Uncertainty

News blues

Lungs on Covid
"This is what happened to a 54-year-old man's lung on COVID-19 (he later died).
HiP-CT scans show that in severe cases, the lungs’ blood vessels are severely damaged:
Here, airspaces are colored with cyan, open blood vessels are colored in red,
and blocked, damaged blood vessels are colored in yellow, Nat Geo reports. 
Researchers say images like this, created by the world’s brightest x-rays,
not only are helping scientists understand the virus—they are so scary that
they are prompting their friends to get boosted. See more images."

 © PHOTOGRAPH BY LUCA LOCATELLI AND ESRF, HUMAN ORGAN ATLAS

The FDA pauses monoclonal antibody treatments

The Food and Drug Administration announced that it would limit the use of two monoclonal antibody COVID-19 treatments, made by pharmaceutical companies Regeneron and Eli Lilly. Those treatments had been successful at keeping symptomatic patients out of the hospital in earlier waves, but did not work against Omicron, the agency said. A third, less common monoclonal treatment, called sotrovimab, can still be used.

Read more >> 

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Life with antibiotics: “When you deal with uncertainty, you err on the side of the prescribing, which is not necessarily the right thing to do,” says University of Maryland Medical Center infectious disease physician Jacqueline Bork.

… overuse of antibiotics during the COVID-19 pandemic may be making the problem worse.
More than 750,000 people die from antibiotic-resistant infections annually, and that number is expected to reach 10 million by 2050. In the United States alone, antibiotic- resistant microbes cause more than 2.8 million infections and over 35,000 deaths annually.
… more than half of the nearly 5,000 patients hospitalized between February and July 2020 were prescribed at least one antibiotic within the first 48 hours of admission.
… Antibiotics only kill bacteria and not viruses like SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. But pneumonia can be caused by fungi, bacteria, or viruses, and figuring out which pathogen is responsible can take at least 48 hours, and sometimes include invasive procedures to confirm the cause of the infection. Sometimes the tests don’t identify the culprit. “Many of us were probably overprescribing a good amount of antibiotics.

Read “Superbugs were already on the rise. The pandemic likely made things worse.”>> 

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The Lincoln Project: This is Josh Mandel …running for US Senate seat from Ohio. (0:41 mins)
Music that captures the moment >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

No sign of rain in the San Francisco Bay Area. It’s warm and an early spring may be on its way….
San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 7:14am
Sunset: 5:29pm

KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 5:26am
Sunset: 6:57pm