Biogen Conference Likely Led To 20,000 COVID-19 Cases In Boston Area (bostonglobe.com) 35
schwit1 shares a report from The Boston Globe: A new study estimates the Biogen conference held at Boston's Marriott Long Wharf hotel in February played a far greater role in spreading the coronavirus than previously thought. The research team analyzed the genetic sequences of the virus that caused COVID-19 in the 772 patients, almost all from Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, and Suffolk counties. By examining mutations in the genetic code that naturally occur as the virus makes copies of itself -- subtle changes that act like a passport stamp showing where the pathogen has been -- the sleuths identified more than 80 distinct SARS-CoV-2 genomes of viruses that infected the Boston area in the first five months of the year. Most of the viruses came from elsewhere in the United States and Western Europe, the scientists said. But one virus with a unique genetic signature had an outsize impact. Some 289 of the 772 patients, or more than a third, were infected with a virus traceable to the meeting held on Feb. 26-27 by Cambridge biotech Biogen.
In a remarkable sign of how the virus can spread unpredictably and take a disproportionate toll on society's most vulnerable members, the 289 conference-related cases included 122 people living in Boston-area homeless shelters and employees who work there, the study says. It's unclear what path the virus took to get there. By multiplying the proportion of conference-related viral genomes in each of the four counties by the total number of coronavirus infections in Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, the scientists estimate that 20,000 infections could be linked to the Marriott event. The study never mentions Biogen by name. It simply refers to an "international business conference held in Boston from February 26-27." "We never would have knowingly put anyone at risk," it said in a statement. "When we learned a number of our colleagues were ill, we did not know the cause was COVID-19, but we immediately notified public health authorities and took steps to limit the spread."
In a remarkable sign of how the virus can spread unpredictably and take a disproportionate toll on society's most vulnerable members, the 289 conference-related cases included 122 people living in Boston-area homeless shelters and employees who work there, the study says. It's unclear what path the virus took to get there. By multiplying the proportion of conference-related viral genomes in each of the four counties by the total number of coronavirus infections in Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, the scientists estimate that 20,000 infections could be linked to the Marriott event. The study never mentions Biogen by name. It simply refers to an "international business conference held in Boston from February 26-27." "We never would have knowingly put anyone at risk," it said in a statement. "When we learned a number of our colleagues were ill, we did not know the cause was COVID-19, but we immediately notified public health authorities and took steps to limit the spread."
Cheltenham Festival too (Score:5, Insightful)
The Cheltenham Festival was another similar super-spreading event. Our government completely dropped the ball by not immediately advising that these kinds of events be cancelled.
Worst death rate in Europe. Worst economic hit in the G7. World beating, as our Prime Minister would say.
Re:Cheltenham Festival too (Score:5, Interesting)
The Cheltenham Festival was probably late enough in the pandemic that organizers should have stopped it. In the West in March, we were definitely at a stage during that time where people in charge were in a wavering, "what should we do" kind of approach. In late February, the first observation of a significant COVID outbreak in the US happened in Seattle. This was essentially coincident with the conference in Boston.
I'm not saying that the US response has been appropriate or adequate, but I do think that, given what we knew at the time, cancelling that conference would have seemed overcautious. The consequences show that COVID was active in the US a lot earlier than we initially thought. We still should have been aware of it and preparing for it, and the response of our federal government has been shamefully poor. But hindsight is 20/20, and I don't see that the conference organizers could reasonably have done much better with the information at hand.
Re: Cheltenham Festival too (Score:2)
Definitely! Even if the government in the UK or or US had done this I highly doubt citizens would have responded or heeded the warnings. It would have made no difference.
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conference held in Boston from February 26-27 (Score:5, Interesting)
Boston scientist convention: Just pahk yah cah and wipe yah hands on yah pants.
Re:conference held in Boston from February 26-27 (Score:5, Informative)
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/0... [cnn.com]
"There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly," Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO health emergencies program"
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Re:conference held in Boston from February 26-27 (Score:4, Insightful)
I've never understood this argument. It's basically "hey, look at all of these countries that are locking down and imposing quarantines for some reason, let's just sit back and do nothing until we know what we're dealing with. those silly asians". Even if you ignore the fact that the US was already informed in December, a responsible position would have been to follow suit from the get-go and seek clarification later. No country locks itself down just for the hell of it.
Re:conference held in Boston from February 26-27 (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree 100%.
For the record, as an American abroad I'm embarrassed at our response - my earlier post was not meant to provide an excuse. The WHO screwed up, but regardless the US response was not great. Regarding the CDC, I do wonder how much of it was the CDC/NIH shortcomings, versus the administration. It would seem that Fauci et. al., generally have it together.
Part of the stark contrast in response from the West in general vs Asian countries is that the SARS pandemic has left serious scars in various countries and territories in Asia. In Hong Kong, it was the people who were paranoid and were urging the local government to shut borders long before the government got their act together and did it. The people were so proactive in wearing masks, distancing, etc., that the conversation to make it mandatory was never even had (except to tell expats they should, as many of them don't wear masks). A lot of that was because they've gone through this once before in a way no other Western country/territory has...
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No country locks itself down just for the hell of it.
They did it to make Trump look bad.
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Every right wing nutter.
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That would be Boston in the UK, where they speak with a Lincolnshire accent.
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"That would be Boston in the UK, where they speak with a Lincolnshire accent."
We know, the " almost all from Essex, Middlesex, Norfolk, and Suffolk counties" were a dead giveaway.
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Actually, the settlers copied all the originals. There are counties with all these names in Massachusetts. For the avoidance of doubt, the Biogen conference happened in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, not Boston, Lincolnshire, UK.
Re:conference held in Boston from February 26-27 (Score:4, Funny)
It's easy to find your way around Massachusetts. Just remember that Norfolk is in the South; Essex is in the North; Suffolk is in the Middle and Middlesex is off to one side.
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Further proof (Score:1, Funny)
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...that protesting in large groups doesn't transmit COVID.
Thing is, conferences can be cancelled by their organizers and that's that. Good luck trying to convince a mob of angry people they're not going to be protesting today.
"Why is it we can't do X activity due to Covid-19, if it's okay for large groups to gather in protest?" Because you don't jump off a cliff just because a bunch of other suicidal idiots think it's a good idea. Shit, doesn't anyone learn that anymore?
Embarrassment for the biopharma industry (Score:2)
The Biogen incident is a major embarrassment for Biogen, especially compared to competitors like Astrazeneca biologics division which has been forging ahead leading in Vaccine and treatment development and projecting themselves as being the saviors from Covid-19.
There were many still operating international conferences and internal meetings happening in February in Europe and the US, Biogen lucked out with a Covid-19 super spreader attending their meeting at just the wrong time. Because of the industry, the
Re:Embarrassment for the biopharma industry (Score:4, Insightful)
Because of the industry, there is a perception that they "should have known better"
Why? I would actually think they'd be more likely than other organizations to follow the actual medical evidence. About a month and a half prior to the conference, the WHO stated there was no evidence of human to human transmission. Around a month before the conference an official in China stated that they'd found 2 cases of that. At that time the report was that there were about 200 COVID positives, confined to people in Wuhan and Guangdong. The WHO followed up all that by describing this as "limited" person to person spread. Maybe more importantly, only 3 people were reported to have died from it.
5 days before the conference the CDC was still reporting no community spread. Wuhan had been locked down a while, but nothing in Europe was until Italy did it 3 days before the conference. The US hadn't even hit 100 cases at that point, though were were barely testing. At that time quite a few prominent people were arguing that travel restrictions were outrageous and that we should all still be going out and mingling and that sort of thing.
At the time of the conference the available evidence indicated it was just another of the many variants of respiratory illness that appear every few years and end up being fairly easy to control and don't impact very many people. Of course now we know it had spread farther than we knew, had been in the US longer than we suspected, and that quite a lot of evidence was being covered up in February.
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Deaths not cases (Score:1)
Conferences generally (Score:2)
I know nothing about the Biogen conference, but aside from DefCon and gaming conferences, my experience with these things is that they're usually attended disproportionately by older, often overweight men.
Is it a "super spreader" event or just the fact that this was an exceptionally target-rich environment?
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In this case, it was a lot of regular pharmaceutical employees. What made it a "super spreader" event was that a lot of people were infected at once who then spread out around the community and infected others.
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And? (Score:2)
Yes, that is how any infectious disease works by definition. One single person in China has led to 24 million infections so far. However, neither the person in China nor the person at the conference infected all those people directly. *Any* person infected with any infectious disease could result in any number of additional people being infected with that disease. The only unique thing here is having tracked some subset of infections back to a specific likely source.
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Identifying these events is important in understanding how the virus spreads. This is important to track because (a) different viruses spread readily under different conditions and (b) mutations may render old protections inadequate. It is always better to find out sooner rather than later.
Tracking mutations is important for other reasons, which I assume are fairly obvious, and this tracking inevitably leads to the identification of super-spreading events.
So, intentionally or not, we will uncover this type
Appropriate name (Score:1)
BioGen seems like a good name for a conference that generates 20k infections!