Category: Health

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6.4 Million Doses Of Pfizer Vaccine Will Ship Mid-December

The first confirmed case of the omicron variant in the U.S. has been discovered in California.

From the New York Times:

Around mid-December, 6.4 million doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine will be shipped out across the United States in an initial push after it receives an expected emergency authorization, officials leading Operation Warp Speed, the administration’s push to fast-track a vaccine, said on a call with reporters on Tuesday.

The first doses — which are expected to go to health care workers and potentially a few other vulnerable groups — will be allocated to all 50 states and eight territories, as well as six major metropolitan areas. The quantities will be based on how many adults live in each jurisdiction.

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Coronavirus: 193K New Cases On Friday, 82K Hospitalizations

The first confirmed case of the omicron variant in the U.S. has been discovered in California.

The United States recorded more than 192,805 new cases of the coronavirus on Friday. More than 82,000 people were hospitalized, according to the COVID Tracking Project, topping Thursday’s record. From the New York Times:

As the nation reconsiders the usual winter holiday travel and cozy indoor gatherings, new cases are being reported at an unrelenting clip. The seven-day average has exceeded 100,000 cases a day every day for the last two weeks, according to a New York Times database.

Deaths are higher than normal in all 50 states.

The latest virus surge began accelerating across much of the country in mid-October. It took just over two weeks for the nation to go from eight million cases to nine million on Oct. 30; going from nine to 10 million took only 10 days. From 10 million to 11 million took just under seven days.

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Milestone: 250,000+ U.S. Deaths From COVID-19

(graphic via CNN)
A sad milestone today as the death toll from COVID-19 in the U.S. crosses the 250,000 mark. According to Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. saw the highest coronavirus-related death toll on Tuesday in more than six months with 1,707 fatalities. From CNN:

The coronavirus is now killing at least one American every minute of the day, bringing the country to another horrific milestone on Wednesday: At least 250,029 people in the country have died of Covid-19 since the first death on February 29 in Washington state.

And it’s only going to get worse, said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor at George Washington University School of Medicine.

“The horrible death count that we saw yesterday in the United States … reflects the number of people who were being infected three weeks ago — two to three weeks ago, because that’s the lag,” Reiner said Wednesday.

“On average, two to three weeks ago, we were seeing 70,000 to 80,000 (new) cases per day. Yesterday, there were about 155,000 (new) cases. So if you’re alarmed at the 1,700 deaths today, two to three weeks from now, we’re going to see 3,000 deaths a day.”

And Donald Trump told his supporters just weeks ago, “We’re rounding the curve…” So. Much. Winning.

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Moderna Says Its COVID Vaccine Nearly 95% Effective

The first confirmed case of the omicron variant in the U.S. has been discovered in California.

From the Washington Post:

Biotechnology firm Moderna announced Monday that a preliminary analysis shows its experimental coronavirus vaccine is nearly 95 percent effective at preventing illness, including severe cases — a striking initial result that leaves the United States with the prospect that two coronavirus vaccines could be available on a limited basis by the end of the year.

The news comes a week after pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech lifted the stock market and people’s hopes with the news that their coronavirus vaccine was more than 90 percent effective.

At a briefing Monday, government officials predicted that if the two vaccines receive a regulatory greenlight, the first shots could be given in December, with enough to vaccinate 20 million people that month — and more becoming available into 2021 as production ramps up and other vaccine candidates may be successful.

The news is extremely promising but researchers still have some questions including how long will the protection of the vaccine last? Moderna has said it can produce 20 million doses by the end of the year — enough for 10 million people to get both shots.

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Coronavirus Update 11/11/20

New York state is about to drop its face mask mandate as COVID-19 cases continue to drop in the Empire State.

No, Donald Trump Jr., the coronavirus has not ‘magically’ gone away now that the 2020 election has passed. With the virus surging in so many places both here and around the world, I wanted to create a way to share news related to the pandemic in an abbreviated manner. For more information on any of the stories below, please feel free to click the links. Per Johns Hopkins Hospital coronavirus tracking, the U.S.  has now reported 10,353,604 cases of COVID-19 resulting in 240,688 deaths. • CBS News: Texas became the first state to surpass 1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday. The second-most populous U.S. state, Texas now has more coronavirus cases than all of Italy, which was previously one of the major hot spots of the virus. California is close behind with over 986,000 confirmed cases, as is Florida with more than 852,000. • ABC News: Faced with more than 2,000 new daily COVID-19 cases in his state and hospitals at capacity, Utah’s Gov. Gary Herbert has declared a state of emergency and issued a mandate for all residents to wear masks in public until further notice. Herbert’s announcement implored all state residents “to do everything in your power to stop the spread of this disease.” • CNN: Following the positive news regarding the effectiveness of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN’s Jake Tapper that an average American could potentially have access to a coronavirus vaccine by April of 2021.

• Pink News: Brazil’s homophobic president Jair Bolsonaro has told his country to accept coronavirus and stop dealing with it like “a country of fags”. The far-right leader made the remarks as his country has suffered over 5.7 million infections and 163,000 deaths from coronavirus. “We have to stop being a country of fags… We have to face up to it and fight. I hate this faggot stuff.” • Nevada Current: With the coronavirus surging in Nevada and nearly every state in the nation, Gov. Steve Sisolak urged people Tuesday to “to operate in a ‘Stay at Home 2.0’ mentality to get things under control so our public health response infrastructure can catch up.” Nevada has seen more than 1,300 cases a day over the most recent seven day period and hospitalization rates not seen since August. • The Hill: A top health department official in Wisconsin says that the state is nearing a tipping point at which some patients who need lifesaving care will be unable to receive it due to overcrowding in hospitals resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak.

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Supreme Court Appears Inclined To Uphold Obamacare After Oral Arguments

(stock image via Depositphotos)
Several news outlets report that at least 5 Supreme Court justices appear to lean against striking down the Affordable Care Act after oral arguments today in a case brought by the Trump administration. From the New York Times:

It was not clear whether the court would strike down the so-called individual mandate, which was rendered toothless in 2017 after Congress zeroed out the penalty for failing to obtain insurance. But the bulk of the sprawling 2010 health care law, which is President Barack Obama’s defining domestic legacy, appeared likely to survive its latest encounter with the Supreme Court.

In legal terms, the key justices said the mandate could be severed from the rest of the law.

“It does seem fairly clear that the proper remedy would be to sever the mandate provision and leave the rest of the act in place — the provisions regarding pre-existing conditions and the rest,” said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. made a similar point. “Congress left the rest of the law intact when it lowered the penalty to zero,” he said.

The three justices who make up the court’s more liberal wing – Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan – all seem inclined to uphold the ACA. According to a study by the Urban Institute, more than 21 million Americans would become uninsured if the law were to be struck down. A ruling in the case is expected by next spring.

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New Cases Of Coronavirus Exceed 100K For 2nd Day In A Row In US

Donald Trump leaves the hospital after treatment for the coronavirus (photo: public domain)
Although Donald Trump told his followers on the campaign trail about the coronavirus – “By the way, on November 4, you won’t hear about it anymore” – sadly we are. For the second day in a row, the U.S. has reported over 100,000 new cases of the virus in a single day. From the New York Times:

The country burst across the 100,000 threshold of reported cases a day earlier, the first time it had done so since the pandemic began. The total count of new infections Wednesday was at least 107,000, according to a New York Times database.

On Thursday evening, the county in the U.S. hit 102,297, and was expected to go up.

Twenty-three states have recorded more cases in the past week than in any other seven-day stretch.

Five states — Colorado, Indiana, Maine, Minnesota and Nebraska — set single-day case records on Wednesday. Cases were also mounting in the Mountain West and even in the Northeast, which over the summer seemed to be getting the virus under control.

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U.S. Reports Nearly 100K New Cases Of Coronavirus In A Day

The first confirmed case of the omicron variant in the U.S. has been discovered in California.

As Donald Trump tells his campaign rally attendees that the U.S. has “rounded the curve” of the coronavirus pandemic, actual facts say differently as nearly 100,000 new coronavirus cases were reported on Friday – a new daily record. From the Washington Post:

The milestone — the first daily tally above 90,000 — came a week after the country passed 80,000 cases in a day, breaking the record set during a summer case surge concentrated in the Sun Belt. Experts have long predicted another spike in cases as cold weather sends many indoors and aids the virus’s spread.

The holiday travel season has public health officials worried too. And cases are surging in every swing state that is crucial to next week’s presidential election.

Total confirmed cases in the U.S. topped 9 million Friday, with the last 1 million recorded in just over two weeks. Increased testing alone does not explain the jump in cases; current coronavirus hospitalizations are steadily rising again, though they have yet to surpass the summer’s peak.

At least 229,000 deaths have been linked to the coronavirus.

On Thursday night, Donald Trump Jr. declared that coronavirus deaths had dropped to “almost nothing” and “we’ve gotten control of this.”

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Fitness Influencer Denied COVID Existed Until He Got It (And Died)

Dmitriy Stuzhuk (images via Instagram)
Dimitriy Stuzhuk, a social media fitness ‘influencer’ with over a million followers on Instagram, has died of COVID-19 after spending months denying the virus even existed. While he may have been in top physical shape, the 33-year-old sports and healthy living proponent was not able to survive the effects of the coronavirus. Four days ago, Stuzhuk told his followers in a post that he contracted the disease while traveling in Turkey. After a few days of body aches, a swollen neck, and a recurring cough, the fitness lifestyle returned home to Ukraine where underwent a battery of tests which showed he had tested positive for the coronavirus. While in the hospital he was given oxygen and additional medications. He was discharged after 8 days in the hospital, at which point he told his Instagram followers, “I was one who thought that Covid does not exist…until I got sick.” Accompanied by a photo wearing an oxygen mask, he added, “COVID IS NOT A SHORT-LIVED DISEASE! And it is heavy,” according to Sky News.

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КОРОНАВИРУС «COVID», ДЕНЬ 8 ⠀ Как вы все знаете из историй, я болею корлнавирусом. Сегодня, вернувшись домой, первый раз появился энтузиазм хотя бы что-то написать. Хочу поделиться, как я заболел и убедительно предостеречь всех: я тоже думал, что нет никакого ковида, и это все относительно. Пока сам не заболел. COVID-19 БОЛЕЗНЬ НЕ ЭФЕМЕРНАЯ! И тяжелая. Но обо всем по порядку. ⠀ Как это было? Плохо мне стало на второй день в Турции. Я проснулся среди ночи от того, что у меня отекла шея и было тяжело дышать. При этом немного побаливал живот. ⠀ На следующий день начал появляться кашель, но температуры никакой не было. Особых симптомов болезни тоже не было, поэтому я подумал, что это могут быть последствия после занятия спортом, смены климата и питания ну и плюс сон под кондиционером. ⠀ После возвращения из Турции я сразу же пошел сдавать разные анализы, делать УЗИ и на всякий случай решил пройти тест на COVID. Он оказался положительным😔 ⠀ На следующий день я поехал делать КТ. Мне назначили лечение и стали настаивать на госпитализации. Это отдельная история, потому что сейчас там идут ремонтные работы, больница полностью набита людьми, некоторые из них живут в коридоре😱😱 Питания никакого нет, бумаги нет, столовых приборов тоже нет! Меня никто об этом не предупреждал. Медицине в нашей стране будет посвящён отдельный пост — что уж там, она это заслужила. ⠀ ПРО ЛЕЧЕНИЕ. Мне назначили курс лечения и сказали, что нужно его продолжать. Дали кислородный аппарат для дыхания, так как у меня низкий уровень кислорода (хотя я считаю, критическим он считается после 90, у меня же 94-96 это вполне позволительно для лечения дома, врач в приемной мне сказал тоже самое😄). ⠀ ☝🏻Учитывая все эти факторы, я принимаю решение, что мне будет удобней и комфортней находиться на дистанционной опеке у себя дома, где у меня есть все условия для нормального лечения. В конце концов я всегда могу обратиться в нужные службы. Та и дома, как говорится, и стены лечат🙌🏻 ⠀ Мое состояние стабильное.

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In his post, he described less-than-optimal conditions in his Ukraine hospital, which surprised him, and he promised a future post about “medicine in our country.” But that post wasn’t to be. His recovery proved to be a brief reprieve as he was rushed back to the hospital with cardiovascular complications due to the virus. His ex-wife, Sofia, shared on her own Instagram account that Stuzhuk was in “grave condition” and “unconscious.” Shortly thereafter, she announced Stuzhuk’s passing writing, “Only warm memories remain, three beautiful kids and valuable experience.” As you can see in recent Instagram posts, Stuzhuk appeared to be in peak physical shape. Ukraine has reported 307,301 cases of COVID-19 in the country resulting in 5,762 deaths. There have been 39,845,660 cases worldwide with 1,111,957 reported deaths at this writing according to Johns Hopkins University.