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The US reported more than 100,000 New Cases of the Coronavirus in a day

For the first time since the pandemic began the United States has recorded around 102,831 new cases of the coronavirus in a day on Wednesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. This increase in the number of cases doesn’t come as a surprise for the health experts who projected the winter surge that will continue to get worse before getting better.

The US top disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci warned some days ago that the country should be prepared for a whole lot of hurt. He predicted that during the winter the new daily cases of the coronavirus will reach 100,000 or more. This Wednesday Dr. Fauci’s predictions were met as the country crossed the grim milestone of 100,000 cases in a day and 1,116 deaths.

Also Read: Are Pregnant women with Coronavirus more at risk of dying?

Previously, the highest number of cases of coronavirus was reported on the 30th of October in the country and was nearly 99,321. Now the whole country is seeing a spike in the number of infections even the states which were once protected from the worst of the pandemic.

From Ohio to Dakota, a spike in the cases of coronavirus is being seen with an unprecedented increase in the hospitalizations as well in recent days, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project. West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Tennessee have also broken their records of the number of hospitalizations. The surge in the cases comes days after President Donald Trump in the last days of his campaign insisted without any evidence that the country has turned a corner on the pandemic. Moreover, he also accused the media of exaggerating the pandemic so that his reelection chances are damaged.

More than 9.4 million people in the US have already been infected by the virus and more than 233,000 have died, according to Johns Hopkins. And with each passing day, many states across the US are continuing to report alarming trends. Not less than 36 states in the country are reporting more cases of the coronavirus as compared to last week.

Health officials in Oregon reported around 597 new cases of the virus on Wednesday and it is the sixth time this week that the new cases in the state have reached more than 500. The single-day record of the state was 600 cases and was reached on the 30th of October. Moreover, Wisconsin also broke its daily record of new cases on Wednesday by reporting more than 5,930 new cases. Illinois and Ohio also recorded their 2nd highest number of cases in a day.

Public health officials are urging the citizens to follow the safety precautions of the virus that have been so far the only way which has proven effective in controlling the spread of the virus and include wearing face masks, follow social distancing, and washing hands frequently. However, the health officials are worried that things could get worse in the coming weeks as the Thanksgiving holiday is now approaching and is just weeks away. They fear that the people of America will risk the safety of them and their loved ones by opting to gather with friends and family, which may make the situation worse than it already is.

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Is a Coronavirus Test Always Accurate?

Testing negative on a coronavirus test doesn’t mean that a person doesn’t have the virus as it can take some time even days for the virus to appear on the test. Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician, said that it is common knowledge that the incubation period for the virus is 14 days and before the incubation period is over you may test negative and show no symptoms but in reality, you may actually be developing the disease inside your body and may be able to transfer it to other people.

A person can be contagious even if he has tested negative for the virus in the coronavirus test. According to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who is the chief of Massachusetts General Hospital’s division of infectious diseases, people after testing negative feel like they are out of the woods but in fact, they are not. She further added that for people who are tested positive with the virus, symptoms may take 5 days or two weeks to appear after that and the general perception is that people are most infectious for the two days before and after the symptoms show up.

Also Read: Cases of Covid19 in Children in the US are increasing rapidly

According to estimates from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 40% of the people who are infected with the coronavirus show no symptoms and around 50% of the transmissions happen before the symptoms of the virus begin. Walensky called it one of the biggest Achilles heels and also one of the biggest challenges because other coronaviruses don’t transmit without symptoms. She said that the reason the SARS outbreak was controlled quickly and it didn’t turn into a pandemic was because it did not spread by people who were asymptomatic.

If a person is infected with the virus, he probably may not be tested positive for the virus the next day in the coronavirus test, according to a study published in the medical journal Annals of Internal Medicine. The study projected that during the first four days of being exposed to the virus, when a person is asymptomatic, the probability is 100% of that person getting a wrong negative test result. On the day the person begins to show symptoms the false negativity rate drops to 38% and three days after the beginning of symptoms the false negativity rate dropped to 20%, according to the study.

A senior author of the study and an associate professor of epidemiology Justin Lessler said that that the coronavirus takes some time to replicate and reach detectable levels in the body. He further added that a person can get infected by very few particles but these particles cannot be detected until the particles replicate themselves to become detectable. Lessler believes that getting a coronavirus test before the third day of getting infected is not of much use.

So, what should a person do, if he wants to meet with his loved ones? According to Walensky, the best way to do this is after quarantining for 14 days at least, and if it’s a proper quarantine then there will be no need for testing as it’s the cleanest way for it. She said that quarantine means staying at home and that ‘quarantine’ and ‘grocery store’ are two words that don’t belong together.

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Scott Darlow Chats His New Single & Sobriety

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

WATCH – Living the good life – 

Oct. 28, 2020 – This morning on the show, Triple M’s Pablo chatted to singer and muscian, Scott Darlow, about his new single, sobriety and, how much he loves Christmas trees!

His new single, Bind The Hands Of Time, was released this month and is his second single of the year, and his co-writer on this song was Diesel!

They spoke about the story behind the song and Scott’s decision to give up alcohol.

The chat took a funny turn when they spoke about Christmas trees – the REAL ones! He saw one at the local footy oval and he was blown away! The story behind his love for real Chrissy trees is pretty great. 

Missed the chat? Here’s what Scott Darlow had to say about his new single, sobriety AND Christmas trees: 

more@TripleM

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When Justice Department lawyer exposed the agency’s secret role in drug cases, intelligence community retaliated.

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

New Yorker by Ronan Farrow –

Oct. 30, 2020 – “When I get really pissed,” McConnell told me, “I get monotone, I don’t blink.” He related to Padden what he had found in the Helios database. Padden, sixty and heavyset, with a neatly cropped white beard, served in the Marines for twelve years before becoming a civilian prosecutor. He met McConnell when they were both stationed in Quantico, Virginia, and recruited him for the task force. Padden shared McConnell’s respect for rules. “We are talking about the withholding and misrepresentation of information to prosecutors by agents who are supposedly part of the prosecutorial team. We’ve got discovery problems, ethical problems there,” Padden told me. “You gotta have at least a prosecutorial supervisor in the know.”

In the following months, other officials independently raised concerns about the concealed intelligence. In late February, 2018, Dick Getchell, a federal prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida, e-mailed McConnell, asking to talk about “cases where targeting information does not appear to be LE-sourced” (the abbreviation stands for “law enforcement”). The same day, Getchell e-mailed the F.B.I. about a case resulting from a deceptive database entry. “Please advise as to the nature and substance of the information which FBI Miami provided which resulted in this seizure,” he wrote. Rhonda Squizzero, an F.B.I. special agent, replied that the targeting information had been gathered in an F.B.I. operation called Black Pearl, made up of investigations called World’s End, Calypso, and Wicked Wench—all references to the “Pirates of the Caribbean” film series. She wrote that those investigations had generated “case debriefs and electronic evidence” that pointed to a Mexican crime organization called La Victoria. McConnell and several other sources said that the investigations were a cover and could not be the source of the information. In a subsequent e-mail, Getchell expressed skepticism about La Victoria as well, writing that it was a group that “our office has never heard of.” In fact, there is no evidence that any such organization exists. The F.B.I. spokesperson said that the Bureau takes “a host of precautions to protect both the intelligence we receive and the sources and methods used to gather it. This can include using code names.”

“Everyone in the building knew this was crap,” one law-enforcement official told me. “What they were doing was bullshitting.”

McConnell and Padden also raised their concerns with C.I.A. and F.B.I. officials, who defended the concealment. In February, 2018, they met for three hours with the agency’s senior operative on the task force. (The New Yorker is not publishing the C.I.A. operative’s name, for safety reasons.) The operative argued against disclosing the C.I.A.’s role, either in the database or to prosecutors, saying that the arrangement benefitted both the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. The F.B.I., the C.I.A. operative said, was “a good partner.”

That spring and summer, the C.I.A. operative grew increasingly hostile to McConnell. During a meeting in March, according to McConnell, the operative warned, “If people keep talking about our program, someone is going to need to go to prison.” A month later, a meeting devolved into a shouting match. “If that cocksucker Cambre wants to fuck me in the ass, the least he can do is use some lubricant,” several people familiar with the conversation recalled the operative saying, referring to the D.E.A. agent who had initially raised the matter. “He’s going all ballistic,” McConnell told me, of the operative. “He was just lit.”

more@NewYorker

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My Drug Addiction Almost Cost Me My Kids!

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Families Matter – 

Oct. 29, 2020 – Many of her more painful memories involved her addiction to opioids and other painkillers.

At one point in the book, Leah recalls a rock bottom moment in which she did heroin with her father, who is sadly still an addict.

Of course, reality TV tends to lag several months behind the real world, so Leah is just now discussing the process of writing the book on recent episodes of TM2. “I talk about things I never thought I would talk about,” Leah said on Tuesday’s installment.

“There are so many reasons behind me wanting to write this book. I feel like I have experienced so much in my lifetime that I haven’t been honest about, and I am finally ready to be open about it, and take whatever comes and not care, as it will make a difference to someone else,” she continued.

“I have never said this before but I was addicted to pain medication.”

more@HollywoodGossip

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Illuminating look at lives in poverty & alcoholism

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

SHUGGIE BAIN – 

Oct. 31, 2020 – When Hugh “Shuggie” Bain is five years old, his drunk mother Agnes calmly sets fire to the curtains in their room and clings to him as they burn, until his father rushes in to put it out.

Scottish-American author Douglas Stuart’s debut is a relentlessly grim portrait of working-class life in 1980s Glasgow, Scotland, a city gutted by then-British premier Margaret Thatcher’s Austerity policies.

Stuart, 44, who works in fashion design in New York, grew up on a Glasgow public housing estate and, like Shuggie, was the youngest son of an alcoholic single mother. She died when he was 16. Of all the novels on the Booker shortlist, his is the most draining read. It is a faithful and unflinching record of the grind of poverty and the suck…

more@StraitsTimes

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Why the pandemic is inspiring many to give up alcohol

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

No one will notice but you –  

Oct. 25, 2020 – Maritza Chesonis-Worthington, a functional nutritionist & hormone expert, told Salon it used to be hard for her to imagine giving up alcohol — until the pandemic happened. As a “health conscious” person, her decision to abstain from alcohol happened for a myriad of reasons. First, she wanted to support her immune system and stay healthy. Second, there was less social pressure to drink. 

“Perhaps it’s not the substance itself that drives dependency, but rather the connection and sense of tradition that it brings amongst family and friends,” Chesonis-Worthington said. Now she has been finding “novel ways to connect with others.” 

But not everyone is cutting alcohol cold turkey. According to a report in the journal JAMA Network Open, Americans are drinking 14 percent more often during the coronavirus pandemic, though this data that comes from the beginning of the pandemic. The study compared responses from a survey of 1,540 participants of their self-reported drinking habits in spring to the year prior. For women, the increase was up to 17 percent compared to last year. The study’s participants were between the ages of 30 and 80; the data collected was from the RAND Corporation American Life Panel. Michael Pollard, a sociologist and co-author of that behavior, previously told Salon that it was unclear whether these “alcohol use behaviors [will] persist,” or whether they will “go back to the way they were before COVID-19.”

Indeed, some say their drinking habits accelerated at the beginning of the pandemic before declining, as mythology writer Mike Greenberg told Salon.

more@Salon

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U.S. Is ‘Facing A National Mental Health Crisis’

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

LISTEN – WHY? – 

Oct. 26, 2020 – For more than a decade, the American Psychological Association has issued a report based on extensive surveys called “Stress in America.” This year’s report begins on a somber note: “Our 2020 survey is different.”

It goes on to say that “we are facing a national mental health crisis that could yield serious health and social consequences for years to come.” Dr. Vaile Wright is senior director of healthcare innovation at the American Psychological Association and one of the report’s authors. She joins host Peter O’Dowd to discuss mental health in America. If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (En Español: 1-888-628-9454; Deaf and Hard of Hearing: 1-800-799-4889) or the Crisis Text Line by texting 741741.

more@WBUR

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Juice WRLD’s Mom Recalls Her Son’s Addiction

Addiction Recovery Bulletin

Mourning never ends –  

Oct. 27, 2020 – While the rapper, born Jarad Higgins, was a Billboard chart topper and a global superstar, Wallace recalled that he was always just her son to her. “Juice WRLD was an icon, but Jarad was my son. I didn’t treat him like a celebrity,” she recalled. “In fact, the first time I saw him perform, it was in Chicago, I forget where, but I saw the crowd and I saw the girls and ‘Take a selfie with me.’ He was poked up and he was still living with me at the time. When he came home, I said, ‘Take out the garbage,’ because I just wanted him to stay humble.”  Wallace also noted how close she was with Juice, even about his addiction. The rapper died in December 2019 due to an accidental overdose.

“I said, ‘If you have anxiety, then you need to get medicated properly for it instead of medicating yourself,’” she explained. “I talked to him about it. I told him my biggest fear was him overdosing on the stuff. That’s why I made the decision I have to talk about it with other people. I can’t keep that as a secret.”

As a result, the loving mother is continuing Juice WRLD’s legacy with the Live Free 999 Foundation, which aims to help young people struggling with mental health issues and addiction. “That’s our objective with our foundation. Normalize the conversation, so it has to start with me,” she said. “I hope it’s what he wanted, was a legacy of healing. To let people know that you don’t have to suffer alone.”

more@Billboard

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Alcohol: A Hidden Epidemic?

By Bill White
Posted on his website, Selected Papers of William L. White, on October 1, 2020

In my early writings on the history of addiction in the United States, I document the discrepancy between public perception of substance-related problems and data documenting the actual patterns of such problems. For example, the sensationalist 1960s media coverage in the United States of marijuana and LSD use obscured fundamental shifts in alcohol, tobacco, and prescription drug use in the U.S.  Lowered age of onset of alcohol use, increased alcohol and tobacco consumption among women, and the increased prevalence of prescription drug dependence remained invisible amidst lurid tales of illicit counterculture drug use.

Two recent studies raise similar concerns that panic over recent drug surges (e.g., methamphetamines and opioids) may be similarly obscuring intensified surges in alcohol consumption and its related consequences.

In the first study, White and colleagues (2020) use data from the National Center for Health Statistics to analyze trends in alcohol-related mortality in the U.S. between 1999 and 2017. Their major findings include the following:

  • The number of alcohol-related deaths per year among people aged 16+ doubled from 35,914 to 72,558 (a rate increase of 50.9%).

  • Nearly 1 million alcohol-related deaths (944,880) were recorded between 1999 and 2017.

  • In 2017, 2.6% of roughly 2.8 million deaths in the United States involved alcohol. Nearly half of alcohol-related deaths resulted from liver disease (30.7%; 22,245) or overdoses on alcohol alone or with other drugs (17.9%; 12,954).

  • Rates of alcohol-related deaths were highest among males, people in age-groups spanning 45 to 74 years, and among non-Hispanic (NH) American Indians or Alaska Natives.

  • Rates increased for all age-groups except 16 to 20 and 75+ and for all racial and ethnic groups except for initial decreases among Hispanic males and NH Blacks followed by increases.

  • The largest annual increase occurred among NH White females.

  • Rates of acute alcohol-related deaths increased more for people aged 55 to 64, but rates of chronic alcohol-related deaths, which accounted for the majority of alcohol-related deaths, increased more for younger adults aged 25 to 34. (White et al., 2020)

Current low-risk drinking guidelines in the U.S. for healthy adults age 65 and under recommend no more than 4 drinks a day and no more than 14 drinks per week for men and no more than 3 drinks a day and no more than 7 drinks per week for women. (Women who are pregnant or may become pregnant should not drink any alcohol.) Sherk and colleagues (2020) evaluated the extent to which similar recommended low risk alcohol consumption guidelines in Canada served to reduce alcohol-related harms. The major conclusions and recommendation of this study were as follows:

  • Despite the comparatively high level of these guidelines, drinkers adhering to these limits were still exposed to increased hospital stays for both genders and increased mortality in men.

  • …even light or moderate alcohol consumption increased the risk for a number of health consequences, e.g., cancer, heart disease, digestive conditions, and traumatic injury.

  • More than one quarter (27%) of alcohol-caused hospital stays were experienced by people who drink within the weekly guidelines.

  • A gender neutral recommendation may be similar to that used in the Netherlands: don’t drink or, if you do, drink no more than one drink per day (International Alliance for Responsible Drinking, 2019).

Recent studies confirm the increase in alcohol-related deaths in the United States and that even drinking alcohol within recommended guidelines may result in untoward health consequences. These findings underscore the continued need for public alcohol-focused public/professional education, universal alcohol problems screening, alcohol-focused treatment resources, and sustained recovery support resources for individuals and families impacted by alcohol use disorders.

Alcohol and tobacco use is historically endemic in the United States. Such ritualized use is so infused into the cultural water in which we all swim that we fail to see it. That blindness has exacted, and continues to exact, an enormous toll on individuals, families, and communities.

References

White, A. M., Castle, I-J. P., Hingson, R. W., & Powell, P. A. (2020). Using death certificates to explore changes in alcohol-related mortality in the United States, 1999-2017. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 44 (1), 178-187.

Sherk, A., Thomas, G., Churchill, S., & Stockwell, T. (2020). Does drinking within low-risk guidelines prevent harm? Implications for high-income countries using the international model of alcohol harms policies. Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, 81, 352-361.

William White has a Master’s degree in Addiction Studies and has worked in outreach, clinical research and teaching roles in the addictions field since 1969. Bill has authored or co-authored more than 400 articles and 21 books, including Slaying the Dragon – The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America and, more recently, Recovery Rising.

To date, eleven articles authored or co-authored by Bill have been posted on AA Agnostica. Here are the previous ones, in order:

Recovery is Contagious (July 07, 2019)
Recovery Spirituality (January 20, 2019)
Addiction, Recovery, and Personal Character (June 14, 2018)
The Secular Wing of AA (March 04, 2018)
The Karma of Recovery (January 04, 2018)
Recovery Pathways are not always a Pathway (December 21, 2017)
AA Agnostica and the Varieties of AA Experience (August 03, 2014)
The Resilience of Alcoholics Anonymous (June 01, 2014)
Agnostic Groups in AA – An Interview (March 17, 2013)
A Message of Tolerance and Celebration (December 30, 2012)

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