#south carolina coronavirus cases

[covid-safer-hotties]

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"In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed cutting the state’s public health funding by $300 million. And the Department of Health in Washington state slashed more than 350 positions at the end of last year and more than 200 this year." Tell me again that the Democrats are damage control: They can't even do the right thing in the states where they have absolute majorities. You should be livid, not complacent or complicit.

Analysis by Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez and McKenzie Beard

Good morning. I’m Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez, a KFF Health News correspondent based in Elko, Nev., which is about as high in elevation as Denver, the Mile-High City. Email me about your experiences with health care in rural America at jorozco@kff.org.

Today’s edition: The Harris-Walz campaign rolled out a plan to improve rural health care. Nebraska voters are set to weigh in on two conflicting abortion-related ballot initiatives. But first …

The boom-and-bust funding cycle for public health hits states

During the coronavirus pandemic, states received a rush of funding from the federal government to bolster their fight against the disease. In many cases, that cash flowed into state and local health departments, fueling a staffing surge to handle, among other things, contact tracing and vaccination efforts.

But public health leaders quickly identified a familiar boom-and-bust funding cycle as they warned about an incoming fiscal cliff once the federal grants sunset. Now, more than a year since the federal Department of Health and Human Services declared the end of the coronavirus emergency, states — such as Montana, California and Washington — face tough decisions about laying off workers and limiting public health services.

In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed cutting the state’s public health funding by $300 million. And the Department of Health in Washington state slashed more than 350 positions at the end of last year and more than 200 this year.

Public health experts warn that losing staff who perform functions like disease investigation, immunization, family planning, restaurant inspection and more could send communities into crisis.

“You cannot hire the firefighters when the house is already burning,” said Brian Castrucci, president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, an organization that advocates for public health policy.

In late September, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra declared a public health emergency for states affected by Hurricane Helene, allowing state and local health authorities in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee to more easily access federal resources. Last week, ahead of Hurricane Milton’s landfall in Florida, Becerra declared another public health emergency to aid the state’s response.

If states don’t have robust public health resources ready when disasters like this hit their communities, it can have devastating effects.

Local health department staffing grew by about 19 percent from 2019 to 2022, according to a report from the National Association of County and City Health Officials that examined 2,512 of the nation’s roughly 3,300 local departments. The same report found that half of those departments’ revenue in 2022 came from federal sources.

But in some places, the pandemic cash did little more than keep small health departments afloat. The Central Montana Health District, a public health agency serving five rural counties, received enough money to retain a staff member to help handle testing, contact tracing and rolling out the coronavirus vaccines. It wasn’t enough to hire extra workers, but it allowed officials to fill a position left empty when a staffer left the department, said Susan Woods, the district’s public health director.

Now, five full-time employees work for the health district — enough to scrape by, Woods said.

“Any kind of crisis, any kind of, God forbid, another pandemic, would probably send us crashing,” she said.

Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs for the national health officials’ group, said she expects layoffs and health department budget cuts to intensify. Those cuts come as health officials work to address issues that took a back seat in the pandemic, such as increases in rates of sexually transmitted infections, suicide and substance misuse.

And rural health departments deserve more attention, Casalotti said, as they are likely to be the most vulnerable and face compounding factors such as hospital closures and the loss of services including maternity and other women’s care.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling and journalism.

[beardedmrbean]

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden announced on Monday that he is commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment, takes office.

The move spares the lives of people convicted in killings, including the slayings of police and military officers, people on federal land and those involved in deadly bank robberies or drug deals, as well as the killings of guards or prisoners in federal facilities.

It means just three federal inmates are still facing execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.

“I’ve dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system,” Biden said in a statement. “Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”

The Biden administration in 2021 announced a moratorium on federal capital punishment to study the protocols used, which suspended executions during Biden's term. But Biden actually had promised to go further on the issue in the past, pledging to end federal executions without the caveats for terrorism and hate-motivated, mass killings.

While running for president in 2020, Biden's campaign website said he would “work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.”

Similar language didn't appear on Biden's reelection website before he left the presidential race in July.

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden's statement said. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president, and now president, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”

He took a political jab at Trump, saying, “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has spoken frequently of expanding executions. In a speech announcing his 2024 campaign, Trump called for those “caught selling drugs to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.” He later promised to execute drug and human smugglers and even praised China's harsher treatment of drug peddlers. During his first term as president, Trump also advocated for the death penalty for drug dealers.

There were 13 federal executions during Trump's first term, more than under any president in modern history, and some may have happened fast enough to have contributed to the spread of the coronavirus at the federal death row facility in Indiana.

Those were the first federal executions since 2003. The final three occurred after Election Day in November 2020 but before Trump left office the following January, the first time federal prisoners were put to death by a lame-duck president since Grover Cleveland in 1889.

Biden faced recent pressure from advocacy groups urging him to act to make it more difficult for Trump to increase the use of capital punishment for federal inmates. The president's announcement also comes less than two weeks after he commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic, and of 39 others convicted of nonviolent crimes, the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history.

The announcement also followed the post-election pardon that Biden granted his son Hunter on federal gun and tax charges after long saying he would not issue one, sparking an uproar in Washington. The pardon also raised questions about whether he would issue sweeping preemptive pardons for administration officials and other allies who the White House worries could be unjustly targeted by Trump’s second administration.

Speculation that Biden could commute federal death sentences intensified last week after the White House announced he plans to visit Italy on the final foreign trip of his presidency next month. Biden, a practicing Catholic, will meet with Pope Francis, who recently called for prayers for U.S. death row inmates in hopes their sentences will be commuted.

Martin Luther King III, who publicly urged Biden to change the death sentences, said in a statement issued by the White House that the president "has done what no president before him was willing to do: take meaningful and lasting action not just to acknowledge the death penalty’s racist roots but also to remedy its persistent unfairness.”

Donnie Oliverio, a retired Ohio police officer whose partner was killed by one of the men whose death sentence was converted, said the execution of "the person who killed my police partner and best friend would have brought me no peace."

“The president has done what is right here,” Oliverio said in a statement also issued by the White House, “and what is consistent with the faith he and I share.”

[dnickels]

tbh one of the first things i tell young people getting into political campaigning is to make sure you don't block the "other" side, because inevitably you end up in a leftwing tankie echo chamber type thing, overestimate your numbers horrendously, make a bunch of mis-steps based on the assumption you've got it in the bag, and end up getting annihilated at the ballot box. i see your bernie primary trauma and raise you a bbc exit poll showing corbyn had been completely wiped out in an almost historically bad loss 😔😔😔

Sure-- I would argue that issues with the Sanders campaign had more to do with the fact that he (and by extension his top staffers) weren't ready to go to war with the Democratic Party rather than any 'tankie' overconfidence. Sanders still won't, I think he genuinely believes himself to be responsible for Trump on some level (ridiculous and stupid, get a grip Bernard) and it explains his devotion to taking the party line even when its morally reprehensible and will never win him anything from Schumer et al. The Corbyn situation was different in meaningful ways but at least one issue was that he wasn't willing to actually crush his enemies within the party, or even think of them as enemies at all, and the Labour institution was willing to sabotage him even at the expense of the country.

There were obviously many many more issues at work in both cases but the point I'm making here is that massive liberal institutions are much more powerful than left insurgencies and their capacity to Do Politics-- raise funds, disseminate messages, craft media narratives-- at the national level dwarfs even an incredible volunteer operation like Sanders in 2020. Sanders dominated in states where he had a strong ground presence, ie, where people actually had a chance to hear about Bernie Sanders, and then fell in places like South Carolina where he didn't invest in a similar campaign presence. Once the narrative could coalesce around an alternative it was over-- it might not have been but the intrusion of the novel coronavirus and the Dems' willingness to kill their own voters was the end of the Sanders campaign.

My point being: at no point do alleged Stalinists factor in here at all. There's so much brow beating about how a handful of communist subversives are going to spoil everything by voting for Howie Hawkins and its nonsense. It's nonsense! The electoral college still exists!! A random electrician in Manitowoc, Wisconsin is 10,000 times more likely to play a key role in the fate of the country than I am and he is not on tumblr. Anyone with real concerns should be out canvassing in Dearborn or Scranton, not shadowboxing the ghost of the Comintern.

[newstfionline]

Monday, November 25, 2024

Large Swath of US Faces Power Supply Risk During Extreme Cold (Bloomberg) The entire US Northeast faces an elevated threat of electricity shortages this winter in case of extreme cold weather, in part due to limited capacity on natural gas pipelines that supply power plants. All US regions have sufficient electricity supplies to meet their needs in normal weather conditions, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. said Thursday in its annual winter reliability assessment. But harsh weather could threaten energy reserves across a broad swath of the country, from the Northeast to the Midwest and Texas. Prolonged cold can cause power plants to break down even as electricity demand soars, while short days with low winds can slash renewable generation. The Northeast, according to NERC, faces the added problem of limited natural gas pipeline capacity hampering the ability of power plants to burn more of the fuel when needed. In last year’s winter assessment, only New England was flagged for pipeline constraints—now, the problem extends as far west as Chicago and as far south as North Carolina.

The rising price of paying the national debt is a risk for Trump’s promises on growth and inflation (AP) Donald Trump has big plans for the economy—and a big debt problem that will be a hurdle to delivering on them. Trump has bold ideas on tax cuts, tariffs and other programs, but high interest rates and the price of repaying the federal government’s existing debt could limit what he’s able to do. Not only is the federal debt at roughly $36 trillion, but the spike in inflation after the coronavirus pandemic has pushed up the government’s borrowing costs such that debt service next year will easily exceed spending on national security. The higher cost of servicing the debt gives Trump less room to maneuver with the federal budget as he seeks income tax cuts. It’s also a political challenge because higher interest rates have made it costlier for many Americans to buy a home or new automobile. And the issue of high costs helped Trump reclaim the presidency in November’s election.

Can RFK Jr make America's diet healthy again? (BBC) Robert F Kennedy Jr has set his sights on changing how Americans eat and drink. From the dyes in Fruit Loops cereal to seed oils in chicken nuggets, Kennedy—who is President-elect Trump's choice to lead the Department of Health and Human Services—has long spoken out against ingredients that he says hurt Americans' health. “We are betraying our children by letting [food] industries poison them,” Kennedy said at a rally in November, after he had ended his independent presidential bid and backed Donald Trump. But if Kennedy hopes to target junk food, he will first have to shake up the country's food regulations—and run up against Big Food. “What he's suggesting is taking on the food industry,” said former New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle. “Will Trump back him up on that? I’ll believe it when I see it.”

Afraid of losing the US-Canada trade pact, Mexico alters its laws and removes Chinese parts (AP) Mexico has been taking a bashing lately for allegedly serving as a conduit for Chinese parts and products into North America, and officials here are afraid a re-elected Donald Trump or politically struggling Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could try to leave their country out of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade agreement. Mexico’s ruling Morena party is so afraid of losing the trade deal that President Claudia Sheinbaum said Friday the government has gone on a campaign to get companies to replace Chinese parts with locally made ones. While Sheinbaum claimed Mexico had been working on that effort since t he 2021 global supply chain crisis—when factories around the world were stalled by a lack of parts and particularly computer chips from Asia—it appears to be an uphill battle. Even the United States has faced big challenges in moving chip production back home despite billions in subsidies and incentives.

Haiti wonders what’s next as gang violence surges and UN peacekeeping mission flops (AP) When Kenyan police arrived in Haiti as part of a U.N.-backed mission earlier this year to tackle gang violence, hopes were high. Coordinated gang attacks on prisons, police stations and the main international airport had crippled the country’s capital and forced the prime minister to resign, plunging Haiti into an unprecedented crisis. But the crisis has only deepened since the international policing contingent arrived. The main international airport closed for the second time this year after gangs opened fire on commercial flights in mid-November, striking a flight attendant. Gunmen also are attacking once-peaceful communities to try and seize control of the entire capital, taking advantage of political infighting that led to the abrupt dismissal of the prime minister earlier this month. Now, a new prime minister is tasked with turning around a nation that sees no escape from its troubles as Haitians wonder: How did the country reach this point?

US bribery and fraud charges are a big test yet for India’s Adani, one of Asia’s richest men (AP) Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, one of Asia’s richest men, may be facing his biggest challenge yet with an indictment by U.S. prosecutors for alleged fraud and bribery. But it’s unclear just how the case will affect his businesses and own future—as well as the Indian economy and government. Adani, a major power player in India perceived as close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was charged Wednesday with securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud at a court in Brooklyn, New York. The test for the tycoon and his multibillion dollar empire spawning everything from energy and ports to media and agriculture, comes just after the 62-year-old founder and his sprawling business empire had bounced back after losing more than $60 billion in market value in early 2023 following allegations of stock price manipulation and fraud by the short-selling firm Hindenburg Research. It also raises questions about corporate governance and crony capitalism in India’s economy, which Modi has vowed to make the world’s third largest, intensifying scrutiny on the outsized influence of large, family-run conglomerates. Asia’s richest man is another Indian billionaire, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries.

Russia says US using Taiwan to stir crisis in Asia (Reuters) The United States is using Taiwan to provoke a serious crisis in Asia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko told TASS news agency in remarks published on Sunday, reiterating Moscow's backing of China's stance on Taiwan. "We see that Washington, in violation of the 'one China' principle that it recognises, is strengthening military-political contacts with Taipei under the slogan of maintaining the 'status quo', and increasing arms supplies," Rudenko told the state news agency. "The goal of such obvious U.S. interference in the region's affairs is to provoke the PRC (People's Republic of China) and generate a crisis in Asia to suit its own selfish interests." China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, a claim that Taiwan's government rejects.

Israeli Strike in the Heart of Beirut Kills at Least 20 (NYT) An Israeli airstrike on a residential building in central Beirut killed at least 20 people on Saturday, the Lebanese Health Ministry said, part of an intensifying Israeli military campaign that appears aimed at pressuring Hezbollah into a cease-fire deal. The strike was an attempt to assassinate a top Hezbollah military commander, Mohammad Haidar, according to three Israeli defense officials who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations. Hezbollah officials on Saturday afternoon said that none of the group’s leaders were at the site of the airstrike, and later in the day, one of the Israeli officials said Mr. Haidar was not killed. The death toll in the latest strike was expected to rise, and at least 66 people were injured, according to the Health Ministry. The strike came just after 4 a.m., jolting Beirut residents awake with thundering explosions that left much of the city enveloped in acrid smoke. It was the third strike this week in central Beirut, an area that had largely been spared since the war between Hezbollah and Israel escalated.

War fatigue deepens in Israel as deaths mount and fighting expands (Washington Post) Ari Krauss, a reservist in the Israeli military’s elite Golani Brigade, said he spent his days inside Gaza exploding underground tunnels. At night, he recalled, he would join the other fathers in uniform on a sandy hill, trying to get enough cellphone bars to FaceTime his infant daughter. His day job seemed like a distant memory. Early in the war, the brigade sent a letter to his company apologizing for drafting him but committing to no date for his full return. Being a soldier, the letter made clear, was now his main calling. Krauss’s situation, or some version of it, is shared by some 80,000 Israeli reservists who are planning to leave, or have already left, families, jobs and studies to serve on the front lines of Israel’s grinding wars in Gaza and Lebanon. Increasingly, some are choosing not to report for duty, putting further strain on an overextended military amid an ever-widening regional war. Nadav Shoshani, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces, said in a briefing last week that the army’s enlistment numbers are down by about 15 percent since the period after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. More than 800 soldiers have been killed since October 2023. “Wherever you look—the economic crisis, the toll on the reservists and their families, and of course the dead and the wounded—Israeli society is definitely at the edge of its capacity,” said Gayil Talshir, a political analyst at Hebrew University.

More aid workers have been killed in 2024 than in any other year, UN says (AP) More aid workers, health care staffers, delivery personnel and other humanitarians have been killed in 2024 than in any other single year, the United Nations reported Friday. Bloodshed in the Middle East has been the single-biggest cause of the 281 deaths among humanitarians globally this year, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Humanitarians “are working courageously and selflessly in places like Gaza, Sudan, Lebanon, Ukraine and so on. They show the best humanity has to offer, and they are getting killed in return—in record numbers,” OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said. A total of 268 of the humanitarians killed—including from non-U.N. organizations like the Red Cross and Red Crescent��were national staff, while 13 were international staff.

Giving thanks (AP) It’s the season of giving thanks, and being in the mood for gratitude shapes who we are as a species and how we connect with the people around us. “This is something that is part of our human DNA,” said Sarah Schnitker, a psychologist at Baylor University. “It is a glue, in a sense, that holds us together.” Giving thanks might be good for you, too: A 2016 study found that people who wrote letters of gratitude reported better mental health and saw changes in their brain activity—even months down the line. But researcher Jenae Nelson pointed out that recognizing the giver, not just the gift, is key. So, if Thanksgiving has you in a mood for gratitude, she suggested focusing on thanking the people in your life, rather than just making “gratitude lists” of the stuff you have. “It’s not just about stuff and materialism,” Nelson said. “It’s about relationships, and the things that people do for you, and then the things that you can in turn do back for other people.”

[vmvijay]

Corona In America: America Is Done With Coronravirus Buy Covid 19 Is Not Done With America Why - अमेरिका भले ही कोरोना को भूलने की कोशिश कर रहा हो पर वायरस उसे नहीं भूल रहा है

Corona In America: America Is Done With Coronravirus Buy Covid 19 Is Not Done With America Why – अमेरिका भले ही कोरोना को भूलने की कोशिश कर रहा हो पर वायरस उसे नहीं भूल रहा है

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पढ़ें अमर उजाला ई-पेपर Free में कहीं भी, कभी भी।

70 वर्षों से करोड़ों पाठकों की पसंद

ख़बर सुनें

ख़बर सुनें

अमेरिका के राष्ट्रपति डोनाल्ड ट्रंप के चमत्कारिक पूर्वानुमान को एक महीना हो चुका है, जब अप्रैल में डोनाल्ड ट्रंप ने कहा था कि जैसे ही गर्मी पड़नी शुरू हो जाएगी, कोरोना के मामले चमत्कारिक तरीके से कम हो जाएंगे। लेकिन ऐसा बिल्कुल नहीं हुआ है और ना ट्रंप का वो दावा सही…

[newsaryavart]

अमेरिका में कई जगह सामान्य हुआ जीवन, क्या कोरोना का अमेरिका से संबंध खत्म?

अमेरिका में कई जगह सामान्य हुआ जीवन, क्या कोरोना का अमेरिका से संबंध खत्म?

[ad_1]

पढ़ें अमर उजाला ई-पेपर Free में कहीं भी, कभी भी।

70 वर्षों से करोड़ों पाठकों की पसंद

ख़बर सुनें

ख़बर सुनें

अमेरिका के राष्ट्रपति डोनाल्ड ट्रंप के चमत्कारिक पूर्वानुमान को एक महीना हो चुका है, जब अप्रैल में डोनाल्ड ट्रंप ने कहा था कि जैसे ही गर्मी पड़नी शुरू हो जाएगी, कोरोना के मामले चमत्कारिक तरीके से कम हो जाएंगे। लेकिन ऐसा बिल्कुल नहीं हुआ है और ना ट्रंप का वो दावा सही…

[weelectronicstudentreviewstuff]

Apple to Reclose Dozens of Retail Stores in US as Covid-19 Cases Spike

Apple to Reclose Dozens of Retail Stores in US as Covid-19 Cases Spike

Image for Representation (Image: Reuters)

Apple has already reclosed 47 stores in recent weeks in the United States as Covid-19 cases continue to rise rapidly.

IANS

Last Updated: July 2, 2020, 11:36 AM IST

Apple which has reclosed 47 own-branded retail stores in the US would shut 30 additional stores by Thursday, the media reported. “Due to current COVID-19 conditions in…

[amitbchoudhury]

Gov. McMaster extends state of emergency as South Carolina coronavirus cases continue to spike

Gov. McMaster extends state of emergency as South Carolina coronavirus cases continue to spike

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Gov. McMaster extends state of emergency as South Carolina coronavirus cases continue to spike

Health official more concerned about COVID-19 in state ‘than ever before’

Updated: 6:09 PM EDT Jun 10, 2020

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FOR HOW YOU ARE GOING TO ACT, AND THE OPPORTUNITIES YOU GIVE US, AND WE PRAY IN…

[athelind]

It looks like COVID-19 cases are trending downward or even declining in places with active protests (and continued closures), and increasing in states with less protesting (and more "open for business").

The key summary:

In major cities including New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington, DC, and Chicago, where numerous protests have taken place in recent weeks, numbers of new coronavirus cases are actually declining, despite widespread testing. Coronavirus cases are also trending downward in Minnesota, the state where Floyd was killed, and where the protests started.

Meanwhile, across many southern states where protests were not as prevalent — Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Oklahoma — coronavirus infection rates and hospitalizations are trending towards new all-time highs.

I've been somewhat concerned that the right would try to blame an upswing in cases on the protests, but it looks like the actual data is hard to spin -- especially since it's being reported in Business Insider, hardly a lefty revolutionary rag.

[feminist-space]

Tw for psychosis

Article is from the New York Times

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"Almost immediately, Dr. Hisam Goueli could tell that the patient who came to his psychiatric hospital on Long Island this summer was unusual.

The patient, a 42-year-old physical therapist and mother of four young children, had never had psychiatric symptoms or any family history of mental illness. Yet there she was, sitting at a table in a beige-walled room at South Oaks Hospital in Amityville, New York, sobbing and saying that she kept seeing her children, ages 2 to 10, being gruesomely murdered and that she herself had crafted plans to kill them.

“It was like she was experiencing a movie, like ‘Kill Bill,’” said Goueli, a psychiatrist.

The patient described one of her children being run over by a truck and another decapitated. “It’s a horrifying thing that here’s this well-accomplished woman and she’s like ‘I love my kids, and I don’t know why I feel this way that I want to decapitate them,’” he said.

The only notable thing about her medical history was that the woman, who declined to be interviewed but allowed Goueli to describe her case, had become infected with the coronavirus in the spring. She had experienced only mild physical symptoms from the virus, but, months later, she heard a voice that first told her to kill herself and then told her to kill her children.

At South Oaks, which has an inpatient psychiatric treatment program for COVID-19 patients, Goueli was unsure whether the coronavirus was connected to the woman’s psychological symptoms. “Maybe this is COVID-related, maybe it’s not,” he recalled thinking.

“But then,” he said, “we saw a second case, a third case and a fourth case, and we’re like, ‘There’s something happening.’”

Indeed, doctors are reporting similar cases across the country and around the world. A small number of COVID patients who had never experienced mental health problems are developing severe psychotic symptoms weeks after contracting the coronavirus.

In interviews and scientific articles, doctors described:

A 36-year-old nursing home employee in North Carolina who became so paranoid that she believed her three children would be kidnapped and, to save them, tried to pass them through a fast-food restaurant’s drive-thru window.

A 30-year-old construction worker in New York City who became so delusional that he imagined his cousin was going to murder him, and, to protect himself, he tried to strangle his cousin in bed.

A 55-year-old woman in Britain had hallucinations of monkeys and a lion and became convinced a family member had been replaced by an impostor.

Beyond individual reports, a British study of neurological or psychiatric complications in 153 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 found that 10 people had “new-onset psychosis.” Another study identified 10 such patients in one hospital in Spain. And in COVID-related social media groups, medical professionals discuss seeing patients with similar symptoms in the Midwest, Great Plains and elsewhere.

“My guess is any place that is seeing COVID is probably seeing this,” said Dr. Colin Smith at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, who helped treat the North Carolina woman. He and other doctors said their patients were too fragile to be asked whether they wanted to be interviewed for this article, but some, including the North Carolina woman, agreed to have their cases described in scientific papers.

Medical experts say they expect that such extreme psychiatric dysfunction will affect only a small proportion of patients. But the cases are considered examples of another way the COVID-19 disease process can affect mental health and brain function.

Although the coronavirus was initially thought primarily to cause respiratory distress, there is now ample evidence of many other symptoms, including neurological, cognitive and psychological effects, that could emerge even in patients who didn’t develop serious lung, heart or circulatory problems. Such symptoms can be just as debilitating to a person’s ability to function and work, and it’s often unclear how long they will last or how to treat them.

Experts increasingly believe brain-related effects may be linked to the body’s immune system response to the coronavirus and possibly to vascular problems or surges of inflammation caused by the disease process.

“Some of the neurotoxins that are reactions to immune activation can go to the brain, through the blood-brain barrier, and can induce this damage,” said Dr. Vilma Gabbay, a co-director of the Psychiatry Research Institute at Montefiore Einstein in the Bronx, New York.

Brain scans, spinal fluid analyses and other tests didn’t find any brain infection, said Gabbay, whose hospital has treated two patients with post-COVID psychosis: a 49-year-old man who heard voices and believed he was the devil and a 34-year-old woman who began carrying a knife, disrobing in front of strangers and putting hand sanitizer in her food.

Physically, most of these patients didn’t get very sick from COVID-19, reports indicate. The patients that Goueli treated experienced no respiratory problems, but they did have subtle neurological symptoms like hand tingling, vertigo, headaches or diminished smell. Then, two weeks to several months later, he said, they “develop this profound psychosis, which is really dangerous and scary to all of the people around them.”

Also striking is that most patients have been in their 30s, 40s and 50s. “It’s very rare for you to develop this type of psychosis in this age range,” Goueli said, since such symptoms more typically accompany schizophrenia in young people or dementia in older patients. And some patients — like the physical therapist who took herself to the hospital — understood something was wrong, while usually “people with psychosis don’t have an insight that they’ve lost touch with reality.”

Some post-COVID patients who developed psychosis needed weeks of hospitalization in which doctors tried different medications before finding one that helped.

Dr. Robert Yolken, a neurovirology expert at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, said that although people might recover physically from COVID-19, in some cases their immune systems might be unable to shut down or might remain engaged because of “delayed clearance of a small amount of virus.”

Persistent immune activation is also a leading explanation for brain fog and memory problems bedeviling many COVID survivors, and Emily Severance, a schizophrenia expert at Johns Hopkins, said post-COVID cognitive and psychiatric effects might result from “something similar happening in the brain.”

It may hinge on which brain region the immune response affects, Yolken said, adding, “some people have neurological symptoms, some people psychiatric and many people have a combination.”

Experts don’t know whether genetic makeup or perhaps an undetected predisposition for psychiatric illness put some people at greater risk. Dr. Brian Kincaid, medical director of psychiatric emergency department services at Duke, said the North Carolina woman once had a skin reaction to another virus, which might suggest her immune system responds zealously to viral infections.

Sporadic cases of post-infectious psychosis and mania have occurred with other viruses, including the 1918 flu and the coronaviruses severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome.

Sporadic cases of post-infectious psychosis and mania have occurred with other viruses, including the 1918 flu and the coronaviruses severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome.

“We think that it’s not unique to COVID,” said Dr. Jonathan Alpert, chairman of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who co-wrote the report on the Montefiore patients. He said studying these cases might help to increase doctors’ understanding of psychosis.

The symptoms have ranged widely, some surprisingly severe for a first psychotic episode, experts said. Goueli said a 46-year-old pharmacy technician, whose family brought her in after she became fearful that evil spirits had invaded her home, “cried literally for four days” in the hospital.

He said the 30-year-old construction worker, brought to the hospital by the police, became “extremely violent,” dismantling a hospital radiator and using its parts and his shoes to try to break out of a window. He also swung a chair at hospital staff.

How long the psychosis lasted and patients’ response to treatment has varied. The woman in Britain — whose symptoms included paranoia about the color red and terror that nurses were devils who would harm her and a family member — took about 40 days to recover, according to a case report.

The 49-year-old man treated at Montefiore was discharged after several weeks’ hospitalization, but “he was still struggling two months out” and required readmission, Gabbay said.

The North Carolina woman, who was convinced that cellphones were tracking her and that her partner would steal her pandemic stimulus money, didn’t improve with the first medication, said Dr. Jonathan Komisar at Duke, who said doctors initially thought her symptoms reflected bipolar disorder. “When we began to realize that maybe this isn’t going to resolve immediately,” he said, she was given an antipsychotic, risperidone and discharged in a week.

The physical therapist who planned to murder her children had more difficulty. “Every day, she was getting worse,” Goueli said. “We tried probably eight different medicines,” including antidepressants, antipsychotics and lithium. “She was so ill that we were considering electroconvulsive therapy for her because nothing was working.”

About two weeks into her hospitalization, she couldn’t remember what her 2-year-old looked like. Calls with family were heartbreaking because “‘You could hear one in the background saying ‘When is Mom coming home?’” Goueli said. “That brought her a lot of shame because she was like, ‘I can’t be around my kids and here they are loving me.’”

Ultimately, risperidone proved effective and after four weeks, she returned home to her family, “95% perfect,” he said.

“We don’t know what the natural course of this is,” Goueli said. “Does this eventually go away? Do people get better? How long does that normally take? And are you then more prone to have other psychiatric issues as a result? There are just so many unanswered questions.”"

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/health/covid-psychosis-mental.html

[fantasticartisandetective]

Omicron side effects you can experience the ill effects of to be sure after COVID-19 immunization

In case you're vaccinated against the coronavirus, the chance of severe catching severe COVID complaint is bleak, but that doesn't mean you have beaten the contagion. Omicron, which shows vulnerable fugitive parcels, can infect you indeed if you have taken both the dabs. Then we talk about the symptoms of Omicron that people suffer from indeed after vaccination Omicron Varient Symptoms Reuters reported that the symptoms of the omicron variety were “ veritably minor” and could be handled at home. Scholars at a university with a milder form of the complaint were first described with these diseases. WHO reports that omicron, like other Coronavirus variants, can beget serious illness or death, especially in vulnerable individuals. The symptoms of COVID-19 include fever or chills, coughing, briefness of breath, frazzle, muscle or body pangs, headache, sore throat, loss of taste or smell, a watery nose, and uncomfortable breathing. Omicron Variant Beget Experimenters in South Africa believe that Omicron is to condemn for a recent shaft in COVID-19 infections in Gauteng, the country’s most vibrant fiefdom. A prestigious soccer club in Portugal was planted to have 13 cases of omicron on Monday. One of the men who were positive lately returned from a holiday to South Africa. Two individuals who had quite recently gone from Nigeria were determined to have omicron after they tried positive in Ontario, as indicated by Canada's Health Minister. Omicron Varient Preventives President Joe Biden emphasized at a Monday news conference that omicron is “ a cause for concern, not fear."As of Monday autumn, no cases of omicron have been reported in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Omicron, on the other hand, is believed to have spread quietly formerly. According to Julie Swann, an epidemic modelling and health systems expert at North Carolina State University, covering the United States is still a long way from what it should be. Presumably, in the United States, the experimenter says, “ but we haven’t sequenced enough samples or tested enough people.” Omicron Variant Treatment It’s unknown whether omicron infections beget more severe conditions than other types. Despite this, primary exploration indicates that hospitalization rates are adding in South Africa. The contagion may also be suitable to overcome former infection impunity or COVID-19 vaccination to beget a advanced infection. Medical experts advise people to exercise caution until further information is available. This understanding ought to be treated in a serious way," Swann said. Regardless of whether this one ends up being a catastrophe, there will be another. March 10, 2022, 1154 pm

[weheartchrisevans]

BOSTON — So you're Tim Scott, the Republican senator from South Carolina who opposes Roe v. Wade and wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and you get a call from Chris Evans, a Hollywood star and lifelong Democrat who has been blasting President Trump for years. He wants to meet. And film it. And share it on his online platform. Can anybody say "Borat?" “I was very skeptical,” admits Scott. “You can think of the worst-case scenario.”But then Scott heard from other senators. They vouched for Evans, most famous for playing Captain America in a series of films that have grossed more than $1 billion worldwide. The actor also got on the phone with Scott’s staff to make a personal appeal.

It worked. Sometime in 2018, Scott met on camera with Evans in the nation’s capital, and their discussion, which ranged from prison reform to student loans, is one of more than 200 interviews with elected officials published on “A Starting Point,” an online platform the actor helped launch in July. Not long after, Evans appeared on Scott’s Instagram Live. They have plans to do more together.

“While he is a liberal, he was looking to have a real dialogue on important issues,” says Scott. “For me, it’s about wanting to have a conversation with an audience that may not be accustomed to hearing from conservatives and Republicans.”

Evans, actor-director Mark Kassen and entrepreneur Joe Kiani launched “A Starting Point” as a response to what they see as a deeply polarized political climate. They wanted to offer a place for information about issues without a partisan spin. To do that, they knew they needed both parties to participate.

Evans, 39, sat on the patio outside his Boston-area home on a recent afternoon talking about the platform. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans and spent some of the interview chasing around his brown rescue dog. Nearly 100 million people didn’t vote in the 2016 general election, Evans says. That’s more than 40 percent of those who were eligible.He believes the root of this disinterest is the nastiness on both sides of the aisle. Many potential voters simply turn off the news, never mind talking about actual policy.“A Starting Point” is meant to offer a digital home for people to hear from elected officials without having the conversation framed by Tucker Carlson or Rachel Maddow.

“The idea is . . . ‘Listen, you’re in office. I can’t deny the impact you have,’ ” says Evans. “ ‘You can vote on things that affect my life.’ Let this be a landscape of competing ideas, and I’ll sit down with you and I’ll talk with you.”

Or, as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has appeared on the site, puts it, “Sometimes, boring is okay. You’re being presented two sides. Everything doesn’t have to be sensational. Sometimes, it can just be good facts.” Evans wasn’t always active in politics. At Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, he focused on theater, not student government. And he moved away from home his senior year, working at a casting agency in New York as he pushed for acting gigs. His uncle, Michael E. Capuano, served as a congressman in Massachusetts for 20 years, but other than volunteering on some of his campaign, Evans wasn’t particularly political.

In recent years, he’s read political philosopher Hannah Arendt and feminist Rebecca Solnit’s “The Mother of All Questions” — ex-girlfriend Jenny Slate gave him the latter — and been increasingly upset by Trump’s policies and behavior. He’s come to believe that he can state his own views without creating a conflict with “A Starting Point.” When he and Scott spoke on Instagram, the president wasn’t mentioned. In contrast, recently Evans and other members of the Avengers cast took part in a virtual fundraiser with Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala D. Harris.

“I don’t want to all of a sudden become a blank slate,” says Evans. “But my biggest issue right now is just getting people to vote. If I start saying, ‘vote Biden; f Trump,’ my base will like that. But they were already voting for Biden.”

(In September, Evans accidentally posted an image of presumably his penis online and, after deleting it, tweeted: “Now the I have your attention . . . Vote Nov. 3rd!!!”)

Evans began to contemplate the idea that became “A Starting Point” in 2017. He heard something reported on the news — he can’t remember exactly what — and decided to search out information on the Internet. Instead of finding concrete answers, Evans fell down the rabbit hole of opinions and conflicting claims. He began talking about this with Kassen, a friend since he directed Evans in 2011’s “Puncture.” What if they got the information directly from elected officials and presented it without a spin? Kassen, in turn, introduced Evans to Kiani, who had made his fortune through a medical technology company he founded and, of the three, was the most politically involved.

Kiani has donated to dozens of Democratic candidates across the country and earlier this year contributed $750,000 to Unite the Country, a super PAC meant to support Joe Biden. But he appreciated the idea of focusing on something larger than a single race or party initiative. He, Kassen and Evans would fund “A Starting Point,” which has about 18 people on staff.

“There’s no longer ABC, NBC and CBS,” Kiani says. “There’s Fox News and MSNBC. What that means is that we are no longer being censored. We’re self-censoring ourselves. And people go to their own echo chamber and they don’t get any wiser. If you allow both parties to speak, for the same amount of time, without goading them to go on into hyperbole, when people look at both sides’ point of view of both topics, we think most of the time they’ll come to a reasonable conclusion.”

“What people do too often is they get in their silos and they only watch and listen and read what they agree with,” says John Kasich, the former Ohio governor and onetime Republican presidential candidate. “If you go to Chris’s website, you can’t bury yourself in your silo. You get to see the other point of view.” As much as some like to blame Trump for all the conflicts in Washington, Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) says he’s watched the tone shifting for decades. He appreciated sitting down with Evans and making regular submissions to “Daily Points,” a place on the platform for commentary no longer than two minutes. During the Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Coons recorded a comment on Judge Amy Coney Barrett and the Affordable Care Act.“ ‘A Starting Point’ needs to be a sustained resource,” Coons says. “Chris often talks about it being ‘Schoolhouse Rock’ for adults.”

It’s not by chance that Evans has personally conducted all of the 200-plus interviews on “A Starting Point” during trips to D.C. Celebrities often try to mobilize the public, whether it’s Eva Longoria, Tracee Ellis Ross and Julia Louis-Dreyfus hosting the Democratic National Convention or Jon Voight recording video clips to praise Trump. But in this case, Evans is using his status in a different way, to entice even the most hesitant Republican to sit down for an even-toned chat. And he’s willing to pose with anyone, even if it means explaining himself on “The Daily Show” after Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas posted a selfie with Evans. (Two attempts to interview Trump brought no response.) Murkowski remembers when Evans came to Capitol Hill for the first time in 2018. She admits she didn’t actually know who he was — she hadn’t yet seen any Marvel movies. She was in the minority.“We meet interesting and important people but, man, when Captain America was in the Senate, it was all the buzz,” she says. “And people were like, ‘Did you get your picture taken?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I sat down and did the interview.’ ‘You did an interview? How did you get an interview with him?’ ”What impressed Murkowski wasn’t his star power. It was the way Evans conducted the interview.“It was relaxing,” she says. “You didn’t feel like you were in front of a reporter who was just waiting for you to say something you would get caught on later. It was a dialogue . . . and we need more dialogue and less gotcha.”

“Starting Points” offers two-minute answers by elected officials in eight topic areas, including education, the environment and the economy. This is where the interviews Evans conducted can be found. “Daily Points” has featured a steady flow of Republicans and Democrats. A third area, “Counterpoints,” hosts short debates between officials on particular subjects. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, debated mail-in voting with Dusty Johnson, the Republican congressman from South Dakota.

“Most Americans can’t name more than five members of the United States House,” says Johnson. “ ‘A Starting Point’ allows thoughtful members to talk to a broader audience than we would normally have.”

The platform’s social media team pushes out potentially newsworthy clips, whether it’s Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) discussing his meeting with Barrett just before he tested positive for the coronavirus, or Angus King, the independent senator from Maine, criticizing Trump for his comments on a potential peaceful transfer of power after November’s election. Kassen notes that the King clip was viewed more than 175,000 times on “A Starting Point’s” Twitter account, compared with the 10,000 who caught in on CNN’s social media platform.

“Because it’s short-form media, we’re engineered to be social,” says Kassen. “As a result, when something catches hold, it’s passed around our audience pretty well.”

The key is to use modern tools to push out content that’s tonally different from what you might find on modern cable news. Or on social media. Which is what Evans hopes leads to more engagement. He’s particularly proud that more than 10,000 people have registered to vote through “A Starting Point” since it went online.

“If the downstream impact or the byproduct of this site is some sort of unity between the parties, great,” says Evans. “But if nobody’s still voting, it doesn’t work. We need people involved.”

[wilwheaton]

In South Carolina, which posted its largest single-day case increase yet on Friday, officials warned that some young people had become seriously ill from the virus and that those without serious symptoms could still infect family members and friends. “The increases that we’re seeing serve as a warning that young adults and youth are not immune to Covid-19,” said Dr. Brannon Traxler of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control. “They also tell us that younger South Carolinians are not taking social distancing seriously.” The clusters may be especially worrying to colleges and universities that plan to bring students back to campus in the fall, when both the coronavirus and the flu virus are expected to be circulating simultaneously. While some — like Cal State, the nation’s largest four-year public university system — have already told students classes will be almost exclusively online, others are betting that careful planning, broad testing and social limits can keep students and faculty members safe and healthy. Critical to their planning is the idea that young people will strictly adhere to social distancing and other mitigations, an assumption that one expert on the psychology of the young has called “delusional.”

Coronavirus Updates: Latest News and Analysis - The New York Times

Nobody could have predicted that a demographic with underdeveloped risk assessment and an overblown sense of their own invincibility would get bored with restrictions designed to save lives and put themselves and their peers at risk.

It’s all such a giant shock. Nobody could have predicted this. *eye rolling emoji*

[route22ny]

His big thank you: COVID-19 survivor writes notes to all 116 who treated him at Manhattan hosp

There’s deep and abiding gratitude. And there’s COVID-19 survivor Jeff Gerson, who took his thanks to another level.

Gerson arrived March 18 at NYU Langone Tisch Hospital in Manhattan with a 103-degree fever, an uncontrollable cough and a bad prognosis. The coronavirus casualty went on a ventilator the next day, waking up a month later with no memory of his miraculous recovery or the dozens of frontline workers who saved his life.

That was soon to change.

When the 44-year-old patient returned home May 2, he felt a gnawing need to thank them all — a total of 116 doctors, nurses, therapists and other anonymous medical heroes of the pandemic. The finance professional turned into an online detective, using a hospital app and his own insurance records to track down dozens of his benefactors across the next five months.

And then, as Thanksgiving neared, he sent them all a note of deep appreciation.

“If you are receiving this letter, it is because I have become aware that you had a part in saving my life,” wrote the grateful Upper East Side resident. “It is only after much effort on my part to find your names that I realize just how many of you there were.”

Gerson, now six months out of the hospital and healthy, recalled the flood of emotions accompanying his recovery from a virus that has claimed more than 260,000 American lives.

“I was crying every morning, literally,” said Gerson. “I had questions. Why did I survive? I certainly had thoughts about what I needed to do in my life now, to make this worthwhile.”

He thought of the climactic scene in the film “Saving Private Ryan,” where the dying Tom Hanks character urged Matt Damon’s character to “earn this” — to carry on for those lost trying to save him.

“I was just really thankful, and lucky, and grateful,” he recalled. “I wanted to say thank you. I just wanted to thank everybody.”

His first thought was a party, but a peek outside his hospital room window provided a glimpse of how the world had changed since his hospitalization. Looking west on 33rd St. from First Ave., he could count on one hand the number of parked cars all the way across Manhattan to Penn Station.

“I had no idea what the rest of the world was going through,” he explained. “I was just so thankful these people were doing their job and taking the risks they had taken. And my inability to thank them for such special and heroic treatment was really leaving a void in my recovery process.”

It took a while, but Gerson compiled his list and composed the heartfelt three-page message of thanks that was sent out Nov. 10.

NYU Langone Dr. Luis Angel (pictured above, left) recalled the insanity engulfing the hospital back when Gerson arrived: 170 coronavirus patients, all on ventilators. Over the course of the next three months, about 40% of the hospital’s ventilated COVID-19 victims did not survive, he recalled.

Angel was surprised and thrilled by the unexpected thank you note from one who did.

“I’ll tell you, it’s incredible,” said Angel. “To find every name and give a thank you to everybody — we don’t live for that. But when we get it, we absolutely enjoy and appreciate that.”

Angel stresses he was just a cog in a bigger machine of Gerson’s saviors: “This is a credit to everyone. Everyone did the best for him.”

The dozens of workers whose efforts spared his life included visiting nurses from coast to coast, volunteers who came to the city from California, Georgia, Kentucky and South Carolina.

In the end, Gerson failed to reach just one of his rescuers: Dr. Sydney Mehl, who treated him only to die weeks later from the deadly virus. Gerson recalled searching the internet for Mehl’s contact information only to find his obituary.

“I have since reached out to his wife, and found her through Facebook,” said Gerson. “He was dedicated right to the end. That’s the kind of doctor he was.” With Thanksgiving arriving, Gerson’s life is back to normal. He takes daily bike rides through Central Park, and spends time with his 6-year-old son.

“It’s surreal,” he said. “I won’t say it feels like it happened to somebody else. But I’m not feeling any ill effects, I have not slowed down at all.”

He believes the letter of thanks was sent at a good time, shortly after the six-month anniversary of his release from the hospital and as the number of positive cases starts to climb.

“It does feel like the timing of the letter just came together,” he said. “People are forgetting what’s going on out there on the front lines.”

Gerson ended his missive with a request for his heroes to contact him, to celebrate their heroic efforts and to keep up the life-saving work.

“Continue doing what you do,” he concluded. “Continue being the heroes you are and know you will forever have my gratitude.”

This article by Larry McShane appeared in today’s New York Daily News; photos by Barry Williams.

Happy Thanksgiving.

[weelectronicstudentreviewstuff]

Apple Decides to Yet Again Shut Some Retail Stores in US as Covid-19 Cases Surge

Apple Decides to Yet Again Shut Some Retail Stores in US as Covid-19 Cases Surge

Apple Inc said on Friday it is temporarily shutting some stores again in Florida, Arizona, South Carolina, and North Carolina in the United States, as novel coronavirus cases continue to rise in the country. Shares of the company, which said the closure would affect 11 stores in these states, were down 0.5%.

Apple had planned to reopen about 100 U.S. stores, mostly with curbside pickup but some…