I believe that medicine’s potential is much more than the version we see in the world today. A doctor should be an educator with the goal of bringing patients to a place of deeper understanding of who they are in the world. To me, medicine is ultimately about self-empowerment through self-knowledge and growth.
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The days are shortening. We are entering the week where we pass the exact balance point between high summer and the depth of winter. It’s the year’s second transition point between the two extremes. It’s the sunset of the year: the Fall Equinox. The time between the poles is when we have greatest access to powers of balance, rhythm, harmony and healing. Imagine a life where you take a pause at the sunrise and sunset to harmonize. The same goes for the equinoxes. It’s not so easy with the light pollution we live with to stay in rhythm with the day and the year, but there is serenity, calm and much more as a reward for your efforts.
Antihistamines and COVID treatment?
A general trend with the COVID illness is that people get a little better after a few days and then experience a delayed shortness of breath which can accompany an overall worsening. Doctors treating patients with COVID have found this can be headed off by treating with an antihistamine. Dr Cheedy in South Africa postulates that there is an allergy component to this phase of the illness. He wonders if this could explain why certain entire families fare poorly. We’ve all seen the headlines about several members of a household succumbing to COVID. Could their familial susceptibility to this particular allergy reaction explain that? He started using allergy medicines when that late shortness of breath came and has had very good results.
Claritin and Allegra, typical allergy drugs are examples of histamine blockers. They block type 1 histamine blockers. Pepcid is a type two histamine blocker is also used in severe allergic reactions. You might remember President Trump received Pepcid last year by his team of doctors.
It’s part of the approach now: one of several components to consider. Gone should be the days of sending a patient home with fluids and Tylenol and a pulse oximeter.
The importance of having actual treating physicians as part of the national leadership cannot be understated. They dictate the approach for masses of clinicians. Many postulate this is a weakness of the current physician advisory panels and the lack of usable tools that we get from them. Imagine never treating a COVID patient and making recommendations on how to do so. Not fruitful.
Surveillance labs for the CDC usually test over one million swabs for influenza in any given year and see on average 200,000 positive influenza tests. There are estimated to be tens of millions of flu cases annually, partly based on extrapolating this data.
The 2020/21 flu season was like no other. There were not quite one million tests in surveillance labs (a few hundred thousand below usual) but only 1,700 positives. It’s one of the most intriguing parts of the Pandemic: the disappearance of other respiratory illnesses.
Who has fared best/worst against COVID? A state by state analysis follows.
5 states with the highest mortality from COVID per population are listed below. This can be a function of several factors, including how many cases the state has seen. These other factors are not analyzed here. Only the death rate from COVID as has been publicly reported as of this month.
The five states with the most COVID death are:
| State | deaths per 100,000 population | |
|---|---|---|
| #1 | New Jersey | 305 |
| #2 | Mississippi | 299 |
| #3 | New York | 281 |
| #4 | Louisiana | 281 |
| #5 | Massachusetts | 266 |
The five states with the least COVID death are:
| State | deaths per 100,000 population | |
|---|---|---|
| #46 | Maine | 81 |
| #47 | Oregon | 71 |
| #48 | Alaska | 63 |
| #49 | Hawaii | 47 |
| #50 | Vermont | 46 |
Other notables:
| State | deaths per 100,000 population | |
|---|---|---|
| #12 | Florida | 227 |
| #22 | Texas | 208 |
| #33 | California | 170 |
And finally…
