Pirate's Cove

You know which groups were hit hardest by COVID? Those 55 and up. Those in nursing homes (perhaps it wasn’t such a great idea to stuff seniors with COVID in nursing homes, eh, Gov Cuomo and a few others?). And those with pre-existing conditions, like diabetes

Covid and Diabetes, Colliding in a Public Health Train Wreck

(Starting out with a human interest story)

After older people and nursing home residents, perhaps no group has been harder hit by the pandemic than people with diabetes. Recent studies suggest that 30 to 40 percent of all coronavirus deaths in the United States have occurred among people with diabetes, a sobering figure that has been subsumed by other grim data from a public health disaster that is on track to claim a million American lives sometime this month.

People with diabetes are especially vulnerable to severe illness from Covid, partly because diabetes impairs the immune system but also because those with the disease often struggle with high blood pressure, obesity and other underlying medical conditions that can seriously worsen a coronavirus infection.

“It’s hard to overstate just how devastating the pandemic has been for Americans with diabetes,” said Dr. Giuseppina Imperatore, who oversees diabetes prevention and treatment at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Diabetes patients hospitalized with Covid spend more time in the I.C.U., are more likely to be intubated and are less likely to survive, according to several studies, one of which found that 20 percent of hospitalized coronavirus patients with diabetes died within a month of admission. Though researchers are still trying to understand the dynamics between the two diseases, most agree on one thing: Uncontrolled diabetes impairs the immune system and decreases a patient’s ability to withstand a coronavirus infection.

Um, we rather knew this at the beginning of Wuhan flu: that older folks and those with conditions like diabetes were in the most danger. So, what did government do? Lock everyone down. Create stay at home orders. Tell everyone what they can and cannot do, where they can and cannot go. If they are an essential or non-essential worker. To wear masks. That they can’t be out on the ocean on a paddleboard all alone. They can’t buy gardening supplies and seeds. They can’t be in their front yards. No gym. Can’t go to their vacation house out of the city. No matter your age or health. Everyone Will Comply.

So, this isn’t exactly a revelation. The only thing really new is the exact numbers.

Like the pandemic, which has had an outsize toll on communities of color, the burden of diabetes falls more heavily on Latino and Black Americans, highlighting systemic failures in health care delivery that have also made the coronavirus far deadlier for the poor, said Nadia Islam, a medical sociologist at NYU Langone Health. “It’s not that diabetes itself makes Covid inherently worse but rather uncontrolled diabetes, which is really a proxy for other markers of disadvantage,” she said…..

Of course they had to drag raaaaacism into this.

…Compounding the concerns, some studies suggest that a coronavirus infection can heighten the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, a disease that is largely preventable through a healthy diet and exercise.

So, let’s shut down the gyms, limit the ability to be outside exercising, and so much of the food production so people can eat healthy, right?

Over the past two years, doctors have also reported a sharp rise in young people being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, an increase that many believe is tied to the drastic spike in childhood obesity during the pandemic. “We’ve seen kids coming in so sick and dehydrated that they sometimes require I.C.U. care,” said Dr. Daniel Hsia, a diabetes specialist at the Pennington Medical Research Center at Louisiana State University.

Keeping the kids locked up inside helped, right, authoritarian politicians and bureaucrats? Perhaps schools, when they reopened, should have spent more time on physical fitness than social justice BS. Speaking of kids

Pandemic has delayed social skills of young children, says Ofsted chief

An increasing number of young children have been left unable to understand facial expressions after having fewer opportunities to develop their social and emotional skills during the pandemic, the education watchdog for England has said.

Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector, said the worst affected were the most vulnerable children, with those living in smaller homes without gardens typically spending more time on screens during successive lockdowns, which also resulted in delays in learning to walk and crawl.

Something that people against the extreme COVID measures said would happen.

Read: NY Times Scoop: Chinese Coronavirus Hit Those With Diabetes Hard »