Laborers and service industry workers with lower levels of education were about five times more likely to die from COVID-19 than people in higher socioeconomic positions, according to a study co-authored by a University of South Florida professor.
Researchers analyzed nearly 70,000 COVID deaths in 2020 for adults ages 25 to 64 and also looked at whether individuals had any college education and what job sectors they worked in.
The team found 68% of COVID-19 deaths among working age adults during the first year of the pandemic were people in low socioeconomic positions with jobs in labor, retail and the service industry.
These jobs typically required on-site attendance and prolonged close contact with others.
Jason Salemi, an epidemiologist with USFs College of Public Health, is calling for improvements to workplace safety in those industries. Too often, he says, employers and safety officials focus on personal protective equipment like masks to curb infections. That is important, but Salemi argues a lot more needs to be done to protect frontline workers who have a higher chance of being exposed to the coronavirus.
We need to think about ventilation and filtration of the air for those who work in public indoor settings, he suggested, adding, Stressing the importance of testing and not coming into work sick, maybe offering paid sick leave if they [staff] do test positive.
The study was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. It found white women made up the largest population group considered high SEP, or socioeconomic position, which involved having at least a bachelors degree. More than half of Hispanic men analyzed in the data were in a low SEP. According to the study, the mortality rate of low SEP Hispanic men is 27 times higher than high SEP white women.
Salemi said he hopes the study raises awareness that getting back to normal does not mean the same thing for everyone. Workers in high-risk industries continue to face threats as coronavirus cases surge now.
And even if they don't get hospitalized, if they get sick, they might have to go home, they might not be able to make money during that time, he said. So just recognize that the simple steps we're able to take to bring down community transmission does an exceptional job at protecting these individuals.
Salemi authored the study with a team of researchers from the COVKID Project, which monitors data about the pandemics affect on children and teens. In this case, he said, they were studying the toll the virus has taken on the parents and grandparents of many young people.
The team plans to look at 2021 and 2022 data in the future to see how the availability of COVID-19 vaccines affects disparities in mortality.
Good morning, Mission, and welcome to Virus Village, your (somewhat regular) Covid-19 data dump.
Hospitalizations, recorded infections and positivity rates show some stability as R Number models dip below 1. Wastewater monitoring shows a recent decline before levelling off.
Belatedly, local celebrity experts now agree San Francisco has been in the midst of another surge, quickly blaming it on public pandemic fatigue. Once again, arguments over the efficacy of masks and mask mandates generate more than enough controversy to keep everyone distracted.
A new study from Mission and 24th indicates covid has become milder for many but may remain infectious beyond the standard five days (set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). In the Chronicle article, senior author of the study, Dr. Diane Havlir is quoted saying Milder illness does not mean no illness. It does not mean the illness doesnt affect peoples ability to go to work and support their families. And were still seeing hospitalizations. We are still in a pandemic, and we need to keep our response on pace with the virus.
Further down in the article, she observes: The new public health approach is personal responsibility.
Even if you have health care, access to the tools, a ventilated workplace and home and isolation support, its not easy to know what to do.
You may want to reconsider the gym.
During the less severe omicron surge, death rates soared for the elderly.
Public health still seems to fuctioning in Japan where a more cautious and a more consistent approach has promoted public trust and held down the numbers.
A cheerleader for personal responsibility, San Franciscos Department of Public Health suggests you remain covid ready, while providing some testing and vaccination programs. The Department seems to be busy running a PR campaign to cover up the mess at Laguna Honda.
A recent study shows the efficacy of Evushield during the initial omicron surge, while the Paxlovid rebound effect is only an introduction to the drugs mysteries. Another tool, the pulse oximeter, doesnt work well for people of color, with predictable consequences.
There are now 200 symptoms associated with long covid even though we still know next to nothing about it.
The Vaccine continues to work in protecting against severe illness. There is some evidence that Fully vaccinated individuals had a shorter duration of viable viral shedding and a lower rate of secondary transmission than partially vaccinated or unvaccinated individuals.
Although the second booster (4th shot) provides little or no benefit, more evidence suggests repeated vaccination does not exhaust the immune response by T cells.
Scroll down for todays covid numbers.
Over the past week, hospitalizations rose another 12 percent (representing 11 new patients). On May 31, DPH reports there were 100 covid hospitalizations,or about11.4 covid hospitalizations per 100,000 residents (based on an 874,000 population). Though still low, ICU patients rose into double figures during the week. The California Department of Public Health currently reports 96 covid patients in SF hospitals with 11 patients in ICU.
The latest report from the federal Department of Health and Human Services shows Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital with 14 covid patients and 8 ICU beds available, while across the Mission, CPMC had 12 covid patients and 4 ICU beds available. Of 98 reported covid patients in the City,29 were at either SFGH or UCSF, with at least 72 ICU beds available among reporting hospitals (which does not include the Veterans Administration or Laguna Honda). The California DPH currently reports 110 ICU beds available in San Francisco.
Between March 28 and May 27, DPH recorded 992 new infections among Mission residents (an increase of 13 percent from last week) or 191 new infections per 10,000 residents. During that period, Mission Bay had the highest rate at 331 new infections per 10,000 residents. Of 38 neighborhoods, 18 had rates above 200 per 10,000 residents, with 12 in the east and southeast sectors of the City. Treasure Island continued with the lowest rate and Lakeshore, the only neighborhood in the City with less than 50 percent of its population vaccinated, continued to have the second lowest rate.
DPH reports on May 24, the 7-day average of daily new infections recorded in the City rose to 481 or approximately 55 new infections per 100,000 residents (based on an 874,000 population), representing a 1.3 percent rise from last week. According to DPH, the 7-day average infection rate among vaccinated residents was 52.2 per 100,000 fully vaccinated residents and 108.1 per 100,000 unvaccinated residents. It is unclear whether fully vaccinated means 2, 3 or 4 doses. According to the New York Times the 7-day average number on May 24 was 569. The latest report from the Times says the 7-day average on May 31 was 519, a 3 percent rise over the past two weeks. State wastewater monitoring at the Citys Southeast sewer shed shows virus prevalence declining for a few days before flattening out at a relatively high level.
As of May 27, Asians have had 3,698 new recorded infections or 30.4 percent of the months cases so far; White 3,052 infections or 25.1 percent; Latinxs 1,444 infections or 11.9 percent; Blacks 434 infections or 3.6 percent; Multi-racials 91 infections or .7 percent; Pacific Islanders 74 infections or .6 percent; and Native Americans have had 23 recorded infections in May or .3 percent of the May totals so far.
The 7-day rolling Citywide average positivity rate dropped about .8 percent during the past week, while average daily testing rose 3 percent. Between March 28 and May 27, DPH reports an 8.1 percent positivity rate in the Mission. During that time, Portola had the highest postivity rate at 10.5 percent and Noe Valley had the lowest rate at 6.4 percent.
Vaccination rates in SF show virtually no change from last week with the number of residents who have received at least one dose rising .064 percent and the number of residents receiving a booster rising .6 percent.
For information on where to get vaccinated in and around the Mission, visit ourVaccination Page.
Four new covid-related deaths, including 3 more in May, have been reported, bringing the total since the beginning of the year to 186. DPH wont say how many were vaccinated. Nor does it provide information on the race/ethnicity or socio-economic status of those who have recently died. According to DPH COVID-19 deaths are suspected to be associated with COVID-19. This means COVID-19 is listed as a cause of death or significant condition on the death certificate. Using a phrase like suspected to be associated with indicates the difficulty in determining a covid death. The fog gets denser as DPH reports, incredibly as it has for months, only 21 of the deaths are known to have had no underlying conditions, or comorbidities. DPH only supplies cumulative figures on deaths.
The lack of reliable infection number data makes R Number estimates very uncertain. Covid R Estimation on May 24 estimated the San Francisco R Number had dropped below 1 to .94 while its estimate for the California R Number on May 30 dropped to .99. The ensemble, as of May 29, lowered its estimate of the San Francisco R Number to .91 and lowered its California R Number to .94. Note: Two models show SF under 1, with one recording a preposterous .19.
As of May 27, DPH has recorded 26 new infections in nursing homes (skilled nursing facilities) and 2 new deaths so far this month. In Single Room Occupancy hotels (SROs), DPH has recorded 181 infections and 0 new deaths so far in May.
A University of Queensland-led study has found millions of COVID-19 patients may have undiagnosed acute kidney injury (AKI).
AKI is a condition where the kidneys suddenly fail to filter waste from the blood, which can lead to serious illness or even death.
Existing data indicates approximately 20 per cent of patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 develop AKI, rising to roughly 40 per cent for those in intensive care.
But UQ PhD candidate and kidney specialist Dr Marina Wainstein said the true numbers could be double those figures.
Doctors look at the amount of urine a patient passes and the level of a compound called creatinine in the blood, which rises when the kidneys aren't working well.
However, if that creatinine rise occurs before a patient presents to hospital, we can miss the AKI diagnosis and fail to manage the patient appropriately in those early, critical days of hospitalization."
Dr Marina Wainstein, UQ PhD candidate and kidney specialist
Dr Wainstein said when researchers also measured the fall in creatinine levels, which often follows the initial rise, the rate of AKI diagnosis in COVID-19 patients doubled.
"That was a pretty shocking finding," she said.
Dr Wainstein said 'missing' AKI in COVID-19 patients is dangerous.
"Even though the AKI is already starting to improve in hospital, our research shows that these patients have worse in-hospital outcomes and are more likely to die compared to patients with no AKI," she said.
Dr Wainstein said treatment for AKI can be as simple as checking a patient's hydration level and stopping medications that can be toxic to the kidneys.
Study supervisor Dr Sally Shrapnel, from UQ's School of Mathematics and Physics, said collecting and analysing data for the project during the pandemic proved challenging.
"Typically data scientists work with complete, well curated registry data, but in this project it was collected by hospital staff working under extremely onerous conditions in a variety of different resource settings," she said.
"Curating and cleaning the data turned out to be a significant part of the project."
Dr Shrapnel said the researchers were able to include data from resource-poor countries, where community-acquired AKI is also more common.
"These people have limited access to healthcare and are more likely to present late in the disease process."
Dr Shrapnel said a more comprehensive definition of AKI one which can detect cases that develop in the community - needs to be implemented as soon as possible.
"Now we have the data showing a large gap in AKI diagnosis exists, it's time to test this definition in a clinical trial so we can identify all AKI patients early and hopefully prevent these awful outcomes."
Source:
Journal reference:
Wainstein, M., et al. (2022) Use of an extended KDIGO definition to diagnose acute kidney injury in patients with COVID-19: A multinational study using the ISARICWHO clinical characterisation protocol. PLOS Medicine. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003969.
COVID-19 isnt vanishing and probably will require yearly shots like the flu, according to U.S. officials who must decide whether to launch another booster campaign this fall and if a variant-specific booster shot would be an upgrade on existing vaccines.
Unlike vaccines that stave off illness for many years, the protection offered by the first generation of COVID-19 vaccines wanes within several months.
We did not know a year or two ago when vaccines were first available as to what their durability would be in the face of new variants. We now understand that resilience of vaccination is not what wed like it to be. Its not a tetanus vaccine that lasts 10 years, said Cameron Wolfe, an associate professor of medicine at Duke University.
U.S. regulators authorized a second booster shot for people 50 and older earlier this year. Drugmakers and White House officials have signaled that a wider campaign will likely unfold before the winter, when the virus tends to proliferate.
It could become an annual tradition.
Were going to be dealing with this virus on a chronic basis, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told PIX11 over Memorial Day weekend. Depending upon what this virus does, there is certainly a reasonably good chance that we will have the same sort of situation that we have with influenza, where every year you have to re-boost people to keep that protection up.
One of the main challenges will be getting people to take the shots. About two-thirds of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19 but less than a third of the population has received an initial booster.
Also, scientists who advise the Food and Drug Administration will almost certainly demand data that shows giving booster shots to the young and healthy is necessary before endorsing another campaign.
White House COVID coordinator Ashish K. Jha said he wont put his thumb on the scale when it comes to boosters for people younger than 50.
I really do leave that up to FDA to decide, he said Thursday.
Another challenge will be making enough shots while keeping up with the ever-mutating virus. Tailoring the best COVID-19 vaccine is like trying to catch a moving train, with new spinoffs of the highly contagious omicron variation seeming to blanket the nation each month.
Like the influenza vaccine, it will be close to what is circulating but not exactly up to date, William Schaffner, an infectious diseases specialist at Vanderbilt University, said of a reformulated vaccine.
FDA officials will discuss this month whether a variant-specific shot is needed and, if so, how it will attack the dominant omicron strains.
Pfizer and Moderna, the leading COVID-19 vaccine makers in the U.S., are testing bivalent shots that could target both omicron and the original form of the virus that causes the disease.
Drugmakers and regulators will try to get on the same page as the virus mutates from the BA.1 form of omicron to BA.2 and most recently BA.2.12.1, which accounts for 6 in 10 cases in America.
Scientists told The Washington Times the manufacturers will likely target the original form of omicron that appeared around the winter holiday period and hope that the vaccine offers better protection across its sub-lineages than those on offer now.
The vaccines that we developed against the original Wuhan and early variant strains and we will still use are still active against omicron, [but] they must just have lost some of their impact, Dr. Wolfe said. So an omicron-specific [vaccine], even if it doesnt precisely target BA version 2-point-1-point-whatever comes next gives you broad neutralizing activity thats generally better than what we had.
Stephane Bancel, the CEO of Moderna, has said the company will share trial data in the second quarter on a shot that combines its existing booster with an omicron-specific formulation. This version remains our lead candidate for the fall 2022 Northern Hemisphere booster, he said in April.
The companys primary focus has been on the bivalent booster approach to maintain high neutralizing antibody titers while improving breadth of immunity to variants, the company told The Washington Times this week.
Pfizer initiated omicron-specific trials in January.
Our team of experts is working tirelessly to understand how our COVID-19 vaccine may protect against these evolving variant strains and will continue to share results as we have them, the company said in a written statement.
Regulators will use drugmakers filings to guide their thinking on whether vaccines should be fine-tuned or if the current shots are sufficient for stiff-arming severe illness from the virus.
Looking further ahead, some researchers are hoping to land a pan-coronavirus vaccine after at least three pathogens in this family sparked waves of infection over the past two decades. Besides COVID-19, there was the original SARS outbreak in 2003 and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) remains a concern.
The ideal vaccine would cover all coronaviruses, but thats a long way off, said Lawrence O. Gostin, a global health professor at Georgetown University. Companies are working on bivalent or multivalent vaccines. FDA will soon meet to decide the optimal vaccine composition for the fall. FDA will have to make a highly consequential decision. The stakes are very high.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
Recent COVID-19 research has focused on how the disease impacts a persons likelihood to develop other conditions, such as Parkinsons disease, heart disease, and diabetes.
Now researchers from the University of Milan, Italy have found a link between thyroid dysfunction and COVID-19. And one year after infection, scientists found people with moderate-to-severe COVID-19 still had evidence of thyroid dysfunction.
The study was recently presented at the 24th European Congress of Endocrinology in Milan, Italy.
The thyroid is a gland located on the front of the neck. It produces specific hormones that help regulate a variety of body functions, including metabolism, body temperature, heart rate, and digestion.
Thyroid dysfunction occurs when something affects the thyroid, causing it to decrease or increase hormone production. There are four main types of thyroid disease:
Thyroid dysfunction diagnosis occurs through a combination of a physical exam, blood test, and imaging by a thyroid scan or ultrasound. Treatment varies depending on the type of thyroid disease a person has and can include medications, beta-blockers, radioactive iodine, and surgery.
According to the studys lead author Dr. Ilaria Muller, assistant professor in endocrinology, Department of Clinical Sciences and Community Health at the University of Milan, Italy, the purpose of the study was twofold.
One was to prove COVID-19 affected thyroid function and triggered inflammation of the thyroid, causing thyroiditis.
Dr. Muller explained COVID-19 modifies thyroid function on a variety of different levels, including, non-thyroidal illness syndrome a complex combination of adaptive and maladaptive mechanisms inducing transient alterations of thyroid function tests in severely ill people cytokine storm, alterations of the hypothalamus-pituitary-thyroid axis, and by triggering an inflammation of the thyroid gland thyroiditis.
The researchers second goal was to correlate thyroid function with several parameters of COVID-19 disease severity. We finally wanted to monitor the evolution of the thyroid dysfunction over time, up to one year after the SARS-CoV-2 infection, to verify the presence or absence of long-term consequences on the thyroid function, she told MNT.
Dr. Muller and her team studied 100 patients admitted to the hospital for severe COVID-19. Upon analysis of their thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) and other indicators, they found a frequent occurrence of thyroiditis in the patient population. However, the patients thyroids returned to normal levels shortly after recovery from COVID-19.
The researchers then examined the same patients 12 months later. They found regions of thyroiditis remained visible via thyroid ultrasound in half of the patient population.
Additionally, the scientists found four out of six patients had decreased uptake during thyroid of radiotracers such as technetium or iodine during thyroid scans. The decreased uptake is a hallmark of thyroiditis.
Based on her teams findings, Muller believed it would be useful for healthcare professionals to measure thyroid function in severe COVID-19 patients. This is because the serum concentrations of thyroid hormones TSH and free triiodothyronine (FT3) are prognostic indicators of thyroid disease severity.
Furthermore, this would allow (them) to diagnose the possible presence of thyrotoxicosis excess of thyroid hormones due to atypical thyroiditis, an additional risk factor for a poor outcome in patients already debilitated by severe COVD-19 disease, she explained.
Overall, Dr. Muller said the effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 disease on thyroid function seem mild and transient.
Even if the areas of thyroiditis within the thyroid gland persist for months after the infection, the thyroid function is promptly restored and no apparent increase of thyroid autoimmunity has been observed. Thus long-term consequences on the thyroid function are unlikely.
Dr. Muller
Dr. Antonio C. Bianco, professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, was also pleased to see that in most cases the function of the thyroid gland returned to normal after 12 months and that residual functional abnormalities were only present in a small number of people.
However, he told MNT that he did not expect to see ultrasonographic signs of thyroiditis in half of the individuals affected. This suggests that the COVID-19-associated thyroiditis was severe in this population, he added.
When asked how this research may impact the treatment of COVID-19 patients with thyroid issues in the future, Bianco said it warrants enhanced follow-up of these patients. I would not be surprised if they were more likely to develop primary hypothyroidism after 5 or 10 years, he added.
Additionally, Bianco noted for the next steps in this research he would like to see a larger follow-up. Right now it seems that their thyroid function tests are normal and the ultrasonographic findings were the only abnormalities, he explained.
A longer follow-up, e.g. five or 10 years, would indicate if these residual ultrasonographic findings will be resolved and everything returned to normal or that some of these patients evolved to become hypothyroid.
DENVER (KDVR) COVID-19 rates continue to steadily increasein Colorado over the last six weeks. The Centers for Disease Control and prevention has moved three counties into the high level for community transmission: Boulder County, Jackson County, and Broomfield County.
The CDC said communities with ahigh level of COVID-19transmission should do the follow:
As of Monday, the states seven-day positivity rate was 10.33%, which is up from 9.25% one week ago. Positivity rate measures the amount of COVID positive tests to the total amount of tests taken.
Overall, 44 counties saw an increase in COVID-19 positivity, 11 counties saw a decrease, two counties stayed the same, and seven counties administered fewer than 10 tests.
According to theColorado Department of Public Health and Environment, incidence rates are up over the last week.
Heres a look atpositivity rates for every county over the last seven days:
Significant spread of COVID-19 in Boulder County
According toJohns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the percent positive is exactly what it sounds like: the percentage of all coronavirus tests performed that are actually positive, or: (positive tests)/(total tests) x 100%. The percent positive (sometimes called the percent positive rate or positivity rate) helps public health officials answer questions suchas:
The percent positive will be high if the number ofpositive testsis too high, or if the number oftotal testsis too low. A higher percent positive suggests higher transmission and that there are likely more people with coronavirus in the community who havent been tested yet, Johns Hopkins shared.
COVIDA nurse administers a pediatric dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to a girl at a L.A. Care Health Plan vaccination clinic at the Los Angeles Mission College in January. Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images
A new analysis by a Boston doctor shows that COVID-19 has killed more children than the seasonal flu, contrary to the narrative pushed by some that coronavirus is not a bad disease for children.
Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Womens Hospital, wrote in an Inside Medicine post on Monday that at the peak of the omicron wave, COVID-19 killed more children per month than flu does on average each year. In 2021, coronavirus killed about 600 children, compared to the 10-year average of 120 children dying of the flu per year.
These irrefutable figures, reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reveal that last year, pediatric COVID-19 deaths were around 500% that of pediatric flu deaths in a typical 21st century season, Faust wrote.
The doctor went on to write that since 2000, there have only been seven times that a respiratory virus killed more than 65 children in a month. Twice those deaths were from the flu, but the other five times were from COVID-19.
The numbers get a little confusing though, Faust wrote, because there are stats reported for both actual deaths and estimated numbers.
The National Center for Health Statistics, or NCHS, counts every single death in the United States, Faust wrote. Meanwhile, the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, or NCIRD, estimates the overall burden of diseases, which include both underlying and contributing causes of death.
If a person dies primarily of terminal cancer, but influenza might have played a role in the timing of their death, the NCIRD might include that death in its annual assessment of influenzas burden of disease, Faust wrote.
Because both coronavirus and influenza deaths for children are mandated for reporting to public health officials, the actual counts of deaths by the NCHS are highly accurate and are certainly the right comparator for Covid-19, Faust said.
Its important to do an apples-to-apples comparison when talking about the severity of COVID, Faust said comparing actual counts to actual counts or estimates to estimates.
In that vein, Faust cautioned against comparing pediatric outcomes to adult outcomes.
Its true that older adults are orders of magnitude more likely to die of Covid-19 than children are, Faust wrote. But in public health, you compare groups to themselves, if you want to understand a particular threat. You wouldnt downplay pediatric cancer by noting that 80-year-olds die of cancer at a rate that is 541-times greater that of 8-year-olds (which, by the way, is true).
Though Faust is pointed out that COVID-19 has severe outcomes for some children, he emphasized that he is not arguing schools should close.
Rather, he said that the discussion should be about how to keep schools safe.
Pediatric Covid-19 vaccination rates remain woefully low, Faust wrote. Understanding the real risk that Covid-19 poses to children is about the only thing I can think of that might convince parents to do the right thing.
Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House coronavirus response coordinator who is on leave from his position as dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, applauded Fausts analysis and stressed the importance of vaccines to keep kids out of the hospital.
If your kid 5 or older isnt vaccinated, its time, he wrote.
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This is the daily update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Is there a threshold that we must reach for people to care?
(CDC)
Most of the Northeast, half of Florida and parts of nearly every state are in moderate- or high-risk zones right now, and that is using the CDCs new tracking software based on hospitalizations and deaths, not just on new cases.
(CovidActNow.org)
I did a little bit of traveling last week. I had to get a COVID-19 test to enter the U.S. from Canada. I paid $38 for a person in Asia to watch me stick a swab up my nose and show her a negative test over the phone. Nobody at U.S. immigration asked to see it, and I do not know if anybody looked at the document I uploaded to the airline. They must have millions being uploaded daily, so it is hard to believe it is anything more than a computer checking to see that something has been uploaded.
Before we got on a tour bus in Vancouver, a driver yelled to a crowd of 100 people, Has everybody been vaccinated? The crowd yelled yes. He asked if anybody felt sick. The crowd yelled no. And that was that.
The seasonal flu is spreading way out of season. Stat reports four virus outbreaks that are causing summertime concern:
The past two winters were among the mildest influenza seasons on record, but flu hospitalizations have picked up in the last few weeks in May! Adenovirus type 41, previously thought to cause fairly innocuous bouts of gastrointestinal illness, may be triggering severe hepatitis in healthy young children.
Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, a bug that normally causes disease in the winter, touched off large outbreaks of illness in kids last summer and in the early fall in the United States and Europe.
And now monkeypox, a virus generally only found in West and Central Africa, is causing an unprecedented outbreak in more than a dozen countries in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Australia, with the United Kingdom alone reporting more than 70 cases. The U.S. has identified nine monkeypox cases.
The disruption of normal virus cycles, in part, seems to be linked to how children interact with each other. Children often spread viruses and, while they were at home, they spread them less. And babies born during the pandemic may carry fewer immunities.
We will find out today whether 1,300 resident physicians and trainees voted to unionize at three Los Angeles hospitals. Kaiser Health News notes, Since March, residents at Stanford Health Care, Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and the University of Vermont Medical Center have unionized.
Kaiser says the key issues are work schedules, lack of protective gear, low staffing and pay:
The average resident salary in the U.S. in 2021 was $64,000, according to Medscape, a physician news site, and residents can work up to 24 hours in a shift but no more than 80 hours per week. Although one survey whose results were released last year found that 43% of residents felt they were adequately compensated, those who are unionizing say wages are too low, especially given residents workload, their student loan debt, and the rising cost of living.
People visit a memorial outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Monday, May 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)
Maybe it is partly out of frustration that there is no easy solution to stopping Americas gun violence that some journalists are asking whether it makes sense to publish graphic images of the children who died from gunfire. The argument is that just as images of war can stir the public to act, maybe it is time to awaken the public to a reality it has been shielded from until a mass killer unloads in their town.
This is not a new idea. Far from it. In 2019, just before the 20th anniversary of the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, I introduced you to some teens from Columbine and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida who asked journalists to publish graphic images of dead students. The teens even signed permission cards saying if they died in gunfire, please use the crime scene images.
I wrote in 2019 and still believe today:
Even if students place a sticker on their IDs or drivers licenses saying they want photos of their death made public, that is not the reason to publish. Take the students wishes into consideration, but dont stop there.
There should be a journalistic purpose for the image to be published. If, for example, there is any question about what occurred if the images prove an official version of the incident to be untrue, if the images illustrate a truth that the public would not have known from the descriptions of the scene then the graphic images may be newsworthy, and they could be ethically published.
I am concerned that publishing graphic images would reward shooters intentions. In Buffalo and New Zealand, the shooters livestreamed the massacres expressly to show the brutality.
Without a doubt, graphic images of death can stir the public. As I pointed out in 2019, Graphic images of death involving Emmett Till became a catalyst for the civil rights movement. The graphic image of Kim Phuc, hit by napalm, showed the horrors of the Vietnam War. Other images from Syria and Somalia have shown children as victims.
In 1929, journalists told the story of the St. Valentines Day Massacre, using graphic images of bullet-riddled gangsters shot down during the Prohibition gun battles in Chicago. Back then, the battle was about Prohibition, and the bloody photos prompted the public to consider its cost. The gangsters used Thompson submachine guns, Tommy guns, in that and other shootings of the era. In 2018, The New York Times put that weapon into todays context:
One of the first portable and fully automatic firearms, the Tommy gun was a weapon of war that missed its moment, produced too late to serve in World War I. Its manufacturer, facing ruin, tried to market the gun as a self-defense weapon, aided by the fact that the Thompson was so novel the law had yet to catch up with it. In those days, Chicagoans could buy a Tommy gun more easily than they could a handgun.
The Thompson found eager buyers among the criminal class, who appreciated its lethality and the ease with which it could be concealed. Like todays AR-15, the Tommy gun enabled many of the eras most heinous crimes from the murder of a Chicago prosecutor, William McSwiggin, in 1926 to the killing of four lawmen in what became known as the Kansas City Massacre of 1933. But while the Thompson empowered gangsters to kill more people more quickly, it hadnt created this crime wave it had merely amplified it.
In 1932, President Franklin Roosevelt said he was determined to do something about the gun crimes of the day. The War on Crime led to Americas first gun control law, the National Firearms Act of 1934. It did not ban machine guns but did heavily regulate and even license them. Subsequently, machine guns were rarely used in crimes, and that is still the case today, nearly nine decades later.
In 2019, Chicago Magazine made two other observations worth considering. The St. Valentines Day Massacre in 1929 was, at the time, the worst mass killing in U.S. history to occur on that day of the year.
It lost that distinction on February 14th, 2018 when 17 students were murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. That shooting did lead to a federal ban on bump stocks, which enable a semi-automatic weapon to fire at the rate of a machine gun, but there has been no legislation to regulate the weapons themselves, nor is there likely to be.
On Monday, President Joe Biden suggested Congress should ban assault weapons. Chicago Magazine writes:
Guns also occupy a different place in American cultural than they did in the 1920s. The National Rifle Association, for instance, helped write the National Firearms Act of 1934. The associations president told Congress, I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses. At that time, the NRA was primarily concerned with marksmanship and gun safety.
Here are three thoughtful articles on the debate over publishing/airing graphic images from shooting scenes:
On Saturday, Sunday and the federal holiday on Monday, there were at least 13 mass shootings. Eight people died and 56 were injured. Since the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, there have been at least 61 mass shootings involving four or more victims.
This early season storm is passing through Mexico today and might regenerate in the Gulf of Mexico in the next 24 hours. Forecasters say there is a 30% chance the storm will not play out after clearing Mexico.
It could redevelop into the Atlantic basins first named storm. If formed, that storm would be called Alex.
(National Hurricane Center)
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Mike Stucka USA TODAY NETWORK| Register-Guard
Oregon reported 11,082 new cases of coronavirus in the week ending Sunday, from 10,891 the week before of the virus that causes COVID-19.
Lane County reported 1,020 cases and two deaths in the latest week. A week earlier, it had reported 1,037 cases and four deaths. Throughout the pandemic, Lane County has reported 61,910 cases and 547 deaths.
Oregon ranked 14th among the states where coronavirus was spreading the fastest on a per-person basis, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the latest week coronavirus cases in the United States decreased 11.3% from the week before, with 702,236 cases reported. With 1.27% of the country's population, Oregon had 1.58% of the country's cases in the last week. Across the country, 32 states had more cases in the latest week than they did in the week before.
Within Oregon, the worst weekly outbreaks on a per-person basis were in Multnomah County with 354 cases per 100,000 per week; Deschutes County with 338; and Washington County with 315. The Centers for Disease Control says high levels of community transmission begin at 100 cases per 100,000 per week.
Adding the newest cases overall were Multnomah County, with 2,880 cases; Washington County, with 1,898 cases; and Clackamas County, with 1,191. Weekly case counts rose in 22 counties from the previous week. The worst increases from the prior week's pace were in Marion, Jackson and Multnomah counties.
>> See how your community has fared with recent coronavirus cases
Oregon ranked 20th among states in the share of people receiving at least one shot, with 77.9% of its residents at least partially vaccinated. The national rate is 77.7%, a USA TODAY analysis of CDC data shows. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which are the most used in the United States, require two doses administered a few weeks apart.
In the week ending Wednesday, Oregon reported administering another 55,427 vaccine doses, including 4,397 first doses. In the previous week, 51,937 vaccine doses were administered, including 3,979 first doses. In all, Oregon reported it has administered 7,803,785 total doses.
Across Oregon, cases fell in nine counties, with the best declines in Deschutes County, with 668 cases from 779 a week earlier; in Washington County, with 1,898 cases from 1,995; and in Clackamas County, with 1,191 cases from 1,221.
In Oregon, 25 people were reported dead of COVID-19 in the week ending Sunday, one less than the week before.
A total of 760,803 people in Oregon have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and 7,611 people have died from the disease, Johns Hopkins University data shows. In the United States 83,984,644 people have tested positive and 1,004,733 people have died.
>> Track coronavirus cases across the United States
USA TODAY analyzed federal hospital data as of Sunday, May 29.
Likely COVID-19 patients admitted in the state:
Likely COVID-19 patients admitted in the nation:
Hospitals in 34 states reported more COVID-19 patients than a week earlier, while hospitals in 33 states had more COVID-19 patients in intensive-care beds. Hospitals in 35 states admitted more COVID-19 patients in the latest week than a week prior, the USA TODAY analysis of U.S. Health and Human Services data shows.
COVID-19 cases back on the rise in US after new subvariants appear
COVID-19 infections have spiked over the past month due to new and more infectious subvariants, waning vaccines, and fewer people wearing masks.
Damien Henderson, USA TODAY
On the cusp of last summer, as COVID vaccination rates were on the upswing and transmission rates were dropping, New Jersey officials talked excitedly about a return to normalcy, with offices filling with employees again andmasks no longer required in schools.
Then the delta variant emerged unexpectedlyin June and upended all those plans.
As summer 2022 approaches, New Jersey appears to be in a better place so long as a new, more virulent strain does not emerge.
Key metrics including severe illness and death have remainedrelatively low for more than two months, even though cases are on the upswing and every county is seeing high levels of transmission.
Public health experts and front-line physicians have expressed everything from caution to optimism over the past few weeksas New Jersey enters its third pandemic summer.
Is COVID still a virus that can mutate into the mass killer that has already taken 1 million American lives? Or is it evolving into one that jumps more benignly from host to host?
"The assumption that youre going to have milder illness is a hope but not necessarily something that will pan out,"said Dr. StanleyWeiss, an infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at Rutgers Medical School. "The biology of this virus is changing over time. So we don't have ironcladanswers."
Dr. Gian Varbaro, chief medical officer of Bergen New Bridge Medical Center in Paramus, said it's unlikely that the virus will mutate into a more deadly strain.
Every pandemic ends the same way, with the virus mutating to become more infectious but it also becomes less virulent, less deadly, he said. Its not in an infectious agents interests to kill the people who its infecting, because then it cant spread. The best thing for a virus would be for you to never know you have it.
As New Jerseyans spent Memorial Day weekend opening community pools, hosting neighborhood barbeques and gathering in somber ceremonies to remember this country's war dead, it may seem like the pandemic is over. But it's not.
The latest forecasting models by thestate Department of Health show two scenarios through mid-August: a "moderate plus" model, in which cases and hospitalizations remain relatively stable, and a "high" model that shows two surges.
But long-range forecasts are difficult.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention project metrics out only two orthree weeks. And as COVIDcontinues to mutate into new variants with new characteristics, the virus has shifted its trajectory multiple times over thepandemic's 30 months,making it difficult to predict its next turn.
The emergence of new variants can change any well-informed prediction, said Gemma Downham, director of infection prevention for AtlantiCare, one of the largest medical providers in South Jersey.
The daily COVID death toll has been in the single digits for almost three months, and most hospitals are reporting few serious cases of illness, with fewer than 40patients on ventilators statewide as Memorial Day weekend ended. The vast majority of patients testing positive for COVID at hospital admission are being admitted for conditions unrelated tothe virus. As of Monday night, 844 people in the state'shospitals had tested positive for COVID.
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The Health Department's worst-case scenario shows COVID cases surging in mid-June and again in mid-July, with the daily hospital census at almost 2,000. The high would hit on June 18with 7,050 cases, 1,602 hospitalizations, 154 intensive care admissions and 63 people on ventilators all about double what the numbers have been in mid-May.
The moderate forecast does not show a significant surge in the first half of the summer.
But that model appears to have already been exceeded. The model, which was completed on May 11, predicted a peak of 3,264 cases and 742 hospitalizations by May 17, compared with the actual tally of 3,842 cases and 862 hospitalizations that were reportedby health officials on May 17.
Downham, an epidemiologist, said she expects the surge to subside before the start of summer but is concerned that the virus is still transmitting at a high level, allowing it to mutate.
People who are vaccinated and boosted seem to have either no symptoms from the subvariants or symptoms so mild that they are mistaken for allergies or a cold. As a result, people let their guard down,and transmission goes up.
Many New Jerseyans have been reinfected during the latest wave, and long-term health implications of repeated COVID infections arestill unknown.
Even if you have mild to no symptoms, you are still contagious and can spread it to others who might be more vulnerable, Downham said.
"We are seeing individuals who were recently infected with omicron getting reinfected sooner than expected," she said."It appears as though immunity after an omicron infection is lasting less than 90 days."
At Bergen New Bridge, New Jersey's largest hospital,doctors are seeing more people come in with COVID, but their symptoms are not severe enough to warrant admission.
What were seeing is a lot of outpatient COVID and an increase from what it was several weeks ago, but nothing thats requiring hospitalization,Varbaro said.
Conventional wisdom holds that summer will result in less transmission in the Northeast, because people will spend less time indoors. While that held true in 2020, delta showed in 2021 that a new variant can upendthat notion.
By the end of last summer, Gov. Phil Murphy had reinstated mask-wearing in all schools, many back-to-the-office plans were postponed and New Jersey's COVID metrics ended up worse on Labor Day 2021 than they were the prior year.
Major variants detected so far this year are from the lineage of the original omicron strain that surged forcefully in December and January in New Jersey and then declined just as fast.
The region has seen the rapid emergence of the newBA.2.12.1 subvariant, which became the dominant strain in New Jersey and New York in early May.It has pushed out the BA.2subvariant and now makes up more than 70% ofstrains, according to CDC data.
On the horizon are the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, currently circulating inSouth Africa and Europe. If the patterns of transmission continue, it will be only a matter of time before they reach New Jersey.
Vaccines, booster shots and early treatment with monoclonal antibodieshave shown to be effective in preventing severe illness for now.
But health care professionals and policymakers have to remain nimble, because the virus could change dramatically in a short period of time, as seen with the delta and omicron variants, Weiss said. Using outdated data "is worse than useless, it's misleading," he said.
And scientists are constantly finding more information on how current strains behave. A study released this month suggests that COVID has the ability to linger in the body for much longer than suspected. "It shows how little we know about the virus," Weiss said.
Varbaro is optimistic that things will gradually get better even as the virus continues to spread and reinfect more people across the globe.
"We're going to see more blips and bump-ups like we're seeing now with these subvariants of omicron, butless virulent," he said."Is it possible if it makes some quantum leap in infectiousness?Sure. But it's unlikely."
Scott Fallon has covered the COVID-19 pandemic since its onset in March 2020. To get unlimited access to the latest news about the pandemic's impact on New Jersey, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.
Email:fallon@northjersey.com
Twitter:@newsfallon
