Author: SupremeCmdr

Alexa – Lock All The Doors, Delete Everything

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https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/03/attackers-can-force-amazon-echos-to-hack-themselves-with-self-issued-commands/
Echo go to Amazon buy everything.

Some days I’m very happy being old fashioned. I still need a key to open my front door. I have to open my refrigerator to see what’s inside. And Good God I have to manually select the music I want to listen too.

Some days I’m very happy being old fashioned. Today is one of those days.

Was SARS-COV-2 the Reason Why People Forgot How to Drive?

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The U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released its 2020 annual traffic crash data, showing that 38,824 lives were lost in traffic crashes nationwide. That number marks the highest number of fatalities since 2007. 

https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/nhtsa-releases-2020-traffic-crash-data

In Pandemic Year One we had the highest number of traffic fatalities since 2007.

Correlation is not causation. The post title is a click bait joke.

Merkel Cell Carcinoma (MCC)

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Patients treated for Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) face a five-year recurrence rate of 40% — markedly higher than the recurrence rates for melanoma and other skin cancers, according to research published today in JAMA Dermatology.

University of Washington School of Medicine/UW Medicine. “Patients with rare skin cancer face 40% recurrence rate.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220223111226.htm (accessed February 24, 2022).

Covid Protocols

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COVIDprotocols.org was launched by a team from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in March, 2020 to create open access adaptable protocols for the management of COVID19 patients, based on BWH guidelines and multidisciplinary committee discussions. In spring of 2020, Partners In Health (PIH) also published the guides for COVID-19, focused on COVID-19 care in resource-limited settings. In December, 2020, COVIDprotocols.org partnered with UCSF’s Institute for Global Health Sciences and Partners in Health (PIH) to combine the best content from UCSF’s USAID-STAR sponsored OpenCriticalCare.org and the PIH COVID19 Guides to create COVIDprotocols.org v2.0. This updated resource for COVID-19 includes content relevant to all practice settings and presents information in ways to facilitate easier utilization in learning and practice. The BWH-specific protocols still exist and are available at BWH.covidprotocols.org.

https://covidprotocols.org/en/about/

I like the dashboard https://opencriticalcare.org/covid-dashboard/

Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor and this blog and the information contained herein are intended and designed for educational purposes only. DO NOT rely on this information to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, and/or treatment protocols.

Cluttered Memories From a Lifetime of Knowledge

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As we age, many of us have difficulty retrieving memories. Researchers propose an explanation for why this might be happening: the brains of older adults allocate more space to accumulated knowledge and have more material to navigate when attempting to access memories.

Cell Press. “Lifetime of knowledge can clutter memories of older adults.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220211111852.htm (accessed February 11, 2022).

But this still doesn’t explain why I can’t remember where I put my coffee cup.

More on Vitamin D and Covid-19 – 02.06.22

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The records of 1,176 patients admitted between April 2020 and February 2021 to the Galilee Medical Center (GMC) with positive PCR tests were searched for vitamin D levels measured two weeks to two years prior to infection. Patients with vitamin D deficiency (less than 20 ng/mL) were 14 times more likely to have severe or critical case of COVID than those with more than 40 ng/mL. Strikingly, mortality among patients with sufficient vitamin D levels was 2.3%, in contrast to 25.6% in the vitamin D deficient group.

Bar-Ilan University. “Pre-infection deficiency of vitamin D is associated with increased disease severity and mortality among hospitalized COVID-19 patients: Study affirms that sufficient vitamin D levels may positively influence the outcome of infection.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220203161135.htm (accessed February 6, 2022).

Links to a few older posts on the same topic.

Vitamin D Treatment and Covid-19 Related Outcomes – Hospital del Mar, Barcelona, Spain

Does Vitamin D Deficiency Raise COVID-19 Risk? – JAMA

Vitamin D Deficiency Is Inversely Associated with COVID-19 Incidence and Disease Severity in Chinese People

More on Vitamin D and Covid-19 Vitamin D and Mortality Risk in People With CVD