This long tale in RawStory.com, published August 31, is the third installment in a series on QAnon, that notorious conspiracy theory of theories. It describes the ancient origins of many of the theories within QAnon, going back to the 1970s and even before. The author describes attempts by his “friend” to convince him of conspiracy theories supporting the Republican Presidential candidate:
According to my friend, initiates of the Illuminati had teamed up with subterranean demons to torture, rape and eat kidnapped children in underground military bases ruled by [redacted]’s mortal enemies.
The story goes into great detail to describe the ancestors of the conspiracy theories that are now prevalent on the alt-Right. It seems that many of these theories can be traced back to such documents as the book “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by the late Dr. Hunter Thompson (allegedly a work of fiction.)
That book described the fictional “adrenochrome” which was extracted from young children (who were then killed) and used by fictional wealthy and elderly individuals to fictionally rejuvenate themselves. In the modern version of the conspiracy theory, however, “adrenochrome” is a real substance and their “proof” that it exists is the reference to it in that book.
Back then (in the late sixties), left-wing conspiracy theorists held that the CIA, through projects like MK ULTRA, was experimenting with mind control through drugs and other means. Ideas (or “memes”) like this are now part and parcel of modern conspiracy theories, which use them without attribution and probably without realizing their ancient origin. The difference from past versions of these theories is that they are used by those on the far right to make their case for such falsehoods as “cannibalistic pedophiles who use Comet Ping Pong (a real pizza joint in Washington DC) as a base.”
This long and involved story piece is a fascinating read if you can tolerate the bizarre, involved, and nauseating ideas involved and understand that they are pure figments of the imagination. It seems that the new conspiracists can’t tell the difference between truth and fiction.
One of the techniques used by practitioners of “Big Lie” propaganda is to repeat false statements over and over again until they become more reasonable-sounding because of their familiarity. You should beware of people who repeat the same statement twice or three times, as if for emphasis, but really to make the statement seem more reasonable by repetition. The technique is dangerous because experiments have shown that it really works. It is known by logicians as the “argumentum ad nauseam.”
Other logical fallacies found in modern propaganda include ad hominem (“against the man”) which includes personal insults like “weak”, “loonies”, “losers”, and the like. Another is the appeal to fear, which uses images or words designed to cause fear in the listener– this is very popular with modern rightists. Other popular fallacies include the “black and white fallacy“, the “cult of personality“, the “thought-terminating cliche” (“it is what it is”), and “whataboutism.” Look these up in Wikipedia under “Propaganda techniques” so that you can become familiar with them and be on your guard when they are used on you (mainly by Republicans but even by some Democrats as well.)
Saliva specimens for SARS-COV-2 detection: 2 studies show parallel positivity and sensitivity
A letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine on August 28 describes higher virus counts in saliva specimens than in nasopharyngeal swab specimens taken from the same patients.
From the letter:
We therefore screened 495 asymptomatic health care workers who provided written informed consent to participate in our prospective study, and we used RT-qPCR to test both saliva and nasopharyngeal samples obtained from these persons. We detected SARS-CoV-2 RNA in saliva specimens obtained from 13 persons who did not report any symptoms at or before the time of sample collection. Of these 13 health care workers, 9 had collected matched nasopharyngeal swab specimens by themselves on the same day, and 7 of these specimens tested negative …. The diagnosis in the 13 health care workers with positive saliva specimens was later confirmed in diagnostic testing of additional nasopharyngeal samples by a CLIA (Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988)–certified laboratory.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2016359
A letter to the Annals of Internal Medicine, also on August 28, found similarly discordant test results: (in this study both nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs were used in separate cases)
Of the 1939 paired swab and saliva samples analyzed (Figure), SARS-CoV-2 E gene was detected in 70 samples (Table), 80.0% with swabs and 68.6% with saliva. Thirty-four participants (48.6%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 on both swab and saliva samples. Discordant test results were seen in 22 participants (31.4%) who tested positive with swab alone and in 14 (20%) who tested positive with saliva alone. Swabs were obtained from the nasopharynx in 35.7% of participants who tested positive with saliva alone, compared with 9.1% of participants who tested positive with swab alone.
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-4738
The second study used a preservative fluid for the saliva specimen to prevent degradation of the RNA during room-temperature storage and transport of the specimen: “This study is unique in that it used a novel collection kit containing a preservative and viricidal [sic] fluid, allowing for safe and stable storage and transport of the samples.”
The first study was much smaller than the second, so the finding of somewhat greater sensitivity for saliva specimens may have been a fluke. Nonetheless, it is clear that saliva specimens are similarly sensitive as nasopharyngeal specimens.
These two studies suggest that it may be useful to test patients who have a high index of suspicion for COVID-19 with both nasopharyngeal swabs and saliva tests. Nasopharyngeal swabs have a significant false negative testing rates, a factor which is not widely discussed. The discordance of positive tests with one type of specimen and negative results with the second type supports the idea of using both tests when one is highly suspicious of infection.
The studies indicate that saliva testing is a viable means for detecting SARS-COV-2 RNA. The saliva test has the advantage of dispensing with an invasive nasopharyngeal swab, eliminating one component of the test which may be in short supply. In addition, the saliva test does not require a technician for collection, eliminating the risk of exposure to infection by another person.
The only roadblock to using saliva tests is certification by the Food and Drug Administration for these tests. Emergency Use Authorization should be immediately given for saliva tests.
This paper, a pre-print (not peer-reviewed yet) in Lancet (abstract here), describes a man who had two infections with genetically distinct SARS-COV-2 isolates resulting in two symptomatic episodes of COVID-19. From the paper:
In April, 2020, a twenty-five year old resident of Reno, NV tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 through a community-based testing event held by the Washoe County Health District (collection date: 4/18/2020). The patient indicated symptoms consistent with viral infection (sore throat, cough, headache, nausea, diarrhea; onset: 3/25/20). During isolation, the patient indicated resolution of symptoms (4/27/20).
(from pdf version)
Forty-eight days later (on 5/28/20), only two days after testing negative for the viral antigen, the patient had a recurrence of symptoms. He was hospitalized with hypoxia a few days later. Chest imaging showed pneumonia. This time (on 6/6/20) he had an IgM/IgG positive blood test. The virus responsible was found to be genetically distinct from that isolated during his first episode.
The details of the distinction are complex, but the viruses were in the same clade (strain) but there were several mutations in the second isolate which were not present in the first. In addition, the patient’s parent had symptoms simultaneously with the patient’s second infection and was found to be positive for SARS-COV-2. At the time of publication, the authors were unable to confirm the identity of the second infection with that of the patient’s parent (but they’re working on it.)
This patient had no immunosuppressive conditions and was not on any medication which might have prevented him from resisting the second infection.
This and other, so far isolated, cases of re-infection with different strains of the virus represent confusing, not to say bizarre, facts about this new virus. Speculation would be premature at this juncture.
Suffice it to say that it is possible for young, healthy people to be infected a second time within a few months– and to have significant symptoms and disease (pneumonia in this case.)
(… continued from previous post )
The trick of dividing what should be a unified society into warring classes or ethnicities destroys the solidarity of a free society and makes it easier to subjugate the society. What is needed for this trick is to take the otherwise trivial distinguishing characteristics of two groups within society– for example, green eyes vs. blue eyes– then use them to denigrate one group while setting them against and advantaging the other group.
It is even easier to destroy society by undermining the competence of its government. The con man in the White House has been doing that ever since he came into office: he hires incompetent people who know nothing of the departments they are supposed to run– or worse, these people have publicly declared that they want to dismantle the very agency they are appointed to head.
These incompetents, with no experience in government (or worse, experience in trying to destroy government) are hired because they affirm their loyalty to the con man in chief. They are fired only if their scandals become too flagrant to be ignored, or they disobey their instructions and make statements counter to their con man leader’s lies.
A perfect example of this all-encompassing ignorance and incompetence is Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education. She never held any government position before her appointment. She never had a position as a teacher or an administrator in any branch of education. Her only qualification was that she was a loyal, affluent Republican. Her stated aims in life (and her experience as an organizer) before her appointment were related to the promotion of private, religious schools– about as far from free, secular public schools as could be imagined.
This Ms. DeVos has been part of the administration since the beginning. She has avoided scandal and made few public statements, thus her ability to stay in office. She has quietly dismantled one of the most important efforts made towards equalizing education: the relief of debt incurred by students defrauded by for-profit vocational schools. She has steered government efforts away from providing justice to students victimized by sexual assault in schools. She has done much more to damage schools that is unpublicized and essentially done in the dark, without anyone learning enough to complain, much less to try and stop her.
I am so angry that our society has been divided into polarized camps by the con man in the White House, that I just can’t shut up. He has worked hard to increase the sense of grievance that disadvantaged (or fearful of being dispossessed) White people, especially White Men, are feeling.
Anyone who doubts that this con man is a racist should study his history. He was sued by our federal government for refusing to lease apartments to Black and other non-White people. He signed a consent agreement and then ignored it. He was sued again, and forced to sign a second consent agreement. He made racist comments about his employees who were Black, comments which were so foul that I refuse to dignify them by repeating them.
He made selective and “strategic” alignments with certain Black people, such as the singer Kanye West, who fit his definition of White by being rich and evangelical Christian. He elevated the Black neurosurgeon Ben Carson into Secretary for Housing and Urban Development– a position for which he had neither experience nor expertise– because he was rich and an evangelical Christian.
He made an alliance with Herman Cain, who fit his definition of White by being rich and a conservative Republican (he was instrumental in the defeat of President Clinton’s national health care plan by sponsoring the TV ads that starred “Harry and Louise”.) Then he cooperated in Mr. Cain’s death from the novel coronavirus by inviting him to a mask-optional, non-socially-distanced rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma that resulted in a dramatic surge of new cases.
He has deliberately angered Black people by insulting them, especially those who have had the courage to speak out against his prejudice and injustices. If you doubt this, look up what he said and tweeted about the late John Lewis and his Congressional District.
He has even encouraged agents in the pay of the Russian Secret Service to increase polarization and engender anger and division among both White and Black people in this country.
Before the last presidential election, the Internet Research Agency (a Russian Secret Service organization) created fake accounts that appeared to support Blacks but stoked resentment against Whites– not to change votes (almost all Blacks voted against the Republican Presidential candidate anyway) but to increase Black anger against Whites.
All of this con man’s actions have deliberately fostered anger and division among the American people. He could not have done more harm to America if he had studied the speeches of Hitler. (Oh, wait, one of his biographers claimed that he really did study the speeches of Hitler!)
(I regret and sincerely apologize for using the name of Hitler but I justify it by saying that He-who-must-not-be-named is equally as dangerous as Hitler at this point in history.)
We are in a much worse position to counter the attempts at dominance by the Chinese totalitarians than we were four years ago. Don’t fear dominance by the Russians– they are a minor power that is punching way above their weight. Our real and most dangerous adversaries are the Chinese government’s authoritarian/totalitarian bureaucrats, their censors, and their spies.
By the way, the Chinese and the Iranians are not covertly working to sabotage the elections– but the Russians are. The Chinese and the Iranians are expressing their opinions– they don’t like the con man because he is unstable, xenophobic, and against all foreign governments except those that unfailingly support his every fleeting impulse.
It is true that that the governments of China and Iran are undemocratic, authoritarian, and repressive– but they’re not using unfair, covert means to interfere with our elections yet. The Russians are using all available means, both fair and foul, to press for the re-election of the most dangerous con man ever to fool most of the people, most of the time.
Why do the Russians support this con man? Because they can see that he is weakening and dividing America. That suits their goal– to pull this country down to the point where they can, without our interference, get back their precious Soviet Union (which included all of Ukraine, Georgia, and several other countries that they lost in 1991 and that are nominally independent now.)
We have been conned by a con man who lost the popular vote by nearly 3 millions and only won the Electoral College by strategically picking up 70,000 votes spread over three states. Remember that Hitler only gained 40% of the popular vote in a relatively free and fair election (where he divided the popular vote by setting the Communists against the Socialists… )
Hitler won the chancellorship (similar to today’s American presidency) by picking up the support of the industrialists. They “temporarily” backed him “strategically” because they thought that they could discard him afterwards, when he had controlled the unrest in Germany that was threatening to divide it into civil war.
Hitler had incited that very civil war by dividing the country in just the way that I previously described. He set the Jews apart and divided the country into anti-Semites versus Jews and their supporters. He set the Socialists apart by lumping them together with the Communists and denigrating them all as “anti-German.”
Be warned– He-who-must-not-be-named is following this very same playbook. He is lumping the Democrats together with the Socialists. He is lumping the Blacks together with immigrants. He is lumping Native Americans together with South Asian immigrants. He is playing all non-White peoples off against European White peoples. He is playing up all the divisions that already existed before he came to power– making minor disagreements into major feuds.
Enough geopolitics– this is a problem within America, which only Americans (both White and non-White, American-born and immigrant) can solve. We are being made weaker by this con man. Those of us who are still fooled by his fear-mongering are in for an awful awakening that will inevitably come if he is re-elected. I have never in my 66 years been so fearful for the future of America.
Most people on social media saw the video of Jacob Blake being shot in the back by a policeman (according to Wikipedia, he was hit by four of seven shots fired at him.) What they didn’t see was what happened during the couple of minutes before the shooting. From statements that have come to light afterwards, it is clear that the policemen involved were trying to arrest Mr. Blake on a warrant. They were present because they had been called to the scene by the person who had originally made the complaint that led to the warrant. At least four policemen were present and directly involved in attempting to arrest Mr. Blake.
The policemen had used a Taser on him, apparently twice, without much effect. They had also bodily tackled him, and he had slipped their grasp. The fact that four policemen were unable to subdue Mr. Blake physically speaks to their incompetence or weakness. Are they not trained and practiced in physically taking down an arrestee?
Their reaction to their inability to subdue the arrestee also speaks to their incompetence. Instead of trying harder, all four of them, to take him down, they drew their weapons and tried to intimidate him by threatening to shoot him if he did not comply. He had already pulled out the Taser darts they had fired into him– what made them think that they could intimidate him?
This threat was obviously ineffective and led to their being “forced” to use their weapons in an attempt to render him hors de combat or to kill him. Even after seven rounds fired point blank at his back, they were unable to kill him.
This shows the basic incompetence of these policemen. They were unable to hit him with all of their shots (fired slowly, as the video shows)– they missed three out of seven times. Think about this. He was within arm’s reach and they couldn’t hit him consistently with aimed shots.
These policemen– all four of them– were unable to arrest a man without resorting to lethal force, even when he did not present a threat to them (except the threat that they would fail in their “duty” to arrest him) and even in the presence of multiple innocent bystanders who could have been wounded or killed by stray bullets (those other three bullets had to land somewhere.)
The fact is that the police force in Kenosha, Wisconsin is incompetent and dangerous, both to miscreants and to innocent bystanders.
The basic incompetence of this force was again shown the following Tuesday night, when a seventeen-year-old carrying an AR-15 rifle fired on protesters, killing two and wounding a third. Immediately after the shooting, when bystanders were yelling at the police (in their squad cars) “He’s the shooter!” and he walked towards them with his hands up as if to surrender, they ignored him and drove past him. This was also recorded on video from another cellphone.
This minor, a murderer, was able to walk away and return to his home in Illinois. He was arrested the following day (without incident) by local Illinois police. He has still, at this writing, not been extradited back to Wisconsin. His lawyer is claiming “self-defense” and says he will fight the extradition. Watch the video. Does that look like “self-defense” to you?
These incidents speak to the basic incompetence and racism of local police forces both in Kenosha, Wisconsin and in Illinois. The fact that four policemen were unable to arrest a man who was not brandishing a weapon, on a warrant, without resorting to lethal force, tells us that these policemen were incompetent. The fact that he was not allowed to surrender voluntarily, with a lawyer present, to a duly sworn warrant, suggests that he is one of the over-policed minority called Black and indigent.
The fact that a White teenager, after murdering two people, was allowed to return to his home town in another state and surrender voluntarily, with a lawyer, suggests that he is one of the under-policed minority called White and affluent. Is there racism– or classism– here? You decide.
It is no wonder that the roughly 50% of the 8% of Kenosha residents who are both indigent and Black are filled with rage. There is little surprise when they attack the nearest symbols of their economic subservience (a used car dealership and several retail businesses) with fire and looting. What other weapons do they have at hand to make their anger heard?
It is also no wonder that the roughly 95% of Wisconsin residents who are not Black are now more likely to vote for their oppressor-in-chief, the con man in the White House, because they are afraid. This man has used one of the oldest tricks in the autocrat’s playbook: to define society as consisting of warring classes (or ethnicities) and set them one against the other, to distract them from the fact that he is oppressing all of them.
( To be continued in next post … )
The Washington Post on August 28 published an article about the University of Arizona’s sewage surveillance and how it caught a COVID-19 outbreak before it started. Like many other colleges, universities, and primary or secondary schools, the U of AZ has been dealing with the fall opening of school by closely watching its students as they moved into dorms.
One of their newer methods of surveillance: examining sewage from the dorm’s bathrooms for virus RNA. Previous research has shown that fragments of virus RNA can be detected in sewage outfalls even before people report symptoms or test positive for SARS-COV-2.
From the WaPo article:
When a wastewater sample from one dorm came back positive this week, the school quickly tested all 311 people who live and work there and found two asymptomatic students who tested positive. They were quickly quarantined.
“With this early detection, we jumped on it right away, tested those youngsters, and got them the appropriate isolation where they needed to be,” said Richard Carmona, a former U.S. surgeon general who is directing the school’s reentry task force, in a news conference.
Researchers around the world have been studying whether wastewater testing can effectively catch cases early to prevent covid-19 clusters. There are programs in Singapore, China, Spain, Canada and New Zealand, while in the United States, more than 170 wastewater facilities across 37 states are being tested. Earlier this month, officials in Britain announced testing at 44 water treatment facilities. The Netherlands has been collecting samples at 300 sewage treatment plants.
With colleges battling large outbreaks around the country, the University of Arizona — which is trying a mix of online and in-person courses — elected to test sewage from all 20 residence halls. Other schools are doing the same, including the University of California at San Diego and Syracuse University.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/28/arizona-coronavirus-wastewater-testing/
This technique– already proven at several large sewage facilities in the Netherlands– has the potential to surveil large or small groups of people and rapidly detect the excretion of virus RNA, even before symptoms appear in the affected population.
In the U of AZ case, we do not know if the two infected students were asymptomatic or presymptomatic, but it doesn’t matter for this surveillance technique. It can detect infections early, possibly even before nasopharyngeal swabs.
On August 24, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) changed their recommendations for testing of people who have been exposed to other people with COVID-19 (or who have been in an environment where the virus is spreading): now they say a test is not needed unless you have symptoms. It doesn’t say, wait a few days after exposure to get tested (which might make sense, since it takes an average of 4-5 days to come down with an infection after you are exposed)– it just says, you don’t need to be tested.
This change left a lot of experts scratching their heads. What if you were exposed and caught the infection, but had no symptoms? Aren’t you equally at risk of passing it on and aren’t you just as dangerous to others?
We know that a large proportion of people who are infected by SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, have no symptoms. Anywhere from 20% to 80%, depending on which study you read (an average of 40%) of those infected are asymptomatic. However, other studies show that they can just as easily pass on their infections as those who are sick. In fact, if they don’t know that they are contagious, they could pass it on more easily because they won’t isolate themselves.
Now, if you didn’t know that a) you might have it and be asymptomatic and b) you could still easily pass it on, you might think that this is sound advice. But you would be wrong. You could kill your grandfather (who has diabetes and high blood pressure) or your disabled baby nephew (who has an immune deficiency.) Is that good or bad?
This is what the recommendation dated July 22 from CDC says: “Viral testing is recommended for all close contacts of persons with COVID-19.” If you click on the “hyperlink” associated with the words “all close contacts” it takes you to a page about “Contact Tracing” which discusses in-depth everything you need to know about– you guessed it– finding and testing everyone who came into “close contact” with a known case.
This is what the recommendation dated August 24 from CDC says: “If you have been in close contact (within 6 feet) of a person with a COVID-19 infection for at least 15 minutes but do not have symptoms: You do not necessarily need a test unless you are a vulnerable individual or your health care provider or State or local public health officials recommend you take one.” Note that there is nothing about the incubation period (the time between exposure and infection.)
Now, I don’t know about you (maybe you’re not paranoid– yet) but that, to me, sounds suspiciously like a way to avoid testing people rather than a way to track down and isolate everyone who might be infected so that you can contain a highly contagious disease. In the long run, the effect of this guidance or recommendation will be to allow more asymptomatic people to pretend that everything is fine while they go around spreading the disease to unsuspecting contacts.
Especially if they don’t bother to wear a mask and don’t wash their hands after every contact with another individual who is not in their own household. Nor would they trouble themselves to avoid crowds of other people not wearing masks. Just like Typhoid Mary (remember her?)
So Governor Cuomo of New York State came out on TV and said he was going to ignore that new advice from the CDC. I am going to follow his lead, but I’m not going to ignore it altogether. I’m going to store it up in my head in a mental file with all the other gaslighting attempts that come from politicians who get tested multiple times a day and don’t let anyone who hasn’t been tested come within shouting distance.
Footnote: A Washington Post story today at 3:27 PM EDT says that Dr. Scott Atlas, a member of the Coronavirus Task Force, pushed for this change in “guidance” and has stated publicly that “fewer people need tests for the virus” (according to the story.) Apparently the CDC change was pushed by the task force. Admiral Brett Giroir, a task force member, claimed that this related to the idea that someone without symptoms should not be tested on “day two” after exposure because such a test would likely not be valid– but that’s not what the guidance says.
It’s true that the ideal time to test someone without symptoms after exposure would be more like a week to two weeks– but, again, that’s not what the guidance says. This is also unrelated to the shortage in tests and the long turn-around time for results, according to the story. Once again, this is wrong and should not be trusted.
Dr. Atlas, a physician, is not an infectious disease specialist and is a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution, a think tank at Stanford University. Herbert Hoover, it should be remembered, is the president who preceded Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and who did little or nothing to help the US during the worst days of the Great Depression– where we are headed now, only on the heels of a deadly contagious virus pandemic. This new guidance shows that the CDC has been corrupted by the ideas of the Con Man in Chief. Be very, very afraid.
The study authors were quoted in Medpage Today as standing behind the main conclusions of their study.
“We are pleased to confirm that reanalysis of the data has not led to a change in the main conclusions of the study,” they wrote. “As we originally reported, compared with healthy controls and risk factor-matched controls, patients recently recovered from COVID-19 had lower left ventricular ejection fraction, higher left ventricle volume, and elevated values of T1 and T2.”
Only the comparison for left ventricular mass index between COVID-19 patients and healthy controls changed from a significant to a nonsignificant association.
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/88263
This study was described as “the most important cardiology study of the decade” by Darrel Francis, MD, of the National Heart and Lung Institute of Imperial College London, who criticized the journal for “dragging its feet” although the report was only published July 27. He claims that the damage noted on the scans is real, but caused by the patients’ risk factors and not their virus infection.
Unfortunately, without baseline MRI scans, we are left with nothing to prove the ultimate cause of the damage, which is relatively very severe and affected over 70% of the patients.
Who knows? This study will at least force athletes who have had COVID-19 to have MRI scans before they are cleared to participate in college or professional sports. The results of a huge number of scans may shed more light on the incidence of these abnormalities in all athletes.
This reminds me of the autopsy studies done on soldiers killed during combat operations in Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan/Iraq. The post-mortem examinations found that a high proportion of these young, presumably healthy men had early atherosclerotic disease (“hardening of the arteries”) in their hearts.
There was less “hardening of the arteries” in more recent traumatic deaths, confirming the impression that heart attacks have declined as a cause of death over the last 50 years. Yet there are still people who appear healthy who have significant atherosclerosis– so we don’t know how much heart disease there is unless we look.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has published a review of the prevalence of “Mental Health, Substance Use, and Suicidal Ideation” during the week of June 24-30 that came out on August 14. It is, as expected, a dismal picture. We all know that we’re feeling anxious about things.
The people suffering the most are young adults aged 18-24 — 75% of them have “at least one mental or behavioral condition.” That is, they feel anxious or depressed, or they are drinking heavily, or having other ugly feelings and doing other ugly things. Worst of all, about a quarter of them reported “suicidal ideation”– they had thoughts of harming themselves or wished they were dead.
Of course, people who already had problems are suffering even more, but that’s to be expected. The others who are, surprisingly, deeply affected, are those who did not receive a high school diploma (66%) and unpaid adult caregivers (67%); most of the rest of the subcategories have about a 50% positive response rate to the questions about feeling bad or doing “bad” things to cope. Unpaid adult caregivers also reported “suicidal ideation” at a 30% rate.
About a quarter to 30% of all adults report anxiety or depression symptoms, three to four times the rate that gave that report pre-pandemic. 13% stated that they were using substances to cope with the effects of stressors (whether that is fear of infection, job loss, or the death of a relative varies, of course.) 11% of all adults reported feeling suicidal this June.
These data were summarized in a post on Medpage Today also dated August 14; this is a quick and easy read compared to the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) linked here and in the first paragraph. Here are a couple of caveats that will help you to digest this information.
First, “suicidal ideation” is not the same as risk for suicide. About half of all people who commit suicide would not have reported suicidal ideation if they were asked prior to doing the deed.
There is a combination of factors that causes people to kill themselves, and they are poorly captured by the thoughts that they have beforehand that are expressed in the phrase “suicidal ideation.” Even specialists don’t think that half of all suicides were actually “mentally ill” before they did it.
We do not know exactly what prompts these people to kill themselves. It appears to be an addition of an “adjustment disorder” (a reaction to something that happens to you, such as losing a job or being yelled at) to something called “akathisia” (literally, the inability to sit still, a kind of restlessness that seems to provoke sudden, thoughtless actions.)
Akathisia can be brought on by drugs such as certain antidepressants like so-called SSRIs (don’t ask what this acronym means, please. OK, it’s “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors”) It can be calmed by certain other drugs like propranolol, a drug used for high blood pressure called a “beta blocker” (which stops the action of adrenaline.)
Akathisia can also be caused by a person’s reaction to some things that happen, even the thing we just called an “adjustment disorder.” This makes it very difficult to deal with, although it’s the sort of thing that, once you’ve seen it and identified it, you will recognize it immediately the next time.
The second problem I need to talk about is the fact that the suicide rate in this country has gone up by about 50% in the last 20 years. You can look up yearly suicide rates through the CDC’s web sites. The point is that we’ve had a worsening problem for years even before the pandemic, and psychiatrists are very worried about it.
So, bottom line, the US has had mental health problems for years — it seems to have been reducing our life expectancy even pre-pandemic — and the virus is only making it worse.
Please be gentle with one another, try to get together and help each other to deal with this disaster, and tell your children that you know they are hurting even if you can’t do much about it right now. If worse comes to worst, here’s the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255.
The New York Times on August 5-6 published an article about unusual and persistent COVID-19 symptoms titled “The Many Symptoms of Covid-19” that added the term “brain fog” and symptoms like dizziness, impaired thinking, lightheadedness, confusion, inability to wake, and uncoordinated movement. Signs of stroke like facial drooping, numbness, and garbled speech have been seen. Eye pain, itching, tearing, and redness are common. Transient rashes, blisters on the fingers and toes, or even bumpy, smooth, itchy, or innocuous-looking rashes may occur.
Blood clots can cause dangerous loss of circulation in the extremities. Sudden onset of severe pain in the thighs, legs, or buttocks is a dangerous sign and should prompt emergent evaluation for blocked arteries.
Monitoring oxygen saturation with a widely available monitor can be done safely at home. Low oxygen saturation, into the 70% range, can be transient, but if it persists, this is a sign that hospitalization for oxygen therapy is needed.
Mental symptoms like confusion, dizziness, and incoordination, are common; if mild, they can be observed, but if severe, evaluation for stroke is needed emergently at the hospital.
Children often have mild symptoms, but persistent high fevers, lethargy and irritability, with loss of appetite are danger signs. Rashes are also danger signs in children. Rarely, a disease resembling Kawasaki syndrome now called multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MISC) can occur; it is not usually fatal but requires hospital treatment. Often MISC appears after a week or more of illness.
The comments section of this article has many personal accounts of similar symptoms, particularly of the persistent variety, that make for wrenching reading.
The latest news brings a report of a patient who was confirmed to be re-infected with a different strain of SARS-COV-2 four and a half months after recovering from COVID-19. The patient travelled from Asia to Europe and was infected there with a distinct strain of the virus that was confirmed by genetic testing. The report can be found in today’s New York Times and is not paywalled (their coronavirus reporting is free.)
This rigorously confirmed report of a repeat infection indicates that the disease stimulates an immune response that is simply insufficient to prevent re-infection. Fortunately, the patient had only mild symptoms the first time and was asymptomatic the second time– his infection was caught by surveillance of travellers. We can only hope that patients prone to more severe symptoms develop more protective antibodies that last more than four months.
Conrad Theodore Seitz 