THECOCONUTWHISPERER

Tuesday, 5 May 2020

Even after respiratory symptoms fade, coronavirus victims face danger

https://www.foxnews.com/health/even-after-respiratory-symptoms-fade-coronavirus-victims-face-new-danger

Coronavirus victims are facing a new danger that may occur even after respiratory symptoms fade and infection from the virus clears.

Doctors are beginning to notice a troubling blood-clotting phenomenon, which is occurring more frequently in patients who have the virus. These clots are also being discovered in younger coronavirus patients and can result in sudden strokes or death.

“There’s something about this virus that’s exaggerated that to the nth degree,” said Mitchell Levy, chief of pulmonary critical care and sleep medicine at the Warren Albert School of Medicine, according to Bloomberg. “We’re seeing clotting in a way in this illness that we have not seen in the past.”

A Resident physician stands outside a room at an Intensive Care Unit on April 20 in New York. Coronavirus victims are facing a new danger that may occur even after respiratory symptoms fade and infection from the virus clears. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

He added that blood clotting is “probably the most important thing that’s emerged over the last perhaps month or two."

Clots may form and damage several types of organs in the body. They include the heart, liver, or in patients’ arterial catheters and filters that support failing kidneys.

However, blood clotting that appears in the lungs is thought to be the most severe in coronavirus patients. It can impede blood flow and impact infected patients who already have difficulty breathing due to the virus -- previously believed to be a typical respiratory disease.

Margaret Pisani, an associate professor of medicine at the Yale University School of Medicine says clots in the lungs are likely what’s causing coronavirus patients who may appear well to suddenly “fall off the ledge” and develop a blood-oxygen deficiency, the paper reported.

Doctors had previously attributed lung damage to pneumonia, but they are now looking at clotting as well.

Dr. Hooman Poor, a lung specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, noticed blood was not flowing well through the lungs of 14 patients on ventilators, which he determined was due to clotting.

"I feel like all these patients have blood clots in their lungs," Poor said last month, according to the Reuters.

A report in the New England Journal of Medicine last week found that five people between the age of 33 to 49 who had strokes, also tested positive for the coronavirus. They were all treated for large-vessel blockages.

On April 13, a study published by researchers in the Netherlands found that 31 percent of intensive-care unit coronavirus patients they observed had a complication associated with clotting. The study described the findings as "remarkably high."

The large arterial lung clots can also put an overwhelming strain on the heart, which may result in cardiac arrest. Clotting may also disrupt blood flow for coronavirus patients on ventilators, said Edwin van Beek, chair of clinical radiology at the University of Edinburgh’s Queen’s Medical Research Institute, according to Bloomberg.

“That’s quite frightening when you think of it because we didn’t know what we’re up against until we were in a later stage," Frank Rasulo, a physician in neurocritical care in Italy told the paper.

NEW YORK CITYPublished 2 hours ago 15 children in New York City hospitalized with mystery ailment linked to coronavirus: report

https://www.foxnews.com/health/15-children-in-new-york-city-hospitalized-with-mystery-ailment-linked-to-coronavirus-report

Hospitals in New York City have reported that they are treating 15 children that have shown symptoms often associated with Kawasaki disease, which global health officials have linked to the coronavirus.

The New York Times reported early Tuesday that the children range from 2 to 15. Their illnesses have been described in a bulletin as a multisystem inflammatory syndrome potentially linked to COVID-19.

Last week, Matt Hancock, the U.K.’s health secretary, issued a warning that some children have died in Italy and Britain from an unknown condition that has been likened to Kawasaki disease. Doctors in Europe said some of the children who died from the inflammatory ailment had no underlying conditions.

The Times pointed out that none of the children in the U.S. died.

“It’s increasingly recognized that Covid-19 hasn’t read the textbook about what it should be doing as a respiratory virus,” Prof David Burgner, a pediatric and infectious diseases doctor at Melbourne’s Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, told the Guardian last week.

Alligator attack victim in South Carolina didn’t scream during incident, witness says

https://www.foxnews.com/us/alligator-attack-victim-in-south-carolina-didnt-scream-during-incident-witness-says

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. — A woman killed by an alligator at a South Carolina pond told a friend she wanted to get close to the animal and didn’t scream as it attacked her and dragged her into the water, according to a police report.

Cynthia Covert, 58, died in the attack Friday afternoon on Kiawah Island, Charleston County deputies said.

A deputy had to shoot and kill the alligator to get Covert away from the animal, according to the police report released Monday.

The woman Covert was staying with said she didn’t seem herself Friday and walked toward the alligator, which lunged and grabbed her in its mouth when she was about 4 feet away, deputies said.

Covert, of Johns Island, made no sound as the alligator pulled her under, the woman told police.

The woman’s husband and another man tried beating the alligator with shovels, but the animal swam deeper, the police report said.

When deputies arrived, the alligator kept surfacing with Covert and going under. One officer was able to shoot the animal as it surfaced again, police said.

Firefighters used poles to get Covert out of the pond but she died at the hospital, authorities said.

An autopsy Monday found Covert died of drowning, the Charleston County Coroner’s Office said.

5-year-old Utah boy allegedly takes parent's car in bid to buy Lamborghini in California

https://www.foxnews.com/us/following-argument-5-year-old-utah-boy-allegedly-takes-parents-car-in-bid-to-buy-lamborghini-in-california

Hot Wheels weren’t good enough for him.

A 5-year-old boy was caught driving his parents’ car on a freeway in Utah on Monday — apparently on his way to California to buy a Lamborghini.

The kid driver made it a handful of miles, from his home in Ogden to I-15’s 25th Street offramp, Utah State Police said.

Troopers initially thought they’d stumbled upon an impaired driver, but soon found their perp was actually a child with a penchant for luxury cars.

A 5-year-old boy was caught driving his parents’ car on Monday, May 4, 2020, on a freeway in Utah — apparently on his way to California to buy a Lamborghini. (Utah State Police/Twitter)

The boy told them he left home after an argument with his mom, in which she refused to buy him a Lamborghini.

So he decided to go get one himself.

“He might have been short on the purchase amount, as he only had $3 dollars in his wallet,” state police posted on Twitter.

Their post included a photo of the boy in a grey sweatshirt and patterned shorts, wringing his hands inside his parents’ car.

UHP Sgt. Nick Street confirmed to local outlet KSL that the boy is indeed 5 years old, though the angle at which the photo was taken may have made him look older.

Cops didn’t mention a punishment for the boy — but going to bed without dinner could be in his future.

The cost of reopening the economy, in lives

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-cost-of-reopening-the-economy-in-lives-201007725.html

Relaxing business closures and stay-at-home rules could cost 13,000 lives in Texas and 12,000 lives in Georgia by September 1. But it will also preserve $3.4 billion in statewide income in Texas, and $1.7 billion in Georgia. New York’s tougher restrictions will save 5,000 lives, but cost $2.4 billion in lost income.

These insights, from a new online tool built by the Rand research organization, highlight the agonizing tradeoffs governors and mayors face as they decide whether to let businesses reopen and risk a resurgence of the coronavirus that has shut down much of the world economy. The virus has infected more than 1.2 million Americans so far, and killed 68,000. President Trump has now raised his forecast death toll to as many as 90,000, and some estimates are higher.

Most states don’t meet the Trump’s administration’s criteria for relaxing restrictions meant to contain the virus, which include a prolonged decline in confirmed cases and flulike illnesses. But states such as Texas, Georgia, Tennessee and Colorado are easing restrictions anyway, allowing some businesses to operate under new sanitary guidelines.

A simulation by the Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates 116,000 total coronavirus deaths by the end of June if tough restrictions remain in place—but 353,000 deaths if those restrictions are partially lifted. If fully lifted, with no further restrictions, deaths would spike to 895,000. That would save jobs, though.

The Rand tool allows some additional tinkering with state-by-state scenarios under six different levels of restriction, ranging from no limits at all to the kind of strict rules in place in New York, New Jersey and California. Here are some of the results for four highly populated states and Georgia, which has the most lenient rules in place among states with significant infection rates.

In every instance, looser restrictions improve the performance of the economy but also lead to more deaths. If New York loosened restrictions by two notches, there’d be more business activity and $2.4 billion in additional statewide income. But 5,000 more people would die. Texas and Georgia now have moderate restrictions in place, which the Rand model estimates will cause 25,000 additional deaths in the two states combined. But it will also generate an extra $5.1 billion in income, combined.

Extrapolating to determine the income gained per death when comparing moderate and strict measures yield these figures:

New York: $163,000

Florida: $276,000

Georgia: $247,000

Texas: $254,000

California: $700,000

When evaluating the impact of government policies that affect public health, analysts place a statistical value of about $10 million on each human life as a way of measuring the appropriate amount of risk a policy may cause or mitigate. By that standard, the payback from reopening is low, although governors are factoring in other things such as the political mood, hospital capacity and demands from businesses.

Need for more testing

Nobody is sure how quickly to reopen. The worst outcome would be a premature reopening of businesses that lead to a resurgence of the virus, more infections and deaths and the need to force another round of closures. Health care analyst Chris Meekins at financial firm Raymond James places the odds of containing the virus nationwide by the end of May at 30%, with a 45% likelihood of containing it by July 4. He sees a 25% chance that the virus is still going on strong by Labor Day, with 100 million infections in the United States, and more than 250,000 deaths.

The biggest barrier to more thorough reopening is a lack of testing for the virus, which must be widespread and cheap. Without a vaccine, frequent testing is the only way to know if workers heading back to the job might be sick, and need to be sent home, to protect everybody else. Labs in the U.S. are now processing about 250,000 tests per day, a pace that has increased steadily. But experts say we need multiples of that to do enough screening to reopen businesses with confidence. The reopening experiments underway in Georgia and Texas might reveal who’s right.

Congress Will Extend Unemployment Boost 'Over Our Dead Bodies,' Vows Lindsey Graham

https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/lindsey-graham-dead-bodies-unemployment-benefits-235759761.html

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) promised business leaders that Congress would not extend enhanced unemployment benefits during the COVID-19 crisis, saying such a continuation would only happen “over our dead bodies.”

He made the comment on Wednesday at a state task force panel about re-opening South Carolina businesses. “Our” was a reference to himself and fellow Republican Sen. Tim Scott, who was also on the panel.

Wednesday was the day the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus passed 60,000.

Graham insisted that extending enhanced benefits would incentivize people to stay home rather than return to work.

In March, Congress voted to give an additional $600 per week to those collecting unemployment through July 25, as the coronavirus outbreak continues to trigger massive layoffs.

“I promise you, over our dead bodies will this get reauthorized,” Graham said. “We’ve got to stop this. You cannot turn on the economy until you get this aberration of the law of fixed.”

Some 30.3 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits since the COVID-19 outbreak took hold. Economists predict that April’s unemployment rate, which will be announced next week, could be as high as 20%.

Graham’s criticism of worker benefits comes as another coronavirus-related fiscal measure is facing blowback. The Paycheck Protection Program, part of the $2.2 trillion economic relief act passed in March, was supposed to aid small businesses. In the first round of funding for the program, nearly 300 publicly traded corporations received $1 billion in forgivable loans.

As states push ahead with reopening, CDC warns coronavirus cases and deaths are set to soar

https://www.yahoo.com/news/as-states-push-ahead-with-reopening-cdc-warns-coronavirus-cases-and-deaths-are-set-to-soar-182250157.html

As nearly half of U.S. states begin to ease restrictions that were put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is quietly projecting a stark rise in the number of new cases of the virus and deaths from it over the next month.

Modeling from the CDC, incorporated into a chart prepared by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and circulated within the administration, was obtained by the New York Times. It projects 200,000 new daily cases of the coronavirus by the end of May and 3,000 daily deaths in the U.S. At present, approximately 25,000 new cases are reported each day, with roughly 1,750 deaths.

Without disputing the accuracy of the modeling used by the CDC, the White House quickly distanced itself from the projections.

“This data is not reflective of any of the modeling done by the task force or data that the task force has analyzed,” White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere said in a Monday statement. “The president’s phased guidelines to open up America again are a scientific-driven approach that the top health and infectious disease experts in the federal government agreed with.”

Despite the growing risk of exposure and death from COVID-19, many states are proceeding with a relaxation of restrictions that were meant to slow the spread of the virus, which have brought the nation’s economy to a virtual halt. Those moves in states like Georgia and Texas do not follow the phased federal guidelines issued by President Trump’s coronavirus task force on April 16.

The guidelines were announced at a White House press briefing, where Trump proclaimed that “now that we have passed the peak in new cases, we’re starting our life again, we’re starting rejuvenation of our economy again, in a safe and structured and very responsible fashion.” There were 32,076 new cases in the U.S. on that day, a number that has been exceeded on at least four days since.

While the implementation was left to the discretion of state governors, the guidelines were clear that no state should attempt to ease restrictions until it had observed a “downward trajectory” of new cases of the virus over a 14-day period. Yet, as of this weekend, no state in the nation could make that claim.

On “Fox News Sunday,” anchor Chris Wallace pressed Dr. Deborah Birx, one of the leading health experts on the coronavirus task force, on that point.

“Not a single state has met the White House gating guidelines of two weeks of steady decline in new cases. Are you concerned about this patchwork reopening, and why leave it up to the governors?” Wallace asked Birx. “Why not set a firm, if not binding, a firm national policy on when states can reopen?”

“Well, I think federal guidelines are pretty firm policy of what we think is important from a public health standpoint,” Birx responded. “We also made it possible for states to open counties independently of the entire state, because, again, some of these outbreaks are very local and have to be studied and understood that way.”

President Trump on the South Lawn of the White House on Sunday. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

Reopening the country without ramping up testing, building an army of contact tracers or having a plan in place to isolate those who test positive for the virus is certain to result in a spike of new cases, numerous health experts have warned.

Yet at least 26 states intend to test that prediction, many of them starting this week.

Georgia became the first state to lift coronavirus restrictions when Gov. Brian Kemp announced on April 20 that he would allow businesses like massage and tattoo parlors, hair salons, gyms and bowling alleys to reopen on April 24. Three days later the state further loosened restrictions, allowing restaurants and theaters to reopen.

Before his announcement, Kemp informed Trump of his decision on a conference call between the president and the nation’s governors. On that call, Trump was heard praising Kemp for doing a “great job.”

But after Kemp was sharply criticized for lifting the state’s restrictions too soon, Trump said he was unhappy with the governor.

“I want them to open, and I want him to open as soon as possible,” Trump told reporters on April 24. “And I want the state to open. But I wasn’t happy with Brian Kemp. I will tell you that right now.”

Since moving to reopen the state, Georgia has continued to see a high number of new cases, with 1,000 reported on Friday and another 999 on Saturday. Despite the new data, Kemp let his shelter-in-place restriction for residents expire on Monday.

As this public health experiment has taken place, the risk of exposure to the virus for Georgia citizens has risen by 42 percent, according to data compiled by Stanford University’s COVID-19 Case Mapper.

Similarly worrying figures have been reported in Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott lifted stay-at-home orders last weekend. In a tweet posted Sunday, the governor sought to emphasize what he saw as a bit of good news about the number of people in the state who have recovered from COVID-19.

Yet Sunday also marked the fourth straight day that the state tallied more than 1,000 new cases of the virus. Far from showing a 14-day decline in new cases, Dallas County reported Sunday its highest daily tally so far, with 234 new positive results.

Customers at a Waffle House restaurant in Brookhaven, Ga., on April 27. (John Spink/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

And while Abbott is correct that on Saturday and Sunday Texas reported a higher number of people who had recovered from the virus than were still infected by it, Texas ranks 49th among states for per capita testing for the coronavirus. As of Monday, the state, which has a population of 29 million, said 407,398 tests had been administered. More testing would certainly reveal a much higher number of active cases, health experts say, and the overall number of cases continues to grow. As of Monday, 32,332 Texans had tested positive, up from 25,297 a week earlier.

Given the Trump administration’s own internal projections, states across the nation can expect to see many more cases and deaths in the days ahead.