McCamy Taylor
McCamy Taylor's JournalTrump promises "shooting" and Suddenly White Guys are Smashing Windows
and setting off violence in cities all across the country. Sounds like a conspiracy to me.
The Protester Who Says "Break the law!" In an Undercover Cop
We knew it back in the 1960s and we should remember it now. All this violence plays right into Trump's hands.
Gun toting nuts: If they can require shoes and shirt they can require a mask.
It has happened again. A wingnut has shot an employee (this time in a Waffle House) for telling him he has to wear a mask when coming into the restaurant to pick up a to go order.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/05/colorado-man-shoots-waffle-house-cook-who-asked-him-to-wear-a-face-mask/
To all the people complaining about their loss of "libety", are you planning to walk into Waffle House in shorts sans shirt and shoes next?
You don't have to cough or spit to aerosolize COVID
Scientists knew this already but thank you to the WaPo for this article
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/experiment-shows-human-speech-generates-droplets-that-linger-in-the-air-for-more-than-8-minutes/2020/05/13/7f293ba2-9557-11ea-82b4-c8db161ff6e5_story.html
Ordinary speech can emit small respiratory droplets that linger in the air for at least eight minutes and potentially much longer, according to a study published Wednesday that could help explain why infections of the coronavirus so often cluster in nursing homes, households, conferences, cruise ships and other confined spaces with limited air circulation.
The report, from researchers at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the University of Pennsylvania, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal. It is based on an experiment that used laser light to study the number of small respiratory droplets emitted through human speech.
The answer: a lot.
“Highly sensitive laser light scattering observations have revealed that loud speech can emit thousands of oral fluid droplets per second,” the report states.
Wear the fucking mask.
Sleep Apnea: Is it A risk Factor for COVID Morbity and Mortality?
By sleep apnea, I mean untreated sleep apnea. Which, in the United States, means 80% of sleep apnea, since at any one time 80% of people affected by the disorder do not know that they have it. Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is the most commonly undiagnosed common medical condition in this country, affecting up to 10% of the general adult population. Why is it so hard to diagnose? One, people cannot possibly see themselves sleep so they do not know if they snore or stop breathing unless someone else recognizes these are signs of sleep apnea and tells them. Two, doctors are trained to screen the morbidly obese for sleep apnea and ignore it in anyone else. Three, the testing is complicated--an overnight stay in a sleep lab is the gold standard. Imagine if the test for diabetes involved an overnight stay in a lab? How many people would know that they have diabetes?
Why sleep apnea? Look at the known demographic factors that are associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Male gender--men are affected by sleep apnea twice as often as women. African-American race--Blacks have twice the risk. Advancing age is associated with greater risk. Hypertension is also a risk factor since untreated sleep apnea is associated with difficult to control hypertension---3 or 4 medications and the blood pressure still is not controlled, but since it easy to check a blood pressure and difficult to get a sleep study, the secondary hypertension is diagnosed and the underlying sleep disorder i missed. Diabetes---OSA is associated with metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance. And finally, obesity, which is a risk factor but not the only risk factor.
Why might untreated sleep apnea increase the risk of complications from COVID?
1. Low oxygen spells at night might exacerbate the hypoxic effects of the virus on the lungs. Low oxygen can damage the lungs.
2. Sleep apnea is associated with relatively more sympathetic autonomic activity and decreased parasympathetic activity. Some doctors (like me) suspect that the virus may attack the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve plays an important role in limiting inflammation and the cytokine storm that seems to be killing some people. Severing the vagus nerve in lab animals causes the lungs to quickly fill up with fluid leading to a rapid death. Now, obviously the vagus nerve is not severed in COVID--if it was it would affect the ability to speak. However, degrees of injury might be important in determining how severe a bout of COVID will be. And if you start off with a relatively suppressed parasympathetic nervous system because you have untreated OSA, this might make a significant difference in how sick you get.
3. Another risk factor for sleep apnea is reflux disease. The body stops breathing in order to protect the airway. Those who have reflux are at increased risk of aspiration pneumonia which can worsen their pulmonary disease. They are also at increased risk for sleep apnea.
This hypothesis should be easy to test. When people are diagnosed with COVID ask their family members "Does he/she snore or stop breathing at night?" Ask the patient if he has ever been diagnosed with sleep apnea and is he compliant
with treatment (a great many people cannot tolerate CPAP currently the gold standard treatment for OSA).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23729937 Link about increased sympathetic and decreased parasympathetic tone in sleep apnea.
If Trump and Pence get COVID they will never tell.
Because they are treating COVID like some kind or preview for the rapture. "Good" Americans will be safe, because God loves them. Only "bad" people--meaning Democrats and minorities and gays--will die.
What if Pence and Trump are already getting infusions of serum from COVID survivors to boost their antibodies and that is why they are not wearing masks?
Anti-vaxxers Blame COVID Deaths on (Other) Vaccines
In the 26-minute video, the woman asserted how Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading voice on the coronavirus, had buried her research about how vaccines can damage people’s immune systems. It is those weakened immune systems, she declared, that have made people susceptible to illnesses like Covid-19.
Let me get this straight. If more of us had all died in childhood from measles, pertussis, tetanus, rabies there would be fewer of us alive now to catch COVID-19?
Nicotine as a Potential Therapy for COVID?
No one is suggesting that people take up smoking to fight COVID. Cigarettes are full of nasty stuff that weakens your lungs. However, some researchers have concluded that
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7192087/
we noticed that most of the clinical characteristics of severe COVID-19 could be explained by dysregulation of the cholinergic anti-inflammatory system.
I have been writing about this lately (see my old journals for more). My theory is that COVID affects the various cranial nerves including the vagus which in turn weakens the body's natural cholinergic system.
What readily available medications can augment a weakened cholinergic system? One is nicotine
The authors of this editorial write:
Once someone is infected with SARS-CoV-2, the immune system is mobilized. As the virus replicates, cell and viral debris or virions may interact with the nAChRs blocking the action of the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway. If the initial immune response is not enough to combat the viral invasion at an early stage, the extensive and prolonged replication of the virus will eventually block a large part the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway seriously compromising its ability to control and regulate the immune response. The uncontrolled action of pro-inflammatory cytokines will result in the development of cytokine storm, with acute lung injury leading to ARDS, coagulation disturbances and multiorgan failure. Based on this hypothesis, COVID-19 appears to eventually become a disease of the nicotinic cholinergic system. Nicotine could maintain or restore the function of the cholinergic anti-inflammatory system and thus control the release and activity of pro-inflammatory cytokines. This could prevent or suppress the cytokine storm. This hypothesis needs to be examined in the laboratory and the clinical setting.
(From a 1992 Thesis) Obesity Lowers Oxygen Levels When Lying Down
Obesity has been linked to a greater risk of hospitalization with COVID. I found a thesis done in 1992 by Anna Marie Angela Klosterman for her Masters Science Nurse Anesthesia which attempted to answer the question "Do obese people's oxygen saturation levels drop more than non-obese people when they lie down?" The answer was a (statistically significant) "Yes."
https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6193&context=etd
Worse, while everyone, obese and non-obese, experiences a drop in oxygen saturation levels when they first lie down (probably related to the fact that the intra-abdominal contents now push against the diaphragm, making the work of breathing more difficult) in the obese group, oxygen levels continued to drop for several minutes.
This means that when someone who is obese gets COVID ( or any other lower respiratory infection) they start out with a handicap. If they go to bed to rest, their oxygen drops. Meaning less severe lung involvement will result in worsened hypoxia--putting that person at risk of dangerously low oxygen levels.
Possible implication for COVID patients: Everyone and especially everyone who is obese should be encouraged to prop up, maybe even sleep in a recliner since everyone's oxygen saturation falls a little bit when they lie down but people who are overweight have a more serious problem with lower oxygen saturation when lying flat on their backs. And every little bit (of oxygen) counts when you are trying to avoid the effects of low oxygen.
On a related note, there is something called a "tilt table" which can be used in an ICU for those who are on a ventilator long term.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003999304004034
Standing for 5 minutes with assistance of a tilt table significantly increased ventilation in critical care patients during and immediately after the intervention. There were no improvements in gas exchange post tilt. Using a tilt table provided an effective method to increase ventilation in the short term.
What if a tilt table could be used for more than a few minutes? Would oxygen improve for a longer period of time?
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