As one who has suffered the severest of allergic reactions, anaphylaxis, on several occasions after nut ingestion, I was quite worried when I heard that the British FDA-equivalent had announced that “any person with a history of anaphylaxis to a vaccine, medicine or food should not receive the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.” The UK began vaccinating…
Severe Allergic or Anaphylactic Food Reactions and the COVID-19 Vaccine — The Skeptical Cardiologist
Thank you Dr. Pearson.
Participants also answered questions about their food and alcohol consumption at baseline and through two follow-up assessments. The Food Frequency Questionnaire asked participants about their intake of fresh fruit, dried fruit, raw vegetables and salad, cooked vegetables, oily fish, lean fish, processed meat, poultry, beef, lamb, pork, cheese, bread, cereal, tea and coffee, beer and cider, red wine, white wine and Champaign and liquor.
Here are four of the most significant findings from the study:
Cheese, by far, was shown to be the most protective food against age-related cognitive problems, even late into life;
The daily consumption of alcohol, particularly red wine, was related to improvements in cognitive function;
Weekly consumption of lamb, but not other red meats, was shown to improve long-term cognitive prowess; and
Excessive consumption of salt is bad, but only individuals already at risk for Alzheimer’s Disease may need to watch their intake to avoid cognitive problems over time.
Iowa State University. “Diet modifications — including more wine and cheese — may help reduce cognitive decline, study suggests.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201210145850.htm (accessed December 13, 2020).
Journal Reference
Finally some good news.
Compared with participants who used less than 120 minutes per day of social media, for example, young adults who used more than 300 minutes per day were 2.8 times as likely to become depressed within six months.The study, which will be published online Dec. 10 and is scheduled for the February 2021 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, is the first large, national study to show a link between social media use and depression over time.
University of Arkansas. “Increased social media use linked to developing depression.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201210074722.htm (accessed December 13, 2020).
Journal Reference
A few more posts for your reading pleasure.
I’d thought long and hard about what I wanted to do when Will — and, soon after, his brother, Theo — returned home. The by-the-book Dr. Anthony Fauci approach would have been to have the boys keep on their masks, send them upstairs for a couple of weeks, and open all the windows in the house in the meantime.
But as the pandemic has taught us, there are things we value more than perfect protection from the virus. When it comes to them, we’re willing to puncture our bubbles, because without them, living feels like something less than being fully alive…
I admit that, at least to an outsider, my behavior seems inconsistent. But to me, it makes perfect sense. The risks I’m choosing to take are the ones where the payoff is biggest relative to the risk I perceive. (Yes, even the haircut! I love a good high-and-tight, and my barber is applying the clippers in his open-air home workshop.)
Before you argue with me, I get it. These aren’t the choices you would make. And that’s my point.We all have things we value. And risks we are willing to take for them. Neither of these two categories will be exactly the same for any one of us.
When it comes to the virus, we are all consistently inconsistent
Adam Cohen Published: Sun, December 13, 2020 1:07 AM Updated: Sun, December 13, 2020 1:36 AM — https://oklahoman.com/article/5678132/cohen-when-it-comes-to-the-virus-we-are-all-consistently-inconsistent
Exposed to grandchildren? Why take the chance?
reader comment
A reader’s comment above stopped me in my tracks. The past nine months have been spent mostly in the house with minimal forays out of the house for essentials like food and beer. I didn’t get a real haircut for months. The insides of a restaurant are now foreign to me. I cancelled my gym membership. So the comment made me think, why did I take the chance to spend time with Tiny Human Petri Dishes? When I stumbled upon the Cohen article I realized I was not alone. Nine months have disappeared and we all struggle with our own individual risk/reward scenarios.
The Grandchildren Bubble is unique. Risk was reduced to zero for six months. After six months all of the adults decided the Covid risk was minimal for several reasons. Two of the four adults (the most cautious and conservative ones) caught the virus. Thankfully both were fairly mild cases on the spectrum of asymptomatic to death and both have fully recovered. So two people have antibodies. The third adult is a front line HCW who deals with Covid each and every time he goes to work. The doctor has gotten tested multiple times all with negative results. One Tiny Human attends preschool and if a child has anything near a small sniffle they have to stay home and cannot rejoin the class until they have a negative Covid test. She recently received a negative test. Tiny Human Too just started crawling and doesn’t get out the house much. Not much to worry about here.
And for readers who have been counting that leaves yours truly. I lived with one of the infected before we knew she was infected. I tested negative the day before she got her test results. One of our neighbors asked if I left the house to live in a hotel. No I didn’t. Living apart while under the same roof was an interesting experience that I hope never to repeat. And despite having Covid in the house I didn’t catch it.
So I spent some time in my only trusted bubble mask less and I end up catching one or two non-Covid-19 coronaviruses. Next time I’m wearing a mask.
Several churches joined forces to distribute food on Friday as part of the “Simultaneous Free Food Giveaway.
“The Rev. Derrick Scobey, senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, helped coordinate the event, partnering with World Vision and Joey Abbo, chief executive officer of the Needs Foundation. The humanitarian aid organization and the foundation supplied the food that was distributed on Friday.
Oklahoma churches, leaders join forces for ‘simultaneous’ food distribution — https://oklahoman.com/article/5678143/oklahoma-churches-leaders-join-forces-for-simultaneous-food-distribution
If you have the means to help please help others in need.
A total of 669 people were followed (mean age 43 years, 60% female, 25% of healthcare professionals and 69% without underlying risk factors that could be related to complications from COVID-19). At 6 weeks from diagnosis, nearly a third of participants still had one or more symptoms related to COVID-19, mainly fatigue (14%), shortness of breath (9%) and loss of taste or smell (12%). In addition, 6% reported a persistent cough and 3% reported headaches. Dr. Mayssam Nehme, Senior Resident in Professor Guessous’s team and first author of this work, also explains how these patients felt: “In addition to the physical distress of their symptoms, many were very worried: how much longer would it last? Were some after-effects irrecoverable? Even without a clear medical answer, in the current state of knowledge, it is important to accompany concerned patients and to listen to them,” she adds. With this in mind, the HUG has set up a specific consultation for long COVID patients in order to improve their care and guide them through the health system.
Université de Genève. “COVID-19: persistent symptoms in one third of cases.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201208111551.htm (accessed December 8, 2020) — https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201208111551.htm
Journal Reference
I’ve been quiet for a few days, no writing, no posting. I conducted a small experiment of allowing contact with tiny human petri dishes while not wearing a mask. Naturally I caught whatever those tiny disease vectors had. The good news? My life partner wore a mask during the encounter. She’s fine.
Masks work.
Meanwhile at the CDC…
We don’t have enough vaccine yet for all health care workers. We will eventually, but we don’t yet.
Helen Keipp Talbot — who is known by her middle name — raised serious concerns during the meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices about using the vaccines in the frail elderly, noting there are no data yet to suggest the vaccines work in this population.
CDC advisory panel’s lone dissenter on why long-term care residents shouldn’t receive Covid-19 vaccine first — https://www.statnews.com/2020/12/03/cdc-advisory-panels-lone-dissenter-on-why-long-term-care-residents-shouldnt-receive-covid-19-vaccine-first/
Talbot is an associate professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University. Despite the fact no one seems to be listening to her opinions, she makes some excellent observations.
Meanwhile back in Oklahoma
Click on the link for the NEJM Journal Watch weekly update. NO paywalls on any of the links in this article. Pretty good links too this week.
https://www.jwatch.org/fw117293/2020/12/05/latest-covid-19-news-week-ending-dec-5
Meanwhile in Oklahoma…
Help.
They examined the records of nearly 300,000 adults in the U.S. who had an initial atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease event between 2007 and 2016. These were divided into three groups: coronary heart disease, ischemic stroke or transient ischemic attack, or peripheral artery disease.
When people left the hospital or emergency department in 2007 following a first diagnosis in one of these categories, about half began taking statins within 30 days. By 2016, statin use increased to approximately 60%.
“Based on the guidelines, we hoped to see a much higher uptake among this entire group,” says Dr. Noseworthy. “Statin intolerance was only noted for 4%-5% of the patients, which means as many as 35% of patients are not receiving treatment according to the guidelines.”
Mayo Clinic. “Statins can save lives; are they being used?.” ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201201144030.htm (accessed December 2, 2020) — https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201201144030.htm
Journal Reference:
Xiaoxi Yao, Nilay D. Shah, Bernard J. Gersh, Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, Peter A. Noseworthy. Assessment of Trends in Statin Therapy for Secondary Prevention of Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease in US Adults From 2007 to 2016. JAMA Network Open, 2020; 3 (11): e2025505 DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.25505
An October 2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report documented COVID-19’s demographic changes. Between May and July, the median age of confirmed US cases fell from 46 years to 37 years. The pandemic’s age distribution had already shifted by June, when new cases were highest among people aged 20 through 29 years. From August 2 to September 5, the weekly incidence among people aged 18 through 22 years roughly doubled from 10.5% to 22.5% of total new cases, some of which was likely due to college students going back to school.
Of the almost 7 million COVID-19 cases included in the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker, about 76% have occurred among adults younger than 65 years, with 18- through 29-year-olds making up the largest chunk. The hospitalization and death rates continue to be far greater among seniors but, importantly, not all younger adults experience mild disease. As of late October, death certificate data show that COVID-19 has killed almost 45 000 people aged 15 through 64 years, including about 6300 adolescents and adults younger than 45 years.
Younger Adults Caught in COVID-19 Crosshairs as Demographics Shift — Abbasi J. Younger Adults Caught in COVID-19 Crosshairs as Demographics Shift. JAMA. 2020;324(21):2141–2143. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.21913 – https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2773055
Please stop all comparisons with the flu.
CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2019–2020 season was moderate with an estimated 38 million people sick with flu, 18 million visits to a health care provider for flu, 400,000 hospitalizations for flu, and 22,000 flu deaths
Estimated Influenza Illnesses, Medical visits, Hospitalizations, and Deaths in the United States — 2019–2020 Influenza Season — https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2019-2020.html
No comparison in my opinion. https://globalepidemics.org/key-metrics-for-covid-suppression/
lifeunderwriter.net 
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