Coronavirus

[BoSoxGal]

This is an important piece discussing the phenomenon of young people (30s, 40s, 50s) having strokes from covid19 infection rather than serious respiratory symptoms. Noteworthy in the piece is the information that NY had a 4 fold increase in deaths at home over the past couple of months - most of these cases won’t ever be autopsied so linking them to covid19 isn’t possible, but it sounds like a probability exists that they were victims of the virus.

This is a free article from WashPo in their coronavirus coverage, and I strongly suggest reading and sharing it. It appears that covid19 is creeping up on some younger folks and killing them via blood clotting/strokes and because it’s not the typical presentation of the illness they’ve heard about, and because a massive stroke in those age categories is rare, younger folks might not seek medical attention from fear of ER covid19 exposure who really need help ASAP.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... -patients/

[Econoline]

Again, the more we learn about this virus, the more we realize we don't know yet.

We're still flying blind, without a map, avoiding the mountains by guesswork and intuition, hoping we can spot a flat patch of ground to land on before we run out of fuel.

[Bicycle Bill]

-"BB"-

[Lord Jim]

United States
Coronavirus
Cases:
1,036,417
Deaths:
59,284

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

The Washington State institute whose death projection modeling Trump has quoted the most, yesterday raised it's projected US death total from 60,000 (which we will blow past today; after a couple of days where the the death toll had dropped to around 1100 and 1300 yesterday we once again ballooned to well over north of 2000,) to 74,000 by early to mid-August...

In all fairness, given our federal system and the disparity between responsible state and local governments and the irresponsible ones, and the abject incompetence at the top of the national government, this country has got to be a very tough one to model with any accuracy...(And Lord knows how many thousands of needless deaths will now be added in a few weeks due to the reckless and stupid reopening moves made by morons like Brian Kemp)

Nevertheless, that 74,000 prediction looks way too optimistic, given where we are now, even with a substantial and sustained drop in daily totals (which is unlikely, given the new spikes and surges likely to brought on by some of the hare-brained reopening schemes currently being implemented)

By early to mid-August, we're likely to be a lot closer to 100k deaths..possibly even north of that number...

[MajGenl.Meade]

yesterday raised it's projected

[RayThom]

Ah, Bob Newhart. He's still on this side of the sod.

Bob Newhart records COVID-19 PSA for WGN Radio
https://wgnradio.com/dave-plier/bob-new ... wgn-radio/

[BoSoxGal]

This is a nightmare science fiction novel that we’d all like to put down now and walk away from.

Except we can’t because it’s real - and we brought it on ourselves.

[Lord Jim]

This is a nightmare science fiction novel that we’d all like to put down now and walk away from.

Man, ain't that the truth...

[Gob]

Police discovered 100 bodies stacked in unrefrigerated trucks outside a funeral home in Brooklyn Wednesday after police responded to 911 complaints from neighbors who had been complaining for weeks about the smell.



Authorities found two unrefrigerated U-Haul box trucks being used to store the bodies outside of Andrew T. Cleckley Funeral Home in Flatlands after neighbors filmed body bags being dragged into them in recent days.

There were as many as 50 corpses being stored in each truck, according to ABC News, as the facility struggled to keep up with the overwhelming surge of bodies due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Police found the bodies in various stages of decomposition.

The owner told city officials that its freezer had stopped working and they were forced to use the trucks as storage while bodies awaited burial or cremation.

'For weeks already, there have been trucks constantly outside unloading bodies. You could smell the death,' Jay Fredo told New York Daily News.

'Some of them have been dropped. I know it's a pandemic, but this is crazy. It's sick.'

No criminal charges were brought but the home was cited for failing to control the odors.

The facility was able to obtain a larger, refrigerated truck later in the day, the official said, and workers suited up in protective gear could be seen in the afternoon transferring bodies.

'I saw 15 bodies in the U-Haul box truck stacked up on one another, and more in the other,' one officer told the New York Daily News.

'They stored them right out on the street.'



A member of staff told ABC that there were a further 30 to 40 bodies inside and some were being kept on the floor.

'This funeral home is over-capacitated with human remains and that is true,' said Dr. David Penepent, a funeral director who teaches at SUNY Canton and was brought in by the state to help.

'He got overwhelmed with the number of remains that he had and he didn't know what to do and I'm here to assist him in this operation.'

John DiPietro, who owns the neighboring property, told the New York Post that cadavers had been mounting up at the funeral home for weeks.

'You don't respect the dead that way. That could have been my father, my brother,' said DiPietro.

According to the Post, the funeral home told police officers that the bodies were due to go to the crematorium, but nobody had come to collect them.

In contrast, ABC News reports that the funeral homeowner told city officials that their freezer was broken.

Funeral homes across New York City have been overwhelmed in recent weeks during the coronavirus pandemic.

[RayThom]

What happened to the practice of "you kill 'em, we chill 'em?

You can't trust anyone these days.

[BoSoxGal]

I have nothing but sympathy for this situation - funeral homes are being overwhelmed by the rate and number of deaths. It’s so easy for others to judge, like the man quoted in that piece saying it’s disrespectful to the dead - but what solutions are they offering? There are no solutions other than the state helping with cold storage, as they’ve now done. It sounds like maybe they dropped the ball in terms of communicating to funeral homes that they would provide such assistance as necessary. Now they’re helping and hopefully stepping up efforts to reach out to other mortuary services to check that they have all the capacity assistance they need.

Mortuary fraud happens, but I don’t think this is an instance of that. Pandemics overwhelm everything.

[Lord Jim]

The facts of this horrendous situation have required me to be such a Billy Bummer, it's nice to be able to post something genuinely hopeful based on solid science:

FDA will reportedly authorize use of remdesivir for Covid-19 after trial shows 'positive effect' on recovery time

(CNN)Researchers released some good news about a possible treatment for coronavirus Wednesday -- evidence that the experimental drug remdesivir might help patients recover more quickly from the infection.

The US Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved any drugs for the treatment of the coronavirus. But it plans to announce an emergency-use authorization for remdesivir, according to The New York Times. The authorization could come as soon as Wednesday, The Times reported, citing a senior administration official.

In a statement to CNN, the FDA said it is in talks with Gilead Sciences, the maker of remdesivir, about making the drug available to patients.

"As part of the FDA's commitment to expediting the development and availability of potential COVID-19 treatments, the agency has been engaged in ... discussions with Gilead Sciences regarding making remdesivir available to patients as quickly as possible, as appropriate," FDA spokesman Michael Felberbaum said in statement.

The government-funded study found that patients who took remdesivir recovered faster than patients who did not. It's not a home run, but federal officials are keen to provide any hope they can in a pandemic that has infected more than 1 million Americans and killed close to 60,000 of them.

The head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was optimistic about the results.

"The data shows that remdesivir has a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery," Dr. Anthony Fauci said at the White House during a meeting with President Donald Trump.

Results from the preliminary trial show remdesivir improved recovery time for coronavirus patients from 15 to 11 days. That's similar to the effect that the influenza drug Tamiflu has on flu. Tamiflu also doesn't cure patients quickly, but can reduce how long they are sick.

"Although a 31% improvement doesn't seem like a knockout 100%, it is very important proof of concept," Fauci said of remdesivir. "What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus."

Remdesivir also may reduce the likelihood that patients will die.

"Results also suggested a survival benefit, with a mortality rate of 8.0% for the group receiving remdesivir versus 11.6% for the placebo group," the NIAID said.

Normally, data about a drug's efficacy wouldn't be released this early from a preliminary trial.

But "whenever you have clear-cut evidence that a drug works, you have an ethical obligation to immediately let the people in the placebo group know so that they can have access," Fauci said.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/29/health/g ... index.html

[Big RR]

BSG--what you are saying could be true, but then, so far as I know, nothing will force a funeral home to agree to accept a body; if a mortuary does not have sufficient storage space (which could include refrigerated trailers, but not just U Haul moving trucks at ambient temperature), I don't see why a private business would accept them, especially if its refrigeration was broken. I've dealt with funeral homes on several occasions, and they will not accept a body until you contract with them for the services (some will permit a verbal agreement); perhaps the state can force them to take bodies in an emergency like this, but I haven't seen anything alleging this.

[BoSoxGal]

I suspect that the funeral home just didn’t want to say no to people, understanding that bodies for whom no arrangements can be made are being buried by the city on Hart’s Island.

Funeral homes in my experience are very much a part of the community like barber shops and local diners, the directors are usually familiar with the families around them and feel an obligation to serve - they often make special arrangements for payment and such out of that sense of duty. I realize I’ve lived in a lot of small towns/smaller cities in my life, but it’s my understanding that neighborhoods within NYC boroughs end up functioning in much the same way as a smaller city in terms of community.

It seems to me that if any nefarious intent was evident, a criminal citation would have issued. Perhaps time will reveal more, but again, at the moment I default to empathy.

[Big RR]

Perhaps but this is pretty eggregious; I have never been to a funeral home that had storage facilities for 10 bodies, let alone 100. Given that their refrigeration system was broken, they weren't doing anyone any favors by stacking bodies in unrefrigerated moving vans. It may be because they didn't want to say "no" rather than any seeking to capitalize on the situation monetarily, but it still is pretty unprofessional.

BTW, I can't find any details on burial of bodies on Hart Island, other than a regulation saying that, if there is a family, they must approve of the burial in writing; there may be a time beyond which a body is considered to be abandoned, but I doubt it is quick.

[BoSoxGal]

They’re burying any body unclaimed after 14 days on Hart’s, that’s been all over the news. They’ve buried hundreds on Hart’s already - maybe thousands? They are buried in such a way that they can be reclaimed later if possible, but many families will not have the means.


https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviru ... g-pandemic

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytime ... d.amp.html

Some folks seem to think this is horrific but I’m unsentimental about the whole burial ritual and I think Hart’s is a lovely place to end up - bodies are buried there unembalmed in pine boxes, so they eventually become one with the earth. Over a million people have been buried there by the city since the first - Union soldiers in the Civil War. There’s a good documentary film on the island that I just watched recently, before the pandemic.

[BoSoxGal]

Okay, this is propaganda put out by Chinese TV - and the initial response to the virus in China was clearly imperfect.

But, there are some real elements of truth about the USA response depicted accurately here.

[Scooter]

[Gob]

A nursing home in New York has reported a “horrifying” death toll of 98 people from the coronavirus as residential facilities continued to emerge as a deadly source of outbreaks across the world.

The death toll at the Isabella Geriatric Center in Manhattan is one of the worst such outbreaks in the United States and caused a shock even in hard-hit New York after an official state tally of nursing home deaths listed only 13 at the home as of Friday.

But officials at the 705-bed centre later confirmed that up to 46 residents who tested positive for Covid-19 had died, as well as an additional 52 people suspected to have the virus, Associated Press reported. Some died at the nursing home and some died after being treated at hospitals.

“It’s absolutely horrifying,” mayor Bill de Blasio said. “It’s just impossible to imagine so many people lost in one place.”

The number of bodies became so overwhelming the home ordered a refrigerator truck to store them because funeral homes have been taking days to pick up the deceased.

“Isabella, like all other nursing homes in New York City, initially had limited access to widespread and consistent in-house testing to quickly diagnose our residents and staff,” Audrey Waters, a spokeswoman for the nursing home, wrote in an email.

“This hampered our ability to identify those who were infected and asymptomatic, despite our efforts to swiftly separate anyone who presented symptoms.”

Isabella also encountered staffing shortages, prompting it to hire from outside agencies and early challenges securing personal protective equipment for employees. Waters said the home finally is getting more access to testing now.

A survey last month of nursing homes in New York state found that 19 had reported 20 or more deaths linked to the pandemic, raising the prospect of hundreds of unattributed Covid-19 deaths in a state where almost 24,000 people have died from the disease.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... g-outbreak

[Guinevere]

Likely half of the COVID-19 deaths in Massachusetts will be of residents in nursing homes. It’s horrible and horrifying and the Commonwealth still has yet to figure it out. They deployed the National Guard to test in all of them, and released PPE from the MEMA bunker, using local police to deploy it. This is showing how the model is inherently flawed - not enough skilled nursing care (mostly PCAs and aides), not enough staff overall, and not enough oversight, yet ridiculous costs. My heart breaks for all of those seniors and their families.