Coronavirus Daily News Brief – May 12: New Site Aggregates Long Covid Studies, Heart Failure Patients Live Longer When Vaxxed

A statue of Ben Franklin in the center of Penn’s campus
Good afternoon. This is Jonathan Spira, director of research at the Center for Long Covid Research, reporting. Here now the news of the pandemic from across the globe on its 1,523rd day and Mother’s Day in many countries.
The Coronavirus Daily News Brief team wishes everyone Happy Mother’s Day, Alles Liebe zum Muttertag, Gelukkige Moederdag, joyeuse fête des mères, Buona Festa della Mamma, feliz día de la madre, feliz dia das mães, 母の日おめでとう, С днем ​​матери, День Матері, and יום האם שמח.
In news we cover today , a new study suggests that heart failure patients who are vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 have a greater chance of living longer than those who are not, the man who received a genetically modified pig kidney transplant in March died this past weekend, and a new website aggregates information about hundreds of ongoing Long Covid Studies.
THE LEDE
In case you missed this last month, Pomona College economist Gary N. Smith swiftly calculated that the number of tenured and tenure-track professors at his school declined from 1990 to 2022, while the number of administrators nearly sextupled in that period.
“Happily, there is a simple solution,” Smith wrote in a rather droll Washington Post column. Following in the tradition of Anglo-Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, his extremely modest and not at all revolutionary proposal called for getting  rid of all faculty and students at Pomona so that the college could fulfill its destiny as an institution run by and for nonteaching functionaries. At the very least, he wrote, “the elimination of professors and students would greatly improve most colleges’ financial position.”
This gives rise to the thought that we could save far greater sums of money by closing numerous institutions and letting the chips fall where they may.
Keep in mind that, if this is starting to sound like the stuff that Tom Lehrer ballads and songs are made of, you’re probably write, although it’s unlikely he will take pen to paper.
Tom Lehrer, you may recall or really should know, is a satirical singer/songwriter who was most active in the middle three decades of the 20th century, the 1950s, 1960s, and the 1970s. He had the ability to take what sounded like a pleasant little ditty that your grandparents might have enjoyed that give it a subversive twist. A song that starts off, “Spring is here/Spring is here/Full of skittles/And full of beer” is the beginning for what was his first hit, “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park.” A number called “National Brotherhood Week” sounds somewhat upbeat and harmless until it calls out the hypocrisy of the celebration by singing “it’s fun to eulogize the/ people you despite / as long as you don’t let ‘em in your schools.”
In my case, Lehrer and his acerbic wit were introduced to me in seventh grade science by Mr. Stigman, who played the song “Pollution” in class – “If you visit / American city / you will find it / very pretty / just two things of which you must be aware / don’t drink the water and don’t breath the air..”
As one song’s refrain goes, “Who’s next?”
TODAY IN THE FIRST YEAR OF COVID HISTORY
On May 12, 2020, the United Kingdom unveiled a new strategy to combat the coronavirus pandemic.  Then Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the nation and called for Britons not to stay home but to “Stay Alert.” The country introduced a 14-day self quarantine period for visitors and returning residents and may allow sporting and cultural events to take place in June behind closed doors.
Shanghai Disneyland, one of 14 Walt Disney theme parks that had closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, reopened to the public, albeit with a limit of one-third of the normal number of visitors.  Face masks and gloves are required, there are temperature checks for visitors, and costumed characters must maintain distance from visitors.
In Russia, President Vladimir Putin, while acknowledging that the coronavirus had not yet been defeated, declared an end to the nationwide “nonworking period.” In doing so, he gave the country’s governors the power to decide on what restrictions should remain or be loosened, depending on the situation in their individual territories.
A few days after then President Donald Trump of the United States said that “we have to get our country open again,” the coronavirus began to spread throughout the White House, sending some officials into self-quarantine.  Two staffers, the vice president’s press secretary and a valet to the president, tested positive for the virus.
Finally, the number of coronavirus cases across the globe stood at 4.22 million, of which 1.51 million hadrecovered, based on data compiled by the Coronavirus Morning News Brief. The death toll stood at 284,834.
In the United States and its territories, the number of confirmed cases stood at 1.37 million, while the death toll stood at 80,870. Russia had the fourth highest number of cases in the world, with 221,344, with a death toll of 2,009.
LONG COVID
The new Long Covid Studies project makes it easy for patients to find such clinical studies that are taking place near their homes. This in turn will make such studies more accessible to those who want to participate in research.
The website is the work of Ezra Spier, a Long Covid patient who also does research on the topic. The new site contains information about at least 500 of studies at the present time.
UNITED STATES
Heart failure patients who are vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 have an 82% greater likelihood of living longer than those who are not vaccinated, according to research presented today at Heart Failure 2024, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology.
“In this large study of patients with heart failure, Covid-19 vaccination was associated with a lower likelihood of contracting the infection, being admitted to hospital because of heart failure, or dying from any cause during a six-month period compared with remaining unvaccinated,” said Dr. Kyeong-Hyeon Chun, the study’s author who is affiliated with the National Health Insurance Service in Korea.
The symptoms associated with the new FLiRT subvariants are as follows: Sore throat, Cough, Fatigue, Congestion, Runny nose, Headache, Muscle aches, Fever or chills, New loss of sense of taste or smell, Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, Nausea or vomiting, and Diarrhea.
The sublineages are known as KP.1.1 and KP.2,
OTHER HEALTHCARE NEWS
Richard Slayman, the recipient of the first world’s pig kidney transported died over the weekend. Slayman underwent the four-hour procedure in March at Massachusetts General Hospital and was discharged from the hospital two weeks later on April 2.
His doctors said that there was no indication that his death was due to the transplant.  At the time of his transplant he had numerous comorbidities, including Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
PANDEMIC STATISTICS
CURRENT U.S. COVID STATISTICS AT A GLANCE
In the United States, in the week ending May 4, 2024, the test positivity rate was, based on data released on May 10 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was 3.1%, a figure is up 0.1 percentage points from the previous 7-day period, and the trend in test positivity is +0.1% in the most recent week. Meanwhile, the percentage of emergency department visits that were diagnosed as SARS-CoV-2 was 0.3%, and the trend in emergency department visits is -7.6%.
The number of people admitted to hospital in the United States due to SARS-CoV-2 is no longer being reported as of the end of May. Meanwhile, the percentage of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 was 0.7%, a figure that is virtually unchanged from the previous period.
VACCINATION SPOTLIGHT
Some 70.6% of the world population has received at least one dose of coronavirus vaccine at press time, according to Our World in Data, an online scientific publication that tracks such information.  So far, 13.57 billion doses of the vaccine have been administered on a global basis and 7,170 doses are now administered each day.
Meanwhile, only 32.7% of people in low-income countries have received one dose, while in countries such as Canada, China, Denmark, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, at least 75% of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine.
Only a handful of the world’s poorest countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia and Nepal – have reached the 70% mark in vaccinations. Many countries, however, are under 20% and, in countries such as Haiti, Senegal, and Tanzania, for example, vaccination rates remain at or below 10%.
In addition, with the beginning of vaccinations in North Korea in late September, 2023, Eritrea remains the only country in the world that has not administered vaccines in any significant number
Finally, as of April 14, 2024, only Turkmenistan in Central Asia is only state that has not reported any cases of SARS-CoV-2 infections whatsoever, although it is strongly suspected that the virus is present there. Meanwhile, the last territory in the world to have its first ever SARS-CoV-2 infection was Tokelau, a dependency of New Zealand that reported its first five cases on December 21, 2022.
Where Has All the Data Gone?
We regret to inform that, as of April 15, 2024, the Global Daily Statistics data in the Coronavirus Daily News Brief are no longer being updated. Over the past 15 months, as more politicians and governments sought to place SARS-CoV-2 in the rear-view mirror, pandemic data reporting sputtered out and we are now at the point where it is simply not feasible to provide statistically valid case data on a global scale.
We are developing potential new and authoritative sources that we will present once they have been properly vetted, so stay tuned to this space. In the meantime, our Long Covid and pandemic coverage will remain much the same.
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Anna Breuer contributed reporting to this issue.
The Coronavirus Daily News Brief is a publication of the Center for Long Covid Research. www.longcov.org
If you have Long Covid and need to talk to someone, call the Long Covid Patient Peer Counseling Phone Line, or HOPELINE.  The HOPELINE is our free, confidential support and information service.
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