COVID-19

It’s Now Time to Worry About Long-Term Cardiac Consequences of COVID-19 — The Skeptical Cardiologist

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A study published yesterday in JAMA has the skeptical cardiologist very concerned about the long-term cardiac effects of COVID-19 infection. The investigators performed cardiac MRI (CMR) on 100 patients with documented COVID-19. Cardiac MRI is now considered the gold-standard for noninvasively measuring pathologic changes in cardiac muscle. In this study of a cohort of German…

via It’s Now Time to Worry About Long-Term Cardiac Consequences of COVID-19 — The Skeptical Cardiologist
Thank you Dr. Pearson.

And the following is a link to the Medscape article:

Heart Damage Even After COVID-19 ‘Recovery’ Evokes Specter of Later Heart Failure

Covid-19 – Truth vs Lies and Misinformation

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The strongest weapon we have against pandemic is telling the truth.

I continue rounding on my other COVID patients, recalling an article that I’d just read about how coronavirus didn’t affect the 17,000 children infected with it in Florida because coronavirus doesn’t affect children.

  “COVID doesn’t affect children.” You may want to rethink that.

Naturally I tend to focus on infection numbers where I live.  The 17,000 number in Florida shocked me so I went online to verify the number.

But these figures continue on the rise. According to state data released by the Florida Department of Health, Florida has tested 173,520 state residents under the age of 18 for COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus. Of those tests, the number has gone up from 17,000 reported last Friday to 23,170 tests that came back positive.

UPDATED: More Than 23,000 Children Have Tested Positive for COVID-19 in Florida

I was wrong.  The number of children infected with Covid-19 in Florida is higher than 17,000.  I wish I had more cheerful news on this Sunday but the truth must be told.  We all need to cut through the noise to see the truth.

After a unanimous vote at a commissioner’s meeting to make masks mandatory, residents of Palm Beach County in Florida erupted in anger, which included threatening to arrest a doctor for “crimes against humanity” for their vote. Two Twitter accounts — BadMedicalTakes and BadCOVID19Takes – a YouTube study, and Facebook posts promoting bogus COVID-19 cures highlight some of the public health misinformation being spread on social media platforms. The political nature of wearing face masks for public health safety has resulted in misinformation about their effectiveness. Those who wrongly believe face masks have detrimental respiratory effects are interfering with the ability to scale our nation’s public health response. During this unprecedented time of dealing with a viral outbreak and its economic effects on such a large scale, our nation should be experiencing strong unity in championing public health safety measures. Instead, the decision to wear a mask outside the home is influenced by gender, political party, and education level.

COVID-19 misinformation is a public health crisis

It came as a complete surprise that I would stumble upon my calling and purpose on this Sunday.  I’m not young anymore and I’ve been thinking a lot about how to structure my retirement.  I admit to reading a lot (maybe too much) and the pandemic has tightened my focus on the virus.  I never envisioned my reading/research and sharing on social media would become my calling at this stage in life.

But it’s what I do.  I hope you benefit from my work and that it helps you cut through the bullshit making this pandemic way worse than it ever should have been.

WAR IS PEACE

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

George Orwell – 1984

Masks are sexy.  Wear a mask.

 

The Latest in COVID-19 News: Week Ending 07.25.20 – NEJM Journal Watch

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Click on the link for the NEJM Journal Watch weekly update.  NO paywalls on any of the links in this article.  (paywalls bother me)

The Latest in COVID-19 News: Week Ending July 25

Meanwhile in Imperial County California…

For many decades, a relative few white farmers who tilled vast acreages of winter vegetables, cotton and alfalfa held that power. Ultimately, however, demography shifted power to Latinos, the sons and daughters of field workers from Mexico who are today 80% of Imperial County’s population.

Changing demography didn’t change Imperial County’s basic nature. It exists primarily to grow food and fiber with little economic diversity and always ranks high on California’s lists of unemployment and poverty.

Imperial has another distinction these days — the epicenter of California’s COVID-19 pandemic. Its infection rate is six times as high as California’s as a whole and victims are overwhelming its two hospitals.

Imperial County, the COVID-19 epicenter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nutrition and Obesity in Covid-19

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USCOVID19_IMAGE

NEJM

A healthy diet, rich in fruits and vegetables and low in sugar and calorie-dense processed foods, is essential to health. The ability to eat a healthy diet is largely determined by one’s access to affordable, healthy foods — a consequence of the conditions and environment in which one lives. In the United States, poor diet is the leading underlying cause of death, having surpassed tobacco use in related mortality.2 A study of dietary trends among U.S. adults between 1999 and 2012 showed overall improvement in the American diet, with the proportion of people who reported having a poor-quality diet decreasing from 55.9% to 45.6%; additional analyses, however, revealed persistent or worsening disparities in nutrition based on race or ethnicity, education, and income level.3

Covid-19 and Disparities in Nutrition and Obesity

Screenshot_2020-07-19 Covid-19 and Disparities in Nutrition and Obesity NEJM

The BMJ

Global efforts to develop treatments for covid-19 have focused on drug repurposing, immunotherapies including convalescent plasma and monoclonal antibodies, and vaccines. Despite obesity prevalence rates of 40% in the United States, 29% in England, and 13% globally, to our knowledge none of the several thousand clinical studies of covid-19 in international clinical trial registries proactively recruit participants with obesity. On the contrary, several studies consider overweight or obesity as exclusion criteria. We call for proportional representation of people with obesity in clinical trials of drugs and vaccines, including dose finding studies.

Obesity and covid-19: the unseen risks

More from The BMJ

Covid-19: What we eat matters all the more now

…our food systems are making us ill.11 The covid-19 outbreaks at meat packing plants have focused minds on the meat industry as a driver for acute and chronic disease.12 Last month Monique Tan and colleagues wrote that the food industry should be held partly accountable “not only for the obesity pandemic but also for the severity of covid-19 disease and its devastating consequences.”13 The government must do more to hold the industry to account.

BMJ 2020; 370 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m2840

Lose weight.  Make better food choices.  Wear a mask.

 

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A Surge in Small Business Bankruptcies is Underway

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Re-posted article from Straight Line Logic

More than 500 companies filed for bankruptcy under the small-business bankruptcy rules since February, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. June was the top month for filings with 131 cases; many were filed in states hit hard by the pandemic like Florida, Texas, California, New York and Illinois.

  A Surge in Small Business Bankruptcies is Underway

Unfortunately this is the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

A lot of people are going to need a lot of help over the upcoming years.  Do what you can, in whatever capacity you have to help.  We have increased our donations to a local charity called The Hope Center and have started sending small sums to the Food Bank of Oklahoma.  Every little bit helps.

English Pub Installs an Electric Fence to Maintain Social Distancing — VinePair

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Restaurant and bar owners worldwide are rapidly innovating to accommodate social distancing requirements in their establishments. One pub landlord has a crafty solution, and it’s positively … electric. Johnny McFadden, landlord of The Star Inn in Cornwall, England, installed an electric fence in his pub to maintain a safe distance between pub goers and his…

via English Pub Installs an Electric Fence to Maintain Social Distancing — VinePair

Not The Onion.

You can’t make this stuff up.

How to fix the Covid-19 dumpster fire in the U.S.

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Pent-up people embraced newfound freedoms over-exuberantly, Fauci said. He suggests going back to Phase 1 of the reopening process and then working forward with more caution. “Do it the way they should have done it in the beginning,” he said.  “If we do that, particularly closing the bars, avoiding anything that has a congregation of a large number of people, wearing masks outside essentially all the time, keep distancing … I would almost guarantee that we would see a turnaround of the resurgence that we’re seeing now.”

How to fix the Covid-19 dumpster fire in the U.S.

Despite the click bait title this article is full of good ideas on what we can do to help tamper down the “dumpster fire”.  Worthwhile reading.

What Happens If Most Businesses & Consumers Tighten Their Belts at the Same Time?

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In April and May 2020, the Bank of Italy conducted a special survey of Italian households to collect data on the financial situation and expectations of households during the crisis linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than half of those surveyed said their household income had shrunk as a result of the measures adopted to contain the epidemic. The impact has been particularly severe on the self-employed. Over a third said they did not have enough liquid resources to cover essential household expenses for a period of three months. Households’ expectations regarding spending have also been affected by the economic situation: more than half of those interviewed believe that even when the epidemic is over, they will spend less on travel, holidays, restaurants, cinema and theatres than they did before the crisis.

The Bank of Italy

What Happens If Most Businesses & Consumers Tighten Their Belts at the Same Time?

Answer:

Not good.

 

Covid-19 Research 07.12.20

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Although COVID-19 is most well known for causing substantial respiratory pathology, it can also result in several extrapulmonary manifestations. These conditions include thrombotic complications, myocardial dysfunction and arrhythmia, acute coronary syndromes, acute kidney injury, gastrointestinal symptoms, hepatocellular injury, hyperglycemia and ketosis, neurologic illnesses, ocular symptoms, and dermatologic complications.

Gupta, A., Madhavan, M.V., Sehgal, K. et al. Extrapulmonary manifestations of COVID-19. Nat Med (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0968-3

Extrapulmonary manifestations of COVID-19

I do a fair amount of reading and research on this virus.  This review article is highly scientific and clinical.  If you choose to read this article I am not to blame if you never leave your house again for the next few years.