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Orphaned Children – More than 140,000 U.S. Children Lost a Primary or Secondary Caregiver Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic - Speedy - 10-26-2021
Slightly dated:
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p1007-covid-19-orphaned-children.html
October 7, 2021
One U.S. child loses a parent or caregiver for every four COVID-19-associated deaths, a new modeling studyexternal icon published today in Pediatrics reveals. The findings illustrate orphanhood as a hidden and ongoing secondary tragedy caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and emphasizes that identifying and caring for these children throughout their development is a necessary and urgent part of the pandemic response – both for as long as the pandemic continues, as well as in the post-pandemic era.
From April 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021, data suggest that more than 140,000 children under age 18 in the United States lost a parent, custodial grandparent, or grandparent caregiver who provided the child’s home and basic needs, including love, security, and daily care. Overall, the study shows that approximately 1 out of 500 children in the United States has experienced COVID-19-associated orphanhood or death of a grandparent caregiver. There were racial, ethnic, and geographic disparities in COVID-19-associated death of caregivers: children of racial and ethnic minorities accounted for 65% of those who lost a primary caregiver due to the pandemic.
Children’s lives are permanently changed by the loss of a mother, father, or grandparent who provided their homes, basic needs, and care. Loss of a parent is among the adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) linked to mental health problems; shorter schooling; lower self-esteem; sexual risk behaviors; and increased risk of substance abuse, suicide, violence, sexual abuse, and exploitation.
List of medicines/products tied to fetal cells - Speedy - 10-26-2021
I’m too lazy to type the list.
A cheap antidepressant lowers the risk of COVID45 hospitalization, a large study finds - Speedy - 10-28-2021
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/10/27/world/covid-vaccine-boosters/antidepressant-fluvoxamine-covid-hospitalization
A large clinical trial has found that a common and inexpensive antidepressant lowered the odds that high-risk Covid-19 patients would be hospitalized. The results, published on Wednesday, could open the door to new guidelines for the drug’s use both in the United States and globally.
The drug, fluvoxamine, has been safely prescribed for nearly 30 years as a treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder. But when the coronavirus started spreading, researchers were drawn to the medication because of its ability to reduce inflammation, potentially allowing it to quell the body’s overwhelming response to a coronavirus infection.
Several smaller studies of fluvoxamine earlier in the pandemic showed promising results, but none was as large or persuasive as the one published on Wednesday by a group of researchers in Canada, the United States and Brazil, outside scientists said. Among nearly 1,500 Covid patients in Brazil given either fluvoxamine or a placebo, the drug reduced the need for hospitalization or prolonged medical observation by one-third, the study found. It was published in The Lancet Global Health.
Some patients struggled to tolerate the drug and stopped taking it, the study said, raising a question among outside scientists about whether they had yet identified the ideal dose. But among those who had largely followed doctors’ orders, the benefits were even more striking. In those patients, the drug reduced the need for hospitalization by two-thirds and slashed the risk of dying: One Covid patient given fluvoxamine died, compared with 12 given a placebo.
“That’s really good,” said Dr. David Boulware, an infectious disease scientist at the University of Minnesota who worked on a smaller, real-world study of the drug in Covid patients in California. Plus, he added, “it’s not a shiny new, expensive drug. The nice thing about this is it has a known safety profile.”
Beyond proper dosing, the study left other questions unresolved, scientists said. Penny Ward, a visiting professor in pharmaceutical medicine at King’s College London, noted that part of the drug’s benefit appeared to come from reducing the need for extended medical observation, which the study tracked alongside hospital admissions. And most patients in the study were unvaccinated, Professor Ward said, so it’s unclear how well the drug would work in the vaccinated.
The new study, coming nearly a year after smaller trials of the drug, was a reminder of the difficulty that many researchers have had running large tests of Covid treatments. The Biden administration has made more funding available for such trials, scientists said, but enrolling enough patients has only gotten more difficult: Most high-risk Americans are vaccinated, and vaccine-averse people may be less likely to participate in trials.
Because fluvoxamine is already approved for treating O.C.D., doctors can already prescribe it “off label” for Covid. But Dr. Boulware said that prescriptions of the drug had increased only slightly during the pandemic, unlike other repurposed drugs with far less scientific support, like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.
“It hasn’t really gotten any cult following,” he said.
Federal treatment guidelines say that larger trials are necessary to evaluate the use of fluvoxamine for Covid, and scientists said they expected those recommendations to change on the basis of the new study.
The new findings are also expected to boost the popularity of the drug in less wealthy countries: A 10-day course of the drug costs about $4.
Re: A cheap antidepressant lowers the risk of COVID45 hospitalization, a large study finds - Filliam H. Muffman - 10-28-2021
$4 versus $700 is a huge improvement. I hope long term studies show it's one of the best options to undercut prices of other treatments.
Re: A cheap antidepressant lowers the risk of COVID45 hospitalization, a large study finds - rgG - 10-29-2021
I saw something about fluvoxamine last night. Thanks for posting as I was just about to Google it.
I wondered what mechanism it used and think it is interesting that it is an anti inflammatory is very interesting.
Re: A cheap antidepressant lowers the risk of COVID45 hospitalization, a large study finds - deckeda - 11-08-2021
A good read:
This is a WaPo story but made available locally: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/nov/07/the-vaccine-countdown/?amp-content=amp
This small hospital was faced with a nearly 50-50 split on getting staffers vaxxed.
This nurse knows on some level she’s on the wrong side of history:
“You could have made this a lot easier by being an a—hole,” she said.
Re: A cheap antidepressant lowers the risk of COVID45 hospitalization, a large study finds - Speedy - 11-08-2021
deckeda wrote:
A good read:
This is a WaPo story but made available locally: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/nov/07/the-vaccine-countdown/?amp-content=amp
This small hospital was faced with a nearly 50-50 split on getting staffers vaxxed.
This nurse knows on some level she’s on the wrong side of history:
“You could have made this a lot easier by being an a—hole,” she said.
It was a good read (in the WaPo.) The nurse, a supervisor, was whacked-out on fringe media. She was completely brainwashed. Good riddance. I hope she enjoys her retirement where she is less likely to hurt sick people.
The bewildering ordeal of getting billed for a coronavirus vaccine - Speedy - 11-10-2021
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/11/09/vaccine-fee-bill-charge-coronavirus/
Raising three kids, Heather Christena Schmidt has learned a lot about emergency rooms. “Kids are always, you know, getting into stuff,” she says. So when the first puzzling bill arrived, she knew it wouldn’t be the last.
Schmidt’s 13-year-old daughter, Ava, got her second dose of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine on June 22. After her first dose, administered in May at a CVS, Ava fainted. The reason remains elusive. So her primary care doctor recommended she get the second dose at an emergency room, where she could be treated immediately if anything went wrong.
Nothing did; Ava was in and out of the hospital near the Schmidts’ home in Camarillo, Calif., in less than a half-hour. But Schmidt has received three separate bills for her daughter’s shot that day — one from the hospital system, one from insurance and one from the doctor who administered the shot — totaling $262.50.
We were told from the beginning that they would be free, these vaccines. The official webpage for the government’s vaccine rollout reads, in large bold print, “COVID-19 vaccines are free to all people living in the United States, regardless of their immigration or health insurance status,” paid for via federal funding and partnerships with insurance companies. President Donald Trump said they were free. President Biden said they were free. For most Americans, it’s been uncomplicated: They’re free.
Nevertheless, a tiny subset of Americans have gotten billed anyway, some in small, annoying-on-principle amounts, others in more alarming denominations. Some have seen their bills quickly disappear after a phone call, waved away as errors. Others — Schmidt, for example — have found themselves in long, unpleasant games of telephone, stuck with the difficult choice between paying for a shot or jeopardizing their credit scores, putting our bewildering system on full, vexing display.
I should admit here that I was charged for my coronavirus vaccine — $567, in fact. And initially, I wondered whether that was my karmic penalty for getting it early.
On March 6, I had already spent weeks obsessively checking for updates on when I, an otherwise healthy 31-year-old with asthma, would qualify in my home state of New Jersey. So when a friend texted me that he’d heard the Jersey City Medical Center nearby was handing out doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine that had been approved just days before, I dropped everything and leaped into my car. When I arrived, I told the front desk why I was there. A security officer pointed me toward the emergency department.
Claire Fallon, a freelance writer based in Jersey City, found out about the shots from the same mutual friend. Fallon, 33, sat just a few feet away from me in the waiting room; she told me later that at the time, she had recently joined her husband’s insurance but didn’t have a card yet. She and the nurse on duty decided she would simply be categorized as an “uninsured.”
The first bill — from the hospital network, RWJBarnabas Health — showed up about two months later. Like mine, Fallon’s was for $567, but hers came with an “uninsured discount adjustment” down to $73.71. Fallon later received an additional bill from the Jersey City Medical Center for $251.58.
When Fallon called the number on her second bill, the agent said “she would put a hold on it until we figured out what was going on,” Fallon remembers. “That was the last I heard of it.” Fallon still worries, months later, about that outstanding bill.
I’m not proud of it: I ignored my bill. Right up until I got a phone call reminding me to pay it in June while I was vacationing. Flustered, I told the agent on the phone that I didn’t think I needed to pay $567 for a free vaccine. In September, I got a new bill from RWJBarnabas: A “covid-19 adjustment” brought the total down to $225.39. On Oct. 11, I called them to ask why I was still being charged; the representative told me he would send my bill out for review, and acknowledged that I “shouldn’t have to pay anything.” As of Nov. 3, it was still under review.
RWJBarnabas said in a statement to The Washington Post that it “does not charge patients for the vaccine. Vaccine administration is billed to insurers. However, patients who receive medical screenings in our emergency department are billed for the emergency room visit, as is customary.” (Although that’s where the vaccinations took place, I received no other medical treatment.)
Laurie Todd, based in Kirkland, Wash., does business as “the Insurance Warrior,” writing appeals for clients with far weightier problems, such as when their lifesaving treatments are denied insurance coverage or deemed out-of-network. As a result, she hasn’t dealt with any bills for coronavirus vaccines, she notes, but if she did, she would skip phoning a billing office and go straight to an executive at whatever clinic, pharmacy or insurance company sent the bill — via email.
“Attach a copy of the bill. Point out to them that … vaccinations are free to all citizens,” she told The Post in an email.
Re: The bewildering ordeal of getting billed for a coronavirus vaccine - deckeda - 11-10-2021
Freakin bureaucracy. Systemic incompetence. The “free” vaccine was always suspect. Do you have insurance? OK we’ll have you fill out all this stuff. Don’t have insurance? Uh OK here’s your jab.
One of my brothers in law just did that. Told them he has no insurance (he does) and sailed through in a few minutes at a CVS.
Of course, it depends on where you go. The pharmacies always want to know. But back when the county was doling them out while you sat in your car at the fairgrounds there was none of that. We did fill out some very basic info online but it was about eligibility, not our insurance.
Re: The bewildering ordeal of getting billed for a coronavirus vaccine - Speedy - 11-10-2021
Our employer-provided health insurance comes straight out of our health savings account until we reach a deductible limit, not something I wanted to happen. But I used my Part A Medicare (the only Medicare part I have) number to get the jab.