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I just got off the phone with a co-worker up on the Navajo reservation in Tuba City, AZ. He's a property manager for a nice little manufactured home community owned by the company I work for. Really sweet tenants there. "B" called to tell me that the situation up in northern Arizona is bad and deteriorating rapidly.
The Navajo reservation is a perfect storm of poverty, malnutrition, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, smoking, alcoholism, and inadequate health care resources. Consequently it's been hit especially hard by Covid-19.
Last week he and his tenants heard a woman screaming for help (not in our community but nearby). She was being beaten. They called 911. The dispatcher said that police are not responding to calls like that anymore.
But they are on the road, pulling people over and fining them $1000 for being out of their home. There is an 8pm curfew. As of 8pm tonight no one can leave their house until Monday morning. Our manager carries a letter from the company attesting to the fact that he has an "essential job", which he does. He's been buying food for our elderly residents who don't have family to help them.
A lot of the area doesn't have trash pick-up; people must to drive their garbage to the local dump. The dump reduced their hours. The line of cars of people trying to dump their garbage is about two miles long. So people have taken dumping their trash in our dumpsters, piling it up on the ground when the dumpsters got full. Mountains of garbage. This made a health hazard for our residents and staff. We had to have the dumpsters removed (fortunately our residents also have curbside trash carts). The dump will be closed this weekend, too.
There is only one small, overpriced grocery store in Tuba City, so most residents drive to Gallup, NM to do their shopping at Walmart. The first of the month is the big shopping day. It's when everybody gets their Social Security and Food Stamp money. By the first of the month people are out of everything. Food, formula, diapers... Today something like half the population of Tuba City was heading over to Gallup, when Gallup put up roadblocks at noon. They sealed off the whole town. No one is allowed in. "B" told me there was a line of stuck cars 15 miles long on the the highway, of people trying to go to Gallup for their essential shopping.
They've been turning around and going over to Flagstaff. "B" estimates that about 80% of the town population went to Flagstaff for groceries today.
My reading is the kids are going back to school in Sept, I might be longer as I am over 50 & I care for my mum, 87 & has had a letter from the NHS saying she is "At risk group".
At what point would you say we should come out of lockdown?
Just wondering...
Mike
i don't have a clue myself. sensible looking plans i've seen propose a phased opening of the economy. e.g. first people under 50 with no significant health issues, then under 60. then with minor health issues. then under 70, etc. meanwhile maintaining social distancing, masks and so on.
you want a really geared up testing system to do this, though, with a lot of regular testing of even asymptomatic individuals. [everyone? a random sample? i don't know enough to hazard a guess] the problem is the incubation period being as long as 2 weeks. what that means is that you could open up for a population, and everything looks great for 2-3 weeks and then you're swamped by a flood of sickness.
if we learn that you do acquire immunity, and if we have a good serological test [2 "if"s] then you could also release people who have evidence of immunity.
having good treatment would allow us to move more quickly. i just read today of a lab at mt. sinai in nyc which is developing synthetic antibodies [based on computer designed molecules complementary to the 3 dimensional structure of the ace receptor binding site which the virus uses to enter cells.] also gilead's drug seems promising, not impressive, but a start.
So here's how this will go. This will be deemed illegitimate because:
1. The AAPS is labeled a politically conservative or ultra-conservative front for right-wing doctors like the Pauls.
2. It is alleged to take positions contrary to the AMA-policed orthodoxy.
There will be other objections, but these should be enough to warn off most "thoughtful" people.
That the AMA is leans politically leftist and serves the interests of the medical and pharma cartels apparently doesn't raise similar concerns.
And neither does the dismissal of Hydroxychloroquine by the medical/pharma cartels as a dangerous and untested drug (despite its decades of safe use) versus their seemingly unanimous consent on the Remdesivir's safety and efficacy despite it being brand new and its fast-tracked approval. We're not supposed to notice that HCQ seems to work well in every country that's tried it, except the United States.
That HCQ sells for about a buck a dose versus an expected $1000 a dose for Remdesivir isn't something we proles should concern ourselves with, either. Neither does the financial relationships between Remdesivir manufacturer Gilead Sciences and the NIH panel charged with setting its treatment guidelines. Because conspiracy theory.
AAPS Letter Asking Gov. Ducey to Rescind Executive Order concerning hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19
Share: April 27, 2020
The Honorable Doug Ducey
1700 West Washington St.
Phoenix, AZ 85007
Dear Governor Ducey:
This concerns your Executive Order forbidding prophylactic use of chloroquine (CQ) or hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) unless peer-reviewed evidence becomes available.
Attached and posted here (https://bit.ly/cqhcqresearch) is a summary of peer-reviewed evidence, indexed in PubMed, concerning the use of CQ and HCQ against coronavirus. We believe that there is clear and convincing evidence of benefit both pre-exposure and post-exposure.
In addition, Michael J. A. Robb, M.D., of Phoenix is compiling all reports as they come in. As of this date, the total number of reported patients treated with HCQ, with or without azithromycin and zinc, is 2,333. Of these, 2,137 or 91.6 percent improved clinically. There were 63 deaths, all but 11 in a single retrospective report from the Veterans Administration where the patients were severely ill.
Most of the data concerns use of HCQ for treatment, but one study included used the medication as prophylaxis with excellent results. Many nations, including Turkey and India, are protecting medical workers and contacts of infected persons prophylactically. According to worldometers.info, deaths per million persons from COVID-19 as of Apr 27 are 167 in the U.S., 33 in Turkey, and 0.6 in India.
Based on this evidence, we request that you rescind your Executive Orders impeding the use of CQ and HCQ and further order that administrative agencies not impose any requirements on the prescription of CQ, HCQ, azithromycin, or other drugs intended to treat or prevent coronavirus illness that do not apply equally to all approved medications that may be used off-label for any purpose.
Respectfully,
Michael J. A. Robb, M.D.
President, Arizona State Chapter of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
Jane M. Orient, M.D.
Executive Director, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons
CC Speaker Rusty Bowers, Rep. Warren Petersen, Rep. Nancy Barto, Sen. Karen Fann, Sen. Rick Gray, and Sen. Kate Brophy-McGee
Attachments:
Sequential CQ / HCQ Research Papers and Reports, January to April 20, 2020 https://bit.ly/cqhcqresearch
The probabilities of clinical success using hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc against the novel betacoronavirus, COVID-19, revised Apr 26, 2020 https://bit.ly/hcqtable
Vitamin D deficiency has been described as being pandemic, but serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] distribution data for the European Union are of very variable quality. The NIH-led international Vitamin D Standardization Program (VDSP) has developed protocols for standardizing existing 25(OH)D values from national health/nutrition surveys. OBJECTIVE:
This study applied VDSP protocols to serum 25(OH)D data from representative childhood/teenage and adult/older adult European populations, representing a sizable geographical footprint, to better quantify the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in Europe. DESIGN:
The VDSP protocols were applied in 14 population studies [reanalysis of subsets of serum 25(OH)D in 11 studies and complete analysis of all samples from 3 studies that had not previously measured it] by using certified liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry on biobanked sera. These data were combined with standardized serum 25(OH)D data from 4 previously standardized studies (for a total n= 55,844). Prevalence estimates of vitamin D deficiency [using various serum 25(OH)D thresholds] were generated on the basis of standardized 25(OH)D data. RESULTS:
An overall pooled estimate, irrespective of age group, ethnic mix, and latitude of study populations, showed that 13.0% of the 55,844 European individuals had serum 25(OH)D concentrations <30 nmol/L on average in the year, with 17.7% and 8.3% in those sampled during the extended winter (October-March) and summer (April-November) periods, respectively. According to an alternate suggested definition of vitamin D deficiency (<50 nmol/L), the prevalence was 40.4%. Dark-skinned ethnic subgroups had much higher (3- to 71-fold) prevalence of serum 25(OH)D <30 nmol/L than did white populations. CONCLUSIONS:
I don't know what "BAME" means but it looks like they're dark skinned minorities. I don't think their risk is genetic, except for the fact that having dark skin is genetic. If they looked, they might find that their vulnerability has to do with low levels of vitamin D. People with dark skin tend to have lower levels of vitamin D than do people with light skin. People with low levels of vitamin D are more susceptible to flu and respiratory infections.
People with low levels of selenium are more likely to die from cardiomypathy in the presence of a respiratory virus.
Adequate amounts of vitamin A is also provides some protection to the lungs. Intracellular zinc disables viral RNA replication (think Zicam for a cold).
Chris has posted numerous times about IV vitamin C and cortisol for treating sepsis.
There are numerous nutritional factors that could be playing a role in who gets sick, who doesn't, who gets really sick or dies, and who only get mildly sick. Testing for and supplementing nutritional deficiencies is cheaper than treating illness. Cheaper than drugs. Much cheaper than multi-million dollar genetic studies. But all I hear about is the need for more genetic research.
Thank you, bpr. You inject a needed dose of rationality here. With the ongoing crisis of reproducibility, the dodgy financial incentives, and the politicization of science, it's a wonder we accomplish anything at all.
It's the mortality rate: Covid-19 deaths per 100,000 people aged 18-45 in NYC (just people in that age group, not tested, not positive, just people), based on NYC data. Seems to have ticked up to 14 per 100,000 since publication.
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