News roundup for Tue, Jun 22, 2021

3 Comments on News roundup for Tue, Jun 22, 2021
Where is Tropical Depression Claudette moving towards

China’s stance toward Taiwan is increasingly aggressive as played out in war games. The US stance toward Taiwan is complicated—we have formally “acknowledged” One China policy in the past, but we also sell arms to Taiwan, take a defensive military stance of the island, and support democracy in Taiwan as well. The fight over Taiwan could spark significant conflict.

It’s not just China having strange, vague problems in their nuclear plants–Iran is having problems, too:

Tropical Depression Claudette is wreaking havoc in the Southeast:

https://twitter.com/ai6yrham/status/1406715174602514435?s=20

A trifecta of extreme weather, a pilot shortage, and a huge uptick in customer demand has American Airlines cancelling hundreds of flights:

A pregnant mom saves four kids from drowning with her quick thinking.

A hydropower plant in CA is headed for shutdown for the first time since its opening. Extreme weather has reservoirs at all-time lows:

https://twitter.com/ai6yrham/status/1407065142022443009?s=20

The shipping and logistics woes continue—shipping containers are still backed up all over the globe. Scarcity of goods secondary to this backup is meeting skyrocketing demand from consumers emerging from over a year of pandemic-related economic suppression. This combination is increasing inflationary pressure, but it should be transient. If the US government keeps printing money, though, then maybe it won’t be so transient.

The world has over 179.5 million COVID cases. The world has gained 2.5 million cases in the last week. There have been nearly 3.9 million deaths in total. The US has over 34.4 million cases. Over 617,000 Americans have died—only 2,000 in the last week. The US has gained about 7,500 new cases since yesterday—as mentioned previously Florida is no longer reporting cases daily so this count is not entirely accurate. In any case, it’s clear that case gain is slowing in the US. There have been 174 deaths in the US in the last day. India has had over 1,400 deaths in the last day and brazil has had over 900. India and Brazil are closely matched in daily case gain and daily deaths, each with more than 38,000 cases and over 700 deaths.

Britain is entering a third wave because of Delta. In fact, Delta is taking off all over the world:

South America is still struggling badly with the pandemic. Brazil is taking the brunt of the “big burn”:

There is more and more evidence of serious structural changes to the brain after COVID infection. There can be noticeable loss of grey matter, even with asymptomatic infection. Grey matter is the body of the neuron, so what we’re talking about here is significant cell death in the brain:

45% of Americans are now fully vaccinated:

Stephanie Arnold | cosmicpixle

Stephanie Arnold is an advanced practice psychiatric nurse and a doctoral candidate in UA Tuscaloosa’s DNP program. Stephanie moonlights from time to time at UCLA teaching mental health nursing. She also likes making cold-process soap.

  • 3 Comments
    • Bed June 21, 2021

      There can be noticeable loss of grey matter, even with asymptomatic infection.

      As scary as that is (which it very much is), I can’t help but get this feeling more research may be needed in regards to asymptomatic cases. I read through the UK study, and it’s worth noting that it’s a preprint. That doesn’t diminish the hard work put into it, but rather means more information absolutely needs be found out and studied extensively.
      Regardless, if the potential/probable loss of brain matter doesn’t convince people to vaccinate then I just don’t know what will… 🙁

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      • Hardened Bed June 22, 2021

        Here’s another study:

        “People who had recovered, including those no longer reporting symptoms, exhibited significant cognitive deficits when controlling for age, gender, education level, income, racial-ethnic group and pre-existing medical disorders.”

        https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.20.20215863v1

        I love the comment in the article: “The study is the first to compare brain scans pre/post Covid. It affected people with even a mild case, so please read and share if you know someone who’s had it.”

        Oh yeah, that will go over well!  “Hey sorry you had COVID & BTW you’re stupider now.”  I’m already unpopular enough because I wear a mask indoors and no longer shake hands with people.

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      • Bed Hardened June 22, 2021

        I didn’t even know this was being studied back in October! Maybe I just didn’t notice it while checking the blog posts here that month…
        Also, I’d keep doing what you’re doing with masks and not shaking hands considering the more transmissible Delta variant. Even if that variant didn’t exist, I would still mask up and do social distancing.

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