Category: Corona Virus

This is solid evidence that its not all in the head, and that the sense of disgust can be related to the compounds in the distorted foods. The central nervous system is certainly involved as well in interpreting the signals that it receives from the nose. The parosmic experience is a combination of the two mechanisms which produces the distorted perception of everyday foods, and the associated sense of disgust," says Doctor Jane Parker, Associate Professor of Flavour Chemistry and Director of the Flavour Centre at the University of Reading.

We can now see that certain aroma compounds found in foods are having this particular effect. It will, we hope, be reassuring for those with parosmia to know that their experience is real, that we can identify other foods which may also be triggers and, moreover, suggest safe foods that are less likely to cause a problem. This research provides useful tools and strategies for preventing or reducing the effect of the triggers," she adds.

Another researcher Mr Simon Gane from the Royal National Ear, Nose and Throat and Eastman Dental Hospital said, "We still have a long way to go in understanding this condition, but this research is the first to zoom in on the mechanism in the nose. We now know this has to be something to do with the nerves and their receptors because thats how these molecules are detected."

Read the rest here:

Coronavirus smell test: If you have COVID-19, here's how your coffee may smell - Times of India

Dmitry Kovtun, one of the two Russian men accused of assassinating the former spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London, died of Covid in a Moscow hospital on Saturday.

Litvinenko died in 2006, weeks after drinking tea laced with the radioactive isotope polonium 210 at a London hotel, where he met Kovtun and the other suspect, Andrei Lugovoi. The case has since weighed on relations between Britain and Russia.

After Litvinenkos death detectives found polonium in all the hotel rooms where Kovtun and Lugovoi had stayed in London, as well as on Lugovois plane seat from Moscow and in numerous other locations including at Arsenals Emirates stadium.

Kovtuns death aged 56 was first reported by Lugovoi, a former KGB bodyguard who is now a Russian MP, who wrote on his Telegram page on Saturday: This is an irreplaceable and difficult loss for us.

Sad news came today, as a result of a serious illness associated with a coronavirus infection, my close and faithful friend suddenly died, Lugovoi added.

A British inquiry in 2016 concluded that the Litvinenko murder was an operation of Russias FSB spy agency and that the assassination was probably approved at the time by the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

One of the key findings presented by the British inquiry led by Sir Robert Owen were phone records that showed Kovtun made a phone call to another FSB colleague saying he was looking for a cook to put a very expensive poison in Litvinenkos food or drink.

Last year, the European court of human rights also ruled that Russia was responsible for the killing of Litvinenko, ordering Moscow to pay 100,000 (85,000) in non-pecuniary damages to his widow, Marina.

In a deathbed statement, Litvinenko accused Putin of being behind his killing.

The Kremlin has always denied the charges and refused to extradite the two suspects to face trial.

Before the fall of the Soviet Union, Kovtun is believed to have served in the communist east at the KGBs ninth directorate, which was charged with the protection of top Kremlin officials. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Kovtun and his then German wife, Inna Hohne, moved to Hamburg and claimed political asylum, with him working as a waiter. He eventually left Germany for Russia where he was involved in various businesses.

In contrast to Lugovoi, who became a prominent politician following the poisoning of Litvinenko, Kovtun kept a low profile in Russia and not much is known about his private life.

Hohne previously told German detectives during the inquiry into Litvinenkos death that Kovtun was a heavy drinker who shifted between badly paid jobs and dreamed of being a porn star.

Litvinenko, who was dismissed from the FSB after publicly criticising the security services connection to organised crime, is believed to have been killed over his work for the British intelligence agencies and his claims that the FSB was responsible for the bombing of apartment blocks in Moscow and two other cities in 1999.

The Litvinenko killing was followed by a series of other poisonings of Kremlin critics that the west blamed on Russia, including the attempted poisoning of the former double agent Sergei Skripal in Britain in 2018 and the opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Siberia in 2020.

See original here:

Alexander Litvinenko assassination suspect dies of Covid - The Guardian

If you recently contracted COVID, how long are you protected and are you at risk of getting the virus again?

The question has been asked since the start of the pandemic, but as the virus continues to mutate, the answers have changed.

Omicron, for example, led to a major shift in "natural immunity," with many who had previously been infected susceptible to reinfection with the new version of the virus.

Now, as omicron makes up nearly all U.S. COVID cases, it's a question of how protection from one version of omicron will work against newer subvariants.

"At the beginning, we could very confidently, you know, sort of back in February, we could really confidently say that 90% of the people were not getting reinfected if they had COVID already," Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said last week. "That's been dropping a little bit though around the world."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "after recovering from COVID-19, most individuals will havesome protection from repeat infections."

"However, reinfections do occur after COVID-19," the CDC states, adding that changes and mutations "can lead to theemergence of variantsthat can increase the risk of reinfection."

Last month, Chicago's top doctor said experts were seeing changes in immunity from infection.

"We are seeing people get COVID still, more of these what we call breakthrough infections," Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said. "But importantly, 'natural immunity' also is not lasting. And so we know that when somebody has had COVID, it's as much about how recently they've had it in some ways, because we are still seeing pretty good protection if somebody had one version of omicron. But we are starting to see, as omicron has continued to evolve, we're starting to see some more people who had original omicron even in December, even getting some of these these new subvariants of omicron."

While such cases aren't the norm, Arwady said, they are starting to rise.

"If you have had COVID in the last few months, your production is pretty good, but we're starting to see some more there," she said.

Currently, Chicago and several surrounding counties remain under a "high community level" for COVID, per guidelines set by the CDC.

But Arwady also warned last week that people should not "try to 'get COVID to get it over with,'" in part because it remains unclear if they could still contract the virus after infection.

"Don't think that getting COVID means you'll never get COVID again," she said. "We see plenty of people get re-infected with COVID. The vaccine is the most important thing for protection."

The uncertainty surrounding natural immunity can be particularly confusing for those experiencing long COVID symptoms.

The CDC says most people with COVID-19 "get better within a few days to a few weeks after infection." But for some, symptoms may last even longer and in other cases may even disappear and then return.

"Post-COVID conditions can include a wide range of ongoing health problems," the CDC states. "These conditions can last weeks, months, or years."

A recent study from Northwestern Medicine showed that many so-called COVID "long-haulers" continue to experience symptoms including brain fog, tingling, headaches, dizziness, blurred vision, tinnitus and fatigue an average of 15 months after the onset of the virus.

"Long-haulers, are defined as individuals who have had COVID symptoms for six or more weeks,the hospital system has said.

But, according to the CDC, four weeks after infection is when post-COVID conditions could first be identified.

"Most people with post-COVID conditions experienced symptoms days after their SARS CoV-2 infection when they knew they had COVID-19, but some people with post-COVID conditions did not notice when they first had an infection," the CDC states.

Long-COVID symptoms can range from a wide variety of ailments, some of which may even disappear and then return later.

"Post-COVID conditions may not affect everyone the same way. People with post-COVID conditions may experience health problems from different types and combinations of symptoms happening over different lengths of time," the CDC reports. "Most patients symptoms slowly improve with time. However, for some people, post-COVID conditions may last months, and potentially years, after COVID-19 illness and may sometimes result in disability."

Testing can also become challenging for such groups as PCR tests can "stay positive for some time," experts said.

"Those PCR tests are very sensitive," Arwady said. "They keep picking up dead virus in your nose for sometimes for weeks, but you can't grow that virus in the lab. You can't spread it but it can be positive."

According to theCDC, some people who contract COVID-19 can have detectable virus for up to three months, but that doesn't mean they are contagious.

Public health officials recommend that even those who contract COVID remain up-to-date with their vaccinations and booster shots.

"I think realistically, this is a guess, but my guess - where we're heading, given that there's no sign yet that COVID has stopped mutating...we've got to keep it from turning into hospitalizations and deaths, which are actually pretty good at already between vaccines and treatments," Arwady said. "But I do think it's likely that in the fall, we probably will see an updated version of a booster that actually has been changed to be more protective against the ways in which COVID has mutated since then."

View post:

How Long Are You Protected After Getting COVID and Can You Get COVID Twice? - NBC Chicago

A new virus outbreak is detected. It starts spreading around the globe, case by case, country by country. Health authorities launch into action, tracking infections and issuing guidance.

"This is not Covid," Dr. Jennifer McQuiston, a veterinarian and deputy director of the CDC's Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, said in a statement last week.

Of course, several leaders tried to calm citizens when Covid-19 was first emerging, only for that virus to spiral into a once-in-a-generation pandemic.

So how, exactly, is monkeypox different to Covid -- and why are experts so far more relaxed about this outbreak?

Most importantly, monkeypox is not spread as easily as Covid-19. "Respiratory spread is not the predominant worry" with monkeypox, McQuiston said. It's only passed between humans if there is very close contact with an infected person -- such as sharing clothing or bedding, or through saliva -- according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

However, in the developed world, "it would be very unusual to see anything more than a handful of cases in any outbreak, and we won't be seeing (Covid)-style levels of transmission," Head said.

But perhaps most importantly of all, monkeypox is not a new disease. Smallpox vaccines can be used to tackle the virus, there is a wealth of scientific research into how the illness acts, and it doesn't mutate as rapidly as Covid-19 has.

So if headlines about monkeypox transport your mind back to March 2020, it's worth taking a beat.

"This is a virus we understand: we have vaccines against it, we have treatments against it, and it's spread very differently than SARS-Cov-2 -- it's not as contagious as Covid -- so I am confident we're going to be able to keep our arms around it," White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha told ABC's Martha Raddatz Sunday.

YOU ASKED. WE ANSWERED.

Q: Is Covid-19 contagious after treatment with Paxlovid?

A: People who have a Covid-19 relapse after being treated with antiviral drug Paxlovid can still be contagious, but they might not know it if they don't have any symptoms.

"People who experience rebound are at risk of transmitting to other people, even though they're outside what people accept as the usual window for being able to transmit," said Dr. Michael Charness of the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Boston.

Charness and his colleagues collaborated with a team of researchers at Columbia University to look into cases of Covid-19 that return after Paxlovid treatment. He said they've found at least two instances in which people have transmitted the virus to others when their infection recurs.

READS OF THE WEEK

Shanghai is finally 'reopening,' but the trauma of lockdown lives on

The skyscrapers lit up, roads filled with traffic, and young people drank and danced in the streets as fireworks boomed overhead.

As of Wednesday morning, most of Shanghai's 25 million residents are free to leave their communities, shops and office buildings can reopen, cars are back on the streets, and subway and buses are resuming services.

Did Covid curb your dating life? Date night will make its comeback a success

The pandemic may have seemed like the perfect opportunity to nurture a relationship with unlimited access to your partner, nonstop togetherness and plenty of time for intimacy.

But, as most of us are aware, lockdowns had the opposite effect on romance. Living on top of each other, not changing out of our pajamas and sometimes not showering was the epitome of not sexy.

Sex therapist Madelyn Esposito-Smith said that Covid-19 had "incinerated sexual desire" for couples living together, taking away all "intrigue and mystery" and making alone time a "precious commodity."

North Korea may rethink restrictions after claiming its Covid outbreak is improving

KCNA reported on Sunday that leader Kim Jong Un and other top officials had assessed the pandemic situation as "improved" and discussed adjusting containment measures.

Pyongyang reported more than 89,500 new "fever cases" and 106,390 recoveries between Friday and Saturday evening nationwide, but did not mention if there had been any additional deaths.

According to KCNA, the country's latest death toll stood at 69 at the end of last week. However, given the lack of independent reporting inside North Korea, it is difficult to verify the figures and there has long been widespread skepticism over the country's Covid reporting.

TOP TIP

If you suffer from long Covid, take it easy

If you don't feel well in the weeks following a Covid-19 infection, you have to be prepared to take things slowly and manage your expectations on what you can and can't do.

Dr. Erica Spatz, an associate professor of cardiology at the Yale School of Medicine, said a common complaint is that even just going for a walk feels awful. When returning to exercise, "start with five to 10 minutes on a recumbent bicycle or a rower, and add a couple of minutes every week," she suggested.

This "go slow" advice applies to all lingering effects of Covid, including cognition.

Listen to our podcast

Read more here:

Monkeypox is not Covid. Here's why - CNN

THURSDAY 6/2/2022 2:01 p.m.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services has reported 1,477,724 total positive coronavirus test results in the state and 13,026 total COVID-19 deaths.

The number of known cases per variant is no longer tracked as The Wisconsin Department of Health Services has updated its website, deleting that section.

Unable to view the tables below?Click here.

The DHS announced an attempt to verify and ensure statistics are accurate, some numbers may be subject to change. The DHS is combing through current and past data to ensure accuracy.

Wisconsins hospitals are reporting, that the 7-day moving average of COVID-19 patients hospitalized was 427 patients. Of those,45 are in an ICU. ICU patients made up 10.6%of hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services reports that 9,529,383 vaccine doses and 2,040,554 booster doses have been administered in Wisconsin as of June 2.

Unable to view the tables below?Click here.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services is using a new module to measure COVID-19 activity levels. They are now using the Center for Disease Control and Preventions (CDC) COVID-19 Community Levels. The map is measured by the impact of COVID-19 illness on health and health care systems in the communities.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 10 counties in Wisconsin are experiencing high COVID-19 community levels. None of them are located in northeast Wisconsin.

24 counties in Wisconsin are experiencing medium COVID-19 community levels, including Brown, Door, Marinette, Menominee, and Winnebago County in northeast Wisconsin.

Every other county in Wisconsin is experiencing low COVID-19 community levels.

For more information on how the data is collected, visit the CDCs COVID-19 Community Levels data page.

See the original post here:

Wisconsin adds over 2.6k new cases of COVID-19 - WeAreGreenBay.com

Total vaccine doses distributed: 747,974,855

Patients whove received the first dose: 258,655,540

Patients whove received the second dose: 221,350,544

% of population fully vaccinated (both doses, not including boosters): 66.7%

% tied to Omicron variant: 99.9%

% tied to Other: 0.1%

Continued here:

Coronavirus Omicron variant, vaccine, and case numbers in the United States: June 2, 2022 - Medical Economics

The number of new coronavirus cases in Connecticut continued to fall this week, along with hospitalizations, though Hartford Healthcares COVID-19 expert warned the virus is not going away anytime soon.

There were 3,583 positive cases recorded by the state in the past seven days, less than half of the 7,560 recorded the week before, according to state data, available at data.ct.gov. With 33,085 tests recorded, the states positivity rate is now 10.83%, down from 12.05% on May 26 and 14% on May 19, showing the decline of a wave that began in early April with a highly transmissible variant of omicron.

Hospitalizations also fell, from 379 a week ago to 311 Thursday. Officials note that many of those are incidental cases, in which people were admitted to a hospital for other reasons and then tested positive upon arrival.

Connecticut saw 39 COVID-related deaths in the past week, the data shows. There were 19 deaths recorded last week and an additional 39 the week of May 19. Research has shown that deaths from the virus tend to lag behind an increase in cases.

Omicron continues to be the dominant variant, the state said, with BA.2 accounting for 89% of cases diagnosed this week. Evolving subvariants will continue to drive transmission through the summer with a spike in the fall, Ulysses Wu, MD, chief epidemiologist for Hartford HealthCare, said in a post Thursday on Hartford Healthcares News Hub.

Levels are not going to approach winter levels or last summers delta variant levels, but we also will not approach the lows that we would like to see, Wu said. We will continue to go through waves of swells throughout the early summer at the least, with a likely spike in late fall.

He predicted new surges could come from subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, which were detected in the United States in late March, and seem to evade immunity created by vaccines and previous infection.

With transmission still high, experts recommend people vaccinated or not continue to wear masks indoors and in crowded spaces.

Excerpt from:

COVID-19 positivity continues to decline, but expert warns variants will drive new surges - Hartford Courant

In a recent study published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, researchers evaluated the increase in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections among university students immediately after returning to their university in September 2020. The students relocated to their universities for the new academic term during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in England.

In the United Kingdom (UK), university students relocate to their universities in September at the commencement of the new academic term, which coincided with the surge in COVID-19 cases in the country during that period. While some United Kingdom (UK) universities preferred online teaching, some universities required students to be present in person. Unfortunately, immediately after the new academic term started, SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks occurred associated with the universities.

In the present study, researchers evaluated the increase in COVID-19 cases and outbreaks on the return of students to their universities for the new academic term beginning September 2020 during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

SARS-CoV-2-positive students (student case patients) were identified based on contact tracing records and their university attendance. Student case patients residing in university student accommodations were identified by matching their residential addresses with national property databases. SARS-CoV-2-positive individuals were asked about their activities and events within a week before the onset of COVID-19 symptoms/ date of the test, which included data on their attendance in educational settings.

For identifying university attendees among case patients, those with SARS-CoV-2-positive reports were linked to the National Health Service (NHS) test and trace exposure data. Contact tracing and case patient data were linked by the SARS-CoV-2-positive specimen number, date of birth, and the NHS number.

The types of accommodation were identified by matching the case patient address with the Ordnance Survey Address Base Premium database, wherein each address is assigned a unique property reference number (UPRN) which enables mapping case patients to a particular area of residence. Age-specific case rates were compared between towns with universities to those without using the Office for National Statistics (ONS) 2019 midyear estimates. COVID-19 case rates among student case patients and the rest of the population were compared, and the geographic regions with the highest number of cases were determined.

Between 1 September 2020 and 31 December 2020, 1,999,180 COVID-19 cases were reported in England, of which 53,430 (2.7%) were student case patients. After the new academic term began (in September), a rapid increase in student case patients from 0.7% to 7.8% from September to October. The increase in COVID-19 cases was initially driven by cases and SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks in university student accommodations, most pronounced in individuals aged 18 to 23 years (student population), and was two-fold higher in towns with universities.

In the student population, cases increased from 11 COVID-19 cases/100,000 individuals to 99 COVID-19 cases/100,000 individuals between 1 September 2020 and 1 October 2020. During the same period, the COVID-19 case rate among the remaining population of England increased from three to 13 COVID-19 cases/100,000 individuals. At the commencement of the academic term, 60% to 70% of student case patients lived in student accommodations, which dropped to 20% to 30% after mid-November.

The mean ages of student case patients and all case patients were 20 years and 37 years, respectively, and a higher proportion of females among student case patients (57% females vs. 53% males). Most student case patients were reported in Nottingham, Sheffield, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds. Most student case patients residing in student accommodations were reported in Nottingham, Sheffield, York, Newcastle, and Coventry.

SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks in student accommodations continued for six days compared to two days for other accommodation settings. Outbreaks that involved students showed an upward trend, increasing from 0.7% to 7.3% in September 2020 but declining to 1% by December 2020. A significant reduction in COVID-19 cases was observed in November after the second period of national restrictions in university towns; however, the rates increased in December after the restrictions were lifted.

To summarize, the unprecedented increase in COVID-19 cases among university students after their term began, likely due to the physical and social interactions of students in enclosed spaces during the university fresher week, was reduced by enforcing national COVID-19 restrictions. The study highlights the need for stringent preventive measures to curtail SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

The rest is here:

COVID-19 cases and outbreaks among students after their return to university in September 2020 - News-Medical.Net

Covering COVID-19 is a daily Poynter briefing of story ideas about the coronavirus and other timely topics for journalists, written by senior faculty Al Tompkins. Sign up here to have it delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.

This is the daily update from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Is there a threshold that we must reach for people to care?

(CDC)

Most of the Northeast, half of Florida and parts of nearly every state are in moderate- or high-risk zones right now, and that is using the CDCs new tracking software based on hospitalizations and deaths, not just on new cases.

(CovidActNow.org)

I did a little bit of traveling last week. I had to get a COVID-19 test to enter the U.S. from Canada. I paid $38 for a person in Asia to watch me stick a swab up my nose and show her a negative test over the phone. Nobody at U.S. immigration asked to see it, and I do not know if anybody looked at the document I uploaded to the airline. They must have millions being uploaded daily, so it is hard to believe it is anything more than a computer checking to see that something has been uploaded.

Before we got on a tour bus in Vancouver, a driver yelled to a crowd of 100 people, Has everybody been vaccinated? The crowd yelled yes. He asked if anybody felt sick. The crowd yelled no. And that was that.

The seasonal flu is spreading way out of season. Stat reports four virus outbreaks that are causing summertime concern:

The past two winters were among the mildest influenza seasons on record, but flu hospitalizations have picked up in the last few weeks in May! Adenovirus type 41, previously thought to cause fairly innocuous bouts of gastrointestinal illness, may be triggering severe hepatitis in healthy young children.

Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, a bug that normally causes disease in the winter, touched off large outbreaks of illness in kids last summer and in the early fall in the United States and Europe.

And now monkeypox, a virus generally only found in West and Central Africa, is causing an unprecedented outbreak in more than a dozen countries in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Australia, with the United Kingdom alone reporting more than 70 cases. The U.S. has identified nine monkeypox cases.

The disruption of normal virus cycles, in part, seems to be linked to how children interact with each other. Children often spread viruses and, while they were at home, they spread them less. And babies born during the pandemic may carry fewer immunities.

We will find out today whether 1,300 resident physicians and trainees voted to unionize at three Los Angeles hospitals. Kaiser Health News notes, Since March, residents at Stanford Health Care, Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, and the University of Vermont Medical Center have unionized.

Kaiser says the key issues are work schedules, lack of protective gear, low staffing and pay:

The average resident salary in the U.S. in 2021 was $64,000, according to Medscape, a physician news site, and residents can work up to 24 hours in a shift but no more than 80 hours per week. Although one survey whose results were released last year found that 43% of residents felt they were adequately compensated, those who are unionizing say wages are too low, especially given residents workload, their student loan debt, and the rising cost of living.

People visit a memorial outside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Monday, May 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

Maybe it is partly out of frustration that there is no easy solution to stopping Americas gun violence that some journalists are asking whether it makes sense to publish graphic images of the children who died from gunfire. The argument is that just as images of war can stir the public to act, maybe it is time to awaken the public to a reality it has been shielded from until a mass killer unloads in their town.

This is not a new idea. Far from it. In 2019, just before the 20th anniversary of the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, I introduced you to some teens from Columbine and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida who asked journalists to publish graphic images of dead students. The teens even signed permission cards saying if they died in gunfire, please use the crime scene images.

I wrote in 2019 and still believe today:

Even if students place a sticker on their IDs or drivers licenses saying they want photos of their death made public, that is not the reason to publish. Take the students wishes into consideration, but dont stop there.

There should be a journalistic purpose for the image to be published. If, for example, there is any question about what occurred if the images prove an official version of the incident to be untrue, if the images illustrate a truth that the public would not have known from the descriptions of the scene then the graphic images may be newsworthy, and they could be ethically published.

I am concerned that publishing graphic images would reward shooters intentions. In Buffalo and New Zealand, the shooters livestreamed the massacres expressly to show the brutality.

Without a doubt, graphic images of death can stir the public. As I pointed out in 2019, Graphic images of death involving Emmett Till became a catalyst for the civil rights movement. The graphic image of Kim Phuc, hit by napalm, showed the horrors of the Vietnam War. Other images from Syria and Somalia have shown children as victims.

In 1929, journalists told the story of the St. Valentines Day Massacre, using graphic images of bullet-riddled gangsters shot down during the Prohibition gun battles in Chicago. Back then, the battle was about Prohibition, and the bloody photos prompted the public to consider its cost. The gangsters used Thompson submachine guns, Tommy guns, in that and other shootings of the era. In 2018, The New York Times put that weapon into todays context:

One of the first portable and fully automatic firearms, the Tommy gun was a weapon of war that missed its moment, produced too late to serve in World War I. Its manufacturer, facing ruin, tried to market the gun as a self-defense weapon, aided by the fact that the Thompson was so novel the law had yet to catch up with it. In those days, Chicagoans could buy a Tommy gun more easily than they could a handgun.

The Thompson found eager buyers among the criminal class, who appreciated its lethality and the ease with which it could be concealed. Like todays AR-15, the Tommy gun enabled many of the eras most heinous crimes from the murder of a Chicago prosecutor, William McSwiggin, in 1926 to the killing of four lawmen in what became known as the Kansas City Massacre of 1933. But while the Thompson empowered gangsters to kill more people more quickly, it hadnt created this crime wave it had merely amplified it.

In 1932, President Franklin Roosevelt said he was determined to do something about the gun crimes of the day. The War on Crime led to Americas first gun control law, the National Firearms Act of 1934. It did not ban machine guns but did heavily regulate and even license them. Subsequently, machine guns were rarely used in crimes, and that is still the case today, nearly nine decades later.

In 2019, Chicago Magazine made two other observations worth considering. The St. Valentines Day Massacre in 1929 was, at the time, the worst mass killing in U.S. history to occur on that day of the year.

It lost that distinction on February 14th, 2018 when 17 students were murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. That shooting did lead to a federal ban on bump stocks, which enable a semi-automatic weapon to fire at the rate of a machine gun, but there has been no legislation to regulate the weapons themselves, nor is there likely to be.

On Monday, President Joe Biden suggested Congress should ban assault weapons. Chicago Magazine writes:

Guns also occupy a different place in American cultural than they did in the 1920s. The National Rifle Association, for instance, helped write the National Firearms Act of 1934. The associations president told Congress, I have never believed in the general practice of carrying weapons. I do not believe in the general promiscuous toting of guns. I think it should be sharply restricted and only under licenses. At that time, the NRA was primarily concerned with marksmanship and gun safety.

Here are three thoughtful articles on the debate over publishing/airing graphic images from shooting scenes:

On Saturday, Sunday and the federal holiday on Monday, there were at least 13 mass shootings. Eight people died and 56 were injured. Since the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, there have been at least 61 mass shootings involving four or more victims.

This early season storm is passing through Mexico today and might regenerate in the Gulf of Mexico in the next 24 hours. Forecasters say there is a 30% chance the storm will not play out after clearing Mexico.

It could redevelop into the Atlantic basins first named storm. If formed, that storm would be called Alex.

(National Hurricane Center)

Well be back tomorrow with a new edition of Covering COVID-19. Are you subscribed? Sign up hereto get it delivered right to your inbox.

Here is the original post:

Is anyone still paying attention to COVID-19 trends? - Poynter

COVIDA nurse administers a pediatric dose of the Covid-19 vaccine to a girl at a L.A. Care Health Plan vaccination clinic at the Los Angeles Mission College in January. Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

A new analysis by a Boston doctor shows that COVID-19 has killed more children than the seasonal flu, contrary to the narrative pushed by some that coronavirus is not a bad disease for children.

Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Womens Hospital, wrote in an Inside Medicine post on Monday that at the peak of the omicron wave, COVID-19 killed more children per month than flu does on average each year. In 2021, coronavirus killed about 600 children, compared to the 10-year average of 120 children dying of the flu per year.

These irrefutable figures, reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reveal that last year, pediatric COVID-19 deaths were around 500% that of pediatric flu deaths in a typical 21st century season, Faust wrote.

The doctor went on to write that since 2000, there have only been seven times that a respiratory virus killed more than 65 children in a month. Twice those deaths were from the flu, but the other five times were from COVID-19.

The numbers get a little confusing though, Faust wrote, because there are stats reported for both actual deaths and estimated numbers.

The National Center for Health Statistics, or NCHS, counts every single death in the United States, Faust wrote. Meanwhile, the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, or NCIRD, estimates the overall burden of diseases, which include both underlying and contributing causes of death.

If a person dies primarily of terminal cancer, but influenza might have played a role in the timing of their death, the NCIRD might include that death in its annual assessment of influenzas burden of disease, Faust wrote.

Because both coronavirus and influenza deaths for children are mandated for reporting to public health officials, the actual counts of deaths by the NCHS are highly accurate and are certainly the right comparator for Covid-19, Faust said.

Its important to do an apples-to-apples comparison when talking about the severity of COVID, Faust said comparing actual counts to actual counts or estimates to estimates.

In that vein, Faust cautioned against comparing pediatric outcomes to adult outcomes.

Its true that older adults are orders of magnitude more likely to die of Covid-19 than children are, Faust wrote. But in public health, you compare groups to themselves, if you want to understand a particular threat. You wouldnt downplay pediatric cancer by noting that 80-year-olds die of cancer at a rate that is 541-times greater that of 8-year-olds (which, by the way, is true).

Though Faust is pointed out that COVID-19 has severe outcomes for some children, he emphasized that he is not arguing schools should close.

Rather, he said that the discussion should be about how to keep schools safe.

Pediatric Covid-19 vaccination rates remain woefully low, Faust wrote. Understanding the real risk that Covid-19 poses to children is about the only thing I can think of that might convince parents to do the right thing.

Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House coronavirus response coordinator who is on leave from his position as dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, applauded Fausts analysis and stressed the importance of vaccines to keep kids out of the hospital.

If your kid 5 or older isnt vaccinated, its time, he wrote.

Stay up to date on all the latest news from Boston.com

Read more:

Irrefutable figures show COVID-19 killed more kids than the flu, Boston doctor says - Boston.com