Jonathan M Metsch, Dr.P.H.
Dr. Jonathan M. Metsch is: Clinical Professor of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai; and previously Affiliated Faculty, Executive MBA in Healthcare Administration, Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, C.U.N.Y., and Adjunct Professor at Rutgers School of Public Affairs and Administration and Rutgers School of Public Health.
Jonathan was a Commissioner of the Hoboken Historical Preservation Commission (2017-2023), was Chairman of the Institutional Review Board of Stevens University (2016-2023) and is an active Taproot and Catchafire volunteer consultant.
Jonathan served as a Board member of the Hoboken Shelter, Jewish Family Service of MetroWest and as a Leadership Newark Coach. He was the Founder of Hudson Cradle and served on the Board of the Hudson County Child Abuse Prevention Center, and the Steering Committee of MetroWest CARES.
From September 2009 to November 2011 Jonathan was a Commissioner of the Hoboken Municipal Hospital Authority, part of the team that “privatized” this City-owned hospital. He was also the organizer and co-chairman of the Hoboken H1N1 Swine Flu Task Force.
Metsch was a UJA-Federation of New York MAP consultant, previously serving: on the Board of Hillel at Baruch College; as a member of the Jewish Community Centers review team; on the Board of Associated Camps; and as a member of the Food Sustainability portfolio review group.
While serving as President and CEO of LibertyHealth/ Jersey City Medical Center (and Associate Dean for Jersey City Medical Center, Mount Sinai School of Medicine) from 1989-2006, Jersey City Medical Center: was designated as a Regional Perinatal Center, Level II Trauma Center, Teaching Hospital Cancer Program, a Children’s Hospital, and a Medical Coordination Center (for statewide disaster preparedness); started cardiac surgery/ interventional cardiology; and became a major teaching affiliate of Mount Sinai School of Medicine. A total replacement hospital was opened on a new site in 2004.
Metsch was Chairman of the Board of the New Jersey Hospital Association and served on the Boards of the Seton Hall University School of Graduate Medical Education, the Hudson County AIDS Consortium, the State Health Planning Board, the Hudson County Perinatal Consortium, and The Hospital Alliance of New Jersey. He served on the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Hospitals, the Task Force on Affordability and Accessibility of Health Care in New Jersey, the Governor’s Advisory Council on AIDS, and the Department of Human Services HMO-Hospital Workgroup.
From 1972-1989 Jonathan worked at The Mount Sinai Medical Center (NYC) as: a faculty member of the Baruch-Mount Sinai Graduate Program in Health Care Administration; Administrator of Mount Sinai Services, City Hospital Center at Elmhurst; Associate Dean for Administration of Mount Sinai School of Medicine; and Senior Vice President for Administration, MSMC.
From 1967-1970 Jonathan was on active duty in the U.S. Air Force leaving with the rank of Captain.
Dr. Metsch earned: a B.A. from Queens College of the City University of New York; an M.P.A. from the University at Albany, State University of New York; and a Dr.P.H. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (from which he received the School of Public Health’s 2005 Harriet Hylton Barr Distinguished Alumni Award).
Dr. Metsch’s PANDEMIC CONTENT TRACKING PROJECT, Doctor, Did You Wash Your Hands?(R) can be found at http://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/
October 21, 2024 #2
CORONAVIRUS TRACKING Links to POSTS 1-272
CORONAVIRUS TRACKING Links to POSTS 1-272
Doctor, Did You Wash Your Hands?®
https://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/
Curated Contemporaneous Case Study Methodology
https://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/2019/12/9897/
PART 1. January 21, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday confirmed the first U.S. case of a deadly new coronavirus that has killed six people in China.”
PART 2. January 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “If it’s not contained shortly, I think we are looking at a pandemic..”….. “With isolated cases of the dangerous new coronavirus cropping up in a number of states, public health officials say it is only a matter of time before the virus appears in New York City.”
PART3. February 3, 2020. “The Wuhan coronavirus spreading from China is now likely to become a pandemic that circles the globe…”..Trump appeared to downplay concerns about the flu-like virus …We’re gonna see what happens, but we did shut it down..” (D)
PART 4. February 9, 2020. Coronavirus. “A study published Friday in JAMA found that 41% of the first 138 patients diagnosed at one hospital in Wuhan, China, were presumed to be infected in that hospital.….
PART 5. February 12, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “In short, shoe-leather public health and basic medical care—not miracle drugs—are generally what stop outbreaks of emerging infections..”
POST 6. February 18, 2020. Coronovirus. “Amid assurances that the (ocean liner) Westerdam was disease free, hundreds of people disembarked in Cambodia…” “ One was later found to be infected”…. “Over 1,000… passengers were in…transit home”…. “This could be a turning point””
PART 7. February 20, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. With SARS preparedness underway in NJ LibertyHealth/ Jersey City Medical Center, where I was President, proposed that our 100 bed community hospital with all single-bedded rooms, be immediately transformed into an EMERGENCY SARS ISOLATION Hospital.
PART 8. February 24, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…every country’s top priority should be to protect its health care workers. This is partly to ensure that hospitals themselves do not become sites where the coronavirus is spread more than it is contained.”
PART 9. February 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Responding to a question about the likelihood of a U.S. outbreak, President Trump said, “I don’t think it’s inevitable…”It probably will. It possibly will,” he continued. “It could be at a very small level, or it could be at a larger level.”
Part 10. March 1, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Stop Surprise Medical Bills for Coronavirus care. (&) Lessons Learned (or not) In California and Washington State from community acquired cases.
PART 11. March 5, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Gov. Andrew Cuomo… would require employers to pay workers and protect their jobs if they are quarantined because of the coronavirus.”
Part 13.. March 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “If I’m buying real estate in New York, I’ll listen to the President….If I’m asking about infectious diseases, I’m going to listen to Tony Fauci,”
PART 14. March 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “ “Most physicians have never seen this level of angst and anxiety in their careers”…. One said “I am sort of a pariah in my family.”
PART 15. March 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…Crimson Contagion” and imagining an influenza pandemic, was simulated by the Trump administration….in a series of exercises that ran from last January to August.
PART 16. March 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. I am not a clinician or a medical ethicist but articles on Coronavirus patient triage started me Googling………to learn about FUTILE TREATMENT
PART 17. April 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Florida allows churches to continue holding services. Gun stores deemed “essential.” “New York’s private and public hospitals unite to manage patient load and share resources.
PART 18. April 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The federal government’s emergency stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) is depleted, and states will not be receiving any more shipments, administration staff told a House panel.
PART 19. April 13, 2020 CORONOAVIRUS. “…overlooked in the United States’ halting mobilization against the novel coronavirus: the personal aides, hospice attendants, nurses and occupational or physical therapists who deliver medical or support services to patients in their homes.”
PART 20. April 20, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…nothing is mentioned in the “Opening Up America Again” plan about how states should handle a resurgence.”
PART 21. April 23, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “We need to ask, are we using ventilators in a way that makes sense for other diseases but not this one?”
POST 23. May 3, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. … what Dr. Fauci really wants,…”is just to go to a baseball game. That will have to wait. The level of testing for the virus is not adequate enough to allow for such mass gatherings.’ (K)
POST 24. May 7, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said: “there are going to be deaths no matter what”… but that people needed to get back to work.
POST 25. May 10, 2020, CORONAVIRUS. “It is scary to go to work,” said Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser to the president. “I think that I’d be a lot safer if I was sitting at home than I would be going to the West Wing.”
POST 26. May 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS, “Deep cleaning is not a scientific concept”….”there is no universal protocol for a “deep clean” to eradicate the coronavirus”
POST 27. May 19, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Hospital…executives…are taking pay cuts…to help offset the financial fallout from COVID-19.” As “front line” layoffs and furloughs accelerate…
PART 29. May 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The economy did not close down. It closed down for people who, frankly, had the luxury of staying home,” (Governor Cuomo). But not so for frontline workers!
POST 30. June 3,202. CORONAVIRUS. “The wave of mass protests across the United States will almost certainly set off new chains of infection for the novel coronavirus, experts say….
POST 31. June 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “I think we had an unintended consequence: I think we made people afraid to come back to the hospital,”
Post 32. June 16, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Could the Trump administration be pursuing herd immunity by “inaction”? “ If Fauci didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him.”
POST 33. June 21, 2002. CORONAVIRUS….. Smashing (lowering the daily number of cases) v. flattening the curve (maintaining a plateau)
POST 34. June 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. CDC Director Redfield… “the number of coronavirus infections…could be 10 times higher than the confirmed case count — a total of more than 20 million.” As Florida, Texas and Arizona become eipicenters!
POST 35. June 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Pence: “We slowed the spread. We flattened the curve. We saved lives..” While Dr. Fauci “warned that outbreaks in the South and West could engulf the country…”
POST 36. July 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “There’s just a handful of interventions proven to curb the spread of the coronavirus. One of them is contact tracing, and “it’s not going well,” (Dr. Anthony Fauci)..
POST 38. July 15, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Some Lessons Learned, or not. AdventHealth CEO Terry Shaw: I wouldn’t hesitate to go to Disney as a healthcare CEO — based on the fact that they’re working extremely hard to keep people safe,” (M)
POST 39. July, 23,2020. CORONAVIRUS. A Tale of Two Cities. Seattle becomes New York (rolls back reopening) while New York becomes Seattle (moves to partial phase 4 reopening)
POST 40. July 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS.” One canon of medical practice is that you order a test only if you can act on the result. And with a turnaround time of a week or two, you cannot. What we have now is often not testing — it’s testing theater.”
POST 41. August 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Whenever a vaccine for the coronavirus becomes available, one thing is virtually certain: There won’t be enough to go around. That means there will be rationing.”
POST 42. August 11, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “I think that if future historians look back on this period, what they will see is a tragedy of denial….
POST 43. August 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS.” “we’ve achieved something great as a nation. We’ve created an unyielding market for FAUCI BOBBLEHEADS”!! (W)
POST 44. September 1, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The CDC…modified its coronavirus testing guidelines…to exclude people who do not have symptoms of Covid-19.” (While Dr. Fauci was undergoing surgery.) A White House official said: “Everybody is going to catch this thing eventually..”
POST 45. September 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Trump on Fauci. ‘You inherit a lot of people, and you have some you love, some you don’t. I like him. I don’t agree with him that often but I like him.’
POST 47. September 24, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Perry N. Halkitis, dean of the School of Public Health at Rutgers University…called New York City’s 35 percent rate for eliciting contacts “very bad.” “For each person, you should be in touch with 75 percent of their contacts within a day,” he said”
POST 48. October 1, 2020. “…you can actually control the outbreak if you do the nonpharmaceutical interventions (social distancing and masks). In the United States we haven’t done them. We haven’t adhered to them; we’ve played with them.” (A)
POST 49. October 4, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. RAPID RESPONSE. “The possibility that the president and his White House entourage were traveling superspreaders is a nightmare scenario for officials in Minnesota, Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania…”
POST 50. October 6, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Monday October 5th will go down as one of the most fraught chapters in the history of American public Health (and national security).
POST 51. October 12, 2020. Rather than a hodge-podge of Emergency Use Authorizations, off-label “experimentation”, right-to-try arguments, and “politicized” compassionate use approvals maybe we need to designate REGIONAL EMERGING VIRUSES REFERRAL CENTERS (REVRCs).
POST 54. October 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. POST 54A. New Jersey’s Coronavirus response, led by Governor Murphy and Commissioner of Health Persichilli started with accelerated A+ traditional, evidence-based Public Health practices, developed over years of experience with seasonal flu, swine flu, Zika, and Ebola.
POST 55. October 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. The Testing Conundrum: “ It’s thus very possible to be antigen negative but P.C.R. positive, while still harboring the virus in the body..”
Post 56. October 30, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Trump’s now back in charge. It’s not the doctors.”
POST 57. November 3, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Deborah Birx: the US is entering its “most deadly phase” yet, one that requires “much more aggressive action,”
POST 58. November 4, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…the president has largely shuttered the White House Coronavirus Task Force and doubled down on anti-science language…”
POST 59. November 5, 2020. Coronavirus. “The United States on Wednesday recorded over 100,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day for the first time since the pandemic began..
POST 60. November 7, 2020. “White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has tested positive for the coronavirus….” (A)
POST 61. November 7, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Joe Biden’s top priority entering the White House is fighting both the immediate coronavirus crisis and its complex long-term aftermath…” “Here are the key ways he plans to get US coronavirus cases under control.”
POST 62. November 8, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The United States reported its 10 millionth coronavirus case on Sunday, with the latest million added in just 10 days,…”
POST 63. November 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “New York City-based Mount Sinai Health System has opened a center to help patients recovering from COVID-19 and to study the long-term impact of the disease….”
POST 64. November 10, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “It works! Scientists have greeted with cautious optimism a press release declaring positive interim results from a coronavirus vaccine phase III trial — the first to report on the final round of human testing.”
POST 66. November.12, 2020. CORONAVIRUS.”… as the country enters what may be the most intense stage of the pandemic yet, the Trump administration remains largely disengaged.”… “President-elect Biden has formed a special transition team dedicated to coordinating the coronavirus response across the government…”
POST 68. November 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. The CDC “now is hewing more closely to scientific evidence, often contradicting the positions of the Trump administration.”..” “A passenger aboard the first cruise ship to set sail in the Caribbean since the start of the pandemic has tested positive for coronavirus..”
POST 70. November 16, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Atlas criticized Michigan’s new Covid-19 restrictions..urging people to “rise up” against the new public health measures.
POST 71. November 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. ”Hospitals overrun as U.S. reports 1 million new coronavirus cases in a week.” “But in Florida, where the number of coronavirus infections remains the third-highest in the nation, bars and schools remain open and restaurants continue to operate at full capacity.”
POST 72. November 18, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The Health and Human Services Department will not work with President-elect Joe Biden’s (PANDEMIC) team until the General Services Administration makes a determination that he won the election,….”
POST 74. November 20, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Pfizer…submitted to the FDA for emergency use authorization for their coronavirus vaccine candidate. —FDA issued an EUA for the drug baricitinib, in combination with remdesivir, as WHO says remdesivir doesn’t do much of anything.
https://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/2020/11/post-76-november-23-2020-coronavirus-no-battle-plan-survives-contact-with-the-enemy-ventilators-just-keep-people-alive-while-the-people-caring-for-them-can-figure-out/
POST 77. November 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Pope Francis: “When I got really sick at the age of 21, I had my first experience of limit, of pain and loneliness.”.. “….Aug. 13, 1957. I got taken to a hospital…”….” I remember especially two nurses from this time.”…” They fought for me to the end, until my eventual recovery.”
POST 78. November 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Kelby Krabbenhoft is no longer president and CEO of Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health.” “…for not wearing a face covering… “ because “He considered himself immune from the virus.”
https://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/2020/11/post-78-november-27-2020-coronavirus-kelby-krabbenhoft-is-no-longer-president-and-ceo-of-sioux-falls-s-d-based-sanford-health-for-not-wearing-a-face-covering/
POST 80. November 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Op-Ed in the Jersey Journal. Do you know which hospital is right for you if you have coronavirus? | Opinion
POST 81. December 1, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Dr. Atlas, … who espoused controversial theories and rankled government scientists while advising President Trump on the coronavirus pandemic, resigned…”
POST 84. December 6, 2020. CPRONAVIRUS. “ More than 100,000 Americans are in the hospital with COVID-19…” “We’re seeing C.D.C. …awaken from (its) politics-induced coma…”…Dr. Fauci “to be a chief medical adviser in Biden’s incoming administration..”.. “Trump administration leaves states to grapple with how to distribute scarce vaccines..”
POST 85. December 7, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…Florida, Gov. DeSantis’ administration engaged in a pattern of spin and concealment that misled the public on the gravest health threat the state has ever faced..”.. “NY Gov. Cuomo said…the state will implement a barrage of new emergency actions..”… Rhode Island and Massachusetts open field hospitals… “Biden Names Health Team to Fight Pandemic”
POST 86. December 9, 2020. If this analysis seems a bit incomprehensible it is because “free Coronavirus test” is often an oxymoron! with charges ranging from as little as $23 to as much as $2,315… Laws (like for free Coronavirus tests) are Like Sausages. Better Not to See Them Being Made. (Please allow about 20 seconds for the text to download. Thanx!)
POST 87. December 10, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…Rudolph W. Giuliani, the latest member of President Trump’s inner circle to contract Covid-19, has acknowledged that he received at least two of the same drugs the president received. He even conceded that his “celebrity” status had given him access to care that others did not have.”
POST 88. December 11, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “As COVID-19 cases surge, the federal government is releasing data about hospital capacity at facilities around the country….”The new data paints the picture of how a specific hospital is experiencing the pandemic,”…
PART 89. December 12, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. THE VACCINE!!! “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Winston Churchill
POST 90. December 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…the first doses of a Covid-19 vaccine have been given to the American public..”…” Each person who receives a vaccine needs two doses, and it’s up to states to allocate their share of vaccines.”
POST 92. December 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “..each state — and each hospital system — has come up with its own (vaccination) plan and priorities. The result has been a sometimes confusing constellation of rules and groupings that has left health care workers wondering where they stand.” (Trump appointee July 4th email “…we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD,”)
POST 93. December 19, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. On NPR Congresswoman Shalala (D-Florida) said she wouldn’t jump the vaccination line in Miami; then added she would get vaccinated in Washington this week. This, even though Congress has failed to pass “essential” Coronavirus legislation. So who are our “essential” workers?
POST 95. December 23, 2020. “The Murphy administration may step in to force (New Jersey) hospitals to report COVID-19 outbreaks among staff.”
POST 97. December 27, 2020. “A new variant of the coronavirus that has been spreading through the UK and other countries has not yet been detected in the United States..”.. . But if new-wave medicines like antivirals and antibody therapy contributed to the development of viral variants, it will be “a reminder for all the medical community that we need to use these treatment options carefully.”
POST 98. December 28, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Governor Andrew Cuomo announced new penalties in order to rein in possible vaccination fraud…
POST 99. December 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “ICUs are being overwhelmed across many parts of California. Statewide aggregate ICU availability has been at 0% since Christmas Eve…. a surge on top of a surge on top of a surge.”… “hospitals are getting close to the point where they would begin putting COVID-positive patients under the care of COVID-positive staff who are asymptomatic.”
POST 100. December 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Front line hospital workers – in the ER, ICUs, EMS, acute medical care, behavioral health – are amongst the most courageous, heroic and dedicated colleagues you will ever meet.
POST 101. December 30, 2020.CORONAVIRUS. Is there a point where the increasing Coronavirus trajectory so far exceeds the slow growth of the vaccination rate that reaching herd immunity through vaccinations becomes less likely?
POST 102. January 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “We’ve taken the people with the least amount of resources and capacity and asked them to do the hardest part of the vaccination — which is actually getting the vaccines administered into people’s arms,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health. “Ultimately, the buck seems to stop with no one,”…
POST 104. January 6, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Paramedics in Southern California are being told to conserve oxygen and not to bring patients to the hospital who have little chance of survival…”
POST 106. January 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. The riots at the Capitol could have been a superspreader event. “From what I saw… you had a large congregation of individuals who were in close contact for an extended period of time and almost universally unmasked…. many coming and going on buses as well, also unmasked, and hanging out in hotel lobbies.”
POST 107. January 8, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Our job is to make sure the vaccine isn’t politicized the way masks were politicized,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said after getting her vaccine. South Carolina Rep.-elect Nancy Mace, a Republican, wrote that “Congress shouldn’t be putting themselves first in line for the COVID-19 vaccination when the average American can’t get it.”
POST 110. January 13, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. ““The (federal) government is changing the way it allocates Covid vaccine doses, now basing it on how quickly states can administer shots and the size of their elderly population.”… “New York State sent a letter to hospitals saying if they don’t use their vaccine allocations by the end of this week, they won’t receive any further allocations.”
POST 111. January 14, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Visitors from Toronto to New York to Buenos Aires have long flocked to Florida for sun, surf and shopping. Now they are coming for the Covid-19 vaccine….
POST 112. January 14, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. CHINA – “Eleven million people are under lockdown in Hebei province after a new cluster of coronavirus infections.
PART 113. January 17, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. The Next President Actually Has a Covid Plan… New York City and other places in the state expect to exhaust their supply of doses as early as next week… Charles Barkley said during the “NBA on TNT” broadcast that pro athletes should get the first round of the vaccine…..
POST 115. January 21, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. A year ago today an unnumbered POST was headlined “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday confirmed the first U.S. case of a deadly new coronavirus that has killed six people in China.” The CORONAVIRUS CONTENT TRACKING PROJECT started with HISTORIOGRAPHY and over time moved to LESSONS LEARNED, RAPID RESPONSE, and THE VACCINATION PROGRAM. Now 115 POSTS later – the BIDEN CORONAVIRUS PLAN.
POST 116. January 22, 2021. President Biden – “We’re entering what may be the toughest and deadliest period of the virus. We must set aside politics and finally face this pandemic as one nation.”
POST 117. January 23, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. 1.Dr. Fauci:“The idea that you can get up here….”and.. let the science speak”… “It is somewhat of a liberating feeling.” 2.updated CDC guidance:”.. providers could give the second dose up to six weeks after the first dose..” 3.Dr. Fauci: people would be “taking a chance” if they follow the CDC’s updated guidance.
POST 119. January 27, 2010. CORONAVIRUS. Amazon is offering its help to President Joe Biden with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee, included the help of companies like Starbucks, Costco and Microsoft in a plan to vaccinate 45,000 residents a day.
POST 121. January 30, 2021. CORONVIRUS. Will our communities become stratified by which vaccine is distributed? 95%ters v. 72%ters? Will the easier distribution of the J&J vaccine drive its inequitable distribution to” hard-hit, marginalized, and medically underserved communities.” (thanx! to XJ/LA)
POST 122. February 1, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr.Fauci endorses double-masking. Dr.Osterholm disagrees!
POST 123. February 4, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Nursing homes across the country are facing the same struggle, as workers have been more reluctant than residents to be vaccinated…
POST 124. February 5, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Osterholm ” …it may be time to..go with a ‘first-dose only’ approach, so more people over the age of 65 can have at least some protection right away. He said that would require delaying second doses until this summer.” Dr.Fauci “warned against this practice, and cautioned people about “the danger” that could come with focusing only on the first dose.”
POST 125. June 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “States are rolling back Covid-19 restrictions as new cases trend down from record highs across the country. But experts warn it might be too much too soon as variants pose an increased risk and the pandemic… is far from over.”
POST 126. February 11, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “There will be more coronavirus outbreaks in the future. Bats and other mammals are rife with strains and species of this abundant family of viruses. Some of these pathogens will inevitably spill over the species barrier and cause new pandemics. It’s only a matter of time.” (A)
POST 127. February 12, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “… Trump only agreed to be hospitalized when aides told him that he could walk to Marine One or he could wait until his case progressed and he would be carried out.”
POST 130. February 16, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “A second person who had contracted the Ebola virus died this week in the Democratic Republic of Congo, marking another outbreak just three months after the nation outlasted the virus’s second-worst outbreak in history…”
POST 131. February 17, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “It really is right now – a race between how quickly new variants, particularly the U.K. variant, can spread in the United States and how quickly we can get people vaccinated”
POST 132. February 20, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “In Texas, where over 2.5 million people are still without power, the state health department said this week’s vaccine shipments wouldn’t arrive until Wednesday at the earliest.”
POST 135. February 27, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “As Chief Executive Officers of New York’s major health care systems, we would like to provide facts to clear up confusion in the public and the media regarding decisions to discharge patients to nursing homes during New York’s spring coronavirus surge.”
POST 138. March 6, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “New cases are decreasing in the third wave because we are past the holidays, not because of vaccinations. It is a common misconception that the decrease we are seeing in new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the U.S. is due to vaccinations. The two aren’t related; at least yet.”
POST 140. March 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “In West Virginia, they are bracing for the second wave….. Not coronavirus but opioid overdoses, with one scourge driving a resurgence of the other.
POST 141. March 11, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Today is the first anniversary of the WHO declaration that the novel coronavirus was a Public Health Emergency of International Concern… “To truly prepare itself against the next pandemic, the U.S. has to reimagine what preparedness looks like.”
POST 142. March 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Candida auris is a superbug, a pathogen that can evade drugs made to kill it—and early signs suggest the COVID-19 pandemic may be propelling infections of the highly dangerous yeast. That’s because C. auris is particularly prominent in hospital settings, which have been flooded with people this year due to the coronavirus.”
POST 143. March 17, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The Trump administration sought to suppress Covid-19 testing in the United States last year by softening guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on who needed to be tested, a House panel said Monday.”
POST 145. March 25, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Efforts to disseminate Covid-19 vaccines as widely as possible are hitting an unexpected obstacle: health-care workers who decline the shots.
POST 146. March 30, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Osterholm told Becker’s: “This is the perfect storm,”…”Here is Europe locking down and having problems containing B.1.1.7, even with vaccinations and previous infection histories. Here we are opening up as wide as we can. We are literally just walking into the mouth of the virus saying, ‘Don’t worry.’” (M)
POST 147. April 5, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The pandemic helped cement the shift to “a philosophy of really focusing on the role of the physician in reasoning through ambiguous and unknown problems as the focus of education, rather than teaching students that the role of physician was to memorize a body of knowledge that was already in existence and good enough for what usually happens.”
POST 149. April 10, 2021. CORONAVIRIUS. “From Michigan to Massachusetts, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are on the rise again. Deaths will soon follow. “ ”.. the Biden administration is facing renewed calls to delay second vaccine doses and blanket more of the U.S. population with an initial shot.”
POST 152. April 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s director said Saturday authorities are considering mixing COVID-19 vaccines because the country’s domestically made doses “don’t have very high protection rates,”
POST 153. April 18, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “At least 35 hospitals across Michigan were listed Thursday as nearing capacity and three were at full capacity for COVID-19 patients..”.. We can manufacture beds. We can open up beds. We can create entire wings of the hospital if we have to, but if we don’t have staff for those beds, we’ve got nothing.”..
POST 157. April 25, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Ohio hospitals; “We agreed in multiple conversations, there’s nothing in fighting a pandemic that creates a competitive advantage.”…
POST 158. May 5, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. . As populations get closer to herd immunity “ it may be helpful to introduce some nuance to what we mean by the term. Nationwide herd immunity. Regional herd immunity. Temporary herd immunity. Endemicity.”
POST 163. May 23, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. RWJBarnabas Health in New Jersey announced a mandate…saying supervisors and those of higher rank must get the vaccine by June 30. They will eventually require the system’s 35,000 employees to do the same.
POST 164. May 26, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. On Wednesday, health minister Norihisa Tamura warned Olympic organizers they would have to “secure their own” hospital beds for anyone falling ill at the Games, explaining the government would not release beds set aside for Japanese covid-19 patients.”
POST 165. May 31,2001. CORONAVIRUS. “Like all pandemics, this one will end either with millions — maybe billions — being infected or being vaccinated. This time, world leaders have a choice, but little time to make that choice before it is made for them.”
POST 166. June 3, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “President Biden said Wednesday that he has asked intelligence agencies to double down on their efforts to investigate whether the coronavirus originated from human contact with an animal or in an laboratory in China, saying there is not “sufficient information” to assess whether one is more likely than the other.”
POST 167. June 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Hospitals prevaricate on mandatory staff vaccinations. Florida’s Governor forbids cruise ship vaccine mandates. Pfizer and Moderna apply for FDA full approval.
POST 168. June 10, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Our species has a tendency to get distracted. We have a very strong appetite for distraction, and when something is not in the spotlight, when it’s not a crisis anymore, we tend to forget and move on to something else. So the biggest challenge is going to be maintaining focus on this next step of developing vaccines that anticipate pandemics.”
POST 170. June 17, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Dr. Ashish Jha…is worried about the potential impact the delta variant could have in the United States… “I’m concerned about the Delta variant,”… “Why? Most contagious variant yet. Wreaked havoc in India. Spiking cases in UK. Growing rapidly in the US.”
POST 171. June 19, 2021. “A 34-year-old man (a Covid-19 survivor) has been diagnosed with India’s first known case of “green fungus” infection.”… “Green fungus is the new infection to join the earlier known cases of black, white and yellow fungus.”…”green fungus was earlier seen only as a “junior partner” in other infections… In the current patient, this fungus is acting as the aggressor.”
POST 172. June 23, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Morgan Stanley chief executive James Gorman said: “If you can go into a restaurant in New York City, you can come into the office.”…”remote work can “dramatically undermine” the character and culture a company is attempting to build; and “virtually eliminates spontaneous learning and creativity.”
POST 175. July 5, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Can a health care worker who is not against vaccines in general still harbor sincere concerns that scientists don’t yet know about all the side effects of these vaccines? Yes, says Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD — but those people should not work in health care.”
POST 176. July 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Mercy Springfield ( Missouri) hospital…” ran out of ventilators for its patients over the Fourth of July weekend…”…“Mercy will require all current and future employees to be fully vaccinated.”…“The US government is deploying a Covid-19 surge team to provide public health support in southwest Missouri
POST 177. July 12, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. the Delta variant is “the 2020 version of Covid-19 on steroids,”… “It is the most hypertransmissible, contagious version of the virus we’ve seen to date…it’s a superspreader strain if there ever was one .” but… now, there’s a Delta Plus variant…
POST 180, July 20, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Most people will either get vaccinated, or have been previously infected, or they will get this Delta variant,”.. “And for most people who get this Delta variant, it’s going to be the most serious virus that they get in their lifetime in terms of the risk of putting them in the hospital,”
POST 181. July 22, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Health experts fear the Tokyo Olympics could become a COVID-19 superspreader event.” “Whatever happens in Japan isn’t likely going to stay in Japan since all of the athletes and accompanying coaches and staff will be returning to their home countries.”
POST 182. July 26, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R): “Folks supposed to have common sense.”…“But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.” ““Beginning in mid-September, New York City will require all of its 340,000 municipal workers, including police, firefighters and teachers, to either be vaccinated against COVID-19 or tested weekly.”
POST 183. July 29, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. When I was appointed President and CEO of Jersey City Medical Center in1989 in the peak of the HIV/ AIDS crisis, we had a dedicated, and always full, dedicated 60 bed AIDS unit, staffed by one full time nurse and numerous part-time and per diem nurses. Today, right now, hospitals caught in the Covid-19 surge, are forced to redeploy nursing staff, respiratory therapists and other clinicians, most without prior infectious diseases experience. Why are we tolerating the unvaccinated putting our hospital staffs at risk?
POST 186. August 8, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late,” she added, referring to patients who have to be put on a ventilator.” (A) “There is no one definition of what the end of a pandemic means.”.. “The question of when the crisis will be over is a layered one — with different answers from local, national and global perspectives.”
POST 187. August 11, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “As a result of the increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, the state of Florida requested 300 ventilators from the federal government.”… “An 11-month-old girl with Covid-19 is stable and no longer intubated one day after she was airlifted to a Texas hospital 150 miles away because of a shortage of pediatric beds in the Houston area.”
POST 188. August 15, 20201. CORONAVIRUS. “According to an internal CDC briefing….an estimated 1.1 million people have already gotten unauthorized booster shots…”….”If it is left up to the honor system, I think many Americans will suddenly wake up and find themselves immunocompromised enough to get a 3rd dose,”
POST 189. August 19,2021. CORONAVIRUS. “There wasn’t a single I.C.U. bed available in Alabama on Wednesday…”…”A triage plan on the Alabama health department’s website suggests that “persons with severe mental retardation” are among those who “may be poor candidates for ventilator support.”
POST 190, August 21, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “We’re looking, in essence, at running two systems — a COVID system and a non-COVID system of care,”..“Emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and certified paramedics can now care for patients in Mississippi hospitals and emergency rooms under a new health office order issued by the Mississippi State Department of Health on Wednesday.”
POST 191. August 27, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Anthony Fauci, MD, chief medical advisor to the president and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explained that late September gives the United States time to set up the logistics.” This is not medical science, but perhaps Political Science?
POST 192. August 30, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Gov. John Bel Edwards on Hurricane Ida – “I hate to say it this way, but we have a lot of people on ventilators today and they don’t work without electricity,” he said.”
POST 194. August 2, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Recently-released data is painting a grim picture of the opioid epidemic that has gripped the United States — as the country is still grappling with the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than half a million Americans. Some people are calling them twin pandemics that have collided”…“Faced with a novel health crisis, researchers are collecting data on the long-term impact of using opioids to treat COVID-19 pain…
POST 195. September 6, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “…there are “zero ICU beds left for children in Dallas County, Texas,”.,..”That means if your child’s in a car wreck, if your child has a congenital heart defect or something and needs an ICU bed, or more likely if they have Covid and need an ICU bed, we don’t have one. Your child will wait for another child to die… (county judge Clay Jenkins)
POST 196. SEPTEMBER 11, 2001. PART 1. Military helicopters and jets were overhead, as President Bush was getting ready to leave NYC. PART 2. LESSONS LEARNED memorandum by hospital CEO Jonathan Metsch goes “viral”…
POST 197. September 12, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Idaho officials have instituted “crisis standards of care” to help 10 hospitals and health care systems decide how to allocate personnel and resources to deal with a crush of COVID-19 patients.”… “The Washington Medical Coordination Center oversees facilitating transfers in the state, and it’s warning we could be nearing the point of “Crisis Standards of Care,” just like Idaho.” .. “These crisis models don’t actually save more lives, they just save different lives..”
POST 199. September 19, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Crisis Standards of Care. “… to his knowledge, no patient in Idaho has been taken off life-support therapy in order to provide that therapy to another patient who has a better prognosis.” “While that has yet to occur, if we continue on this path, it will,”
POST 201. September 27, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “A multibillion-dollar institution in the Seattle area is sitting on nearly $12 billion in cash… received at least $509 million in government funds (from) a federal program that is supposed to prevent health care providers from capsizing during the coronavirus pandemic.”
“Based on our estimates…we find preventable COVID-19 hospitalizations cost $5.7 billion from June to August in 2021.”…
POST 202. September 30, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “..NY Governor Hochul signed an executive order expanding healthcare worker eligibility requirements…to head off potential staffing shortages fueled by the state’s new COVID-19 vaccination requirements.” “The.. order allows out-of-state/ out-of-country healthcare workers to practice in New York…”..”It allows EMTs graduates to temporarily pitch in at additional healthcare settings; allows various types of healthcare workers to more easily administer and order COVID-19 vaccinations; enables telemedicine physician visits in nursing homes; permits facilities to more quickly discharge, transfer or receive patients…”
POST 203. October 3, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “.. more than 125,000 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases have been reported in pregnant people, including more than 22,000 hospitalized cases and 161 deaths”…The risk is not just to the mother. Covid-19 in pregnancy can cause preterm birth or babies born so sick they have to go straight to the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU.”
POST 204. October 5, 2021.CORONAVIRUS. “News that an experimental antiviral drug from Merck appears to halve the risk of hospitalization or death from Covid-19 has bolstered hopes of finding a simple at-home treatment for the virus.”..” A more blunt assessment came from vaccine scientist Dr. Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine. “It’s not a miracle cure but a companion tool, So get vaccinated.””
POST 205. October 11, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. The AAP reported nearly 226,000 new child cases over the past week ending. “Hospital care for children does not occur in isolation from that of adults. Many of the resources we use are the same—a twenty-pound baby and a two-hundred-pound man might use the same kind of ventilator, for example. Dialysis machines, which could cleanse a seven-year-old’s blood as easily as his grandfather’s, are in high demand. Pediatric resident physicians, nurses, and respiratory therapists get cross-deployed to care for adults during the surges.”
POST 206. October 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. to borrow from Winston Churchill about where we are with the pandemic – “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
POST 207. October 17, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “…if you choose your own unauthorized booster shot, what happens if later research proves a different combination is better? That’s why experts say it’s a bad idea to become your own vaccine advisory committee and get a shot out of turn.”
POST 208. October 22, 2021, CORONAVIRUS. “What is the “delta plus” variant?” Scientists are monitoring the delta-related variant — known as AY.4.2. — to see if it might spread more easily or be more deadly than previous versions of the coronavirus.
POST 209. October 28, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The quest at Mount Sinai began with a mystery.”…”America was not simply struggling to contain a once-in-a-century pandemic, caused by a virus far more dangerous than seasonal influenza. Many patients were, for unknown reasons, not recovering.”
POST 211. November 4, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Colorado – “…there are patients who really ought to be in an intensive care unit but instead they’re in an emergency room. Or they ought to be in a step-down unit but instead they’re on the floor. Or they ought to be getting one-to-one nursing, and instead they’re getting two-to-one, or three-to-one nursing….”
POST 212. November 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “They went into hospitals with heart attacks, kidney failure or in a psychiatric crisis. They left with covid-19…” “A new report shows the coronavirus pandemic had a direct increase on the number of healthcare-acquired infections in hospitals nationwide.”
POST 213. November 13, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Since the earliest days of the pandemic, there has been one collective goal for bringing it to an end: achieving herd immunity…Now the herd is restless. And experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set aside herd immunity as a national goal.”
POST 214. November 20, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “This virus is doing what this virus does,” said Michael Osterholm… “We don’t understand why surges start, we don’t understand why they end.” (A)
POST 215. November 26, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Fauci on the new South African variant: “It’s not going to be possible to keep this infection out of the country. The question is: Can you slow it down?”
POST 217. December 3, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. President Biden Announces New Actions to Protect Americans Against the Delta and Omicron Variants as We Battle COVID-19 this Winter
POST 218. December 5, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “In some ways, Delta is the ideal variant: It’s transmissible enough to dominate more dangerous variants, and its virulence can be controlled through vaccination. In the next few weeks, we’ll find out whether Omicron will have its own silver lining—or whether it’ll be catastrophically worse.”
POST 219. December 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Entering uncharted territory, the U.S. counts 500,000 Covid-related deaths.”… “So yes, I am furious at the unvaccinated, and I am not ashamed of disclosing that. I am no longer trying to understand them or educate them.”
POST 220 December 13, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Osterholm. “You cannot outrun the game clock with this pandemic. This virus will find you… We’ve seen health care systems virtually broken by this pandemic. They just couldn’t provide critical care to non-Covid patients.” (A)
POST 222. December 20, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. So why my “inside baseball” focus on COVID-19 from the perspective of a retired hospital CEO?
POST 223. December 28, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Links for a case study of Crisis Standards of Care.
POST 224. December 29, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “crisis standards of care protocols in Maryland – “It also allows us to slim down documentation,… allows unconventional staffing models such as using nurses that have not been bedside. It also sets the expectations for the community that it’s not business as usual.”
POST 225. January 3, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Be first, be right, be credible,” are among the most important principles for health authorities to follow in a crisis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shared in a pamphlet on crisis communication in 2018….”
Post 226. January 5, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. New York City – “The city’s ambulance corps are so understaffed because of the COVID-19 surge, they’re now under new orders to try to convince stable patients with flu-like symptoms not to go to the hospital.”
POST 228. January 13, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “State officials are attempting to address California’s staffing shortage through a sweeping policy change that allows asymptomatic healthcare workers who have tested positive for the coronavirus to return to work immediately.” “Asymptomatic health professionals who had tested positive for COVID-19 should “preferably be assigned to work with COVID positive patients.”
POST 229. January 16, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “It is now highly unlikely that the U.S. will hit the ~85-90% of Americans vaccinated to get to the other side of the pandemic…”
POST 230. January 20, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “Dr. Fauci also said that the world is still in the first of what he considered to be the five phases of the pandemic. The first is the “truly pandemic” phase, “where the whole world is really very negatively impacted,” followed by deceleration, control, elimination and eradication.”…to paraphrase Churchill – “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”..
POST 232. January 28, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “A Boston hospital’s denial of a heart transplant to a man who is unvaccinated for Covid-19 has generated national attention, but experts say mandating vaccines is in keeping with other long-standing requirements that patients have to meet to receive an organ — including getting other shots…”
POST 233. February 2, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “The same virus can cause endemic, epidemic or pandemic infections: it depends on the interplay of a population’s behaviour, demographic structure, susceptibility and immunity, plus whether viral variants emerge.”
POST 234. February 2, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell demanded an end to the COVID-19 state of emergency on Wednesday , saying it was time for Americans to get on with their lives after two years on a ‘hellish highway.’”
POST 236. February 22, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. MOUNT SINAI AT HOME – “We began thinking about how we could use hospital-at-home to meet the needs of our hospital system in our community, in terms of responding to the crisis of COVID-19…”
POST 238. March 5, 2022, CORONAVIRUS. “Two different scientists can look at the same set of data and come up with different conclusions. That’s not to say that one person is being unscientific or ignoring the scientific process,” said Leana Wen, an emergency physician and a professor at George Washington University. “Public health policy is also a measure of values.””
POST 239. March 9, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “War is an infectious disease’s best friend,” says Michael Osterholm, “It challenges every public health program you can possibly have. It limits the medical care available for those who might be seriously ill, and often fosters transmission when so many people are crowded into bomb shelter locations and on trains. This is going to be the perfect storm of one serious challenge after another.” (E)
POST 240. March 15, 2022. ““China is modifying its Covid-19 playbook amid a surge in cases as it seeks to avoid strains on its healthcare system.”
POST 241. March 20, 2022, CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Ashish Jha will serve as the new White House COVID-19 response coordinator.” He is not, for the record, a virologist, immunologist, or vaccinologist…But he is a public health expert and a practicing internist, which means he has years of experience explaining complicated and often incomplete information to people who neither know nor care about the correct pronunciation of “adenovirus.” That’s who he imagines on the other end of his webcam.”
POST 242. March 24, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “How worried should people be about the BA.2 variant? Will vaccines protect against it? What if someone contracted a previous variant — could they become reinfected? Is BA.2 milder than previous versions, and if so, should people try to get it? Could BA.2 cause another surge in the US, and is it time for restrictions to be put back into place?”
POST 244. April 4, 2022.CORONAVIRUS. “Here’s a scary thought: America’s ability to face the pandemic’s next phase may depend on a handful of senators.”…. “When the end of the COVID-19 pandemic comes, it could create major disruptions for a cumbersome U.S. health care system made more generous, flexible and up-to-date technologically through a raft of temporary emergency measures.”
https://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/2022/04/post-244-april-4-2022-coronavirus-heres-a-scary-thought-americas-ability-to-face-the-pandemics-next-phase-may-depend-on-a-handful-of-senators/
POST 245. April 10, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. We can’t react to a wave we don’t see coming. “I keep thinking back to this idea of If we don’t measure it, it won’t happen,”…(As President Donald Trump once put it, “If we stop testing, we’d have fewer cases.”) In reality, “it’s very well happening, and we just don’t see it yet.”
POST 246. April 15, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “State authorities and health care organizations could pay a high price for reinstating SCOPE OF PRACTICE (SOP) restrictions when the pandemic ends.” (e.g. NPs, PAs, Pharmacists +++)
POST 249. May 6, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “The United States is “certainly, right now, in this country, out of the pandemic phase..” (Dr. Anthony Fauci). “The US should prepare for a possible summer surge of Covid-19 cases across Southern states..” (Dr. Deborah Birx)
POST 250. May 11, 2022. Herd Immunity Deja vu. “Not so long ago, the world was clinging to the hope of herd immunity—to the notion that the population would eventually reach some communal level of protection sufficient to quash the outbreak for good. Maybe, experts posited many months back, once 60 to 90 percent of people had been infected or vaccinated or both, the virus would run out of viable hosts, and simply fizzle out. Now it’s clear that “that’s too simplistic…”
POST 251. May 16, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “Now, nearly one million people have died. It did not have to be this way.”
POST 252. May 20, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “The stakes, two years into the pandemic, should be clear. Fewer vaccines, fewer treatments, and fewer tests will mean more infections, more serious illnesses, and more deaths. That is the scenario the country is staring down: one million people already dead and more to come because politicians became complacent.”
POST 254. June 2, 2022. MONKEYPOX, “Massachusetts General Hospital this week began vaccinating a small group of workers against monkeypox — the first time the new medicine has been used in this country outside of clinical trials. The workers were in close contact with a man diagnosed with the virus and hospitalized at Mass General from May 12 to May 20. The patient was the first person in the United States to be tied to an ongoing outbreak of the rare virus in Europe and North America.”
POST 255. June 5, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “More than a year after U.S. health care workers were saluted for saving lives in the COVID-19 outbreak and celebrated with nightly clapping from windows and balconies, some are being issued panic buttons in case of assault and ditching their scrubs before going out in public for fear of harassment.”
“The shooting in Tulsa is an extreme example of a growing trend: violence against doctors, nurses, and other health care workers.”
POST 257. June 17, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “We’re now in a very weird pandemic phase. On Twitter, doctors such as Eric Topol sound five-alarm warnings about the latest subvariants of omicron. Offline, even in blue states, people are back to parties, bars and restaurants — and will soon be flying around the world with no testing requirements to return to the US. Things feel as if they’ve lost any coherence. There’s no discernible strategy or guidance on what Covid precautions we should still be taking.”
POST 258. June 26, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “For a long time, whenever companies wanted to hire a CEO or another key executive, they knew what to look for: somebody with technical expertise, superior administrative skills, and a track record of successfully managing financial resources.”..” That practice now feels like ancient history. So much has changed during the past two decades that companies can no longer assume that leaders with traditional managerial pedigrees will succeed in the C-suite..”
POST 262. July 21, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. Michael Osterholm, PhD: “I think the (COVID) challenge we have and continue to have are these viruses keep throwing 210-mile-an-hour curveballs. We just don’t know what the next situation is going to be.” (H) New this week: Parechovirus & Marburg virus disease.
POST 263. July 24, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “Inside the West Wing, there was never much doubt that Mr. Biden would eventually contract the disease.”…”The president’s access to healthcare started even before he got sick. He receives full time medical care from the White House Medical Unit, a part of the military located on the first floor of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
POST 264. July 30, 2022. Monkeypox. “The federal response to monkeypox, including the limited testing capacity, has echoes of how public health authorities initially mismanaged Covid-19.”
POST 266. August 11, 2022. Polio/ Monkeypox ++. CDC ”..has deployed a federal team to New York to investigate the case of polio detected in Rockland County. ““Based on earlier polio outbreaks, New Yorkers should know that for every one case of paralytic polio observed, there may be hundreds of other people infected..”
POST 267. August 20, 2022. CDC IMPLOSION! Lessons Learned (or not). CDC Director Walensky “…delivered a sweeping rebuke of her agency’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying it had failed to respond quickly enough and needed to be overhauled.”
POST 268. August 23, 2022. PANDEMICS. “The Covid-19 pandemic has been a lesson in speed — the speed at which a novel virus among humans can spread, the speed at which it can rack up fatalities and cripple economies, the speed at which vaccines can be designed and produced, the speed at which misinformation can undermine public health. Amid all that rapidity is a different kind of speed, which drives the rest, like an engine spinning the cars on a nauseating carnival ride: the speed of viral evolution…”
POST 270. September 6, 2022. CORONAVIRUS+. This is a RAPID RESPONSE/ LESSONS LEARNED project meant to: facilitate immediate decisions in the command center and incident review/ Lessons Learned ; then in the classroom, the board room, policy making forums, project management teams; ++++. me!)
POST 271. September 8, 2020. CORONAVIRUS+++. CONTENT BUNDLES PART 2 – Protecting Health Care Staff. Trump/Biden. Fauci/ Osterholm. Vaccine distribution discombobulation. Public Health 101!
POST 272 September 13, 2022. CORONAVIRUS+++. Content Bundles for discussions on: CRISIS STANDARDS OF CARE. HERD IMMUNITY. CDC/ FDA. PROTECTING HEALTH CARE STAFF. TRUMP/ BIDEN. FAUCI/ OSTERHOLM. VACCINE DISTRIBUTION DISCOMBOBULATION. PUBLIC HEALTH 101!
POST 269. August 31, 2022. “Everyone Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth.” (Mike Tyson). Are we in a slow retreat to herd immunity?
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“At the very moment a better coronavirus vaccine is expected to finally become available, America’s vaccination program is feeling the effects of a long period of retreat.
Local programs to bring shots to the places where Americans gather and the institutions they trust have folded, a consequence in some cases of congressional resistance to more pandemic response spending…
With the virus killing far fewer people than it once did and many Americans reverting to their prepandemic ways, the country’s no-expenses-spared attitude to saving lives has evolved into a response that has put a greater onus on individuals to protect themselves. In keeping with that approach, many health officials believe the vaccine machinery is in place to meet what they expect, lamentably, to be tepid demand this fall.
But others are worried that the country is surrendering a decisive opportunity to stoke that demand and restore the more robust vaccination efforts that lifted last year’s initial rollout.
“We are watching the dismantling of the hyperlocal infrastructure that actually brought needles to arms in the most vulnerable communities in the country,” said Stephen Thomas, the director of the Center for Health Equity at the University of Maryland. “To this day, vaccine uptake in the United States is embarrassing.”…
The United States is leaning ever more heavily on vaccines to defend against the virus at a time when health officials are pulling back on other preventive measures, like masking, distancing and quarantining…
But, at the same time, the vaccination campaign is lagging. While two-thirds of Americans have completed the primary vaccine series, only about one-third have received boosters. The country’s per capita booster coverage trails that of some 70 other nations, according to Our World in Data.
Some are worried that the country is surrendering a decisive opportunity to stoke demand for and restore the more robust vaccination efforts that lifted last year’s initial rollout.
Partly as a result, scientists said, Americans this year have died from Covid at a rate 80 percent higher than Canadians and 30 percent higher than residents of the European Union.” (A)
“AIDS. SARS. H1N1 influenza. Ebola. Covid-19. Monkeypox. Infectious disease outbreaks often come and go, though some persist over the long haul, much like the man who has occupied the campus of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984: Dr. Anthony Stephen Fauci…
As Dr. Fauci prepares to retire at the end of this year, one has to wonder if this is the end of an era as well. Don’t get me wrong: No one I know thinks that our gains on AIDS and the progress we’ve made in other areas of infectious disease control — particularly on vaccine-preventable diseases — are trivial accomplishments.
But with Covid-19, something has changed. It tested a fundamental equilibrium among science, public health and politics in America. Most administrations, I argue, simply don’t care much about science and public health; it’s not a priority for them. On AIDS, Mr. Reagan ignored it, and Bill Clinton paid lip service to it. George W. Bush came the closest to making it a priority, with the establishment of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, but by the time of Barack Obama, activists were protesting again about an administration’s neglect.
But Covid-19 caught the attention of politicians, and not in a good way. For decades, Dr. Fauci and other scientists could advise presidents, even sway them for good on occasion, because so little was at stake politically for these leaders. But with Mr. Trump and President Biden, too much was riding on their short-term political fortunes to indulge scientific and public health evidence and advice too much or for too long.” (B)
“But however much truth there is to the story that Dr. Fauci was a victim of our polarized era and broken media environment, it is also partial and simplistic. It amounts to insisting that skepticism of the good doctor must have been everyone’s fault but his own…
Dr. Fauci became the face of American public health’s incoherent response to the pandemic. He urged the country to shut down weeks after dismissing early Covid worries as a baseless fear of “going to a Chinese restaurant”; he encouraged masking weeks after counseling against it; he aggressively cast the lab leak theory as fringe (though possible) despite many scientists wanting more to be done on lab safety. Just this April, Dr. Fauci said one day that we were “out of the pandemic phase” and the next day that we were “still experiencing a pandemic.”..
This is a bad place for us to be. While Dr. Fauci has unfairly borne the burden of a failure that belongs to the entire public health system, he has also embraced his role as its figurehead, and is still held up by it as an idol. And while public health leaders are now gingerly attempting to confront their mistakes, what we have seen in, say, the C.D.C.’s new internal report are halfhearted, proceduralist ideas. The public health establishment will not be able to do better than this without real soul-searching. And that will require swallowing a bitter pill: labeling Dr. Fauci’s Covid legacy and the approach it embodied a failure. His retirement is an opportune moment to move on from the view of science he stood for throughout the pandemic to something new.” (C)
“The pandemic itself is another impediment. The agency’s massive complex outside Atlanta sits mostly empty, while employees, including Dr. Walensky, work remotely.
“The actions that are being taken all strike me as actions that make sense and would make C.D.C. a more effective public health agency,” said Dr. Besser, the former C.D.C. acting director.
But he said it was hard to see how Dr. Walensky could execute wholesale changes when she only sees most of her staff at a distance. “I don’t know how you motivate and inspire culture change when people aren’t together,” he said.” (D)
“The Biden administration has been planning for how to get past the crisis phase of the Covid-19 pandemic and will stop buying vaccines, treatments and tests as early as this fall, White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said on Tuesday.
One of the things we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about in the last many months — and we’re going to continue this work, and you’ll hear more from the administration on this — is getting us out of that acute emergency phase where the US government is buying the vaccines, buying the treatments, buying the diagnostic tests,” Jha said at an event sponsored by the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation…
“I would like to get to a point where every adult in America who wants a vaccine can get one. I’m hopeful we will be there. We’re not quite there yet in terms of how many vaccine doses we’ve been able to buy,” he said.
Jha said the transition to commercialization is complicated. It involves regulatory issues, market dynamic issues and equity issues, but the administration is working carefully and thoughtfully to get it right.
“Right now, everybody can walk into a CVS and get a vaccine. I want to make sure that when we make this transition, we don’t end up at a point where nobody can get a vaccine because we didn’t get the transition right,” he said.
Jha said some of the commercialization would start in the fall, but most would be visible in 2023.
He said it would be important for the government to continue to make investments in the development of the next generation of vaccines and in pandemic preparedness.
“But this business of day-to-day running of a pandemic, that needs to transition, and we’re working very hard to make sure that transition is in a very orderly and transparent way so everybody sees it coming,” he said.” (E)
“The government will end its giveaway of Covid-19 at-home tests Friday because of insufficient congressional funding, a senior Biden administration official said Sunday.
A stockpile of the tests is being depleted, and officials want to have enough on hand in the event of a fall surge, the source said.
The giveaway, which includes tests mailed at no cost to recipients who request them at Covidtests.gov, will end Friday, according to an announcement on the site — unless there’s a surprise round of funding from Congress, the source said.
“If Congress provides funding, we will expeditiously resume distribution of free tests through covidtests.gov,” the source said. “Until then, we believe reserving the remaining tests for distribution later this year is the best course.”
“The administration has been clear about our urgent Covid-19 response funding needs,” the source said. “We have warned that congressional inaction would force unacceptable tradeoffs and harm our overall Covid-19 preparedness and response — and that the consequences would likely worsen over time.”
Fewer people are testing for the coronavirus, and many are believed to have had it without knowing conclusively. In fact, experts believe many Americans have been reinfected at this point in the pandemic.
With the halting of distribution Friday, the vast majority of people in the U.S. would still have the option of free testing or getting reimbursed through private insurance, Medicare or Medicaid.
The federal government has distributed an estimated 600 million tests through its Covid-19 test website. It first started shipping the free tests in January, when the omicron variant was peaking.
It was not immediately clear how many are currently left in the stockpile.
In March, the White House asked Congress for an additional $22.5 billion in funding for Covid relief efforts, warning that it would be unable to sustain testing capacity without it.
But an impasse resulted in the funding, which the Biden administration also intended to use for research and treatments, not being granted. “ (F)
“The updated Covid vaccine boosters, a reformulated version targeting the BA.5 omicron subvariant, could be available around Labor Day. They’ll be the first Covid shots distributed without results from human trials. Does that matter?
Because the Biden administration has pushed for a fall booster campaign to begin in September, the mRNA vaccine-makers Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have only had time to test the reformulated shots in mice, not people. That means the Food and Drug Administration is relying on the mice trial data — plus human trial results from a similar vaccine that targets the original omicron strain, called BA.1 — to evaluate the new shots, according to a recent tweet from the FDA commissioner, Dr. Robert Califf.
Federal health officials hope that the new vaccines will provide stronger protection over the existing booster shots, which still target the original coronavirus strain. But the lack of data in humans means officials likely won’t know how much better the new shots are — if at all — until the fall booster campaign is well underway.
The FDA’s decision to move forward without data from human trials is a gamble, experts say, threatening to further lower public trust in the vaccines should the new boosters not work as intended…
The FDA’s decision to consider Covid boosters without human data is in line with how it evaluates modified vaccines for influenza each year. Clinical studies in humans aren’t required for the approval of seasonal influenza vaccines, even when they’re reformulated for strain changes, said Dr. Jesse Goodman of Georgetown University, a former FDA vaccine chief.
Still, the flu vaccine isn’t a fair comparison, said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
The FDA’s policy on influenza shots is based on decades of experiences with strain changes where the flu vaccines behaved generally in the same way. The U.S. is still on its first iteration of the Covid vaccines, and the mRNA technology has only been in widespread use since late 2020.
The agency is making “huge assumptions” in its consideration of the new Covid boosters, Offit said, adding that it’s possible the new shots may not be any more effective than the existing vaccines.
Not all experts see it the same way.” (G)
“The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday authorized updated versions of Pfizer-BioNTech’s and Moderna’s Covid booster shots that target the highly contagious BA.5 omicron subvariant…
“The public can be assured that a great deal of care has been taken by the FDA to ensure that these bivalent Covid-19 vaccines meet our rigorous safety, effectiveness and manufacturing quality standards for emergency use authorization,” Dr. Peter Marks, the agency’s top vaccine regulator, said in a statement.
The FDA’s signoff isn’t the last step: The decision will now go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its advisory committee to issue their own recommendation on how the shots should be used. The agency’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is scheduled to vote Thursday. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky could sign off on the doses shortly after Thursday’s meeting, and vaccinations could begin widely after Labor Day….
The FDA convened its outside advisory committee in June to review data on a different version of a booster — one that combined the original strain with an earlier version of omicron, called BA.1. At the time, the committee voted in favor of updating the shot to target omicron, but it did not specify which particular subvariant.
The FDA did not consult its advisory committee again before Wednesday’s authorizations”. (K)
“After the game-changing COVID-19 antiviral Paxlovid began to be used in late 2021, researchers noticed a perplexing trend. In some people taking the drug, symptoms and detectable virus vanish, only to mysteriously return days later.
After months of grasping at straws, scientists are beginning to make some headway in understanding ‘Paxlovid rebound’. Two recent studies suggest that it is surprisingly common for SARS-CoV-2 to return in untreated cases of COVID-191, while hinting that the virus’s comeback is fiercer and more common in people who take Paxlovid2.
“We’re all seeing people who are taking Paxlovid doing really well and then suddenly they’re getting sick again,” says Michael Charness, a physician-scientist at VA Boston Healthcare in Massachusetts, who published an early description of Paxlovid rebound3. “There are so many unanswered questions.”…
The study, led by infectious-disease physician and vaccine scientist Kathryn Stephenson at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, closely followed 11 people who took Paxlovid for COVID-19 and 25 who did not. More than one-quarter of the Paxlovid recipients rebounded, based on levels of SARS-CoV-2, compared with just one of the 25 untreated people. Moreover, people with Paxlovid rebound had high levels of virus for several days, as if they had new acute infections. “The single case of viral rebound without treatment was more like a viral ‘blip’,” Stephenson wrote on Twitter.
Charness says that Paxlovid rebound does seem to be qualitatively different from rebound in untreated people, whose viral levels rarely reached the peaks of their initial infection.
But the cause of Paxlovid rebound remains unclear. Studies have suggested that it’s unlikely to be due to viral drug resistance or feeble immune responses in rebounders. Researchers are testing whether viral replication, having been suppressed by Paxlovid, can bounce back when the drug vanishes from the body, leading to high viral levels and potent immune responses that can cause symptoms to reappear.
Physicians also need a better guide as to how to treat, and ultimately prevent, Paxlovid rebound. Mark Siedner, a clinical epidemiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston who is studying Paxlovid rebound, says the phenomenon reminds him of what occurs when other diseases are treated for too short a time. “This smells like treatment duration is not long enough for the subgroup of people who have rebound.”
The drug is currently given for five days, but Charness says it’s worth looking at longer treatment periods — as long as this doesn’t promote drug resistance. “There is still a lot to learn.”” (H)
“Starting Sept. 6, employees of Goldman Sachs will be allowed to enter the office regardless of vaccination status and will no longer be required to test for COVID-19 or wear masks.
“With many tools including vaccination, improved treatments, and testing now available, there is significantly less risk of severe illness,” Goldman said in the memo sent out to all employees.
The company cited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recently relaxed many restrictions including quarantine rules and social distancing requirements.
Goldman Sachs has been a big advocate of bringing people back into the office, setting it apart from other companies in finance and tech that are leaning more toward a hybrid work style.
In a push to prove the world has returned to normal, the company is also reducing the number of COVID tests available around the office.
“With antigen test kits widely available in the community, we will begin ramping down the provision of test kits on our campuses, with the current expectation of ending the program by year end,” the memo stated.
The memo comes just days before the bank expects all employees to return to its offices five days a week.” (I)
“When White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci warned in 2020 that living with the coronavirus was going to be our new normal, he meant it.
“We’re not going to eradicate the virus from the face of the Earth,” Fauci told Yahoo Finance in an interview on Tuesday. “I don’t believe we’re even going to eliminate it from this country to the tune of getting zero cases.”
Despite earlier estimates pointing to a possible end to the pandemic by 2024, along with assumptions that all countries would be fully vaccinated by then, poor adherence to vaccinations and public health mitigation measures has resulted in an ongoing pandemic that is nowhere near under control…
Instead, Fauci, who also serves as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), hopes that at least by 2024, the circulation of the virus is low enough “that it does not disrupt … the economy, our ability to interact socially with each other, schools, and things like that.”” (J)
“The 7-day average for new daily cases has dipped slightly to the 120,000 range over the past 3 days, according to an analysis by the Washington Post. Today the 7-day average is 121,739 cases.
Meanwhile, the 7-day average for new daily deaths is rising, today reaching 496. Deaths, often a lagging indicator, have shown a slow rise since the middle of July.
According the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 41.7% of US counties have high COVID community levels, and 38.9% are at the medium level. Its community transmission map shows that 94% are classified as having high transmission, a level for which CDC recommends masking while indoors and using public transportation.” (L)
“When COVID-19 vaccines first became available, public officials, community organizations and policymakers mobilized to get shots into arms. These efforts included significant investments in making vaccines accessible to Black, Hispanic, American Indian and Alaska Native populations. These groups experienced exceptionally high COVID-19 death rates early in the pandemic and had low initial vaccine rates.
The efforts worked. As of August 2022, vaccination rates for the primary series – or required initial doses of COVID-19 vaccines – for Black and Hispanic people exceeded those of white Americans.
But boosters are a different story. Comparable booster vaccine promotion efforts have been lacking. Confusion in the public health messaging surrounding boosters and limited federal funding for rolling out vaccination campaigns have resulted in slow booster uptake across the country.
As a result, divides have once again emerged. A recent study of COVID-19 booster rates found that 45% of white adults and 52% of Asian American adults had received boosters by January 2022. But only 29% of Black adults and 31% of adults who reported another racial or ethnic identity, such as American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander or multiracial, were boosted.” (M)
- A.Fall Vaccination Campaign Will Bring New Shots, Worse Access, By Benjamin Mueller, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/28/health/covid-vaccines-money.html?campaign_id=154&emc=edit_cb_20220829&instance_id=70573&nl=virus-briefing®i_id=60725593&segment_id=102706&te=1&user_id=911bc32ff6f4bd2de009fcc7d3ffd59b
- B.How History Will Remember the Fauci Era, By Gregg Gonsalves, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/23/opinion/fauci-retires.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqYhkQFUZACbSRdkhrxqAwvbG3bc9w2XzMCmPRC0Ez_gQB8LI3XbxUpdZRol52SWHFpgGOaUzRfd2w6gBM0U9EQT3_t7ZkppbZnhupNz2VDxqgdecBb1gqDG2NGeycu41jKeysBOnHGruWaLf1XEqJh804sc2MAH3hgFbg_vNAeV32dJh3PY-BJgcRD8IYCGCvfCAGAwpcZzdLUmasl9qLrkfDTLDntec6KYCeBFRDD_ETHB44WU96LBMKQ6TpDNkjObd5lAaTwQuMNc&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
- C.Why Many Americans Turned on Anthony Fauci, By Ari Schulman, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/30/opinion/why-anthony-faucis-covid-legacy-is-a-failure.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
- D.Walensky, Citing Botched Pandemic Response, Calls for C.D.C. Reorganization, By Sharon LaFraniere and Noah Weiland, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/17/us/politics/cdc-rochelle-walensky-covid.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
- E.Biden administration will stop buying Covid-19 vaccines, treatments and tests as early as this fall, Jha says, By Brenda Goodman, https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/16/health/biden-administration-covid-19-vaccines-tests-treatments/index.html
- F.Biden administration to stop sending free at-home Covid tests Friday, By Monica Alba and Dennis Romero, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/biden-administration-end-free-home-covid-19-tests-friday-rcna45192
- G.FDA expected to authorize new Covid boosters without data from tests in people, By Berkeley Lovelace Jr., https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-authorize-new-covid-boosters-data-tests-people-rcna45387
- H.COVID rebound is surprisingly common — even without Paxlovid, by Ewen Callaway, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02121-z
- I.Goldman Sachs is done with COVID in the office, by SOPHIE MELLOR, https://fortune.com/2022/08/31/goldman-sachs-done-with-covid-in-the-office/
- J.Fauci on COVID-19: ‘We’re not going to eradicate the virus’, by Anjalee Khemlani, https://finance.yahoo.com/news/covid-19-cases-never-get-to-zero-fauci-160932338.html?guccounter=1
- K.FDA authorizes Pfizer’s and Moderna’s updated Covid booster shots, By Berkeley Lovelace Jr., https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fda-authorizes-pfizers-modernas-updated-covid-booster-shots-rcna44825
- L.US COVID cases show hints of decline, but deaths are up, by Lisa Schnirring, https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2022/08/us-covid-cases-show-hints-decline-deaths-are
- M.Low vaccine booster rates are now a key factor in COVID-19 deaths – and racial disparities in booster rates persist, by Andrew Stokes, https://theconversation.com/low-vaccine-booster-rates-are-now-a-key-factor-in-covid-19-deaths-and-racial-disparities-in-booster-rates-persist-187272
CORONAVIRUS TRACKING Links to POSTS 1-269
CORONAVIRUS TRACKING Links to POSTS 1-269
Doctor, Did You Wash Your Hands?®
https://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/
Curated Contemporaneous Case Study Methodology
https://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/2019/12/9897/
Jonathan M. Metsch, Dr.P.H.
https://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/2021/10/jonathan-m-metsch-dr-p-h-2/
PART 1. January 21, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday confirmed the first U.S. case of a deadly new coronavirus that has killed six people in China.”
PART 2. January 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “If it’s not contained shortly, I think we are looking at a pandemic..”….. “With isolated cases of the dangerous new coronavirus cropping up in a number of states, public health officials say it is only a matter of time before the virus appears in New York City.”
PART3. February 3, 2020. “The Wuhan coronavirus spreading from China is now likely to become a pandemic that circles the globe…”..Trump appeared to downplay concerns about the flu-like virus …We’re gonna see what happens, but we did shut it down..” (D)
PART 4. February 9, 2020. Coronavirus. “A study published Friday in JAMA found that 41% of the first 138 patients diagnosed at one hospital in Wuhan, China, were presumed to be infected in that hospital.….
PART 5. February 12, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “In short, shoe-leather public health and basic medical care—not miracle drugs—are generally what stop outbreaks of emerging infections..”
POST 6. February 18, 2020. Coronovirus. “Amid assurances that the (ocean liner) Westerdam was disease free, hundreds of people disembarked in Cambodia…” “ One was later found to be infected”…. “Over 1,000… passengers were in…transit home”…. “This could be a turning point””
PART 7. February 20, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. With SARS preparedness underway in NJ LibertyHealth/ Jersey City Medical Center, where I was President, proposed that our 100 bed community hospital with all single-bedded rooms, be immediately transformed into an EMERGENCY SARS ISOLATION Hospital.
PART 8. February 24, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…every country’s top priority should be to protect its health care workers. This is partly to ensure that hospitals themselves do not become sites where the coronavirus is spread more than it is contained.”
PART 9. February 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Responding to a question about the likelihood of a U.S. outbreak, President Trump said, “I don’t think it’s inevitable…”It probably will. It possibly will,” he continued. “It could be at a very small level, or it could be at a larger level.”
Part 10. March 1, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Stop Surprise Medical Bills for Coronavirus care. (&) Lessons Learned (or not) In California and Washington State from community acquired cases.
PART 11. March 5, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Gov. Andrew Cuomo… would require employers to pay workers and protect their jobs if they are quarantined because of the coronavirus.”
Part 12. March 10, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Tom Bossert, Donald Trump’s former homeland security advisor…(said) that due to the coronavirus outbreak, “We are 10 days from the hospitals getting creamed.”
Part 13.. March 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “If I’m buying real estate in New York, I’ll listen to the President….If I’m asking about infectious diseases, I’m going to listen to Tony Fauci,”
PART 14. March 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “ “Most physicians have never seen this level of angst and anxiety in their careers”…. One said “I am sort of a pariah in my family.”
PART 15. March 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…Crimson Contagion” and imagining an influenza pandemic, was simulated by the Trump administration….in a series of exercises that ran from last January to August.
PART 16. March 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. I am not a clinician or a medical ethicist but articles on Coronavirus patient triage started me Googling………to learn about FUTILE TREATMENT
PART 17. April 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Florida allows churches to continue holding services. Gun stores deemed “essential.” “New York’s private and public hospitals unite to manage patient load and share resources.
PART 18. April 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The federal government’s emergency stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) is depleted, and states will not be receiving any more shipments, administration staff told a House panel.
PART 19. April 13, 2020 CORONOAVIRUS. “…overlooked in the United States’ halting mobilization against the novel coronavirus: the personal aides, hospice attendants, nurses and occupational or physical therapists who deliver medical or support services to patients in their homes.”
PART 20. April 20, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…nothing is mentioned in the “Opening Up America Again” plan about how states should handle a resurgence.”
PART 21. April 23, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “We need to ask, are we using ventilators in a way that makes sense for other diseases but not this one?”
POST 22. April 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. ..the “ACS released a list of 10 issues that should be addressed before a healthcare organization resumes elective surgeries[JM1] ….”
POST 23. May 3, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. … what Dr. Fauci really wants,…”is just to go to a baseball game. That will have to wait. The level of testing for the virus is not adequate enough to allow for such mass gatherings.’ (K)
POST 24. May 7, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said: “there are going to be deaths no matter what”… but that people needed to get back to work.
POST 25. May 10, 2020, CORONAVIRUS. “It is scary to go to work,” said Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser to the president. “I think that I’d be a lot safer if I was sitting at home than I would be going to the West Wing.”
POST 26. May 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS, “Deep cleaning is not a scientific concept”….”there is no universal protocol for a “deep clean” to eradicate the coronavirus”
POST 27. May 19, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Hospital…executives…are taking pay cuts…to help offset the financial fallout from COVID-19.” As “front line” layoffs and furloughs accelerate…
POST 28. May 23, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. ““You’ve got to be kidding me,”..”How could the CDC make that mistake? This is a mess.” CDC conflates viral and antibody tests numbers.
PART 29. May 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The economy did not close down. It closed down for people who, frankly, had the luxury of staying home,” (Governor Cuomo). But not so for frontline workers!
POST 30. June 3,202. CORONAVIRUS. “The wave of mass protests across the United States will almost certainly set off new chains of infection for the novel coronavirus, experts say….
POST 31. June 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “I think we had an unintended consequence: I think we made people afraid to come back to the hospital,”
Post 32. June 16, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Could the Trump administration be pursuing herd immunity by “inaction”? “ If Fauci didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him.”
POST 33. June 21, 2002. CORONAVIRUS….. Smashing (lowering the daily number of cases) v. flattening the curve (maintaining a plateau)
POST 34. June 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. CDC Director Redfield… “the number of coronavirus infections…could be 10 times higher than the confirmed case count — a total of more than 20 million.” As Florida, Texas and Arizona become eipicenters!
POST 35. June 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Pence: “We slowed the spread. We flattened the curve. We saved lives..” While Dr. Fauci “warned that outbreaks in the South and West could engulf the country…”
POST 36. July 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “There’s just a handful of interventions proven to curb the spread of the coronavirus. One of them is contact tracing, and “it’s not going well,” (Dr. Anthony Fauci)..
POST 37. June 8, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. When “crews arrive at a hospital with a patient suspected of having COVID-19, the hospital may have a physical bed open for them, but not enough nurses or doctors to staff it.”
POST 38. July 15, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Some Lessons Learned, or not. AdventHealth CEO Terry Shaw: I wouldn’t hesitate to go to Disney as a healthcare CEO — based on the fact that they’re working extremely hard to keep people safe,” (M)
POST 39. July, 23,2020. CORONAVIRUS. A Tale of Two Cities. Seattle becomes New York (rolls back reopening) while New York becomes Seattle (moves to partial phase 4 reopening)
POST 40. July 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS.” One canon of medical practice is that you order a test only if you can act on the result. And with a turnaround time of a week or two, you cannot. What we have now is often not testing — it’s testing theater.”
POST 41. August 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Whenever a vaccine for the coronavirus becomes available, one thing is virtually certain: There won’t be enough to go around. That means there will be rationing.”
POST 42. August 11, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “I think that if future historians look back on this period, what they will see is a tragedy of denial….
POST 43. August 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS.” “we’ve achieved something great as a nation. We’ve created an unyielding market for FAUCI BOBBLEHEADS”!! (W)
POST 44. September 1, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The CDC…modified its coronavirus testing guidelines…to exclude people who do not have symptoms of Covid-19.” (While Dr. Fauci was undergoing surgery.) A White House official said: “Everybody is going to catch this thing eventually..”
POST 45. September 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Trump on Fauci. ‘You inherit a lot of people, and you have some you love, some you don’t. I like him. I don’t agree with him that often but I like him.’
POST 46. September 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Bill Gates used to think of the US Food and Drug Administration as the world’s premier public-health authority. Not anymore. And he doesn’t trust the Centers for Disease Control and Protection either….”
POST 47. September 24, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Perry N. Halkitis, dean of the School of Public Health at Rutgers University…called New York City’s 35 percent rate for eliciting contacts “very bad.” “For each person, you should be in touch with 75 percent of their contacts within a day,” he said”
POST 48. October 1, 2020. “…you can actually control the outbreak if you do the nonpharmaceutical interventions (social distancing and masks). In the United States we haven’t done them. We haven’t adhered to them; we’ve played with them.” (A)
POST 49. October 4, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. RAPID RESPONSE. “The possibility that the president and his White House entourage were traveling superspreaders is a nightmare scenario for officials in Minnesota, Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania…”
POST 50. October 6, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Monday October 5th will go down as one of the most fraught chapters in the history of American public Health (and national security).
POST 51. October 12, 2020. Rather than a hodge-podge of Emergency Use Authorizations, off-label “experimentation”, right-to-try arguments, and “politicized” compassionate use approvals maybe we need to designate REGIONAL EMERGING VIRUSES REFERRAL CENTERS (REVRCs).
POST 52. October 18, 2020. ZIKA/ EBOLA/ CANDIDA AURIS/ SEVERE FLU/ Tracking. “… if there was a severe flu pandemic, more than 33 million people could be killed across the world in 250 days… Boy, do we not have our act together.” —”- Bill Gates. July 1, 2018
POST 53. October 20, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “a…“herd-immunity strategy” is a contradiction in terms, in that herd immunity is the absence of a strategy.”
POST 54. October 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. POST 54A. New Jersey’s Coronavirus response, led by Governor Murphy and Commissioner of Health Persichilli started with accelerated A+ traditional, evidence-based Public Health practices, developed over years of experience with seasonal flu, swine flu, Zika, and Ebola.
POST 55. October 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. The Testing Conundrum: “ It’s thus very possible to be antigen negative but P.C.R. positive, while still harboring the virus in the body..”
Post 56. October 30, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Trump’s now back in charge. It’s not the doctors.”
POST 57. November 3, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Deborah Birx: the US is entering its “most deadly phase” yet, one that requires “much more aggressive action,”
POST 58. November 4, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…the president has largely shuttered the White House Coronavirus Task Force and doubled down on anti-science language…”
POST 59. November 5, 2020. Coronavirus. “The United States on Wednesday recorded over 100,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day for the first time since the pandemic began..
POST 60. November 7, 2020. “White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has tested positive for the coronavirus….” (A)
POST 61. November 7, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Joe Biden’s top priority entering the White House is fighting both the immediate coronavirus crisis and its complex long-term aftermath…” “Here are the key ways he plans to get US coronavirus cases under control.”
POST 62. November 8, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The United States reported its 10 millionth coronavirus case on Sunday, with the latest million added in just 10 days,…”
POST 63. November 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “New York City-based Mount Sinai Health System has opened a center to help patients recovering from COVID-19 and to study the long-term impact of the disease….”
POST 64. November 10, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “It works! Scientists have greeted with cautious optimism a press release declaring positive interim results from a coronavirus vaccine phase III trial — the first to report on the final round of human testing.”
POST 65. November 11, 2020. CORONAVIRUS, “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took a stronger stance in favor of masks on Tuesday, emphasizing that they protect the people wearing them, rather than just those around them…
POST 66. November.12, 2020. CORONAVIRUS.”… as the country enters what may be the most intense stage of the pandemic yet, the Trump administration remains largely disengaged.”… “President-elect Biden has formed a special transition team dedicated to coordinating the coronavirus response across the government…”
POST 67. November 13, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “When all other options are exhausted, the CDC website says, workers who are suspected or confirmed to have COVID-19 (and “who are well enough to work”) can care for patients who are not severely immunocompromised — first for those who are also confirmed to have COVID-19, then those with suspected cases.”
POST 68. November 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. The CDC “now is hewing more closely to scientific evidence, often contradicting the positions of the Trump administration.”..” “A passenger aboard the first cruise ship to set sail in the Caribbean since the start of the pandemic has tested positive for coronavirus..”
POST 69. November 15, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Colorado Gov. Jared Polis will issue a new executive order outlining steps hospitals will need to take to ready themselves for a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations and directing the hospitals to finalize plans for converting beds into ICU beds, adding staffing and scaling back on or eliminating elective procedures….
POST 70. November 16, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Atlas criticized Michigan’s new Covid-19 restrictions..urging people to “rise up” against the new public health measures.
POST 71. November 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. ”Hospitals overrun as U.S. reports 1 million new coronavirus cases in a week.” “But in Florida, where the number of coronavirus infections remains the third-highest in the nation, bars and schools remain open and restaurants continue to operate at full capacity.”
POST 72. November 18, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The Health and Human Services Department will not work with President-elect Joe Biden’s (PANDEMIC) team until the General Services Administration makes a determination that he won the election,….”
POST 73. November 19, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…officials at the CDC…urged Americans to avoid travel for Thanksgiving and to celebrate only with members of their immediate households…” When will I trust a vaccine? to the last question I always answer: When I see Tony Fauci take one….”
POST 74. November 20, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Pfizer…submitted to the FDA for emergency use authorization for their coronavirus vaccine candidate. —FDA issued an EUA for the drug baricitinib, in combination with remdesivir, as WHO says remdesivir doesn’t do much of anything.
POST 75. November 21, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The president and CEO of one of the nation’s largest non-profit health systems says he won’t be wearing a mask at work because he’s recovered from COVID-19, and doing so would only be a “symbolic gesture” because he considers himself immune from the virus….
POST 76. November 23, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” Ventilators..”just keep people alive while the people caring for them can figure out what’s wrong and fix the problem. And at the moment, we just don’t have enough of those people.”
POST 77. November 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Pope Francis: “When I got really sick at the age of 21, I had my first experience of limit, of pain and loneliness.”.. “….Aug. 13, 1957. I got taken to a hospital…”….” I remember especially two nurses from this time.”…” They fought for me to the end, until my eventual recovery.”
POST 78. November 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Kelby Krabbenhoft is no longer president and CEO of Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health.” “…for not wearing a face covering… “ because “He considered himself immune from the virus.”
POST 79. November 28, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Mayo Clinic. “”Our surge plan expands into the garage…”..””Not where I’d want to put my grandfather or my grandmother,” … though it “may have to happen.”
POST 80. November 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Op-Ed in the Jersey Journal. Do you know which hospital is right for you if you have coronavirus? | Opinion
POST 81. December 1, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Dr. Atlas, … who espoused controversial theories and rankled government scientists while advising President Trump on the coronavirus pandemic, resigned…”
POST 82. December 3, 2020. CORONAVIRIUS. The NBA jumped to the front of the line for Coronavirus testing….while front line nurses often are still waiting. Who will similarly “hijack” the vaccine?
POST 83. December 4, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “California Gov. Gavin Newsom says he will impose a new, regional stay-at-home order for areas where capacity at intensive care units falls below 15%.”… East Tennessee –“This is the first time the health care capability benchmark has been in the red..”
POST 84. December 6, 2020. CPRONAVIRUS. “ More than 100,000 Americans are in the hospital with COVID-19…” “We’re seeing C.D.C. …awaken from (its) politics-induced coma…”…Dr. Fauci “to be a chief medical adviser in Biden’s incoming administration..”.. “Trump administration leaves states to grapple with how to distribute scarce vaccines..”
POST 85. December 7, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…Florida, Gov. DeSantis’ administration engaged in a pattern of spin and concealment that misled the public on the gravest health threat the state has ever faced..”.. “NY Gov. Cuomo said…the state will implement a barrage of new emergency actions..”… Rhode Island and Massachusetts open field hospitals… “Biden Names Health Team to Fight Pandemic”
POST 86. December 9, 2020. If this analysis seems a bit incomprehensible it is because “free Coronavirus test” is often an oxymoron! with charges ranging from as little as $23 to as much as $2,315… Laws (like for free Coronavirus tests) are Like Sausages. Better Not to See Them Being Made. (Please allow about 20 seconds for the text to download. Thanx!)
POST 87. December 10, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…Rudolph W. Giuliani, the latest member of President Trump’s inner circle to contract Covid-19, has acknowledged that he received at least two of the same drugs the president received. He even conceded that his “celebrity” status had given him access to care that others did not have.”
POST 88. December 11, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “As COVID-19 cases surge, the federal government is releasing data about hospital capacity at facilities around the country….”The new data paints the picture of how a specific hospital is experiencing the pandemic,”…
PART 89. December 12, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. THE VACCINE!!! “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Winston Churchill
POST 90. December 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…the first doses of a Covid-19 vaccine have been given to the American public..”…” Each person who receives a vaccine needs two doses, and it’s up to states to allocate their share of vaccines.”
POST 91. December 15, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “UPMC will first give (vaccination) priority to those in critical jobs. That includes a range of people working in critical units, from workers cleaning the emergency room and registering patients to doctors and nurses.. “Finally, if needed, UPMC will use a lottery to select who will be scheduled first.”
POST 92. December 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “..each state — and each hospital system — has come up with its own (vaccination) plan and priorities. The result has been a sometimes confusing constellation of rules and groupings that has left health care workers wondering where they stand.” (Trump appointee July 4th email “…we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD,”)
POST 93. December 19, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. On NPR Congresswoman Shalala (D-Florida) said she wouldn’t jump the vaccination line in Miami; then added she would get vaccinated in Washington this week. This, even though Congress has failed to pass “essential” Coronavirus legislation. So who are our “essential” workers?
POST 94. December 21, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “A doctor at an L.A. County public hospital said the number of COVID-19 patients is “increasing exponentially, without an end in sight.”.. “I haven’t done ICU medicine since I was a resident — you don’t want me adjusting your ventilator,” he said. “That’s the challenge, actually — it isn’t so much space, it’s staff…”
POST 95. December 23, 2020. “The Murphy administration may step in to force (New Jersey) hospitals to report COVID-19 outbreaks among staff.”
POST 96. December 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Achieving herd immunity against the coronavirus could require as much as 90 percent of the population to be vaccinated, Anthony Fauci…”…”..he hesitated to state a number as high as 90% weeks ago because many Americans still seemed skeptical about vaccine….”
POST 97. December 27, 2020. “A new variant of the coronavirus that has been spreading through the UK and other countries has not yet been detected in the United States..”.. . But if new-wave medicines like antivirals and antibody therapy contributed to the development of viral variants, it will be “a reminder for all the medical community that we need to use these treatment options carefully.”
POST 98. December 28, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Governor Andrew Cuomo announced new penalties in order to rein in possible vaccination fraud…
POST 99. December 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “ICUs are being overwhelmed across many parts of California. Statewide aggregate ICU availability has been at 0% since Christmas Eve…. a surge on top of a surge on top of a surge.”… “hospitals are getting close to the point where they would begin putting COVID-positive patients under the care of COVID-positive staff who are asymptomatic.”
POST 100. December 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Front line hospital workers – in the ER, ICUs, EMS, acute medical care, behavioral health – are amongst the most courageous, heroic and dedicated colleagues you will ever meet.
POST 101. December 30, 2020.CORONAVIRUS. Is there a point where the increasing Coronavirus trajectory so far exceeds the slow growth of the vaccination rate that reaching herd immunity through vaccinations becomes less likely?
POST 102. January 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “We’ve taken the people with the least amount of resources and capacity and asked them to do the hardest part of the vaccination — which is actually getting the vaccines administered into people’s arms,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health. “Ultimately, the buck seems to stop with no one,”…
POST 103. January 4, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Fauci said “that the United States would not follow Britain’s lead in front-loading first vaccine injections, potentially delaying the administration of second doses…Dr. Moore – ”British officials “seem to have abandoned science completely now and are just trying to guess their way out of a mess.”
POST 104. January 6, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Paramedics in Southern California are being told to conserve oxygen and not to bring patients to the hospital who have little chance of survival…”
POST 105. January 8, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. POST 105. January 8, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Facing a shortage of vaccinators, the Association of Immunization Managers… recommends relaxing regulation or adjusting licensing requirements. At least two states, Massachusetts and New York, have changed their laws in recent weeks to expand those who are eligible to give shots.”
POST 106. January 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. The riots at the Capitol could have been a superspreader event. “From what I saw… you had a large congregation of individuals who were in close contact for an extended period of time and almost universally unmasked…. many coming and going on buses as well, also unmasked, and hanging out in hotel lobbies.”
POST 107. January 8, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Our job is to make sure the vaccine isn’t politicized the way masks were politicized,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said after getting her vaccine. South Carolina Rep.-elect Nancy Mace, a Republican, wrote that “Congress shouldn’t be putting themselves first in line for the COVID-19 vaccination when the average American can’t get it.”
POST 108. January 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. (vaccination)”Line-cutters will be named and shamed. It’s inevitable, as will be the congressional hearings and front-page investigative stories ferreting out who saved their own skin at the expense of others.”
POST 109.January 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “President-elect Joe Biden will aim to release nearly every available dose of the coronavirus vaccine when he takes office, a break with the Trump administration’s strategy of holding back half of US vaccine production to ensure second doses are available.
POST 110. January 13, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. ““The (federal) government is changing the way it allocates Covid vaccine doses, now basing it on how quickly states can administer shots and the size of their elderly population.”… “New York State sent a letter to hospitals saying if they don’t use their vaccine allocations by the end of this week, they won’t receive any further allocations.”
POST 111. January 14, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Visitors from Toronto to New York to Buenos Aires have long flocked to Florida for sun, surf and shopping. Now they are coming for the Covid-19 vaccine….
POST 112. January 14, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. CHINA – “Eleven million people are under lockdown in Hebei province after a new cluster of coronavirus infections.
PART 113. January 17, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. The Next President Actually Has a Covid Plan… New York City and other places in the state expect to exhaust their supply of doses as early as next week… Charles Barkley said during the “NBA on TNT” broadcast that pro athletes should get the first round of the vaccine…..
POST 114. January 18, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “When government programs that have been unattended, underfunded and bogged down by red tape suddenly have to meet a huge demand in a crisis, they can’t cope and people suffer….”
POST 115. January 21, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. A year ago today an unnumbered POST was headlined “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday confirmed the first U.S. case of a deadly new coronavirus that has killed six people in China.” The CORONAVIRUS CONTENT TRACKING PROJECT started with HISTORIOGRAPHY and over time moved to LESSONS LEARNED, RAPID RESPONSE, and THE VACCINATION PROGRAM. Now 115 POSTS later – the BIDEN CORONAVIRUS PLAN.
POST 116. January 22, 2021. President Biden – “We’re entering what may be the toughest and deadliest period of the virus. We must set aside politics and finally face this pandemic as one nation.”
POST 117. January 23, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. 1.Dr. Fauci:“The idea that you can get up here….”and.. let the science speak”… “It is somewhat of a liberating feeling.” 2.updated CDC guidance:”.. providers could give the second dose up to six weeks after the first dose..” 3.Dr. Fauci: people would be “taking a chance” if they follow the CDC’s updated guidance.
POST 118. January 24, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Unfortunately, we’ve let this virus spread extensively and are launching the vaccination campaign at the height of the threat,” Dr. Meyers said. “The more the virus spreads before the vaccine reaches people, the fewer deaths we can prevent with the vaccine.”
POST 119. January 27, 2010. CORONAVIRUS. Amazon is offering its help to President Joe Biden with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee, included the help of companies like Starbucks, Costco and Microsoft in a plan to vaccinate 45,000 residents a day.
POST 120. January 28, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The fact that four vaccines backed by the federal government seem to be less effective against the (South African) B.1.351 variant has unsettled federal officials and vaccine experts alike. Facing this uncertainty, many researchers said it was imperative to get as many people vaccinated as possible — quickly. Lowering the rate of infection could thwart the contagious variants while they are still rare, and prevent other viruses from gaining new mutations that could cause more trouble.”
POST 121. January 30, 2021. CORONVIRUS. Will our communities become stratified by which vaccine is distributed? 95%ters v. 72%ters? Will the easier distribution of the J&J vaccine drive its inequitable distribution to” hard-hit, marginalized, and medically underserved communities.” (thanx! to XJ/LA)
POST 122. February 1, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr.Fauci endorses double-masking. Dr.Osterholm disagrees!
POST 123. February 4, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Nursing homes across the country are facing the same struggle, as workers have been more reluctant than residents to be vaccinated…
POST 124. February 5, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Osterholm ” …it may be time to..go with a ‘first-dose only’ approach, so more people over the age of 65 can have at least some protection right away. He said that would require delaying second doses until this summer.” Dr.Fauci “warned against this practice, and cautioned people about “the danger” that could come with focusing only on the first dose.”
POST 125. June 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “States are rolling back Covid-19 restrictions as new cases trend down from record highs across the country. But experts warn it might be too much too soon as variants pose an increased risk and the pandemic… is far from over.”
POST 126. February 11, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “There will be more coronavirus outbreaks in the future. Bats and other mammals are rife with strains and species of this abundant family of viruses. Some of these pathogens will inevitably spill over the species barrier and cause new pandemics. It’s only a matter of time.” (A)
POST 127. February 12, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “… Trump only agreed to be hospitalized when aides told him that he could walk to Marine One or he could wait until his case progressed and he would be carried out.”
POST 128. February 14, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new research on Wednesday that found wearing a cloth mask over a surgical mask offers more protection against the coronavirus, as does tying knots on the ear loops of surgical masks…
POST 130. February 16, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “A second person who had contracted the Ebola virus died this week in the Democratic Republic of Congo, marking another outbreak just three months after the nation outlasted the virus’s second-worst outbreak in history…”
POST 131. February 17, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “It really is right now – a race between how quickly new variants, particularly the U.K. variant, can spread in the United States and how quickly we can get people vaccinated”
POST 132. February 20, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “In Texas, where over 2.5 million people are still without power, the state health department said this week’s vaccine shipments wouldn’t arrive until Wednesday at the earliest.”
POST 133. February 23, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Going off your meds is a surefire way to aggravate your doctor. What if a whole country did it?” The United Kingdom has veered into uncharted territory by changing tack and introducing a revised COVID-19 vaccination protocol, one that involves distributing the second dose at 12 weeks, rather than the prescribed 21 days.”
POST 134. February 24, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. The first tranche of the J&J (single dose) vaccine must go to K-12 teachers, so schools can open safely in the first 100 days of the Biden Administration. The federal government…”can set up its own vaccination centers in regions with eligible populations it’s trying to target.” We owe our front-line teachers nothing less!
POST 135. February 27, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “As Chief Executive Officers of New York’s major health care systems, we would like to provide facts to clear up confusion in the public and the media regarding decisions to discharge patients to nursing homes during New York’s spring coronavirus surge.”
POST 136. March 2, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. ““The governors of Texas and Mississippi both announced on Tuesday they would be lifting their states’ mask mandates and rolling back many of their Covid-19 health mandates..”…while “The US could experience a “fourth surge” of coronavirus before the majority of the country is vaccinated.”
POST 137. March 4, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The clamor for hard-to-get Covid-19 vaccines has created armies of anxious Americans who have resorted to hunting for leftovers on the fringes of the country’s patchwork vaccination system. They haunt pharmacies at the end of the day in search of an extra, expiring dose. They drive from clinic to clinic hoping that someone was a no-show to their appointment. They cold-call pharmacies like eager telemarketers: Any extras today? Maybe tomorrow? Some pharmacists have even given them a nickname: vaccine lurkers.” (H)
POST 138. March 6, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “New cases are decreasing in the third wave because we are past the holidays, not because of vaccinations. It is a common misconception that the decrease we are seeing in new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the U.S. is due to vaccinations. The two aren’t related; at least yet.”
POST 140. March 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “In West Virginia, they are bracing for the second wave….. Not coronavirus but opioid overdoses, with one scourge driving a resurgence of the other.
POST 141. March 11, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Today is the first anniversary of the WHO declaration that the novel coronavirus was a Public Health Emergency of International Concern… “To truly prepare itself against the next pandemic, the U.S. has to reimagine what preparedness looks like.”
POST 142. March 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Candida auris is a superbug, a pathogen that can evade drugs made to kill it—and early signs suggest the COVID-19 pandemic may be propelling infections of the highly dangerous yeast. That’s because C. auris is particularly prominent in hospital settings, which have been flooded with people this year due to the coronavirus.”
POST 143. March 17, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The Trump administration sought to suppress Covid-19 testing in the United States last year by softening guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on who needed to be tested, a House panel said Monday.”
POST 144. March 20, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. ““The vaccine hesitancy we are seeing isn’t just about Covid vaccines,”… “It is a general reflection of Americans’ lack of trust in science, the pharmaceutical industry, and large health care institutions. We need a full court press on science and vaccine education right now to prevent more aggressive Covid-19 variants from developing and taking hold.”
POST 145. March 25, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Efforts to disseminate Covid-19 vaccines as widely as possible are hitting an unexpected obstacle: health-care workers who decline the shots.
POST 146. March 30, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Osterholm told Becker’s: “This is the perfect storm,”…”Here is Europe locking down and having problems containing B.1.1.7, even with vaccinations and previous infection histories. Here we are opening up as wide as we can. We are literally just walking into the mouth of the virus saying, ‘Don’t worry.’” (M)
POST 147. April 5, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The pandemic helped cement the shift to “a philosophy of really focusing on the role of the physician in reasoning through ambiguous and unknown problems as the focus of education, rather than teaching students that the role of physician was to memorize a body of knowledge that was already in existence and good enough for what usually happens.”
POST 148. April 7, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. While the Biden administration accelerates vaccinations to ward off numerous variants and as more young people are being hospitalized, states, even with increasing case rates are on paths to fully reopen. Politics v. public health!
POST 149. April 10, 2021. CORONAVIRIUS. “From Michigan to Massachusetts, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are on the rise again. Deaths will soon follow. “ ”.. the Biden administration is facing renewed calls to delay second vaccine doses and blanket more of the U.S. population with an initial shot.”
POST 150. April 10, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The use of so-called COVID-19 “vaccine passports” is quickly becoming a divisive issue across the US – with several states, including New York, embracing the idea, while others have already moved to ban them.”
POST 151. April 14, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. the J&J vaccination pause. “ Federal officials are concerned that doctors may not be trained to spot or treat the rare disorder if recipients of the vaccine develop symptoms of it…” “…a standard treatment for blood clots — use of an anticoagulant drug — could be dangerous or even fatal in such cases…”
POST 152. April 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s director said Saturday authorities are considering mixing COVID-19 vaccines because the country’s domestically made doses “don’t have very high protection rates,”
POST 153. April 18, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “At least 35 hospitals across Michigan were listed Thursday as nearing capacity and three were at full capacity for COVID-19 patients..”.. We can manufacture beds. We can open up beds. We can create entire wings of the hospital if we have to, but if we don’t have staff for those beds, we’ve got nothing.”..
POST 154. April 19, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Breakthrough infections, which occur when fully vaccinated people are infected by the pathogen that their shots were designed to protect against, are an entirely expected part of any vaccination process.” “Pfizer’s chief executive said that a third dose of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine was “likely” to be needed within a year of the initial two-dose inoculation — followed by annual vaccinations.”
POST 155. April 24, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. As the J&J vaccine pause is ended Senator Johnson said “The science tells us that vaccines are 95% effective. So if you have a vaccine, quite honestly, what do you care if your neighbor has one or not? I mean, what is it to you?”
POST 156. April 28, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. As CDC revises guidance on outdoor masking, Texas Governor Abbott says “the state is “very close” to herd immunity… despite acknowledging that he does not know what the herd immunity threshold is for the virus, an uncertainty echoed by the public health community.”
POST 157. April 25, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Ohio hospitals; “We agreed in multiple conversations, there’s nothing in fighting a pandemic that creates a competitive advantage.”…
POST 158. May 5, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. . As populations get closer to herd immunity “ it may be helpful to introduce some nuance to what we mean by the term. Nationwide herd immunity. Regional herd immunity. Temporary herd immunity. Endemicity.”
POST 159. May 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Without deeper sharing of expertise in how to make vaccines…waiving patent obligations is unlikely to be a game-changer… Having access to the “recipe” certainly helps, but understanding how to put it together and produce it at scale is something else.”
POST 161. May 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Even if the spread of Covid-19 decreases enough to allow a return of most activities, there are some aspects of pandemic life that epidemiologists say will persist much longer. In particular, they say that masks are a norm that should continue, even if that view puts them at odds with the new C.D.C. guidance. More than 80 percent of them say people should continue to wear masks when indoors with strangers for at least another year, and outdoors in crowds.”
POST 162. May 21, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is refusing to lift his indoor mask mandate for vaccinated residents…” “…fully vaccinated residents in New York and Connecticut are no longer required to wear masks..”..” “California says it isn’t ready to follow the federal lead and unmask, at least for another month..”.. “..Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Tuesday prohibiting state governmental entities such as counties, public school districts, public health authorities and government officials from requiring mask wearing.”
POST 163. May 23, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. RWJBarnabas Health in New Jersey announced a mandate…saying supervisors and those of higher rank must get the vaccine by June 30. They will eventually require the system’s 35,000 employees to do the same.
POST 164. May 26, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. On Wednesday, health minister Norihisa Tamura warned Olympic organizers they would have to “secure their own” hospital beds for anyone falling ill at the Games, explaining the government would not release beds set aside for Japanese covid-19 patients.”
POST 165. May 31,2001. CORONAVIRUS. “Like all pandemics, this one will end either with millions — maybe billions — being infected or being vaccinated. This time, world leaders have a choice, but little time to make that choice before it is made for them.”
POST 166. June 3, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “President Biden said Wednesday that he has asked intelligence agencies to double down on their efforts to investigate whether the coronavirus originated from human contact with an animal or in an laboratory in China, saying there is not “sufficient information” to assess whether one is more likely than the other.”
POST 167. June 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Hospitals prevaricate on mandatory staff vaccinations. Florida’s Governor forbids cruise ship vaccine mandates. Pfizer and Moderna apply for FDA full approval.
POST 168. June 10, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Our species has a tendency to get distracted. We have a very strong appetite for distraction, and when something is not in the spotlight, when it’s not a crisis anymore, we tend to forget and move on to something else. So the biggest challenge is going to be maintaining focus on this next step of developing vaccines that anticipate pandemics.”
POST 169. June 14, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Hospitals in Washington, D.C…announced a consensus agreement to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for more than 30,000 workers, 70% of which are already vaccinated. Each of 14 hospitals will set their own deadline…”
POST 170. June 17, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Dr. Ashish Jha…is worried about the potential impact the delta variant could have in the United States… “I’m concerned about the Delta variant,”… “Why? Most contagious variant yet. Wreaked havoc in India. Spiking cases in UK. Growing rapidly in the US.”
POST 171. June 19, 2021. “A 34-year-old man (a Covid-19 survivor) has been diagnosed with India’s first known case of “green fungus” infection.”… “Green fungus is the new infection to join the earlier known cases of black, white and yellow fungus.”…”green fungus was earlier seen only as a “junior partner” in other infections… In the current patient, this fungus is acting as the aggressor.”
POST 172. June 23, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Morgan Stanley chief executive James Gorman said: “If you can go into a restaurant in New York City, you can come into the office.”…”remote work can “dramatically undermine” the character and culture a company is attempting to build; and “virtually eliminates spontaneous learning and creativity.”
POST 173. June 26, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The daily toll of COVID-19, as measured by new cases and the growing number of deaths, overlooks a shadowy set of casualties: the rising risk of mental health problems among health care professionals working on the frontlines of the pandemic.”
POST 175. July 5, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Can a health care worker who is not against vaccines in general still harbor sincere concerns that scientists don’t yet know about all the side effects of these vaccines? Yes, says Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD — but those people should not work in health care.”
POST 176. July 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Mercy Springfield ( Missouri) hospital…” ran out of ventilators for its patients over the Fourth of July weekend…”…“Mercy will require all current and future employees to be fully vaccinated.”…“The US government is deploying a Covid-19 surge team to provide public health support in southwest Missouri
POST 177. July 12, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. the Delta variant is “the 2020 version of Covid-19 on steroids,”… “It is the most hypertransmissible, contagious version of the virus we’ve seen to date…it’s a superspreader strain if there ever was one .” but… now, there’s a Delta Plus variant…
POST 178. July 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Tennessee’s top vaccine official says she has been fired as punishment for doing her job in the face of political pushback.”..” More than 180 state and local public health leaders…have resigned, retired or been fired since April 1…”“Former President Trump and his GOP allies have stepped up attacks on Anthony Fauci…”
POST 179. July 16, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “It, therefore, follows that the “harm principle” (“first, do no harm.”) can be used to justify compulsory vaccination programs in specific instances where the community interests or benefits are deemed to be significant.”
POST 180, July 20, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Most people will either get vaccinated, or have been previously infected, or they will get this Delta variant,”.. “And for most people who get this Delta variant, it’s going to be the most serious virus that they get in their lifetime in terms of the risk of putting them in the hospital,”
POST 181. July 22, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Health experts fear the Tokyo Olympics could become a COVID-19 superspreader event.” “Whatever happens in Japan isn’t likely going to stay in Japan since all of the athletes and accompanying coaches and staff will be returning to their home countries.”
POST 182. July 26, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R): “Folks supposed to have common sense.”…“But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.” ““Beginning in mid-September, New York City will require all of its 340,000 municipal workers, including police, firefighters and teachers, to either be vaccinated against COVID-19 or tested weekly.”
POST 183. July 29, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. When I was appointed President and CEO of Jersey City Medical Center in1989 in the peak of the HIV/ AIDS crisis, we had a dedicated, and always full, dedicated 60 bed AIDS unit, staffed by one full time nurse and numerous part-time and per diem nurses. Today, right now, hospitals caught in the Covid-19 surge, are forced to redeploy nursing staff, respiratory therapists and other clinicians, most without prior infectious diseases experience. Why are we tolerating the unvaccinated putting our hospital staffs at risk?
POST 185. August 6, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. ‘If you aren’t going to help, please get out of the way’: Biden turns up the pressure on GOP governors as Delta spreads”
POST 186. August 8, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late,” she added, referring to patients who have to be put on a ventilator.” (A) “There is no one definition of what the end of a pandemic means.”.. “The question of when the crisis will be over is a layered one — with different answers from local, national and global perspectives.”
POST 187. August 11, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “As a result of the increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, the state of Florida requested 300 ventilators from the federal government.”… “An 11-month-old girl with Covid-19 is stable and no longer intubated one day after she was airlifted to a Texas hospital 150 miles away because of a shortage of pediatric beds in the Houston area.”
POST 188. August 15, 20201. CORONAVIRUS. “According to an internal CDC briefing….an estimated 1.1 million people have already gotten unauthorized booster shots…”….”If it is left up to the honor system, I think many Americans will suddenly wake up and find themselves immunocompromised enough to get a 3rd dose,”
POST 189. August 19,2021. CORONAVIRUS. “There wasn’t a single I.C.U. bed available in Alabama on Wednesday…”…”A triage plan on the Alabama health department’s website suggests that “persons with severe mental retardation” are among those who “may be poor candidates for ventilator support.”
POST 190, August 21, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “We’re looking, in essence, at running two systems — a COVID system and a non-COVID system of care,”..“Emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and certified paramedics can now care for patients in Mississippi hospitals and emergency rooms under a new health office order issued by the Mississippi State Department of Health on Wednesday.”
POST 191. August 27, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Anthony Fauci, MD, chief medical advisor to the president and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explained that late September gives the United States time to set up the logistics.” This is not medical science, but perhaps Political Science?
POST 192. August 30, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Gov. John Bel Edwards on Hurricane Ida – “I hate to say it this way, but we have a lot of people on ventilators today and they don’t work without electricity,” he said.”
POST 193. September 3, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Nurses are leaving their hospitals and becoming travel nurses at hospitals across town “because they can make $4,000, $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 a week while not having to relocate anywhere..”
POST 194. August 2, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Recently-released data is painting a grim picture of the opioid epidemic that has gripped the United States — as the country is still grappling with the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than half a million Americans. Some people are calling them twin pandemics that have collided”…“Faced with a novel health crisis, researchers are collecting data on the long-term impact of using opioids to treat COVID-19 pain…
POST 195. September 6, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “…there are “zero ICU beds left for children in Dallas County, Texas,”.,..”That means if your child’s in a car wreck, if your child has a congenital heart defect or something and needs an ICU bed, or more likely if they have Covid and need an ICU bed, we don’t have one. Your child will wait for another child to die… (county judge Clay Jenkins)
POST 196. SEPTEMBER 11, 2001. PART 1. Military helicopters and jets were overhead, as President Bush was getting ready to leave NYC. PART 2. LESSONS LEARNED memorandum by hospital CEO Jonathan Metsch goes “viral”…
POST 197. September 12, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Idaho officials have instituted “crisis standards of care” to help 10 hospitals and health care systems decide how to allocate personnel and resources to deal with a crush of COVID-19 patients.”… “The Washington Medical Coordination Center oversees facilitating transfers in the state, and it’s warning we could be nearing the point of “Crisis Standards of Care,” just like Idaho.” .. “These crisis models don’t actually save more lives, they just save different lives..”
POST 198. September 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. A pundit said “The most elegant policy riposte to the anti-vaxxers… is to refuse to allow Medicare or Medicaid to pay their medical bills in the event they become seriously ill. Private health insurers might also follow suit.” (but is making our hospitals become the bill collectors right?)
POST 199. September 19, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Crisis Standards of Care. “… to his knowledge, no patient in Idaho has been taken off life-support therapy in order to provide that therapy to another patient who has a better prognosis.” “While that has yet to occur, if we continue on this path, it will,”
POST 201. September 27, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “A multibillion-dollar institution in the Seattle area is sitting on nearly $12 billion in cash… received at least $509 million in government funds (from) a federal program that is supposed to prevent health care providers from capsizing during the coronavirus pandemic.”
“Based on our estimates…we find preventable COVID-19 hospitalizations cost $5.7 billion from June to August in 2021.”…
POST 202. September 30, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “..NY Governor Hochul signed an executive order expanding healthcare worker eligibility requirements…to head off potential staffing shortages fueled by the state’s new COVID-19 vaccination requirements.” “The.. order allows out-of-state/ out-of-country healthcare workers to practice in New York…”..”It allows EMTs graduates to temporarily pitch in at additional healthcare settings; allows various types of healthcare workers to more easily administer and order COVID-19 vaccinations; enables telemedicine physician visits in nursing homes; permits facilities to more quickly discharge, transfer or receive patients…”
POST 203. October 3, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “.. more than 125,000 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases have been reported in pregnant people, including more than 22,000 hospitalized cases and 161 deaths”…The risk is not just to the mother. Covid-19 in pregnancy can cause preterm birth or babies born so sick they have to go straight to the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU.”
POST 204. October 5, 2021.CORONAVIRUS. “News that an experimental antiviral drug from Merck appears to halve the risk of hospitalization or death from Covid-19 has bolstered hopes of finding a simple at-home treatment for the virus.”..” A more blunt assessment came from vaccine scientist Dr. Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine. “It’s not a miracle cure but a companion tool, So get vaccinated.””
POST 205. October 11, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. The AAP reported nearly 226,000 new child cases over the past week ending. “Hospital care for children does not occur in isolation from that of adults. Many of the resources we use are the same—a twenty-pound baby and a two-hundred-pound man might use the same kind of ventilator, for example. Dialysis machines, which could cleanse a seven-year-old’s blood as easily as his grandfather’s, are in high demand. Pediatric resident physicians, nurses, and respiratory therapists get cross-deployed to care for adults during the surges.”
POST 206. October 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. to borrow from Winston Churchill about where we are with the pandemic – “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
POST 207. October 17, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “…if you choose your own unauthorized booster shot, what happens if later research proves a different combination is better? That’s why experts say it’s a bad idea to become your own vaccine advisory committee and get a shot out of turn.”
POST 208. October 22, 2021, CORONAVIRUS. “What is the “delta plus” variant?” Scientists are monitoring the delta-related variant — known as AY.4.2. — to see if it might spread more easily or be more deadly than previous versions of the coronavirus.
POST 209. October 28, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The quest at Mount Sinai began with a mystery.”…”America was not simply struggling to contain a once-in-a-century pandemic, caused by a virus far more dangerous than seasonal influenza. Many patients were, for unknown reasons, not recovering.”
POST 211. November 4, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Colorado – “…there are patients who really ought to be in an intensive care unit but instead they’re in an emergency room. Or they ought to be in a step-down unit but instead they’re on the floor. Or they ought to be getting one-to-one nursing, and instead they’re getting two-to-one, or three-to-one nursing….”
POST 212. November 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “They went into hospitals with heart attacks, kidney failure or in a psychiatric crisis. They left with covid-19…” “A new report shows the coronavirus pandemic had a direct increase on the number of healthcare-acquired infections in hospitals nationwide.”
POST 213. November 13, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Since the earliest days of the pandemic, there has been one collective goal for bringing it to an end: achieving herd immunity…Now the herd is restless. And experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set aside herd immunity as a national goal.”
POST 214. November 20, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “This virus is doing what this virus does,” said Michael Osterholm… “We don’t understand why surges start, we don’t understand why they end.” (A)
POST 215. November 26, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Fauci on the new South African variant: “It’s not going to be possible to keep this infection out of the country. The question is: Can you slow it down?”
POST 216. December 1, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Covid cacophony: as states struggle to address health care staffing shortages, a federal court puts Biden administration health care worker vaccination mandate on hold.
POST 217. December 3, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. President Biden Announces New Actions to Protect Americans Against the Delta and Omicron Variants as We Battle COVID-19 this Winter
POST 218. December 5, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “In some ways, Delta is the ideal variant: It’s transmissible enough to dominate more dangerous variants, and its virulence can be controlled through vaccination. In the next few weeks, we’ll find out whether Omicron will have its own silver lining—or whether it’ll be catastrophically worse.”
POST 219. December 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Entering uncharted territory, the U.S. counts 500,000 Covid-related deaths.”… “So yes, I am furious at the unvaccinated, and I am not ashamed of disclosing that. I am no longer trying to understand them or educate them.”
POST 220 December 13, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Osterholm. “You cannot outrun the game clock with this pandemic. This virus will find you… We’ve seen health care systems virtually broken by this pandemic. They just couldn’t provide critical care to non-Covid patients.” (A)
POST 221. December 18, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine was going to be a shot for the world. Now, under the weight of a mountain of bad PR, one wonders if the world will want it.”
POST 222. December 20, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. So why my “inside baseball” focus on COVID-19 from the perspective of a retired hospital CEO?
POST 223. December 28, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Links for a case study of Crisis Standards of Care.
POST 224. December 29, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “crisis standards of care protocols in Maryland – “It also allows us to slim down documentation,… allows unconventional staffing models such as using nurses that have not been bedside. It also sets the expectations for the community that it’s not business as usual.”
POST 225. January 3, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Be first, be right, be credible,” are among the most important principles for health authorities to follow in a crisis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shared in a pamphlet on crisis communication in 2018….”
Post 226. January 5, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. New York City – “The city’s ambulance corps are so understaffed because of the COVID-19 surge, they’re now under new orders to try to convince stable patients with flu-like symptoms not to go to the hospital.”
POST 227. January 10, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Stay indoors. But also return in person. Wear a mask. Not that one. The expensive one, that you can’t find. Take rapid tests. Which you also can’t find. But if you find them, don’t buy them. Rapid tests don’t work. You need PCR. There are zero appointments in your area.” (F)
POST 228. January 13, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “State officials are attempting to address California’s staffing shortage through a sweeping policy change that allows asymptomatic healthcare workers who have tested positive for the coronavirus to return to work immediately.” “Asymptomatic health professionals who had tested positive for COVID-19 should “preferably be assigned to work with COVID positive patients.”
POST 229. January 16, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “It is now highly unlikely that the U.S. will hit the ~85-90% of Americans vaccinated to get to the other side of the pandemic…”
POST 230. January 20, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “Dr. Fauci also said that the world is still in the first of what he considered to be the five phases of the pandemic. The first is the “truly pandemic” phase, “where the whole world is really very negatively impacted,” followed by deceleration, control, elimination and eradication.”…to paraphrase Churchill – “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”..
POST 231. January 24, 202. CORONAVIRUS. “Florida’s top public health official in Orlando has been placed on administrative leave after sending an email to his employees noting their lackluster coronavirus vaccination rates and urging them to get the shots.”
POST 232. January 28, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “A Boston hospital’s denial of a heart transplant to a man who is unvaccinated for Covid-19 has generated national attention, but experts say mandating vaccines is in keeping with other long-standing requirements that patients have to meet to receive an organ — including getting other shots…”
POST 233. February 2, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “The same virus can cause endemic, epidemic or pandemic infections: it depends on the interplay of a population’s behaviour, demographic structure, susceptibility and immunity, plus whether viral variants emerge.”
POST 234. February 2, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell demanded an end to the COVID-19 state of emergency on Wednesday , saying it was time for Americans to get on with their lives after two years on a ‘hellish highway.’”
POST 235. February 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Over time, the U.S. health care sector has implemented various pieces of the (pandemic) safety-assessment-and-improvement puzzle, but it has not instituted a thorough system of safety that reaches from the boardroom to the front lines and that can be maintained during times of crisis.”
POST 236. February 22, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. MOUNT SINAI AT HOME – “We began thinking about how we could use hospital-at-home to meet the needs of our hospital system in our community, in terms of responding to the crisis of COVID-19…”
POST 238. March 5, 2022, CORONAVIRUS. “Two different scientists can look at the same set of data and come up with different conclusions. That’s not to say that one person is being unscientific or ignoring the scientific process,” said Leana Wen, an emergency physician and a professor at George Washington University. “Public health policy is also a measure of values.””
POST 239. March 9, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “War is an infectious disease’s best friend,” says Michael Osterholm, “It challenges every public health program you can possibly have. It limits the medical care available for those who might be seriously ill, and often fosters transmission when so many people are crowded into bomb shelter locations and on trains. This is going to be the perfect storm of one serious challenge after another.” (E)
POST 240. March 15, 2022. ““China is modifying its Covid-19 playbook amid a surge in cases as it seeks to avoid strains on its healthcare system.”
POST 241. March 20, 2022, CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Ashish Jha will serve as the new White House COVID-19 response coordinator.” He is not, for the record, a virologist, immunologist, or vaccinologist…But he is a public health expert and a practicing internist, which means he has years of experience explaining complicated and often incomplete information to people who neither know nor care about the correct pronunciation of “adenovirus.” That’s who he imagines on the other end of his webcam.”
POST 242. March 24, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “How worried should people be about the BA.2 variant? Will vaccines protect against it? What if someone contracted a previous variant — could they become reinfected? Is BA.2 milder than previous versions, and if so, should people try to get it? Could BA.2 cause another surge in the US, and is it time for restrictions to be put back into place?”
POST 244. April 4, 2022.CORONAVIRUS. “Here’s a scary thought: America’s ability to face the pandemic’s next phase may depend on a handful of senators.”…. “When the end of the COVID-19 pandemic comes, it could create major disruptions for a cumbersome U.S. health care system made more generous, flexible and up-to-date technologically through a raft of temporary emergency measures.”
https://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/2022/04/post-244-april-4-2022-coronavirus-heres-a-scary-thought-americas-ability-to-face-the-pandemics-next-phase-may-depend-on-a-handful-of-senators/
POST 245. April 10, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. We can’t react to a wave we don’t see coming. “I keep thinking back to this idea of If we don’t measure it, it won’t happen,”…(As President Donald Trump once put it, “If we stop testing, we’d have fewer cases.”) In reality, “it’s very well happening, and we just don’t see it yet.”
POST 246. April 15, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “State authorities and health care organizations could pay a high price for reinstating SCOPE OF PRACTICE (SOP) restrictions when the pandemic ends.” (e.g. NPs, PAs, Pharmacists +++)
POST 248. April 27, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “For at-risk Americans without access to a “test-to-treat” drugstore that has a qualifying provider available, this means some will have to make multiple trips to get the pills. You have to develop COVID symptoms, you have to subsequently get a test for COVID-19, get the result of that test, find and go to see a provider, get a prescription, and then fill that prescription. That’s six steps in five days,”…
POST 249. May 6, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “The United States is “certainly, right now, in this country, out of the pandemic phase..” (Dr. Anthony Fauci). “The US should prepare for a possible summer surge of Covid-19 cases across Southern states..” (Dr. Deborah Birx)
POST 250. May 11, 2022. Herd Immunity Deja vu. “Not so long ago, the world was clinging to the hope of herd immunity—to the notion that the population would eventually reach some communal level of protection sufficient to quash the outbreak for good. Maybe, experts posited many months back, once 60 to 90 percent of people had been infected or vaccinated or both, the virus would run out of viable hosts, and simply fizzle out. Now it’s clear that “that’s too simplistic…”
POST 251. May 16, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “Now, nearly one million people have died. It did not have to be this way.”
POST 252. May 20, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “The stakes, two years into the pandemic, should be clear. Fewer vaccines, fewer treatments, and fewer tests will mean more infections, more serious illnesses, and more deaths. That is the scenario the country is staring down: one million people already dead and more to come because politicians became complacent.”
POST 253. May 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Significant obstacles persist in getting Paxlovid to everyone who could benefit from it; more than a million courses of Paxlovid purchased by the government are still available…”..” However, some doctors have also voiced concerns over wider use of the antiviral drug amid reports of so-called “rebound” symptoms following use of Paxlovid, which might raise the risk of the virus evolving resistance to the pills.”
POST 254. June 2, 2022. MONKEYPOX, “Massachusetts General Hospital this week began vaccinating a small group of workers against monkeypox — the first time the new medicine has been used in this country outside of clinical trials. The workers were in close contact with a man diagnosed with the virus and hospitalized at Mass General from May 12 to May 20. The patient was the first person in the United States to be tied to an ongoing outbreak of the rare virus in Europe and North America.”
POST 255. June 5, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “More than a year after U.S. health care workers were saluted for saving lives in the COVID-19 outbreak and celebrated with nightly clapping from windows and balconies, some are being issued panic buttons in case of assault and ditching their scrubs before going out in public for fear of harassment.”
“The shooting in Tulsa is an extreme example of a growing trend: violence against doctors, nurses, and other health care workers.”
POST 256. June 10, 2022. MONKEYPOX. “This is one of the rare diseases in which you can vaccinate somebody after they’ve been infected, before they have symptoms, and block the disease,”… “We would have to really screw things up not to be able to contain this..”
POST 257. June 17, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “We’re now in a very weird pandemic phase. On Twitter, doctors such as Eric Topol sound five-alarm warnings about the latest subvariants of omicron. Offline, even in blue states, people are back to parties, bars and restaurants — and will soon be flying around the world with no testing requirements to return to the US. Things feel as if they’ve lost any coherence. There’s no discernible strategy or guidance on what Covid precautions we should still be taking.”
POST 258. June 26, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “For a long time, whenever companies wanted to hire a CEO or another key executive, they knew what to look for: somebody with technical expertise, superior administrative skills, and a track record of successfully managing financial resources.”..” That practice now feels like ancient history. So much has changed during the past two decades that companies can no longer assume that leaders with traditional managerial pedigrees will succeed in the C-suite..”
POST 261. July 14, 2022. CORONAVIRUS+. A trifecta of threats which could breach hospital capacity again! – BA.5, monkeypox, & drug-resistant infections (Acinetobacter and Candida auris)
POST 262. July 21, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. Michael Osterholm, PhD: “I think the (COVID) challenge we have and continue to have are these viruses keep throwing 210-mile-an-hour curveballs. We just don’t know what the next situation is going to be.” (H) New this week: Parechovirus & Marburg virus disease.
POST 263. July 24, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “Inside the West Wing, there was never much doubt that Mr. Biden would eventually contract the disease.”…”The president’s access to healthcare started even before he got sick. He receives full time medical care from the White House Medical Unit, a part of the military located on the first floor of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
POST 265. August 4, 2022. Monkeypox. “The shortage of vaccines to combat a fast-growing monkeypox outbreak was caused in part because the Department of Health and Human Services failed early on to ask that bulk stocks of the vaccine it already owned be bottled for distribution…”
POST 266. August 11, 2022. Polio/ Monkeypox ++. CDC ”..has deployed a federal team to New York to investigate the case of polio detected in Rockland County. ““Based on earlier polio outbreaks, New Yorkers should know that for every one case of paralytic polio observed, there may be hundreds of other people infected..”
POST 267. August 20, 2022. CDC IMPLOSION! Lessons Learned (or not). CDC Director Walensky “…delivered a sweeping rebuke of her agency’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying it had failed to respond quickly enough and needed to be overhauled.”
POST 268. August 23, 2022. PANDEMICS. “The Covid-19 pandemic has been a lesson in speed — the speed at which a novel virus among humans can spread, the speed at which it can rack up fatalities and cripple economies, the speed at which vaccines can be designed and produced, the speed at which misinformation can undermine public health. Amid all that rapidity is a different kind of speed, which drives the rest, like an engine spinning the cars on a nauseating carnival ride: the speed of viral evolution…”
POST 269. August 31, 2022. “Everyone Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth.” (Mike Tyson). Are we in a slow retreat to herd immunity?
August 31, 2022
POST 268. August 23, 2022. PANDEMICS. “The Covid-19 pandemic has been a lesson in speed — the speed at which a novel virus among humans can spread, the speed at which it can rack up fatalities and cripple economies, the speed at which vaccines can be designed and produced, the speed at which misinformation can undermine public health. Amid all that rapidity is a different kind of speed, which drives the rest, like an engine spinning the cars on a nauseating carnival ride: the speed of viral evolution…”
to get POSTS automatically you can use –
https://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/ link to web site
CORONAVIRUS CONTENT TRACKING PROJECT group on LinkedIn
JONATHAN M. Metsch on Facebook
for links to POSTS 1-268 in chronological order, highlight and click on
https://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/2022/08/coronavirus-tracking-links-to-posts-1-268/
The coronavirus, like many other viruses of its ilk (RNA viruses with highly changeable genomes), evolves fast. It has adapted quickly to us. Now arises the crucial question of whether humans and human ingenuity can adapt faster.
Unless the answer is yes, we face a long, doleful future of continued suffering. Some experts reckon the toll of endemic Covid might be somewhere from 100,000 to 250,000 deaths every year, just in the United States. Millions of lives depend on whether human science, human governance and human wisdom can outpace the ingenuity of SARS-CoV-2, a relatively simple but enterprising agent consisting of four structural proteins plus an RNA genome.
Charles Darwin said the mechanisms of evolution never move quickly, but Darwin didn’t know about viruses. “That natural selection will always act with extreme slowness, I fully admit,” he wrote in “On the Origin of Species,” published in 1859. The first virus discovered, tobacco mosaic virus, didn’t come to scientific attention until decades later. As evolutionary theory developed from Darwin’s work and throughout much of the 20th century, it drew mostly on evidence from fields such as paleontology, biogeography, embryology and comparative anatomy — visible patterns that can reveal slow changes over long stretches of time. Those data are generally far less useful for measuring evolution when it happens fast.
But we have a new form of evidence for evolution: the sequencing and comparison of genomes. Whiz-bang machines do the sequencing — reading out the genetic code, letter by letter — and powerful computers help do the comparing, and it’s all much faster and cheaper…
The world needs that leadership, broadening and paying for sequencing surveillance of this coronavirus and its changes, everywhere the virus goes. But we need much more…
We need ambitious seroprevalence studies (screening of blood samples for evidence of past infection) that will help scientists learn how many undetected infections have occurred. What’s the real case total in each country and around the world? We need farsighted and well-funded research on vaccine platforms that can be quickly adapted for use against whole classes of newly emerged pathogens, not just hurried efforts to create a booster for the latest variant. We need a universal coronavirus vaccine and a universal influenza vaccine, although neither — given the formidable capacity of those viruses to evolve — may be achievable.
More simply, we need temperature-stable and needle-free vaccines that can reduce the problems of vaccine refusal in high-income countries and vaccine unavailability in low-income countries that are hot. We need better antiviral drugs, even for rare but dangerous viruses (such as Nipah virus), entailing development efforts that may never be profitable for pharmaceutical companies.
…we need investments toward much better ventilation and air filtration in our public buildings, reducing the spread of the coronavirus and other airborne pathogens…
All of us should take note. We have 12 million snapshots of this thing in motion — which is enough, at the standard cinema projection rate of 24 frames per second, to make a movie of SARS-CoV-2 evolution 138 hours long. But because evolutionary biology is a descriptive science, not a predictive one, we still don’t know how the story might end. Probably it doesn’t end at all. And the genomic epidemiologists, as smart as they are, can’t save us from what’s still coming. We have to save ourselves.” (A)
“The recent explosion of monkeypox cases in countries where the infection had not previously spread, coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic, has underscored the rising threat of emerging viruses in the 21st century.
An infectious disease is described as emerging when it is new on the global scene, when its infection agent has changed to become more transmissible or more dangerous or when it is rapidly spreading through new regions.” (B)
“Rabies caused by the Rabies lyssavirus and Australian Bat lyssavirus is one of the earliest reported and the deadliest pandemics in the history of mankind in 500 BCE Louis Pasteur and Emile Roux developed a vaccine for rabies in 1885…
Plague caused by the bacteria Yersinia pestis, is also an example of an old pandemic. In 541 CE this disease took over Europe, Asia, and North America resulting in the death of approximately 30–50 million people (half of the world’s population at the time)…
Smallpox (Variola major and Variola minor) had been described several centuries ago in China and India. Smallpox was of great concern in the 15th century. With the arrival of the Spanish in the Caribbean, diseases like Measles (caused by a virus from the paramyxovirus family), Bubonic Plague (caused by the bacteria Y. pestis), and Smallpox invaded, resulting in the death of nearly 90% of the population because people did not have immunity against the disease (Reynolds and Damon, 2016). However, in May,1796, Edward Jenner developed a vaccine against smallpox.
The Pandemic Cholera, a bacterial infection caused by bacterium Vibrio cholerae, started in the Bengal region of India between 1817 and 1824.
The Spanish Influenza pandemic is considered to be one of the most lethal pandemics of the Modern Age. The 1889–1890 pandemic influenza is the most important antecedent and is particularly interesting due to its similarities and differences with respect to the later Spanish Influenza…
Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a chronic, potentially life-threatening condition caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). HIV is a type of lentivirus, which targets T-cells in the immune system. AIDS was first identified in the 1980s (Rambaut et al., 2004). It is one of history’s worst pandemics..
Coronavirus was first identified in 1965. In 1975, a group of virologists working on infectious animal virus found a new strain of the virus. This newly discovered infectious virus was named coronavirus (corona indicating the crown-like appearance of the surface projections) and was later authoritatively acknowledged as other sorts of viruses (Kahn and McIntosh, 2005; Tyrrell et al., 1975)…
The history of pandemic disease is said to follow a trend recurring every 100 years, starting from the great plague of Marseille in 1720, the cholera pandemic in 1820, the deadly Spanish flu of 1920, to the very recent pandemic of COVID-19. It could be that these viruses and bacteria mutate with time and somehow find ways to infect human cells.” (C)
“The human population seems to face an ebb and flow with pandemics that has restricted existence. While the world was brought to a standstill in the past two years due to the deadly novel coronavirus, now the emergence of newer viruses has raised alarm.
The global surge of monkeypox cases has forced the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare the same a pandemic.
Does this tell a grim tale of the potential threat that the emerging viruses possess in the 21st century?
Here’s a look at all the emerging viruses in the 21st century.
Covid-19
Covid-19 emerged towards the later half of 2019 in Wuhan city of China. It is caused by a new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. The virus has progressed into multiple mutations therefore making it significantly difficult to arrest the spread globally. The virus killed more than 6.2 million people according to a tally to the end of May by the US Johns Hopkins University…
MERS
Detected in 2012 in Saudi Arabia, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is a viral respiratory disease caused by a new coronavirus transmitted via camels…
SARS
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), also a coronavirus, emerged in southern China in late 2002. It is believed to have been transmitted from bats to humans via a civet—a mammal whose meat is sold in Chinese markets…
Ebola
First identified in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire) the virus, whose natural host is the bat, has since set off series of epidemics in Africa, killing around 15,000 people…
Marburg
First identified in 1967 in Germany and the former Yugoslavia after research on imported African green monkeys, the Marburg virus is from the same family as Ebola and leads to the death of around one in two of those infected. The worst outbreak killed 329 people in Angola in 2005…
Zika, chikungunya, dengue
These three viruses produce similar, flu-like symptoms and are transmitted through mosquito bites. Cases exploded in the early 2000s in parallel with a spike in the population of tiger mosquitos.
The zika virus, first discovered in 1947 in a monkey in Uganda, caused its first epidemic in Micronesia in 2007 before exploding in Latin America in 2015, notably in Brazil.
Chikungunya spread in Africa from 2004 and reached the Indian Ocean as well as Asia before reaching the Caribbean from 2013 prior to a 2015 outbreak in Latin America. It causes fever and joint pain which generally subside after a few days or sometimes weeks.
Dengue, which primarily occurs in tropical and sub-tropical regions, is often mild, but can be fatal in rare cases.” (D)
“Intermittent outbreaks of infectious diseases have had profound and lasting effects on societies throughout history. Those events have powerfully shaped the economic, political, and social aspects of human civilization, with their effects often lasting for centuries. Epidemic outbreaks have defined some of the basic tenets of modern medicine, pushing the scientific community to develop principles of epidemiology, prevention, immunization, and antimicrobial treatments.” (E)
“The twenty-first century has already recorded more than ten major epidemic or pandemic virus emergence events, including the ongoing and devastating coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. As viral disease emergence is expected to accelerate, these data dictate a need for proactive approaches to develop broadly active family-specific and cross-family therapeutics for use in future disease outbreaks. Emphasis should focus not only on the development of broad-spectrum small-molecule and antibody direct-acting antivirals, but also on host-factor therapeutics, including repurposing previously approved or in-pipeline drugs. Another new class of therapeutics with great antiviral therapeutic potential is RNA-based therapeutics. Rather than only focusing on known risks, dedicated efforts must be made toward pre-emptive research focused on outbreak-prone virus families, ultimately offering a strategy to shorten the gap between outbreak and response. Emphasis should also focus on orally available drugs for outpatient use, if possible, and on identifying combination therapies that combat viral and immune-mediated pathologies, extend the effectiveness of therapeutic windows and reduce drug resistance. While such an undertaking will require new vision, dedicated funding and private, federal and academic partnerships, this approach offers hope that global populations need never experience future pandemics such as COVID-19.” (F)
“Nearly three dozen people in China have been sickened by a newly identified virus from the same family as the deadly Nipah and Hendra viruses, though there’s no evidence the pathogen can be transmitted from person-to-person.
The virus, named Langya henipavirus or LayV, was found thanks to an early detection system for feverish people with a recent history of exposure to animals in eastern China. The patients — mainly farmers — also reported fatigue, cough, loss of appetite and aches, with several developing blood-cell abnormalities and signs of liver and kidney damage. All survived.
Among the 35 patients, 26 were infected only with LayV, according to a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine. There was no evidence they had been in close contact or had a common exposure history, suggesting human infection may be sporadic, the researchers said. Tests detected the virus in 27% of shrews, a known vector for similar henipaviruses, suggesting the small, furry mole-like mammals may be a natural reservoir, they said.” (G)
“If Covid-19 probably would have overwhelmed even the most effective public-health bureaucracy, monkeypox — which as of now is mostly spread through close human contact, especially sexual contact, and for which we already have a vaccine — offered a chance to replay the Covid outbreak at a milder degree of difficulty. Yet the same kinds of bureaucratic failure were repeated — too little testing early on, too little interagency coordination, too little preparation for what should have been predictable challenges.
And then along with these failures came an absurd ideological spectacle, in which health officials agonized about how to state the obvious — that monkeypox at present is primarily a threat to men who have sex with men — and whether to do anything to publicly discourage certain Dionysian festivities associated with Pride Month. As the suffer-no-fools writer Josh Barro has exhaustively chronicled, public-health communication around monkeypox has been an orgy of euphemism and wokespeak, misleading and baffling if you don’t understand what isn’t being said.
This, too, has repeated Covidian failures. The political anxiety about saying or doing anything that might appear to stigmatize homosexuality mirrors the great public-health abdication to the George Floyd protests — in which a great many members of an expert community that had championed closures and lockdowns decided to torch their credibility by endorsing mass protests because the cause seemed too progressive to critique.
In each case what’s been thrown over is neutrality — the idea that public health treats risky behaviors equally, regardless of what form of expression they represent. In June of 2020 and again in June of 2022, the message from important parts of public health officialdom has been that the rules bind only some groups — Orthodox Jews holding funerals, say, or parents hoping to find an open playground — while leaving others liberated if their political cause is just or the risk of stigma seems too high…
It’s bad news for what remains of this pandemic: The collapse of the coronavirus vaccination effort, for instance, has spread well beyond Trump country, with many parents especially inclined to regard all public health edicts with suspicion.
And it’s worse news for the next crisis. Because speaking for myself, as a citizen with a personal interest in medical controversy, when I read the kind of blathering, newspeak-infused monkeypox advisories that Barro highlights, all I can think is: I can never trust anything these people say again.” (K)
“The U.S. seemed ready for the monkeypox outbreak. It had vaccines and treatments that are effective and experts had studied the virus for decades.
Yet the U.S. response has fallen short. The country cannot use millions of vaccine doses it owns because they were not bottled for distribution. The available vaccines and medications remain out of reach for a vast majority of Americans — a result of poor communication by federal officials and of other bureaucratic barriers.
Monkeypox is not very deadly, so this is not a Covid-level catastrophe. But the flawed response suggests that, nearly three years after Covid first appeared, the U.S. is still unprepared for the next deadly pandemic.
The C.D.C. director, Rochelle Walensky, acknowledged that much yesterday. She called for her agency to be overhauled after an external review found it had failed to respond quickly and clearly to Covid. She faulted the agency for acting too much like an academic institution that was focused on producing “data for publication” instead of “data for action.”
“For 75 years, C.D.C. and public health have been preparing for Covid-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,” Walensky said….
Nearly three years into Covid, the U.S. is still not ready for the next pandemic. The C.D.C. is moving to remedy some of the problems plaguing the country’s public health system. Those changes, along with the broader lessons from Covid and monkeypox, could be the difference between another deadly pandemic and a crisis averted.” (L)
“The omicron subvariant known as BA.5 was first detected in South Africa in February and spread rapidly throughout the world. As of the second week of July, BA.5 constituted nearly 80% of COVID-19 variants in the United States.
Soon after researchers in South Africa reported the original version of the omicron variant (B.1.1.529) on Nov. 24, 2021, many scientists – including me – speculated that if omicron’s numerous mutations made it either more transmissible or better at immune evasion than the preceding delta variant, omicron could become the dominant variant around the world.
The omicron variant did indeed become dominant early this year, and several sublineages, or subvariants, of omicron have since emerged: BA.1, BA.2, BA.4 and BA.5, among others. With the continued appearance of such highly transmissible variants, it is evident that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is effectively using classic techniques that viruses use to escape the immune system. These escape strategies range from changing the shape of key proteins recognized by your immune system’s protective antibodies to camouflaging its genetic material to fool human cells into considering it a part of themselves instead of an invader to attack…
BA.5 will not be the end game. As the virus continues to circulate, this evolutionary trend will likely lead to the emergence of more transmissible variants that are capable of immune escape.
While it is difficult to predict what variants will arrive next, we researchers cannot rule out the possibility that some of these variants could lead to increased disease severity and higher hospitalization rates. As the virus continues to evolve, most people will get COVID-19 multiple times despite vaccination status. This could be confusing and frustrating for some and may contribute to vaccine hesitancy. Therefore, it is essential to recognize that vaccines protect you from severe disease and death, not necessarily from getting infected.
Research over the past two and a half years has helped scientists like me learn a lot about this new virus. However, many unanswered questions remain because the virus constantly evolves, and we are left trying to target a constantly moving goal post. While updating vaccines to match circulating variants is an option, it may not be practical in the short term because the virus evolves too quickly. Vaccines that generate antibodies against a broad range of SARS-CoV-2 variants and a cocktail of broad-ranging treatments, including monoclonal antibodies and antiviral drugs, will be critical in the fight against COVID-19.” (M)
________________________
DR. FAUCI TO RETIRE
“Dr. Anthony Fauci, who played a critical role in steering humanity through the two pandemics of our time, AIDS and COVID-19, announced Monday he is stepping down from his role in the federal government.
As of December, he will leave the position he’s held for 38 years as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as his job as chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, and his role as Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden.” (N)
“Fauci was a leading figure in not just the fight against the coronavirus but also diseases like Zika and, of course, AIDS. What do you think he’ll be most remembered for — his battles against Donald Trump, or the other stuff?
I think Fauci will be remembered for the twin infectious disease outbreaks that have, in a sense, served as bookends to his public-service career: AIDS and the coronavirus pandemic.
Both times, he became controversial. But they turned out very differently for him.
During the early days of the AIDS epidemic, as so many gay men were dying, they were also protesting Fauci, calling him a murderer and a killer. He brought them into his fold and befriended many of them. He would be the first to tell you that it changed him; it made him more sensitive to the patient’s point of view.
Fauci is a master of navigating Washington’s nexus of science and politics. But even he couldn’t escape the polarization of Donald Trump. With Covid, I think he will simply be remembered as a polarizing figure — a hero and a brilliant scientist and public servant to some, but a symbol of bureaucracy run amok to others.” (O)
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Winston Churchill
PREQUELS
POST 52. October 18, 2020. ZIKA/ EBOLA/ CANDIDA AURIS/ SEVERE FLU/ Tracking. “… if there was a severe flu pandemic, more than 33 million people could be killed across the world in 250 days… Boy, do we not have our act together.” —”- Bill Gates. July 1, 2018
POST 142. March 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Candida auris is a superbug, a pathogen that can evade drugs made to kill it—and early signs suggest the COVID-19 pandemic may be propelling infections of the highly dangerous yeast. That’s because C. auris is particularly prominent in hospital settings, which have been flooded with people this year due to the coronavirus.”
POST 261. July 14, 2022. CORONAVIRUS+. A trifecta of threats which could breach hospital capacity again! – BA.5, monkeypox, & drug-resistant infections (Acinetobacter and Candida auris)
(A) We Are Still in a Race Against the Coronavirus, By David Quammen, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/10/opinion/coronavirus-evolution-vaccines.html
(B)The emerging viruses of the 21st century, https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-06-emerging-viruses-21st-century.html
(C) Threat, challenges, and preparedness for future pandemics: A descriptive review of phylogenetic analysis based predictions, by Amanpreet Behl, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567134822000144
(D) As pandemics plague 21st century, know about emerging viruses: MERS, SARS, Ebola, Marburg, https://www.livemint.com/science/news/as-covid-zika-monkeypox-plague-21st-century-here-s-everything-to-know-of-the-emerging-viruses-11657275227323.html
(E) Brief History of Pandemics (Pandemics Throughout History), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7123574/
(F) Developing therapeutic approaches for twenty-first-century emerging infectious viral diseases, by Rita M. Meganck & Ralph S. Baric, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01282-0
(G)Dozens in China Infected With New ‘Langya’ Virus Carried by Shrews, By Michelle Fay Cortez, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-10/dozens-in-china-sickened-by-new-virus-likely-coming-from-shrews
(H) Poliovirus detected in wastewater samples in New York City, health officials say, By Kristina Sgueglia and Jen Christensen, https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/12/health/polio-wastewater-nyc/index.html
(I) With new guidance, CDC ends test-to-stay for schools and relaxes COVID rules, by WILL STONE and Pien Huang, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/08/11/1116991600/with-new-guidance-cdc-ends-test-to-stay-for-schools-and-relaxes-covid-rules
(J) There’s just one drug to treat monkeypox. Good luck getting it., By Apoorva Mandavilli, https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/aug/06/theres-just-one-drug-to-treat-monkeypox-good-luck-/
(K) The C.D.C. Continues to Lead From Behind, By Ross Douthat, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/13/opinion/cdc-monkeypox-covid.html?referringSource=articleShare
(L) America’s Pandemic Failures, By German Lopez, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/briefing/monkeypox-cdc-walensky-covid.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
(M) How the Omicron Subvariant BA.5 Became a Master of Disguise – and What It Means for the Current COVID-19 Surge, by Dr. Suresh V. Kuchipudi, https://www.nifa.usda.gov/about-nifa/impacts/how-omicron-subvariant-ba5-became-master-disguise-what-it-means-current-covid-19
(N) Fauci to step down in December after decades of public service, by RICHARD HARRIS, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/08/22/930873868/fauci-to-step-down-in-december-after-decades-of-public-service
(O) How America will remember Fauci, By Blake Hounshell and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/22/us/politics/dr-fauci-career.html
CORONAVIRUS TRACKING Links to POSTS 1-268
CORONAVIRUS TRACKING Links to POSTS 1-268
Doctor, Did You Wash Your Hands?®
https://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/
Curated Contemporaneous Case Study Methodology
https://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/2019/12/9897/
Jonathan M. Metsch, Dr.P.H.
https://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/2021/10/jonathan-m-metsch-dr-p-h-2/
PART 1. January 21, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday confirmed the first U.S. case of a deadly new coronavirus that has killed six people in China.”
PART 2. January 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “If it’s not contained shortly, I think we are looking at a pandemic..”….. “With isolated cases of the dangerous new coronavirus cropping up in a number of states, public health officials say it is only a matter of time before the virus appears in New York City.”
PART3. February 3, 2020. “The Wuhan coronavirus spreading from China is now likely to become a pandemic that circles the globe…”..Trump appeared to downplay concerns about the flu-like virus …We’re gonna see what happens, but we did shut it down..” (D)
PART 4. February 9, 2020. Coronavirus. “A study published Friday in JAMA found that 41% of the first 138 patients diagnosed at one hospital in Wuhan, China, were presumed to be infected in that hospital.….
PART 5. February 12, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “In short, shoe-leather public health and basic medical care—not miracle drugs—are generally what stop outbreaks of emerging infections..”
POST 6. February 18, 2020. Coronovirus. “Amid assurances that the (ocean liner) Westerdam was disease free, hundreds of people disembarked in Cambodia…” “ One was later found to be infected”…. “Over 1,000… passengers were in…transit home”…. “This could be a turning point””
PART 7. February 20, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. With SARS preparedness underway in NJ LibertyHealth/ Jersey City Medical Center, where I was President, proposed that our 100 bed community hospital with all single-bedded rooms, be immediately transformed into an EMERGENCY SARS ISOLATION Hospital.
PART 8. February 24, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…every country’s top priority should be to protect its health care workers. This is partly to ensure that hospitals themselves do not become sites where the coronavirus is spread more than it is contained.”
PART 9. February 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Responding to a question about the likelihood of a U.S. outbreak, President Trump said, “I don’t think it’s inevitable…”It probably will. It possibly will,” he continued. “It could be at a very small level, or it could be at a larger level.”
Part 10. March 1, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Stop Surprise Medical Bills for Coronavirus care. (&) Lessons Learned (or not) In California and Washington State from community acquired cases.
PART 11. March 5, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Gov. Andrew Cuomo… would require employers to pay workers and protect their jobs if they are quarantined because of the coronavirus.”
Part 12. March 10, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Tom Bossert, Donald Trump’s former homeland security advisor…(said) that due to the coronavirus outbreak, “We are 10 days from the hospitals getting creamed.”
Part 13.. March 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “If I’m buying real estate in New York, I’ll listen to the President….If I’m asking about infectious diseases, I’m going to listen to Tony Fauci,”
PART 14. March 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “ “Most physicians have never seen this level of angst and anxiety in their careers”…. One said “I am sort of a pariah in my family.”
PART 15. March 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…Crimson Contagion” and imagining an influenza pandemic, was simulated by the Trump administration….in a series of exercises that ran from last January to August.
PART 16. March 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. I am not a clinician or a medical ethicist but articles on Coronavirus patient triage started me Googling………to learn about FUTILE TREATMENT
PART 17. April 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Florida allows churches to continue holding services. Gun stores deemed “essential.” “New York’s private and public hospitals unite to manage patient load and share resources.
PART 18. April 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The federal government’s emergency stockpile of personal protective equipment (PPE) is depleted, and states will not be receiving any more shipments, administration staff told a House panel.
PART 19. April 13, 2020 CORONOAVIRUS. “…overlooked in the United States’ halting mobilization against the novel coronavirus: the personal aides, hospice attendants, nurses and occupational or physical therapists who deliver medical or support services to patients in their homes.”
PART 20. April 20, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…nothing is mentioned in the “Opening Up America Again” plan about how states should handle a resurgence.”
PART 21. April 23, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “We need to ask, are we using ventilators in a way that makes sense for other diseases but not this one?”
POST 22. April 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. ..the “ACS released a list of 10 issues that should be addressed before a healthcare organization resumes elective surgeries[JM1] ….”
POST 23. May 3, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. … what Dr. Fauci really wants,…”is just to go to a baseball game. That will have to wait. The level of testing for the virus is not adequate enough to allow for such mass gatherings.’ (K)
POST 24. May 7, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said: “there are going to be deaths no matter what”… but that people needed to get back to work.
POST 25. May 10, 2020, CORONAVIRUS. “It is scary to go to work,” said Kevin Hassett, a top economic adviser to the president. “I think that I’d be a lot safer if I was sitting at home than I would be going to the West Wing.”
POST 26. May 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS, “Deep cleaning is not a scientific concept”….”there is no universal protocol for a “deep clean” to eradicate the coronavirus”
POST 27. May 19, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Hospital…executives…are taking pay cuts…to help offset the financial fallout from COVID-19.” As “front line” layoffs and furloughs accelerate…
POST 28. May 23, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. ““You’ve got to be kidding me,”..”How could the CDC make that mistake? This is a mess.” CDC conflates viral and antibody tests numbers.
PART 29. May 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The economy did not close down. It closed down for people who, frankly, had the luxury of staying home,” (Governor Cuomo). But not so for frontline workers!
POST 30. June 3,202. CORONAVIRUS. “The wave of mass protests across the United States will almost certainly set off new chains of infection for the novel coronavirus, experts say….
POST 31. June 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “I think we had an unintended consequence: I think we made people afraid to come back to the hospital,”
Post 32. June 16, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Could the Trump administration be pursuing herd immunity by “inaction”? “ If Fauci didn’t exist, we’d have to invent him.”
POST 33. June 21, 2002. CORONAVIRUS….. Smashing (lowering the daily number of cases) v. flattening the curve (maintaining a plateau)
POST 34. June 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. CDC Director Redfield… “the number of coronavirus infections…could be 10 times higher than the confirmed case count — a total of more than 20 million.” As Florida, Texas and Arizona become eipicenters!
POST 35. June 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Pence: “We slowed the spread. We flattened the curve. We saved lives..” While Dr. Fauci “warned that outbreaks in the South and West could engulf the country…”
POST 36. July 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “There’s just a handful of interventions proven to curb the spread of the coronavirus. One of them is contact tracing, and “it’s not going well,” (Dr. Anthony Fauci)..
POST 37. June 8, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. When “crews arrive at a hospital with a patient suspected of having COVID-19, the hospital may have a physical bed open for them, but not enough nurses or doctors to staff it.”
POST 38. July 15, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Some Lessons Learned, or not. AdventHealth CEO Terry Shaw: I wouldn’t hesitate to go to Disney as a healthcare CEO — based on the fact that they’re working extremely hard to keep people safe,” (M)
POST 39. July, 23,2020. CORONAVIRUS. A Tale of Two Cities. Seattle becomes New York (rolls back reopening) while New York becomes Seattle (moves to partial phase 4 reopening)
POST 40. July 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS.” One canon of medical practice is that you order a test only if you can act on the result. And with a turnaround time of a week or two, you cannot. What we have now is often not testing — it’s testing theater.”
POST 41. August 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Whenever a vaccine for the coronavirus becomes available, one thing is virtually certain: There won’t be enough to go around. That means there will be rationing.”
POST 42. August 11, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “I think that if future historians look back on this period, what they will see is a tragedy of denial….
POST 43. August 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS.” “we’ve achieved something great as a nation. We’ve created an unyielding market for FAUCI BOBBLEHEADS”!! (W)
POST 44. September 1, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The CDC…modified its coronavirus testing guidelines…to exclude people who do not have symptoms of Covid-19.” (While Dr. Fauci was undergoing surgery.) A White House official said: “Everybody is going to catch this thing eventually..”
POST 45. September 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Trump on Fauci. ‘You inherit a lot of people, and you have some you love, some you don’t. I like him. I don’t agree with him that often but I like him.’
POST 46. September 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Bill Gates used to think of the US Food and Drug Administration as the world’s premier public-health authority. Not anymore. And he doesn’t trust the Centers for Disease Control and Protection either….”
POST 47. September 24, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Perry N. Halkitis, dean of the School of Public Health at Rutgers University…called New York City’s 35 percent rate for eliciting contacts “very bad.” “For each person, you should be in touch with 75 percent of their contacts within a day,” he said”
POST 48. October 1, 2020. “…you can actually control the outbreak if you do the nonpharmaceutical interventions (social distancing and masks). In the United States we haven’t done them. We haven’t adhered to them; we’ve played with them.” (A)
POST 49. October 4, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. RAPID RESPONSE. “The possibility that the president and his White House entourage were traveling superspreaders is a nightmare scenario for officials in Minnesota, Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania…”
POST 50. October 6, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Monday October 5th will go down as one of the most fraught chapters in the history of American public Health (and national security).
POST 51. October 12, 2020. Rather than a hodge-podge of Emergency Use Authorizations, off-label “experimentation”, right-to-try arguments, and “politicized” compassionate use approvals maybe we need to designate REGIONAL EMERGING VIRUSES REFERRAL CENTERS (REVRCs).
POST 52. October 18, 2020. ZIKA/ EBOLA/ CANDIDA AURIS/ SEVERE FLU/ Tracking. “… if there was a severe flu pandemic, more than 33 million people could be killed across the world in 250 days… Boy, do we not have our act together.” —”- Bill Gates. July 1, 2018
POST 53. October 20, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “a…“herd-immunity strategy” is a contradiction in terms, in that herd immunity is the absence of a strategy.”
POST 54. October 22, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. POST 54A. New Jersey’s Coronavirus response, led by Governor Murphy and Commissioner of Health Persichilli started with accelerated A+ traditional, evidence-based Public Health practices, developed over years of experience with seasonal flu, swine flu, Zika, and Ebola.
POST 55. October 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. The Testing Conundrum: “ It’s thus very possible to be antigen negative but P.C.R. positive, while still harboring the virus in the body..”
Post 56. October 30, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Trump’s now back in charge. It’s not the doctors.”
POST 57. November 3, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Deborah Birx: the US is entering its “most deadly phase” yet, one that requires “much more aggressive action,”
POST 58. November 4, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…the president has largely shuttered the White House Coronavirus Task Force and doubled down on anti-science language…”
POST 59. November 5, 2020. Coronavirus. “The United States on Wednesday recorded over 100,000 new coronavirus cases in a single day for the first time since the pandemic began..
POST 60. November 7, 2020. “White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has tested positive for the coronavirus….” (A)
POST 61. November 7, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Joe Biden’s top priority entering the White House is fighting both the immediate coronavirus crisis and its complex long-term aftermath…” “Here are the key ways he plans to get US coronavirus cases under control.”
POST 62. November 8, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The United States reported its 10 millionth coronavirus case on Sunday, with the latest million added in just 10 days,…”
POST 63. November 9, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “New York City-based Mount Sinai Health System has opened a center to help patients recovering from COVID-19 and to study the long-term impact of the disease….”
POST 64. November 10, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “It works! Scientists have greeted with cautious optimism a press release declaring positive interim results from a coronavirus vaccine phase III trial — the first to report on the final round of human testing.”
POST 65. November 11, 2020. CORONAVIRUS, “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took a stronger stance in favor of masks on Tuesday, emphasizing that they protect the people wearing them, rather than just those around them…
POST 66. November.12, 2020. CORONAVIRUS.”… as the country enters what may be the most intense stage of the pandemic yet, the Trump administration remains largely disengaged.”… “President-elect Biden has formed a special transition team dedicated to coordinating the coronavirus response across the government…”
POST 67. November 13, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “When all other options are exhausted, the CDC website says, workers who are suspected or confirmed to have COVID-19 (and “who are well enough to work”) can care for patients who are not severely immunocompromised — first for those who are also confirmed to have COVID-19, then those with suspected cases.”
POST 68. November 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. The CDC “now is hewing more closely to scientific evidence, often contradicting the positions of the Trump administration.”..” “A passenger aboard the first cruise ship to set sail in the Caribbean since the start of the pandemic has tested positive for coronavirus..”
POST 69. November 15, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Colorado Gov. Jared Polis will issue a new executive order outlining steps hospitals will need to take to ready themselves for a surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations and directing the hospitals to finalize plans for converting beds into ICU beds, adding staffing and scaling back on or eliminating elective procedures….
POST 70. November 16, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Atlas criticized Michigan’s new Covid-19 restrictions..urging people to “rise up” against the new public health measures.
POST 71. November 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. ”Hospitals overrun as U.S. reports 1 million new coronavirus cases in a week.” “But in Florida, where the number of coronavirus infections remains the third-highest in the nation, bars and schools remain open and restaurants continue to operate at full capacity.”
POST 72. November 18, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The Health and Human Services Department will not work with President-elect Joe Biden’s (PANDEMIC) team until the General Services Administration makes a determination that he won the election,….”
POST 73. November 19, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…officials at the CDC…urged Americans to avoid travel for Thanksgiving and to celebrate only with members of their immediate households…” When will I trust a vaccine? to the last question I always answer: When I see Tony Fauci take one….”
POST 74. November 20, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Pfizer…submitted to the FDA for emergency use authorization for their coronavirus vaccine candidate. —FDA issued an EUA for the drug baricitinib, in combination with remdesivir, as WHO says remdesivir doesn’t do much of anything.
POST 75. November 21, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “The president and CEO of one of the nation’s largest non-profit health systems says he won’t be wearing a mask at work because he’s recovered from COVID-19, and doing so would only be a “symbolic gesture” because he considers himself immune from the virus….
POST 76. November 23, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” Ventilators..”just keep people alive while the people caring for them can figure out what’s wrong and fix the problem. And at the moment, we just don’t have enough of those people.”
POST 77. November 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Pope Francis: “When I got really sick at the age of 21, I had my first experience of limit, of pain and loneliness.”.. “….Aug. 13, 1957. I got taken to a hospital…”….” I remember especially two nurses from this time.”…” They fought for me to the end, until my eventual recovery.”
POST 78. November 27, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Kelby Krabbenhoft is no longer president and CEO of Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health.” “…for not wearing a face covering… “ because “He considered himself immune from the virus.”
POST 79. November 28, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Mayo Clinic. “”Our surge plan expands into the garage…”..””Not where I’d want to put my grandfather or my grandmother,” … though it “may have to happen.”
POST 80. November 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Op-Ed in the Jersey Journal. Do you know which hospital is right for you if you have coronavirus? | Opinion
POST 81. December 1, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Dr. Atlas, … who espoused controversial theories and rankled government scientists while advising President Trump on the coronavirus pandemic, resigned…”
POST 82. December 3, 2020. CORONAVIRIUS. The NBA jumped to the front of the line for Coronavirus testing….while front line nurses often are still waiting. Who will similarly “hijack” the vaccine?
POST 83. December 4, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “California Gov. Gavin Newsom says he will impose a new, regional stay-at-home order for areas where capacity at intensive care units falls below 15%.”… East Tennessee –“This is the first time the health care capability benchmark has been in the red..”
POST 84. December 6, 2020. CPRONAVIRUS. “ More than 100,000 Americans are in the hospital with COVID-19…” “We’re seeing C.D.C. …awaken from (its) politics-induced coma…”…Dr. Fauci “to be a chief medical adviser in Biden’s incoming administration..”.. “Trump administration leaves states to grapple with how to distribute scarce vaccines..”
POST 85. December 7, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…Florida, Gov. DeSantis’ administration engaged in a pattern of spin and concealment that misled the public on the gravest health threat the state has ever faced..”.. “NY Gov. Cuomo said…the state will implement a barrage of new emergency actions..”… Rhode Island and Massachusetts open field hospitals… “Biden Names Health Team to Fight Pandemic”
POST 86. December 9, 2020. If this analysis seems a bit incomprehensible it is because “free Coronavirus test” is often an oxymoron! with charges ranging from as little as $23 to as much as $2,315… Laws (like for free Coronavirus tests) are Like Sausages. Better Not to See Them Being Made. (Please allow about 20 seconds for the text to download. Thanx!)
POST 87. December 10, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…Rudolph W. Giuliani, the latest member of President Trump’s inner circle to contract Covid-19, has acknowledged that he received at least two of the same drugs the president received. He even conceded that his “celebrity” status had given him access to care that others did not have.”
POST 88. December 11, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “As COVID-19 cases surge, the federal government is releasing data about hospital capacity at facilities around the country….”The new data paints the picture of how a specific hospital is experiencing the pandemic,”…
PART 89. December 12, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. THE VACCINE!!! “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Winston Churchill
POST 90. December 14, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “…the first doses of a Covid-19 vaccine have been given to the American public..”…” Each person who receives a vaccine needs two doses, and it’s up to states to allocate their share of vaccines.”
POST 91. December 15, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “UPMC will first give (vaccination) priority to those in critical jobs. That includes a range of people working in critical units, from workers cleaning the emergency room and registering patients to doctors and nurses.. “Finally, if needed, UPMC will use a lottery to select who will be scheduled first.”
POST 92. December 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “..each state — and each hospital system — has come up with its own (vaccination) plan and priorities. The result has been a sometimes confusing constellation of rules and groupings that has left health care workers wondering where they stand.” (Trump appointee July 4th email “…we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD,”)
POST 93. December 19, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. On NPR Congresswoman Shalala (D-Florida) said she wouldn’t jump the vaccination line in Miami; then added she would get vaccinated in Washington this week. This, even though Congress has failed to pass “essential” Coronavirus legislation. So who are our “essential” workers?
POST 94. December 21, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “A doctor at an L.A. County public hospital said the number of COVID-19 patients is “increasing exponentially, without an end in sight.”.. “I haven’t done ICU medicine since I was a resident — you don’t want me adjusting your ventilator,” he said. “That’s the challenge, actually — it isn’t so much space, it’s staff…”
POST 95. December 23, 2020. “The Murphy administration may step in to force (New Jersey) hospitals to report COVID-19 outbreaks among staff.”
POST 96. December 26, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Achieving herd immunity against the coronavirus could require as much as 90 percent of the population to be vaccinated, Anthony Fauci…”…”..he hesitated to state a number as high as 90% weeks ago because many Americans still seemed skeptical about vaccine….”
POST 97. December 27, 2020. “A new variant of the coronavirus that has been spreading through the UK and other countries has not yet been detected in the United States..”.. . But if new-wave medicines like antivirals and antibody therapy contributed to the development of viral variants, it will be “a reminder for all the medical community that we need to use these treatment options carefully.”
POST 98. December 28, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Governor Andrew Cuomo announced new penalties in order to rein in possible vaccination fraud…
POST 99. December 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “ICUs are being overwhelmed across many parts of California. Statewide aggregate ICU availability has been at 0% since Christmas Eve…. a surge on top of a surge on top of a surge.”… “hospitals are getting close to the point where they would begin putting COVID-positive patients under the care of COVID-positive staff who are asymptomatic.”
POST 100. December 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. Front line hospital workers – in the ER, ICUs, EMS, acute medical care, behavioral health – are amongst the most courageous, heroic and dedicated colleagues you will ever meet.
POST 101. December 30, 2020.CORONAVIRUS. Is there a point where the increasing Coronavirus trajectory so far exceeds the slow growth of the vaccination rate that reaching herd immunity through vaccinations becomes less likely?
POST 102. January 2, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “We’ve taken the people with the least amount of resources and capacity and asked them to do the hardest part of the vaccination — which is actually getting the vaccines administered into people’s arms,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health. “Ultimately, the buck seems to stop with no one,”…
POST 103. January 4, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Fauci said “that the United States would not follow Britain’s lead in front-loading first vaccine injections, potentially delaying the administration of second doses…Dr. Moore – ”British officials “seem to have abandoned science completely now and are just trying to guess their way out of a mess.”
POST 104. January 6, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Paramedics in Southern California are being told to conserve oxygen and not to bring patients to the hospital who have little chance of survival…”
POST 105. January 8, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. POST 105. January 8, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Facing a shortage of vaccinators, the Association of Immunization Managers… recommends relaxing regulation or adjusting licensing requirements. At least two states, Massachusetts and New York, have changed their laws in recent weeks to expand those who are eligible to give shots.”
POST 106. January 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. The riots at the Capitol could have been a superspreader event. “From what I saw… you had a large congregation of individuals who were in close contact for an extended period of time and almost universally unmasked…. many coming and going on buses as well, also unmasked, and hanging out in hotel lobbies.”
POST 107. January 8, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Our job is to make sure the vaccine isn’t politicized the way masks were politicized,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said after getting her vaccine. South Carolina Rep.-elect Nancy Mace, a Republican, wrote that “Congress shouldn’t be putting themselves first in line for the COVID-19 vaccination when the average American can’t get it.”
POST 108. January 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. (vaccination)”Line-cutters will be named and shamed. It’s inevitable, as will be the congressional hearings and front-page investigative stories ferreting out who saved their own skin at the expense of others.”
POST 109.January 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “President-elect Joe Biden will aim to release nearly every available dose of the coronavirus vaccine when he takes office, a break with the Trump administration’s strategy of holding back half of US vaccine production to ensure second doses are available.
POST 110. January 13, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. ““The (federal) government is changing the way it allocates Covid vaccine doses, now basing it on how quickly states can administer shots and the size of their elderly population.”… “New York State sent a letter to hospitals saying if they don’t use their vaccine allocations by the end of this week, they won’t receive any further allocations.”
POST 111. January 14, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Visitors from Toronto to New York to Buenos Aires have long flocked to Florida for sun, surf and shopping. Now they are coming for the Covid-19 vaccine….
POST 112. January 14, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. CHINA – “Eleven million people are under lockdown in Hebei province after a new cluster of coronavirus infections.
PART 113. January 17, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. The Next President Actually Has a Covid Plan… New York City and other places in the state expect to exhaust their supply of doses as early as next week… Charles Barkley said during the “NBA on TNT” broadcast that pro athletes should get the first round of the vaccine…..
POST 114. January 18, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “When government programs that have been unattended, underfunded and bogged down by red tape suddenly have to meet a huge demand in a crisis, they can’t cope and people suffer….”
POST 115. January 21, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. A year ago today an unnumbered POST was headlined “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday confirmed the first U.S. case of a deadly new coronavirus that has killed six people in China.” The CORONAVIRUS CONTENT TRACKING PROJECT started with HISTORIOGRAPHY and over time moved to LESSONS LEARNED, RAPID RESPONSE, and THE VACCINATION PROGRAM. Now 115 POSTS later – the BIDEN CORONAVIRUS PLAN.
POST 116. January 22, 2021. President Biden – “We’re entering what may be the toughest and deadliest period of the virus. We must set aside politics and finally face this pandemic as one nation.”
POST 117. January 23, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. 1.Dr. Fauci:“The idea that you can get up here….”and.. let the science speak”… “It is somewhat of a liberating feeling.” 2.updated CDC guidance:”.. providers could give the second dose up to six weeks after the first dose..” 3.Dr. Fauci: people would be “taking a chance” if they follow the CDC’s updated guidance.
POST 118. January 24, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Unfortunately, we’ve let this virus spread extensively and are launching the vaccination campaign at the height of the threat,” Dr. Meyers said. “The more the virus spreads before the vaccine reaches people, the fewer deaths we can prevent with the vaccine.”
POST 119. January 27, 2010. CORONAVIRUS. Amazon is offering its help to President Joe Biden with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. Washington’s governor, Jay Inslee, included the help of companies like Starbucks, Costco and Microsoft in a plan to vaccinate 45,000 residents a day.
POST 120. January 28, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The fact that four vaccines backed by the federal government seem to be less effective against the (South African) B.1.351 variant has unsettled federal officials and vaccine experts alike. Facing this uncertainty, many researchers said it was imperative to get as many people vaccinated as possible — quickly. Lowering the rate of infection could thwart the contagious variants while they are still rare, and prevent other viruses from gaining new mutations that could cause more trouble.”
POST 121. January 30, 2021. CORONVIRUS. Will our communities become stratified by which vaccine is distributed? 95%ters v. 72%ters? Will the easier distribution of the J&J vaccine drive its inequitable distribution to” hard-hit, marginalized, and medically underserved communities.” (thanx! to XJ/LA)
POST 122. February 1, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr.Fauci endorses double-masking. Dr.Osterholm disagrees!
POST 123. February 4, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Nursing homes across the country are facing the same struggle, as workers have been more reluctant than residents to be vaccinated…
POST 124. February 5, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Osterholm ” …it may be time to..go with a ‘first-dose only’ approach, so more people over the age of 65 can have at least some protection right away. He said that would require delaying second doses until this summer.” Dr.Fauci “warned against this practice, and cautioned people about “the danger” that could come with focusing only on the first dose.”
POST 125. June 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “States are rolling back Covid-19 restrictions as new cases trend down from record highs across the country. But experts warn it might be too much too soon as variants pose an increased risk and the pandemic… is far from over.”
POST 126. February 11, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “There will be more coronavirus outbreaks in the future. Bats and other mammals are rife with strains and species of this abundant family of viruses. Some of these pathogens will inevitably spill over the species barrier and cause new pandemics. It’s only a matter of time.” (A)
POST 127. February 12, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “… Trump only agreed to be hospitalized when aides told him that he could walk to Marine One or he could wait until his case progressed and he would be carried out.”
POST 128. February 14, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new research on Wednesday that found wearing a cloth mask over a surgical mask offers more protection against the coronavirus, as does tying knots on the ear loops of surgical masks…
POST 130. February 16, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “A second person who had contracted the Ebola virus died this week in the Democratic Republic of Congo, marking another outbreak just three months after the nation outlasted the virus’s second-worst outbreak in history…”
POST 131. February 17, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “It really is right now – a race between how quickly new variants, particularly the U.K. variant, can spread in the United States and how quickly we can get people vaccinated”
POST 132. February 20, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “In Texas, where over 2.5 million people are still without power, the state health department said this week’s vaccine shipments wouldn’t arrive until Wednesday at the earliest.”
POST 133. February 23, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Going off your meds is a surefire way to aggravate your doctor. What if a whole country did it?” The United Kingdom has veered into uncharted territory by changing tack and introducing a revised COVID-19 vaccination protocol, one that involves distributing the second dose at 12 weeks, rather than the prescribed 21 days.”
POST 134. February 24, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. The first tranche of the J&J (single dose) vaccine must go to K-12 teachers, so schools can open safely in the first 100 days of the Biden Administration. The federal government…”can set up its own vaccination centers in regions with eligible populations it’s trying to target.” We owe our front-line teachers nothing less!
POST 135. February 27, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “As Chief Executive Officers of New York’s major health care systems, we would like to provide facts to clear up confusion in the public and the media regarding decisions to discharge patients to nursing homes during New York’s spring coronavirus surge.”
POST 136. March 2, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. ““The governors of Texas and Mississippi both announced on Tuesday they would be lifting their states’ mask mandates and rolling back many of their Covid-19 health mandates..”…while “The US could experience a “fourth surge” of coronavirus before the majority of the country is vaccinated.”
POST 137. March 4, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The clamor for hard-to-get Covid-19 vaccines has created armies of anxious Americans who have resorted to hunting for leftovers on the fringes of the country’s patchwork vaccination system. They haunt pharmacies at the end of the day in search of an extra, expiring dose. They drive from clinic to clinic hoping that someone was a no-show to their appointment. They cold-call pharmacies like eager telemarketers: Any extras today? Maybe tomorrow? Some pharmacists have even given them a nickname: vaccine lurkers.” (H)
POST 138. March 6, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “New cases are decreasing in the third wave because we are past the holidays, not because of vaccinations. It is a common misconception that the decrease we are seeing in new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in the U.S. is due to vaccinations. The two aren’t related; at least yet.”
POST 140. March 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “In West Virginia, they are bracing for the second wave….. Not coronavirus but opioid overdoses, with one scourge driving a resurgence of the other.
POST 141. March 11, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Today is the first anniversary of the WHO declaration that the novel coronavirus was a Public Health Emergency of International Concern… “To truly prepare itself against the next pandemic, the U.S. has to reimagine what preparedness looks like.”
POST 142. March 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Candida auris is a superbug, a pathogen that can evade drugs made to kill it—and early signs suggest the COVID-19 pandemic may be propelling infections of the highly dangerous yeast. That’s because C. auris is particularly prominent in hospital settings, which have been flooded with people this year due to the coronavirus.”
POST 143. March 17, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The Trump administration sought to suppress Covid-19 testing in the United States last year by softening guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on who needed to be tested, a House panel said Monday.”
POST 144. March 20, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. ““The vaccine hesitancy we are seeing isn’t just about Covid vaccines,”… “It is a general reflection of Americans’ lack of trust in science, the pharmaceutical industry, and large health care institutions. We need a full court press on science and vaccine education right now to prevent more aggressive Covid-19 variants from developing and taking hold.”
POST 145. March 25, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Efforts to disseminate Covid-19 vaccines as widely as possible are hitting an unexpected obstacle: health-care workers who decline the shots.
POST 146. March 30, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Osterholm told Becker’s: “This is the perfect storm,”…”Here is Europe locking down and having problems containing B.1.1.7, even with vaccinations and previous infection histories. Here we are opening up as wide as we can. We are literally just walking into the mouth of the virus saying, ‘Don’t worry.’” (M)
POST 147. April 5, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The pandemic helped cement the shift to “a philosophy of really focusing on the role of the physician in reasoning through ambiguous and unknown problems as the focus of education, rather than teaching students that the role of physician was to memorize a body of knowledge that was already in existence and good enough for what usually happens.”
POST 148. April 7, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. While the Biden administration accelerates vaccinations to ward off numerous variants and as more young people are being hospitalized, states, even with increasing case rates are on paths to fully reopen. Politics v. public health!
POST 149. April 10, 2021. CORONAVIRIUS. “From Michigan to Massachusetts, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are on the rise again. Deaths will soon follow. “ ”.. the Biden administration is facing renewed calls to delay second vaccine doses and blanket more of the U.S. population with an initial shot.”
POST 150. April 10, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The use of so-called COVID-19 “vaccine passports” is quickly becoming a divisive issue across the US – with several states, including New York, embracing the idea, while others have already moved to ban them.”
POST 151. April 14, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. the J&J vaccination pause. “ Federal officials are concerned that doctors may not be trained to spot or treat the rare disorder if recipients of the vaccine develop symptoms of it…” “…a standard treatment for blood clots — use of an anticoagulant drug — could be dangerous or even fatal in such cases…”
POST 152. April 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s director said Saturday authorities are considering mixing COVID-19 vaccines because the country’s domestically made doses “don’t have very high protection rates,”
POST 153. April 18, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “At least 35 hospitals across Michigan were listed Thursday as nearing capacity and three were at full capacity for COVID-19 patients..”.. We can manufacture beds. We can open up beds. We can create entire wings of the hospital if we have to, but if we don’t have staff for those beds, we’ve got nothing.”..
POST 154. April 19, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Breakthrough infections, which occur when fully vaccinated people are infected by the pathogen that their shots were designed to protect against, are an entirely expected part of any vaccination process.” “Pfizer’s chief executive said that a third dose of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine was “likely” to be needed within a year of the initial two-dose inoculation — followed by annual vaccinations.”
POST 155. April 24, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. As the J&J vaccine pause is ended Senator Johnson said “The science tells us that vaccines are 95% effective. So if you have a vaccine, quite honestly, what do you care if your neighbor has one or not? I mean, what is it to you?”
POST 156. April 28, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. As CDC revises guidance on outdoor masking, Texas Governor Abbott says “the state is “very close” to herd immunity… despite acknowledging that he does not know what the herd immunity threshold is for the virus, an uncertainty echoed by the public health community.”
POST 157. April 25, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Ohio hospitals; “We agreed in multiple conversations, there’s nothing in fighting a pandemic that creates a competitive advantage.”…
POST 158. May 5, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. . As populations get closer to herd immunity “ it may be helpful to introduce some nuance to what we mean by the term. Nationwide herd immunity. Regional herd immunity. Temporary herd immunity. Endemicity.”
POST 159. May 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Without deeper sharing of expertise in how to make vaccines…waiving patent obligations is unlikely to be a game-changer… Having access to the “recipe” certainly helps, but understanding how to put it together and produce it at scale is something else.”
POST 161. May 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Even if the spread of Covid-19 decreases enough to allow a return of most activities, there are some aspects of pandemic life that epidemiologists say will persist much longer. In particular, they say that masks are a norm that should continue, even if that view puts them at odds with the new C.D.C. guidance. More than 80 percent of them say people should continue to wear masks when indoors with strangers for at least another year, and outdoors in crowds.”
POST 162. May 21, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy is refusing to lift his indoor mask mandate for vaccinated residents…” “…fully vaccinated residents in New York and Connecticut are no longer required to wear masks..”..” “California says it isn’t ready to follow the federal lead and unmask, at least for another month..”.. “..Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Tuesday prohibiting state governmental entities such as counties, public school districts, public health authorities and government officials from requiring mask wearing.”
POST 163. May 23, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. RWJBarnabas Health in New Jersey announced a mandate…saying supervisors and those of higher rank must get the vaccine by June 30. They will eventually require the system’s 35,000 employees to do the same.
POST 164. May 26, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. On Wednesday, health minister Norihisa Tamura warned Olympic organizers they would have to “secure their own” hospital beds for anyone falling ill at the Games, explaining the government would not release beds set aside for Japanese covid-19 patients.”
POST 165. May 31,2001. CORONAVIRUS. “Like all pandemics, this one will end either with millions — maybe billions — being infected or being vaccinated. This time, world leaders have a choice, but little time to make that choice before it is made for them.”
POST 166. June 3, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “President Biden said Wednesday that he has asked intelligence agencies to double down on their efforts to investigate whether the coronavirus originated from human contact with an animal or in an laboratory in China, saying there is not “sufficient information” to assess whether one is more likely than the other.”
POST 167. June 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Hospitals prevaricate on mandatory staff vaccinations. Florida’s Governor forbids cruise ship vaccine mandates. Pfizer and Moderna apply for FDA full approval.
POST 168. June 10, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Our species has a tendency to get distracted. We have a very strong appetite for distraction, and when something is not in the spotlight, when it’s not a crisis anymore, we tend to forget and move on to something else. So the biggest challenge is going to be maintaining focus on this next step of developing vaccines that anticipate pandemics.”
POST 169. June 14, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Hospitals in Washington, D.C…announced a consensus agreement to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for more than 30,000 workers, 70% of which are already vaccinated. Each of 14 hospitals will set their own deadline…”
POST 170. June 17, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Dr. Ashish Jha…is worried about the potential impact the delta variant could have in the United States… “I’m concerned about the Delta variant,”… “Why? Most contagious variant yet. Wreaked havoc in India. Spiking cases in UK. Growing rapidly in the US.”
POST 171. June 19, 2021. “A 34-year-old man (a Covid-19 survivor) has been diagnosed with India’s first known case of “green fungus” infection.”… “Green fungus is the new infection to join the earlier known cases of black, white and yellow fungus.”…”green fungus was earlier seen only as a “junior partner” in other infections… In the current patient, this fungus is acting as the aggressor.”
POST 172. June 23, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Morgan Stanley chief executive James Gorman said: “If you can go into a restaurant in New York City, you can come into the office.”…”remote work can “dramatically undermine” the character and culture a company is attempting to build; and “virtually eliminates spontaneous learning and creativity.”
POST 173. June 26, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The daily toll of COVID-19, as measured by new cases and the growing number of deaths, overlooks a shadowy set of casualties: the rising risk of mental health problems among health care professionals working on the frontlines of the pandemic.”
POST 175. July 5, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Can a health care worker who is not against vaccines in general still harbor sincere concerns that scientists don’t yet know about all the side effects of these vaccines? Yes, says Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD — but those people should not work in health care.”
POST 176. July 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Mercy Springfield ( Missouri) hospital…” ran out of ventilators for its patients over the Fourth of July weekend…”…“Mercy will require all current and future employees to be fully vaccinated.”…“The US government is deploying a Covid-19 surge team to provide public health support in southwest Missouri
POST 177. July 12, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. the Delta variant is “the 2020 version of Covid-19 on steroids,”… “It is the most hypertransmissible, contagious version of the virus we’ve seen to date…it’s a superspreader strain if there ever was one .” but… now, there’s a Delta Plus variant…
POST 178. July 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Tennessee’s top vaccine official says she has been fired as punishment for doing her job in the face of political pushback.”..” More than 180 state and local public health leaders…have resigned, retired or been fired since April 1…”“Former President Trump and his GOP allies have stepped up attacks on Anthony Fauci…”
POST 179. July 16, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “It, therefore, follows that the “harm principle” (“first, do no harm.”) can be used to justify compulsory vaccination programs in specific instances where the community interests or benefits are deemed to be significant.”
POST 180, July 20, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Most people will either get vaccinated, or have been previously infected, or they will get this Delta variant,”.. “And for most people who get this Delta variant, it’s going to be the most serious virus that they get in their lifetime in terms of the risk of putting them in the hospital,”
POST 181. July 22, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Health experts fear the Tokyo Olympics could become a COVID-19 superspreader event.” “Whatever happens in Japan isn’t likely going to stay in Japan since all of the athletes and accompanying coaches and staff will be returning to their home countries.”
POST 182. July 26, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R): “Folks supposed to have common sense.”…“But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.” ““Beginning in mid-September, New York City will require all of its 340,000 municipal workers, including police, firefighters and teachers, to either be vaccinated against COVID-19 or tested weekly.”
POST 183. July 29, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. When I was appointed President and CEO of Jersey City Medical Center in1989 in the peak of the HIV/ AIDS crisis, we had a dedicated, and always full, dedicated 60 bed AIDS unit, staffed by one full time nurse and numerous part-time and per diem nurses. Today, right now, hospitals caught in the Covid-19 surge, are forced to redeploy nursing staff, respiratory therapists and other clinicians, most without prior infectious diseases experience. Why are we tolerating the unvaccinated putting our hospital staffs at risk?
POST 185. August 6, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. ‘If you aren’t going to help, please get out of the way’: Biden turns up the pressure on GOP governors as Delta spreads”
POST 186. August 8, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late,” she added, referring to patients who have to be put on a ventilator.” (A) “There is no one definition of what the end of a pandemic means.”.. “The question of when the crisis will be over is a layered one — with different answers from local, national and global perspectives.”
POST 187. August 11, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “As a result of the increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, the state of Florida requested 300 ventilators from the federal government.”… “An 11-month-old girl with Covid-19 is stable and no longer intubated one day after she was airlifted to a Texas hospital 150 miles away because of a shortage of pediatric beds in the Houston area.”
POST 188. August 15, 20201. CORONAVIRUS. “According to an internal CDC briefing….an estimated 1.1 million people have already gotten unauthorized booster shots…”….”If it is left up to the honor system, I think many Americans will suddenly wake up and find themselves immunocompromised enough to get a 3rd dose,”
POST 189. August 19,2021. CORONAVIRUS. “There wasn’t a single I.C.U. bed available in Alabama on Wednesday…”…”A triage plan on the Alabama health department’s website suggests that “persons with severe mental retardation” are among those who “may be poor candidates for ventilator support.”
POST 190, August 21, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “We’re looking, in essence, at running two systems — a COVID system and a non-COVID system of care,”..“Emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and certified paramedics can now care for patients in Mississippi hospitals and emergency rooms under a new health office order issued by the Mississippi State Department of Health on Wednesday.”
POST 191. August 27, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Anthony Fauci, MD, chief medical advisor to the president and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explained that late September gives the United States time to set up the logistics.” This is not medical science, but perhaps Political Science?
POST 192. August 30, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Gov. John Bel Edwards on Hurricane Ida – “I hate to say it this way, but we have a lot of people on ventilators today and they don’t work without electricity,” he said.”
POST 193. September 3, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Nurses are leaving their hospitals and becoming travel nurses at hospitals across town “because they can make $4,000, $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 a week while not having to relocate anywhere..”
POST 194. August 2, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Recently-released data is painting a grim picture of the opioid epidemic that has gripped the United States — as the country is still grappling with the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than half a million Americans. Some people are calling them twin pandemics that have collided”…“Faced with a novel health crisis, researchers are collecting data on the long-term impact of using opioids to treat COVID-19 pain…
POST 195. September 6, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “…there are “zero ICU beds left for children in Dallas County, Texas,”.,..”That means if your child’s in a car wreck, if your child has a congenital heart defect or something and needs an ICU bed, or more likely if they have Covid and need an ICU bed, we don’t have one. Your child will wait for another child to die… (county judge Clay Jenkins)
POST 196. SEPTEMBER 11, 2001. PART 1. Military helicopters and jets were overhead, as President Bush was getting ready to leave NYC. PART 2. LESSONS LEARNED memorandum by hospital CEO Jonathan Metsch goes “viral”…
POST 197. September 12, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Idaho officials have instituted “crisis standards of care” to help 10 hospitals and health care systems decide how to allocate personnel and resources to deal with a crush of COVID-19 patients.”… “The Washington Medical Coordination Center oversees facilitating transfers in the state, and it’s warning we could be nearing the point of “Crisis Standards of Care,” just like Idaho.” .. “These crisis models don’t actually save more lives, they just save different lives..”
POST 198. September 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. A pundit said “The most elegant policy riposte to the anti-vaxxers… is to refuse to allow Medicare or Medicaid to pay their medical bills in the event they become seriously ill. Private health insurers might also follow suit.” (but is making our hospitals become the bill collectors right?)
POST 199. September 19, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Crisis Standards of Care. “… to his knowledge, no patient in Idaho has been taken off life-support therapy in order to provide that therapy to another patient who has a better prognosis.” “While that has yet to occur, if we continue on this path, it will,”
POST 201. September 27, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “A multibillion-dollar institution in the Seattle area is sitting on nearly $12 billion in cash… received at least $509 million in government funds (from) a federal program that is supposed to prevent health care providers from capsizing during the coronavirus pandemic.”
“Based on our estimates…we find preventable COVID-19 hospitalizations cost $5.7 billion from June to August in 2021.”…
POST 202. September 30, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “..NY Governor Hochul signed an executive order expanding healthcare worker eligibility requirements…to head off potential staffing shortages fueled by the state’s new COVID-19 vaccination requirements.” “The.. order allows out-of-state/ out-of-country healthcare workers to practice in New York…”..”It allows EMTs graduates to temporarily pitch in at additional healthcare settings; allows various types of healthcare workers to more easily administer and order COVID-19 vaccinations; enables telemedicine physician visits in nursing homes; permits facilities to more quickly discharge, transfer or receive patients…”
POST 203. October 3, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “.. more than 125,000 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases have been reported in pregnant people, including more than 22,000 hospitalized cases and 161 deaths”…The risk is not just to the mother. Covid-19 in pregnancy can cause preterm birth or babies born so sick they have to go straight to the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU.”
POST 204. October 5, 2021.CORONAVIRUS. “News that an experimental antiviral drug from Merck appears to halve the risk of hospitalization or death from Covid-19 has bolstered hopes of finding a simple at-home treatment for the virus.”..” A more blunt assessment came from vaccine scientist Dr. Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine. “It’s not a miracle cure but a companion tool, So get vaccinated.””
POST 205. October 11, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. The AAP reported nearly 226,000 new child cases over the past week ending. “Hospital care for children does not occur in isolation from that of adults. Many of the resources we use are the same—a twenty-pound baby and a two-hundred-pound man might use the same kind of ventilator, for example. Dialysis machines, which could cleanse a seven-year-old’s blood as easily as his grandfather’s, are in high demand. Pediatric resident physicians, nurses, and respiratory therapists get cross-deployed to care for adults during the surges.”
POST 206. October 15, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. to borrow from Winston Churchill about where we are with the pandemic – “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
POST 207. October 17, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “…if you choose your own unauthorized booster shot, what happens if later research proves a different combination is better? That’s why experts say it’s a bad idea to become your own vaccine advisory committee and get a shot out of turn.”
POST 208. October 22, 2021, CORONAVIRUS. “What is the “delta plus” variant?” Scientists are monitoring the delta-related variant — known as AY.4.2. — to see if it might spread more easily or be more deadly than previous versions of the coronavirus.
POST 209. October 28, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The quest at Mount Sinai began with a mystery.”…”America was not simply struggling to contain a once-in-a-century pandemic, caused by a virus far more dangerous than seasonal influenza. Many patients were, for unknown reasons, not recovering.”
POST 211. November 4, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Colorado – “…there are patients who really ought to be in an intensive care unit but instead they’re in an emergency room. Or they ought to be in a step-down unit but instead they’re on the floor. Or they ought to be getting one-to-one nursing, and instead they’re getting two-to-one, or three-to-one nursing….”
POST 212. November 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “They went into hospitals with heart attacks, kidney failure or in a psychiatric crisis. They left with covid-19…” “A new report shows the coronavirus pandemic had a direct increase on the number of healthcare-acquired infections in hospitals nationwide.”
POST 213. November 13, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Since the earliest days of the pandemic, there has been one collective goal for bringing it to an end: achieving herd immunity…Now the herd is restless. And experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set aside herd immunity as a national goal.”
POST 214. November 20, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “This virus is doing what this virus does,” said Michael Osterholm… “We don’t understand why surges start, we don’t understand why they end.” (A)
POST 215. November 26, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Fauci on the new South African variant: “It’s not going to be possible to keep this infection out of the country. The question is: Can you slow it down?”
POST 216. December 1, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Covid cacophony: as states struggle to address health care staffing shortages, a federal court puts Biden administration health care worker vaccination mandate on hold.
POST 217. December 3, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. President Biden Announces New Actions to Protect Americans Against the Delta and Omicron Variants as We Battle COVID-19 this Winter
POST 218. December 5, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “In some ways, Delta is the ideal variant: It’s transmissible enough to dominate more dangerous variants, and its virulence can be controlled through vaccination. In the next few weeks, we’ll find out whether Omicron will have its own silver lining—or whether it’ll be catastrophically worse.”
POST 219. December 9, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Entering uncharted territory, the U.S. counts 500,000 Covid-related deaths.”… “So yes, I am furious at the unvaccinated, and I am not ashamed of disclosing that. I am no longer trying to understand them or educate them.”
POST 220 December 13, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Osterholm. “You cannot outrun the game clock with this pandemic. This virus will find you… We’ve seen health care systems virtually broken by this pandemic. They just couldn’t provide critical care to non-Covid patients.” (A)
POST 221. December 18, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine was going to be a shot for the world. Now, under the weight of a mountain of bad PR, one wonders if the world will want it.”
POST 222. December 20, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. So why my “inside baseball” focus on COVID-19 from the perspective of a retired hospital CEO?
POST 223. December 28, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. Links for a case study of Crisis Standards of Care.
POST 224. December 29, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “crisis standards of care protocols in Maryland – “It also allows us to slim down documentation,… allows unconventional staffing models such as using nurses that have not been bedside. It also sets the expectations for the community that it’s not business as usual.”
POST 225. January 3, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Be first, be right, be credible,” are among the most important principles for health authorities to follow in a crisis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shared in a pamphlet on crisis communication in 2018….”
Post 226. January 5, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. New York City – “The city’s ambulance corps are so understaffed because of the COVID-19 surge, they’re now under new orders to try to convince stable patients with flu-like symptoms not to go to the hospital.”
POST 227. January 10, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Stay indoors. But also return in person. Wear a mask. Not that one. The expensive one, that you can’t find. Take rapid tests. Which you also can’t find. But if you find them, don’t buy them. Rapid tests don’t work. You need PCR. There are zero appointments in your area.” (F)
POST 228. January 13, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “State officials are attempting to address California’s staffing shortage through a sweeping policy change that allows asymptomatic healthcare workers who have tested positive for the coronavirus to return to work immediately.” “Asymptomatic health professionals who had tested positive for COVID-19 should “preferably be assigned to work with COVID positive patients.”
POST 229. January 16, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “It is now highly unlikely that the U.S. will hit the ~85-90% of Americans vaccinated to get to the other side of the pandemic…”
POST 230. January 20, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “Dr. Fauci also said that the world is still in the first of what he considered to be the five phases of the pandemic. The first is the “truly pandemic” phase, “where the whole world is really very negatively impacted,” followed by deceleration, control, elimination and eradication.”…to paraphrase Churchill – “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”..
POST 231. January 24, 202. CORONAVIRUS. “Florida’s top public health official in Orlando has been placed on administrative leave after sending an email to his employees noting their lackluster coronavirus vaccination rates and urging them to get the shots.”
POST 232. January 28, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “A Boston hospital’s denial of a heart transplant to a man who is unvaccinated for Covid-19 has generated national attention, but experts say mandating vaccines is in keeping with other long-standing requirements that patients have to meet to receive an organ — including getting other shots…”
POST 233. February 2, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “The same virus can cause endemic, epidemic or pandemic infections: it depends on the interplay of a population’s behaviour, demographic structure, susceptibility and immunity, plus whether viral variants emerge.”
POST 234. February 2, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell demanded an end to the COVID-19 state of emergency on Wednesday , saying it was time for Americans to get on with their lives after two years on a ‘hellish highway.’”
POST 235. February 17, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Over time, the U.S. health care sector has implemented various pieces of the (pandemic) safety-assessment-and-improvement puzzle, but it has not instituted a thorough system of safety that reaches from the boardroom to the front lines and that can be maintained during times of crisis.”
POST 236. February 22, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. MOUNT SINAI AT HOME – “We began thinking about how we could use hospital-at-home to meet the needs of our hospital system in our community, in terms of responding to the crisis of COVID-19…”
POST 238. March 5, 2022, CORONAVIRUS. “Two different scientists can look at the same set of data and come up with different conclusions. That’s not to say that one person is being unscientific or ignoring the scientific process,” said Leana Wen, an emergency physician and a professor at George Washington University. “Public health policy is also a measure of values.””
POST 239. March 9, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “War is an infectious disease’s best friend,” says Michael Osterholm, “It challenges every public health program you can possibly have. It limits the medical care available for those who might be seriously ill, and often fosters transmission when so many people are crowded into bomb shelter locations and on trains. This is going to be the perfect storm of one serious challenge after another.” (E)
POST 240. March 15, 2022. ““China is modifying its Covid-19 playbook amid a surge in cases as it seeks to avoid strains on its healthcare system.”
POST 241. March 20, 2022, CORONAVIRUS. Dr. Ashish Jha will serve as the new White House COVID-19 response coordinator.” He is not, for the record, a virologist, immunologist, or vaccinologist…But he is a public health expert and a practicing internist, which means he has years of experience explaining complicated and often incomplete information to people who neither know nor care about the correct pronunciation of “adenovirus.” That’s who he imagines on the other end of his webcam.”
POST 242. March 24, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “How worried should people be about the BA.2 variant? Will vaccines protect against it? What if someone contracted a previous variant — could they become reinfected? Is BA.2 milder than previous versions, and if so, should people try to get it? Could BA.2 cause another surge in the US, and is it time for restrictions to be put back into place?”
POST 244. April 4, 2022.CORONAVIRUS. “Here’s a scary thought: America’s ability to face the pandemic’s next phase may depend on a handful of senators.”…. “When the end of the COVID-19 pandemic comes, it could create major disruptions for a cumbersome U.S. health care system made more generous, flexible and up-to-date technologically through a raft of temporary emergency measures.”
https://doctordidyouwashyourhands.com/2022/04/post-244-april-4-2022-coronavirus-heres-a-scary-thought-americas-ability-to-face-the-pandemics-next-phase-may-depend-on-a-handful-of-senators/
POST 245. April 10, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. We can’t react to a wave we don’t see coming. “I keep thinking back to this idea of If we don’t measure it, it won’t happen,”…(As President Donald Trump once put it, “If we stop testing, we’d have fewer cases.”) In reality, “it’s very well happening, and we just don’t see it yet.”
POST 246. April 15, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “State authorities and health care organizations could pay a high price for reinstating SCOPE OF PRACTICE (SOP) restrictions when the pandemic ends.” (e.g. NPs, PAs, Pharmacists +++)
POST 248. April 27, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “For at-risk Americans without access to a “test-to-treat” drugstore that has a qualifying provider available, this means some will have to make multiple trips to get the pills. You have to develop COVID symptoms, you have to subsequently get a test for COVID-19, get the result of that test, find and go to see a provider, get a prescription, and then fill that prescription. That’s six steps in five days,”…
POST 249. May 6, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “The United States is “certainly, right now, in this country, out of the pandemic phase..” (Dr. Anthony Fauci). “The US should prepare for a possible summer surge of Covid-19 cases across Southern states..” (Dr. Deborah Birx)
POST 250. May 11, 2022. Herd Immunity Deja vu. “Not so long ago, the world was clinging to the hope of herd immunity—to the notion that the population would eventually reach some communal level of protection sufficient to quash the outbreak for good. Maybe, experts posited many months back, once 60 to 90 percent of people had been infected or vaccinated or both, the virus would run out of viable hosts, and simply fizzle out. Now it’s clear that “that’s too simplistic…”
POST 251. May 16, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “Now, nearly one million people have died. It did not have to be this way.”
POST 252. May 20, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “The stakes, two years into the pandemic, should be clear. Fewer vaccines, fewer treatments, and fewer tests will mean more infections, more serious illnesses, and more deaths. That is the scenario the country is staring down: one million people already dead and more to come because politicians became complacent.”
POST 253. May 29, 2020. CORONAVIRUS. “Significant obstacles persist in getting Paxlovid to everyone who could benefit from it; more than a million courses of Paxlovid purchased by the government are still available…”..” However, some doctors have also voiced concerns over wider use of the antiviral drug amid reports of so-called “rebound” symptoms following use of Paxlovid, which might raise the risk of the virus evolving resistance to the pills.”
POST 254. June 2, 2022. MONKEYPOX, “Massachusetts General Hospital this week began vaccinating a small group of workers against monkeypox — the first time the new medicine has been used in this country outside of clinical trials. The workers were in close contact with a man diagnosed with the virus and hospitalized at Mass General from May 12 to May 20. The patient was the first person in the United States to be tied to an ongoing outbreak of the rare virus in Europe and North America.”
POST 255. June 5, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “More than a year after U.S. health care workers were saluted for saving lives in the COVID-19 outbreak and celebrated with nightly clapping from windows and balconies, some are being issued panic buttons in case of assault and ditching their scrubs before going out in public for fear of harassment.”
“The shooting in Tulsa is an extreme example of a growing trend: violence against doctors, nurses, and other health care workers.”
POST 256. June 10, 2022. MONKEYPOX. “This is one of the rare diseases in which you can vaccinate somebody after they’ve been infected, before they have symptoms, and block the disease,”… “We would have to really screw things up not to be able to contain this..”
POST 257. June 17, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “We’re now in a very weird pandemic phase. On Twitter, doctors such as Eric Topol sound five-alarm warnings about the latest subvariants of omicron. Offline, even in blue states, people are back to parties, bars and restaurants — and will soon be flying around the world with no testing requirements to return to the US. Things feel as if they’ve lost any coherence. There’s no discernible strategy or guidance on what Covid precautions we should still be taking.”
POST 258. June 26, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “For a long time, whenever companies wanted to hire a CEO or another key executive, they knew what to look for: somebody with technical expertise, superior administrative skills, and a track record of successfully managing financial resources.”..” That practice now feels like ancient history. So much has changed during the past two decades that companies can no longer assume that leaders with traditional managerial pedigrees will succeed in the C-suite..”
POST 261. July 14, 2022. CORONAVIRUS+. A trifecta of threats which could breach hospital capacity again! – BA.5, monkeypox, & drug-resistant infections (Acinetobacter and Candida auris)
POST 262. July 21, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. Michael Osterholm, PhD: “I think the (COVID) challenge we have and continue to have are these viruses keep throwing 210-mile-an-hour curveballs. We just don’t know what the next situation is going to be.” (H) New this week: Parechovirus & Marburg virus disease.
POST 263. July 24, 2022. CORONAVIRUS. “Inside the West Wing, there was never much doubt that Mr. Biden would eventually contract the disease.”…”The president’s access to healthcare started even before he got sick. He receives full time medical care from the White House Medical Unit, a part of the military located on the first floor of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
POST 265. August 4, 2022. Monkeypox. “The shortage of vaccines to combat a fast-growing monkeypox outbreak was caused in part because the Department of Health and Human Services failed early on to ask that bulk stocks of the vaccine it already owned be bottled for distribution…”
POST 266. August 11, 2022. Polio/ Monkeypox ++. CDC ”..has deployed a federal team to New York to investigate the case of polio detected in Rockland County. ““Based on earlier polio outbreaks, New Yorkers should know that for every one case of paralytic polio observed, there may be hundreds of other people infected..”
POST 267. August 20, 2022. CDC IMPLOSION! Lessons Learned (or not). CDC Director Walensky “…delivered a sweeping rebuke of her agency’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying it had failed to respond quickly enough and needed to be overhauled.”
POST 268. August 23, 2022. PANDEMICS. “The Covid-19 pandemic has been a lesson in speed — the speed at which a novel virus among humans can spread, the speed at which it can rack up fatalities and cripple economies, the speed at which vaccines can be designed and produced, the speed at which misinformation can undermine public health. Amid all that rapidity is a different kind of speed, which drives the rest, like an engine spinning the cars on a nauseating carnival ride: the speed of viral evolution…”
August 23, 2022