COVID Chronicle: 25 per week

Twenty-five weeks after the beginning of the US pandemic, the United States heads for a Labor Day weekend devastated by uncertainty, more than anything else. Eight weeks have passed since the final version of the COVID Chronicle. For the final semester of 2020, let’s see what’s new and what it suggests where it is heading.

Steroid success

Severe COVID patients who received systemic corticosteroids are 34% less likely to die in 28 days than those who received other treatments or placebo in a prospective meta-analysis of seven randomized controlled trials became. Although this cure is far from a silver bullet, doctors offer yet another weapon against this disease.

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Supercomputer revelation

Computer data has led to a new theory of how the disease affects the body, called the bradykinin hypothesis. Studies show that the disease usually begins with a virus that enters the body through the nasal ACE2 receptor. COVID-friendly receptors are located in abundant ACE2 cells, including important organs such as the intestine and kidneys, and move in the body. , And heart.

However, the big point is that group data analysis tricks the body into upregulating receptors in areas of the body that are not present at high levels, such as the lungs.

Bradykinin is a chemical that helps regulate blood pressure. According to an analysis by Jacobson’s team, the COVID process affecting the ACE2 receptor disrupts the body’s ability to regulate chemicals, resulting in the release of bradykinin accumulation. .. Obviously much more research is needed, but the information may hold the key to a better understanding of how to treat the disease most effectively.

Vaccine advances

Efforts to develop effective vaccines continue at a breakthrough speed. Although proposals have been made that clinical trials and vaccines may be ready by the end of 2020, former FDA member Scott Gottlieb is likely not widely available until months after 2021. However, high-risk groups will probably have faster access to vaccines.

Gottlieb told CNBC’s Squaw Box on Friday, “It’s an event in 2021 in terms of widespread distribution of vaccines that you can actually go to a doctor’s office or go to a distribution site to get the vaccine. I think.” “I think it’s possible that it’s likely to be seen in the first quarter of 2021, maybe in the first half of 2021, but by the end of the first quarter of 2021 we could find a widely available vaccine I think there is a possibility.”

Reinfection

Negative news is that there is further evidence that people infected with SARS-CoV-2 can be re-infected in 3-4 months with the idea that vaccination efforts and herd immunity are in the near future. It’s getting more complicated.

The first recorded case of reinfection was a 33-year-old man in Hong Kong who contracted the virus at the end of March and was infected with the virus on a trip to Europe more than four months later. The viral genome sequences from each infection differed significantly, with the second strain being consistent with the strain that was prevalent in Europe at the time.

The man experienced mild symptoms in the first match and was asymptomatic in the second. With this, one could expect that his immune system would have learned from the initial infection. The first reinfection was confirmed in the United States in Nevada after two or three more infections abroad. A 25-year-old man was reinfected just 48 days after the first virus infection.

Autumn surge?

As much of the world is heading for autumn, healthcare professionals are concerned that the cold weather will push people indoors and that the virus may surge in many northern regions. This summer is believed to have contributed significantly to the so-called Sunbelt surge, which plagued states such as Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, and Arizona. Studies have shown that indoor transmission of viruses can be up to 20 times higher than outside.

Six percent myth

Finally, another persistent conspiracy theory has spread in social media via word-of-mouth, and the CDC Finally admitted Only 6% of the reported deaths from COVID were actually caused by the disease and not from something completely different while SARS-CoV-2 was positive. The US Death Certificate confuses how various factors are enumerated.

A standard death certificate requires the top box in the cause of death section to be the final illness or condition leading to death. Below there is space for up to four underlying conditions leading to the cause in the upper box, and another for critical conditions contributing to death but not the underlying cause.

Yes, only about 6% had nothing Other than COVID-19 listed. However, 95% started with coronavirus. If you died of respiratory failure as a result of COVID-19, you died of COVID-19 in the same way that someone died of cancer due to organ failure caused by stage 4 cancer.

And by the bottom section of the co-morbidity factor, about one-third of Americans are considered obese, but nearly half of American adults are considered hypertensive by current guidelines. An additional 10% have diabetes. If you add millions of people with symptoms such as COPD, heart disease, asthma, cancer and other disorders of the immune system, no one should be surprised at their numbers.

Dennis Maley is an editor and columnist at The Bradenton Times. He has over 20 years of experience as a journalist and has been in charge of the Manatee County Government since 2010. He graduated from Shippensburg University and holds a government degree. He was later captain of the US military. click here About his career. Denise’s latest novel, Sacred Hearts, is available here..