Collector's Edition: 100 issues later and there's still no direction home

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 Robin Hunter of Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with Impres Pharma.

⇒ Issue #100 (In numerology, 100 is a nice, round number)
⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 08/25: 127,594*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 08/25: 9,129*
⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 08/25: 23,676,599*
⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 08/25: 813,789*

Good morning, all you CurveFlatteners. It’s Mitch Shannon here, making use of my smartphone’s real-time voice transcription featchur thiff mornming -- and I’m marvelling ut how smoovly weehav transmissioned too techmollogy dat haz transhforumed ow we lib hour lyphes.

Well, that’s what you do as the sixth month of social isolation begins, isn’t it? You continue to experiment. You try out stupid tech tricks that you wouldn’t have cared about back in March, before all this Covid kerfuffle began. (I swear, if this pandemic lasts one more hour, I might finally be ready to ask the neighbour’s kids about that thing called TikTok.)
Incredibly, this is the 100th edition of the Daily CurveFlattener. When we launched this e-newsletter on March 30 of this year, it was with the thought that our team at Chronicle would serve our stakeholders by creating a reliable information source for the duration of the pandemic, even if it lasted more than just a few weeks. Frankly, we didn’t envision the project as something that would still be required in the autumn.

That was only one item on a long list of things that we didn’t see coming. Consider the naiveté of this statement, as proclaimed in DCF #1:

It helps to think that we're helping to flatten the curve by exchanging knowledge and experiences... With a bit of sustained discipline and a decent measure of luck, the services of the Daily CurveFlattener may not be required for much longer. Wouldn't that be excellent?

Well, yes, it surely would have been excellent. However, the early idea that things might snap back to normal in shortish order would prove to be an overly optimistic thought.

As we begin to accept the humbling reality that the pandemic is something that we, the lucky ones, are going to continue to live with through the memorable year of 2020, the required adjustments will continue. There will be continued business uncertainties and family challenges as we enter the fall. There will surely be political and societal fallout. We’re entering a season that will reward safe, smart and unselfish impulses. We know that other generations and other cultures have dealt with much worse for far longer. And so, in the words on the poster, we will “keep calm and CurveFlatten on,” as long as required. We know you’ll do the same.


COVID CHRONICLE 08/25/20

• The modern patient journey typically begins with an inquiry to Dr. Google. Has that changed in the Covid era? That question occurred to Mayo Clinic researchers, who undertook a data search of terms such as "chest pain" and "myocardial infarction" searched by U.S. and European residents through the period of June 1, 2019 to May 31 of this year. The investigators were trying to determine whether online search habits correlated with reports during the Covid pandemic of fewer patients going to the ER with acute CV complaints. Reports Dr. Conor Senecal, lead author of an article in JMIR Cardio: "Searches for 'heart attack' dropped during the same period of reported reduced heart attack admissions, but surprisingly, searches for 'chest pain' rose [by at least 34%.] This raises concern that people may have either misconstrued chest pain as an infectious symptom or actively avoided getting care due to COVID-19 concerns."
• Parents concerned about the potential spread of Covid when classroom instruction returns in September may be encouraged by preliminary findings from a recent Australian study. Research findings published in The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health suggest the rate of Covid-19 transmission in New South Wales educational settings was extremely limited during the first wave from January to April 2020. Lead author Professor Kristine Macartney said "Covid-19 transmission in schools appears to be considerably less than that seen for other respiratory viruses, such as influenza. This supports the previous findings that… transmission in educational settings can be kept low and manageable in the context of an effective pandemic response that includes contact tracing and quarantine, and temporary school closures for cleaning if someone is found to be infected.” She cautions the findings may not be similar in other jurisdictions.
• The pandemic has resulted in a worldwide shortage of IV sedatives, leading to a multi-centre international trial led by London, Ont.’s Lawson Health Research Institute aimed at determining whether inhaled sedatives might work for patients requiring ventilation. The 800-patient study is co-led by Dr. Marat Slessarev and Dr. Angela Jerath at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and funded by the Ontario government.
• The picturesque town of Point Roberts, Wash. (pop. 1,400; 98281 zip code) is located on what is known as a pene-exclave, which is a geographic anomaly. Essentially, it’s a small landmass surrounded by the Vancouver exurbs, completely cut off from its mothership, the Evergreen State. That’s posed a particular problem since the Canada-USA border has been closed to non-essential travel since March 21. Point Robertsites (Robertsonians?) have no way to visit relatives in the USA without traversing Canada and the town relies on Canadian suppliers of goods and services. Governor Jay Inslee has requested a compassionate exemption for community residents from the binational travel restrictions. Meanwhile, the USA border wall with Mexico is stalled, but American authorities are installing a cable barrier to separate Washington and British Columbia, according to CTV News. A spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol agency tells reporters the barrier “protects people in the United States and Canada.”

WHAT CHRONICLE IS WORKING ON TODAY

The National Pharmaceutical Congress will take place as a series of three weekly webinars, beginning October 21st. Co-chair Joe Knott of Pangaea Group and I are putting together the best faculty ever, to discuss how the Life Sciences industry can navigate the Covid kerfuffle and still get the job done. Registration is now open at https://www.pharmacongress.info. (Use discount code “DCF20” and save 20 per cent from your registration fee.)


RIGHT NOW I’M READING



I like Bob. Maybe you like Bob. But apparently, there’s a thing called “liking Bob too much.” and journalist David Kinney examines the phenomenon in his 2014 study, The Dylanologists: Adventures in the Land of Bob (Simon & Schuster, Cdn$21.) Kinney interviews dozens of aficionados of Dylan’s music who cross over some kind of psychic or spiritual threshold to become full-time nomadic concert-goers, bedazzled scholarly interpreters, obsessed collectors, shameless acolytes, groupies, what-have-you. When Kinney speaks with a Thunder Bay, Ont. Bob-head whose life literally revolves around Dylan’s concert-touring schedule, you acknowledge the misspent enthusiasm pop music fans have always brought to certain performers. And then you’d wish they’d just, you know, get a life.


TOMORROW AND TOMORROW

Please make use of the comments section at the Daily CurveFlattener, to let us know what you're up to today and your plans for the weekend. Or feel free to check in via LinkedIn, email, or your choice of connector. By all means, pass this newsletter along to your colleagues.

Stay in touch, stay safe and enjoy your days off. Chronicle’s Dhiren Mahiban takes over tomorrow -- unless I’ve got things confused and it’s Kylie Rebernik. They can work it out. Say. Have you subscribed to Skin Spectrum Weekly, our newsletter about the intersection of dermatology and society? Sign up for free at http://skinspectrum.online and have it delivered to your phone or inbox every Monday.