Category Archives: SARS-CoV-2

healthcare, human rights, SARS-CoV-2

Keisha Lance Bottoms says Atlanta mask mandate will stand | 11alive.com

In the latest back-and-forth of a growing open dispute between Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Gov. Brian Kemp, the mayor said Thursday mask requirements “are enforceable and they stand” one day after the governor explicitly barred them.

The issue of masks has been perhaps the most contentious one between the two leaders, with Kemp rejecting calls to institute a statewide mask mandate and Bottoms one of the policy’s most vocal proponents.

 

Source: Keisha Lance Bottoms says Atlanta mask mandate will stand | 11alive.com

Fail!, healthcare, Just strange, pandemic, SARS-CoV-2

Coronavirus data disappeared after Trump administration shifted control from CDC

The CDC’s web page for data on available hospital and ICU beds has been replaced with a note that reads: “Data displayed on this page was submitted directly to CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) and does not include data submitted to other entities contracted by or within the federal government.”

“We don’t have this critical indicator anymore,” Panchadsaram said. “The intent of just switching the data streams towards HHS, that’s fine. But you got to keep the data that you’re sharing publicly still available and up to date.”

 

Dr. Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, which runs one of the most popular third-party coronavirus data dashboards, said the policy change won’t impact the Hopkins site because they’ve managed to source their data directly from states. She added, however, that the policy change raises questions about the transparency of the data and the role of the CDC in the ongoing U.S. response.

Source: Coronavirus data disappeared after Trump administration shifted control from CDC

healthcare, SARS-CoV-2

I covered America’s coronavirus outbreak for months. Then I caught the disease – ABC News

I’m not sure where I crossed paths with COVID-19. But five days after we got back from President Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I hit a brick wall.

I woke up in the middle of the night to a tightening grip on my airways, a deep burning sensation when trying to swallow, a throbbing headache right behind the eyeballs and total exhaustion.

Getting up the next morning, I was dizzy, unable to stand for long, simple tasks were difficult and everything just hurt. I felt like I had been pummelled with a baseball bat.

If we weren’t amid a global pandemic, which I’ve been covering as the ABC’s North America correspondent, I would have convinced myself it was just a bad case of the flu.

 

Source: I covered America’s coronavirus outbreak for months. Then I caught the disease – ABC News

SARS-CoV-2

L.A. on verge of shutting down again as record cases reported – Los Angeles Times

The worsening conditions come as California closes many businesses that had been allowed to reopen in May as officials try to slow the outbreaks. But Los Angeles said that if the trends don’t change soon, even more restrictive measures will be necessary.

Los Angeles County confirmed 4,244 new cases and 2,103 hospitalizations Tuesday. Of those hospitalized, 27% are in intensive care. The county also reported 73 additional deaths — one of the highest single-day counts reported. It’s possible that number may reflect a lag in reported deaths over the weekend, officials said in a statement.

 

Source: L.A. on verge of shutting down again as record cases reported – Los Angeles Times

SARS-CoV-2

Scientists know coronavirus came from bats, not a lab — here’s how

Decades of research shows that a robust national public-health system could save billions of dollars annually by reducing the burden of preventable illnesses and keeping the population healthier over all. But like most public-health departments across the country, Harris County’s was grossly underfunded. Shah likes to think of his fellow public-health practitioners as the offensive line of a football team whose fans know only the quarterback: clinical medicine. Except that when a football team has a great season, the owners continue to invest in the offensive line, recognizing that it is crucial to the quarterback’s success. “In public health we do the opposite,” he told me recently. “When tuberculosis rates decline or tobacco use goes down, we cut those programs.”

Source: Scientists know coronavirus came from bats, not a lab — here’s how

Fail!, healthcare, pandemic, SARS-CoV-2, Traitor

Opinion | How America Lost the War on Covid-19 – The New York Times

Over the past three weeks things have quickly gotten very grim. Hospitals in Arizona and Texas are in crisis. And, yes, it was premature reopening that did it, both directly and by sending a signal to individuals that the risk was past.

But what strikes me, when looking at America’s extraordinary pandemic failure, is how top-down it all was.

Those anti-lockdown demonstrations weren’t spontaneous, grass-roots affairs. Many were organized and coordinated by conservative political activists, some with close ties to the Trump campaign, and financed in part by right-wing billionaires.

And the rush to reopen in Sunbelt states was less a response to popular demand than a case of Republican governors following Trump’s lead.

healthcare, pandemic, SARS-CoV-2

Nurses Who Battled Virus in New York Confront Friends Back Home Who Say It’s a Hoax – The New York Times

Heather Smith, a nurse from Topsail Island, off the coast of North Carolina, who worked at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, struggled to hold back tears when describing how she felt when her brother said he did not believe the virus was real. When Ms. Smith started typing a rant on Facebook, she said, “I realized how angry I was.” She said she could not get out of her mind the images of patients who died alone: “No one understands how serious and how traumatizing it is.” Courtney Sudduth, a nurse from Oklahoma City, said that when she arrived in New York people from back home wanted to know: Was it really as bad as the news media made it sound? Yes, she would tell them, describing the 18-wheel refrigerated truck that was parked outside Mount Sinai Beth Israel hospital in Manhattan and used to store bodies. Even that was not enough. Her grandmother in Mississippi still does not wear a mask when she goes grocery shopping, she said. “Oh, I’ll be fine,” Ms. Sudduth recalled her grandmother as saying. One of Ms. Sudduth’s brothers, who lives in Mississippi, believed conspiracy theories about the virus and continued to socialize at cookouts — until last month, she said, when he cam

Fail!, healthcare, pandemic, SARS-CoV-2

Months Into Virus Crisis, U.S. Cities Still Lack Testing Capacity – The New York Times

At a testing site in New Orleans, a line formed at dawn. But city officials ran out of tests five minutes after the doors opened at 8 a.m., and many people had to be turned away.

In Phoenix, where temperatures have topped 100 degrees, residents have waited in sweltering cars for as long as eight hours to get tested.

And in San Antonio and other large cities with mounting caseloads of the virus, officials have reluctantly announced new limits to testing: The demand has grown too great, they say, so only people showing symptoms may now be tested — a return to restrictions that were in place in many parts of the country during earlier days of the virus.