This is a case update. For the US and California, cases continue to rise. The number of daily deaths have begun to rise as well in the last week, running about 3 weeks behind the rise in daily confirmed cases.

The news is better in San Diego. Daily new cases has flattened and may even be going down. A caution is always that Sunday and Monday are always low days of the week in terms of new cases, so you have to be careful about saying things are getting better on a Tuesday! The number of active cases in San Diego may be flattening as well.

After a spike in cases in Imperial County, east of San Diego, hospitals in El Centro have become overwhelmed and COVID patients are being sent to San Diego, Orange and other counties. This stresses the importance of keeping case loads low so as not to overwhelm hospitals and ICU deparments.

Texas Medical Association Chart: The Texas Medical Association released a very helpful chart giving the relative risks of different activities.

If you’ve reading my posts, you won’t be very surprised by the entries, they are pretty consistent with what I’ve thought myself.

The information was obtained by polling Texas doctors, so the data probably reflects what they know about their own patient’s histories, and also probably some opinion.

Budesonide: A very interesting video was posted last week featuring Dr. Richard Bartlett. He claims to have a very effective new treatment, using a nebulized anti-inflammatory normally for asthma, Budesonide. It will be very interesting to watch if others have success with this method.

The video introduces another topic that is very timely. If you watch the whole video, you’ll notice that Dr. Bartlett has some views about the virus that I don’t share. However, I think the video is still worth watching. Often these days, people dismiss people with whom they disagree on any topic. In reality, it’s very common to be able to take at least some truth from those with whom we disagree. In fact, on complicated topics, I find that with almost anyone I read or watch, even people I respect highly, there is often some topic that I think they’re wrong about. If I refuse to learn from people that I disagree with, I’d have to quit listening to most of the people I respect! With all that’s going on in the US right now, we will need to listen to and learn from all kinds of people to move forward. Even if you disagree, learning a person’s position will help you understand the topic better.

Don’t fear, but be smart!
Erik