Category: Health

Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, San Diego County is back in the Red, tier that is! And San Diego area schools have been given the green light to reopen.

Dr. Wilma Wooten on Tuesday announced that San Diego County has attained a case rate low enough to rejoin the red tier Wednesday, March 17.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune:

In a biweekly COVID-19 update to the Board of Supervisors, the county’s public health officer foreshadowed the contents of the state’s weekly tier report, listing the score at 6.8 cases per 100,000 residents.

By Judi Curry

When you think of SeaWorld what do you think of? Shamu? Orcas? Dolphins? Seals? Sharks? Fish? What was the reason that Sea World started in the first place?

Let me give you some history:

“SeaWorld® opened its gates for the first time in 1964, founded by George Millay, Milt Shedd, Ken Norris and David DeMott. Originally planned as an underwater restaurant, the concept grew into a marine zoological park on 21 acres along the shore of Mission Bay in San Diego. With an initial investment of $1.5 million, 45 employees, several dolphins, sea lions, and two saltwater aquariums, SeaWorld drew more than 400,000 visitors its first year.

By Roberto “Rob” Camacho

In the unprecedented global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has been forced to take a hard look in the mirror and acknowledge societal ills and inequities which unattended have festered for decades.

Over the past twelve months COVID presented a chance to reimagine things such as housing, education, wage increases, access to technology, healthcare, and more. However, due to the actions of the economic elite, and a stubbornly complicit legislature, the lives of everyday people have been crushed to ensure that even in the midst of a deadly pandemic, the status quo has remained the same at all costs. Including the lives of more than half a million people in the U.S. who have died of COVID over the past twelve months.

By Colleen O’Connor

Pace yourselves and brace yourselves. The pandemic is not going away anytime soon.

Another surge is coming. Look to Europe’s opening/closing and infecting scenario, caused by a new COVID variant, soon to be dominant here.

Germany, a disciplined country, announced they are in the middle of a “third wave.” Also, in the “third wave,” is the Netherlands, where infection cases rose by nearly 19 per cent over the past seven days. Add Stockholm to the list, with a 27 per cent rise in case numbers in recent weeks; again, all due to the new mutation.

So, candor is required. Faced with the latest wave, amid a newer, more efficient strain, the current attempts at mandatory school re-openings (with financial incentives) are near reckless.

One size does cannot and should not fit all students, teachers, schools, all districts or all states.

By Judi Curry

During the past month when in the throes of Covid, I have been overwhelmed by the responses I have received from my friends, relatives, neighbors, strangers, etc.

I received over 100 get well wishes; I even received over 75 “Happy Birthday” wishes.

People that I do not know have sent me cards; a neighbor that I still don’t know sent me a long note telling me that he would be glad to anything for me that needed to be done during this time. (He sent me his address so that when I am finally able to go out I can see where he lives with his family.)

Al Nashashibi from Faurouz left me a huge of amount of his restaurants’ “Lemon Grass” soup by my front door;

by Jill Castellano / inewscource / February 12, 2021

For the second time, a federal watchdog agency found that the Department of Veterans Affairs’ investigation into unethical liver research performed on San Diego veterans was “not reasonable.”

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel published new reports on Tuesday, Feb. 8, revealing more details about the mistakes and violations that occurred during the research and its dissatisfaction with the VA’s investigation into what happened. inewsource broke the story about the unethical study in 2018 as the first article in its Risky Research series.

The study at the San Diego VA was part of a $6 million international project to find new therapies for people with alcoholic hepatitis. Researchers around the world were supposed to collect these patients’ leftover liver tissue after they received biopsies and look for patterns.

But that’s not what happened in San Diego.

By Colleen E. Putzel / Times of San Diego / Feb. 16, 2021

Like most tragedies, the onset of the pandemic produced a call for unity with sentiments ensuring “we’re all in this together.”

Every outlet, from the daily news to hand-made window signs, offered appreciation for those on the front line: health care workers, grocery store clerks, public transportation workers, and truck drivers. My father, a truck driver, and my mother, a seamstress, suddenly became heroes.

My father goes to work every day delivering construction materials and my mother paused her Etsy sales to make masks for her local hospital. I feared, especially early on, that my father’s company would begin laying off workers. As that threat seemed less imminent, it was replaced by the fear that he would be exposed to the virus.

On the one year anniversary of San Diego County’s declaration of a local health emergency due to COVID-19, there are hopeful signs that the worst of the pandemic could be behind us. And these charts and graphs demonstrate the basis of that hope.

It was on February 14th, 2020, Valentine’s Day, that San Diego County declared a local health emergency to combat the coronavirus. At that time there were two confirmed cases of COVID-19 in San Diego County and several suspected cases.

One year later to the day, more than a quarter of a million people in San Diego County have tested positive for COVID-19 and 3,000 people have died. But because there is hope, it does not mean we stop or ease up on

By Colleen O’Connor

Time to be blunt. Teachers, students and children are the new electoral battering rams amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Just as I wrote in June of last year, the 2020 Presidential election it was “not Biden v. Trump, but COVID-19 v. Trump).” And the GOP’s own confidential postmortem report (as quoted on Politico), confirms it.

“The autopsy says that coronavirus registered as the top issue among voters, and that Biden won those voters by a nearly 3-to-1 margin. A majority registered disapproval of Trump’s handling of the virus.

The Saga of the Widder Curry’s Covid -19

By Judi Curry

I want to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you that sent me prayers, positive thoughts, greeting cards, flowers, soups, foods, magazines, funny sayings, etc. during these past 22 days that I have been wiped out by Covid.

NEVER in my entire lifetime, which is substantial, have I ever been so weak, so indisposed as I have been the past three weeks.

When I say that I had no energy even to lift myself off the commode, that is no exaggeration. I needed help, each and every time. And do you want to know the strange thing about this disease? I had a “mild case.” I never had an elevated temperature; I never had low oxygen; my blood pressure remained normal throughout the entire 22 days.

I just had no energy. None. Nada. And one of the worst sensations I had in the 22 days was that my bones were on fire! Truly! They felt like there were flames emanating from them. All day. All night. For 18 days!

And how did it start?

by Ernie McCray

I got my first vaccine for covid-19 on February 6, 2021. One more to go for this old son of a gun.

But when I got back home after my shot I was reminded that this wasn’t the first time that February 6 was special to me, since on that day 61 years ago I took to the court with my teammates in Bear Down Gym at the University of Arizona and got to shaking and baking and whipping outlet passes to start fast breaks and shot the lights out all over the place, and came away with 46 points, a record that stands to this day.

The fun and glory of that will never go away.

And I couldn’t help but think, in those moments, what a difference six decades can make in one’s life. In so many ways. I was so strong back then physically, even with a bad back, something that’s plagued me since those days.

By Colleen O’Connor

What keeps America together? See for yourself.

“Look at the people that are on the ground. That’s who represents America,” says Admiral William McRaven; the man who oversaw the Bin Laden raid.

Look at the great story of the Oregon health workers who got stuck in a snowstorm on their way back from a COVID-19 vaccination event and went car to car injecting stranded drivers before several of the doses expired.

That “impromptu vaccine clinic” is a prime example of who represents America. Those are the angels among us. As I discovered myself.

Starting from the beginning.