week 17

Pence announced that the administration will be encouraging US health workers to reuse their PPEs, increasing the danger to their own health that they face while caring for the sick even though he says supplies remain 'very strong'. And apparently that's a lie as health care workers have already been reusing their PPEs because Trump has not put the force of the government behind making sure our health care workers have what they need to protect themselves.

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Trump is desperate and all he can think about is getting the economy going to boost his re-election bid. He wants the kids back in school so the parents will go back to work and so he is pushing hard for all the states to start in person schools again in August and so to that end he is threatening to withhold federal aid to those schools that do not open because he doesn't have the power to order the states to do what he wants. He is not, however, helping school districts deal with the cost of outfitting the schools to make them safe for students and teachers alike. And of course Education Secretary DeVos is demanding that schools open on time in August fully with in person instruction 5 days a week, dismissing distance learning and limited classroom instruction. These people care nothing for Americans or our children.

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Trump has formally withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization. In the middle of a pandemic. Fortunately, it can't go into effect for one year and Biden has pledged to rejoin on his first day as president.

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Virologists and scientists are finding evidence that the coronavirus may not have originated in China after all but was already dispersed around the globe and laying dormant until environmental conditions were just right for it to become active before the first outbreak in China. Spanish virologists announced they had found traces of the disease in samples of waste water collected in March 2019 and Italian scientists have also found evidence of coronavirus in sewage samples in Milan and Turin in mid-December, many weeks before the first case was detected, while experts have found traces in Brazil in November. Read the article here. 

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We hear that people recover or they die. We don't hear about all the people who suffer for months before they recover or the continuing health problems they suffer from damaged organs after recovery including the brain. Neurologists in the UK have published a study of more than 40 UK Covid-19 patients whose complications ranged from brain inflammation and delirium to nerve damage and stroke. In some cases, the neurological problem was the patient’s first and main symptom. You can read the article here. 

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While there is still no cure for covid-19, convalescent serum therapy is emerging as one of the most promising strategies. In a  study at Houston's Methodist Hospital of 25 critically ill patients, 19 improved including 11 that were discharged. 

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Every department in the government is compromised. HHS accused the CDC of undermining the president by publishing scientific data about potential risks of the virus to pregnant women because as far as this administration is concerned the only thing that matters is that Trump isn't made to look bad.

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Trump has not asked Dr. Fauci for a briefing for two months and he is being prevented from speaking to reporters because he tells the truth about the pandemic running rampant in this country. And it is running rampant. And so, of course, now the White House is running a campaign to discredit Dr. Fauci by publishing a list of all the times he was wrong in the early days. What they aren't saying is that the statements Dr. Fauci made about the virus were based on the limited scientific knowledge they had at the time. But that's really beside the point as the whole reason for the campaign to discredit him is not because of predictions based on limited knowledge but because he continues to refute Trump's assertion that the US is doing great. The fact is we aren't doing great. 70,000 new cases nationwide on Friday alone and 15,300 new cases in Florida on Saturday, the highest number yet for a single day in a single state.

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My county is up to 328 cases. They are still reporting only one death but people here are starting to question that.

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Current US statistics as of today 7/12/20, 17:09 GMT (last week's totals in parenthesis): cases – 3,385,377 (2,964,797), deaths – 137,620 (132,473)

Almost half a million new cases in one week.