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Post by Admin on Jul 25, 2021 13:24:59 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jul 26, 2021 16:42:58 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jul 26, 2021 17:05:13 GMT
5 top tips for self-care in a pandemic-exhausted world Some countries are lifting pandemic restrictions, while others are instating snap lockdowns amid fresh outbreaks of COVID-19. We are living in stressful, confusing times, and it is now perhaps more important than ever to look after ourselves as much as possible. Read on for some top self-care tips from Medical News Today and our trusted experts. www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/5-top-tips-for-self-care-in-a-pandemic-exhausted-world‘Ancient RNA virus epidemics occurred frequently during human evolution’ www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/ancient-rna-virus-epidemics-occurred-frequently-during-human-evolutionGenome adaptations may offer insight into a viral epidemic as far back as 25,000 years. Several lines of evidence point to a coronavirus or similar virus that emerged among the ancestors of East Asian people. Identifying ancient viral activity may uncover the potential of evolutionary genomic methods to predict and combat future pandemics. A team of scientists, which researchers at the University of Arizona in Tucson and the University of Adelaide in South Australia co-led, delved into human genomes to find a correlation between ancient coronavirus epidemics and past adaptation in modern humans. They hope that understanding the effect of past pandemics on genetic mutations will give scientists more “ammunition” in the arms raceTrusted Source against SARS-CoV-2 variants.
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Post by Admin on Jul 26, 2021 18:48:11 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2021 9:22:22 GMT
Everything you need to know about vaccines — our only viable strategy for living with Covid-19 By Lucy Allais, Shabir Madhi, Imraan Valodia, Alex van den Heever, Martin Veller and Francois Venter• 26 July 2021 www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-07-26-everything-you-need-to-know-about-vaccines-our-only-viable-strategy-for-living-with-covid-19/Most importantly: Vaccines will give you near-complete protection against severe illness and dying from Covid. Vaccines are safe. All vaccines used in the vaccination programme in South Africa have undergone extensive trials and have been proven to be effective and safe. The risk of serious side effects is similar to the chance of being struck by lightning, and side effects are treatable and generally go away on their own. It takes time for vaccines to start working well — usually about two weeks, and their working steadily improves after this. Vaccines differ in how well they protect against infection and mild Covid. Most vaccines will require at least two doses and provide good protection against severe illness from Covid two weeks after your first shot. Until you are fully vaccinated you should continue to take the same precautions as if you are unvaccinated.
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Post by Admin on Jul 28, 2021 14:27:56 GMT
What is a breakthrough infection? 6 questions answered about catching COVID-19 after vaccination July 28, 2021 1.26pm BST theconversation.com/what-is-a-breakthrough-infection-6-questions-answered-about-catching-covid-19-after-vaccination-164909If you’ve been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, maybe you figured you no longer need to worry about contracting the coronavirus. But along with the rising number of new COVID-19 cases globally and growing concern about highly transmissible strains like the delta variant come reports of fully vaccinated people testing positive for COVID-19. Members of the New York Yankees, U.S. Olympic gymnast Kara Eaker and U.K. health secretary Sajid Javid are some of those diagnosed with what is called a “breakthrough infection.” As scary as the term may sound, the bottom line is that the existing COVID-19 vaccines are still very good at preventing symptomatic infections, and breakthrough infections happen very rarely. But just how common and how dangerous are they? Here’s a guide to what you need to know. What is ‘breakthrough infection?’ No vaccine is 100% effective. Dr. Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was 80%-90% effective in preventing paralytic disease. Even for the gold standard measles vaccine, the efficacy was 94% among a highly vaccinated population during large outbreaks. Comparably, clinical trials found the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna were 94%–95% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 – much more protective than initially hoped. A quick reminder: A vaccine efficacy of 95% does not mean that the shot protects 95% of people while the other 5% will contract the virus. Vaccine efficacy is a measure of relative risk – you need to compare a group of vaccinated people to a group of unvaccinated people under the same exposure conditions. So consider a three-month study period during which 100 out of 10,000 unvaccinated people got COVID-19. You’d expect five vaccinated people to get sick during that same time. That’s 5% of the 100 unvaccinated people who fell ill, not 5% of the whole group of 10,000. When people get infected after vaccination, scientists call these cases “breakthrough” infections because the virus broke through the protective barrier the vaccine provides. How common is COVID-19 infection in the fully vaccinated? Breakthrough infections are a little more frequent than previously expected and are probably increasing because of growing dominance of the delta variant. But infections in vaccinated people are still very rare and usually cause mild or no symptoms. For instance, 46 U.S. states and territories voluntarily reported 10,262 breakthrough infections to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention between Jan. 1 and April 30, 2021. By comparison, there were 11.8 million COVID-19 diagnoses in total during the same period. Beginning May 1, 2021, the CDC stopped monitoring vaccine breakthrough cases unless they resulted in hospitalization or death. Through July 19, 2021, there were 5,914 patients with COVID-19 vaccine breakthrough infections who were hospitalized or died in the U.S., out of more than 159 million people fully vaccinated nationwide. One study between Dec. 15, 2020, and March 31, 2021, that included 258,716 veterans who received two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, counted 410 who got breakthrough infections – that’s 0.16% of the total. Similarly, a study in New York noted 86 cases of COVID-19 breakthrough infections between Feb. 1 and April 30, 2021, among 126,367 people who were fully vaccinated, mostly with mRNA vaccines. This accounts for 1.2% of total COVID-19 cases and 0.07% of the fully vaccinated population. How serious is a COVID-19 breakthrough infection? The CDC defines a vaccine breakthrough infection as one in which a nasal swab can detect the SARS-CoV-2 RNA or protein more than 14 days after a person has completed the full recommended doses of an FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccine. Note that a breakthrough infection doesn’t necessarily mean the person feels sick – and in fact, 27% of breakthrough cases reported to the CDC were asymptomatic. Only 10% of the breakthrough-infected people were known to be hospitalized (some for reasons other than COVID-19), and 2% died. For comparison, during the spring of 2020 when vaccines were not yet available, over 6% of confirmed infections were fatal. In a study at U.S. military treatment facilities, none of the breakthrough infections led to hospitalization. In another study, after just one dose of Pfizer vaccine the vaccinated people who tested positive for COVID-19 had a quarter less virus in their bodies than those who were unvaccinated and tested positive. What makes a breakthrough infection more likely? Nationwide, on average more than 5% of COVID-19 tests are coming back positive; in Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma, the positivity rate is above 30%. Lots of coronavirus circulating in a community pushes the chance of breakthrough infections higher. The likelihood is greater in situations of close contact, such as in a cramped working space, party, restaurant or stadium. Breakthrough infections are also more likely among health care workers who are in frequent contact with infected patients. For reasons that are unclear, nationwide CDC data found that women account for 63% of breakthrough infections. Some smaller studies identified women as the majority of breakthrough cases as well. Vaccines trigger a less robust immune response among older people, and the chances of a breakthrough infection get higher with increasing age. Among the breakthrough cases tracked by the CDC, 75% occurred in patients age 65 and older. Being immunocompromised or having underlying conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, chronic kidney and lung diseases and cancer increase the chances of breakthrough infections and can lead to severe COVID-19. For example, fully vaccinated organ transplant recipients were 82 times more likely to get a breakthrough infection and had a 485-fold higher risk of hospitalization and death after a breakthrough infection compared with the vaccinated general population in one study. How do variants like delta change things? Researchers developed today’s vaccines to ward off earlier strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Since then new variants have emerged, many of which are better at dodging the antibodies produced by the currently authorized vaccines. While existing vaccines are still very effective against these variants for preventing hospitalization, they are less effective than against previous variants. Two doses of the mRNA vaccines were only 79% effective at preventing symptomatic disease with delta, compared with 89% effective in the case of the earlier alpha variant, according to Public Health England. A single dose was only 35% protective against delta. About 12.5% of the 229,218 delta variant cases across England through July 19 were among fully vaccinated people. Israel, with high vaccination rates, has reported that full vaccination with the Pfizer vaccine might be only 39%-40.5% effective at preventing delta variant infections of any severity, down from early estimates of 90%. Israel’s findings suggest that within six months, COVID-19 vaccines’ efficacy at preventing infection and symptomatic disease declines. The good news, though, is that the vaccine is still highly effective at protecting against hospitalization (88%) and severe illness (91.4%) caused by the now-dominant delta variant. So how well are vaccines holding up? As of the end of July 2021, 49.1% of the U.S. population, or just over 163 million people, are fully vaccinated. Nearly 90% of Americans over the age of 65 have received at least one dose of a vaccine. Scientists’ models suggest that vaccination may have saved approximately 279,000 lives in the U.S. and prevented up to 1.25 million hospitalizations by the end of June 2021. Similarly, in England about 30,300 deaths, 46,300 hospitalizations and 8.15 million infections may have been prevented by COVID-19 vaccines. In Israel, the high vaccination rate is thought to have caused a 77% drop in cases and a 68% drop in hospitalizations from that nation’s pandemic peak. Across the U.S., only 150 out of more than 18,000 deaths due to COVID-19 in May were of people who had been fully vaccinated. That means nearly all COVID-19 deaths in U.S. are among those who remain unvaccinated. The U.S. is becoming “almost like two Americas,” as Anthony Fauci put it, divided between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. Those who have not been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 remain at risk from the coronavirus that has so far killed more than 600,000 people in the U.S.
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Post by Admin on Jul 28, 2021 19:08:53 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jul 31, 2021 0:20:54 GMT
How the pandemic put the final nail in the coffin of the right-wing idea of liberty www.alternet.org/2021/07/vaccines-liberty/I'm still stuck on the idea that if we're nicer to Americans refusing to get vaccinated, they'd be more likely to get vaccinated. That seems akin to hostage-takers being more likely to release hostages if we meet their demands. Anyone who thought about this morally for five minutes would realize anyone willing to take hostages in the first place is untrustworthy, much less committed to releasing hostages after their demands are met. Meeting their demands actually incentivizes them to take even more hostages. Americans refusing to get vaccinated are similarly engaged in power politics, not an fair, honorable and equitable exchange. What's good for them is not their own health and well-being. What's good for them is not enlightened self-interest. What is good for them is maintaining a political advantage, real or imagined, that "us" has over "them." So the more we ask anti-vaxxers nicely to please get vaccinated pretty please with sugar on top, the more incentive they have to say no. The more they say no, the more we have to keep asking. Yes, we're asking them to do what's best for them and their loved ones, but they don't see that. What happens after hostages are released? No more advantage! I'd say most people think politics is about problem-solving. Anti-vaxxers think politics is war by other means. To get vaccinated is to concede defeat. And that's unthinkable. That the real defeat would be their own deaths by the covid does not undermine my point here. It underscores it. A founding principle of the anti-vaxx movement, started long before the covid came, is individual freedom. In this story, they are the heroes. Laws, regulations and people who think politics is about problem-solving—they are the villains. Once people get it in their heads that giving in to laws, regulations and problem-solving is the death of their liberty, it's not hard to imagine them accepting as good the real thing. In this sense, they're less hostage takers than suicide bombers. It should be said this idea of freedom is upside down, backwards and prolapsed. It should also be said that's the case for many Americans, not just anti-vaxxers. Freedom is usually seen as freedom of choice, freedom to do what you want, freedom to not do what you don't want. That's the myopic legacy of conservative politics in the United States, stemming back to the rise of industrialism and to the slave masters before that. My hope is the pandemic is revealing to us what individual liberty can be. It can be what we do together as a political community for the sake of individuals but also for the sake of the common good. It's about the equitable use of the government for achieving such ends, especially solving collective problems, like a pandemic that has killed nearly 625,000. That means making people, by force if needed, do what they should. Coercion is often seen as freedom's antipode, but again, that's the legacy of the history of conservative politics. States and localities make people do stuff all the time with very few residents carping about their lost individual liberty. (This includes getting vaccinated!) That anti-vaxxers deny this shared reality in addition to refusing to get vaccinated, adds insult (to our collective intelligence) to injury (to the republic). Editorial Board subscriber Jim Prevatt expressed this double-whammy when he said: "Tell me again why is it that people get to decide whether or not to be vaccinated against COVID-19. I don't get a choice about whether to murder somebody. I don't get a choice to drive without a driver's license or to exceed the speed limit or run a red light or go to Switzerland without a passport. Why do people get a choice not to take the vaccine when they might very well expose somebody else who will die from it?" Mr. Prevatt echoed sentiments expressed by Abraham Lincoln. The 16th president said that "the legitimate object of government is 'to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.' Making and maintaining roads, bridges, and the like; providing for the helpless young and afflicted; common schools; and disposing of deceased men's property, are instances." I'm pretty sure he'd include vaccinations against the covid. Mr. Prevatt joins Editorial Board member Claire Bond Potter in updating Lincoln's view to meet the equity demands of a multi-racial republic. In a piece about the collapsed Florida condo, and speaking of the role of building regulations, Claire said "individuals do not make the best decisions for themselves. They make self-interested ones. Government is there to make the hard political decisions that individuals cannot, or will not, make on their own. Politics is how we, as a people, make good on a social commitment to care for each other."1 Claire didn't say this but I'm confident she'd agree this applies to people refusing vaccinations. If you can't be trusted to "make good on a social commitment to care for each other," you'll have to be forced to. So far, vaccination mandates are not uniform. They are a patchwork of local and state laws, and requirements by individual institutions, such as colleges and public schools. There is no national mandate, not even for the military. In their absence, however, the tide is shifting away from the idea that we should be nicer to people in order to get them to do the right thing. No, they should do the right thing for its own sake. The tide is also shifting away from the legacy of conservative politics. Government is not the opposite of individual liberty. Government can be the way of realizing it fully.
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Post by Admin on Jul 31, 2021 0:42:52 GMT
Rapid response to: Long covid—mechanisms, risk factors, and management BMJ 2021; 374 doi: doi.org/10.1136/bmj.n1648 (Published 26 July 2021) Cite this as: BMJ 2021;374:n1648 www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1648/rr-0Rapid Response: A few important things we would like to add Re: Long covid—mechanisms, risk factors, and management Dear Dr Crook and colleagues, Thank you for a very good review about Long Covid, its mechanisms, risk factors, and management.[1] Thank you also for referring to two of our reviews of the efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for CFS and Q-fever fatigue syndrome.[2,3] However, there are a few little but important things we would like to add. You state that our re-analysis of a Cochrane review questions the effectiveness of CBT for ME/CFS.[2] Our re-analysis, however, not only found that there are many problems with the studies in the review, but also that CBT does not lead to objective improvement in ME/CFS. You also mention our review of the Qure study, [3] a study which investigated the efficacy of CBT for Q-fever fatigue syndrome. Our review found that only 10% of participants improved subjectively after CBT in a study without a control group for the CBT arm. Moreover, CBT did not reduce disability, nor did it lead to objective improvement. You also mention that a Cochrane review of exercise therapy for ME/CFS from 2017 concluded that exercise therapy might be beneficial for patients with ME/CFS.[4] However, an amended review [5] was published by the same authors in 2019 because there were many problems with the 2017 review. Our re-analysis of the amended review [6] unfortunately showed that many problems had not been addressed and that the reviewers continued to ignore the objective outcomes which showed that graded exercise therapy (GET) did not lead to objective improvement in ME/CFS. Cochrane’s Editor-in-Chief, Dr Soares-Weiser has acknowledged those problems and has put a note on Cochrane’s website about that. She has also appointed Dr Bastian to start work on a new review which should be state-of-the-art and not ignore the objective outcomes.[7] You also state that NICE has a ME/CFS guideline in which it advises that patients should be treated with CBT and GET and that "NICE aims to publish revised guidelines in August 2021" "following backlash over these guidelines from the ME Association." However, NICE is updating their guideline because several reviews, including some of ours, have highlighted the fact that CBT and GET do not lead to objective improvement in ME/CFS. Moreover, research by the Oxford Brookes University[8] into the safety of these two treatments, carried out for NICE, found that worsening of symptoms after treatment was reported in 81.1% (GET) and 58.3% (CBT). It also found that the percentage of severely affected patients increased from 12.9% to 35.3% after GET and from 12.6% to 26.6% after CBT. NICE itself published its draft ME/CFS guideline in November 2020, in which it stated that "GET should not be offered for the treatment of ME/CFS" "because of the harms reported by people with ME/CFS." And that CBT "is not a treatment or cure for ME/CFS."[9] Mark Vink, MD, family and insurance physician Alexandra Vink-Niese, independent researcher No conflict of interest References 1. Crook H, Raza S, Nowell J, Young M, Edison P. Long covid-mechanisms, risk factors, and management. BMJ. 2021 Jul 26;374:n1648. doi: 10.1136/bmj.n1648. PMID: 34312178. 2. Vink M, Vink-Niese A. Cognitive behavioural therapy for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome is not effective. Re-analysis of a Cochrane review. Health Psychol Open 2019;6:2055102919840614. 3. Vink M, Vink-Niese A. Could cognitive behavioural therapy be an effective treatment for long covid and post covid-19 fatigue syndrome? Lessons from the Qure Study for Q-Fever Fatigue Syndrome. Healthcare (Basel) 2020;8:552. 4. Larun L, Brurberg KG, Odgaard-Jensen J, Price JR. Exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome. Cochrane Database Syst Rev2017;4:CD003200. 5. Larun L, Brurberg KG, Odgaard-Jensen J, Price JR. Exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2019, Issue 10. Art. No.: CD003200. 6. Vink M, Vink-Niese F. Graded exercise therapy does not restore the ability to work in ME/CFS - Rethinking of a Cochrane review. Work. 2020;66(2):283-308. doi: 10.3233/WOR-203174. 7. Cochrane. Publication of Cochrane Review: ‘Exercise therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome’ October 2, 2019 www.cochrane.org/news/cfs (accessed 28 July 2021) 8. Oxford Clinical Allied Technology and Trials Services Unit (OxCATTS) and Oxford Brookes University (2019) Evaluation of a Survey Exploring the Experiences of Adults and Children with ME/CFS Who Have Participated in CBT and GET Interventional Programmes. Final report, 27 February. Available at: https:// huisartsvink.files.wordpress.com/2019/11/nicepatient-survey-outcomes-cbt-and-get-oxfordbrookes-full-report-03.04.19.pdf (accessed 28 July 2021) 9. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) (2020) Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (or Encephalopathy)/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Diagnosis and Management. Draft guidance consultation. Available at: www.nice.org.uk/ news/article/nice-draft-guidance-addresses-thecontinuing-debate-about-the-best-approachto-the-diagnosis-and-management-of-me-cfs (accessed 28 July 2021) Competing interests: No competing interests
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Post by Admin on Jul 31, 2021 17:34:17 GMT
Cognitive dysfunction linked to COVID-19 www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/cognitive-dysfunction-linked-to-covid-19There is growing concern about the effects of COVID-19 on many parts of a person’s body besides the respiratory system. Researchers have shown that COVID-19 symptoms can persist after recovery and lead to neurological problems. Research presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) 2021 further confirms these findings, including making links between COVID-19 and signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Scientists presenting research at the AAIC 2021, held online and in Denver, CO, have found links between COVID-19 and longer-term cognitive issues, including biological signs of Alzheimer’s disease. The findings lay the ground for larger longitudinal studies to explore in more detail the neurological effects of COVID-19. Long COVID COVID-19 is primarily a respiratory condition. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)Trusted Source note that COVID-19 symptoms can include mild respiratory problems, more severe low oxygen levels and shortness of breath, and life threatening issues affecting multiple organs across a person’s body. Much research has been done to understand these acute symptoms, and there are now many different treatment options open to clinicians. However, the effects of COVID-19 do not always end after the acute phase of the condition. As the pandemic progressed, anecdotal evidence suggested many people who had recovered from COVID-19 were still experiencing a variety of symptoms. This became known as long COVID. According to Dr. A. V. Raveendran, of the Government Medical College in Manjeri, India, and his colleagues, symptoms of long COVID can include “profound fatigue, breathlessness, cough, chest pain, palpitations, headache, joint pain, myalgia and weakness, insomnia, pins and needles, diarrhea, rash or hair loss, impaired balance and gait, neurocognitive issues, including memory and concentration problems, and worsened quality of life.” Neurological issues under the spotlight At the AAIC 2021, researchers presented a number of studies that focus on the neurological issues associated with the longer-term effects of COVID-19. According to Dr. Heather M. Snyder, Alzheimer’s Association vice president of medical and scientific relations, “[t]hese new data point to disturbing trends showing COVID-19 infections leading to lasting cognitive impairment and even Alzheimer’s symptoms.” “With more than 190 million cases and nearly 4 million deaths worldwide, COVID-19 has devastated the entire world. It is imperative that we continue to study what this virus is doing to our bodies and brains. The Alzheimer’s Association and its partners are leading, but more research is needed,” she said. Cognitive issues In one study, Dr. Gabriel De Erausquin, of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio Long School of Medicine, as well as colleagues from the Alzheimer’s Association leading a consortium on links between COVID-19 and the nervous system, looked at neurological issues in Amerindians from Argentina who had recovered from acute COVID-19. The 300 participants were assessed 3–6 months after having COVID-19. The researchers found that more than 50% of the participants had issues with forgetfulness and that around 25% also experienced executive dysfunction and language issues. The researchers noted an association between these cognitive issues and loss of smell but not with the severity of the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection. According to Dr. Erausquin, “[we are] starting to see clear connections between COVID-19 and problems with cognition months after infection.” “[It is] imperative we continue to study this population, and others around the world, for a longer period of time to further understand the long-term neurological impacts of COVID-19.” Signs of Alzheimer’s disease In another study presented at the conference, Prof. Thomas M. Wisniewski, professor of neurology, pathology, and psychiatry at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, and his colleagues explored the possible links between COVID-19 and clinical signs of Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers took blood plasma samples from 310 people who had been admitted to hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 158 had neurological symptoms associated with COVID-19 — most frequently, confusion — while 152 did not. In the patients who did not have cognitive issues prior to developing COVID-19 but then did develop neurological symptoms, the researchers found an increase in biological markers associated with Alzheimer’s disease, brain injury, and neuroinflammation, compared with the patients who did not have neurological symptoms. These included total tau, neurofilament light, glial fibrillary acid protein, phosphorylated tau, and ubiquitin carboxyl-terminal hydrolase L1. The researchers also noted a correlation between some of these markers and C-reactive peptide. Prof. Wisniewski explains: “These findings suggest that patients who had COVID-19 may have an acceleration of Alzheimer’s-related symptoms and pathology. However, more longitudinal research is needed to study how these biomarkers impact cognition in individuals who had COVID-19 in the long term.” Oxygen deprivation Researchers also presented findings looking at the relationship between cognitive issues linked to COVID-19, and people’s physical condition and blood oxygen levels. Dr. George D. Vavougios, a postdoctoral researcher for the University of Thessaly in Greece, and his colleagues recruited 32 people who had been hospitalized with mild or moderate COVID-19 and then discharged 2 months later. Just over half of the participants had issues with cognitive decline, including short-term memory impairment as well as multidomain impairment without short-term memory issues. The researchers found a correlation between worse levels of cognitive scores and being older, having a larger waist circumference, and a higher waist-to-hip ratio. The participants also took a 6-minute walking test. After accounting for sex and age, the researchers found a link between worse memory and thinking scores and lower blood oxygen levels. Dr. Vavougios says: “A brain deprived of oxygen is not healthy, and persistent deprivation may very well contribute to cognitive difficulties. These data suggest some common biological mechanisms between COVID-19’s dyscognitive spectrum and post-COVID-19 fatigue that have been anecdotally reported over the last several months.” Growing body of evidence The research presented at the conference is also supported by a new study published in The Lancet, which drew on data from over 80,000 participants. Having accounted for a range of factors, the researchers behind this study found that people who had recovered from COVID-19 had significant cognitive issues, compared with a control group. Speaking to Medical News Today, Dr. Adam Hampshire, of the Department of Brain Sciences, Dementia Research Institute, Care Research and Technology Centre, Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, and the corresponding author of the study, said the study emerged out of ongoing research he was conducting when the pandemic took hold. “By coincidence, when the pandemic accelerated in the U.K., I was in the process of collecting one of the largest online surveys of cognitive abilities to have been conducted.” He went on to say: “Several peers wrote to me noting that the study could be extended to address questions about the potential impact of the virus, and of the pandemic more broadly, on cognition and mental health. I had been thinking along similar lines so decided to try and help address this important question.” Dr. Hampshire said that the findings make clear a link between cognitive dysfunction and COVID-19 but that more research needs to be done to confirm these findings, explore them in more detail, and understand what, if any, causal mechanisms may be underlying them. “We have identified a worrying association between [COVID-19] illness and cognitive deficits. We also have ruled out many potentially confounding factors.” “What is needed is a combination of longitudinal studies that determine how long these deficits last and to disentangle causality, as well as brain imaging studies to understand the underlying neural basis. Such work is underway, and some of those studies are using our assessment software, which I have made available for this purpose.” – Dr. Adam Hampshire
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Post by Admin on Aug 1, 2021 8:45:14 GMT
Published on March 28, 2020 Social Distancing During the Black Death written by James Hankins quillette.com/2020/03/28/social-distancing-during-the-black-death/One of the comforts of studying history is that, no matter how bad things get, you can always find a moment in the past when things were much, much worse. Some commentators on our current crisis have been throwing around comparisons to earlier pandemics, and the Black Death of 1347 — 50 inevitably gets mentioned. Please. The Black Death wiped out half the population of Europe in the space of four years. In some places the mortality was far swifter and deadlier than that. The novelist Giovanni Boccaccio, who gave us the most vivid picture of the Black Death in literature, estimated that 100,000 people died in Florence in the four months between March and July 1348. The population of the city in 1338, according to one contemporary chronicler, stood at 120,000. Boccaccio at the time was a city tax official and saw the whole thing at ground level. Every morning bodies of the dead—husbands, wives, children, servants—were pushed out into the street where they were piled on stretchers, later on carts. They were carried to the nearest church for a quick blessing, then trundled to graveyards outside the city for burial. As the death toll rose, traditional burial practices were abandoned. Deep trenches were dug into which bodies were dumped in layers with a thin covering of soil shoveled on top. Boccaccio writes that “no more respect was accorded the dead than would today be shown to dead goats.” Like COVID-19, the disease spread with bewildering rapidity, but unlike in the modern pandemic, it infected everyone, young and old, rich and poor, not mainly the old and infirm. And again unlike the current virus, the effects of bubonic plague were particularly humiliating. Tumor-like growths as big as apples, called “bubos,” would appear in the groin or armpit. Gangrenous blotches would appear on hands and feet causing the skin to turn black and die. The victims would start coughing up blood, all their bodily fluids stank and their breath became putrid. “The stench of dead bodies, sickness and medicines seemed to fill and pollute the whole atmosphere.” There was no dying with dignity during the Black Death. It’s no surprise that a kind of extreme social distancing became the norm, even without urging from governments. Boccaccio’s stories are shocking. Everyone ran in panic from the sick. Neighbors shunned neighbors, relatives relatives. Children abandoned elderly parents and priests their flocks. Incredibly, “even fathers and mothers refused to nurse and assist their own children, as though they did not belong to them.” Some reacted by locking themselves up with a few friends in some comfortable place stocked with food and fine wines. They would entertain themselves with music and refuse to receive any news of the dead. Others, often those without the means to escape, became fatalistic and began looting the houses of the dead, stuffing themselves with food and drink, heedless of the risks of infection. It is not yet certain that COVID-19 will become the fifth endemic coronavirus in the world today. The far more deadly bubonic plague long remained endemic in Europe, turning pandemic again some 17 times before its last outbreak in 1664 — 67—about once a generation. Over time a kind of bush telegraph developed in cities to keep track of new outbreaks. Transmitting news of the plague became a regular topic of private and public correspondence. The questions sound familiar to us now: Has the plague come to Bologna? How long has it been there? How many are infected? How many have died? Has a quarantine been imposed? Public authorities, predictably, took drastic measures to isolate the sick. In Venice, physicians were forbidden to leave the city during plague—as today, there was no social distancing for medical personnel. Plague doctors were required to wear the premodern equivalent of the hazmat suit: a long linen gown, a hat covering the hair, eyeglasses, and a mask with a long beak containing antidotes and perfumes to mask the stench of death. Today, the plague doctor’s dress still exists as a popular costume during Carnival. Were there any silver linings to so horrible a pestilence? There were surely a few, though some of them remain speculative even now. Florentine Republicans began to appreciate Madonna Peste (Lady Pestilence) when she carried off their great nemesis, the duke of Milan, in 1402, at a critical moment during their long war with the great tyrant. After the Black Death there was an “inheritance effect” that led to far greater concentrations of wealth among those who survived. Some modern historians have claimed that this concentrated wealth led to an upmarket “investment in culture” that made possible the Renaissance itself. That’s a bit of a stretch.
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Post by Admin on Aug 1, 2021 14:07:58 GMT
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Post by Admin on Aug 1, 2021 17:50:04 GMT
'It just went boom': Florida ICU's swamped with younger COVID victims www.alternet.org/2021/08/ron-desantis-2654336770/According to a report from the Miami Herald, Florida hospitals are being overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients once again in frightening numbers as the Delta variant spreads rapidly among the unvaccinated in the state. Florida has long been a hot spot for COVID-19 infections as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has resisted recommendations from health officials and refuses to mandate the wearing of masks -- recently giving parents the option of not masking up their kids returning to school. As the Herald report notes, the new flood of victims flooding in are even sicker than before -- and also younger. Pointing out that every bed in Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital is filled at the moment, the report notes that every patient was unvaccinated and now suffering the devastating effect of COVID-19. "The youngest patient, a 27-year-old woman on a ventilator, had to be resuscitated with a bag valve mask after her blood oxygen saturation levels crashed. The oldest, a 71-year-old man, has been in the ICU for two weeks. He has been in a coma for three days. When he awakens, if he awakens, he will be a widower. The man's wife, also hospitalized with COVID-19, died two days earlier," the report states. "Many healthcare workers at Jackson Memorial thought the end of the pandemic was in sight, largely due to the effectiveness of the vaccines. Then the delta variant took hold, particularly in areas with low vaccination rates, and cases are surging again, only at a faster clip." Describing the sudden surge from variant, Ademola Ayo Akinkunmi, director of patient care services for Jackson Health bluntly stated, "It just went boom," before adding, "No matter how hard we work to discharge patients we know there are others coming." The report goes on to note, "In Florida, the number of new cases and the rate of positive tests for the virus that causes COVID-19 — a measure known as the level of community transmission — is high in all 67 counties, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. On Saturday, Florida reported 21,683 new COVID-19 cases as of July 30, the single-highest daily COVID case count since the pandemic began 18 months ago, according to CDC data. The seven-day moving average soared to 15,817, a more than 750% increase since July 1." According to Alix Zacharski, manager of the medical intensive care unit at Jackson Memorial, the critically-ill patients they are seeing are way younger -- and way sicker -- than they were during the first wave of COVID victims. "Unlike last year, we're getting a very young population, which is extremely concerning because this time we're now getting young people without pre-existing conditions," Zacharski admitted. "So that's scarier." Case in point, the Herald reports, "On a recent weekday afternoon, Zacharski was working in the ICU when a 27-year-old patient's vital signs crashed, triggering an alarm on a computer monitor in the nurses' station. Her blood oxygen saturation levels had dropped suddenly from 95 to 64. Normal readings usually range from 95 to 100, and anything below 90 is considered low. As the patient's heart rate accelerated, Zacharski and her colleagues rushed to the patient's room and removed the ventilator from her throat. Then they applied a bag valve mask, pumping the air bag by hand to force oxygen into the patient's lungs." "The medical team revived the patient, and her blood oxygen levels slowly recovered. It's possible that the patient's blood oxygen levels crashed because of a mucus plug, Zacharski said, emphasizing that dangerous complications can arise at any time," the report continued with Zacharski adding, "People come down with it within five days and they're really sick. They are coming to the hospital saying, 'I don't feel good. I can't breathe'. That's when you're feeling, 'Oh, this is very different from what it was before.' " "It's very hard for us when someone's eyes are looking at you, staring at you, deadlocked, pleading and begging you, hugging you to help them breathe," she added. "That's the part that stays with us. It's really hard."
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Post by Admin on Aug 1, 2021 21:10:08 GMT
I’m An ICU Doctor And I Cannot Believe The Things Unvaccinated Patients Are Telling Me “My experiences in the ICU these past weeks have left me surprised, disheartened, but most of all, angry.” headshot Thanh Neville, M.D., M.S.H.S. Guest Writer www.huffpost.com/entry/icu-doctor-health-care-workers-unvaccinated-patients_n_6102ad2ae4b000b997df1f17“We can’t let COVID win.” This was my colleague’s mantra when the pandemic started last year. And for the almost 18 months since, health care workers have rallied to the battlefields, even at times when we had no weapons to brandish. We took care of the infected and the critically ill when no one else would. We reused N95 masks, carefully placing them in labeled brown paper bags in between shifts. We witnessed lonely deaths and held up iPads for families to say their heartbreaking goodbyes. We created elaborate backup schedules and neglected our personal lives. We stepped up during surges and when our colleagues fell ill. Camaraderie in the ICU had never been stronger because we recognized that this was a team effort and all of humanity was battling against a common enemy. But as health care workers, we also were painfully aware of our own vulnerabilities. We can run out of ICU resources for our patients. We can run out of personal protective equipment for ourselves. We can be exposed on the job and get sick. And we can die — many of us did, more than 3,600 from COVID-19 in the first year. Many of us quarantined away from our families to protect the ones we love. We counted the risk factors of our children, our elderly parents, our spouses, and came up with our own formulas to decide whether to come home at the end of the shift or hole up in a hotel room. One of our ICU directors wrote and rewrote our COVID-19 clinical guidelines to keep up with the evolving literature and somehow she carved out the time to write her own will. I worked daily to adapt our end-of-life program to the changing needs and restrictions of the pandemic and signed up for a vaccine clinical trial as soon as one became available. I also updated my own advance directive and printed it out for my husband, just in case. Then, effective vaccines became widely available in the U.S. — I briefly saw light at the end of the tunnel. The number of patients with COVID-19 in ICUs across the country plummeted. It looked like our sacrifices and commitment as health care workers had paid off. We believed herd immunity could become a reality and we could return to some sense of normalcy. But the relief was short-lived, the hope was fleeting, and we are amid another surge. A surge that is fueled by a highly transmissible variant and those unvaccinated. My experiences in the ICU these past weeks have left me surprised, disheartened, but most of all, angry. I am angry that the tragic scenes of prior surges are being played out yet again, but now with ICUs primarily filled with patients who have chosen not to be vaccinated. I am angry that it takes me over an hour to explain to an anti-vaxxer full of misinformation that intubation isn’t what “kills patients” and that their wish for chest compressions without intubation in the event of a respiratory arrest makes no sense. I am angry at those who refuse to wear “muzzles” when grocery shopping for half an hour a week, as I have been so-called “muzzled” for much of the past 18 months. I cannot understand the simultaneous decision to not get vaccinated and the demand to end the restrictions imposed by a pandemic. I cannot help but recoil as if I’ve been slapped in the face when my ICU patient tells me they didn’t get vaccinated because they “just didn’t get around to it.” Although such individuals do not consider themselves anti-vaxxers, their inaction itself is a decision — a decision to not protect themselves or their families, to fill a precious ICU bed, to let new variants flourish, and to endanger the health care workers and immunosuppressed people around them. Their inaction is a decision to let this pandemic continue to rage. I am at a loss to understand how anyone can look at these past months of the pandemic — more than 600,000 lives lost in the U.S. and more than 4 million worldwide — and not believe it’s real or take it seriously. And meanwhile, immunocompromised people, for whom vaccines don’t generate much immunity, are desperately waiting for herd immunity. I have no way to comfort my rightfully outraged transplant patients who contracted COVID-19 after isolating for over a year and getting fully vaccinated as soon as they could. With angry tears, these patients tell me it’s not fair that there are people who are choosing to endanger both themselves and the vulnerable people around them. They feel betrayed by their fellow citizens and they are bitter and angry. I cannot blame them. I am at a loss to understand how anyone can look at these past months of the pandemic — more than 600,000 lives lost in the U.S. and more than 4 million worldwide — and not believe it’s real or take it seriously. But the unhappy truth is that there are people who do not. They did not in the beginning and many are doubling down now. I thought when this pandemic began that we were all in this fight together, engaged in a war against a common enemy. Now, I painfully realize: Perhaps we were never on the same side and we never had a common enemy. Perhaps the war has been among ourselves all along. We have won many battles but unvaccinated America is choosing to let COVID win the war.
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Post by Admin on Aug 2, 2021 8:37:07 GMT
Don’t be fooled by signs of recovery – pandemics weaken the flow of business ideas for seven years July 30, 2021 4.23pm BST theconversation.com/dont-be-fooled-by-signs-of-recovery-pandemics-weaken-the-flow-of-business-ideas-for-seven-years-165354The UK continues on its path to economic recovery from COVID. According to the latest survey data from the Office for National Statistics, the proportion of companies seeing their turnover reduced by COVID in July 2021 was just 29%, compared to 65% in June 2020. That’s the lowest level since these surveys started in the same month. This is what you would expect with the lifting of COVID restrictions. We are seeing predictable winners and losers – international travel and high-street retail are still getting back on their feet, for example, while Amazon and other home delivery businesses roar on. But this narrative is missing something important. For many businesses, recovery will depend on rather more than just restrictions being lifted. The ability of businesses to innovate after a pandemic can be hampered for years after – and no one seems to be talking about it. Productivity and remote working As part of the COVID restrictions, people were told that everyone who can work from home must do so. One important question was how this has affected productivity, which is a standard determinant of GDP growth and wages. The UK’s productivity growth has been in decline for years, so anything that prevents it from getting worse would be worth pursuing. Whether remote working would achieve this was debatable, however. Academic research published years before the pandemic pointed to clear productivity gains when people work from home. But the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published a paper in September 2020 indicating that the overall effects would be negative, and a Bank of England working paper from December agreed. If so, it’s bad news that many believe that remote working will never go away entirely.
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