The new coronavirus kills by inflaming and clogging the tiny air sacs in the lungs, choking off the body’s oxygen supply until it shuts down the organs essential for life.
But clinicians around the world are seeing evidence that suggests the virus also may be causing heart inflammation, acute kidney disease, neurological malfunction, blood clots, intestinal damage and liver problems. That development has complicated the treatment of the most severe cases of covid-19, the illness caused by the virus, and makes the course of recovery less certain, they said.
The prevalence of these effects is too great to attribute them solely to the “cytokine storm,” a powerful immune-system response that attacks the body, causing severe damage, doctors and researchers said.
Almost half the people hospitalized because of covid-19 have blood or protein in their urine, indicating early damage to their kidneys, said Alan Kliger, a nephrologist at the Yale School of Medicine who co-chairs a task force assisting dialysis patients who have covid-19.
Even more alarming, he added, is early data that shows 14 to 30 percent of intensive-care patients in New York and Wuhan, China — birthplace of the pandemic — losing kidney function and requiring dialysis, or its in-hospital cousin, continuous renal replacement therapy. New York intensive care units are treating so much kidney failure, he said, they need more personnel who can perform dialysis and have issued an urgent call for volunteers from other parts of the country. They also are running dangerously short of the sterile fluids used to deliver continuous renal therapy, he said.
“That’s a huge number of people who have this problem. That’s new to me,” Kliger said. “I think it’s very possible that the virus attaches to the kidney cells and attacks them.”
But in medicine, logical inferences often do not prove true when research is conducted. Everyone interviewed for this story stressed that with the pandemic still raging, they are speculating with much less data than is normally needed to reach solid clinical conclusions.
Indiana Republican Congressman Trey Hollingsworth said Tuesday that Americans need to get back to work — despite the risk of dying from coronavirus. In a radio interview, Hollingsworth prioritized the reopening of the economy and called it the "lesser of these two evils."
While discussing the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic, Hollingsworth said there is no "zero-harm choice" between sending people back to work or letting the economy continue to falter.
"Both of these decisions will lead to harm for individuals, whether that's dramatic economic harm or or whether that's the loss of life," he said. "But it is always the American government's position to say, in the choice between the loss of our way of life as Americans and the loss of life of American lives, we have to always choose the latter."
Despite potentially risking people's lives to the virus, Hollingsworth said in his view it's still "the lesser of these two evils" compared to the economic shutdown.
"It is policymakers' decision to put on our big boy and big girl pants and say, 'This is the lesser of these two evils'," he said. "And it is not zero evil, but it is the lesser of these evils, and we intend to move forward in that direction. That is our responsibility and to abdicate that is to insult the Americans that voted us into office."
"It is policymakers' decision to put on our big boy and big girl pants and say, 'This is the lesser of these two evils'," he said. "And it is not zero evil, but it is the lesser of these evils, and we intend to move forward in that direction. That is our responsibility and to abdicate that is to insult the Americans that voted us into office."
That is a remarkable statement.
-------------------------------- Life is short. Play with your dog.
According to this poll, at least, most Americans disagree with Hollingsworth.
quote:
President Donald Trump calls it “the biggest decision I’ll ever make.”
Voters say it’s an easy call: Don’t reopen the economy if it will enable the coronavirus to spread.
As Trump prepares to restart the nation’s economic engine — which was abruptly cut a month ago as the new coronavirus began to spread rapidly throughout the country — a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll shows the vast majority of voters support continuing the social-distancing measures that appear to be helping the U.S. hamper the rapid spread of Covid-19, the illness caused by the virus.
More than eight in 10 voters, 81 percent, say Americans “should continue to social distance for as long as is needed to curb the spread of coronavirus, even if it means continued damage to the economy.” Only 10 percent say Americans “should stop social distancing to stimulate the economy, even if it means increasing the spread of coronavirus.” Nine percent of voters have no opinion.
While Democrats (89 percent) are more likely than Republicans (72 percent) to say Americans should continue the “social distancing” measures, large majorities in all demographic groups say it’s more important to stop the spread of the virus than to resume economic activity that could undermine those mitigation efforts.
He spent days hyping it up. He built suspense. And he promised a big announcement.
When he finally unveiled his much-heralded new White House economic task force focused on reopening the economy, President Donald Trump read off a list of names. Dozens and dozens and dozens of names.
With little explanation or context about their ultimate purpose, Trump spent roughly 10 minutes in the White House Rose Garden ticking off names of executives and companies from sectors including technology, agriculture, banking, financial services, defense, energy, transportation, sports and health care.
“Now, we have a list of people that I’ll be speaking to over the next very short period of time, in many cases, tomorrow,” Trump said. “We have a list of different industries that I’ll be discussing by, meeting by telephone, because we don't want people traveling right now.”
Trump read off names of just about every leading corporation in America — all of whom he said would advise the administration in the coming weeks about how to reopen the economy from its coronavirus-induced shutdown.
After the president concluded his news briefing, the White House released a list of nearly 200 corporate executives, faith leaders and thought leaders broken out by sector in what the announcement called “Great American Economic Revival Industry Groups.”
“These bipartisan groups of American leaders will work together with the White House to chart the path forward toward a future of unparalleled American prosperity,” the statement said. “The health and wealth of America is the primary goal, and these groups will produce a more independent, self-sufficient, and resilient Nation.”
At no point did Trump or the White House explain the way the committees would work, or the types of suggestions they sought or the benchmarks the White House would use to determine whether it was safe to reopen shuttered businesses, send children back to school, reopen stadiums or resume work in offices.
Trump also did not indicate who would lead the effort emanating from the various industry groups from the White House; on Monday, the councils had seemed like a potential new project for chief of staff Mark Meadows. Throughout the past week there were also confusing signals about the involvement of senior advisers Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
The back-and-forth deliberations over the “Opening Our Country Council,” as Trump called it at one point last week, laid bare for the American public the way decisions often are made in the Trump White House — through power struggles, the loose and very public airing of possible ideas and then the president making adjustments on the fly with a goal of having a big announcement.
