COMMUNITY NEWS
Healthy Microbiome Builds Immune System (Which Fights Covid)
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By Jondi Gumz
study by the University of Massachusetts Medical School shows the gut microbiome accurately predicts which patients are at risk of becoming critically ill from the sometimes deadly Covid-19. Researchers proposed stool samples be used to identify which patients would likely need more interventions to survive, but Dr. Robynn Chutkan, a gastroenterologist and author of the “The Anti-Viral Gut Book,” coming in November, sees something more. While it’s impossible to alter your age and difficult to alter medical conditions, it is possible to change your microbiome by what you eat, and quickly — within 30 hours of food hitting the gut, she said, citing the study while talking with John Robbins on the Food Revolution Summit. The January 2021 preprint study of 63 hospitalized patients found an abundance of Entercooccus faecelis in the severely ill, and fewer in the moderately ill.
Ana MaldonadoContreras, on the research team, wrote, “As a Latina scientist investigating interactions between diet, microbiome and immunity, I must stress the importance of better policies to improve access to healthy foods, which lead to a healthier microbiome.” The highly contagious but less deadly BA.2 Omicron subvariant now dominates, a change from the initially deadly coronavirus, and new signs of normal are appearing, such as the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk bringing back live music — Thursdays on the Colonnade — and Friday night movies. New data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show almost 60 percent of the populace — and 76 percent of children — have had Omicron or another coronavirus variant. Asked about the data, Dr. Anthony Fauci,
8 / May 1st 2022 / Aptos Times www.tpgonlinedaily.com
chief medical advisor to the president, told PBS, “If you add up the people who’ve been infected, plus the people who’ve been vaccinated and hopefully boosted, you have a rather substantial proportion of the United States population that has some degree of immunity.” He said 66 percent of the U.S. populace is vaccinated. Asked if the end of the 2-year-old pandemic is near, Fauci called the question unanswerable. He said, “We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase. Namely, we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now.” He added, “We’re not going to eradicate this virus. If we can keep that level very low, and intermittently vaccinate people — and I don’t know how often that would have to be … That might be every year, that might be longer, in order to keep that level low.” Gov. Gavin Newsom had announced plans to mandate Covid vaccine for school children in July, but the state will delay until July 2023. Hospitalizations, which peaked in January from Omicron, have plummeted in California and locally. The state Department of Public Health reports test positivity, 23% in January, has ticked up from 1.7% to 2.7% but hospitalizations — 20,000 at the peak of the Omicron surge in January — are down to 950. In Santa Cruz County, six people are hospitalized with Covid, none in intensive care. On Wednesday, the county reported one more death, a man in his 80s with underlying medical conditions, brining the total to 261. On April 25, Cal/OSHA Standards Board convened in person for the first time in two years and adopted new workplace rules. Unvaccinated and vaccinated workers must be treated the same; no mask mandate for those unvaccinated. Requirements to disinfect surfaces were removed. Requirements for partitions and physical distancing were replaced by requirements for better ventilation. Employees testing positive can return to work masked five days later.
Airline Mask Mandate Voided n April 18, a federal judge in Florida voided the mask mandate for airlines, trains and buses ordered by the CDC on Feb. 3, 2021. Airlines made masks optional. The Justice Department is appealing at the request of the CDC but the agency did not ask for a stay of the ruling, which would have reinstated the mandate. U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle ruled in favor of Health Freedom Defense Fund and airline travelers Ana Carolina Daza and Sarah Pope, who claimed the CDC failed to provide a 30-day comment public period required for new regulations. Mizzell provided a 59-page explanation, based on the Public Health Services Act of 1944, which specifies measures that could be necessary to prevent the spread of disease, inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, and pest extermination, but there is no definition of sanitation. Dictionaries from this time define sanitation as cleaning. “Wearing a mask cleans nothing,” the judge wrote. “At most it traps virus droplets. But it neither ‘sanitizes’ the person wearing the mask nor ‘sanitizes’ the conveyance.” The mask mandate applied to anyone at an airport without a finding of infection. The government interprets “sanitation” to mean “applying of measures for preserving and promoting public health.” The judge disagreed, writing that historically, public health has been regulated at the state level, and the 1944 law has no clear language indicating Congress intended for the CDC to take over this responsibility. Secondly, the CDC did not allow public comment although the Administrative Procedures Act requires agencies provide an opportunity for the public to review and comment on a new rule before it takes effect. The comment period must be at least 30 days; the agency must consider and respond. The CDC asserted Covid-19 caused a public health emergency without providing supporting data, unlike Medicare, which mandated without public comment vaccination of healthcare staff, providing 44 footnotes of sources. The judge concluded: Process matters. The purpose of notice and comment is to reintroduce public participation and fairness to affected parties after government authority has been delegated to unrepresentative agencies.
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