Tag: COVID-19

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Study: HIV+ More Likely To Be Hospitalized Due To COVID

(image via Depositphotos)
While not a big surprise, it appears folks living with HIV fare worse against COVID-19 than those without HIV. The Journal of the American Medical Association published research this week showing a connection between people living with HIV and increased hospitalization and death rates among New York State residents. The study found those already living with HIV experienced poorer COVID-related outcomes relative to persons living without diagnosed HIV. A previous HIV diagnosis was associated with higher rates of severe disease requiring hospitalization, and hospitalization risk increased with progression of HIV disease stage. A total of 2988 persons living with diagnosed HIV received a diagnosis of COVID-19. Of these persons living with diagnosed HIV, 896 were hospitalized and 207 died in the hospital through June 15, 2020. After standardization, persons living with diagnosed HIV and persons living without diagnosed HIV had similar diagnosis rates, but persons living with diagnosed HIV were hospitalized more than persons living without diagnosed HIV.

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Police Break Up Late Night 81-Person Orgy

(stock photo via Pexels/Maurício Mascaro )

French police were called last Friday after neighbors complained about noise that seemed to come from a late night party.

Around 9 pm, the officers arrived at a warehouse in Collegien, around 20 miles from the centre of Paris. They found about 11 people hanging out in the car park.

At 11 pm, after gaining legal entry into the warehouse, police officers discovered a rave/orgy with 81 participants complete with sound and lighting equipment.

The Independent reports the participants were each fined 135 Euros ($161 US) for being in breach of the current coronavirus curfew in effect. France currently restricts outside movement from 6 pm to 6 am.

Police reports also indicated there were “problems with masks and social distancing” as well. Some party-goers were also detained for questioning.

This is just the latest example of folks growing fatigued of COVID lockdown rules as the pandemic enters its second year.

Last December, Belgian police were called to a house party near a COVID clinic where a 52-person orgy was in full swing.

Anti-LGBTQ Hungarian lawmaker Jozsef Szajer was among those arrested and quickly resigned from his position.

While health concerns during a pandemic are definitely a serious issue, folks on the Twitterverse tried to find some humor in the moment.

Jokes aside, during the ongoing pandemic please remember to wear a face mask in public, wash your hands often, and practice social distancing.

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Trump Officials Lobbied Congress Against Funding Vaccine Rollout

The FDA has approved updated versions of COVID-19 vaccines

Frustrated by the rollout of the coronavirus vaccines? This is a reason why it’s going so poorly. StatNews journalist Nicholas Florko reports Trump officials actively lobbied against giving states money for Covid-19 vaccine administration. Via StatNews:

Top Trump officials actively lobbied Congress to deny state governments any extra funding for the Covid-19 vaccine rollout last fall — despite frantic warnings from state officials that they didn’t have the money they needed to ramp up a massive vaccination operation.

The push, described to STAT by congressional aides in both parties and openly acknowledged by one of the Trump officials, came from multiple high-ranking Trump health officials in repeated meetings with legislators.

Without the extra money, states spent last October and November rationing the small pot of federal dollars they had been given. And when vaccines began shipping in December, states seemed woefully underprepared.

Paul Mango, the former deputy chief of staff for policy at the Department of Health and Human Services, was apparently a big part of the lobbying effort. He told StatNews that since states hadn’t spent the $200 million that the CDC sent in September, they must not need the funds. Mango told StatNews he believed the states were asking for the funding to help fill empty tax coffers. “A lot of them had shut down their economies and they weren’t getting tax revenue,” he said. There’s much more over at StatNews – quite the deep dive into the facts.

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Biden Deploys FEMA In 11 States To Help Vaccination Effort

A FEMA healthcare worker prepares a COVID-19 vaccination

A FEMA healthcare worker prepares a COVID-19 vaccination
A FEMA healthcare worker prepares a COVID-19 vaccination (image via FEMA)
President Biden ordered FEMA to jump in a help with vaccination efforts across the country, and things are already happening on the ground in several states. From NBC News:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is deploying or supporting vaccination efforts in at least 11 states after President Joe Biden ordered the government to get on a war footing in his mission to vaccinate 300 million Americans by summer’s end.

The states are Arizona, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, according to a FEMA official. Federal workers are also supporting efforts in the U.S. Virgin Islands, the official said.

FEMA has reportedly already set up vaccination sites in four of those states – Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and Washington. In a statement, FEMA said they are “determining where staff support, supplies and other resource gaps are — and then working to fill them. Items that are funded can include: • Supplies and commodities needed to safely store and administer the vaccine. • Transportation support and reasonable, necessary security for refrigerated trucks. • Medical and support staff. • Communication materials that keep the public informed. • Training personnel on vaccine distribution and administration.

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Biden Will Deploy National Guard & FEMA To Ramp Up Vaccinations

President-elect Joe Biden will utilize the National Guard and FEMA to ramp up vaccinations against the coronavirus
President-elect Joe Biden (via campaign)
President-elect Joe Biden has announced he will direct FEMA and the National Guard to build coronavirus vaccine clinics across the United States in order to make vaccinations more widely available faster. From CNBC:

The Biden administration will also “quickly jumpstart” efforts to make the vaccines available at local pharmacies across the U.S., which should ensure that Americans have access to doses at facilities only miles from their home, according to the plan.

“Here’s the deal: The more people we vaccinate, the faster we do it, the sooner we can save lives and put this pandemic behind us and get back to our lives and loved ones,” Biden said at a speech in Wilmington, Delaware, Thursday night. “We won’t get out of it overnight and we can’t do it as a separated nation.”

The rollout of the coronavirus vaccine has been much slower than anticipated. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of this morning more than 31.1 million doses of vaccine had been distributed across the U.S. Of that, just over 12.2 million vaccinations have been administered. At this writing, Johns Hopkins University of Medicine reports there have been 23,478,669 cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and 391,279 deaths related to the virus.

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COVID-19 Deaths Set New Single-Day Record (Again)

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

The U.S. set a new single-day record for COVID-19 deaths on Wednesday As Americans watched the violent invasion of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, the COVID-19 pandemic continued its own ‘invasion’ of the nation as the U.S. reported a new single-day record for deaths due to the coronavirus. From the New York Times:

Officials reported at least 3,964 new coronavirus deaths in the United States on Wednesday, a new single-day record, though delayed recording because of the holidays might have played a role. The daily death toll in New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania also set records.

Some states also reported single-day case records, while Illinois became one of five states that have now recorded their millionth case since the pandemic began.

In Arizona, which is beginning the new year with a higher rate of new cases than any other state, hospitalizations and deaths set records in the past few days. Over the past week, the state has averaged more than 8,000 cases a day, more than double the summer peak.

Read more regarding the COVID-19 pandemic at the New York Times.

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EMTs Told Not To Bring COVID Patients To Hospitals If Survival Chances Are Low

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

A man wearing a face mask to improve his survival chances against COVID-19 Things are getting even worse in Los Angeles in regard to the coronavirus pandemic. EMTs are being told to assess the survival chances of a patient before bringing them to a hospital where resources are growing thin. From the Washington Post:

First responders in Los Angeles County have been told not to bring patients to hospitals if their survival chances are low, as health-care workers try to dig out from a deluge of covid-19 patients.

More than 128,000 people across the United States were hospitalized with covid-19 on Monday, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. That number is a record and represents an increase of 2,800 patients in a single day.

The L.A. County Emergency Medical Services Agency issued a directive Monday that ambulance crews should conserve oxygen by administering it only to patients who have oxygen saturation levels below 90%.

To reduce demand on hospitals, the agency recently issued memos directing ambulance staff not to transfer to hospitals most patients who have virtually no chance of survival.

People who require hospitalization are reportedly waiting over 8 hours in ambulances before being admitted. Related: Trump Didn’t Want People Tested For COVID Unless Vomiting In ER

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Dr. Anthony Fauci On COVID-19: ‘The Deaths Are Real’

Dr. Anthony Fauci

Dr. Anthony Fauci
Dr. Anthony Fauci on ‘This Week’ (screen capture)
During an appearance on ABC News’s This Week, Dr. Anthony Fauci shared that he did not foresee how the COVID-19 pandemic death toll in the United States would spin out to such high levels. Fauci pointed to indoor activities and holiday travel for aiding transmission of the virus. He also repeated his call for Americans to take public health precautions seriously if we ever hope to slow the current surge. From ABC News:

“To have 300,000 cases in a given day, and between two and 3,000 deaths a day is just terrible,” the nation’s top infectious disease expert told ABC’s “This Week” Co-anchor Martha Raddatz Sunday. “There’s no running away from the numbers, Martha. It’s something that we absolutely got to grasp and get our arms around and turn that inflection down by very intensive adherence to the public health measures, uniformly, throughout the country, with no exception.”

“The deaths are real deaths,” Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, when asked by Raddatz for his response to the president’s tweet. “All you need to do is go out into the trenches. Go to the hospitals and see what the health care workers are dealing with. They are under very stressful situations in many areas of the country. The hospital beds are stretched, people are running out of beds, running out of trained personnel who are exhausted.”

“That’s real,” he continued. “That’s not fake. That’s real.”

Just prior to Fauci’s appearance, Donald Trump tweeted (with no evidence) that the numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of infected persons and deaths in the country are “exaggerated.” That’s in spite of nearly every state reporting increased coronavirus infections nationwide. According to Johns Hopkins University COVID tracker, the U.S. this weekend surpassed 20 million reported cases of COVID-19, and the number of deaths has now exceeded 351,000 since the pandemic began 10 months ago.

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Billy Porter Shares Behind-The-Scenes Info From POSE

Billy Porter as 'Pray Tell' on POSE

Billy Porter as 'Pray Tell' on POSE
Billy Porter as ‘Pray Tell’ on POSE (promo photo)
The acclaimed FX series Pose resumed shooting this fall after hitting the pause button due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Emmy Award winner Billy Porter shared some intel from behind-the-scenes when he sat down on Live With Kelly and Ryan this week. “We are shooting Season 3 right now with all of the COVID protocols in place,” Porter told the hosts. “It is not the easiest version of filming a television show that I have been a part of, but I am grateful that we are back to work. Disney is now the parent company of FX, and they have really taken this seriously. They are keeping us all very safe during this process.” What folks really want to know, though, is how are they filming those huge ball scenes created with a soundstage full of actors and extras? “We’re still trying to figure that part out,” Porter admitted. “We have not shot any of the balls yet. We have been shooting the scene work, and I believe we are waiting for the ball sequences to hopefully be shooting them in some sort of vaccine situation. So, we are pushing those scenes to next year.”

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NY Times: Trump Didn’t Want Folks COVID Tested Unless In ER And Vomiting

Donald Trump

Donald Trump
Donald Trump (photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr – CC License)
The New York Times spoke to several White House insiders regarding the whys and wherefores of Donald Trump’s failed response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The upshot seems to be practically every decision was predicated on: what would it mean for Trump? Between Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and not-an-infectious-expert Dr. Scott Atlas bending to Trump’s ego, scientists and doctors had a tough time getting solid health policy implemented. Trump thought wearing face masks wouldn’t appeal to his base, so he didn’t really encourage their use. And he really hated how the positivity rate of testing ‘made him look bad.’ Trump reportedly didn’t want folks tested for COVID until they were so sick they landed in an emergency room and were vomiting. From the New York Times:

It was a warm summer Wednesday, Election Day was looming and President Trump was even angrier than usual at the relentless focus on the coronavirus pandemic.

“You’re killing me! This whole thing is! We’ve got all the damn cases,” Mr. Trump yelled at Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, during a gathering of top aides in the Oval Office on Aug. 19. “I want to do what Mexico does. They don’t give you a test till you get to the emergency room and you’re vomiting.”

Mexico’s record in fighting the virus was hardly one for the United States to emulate. But the president had long seen testing not as a vital way to track and contain the pandemic but as a mechanism for making him look bad by driving up the number of known cases.

“I’m going to lose,” Trump told Kushner during one exchange. “And it’s going to be your fault, because of the testing.” In another episode, Jared Kushner and Hope Hicks tried to get Trump to embrace face mask use but with Meadows and adviser Stephen Miller pushing back, the Donald refused. Read the full report at the New York Times.