Sunday, July 12, 2020

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Trump has formally withdrawn the US from the World Health Organization.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.




7 comments:

  1. I'm so overwhelmed right now. It's all too much. I made the mistake of getting into it a little bit with a woman I know whose parents used to be very good friends of mine. She's convinced that it's all just a way to keep the economy down and that we're being afraid of a little virus that we don't need to be afraid of and that a lab in NC created the virus so that...well, that part I'm not sure about. I feel sick to my stomach.

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  2. It's fascinating to think this virus has been around longer than we realized, and was more widespread than we realized. It makes you wonder what else is wandering around out there!

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  3. "He is not, however, helping school districts deal with the cost of outfitting the schools to make them safe for students and teachers alike." This. It's a tragedy of immense proportions that we have this president at this time. Yesterday in New York City, no one died from covid, first time we can say that since March. Thank you for these updates, so clear and cogently expressed.

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  4. It's just a shit show. No way to pretty it up. I'm praying for sanity in November, but I'm starting to wonder if we'll even BE here in January when (hopefully) President Biden is sworn in.

    My 18 year old niece, who lives in Miami now, has tested positive for COVID. Fortunately her only symptoms have been a sore throat & loss of taste & smell. I'm pretty sure I haven't had it, but I'm giving blood on Friday & they'll test for antibodies. We'll see.

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  5. The thought of the vast amount of work required to return to square one...

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  6. I read a totally depressing article the other day. The author's thesis was that we've waited too late, and this will be with us forever. Oh yay.

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  7. I go from so what, we can change to oh shit, this is it in a matter of hours these days.

    And then I read this study: "Working memory capacity predicts individual differences in social-distancing compliance during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States."
    link: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/07/09/2008868117

    And to quote: "Before vaccination and other intervention measures become available, successful containment of an unknown infectious disease critically relies on people’s voluntary compliance with the recommended social-distancing guidelines. This involves a decision process of prioritizing the merits of social distancing over its costs, which may depend on one’s ability to compare multiple pieces of potentially conflicting information regarding social distancing in working memory. Our data support this hypothesis, highlighting the critical role of one’s working memory capacity in social-distancing compliance during the early stage of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. This observation reveals a core cognitive limitation in one’s response to a public health crisis and suggests a possible cognitive venue for the development of strategies to mitigate this challenge."

    It's all up to us, seriously.

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I opened my big mouth, now it's your turn.