Tag: pandemic

Medical worker describes terrifying lung failure from COVID-19 — even in his young patients

AlterNet logoAs of Friday, Louisiana was reporting 479 confirmed cases of COVID-19, one of the highest numbers in the country. Ten people had died. The majority of cases are in New Orleans, which now has one confirmed case for every 1,000 residents. New Orleans had held Mardi Gras celebrations just two weeks before its first patient, with more than a million revelers on its streets.

I spoke to a respiratory therapist there, whose job is to ensure that patients are breathing well. He works in a medium-sized city hospital’s intensive care unit. (We are withholding his name and employer, as he fears retaliation.) Before the virus came to New Orleans, his days were pretty relaxed, nebulizing patients with asthma, adjusting oxygen tubes that run through the nose or, in the most severe cases, setting up and managing ventilators. His patients were usually older, with chronic health conditions and bad lungs.

Since last week, he’s been running ventilators for the sickest COVID-19 patients. Many are relatively young, in their 40s and 50s, and have minimal, if any, preexisting conditions in their charts. He is overwhelmed, stunned by the manifestation of the infection, both its speed and intensity. The ICU where he works has essentially become a coronavirus unit. He estimates that his hospital has admitted dozens of confirmed or presumptive coronavirus patients. About a third have ended up on ventilators. Continue reading.

Yes, Trump And His Republican Supporters Are To Blame

Republicans and the right-wing media cannot be allowed to live down the bad, dangerous, horribly wrong information they promoted on coronavirus for weeks.

President Donald Trump and many of his sycophants — including those at Fox News — have dramatically changed their tone when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic. After weeks of claiming that the mainstream media were exaggerating the dangers of coronavirus, Trump has adopted a somber tone and now acknowledges how deadly it is. But the fact remains that for far too long, many Trumpistas and Republicans claimed that coronavirus wasn’t nearly as dangerous as liberals, progressives, Democrats, centrists, Never Trump conservatives and the mainstream media were making it out to be. And those Trumpistas and Republicans — by encouraging complacency in the face of a deadly pandemic — now have blood on their hands.

Previously, Trump claimed that coronavirus warnings from the mainstream media and Democrats were a “hoax.” But unsettling figures from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland say otherwise. As of early Friday morning, March 20, the COVID-19 strain of coronavirus has killed 10,038 people worldwide — including 3405 in Italy alone. Italy, in fact, has now passed Mainland China in the COVID-19 death count. Other countries being ravaged by coronavirus range from Iran (with 1284 deaths) to Spain (833 deaths). But those numbers are likely to increase substantially in the weeks ahead. Continue reading.

In hard-hit areas, testing restricted to health care workers, hospital patients

Washington Post logoOfficials direct scarce resources where they are needed most to save people’s lives.

Health officials in New York, California and other hard-hit parts of the country are restricting coronavirus testing to health care workers and the severely ill, saying the battle to contain the virus is lost and the country is moving into a new phase of the pandemic response.

As cases spike sharply in those places, they are bracing for an onslaught and directing scarce resources where they are needed most to save people’s lives. Instead of encouraging broad testing of the public, they’re focused on conserving masks, ventilators and intensive care beds — and on getting still-limited tests to health-care workers and the most vulnerable. The shift is further evidence that rising levels of infection and illness have begun to overwhelm the health care system.

A similar message was hammered Saturday by members of the White House coronavirus task force, who said it was urgent to conserve scarce supplies and offered guidelines about who should get tested. Top priority, they said, should go to those who are hospitalized, along with health-care workers, symptomatic residents of long-term care facilities and people over 65 — especially those with heart and lung disease, which place them at higher risk. Continue reading. Free article.

NBC’s Peter Alexander asked Trump to reassure Americans about coronavirus. Trump berated him instead.

Washington Post logoIt was the journalistic equivalent of a layup, an opportunity for President Trump to utter a sound bite to soothe an anxious nation’s fears and concerns amid a pandemic.

Instead, Trump turned an exchange at a news conference into something very different — a jarring attack on the news media in general and the reporter who asked the question in particular.

NBC News correspondent Peter Alexander started the exchange by asking Trump whether he “may be giving Americas a false sense of hope” by touting drug therapies that health-care experts have said are unproved as treatments for the coronavirus. Continue reading.

‘I’ve never seen anything like it’: Sanjay Gupta stunned after Dr. Fauci is forced to fact-check Trump

AlterNet logoCNN’s Sanjay Gupta found himself shocked after watching President Donald Trump try to correct Dr. Anthony Fauci about potential coronavirus treatments.

Shortly after the president’s press conference ended, CNN host John King highlighted Fauci shooting down the idea of using an antimalarial drug to treat the virus.

The information that you’re referring to [regarding the drug] is anecdotal,” Fauci said. “It was not done in a controlled clinical trial, so you really can’t make any definitive statement about it.” Continue reading.

Coronavirus testing faces new challenge as key supplies run low

The Hill logoThe improved pace of coronavirus testing faces a potential setback from shortages of the chemicals and supplies that labs need to run those tests.

President Trump has boasted that millions of test kits are being delivered to labs across the country, but the kits are rendered useless without the reagents that are needed to prepare samples for testing.

States and labs say they are now running dangerously low on those crucial chemicals. Continue reading.

U.S. economy deteriorating faster than anticipated as 80 million Americans are forced to stay at home

Washington Post logoAlready, it is clear that the initial economic decline will be sharper and more painful than during the 2008 financial crisis

The U.S. economy is deteriorating more quickly than was expected just days ago as extraordinary measures designed to curb the coronavirus keep 84 million Americans penned in their homes and cause the near-total shutdown of most businesses.

In a single 24-hour period, governors of three of the largest states — California, New York and Illinois — ordered residents to stay home except to buy food and medicine, while the governor of Pennsylvania ordered the closure of nonessential businesses. Across the globe, health officials are struggling to cope with the growing number of patients, with the World Health Organization noting that while it required three months to reach 100,000 cases, it took only 12 days to hit another 100,000.

The resulting economic meltdown, which is sending several million workers streaming into the unemployment line, is outpacing the federal government’s efforts to respond. As the Senate on Friday raced to complete work on a financial rescue package, the White House and key lawmakers were dramatically expanding its scope, pushing the legislation far beyond the original $1 trillion price tag. Continue reading.

Coronavirus crisis exposes years of failure

The Hill logoThe coronavirus spreading across the United States has exposed a deep and pervasive failure to plan for what experts and former government officials have warned of for years, the prospect of a global pandemic that threatens to overwhelm health systems and kill millions.

Instead, two months after the first American tested positive and as the number of confirmed cases inside the country soars past 10,000, a decentralized governmental response has been scattered and uneven, a mix of action and inaction, urgency and passivity.

The federalist nature of American democracy means the response to any disaster will vary based on the competency of state and local officials. It will not look like China, for better and for worse. Continue reading.

Pence staffer tests positive for coronavirus

The Hill logoAn official working for Vice President Pence has tested positive for the coronavirus, his office announced Friday, becoming the first known positive test to date for a White House staffer.

“‪This evening we were notified that a member of the Office of the Vice President tested positive for the Coronavirus,” Pence’s press secretary, Katie Miller, said in a statement.

“Neither President Trump nor Vice President Pence had close contact with the individual. Further contact tracing is being conducted in accordance with CDC guidelines,” the spokeswoman added. Continue reading.

The new sick leave law doesn’t help the workers that need it most

Washington Post logoOnly 12 percent of workers in businesses that are likely to stay open will be affected

The Families First Coronavirus Emergency Response Act passed the Senate on March 18, and was signed into law by President Trump. The “phase 2” bill was one of the first moves by Congress in reaction to the coronavirusoutbreak and aimed to extend sick leave to vulnerable U.S. workers, along with other financial benefits.

Nearly a quarter of U.S. workers don’t have access to paid sick leave, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For many of these workers, like waiters and waitresses, the federally mandated leave comes too late, as layoffs from social distancing measures have spiked.

But many parts of the retail industry — such as grocery stores, pharmacies and gas stations — will likely remain open, declared “essential” by such cities as Philadelphia that have instituted shelter-in-place policies. Workers at these businesses will come into contact with the most people, and if they don’t already have paid sick leave, the new law is unlikely to help. Continue reading.  This is a free article.