BY RUTH HILL R.N.
I cannot seem to get away from talking or getting angry about coronavirus. It invades every activity. It is on every TV commercial, “wash hands, wear a mask and keep your distance to save lives.” Am I that powerful that I can save lives? I do not think so. Can you imagine all the guilt children will have after this is over to think the child would cause their grandparent to die? I see posts on social media saying “maskit or caskit.” If you think not wearing a mask will kill someone, I will sell you a bridge on Staten Island.
According to Phil Magness, a Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research there are two pandemics: one that deals with the general population, which is mild, and one that deals with the elderly long term care facilities (LTC), which is serious. All the epidemiologist models did not predict that 30% to 70% of deaths are coming from LTC facilities. The models used projections from the flu virus.
The associated models strongly adopted non-pharmaceutical policy interventions as a primary tool of COVID-19 mitigation. Public event cancellations, school and business closures, and wide scale lockdowns or shelter-in-place orders (SIPOs), were implemented in all but a handful of countries across the globe with direct dependence on the advice of epidemiology modeling. In a well-documented example, the simulation model for the United Kingdom and the United States by researchers at Imperial College London (ICL) spurred both governments to shift their response strategies to embrace wide scale lockdowns in mid-March 2020.
Magness continues to state the models diverge from the realities of the coronavirus outbreak in the US and UK countries. Simply put, we adopted the wrong measures and used them to ineffectually target the milder of the two pandemics, all the while neglecting or even exacerbating the much more severe outbreak that continues to run its course through our vulnerable nursing home population. Massachusetts LTC deaths have leveled from their early peak in April, but they still remain at approximately three times the general population’s daily toll.
The controversy about the use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) confuses the public. The Henry Ford Health System (HFHS) published a peer review study in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases. It was a retrospective analysis of 2,541 patients hospitalized between March 10 and May 2, 2020 across the system’s six hospitals. The study found 13% of those treated with HCQ alone died compared to 26.4% not treated with HCQ. None of the patients had documented serious heart abnormalities. Dosing by HFHS also differed from other studies not showing a benefit of the drug. https://www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment-study
Doctors on Long Island are using doxycycline instead of azithromycin (AZ) +HCQ on patients in nursing homes. Doxycycline appears to have less complications than AZ. https://abc7ny.com/coronavirus-treatment-long-island-news-nassau-county/6093072/
And finally, Corneliu Popescu and Philip Fisher published in Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease, a retrospective analysis of 1061 cases in Marseille, France. Good clinical outcome and virological cure were obtained in 973 patients within 10 days (91.7%) using the HCQ+AZ+Zinc. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32485391/
Using medical cannabis may be one option for coping with confusing information. A cannabis ratio of Cannabidiol:delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (CBD:THC) 1:1 is a good first start. Take 5mg twice a day and adjust upward to three or four times a day as tolerated to boost the immune system, reduce anxiety, and reduce the flow of proinflammatory cytokines. The most lethal complication of COVID-19 is when the lungs progress to a cytokine storm. Dexamethasone, a steroid, along with Tocilizumab, a monoclonal antibody used for arthritis, are both successfully being used to mitigate the inflammatory process. Unfortunately, much of this information is often blocked or ignored by social media and the mainstream media. There is positive information about treatments and nonpharmaceutical strategies for treating COVID-19.
In summary wash your hands more frequently, wear a mask, but if someone does not wear a mask due to issues with breathing, lack of oxygen, or rashes that sometimes occur, do not shun, or ridicule the person. Let us be more understanding of others and not panic the elderly.
Direct question to info@ruthahillrn.com
