Promising News

 Promising news on COVID-19!

The New York Times reports we may be closer to herd immunity than thought.

What if ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Closer Than Scientists Thought?

"In interviews with The New York Times, more than a dozen scientists said that the threshold is likely to be much lower: just 50 percent, perhaps even less. If that’s true, then it may be possible to turn back the coronavirus more quickly than once thought."

In another article in the Times, researchers now believe the human body is storing strong memory of COVID-19 which may prevent reinfection.

Scientists See Signs of Lasting Immunity to Covid-19, Even After Mild Infections

"Scientists who have been monitoring immune responses to the virus are now starting to see encouraging signs of strong, lasting immunity, even in people who developed only mild symptoms of Covid-19, a flurry of new studies suggests."

And in one of the most fascinating articles I have read about the epidemic, a vision of a normal society even without a vaccine emerges through alternative testing. Instead of doing the expensive nasal swab testing, a much cheaper, easier to produce test that relies on saliva is mass produced. Testing becomes a part of our daily lives.

The Plan That Could Give Us Our Lives Back

"...it is in our power to have an abundance of tests within months—and to return life to normal, or something close to it, even before a vaccine is found. There is a way out of the pandemic."

Imagine this, you go to a community event -- restaurant, theater or sports game, spit into a cup, wait ten minutes for the test to come back, you are negative, you can enter with no need for a mask. 

Let's hope these visions come true.

Meanwhile, in Connecticut, things are still looking good.

COVID ACT NOW Connecticut

2.0 news cases daily per 100,000 people.

Infection rate 0.96 (less than 1 is desirable).

0.8% positive test rate.

***

Here's an article about Los Angeles considering the rapid inexpensive tests.

LA mayor embraces shift in COVID-19 testing strategy: simplicity and speed

AC Fireworks

 

Every year on the 4th of July we have a big party at my house. My brother and his family come up from New Jersey. I grill steaks, ribs, burgers, fries, chicken, and also cook fish, scallops, shrimp and sometimes lobster, as well as corn, zucchini, and mashed potatoes. “The tribe,” as my wife calls her Jamaican family, comes over, bringing friends with them, as well as curry goat and oxtails, with rice and peas. I fill up coolers with bottles of water, beer, hard seltzers and sodas from a local place that makes kid centric drinks like Zombie Juice, Toxic Slime, Monster Mucus, Dog Barf, and Kiddy Piddle. Dessert is ice cream and pie (apple and pumpkin) along with grapes and fresh berries, (blueberry, raspberry and strawberry). And then after dark, there are fireworks that I set on a step ladder and fire into the night sky, ending always with a spectacular finale.

Well, because of COVID we cancelled 4th of July, and instead at the last minute decided to have just a small get together, limiting the food to hot dogs and hamburgers and chicken, and inviting only my wife’s sisters and their kids. The plan was for everyone to bring a chair and we would all sit out back. Things were going pretty well, then I noticed it was just me in the back. It was awfully hot and humid and it seemed the rest had all gravitated to the living room where the large window AC was cranking on high. There were fifteen people in the room, sitting on the couch, one love seat and one arm chair, many in each other’s laps, talking loudly, close together, with no masks on. Why masks, when this is all family?

Here is just some of who were in the room (counting me when I walked in on the scene), a paramedic, an ER nurse, a nursing home health aide, a corrections worker, a supermarket worker, and an ice cream shop worker, as well as someone who recently left a job as a group home worker. Talk about touching all the hot spots. Now, while Connecticut is doing great (for the most part) as far as COVID goes, (and way better than most of the country), all it takes is one person to have been infected a couple of days before and not know it, to get every one in that room infected with COVID, thanks to proximity, loud talking and laughter, producing more respiratory droplets, no masks, and with a giant assist from the air conditioner, which as the window type, pulls air in, cools it and then recirculates it (along with its possible COVID droplet storm) shooting back into the room.

British experts say turn OFF air conditioning to reduce risk of spreading coronavirus as WHO admits pathogen can spread through tiny floating droplets

Open windows while using air conditioning, experts say as WHO shifts stance on airborne coronavirus

This is how super-spreader events work.

My wife, who makes me strip when I come home after every city shirt, throw my COVID clothes in the hot wash, and take an immediate shower, was very apologetic for letting her guard down. With family something you don’t think. 

All it takes is one person to get infected, and be at their most infectious a few days after infection, to be in extended contact with a group of people in a confined space.   Fortunately, they weren't all in there for that long

While all the people in attendance were relatively healthy and fit (and two had recent Negative COVID tests), they all have contact with older family members who did not attend.

We are going to be more careful. We will still have family gatherings, but keep them outside and better spaced, and if anyone goes inside, instead of using the window AC, we are going to open windows and fans.

 

Part-Time

For over twenty-five years I was a full time street medic.  I have been part-time now for only a few months.  I have tried to work at least 20 hours a week, but there have been a couple of weeks when I have only worked once, and one week where I did not work at all.

I sit at my desk at the hospital and watch the crews come in and listen to their stories, and i feel like a desk-jockey fan boy wishing i was still out there.  Tell me again about that call...

When I was full time I always worked at least three twelve hour shifts in a row so my weeks balanced between being a paramedic and then living a regular life.

Now that the regular life is a much larger portion of my time, I am finding two things.  I don’t look forward to going to work as much as i did and when I do, I am nervous.

This isn’t to say that I still don’t enjoy the work, and don’t for most part, still feel comfortable in the position.  It is just that I feel unbalanced.

Not having to get up at 4;30 in the morning is great.  Being always free to take my daughter to her sports practices and games is very special.  Getting more time to exercise is life-saving..

But when I am back on the street, I feel like a second string guard being put in to play for a few minutes while the starters get a rest, then I am back on the bench, never having really gotten into the flow.  Maybe I scored a bucket or two or had an assist, but I am not the starter.  I think back to when ten years ago, I worked six days a week, and working as a paramedic was as smooth for me as breathing. It was my world.

Now sometimes after a long busy shift, I start to feel back in the groove but then I am punching out, and several days later when I punch back in, I feel like a newbie again.  

I do good calls and I want to work more.  Schedulers who are always trying to grab people for extra shifts (The COVID slowdown has ended) would do well to post themselves in hospital EMS rooms after big trauma calls or STEMIs.  You want to work an extra shift?  Hell yeah!  Sign me up!

Sometimes, even after the end of the busy shift when I have done calls that I felt mattered, I will take a look at the open shifts.  I’m a paramedic.  This is where I belong.  This is what I do.

I look at my schedule now and say, yes, I’ll take that, no, wait a minute, I have a meeting at the hospital that day or yes, I can, no, wait, my daughter has basketball practice, sorry, not available.

I do feel more rounded in my life and healthier, but I don’t think I’ll ever be fully comfortable as a part-time medic.

The firefighters are always asking when am I going to retire.  I tell them I will when my daughter graduates college.  Looking at 2030,  I’ll be 71.  I hope I can make it that long.  Not sure I’ll be able to.

I worry that as hard as going part-time has been, retiring completely will likely be even worse.  I’ll sit in my rocking chair and when I hear the sirens in the distance, I will have to turn my hearing aide down to keep the pangs of loss from being too great.  If I am ever in a nursing home (please put a bullet in my head), how will I feel watching the crews wheel past my open door?  Will I wheel myself out into the hall and race after them?  Or will I take a pillow and try to suffocate myself to spare myself any further torture of the sad knowledge that life that has passed me by?  When the paramedics come through the door for me, I hope I am long gone.

Followers of the legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix and Duane Allman leave joints and guitar picks on their graves.  Anyone looking to track my final resting place down, please don’t put a toy ambulance on my site.  The joint will probably be okay, because I imagine that later in life after my children have grown and moved away, I will have a medical marijuana card by then to ease my  chronic pain and depression.  Wait!  Actually I do not wish to be buried in the cold cold ground.  Cremate me instead.  Spread my ashes in the places I have loved.  Fenway Park, the Atlantic Ocean, and yes, the city streets of Hartford.   

Riggs

 

Riggs is a therapy dog.  Our ambulance service moves him about between various divisions to boost responder morale.  I met him for the first time on Friday.  They brought him out to one of the hospitals, and he came over where I sat in my fly car, and he let me take his picture.

When I was a boy I was scared to death of dogs.  I grew up in Turkey where packs of wild gypsy dogs roamed the streets.  The first word I ever spoke was “enginar," which means artichoke in Turkish.  Gypsy women carried baskets of them on their backs, and shouted “Enginar!” hoping to entice people to buy.  I had an unusual childhood.  One of my first memories was of a dancing bear in the streets and holding a small cup of coins.  I remember fires and dancing to music, and the ever present growling dogs.

I came to America in the early 1960s when John Kennedy was still alive. I was in the Indian Guides, which was an alternative to cub scouts/boy scouts.  The theme of the Indian guides was “Like father like son, Pals forever.”  My father’s Indian name was Big-Elk-that -Walks the High-Places,  Mine was little frog that hops on lily pad.  We were on a bike outing when I was attacked by a German Shepard.  The German Shepherd raced across a farmer’s field, and picked me out of the Indian Guide peloton like I was the smallest wildebeest in the great herd.  He leapt up and tore a hunk out of my pants and left teeth marks in my hide.  Later, a neighbor had a German Shepard named Stormy, who lived in a big cage in their garage.  The neighbor let him out in the evenings to run the neighborhood (and hunt small boys like me).  Stormy would come at me, and then jump up on his hind legs and bark, showing his teeth as I would break out in tears.  My sister would have to come out and chase him away.  At night I dreamed of poisoning his meat.

It was only when I was in my middle twenties and a girlfriend of mine had a dog, a small runt Shepard, who was the only animal that the SPCA in her Iowa town had to put a picture in the paper twice warning that she would be killed if no one claimed her, that I learned to love dogs.  I would walk Elizabeth of “Bibs” early in the morning and feed her biscuits.  She got old and started having seizures after which she would have ten minutes of energy like she was puppy and I could hold a biscuit up and she would jump in the air like Flipper for them.  My girlfriend took her twice to the vet to have her put down, but came back the first time because she could not bear the sorrow of losing Bibs.

All of this is to say that I learned in time to hold my hand out and let a dog lick it.  I learned how to pat them and feel some sort of bond.  I learned how to love a dog and let the dog love me back. 

I don’t know Riggs that well yet, but he seems like a good dog, and I think having him around could lift some spirits on sad days.

Uptick

 One the COVID ACT map, Connecticut is still yellow.  It had turned orange briefly, but that was due to a statistical abnormality where old cases that had been recorded on paper back in May were added to the state totals.  

COVID ACT NOW Connecticut

The hospital where I work this week had its first COVID Free Day where no one in the hospital had COVID.  Additionally in a recent study over 600 asymptomatic employees were tested and not a single one tested positive for COVID.  

But trouble is working nearby.  To the North in Springfield, Massachusetts, at Baystate hospital, 20 staff members and 13 patients tested positive for COVID after reportedly being infected by an employee who had traveled to a hot spot and returned to work without guaranteeing or telling anyone.

Another COVID-19 cluster identified: 13 patients, 23 employees at Baystate Medical Center

  To the south in Greenwich, Connecticut on the New york border, there were 41 new cases in a week with half between 10 and 19.  And just yesterday after the state had dropped to its lowest number of hospitalized patients, Fairfield country, which includes Greenwich, added 8 new cases.

House parties in Greenwich may have spread COVID-19 among teenagers; official says individuals not cooperating with contact tracing

To the East, our neighboring Rhode Island , which reopened a few weeks earlier than Connecticut has been experiencing a spike that is putting it on the edge of being added to Connecticut’s no travel list.  Since the covid shutdowns began, the only time I have left Connecticut was on hot overcast day when I took my daughters to the Rhode Island beaches where we body surfed and boogie-boarded for a few hours, then left straight home.

Rhode Island is seeing a coronavirus spike. What does that mean for Connecticut?

Today, on the ambulance I had my first COVID confirmed patient in over a month.  A gentleman who felt unwell a few days ago, got tested and was positive.  Today, he had a fever and rigors, and felt short of breath.

I've switched from the surgical mask to the N95 as my in house mask.  I can't breathe as well after climbing four flights of stairs with all my gear, but I don’t want to walk into a room full of COVID microdroplet soup.

In an “Are You Kidding Me?” article I read yesterday, there is a new study out speculating that tall people are at higher risk of getting COVID due to airborne transmission.  By tall they are talking about those over 6 feet who they claim have double the risk of contracting COVID .  I wonder what my risk is at 6 foot 8?  I walk into a room, and my head is in the COVID miasma cloud of suspended microdroplets that have been lingering for hours in the poorly ventilated apartment above the head of those below -- all except me.  Just great.

New research suggests COVID-19 can spread via aerosol transmission -- and might affect tall people more

I hope this uptick is temporary and not the whole deal again.

But I am fearful.