The Latest in COVID-19 News: Week Ending 11.07.20 – NEJM Journal Watch

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Over the past week, U.S. researchers reported a secondary infection rate of 53% among household contacts of people with COVID-19. In another study, risk factors for transmission among close contacts of infected people — like sharing a vehicle or being spoken to by the infected person within 2 meters — were detailed. Elsewhere, the FDA warned about false-positives with rapid antigen tests for SARS-CoV-2. And in Denmark, all farmed minks were set to be killed after reports that a SARS-CoV-2 mutation had jumped from minks to humans.

https://www.jwatch.org/fw117204/2020/11/07/latest-covid-19-news-week-ending-nov-7

Click on the link above for the NEJM Journal Watch weekly update. 

Meanwhile in El Paso…

A fourth mobile morgue has been sent to El Paso as the Texas border town grapples with an ever-growing COVID-19 crisis.

Citation: El Paso Gets Fourth Mobile Morgue as COVID-19 Deaths Surge – Medscape – Nov 05, 2020. — https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/940459?src=rss

Covid-19 Data and Rapid Testing

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Rapid Covid-19 tests are being deployed by the millions across the nation. The federal government is sending these tests, which can provide results in minutes, to states for educators, students, nursing home patients, first responders, and other sites. That’s a good thing. But in a rush to get individual test results, we’re making a dangerous public health mistake: We’re losing critical data about Covid-19.

For months, the U.S. has struggled to get accurate information about Covid-19 cases and testing about different demographic groups. As rapid tests surge — and are performed at sites that don’t follow specific Covid-19 data reporting processes — even more information will be lost.

The hidden public health hazard of rapid Covid-19 tests — https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/05/rapid-covid-19-tests-hidden-public-health-hazard/?utm_campaign=rss

Nutrition Matters

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By many measures, the population of the United States is the unhealthiest of any high-income country despite spending much more money, as a share of the economy, on health care. The incidence of chronic disease is higher and life expectancy is lower.

Many chronic conditions plaguing Americans, such as obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure, are avoidable with a prudent diet and lifestyle. Today, more than 42% of American adults have obesity, as do 19.3% of children of age 19 and under. The U.S. has the world’s 12th-highest obesity rate, after Kuwait. (The top 10 are all small Pacific island nations.)

Diet makes a difference. Nearly half of all deaths in the U.S. from heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes are associated with diet, such as the over-consumption of processed meats and sugar-sweetened beverages and insufficient intake of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

Make America healthy again by paying more attention to nutrition — https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/04/nutrition-make-america-healthy-again/?utm_campaign=rss

Presented without the usual snarky comment from yours truly. Read the full article. You’ll find more links for your reading pleasure.

U.S. Election Discussion Thread — Climate Etc.

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by Judith Curry No words. The only thing crazier than the U.S. election is this morning’s hurricane forecast. I have no words re the election.  For a diversion, here is my hurricane forecast for Eta. Summary:  current: TERRIBLE.  forecast: CRAZY Latest from NHC (7 am EST): 145 mph max sustained winds, min pressure 936 mb, […]

U.S. election discussion thread — Climate Etc.

I am re-posting this article by Judith Curry. Yes, the headline is somewhat misleading but I’m glad I clicked and read her post. There’s another hurricane coming.

Admit it. We all need a diversion from the election.

More on Vitamin D and Covid-19

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As of this article’s writing, there are over two hundred fifty articles on PubMed about the connection between vitamin D and COVID-19. As the research studies are undergoing, evidence is mounting that adequate vitamin D levels may be a protective factor against COVID-19 infection and severity. Here’s what the research shows.

Is there a role for vitamin D in the treatment of COVID-19? — https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2020/11/is-there-a-role-for-vitamin-d-in-the-treatment-of-covid-19.html

Yesterday I was going to post a link to an article “Over 80 percent of 200 COVID-19 patients in a hospital in Spain have vitamin D deficiency” when I realized I was unable to access or read the original study. It was late, I was tired, and I didn’t feel like crawling through PubMed to find the study. Well someone out there did the crawling for me. If you follow the link to the original article above you’ll find more links to more research on Vitamin D and Covid-19 like the following:

Evidence suggests that vitamin D supplementation could potentially be effective either in treatment or prevention of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid‐19). Indeed, several studies and trials have begun to investigate the impact of vitamin D supplementation on patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) infection. In this review, we focus on the potential mechanisms of vitamin D in the pathogenesis of Covid‐19. We consider whether deficiency of vitamin D may be one of the underlying biological factors that could explain the excess mortality seen among non‐Caucasians. We also raise several important questions which need to be addressed to provide a clear picture of the extent to which vitamin D supplementation may benefit patients with Covid‐19, particularly those with underlying risk factors.

Vitamin D and Covid‐19: From potential therapeutic effects to unanswered questions — https://doi.org/10.1002/rmv.2159

A little over a month ago I had my annual wellness check up. The medical nerd in me jotted a list of discussion items I wanted to cover during my visit. After catching up on family and checking off the items on my list I asked my doctor if there was anything else she wanted to talk to me about.

No, your list covered all of the things I wanted to talk about except for one. Tell your wife to start taking a Vitamin D supplement.

True story.

Scary Charts From 91-DIVOC

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New Confirmed Covid-19 Cases per Day — http://91-divoc.com/

91-DIVOC is home to many data-forward, high-quality, interactive, and informative visualizations made during the global pandemic created by Prof. Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider a Teaching Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). With a passion for data, he often teaches thousands of students each year in his courses on Data Structures, Data Visualization, and Data Science. He was selected as one of the National Academy of Engineering’s Frontiers of Engineering Education scholars, awarded the Collins Award for Innovation Teaching, and has been consistently ranked as an excellent instructor by his students for the past ten years. His work on data visualizations has been used by governors of multiple states, featured by websites including Popular Mechanics and The Verge, and has been viewed by millions of readers. [Full Curriculum Vitae, PDF]

https://waf.cs.illinois.edu/

The chart I’ve posted is a simple screenshot. Charts at http://91-divoc.com/ are fully interactive.

Vitamin D and Calcium Reduce Incidence of Recurrent Vertigo (BPPV)

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The multi-center study included 957 people in South Korea with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo who had undergone canalith repositioning maneuvers—head movements that shift displaced calcium carbonate crystals in the inner ear. The intervention group included patients who received 400 IU vitamin D and 500 mg calcium carbonate twice daily for 1 year when their baseline serum vitamin D level was below 20 ng/mL along with patients who had higher baseline levels and took no supplements. An observation group had no baseline testing or interventions.

The supplements significantly reduced the annual vertigo recurrence rate by 24%. There were 0.83 recurrences per 1 person-year in the intervention group compared with 1.10 in the observation group. Patients with greater vitamin D deficiencies at baseline derived the most benefit.

JAMA. 2020;324(16):1599. doi:10.1001/jama.2020.18695 — https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2772275

BPPV = benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. The original study in Neurology and the JAMA summary both use the word “prevent” in their respective titles. I think reduce is a more apt description. Semantics aside a 24% reduction in recurrent BPPV episodes is significant.

And yet another example of nutritional deficiencies underlying another disease.

Older Adults Living with Younger People Face Increased Risk for COVID-19 Mortality (if you’re Swedish)

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Older adults who live with younger people, including those of working age, are at increased risk for COVID-19 mortality, according to a study in The Lancet Healthy Longevity.

Using Swedish population and death registries, researchers studied nearly 275,000 adults aged 70 or older in Stockholm. Roughly 3400 died between March and May 2020, 38% from COVID-19.

Those who lived with at least one person younger than 66 years had a 60% increased risk for COVID-19 death relative to those living with older people. In addition, those living in the most densely populated neighborhoods had a 70% higher risk than those in the least densely populated areas, and those living in care homes had over four times the risk of those in independent housing.

NEJM Journal Watch — https://www.jwatch.org/fw117174/2020/10/27/older-adults-living-with-younger-people-face-increased

Check out the recent Time article for an excellent overview of the Swedish Covid-19 response:

The Swedish way has yielded little but death and misery. And, this situation has not been honestly portrayed to the Swedish people or to the rest of the world.

The Swedish COVID-19 Response Is a Disaster. — https://time.com/5899432/sweden-coronovirus-disaster/

Meanwhile in Houston D614G Mutation – 10.31.20

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During the initial wave of the pandemic, 71% of the novel coronaviruses identified in patients in Houston had this mutation. When the second wave of the outbreak hit Houston during the summer, this variant had leaped to 99.9% prevalence. This mirrors a trend observed around the world. A study published in July based on more than 28,000 genome sequences found that variants carrying the D614G mutation became the globally dominant form of SARS-CoV-2 in about a month. SARS-CoV-2 is the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

University of Texas at Austin – https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-10-coronavirus-mutation-contagious.html — More information: Molecular Architecture of Early Dissemination and Massive Second Wave of the SARS-CoV-2 Virus in a Major Metropolitan Area, mBIO, DOI: 10.1128/mBio.02707-20 , mbio.asm.org/content/11/6/e02707-20

Kind of spooky if you ask me.