There are over 3.1 million global cases. Cases have grown by over 600,000 since this time last week. The US has over 1,000,000 cases with nearly 60,000 deaths.
Nuclear risks thanks to the pandemic? Plants can’t operate properly if their workers are sick, and these plants require operations to run 24/7. The folks who run these plants are highly skilled and can’t simply be replaced. Staff may have to resort to contingencies like living on-site to prevent infections.
Blood clots and other coagulopathies are showing up in COVID-19 patients. Are they mysterious? Not really, but I’m sure they’re surprising to people who think COVID-19 is just a respiratory infection. Disseminated intravascular coagulopathy (DIC) and other disorders of blood clotting can be comorbid with serious infections or illnesses and they aren’t that uncommon. From a clinical perspective we see them all the time. Sometimes your body throws all its resources at a problem, clots like hell, runs out of clotting factors, then bleeds like hell (this is a very simplified analogy but it’s helpful here). COVID-19-induced coagulopathies include large clots as well—these can cause heart attacks, strokes, embolisms, and more. These macro- and micro-clots can cut off blood supply to limbs and body parts and cause tissue necrosis—often requiring amputation. These complications are frequently lethal.
This virus might become endemic and seasonal. We may not be able to eliminate this virus. We’re watching what happens as the southern hemisphere enters winter. If it does become endemic, vaccine programs will be the only hope for a more rapid restoration of normalcy.
It’s time to bring back Victory Gardens. Want to know where to start? If you’ve got a small planting space, you can still start a garden:
https://twitter.com/ThisDadDoes/status/1255062640025632768?s=20
Trump to use the Defense Production Act (DPA) to keep meat processing plants open. 5,000 meat processing workers have already been exposed or have tested positive—what does this mean for the workers who will have to work shoulder-to-shoulder? Will they be provided with personal protective equipment (PPE)? Why didn’t we use the DPA to make more PPE?
Where is the national plan??? If the DPA isn’t for this kind of emergency, what is it for? https://t.co/TDZ2t2zAvW
— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) April 26, 2020
As mentioned above, the US has met the grim milestone of 1,000,000 cases. Is there any good news? Not so much. A second wave is likely in the fall. We’ve tested over 5 million people, but that’s a small percentage of our population. We don’t yet have widespread antibody testing. We never even attempted thorough contact tracing. States are starting to open back up right as cases are peaking.
Cases are blooming in prisons, but most inmates are asymptomatic. There’s an argument here that asymptomatic but contagious people are major drivers of infection.
The Oxford lab’s vaccine worked in monkeys. We don’t know if it will work in us. There are scores of vaccine programs all over the globe racing for an effective vaccine. The Jenner Institute is leading along with Moderna and Inovio. Passing clinical safety and efficacy trials is one part of the race. Producing the vaccine for distribution on a global scale is another.
