CORONAVIRUS INFO PROVIDED BY DR. JIM HARRIS –11/22/2021

East Texas is quiet at present (but not SHV/Bossier). Cold weather, holidays, and crowds, unfortunately, will likely unleash more infections, which will largely be Delta Variant which is easier to catch but a little less likely to kill than the original virus.

(THANK YOU, NEW YORK TIMES)

FROM HOPKINS CITATIONS:

1. Aspirin In Patients Admitted To Hospital With Covid-19 (Recovery): A Randomised, Controlled, Open-Label, Platform Trial (The Lancet) Aspirin has been proposed as a treatment for COVID-19 on the basis of its anti-thrombotic properties. We aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of aspirin in patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19. In this randomised, controlled, open-label, platform trial, several possible treatments were compared with usual care in patients hospitalised with COVID-19. The trial took place at 177 hospitals in the UK, two hospitals in Indonesia, and two hospitals in Nepal. Eligible and consenting adults were randomly allocated in a 1:1 ratio to either usual standard of care plus 150 mg aspirin once per day until discharge or usual standard of care alone using web-based simple (unstratified) randomisation with allocation concealment. The primary outcome was 28 day mortality. All analyses were done by intention to treat. The trial is registered with ISRCTN (50189673) and ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04381936).

2. Astrazeneca Supplies 2 Billion Doses of Covid-19 Vaccine Within One Year Of First Approval (Homeland Preparedness News) According to updates from AstraZeneca, the company and its partners managed to provide 2 billion doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to more than 170 countries within 11 months of its first approval and a little more than 18 months after AstraZeneca partnered with Oxford University on development. “Our vaccine has played a key role in tackling the biggest public health emergency of our lifetime: an estimated million lives saved, 50 million infections prevented, two billion doses delivered,” Pascal Soriot, CEO of AstraZeneca, said. “The numbers are remarkable, and I’d like to thank everyone who put their lives to one side to help in this incredible endeavour. While much of the world still has to be vaccinated, and there is still much more to do, today is a proud day and testament to what can be achieved when we all work together.”

3. Europe’s Covid Death Toll Could Rise By Hundreds Of Thousands (Nature) The COVID-19 pandemic could cost an extra 300,000 lives in Europe, according to a study of the number of people in 19 countries who have been neither infected nor vaccinated1. The study’s models also predict that the pandemic could lead to roughly one million hospitalizations in Europe, some of which would contribute to the projected death toll. But the authors of the analysis point out that their estimates are maximum numbers, which assume that all anti-infection restrictions are lifted and contacts between individuals have returned to their pre-pandemic levels. The analysis was posted as a preprint on the medRxiv server and has not yet been peer reviewed. The findings suggest that the pandemic’s impending toll could be quite severe in Europe, and probably elsewhere, says Henrik Salje, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, who was not involved with the study. But the figures should be interpreted with caution, he says, because the analysis assumes that everyone in the population will become exposed — “an extreme worst-case scenario.”

FINALLY: PICTURE OF JERRY JONES’ DOG?