Coronavirus: Lancet Finding Shows 33.6% with Neurological or Psychiatric Problems

Long haul health issues related to COVID-19 is something that I personally find very concerning. Before going into the latest article that I've come across, here are some of my more recent posts about the topic: 

1. Mental Health

2. Impact Among UK Medical Staff

3. Long Hual on Those Who Didn't Need to go to the Hospital

4. Rehospitalized

Here is a Yahoo (May 5) article I came across:

Using TriNetX, an electronic health records network with over 81 million patients, researchers for Lancet Psychiatry, a British medical journal, looked at 236,379 patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19. They found that an estimated 33.62% of them received a neurological or psychiatric diagnosis within six months of testing positive for the virus.

Coronavirus: Breakthrough Cases Part 2

Before looking into breakthrough cases, let's just remember that during the clinical trials, the CDC had the following to say about the Pfizer vaccine:

Based on evidence from clinical trials in people 16 years and older, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 95% effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed infection with the virus that causes COVID-19 in people who received two doses and had no evidence of being previously infected.

But clinical trials do not equal the real world.

I recently took a look at an example where multiple fully vaccinated people got COVID-19 after a house party. That story was reported on August 4th, but it shouldn't be a surprise. Reuters (Jul 5) had reported the following findings from Israel:

Vaccine effectiveness in preventing both infection and symptomatic disease fell to 64% since June 6, the Health Ministry said. At the same time the vaccine was 93% effective in preventing hospitalizations and serious illness from the coronavirus.

Coronavirus: Lab Leak Part 14 - Dr. Peter Ben Embarek

The New York Post (Aug 12) has the following headline, "COVID-19 lab leak theory a ‘probable hypothesis,’ WHO scientist says in stunning reversal." But is that really what Dr. Peter Ben Embarek is saying?

In the stunning reversal, Dr. Peter Ben Embarek, who initially dismissed the lab leak theory as “extremely unlikely,” said he now considers the possibility a “probable hypothesis,” according to the Washington Post, which cites a documentary airing on Danish television channel TV2.

“An employee who was infected in the field by taking samples falls under one of the probable hypotheses,” Ben Embarek told the interviewers.

“This is where the virus jumps directly from a bat to a human. In that case, it would then be a laboratory worker instead of a random villager or other person who has regular contact with bats,” he explained.

I think that the lab leak hypothesis is valid and needs to be researched, but this quote from the New York Post seems to argue for the direct zoonotic transmission hypothesis. Could he have said more that would indicate he believes in a lab leak? If so, I'm sure the New York Post would have taken that part of the quote.

I suspect that Dr. Embarek isn't too happy with articles like this. It seems to be taking his quote out of context.

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books: California Dreamin': Walter Mosley, Ron Brownstein & David L. Ulin on Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s

The 2021 Online Version of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books was a few months back and so I'm a bit late in getting these posts out, but as always I seriously enjoyed catching various panel discussions. One such panel discussion was about California in the 1960s and 1970s called "California Dreamin': Walter Mosley, Ron Brownstein & David L. Ulin on Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s."

Here are some bios of Ron Brownstein and Walter Mosley that I took from the LA Times website:

Ronald Brownstein, a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of presidential campaigns, is a senior editor at The Atlantic, and a senior political analyst for CNN. He also served as the national political correspondent and national affairs columnist for the Los Angeles Times and covered he White House and national politics for the National Journal . . . His newest release is Rock Me on the Water: 1974-The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics.

Walter Mosley is the author of more than 60 critically-acclaimed books of fiction, nonfiction, memoir and plays. His work has been translated into 25 languages. From the first novel he published, Devil in a Blue Dress with its protagonist Easy Rawlins, Mosley’s work has explored the lives of Black men and women in America—past, present and future—in a rich exploration of genre with his latest including the short story collection, The Awkward Black Man.

Libya Update: Sep 2021

I last wrote about LIbya in March 2021. At the time, they had just voted on an interim government lead by Abdelhamid Dbeibah. Six months later and he is still interim Prime Minister. That is positive news. Aljazeera (Sep 16) had the following that discusses the upcoming December elections:

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has pledged support for elections in Libya in talks with the North African country’s interim prime minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah.

. . . The talks with Dbeibah in the Egyptian capital, Ciaro, took place days after el-Sisi met the Libyan renegade commander Khalifa Haftar, who leads forces that have de facto control over Libya’s east and parts of the south.

. . . Critics accused him [I believe the him here is Egypt's president] of failing to follow due process and seeking to favour Haftar, who is increasingly expected to run in the country’s presidential poll later this year.

Coronavirus: Mental Health Crisis?

The Hill (Apr 13) has an article up about mental health problems associated with COVID-19. The author has an interesting comparison to Hurricane Katrina: 

Five months after Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, researchers found that 17 percent of New Orleans residents reported serious mental health problems afterward, compared to 1 percent to 3 percent of the American population.

The article also looks into a study of Americans who might be dealing with psychiatric issues.

Movie Review: Paris, Texas

Paris, Texas is one of those art house movies that I love watching. There isn't any action scenes. It is a story about regrets and what could have been. And thoughts about what should be. 

The movie starts with Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) drinking the last drops of water from a gallon jug. He tosses the jug to the side. All you see is Texas desert. One might assume that he's going to die from dehydration out in this desert as there isn't any buildings or roads that one can see. He comes across a bar, grabs some ice cubes from a freezer, and then faints. He wakes up in a hospital, unable to speak. Via his belongings, the doctor is able to find a phone number and gives the phone number a call. The phone number is to Walt (Dean Stockton), Travis' brother, who lives in Los Angeles. Walt quickly flies out to Texas after telling his wife Anne (Aurore Clement). Anne asks what they should say to Hunter (Hunter Carson) -- someone we don't know anything about at this time. Walt tells Anne to let Hunter know that his father has come back onto the scene.

When Walt flies to Texas and locates Travis (who had decided to ramble off from the hospital), Travis is still unable to speak. But we slowly gain details about his life. He's been gone for about 4 years. Both he and his wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski) had just disappeared. Their son Hunter was just dropped off at the doorstep of Walt and Anne by, most likely, a third party when he was just 3. In fact, Walt and Anne had just assumed that Travis was dead and probably had told Hunter this fact. As time passed, the two of them treated Hunter as their own son and he started to call them mom and dad. At this point in time, Hunter is 7.

Working From Home: Not the future?

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many office workers shifted to working from home. I constantly heard on Bloomberg about how this would become the future of work. Interestingly, Bloomberg (Aug 10) recently found out the following: 

In July, roughly 25% of managers and professional workers teleworked at some point because of the pandemic, the lowest since the government started tracking the data in May 2020. It’s a clear sign that the age-old work compact is mostly intact, and that the office model is far from defunct.

The July number is down from 41% in January and 57% in May of last year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tallies the number of employed who teleworked or worked at home for pay at any time in the month because of the novel coronavirus.

Coronavirus: Can the vaccinated spread the virus?

There is this Tweet that made the rounds from a Ben Wakana who is the deputy director of strategic communications and engagement for the White House COVID-19 Reponse Team.

VACCINATED PEOPLE DO NOT TRANSMIT THE VIRUS AT THE SAME RATE AS UNVACCINATED PEOPLE AND IF YOU FAIL TO INCLUDE THAT CONTEXT YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. https://t.co/gBkDbJ21xX

— Ben Wakana (@benwakana46) July 30, 2021

"Vaccinated People do not transmit the virus at the same rate as unvaccinated people and if you fail to include that context you're doing it wrong."

This might hold up as a true fact, but how true is it? Will this tweet end up splitting hairs?

Here's this story from the Baltimore Sun (Aug 3):

Five days earlier, I had gone to a house party in Montgomery County. There were 15 adults there, all of us fully vaccinated . . . Then, I started to hear that a few other people who had been at the party were getting sick. Then a few more. At this point, 11 of the 15 have tested positive for COVID.

Coronavirus: Mu Variant In Los Angeles

The big concern recently has been the Delta variant. Is is possible that the Mu variant will be the next big variant concern? There are some signs it could be. 

 Deadline (Sep 3) reports:

Today, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health announced the Mu variant, for the first time, has been identified in the region. The numbers are still small; Only 167 Mu variants have been identified in L.A. County thus far. “These specimens were sequenced between June 19 and Augusts 21, with the majority of Mu specimens sequenced in July,” according to a statement from county public health officials.

Note: did some grammar clean-up to the above as it was a bit messy.

Coronavirus: Delta Variant Finds Its Way into New Zealand

As those who are interested in COVID-19 know, New Zealand recently put the country in lockdown over a single case of the delta variant. The Guardian (Aug 27) reports on how the virus got into the country:

New Zealanders lived virus-free in the six months leading up to the latest outbreak, going to workplaces, shops and sport stadiums without needing to wear masks, while children attended school. Then a traveller returning from Sydney brought the Delta variant, which escaped from a quarantine hotel.

The lockdown is extremely strict.

The lockdown prevents most people from leaving home other than to exercise, or to buy groceries or medicine. Retail stores are closed, as are restaurants – including takeaway – schools and most businesses.

CNN (Aug 27) reports on the more interesting topic -- the future. New Zealand has a zero Covid strategy. But they can stay that way for only so long.

The fortified borders have also contributed to another major casualty: tourism. Once the country's largest export industry, overseas visitor arrivals slipped by more than 98% in January 2021 compared with a year before.

Despite that, New Zealand doesn't seem to be in any rush to reconnect with the world. There's even an us-versus-them mentality among some social media users who criticize overseas New Zealanders desperate to get home for not returning sooner.

. . . Earlier this month, a Strategic Covid-19 Public Health Advisory Group said the elimination strategy could still continue, even after New Zealand reopened its borders.

On its website, the Ministry of Health explains that it will use a combination of border rules, vaccinations and public health measures to keep people safe from Covid. The country will still try to stamp out the virus -- but it may mean it relies less on lockdowns.

In a blog post that is around a year old I mentioned that tourism has a direct and indirect impact of 9.8% on New Zealand's economy. Now I'll admit I thought the impact to their economy would be much harsher than it currently has turned out to be. At the time of that post, unemployment was 4.0%. It hit a high of 5.3% in Sep 2020, but has since declined back down to 4.0% as of June 2021. With no tourism, what is driving their economy? Per Reuters (Jun 16):

Growth was largely driven by a surging housing sector amid historically low interest rates and cheap mortgages, although worries about housing affordability have led the government and RBNZ to introduce measures to try to cool the market.

That to me sounds like financial engineering that can't last forever.

Their tourism season is normally between December through March. They've already missed one tourism season. It seems to me that they'll miss this next one. Can they afford to miss another without there being some economic damage? The Ministry of Health explains that even after the country opens their borders, there will still be border rules and that the country will still attempt to stamp out the virus. We know that there are plenty of breakthrough cases for those who have been vaccinated. How restrictive will tourism be when borders are finally opened and will tourist be willing to deal with those restrictions? 

Coronavirus: Lab Leak Part 13 - Back to the Wuhan Wet Market hypothesis?

Is it looking like the Wuhan Wet Market hypothesis is back in play? Bloomberg (Aug 16) looks into this:

According to the report, which was published in June in the online journal Scientific Reports, minks, civets, raccoon dogs, and other mammals known to harbor coronaviruses were sold in plain sight for years in shops across the city, including the now infamous Huanan wet market, to which many of the earliest Covid cases were traced. The data in the report was collected over 30 months by Xiao Xiao, a virologist whose roles straddled epidemiology and animal research at the government-funded Key Laboratory of Southwest China Wildlife Resources Conservation and at Hubei University of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Coronavirus: Long Haulers in UK Medical Staff

As times goes by, we'll be getting more research information about the impact to long-term health after one has recovered from COVID-19. Some of the blog posts I've done have involved rather small sample sizes such as just 100 patients. This Guardian (Apr 3) article is looking at 122,000 health services workers suffering from long hauler symptoms:

At least 122,000 NHS personnel have the condition, the Office for National Statistics disclosed in a detailed report that showed 1.1 million people in the UK were affected by the condition. That is more than any other occupational group and ahead of teachers, of whom 114,000 have it.

. . . “It is particularly worrying that in the latest ONS data healthcare workers self-reported the highest rates of long Covid among all professions, with nearly 4% – accounting for about 122,000 of the estimated 1.094 million people in the UK reporting ongoing symptoms.”