HELLO,
TYLER VACCINE UPDATES FOR THIS WEEK
I am told that folks who volunteer and help at the clinic get a vaccination as a reward. Tomorrow I plan to send out detailed, up-to-date information on vaccine availability and sites.
Easter Bunny Kills Half a Million Americans in 2020, According to Latest Stats
“In 2020, deaths in the US rose by 500 000. That’s half a million more deaths than in 2019, up from 2,854,838 to 3,354,142. It is also the final nail in the coffin for all the Covid Conspiracy idiots that continue to suggest the pandemic never really happened or has been overexaggerated to control or destroy our economies.”
(J. Harris: So the title caught your attention, too. I couldn’t resist. Robert Turner does a nice job, usually.)
HOPKINS CITED:
1. Equity in Vaccination: A Plan to Work with Communities of Color Toward COVID-19 Recovery and Beyond
Thursday, March 18, 2021, 2:00 pm ET
A new plan released by CommuniVax, Equity in Vaccination: A Plan to Work with Communities of Color Toward COVID-19 Recovery and Beyond, provides elected and appointed officials with the tools to create, implement, and support a vaccination campaign that works with BIPOC communities to remedy COVID-19 impacts, prevent even more health burdens, lay the foundation for unbiased healthcare delivery, and enable broader social change and durable community-level opportunities. Hosted by CommuniVax and the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, this webinar will discuss the specific recommendations made in the report and share experiences from local initiatives, so officials can consider adopting them as they implement COVID-19 vaccination campaigns in their own towns, cities, and states.
2. A NEW TEST FOR COVID: “THE TORONTO TEST” A Multiplexed, Next Generation Sequencing Platform for High-throughput Detection of SARS-CoV-2 (Nature) “ Here, we describe “Systematic Parallel Analysis of RNA coupled to Sequencing for Covid-19 screening” (C19-SPAR-Seq), a multiplexed, scalable, readily automated platform for SARS-CoV-2 detection that is capable of analyzing tens of thousands of patient samples in a single run. To address strict requirements for control of assay parameters and output demanded by clinical diagnostics, we employ a control-based Precision-Recall and Receiver Operator Characteristics (coPR) analysis to assign run-specific quality control metrics. C19-SPAR-Seq coupled to coPR on a trial cohort of several hundred patients performs with a specificity of 100% and sensitivity of 91% on samples with low viral loads, and a sensitivity of >95% on high viral loads associated with disease onset and peak transmissibility.”
(J. Harris: I tried to read and understand the article from Toronto ab0ve but couldn’t. This article describes a new, inexpensive technique that tests oral swab specimens quickly and cheaply. This study comes from TORONTO. Here are a few cutouts that I almost understand:)
“…Physical distancing is the current major strategy to suppress spread of the disease, but with enormous socio-economic costs. However, modeling and studies in isolated jurisdictions suggest that active population surveillance through systematic molecular diagnostics, combined with contact tracing and focused quarantining can significantly suppress disease spread… and has significantly impacted disease transmission rates, the number of infected people, and prevented saturation of the healthcare system….[they use] barcoding…our platform is cost effective with retail material costs ranging from USD ~$9 to $6 for 500 versus 10,000 sample batch sizes, respectively…[and] displays excellent performance in distinguishing positive and negative samples.…with a specificity of 100% and sensitivity of 91% on samples with low viral loads, and a sensitivity of >95% on high viral loads associated with disease onset and peak transmissibility.“
3. Outcomes and Mortality Among Adults Hospitalized With COVID-19 at US Medical Centers
The objectives of our study were to examine the characteristics and outcomes among adults hospitalized with COVID-19 at US medical centers and analyze changes in mortality over the initial 6-month period of the pandemic. Among 192,550 adults hospitalized with COVID-19 who were discharged from 555 US medical centers, 101,089 (52.5%) were men, 83,567 (43.3%) were White, and 125,543 (65.2%) had Medicare or Medicaid insurance. The most common comorbidities included hypertension (118,418 [61.5%]), diabetes (73,939 [38.4%]), and obesity (52,759 [27.4%]). Of patients in this cohort, 55,593 (28.9%) were admitted to the ICU, 26,221 (13.6%) died during the index hospitalization, and 5839 (3.0%) were transferred to hospice care. In-hospital mortality increased in association with increasing age; 179 of 12,644 patients (1.4%) aged 18 to 29 years died, and 8277 of 31,135 patients (26.6%) 80 years or older died. Of the patients admitted to the ICU, 15,431 of 55,593 (27.8%) died.
Delayed Large Local Reactions to mRNA-1273 Vaccine against SARS-CoV-2
‘We have also observed delayed large local reactions to the mRNA-1273 vaccine, with a median onset on day 8 (range, 4 to 11) after the first dose. These reactions had a variable appearance (Figure 1). Here, we report on a series of 12 patients with these reactions, all of which appeared near the injection site after complete resolution of the initial local and systemic symptoms associated with vaccination. … Some patients had concurrent systemic adverse effects, and among these patients, 2 had additional skin findings. Most patients received treatment for their symptoms (e.g., with ice and antihistamines). Some patients received glucocorticoids (topical, oral, or both), and 1 patient received antibiotic therapy for presumptive cellulitis. The symptoms resolved a median of 6 days after onset (range, 2 to 11)…….Our suspicion of delayed-type or T-cell–mediated hypersensitivity…Given that neither local injection-site reactions nor delayed-type hypersensitivity reactions are contraindications to subsequent vaccination,2 all 12 patients were encouraged to receive the second dose and completed their mRNA-1273 vaccination course.
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