Pandemic 2020

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Study led by Winnipeg doctor shows blood-thinner can keep COVID-19 patients out of ICU
A game-changing global study led by a Winnipeg physician has found that treating some hospitalized COVID-19 patients with blood thinners increases their chance of survival and reduces their need for intensive care.
The study looked at the effects of heparin, a generic blood thinner, in moderately and severely ill COVID-19 patients in nine countries. The research shows that the blood thinner helps moderately ill patients, but is harmful and should not be used in patients who are already on life-support. In patients who don't yet need ICU care — receiving at most, supplemental oxygen — heparin helps to prevent serious blood-clot-related complications of COVID-19, such as thrombosis and organ failure, the new research shows.

The conclusion: blood thinners could reduce the need for ICU care in roughly 30 per cent of moderately ill patients.

Dr. Ryan Zarychanski, a Winnipeg hematologist, critical care physician and associate professor of internal medicine, University of Manitoba, is a senior author of the studies, which were published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The research shows it's safe to give heparin to moderately ill COVID-19 patients. The findings are expected to quickly change the way COVID-19 patients are treated at the bedside because the medication is affordable and accessible. The results were announced in a livestreamed online broadcast Wednesday.

Zarychanski said the researchers are "very, very certain" of what he described as the straightforward findings of the trials.

"More patients will survive free of organ support. Less will be intubated, less will have thrombosis and there will be a small risk of major bleeding," he said during the virtual broadcast.

"The place where we're tightest on capacity is ICU; if you can reduce the number of people who have to go to the ICU by 30 per cent, that has a really big impact on the health-system stability and our ability to respond to COVID."

Aug 2021: Study led by Winnipeg doctor shows blood-thinner can keep COVID-19 patients out of ICU

A game-changing global study led by a Winnipeg physician has found that treating some hospitalized COVID-19 patients with blood thinners increases their chance of survival and reduces their need for i...

www.winnipegfreepress.com

 

[1212ham]

I think I'm pretty civil here compared to many. I don't speak for others, I only speak for myself. I post mostly factual information, perhaps peppered with a bit of my own opinion. If @rollitup wants to flex his mighty hammer and ban me, because I have a different opinion, then it is what it it. But I'll tell you what it isn't allowing for, and that is simple .discourse

OK, lets have some simple discourse. Do you believe the vaccines will kill more people than the virus?

 

[DIY-HP-LED]

'They couldn't take it anymore': Hospital workers quit amid Covid-19 surge

CNN's Martin Savidge speaks with Arkansas health care workers and administrators about the strain they're under as the state faces rising hospitalizations due to Covid-19. One hospital executive says they have have had employees walk off the job because they just couldn't take the pressure they are put under amid the latest Covid-19 surge.

 

[PJ Diaz]

OK, lets have some simple discourse. Do you believe the vaccines will kill more people than the virus?

No I don't. However it's not quite that simple really, and frankly I think that's a poor question due to the low bar it sets. A better question might be "does the vaccine help more people than it hurts?", and frankly I don't think we'll know that answer for a few years at least. With vaccine efficacy apparently waning after just a few months of inoculation, and the implication of biannual boosters for life, makes that a very complex question really.

 

[DIY-HP-LED]

Lambda COVID Variant 'a Potential Threat to Human Society,' Researchers Say

Japanese researchers have warned of the variant which was first discovered in Peru in August 2020.

www.newsweek.com

Lambda COVID Variant 'a Potential Threat to Human Society,' Researchers Say

There is concern over the threat posed by the Lambda variant of COVID-19 which may be more resistant to vaccines than the original version of the virus.

Research by a team from the University of Tokyo, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that three mutations in Lambda's spike protein help it resist neutralization by vaccine-induced antibodies.

Meanwhile, two mutations in the Lambda variant—T76I and L452Q—make it more infectious than the COVID variant that swept through the world in 2020.

The conclusions of the study posted on BiorXiv on July 28 matched findings—also not yet peer-reviewed—by a team in Chile that found the variant might also evade vaccine antibodies, Infection Control reported.

In June, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Lambda variant, which emerged in Peru in August 2020 and has been recorded in cases in Texas and South Carolina, as a "variant of interest."

It said Lambda, also known as the C.37 variant, has been the COVID-19 carrier in about 81 percent of infections in Peru since April. Cases have been found in 29 countries, territories or areas within five WHO regions.

However, the Japanese researchers said that the threat of the variant might be underestimated given that it was only named as a "variant of concern."

"Lambda can be a potential threat to the human society," senior researcher Kei Sato of the University of Tokyo said, according to Reuters.

Dr. Georg-Christian Zinn, who is director of the Bioscientia Hygiene Center, in Ingelheim, Germany, said that the statement by the Japanese team should be taken seriously even if their findings still need to be verified.

"The new Japanese preprint study on the Lambda variant is very, very credible," he told RTL.de, according to a translation of his comments. He referred to the expertise of the researchers, adding, "the data are valid."

Pablo Tsukayama, a doctor in molecular microbiology at Cayetano Heredia University in Lima who documented Lambda's emergence said that when it was discovered, "it did not attract much attention."

By March 2021, it was in 50 percent of the samples in Lima but only a month later, it was in 80 percent of the samples in Peru. "That jump from one to 50 percent is an early indicator of a more transmissible variant," Tsukayama told Al Jazeera in July.

Meanwhile, Dr. Stuart Ray professor of medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, told NPR in July that Lambda is "sort of a cousin of the alpha variant" but evidence so far is not clear that it has any advantage over the highly contagious delta variant.

"Delta is clearly dominating right now. And so I think our focus can remain on Delta as a hallmark of a highly infectious variant," he said.

"We have to be vigilant for these new variants and track them," he said. "I think right now lambda is a variant of interest, and we'll see whether it becomes a variant of concern."

 

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No I don't. However it's not quite that simple really, and frankly I think that's a poor question due to the low bar it sets. A better question might be "does the vaccine help more people than it hurts?", and frankly I don't think we'll know that answer for a few years at least. With vaccine efficacy apparently waning after just a few months of inoculation, and the implication of biannual boosters for life, makes that a very complex question really.

Then, did we have five years to wait and see?

 

[DIY-HP-LED]

Response To COVID Delta Surge Very Different in Different Parts of U.S.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says the U.S. could see 200,000 new COVID cases a day by the fall. That number was just 10,000 a day a few weeks ago. Skyler Henry reports the response to the surge has been very different depending on where you live.

 

[PJ Diaz]

Then, did we have five years to wait and see?

I would say that considering how the rate of covid cases were already on the decline prior to the mass vaccination campaign, probably so.

 

[doublejj]

Texas Republican leader dies of COVID-19 five days after anti-vaccination post

Texas Republican leader dies of COVID-19 five days after anti-vaccination post

A Texas Republican leader who was hospitalized with COVID-19 died Wednesday, just days after he shared a post on social media questioning the effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccine.The Galve…

thehill.com

 

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[DIY-HP-LED]

Texas Republican leader dies of COVID-19 five days after anti-vaccination post

Texas Republican leader dies of COVID-19 five days after anti-vaccination post

A Texas Republican leader who was hospitalized with COVID-19 died Wednesday, just days after he shared a post on social media questioning the effectiveness of the coronavirus vaccine.The Galve…

thehill.com

Thoughts and prayers...

 

[DIY-HP-LED]

The Anti-vaccine Con Job Is Becoming Untenable

Why targets of deliberate deception often hesitate to admit they’ve been deceived

amp.theatlantic.com

The Anti-vaccine Con Job Is Becoming Untenable
Why targets of deliberate deception often hesitate to admit they’ve been deceived

Something very strange has been happening in Missouri: A hospital in the state, Ozarks Healthcare, had to create a “private setting” for patients afraid of being seen getting vaccinated against COVID-19. In a video produced by the hospital, the physician Priscilla Frase says, “Several people come in to get vaccinated who have tried to sort of disguise their appearance and even went so far as to say, ‘Please, please, please don’t let anybody know that I got this vaccine.’” Although they want to protect themselves from the coronavirus and its variants, these patients are desperate to ensure that their vaccine-skeptical friends and family never find out what they have done.

Missouri is suffering one of the worst COVID-19 surges in the country. Some hospitals are rapidly running out of ICU beds. To Americans who rushed to get vaccinated at the earliest opportunity, some Missourians’ desire for secrecy is difficult to understand. It’s also difficult to square with the common narrative that vaccine refusal, at least in conservative areas of the country, is driven by a lack of respect or empathy from liberals along the coasts. “Proponents of the vaccine are unwilling or unable to understand the thinking of vaccine skeptics—or even admit that skeptics may be thinking at all,” lamented a recent article in the conservative National Review. Writers across the political spectrum have urged deference and sympathy toward holdouts’ concerns about vaccine side effects and the botched CDC messaging about masking and airborne transmission early in the pandemic. But these takes can’t explain why holdouts who receive respect, empathy, and information directly from reliable sources remain unmoved—or why some people are afraid to tell their loved ones about being vaccinated.

What is going on here? Sociology suggests that pundits and policy makers have been looking at vaccine refusal all wrong: It’s not an individual problem, but a social one. That’s why individual information outreach and individual incentives—such as Ohio’s Vax-a-Million program, intended to increase vaccine uptake with cash prizes and college scholarships—haven’t worked. Pandemics, by definition, are collective problems. They propagate and kill because people live in communities. As a result, addressing pandemics requires understanding interpersonal dynamics—not just what promotes trust among people, but which behaviors convey status or lead to ostracism.

Shifting from an individual to a relational perspective helps us understand why people are seeking vaccination in disguise. They want to save face within the very specific set of social ties that sociologists call “reference groups”—the neighborhoods, churches, workplaces, and friendship networks that help people obtain the income, information, companionship, mutual aid, and other resources they need to live. The price of access to those resources is conformity to group norms. That’s why nobody strives for the good opinion of everyone; most people primarily seek the approval of people in their own reference groups.

In Missouri and other red states, vaccine refusal on partisan grounds has become a defining marker of community affiliation. Acceptance within some circles is contingent on refusal to cooperate with the Biden administration’s public-health campaign. Getting vaccinated is a betrayal of that group norm, and those who get the shot can legitimately fear losing their job or incurring the wrath of their families and other reference groups.

Sociology solves mysteries like these by zeroing in on problematic relationships, not the decisions that individuals make in isolation. Many of the people refusing safe, effective vaccination amid a deadly pandemic are enmeshed in a very distinctive type of relationship that sociologists have been studying for more than 70 years: the con job. Con artists gain social or financial advantage by convincing their marks to believe highly dubious claims—and to block out all information to the contrary.

COVID-19-related cons have become big business, not just for right-wing media outlets that have gained viewers while purveying vaccine disinformation but also for small-time social-media grifters and enterprising professionals. The New York Times recently profiled Joseph Mercola, a Florida osteopath whom the paper described as “The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation.” Four years ago, the Federal Trade Commission forced Mercola to pay nearly $3 million in settlements for false advertising claims about indoor tanning beds that he had sold. In February of this year, Mercola told his millions of followers on Facebook that the vaccine would “alter your genetic coding,” and promoted his line of vitamin supplements as an alternative to ward off COVID-19.

To outsiders, the social dynamics of the con appear peculiar and irrational. Those caught up in it can seem self-destructive and, frankly, clueless. But to sociologists, including me, who study fraud, such behaviors obey a predictable logic.

The seminal text in the field—Erving Goffman’s 1952 essay “On Cooling the Mark Out”—observes that all targets of con artists eventually come to understand that they have been defrauded, yet they almost never complain or report the crime to authorities. Why? Because, Goffman argues, admitting that one has been conned is so deeply shameful that marks experience it as a kind of social death. The victim, he writes,

has defined himself as a shrewd man and must face the fact that he is only another easy mark. He has defined himself as possessing a certain set of qualities and then proven to himself that he is miserably lacking in them. This is a process of self-destruction of the self.

Goffman notes that other life events, such as being fired or dumped, can evoke similar feelings of humiliation. But people targeted by con jobs can save their pride by denying the con as long as possible—or claiming they were in on it the whole time. This saves face and cheats social death, but allows the con to continue unchecked, entrapping others. In doing so, marks prioritize their self-image over the common good.

This behavior—which Goffman doesn’t shrink from calling a “moral failure”—is embodied in figures such as the Louisiana man who attained national fame recently with a defiant rant from his ICU bed, refusing to get vaccinated even after a life-threatening bout with COVID-19. After being hospitalized with the disease, or losing loved ones to it, some former vaccine refusers own up to their misjudgment. But not all do.

Framing vaccine refusal in terms of sociological theory isn’t just an intellectual exercise. On the contrary, it can help public-health experts and government officials figure out how to react when marks collide with the reality that COVID-19 is serious, the vaccines work, and not getting vaccinated is dangerous. Goffman points out that con artists employ specialists to “cool” marks down when the deception is finally revealed. A cooler, he writes, “has the job of handling persons caught out on a limb—persons whose expectations and self-conceptions have been built up and then shattered.” Coolers prevent blowback from angry marks—encouraging them to blame themselves, not the con artist. They help marks rebuild their social identity, retain their self-respect, and preserve their affiliations with their reference groups.
...

 

[DIY-HP-LED]

cont...

In this light, the recent volte-face of many prominent conservatives toward enthusiastic endorsement of vaccination is great news for everyone who wants to see an end to the pandemic. Representative Steve Scalise, a high-ranking House Republican from Louisiana, recently got vaccinated on camera. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a press secretary in the Trump White House now running for governor of Arkansas, published an op-ed disclosing that she and her family had gotten vaccinated. On Tuesday, Senator Roy Blunt used the Republican leadership’s weekly press conference to urge his constituents in Missouri to get vaccinated—presumably without resorting to disguises.

David A. Graham: Suddenly, conservatives care about vaccines

Some commentators have mocked these efforts—particularly those of Republican Governors Ron DeSantis of Florida and Kay Ivey of Alabama. DeSantis recently declared, “Vaccines are saving lives.” “It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down,” Ivey recently said, adding, “These folks are choosing a horrible lifestyle of self-inflicted pain.” Both had previously taken vocal stands against certain pandemic-mitigation measures; in May, for example, each signed legislation banning organizations in their states from requiring proof of vaccination for employees and customers.

But those who see only hypocrisy and bad faith in these moves misunderstand the social dynamics of the con. Cooling out the marks—which is what all these right-wing efforts to push vaccination represent—works only when the marks perceive the coolers as members in good standing of the same reference groups. Having expressed doubts about COVID-19 vaccination or other pandemic mitigation likely makes Ivey and DeSantis more effective in persuading other conservatives: Their previous positions signify authenticity and in-group loyalty, making them more trustworthy, not less. High-status leaders such as Scalise, Ivey, Blunt, and DeSantis can expand the range of acceptable behavior for other group members through the example of their own actions.

This is reason for optimism: The conservative coolers are finally on the case, and only they have a chance of transforming partisan vaccine refusers into vaccine adopters. Whether these efforts will improve vaccination rates in red states remains to be seen, but it should come as a relief to those weary of being nice to vaccine holdouts. Blue-staters’ approval probably never mattered in the first place.

 

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I would say that considering how the rate of covid cases were already on the decline prior to the mass vaccination campaign, probably so.

I am not sure if I share your reasoning for the decline. And the reports of the Delta mainly putting unvaxed people in hospital. What would it look like with all us vaxed people being dropped off at Emergency? You paint a rosy picture with no vaccine being used and most of the decline has been driven by the vaccine and all the lockdowns. Would society be in continuous locdown for the five years you want for test results? We took a lot of measures to get where we are the vaccine was one of them. And this is coming from a person that lives in a place that had the lowest number of cases in North America to the highest. And as you probably remember, I have sources in our biggest hospital telling me the numbers were real.

Basically you have wishful thinking and us responsible adults stepped up to do what needed to be done for the good of all. As an air conditioning guy I worked for said on many occasions.

"The good customers pay for the bad ones."

 

[PJ Diaz]

I am not sure if I share your reasoning for the decline. And the reports of the Delta mainly putting unvaxed people in hospital. What would it look like with all us vaxed people being dropped off at Emergency? You paint a rosy picture with no vaccine being used and most of the decline has been driven by the vaccine and all the lockdowns. Would society be in continuous locdown for the five years you want for test results? We took a lot of measures to get where we are the vaccine was one of them. And this is coming from a person that lives in a place that had the lowest number of cases in North America to the highest. And as you probably remember, I have sources in our biggest hospital telling me the numbers were real.

Basically you have wishful thinking and us responsible adults stepped up to do what needed to be done for the good of all. As an air conditioning guy I worked for said on many occasions.

"The good customers pay for the bad ones."

I'm one to accept that if you have different reasoning, then you are welcome to a different curse of action for yourself. My problem is when it comes to mandating that others also follow your same reasoning, instead of allowing for individual choice.

 

[doublejj]

I'm one to accept that if you have different reasoning, then you are welcome to a different curse of action for yourself. My problem is when it comes to mandating that others also follow your same reasoning, instead of allowing for individual choice.

so do you stop at stop signs?.......individual choice and all....how about drunk driving? is that cool if i choose to?....it's my individual choice... right?

 

[PJ Diaz]

so do you stop at stop signs?.......individual choice and all....how about drunk driving? is that cool if i choose to?....it's my individual choice... right?

Right, like where do we draw the line? It's a good question. Decades ago growing and smoking weed was considered bad for society as well. A lot of people do rolling stops every day. I bet you do too.

 

[doublejj]

Right, like where do we draw the line? It's a good question. Decades ago growing and smoking weed was considered bad for society as well. A lot of people do rolling stops every day. I bet you do too.

the point is that we do lots of things every day that disrupt our personal freedoms for the good of us all. So we can all get along safely and live closely together. The Army gave me a whole list of injections because that was good for the Army.....and me.

 

[Budzbuddha]

Column: Canada just surpassed us on vaccinations. Good for them, and shame on us

Many Republicans refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Canadian Conservatives are more pragmatic.

www.latimes.com

Column: Canada just surpassed us on vaccinations. Good for them, and shame on us

GORDON BAY, Canada —
Three months ago, Canada, which has no domestic manufacturer of COVID-19 vaccines, lagged far behind the United States in immunizations. Only 3% of its population was fully vaccinated. Canadians watched glumly as friends and relatives south of the border lined up for shots, while residents of Toronto and Montreal suffered repeated lockdowns.

No longer. Last month, Canada blew past the United States in the share of its population that’s fully vaccinated — 58% as of Friday, versus 49% in the U.S. — to take first place among the seven big industrial democracies. (The United States ranks sixth, ahead of only Japan.)

How did Canada, the country that most closely resembles the United States, do so much better, even though it had to wait longer for Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to deliver their vaccines?

The simple answer is that in Canada, the pandemic didn’t become a politically polarized issue, as it did in the United States.

Canada’s major political parties, including the opposition Conservatives, joined early in full-throated support of mass vaccination. Leading politicians didn’t dismiss immunization as unnecessary, deride mask mandates or attack scientists.

When Andrew Scheer, then the Conservative leader, criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last year over the immunization program, it was to complain that he wasn’t delivering vaccines fast enough.

Canadians have argued over how quickly to lift limits on public gatherings, restaurants and retail stores, but their debates have been muted by U.S. standards. The country’s toughest lockdown was imposed by Ontario Premier Doug Ford, a populist conservative who has been compared to former President Trump.

“I can’t stand lockdowns,” Ford complained, but he stuck by his health experts’ recommendation to keep the restrictions until almost 80% of Ontarians had received their first doses of vaccine.

Like the United States, Canada has anti-vaxxers — just fewer of them. An Angus Reid Institute poll last month found that only 8% of Canadians said they definitely do not intend to get a COVID vaccination, including 15% of Conservative Party voters. Polls in the United States have found refusal rates at least twice as high.

And there lies a clue toward a deeper, more complex explanation for Canada’s vaccination success over that of the U.S.: the underlying differences between the countries’ political cultures and, especially, their conservative parties.

“There is much less polarization in Canada overall,” Peter Loewen, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, told me. “There’s not a lot of political mileage in appearing to be anti-science in Canada; there is in the United States.”

Canadians also differ from Americans in that more of them trust their government to do the right thing. Frank Graves of Ekos Research, an Ottawa pollster, noted that in one survey last year, Americans’ trust in Washington was as low as 17%; the trust level in Canada was 37%, about twice as high.

“In Canada, our number actually bounced up during the pandemic, as people looked to government as a source of salvation,” he told me. “Trust in government, in science and in public health are all interrelated, and they are all key predictors of anti-vax sentiment.”

Another difference: Canada’s Conservative Party is more moderate than the post-Trump Republican Party.

“There’s a strain of authoritarian populism in both parties, but it has become the dominant faction in the Republican Party; it’s not as large in Canada,” Graves said.

Before the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Canada’s Leger Poll asked Canadians whether they would vote for Trump or Joe Biden. Among all Canadians, Biden was the favorite, by a whopping 84%; even Conservative Party voters preferred Biden over Trump, at 59%.

One last difference: Canada has no equivalent of Fox News spreading misinformation about COVID vaccines.

“We’ve got a more centrist media system, with one dominant, government-owned broadcast network,” Loewen said, referring to the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. “It’s hard to quantify the impact, but it’s clear that there is one.”

Of course, not everyone is impressed by Canada’s antipandemic measures. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently derided them as an example of what not to do.

“We were the leading state fighting against coronavirus lockdowns,” he bragged on Fox News. “I believe had Florida not done that, you would see the other states to have followed Canada, [which is] still locked down.”

But the governor should be careful about the comparisons he invites.

Florida led the United States in COVID-19 cases last week, and more than 39,000 Sunshine State residents have died from the disease.

Canada, with a much larger population, has had about 27,000 COVID deaths. Its per capita death rate is less than half that of Florida.

That should make even Republicans ask themselves: What is Canada doing right?

Holy Shit … I better start practicing….

*music
“ Oh Canada ! …. Our home and … “

 

[printer]

I'm one to accept that if you have different reasoning, then you are welcome to a different curse of action for yourself. My problem is when it comes to mandating that others also follow your same reasoning, instead of allowing for individual choice.

I tell you that you are wrong. In doing so I have spent many hours digging for information to back up my opinion. How is that mandating others follow my reasoning more than your reasoning? I counter what I think of as misinformation because that line of thinking has caused near term deaths and a battling the virus has cause much damage to society. You are saying in the future there might be a problem. Yes I understand that and I have said the benefits outweigh the risk at this time.

What health problems will the infected with the virus have in long term? It can be much greater than your imagined health issues but the difference is we know people are having long term covid. We know many people that had to be hospitalized come out of it with health issues. I know what the effects can be, my sister is living with the same scars that many covid patients will have, she is a victim of the SARS outbreak. And this is one reason I have countered many of you posts. I have tried to do it with reason and facts. You can have your own individual choice and not get vaccinated. But when you try to influence others in inaction that will have negative effects on society and my life, I will speak out.