Smoking Like COVID-19

Posted on by Thor

Benjamin Mazer of The Atlantic wrote a wonderful article that had the intriguing premise that COVID-19 will not become endemic like the flu but rather more similar to the annual pandemic of death from smoking. Close to a million deaths could be prevented with a simple behavioral change.

Pandemic minimizers have long suggested that COVID-19 is no worse that the flu. However after over 900,000 dead it is hard to justify that stance unless your head is firmly entrenched in the sand.

However experts are now on board with the idea that if you are fully vaccinated and boosted your risk is on par with the flu for hospitalization and death. The flu results in about 52,000 deaths annually. That is a far better risk than about 333,ooo deaths a year from COVID-19. There is no risk less option.

A new normal will arrive when people realize that COVID deaths closely resemble smoking deaths. Both are easily avoidable. Choosing not to get vaccinated against COVID is, a modifiable health risk on par with smoking, which kills more than 400,000 people each year in the United States.

COVID vaccines have proven to be incredible effective in avoiding hospitalizations and death, An unvaccinated adult is 68 times more likely to die from COVID than a boosted one. Yet people still choose not to get protect thenselves with a simple jab. Because so few are vaccinated in America, hospitals continue to be over run. Denmark and Sweden who have done an amazing job of vaccinating their populations and have decided they are over COVID. Herd immunity is being build in the rest who survive the disease.

Smokers are 15 to 30 times more likely to develop lung cancer than non-smokers. Quitting the habit is akin to receiving a staggeringly powerful medicine, one that wipes out most of this excess risk. Yet smokers, like those who now refuse vaccines, often continue their dangerous lifestyle in the face of persistent attempts to persuade them otherwise. So for those who choose death, you can heighten the experience by shoving a butt in every one of your holes. Oh, and protest those who are trying to save your life while you are at it.

 

COVID ICU Delirium

Posted on by Thor

The Atlantic reported that COVID-19 patients have been experiencing a sort of living nightmare as they battle the virus in hospitals.

Hallucinations vary, from a feeling of falling in slow motion, to one patient felling that a nurse had taken a circular saw and cut her arm and both of her legs off. The saw then came through the wall and cut her head in half.

Patients suffering from Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). Many of these patients have to be put on a ventilator. 80% of patients on ventilators experience ICU Delirium. Patients are sedated in a medically induced coma to ease the memory of the difficulties. However patients reconstruct false memories from stimulus while sedated.

Patients might look like they are resting, while in reality their brain is on fire. A patient might then wake up in a medically induced haze with a tube down their throat and wrists tied. In war time, that would be considered torture. Patients might feel they are being kidnapped or being tortured. They might see blood dripping down the walls, or people might have animal heads. Children might float by with no faces. If a patient has to get an MRI they might feel they are being put in an oven.

COVID-19 is the perfect storm for Delirium. Patients are put on a high dose of drugs, a longer illness along with absence of family and mobility. Communities around the country and around the world are going to have to deal with a tsunami of survivors who have delirium. Even when patients recover and can rationalize that the things in their head could not have happened, the terror is still very real. The delirium can last even after a patient returns home. One in Four ARDS survivors had PTSD symptoms later in their recovery. Nightmares can get so bad that the recovering patient might wish they had died. Surviving and getting your life back are two different things.

 

Vaccinated

Posted on by Thor

The Atlantic reported that, vaccine hesitancy is actually COVID-19 denialism.  As older adults are getting vaccinated,  they are no longer being hospitalized. Instead younger adults are being hospitalized and dying.

Young conservatives are now denying that the virus is real and they don’t want the shot to save themselves or their loved ones.

According to Kaiser Family Foundation polling, 13 percent of Americans say they definitely won’t get a COVID-19 vaccine. Hesitancy is particularly high among people who live in rural areas and white evangelicals—for whom increased church attendance correlates with increased hesitancy, according to a survey from the Public Religion Research Institute.

Some Americans believe that not getting vaccinated is a defense of their freedom. The same demographic are less likely to wear masks so they can spread the virus more efficiently. One young republican troll explained his stance simply, “I dislike the people who want me to take it, and it makes them mad when they hear about my refusal.”

The QAnon theory offers the simple minded some straight forward though strange theories, that , American elites, are a cabal of sex-trafficking pedophiles, and  they are trying to take over the government. Republican Matt Gaetz seems a perfect target for this sex trafficking QAnon theory but I haven’t heard of them being upset by his possible sex with a minor. They seem more upset that he is being investigated.  Gaetz has had COVID-19.

Beautiful, intelligent and patriotic Americans are getting vaccinated and the trolls will keep spreading the virus among themselves.

Cold Storage

Posted on by Thor

650 bodies remain in a disaster morgue in refrigerated trailers on the Brooklyn waterfront. In April 800 people were dying a day in NYC from COVID-19. Many of these bodies have been in cold storage since that time. This disaster morgue was set up for people whose families can’t be located or can’t afford a proper burial, officials said. Some of those families can’t be located because they died form COVID-19 as well.

At first mass burials were held at Hart Island for those who were not claimed by family. However Manhattan Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged that mass burials in temporary graves wouldn’t take place after footage of the mass burials taken by a drone were shown on social media.

NYC is slowly reducing the number of bodies in storage, with the number declining from 698 to 650 since mid-September, according to Dina Maniotis, the chief medical examiner’s office’s executive deputy commissioner.

In Texas, inmates are paid $2 an hour to move bodies to mobile morgues in freezer trucks. The sheriff’s office said the use of the inmates began on November 9 , 2020 on a volunteer basis. While prison labor is a common practice across the U.S., the reliance on inmates to handle the task of moving the corpses of COVID-19 victims is raising questions about the ethics of such work. El Paso County in Texas has about 34,000 active COVID-19 cases, with more than 1,100 people in hospitals, according to local health data. Since the pandemic began spreading widely in March, the county has recorded 769 deaths due to COVID-19. El Paso now has 10 mobile morgues. The National Guard was was then called in to to help move bodies.

With the present surge in COVID-19 cases, hospitals in the Midwest are reaching capacity and they are short on staff. More than 68,500 are hospitalized with Covid-19 across the country, more than at any other point during the pandemic, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project, which is run by journalists at The Atlantic. 19 percent of American hospitals are faced a staffing shortage. We should expect many more hospitalizations, and even worse staffing shortages, to come as the virus burns across the country largely unchecked.

Experts are advising people to stay at home for the Thanksgiving holiday to help slow the spread, but millions of Americans are ignoring the advice of public health experts and traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday. More than 1.04 million people went through airport security checkpoints Sunday November 22, 2020, the most since mid-March.

Trump Envies Fauci

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I highly respect Dr. Anthony Fauci. He speaks the truth without watering down facts. His primary concern at all times has been to save lives. It seems the president envies the doctors popularity. Fauci was asked to throw out the first pitch at the Major League Baseball’s opening day, Thursday, July 23. The pitch was a bit of a tragedy but it was a much needed light hearted moment.

President Donald Trump announced that he would be throwing out the first pitch at the Yankees-Red Sox game at Yankee Stadium on Aug. 15, 2020 claiming he was invited by team president Randy Levine. The New York Times reported that “Mr. Trump had not actually been invited on that day by the Yankees, according to one person with knowledge of Mr. Trump’s schedule. His announcement surprised both Yankees officials and the White House staff. But Mr. Trump had been so annoyed by Dr. Fauci’s turn in the limelight, an official familiar with his reaction said, that he had directed his aides to call Yankees officials and make good on a longtime standing offer from Mr. Levine to throw out an opening pitch. No date was ever finalized.” In other words, he lied.

The White House has been undercutting Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, by circulating anti-Fauci talking points to reporters. It is as if they want to paint him as the enemy of the people. People are tired of the social isolation caused by COVID-19 and want to return to life as usual despite the consequences. Fauci’s public health messaging runs contrary to the president’s priority that Americans should get back to work and open all schools fully in the fall. “Dr. Fauci is a nice man, but he’s made a lot of mistakes,” the president told Fox‘s Sean Hannity.

And aide told The Washington Post that “several White House officials are concerned about the number of times Dr. Fauci has been wrong on things.” The paper reported that the unidentified staffer delivered to them a list of about a dozen past comments Fauci has made that the official claimed were incorrect. Some of the Fauci examples were from early in the pandemic, when information was rapidly evolving. Other top health officials who have acknowledged changing their assessment as time went on, such as the surgeon general. For instance Fauci had advises early on that the public should not run out and start buying N-95 face masks since there was  a shortage of masks available for health care professionals at the time. As more was learned and supplies were re-replenished he advised everyone to wear masks to help stop the spread of the disease. Fauci had not had the opportunity to advise to the president since early June but has continued to make media appearances to discuss the COVID-19 strategy.

Trump retweeted former Wheel of Fortune host Chuck Woolery, who claimed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, many doctors and the media were “lying” about COVID-19. Fauci wasn’t specifically named in that tweet. Dan Scavino, the White House’s director of social media who was promoted in April to deputy chief of staff for communications, shared a political cartoon on his Facebook page that criticized Fauci‘s support of shutdowns and social distancing in order to slow the virus.

Fauci said to The Atlantic. “Ultimately, it hurts the president to do that. When the staff lets out something like that and the entire scientific and press community push back on it, it ultimately hurts the president. And I don’t really want to hurt the president. But that’s what’s happening. I told him I thought it was a big mistake. That doesn’t serve any good purpose for what we’re trying to do.”

Speaking with NBC News, Fauci said that the public should rely on its “respected medical authorities who have a track record of telling the truth … based on scientific evidence and good data.” He continued,  “That’s the safest bet to do: to listen to the recommendations from that category of people. But it’s entirely understandable how the public can get mixed messages and then get a bit confused about what they should do.”

Dr. Fauci is facing death threats to himself and his family and now requires personal security from law enforcement at all times, including at his home, a source confirmed to CNN. As Dr. Fauci’s public profile has grown, so has the concern for his welfare. Fauci’s guidance to Trump for the country to remain as locked down as possible to help control the virus spread has not earned fans among some fervent right-wing voices. Medical staff can fight the disease as hospitals fill to capacity, but they have a harder time fighting stupidity as people ignore simple health precautions. Social distance, wear a mask and wash your hands.