On my deathbed I will regret not listening to a GH gutted Palumboism suffering r****d enough for my science news.
We are about as well informed now as we were 2 years ago. Almost all of those who consider themselves well informed have a 2 year trail of drifting narratives. What we knew in March 2020: Diet, exercise and get healthy. Keep your vitamin D levels elevated. Always wear a mask around other if you feel the slightest bit sick. Wear masks in densely populated areas (ie: public transportation). Social distance works. If you're absolutely terrified of getting it, become a hermit. Vaccines will end the pandemic if everyone takes it (false) Not much has changed.
This is true if you just ignore the things we didn't know in March 2020. We didn't know it spread by air - thus not promoting masks at first We thought it spread through surfaces / touch We didn't know how long it lived on surfaces In the US, we didn't know how to make or get tests We didn't know how deadly it was because our case data and testing was very poor We didn't know if it spread in asymptomatic people We didn't know how long people were contagious We didn't know what level of risk we were exposing front line workers to or how to best protect them We didn't know of any treatments that would work and thought ventilators were a first line of defense We didn't know if vaccines would ever work or how long they'd take to develop On and on
We have a majority vaccinated, a ton of people (probably far more than reported) with prior infection, and now the highest daily infected numbers of all time. The most effort is now correlated to the worst rates.
US surpasses 2.4M cases in one week for first time during pandemic. US. cases are now being reported 95% faster than they were just a week earlier. The most deaths recorded in a single week was 23,415 during the period of Jan. 10-16 of this year. There have been 10,823 reported deaths in the past week. The relatively low number of deaths in contrast to high case counts may support early evidence that omicron is more contagious but less severe. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/12/31/covid-omicron-us-cases-updates/9059897002/
Child Covid-19 hospital admissions reach record-high. With more virus spreading in the country, more children are getting sick and being hospitalized than at any other point in the pandemic. The vast majority of children admitted to hospitals are unvaccinated, said Dr. Lee Savio Beers, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. "Where I work and practice here in DC at Children's National, about half of our hospitalizations ... are children under 5," Savio Beers said. Savio Beers warned, "I think it's just so important for us to remember that we're protecting ourselves, but we're also protecting those little ones who aren't yet eligible for vaccination." A vaccine for children younger than 5 likely won't be available until mid-2022. https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/31/health/us-coronavirus-friday/index.html
Governor of New Jersey the said, 70% of hospitalized Covid-19 patients are unvaccinated. "Our hospitals right now are at roughly the same numbers they were on the worst day of last winter's surge," Murphy said. "The problem is that right now we don't see any sign of let up." Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is deploying 1,250 National Guard troops, he said on the day the state reported its highest hospitalization number. Georgia also deployed 200 troops in the same week that six major health systems saw 100% to 200% increases in hospitalizations. https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/31/health/us-coronavirus-friday/index.html
The usual suspects here shou ignore the problems addressed in this article from the ultra-liberal propaganda machine that is Nat Geo... Can COVID-19 alter your personality? Here's what brain research shows. At the height of the COVID-19 tsunami that engulfed New York City in early 2020, a highly respected emergency room doctor, Lorna Breen, died by suicide. She had been serving as medical director at Manhattan’s New York Presbyterian Allen Hospital, and she was regarded as brilliant, energetic, and organized. She had no history of mental illness. But that changed after Breen contracted the virus. The 49-year-old doctor first showed symptoms on March 18. After a 10-day illness, she returned to work. Her family was alarmed: She was confused, hesitant, nearly catatonic, exhausted. Something was wrong. They brought her home to Charlottesville, and Breen checked into a psychiatric ward at University of Virginia Medical Center. Soon after she was released on April 26, she took her own life. “She had COVID, and I believe that it altered her brain,” her sister Jennifer Feist said on NBC’s Today show. At the time, doctors were just learning that this new coronavirus doesn’t target only the lungs and heart. It also impacts other organs, including the brain. “People arrived at the hospital with severe depression, hallucinations, or paranoia—and then we diagnosed them with COVID,” says Maura Boldrini, a neuroscientist and psychiatrist at Manhattan’s Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Now, almost two years into the pandemic, it’s become clear that neurological problems from COVID-19 can linger or intensify. After recovering from the virus, an alarming number of patients remain shrouded in brain fog, suffering from anxiety or depression, unable to think straight or hold on to memories, and fumbling for words. Not all had been hospitalized; some had only mild infections. Today these neurological problems are an established element of a larger syndrome known as long COVID that includes at least 203 symptoms in 10 organ systems. Boldrini notes that some long COVID symptoms mirror those caused by various chronic brain- and personality-altering conditions, including other viral infections, traumatic brain injuries, and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Huntington’s. These conditions can radically change how people experience, interpret, and understand the world; destabilize emotions; and influence how people think about themselves or interact with others. While little is known about the mechanisms behind many of these symptoms, researchers increasingly believe that inflammation may play a key role. With COVID-19, a storm of inflammatory cytokine proteins can trigger an out-of-control immune response that might permanently damage or destroy brain cells. And with damage to the brain, Boldrini says, “we may not be the same person anymore.” Personality, behavior, and the brain Human personality is the set of deeply ingrained characteristics and habits that influence how people think, feel, and behave. It’s created by a complex interaction of nature and nurture: Inherited traits encoded in our DNA are influenced by our social environment and modified during early developmental experiences. “The brain is obviously so important in defining who we are. It's our ego; it’s everything about our identity,” says Ann McKee, who studies repetitive head trauma as a neurologist, neuropathologist, and head of Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center. “It’s a highly specialized organ, with each part doing fantastically specific things.” While basic personality tends to remain constant throughout adult life, conditions that disrupt brain function can induce extreme shifts in personality—and evidence is mounting that this happens for some people who contract COVID-19. Some patients have developed impulsive or irrational behavior, like Ivan Agerton. The 50-year-old former Marine and documentary photographer experienced psychosis in early 2021 after he recovered from a COVID-19 infection. He grew paranoid, terrified that people were following him and convinced that a SWAT officer was encamped outside his Seattle home. He was ultimately hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, twice. For some patients, this so-called COVID psychosis resolves with time. By June, Agerton said he’d fully recovered. But no one knows how long such COVID-induced symptoms might persist. A study of 395 people who were hospitalized with COVID-19 found that 91 percent had cognitive issues, fatigue, depression, anxiety, sleep problems, or struggled with routine activities six months after they returned home. Healthcare workers and researchers are on the hunt for ways to treat these long-lasting symptoms, and that starts with figuring out why they happen in the first place. continued...
