You need to burn to develop non-flamability!

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Some seem to think that getting infected is the solution to fighting an infectious disease. No one is exactly sure how long the protection after natural infection will last and how durable that protection will be against a variety of different variants. An infection will protect you from reinfection against only the variant that caused your illness. The virus is mutating very quickly. The next mutation can cause re-infection. Some people think that after you’ve gotten a natural infection, you will be permanently protected against COVID-19 as if this were measles. That is simply not true.

An infection will cause COVID-19 antibodies can stay in the body for months. New evidence suggests that ‘hybrid’ immunity, the result of both vaccination and a bout of COVID-19, can provide partial protection against reinfection for about eight months. However, if a new variant finds ways to escape the existing immune response, then even a recent infection might not guarantee protection. The Omicron variants circuiting now are mutating at an incredibly fast rate. Many of these new variants are finding ways to break through existing immunity.

The virus is evolving so fast, that it is impossible to predict exactly how many months someone might be protected from re-infection if they survive their bout with COVID. One in five people who are infected develop long COVID which can greatly reduce quality of life.

Toasy Studio

Posted on by Thor

One assignment I have with my virtual Urban Sketching students is to sketch the studio they happen to be working from.I always sketch and paint along with them and explain in this case, one point perspective and how to block in a scene. In this case the foreground has all warm colors while the mid–ground is more neutral and greyed down. I emphasized how things in the foreground will have fewer horizontal lines while object further away might be home horizontal.

You can see how disorganized I am with rags and folders stored in egg carts. Larger sketches are rolled up on the table and stacks of sketchbooks wait to be filled with sketches. Entry to the studio is blocked with a short stack of plastic containers. That is so the dog doesn’t come in and make even more of a mess. When the dogs have to go outside, they sit at the entrance to the studio and stare at me until I stop painting and let them outside. They are a bit spoiled since they can go out at any time since I am always painting.

Another goal of the painting was to make sure anything outside the windows was painted lighter than anything inside. If I had more time I would erase lines and focus on hard and soft edges of objects.

On July 1, 2022 The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers that updated booster shots for the fall season will need to have added protections against the latest omicron sub-variants. By this time people were becoming keenly aware that breakthrough infections would shift from a statistical anomaly to a regular occurrence.

We all have to get burned!

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Public responses to widespread disease have remained mostly unchanged since the Black Death, in the 14th century. Over 3000 COVID related deaths a week in America has become the new normal. Blindly accepting so much death is as American as Sunday football. Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Michigan has a seating capacity of 107,601. What better place for a maskless orgy of denial and disease? If I had any desire to see a Michigan football game I would be perfectly happy to watch on TV.

When people observe others taking risks despite the pandemic they assume those risks are acceptable. Unfortunately from the start of the pandemic, leaders have not been honest and transparent. Contradictory messages are the norm.

Human beings are inherently social, not solitary, creatures. Making that a reality can be accomplished while masking and having some physical distance. Physical distancing is different than social distancing. The human need for connection with other people is probably what fuels a lot of disease transmission. Most people however have abandoned all protective measures. They actively seek to infect others  as they ignore reality and go about life like it was 1999.

Social distancing does not have to equal social isolation. Those are two very different concepts and virtual interaction can make a big difference.

 

This is a wildfire of the unburnt!

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Ignoring COVID does not make it go away. The World Health Organization (WHO) pointed out that, although everyone is tired of hearing about COVID-19 and its restrictions, “we need to face an undeniable fact…the virus is still very much present among us”. Engaging in risky behavior sends the message that COVID isn’t really their problem, that they don’t see a reason to modify their behavior to mitigate risk. To see this behavior just watch the State of the Union Address in which the only member of Congress to wear a mask was Bernie Sanders. The president giving his speech kept coughing.

People feel helpless and out of control. Their only coping mechanism is to pretest the pandemic does not exist. Complacency, denial and ignorance take over for rational thought. People do not want to live in fear, so they ignore the source of the feat rather than facing the fear. The risk has not magically disappeared, they have chosen to ignore the risk. Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is also death.

 

We have all the tools we need to deal with a wildfire!

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Tools to fight COVID-19 have been abandoned or are being phased out. Treatments available earlier in the pandemic are becoming useless with the rapidly evolving new variants of the virus. Monoclonal anti-body treatments are no longer effective. “The big problem is that monoclonal antibodies bind to a very small piece of the virus. As the virus changes, we are now in a position in which we lost them all because they don’t bind to the virus anymore,” Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor Arturo Casadevall, MD, PhD, told NBC News.

In May of 2022 the White House said it would have to wind down it’s COVID relief program since Congress cut  $22.5 billion in COVID relief funding. There will be no more free vaccinations, tests and treatment to the immunocompromised. If more COVID-19 variants emerge, different boosters may be developed to fight them. Without additional funding, the government will not be able to purchase enough boosters for Americans. U.S. doctors will stop accepting claims from uninsured people.

U.S. will no longer be able to invest in more oral antiviral pills or any new promising antiviral treatment. They will also dial back on research into a “next-generation” COVID-19 vaccine that would protect against a wide range of variants. The country “blindsided” to emerging variants. Researchers won’t be able to properly assess any new variants of COVID-19 that could possibly emerge.

You may have a wildfire and you may have water. The water is useless unless you have a way to get the water to the fire.

Wen Misinformation Genie

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The pandemic is not over. Yet certain talking heads are placating the public and pretending it is over. Almost 4,000 Americans continue to die every week, about 1,000 more that the number of people who died on 9-11. The death numbers are rising. July 4th of last year president Biden claimed the pandemic was over, and a year later despite all the needless death inbetween, he once again proclaimed the same.

Leana Wen is a research professor of health policy and management. She has been a favored host on CNN. At one point in 2021 she said that people should not be allowed out in public unless they are vaccinated. Far right anti-vaxers were furious. Lately however she seems to be on the far right anti-vax pay roll.

Wen claimed that getting infected should be perceived as the new normal going forward. So 4,000 deaths a week is “the new normal.” In a recent column in the Washington Post, Wen claimed, “We are over counting COVID deaths and hospitalizations.” She didn’t reference any research or data to back up her claim but she did talk to several friends.  The anecdotal opinions of these two friends seemed to be the entire basis for her crazy headline. One said that of the patients he treats in Massachusetts,  just 30% are treated with a steroid for patients suffering from low oxygen. He went on to state that he felt hospitalizations are over counted. Strangely, Wen referenced the 30% number and attributed it to deaths rather than hospitalizations, or treatments with steroids which she earlier referenced. Does she not know the difference between death and hospitalization? The article is misleading at best.

Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Bringham and Women’s Hospital, who teaches at Harvard, and consults with the White House. He said on Twitter, “I can’t say for sure if we are over counting hospitalizations, it is certainly possible, although it is not black and white. But I can say with confidence that we are not over counting COVID deaths right now, including Massachusetts, the state highlighted in the Post, because this is literally what I study.”

Excess deaths (orange) in America follow the same trajectory as COVID deaths (black), with excess deaths often being rather higher. These deaths are compared to what would have been expected given the five year averages of deaths prior to the pandemic. If anything, this makes it seem that COVID deaths are likely being under counted. Dr. Faust went on to say, “If we were truly over counting COVID deaths, an important piece of evidence to support that would be if COVID deaths…were exceeding all cause deaths.” So to state the obvious, simply, COVID deaths are not being over counted. It is very likely that COVID deaths are being under counted.

The misinformation Wen is now peddling is dangerous because it ignited the conspiratorial far right anti-vax, Q-Anon crowd. In the early days of the pandemic I used to respect Wen’s opinions and guidance but now she is quite simply encouraging death and denying the facts all around her as the pandemic continues to rage. Wen’s stance is offensive to all the millions of families who lost a love one because of COVID.

Can someone please cork the bottle of this genie of death.

You just need to catch fire and you will stop worrying!

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According to recently published data from experts at the Dornsife School of Public Health, closing indoor dining during the first two waves of the COVID pandemic was associated with a 61% decline in new COVID-19 cases over a six-week span, preventing an estimated 142 daily cases per city, compared with cities that reopened indoor dining during that period. The team looked at data from March to October 2020 in 11 U.S. cities, including Philadelphia, Atlanta and Dallas. The results were published last month in the journal Epidemiology.

At first researchers believed that  recovering from COVID-19 meant the chances of getting the virus again so soon were low. Scientists thought we were protected for at least six months after the initial infection. This as it turns out is not true. You can be er-infected much sooner. The much raster re-infections are due to relaxed safety precautions such as masking and social distancing, as well as declining antibody levels and additional viral mutations, which can result in immune escape by omicron sub-variants.

Re-infections are common. The antibodies you generate in the face of one infection don’t necessarily protect you against other sub-variants for long.

There is nothing you can do to stop a wildfire!

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The Joe Biden administration has decided to let COVID-19 rip with no mitigation other than advising people on occasion to get vaccinated. He said, that there is “nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months” — which is the exact opposite of what presidential candidate Joe Biden promised voters during the 2020 campaign. Back during the election, he said “the trajectory of COVID-19 in America is headed in the wrong direction,” and only he could fix it. In a Oct. 23, 2020 speech, Biden pledged to “immediately put in place a national strategy that will position our country to finally get ahead of this virus and get back our lives.” He never delivered.

Right before July 4th 2021, Biden again claimed the pandemic was over, and we should all celebrate by gathering in large groups to watch fire works. I was in Saint Augustine and the maskless crowds were insane. It is as if a word from the president acted as a mass hypnosis, convincing all to unmask and breath in each other’s faces. We were some of the very few who wore masks. At the time Delta was ripping across the country. In July of 2021 1,208 Americans died due to COVID-19.

On January 20, 2020 when Biden was inaugurated, there were 396,837 confirmed COVID deaths. As of February 5, 2023 there have been 1,073,693 deaths due to COVID. That is most contently an under counting. That means Biden’s bungled pandemic response is so far responsible for 676,856 COVID deaths as opposed to Trumps inept response which resulted in 396,837 COVID deaths. The media is strangely silent on Biden’s horrible handling of the pandemic.

Biden remarked about the pandemic saying, “I mean, look what’s happened, and I think we, I sometimes underestimate it because, I STOPPED THINKING ABOUT IT, but I’m sure you don’t: we lost 1 – over 1 million people in several years to COVID.” Biden warned that, “there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic.”

Biden informed Congress on January 30, 2023 that he will end the twin national emergencies for addressing COVID-19 on May 11, 2023. Sure 500 people are dying every day, but that is the new normal. The United States public health emergency was first declared on Jan. 31, 2020, under the Trump administration. Lawmakers have refused for months to fulfill the Biden administration’s request for billions more dollars to extend free COVID vaccines and testing. The administration has surrendered and they have left you to try and survive as they gaslight you to make you think the pandemic is over. News flash, the pandemic is not over.

It’s just a mildfire!

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Denialists and minimizes have been working hard to downplay the corona virus since the start of the pandemic. A favorite talking point for denialists is the “COVID is just like the flu.” This is of course false. The flu does not kill over a million people over 3 years. COVID-19 has a higher severe disease and mortality rate than influenza in all age groups. COVID-19 survivors report many more long-term effects of the infection than influenza survivors. Lingering symptoms like weakness, shortness of breath, trouble focusing and, in some cases, kidney and heart problems are much more common after COVID-19 than after influenza. “Mild” COVID-19 illness has been described as “flu-like.” It’s important to remember that the flu is a pretty debilitating disease so “mild” COVID-19 is still a pretty significant disease.

A large number of COVID-19 patients present with no or very mild symptoms, but those individuals can still transmit the virus to others, some of whom could have a much more serious course of illness. Every person who gets infected keeps the “chains of transmission” going, which can bring COVID-19 to those who are more vulnerable.

Nearly 1 in 5 people  develop Long COVID, with long term conditions including long-term damage to the lungs, heart, kidneys, brain and other organs. “Mild” cases of COVID are associated with tissue damage and brain matter loss. Damage to the brain can result in loss of smell, and a loss in the overall volume of the brain. This brain matter loss may explain the behavior of some of the denialists.

COVID-19 increases risk of heart attack, strokes and other cardiovascular disease. Patients with COVID-19 were four times likelier to develop major cardiovascular disease in the acute phase of infection than those uninfected. Even a mild case of COVID-19 can increase a person’s risk of cardiovascular problems for at least a year after diagnosis. Researchers found that rates of many conditions, such as heart failure and stroke, were substantially higher in people who had recovered from COVID-19 than in similar people who hadn’t had the disease. The risk was elevated even for those who were under 65 years of age and lacked risk factors. There is an unexpected surge in young people dying of heart attacks.

I’m done with wildfires!

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Groundhog Day, derives from the Pennsylvania Dutch superstition that if a groundhog emerges from its burrows on this day and sees its shadow due to clear weather, it will retreat to its den and winter will go on for six more weeks; if it does not see its shadow because of cloudiness, spring will arrive early. This year, Canadian Groundhog, Fred la Marmotte, did not exit his borrow. That is because Fred died while in hibernation.

A dead groundhog is the harbinger of only one this, that the pandemic is not over. It also indicated that the pandemic will continue for much more than 6 weeks. The groundhog day master of ceremonies, Roberto Blondin said, “In life, the only thing that’s certain is that nothing is certain, Well, this year it’s true. It’s sadly true. I announce to you that Fred is dead.”

H5N1  or Avian Flu has killed 58,200,536 birds in the United States since January 2022. 47 states have been affected. Last fall in Spain, an outbreak of bird flu at a mink farm resulted in the death or culling of the entire group of 50,000 minks. This may be the first case of mammal to mammal transmission of the virus. Humans are mammals.

COVID-19 has a mortality rate of about 1%. Bird flu has a mortality rate of over 50%. If the virus begins to spread among humans, there is little chance that a targeted response to stop the outbreak would happen. Bird flu would indeed make the COVID pandemic seem like it was a minor inconvenience.

On the Caspian Sea there was a mass mortality event of Bird Flu that killed 700 seals. This is again evidence that mammals are passing the virus to each other. The virus is found the the droppings and saliva of birds. If a mammal consumes a dead bird, or is exposed to droppings, that is one way to contract the virus.

Human infections with bird flu viruses can happen when virus gets into a person’s eyes, nose or mouth, or is inhaled. The first case of an avian influenza A (H5N1) virus in a person in the U.S. was reported on April 28, 2022. Researchers at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology report that H5N1 Bird Flu closely  resembles the 1918 Spanish Flu virus.  The 1918 virus was an avian strain that managed to adapt to humans without first acquiring any genes from existing human flu viruses. Further, the researchers found that several of the same mutations found in the H5N1 virus are found in the 1918 Spanish Flu virus.

57 seals were found dead in Maine having also died from H5N1. In Montana, three grizzly bears wandered, disoriented and blinded and were found to be infected by H5N1. All three bears died.

Since 2003, there have been 868 cases of human infection with H5N1 reported, of which 457 were fatal—a 53 percent case fatality rate. Ecuador reported its first case on January 9, 2023, in a 9-year-old girl who had contact with backyard poultry. So far, human to human transmission has not been reported. The 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic started when a bird infected a pig who then gave the virus to a farmer who then spread the virus at Camp Funston in Kansas as troops trained for WW I. Infected troops then spread the virus throughout Europe.

Also infected have been foxes, polecats, badgers and foxes. So did the groundhog die of a virus? No cause of death has been noted.

This wildfire series is inspired by @1goodtern on Twitter. Since the media has gone silent on pandemic coverage, I have turned to Twitter to stay informed.