Category: Health

By Katie Morris and Charis Johnston / lomabeat.com / October 26, 2020

Auggie Lam woke up on a Monday morning to an email stating he tested positive for COVID-19.

Lam, a first-year mechanical engineering major, said, “I immediately contacted every person I had been in contact with for the past week.”

Ashley Portillo, a first-year psychology major, awoke to a screenshot of the email confirming Auggie’s positive result at 7:30 a.m on Monday, which Lam had sent in a group chat.

“Auggie is a funny person so I was waiting for the ‘Psych! Gotcha!,’” she said. “[My friends and I] didn’t know how to respond. We just stood there with our phones. He was in all of our rooms; he was around us all the time. I hugged him. We were just in shock.”

by Jill Castellano and Mary Plummer / inewsource / October 21, 2020

A 22-year-old died of an apparent overdose on his birthday after getting furloughed.

An 81-year-old with a chronic health condition couldn’t go to the gym and lost her life five months later.

A farmworker in a family of undocumented immigrants contracted COVID-19, but — too scared to share his personal information — was never tested. None of them are captured in the county’s official list of coronavirus deaths, but their families say all of them died because of the pandemic.

A review of state and county public health data finds many more people have died as a result of the pandemic than the San Diego County public health office has acknowledged publicly.

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican / October 15, 2020

Warnings about learning losses due to the pandemic dominate education media; especially the media created and financed by billionaires. Based on a briefing by NWEA, McKinsey & Company claims “the average K–12 student in the United States could lose $61,000 to $82,000 in lifetime earnings (in constant 2020 dollars) … solely as a result of COVID-19–related learning losses.” The Hoover Institute’s CREDO warns “the findings are chilling.”

One of my favorite education bloggers, Nancy Flanagan, says it well,

“Test-data estimates, alarmist language and shady research do nothing to help us with the most critical problem we have right now: keeping kids connected to their schoolwork and their teachers. However that’s offered and as imperfect as it may be.”

Times of Media / October 15, 2020

A dozen Point Loma Nazarene University students tested positive for COVID-19 this week and 50 others were identified as “close contacts,” people who were within 6 feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes, school officials said Wednesday.

The surge raised the total number of active cases among students to 19 — five of whom are living off-campus. PLNU also says 66 students are in quarantine or isolation.

As of Wednesday, the university was awaiting test results on 98 students.

Healthline

Reuters reports there are 41 states where new COVID-19 cases have increased the past week. That’s up from 33 the previous week. And by the looks of it, the country could be heading into a “third wave” or surge.

It’s the October surge of new COVID-19 cases – as businesses and colleges reopen and as people gather at political rallies and other events. The higher numbers are being driven by a surge in parts of the Upper Midwest and Rocky Mountain region.

The New York Times reports the daily average of new cases in the United States this past week topped 50,000, a 19 percent increase from the average 2 weeks ago.

By Colleen O’Connor

This may be a bigger scandal than Trump’s $750 tax bill; First Lady Melania’s “F-bombs” about Christmas; his 25,000 lies; the audio confirmation that Trump knew of the serious dangers of COVID-19 in February, and yet continued with his incompetent and cruel responses.

The President of the U.S. is in a hospital with COVID-19, taking experimental drugs, in the middle of a pandemic. This has serious national security implications.

And how did we get here? What next?

For a refresher, remember Trump’s doctors?

Nuclear Shutdown New October 2020

By Michael Steinberg / Black Rain Press

Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline and fall of the nuclear power industry, and highlights the efforts of those working to create a nuclear free world.

Shutting Down Nuke Plants Saves Lives – A Case in Point

As reported in last month’s Nuclear Shutdown News, a violent storm damaged the Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa, and hastened its already scheduled permanent shutdown.

In the September 8 Des Moines Journal, Joseph Mangano, executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project (radiation.org) made the case that closing the plant will mean there will be less radioactivity caused diseases in surrounding areas.

Editordude: The following post by Scott Stephens of Liquid Blue was written for another publication but we decided to publish it as well. He’s very kind. There is a brief bio of Scott at the end.

by Scott Stephens

A legendary local publication has turned 50 this week. The OB People’s Rag was first published on September 17, 1970. OB stands for Ocean Beach, the small, rugged beachfront community which is part of the city proper of San Diego. The “Rag” represented the rebel spirit that OB became known for and led the charge on several progressive social fronts.

OB is different. Many original ’60s hippies still reside here. There is no McDonald’s and very few large corporate retailers. It was in OB that a local food co-op was started (with many of the OB Rag staff involved), which would later evolve into California’s second health food store, Ocean Beach People’s Organic Food Market in 1972.

You won’t find any high-rise hotels or apartments here either. Newport Avenue, the town’s main street, is the very antithesis of Rodeo Drive.

It is true. It is not hyperbole. It is not partisan over-reach. President Trump lied about Covid-19 and now nearly 200,000 of our fellow Americans have died.

Sure, there were a handful of deaths and cases by early February when Trump told The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, “This is deadly stuff,” and “You just breathe the air,” the president explained, “and that’s how it’s passed.”

This is not like the other 20,000 plus falsehoods that Trump has uttered since taking up residence in the White House. These lies about the virus were fatal.

• On February 24, Trump tweeted to the world, “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”
• On February 27, he said, “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
• On March 10, he said, “And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

So, why did Trump say all this? Why did he lie? Why didn’t he fulfill his duty to protect American citizens?

On March 19, Trump told Woodward, ”I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

In a letter to San Diego County officials, a dozen University of California San Diego doctors urged them to slow down the reopenings of businesses and facilities out of concern of potential spikes in coronavirus cases.

“If you have a situation where 8 or 10 or 12 percent of a population is infected and you get together with 10 people, there’s a good chance one of them is going to get infected,” said Dr. Robert Schooley, who was among the dozen of doctors who penned the letter.

By Judi Curry

Covid-19 is affecting many people in many ways. Listing them all would still leave out some, because none of us are aware of everything others are going through to get through each day.

We are all aware of unemployment; no health care; deaths; inability to pay bills, etc.

Most of us are aware of the depression and boredom facing people today.

Most of us are aware of the dilemma of sending our children to school or NOT sending our children to school.

There’s a debate going on in San Diego County on whether local health officials should be telling the public where COVID-19 hot-spots are. The editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune believes “the county is making a big mistake.”

Its decision to refuse to disclose specifically where outbreaks have occurred — instead offering generic descriptions of, say, a local business or a local restaurant — denies residents basic health-risk information that can shape their decision-making. Los Angeles County’s practice of specific disclosure allows residents to see patterns. On Thursday, for example, three of the county’s four outbreaks were in a single small city (Commerce).

County officials say that nondisclosure is a best-practices public health tactic that encourages businesses to provide information about outbreaks,