Friday October 6, 2023
12:30-1:30 p.m.
Meeting Both In-Person and by Zoom
Dampeer Room, Second Floor of Kelvin Smith Library*
Case Western Reserve University
Dear Colleagues:
A recent journal article described “COVID-19 in the Fall of 2023” as “Forgotten but Not Gone.” I wouldn’t quite say it is forgotten. I count at least thirty significant articles in the New York Times and Washington Post during September – compared to at most three on the flu. It is also hard to forget COVID-19 when a whole bunch of people I know, including myself and my wife, have caught it recently, or when CWRU is still notifying me that students have to miss class because of infections. The virus, its variations, treatment and prevention are still generating plenty of articles in the medical journals.
Yet it is fair to say that as Fall began we were entering, in The Atlantic’s headline, “Our First ‘Nonemergency’ COVID Season.” Attempts to track the virus by identifying individual infections have been replaced by surveillance of hospitalizations and of virus prevalence in water supply. It is becoming more like the flu; but that is not quite reassuring because (a) the flu kills a lot of people, and (b) SARS-Coronavirus 2 seems to mutate faster, for reasons both known (it doesn’t go away during the summer) and not. One of The Atlantic’s reporters described the pattern:
“You can think of the virus as a rabbit. It’s just running around all over the place. The virus is constantly evolving; it’s always becoming a little bit different. And our immunity’s playing a little bit of catch-up… the rabbit can just kind of keep running forever, even if it’s just running in circles. So the virus is never going to stop evolving, and our immune system is always going to be playing catch-up.”
It has changed so much, in fact, that when the CDC recently recommended that everyone over the age of 6 months get a new vaccine, that included withdrawing approval for the vaccine versions designed for the first phases of the pandemic. The strains addressed by those vaccines are no longer relevant.
CDC’s recommendation at the same time reflected the strange politics of vaccination. As another Atlantic article explains, there are good reasons why trying to immunize young and healthy Americans may be a waste of resources, and risk exposing young and healthy people to rare but nontrivial side effects. But “in a country where seasonal vaccine uptake is worryingly low and direly inequitable, where health care is privatized and piecemeal, where anti-vaccine activists will pull at any single loose thread, many experts now argue that policies riddled with ifs, ands, or buts – factually sound though they may be – are not the path toward maximizing uptake. ‘The nuanced, totally correct way can also be the garbled message way,’” Dr. Anthony Fauci told the reporter.
There are plenty of further uncertainties. For example, at what point would spread of the virus reach a point at which hospital managers should reinstate masking requirements? Would that even have further benefits, by limiting other infections? Can drug treatments be improved, and who should get the drugs currently available? National policies differ, as I learned when we tested positive in Milan this July and it was nearly miraculous that my wife and I were able to get Paxlovid.
With all these issues it seems time for our discussions to revisit the COVID quandaries. This time it will be a great pleasure to welcome Dr. David Canaday, whose research, as you can see below, addresses a wide variety of issues both about COVID and other infectious diseases. Among the questions he may address are the current state of transmission and risk; to what extent it is appropriate to say COVID is now a lot like flu; how our capacity to deal with COVID compares to other diseases, not just flu but RSV (Respiratory Synctial Virus); and to what extent the behavioral measures to protect us that were partially adopted in 2020 are appropriate now.
In-Person and Virtual Attendance
In order to make it easy for people to protect themselves and still participate, the meetings can be attended on Zoom. Participants can register for each meeting in the same way they did for the past two years. The link is posted below.
The discussion begins at 12:30 p.m., but the room should be open no later than Noon. We try to have beverages and refreshments set up soon after that. Participants should be able to sign on to Zoom also by Noon. But please remember not much will be happening online until the talk begins at 12:30 pm. Please also be prepared to show identification when entering Kelvin Smith Library.
Zoom participants should speak up when asked for questions or comments, or submit thoughts through Zoom’s chat function. Please keep yourself muted until you are choosing to speak.
Each week we will send out this newsletter with information about the topic. It will also include a link to register (for free) for the discussion. When you register, you will automatically receive from the Zoom system the link to join the meeting. If you do not get the newsletter, you should also be able to get the information each Monday by checking http://fridaylunch.case.edu Then if you choose you can use the contact form on that website to request the registration link.
This week’s Zoom link for registration is:
https://cwru.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYtc-uvqjspGdVGe_WkC5WrDFN7DANzIxIP
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Please also e-mail padg@case.edu if you have questions about arrangements or any suggestions. Or call at 216 368-2426 and we’ll try to get back to you. We are very pleased to be partnering this semester with the Siegal Lifelong Learning Program to share information about the discussions.
Best wishes for safety and security for you and yours,
Joe White
Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director, Center for Policy Studies
About Our Guest
David H. Canaday MD is Professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and HIV Medicine of the CWRU School of Medicine and University Hospitals. He earned his BA from the University of Pennsylvania, his MD degree from Washington University School of Medicine. and completed his residency at the University of Minnesota before serving a fellowship in infectious disease here and then joining the faculty in 1999. Since 2000 he has been a practicing physician and researcher with the Louis Stokes VA Medical Center, serving as Associate Director for Research of its Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center (GRECC) since 2010.
Dr. Canaday’s research has long focused on the immunology of aging and disease, including influenza and shingles vaccination as well as HIV & TB pathogenesis. Since the appearance of SARS/CoV-2 (as it is referred to on some of his grants) in 2020, he has also been one of the most active local researchers on that new disease, especially on its course within older populations. His many current projects include work on the effectiveness of seasonal influenza, COVID-19 and other respiratory virus vaccines; vaccine-induced immunity in nursing homes; transmission and immunology of COVID-19 in nursing homes;, comparing effectiveness of different types of influenza vaccines; and the effectiveness of shingles vaccination in rheumatoid arthritis patients.
* Kelvin Smith Library requires all entrants to show identification when entering the building, unless they have a university i.d. that they can magnetically scan. We are sorry if that seems like a hassle, but it has been Library policy for a while in response to security concerns. Please do not complain to the library staff at the entrance, who are just doing their jobs.
Schedule of Friday Lunch Upcoming Topics and Speakers:
October 13: Showdowns and Shutdowns on Capitol Hill. With John B. Gilmour Ph.D., Professor of Government and Public Policy, College of William & Mary. Alternate Room: Mather House 100
October 20: One Semester Away from Crisis: Small Colleges and American Higher Education. With Tom Bogart, Ph.D., Visiting Professor and Chair, Department of Economics. Alternate Room: Mather House 100
October 27: Storefronts, Communities, and the Changing World of Retail. With Michael Goldberg, Associate Professor of Design and Innovation; Executive Director and Associate Vice President, Veale Institute for Entrepreneurship.
November 3: Dobbs and Doctors. With David N. Hackney MD, Division Director, Maternal Fetal Medicine, University Hospitals of Cleveland.
November 10: Who’s Legally Responsible When “Self-Driving” Cars Go “Eyes Off?” With Cassandra Burke Robertson, JD, John Deaver Drinko – BakerHostetler Professor of Law.
November 17: Axios Cleveland and the Future of Local Media. With Sam Allard, reporter for Axios Cleveland.
November 24: Thanksgiving Break
December 1: Civil-Military Relations in Egypt. With Dina Rashed, Ph.D., Associate Dean of the College for Academic Affairs, University of Chicago.
December 8: To Be Determined. |
