Amerika

Virus

• French researchers to test nicotine patches on coronavirus patients

  The study at a major Paris hospital suggests a substance in tobacco – possibly nicotine – may be stopping patients who smoke from catching Covid-19. Clinical trials of nicotine patches are awaiting the approval of the country’s health authorities.

  The renowned French neurobiologist Jean-Pierre Changeux, who reviewed the study, suggested the nicotine might stop the virus from reaching cells in the body preventing its spread. Nicotine may also lessen the overreaction of the body’s immune system that has been found in the most severe cases of Covid-19 infection.

  N.B. French tobacco tends be harsh, sold dry, and minimally processed.

• Coronavirus lingered in a woman’s eyes long after it cleared from her nose

  Though the woman’s pink eye cleared on the 20th day she was at the hospital, they found the virus lingered up to the 21st day, according to the report. For the next couple of days, the virus was undetectable in both the nose and the eyes. But on day 27, they detected the virus once more in her eyes.

  “SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in ocular swabs days after it was undetectable in nasal swabs,” the authors wrote in the letter. What’s more, using lab tests that amplify the viral particles, the researchers confirmed that the sample of virus taken from her eyes was replicating and thus could be viable.

• New postmortem tests reveal COVID-19 began spreading in US in January, mistaken for flu

  COVID-19 was already circulating in California in January, weeks earlier than thought, and early deaths were likely mistaken for the flu, a county health official said on Wednesday (Apr 22).

  The California woman’s death and two other early cases – a 69-year-old man who died on Feb 17 and a 70-year-old man who died on Mar 6 – were confirmed to have been COVID-19 by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after it tested tissue samples.

• Virus from relapse cases not highly infectious: KCDC

  Of the 39 culture tests using samples collected from people who retested positive for COVID-19 after making full recoveries, six were completed and all tested negative for the novel coronavirus, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

  “Although their polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests were positive, they tested negative after being cultivated in isolation, meaning the viruses from relapse cases have very low or no infectious power,” KCDC chief Jeong Eun-kyeong said.

• Harris County releases racial, ethnic data of coronavirus cases

  Harris County Public Health on Tuesday released a racial and ethnic breakdown of coronavirus cases outside the city of Houston.

  Patients are:

  25 percent Hispanic
  23 percent African American
  18 percent white
  4 percent Asian/Pacific Islander
  1 percent other

  The health department was unable to provide this data for the remaining 29 percent of its 2,049 patients.

  Harris County as a whole is 43 percent Hispanic, 29 percent white, 20 percent black and 7 percent Asian.

• COVID-19 Has Mutated To At Least 30 Different Strains, Study Reveals

  Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, might have mutated as many as 30 times since its first confirmed case in December 2019 in Wuhan, China. These mutations could mean one vaccine alone can’t immunize people against all the mutations of SARS-CoV-2 spreading worldwide, according to an alarming study authored by a team of 14 Chinese scientists.

  The preprint of this non-peer reviewed study, “Patient-derived mutations impact pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2,” was published Sunday in Medrxiv, the medical website distributing unpublished manuscripts about health sciences.

• What are ‘COVID toes’? Doctors discover symptom of coronavirus mostly seen in kids

  The presence of purple or blue lesions on a patient’s feet and toes puzzles infectious disease experts.

  “They’re typically painful to touch and could have a hot burning sensation,” said Dr. Ebbing Lautenbach, chief of infectious disease at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine.

  What doctors said is most interesting about “COVID toes” is that they appear in COVID-19 patients who don’t exhibit any other symptoms.

• Swedish health agency says virus has peaked in Stockholm, no easing of restrictions yet

  Around one-third of Stockholm’s 1 million people will have had the novel coronavirus by the start of May and the disease may have already passed its peak in the capital, Sweden’s public health agency said on Tuesday.

  Wallensten said it was too early to say when the number of fatalities in Stockholm would start to decline.

  “The curve for the number of new cases hasn’t started to decline yet, either, so we are not there yet,” he said.

• Spread of coronavirus by children further doubted after French case

  A 9-year-old who contracted COVID-19 in eastern France did not pass the virus on to any other pupils at three ski-schools, according to new research that suggests infants are not large spreaders of the disease.

  Through rapid intervention by health authorities, it was ascertained that the child, who only displayed mild symptoms, came into contact with 172 people while sick.

  All of those were placed in quarantine as a precaution, but none of them contracted COVID-19, not even the child’s two siblings.

• Coronavirus: Why some racial groups are more vulnerable

  In the US, in Chicago, as of early April 2020, 72% of people who died of coronavirus were black, although only one-third of the city’s population is. In Georgia, as of 17 April, white people accounted for 40% of Covid-19 cases where race was reported, although they represent 58% of the state. In the UK, of the first 2,249 patients with confirmed Covid-19, 35% were non-white. This is much higher than the proportion of non-white people in England and Wales – 14%, according to the most recent census.

  Persistent environmental injustice, for example, means that disproportionately high numbers of ethnic-minority households in North America and Europe live near incinerators and landfills, and schools with high proportions of minority students are located near highways and industrial sites – for both economic and non-economic reasons. This too affects vulnerability to lung-inflaming conditions like asthma and Covid-19. “Air quality, which early data is highlighting to be a potential risk factor for Covid-19, is also a risk factor for respiratory health,” says Grania Brigden, who leads the tuberculosis department at the lung health organisation The Union.

• UofL breakthrough technology shows promise fighting novel coronavirus

  The technology is based on a piece of synthetic DNA – an “aptamer” – which targets and binds with a human protein called nucleolin. Early tests show that this aptamer may stop viruses, including novel coronavirus, from “hijacking” nucleolin to replicate inside the body.

• Scientists say coronavirus can spread through ‘aerosolized feces’

  The disease caused by the coronavirus, which scientists had already warned can be spread from fecal-oral transmission, can also be transmitted via “aerosolized feces,” according to Forbes, citing a study published by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology.

  Aerosolized feces can be propelled into the air through what’s called a toilet plume — the spread of aerosols, sometimes containing infectious fecal matter, caused by a flush.

Panic

• Conspiracy theorists burn 5G towers claiming link to virus

  Some 50 fires targeting cell towers and other equipment have been reported in Britain this month, leading to three arrests. Telecom engineers have been abused on the job 80 times, according to trade group Mobile UK, making the U.K. the nucleus of the attacks. Photos and videos documenting the attacks are often overlaid with false commentary about COVID-19. Some 16 have been torched in the Netherlands, with attacks also reported in Ireland, Cyprus, and Belgium.

  The current wave of 5G theories dates back to January, when a Belgian doctor suggested a link to COVID-19.

  Source on the Belgian doctor connecting 5G and COVID-19:

  On January 22, Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws published an interview with Kris Van Kerckhoven, a general practitioner from Putte, near Antwerp. “5G is life-threatening, and no one knows it”, read the headline. One scientifically-baseless claim in this article, published in a regional version of the paper’s print edition and since deleted from its website, sparked a conspiracy theory firestorm that has since torn through the internet and broken out into the real world, resulting in fires and threats. Van Kerckhoven didn’t just claim that 5G was dangerous: he also said it might be linked to coronavirus.

• As people stay home, Earth turns wilder and cleaner

  The air from Boston to Washington is its cleanest since a NASA satellite started measuring nitrogen dioxide,in 2005, says NASA atmospheric scientist Barry Lefer. Largely caused by burning of fossil fuels, this pollution is short-lived, so the air gets cleaner quickly.

  Compared to the previous five years, March air pollution is down 46% in Paris, 35% in Bengaluru, India, 38% in Sydney, 29% in Los Angeles, 26% in Rio de Janeiro and 9% in Durban, South Africa, NASA measurements show.

  “We’re getting a glimpse of what might happen if we start switching to non-polluting cars,” Lefer says.

• Air quality in US dramatically worse than in prior years, says new ‘State of the Air’ report

  The air quality in the United States is dramatically declining, leaving about 150 million people — nearly half of America’s population — breathing unhealthy, heavily polluted air, according to the newly released “State of the Air” 2020 report by the American Lung Association.

  “Around the world, toxic air kills 5 million people every year and, as this report makes clear, the US has a long way to go to better protect communities.” said Sarah Vogel, vice president for health at the Environmental Defense Fund.

  The report found nine western cities reached their worst levels of particulate pollution ever recorded: Fairbanks, Alaska; Yakima, Washington; Las Vegas, Nevada; Phoenix, Arizona; Spokane, Washington; and the following cities in California — Chico, Salinas, Redding and Santa Maria.

• Djokovic opposes compulsory coronavirus vaccination

  “Personally I am opposed to vaccination and I wouldn’t want to be forced by someone to take a vaccine in order to be able to travel,” Djokovic said in a live facebook chat with several fellow Serbian athletes.

• Racist coronavirus graffiti sprayed on Chinese-Australian family’s home in Melbourne

  “COVID-19 China die” was spray-painted on the garage door of the family’s home on Monday morning in Knoxfield, a suburb in Melbourne’s east.

  Then on Tuesday morning at around 2:30am, someone smashed one of their windows with a large rock.

• Global CEOs see U-shaped recession due to coronavirus: survey

  Around 60% of chief executives are preparing for a U-shaped recovery – a long period between recession and an upturn – compared with 22% who predict a double-dip recession, according to an April 15-19 poll of 3,534 chief executives from 109 countries conducted by YPO, a business leadership network.

• Sweden suffers deadliest COVID-19 day but authorities are keeping pubs open

  Gyms, cafes, schools, bars, workplaces and retail shopping all remain open, but gatherings of more than 50 people have been banned and educators have been recommended to move what they can online.

  The nation’s head epidemiologist Anders Tegnell is the government strategist behind Sweden’s relaxed approach to fighting the disease.

  He has argued that strong messaging around social distancing – without harsh restrictions and fines – means Sweden will be able to maintain virus protocols for much longer.

• Street by street, home by home: how China used social controls to tame an epidemic

  One of them, 75-year-old Jiang Hong, said the last three months had been just like life in the Mao Zedong era.

  “It’s déjà vu really – a throwback to the 1960s when we lived in the people’s communes and everything was taken care of but you didn’t have much choice,” the retiree said.

  Like many elderly residents, Jiang had to learn to use social media app WeChat to adapt to her “new collective life”. All the residents in her community “cell” are connected through a WeChat group where they receive government messages and make payments online. These cells make up a grid-based neighbourhood monitoring and management system that exists across China.

• UN warns of ‘biblical’ famine due to Covid-19 pandemic

  Beasley said today 821 million people go to bed hungry every night all over the world, a further 135 million people are facing “crisis levels of hunger or worse,” and a new World Food Program analysis shows that as a result of COVID-19 an additional 130 million people “could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020.”

• Scott Morrison lobbies Donald Trump, others for greater world health oversight to prevent another pandemic

  Prime Minister Scott Morrison is seeking to build an international coalition to give the World Health Organisation (WHO) — or another body — powers equivalent to those of a weapons inspector to avoid another catastrophic pandemic.

  One of the limitations under the WHO, founded in 1948, is that international officials must be invited by nations before being allowed to investigate.

  The Government is somewhat dubious of the chances of reforming the WHO, which gives veto power to each of its 194 member states.

  Humans in groups make bad decisions. They aim for what they think others will approve (the committee mentality) or chase symbolic, appearance-oriented, and novelty-driven ideas as each member of the group tries to stand out. Nations in groups behave the same way. Globalism has died, and needs to remain dead, including this terrible idea.

• YouTube CEO: We’ll ban any coronavirus content against WHO guidelines

  [YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki] told host Brian Stelter that this would include “anything that is medically unsubstantiated”.

  “So people saying ‘take vitamin C; take turmeric, we’ll cure you’, those are the examples of things that would be a violation of our policy,” she said.

  “Anything that would go against World Health Organisation recommendations would be a violation of our policy.”

• Lewes Police Use Drones to Enforce Social Distancing

  The police department has a drone that flies over bike trails and the beach. If it sees people walking too close, it broadcasts a message reminding them of the state of emergency and social distancing guidelines.

  Florida and New Jersey are enforcing via drone as well:

  Police departments in Florida and New Jersey have drones with pre-recorded warnings that will be deployed if crowds are not following COVID-19 guidelines.

• ‘More important things than living,’ Texas’ Dan Patrick says in coronavirus interview

  Patrick recounted the numbers of COVID-19 related deaths in Texas — 495 as of Monday night. He stressed that “every life is valuable” but compared them to the state’s population of 29 million people.

  “But 500 people out of 29 million and we’re locked down, and we’re crushing the average worker. We’re crushing small business. We’re crushing the markets. We’re crushing this country,” Patrick said. “And what I said when I was with you that night, there are more important things than living. And that’s saving this country for my children, and my grandchildren and saving this country for all of us. And I don’t want to die, nobody wants to die, but man, we got to take some risks and get back in the game, and get this country back up and running.”

• Coronavirus: Germany’s states make face masks compulsory

  Mask use will be compulsory on public transport throughout Germany, and nearly all states will also make face coverings mandatory when shopping.

  Research suggests they are not as effective as frequent hand washing with soap and water, and can give users false confidence.

  Washing hands is important, but this is a disease transmitted through airborne aerosols. If we had all just started wearing masks way back in February, we could have avoided crashing our economies and setting the foundation for war.

• Coronavirus: Chinese agents stoked panic in US by spreading fake warnings, officials tell New York Times

  Messages like this one, which claimed to come from a source in the US Department of Homeland Security, were commonplace in the early days of the pandemic:

  “They will announce this as soon as they have troops in place to help prevent looters and rioters. He said he got the call last night and was told to pack and be prepared for the call today with his dispatch orders.”

Tags: covid-19, linkpost, panicdemic