Quicker, more decisive action against COVID-19 in British Columbia is one of the reasons the province has suffered far fewer long-term care deaths than Ontario, a new study says.
The analysis published on Wednesday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal also points to less funding, more privatization and less co-ordination between homes and hospitals as factors that drove the spread of the novel coronavirus among Ontario's most vulnerable.
One of the paper's authors, Dr. Irfan Dhalla of St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto, said there's already been a worrying rise in infections as parts of Ontario grapple with a second wave.
And despite lessons learned from the first wave of the pandemic, Dhalla said front-line workers say the province is still not adequately prepared for a new influx of long-term care cases.
https://www.cbc.ca/n...io-bc-1.5744857https://www.eurekale...j-whf093020.phpCanada extends ban on international travelers
https://medicalxpres...ernational.html Figures from the B.C. Centre for Disease Control show that the province’s infection rate is again flat and could even go into decline in the coming days.
The CDC’s infection data shows that beginning last Thursday, B.C.’s rolling seven-day average of new infections per sick person fell below 1.0, meaning not every person infected with the novel coronavirus is passing the virus on. That usually leads to a drop in infections.
When the rate is 1.0 or above, that means each infected person, on average, is passing the virus on to at least one other person.
B.C.’s seven-day average growth rate in infections was last below 1.0 in late June and early July.
Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry said this week that public health officials are now finding very few new cases that cannot be connected to a previously confirmed case.
https://www.timescol...ning-1.2421329550 Pictures Of Coronavirus Survivors For Anyone Who Still Believes Covid-19 Isn’t Real
w/a $1.1 Million, 181-Page Hospital Bill
https://www.boredpan...virus-recovery/pelosi & fauci action figures on kickstarter
https://www.core77.c...-on-Kickstarter Li and her colleagues tracked the health of 1,685 patients hospitalized at Yale New Haven Health, a five-hospital system in Connecticut, between February and April. Of those patients, 28% had received a psychiatric diagnosis prior to hospitalization.
People who'd struggled with a mental problem were more likely to die, particularly early in their illness:
- 36% of COVID-19 patients with a psychiatric diagnosis died within two weeks of hospitalization, compared with 15% of those with no such diagnosis.
- 41% of patients with mental illness died within three weeks, compared with 22% of those without.
- The four-week mortality rate was 45% for those with a diagnosed psychiatric condition and 32% for those without.
The findings were published online Sept. 30 in JAMA Network Open.
https://medicalxpres...odds-dying.html COVID-19 has turned 2020 into a nightmare for many people, as they struggle with health problems, economic uncertainty and other challenges. Now a team of researchers in Finland has evidence that the pandemic really is a bad dream. In a paper published in Frontiers in Psychology, scientists used artificial intelligence to help analyze the dream content of close to a thousand people and found that the novel coronavirus had infected more than half of the distressed dreams reported.
The researchers crowdsourced sleep and stress data from more than 4,000 people during the sixth week of the COVID-19 lockdown in Finland. About 800 respondents also contributed information about their dreams during that time - many of which revealed a shared anxiety about the pandemic.
"We were thrilled to observe repeating dream content associations across individuals that reflected the apocalyptic ambience of COVID-19 lockdown," said lead author Dr Anu-Katriina Pesonen, head of the Sleep & Mind Research Group at the University of Helsinki. "The results allowed us to speculate that dreaming in extreme circumstances reveal shared visual imagery and memory traces, and in this way, dreams can indicate some form of shared mindscape across individuals."
"The idea of a shared imagery reflected in dreams is intriguing," she added.
https://www.eurekale...f-cim092320.php As the coronavirus emergency exploded into a full-blown pandemic in early 2020, forcing countless businesses to shutter, robot-making companies found themselves in an unusual situation: Many saw a surge in orders. Robots don’t need masks, can be easily disinfected, and, of course, they don’t get sick.
An army of automatons has since been deployed all over the world to help with the crisis: They are monitoring patients, sanitizing hospitals, making deliveries, and helping frontline medical workers reduce their exposure to the virus. Not all robots operate autonomously—many, in fact, require direct human supervision, and most are limited to simple, repetitive tasks. But robot makers say the experience they’ve gained during this trial-by-fire deployment will make their future machines smarter and more capable. These photos illustrate how robots are helping us fight this pandemic—and how they might be able to assist with the next one.
https://spectrum.iee...ovid19-responseCurrent air pollution tied to more severe COVID-19 outcomes, study finds (duh)
https://medicalxpres...ied-severe.html I have been tracking how people are expressing beliefs and values using folkloric practices today. It seems that during these dark times they are being used to visibly brighten our communities. Many of us will have perpetuated these customs simply for something to do – particularly families desperate for ideas to occupy children.
So here are five folkloric customs that could come to define this age in the future.
- Window displays
- Scarecrows
- Painted pebbles, stone snakes
- Kerbside gifts
- Doorstep noise
https://theconversat...lockdown-146130High risk of deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism in patients with COVID-19
https://www.alphagal...y/ItemId/197963 A study of more than a half-million people in India who were exposed to the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, or COVID-19, suggests that the virus' continued spread is driven by only a small percentage of those who become infected.
Furthermore, children and young adults were found to be potentially much more important to transmitting the virus -- especially within households -- than previous studies have identified, according to a paper by researchers from the United States and India published Sept. 30 in the journal Science.
Researchers from the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI), Johns Hopkins University and the University of California-Berkeley worked with public health officials in the southeast Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh to track the infection pathways and mortality rate of 575,071 individuals who were exposed to 84,965 confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2. It is the largest contact-tracing study -- which is the process of identifying people who came into contact with an infected person -- conducted in the world for any disease.
Lead researcher Ramanan Laxminarayan, a senior research scholar in PEI, said that the paper is the first large study to capture the extraordinary extent to which COVID-19 hinges on "superspreading," in which a small percentage of the infected population passes the virus on to more people. The researchers found that 71% of infected individuals did not infect any of their contacts, while a mere 8% of infected individuals accounted for 60% of new infections.
https://www.eurekale...u-lcc092920.phphttps://www.eurekale...d-lct093020.php25 000 volontaires français sont appelés à tester les vaccins contre le Covid-19
https://www.lemonde....54356_3244.htmlGamzu: 40% of newly-diagnosed virus patients in Israel are ultra-Orthodox
https://www.ynetnews...ticle/Hypwn4XUD The campaign—organized by former Trump campaign official Michael Caputo—was intended to "defeat despair" and bolster confidence in the Trump administration's response to the pandemic. A central feature of the campaign would be video interviews between celebrities and administration officials, who would discuss the pandemic and the federal response.
To pull it off, Caputo and his team requisitioned $300 million that Congress had previously budgeted for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They also made a list of more than 30 big-name celebrities that they hoped to appear in the Health Department's videos, including Taylor Swift, Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Billy Joel, Britney Spears, Bruno Mars, Bon Jovi, and Madonna.
But the project has been plagued by missteps from an inexperienced team, disorganization, and tepid celebrity interest. So far, it has only managed to recruit Dennis Quaid, CeCe Winans, and Hasidic singer Shulem Lemmer. Quaid dropped out of the campaign this week.
The campaign was further thrown into question earlier this month when Caputo—whom Trump appointed as spokesperson for the HHS—announced a leave of absence.
Meanwhile, many current and former staff at the HHS are against the campaign, which many see as a public-relations bid to help Trump's reelection.
https://arstechnica....aign-flounders/Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine won't be ready by US election: report
https://medicalxpres...wont-ready.html LOS ANGELES — For six months, Disney has kept tens of thousands of theme park workers on furlough with full health-care benefits in hopes that a light at the end of the pandemic tunnel would appear. On Tuesday, Disney conceded that none was coming.
The company’s theme park division said it would eliminate 28,000 jobs in the United States. Theme parks will account for most of the layoffs, although Disney Cruise Line and Disney’s retail stores will also be affected.
“As heartbreaking as it is to take this action, this is the only feasible option we have in light of the prolonged impact of Covid-19 on our business, including limited capacity due to physical distancing requirements and the continued uncertainty regarding the duration of the pandemic,” Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, said in an email to “cast members,” Disney’s term for its theme park workers.
About 67 percent of the layoffs will involve part-time jobs that pay by the hour. However, executives and salaried workers will also be among those laid off. Disney’s theme parks in California and Florida employed roughly 110,000 people before the pandemic. The job cuts will come from both resorts.
https://www.nytimes....rs-layoffs.htmlMore than half of Americans at risk of shutoffs as economic crisis causes utility bills to pile up
https://www.rawstory...lls-to-pile-up/CDC report shows millions of Americans were losing health insurance before COVID-19
https://www.alternet...efore-covid-19/What’s It Like to Be a Contact Tracer? We Spoke With 3 to Find Out.
We wanted to know what life is like for the public health workers charged with limiting the spread of the coronavirus in Illinois. “A lot of people are initially in shock,” one said about making calls.
https://www.propubli...h-3-to-find-out
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