Bonsoir. I’m Karen Kaplan, and it’s Tuesday, October 11. Here’s the latest news on what’s happening with the coronavirus in California and beyond.
Tonight, the Los Angeles Dodgers kick off their playoffs through the San Diego Padres at Chavez Ravine. This is his third World Series since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
If you’re one of the 56,000 lucky enthusiasts who won a prize ticket to the game, would a runny nose keep you away from Dodger Stadium?How about a dry cough? If you were feeling sore and a little feverish, would you get tested for coronavirus before you left for Elysian Park, or wouldn’t you know you have a medical explanation for staying home?
You don’t have to be a baseball enthusiast to realize why it would be tempting to forget about official public fitness advice. You may allow your advisor nine out of 10 times. But there will surely be events: a wedding, a music festival. , a long-awaited vacation, when you make the decision to follow your plans and hope for the best.
A new one indicates that you have a lot of company.
Researchers surveyed 1,733 adults across the country about their honesty about COVID-19 and fitness compliance during a pandemic, and found widespread deficiencies on both fronts. A total of 41. 6 percent of respondents admitted to committing at least one type of deceptive action on at least one occasion, according to a report published Monday in the medical journal JAMA Network Open.
Most common lies concerned telling others they were or were about to meet that they had taken more precautions against COVID-19 than they had taken. Just under 1 in four respondents did.
At the time of non-compliance with quarantine and isolation rules, 22. 5% admitted to doing so.
In addition, 21% of test participants said they should not get tested for coronavirus when they thought they might have COVID-19, and 20. 4% said they lied about their likelihood of being inflamed by answering screening questions to make a stopover at a doctor’s office.
Other types of “misrepresentation” included instances where someone knew or strongly suspected they had COVID-19 but did not share this data with a companion; not answering frankly a check for entry to a public place; say they didn’t want to quarantine or self-isolate when they wanted; and being misleading about their vaccination status.
The survey did not ask other people how they had deviated from the right path when it came to pandemic precautions. But the fact that more than four in 10 were willing to say they had done so at least once wasn’t entirely surprising.
In non-pandemic times, other people have been known to hide data they find shameful, judge or deprive them of any benefit, the study authors noted. like spending less cash to bolster your savings or skipping dessert for your health.
Researchers have identified that it is not easy to do the right thing. It’s not just a matter of FOMO: staying home infrequently during illness means jeopardizing your task or delaying urgent medical care.
In fact, 39. 2% of those who lied about their desire to isolate themselves from others said they did so because they may not have simply taken time off work. Similarly, 32. 3% of those who reported being vaccinated but did not report distorting their prestige. Because they wanted to work.
But there were also many cases of other people misbehaving, such as 35. 5% of other people who didn’t say they probably or definitely had an active case of COVID-19 because they didn’t need the other people they were with to “be. “with me for exposing them,” according to the study. Additionally, 36. 3% of other people who hid their COVID-19 reputation said they did so because they “didn’t want to miss a fun occasion or activity. “
Often, others substituted their own judgment for expert advice. That includes 48. 9% of other people who broke isolation and quarantine rules because they “didn’t feel very sick. “They “didn’t think it mattered. “
And some others said they dismissed the fact on principle, like 50 percent of other people who lied about getting vaccinated because they “wanted to exercise my freedom to do what I want. “It also includes 59. 3% of other people who have damaged isolation and quarantine rules because what they are doing is “nobody’s business. “
The ultimate excuse not unusual for the lie that other people sought to make their lives “normal”, as if the pandemic had never happened. This is the explanation given by 57. 7% of those who said they lied about their COVID-19 reputation. to enter a public place, as well as 50% of those who distorted their vaccine prestige.
The younger the investigators, the more likely they were to be suspects. Compared to adults over 60, other people in their fifties were twice as likely to report at least one case of falsification or rule breaking. The odds were 3 times higher for other people in their thirties and five times higher for those aged 18 to 29.
The study authors, led by psychology professor Andrea Gurmankin Levy of Middlesex Community College in Middletown, Connecticut, said some COVID-19 liars would likely have lied when answering the survey questions. If this is the case, the actual amount of dishonesty around COVID-19 19 would be higher than the figures reported here.
Still, this doesn’t bode well for our collective ability to put on this pandemic at the right time.
“Public health measures have the potential to particularly reduce the spread and have an effect on disease,” Levy and colleagues wrote, “but their good fortune depends on the public’s willingness to be fair and adhere to those measures. “
Case and in California at 5:28 p. m. Tuesday:
Track California’s coronavirus and vaccination efforts, adding the latest numbers and their breakdown, with our charts.
Nicole Kagan is a student at Duke University and doesn’t know what her campus in Durham, North Carolina, smells like. He never enjoyed the caramel smell of school magnolias, nor did he frown at the musty smell of Cameron Indoor Stadium.
More importantly, when there was a fuel leak in his bedroom, it was not recorded. Luckily, a resident assistant came to his room and told him to evacuate.
Kagan’s life wasn’t like that. He grew up with a fully functional olfactory system, absorbing the unique aromas of bread baked in Subway sandwich shops, rain dogs, new earth and strawberry jelly, among others.
All after contracting COVID-19.
“I caught the virus early in the pandemic and had terrible symptoms, but after a week of bed rest, I am fit to get on with my life,” Kagan, a recent summer intern, wrote in The Times. “My nose n’t. “
Kagan tells us what it’s like to have anosmia, the medical term for loss of smell. It’s a difficult problem to understand, but the coronavirus makes it almost common.
Of those who lose their olfactory talents in the acute phase of COVID-19, about 5% still can’t smell long after the rest of their body has recovered. There is no cure to recover it.
It’s not that Kagan didn’t try. He underwent a nasal endoscopy and tried a daily nasal steroid. He also tried remedies promoted on social media, added aromatherapy, ate a burnt orange and a small bump on the back of his head. None of them worked.
Of the five senses, you may not smell as important as sight or hearing. But it does many important functions that we all take for granted, until it disappears.
Without it, Kagan has no way to judge that the food in his refrigerator is spoiled or that his body odor scares people.
He developed several tricks to pass without the data his nose would give him.
For example, if you walk into a new restaurant, you’ll ask, “What is that smell?If there is one, you can describe it to them and you won’t have to feel left out. “
“My close friends sense a desire to say that the bakeries we pass by smell of caramelized sugar and the school parties we attend smell like sweaty children and old beer,” he wrote. “These are smells I know. “
Kagan spoke with Chrissi Kelly, who lost her sense of smell for 8 years after suffering from a sinus infection. At the time, anosmia was so rare that he created an organization called AbScent to help sufferers and raise awareness among the unaffected. She has not yet discovered an undeniable way to describe what it is.
“You don’t even know where to start,” Kelly told Kagan. “I think it’s because smell is so fundamental to all organisms. And therefore, imagining life without it is simply unthinkable. Like you create a life without gravity. Or how about imagining a life without time? »
AbScent is much busier than before. Since the arrival of COVID-19, the number of affiliates has increased from 1,500 to more than 85,000.
Kagan would rather not count himself among the anosmiacs of the world. Sometimes he smells a puff of dog food or cigarette smoke and thinks his sense of smell might regain. She then wonders if they are “ghost perfumes,” evoked through her brain as she feeds her puppy or crosses paths with a smoker on the street.
As long as you live in a fragrance-free world, try to appreciate the limited benefits. Among them, he writes, “I can cook broccoli in my studio and use the public restroom without gagging. “
Discover advances in vaccination in California with our tracker.
The Omicron subvariant known as BA. 5 remains the large dog, accounting for about 79. 2% of coronavirus samples circulating across the country. But scientists have their eyes on the upstart known as BA. 2. 75. 2, and now they have it in Los Angeles County.
Three specimens of BA. 2. 75. 2 were found here last week, according to Barbara Ferrer, Los Angeles County director of public health. This has the potential to develop in the future.
“It’s very mutated, it looks very different and it escapes some of the protections that we’ve put in place, whether it’s with vaccines and herbal immunity,” he said. As if that wasn’t enough, it also seems to “unresponsive. “to some of our latest treatments. “
BA. 2. 75. 2 has spread to Europe and Asia, but it is not enough here to compare a mention of the COVID-19 data tracker maintained through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For now, this presents more of a “theoretical concern and would possibly never cause any real problems,” Ferrer said.
High on their list of immediate considerations is the fact that California will experience a “double outbreak” this winter.
Health officials first raised the option of a double outbreak in the summer of 2020, as they braced for a double whammy of COVID-19 and seasonal flu. Fortunately, COVID-19 precautions helped keep the flu at bay during the first two pandemic winters.
This could be the year when we run out of luck. Mask mandates no longer exist, social distancing has completely disappeared, and capacity limits for public occasions and spaces are gone. If the flu virus appears, it will be less difficult. to locate other people to infect.
This is the case in Australia, where winter turned into spring last month. The maximum number of laboratory-confirmed flu cases has reached levels not noticed since at least 2017.
“They’ve had a severe flu season ruled by H3N2, which is what’s circulating here,” Ferrer said, referring to a flu strain. An updated edition of H3N2 is included in the flu vaccines now available here.
Another worrying fact about Australia’s flu season is that it predates the previous one, in mid-autumn, and took off quickly, Ferrer said. Normally, our flu season begins in late fall, late November or December.
(As a reminder, it’s one hundred percent okay to get a COVID-19 booster and a flu shot at the same time. )
California is introducing a new law designed to crack down on doctors who give patients data about COVID-19. Starting Jan. 1, doctors will be sanctioned if they say things they know are false or misleading.
The law was passed through the California Medical Association, which represents nearly 50,000 doctors nationwide. But critics, who join many conventional doctors who are staunch supporters of vaccines and masks, fear the law could have accidental consequences.
As a new disease, our understanding of COVID-19 is still evolving. As a result, what was thought to be popular attention last year or the year before is now exceeded.
This leads to this corollary, as Dr. Eric Widera of UC San Francisco put it: “Incorrect information one day is existing clinical thinking another day. “
The law does not apply to doctors who say questionable things in a public forum, such as a political rally or on social media. A congressional inquiry decided that a restriction like this would likely be struck down by a court on First Amendment grounds. .
Beyond California, housing advocates expect to see a sharp rise in homelessness across the country when the federal government releases a report in the coming months. About 580,000 Americans were homeless before the pandemic, and while it’s too early to say how much that number will rise, early reports recommend that cities of all sizes increase the count.
Eviction protections, emergency housing assistance systems and the Child Tax Credit are ending, cutting the safety net that has kept many others off the streets for the past two and a half years. Housing shortages and a volatile economy are pushing others to leave their homes.
Sacramento, Portland, Oregon and Asheville, N. C. , have all noticed significant increases in homelessness. The same goes for Prince George’s County in Maryland and the state of South Dakota. But numbers are falling in Houston, Philadelphia and Washington, D. C. in Boston, a concerted effort to move others from the streets and transitional shelters to permanent housing resulted in a 25 percent reduction in the number of homeless people.
Speaking of Boston, fitness officials said the concentration of coronavirus in the city’s wastewater has nearly doubled in the past two weeks. This may be just an early sign that COVID-19 cases seen in Europe are spreading to the East Coast.
Dr. Bisola Ojikutu, Boston’s public fitness commissioner, called the trend “very concerning” because it could presage a season of “great strain” on Boston’s fitness care system. This statistic is unreliable because it does not come with the results of the in-home verification.
Head to China, where the Communist Party is preparing for a large demonstration in Beijing next week by closing cities in the northern province of Shanxi and Inner Mongolia. , however, cases still tripled from six hundred to around 1800. (By comparison, the U. S. The U. S. has an average of more than twice as many new cases per day, even though China has more than 4 times as many people. )Many frustrated citizens are hoping that the country’s strict “zero COVID” policy will calm down after the party assembly ends.
And after all, Japan received hordes of foreign tourists on Tuesday after it all ended its pandemic border restrictions. People from 60 countries can return to short-term visits, with no restrictions on the number of others who can arrive each day.
Tourists will need to be vaccinated and reinforced, and must test negative on a PCR within 72 hours of boarding a flight to the land of the rising sun. Once on Japanese soil, they must wear a mask and disinfect their hands. in many department stores and restaurants.
These regulations do not deter Japanophiles who have been waiting for about 3 years to eat sushi, take bullet trains, and hot springs known as onsen. All Nippon Airways, or ANA, said the number of others who booked flights to Japan increased fivefold last week. The influx of gold is expected to inject $35 billion into the Japanese economy.
David Beall from Los Angeles has bought a price ticket for his 13th trip to Japan, which will come with stops in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. ” he said.
Today’s comes from readers who need to know: How long should I wait to receive the new reminder if I recently had COVID-19?
Technically, you just have to wait long enough to avoid isolating yourself and being able to leave the house.
Current rules from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call for self-isolation for at least five full days. At this point, if you haven’t had a fever for at least 24 hours without the help of medication and your symptoms have improved or resolved, you can sign up for the global as long as you wear a mask around other people for another five days. If you still have health problems on the sixth day, continue home until the fever goes away for 24 hours. , then wear a mask around the others until the end of day 10. (You can continue to wear a mask beyond day 10 if you wish. )
While you can get the bivalent booster right after you recover from COVID-19, that doesn’t mean you should.
If you’ve just battled a coronavirus infection, your antibody levels are already high. The purpose of reinforcement has already been achieved, so an injection would be superfluous.
That’s why the CDC suggests waiting until it’s been 3 months since your first COVID-19 symptoms gave the impression or since you tested positive for a coronavirus infection (whichever comes first). according to studies cited through the agency.
But there is a bit of room for manoeuvre. For example, if you are in a position with a higher COVID-19 network tier, you may not need to wait as long as you do in a position with a low network tier. Or, if you know your infection was not caused by BA. 4 or BA. 5, the two Omicron subvariants targeted by the new booster, you can also get the vaccine as soon as possible.
Talk to your doctor if you’re not sure when it’s most productive for you.
We need to hear from you. Please email us your coronavirus inquiries and we will do our best to answer them. Wondering if your inquiry has already been answered? Check out our archives here.
The concrete and glass design pictured above is the Robert B State Office Building. Docking, which is across the street from the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka. Most of its 14 floors are empty, so the state government plans to demolish it and build a three-story building in its place.
The task may not come cheap, but $60 million of the charge will be paid for with the federal budget intended to be used for pandemic relief as part of the U. S. bailout. U. S.
Kansas says the structure counts as a “public fitness department” and Troy Waymaster, who chairs the Kansas House Appropriations Committee, said it would be less difficult to practice social distancing in the new structure than in one built in the 1950s. But the main explanation for why for the pandemic relief budget for allocation is that the $1. 6 billion state allocation burns a hole in his figurative pocket.
“To be absolutely honest, we didn’t want it,” Waymaster said.
The U. S. bailout The U. S. government has a broad view of how cash can be spent. About $36 billion has been allocated to infrastructure projects, according to an investigation by The Associated Press. This includes paints on water and sewer systems, spending on roads and bridges, and projects to expand broadband access.
On the other hand, less than $12 billion goes to things that fall within the general framework of public fitness.
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Karen Kaplan is scientific and medical editor at the Los Angeles Times. Before joining the clinical group, he worked in the Business section. He graduated from MIT and Columbia University.
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