Covid 10/21/20 | COVID 19 Information Page

Decent positive coverage on the Covid front – https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/10/20/925441975/studies-point-to-big-drop-in-covid-19-death-rates

“The study, which was of a single health system, finds that mortality has dropped among hospitalized patients by 18 percentage points since the pandemic began. Patients in the study had a 25.6% chance of dying at the start of the pandemic; they now have a 7.6% chance.

That’s a big improvement, but 7.6% is still a high risk compared with other diseases, and Horwitz and other researchers caution that COVID-19 remains dangerous.

The death rate "is still higher than many infectious diseases, including the flu," Horwitz says. And those who recover can suffer complications for months or even longer. "It still has the potential to be very harmful in terms of long-term consequences for many people."”

“"The people who are getting hospitalized now tend to be much younger, tend to have fewer other diseases and tend to be less frail than people who were hospitalized in the early days of the epidemic," Horwitz says.

So have death rates dropped because of improvements in treatments? Or is it because of the change in who’s getting sick?”

“"Clearly, there’s been something [that’s] gone on that’s improved the risk of individuals who go into these settings with COVID-19," he says.

Horwitz and others believe many things have led to the drop in the death rate. "All of the above is often the right answer in medicine, and I think that’s the case here, too," she says.”

“Horwitz believes that mask-wearing may be helping by reducing the initial dose of virus a person receives, thereby lessening the overall severity of illness for many patients.”

I think the last point is very important. IF you get a surge of virus in your body perhaps it causes the cytokine storm – but if the body slowly gets infected at a manageable level perhaps the body doesn’t go crazy. “Healthy” individuals in ER etc.. died as their dosage was potentially much higher than the common individual. VIRAL LOAD is key. Being healthy helps keep the viral load bar higher. Mask at some level will reduce viral load. No matter the mortality rate as an individual I would not like to get sick even a common cold – so do what you can to reduce that by washing hands, ventilate areas, wear a mask, and stay healthy exercise eat healthy and take Vitamin C, D, Zinc, and melatonin.

Vitamin D support again – https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-74825-z

“We find a significant negative association between UVI and COVID-19 deaths, indicating evidence of the protective role of UVB in mitigating COVID-19 deaths. If confirmed via clinical studies, then the possibility of mitigating COVID-19 deaths via sensible sunlight exposure or vitamin D intervention would be very attractive.”

Winter is coming….get your Vitamin D – get out in the Sun when possible – There should be a govt. push for this. Free distribution to the poor neighborhoods – Dr. Fauci admits to taking it why doesn’t society deserve it?

Today I thought I would show the otherside of the equation to quarantine/lockdown – employment/unemployment. Below chart shows that before covid essentially around 60% of population was employed and unemployment rate under 5%. We have the score of re-opening from https://www.multistate.us/issues/covid-19-state-reopening-guide . Also added in the chart is the amount of deaths and confirmations = in THEORY more opening more confirmation. We can see TX and FL surge past NY in confirmation but limited deaths. Ohio had a relatively open policy compared to all the states but confirmations did not blow up – and of recent FL has opened up more.

IF we look at the metric vs. open ranking in just August we can see that opening and unemployment are connected but the confirmation per capita is not so much so. Human behavior and the ability to police that seems to overwhelm any policy. Even though CA most restrictive it hasn’t really helped them in managing spread. OH most open but one of the lowest confirmation per capita.