Ending July with dogged enthusiasm

The NPC Podcast is on the air. The organizers of the National Pharmaceutical Congress are proud to release our new weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Peter's guest this week is Lee Ferreira. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with Impres Pharma. (The NPC Podcast is now on Apple iTunes.)

⇒ Issue #86 (In the TV series, "Get Smart," Maxwell Smart, played by Don Adams, was Agent 86.)
⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 07/30: 117,357*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 0730: 8,962*
⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 07/30: 17,053,700*
⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 07/30: 667,693*

July 30, 2020 — The calendar declares this is Thursday for most of you CurveFlatteners, but it's de-facto Friday for moi, Chronicle senior editor John Evans. I am taking an extra day off before my Simcoe Day long weekend. Call it an extra 24 hours to de-stress. And what's better for de-stressing than spending a long weekend visiting with four beautiful dogs? (And their human families, of course.) But between my brother's two Husky woofers and my friend's Samoyed and Australian Shepherd, I will have a lot of opportunities for therapeutic petting. That photo (below) is Bear, by the way. He is an outsized goof, but he's always glad to see me.

Fortunately, I don't have to worry much about coming in contact with these loving dogs, as several experts have said the risk of contracting Covid-19 from household pets is low.On quite the other hand, our canine friends may help manage the pandemic. Some German researchers have trained eight dogs to identify, by smell, infected saliva and upper-airway secretions. The researchers think this could be a boon to aid screening for Covid-19.

Also deserving of good-boy head pats is all of Canada. The World Health Organization Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that Canada had 'done well' in bringing our outbreak under control, along with other nations including China, Germany and the Republic of Korea.

So keep up that curve-flattening, everyone, and maybe someday we'll get some treats.


COVID CHRONICLE 07/30/2020

• A group of researchers have attempted to compensate for the delay between detection and knowing the final resolution in Covid-19 cases which they say can skew estimates of case-fatality rates (CFRs). They say this skew is particularly a problem when a region is in an ongoing outbreak, especially during the exponential growth phase. Accounting for this, as well as for low (50%) reporting rates, they calculate that in Canada and the U.S. The CFR for Covid-19 is 2% (CMAJ June 22, 2020; 192(25):E666-E670)
• Two recent studies in JAMA Cardiology are expanding what we know about the impact of Covid-19 on the heart. The first used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to look at the hearts of 100 individuals who had recovered from the infection. More than three-quarters (78 per cent) had some cardiac involvement, and 60 per cent had ongoing myocardial inflammation independent of any pre-existing conditions. A second study looked at 39 Covid-19-associated autopsies. In that study, 24 (61.5 per cent) had measurable Covid-19 infection in the heart tissue. However, the investigators found no evidence of acute inflammation of the cardiac muscle in the studied hearts.
• Researchers have confirmed that Covid-19 viruses can be present in the mastoid and inner ear, so they are recommending that otolaryngologic surgeons engage in similar droplet precautions when engaging in procedures in patients with Covid-19 as are typically done for surgeries of the nose, mouth, and airway. (JAMA Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. Published online July 23, 2020)

TODAY I AM EATING

No cooking for me today. After work today I am headed to my brother's place, where he no doubt has some chicken and ribs slow-cooking on the barbecue. Always a treat.


TODAY I AM PLAYING

Settlers of Catan. After visiting my brother I'm headed to a friend's for the rest of the weekend, and I plan to see if we can get in a round of this excellent German board game. It just has a great balance of hidden and revealed information, ongoing player cooperation and competition, and is very easy to learn or teach.

LATER I AM LISTENING TO

The History of English Podcast, episode45: To Coin a Phrase—and Money. After a break I am getting back into this podcast with an episode about the time when the Franks and the Britons shared a currency at the end of the 8th century, how this impacted trade, and through trade changed the English language.

GET ALONG LITTLE DOGGIES

That's it for me for this week, CurveFlatteners. If you have any thoughts or comments, we'd love for you to drop them in the comments section below. Please also check us out on LinkedIn and share us around. Kylie Rebernik will be your newsletter-meisterin tomorrow, to wrap up the week and bring us into the long weekend.