Runaway COVID Cases, Death Rate in U.S. 

"[America] is in for a hellacious couple of weeks [for COVID-linked deaths to come]."
"This has been so badly mishandled from the get-go in the United States. It's horrible to watch."
"[Canada has an opportunity to learn] from the mistakes of others."
"The relative lack of deaths and severe cases and hospital traffic isn't a function of the disease sort of deciding to not be that big a deal anymore."
"It's directly a result of our actions [such as social distancing]. A very active effort is making things not happen."
"Obviously, the other concern is that this is our next-door neighbour. We're dealt a hough hand, here. The border is federal jurisdiction, and it probably means the federal government needs to step up in terms of getting very serious about how we handle screening travellers coming into Canada, how we deal with quarantine of travellers, and monitoring people to make sure they don't break [the 14-day] quarantine and how we try to think creatively about how we try to keep the disease from being introduced, with truckers coming across the border, back and forth."
"It's worth remembering that, even back in February, we saw this grumbling start to these epidemics, where we were importing cases and importing cases and we did not have an exponential growth. And then in early March it suddenly exploded."
Dr.David Fisman, head, division of epidemiology, school of public health, University of Toronto

"If we re-open too much we will see rises in cases, too. [We are] epidemiologically [no] different."
"It's still right here with us, like embers in a dry forest. [We've slowed the curve with severe actions, not with immunity]." 
"[We should be ready for a] re-closing [should we see a case surge]. We should understand that it takes time to see changes, we won't know right away and we risk infecting people now who will need care in a few weeks' time [should we fail to continue physical distancing."
"Staying physically away from each other, consistently, works and it is the only thing we know [that] works. [While masks help as does hand-washing] we don't know how much. To my knowledge, there is nowhere in the world that masks and contact tracing as the only interventions have worked to keep COVID-19 at bay while social activities and contacts were near normal."
Caroline Colijn, disease modelling expert, Simon Fraser University

An employee sweeps inside a closed bar in Austin, Texas, June 26, 2020.

Sergio Flores | AFP | Getty Images

In the United States, case counts continue to swell to record highs in southern and western states daily. Bars were ordered closed in Los Angeles and an additional six California counties, when health officials stated that liquor makes people less compliant with physical distancing and mandatory face masking. For the Fourth of July holiday weekend, Florida has closed bars and beaches in response to the steadily rising cases which has become a phenomenon in no fewer than sixteen states.


The Trump administration is busy putting a optimistic view front and forward, claiming the crisis appears "different than what we saw two months ago", a statement delivered by U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence, leading the White House coronavirus task force. Of the confirmed new cases in Florida and Texas half are being seen in under 35s; "encouraging news", according to Mr. Pence since younger people appear to be less susceptible to serious infection outcomes.

The three most populous U.S. states, California, Florida and Texas are breaking coronavirus records, leading to fears of 'apocalyptic' surges. (Chandan Khanna AFP/Getty Images/CNN)

Daily updates in Canada of new cases and deaths are descending in numbers, along with falling hospital admission rates while recoveries are increasing in numbers, according to a newly=released federal modelling update. Among the elderly in particular, given the carnage seen in long-term care homes in the past few months -- contagion rates are down and a steep decrease has been seen in transmission among the elderly. Balanced by a slight increase among 20- to 39-year-olds.

There have been clusters of infection, however, some flare-ups in Ontario and Alberta. The most serious of them has taken place when over 180 mostly migrant farm workers tested positive over the weekend for COVID-19. It is, however in the United States where case counts are ascending to record daily highs in southern and western states. Even so, Vice-President Pence, looking on the bright side of things a la Monty Python, declares that "We're in a much better place" in comparison to the worst moments of the pandemic two months earlier.

 Canada

Coronavirus Cases:104,204

Deaths:8,591

Recovered:67,594

Dr.Colijn notes that even in younger adults COVID can be severe and the disease is likelier to be communicated to the elderly and other vulnerable groups by infected young adults. It takes time, she reminds her interlocutors, between the disease onset when symptoms are noticed and becoming ill enough that a hospital visit is needed. With hospitalization comes an increased potential of dire respiratory straits,  heroic recovery measures, and possibly death.

"Only now would we be starting to see the impact of reopening in May and June", Dr.Colijn stated, explaining that hospitalizations lag behind confirmed infections, where it takes time between symptom onset and becoming recognizably ill. Confirmed cases in the U.S. now exceed 2.5 million people, with over 125,000 reported COVID-related mortalities making the U.S. the largest COVID epidemic in terms of recognized cases in the world "by a lot".

Sheltering Safely in Community Neighbourhoods

"Neighbourhoods at the core of the city [Manhattan] had a lower rate of infection."
"And through the first two weeks of April, that gap between the core and the periphery actually grew rather than shrank."
Salim Furth, senior research fellow, Mercator Center, Arlington, Va.

"The right way to do isolation is to do it quickly."
"We want to have the ability to isolate over short periods of time and use that short time to help people get over the disease and get back to normal."
Yaneer Bar-Yam, director, New England Complex Sciences Institute

New York is down, but certainly not out. PHOTO: Colton Duke

Logic had it -- or so it was thought -- that dense urban environments would ensure that the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19 infection rate would skyrocket. In New York that didn't quite happen. The super-dense city wasn't super-infected in the densest areas, after all. A map of viral spread in New York in mid-April showed that the heat of infection was not in the subway-tentacled heart of the city; rather it took place in the roomy car-dependent outer neighbourhoods.

When coronavirus infection data was compared with commute models across zip codes, researcher Salim Furth realized that higher viral infection rates appeared to take place in car-dependent neighbourhoods. The reason behind this phenomenon is not yet understood, but a reasonable theory has arisen; that subway users, conscious of the need to self-isolate stayed behind in their own communities, while those residents living in suburban sprawl continued to drive.



Grocery stores, pharmacies and all manner of services are located some distance away in most suburban sprawl locations, as are big box stores and shopping plazas where hundreds or thousands of people gather and physically interact. Though epidemiologists are left to sift through piles of risk factors, viral spread is being increasingly linked to crowded conditions within dwellings as well as occupations placing workers in close proximity to many others.

These conditions are associated not with density per se, but poverty. Toronto released a map indicating viral rates at the end of May across the city, where poor neighbourhoods on the fringes were hit harder than the dense, affluent downtown core. Similarly globally, the densest cities -- Seoul and Singapore among them -- were recognized as being the most successful at countering the viral infection rate.

Vancouver's Commercial Drive, Edmonton's Strathcona, Toronto's Danforth are all areas where residents are able to readily walk to access daily needs; shopping, school, supermarkets, community centre, places of worship, parks.  These represent self-sufficient communities, where short local lockdowns can take place without inconveniencing residents to the straining point.



Public health officials have advised that cities adopt more walkable community designs, where those living in walkable communities with an abundance of local shops, services and amenities report being likelier to know and trust their neighbours; relationships where people look out for one another. Even children growing within mixed-use, walkable places benefit hugely, and end up more likely to climb the socio-economic ladder.

Because of the global pandemic and the influence it has exerted on people's daily lives an unprecedented opportunity has opened for a timely change in city structures. As a result of the crisis neighbourhood streets have seen changes with less traffic enabling people to have room to move and breathe. Business districts have been transforming parking lanes into patios for social distance dining and shopping. Homeless people have been offered hotel rooms during the crisis.

Will these lessons in civic and civil bonds between people continue, should city planners recognize the benefits inherent in community neighbourhoods? In a truly crowded city like Tokyo, community neighbourhoods are the norm; people belong, feel comfortable, are able to walk to all the services they hold dear and require for a comfortable lifestyle. Why not emulate what is successful?

Atmospheric Disruption : Archaeological Revelation

"To find evidence that a volcano on [the] other side of the Earth erupted and effectively contributed to the demise of the Romans and the Egyptians and the rise of the Roman Empire is fascinating."
"It certainly shows how interconnected the world was even 2,000 years ago."
"People have been speculating about this for many years, so it's exciting to be able to provide some answers."
"Many are of the belief that through such climate Earth modelling, we can slow down climate change by replicating volcanic eruptions."
"The sulphur emitted from the volcano creates a layer around the Earth, allowing it to cool and protect it against rapid climate change."
Joe McConnell, Desert Research Institute, Reno, Nevada

"The tephra match doesn't get any better."
"It was very clear that the source of the 43 BCE fallout in the ice was the Okmok 11 eruption."
Gill Plunkett, tephra specialist, Queen's University Belfast

Cicero’s death in 42 B.C.E. marks the end of the Roman Republic. Did a volcano hasten its fall?

© The Holbarn Archive/Bridgeman Images

Verification by way of a new study revealing an ancient volcanic event reaching across the planet to impact on the atmosphere over 8,000 kilometres distant from the eruption, came through the auspices of a new study led by Joe McConnell and an international team of scientists and historians whose analytical conclusion was stamped as proof-positive of what historians had suspected. A volcano had been the cause of extreme cold in the Mediterranean region coinciding with the time of Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BCE.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of National Academy of Science, revealing that Mount Okmok's eruption in Alaska in 43 BCE had been the cause of the extreme temperature plunge leading to crop failure, famine, disease, and finally, the fall of the Roman Republic and the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, which in turn led to the rise of the Roman Empire.

The team of scientists discovered their evidence through analyzing volcanic ash (tephra). Last year the initial discovery was made by Dr. McConnell and Swiss researcher Michael Sigi when they happened to notice a well-preserved layer of tephra in an ice core sample at the Ice Core Laboratory of the Desert Research Institute. Ice core samples from Greenland and Russia drilled in the 1990s were analyzed and evidence found of two eruptions; one in 45 BCE the other in 43 BCE.

Ice core sample to support findings of the Roman Republic demise. Joe McConnell

It was the latter that had been responsible for widespread volcanic fallout over the course of the following two years, found in all the ice core records. Experts from Germany, the U.K., Alaska, Switzerland, the U.S. and Ireland gathered evidence along with Dr. McConnell from across the world which included climate data from tree rings in Scandinavia, the California White Mountains, Austria and a Chinese cave formation, in confirmation of the team's findings.

There were but five volcanic eruptions in the given time frame, according to researchers, and the tephra was compared to samples from all five of the volcanoes, found to best match one of the largest eruptions in the past 2,500 years: Okmok 11 in Alaska. The findings confirm reports from ancient resources, noted classical archaeologist Andrew Wilson of the University of Oxford:

"In the Mediterranean region, these wet and extremely cold conditions during the agriculturally important spring through autumn seasons probably reduced crop yields and compounded supply problems during the ongoing political upheavals of the period."

Volcanologists had studied Okmok for 70 to 80 years, explained Dr.McConnell, no one knowing it was the volcano that linked to the succession of the Roman Republic by the Roman Empire.

Detailed records of past explosive volcanic eruptions are archived in the Greenland ice sheet and accessed through deep-drilling operations. Dorthe Dahl-Jensen

Researching COVID-Pregnancy-Infant Transmission

"There are questions, there is uncertainty and there are so many more tears It has never been harder for me to give care."
"I want to do one clinic without making people cry someday soon."
"The patients have all these questions. We need to be able to answer them and to understand what this could mean to help with delivery planning."
"There is so much anxiety about getting it [COVID-19],and taking care of their baby."
Dr.Darine El-Chaar, maternal-fetal medicine physician, The Ottawa Hospital

In this photo, a doctor performs an ultrasound scan on a pregnant woman at a hospital. Clinicians and epidemiologists don't yet know much about COVID-19 and pregnancy, says the leader of a newly formed national network that's aiming to fill in those gaps. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Teresa Crawford

Dr. El-Chaar is also a researcher at The Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. Funding has been received from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for COVID-19 for her research team looking to find answers to questions about COVID-19 and pregnancy. One of the vital questions this team seeks to find an answer to is whether a mother can pass COVID-19 to her baby.

To that end, the team plans to investigate whether a mother can infect her child with the virus during pregnancy. The research is the first such to be undertaken in Canada. Studies have been produced by some researchers globally but there is much that is not yet known about COVID-19 and how it affects pregnancy, that of both mother and child.

According to results of early research, up to 80 percent of pregnant women infected with COVID-19 experience fairly mild symptoms of the disease, while between 15 and 20 percent of women experience moderate or severe symptoms. Unclear as yet is how many pregnant women tested positive so far for COVID-19 in Ontario. What is known is that over fifty hospitals in the province have reported such cases.

Most pregnant patients have experienced moderate or mild symptoms, and to the present no local cases of COVID transmission from mother to baby have been identified. Out of a total of $4.7 million in research funding, a number of studies are being undertaken in the hope of discovering new data about COVID-19. One study is to determine the rate of COVID-19 infection in pregnant women, and to that end every woman giving birth at The Ottawa Hospital will be tested for the virus.

That data will be useful to inform whether universal testing should be undertaken on pregnant women. By testing maternal and newborn samples from participating hospitals across Ontario, another study plans to examine whether a mother is able to communicate COVID-19 to her child during pregnancy. Mothers and babies with a history of infection will provide additional data to be collected.

The research results are expected to provide more expansive clarity on such questions as whether vaginal births and breast feeding could pose an increased risk with COVID-19, or whether mothers who are infected may confer immunity on their infants. Some of the questions that mothers pose associated with concerns about pregnancy during the pandemic may find their answers from this research.

According to Dr. El-Chaar, mothers not infected are also anxious; attributable party to isolation during the pandemic; less face-to-face doctor appointments; having to attend some appointments unaccompanied; and general concerns about the unknown elements clinging to the global pandemic and how expectant women are affected.

Other research taking place at The Ottawa Hospital and funded through the same source along with other agencies, will investigate the potential of harnessing cancer-fighting vaccine sin the development of  a COVID vaccine; whether stem cell therapy can reduce damage from overactive immune responses to COVID-19 in critically ill patients; and research into how the most vulnerable are being affected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

•  Pregnancy does not appear to increase a person’s risk of becoming infected with COVID-19.
• Clinical signs and symptoms of a COVID-19 infection are usually the same in pregnant and non-pregnant people, which can include fever, cough, shortness of breath, body aches, fatigue and sore throat.

• The majority of pregnant people in Ontario are healthy and considered low-risk, with no pre-existing health conditions. Healthy pregnant people infected with COVID-19 usually have mild symptoms and recover at home without needing hospital care.

• Experts are not sure yet, but it seems that during pregnancy and birth the risk of transmission is low from a COVID-19 infected mother to their baby. After birth, the COVID-19 infected mother could pass the virus to the newborn if infection control measures are not taken, but the risk of transmission is unknown at this time.

• Most babies born to COVID-19 infected mothers are usually healthy and do not require hospitalization, but some may be born too early or too small and might need longer hospital stays.

BORN Ontario

Plastic Infiltration in Fruits, Vegetables

"[The research highlights the] worrying estimated daily intakes, either for adults or for children in terms of plastic particles [but the extent of the potential effects on humans has yet to be understood]."
University of Catania, Sicily, study

"They are spherical particles with a size up to 2 micrometers and they are a little bit flexible, so they can themselves more or less be squeezed into the small pores’ cells of the plant roots."
"Another mechanism is that inside newly developed roots there are small cracks present, and then the particles [go into] those cracks, so it’s even possible that bigger particles than the ones we studied might also be taken up by plants."
Willie Peijnenburg, environmental toxicology professor, Leiden University, Netherlands

Apples were found to be the most contaminated fruit in the study, while carrots were found to be the most contaminated vegetables

Researchers from University of Catania, Sicily, under lead project scientist Margherita Ferrante, have conducted studies into the prevalence of microplastics in the food we eat, drawn up from the soil they're grown in. Generally other research conducted by other scientists has discovered that carrots are microplastics-contaminated, representing the root vegetable with the highest concentration of microplastics, but how this take-up of contaminated fruits and vegetables will impact on peoples' health is as yet unknown.

Pears contained the second highest level of microplastics in fruit

Researchers associated with Dr.Ferrante's laboratory sourced fruits and vegetables from local markets, from supermarkets and other shops; thoroughly washed, peeled, blended and dried the samples. After which they were analyzed with the use of an electron microscope to enable the calculation of the microparticles present. Their findings validated that plastic particles tended to see fruit concentrating greater amounts of microplastic than do vegetables.

And apples, according to the research analytics, turn out to be the fruit most heavily contaminated with microplastics

Microplastics generally can include particles as minuscule as ten nanometres (a million nanometres in a millimetre), and they measure less than five millimetres in diameter. The study, published in the journal Environmental Research, calls for an urgent review of the effects on human health of the presence of microplastics in the fruits and vegetables we eat.

Carrots were shown to contain the smallest pieces of microplastic, taken from soil

Another peer-reviewed study made the claim that plastics are absorbed with water through the root system of crops. Lianzhen Li of the Yanthal Institute of Coastal Zone Research in China partnered with Willie Peijnenburg from Leiden University in the Netherlands, their work set to be published in the journal Nature Sustainability.

Scientists have believed for decades that larger plastic particles could not pass the physical barriers of plant tissue. This latest research, however, has now cast doubt on the hypothesis. Root vegetables such as carrots, radishes, turnips and leafy vegetables such as lettuce were found to be most at risk of microplastic contamination.



 

Community Inspiration

"Hello favourite friends -- I delivered a ton of frozen family-size lasagnas today. Now, this is not a problem by any means, lol. But you have a diehard, full Italian lasagna lover living in your town."

"If any of you want some fresh homemade, no-calorie-counting lasagna, please let me know and I will gladly prepare it."

"The world as we know it is falling apart, but my two little hands are capable of making a difference. I can't change the world, but I can make lasagna."

"I'll bet I could continue this for the rest of my life. I love creating in the kitchen, but more importantly, I love the people I've met."

"When word got out on social media, people from all over the world started donating to my cause. It's a pan of love. A lot of the people I make lasagna for have lost their jobs, and this is my way of saying, 'I understand and I'm here for you'."

"Those warm smells help people to know that somebody cares about them. You can be in the most awful place in your life, and then a big plate of lasagna will provide some peace and hope."

Michelle Brenner, Gig Harbor, Washington

GIG HARBOR, Wash. — In the picturesque city of Gig Harbor, there's one meal that has everyone talking: Michelle Brenner's homemade lasagna. “This is by no means a diet lasagna,” she says. “I tell people do not get on the scale the next day.”

Michelle Brenner, 44, worked at a menswear store in her town, Gig Harbor, and then she was furloughed when everything closed down in a defensive move against the entry of the highly contagious novel coronavirus into the United States, threatening to devastate entire communities. She did what most people instinctively did when she was left with little option but to burrow into the confines of her home. Food, comfort food comes to mind. And for her, comfort food was what she helped her Italian grandmother prepare, when she was a little girl.

Memory of her grandmother preparing the spaghetti sauce, meatballs and lasagna she was allowed to help with in her grandmother's kitchen, flooded her mind. Like most of us when things go dreadfully wrong and depression sets in, we look for rescue, a way to lift that bleak, dark mood, and she found the solution in what she calls "a pan of love", the methodical preparation of an ethnic dish that everyone loves; a combination of pasta, cheese, ground beef and tomato sauce. It fit the bill for encouraging her to feel better about the situation roiling the world and her world in particular.

She decided she would use the stimulus cheque of $1,200 that people in her situation received in an effort to lift people out of instant poverty with job losses that resulted from lockdown. With that money she funded the purchase of lasagna ingredients to enable her to respond to the requests that began to arrive, in response to her communication to her community when she offered to supply anyone wanting it, with a pan of fresh-made lasagna.

Credit: King TV

At first it was friends and neighbours, and then it expanded to people outside her direct neighbourhood, and people just kept coming to take advantage of her offer. Three months on, she figured she had doled out 1,200 pans of lasagna. She employed herself eight hours daily, seven days a week to help feed people in need, by boiling noodles cooking ground beef, preparing tomato sauce and layering it all with mozzarella, ricotta and Parmesan. Delectable and nutritious. And she felt good about it all, being busy with her production schedule, knowing it benefited people in need.

She had set up a pantry in her front yard so people could simply pick up a lasagna dish ready to be placed in the oven at their own home. Then she began to receive so many requests she had difficulty keeping the lasagna constituents in stock. The Gig Harbor Sportsman's Club offered to help, enabling her to use their kitchen. "We saw what a great thing she was doing, and we have this nice commercial kitchen that wasn't being used because of COVID", explained the club's president.

Soon, Michelle Brenner started a fundraiser on Facebook that collected over $10,000 to allow her to continue making lasagna as giveaways. People began donating what they could afford when picking up their orders. To the present, she said, $22,000 has been contributed to enable her "to be making lasagna for many months to come". 

Credit: Lori Thiel/Facebook    Doctors at Swedish Edmonds with one of Michelle Brenner's Lasagna meals

Neurological-Degeneratve Brain Effects of COVID

"...If we're ever going to understand this, this is something we need to do, now."
"We can't wait a year from now when potentially we'll have eight million or more people who have survived COVID-19."
"We're going to see many, many people with profound cognitive impairment a year from now. We have enough experience that we know that this is going to produce cognitive deficits. Many different things are likely to contribute to the cognitive profile of people coming out of this."
"...There are plenty of reports of people reporting what in a clinical context we refer to as delirium.There are people coming out of the ICU recovering from COVID and saying they don't feel themselves. They've got fuzzy thinking. They can't really concentrate. And this is sort of the typical profile that we know goes on to produce long-term consequences."
"I do most of my work with ICU clinicians, and they'll often tell you, no one leaves the ICU in good shape, cognitively."
"The priority, and this is not specific to COVID, the priority in most ICUs around the world is to get the patient out the door alive. They're not trying to get them out making sure they're cognitively intact and they have no memory impairments. People are typically fighting a battle between life and death. Cognitive deficits might not be a high priority at that point."
"You don't want to put all your eggs into giving people memory training if it's not fundamentally a memory problem that people have."
"It's important we understand exactly what the problems are: Is this something that affects people's memory? Their concentration? Their ability to make high-level decisions?"
Dr.Adrian Owen, neuroscientist, Western University

A world renowned neuroscientist has instead launched a study that aims to recruit 50,000 people with a confirmed positive diagnosis of COVID-19 to study the disease’s impact on brain function. Getty Images

Under normal circumstances, Dr.Owen focuses on studying the minds of people who have suffered severe physical trauma that has resulted in severe brain trauma; his specialty is 'understanding' severely injured brains, analyzing and interpreting what has occurred and whether -- although it appears that the individual with the brain trauma is no longer in possession of a functioning brain, by carefully studying the brain's neural responses -- he can detect brain activity however suppressed it is.

His studies and experiments came to a screeching halt, however, with the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that results in COVID-19 contagion. "I have a whole team of people sitting in my lab, unable to directly assess patients", he said. With the escalation of the crisis and heroic protocols undertaken to save peoples' lives in hospital ICUs with the use of respirators, the invasive methods have produced a situation made to measure for investigation by one of the world's top neuroscientists.

What the medical community began to realize was that some patients stricken with COVID-19, receiving life-saving treatment, emerge from that treatment with neurological consequences not quite foreseen when those protocols were embarked upon. He has launched a huge study for the purpose of investigating the impacts COVID-19 infections have on the brain, called COVID-19 Brain Study, an online study hoping to recruit 50,000 participants.

Ideally, people who were given a confirmed, positive diagnosis of the novel coronavirus. With the use of questionnaires and pop-down menus, Dr.Owen and his colleagues plan to collect information "completely anonymized and secure" while enquiring about medical history of participants, of any underlying heart, lung or other health issues, and what happened to them following their COVID-19 diagnosis.''

Participants will be asked to perform cognitive games to assess memory, decision-making, planning the problem-solving, with results to be compared against an immense database of millions of tests that had been completed by a healthy, normal population. Stroke neurologist Dr.Rick Swartz of Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto has partnered with Dr.Owen both anticipating a large and diverse group involvement of a study available in English, French and Spanish.

With an anticipated 50,000 participants, the hope is that sufficient statistical power will emerge to enable them to identify "all of these little nuances", giving answer to questions such as are there certain proportions of the population more vulnerable to developing cognitive deficits such as fuzzy thinking, brain fog, problems concentrating, and are there differences identifying with men and women? The elderly and the young? Does cognitive impairment only strike those who were placed on ventilators, is this an issue that everyone emerges with?

A recent article appears to have raised the question of whether SARS-CoV-2 is neurotropic -- toxic to brain tissues -- and to what extent the virus may impact on the central nervous system. In an earlier coronavirus invasion with SARS in early 2002-03, survivors commonly saw long-term neurological complications and since the novel coronavirus shares some of the same features of its predecessor, both using spike proteins to bind to a protein called ACE2 on the host, the fact that some scientists have discovered ACE2 receptors scattered through the brain offers a clue.

It is known that delirium, a type of brain dysfunction capable of leading to a serious state of confusion and paranoid delusions, can result with the use of high doses of some sedatives in the ICU. One-third of COVID-19 patients of all ages and two thirds of those with severe disease show signs of delirium, according to Harvard Medical School researchers; recognized as early evidence of a correlation.

 Spending time on ventilators leads patients to experience cognitive deficits which result from uneven delivery of oxygen to the brain, explains Dr.Owen. Use of the study's data to design therapeutic strategies "to work out what we need to do to deal with this", represents the hope that spurs this research.

The COVID-19 Brain Study looks to recruit 50,000 individuals who received a confirmed positive diagnosis of the virus in order to answer pressing questions about the disease’s direct and indirect effects on the brain.

"Is this something that's going to affect ten million in a year's time, in which case that is a massive social and economic problem."
"Or is this something that's going to affect 20,000 people a year from now, in which case it's something much more manageable."
Dr.Adrian Owen

Be Aware: Avocado Oil Fraud

"I was surprised some of the samples didn't contain any avocado oil."
"Most people who buy avocado oil are interested in the health benefits, as well as the mild, fresh flavour, and are willing to pay more for the product. But because there are no standards to determine if an avocado oil is of the quality and purity advertised, no one is regulating false or misleading labels."
"These findings highlight the urgent need for standards to protect consumers and establish a level playing field to support the continuing growth of the avocado oil industry." 
"When you go to the store, you're buying [based on] what's on the label. Consumers should be able to trust that labelling and get the product that is reflected on the label."
Selina Wang, food sciences professor, University of California, Davis

Credit: Getty/UC Davis     In first extensive study of commercial avocado oil quality and purity, UC Davis researchers find majority impure or stale

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has given permission to manufacturers of avocado oil to advertise it with the values of "unsaturated fat and blood cholesterol lowering" properties. In the matter of the outcome of the study conducted at the University of California's discovery that "the vast majority" of avocado oils sold in the United States not living up to the labelling, the issue becomes one not only of food fraud and selling a product purporting to have defined health properties when it does not, but the additional issue of food safety arises as well.

Originally used in the manufacture of cosmetics, avocado oil has expanded notably in the marketplace to become a culinary product of quality. Scientific evidence attests to the product's many health benefits including improved heart health, fewer arthritic symptoms, and prevention of gum disease among other promises. Unfortunately, a new study has come to the discovery that "the vast majority" of avocado oils available for sale in the United States fail to match their specifications.

The study reports that 82 percent of commercially available avocado oils had not even reached their best-before dates before spoiling and becoming rancid. In other instances, the product had been adulterated to various degrees with a variety of less expensive fats. An analysis of 22 extra virgin, refined and virgin samples (domestic and imported) turned up 15 rancid bottles, with six having been diluted with other oils, among the 'other' -- safflower, soybean and sunflower oils.

Credit: Getty/UC Davis

Despite being labelled avocado, three of the samples contained an altogether different oil and two only turned out to be "pure and nonoxidized", according to the researchers. Both of those pure, refined products had been produced in Mexico. Purchasing a product, placing trust in the labelling and coming home with an entirely different product could be problematical for people with allergies; say for example a peanut allergy, with someone ending up buying peanut oil labelled as avocado.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency last year alerted Canadians to the presence of false olive oil products in the wake of an unusually poor European harvest. In yet another targeted investigation, the regulatory agency discovered that over a fifth of imported honey products had been adulterated with additional sugars. Leading food science experts to feel instances of food fraud to be on the increase in future, resulting from COVID-19-related disruption in supply chains.

The UC Davis researchers had some sensible advice for consumers; to sniff a bottle of avocado oil for a Play-Doh-like odour, as a sign of oxidation. Like olive oil, avocado oil loses flavour and health benefits once exposed to air, heat or light and should always be stored in a cool, dark cupboard. The flavour and aroma of avocado oil can vary from region to region. "In general, authentic, fresh, virgin avocado oil tastes grassy, buttery and a little bit like mushrooms", the researchers advised.

Just two samples were “pure and nonoxidized,” the researchers said — both of which were refined products made in Mexico, Chosen Foods and Marianne’s Avocado Oil. Mark Ralston / AFP via Getty Images

Hydrate, Hydrate, Hydrate!

"The elderly have been in lockdown for weeks. Our work is showing that the elderly are very vulnerable. They're isolated and many can't speak for themselves."
"As we age, there is a deterioration in the ability to lose heat."
"Canadians do adapt over the summer period, but it takes time."
"If any older person says they're hot then their core temperature is high. By the time they complain, it may be too late."
"A heat wave is a kind of trauma to the human body. The system takes weeks to adapt."
Dr.Glen Kenney, physiologist, University of Ottawa

Many elderly people don't rehydrate as often as they should and may also be on dehydrating medications, which could contribute to their higher risk of serious illness or death during heat waves. (Eric Gaillard/Reuters)

Growing older means a change of basic human physiology. Older people can no longer dissipate heat the way their young body enabled them to do. When young, core temperatures exposed to external heat such as through a prolonged heat wave, stabilize over time. The ability of the human body to adjust in this manner erodes as the person ages. Elderly people become warmer throughout a day-long exposure to high temperatures and they remain warm, the ability to dissipate internal heat impaired by age.

Dr.Kenny is a researcher with a specialty in studying how the human body regulates heat. He leads projects at the University of Ottawa with the use of the world's sole direct calorimeter, a device to make precise measurements of body heat exchange. In addition to age-conferred impairment in dissipating built-up body heat, the elderly burdened with chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, become even more vulnerable.

Where young people sweat to dissipate heat, older people tend to lose the ability to sweat. A study that measured heat dissipation in men between 20 and 70 discovered whole-body sweat rate to be significantly reduced in those between the ages of 45 and 70. Moreover, more heat was discovered by the researchers to be stored in men as young as 40 in comparison to younger men.

There is a sound, practical reason for older people to be cautioned not to exercise when the ambient temperature is too hot, even while the same precaution should be taken by those in their middle years. Both middle-aged and elderly people are vulnerable to heat-related illness during deadly heat waves. Seniors whose core body temperatures are high are seen to have increased heart rates resulting in an increase of cardiovascular deaths occurring during extreme heat events.

In July of 2018 over 90 people were held to have perished resulting from a heat wave in Quebec that year. Roughly three-quarters of the victims struggled with chronic illnesses; two thirds of them were over the age of 65. In geographic areas where temperatures change radically in a short period of time, it leaves no opportunity for the body to prepare for an oncoming heat wave, explains Dr.Kenny.

An example of how complex this situation can be and how it impacts on the health and longevity of the elderly is a law that mandates that Long Term Care homes have some air conditioned common rooms, but the requirement for bedrooms to have air conditioning is lacking. In areas where temperatures veer from cool to hot people have no opportunity to become acclimatized to the heat -- unlike those who live in climates which expose them for long periods of extreme heat.

Some of Dr.Kenny's research subjects have been elite athletes, first-responders, miners working underground, people with chronic disease and burn patients, some of whom may experience a sense of malaise or confusion during heat waves which can place them at risk of accidents and errors in judgement. As for the elderly, frequently they also tend not to show symptoms of heat stress.

Dr.Kenny's advice is to pay attention to hydration. And while cooling showers may be a good measure to reduce body heat built up during extreme prolonged heat events, this is not an option recommended for the elderly for whom wet towels placed around the neck and under armpits where blood vessels are close to the surface, is recommended.

Experts at the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, say knowing which health-related factors may increase risk of heat exhaustion could save a life. Those factors include:

• Age-related changes to the skin such as poor blood circulation and inefficient sweat glands
• Heart, lung, and kidney diseases, as well as any illness that causes general weakness or fever
• High blood pressure or other conditions that require changes in diet, such as salt-restricted diets
• Reduced sweating, caused by medications such as diuretics, sedatives, tranquilizers, and certain heart and blood pressure drugs
• Taking several drugs for various conditions (It is important, however, to continue to take prescribed medication and discuss possible problems with a physician.)
• Being substantially overweight or underweight  
• Drinking alcoholic beverages
• Being dehydrated

Waste-Water Warning for COVID

"Waste water is a portal to what's happening in society, and in your community. A lot of things we do on a day-to-day basis touches water. We touch water. We excrete water. Fecal matter has water and goes into the waste water."
"When we run our showers, the medications we take, the personal care products we use ... all of that ends up in the water. And we have the sewer system that is an intricate network that ends up in one spot. And, if you go to that one spot, the waste water treatment plant here in Ottawa, and take a water sample, then  you have a little portal as to what's happening in the community."
"So that shows the promise. That's why people are saying, 'Yeah, maybe we should be doing this'."
"There's good and bad to that [co-location of another jurisdiction's waste water plant]. The good is that it's all been collected and it's all rushing through there. The negative part is that it's ALL rushing through there; there are tons of constituents in that water. So that makes it difficult."
"Two weeks ago we got to the point where we could say, 'We can do this'. We now feel we're getting real data that we're confident in."
"The idea is to catch the next wave and maybe multiple waves [of virus presence]. That's really a goal of ours, where we can catch it and say, 'Hey, something might be up in the community; we're starting to see something again'."
Dr.Robert Delatolla, engineering professor, University of Ottawa

Prof. Robert Delatolla is part of a research team at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Engineering exploring how wastewater testing could be used to detect a second wave of coronavirus.

A team of researchers has embarked on a process to detect tiny pieces of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in the waste water collection depots of Canada's National Capital. It has a purpose; to perfect methodology whereby in the near future scientists will be enabled swiftly to detect trends reflecting the health condition of the population at large before a situation explodes into a broad health emergency. Among the researchers is Dr.Delatolla.

For years Statistics Canada has used data gleaned from waste water from five Canadian cities; Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver, to determine drug use prevalence among people living in those cities. Health officials in Amersfoort, the Netherland, a city of some 150,000 people located near Utrecht on March 5 discovered the presence of virus remnants in a waste-water check, well before the first clinical case of COVID-19.

That all the human excrement and run-off reflecting the city's human waste activity flushes into the Robert O.Pickard Environment Centre, adjacent Shefford Road in Gloucester, to collect Ottawa's waste water and treat it, represents a direct aid to the research in question. As does the fact that waste water collected in Gatineau's treatment facility located directly across the Ottawa River from Ottawa's own, both feeding into similar systems, and both providing waste-water data reflecting any possible viral-transmission trends.

Robert O.Pickard Environmental Centre. Ottawa. Jean Levac/Postmedia

There are some 3,000 chemicals resulting from personal care products and pharmaceuticals alone contained in the waste water, points out Dr.Delatolla. Daniel Figeys and Marc-Andre MacKenzie, professors with the biochemistry, microbiology and immunology department of the University of Ottawa, along with scientist Alex MacKenzie of the Research Institute of Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, who along with Dr.Delatolla comprise the research team, are searching out fragments of the virus's RNA and proteins.

The team has the capacity to detect single fragments; copies of RNA in a microlitre of waste water; (a microlitre represents one-millionth of a litre -- a single drop of liquid from a commercial eyedropper contains about 50 microlitres, to put things into perspective). While still in the early stages of their data-gathering, the team drew their first samples in early April; weekly tests alternate between the two waste-water facilities as the scientists refine their process.

Only a certain percentage of the population is tested, and some carriers of the virus are asymptomatic, as Dr.Delatolla points out: "But with this, you can go into the waste water, because, literally, everyone has to go to the bathroom, and we know that the virus is shed from our bodies fecally. I imagine the data will tell us a story in this regard [whether the recent easing of provincial and municipal lockdown restrictions will be reflected in greater amounts of novel coronavirus copies found] by the end of the month."

COVID Mutation: Positive, Negative, Unknown

"I am not saying it's [COVID-19] gone away -- the message isn't to declare victory, or say that we have this beaten. But it's fair to say that the experience with the virus is changing."
"[People in this region -- 40 hospitals across western and central Pennsylvania, New York State and Maryland] don't seem to have the same level of sickness as a few weeks ago."
"It's just a general, crude observation. Perhaps we're better at treating patients."
"This particular virus doesn't look like it's changing a lot. But it's a possibility to think about. There are probably six different factors at play and we won't understand all of this. This is a virus that no one knew anything about eight months ago."
Dr.Donald Yealy, chief, emergency medicine, University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre

"We ourselves have seen the D614G gene in sequences of our own. So it's here."
"What's hard to tease out is, when you do see changes -- you might see anywhere between half a dozen and a dozen changes in any given virus -- is to really understand what the significance is."
"[The virus that finally reached us in Canada] would have been passed so many more times in humans than it did at the beginning of the outbreak [in Wuhan]. We have a lot of blind spots as far as the genome goes."
Dr.Samira Mubareka, medical microbiologist, Toronto Sunnybrook Hospital

"We have to make sure that whatever statements we make are backed up by good, hard science, so it's reproducible."
"Because the downside is really bad if you mislead the public to think that the virus is no longer as potent as it once was. People will of course relax their vigilance and succumb to a disease they probably could have avoided."
David Kelvin, immunologist, Dalhousie University

"I'll just be honest and upfront. We don't know. We just don't know if it's weakening."
"We don't have data on this; we haven't tested this. But who knows, maybe the coronaviruses that cause mild cold-like symptoms could have been lethal in human populations many, many years ago."
The virus and the host learned to co-adapt."
Arinjay Banerjee, Institute of Infectious Diseases, McMaster University

While there are some subtle genetic changes in COVID-19 around the world, none have resulted in differences in the way the virus spreads or the type of disease it causes, the WHO has said. AAMIR QURESHI/AFP via Getty Images

Wishing won't make it so; the world has been horribly overwhelmed by the dramatic, sudden incursion of a global threat to human health and longevity, and everyone, from government, the medical/health community, and the ordinary person on the street, entertains hope that it will depart as suddenly (and mysteriously) as it arrived. Leaving us to pick up the pieces of a word turned upside- down and inside-out. Eight million people who were infected to various degrees before stabilization and perhaps left with unknown after-effects; almost a half-million dead of its effects, the world economy in tatters, and confidence in the future shaken to the essential core.

So when anecdotal 'evidence' of a possible change for the better in the effects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus brings a wave of fresh air and hope for an end to this universal nightmare through the auspices of a handful of doctors in northern Italy claiming the virus causing COVID-19 seems to be less affective, no longer appears to be the "biological bomb" it appeared when it first raged onto the world stage the public grasps it for relief. And then the medical chief of a $21 billion health complex spanning a range of hospitals in a handful of U.S. states held a press briefing stating the impression that COVID cases latterly seen appear less severe than those of a mere few weeks earlier.

Dr. Yealy explained that viral pandemics are complicated, volatile, dynamic, they come and they go, they wax and they wane. A multitude of factors could be involved; and he was not attributing the observations "solely or even predominantly" to the outcome of possible mutations. Yet, at a time when the world in the West, while expressing relief that the lockdown that was imposed is gradually being lifted, are being informed that it is too early to lift all restrictions, and that an anticipated second wave may be on the horizon, the balloon of hope is gently pricked and deflated.

Dr.Yealy spoke of observations in a particular part of the United States. No such lifting of the effects of the virus have been in evidence in Canada, on the other hand. So even while Dr.Yealy claims that people in the region he represents "don't seem to have the same level of sickness as a few weeks ago", Canadian doctors respond that nothing of the sort has been seen in Canda; no evidence of lost potency: "In short, no", Dr.Alan Drummond representing the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians remarked.

"In the last ten days, we still put five patients on extracorporeal life support, the most extreme support that we have for people who are failing mechanical ventilation", explained Dr.Niall Ferguson, who has observed no sign of "weakening" or a lesser need of Toronto General Hospital's life support program known as ECMO, of the most severe cases of COVID received for extraordinary efforts at resuscitation.

Scientists at Scripps Research in Florida this week reported in a pre-print paper that a genetic mutation seen in the virus now circulating through Europe and the U.S., no increases of "infectivity" of a significant nature have been seen. The D614G mutation quadrupled the number of spikes on the virus, used to grab onto human cells, making them more effective in breaking into them and infecting them, and then begin the massive reproduction of new viruses that will be shed, looking for additional human interiors to nurture and continue breeding the virus.

Coffee is served in the Caffe Peru bar in Rome, Wednesday, where a large plexiglass division was mounted over the counter to protect bartenders and customers from Covid-19 as they enjoy their drinks. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Over 40,000 genomic sequences have been uploaded to websites that are publicly available and scientists scour the genetic codes to read the 30,000 chemical letters searching for changes, then comparing sequences from other countries. Some subtle alterations have been seen, but none have yet resulted in differences in the manner in which the virus spreads, much less the type of disease it causes, according to the World Health Organization.

On entering a host, a virus replicates by the thousands and RNA viruses like the novel coronavirus are capable of accumulating small, random mutations, a result of the molecular protocol used by the virus to copy itself sometimes going awry. "It makes errors, and sometimes if those errors benefit the virus they'll be selected for -- they'll persist and get passed on and on because there is some kind of fitness advantage", explained Dr.Mubareka.

On occasion less potent versions of a virus emerge, however. Arizona State University researchers found a single sample missing a piece of its genome where 81 of the letters were missing, after sampling nasal swab samples from 382 COVID-positive patients. In 2003 the SARS outbreak saw a similar mutation, one that scientists believe was the causal effect of a much less severe disease emerging, later in the outbreak.

Intensive care unit, Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital, Bergamo, Italy

Dr. Banerjee of McMaster University explained that ideally a pathogen is a clever virus, one that learns to coexcist with its host "because if a host dies, if the individual dies, the virus dies with it". A virus has every reason to protect its own survival by ensuring its presence in a  human body doesn't result in that human body expiring, and with its death its own aspirations to continue replicating and spreading is destroyed. Its purpose is to make the leap from the infected to the uninfected; spreading its replicated version to the next victim, and thus sustain the virus population.

Rome, Italy, May 2, 2020: Patient carried from LTC home to hospital

"[Italy has suffered some of the world's worst death tolls from COVID-19, but fewer people are now admitted to hospital in comparison to three months earlier; while in some regions] even the patients that are admitted, especially in emergency, are less severe."
"They have fever, some respiratory symptoms. They have cough. But even in similar ages, they don't have the same aggressive picture they had three months ago."
"I am not suggesting not to use the masks, or not to wash the hands or not stay one metre away from the other."
"I am just giving the clinical impression, and the clinical impression is the disease is different. I am more optimistic than I was three months ago."
Dr.Matteo Bassetti, director, infectious disease clinic, San Martino Hospital, Genoa, Italy

"In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy,"
"The swabs that were performed over the last ten days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago."
Alberto Zangrillo, head, San Raffaele Hospital, Milan, northern region of Lombardy

A doctor cares for an elderly patient with COVID-19 on June 18, 2020 in Santiago, Chile. While there are reports in some places that COVID-19 appears to be weakening, in other places it appears as potent as ever. Marcelo Hernandez/Getty Images