Where Are The Starter Homes?

/ SupremeCmdr / 3 Comments

Pergens and his wife, Amanda, have a 6-year-old daughter and another child due this month. She stopped working as a pastry chef during the pandemic. They rent a small two-bedroom apartment. “We build all these fancy homes,” Pergens says. “Fancy, fancy houses … and low-income apartments. And there’s absolutely nothing in between.”

The Housing Shortage Is Significant. It’s Acute For Small, Entry-Level Homes — https://www.npr.org/2021/09/04/1033585422/the-housing-shortage-is-significant-its-acute-for-small-entry-level-homes?

Good article but the analysis is only partially correct. Affordable housing has been an issue for decades. It’s not merely an issue of current economic conditions. It’s a lack of political will and the continuing demise of the middle class. WAY BACK last century our starter home cost less than $100,000 and we had over 1600 square feet 3BR 2B.

It’s no wonder the newest hit show on HGTV is Cheap Old Houses. https://www.hgtv.com/shows/discovery-plus-home/articles/cheap-old-houses-hgtv-show

mRNA Vaccination Induces Durable Immune Memory to SARS-CoV-2 with Continued Evolution to Variants of Concern

/ SupremeCmdr / 7 Comments

Twitter thread above. Link to the preprint study here:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.23.457229v1

Is the race to reach herd immunity like chasing a mirage? — Science Chronicle

/ SupremeCmdr / 2 Comments

The emergence of highly contagious new variants, breakthrough infections even among the fully vaccinated and such people spreading the virus to others, and reinfections in the unvaccinated have made the race to reach the magical herd immunity threshold to successfully break the transmission chain and return to normal times looks like chasing a mirage. In […]

Is the race to reach herd immunity like chasing a mirage? — Science Chronicle

Four Oklahoma Health Systems Come Together To Provide a Situation Update on COVID-19 – 08.17.21

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Full transcript of the presser can be found here https://www.koco.com/article/oklahoma-hospital-officials-to-give-situation-update-as-covid-19-cases-rise/37327568

The actual video is below:

A LARGER PROPORTION OF PEOPLE WITH COVID-19 ARE ENDING UP IN THE HOSPITAL.
THE MAJORITY IN OKLAHOMA AS OF LAST WEEK’S WEEKLY EPIDEMIOLOGICAL REPORT, 93% OF THE HOSPITALIZATIONS IN OKLAHOMA FOR COVID-19 ARE IN UN-VACCINATED INDIVIDUALS, AROUND 6% ARE PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN AT LEAST PARTIALLY VACCINATED.

Sorry for the caps but I cut and pasted from the transcript.

I Just Had my WOW Moment of the Weekend

/ SupremeCmdr / 13 Comments
WOW!

Protective heterologous T cell immunity in COVID-19 induced by the trivalent Measles-Mumps-Rubella and Tetanus-Diptheria-Pertussis vaccine antigens — Published:August 13, 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.medj.2021.08.004

There is a downloadable PDF of the study at the link above. Most of the terminology and research methodology is WAY above my pay grade but the conclusion is still a WOW.

New Blood Test Improves Prostate Cancer Screening – the Stockholm3 test

/ SupremeCmdr / 4 Comments

On July 9 2021, results from the STHLM3MRI study were presented in The New England Journal of Medicine, indicating that over-diagnosis could be reduced by substituting traditional prostate biopsies with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and targeted biopsies. The new results, now published in The Lancet Oncology, show that the addition of the Stockholm3 test, which was developed by researchers at Karolinska Institutet, can be an important complement. It is a blood test that uses an algorithm to analyze a combination of protein markers, genetic markers and clinical data.

Karolinska Institutet. “New blood test improves prostate cancer screening.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/08/210813100313.htm (accessed August 14, 2021).

Thursday 08.12.21 – More Diabetes Research for Your Reading Pleasure

/ SupremeCmdr / 3 Comments

Prevalence and incidence of microvascular and macrovascular complications over 15 years among patients with incident type 2 diabetes

Our findings show that a substantial proportion of patients had existing complications including CKD, stable angina, and peripheral neuropathy at the time of T2D diagnosis. Results also show that among those newly diagnosed with T2D, the highest incidence rates of complications included peripheral neuropathy, CKD, and CVD (myocardial infarction, unstable angina, and stroke).

Time to incidence of microvascular and macrovascular complications was only a few years; peripheral vascular disease, stable angina, CKD, and peripheral neuropathy developed earlier in the disease course.

BMJ Open Diabetes Research and Care – http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjdrc-2020-001847

Diabetic Ketoacidosis and Mortality in People With Type 1 Diabetes and Eating Disorders

CONCLUSIONS Adolescents and young adults with type 1 diabetes and eating disorders have more than triple the risk of DKA and nearly sixfold increased risk of death compared with their peers without eating disorders.

Diabetes Care 2021 Aug; 44(8): 1783-1787. https://doi.org/10.2337/dc21-0517

Fenofibrate Use Is Associated With Lower Mortality and Fewer Cardiovascular Events in Patients With Diabetes: Results of 10,114 Patients From the Korean National Health Insurance Service Cohort

Diabetes Care 2021 Aug; 44(8): 1868-1876. https://doi.org/10.2337/dc20-1533

I’ve been out of town the past three weekends in a row. Prior to taking these trips I was feeling a bit burned out. I had little desire to continue my research activities. I had even less desire to write or post to my blogs. But as suddenly as my energy levels dipped, the mojo came back.

Hiatus is over. The SupremeCmdr is back.