Category: Health & Medicine

New York is not a coronavirus model for U.S.

If New York is going to be held up as the model, every officeholder in the country has a new road map for handling the virus:
See a significant percentage of residents of your largest city get infected,
barely prevent your hospital system from getting overwhelmed,
implement a policy that increases infections and deaths at nursing homes,
suffer more than 30,000 deaths and a higher per-capita death rate than any country in the world — and then, after all that, get hailed as a hero.

 

If anyone else wants to make the case that Fauci is a partisan hack; you can start here.

Fauci holds up New York as model for fighting coronavirus — ‘They did it correctly’.

White House health advisor Anthony Fauci has praised New York for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying the state responded “correctly” to bring its outbreak under control.

“We know that, when you do it properly, you bring down those cases. We have done it. We have done it in New York,” Fauci said in an interview with “PBS NewsHour” that aired Friday evening.

“New York got hit worse than any place in the world. And they did it correctly by doing the things that you’re talking about,” he continued.

New York was once the epicenter of the outbreak in the United States with more than 10,000 new cases a day during its peak outbreak in April. The state has dramatically reduced daily new infections to 776 as of Thursday.

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Treat Your Own Spinal Stenosis

Simply put, spinal stenosis is arthritis of the back, and Treat Your Own Spinal Stenosis will show you how to get rid of lower back and leg pain that are caused by the various aging changes that take place in everyone’s low back over time. Anyone with a herniated disc, bone spurs, degenerative discs, scoliosis, or unstable vertebrae can greatly benefit from the targeted exercises in this book, as these spinal problems are often involved in the process of spinal stenosis.

Hebrew U. scientist: Drug could eradicate COVID-19 from lungs in days.
New study shows how coronavirus controls metabolism and which FDA-approved drug could stop it

Researchers at Israel’s Hebrew University of Jerusalem and New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center believe they could potentially downgrade COVID-19’s severity into nothing worse than a common cold.
New research by Hebrew University Prof. Ya’acov Nahmias and Sinai’s Dr. Benjamin tenOever revealed that the FDA-approved drug Fenofibrate (Tricor) could reduce SARS-CoV-2’s ability to reproduce or even make it disappear. Continue reading “”

Dr. Fauci says the surge in new infections is because the country never shut down entirely?
Lord love a duck, that’s the most stupid thing I think I’ve heard to date from a supposed authority on health.
It is flatly impossible to ‘entirely shut down’ the U.S.
So, while he’s technically correct, the statement is nonsensical garbage.
Whether he knows that and is spouting propaganda, or he believes the populace is so stupid we’ll believe that without question and demand the impossible, or he’s so insulated from the reality of how the world actually operates, he doesn’t realize just how stupid he sounds makes no difference.
This man is a clown and needs to be removed from any position of power to make decisions.

CDC chief says Northerners heading South for vacation may be to blame for surge in coronavirus cases, not state reopenings

The current surge in coronavirus cases across the U.S. South may have been caused by Northerners who traveled South for vacation around Memorial Day, said Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“If you look at the South, everything happened around June 12 to June 16. It all simultaneously kind of popped,” he said in an interview Tuesday with The Journal of the American Medical Association’s Dr. Howard Bauchner. Independent of state reopening plans, “we’re of the view that there was something else that was the driver. Maybe the Memorial Day, not weekend, but the Memorial Day week, where a lot of Northerners decided to go South for vacations.”

Because the South hadn’t yet experienced large outbreaks like the northeast, many Southern states and cities reopened bars and gyms early and didn’t require people to wear masks wearing or to practice social distancing “that seriously,” Redfield said. Once the virus was introduced in those areas, that could have allowed it to spread quickly.

“Something happened in mid-June that we’re now confronting right now,” he added. “And it’s not as simple as just saying it was related to timing of reopening or not reopening.”

The comment by Redfield appears to contradict remarks by White House health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci, who said in an interview Monday that the United States is seeing a surge in new Covid-19 infections because the country never shut down entirely.

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Perhaps our Correspondent at the South American Desk can add to this report.

‘Get me back to Caracas’: desperate Venezuelans leave lockdown Bogotá

Rosa Vera, a 40-year-old from a small town in crisis-ridden Venezuela, thought moving to Colombia would give her the chance to find work. Five months ago, she left her family and began the arduous journey to Bogotá, the Colombian capital, to look for a job.

Instead, as coronavirus shut down economic life in the city, Vera and more than 400 Venezuelans had no choice but to camp out for a month, waiting for help to get them home.

“I left Venezuela because the situation was so bad that I couldn’t feed my family,” Vera says, as cars whizz along the highway that cuts through the impromptu camp. “I never thought that here I wouldn’t be able to feed myself.”

Venezuela, despite having the largest proven oil reserves on the planet, is mired in economic and social ruin. Hyperinflation is rampant, rendering the currency, the bolivar, practically useless, while food shortages are a daily reality.

I can knock on doors but if there’s no work, what can I do? Going home is the only option I have

More than 4 million Venezuelans have now left, with about 5,000 crossing into neighbouring Colombia each day at the end of last year, according to data from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Nearly 2 million live in Colombia.

But now, with lockdown shuttering businesses and keeping customers away, there is little work for Venezuelans such as Vera. Unable to pay rent, she was evicted from the house she shared with other migrants in the south of Bogotá. She has spent the past month camped outside a bus terminal on the northern outskirts of the city. Vera, like the 430 others here, would rather be home in Venezuela, where at least shelter is guaranteed. “I can knock on doors but if there’s no work, what can I do?” Vera asks, as she washes her clothes in a stream. “Going home is the only option I have.

“The dream is to get home and get a roof over my head,” Vera says. “With a little help from God, I’ll get there.”

Last Thursday morning the city began bussing the migrants towards the border. Between rain showers, hundreds of hungry Venezuelans packed up their tents and queued for buses.

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I don’t see the need for the ?, but that’s just me

Trump Vindicated? New Peer-Reviewed Hydroxychloroquine Study Shows Reduced COVID-19 Mortality.

A new large-scale study conducted by the Henry Ford Health System concluded that hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug touted by Trump as a potentially game-changing treatment for the coronavirus, successfully lowered mortality rates for hospitalized coronavirus patients. The results were published Thursday in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Infectious Diseases.

Just The News reported on its findings:

The study examined 2,541 patients who had been hospitalized in six hospitals between March 10 and May 2, 2020.

More than twenty-six percent (26.4%) of patients who did not receive hydroxychloroquine died.

But among those who received hydroxychloroquine, fewer than half that number — 13% — died.

More than 90% of the patients received hydroxychloroquine within 48 hours of admission to the hospital. Scientists say giving the drug early during illness may be a key to success.

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A Long Talk With Anthony Fauci’s Boss About the Pandemic, Vaccines, and Faith.

*******

I am guardedly optimistic that by the end of 2020 we will have at least one vaccine that has been proven safe and effective in a large-scale trial. Nobody should accept it as safe and effective without that large-scale trial. There are at least four vaccines that will be getting into such large trials this summer beginning as early as July. Each one of those trials will involve roughly 30,000 volunteers, half of whom will get the vaccine, half of whom will get a dummy placebo. You have to have that control or you will never know if the vaccine worked or not.

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Hydroxychloroquine lowers COVID-19 death rate, Henry Ford Health study finds.

A Henry Ford Health System study shows the controversial anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine helps lower the death rate of COVID-19 patients, the Detroit-based health system said Thursday.

Officials with the Michigan health system said the study found the drug “significantly” decreased the death rate of patients involved in the analysis.

The study analyzed 2,541 patients hospitalized among the system’s six hospitals between March 10 and May 2 and found 13% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine died while 26% of those who did not receive the drug died.

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Out of the clear blue sky………

Houston Protesters Begin to Fall Ill With Coronavirus After Marching for George Floyd.

Increasing numbers of Houston residents have reportedly been diagnosed with COVID-19 after attending protests against the death of George Floyd.

Large protests began in the city days after the death of Houston native Floyd, an unarmed black man who died while police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25. Texas has been experiencing a surge of new COVID-19 cases. Harris County, which encompasses Houston, has been adding hundreds of new cases each day to the more than 17,000 total confirmed cases reported as of Monday.

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Here we go again
Same old stuff again
Marching down the avenue
Another bug and we’ll be through

 

Another Virus with the Potential to Cause a Pandemic Was Discovered In None Other Than China

As the world continues to deal with the Wuhan coronavirus, researchers are warning about another strain of the flu that has the potential to turn into a pandemic. Pigs are the source of the strain but have the potential to be transmitted to humans, the BBC reported. Because of how new the strain is, the chances of humans having immunity to it is little to none.

This new strain of the flu, called G4 EA H1N1, is said to be similar to the swine flu, which came from China in 2009. The humans that are being infected with the new strain, as of now, work in China’s pig industry.

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North Carolina law modified to allow carrying a handgun while wearing a mask

Under normal circumstances, it is against the law to carry a gun while wearing a mask. However, that law is being suspended until February 2021.

The Nash County sheriff’s office has been getting many calls lately from people wondering what the rules are.

According to the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office, if you have a valid concealed carry handgun permit, it is legal to carry a concealed handgun while wearing a mask, so long as you’re wearing the mask to protect yourself or others from COVID-19.

The Nash County Sheriff’s Office announced on social media that it will not be enforcing face coverings.

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Study: Zinc, HCQ, Z-Pak Cocktail Effective Early Vs. COVID-19

An outpatient study is reporting a combination of zinc, hydroxychloroquine, and azithromycin significantly reduces hospitalization and death for COVID-19 positive patients, cutting mortality rate to a mere 0.3%.

The current COVID-19 positive case mortality rate is 5.26%, according to the study. Azithromycin is more commonly known as Z-Pak.

The key note of this study, according to CrowdProtocol doctors, is the early treatment of COVID-19 in outpatients before they require hospitalization for a severe COVID-19 case, the latter of which was used to suggest no benefit to HCQ use in hospitalized patients.

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No new COVID-19 cases from Lake of the Ozarks crowds, Missouri health director says

ST. LOUIS — The large crowds of people at the Lake of the Ozarks over Memorial Day weekend have not led to any more reported cases of COVID-19, Missouri’s top health official health department said Wednesday.

“The answer, to our knowledge, is no,” Dr. Randall Williams, director of the Department of Health and Senior Services, said when asked whether more cases have come from the gatherings, photos of which showed throngs of people close together without wearing masks.

Williams answered questions during a daily news briefing in Jefferson City hosted by Missouri Gov. Mike Parson to address civil unrest and efforts to contain the coronavirus.

Pictures and videos of the lake crowds had prompted concern among the public and health officials.

One person, a Boone County resident, tested positive last week and likely was infectious while among the crowds. That is according to the Camden County Health Department, which has jurisdiction over much of the Lake of the Ozarks region……….

Is that an actual question?
“Rules for Thee, but not for MEEE!” or in other words;
Standard Operational demoncrap Hypocrisy.

Did the governor break her own rules?

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) –Did Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham play by her own rules during the public health order? KRQE News 13 has learned in April, when she ordered non-essential businesses to shut down and lectured all New Mexicans to stay home, a non-essential business opened up so she could buy jewelry and have it delivered to her.

In early April, Gov. Lujan Grisham stressed that New Mexicans needed to stay home and should only go out for essential items such as food. She also announced that all non-essential businesses were closed. “We are in really tough financial times as a state. It mirrors the incredible, personal sacrifices that happen every single day because people have limited their ability to work, telecommuting and many people, in fact, have lost their jobs,” said Gov. Lujan Grisham on April 3rd.

However, just days after the April 3rd news conference and a week before Easter, KRQE News 13 has learned that Gov. Lujan Grisham called an employee at Lilly Barrack on Paseo to buy expensive jewelry. The jewelry was bought over the phone, but the employee went to the store, got the jewelry and placed it outside the door of the store where someone who knew the governor picked it up. This is according to the person who runs Lilly Barrack stores. She says she didn’t know about it until after it happened. She also said no one was allowed in the stores at that time due to the public health order.

The governor refused an on-camera interview but has a different version of the story. In an email from a governor spokesman, he says that “Lujan Grisham did call an employee, saying they had a longstanding personal relationship. The employee came here [Lilly Barrack], got the jewelry and took it home, left it outside their home and then someone came and picked it up.”

The governor’s office first said it was a campaign staffer, then later told KRQE it was the governor’s friend, but wouldn’t release a name. They also said the transaction was entirely contact-less, remote and permissible.

The spokesman also pointed to the governor’s order at the time stating “none of the state’s public health orders have restricted the conduct of business operations in which an employee only interacts with clients or customers remotely.” However, that same order also states it requires the closure of physical retails spaces and doesn’t mention anything about home delivery.

In a time of non-essential closures where curbside was not allowed, KRQE asked if home delivery was okay. The governor’s spokesman said it was not a home delivery and businesses were encouraged to find creative ways to conduct business safely. He also added the store was not opened for the governor and stated that “turning the key inside a door to ‘open’ a store wouldn’t violate the order…” He also said non-essential businesses all across the state let employees in to do inventory or clean.

Other businesses like Mark Diamond’s Jewelers did not interpret the orders the way the governor’s office did. A manager at Gertrude Zachary says no one was allowed in their store and they wouldn’t even risk it because of a fear of fines. They thought online sales through shipping was their only option, but they got zero customers and lost hundreds of thousands in sales.

KRQE News 13 asked about the two people who left their homes to get jewelry to the governor. Her office says this was an unusual transaction and while “of course the governor has been telling people to stay home to the greatest extent possible, it also true she’s been urging New Mexicans to find ways to support local businesses.”

So could you have called up a store and received this kind of service during the pandemic? The governor’s office says if a New Mexican has that kind of personal relationship with a local business and local businesses are trying to operate creatively to keep themselves and their employees afloat while staying safe, certainly this kind of transaction could have occurred.

KRQE News 13 also talked to the manager of Ooh Ahh Jewelry in Nob Hill. She said they did online sales only with one person in the shop who shipped orders out and didn’t do home or curbside deliveries because it wasn’t part of the April public health orders.
Curbside delivery wasn’t allowed until May 1.

Horowitz: The CDC Confirms Remarkably Low Coronavirus Death Rate. Where is the Media?

Most people are more likely to wind up six feet under because of almost anything else under the sun other than COVID-19.

The CDC just came out with a report that should be earth-shattering to the narrative of the political class, yet it will go into the thick pile of vital data and information about the virus that is not getting out to the public. For the first time, the CDC has attempted to offer a real estimate of the overall death rate for COVID-19, and under its most likely scenario, the number is 0.26%. Officials estimate a 0.4% fatality rate among those who are symptomatic and project a 35% rate of asymptomatic cases among those infected, which drops the overall infection fatality rate (IFR) to just 0.26% — almost exactly where Stanford researchers pegged it a month ago.

Until now, we have been ridiculed for thinking the death rate was that low, as opposed to the 3.4% estimate of the World Health Organization, which helped drive the panic and the lockdowns. Now the CDC is agreeing to the lower rate in plain ink.

Plus, ultimately we might find out that the IFR is even lower because numerous studies and hard counts of confined populations have shown a much higher percentage of asymptomatic cases. Simply adjusting for a 50% asymptomatic rate would drop their fatality rate to 0.2% — exactly the rate of fatality Dr. John Ionnidis of Stanford University projected.

More importantly, as I mentioned before, the overall death rate is meaningless because the numbers are so lopsided. Given that at least half of the deaths were in nursing homes, a back-of-the-envelope estimate would show that the infection fatality rate for non-nursing home residents would only be 0.1% or 1 in 1,000. And that includes people of all ages and all health statuses outside of nursing homes. Since nearly all of the deaths are those with comorbidities.

The CDC estimates the death rate from COVID-19 for those under 50 is 1 in 5,000 for those with symptoms, which would be 1 in 6,725 overall, but again, almost all those who die have specific comorbidities or underlying conditions. Those without them are more likely to die in a car accident. And schoolchildren, whose lives, mental health, and education we are destroying, are more likely to get struck by lightning…

BLUF: Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Carriers Are Not Very Contagious.

Background: An ongoing outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has spread around the world. It is debatable whether asymptomatic COVID-19 virus carriers are contagious. We report here a case of the asymptomatic patient and present clinical characteristics of 455 contacts, which aims to study the infectivity of asymptomatic carriers.

Material and methods: 455 contacts who were exposed to the asymptomatic COVID-19 virus carrier became the subjects of our research. They were divided into three groups: 35 patients, 196 family members and 224 hospital staffs. We extracted their epidemiological information, clinical records, auxiliary examination results and therapeutic schedules.

Results: The median contact time for patients was four days and that for family members was five days. Cardiovascular disease accounted for 25% among original diseases of patients. Apart from hospital staffs, both patients and family members were isolated medically. During the quarantine, seven patients plus one family member appeared new respiratory symptoms, where fever was the most common one. The blood counts in most contacts were within a normal range. All CT images showed no sign of COVID-19 infection. No severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections was detected in 455 contacts by nucleic acid test.

Conclusion: In summary, all the 455 contacts were excluded from SARS-CoV-2 infection and we conclude that the infectivity of some asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 carriers might be weak.

Police to New Jersey gym that opened in defiance of order: “Have a good day.”

BELLMAWR, N.J. – A gym in southern New Jersey has reopened for business in defiance of a state order that shut down nonessential businesses to help stem the spread of the coronavirus.

People began gathering outside the Atilis Gym in Bellmawr several hours before it reopened at 8 a.m. Monday.

“We are and only were here for everybody’s safety today. We planned for the worst and hoped for the best, and it seems like that’s what we have out here today,” the officer said to the owners and surrounding crowd.

“Formally, you are all in violation of the executive order. On that note, have a good day. Everybody be safe,” the officer said before walking away as the crowd erupted in cheers.

So far, no spike in coronavirus in places reopening, U.S. health secretary says

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. authorities are not yet seeing spikes in coronavirus cases in places that are reopening but it was still too early to determine such trends, health secretary Alex Azar said on Sunday.

“We are seeing that in places that are opening, we’re not seeing this spike in cases,” Azar said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “We still see spikes in some areas that are, in fact, closed.”

However, Azar said identifying and reporting new cases takes time. A critical part of reopening will be surveillance of flu-like symptoms in the population and other hospital admissions data, as well as testing of asymptomatic individuals, he said.

“It’s still early days,” Azar cautioned in an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation.” He said data will take some time to come in from states that reopened early such as Georgia and Florida.

Nearly all 50 U.S. states have begun to allow some businesses to reopen and residents to move more freely, but only 14 states have met the federal government’s guidelines for lifting measures aimed at fighting the pandemic, according to a Reuters analysis.

 

This is three (3) THREE weeks after he ended his exord and Georgia began reopening.

Gov. Kemp: Pandemic numbers headed in the right direction — down

Governor Brian P. Kemp Monday reported the lowest number of ventilators in use and Covid-19 positive patients hospitalized in Georgia since hospitals began submitting data to the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency (GEMA) on April 8.

As of Monday, May 11, there are 881 ventilators in use; 1,134 Covid-19 positive patients hospitalized statewide; and 1,987 critical care hospital beds in use across Georgia.

On Friday, May 1, there were 989 ventilators in use, 1,483 Covid-19 positive patients hospitalized statewide, and 2,119 critical care hospital beds in use across Georgia.

“This data shows that we are headed in the right direction in our battle with COVID-19. Every day, Georgians are recovering from the virus, freeing up hospital space as we continue to safely reopen our state and ramp up testing and contact tracing.”