stuff from the media is taking a toll on everybody's mental health.

The sexual dysfunction one sounds like it could be more general

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32959752/

A Late COVID-19 Complication: Male Sexual Dysfunction

Since the beginning of the coronavirus infectious disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, an exponentially large amount of data has been published to describe the pathology, clinical presentations, and outcomes in patients infected with the severe acute respiratory syndrome novel coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Although COVID-19 has been shown to cause a systemic inflammation predisposing the involvement of multiple organs, its mechanism affecting the urogenital system has not been well-documented. This case report presents the clinical course of two male patients with COVID-19 who developed sexual dysfunction, as anorgasmia, following recovery from the infection. Although no evidence of viral replication or inflammatory involvement could be identified in these cases' urogenital organs, a lack of other known risk factors for anorgasmia points to the role of COVID-19 as the contributing factor.

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210407/erectile-dysfunction-risk-6-times-higher-in-men-with-covid

April 7, 2021 -- COVID-19 increases the risk of developing erectile dysfunction (ED) by nearly six times, according to data from the first study to investigate the association between ED and COVID-19 in young men in a real-life setting.

The preliminary numbers also indicated that having ED also increased men’s susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Men with ED are more than five times more likely to have COVID-19.

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This tweet was from last week but I'm still posting it to make the point that despite what this forum thinks there is genuine grassroots support for masking from a substantial portion of the population.

There's no grassroots support. It's just a few elites, the media, and laptoppers.

Around here, it's never the blue-collar types who bop around in masks.

This cultural divide is tough to overstate. To this day, I have only met one blue-collar worker personally that wears a mask purely by choice, and even he is a college-educated blue-collar worker.

The support for masking is now more than ever a top down thing, as far as class and especially education goes.

Yeah it’s kinda sad that opposition to the possibility of seasonal mask mandates has gotten like this.

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https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/07/health/us-life-expectancy-drops-again-2021/index.html

Life expectancy in the US fell from 78.9 years in 2019 to 76.6 years in 2021 -- now more than five years less than the average among peer nations.

"This speaks volumes about the life consequences of how the US handled the pandemic," Dr. Steven Woolf, study author and director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, said in a statement. "What happened in the U.S. is less about the variants than the levels of resistance to vaccination and the public's rejection of practices, such as masking and mandates, to reduce viral transmission."

In the US, there was a disproportionate decrease in life expectancy for Black and Hispanic people in 2020. But in 2021, White people had the largest losses, with life expectancy holding steady for Hispanic people and rising slightly for Black people.

For this study, Woolf and other researchers from the University of Colorado and the Urban Institute analyzed death data from the National Center for Health Statistics, the Human Mortality Database and other international statistical agencies.

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https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-being-anti-science-is-now-part-of-many-rural-americans-identity/

In subsequent research conducted before the pandemic, Motta and his colleagues found possible paths to countering vaccine hesitancy. “One way we can try to get skeptics on board with vaccinating is to just make an effort to understand why they’re skeptical, and portray the benefits of vaccinating in those terms,” Motta said. For example, Americans who felt that vaccines tainted their moral/bodily purity were given information about how viruses also attacked and invaded the body, which raised their opinions of vaccines.

The COVID-19 vaccines, however, were rolled out without much of that targeted messaging. Worsening the matter, then-President Donald Trump and his administration made a series of missteps and promoted misinformation, which only further hampered the country’s ability to form a coherent plan. On top of that, the virus was fast moving from the beginning of the pandemic, and the United States is a big country with multiple public health agencies, each with a different level of authority. The authority that state and local health departments have varies by state, which meant communication strategies were varied as well. Meanwhile, in much of rural America, hospitals had already gone through waves of closures, in addition to decades of underinvestment in rural public health.

Importantly, Barker and his colleagues defined anti-intellectualism not as a respondent's ability or personal level of education. Instead, it was about respondents having positive feelings about trusting one’s gut and having negative feelings toward experts, schools and “the book-smarts of intellectuals.” In their paper, the researchers wrote that those who distrust scientists and other official sources of authority “distinguish those who are ‘book smart’ from those who have common sense, the latter of which they view as a superior means of ascertaining truth.”

“It’s more how people think of themselves versus where they are,” Lunz Trujillo said. She cited the political scientist Katherine J. Cramer’s well-known work on rural resentment, which illustrated that many rural people disdained anything perceived to be urban — racial and ethnic minorities, liberals, the LGBTQ community, cultural elites — and tied it to their rejection of intellectuals and intellectualism as well.

The key insight to all this work is that those who distrust vaccines, science and expertise aren’t doing so necessarily because they have a knowledge gap or a misunderstanding. Distrusting experts is part of their identity. Motta and his colleagues’ work suggests that being anti-vaccine has become an identity, too. In some respects, distrusting experts has become a political choice, which means that any message from an official source — whether it’s a researcher, head of a government agency or a journalist — is more likely to inspire the opposite of its intended reaction from those who view that source as part of the political opposition.

This is what I'm talking about when I say national Dems are tone-deaf and have messaging issues. Experts really need to be able to communicate with people they're trying to reach on their own level and signal that they have common (cultural/identity) ground with them.

What struck me most about my time with Naylor and Jackson is that they were both also hunters and, despite being experts in their field, already had a level of trust with the hunters they were trying to convince. They spoke with mid-Southern accents, drove trucks and wore camo. They’re well-educated experts, but it’s hard to imagine that local and out-of-state duck hunters would see them as eggheads that could be easily dismissed. When Booth described his staff’s expertise to me, he said they had “dirt under their fingernails,” which was similar to how Lunz Trujillo explained the kind of experiential knowledge valued by farmers and other rural folks.

But not every issue manifests locally, with local experts able to gather people for friendly dinners. Regarding climate change, Fisher says in her work now she is finding that people are often spurred to action only when the environmental damage becomes an extreme personal risk to them and their family, and when it is seen as preventable. Part of the problem with mitigating COVID-19, she said, was that many people didn’t see the virus as a personal risk — they thought they themselves would be OK, even if so many other people were dying.

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https://www.slowboring.com/p/we-should-expect-more-and-worse-pandemics

We should expect more — and worse — pandemics to come
The fundamentals are bad

As a teenager, I was a big fan of Laurie Garrett’s 1994 book “The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance.”

She argued that the world was making a big mistake treating the HIV/AIDS outbreak as a kind of one-off event. Throughout the 20th century, humanity enjoyed an enormous reduction in the risk of infectious diseases due to the triple punch of improved sanitation, antibiotics, and vaccines, but Garrett claimed that it was a mistake to assume the trend would inevitably continue. On the contrary, she thought it was likely to reverse for several reasons:

1. Antibiotics are miraculous, but resistant strains are emerging faster than we can invent new drugs.
2. Economic development is pushing more people into unfamiliar wildlife habitats where zoonotic crossover events can occur.
3. Just as the transition from hunter-gatherer to agricultural lifestyles increased disease zoonosis, so has the transition from traditional agricultural practices to factory farming.
4. The spread of motorized transportation and the growing affordability of air travel make it more likely that new pathogens will spread rapidly.
5. There are actually a bunch of weird viruses known to be deadly to humans that just haven’t spread much yet.

Her concerns have essentially all been born out over time, though relative to my worries 30 years ago, (5) has been less relevant — the scariest outbreaks have mostly come from entirely new viruses.

Antibiotic resistance remains an underrated problem. It has killed millions of people over the past 10 years, but the victims are primarily in poor countries and/or were already ill, so it doesn’t get enough attention, even as the situation steadily deteriorates.



We also have more people in contact with more animals traveling more quickly to more places. A big new Nature article looks at how deforestation is accelerating disease spread. Statisticians say we’ll likely experience another Covid-scale pandemic in our lifetimes.