CORONAVIRUS INFO PROVIDED BY DR. JIM HARRIS – 12/23/2020

12/23/2020

County judge announces occupancy restrictions due to COVID-19 hospitalization rate (FROM THE MNM)

J Harris Comment: If you feel ill in any way, for example have a headache, feel very tired, achey, coughing, short of breath, diarrhea, nausea—if you feel ill or even a little different IN ANY WAY, you should quarantine yourself. Then get tested when you can. If you have school children in the house, remember that over half the time, they can be infected with Covid and have no symptoms. So, when you get tested, get them tested. They most often do know feel sick. And above all, don’t go visit Grandma, or anyone.

WHAT UK SCIENTISTS SAY ABOUT MUTATIONS, according to the Atlantic:

“… there’s no reason to worry about broad swaths of people getting reinfected or our new vaccines becoming ineffective. When a person gets sick or vaccinated, the immune system learns to recognize many parts of the virus. A mutation is like an acquaintance changing her outfit or her hair. If the virus accumulates a lot of mutations—over years, for example—we might need to update the vaccines, which is what we do with the flu all the time. But it’s not a concern right now.”

Pfizer, Moderna testing COVID-19 vaccines against UK variant

J. Harris: Let’s see how the vaccine works against the mutants anyway.

FROM JOHHS HOPKINS:

1. Readmission and Death After Initial Hospital Discharge Among Patients With COVID-19 in a Large Multihospital System (JAMA) In this national cohort of VA patients, 27% of survivors of COVID-19 hospitalization were readmitted or died by 60 days after discharge, and this rate was lower than matched survivors of pneumonia or heart failure.

“… rates of readmission or death were higher than pneumonia or heart failure during the first 10 days after discharge following COVID-19 hospitalization, suggesting a period of heightened risk of clinical deterioration.”

2. Postmortem Stability of SARS-CoV-2 in Nasopharyngeal Mucosa (Emerging Infectious Diseases) Analyses of infection chains have demonstrated that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is highly transmissive. However, data on postmortem stability and infectivity are lacking. Our finding of nasopharyngeal viral RNA stability in 79 corpses showed no time-dependent decrease. Maintained infectivity is supported by virus isolation up to 35 hours postmortem.

3.Taiwan Snaps World’s Longest Covid-free Streak After Pilot Infects Local Resident (Washington Post) The reports of a single new case and its particulars — the pilot, a New Zealander, was said to have been coughing during his last flight but did not wear a mask at all times — immediately sparked public consternation as they snapped the island’s record without a domestic transmission. The 253-day streak had been a point of pride for Taiwan’s 23 million people and its leaders.

4.Antibody Responses 8 Months after Asymptomatic or Mild SARS-CoV-2 Infection (Emerging Infectious Diseases) Waning humoral immunity in coronavirus disease patients has raised concern over usefulness of serologic testing. We investigated antibody responses of 58 persons 8 months after asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. For 3 of 4 immunoassays used, seropositivity rates were high (69.0%–91.4%).

(J. Harris: Persistent seropositivity likely means immunity to Covid may persist for many months. We will follow this up

5. Mexico Misled Citizens About the Severity of Coronavirus in its Capital (New York Times) The federal government had data that should have prompted an immediate lockdown in early December. Instead, it kept the city open for another two weeks.

The Washington Post mentions: 1. Mexico’s coastal Riviera Maya is attracting even more American tourists than it did before the pandemic — and some of them are bringing the coronavirus back to the United States with them. 2. The conservative group Turning Point USA packed thousands of largely maskless students into event centers in Florida this weekend, including Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.

“How do you know if you’re dining with a Vegan?”

“How?”

“Don’t worry, they’ll tell you”