Either there hasn't been much virus related news last week, what with the election and voter suppression blatantly going on grabbing all the headlines, or I just haven't been very diligent about it, being overloaded with all things Trump and the GOP but I did note a few items.
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When asked about the 160,000+ and counting deaths from COVID-19 by a reporter, Trump's reply was...”It is what it is.”
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Dr. Birx warned that the virus is in a new phase with the case count and deaths rising as it has become extraordinarily widespread into the rural areas now as well and the urban areas where it first manifest and she predicts 300,000 dead by the end of the year.
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Methodist Hospital in Houston is reporting some success with a new drug. From the article: “Methodist was the first to report the rapid recovery of patients on ventilators and those with severe medical conditions after three days of treatment. The drug is called RLF-100 and is also known as aviptadil. It has been approved by the FDA for emergency use at multiple clinical sites in patients who are too ill to enter the FDA’s Phase 2/3 trials.”
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Researchers at Duke University created a simple test to analyze the effectiveness of different masks. The study results were published here.
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A NY Times article stated that 97,000 children tested positive the last two weeks of July so, of course, some states opened their schools and in Georgia a school that opened for all in person classes, the very next day had teachers and students in quarantine and now has 9 new confirmed cases and they have shifted to online classes for the next two days while they disinfect and reassess. I don't know why the authorities are claiming that children won't be contagious. Everyone knows children are little germ factories and they take everything home to mom and dad.
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My county is still climbing, now at 711 cases and 25 deaths. Up from 636 last week.
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Current US statistics as of today 8/10/20, 21:10 GMT (last week's totals in parenthesis): cases – 5,234,420 (4,735,249), deaths – 165,970 (157,265) though how accurate these numbers are is anybody's guess considering Trump is trying to control the numbers by having all data sent to HHS instead of the CDC.
My county recommends all local schools commence the year remotely. Sanity.
ReplyDeleteI think our local districts will be online with very little in person. Schools don't have the space for social distancing.
ReplyDeleteMasks!Any mask is better than none,Thanks for the run down! X
ReplyDeleteI don't have kids, so I don't know the kinds of stresses that parents and teachers are under, but I am ASTONISHED that children are being sent to school in person.
ReplyDeleteLily has decided to keep her kids home. One of the problems is going to be that they live out in the boonies and have terrible wifi. How is that going to work? Despite repeated calls no one seems to be able to do anything about it.
ReplyDeleteOur schools will all be fully open from Sept and kids and teachers will have to go, no ifs no buts. we have a mini Trump here who will blame someone else when it all goes wrong again.
ReplyDeleteFrom a study that has just been accepted for publication in a peer review journal (The Journal of Infectious Diseases)
ReplyDelete". . . we evaluated the virucidal activity of different (commercially) available oral rinses against SARS-CoV-2 under conditions mimicking nasopharyngeal secretions. Several formulations with significant SARS-CoV-2 inactivating properties in vitro support the idea that oral rinsing might reduce the viral load of saliva and could thus lower the transmission of SARS-CoV-2."
Link: https://academic.oup.com/jid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/infdis/jiaa471/5878067
Thank you so much for all this.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the mask comparison link.
ReplyDelete