Health Information During a Time of Stress

This blog was written by Dr. Karsten Theis, Physical Science and Chemistry Department, Westfield State University (contact information below) - - - Today, the World Health Organization has updated their guidance to acknowledge that airborne transmission of COVID-19 may occur. This is in response to a letter from scientists, and to growing evidence in the literature [as mentioned in previous blogs]. Airborne transmission means that if there is insufficient ventilation, someone could enter an empty room containing viral particles in the air, and breathe them in. The WHO stance previously was that viral particles were exhaled by carriers in droplets that sink to the ground relatively quickly (and before these droplets cover 6 feet of distance across the room). Ventilation dilutes the airborne particles when it supplies fresh air. Air conditioners recirculate air, so they do not lower the viral load unless they have special filters in them ( like those in N95 masks ). An ideal mode of vent...

NPR announced today that 250 Scientists all throughout the world wrote a petition to the World Health Organization (WHO) about the  fact that the COVID-19 virus can be t ransmitted not only by mouth droplets but also by breath aerosols.    What does this mean?   It means that when you are out and about someone walking by you might have COVID-19 and their just breathing out of a non-approved mask the virus has the ability to "aerosols" or stay in the air for a period of time.   This changes everything! If I am going to be teaching face-to-face in the Fall (and it looks like I may), I am going to have an industrial sized wind fan in front of me. Not kidding! It will be the only way you'll get me in the classroom. The scientist who was being interviewed said that he has submitted his finding to a medical journal about this so it is based in fact. When I get more specific facts I will update this with those facts! Just wanted to get this important information o...

Today's blog is a follow-up to last week's second part blog about "On Our Way to a Vaccine," which is based upon an article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.  [ Entitled: "The Development of a Vaccine for COVID-19," June 14, 2020, Page 36-43, 56. ] How Do We Test Susan R. Weiss says, "With  COVID-19, there's currently a hamster model that looks like it works pretty well to mimic the disease and also some promising research with mice, ferrets and also nonhuman primates." The model has importance in terms of replicating mammalian sysmptoms. Siddhartha Mukerjee worked on two separate studies regarding vaccine development: He said, "There are two key scientific questions related to animal vaccine development:" If we are exposed to the virus and live, will we have lifelong immunity? Which vaccines out of a number of suggested ones will be the ones to focus on (1) _____________________________________ In the first study , nine monkies ...

Today's blog is a follow-up to last week's first part blog about "On Our Way to a Vaccine, which is based upon an excellent article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.  [ Entitled: "The Development of a Vaccine for COVID-19," June 14, 2020, Page 36-43, 56. ] So, from where we left off last week   - - - Dan Barouch says, "That still leaves the question as to how to get that [aforementioned ] gene into human cells." (1)  He suggests that one way to do this is a vector-based vaccine.  "A vector-based vaccine uses a delivery vehicle  --- one example would be a combined adenovirus, or a "harmless virus" carrier, like a common cold --- to deliver the protein into a person's cells." George Yancopoulos says, "This gene-based approach was used in the case of Ebola.  (2) " But Siddhartha Mukherjee further says, "There is also the idea of further ditching  "harmless virus" carrier (sic) altogether and just using ...

💥  💥  💥  💥  💥  ---  The next series of blogs that I will be writing about is going to be about the process that science has to go through to create a vaccine for a virus or a bacterium. Because it is pretty complicated, I am going to break it down into four separate blogs. Most of the information that this series is based upon comes from an excellent article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.                              [ From an article entitled: "The Development of a Vaccine for COVID-19," June 14, 2020, Page 36-43, 56. ] The fact that the press, experts, epidemiologists, etc. are saying that the biogen field is going to find a vaccine for COVID-19 in 12-18 months is pretty out there. "The first cases of AIDS were described in the early 1980's; it took more than a decade to develop and validate the highly effective triple cocktails that are now the mainstay of therapy." ...

This week it's a video blog on the right way to wear a COVID-19 mask with advice from Dr. Jeanne Noble. 

The following information came from an article in the AARP May 2020 Bulletin . --- "Businesses of all sizes have laid off or furloughed workers --- 10 million as of early April . . ." (1) But there was positivity in today's news in that  2 million workers were rehired during May. But who were those that were rehired? Nearly half the jobs in the US --- 70 Million --- have been effected by COVID-19.  What does this mean as we all try to go back to work? "There are 33 million jobs at high risk of total job loss , lost hours or pay cuts, and another 37 million at medium risk ," says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. There are entire industries right now shattered by being shuttered.  (2) It's obvious that business across America has experienced a dynamic shift in the way people punch the time clock. And as this article states, "If you didn't know how to teleconference, share digital documents, and keep a computer functional on your...