COVID-19 Awareness

I've been working the front lines in an Essential business in my community since the beginning and I'm absolutely Stunned at how some people view this pandemic.

Being a landscape foreman for the heavy stone work and operation of heavy equipment for so many years, I like to lead by example and have always instilled firm safety ethics on my workers. There's nothing like seeing a coworker get hurt on the job!

When I first realized that we had a pandemic on our hands, I made a brief pamphlet using information I copied and pasted from the COVID-19 pages at the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and made them available to customers and colleagues alike. It's amazing how few people had an interest in taking one.

I strongly urge that we all take some time to explore the CDC COVID-19 pages to get educated about this disaster.

As of this writing, more than two-million people have been infected with more than one-hundred, twenty-five thousand deaths - just in the US alone! This is due to a single pandemic - not to be compared to other forms of death!

That said, I may be the only person where I work wearing a mask but I won't let that deter me.

You wouldn't believe how often I get ridiculed or worse for wearing that mask! I wear the mask to protect others - I've been helping customers in a store that's been deemed Essential, which means that I help a LOT of people. I do my best to keep those around me safe.

On the other end of the scale, I get a lot of "Thank You"s from folks who appreciate my endeavors to protect them.

Of the two ends of the scale, it seems that the side who prefer to mock me for wearing a mask also mock the reality of the COVID-19 virus. I've heard that it's fake information designed to wreck the economy. I've heard that it's a government conspiracy. I've also heard that it's no worse than any other reason people die every day... all manner of beliefs that just put me in awe. I mean, these folks seem to truly believe in what they're saying - and it kills me!

These reported deaths are In Addition To all of the other forms of death - not instead of! I mean really?

So I'm interrupting my fun time just to put forth what I feel about this whole thing. Let's look at some videos that I've found on the subject by Scientists and Doctors who just might know a little something about what's going on.

July 15, 2020

It's getting even scarier in the US. There's such a large percentage of Danger Denial that too many people per every ten disbelieve that the situation is dire. Worse, they tend to share a similar thought pattern: "if I get it, I get it", which isn't really the end of that story.

If someone gets the virus everyone they've come into close contact with will likely also get it. Worse still, anyone who touches anything that the infected person had come into close contact with will also likely become infected. Many people, no matter how small percentage numbers might make it seem, cannot survive it. So the above excuse also means: "I don't really care if I kill everyone I know or meet", which is sad!

Remember, unlike ordinary minuscule particles that attract to us (and stick to us), virus particles are actively trying to latch on and get inside, make a whole lot of babies, and broadcast their children to find their own homes to make babies in.

A friend of mine recently tried to convince me (trying to explain how ridiculous I look wearing a mask) that we have better chances of winning the Lottery than catching COVID-19. It doesn't have to sit long in the head to see how absolutely absurd (and incredibly Dangerous!!!) such a comment is - especially when so many people these days actually believe things that they hear other people say in passing.

Hmmm... so the Lottery must have changed how it works. So instead of buying tickets, these dollars are actively looking for us? They want to latch on, climb inside and multiply within us? It's odd that we're not all filthy with wealth!

Let's look at a newscast from Canada, who is nearing their own re-opening phase.

Next we need to squash the selfish (and incorrect) belief that none of us should cooperate (for the survival of all human life in the country - in the world!) and wear masks when we're in public places.

For this I'll direct us to Dr. Phil Mason. In this first video he uncovers the untruth presented by Dr. Rashid Buttar, who tries to convince the world that we should not be wearing masks. Hmmm... imagine the shock of discovering that none (not a single one) of his points even come close to the truth!

Dr. Phil Mason - Wikipedia

Mason worked at Cornell University's department of food science from 2002 until 2012, where he studied the molecular interactions between water and sugar molecules,[6] as well as molecular modeling with regard to proteins and guanidinium solutions. As of 2013, he was working at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic as a member of a research group headed by Pavel Jungwirth.[3]

Mason, on his own and with some fellow technical workers, did original physical chemistry research into the nature of the alkali metals (sodium and potassium, for example) and their chemistry with oxygen and water.[19] It has been known since the metals could be obtained in pure forms that they are explosive when dropped into water. It has long been thought this was caused by the dissociation of water by the metal, releasing hydrogen and oxygen which recombined in an explosion.

Mason developed experimental methods and results that indicate the first reaction of alkali metals and water was coulombic (that is, electrical charge forces) in nature which shatters and drives the metal in an extremely pure state into the water, causing both further coulombic and water dissociation. This result developed in 2015 was completely new to chemistry.[19] His research, supported by the YouTube community, has been published in the journal Nature Chemistry.[20]

On 5 June 2020, his research on solvated electrons dissolved in ammonia was published on the front page of the science journal Science.[21]

Dr. Rashid Buttar - Wikipedia (just so you know to ignore anything he tells you!)

Rashid Ali Buttar (born January 20, 1966) is an American conspiracy theorist, anti-vaccine proponent, and an osteopathy practitioner from Charlotte, North Carolina.[1] He is known for his controversial use of chelation therapy for numerous conditions, including autism and cancer.[2] He has twice been reprimanded by the North Carolina Board of Medical Examiners for unprofessional conduct[3][4] and cited by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for illegal marketing of unapproved and adulterated drugs.[5][6][7]

Buttar claims to be board certified by several entities,[10] all of which are listed as "questionable organizations" by Quackwatch including the American Academy of Preventative Medicine, American Academy of Integrative Medicine, and American College for Advancement in Medicine; the latter's primary purpose being the promotion of chelation therapy.[11]

COVID-19 conspiracy theories and misinformation

See also: Misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic

During the 2019-20 coronavirus pandemic, a series of videos featuring Buttar were posted to YouTube by the fake news website[25][26] Next News Network, in which Buttar advanced a conspiracy theory claiming that NIAID director Anthony Fauci's research helped create COVID-19, as well as numerous other false claims, such as that 5G cell phone networks and "chemtrails" cause COVID-19.[27][14][28] YouTube removed the video a week after it was posted, replacing it with a message saying, "This video has been removed for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines."[28]

Scientists can often (not always) be a little easier to follow than Doctors. Scientists and Doctors often have vocabularies that surpass the understanding of the layperson and if they use an abundance of that, people like me might not get the full grasp of what they're saying. So we need to take it upon ourselves to strive for other ways to get the information in terms that we can wrap our minds onto.

So I'm putting up this wonderfully informative video by a really cool professional scientist (Dr. Phil Mason) who tends to be very good at passing information in common tongue language.

Okay that was February. Let's see how this progresses...

He also put out this video in response to some of the viral (in popularity) conspiracy theories.

The virus is NOT funny

The fact that people actually believe some of these mis-information videos, and other forms of communication that have gone viral is downright Scary!!!

I see the belief in these horrible atrocities every single day!

Scary!!!

Again, the virus is not fun nor is it funny. But let's take a moment to use some good ol' Fun Science to put the spreading power of this virus into a little better perspective - again, with Thunderf00t (Dr. Mason).

How much Coronavirus does it take to infect Everyone on Earth?

Now comes the Really Scary Part!

This is what I was talking about in my own experience, working the front lines to "help people get necessities" during this horrific pandemic.

Here Thunderf00t uses simple math to illustrate how: if one out of every six people don't believe that the virus exists, we'll never be able to contain the virus from infecting every person on the planet - or at least in the United States.

...and one more from Thunderf00t - In this one he again takes a look at how false information is vastly too popular - a very dangerous situation for us all!


Scary Truth!!!!

Let's take a look at what Doctors have to say

Mike Hansen MD reports What Doctors are Learning from Autopsy Findings of Coronavirus (COVID-19) Patients

Once the SARS-CoV-2 virus is deeply embedded in the body, it begins to cause more severe disease. This is where the direct attack on other organs that have ACE2 receptors can occur, including heart muscle, kidneys, blood vessels, liver, and the brain.

Early findings, including those from multiple autopsy and biopsy reports, show that viral particles can be found not only in the nasal passages and throat, but also in tears, stool, kidneys, liver, pancreas, and heart. One case report found evidence of viral particles in the CSF, meaning the fluid around the brain. That patient had meningitis.

So the virus is sometimes going to all these different organs by means of attaching to the ACE2 receptors that are there, but that’s not even the whole story.

Because in some cases, by the time the body’s immune system figures out the body are being invaded, it's like unleashing the military to stomp out the virus, and in that process, there’s a ton of collateral damage.

This is what we refer to as the cytokine storm. When the virus gets into the alveolar cells, meaning the tiny little air sacs within the lungs, it makes a ton of copies of itself and goes onto invading more cells. The alveoli’s next-door neighbor is guessed who, yeah, the tiniest blood vessels in our body, capillaries. And the lining of those capillaries is called the endothelium, which also has ACE2 receptors. And once the virus invades the capillaries. It means that it serves as the trigger for the onslaught of inflammation AND clotting. Early autopsy results are also showing widely scattered clots in multiple organs. In one study from the Netherlands, 1/3rd of hospitalized with COVID-19 got clots despite already being on prophylactic doses of blood thinners. So not only are you getting the inflammation with the cytokine storm, but you’re also forming blood clots, that can travel to other parts of the body, and cause major blockages, effectively damaging those organs.

So it can cause organ damage by

  1. Directly attacking organs by their ACE2 receptor? Yup
  2. Indirectly attacking organs by way of collateral damage from the cytokine storm? Yup
  3. Indirectly cause damage to organs by means of blood clots? yup
  4. Indirectly cause damage as a result of low oxygen levels, improper ventilator settings, drug treatments themselves, and/or all of these things combined? Yeah

Endothelial cells are more vulnerable to dying in people with preexisting endothelial dysfunction, which is more often associated with being a male, being a smoker, having high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity. Blood clots can form and/or travel to other parts of the body. When blood clots travel to the toes, and cause blockages in blood flow there, meaning ischemia or infarction, that can cause gangrene there. And lots of times patients with gangrene require amputation, and “COVID toes”

So is antiphospholipid antibody syndrome, the cause of all these blood clots in patients with severe COVID? Maybe. Some patients with APS have what’s called catastrophic APS, where these patients can have strokes, seizures, heart attacks, kidney failure, ARDS, skin changes like the ones I mentioned. Viral infectious diseases, particularly those of the respiratory tract, have been reported as being the triggers for CAPS.

Various factors increase the risk of developing arterial thrombosis. Classically, the cardiovascular-dependent risk factors implicated in clotting have been hypertension, meaning high blood pressure, high levels of cholesterol, smoking, diabetes, age, chemotherapy, and degree of infection. All of these contribute toward developing arterial thrombosis.

A lot of patients with severe COVID-19 have certain labs that resemble DIC, such as increased PT/INR, increased PTT, decreased levels of platelets. But the reason why these COVID patients who developed clots in the study I mentioned earlier, the reason why they don’t have DIC, is actually 2 reasons, one, they weren’t having extensive bleeding, and two, they did not have low fibrinogen levels. And if its truly DIC, you would have both of those things.

Anyway, you can probably glean from this video why it's so hard for doctors to figure out what is going on with this virus. Between the variable ways this disease can present in different patients, and the different ways that organs can suffer damage, yeah, this is really, really really, complicated.

Are BLOOD CLOTS the reason why COVID19 patients are dying?

Dr. Mike Hansen has a lot more info available - and there a many other sources of fact out there - Stay Informed - Stay Safe!!!

Dr. Mike Hansen, MD Internal Medicine | Pulmonary Disease | Critical Care Medicine

IG: http://instagram.com/doctor.hansen/ #coronavirus #covid19 #covid_19

COVID-19: Life and death moments in an ICU

Staff from Markham Stouffville Hospital outside Toronto offer a glimpse inside the ICU as a warning about the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic.

More to come. I just wanted to get this out there.

Stay Safe Everyone - and Please try to Protect Those Around You!