Reacher

Wow. Reread what you wrote. No need to see both sides. Guess there is no reason for free speech or science anymore. People are wearing masks, social distancing and avoiding restaurants (they are all closed around me). Spread is still increasing. How is that possible? Could it be that the virus travels through aerosols as the Dr below points out and that masks are generally ineffective in slowing the spread? Calm down, take a deep breath and actually look and think about, what people are saying instead of writing them off for whatever reason. Is this guy also a quack? “He received his general medical degrees from Cambridge University in the UK (M.A., M.B., B. Chir.) where he was a scholar at Corpus Christi College. Following a residency at the University of British Columbia he became a Royal College certified general pathologist (FRCPC) and also a Fellow of the College of American Pathologists (FCAP).” “He is in good Standing with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta, and has been recognized by the Court of Queen’s Bench in Alberta as an expert in pathology.” Noting that he was also an expert in virology, Hodkinson pointed out that his role as CEO of a biotech company that manufactures COVID tests means, “I might know a little bit about all this.” The doctor also slammed the unreliability of PCR tests, noting that “positive test results do not, underlined in neon, mean a clinical infection,” and that all testing should stop because the false numbers are “driving public hysteria.” Hodkinson said that the risk of death in the province of Alberta for people under the age of 65 was “one in three hundred thousand,” and that it was simply “outrageous” to shut down society for what the doctor said “was just another bad flu.” Hodkinson remarked that “social distancing is useless because COVID is spread by aerosols which travel 30 meters or so before landing,” as he called for society to be re-opened immediately to prevent the debilitating damage being caused by lockdowns. Hodkinson also slammed mandatory mask mandates as completely pointless. If the virus can travel 100 feet and you need N95 masks or greater to have any effect, these current protocols are not going to do much. Why not hand out Vitamin D to everyone? Seems like that might have a much greater benefit/ cost.

With lockdowns once again spreading, we are reminded, by over 50,000 Drs, of the damaging impacts of such policies. This was discussed earlier and was dismissed (by some) since we were going away from lockdowns in the US. Not only are we not going away from them, they are becoming stricter. And in an environment where we no longer have the safety net of stimulus payments to help people financially. https://justthenews.com/nearly-50000-doctors-and-scientists-630000-citizens-have-signed-global-anti-lockdown-proclamation

50% of the debate is whether it protects you. The other half is protecting others. We finally "have a randomized controlled trial that has looked at the ability of face masks to protect wearers against covid-19" Not sure why this is being dismissed. If everybody is wearing masks, and they only protect others, why are we seeing the spread escalate? Makes no sense. Maybe masks don't protect others either? Is that possible? Seems almost likely given the spread with now nearly universal mask wearing. @Lostin76, I asked your opinion on the conclusions and analysis. I thought you might have some constructive points. All you did was ignore that and shoot the messenger. I guess you don't like the guy. Why would you let your personal opinions influence what he wrote?

What are your thoughts on this Drs conclusion / analysis of the Danish study? https://sebastianrushworth.com/2020/11/19/covid-19-new-evidence-on-face-masks/

I actually read the study. And do wear a mask. I'm not trying to prove anything except bring some relevant info to the board for people to make their own decisions. Around me, masks have been universal for months. Its apparent to me there isn't much science out there on many of these issues. I tried to find a study showing that restaurants were a source of the spread and couldn't find any. A few anecdotal stories was it. This country is killing an entire industry based on what science? Remember, the WHO, CDC, etc all said at one point mask wearing was of little to no value. From what this non fancy pants can tell, it seems there is science on both sides of the mask issue with much to be learned.

They did report- "Our results suggest that the recommendation to wear a surgical mask when outside the home among others did not reduce, at conventional levels of statistical significance, the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in mask wearers in a setting where social distancing and other public health measures were in effect, mask recommendations were not among those measures, and community use of masks was uncommon." Might that not be worth further investigation?

This is the second published study I've seen this week on Mask wearing. Very comparable to the Marine study. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817

Interesting study of Marine recruits published in the NEJM- https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2029717 Marines were picked because of their propensity to follow orders and the control group had a slightly lower % of positive cases than the group that was locked down, socially distancing and wearing masks. Doesn't seem possible. Good news is that almost all were asymptomatic and there were no serious cases reinforcing that young healthy people don't seem to be in danger. This reinforces the studies, and people like Dr Fauci who previously said, masks do not help. Look like the virus will spread either way.

Maybe she wants first dibs for her workers @ https://www.dollywood.com/ ?

Exciting news. Congrats and good luck!

Not only the media but certain classes of people, who should be leading by example, seem all to willing to ignore these precautions. And to your point, makes no sense why larges churches have to be closed or are severely limited when stores (liquor? mattress? pot?) and even strip clubs can remain open. You keep binging up politics in a round about way. You may think it is an indisputable fact there was a terrible policy. I don't agree so, I'd argue, that makes it your opinion- not an indisputable fact. If there was terrible policy- was that at the local, state or national level? Where in the Constitution does it say the federal government should regulate a health crisis? Even states have such varied areas that unilateral measures often make no sense but the states at least have a health infrastucture/ agencies in place. To use your language, I'd say its an indisputable fact some states had terrible, moronic policies and it would be stupid and moronic to argue otherwise.

From what I saw, technically its a 30 day stay at home advisory. And mandatory limit of 10 for all gatherings.

Not fair that @bluegrassIU gets all these likes for doing this.

Cold weather and no indoor dining for much of IL really killing the restaurants. Many have already closed and obviously there will be many more.

Astazeneca looks to be the one to keep an eye on. Big capacity, can be stored in refrigerators and 1/10th the cost of Chinas Sinovac

Sorry to see the Octoberfests go but it is now Winter Ale season!

I know 1 district where teachers can stay home (Naperville) and a couple others where they have to go to school.

You have been busy lately. Shed, carport, harvest, time to go fishing!

Good article discussing reporting the date of death vs date of report- https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/popular-covid-tracking-sites-indicate-rise-deaths-cdc-data-shows "Yet the three major COVID tracking sites all tabulate deaths by date of report, without any option to see COVID-19 fatalities listed by when they actually occurred. This has led to all three sites graphing recent weeks of fatalities as if they were increasing — but more timely data from the CDC suggests that week-over-week numbers of provisional deaths have actually been falling. "

When I saw that someone from IN could win Terry's $ if the Bears one I figured it was @ricoand the Bears would lose

Not looking good in Europe- In most of Europe, a high percentage of tests for the virus are coming back positive, an indication that many infected people are going undetected and that testing programs are insufficient. The positivity rate, which the ECDC recommends should stay below 3%, has reached 11% in Spain, 18% in France and 26% in both the Netherlands and the Czech Republic

https://www.foxnews.com/science/covid-19-transmission-prevented-mouthwash

Worthwhile read- Covid-19: A Swedish care home doctor’s perspective This is a guest post written by a colleague who works as a care home doctor in a small Swedish town. In other words, he is responsible for the wellbeing of frail elderly people living in care homes. He has treated a lot of patients with covid-19. Since the situation may be different in some other countries, I think it is useful to know before reading the article that in Sweden, people stay in their own homes until they are very close to the end of their lives, and only really get moved to care homes when there is less than a year of expected life left. The article was published a few days ago in Svenska Dagbladet, one of the big Swedish daily newspapers. It is fantastic, the best thing I’ve read recently, so I asked him if it would be ok for me to translate it to English and post it on this site, in order for it to reach an international audience. He graciously agreed. The article clearly shows the difference between how the general public, and in particular younger people, think about death, and how doctors think about death. Enjoy. — The media reporting about covid-19 exposes the veritable fear of death that exists in our country. It creates a narrative where health care was denied to everyone in care homes, which caused them to die. It is for example claimed that these deaths could have been avoided with oxygen and intravenous fluids. The perspective of the doctors working in care homes has been left out of the debate, and it has become clear that we need to communicate our work, since there are big misunderstandings among the population. Let me therefore tell you: After 36 years working in internal medicine in a big hospital clinic, I now since four years back work as a home care doctor, with responsibility for, among other things, four care homes in a small municipality. Up to now, 36 of the patients in my care have been infected with covid. I had met with all of them earlier, together with their relatives, as part of our annual care planning, where one of the main things we do is to plan what to do in the case of a decline in their health. This avoids meaningless and, for the patient, often tortuous ambulance trips in to hospital. It also avoids unnecessary investigations and treatments that don’t prolong life, but rather contribute to a drawn out and often painful process of dying. Occasionally, covid-19 infected patients were sent in by me to the hospital, for different reasons. But most commonly a decision had been made, beforehand, that if an infection had been diagnosed with a pulmonary focus, with resulting low oxygen levels and malaise, we wouldn’t send old and frail patients to the hospital. Instead we would focus on giving good symptom reducing treatment in the care home. We wouldn’t give oxygen, which for dying patients shows little benefit compared with morphine and anxiety reducing medications. I knew the patients well and am convinced that for many of the ones that died, death felt like a relief. Several had already during our care planning meetings told me that they longed for death, even though they showed no sign of underlying depression. Thus, it was not because of orders from above, or a lack of beds in the hospital, that the patients stayed in the care home. They stayed because it was decided, in consultation with the patients and their relatives, that staying was in their best interests. The benefit of oxygen therapy is perhaps the most important misunderstanding. It is only in a situation where the patient has decreasing oxygen levels in the blood while still being relatively unaffected in terms of symptoms that oxygen therapy theoretically (there are no studies that prove it) possibly can be of benefit even in frail elderly patients, which is why individuals with this particular constellation should be sent to the hospital for oxygen therapy. Among those whose general condition declines in parallel with their decreasing oxygen levels, oxygen therapy (and ventilator treatment) provide no benefit, something which was experienced in Italy and Spain early during the pandemic, when even frail elderly patients were put on ventilators. Virtually all of them died, after one to three weeks of ventilator treatment, in induced comas, with tubes in their throats, often without any relatives present, in an ICU – a foreign environment with unknown staff. In the care home they would instead have died after one to three days, in their own residence, surrounded by relatives and staff they know well. Another misunderstanding becomes clear from the many stories in the media of patients who were first denied health care, only to later on be provided it after relatives demanded it, and then to have survived “because of” oxygen therapy. The experience of myself and my colleagues is that when a frail older person gets a covid-19 infection that goes in to their lungs and causes systemic symptoms, then oxygen therapy and ventilator treatment don’t affect the disease course (and there is no scientific evidence to support that they do). That it is hard to determine the benefit of different treatment options can be illustrated by one of my patients: an almost 100 year old individual, who developed a mild cold and had an inital oxygen saturation of 98% , which is normal. The covid-19 test was positive. After a few days, the patient also developed a cough and shortness of breath, and the oxygen saturation dropped to 81%, which is seriously low. Since the patient had systemic symptoms, a decision was made not to send her to the hospital, in accordance with the reasoning provided above. The patient improved spontaneously and was declared healthy a few days later. If the patient had been sent in to the hospital and received oxygen therapy, the newspapers and TV would have reported about yet another successful case of a patient who was saved by oxygen therapy (which the care home had “refused” to provide). What about the fear of death? Both the media and the general public (and sometimes colleagues) seem to think of death as the health care system’s worst enemy, which always needs to be fought in all situations. Sometimes when a patient during a care planning session tells med that she longs for death, the children interrupt and say “don’t talk like that, mum!” Usually, I will then ask the children, “why not?”. The patient feels that she has accomplished what she wanted to do, and is due to her illness bed bound, can’t any longer read or listen to music due to declining vision and hearing, suffers from chronic pain and loneliness. Is it so strange in that situation to long for death? I don’t think so, and neither do many of the patients I meet on a daily basis in my work. These are the oldest and sickest patients, and that is why they live in care homes. Why so many younger people, not least journalists and newspaper columnists, don’t understand this, I have no good explanation for. Personally, I am convinced that the best thing for many people at the end of life is not infrequently to let the disease take its natural course, and focus efforts on relieving symptoms. I have never met anything other than the greatest gratitude from patients and relatives when I have helped seriously sick and suffering patients, by removing anxiety, pain, and shortness of breath with the help of medications, so that they can pass on calmly. With that said, we of course have to look at things that haven’t worked so well when it comes to elder care, in order to become better. For example, decisions about palliative care shouldn’t be taken without personal knowledge of and examination of the patient, and the decision should be made together with the patient and relatives. Eric Bertholds Home care physician in Tibro — Personally, I was moved by this article. I think it shows perfectly the huge disconnect in thinking that often exists between the medical profession and the general public, and that is why I thought it would be worth sharing. In the Emergency Room, I often seen very old, very frail people, who have been sent in inappropriately from care homes. Instead of being in a familiar environment, surrounded by their own things and people they know, they lie in a crowded emergency room for several hours, on an uncomfortable hospital gurney, surrounded by unfamiliar people, while suffering painful needle jabs. Very rarely do they gain any benefit from the experience. You might also be interested in reading about my experiences from working as an emergency physician during the covid pandemic, or be interested in reading my article about deprescribing, possibly the most important health intervention there is when it comes to the health of frail older people.

Being married to a dentist, let me say I'm closer to @IUFLAthan @tdhoosier 😁 Remember, it helps you live longer! https://www.verywellhealth.com/simple-steps-to-increase-your-life-expectancy-2223907