Tag: COVID-19

Posted on

Some Florida Beaches Reopened Today

(screen capture)
What could possibly go wrong?… Via the New York Post:

Beaches in Jacksonville, Florida, will be reopened for limited hours beginning Friday evening, following President Trump’s announcement that governors could decide when to open their states back up, the city’s mayor announced Thursday.

Mayor Lenny Curry said beaches and parks would reopen in the county for essential uses including recreational activities at an appropriate social distance, including walking, fishing, biking, swimming and dog walking.

“This can be the beginning of the pathway back to normal life,” Curry said. “Please respect and follow these limitations. Stay within the guidelines for your safety as well as for the safety of your neighbors.”

The beaches will open from 6 to 11 a.m. and from 5 to 8 p.m. each day for the limited activities, ABC News reported. But swimmers and surfers will go into the water at their own risk.

The Jacksonville parks will also reopen but gatherings must still be limited to 50 people or less.

Posted on

Gilead COVID-19 Drug May Offer Glimmer Of Hope

(image via Depositphotos)
For some weeks now, Donald Trump has heralded malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as showing “tremendous promise” to combat COVID-19 but no study has yielded any sufficient data (yet) that bears out Trump’s “feeling” that it would be the salvation folks are hoping for. But drugmaker Gilead may have some good news soon about its experimental drug Remdesivir. From StatNews:

Remdesivir was one of the first medicines identified as having the potential to impact SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, in lab tests. The entire world has been waiting for results from Gilead’s clinical trials, and positive results would likely lead to fast approvals by the Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies.

If safe and effective, it could become the first approved treatment against the disease.

The University of Chicago Medicine recruited 125 people with COVID-19 into Gilead’s two Phase 3 clinical trials. Of those people, 113 had severe disease. All the patients have been treated with daily infusions of remdesivir. 

“The best news is that most of our patients have already been discharged, which is great. We’ve only had two patients perish,” said Kathleen Mullane, the University of Chicago infectious disease specialist overseeing the remdesivir studies for the hospital.

It’s important to note that a  group of 125 patients in Chicago isn’t large enough to give researchers the depth of information they need. Gilead is currently overseeing 152 separate clinical trials around the world involving 2,400 severe patients. There are an additional 169 trials following 1,600 moderate COVID-19 patients. Until the trials are closed and the numbers crunched we won’t have a clear idea as to how useful the drug might be against coronavirus. That said, one man’s story definitely shows promise. Slawomir Michalak, a 57-year-old factory worker from a suburb west of Chicago, told StatNews he went to the University of Chicago Medicine hospital on Friday, April 3, when he spiked a 104 fever and found it difficult to breathe. He was put on oxygen and given the option to join the severe coronavirus trial. On Saturday, April 4, he received his first infusion of the drug. “My fever dropped almost immediately and I started to feel better,” he said. The next day, he received a second dose and was able to breathe without supplemental oxygen. After two more daily treatments of remdesivir, he was well enough to be discharged on Tuesday, April 7. It’s only one man’s experience with the drug, but let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Read more at StatNews.

Posted on

Fauci On Trump Delaying COVID-19 Guidelines: “It Is What It Is”

Dr. Anthony Fauci on CNN’s State of the Union
If you want answers about the ongoing coronavirus threat, Dr. Anthony Fauci is the guy for straight info. During an interview today on State of the Union, Fauci told CNN’s Jake Tapper he hopes November’s elections will be able to happen in a fairly “normal” way, but wouldn’t commit to a guarantee because so many variables are in play – including a possible second wave of infections later this year. Fauci also said “no one is going to deny” that more lives could have been saved during the coronavirus crisis if the Trump administration had begun social distancing guidelines in mid-February. On Saturday, the New York Times reported that high ranking public health experts in the Trump administration, including Fauci, issued guidance on February 21 that the U.S. would need to move toward “aggressive social distancing even if it would disrupt the economy and millions of American lives.” Fauci told Tapper today, “We look at it from a pure health standpoint. We make a recommendation. Often the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it’s not. But it is what it is. We are where we are right now.” It is what it is…

Posted on

Fact-Check: Trump Says U.S. Has ‘Best’ COVID-19 Testing System (Nope)

L-R CNN’s Jim Acosta, Donald Trump
From NowThis News:

During a White House press briefing, Donald Trump said the U.S. doesn’t need nationwide testing before sending people back to work. Watch CNN’s Jim Acosta challenge President Trump on his COVID-19 testing claim.

The U.S. does not have the ‘best’ testing system. As of April 1, dozens of countries have far higher testing rates including Germany, Italy, Norway, S. Korea, Canada, Australia, & Estonia.

The White House had promised to conduct 27 million tests by the end of March. As of April 9, Trump himself told the press only 2 million tests had been administered. Based on those 2 million tests, the U.S. is testing approximately 6 people per thousand. Countries like South Korea and Germany are triple that rate. In the same exchange between Acosta and Trump, the Donald told the CNN journalist, “You shouldn’t be asking that kind of a question … it is very insulting to a lot of great people.” Journalists ask questions. It’s literally their job. People who are on point don’t get defensive when asked questions. They have answers.

Posted on

Campaign Ad: “Distracted”

A pretty devastating new ad from The Lincoln Project: “Trump says his own impeachment “distracted” him from the #Coronavirus response. Let’s be clear: He was never distracted. He just didn’t care.”

 

Posted on

Poll: 57% Of Conservative News Viewers Believe COVID-19 “Less Deadly” Than Flu

Donald Trump
New polling from Gallup shows folks who get their news from Donald Trump’s favorite “state TV” network, Fox News, might be less informed than those who get their news elsewhere. Via Mediaite:

People who consume news sources like Fox News are more than twice as likely to be uninformed about the coronavirus as those who take in sources like CNN and MSNBC, according to a stunning new survey conducted by Gallup.

The Knight Foundation/Gallup poll published Thursday broke down results by “news diet,” which in the case of a “conservative news diet” meant “those who cite only conservative news sources (e.g., Fox News, Breitbart, One America News, the National Review) as top sources.”

But on a key matter of fact regarding the Covid-19 disease, the results were devastating. A full 57 percent of the conservative news consumers falsely believe that the coronavirus is “less deadly than or as deadly as flu,” versus only 28 percent of those with a “liberal news diet” believing the same statement.

Is anyone surprised? Show of hands, please. No one? I didn’t think so.

Posted on

COVID-19 Now The Leading Cause Of Death In U.S.

Donald Trump during White House press conference (public domain)
Newsweek reports that COVID-19, once dubbed a “Democratic hoax” by Donald Trump, is now the leading cause of death in the U.S.

According to a graph published Tuesday by Dr. Maria Danilychev, who practices in San Diego, COVID-19 is the cause of 1,970 deaths in the U.S. per day.

Just last week, COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death, averaging around 748 deaths per day, but as the virus has continued to spread, the increase in daily deaths have followed.

In comparison to COVID-19 fatalities, 1,774 deaths are attributed to heart disease and 1,641 to cancer.

Thanks to social distancing, projections regarding anticipated deaths in the U.S. have recently been adjusted downward to 60,415  in a model produced by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle (IHME). Initial projections from the White House Coronavirus Task Force were between 100,000 and 240,000 U.S. deaths. But, it’s important to remember all of these projections – and the actual number of deaths – will remain fluid depending in great part on the behavior of the American people over the next few months.

Posted on

Australia: Head Lice Drug Shows Promise In Battling COVID-19

A veterinary drug in use since the 1970s might offer a glimmer of hope in treating the coronavirus. From The Weather Channel:

A head lice drug has successfully killed the novel coronavirus within 48 hours in a laboratory setting, as per researchers in Australia.

The study, conducted by researchers from the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory, Royal Melbourne Hospital in Australia, has found the head lice drug Ivermectin could potentially be used—after further research and human trials — as a possible treatment for the COVID-19 disease.

To test how it performs against the novel coronavirus, the researchers infected some cells with the COVID-19-causing SARS-CoV-2 virus, and then exposed them to Ivermectin. Subsequently, they found that just a single dose of Ivermectin had successfully killed the virus in a petri dish.

There was a significant reduction in the virus in just 24 hours, and complete annihilation in less than 48 hours, which is indicative of the drug’s potent antiviral activity.

It goes without saying that, until human trials have been properly performed, it’s important not to consume, hoard, or prescribe this drug.

Posted on

Funny: Broadway Shows Reimagined Under Quarantine

(all images via Jeremy & Jeffrey West)
Creative brothers Jeremy and Jeffrey West tapped into their love of musical theater during the COVID-19 threat to come up with re-imagined Broadway musical titles and posters, a project they dubbed #QuarantineAMusical. “After being under quarantine and maintaining social distancing recommendations for the past three weeks, my brother Jeffrey and I have been brainstorming fun projects to keep our creative juices flowing,” Jeremy West told Playbill. “This project started when I tweeted a joke about John Guare releasing a revised version of his play titled Six Feet of Separation, making changes in light of 2020 social distancing. From there, we made a list of parody musicals re-imagined during a quarantine and dubbed it #QuarantineAMusical.” Check out some of the clever tweaks on these award-winning musicals. You can see more over at Playbill.com.

Posted on

Woman Who Mocked COVID-19 Dies From Virus Two Weeks Later

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

A Texas woman who mocked the ongoing COVID-19 health threat as a “hoax” on social media has died of the virus. As Twitter user @sunnmcheaux posted, on March 14th Karen Kolb Sehlke shared a lengthy coronavirus “hoax” rant on her Facebook. On April 2, her family launched a GoFundMe campaign to pay for her medical and funeral costs. The third tweet below carries a Facebook post that has been attributed to a friend of the deceased, but I haven’t been able to confirm that.

The same Twitter user noted that initially, the GoFundMe listed the cause of death as COVID-19. The campaign has since been edited to now say cause of death unknown. The campaign raised more than $35,000 before the family stopped further donations. The Facebook rant has reportedly been removed as well. I agree with Sunn m’Cheaux that the point of highlighting this story isn’t to mock the woman’s death but to understand the ongoing risks and widespread effects of the disease. (h/t JoeMyGod)