With rising COVID-19 cases and a declining workforce, Montana hospitals are overwhelmed.
Now, the state is reaching out to those with expired medical licenses, asking them to renew.
State labor officials will tell you employment has recovered more than 99% from the pandemic and since January, the number of Montanans receiving unemployment benefits plummeted by 87%.
However, that’s not what you’ll hear from Montana hospitals…
The Department of Labor and Industry said in a statement:
“The Department hears regularly from employers, including healthcare providers, who have been impacted by the ongoing workforce shortage. With COVID-related hospitalizations increasing statewide, at the Governor’s direction the Department is looking at ways to mitigate the healthcare worker shortage and ensure there are no unnecessary delays in the licensure process for individuals qualified to provide medical services.”
Some hospitals say that isn’t enough.
At Bozeman Health, there are 400 open positions right now–from janitors to frontline health workers.
“We absolutely need people to apply for positions,” said Kallie Kujawa, incident command lead. “If anyone is looking for a job, we have so many positions that are unfilled and available, which is partly contributing to our need to have emergency crisis staffing here right now.”
Kujawa added there aren’t any expedited processes or waivers in place to make hiring workers faster. She says Bozeman Health is in talks with the state to try and get some of them back.
In the meantime, they’ve put their own measures in place like expedited onboarding.
“We have emergency credentialing procedures that we can follow,” Kujawa said. “So if they’re already licensed, there are absolutely ways that we have expedited them into our system so that they can start working.” (A)
(9/25/2021)
“New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) is considering deploying the medically trained members of the National Guard ahead of an anticipated shortage of health care workers.
Hochul released a comprehensive plan to address staff shortages in New York facilities Saturday, amid concerns that a large number of health care employees will not meet Monday’s vaccine deadline.
“We are still in a battle against COVID to protect our loved ones, and we need to fight with every tool at our disposal,” Hochul said, according to a release on the state website. “I am monitoring the staffing situation closely, and we have a plan to increase our health care workforce and help alleviate the burdens on our hospitals and other health care facilities.
The plan, announced by the state government lays out several options in the event of a staff shortage.
First the governor said that she would sign an executive order declaring a state of emergency to route additional workforce supply into New York. This includes allowing qualified healthcare workers licensed in other states to practice in New York.
Other options, according to the statement, included deploying medically trained professionals of the National Guard, partnering with the federal government to deploy Disaster Medical Assistance Teams and working with the federal government to expedite visa requests for medical professionals.” (B)
(11/08/2021)
A regional association representing 50 upstate New York hospitals is calling on the state Department of Health to delay implementation of new laws that will require hospitals and nursing homes around the state to establish and maintain minimum staffing levels.
The Iroquois Healthcare Alliance — which represents hospital systems in 32 upstate counties, including the Capital Region — argues implementation of the laws by Jan. 1, 2022 is infeasible given current widespread staffing shortages plaguing health care facilities statewide.
In a letter to state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker last month, IHA President and CEO Gary Fitzgerald said the organization’s primary opposition to the law relates to its timing, as hospitals are currently experiencing “unprecedented” workforce shortages that he says have been exacerbated by the state’s coronavirus vaccine mandate for health care workers and a recent court decision striking down religious exemptions to the mandate.
“The current workforce crisis facing hospitals across upstate New York is dire,” Fitzgerald wrote in the letter.
Hospitals and health systems stretching from Albany to Buffalo had over 2,000 open registered nursing positions prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, he said. After the pandemic hit, some 6,000 workers were furloughed as elective surgeries were canceled to make room for a potential wave of patients, which modeling projections at the time indicated would overwhelm hospitals.
“Today, vacancy rates remain extremely high, and our members are functioning in crisis mode, unable to accept transfers, canceling elective procedures, reducing operating room capacities and a general slowing down of daily patient care, all related to and a direct result of workforce shortages,” he wrote. (C)
(11/11/2021)
“Since the start of the pandemic, Michigan continues to see a surge in patients. But hospitals are unable to meet the rising demand due to a nursing shortage, an issue the 7 Action News team highlighted in July.
Back then we uncovered that there were 165,000 nurses registered in Michigan but only 125,000 were working, many leaving the field due to stress, and burnout among other factors…
Without enough nurses, Michigan’s health care is taking a hit. Right from beds being closed to elective surgeries postponed…
In mid-September, Beaumont Hospitals had to shut down 180 beds while Henry Ford Health closed 120 beds…
According to the American Nurses Association, more than 500,000 registered nurses are expected to retire by 2022. Meanwhile, by next year the shortage is expected to hit 1.1 million.
There are also a lot of nurses who have moved on from bedside nursing to take up home care or even travel nursing.
“I do know that if you pick up a traveling assignment, you get paid maybe twice as much,” said Garcia.
So, what are hospitals in Michigan doing to attract new hires? For starters, Indeed.com shows employment ads for nurses offering a $10,000 signing bonus and pay packages ranging from $70,000 to a whopping $170,000 per year.
There are also health care providers like Henry Ford who announced recently that they will bring in hundreds of nurses from the Philippines.” (D)
(11/13/2021)
“A federal court declined Friday to lift its stay on the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for businesses with 100 or more workers.
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted an emergency stay last Saturday of the requirement by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration that those workers be vaccinated by Jan. 4 or face mask requirements and weekly tests.
Lawyers for the Justice and Labor departments filed a response Monday in which they said stopping the mandate from taking effect will only prolong the COVID-19 pandemic and would “cost dozens or even hundreds of lives per day.”
But the appeals court rejected that argument Friday. Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt wrote that the stay “is firmly in the public interest.”
“From economic uncertainty to workplace strife, the mere specter of the Mandate has contributed to untold economic upheaval in recent months,” Engelhardt wrote.
At least 27 states have filed legal challenges in at least six federal appeals courts after OSHA released its rules on Nov. 4. The federal government said in its court filings Monday that the cases should be consolidated and that one of the circuit courts where a legal challenge has been filed should be chosen at random on Nov. 16 to hear it.
Administration lawyers said there is no reason to keep the vaccine mandate on hold while the court where the cases ultimately land remains undetermined.” (E)
(11/19/2021)
“Hospitals in at least 25 states are critically short of nurses, doctors, and other staff as coronavirus cases surge across the United States, according to the industry’s trade association and a tally conducted by STAT. The situation has gotten so bad that in some places, severely ill patients have been transferred hundreds of miles for an available bed — from Texas to Arizona, and from central Missouri to Iowa.
Many of these hospitals spent months building up stockpiles of medical equipment and protective gear in response to Covid-19, but the supplies are of little use without adequate staffing.
“Care is about more than a room with a hospital bed. It’s about medical professionals taking care of patients,” said John Henderson, chief executive of the Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals (TORCH). “If you don’t have the staff to do that, people are going to die.”..
The American Hospital Association’s vice president of quality and patient safety, Nancy Foster, said she’s heard from two dozen hospital leaders over the past two weeks, warning her of staffing shortages in states including Texas, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Health care providers in Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, and Utah said they’re facing the same problem, as do local reports from New Mexico, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Indiana, Montana, California, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.
The shortages are primarily caused by overwhelming numbers of patients as coronavirus spreads, combined with decreasing staff levels as nurses and doctors themselves fall sick or have to quarantine after being exposed to infected people. Covid-19 is also prevalent in rural areas that have been struggling with a shortage of health professionals for years; hospitals in more remote regions don’t have equipment such as ventilators, and so must transfer severely ill patients to already-overwhelmed urban health care systems. The scale of the problem makes it harder to address: Systems designed to offset shortages by bringing in backup from other areas don’t work when so many states are affected simultaneously.” (F)
(11/27/2021)
(Texas)..is trying to wind down an expensive, federally paid program of hiring nurses and other health care professionals to keep its hospitals from buckling under staffing pressures and burnout caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the plan could be upended by any spike in COVID-19 cases prompted by gatherings over the holidays. Already, the state decided to keep up surge staffing at hospitals in El Paso and the Panhandle because of recent outbreaks.
After three huge waves of hospitalizations — in each of the past two summers and the big daddy of them all, last December and January — the state has spent nearly $7 billion of federal COVID-19 money for temporary nurses, respiratory therapists and some doctors to maintain operations at hospitals and “alternate care sites.”…
The surge staffing began in July 2020 with just more than 3,500 visiting health care workers helping Texas hospitals. Peak deployment came after last winter’s surge of cases, with almost 14,000 temporary nurses and other workers used during one week in early February. Last summer, the numbers dwindled. From mid-May to mid-August, no surge staffing was needed.
But then deployments kicked back up with the spike of cases caused by the delta variant. By early October, the department’s three private vendors were supplying nearly 7,800 health care professionals a week. As of Nov. 17, that had dropped to 3,176….
As of Nov. 15, BCFS had 1,945 medical personnel working in 235 Texas hospitals, said BCFS spokeswoman Evy Ramos. Except for about 300 respiratory therapists, they were all nurses, she said. None was a physician.” (G)
(11/27/2021)
“New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has declared a state of emergency ahead of potential COVID-19 spikes this winter due to the already-circulating Delta and newly-identified Omicron variants of coronavirus.
The declaration, which goes into effect on Dec. 3, will allow the state to acquire pandemic-fighting supplies, increase hospital capacity and fight potential staffing shortages. It would also allow the state Health Department to limit non-essential and non-urgent procedures at hospitals.
“We continue to see warning signs of spikes this upcoming winter, and while the new Omicron variant has yet to be detected in New York State, it’s coming,” Hochul said.” (H)
(11/28/2021)
(Massachusetts) “State officials are taking steps to shore up the health care system as hospitals battle staff shortages amid a new surge in COVID-19 infections.
Infections have been rising in recent weeks amid the highly contagious delta variant, despite the state’s highest-in-the-nation vaccination rate. More than 2 million eligible Massachusetts residents have not been vaccinated and immunity is waning for fully vaccinated people who haven’t yet had their booster shots.
Meanwhile, hospitals are wrestling with chronic staffing shortages that have translated into the loss of more than 500 intensive care unit beds across the state.
On Tuesday, Gov. Charlie Baker took steps to ease health care capacity issues by signing an emergency order requiring hospitals with limited acute care capacity to start reducing elective procedures beginning next week.
Under the new guidance, hospitals are required to keep at least 15% of their medical and surgical and intensive care unit beds available for COVID patients.
Hospitals that do not meet or exceed the capacity threshold will be required to “reduce non-essential, non-urgent scheduled procedures performed on a daily basis by at least 30%, as compared to the hospital or hospital system’s 2019 average daily procedure volume.”” (I)
The court order said that the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid had no clear authority from Congress to enact the vaccine mandate for providers participating in the two government health care programs for the elderly, disabled and poor.
The preliminary injunction by St. Louis-based U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp applies to a coalition of suing states that includes Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. Similar lawsuits also are pending in other states.
The federal rule requires COVID-19 vaccinations for more than 17 million workers nationwide in about 76,000 health care facilities and home health care providers that get funding from the government health programs. Workers are to receive their first dose by Dec. 6 and their second shot by Jan. 4…
Biden’s administration contends federal rules supersede state policies prohibiting vaccine mandates and are essential to slowing the pandemic.
But the judge in the health care provider case wrote that federal officials likely overstepped their legal powers.
“CMS seeks to overtake an area of traditional state authority by imposing an unprecedented demand to federally dictate the private medical decisions of millions of Americans. Such action challenges traditional notions of federalism,” Schelp wrote in his order.
Even under an exceedingly broad interpretation of federal powers, “Congress did not clearly authorize CMS to enact the this politically and economically vast, federalism-altering, and boundary-pushing mandate,” Schelp wrote.” (J)
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.”
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 129. February 15, 2021, CORONAVIRUS. “ “The CDC released its much-anticipated, updated guidance to help school leaders decide how to safely bring students back into classrooms, or keep them there.”…” For politicians, parents and school leaders looking for a clear green light to reopen schools, this is not it.”
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 139. March 8, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. CDC Issues First Set of Guidelines on How Fully Vaccinated People Can Visit Safely with Others…” In practice, that means fully vaccinated grandparents may visit unvaccinated healthy adult children and healthy grandchildren of the same household without masks or physical distancing.” (C)
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 160. May 13, 2021.CORONAVIRUS. “The CDC acknowledged Friday that airborne spread of COVID-19 among people more than 6 feet apart “has been repeatedly documented.”” Meanwhile states relax or eliminate indoor dining restrictions. HUH?
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 174. July 1, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “..while the WHO is encouraging people to keep wearing masks even if they’re vaccinated, Dr. Anthony Fauci says it doesn’t look like the CDC currently plans to change its guidelines.” … health officials in Los Angeles recommended that “everyone, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks indoors in public places as a precautionary measure.”..”
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 184. August 1, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The coronavirus could be “just a few mutations potentially away” from evolving into a variant that can evade existing COVID-19 vaccines, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said..” (A) “The Delta variant is more transmissible than the viruses that cause MERS, SARS, Ebola, the common cold, the seasonal flu and smallpox, and it is as contagious as chickenpox..” (I)
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 200. September 23, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. CDC Director overrides a recommendation of its scientific advisors saying “that people can get a booster if they are ages 18 to 64 years and are health-care workers or have another job that puts them at increased risk of being exposed to the virus.”…“In a pandemic, even with uncertainty, we must take actions that we anticipate will do the greatest good.”
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 210. October 31, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Some people want the FDA to speed up. Others want it to be more cautious…There’s a fundamental tension between the right to get access to a drug people are desperate for and the right to protection from dangerous failures of quality. The first demands speed; the second requires time…”
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.
“Dr Susan Hopkins, the chief medical adviser to the UK Health Security Agency, said the R value, or effective reproduction number, of the B.1.1.529 variant in the South African province of Gauteng, where it was first found, was now 2 – a level of transmission not recorded since the beginning of the pandemic, before restrictions began to be imposed. For an R of anything above 1, an epidemic will grow exponentially.” (A)
“Scientists in South Africa have identified a new coronavirus variant with a worrisome combination of mutations that experts fear could make it more transmissible and allow it to evade immune protection — including the protection generated by vaccines.
Experts are scrambling to learn more about the variant, known by its scientific name B.1.1.529 and called Omicron by the World Health Organization. Right now, there are more open questions than firm answers. And although scientists have expressed significant early concern over the variant — the WHO designated it as a “variant of concern” on Friday — they have cautioned that they are still seeking critical information about it.
One reminder: There have been a series of variants that have caused initial alarm, only to prove largely unimportant in the course of the pandemic.
Scientists in South Africa detected the lineage on Monday, according to the country’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases, and rang the alarm bell for the world. Researchers in Botswana and Hong Kong also posted sequences publicly, and other cases have since been reported in Belgium and Israel. The variant is likely in other countries, but researchers just haven’t picked it up yet.
It’s not clear where the variant actually emerged. It could be that South Africa and Botswana saw it early because they have strong genetic sequencing networks.
On Friday afternoon, the United States joined other countries in imposing travel restrictions from those two countries, as well as Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique, and Malawi, effective Monday.
Why is it causing concern? Several reasons.
For one, it appears to be outcompeting other variants in South Africa — including the extremely transmissible Delta variant — and fast. It’s starting to drive cases up in that country, which has already had several massive waves in its epidemic. Some possible explanations are that it’s a better spreader than even Delta, that it can cause infections in people who are protected at higher rates, or some combination of the two.
But beyond the epidemiological landscape in South Africa, scientists are concerned because of the number and variety of mutations B.1.1.529 acquired — what Sharon Peacock, the director of the Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium, called a “very unusual constellation of mutations.” Some mutations have been previously seen in other variants and are associated with increased transmissibility and the ability to get around immune protection.
Scientists can’t predict how different mutations will behave when combined, but of particular worry to scientists is that the virus has some 32 mutations in its spike protein, which is what vaccines teach our immune system to recognize and target.
The variant “has a very high number of mutations with a concern for predictive immune evasion and transmissibility,” said Tulio de Oliveira, director of the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation, who helped identify the variant in South Africa.” (B)
“Researchers in South Africa are racing to track the concerning rise of a new variant of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19. The variant harbours a large number of the mutations found in other variants, including Delta, and it seems to be spreading quickly across South Africa.
A top priority is to follow the variant more closely as it spreads: it was first identified in Botswana earlier this month and has since turned up in a traveller arriving in Hong Kong from South Africa. Scientists are also trying to understand the variant’s properties, such as whether it can evade immune responses triggered by vaccines and whether it causes more or less severe disease than other variants do.
“We’re flying at warp speed,” says Penny Moore, a virologist at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, whose lab is gauging the variant’s potential to dodge immunity from vaccines and previous infections. There are anecdotal reports of reinfections and of cases in vaccinated individuals, but “at this stage it’s too early to tell anything”, Moore adds.
“There’s a lot we don’t understand about this variant,” Richard Lessells, an infectious-diseases physician at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, said at a press briefing organized by South Africa’s health department on 25 November. “The mutation profile gives us concern, but now we need to do the work to understand the significance of this variant and what it means for the response to the pandemic.”..
Researchers also want to measure the variant’s potential to spread globally — possibly sparking new waves of infection or exacerbating ongoing rises being driven by Delta.” (C)
“The World Health Organization said a heavily mutated version of the virus that causes Covid-19 poses a possible increased risk of reinfection.
The WHO named the strain omicron and labeled it a variant of concern.
South African scientist Tulio de Oliveira said in a media briefing that the variant contains more than 30 mutations to the spike protein, the component of the virus that binds to cells.
South African scientist Tulio de Oliveira said in a media briefing held by the South Africa Department of Health on Thursday that the variant contains a “unique constellation” of more than 30 mutations to the spike protein, the component of the virus that binds to cells. This is significantly more than those of the delta variant.
Many of these mutations are linked to increased antibody resistance, which may affect how the virus behaves with regard to vaccines, treatments and transmissibility, health officials have said.
De Oliveira said the variant contains around 50 mutations in total. The receptor binding domain, the part of the virus that first makes contact with cells, has 10 mutations, far greater than just two for the delta Covid variant, which spread rapidly earlier this year to become the dominant strain worldwide.
This level of mutation means it’s possible that it came from a single patient who could not clear the virus, giving it the chance to genetically evolve. The same hypothesis was proposed for the alpha Covid variant.” (D)
“Officials also expressed concern that the mutation could result in immune evasion and enhanced transmissibility of the virus, but added it is too early to tell what kind of impact the mutations will have on vaccine efficacy. More studies also need to be conducted to understand the clinical severity of the variant compared to previous variants, officials said.
“The full significance of this variant remains uncertain and the best tool we have is still the vaccines,” De Oliveira said. He added that lab studies still need to be carried out to test vaccine and antibody evasion.”” (E)
“The US will restrict travel from South Africa and seven other southern African countries to try to contain a new coronavirus variant spreading there.
From Monday, only US citizens and residents will be allowed to travel from the region.
This follows a similar flight ban imposed by the EU earlier on Friday.
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the new variant to be “of concern”, naming it Omicron.
US officials said flights from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi will be blocked, mirroring earlier moves taken by EU Member States. It will come into effect on Monday.
In a statement, President Joe Biden called the move a “precautionary measure” taken until more is known about the variant.” (F)
“By imposing the travel restrictions, the administration will not stop the virus from coming to the United States; in fact, experts said, it may already be here. But it can give health officials and pharmaceutical companies time to determine whether the current vaccines work against the new variant — and if not, to create new vaccines that do.
“It’s going to buy us some time,” Dr. Fauci said. “It’s not going to be possible to keep this infection out of the country. The question is: Can you slow it down?”
Dr. Fauci said the new variant has about 30 mutations, and roughly 10 of them are on a part of the virus that is associated with transmissibility and immune protection. That suggests the virus may be more transmissible and may escape the current vaccines “to an extent yet to be determined.”
He said there had been some breakthrough infections among those who had recovered from the Delta variant, and among those who were vaccinated.
But at the same time, he said, scientists do not know the severity of the infections caused by the new variant. It is entirely possible that it spreads more quickly but causes less severe disease.
“You don’t want to say don’t worry, and you don’t want to say you’ve got to worry yourself sick, because we’re gathering information rapidly,” he said, adding, “Even though the numbers are still small, the doubling time is pretty rapid and the slope of the increase is really rather sharp.”
Biden administration officials said they were continuing to work with health officials in other countries to learn more about the variant.
“Restricting travel is going to slow its coming, not stop it from coming,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, chair of the department of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania and an adviser to the president during his transition. “The fact that it’s coming here is inevitable. The environment in which it comes may not be inevitable. We can alter the environment.”
Mr. Biden said on Friday that the rise of the Omicron variant was another reason for vaccinated Americans to get boosters and unvaccinated Americans to get inoculated — a point Dr. Fauci echoed. And Mr. Biden said the development should push the international community to donate more vaccines to nations suffering from a lack of access or poor vaccination rates.
Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota who also advised Mr. Biden during his transition, said the administration had little choice on implementing the travel ban.
But Dr. Osterholm said it could take time before scientists know if the current vaccines are effective against the variant, and how transmissible it is. One way to figure that out is through laboratory studies, which will take several weeks, he said. Another way is to follow breakthrough cases in people who are already vaccinated, which could take months.” (G)
“Is it more transmissible?
Will existing vaccines work against it?
What about existing drugs?
Will the variant cause more severe Covid?
Can the vaccines be tweaked and how long could that take?” (H)
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.”
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 129. February 15, 2021, CORONAVIRUS. “ “The CDC released its much-anticipated, updated guidance to help school leaders decide how to safely bring students back into classrooms, or keep them there.”…” For politicians, parents and school leaders looking for a clear green light to reopen schools, this is not it.”
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 139. March 8, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. CDC Issues First Set of Guidelines on How Fully Vaccinated People Can Visit Safely with Others…” In practice, that means fully vaccinated grandparents may visit unvaccinated healthy adult children and healthy grandchildren of the same household without masks or physical distancing.” (C)
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 160. May 13, 2021.CORONAVIRUS. “The CDC acknowledged Friday that airborne spread of COVID-19 among people more than 6 feet apart “has been repeatedly documented.”” Meanwhile states relax or eliminate indoor dining restrictions. HUH?
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 174. July 1, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “..while the WHO is encouraging people to keep wearing masks even if they’re vaccinated, Dr. Anthony Fauci says it doesn’t look like the CDC currently plans to change its guidelines.” … health officials in Los Angeles recommended that “everyone, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks indoors in public places as a precautionary measure.”..”
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 184. August 1, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The coronavirus could be “just a few mutations potentially away” from evolving into a variant that can evade existing COVID-19 vaccines, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said..” (A) “The Delta variant is more transmissible than the viruses that cause MERS, SARS, Ebola, the common cold, the seasonal flu and smallpox, and it is as contagious as chickenpox..” (I)
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 200. September 23, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. CDC Director overrides a recommendation of its scientific advisors saying “that people can get a booster if they are ages 18 to 64 years and are health-care workers or have another job that puts them at increased risk of being exposed to the virus.”…“In a pandemic, even with uncertainty, we must take actions that we anticipate will do the greatest good.”
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 210. October 31, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Some people want the FDA to speed up. Others want it to be more cautious…There’s a fundamental tension between the right to get access to a drug people are desperate for and the right to protection from dangerous failures of quality. The first demands speed; the second requires time…”
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 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)
“Clearly case numbers are still climbing all the indications we have in terms of test positivity rate would suggest we still have more to go with this surge before we hit the peak,” he said.” (B)
“This thing is no longer just throwing curveballs at us — it’s throwing 210 mile an hour curveballs at us,” said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota. He said that the virus had repeatedly defied predictions and continues to do so.” (O)
for links to POSTS 1-214 in chronological order highlight and click on
“A month ago, new coronavirus cases in the United States were ticking steadily downward and the worst of a miserable summer surge fueled by the Delta variant appeared to be over. But as Americans travel this week to meet far-flung relatives for Thanksgiving dinner, new virus cases are rising once more, especially in the Upper Midwest and Northeast.
Federal medical teams have been dispatched to Minnesota to help at overwhelmed hospitals. Michigan is enduring its worst case surge yet, with daily caseloads doubling since the start of November. Even New England, where vaccination rates are high, is struggling, with Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire trying to contain major outbreaks.
Nationally, case levels remain well below those seen in early September, when summer infections peaked, and are below those seen last Thanksgiving. But conditions are worsening rapidly, and this will not be the post-pandemic Thanksgiving that Americans had hoped for. More than 90,000 cases are being reported each day, comparable to early August, and more than 30 states are seeing sustained upticks in infections. In the hardest-hit places, hospitalizations are already climbing…
The new rise in cases comes at a complicated moment. Last Thanksgiving, before vaccines were available, federal and local officials had firmly urged Americans to forgo holiday gatherings. But in sharp contrast, public health officials, including Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, have mostly suggested this year that vaccinated people could gather in relative safety.” (O)
“COVID-19 cases are climbing nationally as the U.S. barrels into its second holiday season during the pandemic, with most families planning this year to gather for Thanksgiving….
“There is concern that the rate of infection spreading is already so high as we head into the holiday season,” said Amber D’Souza, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“We’re definitely headed into our next surge,” she added.
Nationally, the seven-day average for new COVID-19 cases is nearing 95,000, a 33 percent increase from two weeks prior, according to data from The New York Times. In the past two weeks, cases have increased in 39 states and D.C., and they have doubled in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. “ (C)
“As cases of Covid-19 rise throughout the U.S., health officials warn that an increasing number of fully vaccinated people are being hospitalized or going to the emergency room. The concern about waning immunity against severe Covid infection comes as the Food and Drug Administration is expected to authorize a Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine booster shot for all adults 18 and older.
“What we’re starting to see now is an uptick in hospitalizations among people who’ve been vaccinated but not boosted,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease, said Tuesday in an interview. “It’s a significant proportion, but not the majority by any means.”
On Wednesday, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported a decline in vaccine effectiveness among the elderly and residents of long-term care facilities, many of whom were the first to be eligible to be vaccinated last winter.
“Although the highest risk are those people who are unvaccinated, we are seeing an increase in emergency department visits among adults 65 and older, which are now again higher than they are for younger age groups,” Walensky said Wednesday at a White House Covid briefing.
Walensky also pointed to new data on long-term care facilities from the agency’s National Healthcare Safety Network comparing rates of Covid disease between people who are vaccinated with two doses and those who have received extra doses.
“The rate of disease is markedly lower for those who received their booster shot, demonstrating our boosters are working,” she said.
Fauci and Walensky stressed that the majority of hospitalizations and deaths are still among unvaccinated people in the U.S.” (D)
“To protect both patients and staff, healthcare personnel (HCP) were among the first groups in the United States recommended to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. We analyzed data reported to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Unified Hospital Data Surveillance System on COVID-19 vaccination coverage among hospital-based HCP. After vaccine introduction in December 2020, COVID-19 vaccine coverage rose steadily through April 2021, but the rate of uptake has since slowed; as of September 15, 2021, among 3,357,348 HCP in 2,086 hospitals included in this analysis, 70.0% were fully vaccinated. Additional efforts are needed to improve COVID-19 vaccine coverage among HCP.” (E)
“For the fourth week in a row, the rate of new global COVID-19 cases rose, mainly led by surges in Europe but also influenced by spikes in the Americas and Western Pacific countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) said yesterday in its weekly pandemic update.
Cases were up 6% last week compared with the week before, and though deaths were stable or declining in much of the world, fatality levels rose in Europe.
Of the top five countries that reported the most cases last week, four are in Europe: Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Turkey. However, the United States continues to lead the world with the most weekly cases.
Nearly half of European countries saw cases rise 10% or more last week, with surge locations distributed evenly across the region. Countries in Eastern Europe, where vaccine uptake is lower, were the first to report new illness spikes.” (F)
“Austria on Friday became the first Western democracy to announce that it would mandate Covid vaccinations for its entire adult population as it prepared for a nationwide lockdown starting Monday.
The extraordinary measure by Austria, which only days ago separated itself from the rest of Europe by introducing a lockdown for the unvaccinated, who are driving a surge of infections, made for another alarming statement about the severity of the fourth wave of the virus in Europe, now the epicenter of the pandemic.
But it also showed that increasingly desperate governments are losing their patience with vaccine skeptics and shifting from voluntary to obligatory measures to promote vaccinations and beat back a virus that shows no sign of waning, rattling global markets at the prospect that still tentative economic recoveries will be undone.
Some European countries, including Germany, which once seemed a model of how to manage the virus, are now facing their worst levels of infections in the nearly two years since the pandemic began.
The surge, health authorities say, is being driven by stubborn resistance to getting vaccinated in deep pockets of the population, cold weather driving people indoors and loosened restrictions, rather than new variants.
“For a long time — maybe too long — I and others assumed that it must be possible to convince people in Austria to voluntarily get vaccinated,” Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg of Austria said on Friday. “We therefore have reached a very difficult decision to introduce a national vaccine mandate.” (G)
‘Faced with rising infections and an anticipated surge in holiday travel, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday endorsed booster shots of the coronavirus vaccines for all Americans over 18.
The recommendation fulfills President Biden’s pledge in August to make the extra doses available to all adults, and caps months of scientific debate over whether most people really needed boosters. The shots are already available at many drugstores, doctors’ offices and vaccination centers.
The C.D.C. said that Americans over age 50, as well as those 18 and older living in long-term care facilities, “should” get booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines. All other adults over age 18 “may” get booster doses, the agency decided.
Recipients of Johnson & Johnson’s one-dose vaccine already were cleared to get a booster at least two months after the initial shot.
Earlier on Friday, the Food and Drug Administration authorized booster shots for all Americans over age 18. But the C.D.C. usually sets the clinical guidelines adopted by the medical profession.
A panel of scientific advisers approved the expansion of eligibility earlier on Friday, and the agency’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, endorsed the recommendation early in the evening.
Many experts worried that extra doses were not needed by most adults to prevent serious illness and death, and that a push for boosters could constrain global vaccine supplies even as people in many poor countries have not received their first doses.” (H)
“Mask wearing is one of the most effective public health measures for preventing covid-19, reducing incidence of the disease by 53 per cent, according to a review of published research.
Stella Talic at Monash University in Australia and her colleagues carried out a meta-analysis using data from 72 studies to assess the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions – measures that don’t involve drugs – at containing the virus.
Handwashing was also estimated to reduce covid-19 incidence by 53 per cent, but this result was not statistically significant because only a small number of studies on it were included. Physical distancing was found to reduce incidence by 25 per cent.
“It is likely that further control of the covid-19 pandemic depends not only on high vaccination coverage and its effectiveness but also on ongoing adherence to effective and sustainable public health measures,” Talic and her colleagues write in the British Medical Journal.” (I)
“Amid the turmoil of the last two years — a period that included a deadly pandemic, mass layoffs, an ugly presidential election and an attack on the United States Capitol — some of the fiercest political debates in America have been waged over a nearly weightless piece of fabric: the face mask.
American officials were slow to embrace face masks as a strategy for slowing the spread of the coronavirus. When they finally did, masks became a potent symbol of the pandemic — a common-sense public health measure turned political flashpoint and a visible reminder that life was anything but normal.
Now, with the summer’s Delta surge in the rearview mirror and the vaccination of school-age children underway, many Americans are wondering when the masks might finally come off.
“The best science does support mask-wearing as a valid strategy to reduce Covid-19,” said Dr. Stephen Luby, an infectious disease expert and epidemiologist at Stanford University. “The issue is: Well, how long do we do this, and in how many contexts?” He added, “Do we all wear masks the rest of our lives?”
Some public officials are already mapping out an endgame. On Tuesday, Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington, D.C., announced that indoor mask requirements would be loosened. The next day, Florida
Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor-elect, “wants to drop the mask mandate in schools when health officials determine it’s safe,” his spokesman said in an email.
That time has not yet come, experts said.
“Cases are starting to rise again, and we have not yet conquered this virus,” said Anne Rimoin, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We may be tired of Covid and Covid restrictions and public health measures, but this virus is certainly not done with us yet.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that even fully vaccinated people wear masks in public indoor spaces where community transmission of the virus is “substantial or high.” Currently, roughly 85 percent of U.S. counties meet that threshold, which is defined as at least 50 new cases weekly per 100,000 residents.
It will be safer to ease mask requirements early next year, scientists said, after more children have been fully vaccinated and the holiday travel season has passed. And voluntary mask-wearing will continue to be helpful in certain circumstances, as well as in future cold and flu seasons, they noted.
“I don’t think we’re going to want to put all our masks away,” Dr. Luby said.” (J)
“Amid a rise in COVID-19 cases across the U.S., hospitalizations among fully vaccinated people are also increasing, raising questions about waning vaccine immunity and whether booster doses will eventually be required to be considered fully vaccinated. ..
Earlier this month, CDC director Rochelle Walensky, MD, said the agency had no plans to change its definition of fully vaccinated.
Real-world studies from Israel indicate boosters lower people’s chance of breakthrough COVID-19 infection and severe illness. Data showed a third dose of Pfizer’s vaccine in people ages 60 and older reduced the risk of infection by 86 percent and the risk of severe disease by 92 percent.” (K)
“”I hate to say it, but I suspect we’re at the start of a new winter surge,” says Dr. George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco…
The growth in cases isn’t unexpected, given the patchwork of COVID-19 immunity across the U.S., where about 60% of the population is fully vaccinated.
Americans are moving around like they were before the pandemic, mask wearing is low compared to last year, people are spending more time indoors because of cooler weather, and protection against infection, both from vaccinations and prior infection, is waning, says Ali Mokdad, professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington’s Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation.
“You put all of this together — and what you see in Europe where many countries with higher vaccination rates than the United States are seeing a surge — of course, it’s going to happen,” he says.
And unlike last year, the U.S. has to contend with a much more contagious version of the virus “that makes it really hard to snuff out chains of transmission,” not to mention “human nature, which is wanting us to get back to pre-pandemic life,” says Reich at UMass Amherst.
Just how bad the situation gets will come down to complex dynamics around immunity. Southern states endured a brutal wave over the summer and that may have built up enough immunity from infection to shield them from another big resurgence this winter. Areas that did not face the same kind of surge, in particular states in the northern half of the country, are now dealing with an increase, but many also have the benefit of higher vaccination coverage.
“The real question is, how big will it get and will it really be substantial? And my sense is in New England, it’s going to hit a wall of vaccinated people,” says Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University’s School of Public Health.
“I think the Midwest and the Great Plains — which have lower vaccination rates but have not seen a big delta surge — they may very well end up seeing quite a few infections in the weeks and months ahead.”
Even if hospitals see fewer COVID-19 patients overall, it’s already clear that many are less prepared to handle the demands of the pandemic compared to last year.
“Every hospital I have talked to in the last month has severe shortages of staff, especially nurses,” says Dr. Bruce Siegel, president of America’s Essential Hospitals, which represents hundreds of public hospitals in the U.S…
As we head into the holidays, COVID risk increases, with more people traveling and socializing indoors. But “we also have some things that are helping, like more vaccines and kids getting vaccinated,” says Brown’s Jha. “So we’re in a stalemate. I don’t expect us to have a horrible surge, but I can certainly imagine parts of the country that see modest-sized surges as people get together and as the weather stays cold.” (M)
“New York Gov. Kathy Hochul recommended Americans who have family and friends over for indoor Thanksgiving celebrations remain masked and socially distant, a potentially improbable suggestion at this stage in the pandemic.” (L)
“Disney has put on pause a coronavirus vaccine mandate for employees of its Florida theme park after the State Legislature and the governor made it illegal for employers to require all workers get the shots, a company spokesperson confirmed Saturday.
Walt Disney World could have been facing fines under the policy now on hold, illustrating how even one of the most iconic tourism brands in the state has to deal with the headwinds of political debate over the pandemic response.
The Republican-controlled Florida Legislature delivered the bill blocking Covid-19 vaccine mandates on Wednesday and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law on Thursday, casting the measures as an effort to protect workers who could lose their jobs for lack of compliance…
The new Florida law prohibits employers from enforcing strict vaccine mandates, allowing employees to choose exemptions that include health or religious concerns, pregnancy or anticipated pregnancy, and having had the virus and recovered from it. Unvaccinated workers could instead undergo periodic testing or wear protective equipment, at the employers’ cost. Fines for violation could cost $10,000 a day per employee violation for businesses with fewer than 99 employees or up to $50,000 per employee violation for larger businesses.
Government entities and school districts are also restricted by the Covid mandate ban.
Disney World previously struck a deal with employees to require theme park workers be fully vaccinated against Covid to keep their jobs, and the company defended that rule in a statement Saturday. “We believe that our approach to mandatory vaccines has been the right one as we’ve continued to focus on the safety and well-being of our cast members and guests,” the statement said in part.
More than 90 percent of active cast members in Florida had verified they were vaccinated, the company said, before it sent a memo to employees halting the mandate.” (N)
B.Gather Only With Vaccinated Family Members For Holidays, Dr. Osterholm Says, By Liz Collin, https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2021/11/20/gather-only-with-vaccinated-family-members-for-holidays-
E.COVID-19 vaccination coverage among hospital-based healthcare personnel reported through the Department of Health and Human Services Unified Hospital Data Surveillance System, United States, January 20, 2021-September 15, 2021, by Hannah E. Reses et al, https://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-6553(21)00673-8/fulltext
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.”
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 129. February 15, 2021, CORONAVIRUS. “ “The CDC released its much-anticipated, updated guidance to help school leaders decide how to safely bring students back into classrooms, or keep them there.”…” For politicians, parents and school leaders looking for a clear green light to reopen schools, this is not it.”
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 139. March 8, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. CDC Issues First Set of Guidelines on How Fully Vaccinated People Can Visit Safely with Others…” In practice, that means fully vaccinated grandparents may visit unvaccinated healthy adult children and healthy grandchildren of the same household without masks or physical distancing.” (C)
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 160. May 13, 2021.CORONAVIRUS. “The CDC acknowledged Friday that airborne spread of COVID-19 among people more than 6 feet apart “has been repeatedly documented.”” Meanwhile states relax or eliminate indoor dining restrictions. HUH?
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 174. July 1, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “..while the WHO is encouraging people to keep wearing masks even if they’re vaccinated, Dr. Anthony Fauci says it doesn’t look like the CDC currently plans to change its guidelines.” … health officials in Los Angeles recommended that “everyone, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks indoors in public places as a precautionary measure.”..”
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 184. August 1, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “The coronavirus could be “just a few mutations potentially away” from evolving into a variant that can evade existing COVID-19 vaccines, CDC director Rochelle Walensky said..” (A) “The Delta variant is more transmissible than the viruses that cause MERS, SARS, Ebola, the common cold, the seasonal flu and smallpox, and it is as contagious as chickenpox..” (I)
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 200. September 23, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. CDC Director overrides a recommendation of its scientific advisors saying “that people can get a booster if they are ages 18 to 64 years and are health-care workers or have another job that puts them at increased risk of being exposed to the virus.”…“In a pandemic, even with uncertainty, we must take actions that we anticipate will do the greatest good.”
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 210. October 31, 2021. CORONAVIRUS. “Some people want the FDA to speed up. Others want it to be more cautious…There’s a fundamental tension between the right to get access to a drug people are desperate for and the right to protection from dangerous failures of quality. The first demands speed; the second requires time…”
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)
“The pandemic isn’t over. But new cases nationally have dropped below 75,000 a day, less than half the number in August. The United States will soon reopen land borders to vaccinated visitors and lift several international travel restrictions. More than 2 million people boarded flights last Sunday, not too far from pre-pandemic travel levels…
There could still be a winter surge since respiratory viruses thrive when people huddle in heated rooms. Some experts said they expect at least a modest uptick in infections over the next few weeks. Last year’s brutal winter wave of infections, which peaked in January, was just getting rolling at this point on the calendar.
And although aggregate national numbers are lower, many cold-weather states, particularly in the Mountain West, have recently seen a rise in cases and hospitalizations. Alaska, slipping into its dark winter, has the highest infection rate in the nation.
Infectious-disease experts and Biden administration officials are not about to make any definitive predictions about when the pandemic might end. The virus, SARS-CoV-2, is slippery and opportunistic. It is still mutating. It has appeared to lose traction several times over the past year and a half, only to surge anew as it took advantage of more lax behavior and the contagiousness of mutated variants.
Even so, the trends are favorable. With most people vaccinated and infection rates dropping, the United States has entered a new phase of the pandemic in which people are adapting to the persistent presence of an endemic but usually nonlethal pathogen. They really have no choice. The virus isn’t going away….
More than 1,000 people on average are still dying of covid-19 every day in the United States. Someday, the coronavirus may be viewed more like influenza, but experts say we’re not there yet…
“I’m incredibly doubtful this is our last surge, and I think some geographic areas are going to be hit again,” said Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and a Biden transition pandemic adviser. “There’s this waning immunity issue. Is it or is it not occurring, and how much? Could we be back in the soup again when we’re in pretty darn good shape today? What will it be like in 12 months?”… (A)
“The contagious delta variant is driving up COVID-19 hospitalizations in the Mountain West and fueling disruptive outbreaks in the North, a worrisome sign of what could be ahead this winter in the U.S.
While trends are improving in Florida, Texas and other Southern states that bore the worst of the summer surge, it’s clear that delta isn’t done with the United States. COVID-19 is moving north and west for the winter as people head indoors, close their windows and breathe stagnant air.
“We’re going to see a lot of outbreaks in unvaccinated people that will result in serious illness, and it will be tragic,” said Dr. Donald Milton of the University of Maryland School of Public Health.
The forecast for Oregon by Oregon Health & Science University, issued Thursday, foresees hospitalizations remaining above 400 through the end of the year.
In recent days, a Vermont college suspended social gatherings after a spike in cases tied to Halloween parties. Boston officials shut down an elementary school to control an outbreak. Hospitals in New Mexico and Colorado are overwhelmed.
In Michigan, the three-county metro Detroit area is again becoming a hot spot for transmissions, with one hospital system reporting nearly 400 COVID-19 patients. Mask-wearing in Michigan has declined to about 25% of people, according to a combination of surveys tracked by an influential modeling group at the University of Washington.
“Concern over COVID in general is pretty much gone, which is unfortunate,” said Dr. Jennifer Morse, medical director at health departments in 20 central and northern Michigan counties. “I feel strange going into a store masked. I’m a minority. It’s very different. It’s just a really unusual atmosphere right now.”
New Mexico is running out of intensive care beds despite the state’s above-average vaccination rate. Waning immunity may be playing a role. People who were vaccinated early and have not yet received booster shots may be driving up infection numbers, even if they still have some protection from the most dire consequences of the virus.
“Delta and waning immunity — the combination of these two have set us back,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington. “This virus is going to stick with us for a long, long time.”
The delta variant dominates infections across the U.S., accounting for more than 99% of the samples analyzed.
No state has achieved a high enough vaccination rate, even when combined with infection-induced immunity, to avoid the type of outbreaks happening now, Mokdad said.” (B)
“As the Delta variant continues its global surge, experts are questioning whether the long-held goal of achieving herd immunity from Covid-19 through vaccination is still viable…
“If the question is ‘will vaccination alone allow us to dampen and control the pandemic?’ the answer is: no,” epidemiologist Mircea Sofonea told AFP.
He said herd immunity hinged on two basic factors.
“That’s the intrinsic infectiousness of the virus and the efficacy of vaccines to protect against infection. And at the moment, that efficacy isn’t there.”
Delta has shown to be roughly 60 percent more transmissible than the Alpha variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and up to twice as infectious as the original strain that emerged in late 2019.
The more effective the virus becomes at infecting people, the higher the herd immunity threshold becomes.
“Theoretically, it’s a very simple calculation to make,” said epidemiologist Antoine Flahault.
For the original virus, which had a reproduction rate between zero and three — meaning each infected person infects up to three others — herd immunity could have been achieved with around 66 percent of people immunised, Flahault told AFP.
“But if the reproduction rate is eight, as with Delta, that puts us closer to 90 percent,” he said.
Were vaccines 100 percent effective at stopping Delta infections, that 90 percent could conceivably be possible. Unfortunately, they aren’t.
According to data published this week by US authorities, the efficacy of the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines at preventing infection has fallen from 91 percent to 66 percent since Delta became the dominant variant.
And studies have shown that the vaccine efficacy against infection with Delta falls over time — one of the reasons why several countries are now readying for an autumn third shot, or “booster”, vaccination campaign.
With all this taken into account, absent other health measures such as mask-wearing or social distancing, Sofonea said it would take more than 100 percent of people to be vaccinated in order to guarantee transmissions end — an obvious impossibility.
“The Delta variant will still infect people who have been vaccinated and that does mean that anyone who’s still unvaccinated, at some point, will meet the virus,” Andrew Pollard, director of Britain’s Oxford Vaccine Group, told lawmakers this month.
But even if, as Pollard termed it, the “mythical” aim of herd immunity is no longer in play, experts stressed that getting vaccinated remained paramount.” (C)
“It’s highly unlikely that the United States, let alone the world, will be able to completely eliminate the coronavirus that causes Covid-19…
“There’s not even a measurement to say that something is an epidemic or pandemic. All of this is in the eye of the beholder — and that’s part of the issue,” Dr. Arnold Monto, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan and acting chair of the US Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, told CNN.
“So, all of this is not based on rules. It’s based typically on what you have to do to control the outbreak,” Monto said. “What is so different here is that our vaccines are much more effective than what we usually see.”
The good news, according to Monto, is the power of vaccines. The bad news comes with the power of the virus to change and evolve.
No one can predict what the future of Covid-19 could look like — and the emergence of coronavirus variants, like Delta, has shifted the trajectory, he said.
“With the change in transmission patterns, as the variants have emerged — I call it a parade of variants — we now see much more extensive transmission and much more uniform spread globally. This makes declaring the end of the pandemic more difficult,” Monto said. “Because the whole pattern of spread has changed, and there may still be pockets that really haven’t gone through the kind of waves that the rest of the world has gone through.”…
Endemic means that a disease has a constant presence in a population — but it’s not affecting an alarmingly large number of people as typically seen in a pandemic. Even in early 2020, as the pandemic was ramping up, officials at the World Health Organization predicted that the novel coronavirus “may become another endemic virus in our communities” and never go away…
With some Americans still refusing to get their Covid-19 shots and some refusing to wear masks, the transition could take more time.
“We have to get somewhere well north of 80%, possibly even well north of 90% of the population with immunity either through having had infection or through having had vaccinations,” said Landrigan, who worked at the CDC for 15 years.” (D)
“Another wave of COVID-19 is sweeping across Europe, setting new records in some countries.
Records for daily infections have been shattered in recent days in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria. While deaths from COVID-19 are way down from last year in many European countries, Russia — with barely a third of its population vaccinated — has seen a steady two-month surge and now leads the world in total coronavirus deaths for the first time since the start of the pandemic…
The World Health Organization’s COVID-19 report for the week ending Nov. 7 showed that Europe, including Russia, was the only region with a rise in deaths from the virus, up 10%. Overall, new coronavirus cases were on the decline in most of the world, but were up 7% in Europe and 3% in Africa…
In Germany, where cases on Thursday surged to a new record of more than 50,000, the country’s health minister, Jens Spahn, has said his country must do “everything necessary” to break the latest wave of the disease, Deutsche Welle reported…
Nearly a third of Germany’s population is not yet fully vaccinated, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Countries with high vaccine rates and strict mandates have generally fared better
By contrast, Portugal and Spain — where new cases have been minimal — top the European vaccination statistics, with rates in excess of 80%. Infections are also low in France, which has kept restrictions in place since summer, including a requirement to show a vaccine passport to do nearly everything.
Austria — which has a vaccination rate similar to Germany’s and has also posted record infections in the past week — appears to be days away from imposing a lockdown for anyone who is not fully inoculated.
Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg has called a national lockdown for the unvaccinated “probably inevitable,” adding that two-thirds of the population should not have to suffer because the other third refused to be vaccinated…
In the Netherlands, a three-week partial lockdown was announced Friday, Reuters reported.
During a news conference Friday, caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the country will return to a partial lockdown starting Saturday — ordering all bars and restaurants to close at 8 p.m. and sporting events to be held without audiences.
Dutch government officials also recommended that no more than four visitors be allowed in people’s homes.
Denmark, which has also seen a recent upswing in cases, this week ordered its people to present a pass in the form of a smartphone app when they enter bars, restaurants and other public places. It is also considering fast-track legislation to require a digital “corona pass” for employers, according to Reuters.
While the United Kingdom saw a similar increase in cases last month, there are signs of a leveling off since then.” (E)
“Up to 116 hospital patients who were admitted with non-Covid illnesses in the last two weeks, were infected with the virus while in hospital as winter overcrowding now reaches critical levels.
The healthcare-acquired infections caught in hospital during their stay highlight the massive strain on services as daily cases of Covid-19 soared to 5,483 yesterday.
Another six Covid-19 patients were admitted to hospital yesterday, bringing the total to 549, of whom 96 are seriously ill in intensive care, a reduction of one overnight.
Five people a day are still dying from Covid.
In a major blow, one of the country’s biggest hospitals, the Mater in Dublin, is being forced to cancel many outpatient appointments and elective surgeries until further notice due to the pressures.
It has limited its activities to essential services since yesterday evening.
The three children’s hospitals in Dublin – Crumlin, Temple Street and Tallaght – are curtailing some elective operations for the third week running due a surge in winter respiratory illnesses.
It comes after two leading paediatric orthopaedic surgeons, Connor Greene and Damien McCormack, warned that young children denied timely care are ending up in wheelchairs.
And consultants in University Hospital Kerry held a crisis meeting with HSE executives, warning patient safety is at risk because of a shortage of beds and staff. Elective surgery at the hospital has been suspended since mid-September and a “totally inadequate” number of single rooms is increasing infection control risks, they warned….
The worry now is that hospitals across the country have yet to reach their winter peak and seriously ill patients will again have their care put on hold and risk deteriorating.
Prof Alan Irvine, president of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, said nearly one million people are now on a hospital waiting list and even the HSE’s modest target to reduce the queues by 36,000 by the end of the year will not be met.
He warned: “The early winter surge is seeing the widespread cancellation of operations and outpatient appointments already across public hospitals.”…
Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan this weekend said everyone should try to continue to make every effort they can to drive down the disease and break the chains of transmission.
“Before you leave the house, think about the number of people you are going to meet, and the risk associated with the activities you have planned,” Dr Holohan said. “Keep your contacts low and avoid crowds, wear a mask correctly, meet outside if possible, avoid poorly ventilated indoor spaces and practise good hand and respiratory hygiene.”” (F)
“Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida outlined on Friday an urgent plan to increase hospital beds and medical resources in preparation for a possible resurgence of COVID-19 infections this winter.
After a deadly fifth wave of infections almost overwhelmed the medical system during the summer, infections and deaths have fallen dramatically as vaccinations have increased to cover more than 70% of the population.
Emergency measures covering most of the country were lifted last month, but health experts warn that cases will likely rebound, as they did in Japan last winter. Ahead of that, the government plans to boost hospital bed capacity by about 30%, bolster in-home care, and collect data to predict which hospitals will come under pressure.
“In parallel with strengthening the medical system, from December will use IT systems to make public the number of hospital beds and conditions at each hospital,” Kishida told reporters.
Kishida said earlier this week that the “trump card” in the government’s pandemic fight was the procurement of oral treatments that could prevent the need for hospitalisation.
Japan will pay about $1.2 billion to Merck & Co Inc (MRK.N) for 1.6 million courses of the COVID-19 antiviral pill molnupiravir, according to terms announced on Wednesday.
That’s about half the supply that has been secured by the United States and compares with a total of 1.7 million coronavirus cases seen in Japan since the start of the pandemic…
To stave off the bed shortage, the health ministry has adopted a system that uses past and present infection data to predict when and where medical resources will come under strain.
“A sixth wave is a question of when rather than if,” said Yuki Furuse, a Kyoto University professor who developed the predictive tool.
“Because the current situation in Japan is calm, it seems okay to lift some restrictions now. However, I am concerned about whether people can go back to a ‘voluntary self-restraint state’ again when needed,” he added.” (G)
Especially in the months before the Delta variant became dominant, the pandemic seemed like it should be nearly over.
“When the vaccines first came out, and we started getting shots in our own arms, so many of us felt physically and emotionally transformed,” said Dr. Jeremy Greene, a historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “We had a willful desire to translate that as, ‘The pandemic has ended for me.’”
He added, “It was a willful delusion.”
And that is a lesson from history that is often forgotten, Frank Snowden, a historian of medicine at Yale University, said: how difficult it is to declare that a pandemic has ended.
It may not be over even when physical disease, measured in illness and mortality, has greatly subsided. It may continue as the economy recovers and life returns to a semblance of normality. The lingering psychological shock of having lived in prolonged fear of severe illness, isolation and painful death takes long to fade.
Some diseases, like the 1918 flu, receded. Others, like the bubonic plague, remained, smoldering. H.I.V. is still with us, but with drugs to prevent and treat it. In each case, the trauma for those affected persisted long after the imminent threat of infection and death had ebbed.
If nothing else, the Covid-19 virus has humbled experts who once confidently predicted its course, disregarding the lessons of history.
“What we are living through now is a new cycle of collective dismay,” Dr. Greene said — a dismay that has grown out of frustration with the inability to control the virus, fury of the vaccinated at those who refuse to get the shots and a disillusionment that astoundingly effective vaccines haven’t yet returned life to normal.”..
Other pandemics, like this one, were hobbled by what Dr. Snowden calls “overweening hubris,” prideful certainties from experts that add to the frustrations of understanding how and when it will dwindle away.
With Covid, prominent experts declared at first that masks did not help prevent infection, only to reverse themselves later. Epidemiologists confidently published models of how the pandemic would progress and what it would take to reach herd immunity, only to be proved wrong. Investigators said the virus was transmitted on surfaces, then later said that, no, it was spread through tiny droplets in the air. They said the virus was unlikely to transform in a substantial way, then warned of the Delta variant’s greater transmissibility.
“We paid a heavy price for that,” Dr. Snowden said. Many people lost trust in officials amid ever-changing directives and strategies that weakened the effort to control the virus.” (H)
“The U.S. is currently averaging around 76,000 new COVID-19 cases a day, up by nearly 20% since mid-October, according to an ABC News analysis of federal data.
North Dakota now has the country’s highest infection rate, followed by Minnesota, Alaska and Vermont.
COVID-19 hospitalizations nationwide also increased for the fourth consecutive day Friday. More than 47,000 patients with COVID-19 are currently receiving care.” (I)
“Since the earliest days of the pandemic, there has been one collective goal for bringing it to an end: achieving herd immunity. That’s when so many people are immune to a virus that it runs out of potential hosts to infect, causing an outbreak to sputter out.
Many Americans embraced the novel farmyard phrase, and with it, the projection that once 70% to 80% or 85% of the population was vaccinated against COVID-19, the virus would go away and the pandemic would be over.
Now the herd is restless. And experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set aside herd immunity as a national goal.
The prospects for meeting a clear herd-immunity target are “very complicated,” said Dr. Jefferson Jones, a medical officer on the CDC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology Task Force.
“Thinking that we’ll be able to achieve some kind of threshold where there’ll be no more transmission of infections may not be possible,” Jones acknowledged last week to members of a panel that advises the CDC on vaccines….
On issues ranging from the use of masks to how the virus spreads, the agency has made some dramatic about-faces over the course of the pandemic. Those reversals were prompted by new scientific discoveries about how the novel virus behaves, but they’ve also provided ample fuel for COVID-19 skeptics, especially those in conservative media.
“It’s a science-communications problem,” said Dr. John Brooks, chief medical officer for the CDC’s COVID-19 response.
“We said, based on our experience with other diseases, that when you get up to 70% to 80%, you often get herd immunity,” he said.
But the SARS-CoV-2 virus didn’t get the memo.
“It has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, and it’s repeatedly challenged us,” he said. “It’s impossible to predict what herd immunity will be in a new pathogen until you reach herd immunity.”
The CDC’s new approach will reflect this uncertainty. Instead of specifying a vaccination target that promises an end to the pandemic, public health officials hope to redefine success in terms of new infections and deaths — and they’ll surmise that herd immunity has been achieved when both remain low for a sustained period.
“We want clean, easy answers, and sometimes they exist,” John Brooks said. “But on this one, we’re still learning.”…
For instance, it assumes an unrealistic uniformity in the behavior of individuals and groups, and in the virus’ ability to spread from person to person…
“Humans are not a herd,”… (J)
“Austria is placing millions of people not fully vaccinated against the coronavirus in lockdown as of Monday to deal with a surge in infections to record levels and the growing strain on intensive-care units, the government said on Sunday.
Europe is the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic again, prompting some governments to consider re-imposing unpopular lockdowns. Austria has one of the continent’s highest infection rates, with a seven-day incidence of 815 per 100,000 people. read more
Austria is the first European country to reinstate the same restrictions on daily movements that applied during national lockdowns before vaccines were rolled out, though this time they only affect a minority of the population.
“We are not taking this step lightly but it is necessary,” Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg told a news conference announcing the new measure, under which the unvaccinated can only leave their homes for a limited number of reasons like going to work or shopping for essentials.
Roughly 65% of Austria’s population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, one of the lowest rates in western Europe. Many Austrians are sceptical about vaccines, a view encouraged by the far-right Freedom Party, the third biggest in parliament.
The measures on Monday will extend those brought in a week ago which banned the unvaccinated from places including restaurants, hotels, theatres and ski lifts.” (K)
