This research article has not been peer-reviewed (and I honestly don’t understand a lot of the information), but it discusses the relationship between Vit D and infection/mortality rates.
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-21211/v1?int=appleNews
Brief summation:
DH’s private neurology practice in NJ has six physicians and works on a crazy 6 week rotational cycle. I have a detailed calendar to keep track of what office he is working out of (they have 2) and when he is on call.
The last time time DH was on call, and covering the larger of the hospitals that they are affiliated with, was the week of 3/16. About a week after that the hospital system started reporting the number of patients who tested positive and 5 weeks ago from today the total in the system was 415, in his hospital 42. The week he was there no one was required to wear PPE unless providing direct care to a patient who tested positive or was presumed to be positive. He had very few consults of any kind. No strokes, TIAs, headaches, backaches, etc. It was like no one was getting sick or people were scared to come into the hospital.
The NJ peak was predicted to be mid April between 4/13 and 4/21 depending on who was prognosticating.
DH has been on call this past week. PPE is required for everyone in the building. The total number of patients who tested positive in the system (as of 4/1) is now 981, and in his hospital, 130. Even when excluding Covid-19 related consults, he has been busy with all sorts of consults, most of them that aren’t really emergencies or requiring hospital care, which is typical. Covid-19 does have neurological impacts and he has been consulted on several cases which has added to the caseload.
Hopefully six weeks from now, things will be even better.
We have gotten surveys from all of our medical professionals asking things like what procedures we would come to, and what precautions the medical folks should take, etc.
My dentist in central VA sent out an email today stating they are reopening on Monday. Provided a long list of what they are doing to minimize the chance of spread. I was supposed to see her in April, but will be waiting til at least July. VA is officially still on lockdown til June 10, but I think they are trying some Phase 1 openings. (We are in MD, so am not super up-to-date on VA.)
The only change VA has made is allowing non-essential appointments at doctors, dentists and vets, and outpatient surgery centers.
I assume you mean 5/1? Are new daily admissions going down, finally? And what’s he seeing as far as neurological symptoms from covid-19? Has he been seeing strokes?
@“Cardinal Fang” So sorry - yes I did mean 5/1. Unfortunately neither typing nor proofreading are my strong suits which I is why I read more than I respond. By the time I’m done with a post it’s usually no longer relevant or several others said the same thing.
I took the data on hospital usage from a daily update H receives from his hospital system. I actually calculate the change as the update only provides, at least that I can easily find, total inpatients. However, my interpretation of the data is that since inpatients are declining, as patients are released (or unfortunately die) new patients are not totally taking their place. The report does break out confirmed positive cases and those awaiting confirmation, I only tracked confirmed. When I started, awaiting confirmation far outweighed confirmed. That has switched.
H has not mentioned any strokes that were a result of covid-19. Most of the consults have been for change of mental status and most of which he feels are attributed to medications as well as other organ failures that coexist with covid-19.
The Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit has kept a chart on their website tallying the COVID cases. As of May 2, they had 103 COVID in-patients. When I first started checking around mid-March, they had 400 plus patients.
The Henry Ford Hospital has 877 beds.
From The Economist-
There are some studies planned about whether nicotine somehow affects susceptibility to the virus. I never had seasonal allergies until I quit smoking, and always assumed it was because my respiratory system was too coated with tar to notice the allergens.
Could this be a game changer. I guess its too early .
https://www.jewishpress.com/headline/breaking-antibody-to-coronavirus-created-at-israel-institute-for-biological-research-in-nes-ziona/2020/05/05/
I talked to my PCP office today and my appointment Friday will be telepractice. Fine with me. I get to self report my weight and blood pressure (yes I have a blood pressure cuff and will report what i get).
Basically, I guess, they will ask me how I feel and then refill my prescriptions.
They have my bloodwork which was done a couple of weeks ago and was fine.
Went to LabCorp today for regular CBC, INR and leukemia testing. Employees were masked (and covering the nose this time). Still insisted on handling my credit card despite my protests. Let me run it through or send me a %$#@ bill! I brought my own pen and wipes. Sanitizer in the office and at the front entrance to the building.
I double masked – basic CVS hospital mask (non N-95) underneath my fabric mask. Wasn’t as hard to breathe through as I expected, which was a relief. CHF plus chemo has compromised some lung function. Have an oncology appointment next week, though I think it will be done over the phone since the main issue is whether I’m responding to my increased chemo, which we’ll know based on today’s test results. It’s tested via PCR, so we’ll see if it gets done because the priority is COVID PCR testing.
I will be looking forward to the results of this study on ivermectin: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04373824?term=ivermectin&draw=2&rank=2
Quick note on Chloroquine Diphosphate, from large randomized trial: it is NOT good for patients to be put on high doses. Pushes up the death rate. The high-dose group had to be stopped early on because too many of those patients were dying. Study: Effect of High vs Low Doses of Chloroquine Diphosphate as Adjunctive Therapy for Patients Hospitalized With Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Infection
A Randomized Clinical Trial
Link: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2765499
I can guarantee that the “Jewish mind” is not unique. 
Almost a sure bet that there are at least a few such antibodies being developed in the US and elsewhere.
A somewhat decent control, IMO, would be the vaping crowd. That is where it would be logical to look prior to any studies…
UCSF sent a team out into the Mission District in San Francisco, an area thought of as gentrifying, to test people who live and work in the area. Overall, they got about a 2% positive rate, and somewhat more than half of the positives were asymptomatic. For the people who lived in the Mission (rather than worked there) the rate was lower, about 1.4%.
The results were dramatically class- and race-based. Forty-four percent of those tested were Latino, and 38% were white. All the positives were Latino (95% of positives) or Asian/Pacific Islander (5% of positives). NONE of the white people tested positive.
And this makes sense when you look at the income class situation. The people who tested positive said they couldn’t work from home, they were low-income, and they lived in larger households. The majority of people who tested negative said their work and their financial situation were unchanged.
I guess this means stay-at-home works. The people that could stay at home were not infected (and most likely the people who couldn’t stay at home were better off because they weren’t surrounded by lots of other people passing around the disease).
This also points up the fact that it’s not residential density that is the problem here; it’s overcrowding. The people who didn’t get infected and the people who did get infected live in an equally dense urban area, but the people who are infected tend to live in overcrowded housing situations.
Presuming you mean https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/05/417356/initial-results-mission-district-covid-19-testing-announced .
“2,959 census tract residents or workers who formed the focus of the testing project, as well as 1,201 neighbors, school teachers and other volunteers”
Tested by race/ethnicity:
44.1% Latino, 37.8% white, 11.4% Asian/PI, 3.5% other, 2.9% black, 0.2% NA
Positive results by race/ethnicity:
95.1% Latino, 0% white, 4.9% Asian/PI, 0% other, 0% black, 0% NA
Positive result splits (page did not mention splits among total tested, except for race/ethnicity above):
Can work from home: 90% no, 10% yes
Income: 88.9% <$50k, 7.4% $50k-100k, 3.7% >$100k
Household size: 11.5% 1-2 people, 59.6% 3-5 people, 28.8% >5 people
@“Cardinal Fang” I have wondered about the NYC antibody tests since they were conducted in grocery stores among the workers and customers. The workers probably mirror the racial and income divide you quoted above, and even those who are out shopping are not fully sheltering at home.
I am the one who goes out to buy groceries for my family. The other family members have not been inside a store in the past six weeks. By conducting the test in a store, the population is already skewed toward those more likely to have been exposed.
Note that the UCSF study was for active infection, not antibodies. At the time of the study, late April, about 4.5% of the Latinos tested (and none of the whites tested) were infected with the disease. Presumably some percentage of the Latinos tested would have shown up with antibodies, if they had been tested for that.