Fogbow

pdt97801 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 11, 2021 1:48 pm Good luck with Texas finding out of state nurses. Maybe they can get them from Florida.

Thousands of teachers and state employees may lose the ability to get paid leave for COVID-19 absences. The program the state uses to assess hospital bed space in real time to provide adequate care for patients may be dismantled. The National Guard, an integral piece to the state’s vaccine and testing rollout during its busiest peaks, may no longer be available to assist.

Even as new COVID-19 cases set daily and weekly records, and hospital intensive care units and emergency rooms fill up across Mississippi, all this and more could become a reality on Sunday at 11:59 p.m. if Gov. Tate Reeves lets his state of emergency order expire as planned.

Issuing states of emergency — which effectively provide legal framework for extraordinary government actions to be carried out — is one of the governor’s most direct powers in Mississippi.

Reeves’ announcement that he would let the current state of emergency order expire came on June 18, when daily COVID-19 cases were low and the state’s hospitals were not overwhelmed.

Volkonski wrote: ↑Wed Aug 11, 2021 7:44 pm

Reeves claimed that Mississippi’s total number of hospitalizations “remain below where they were at our peak from August of 2020.” This is false. In August 2020, COVID-related hospitalizations peaked at 978. As of Tuesday, that number was 1,378.

In a new study published on Friday, a team of researchers at Harvard University found evidence that exposure to elevated levels of fine particle pollution found in wildfire smoke may have led to thousands more cases of covid-19 and more deaths among those who tested positive for the coronavirus.

In some counties in California and Washington state hit particularly hard by wildfires last year, the study, published in the journal Science Advances, concluded that nearly 20 percent of the covid-19 cases were linked to elevated levels of wildfire smoke. The researchers also found that an even higher percentage of deaths could be linked to wildfire smoke in certain counties.

“Clearly, we see that, overall, this is a very dangerous combination,” Francesca Dominici, a professor of biostatistics at Harvard and one of the authors of the study, said of the interplay between smoke and covid-19. “It’s a really scary thing as we continue to face these wildfires all around the world.”

With many people complaining about brain fog, attention problems and confusion after COVID-19, researchers are exploring whether infections could have long-term consequences for the brain.

Early studies are not reassuring.

In several trials made public Thursday, scientists have found changes in brain biology after hospitalization with COVID-19, problems lingering months after infection, and a link between smell loss and mental sharpness in older adults.

Although long-haul COVID-19 is often described as primarily affecting younger people, the new studies suggest that many over 60 also have brain issues long after their initial infections.

Researchers are concerned about the possibility that lingering brain symptoms might lead to dementia years or decades later.