Coronavirus Could Be Devastating for the Navajo Nation
The Navajo Nation, the largest Native American reservation in the U.S., saw its first case of COVID-19 on March 27th, and since then has seen over 1,300 positive tests for the virus. Most people in the Navajo Nation live in rural areas, which should limit the spread of the virus, but the tribe is facing several challenges in dealing with the Coronavirus.
Many natives have high rates of illnesses that make the community vulnerable to COVID-19 like asthma, diabetes, and heart disease. A history of mining, especially uranium mining, on the reservation has resulted in higher rates of reproductive cancers. In addition, one in 2,000 Navajos are born with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID), a genetic disorder where a child is basically born without an immune system, although mandatory screening of Navajo children at birth enables the tribe to treat the condition.
In addition to these health challenges, the Navajo Nation is extremely poor. The United States has an official poverty rate of 12.6 percent. The rate of poverty in the Navajo Nation for families is 46.5 percent, with 14.9 percent of people living in extreme poverty.
Amenities that Americans take for granted, like plumbing, electricity, and paved roads, are not a guarantee on the reservation. One in ten Navajos doesn’t have electricity. In Apache county Arizona where the capital of the Navajo Nation, Window Rock, is located, Native American households are 13 times more likely to lack complete plumbing. Forty percent of the Native nation does not have indoor plumbing. The CDC handwashing guidelines are incompatible with life under these conditions.
A Poor People Pandemic
The Navajo Nation government has taken steps to stop the spread of COVID-19, with President Jonathan Nez declaring a weekend curfew on April 12th, and the Navajo Department of Health mandating the use of masks outside the home on April 19th. Even with these measures, the Navajo Nation will see higher COVID-19 infection rates and deaths, much like other poor and systematically disadvantaged communities across the country.
Coronavirus Cleaning Leads to Increased Calls to Poison Centers
A new study from the Centers for Disease Control reported a 20% increase in the number of calls to Poison Control since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in January. The National Poison Data System (NPDS), CDC, and the American Association of Poison Control Centers looked at data from calls concerning cleaner and disinfectant exposure for the last three years. There were 45,550 chemical exposure calls from January to March, up 20.4% from 2019 and 16.4% from 2018.
Bleaches accounted for the largest increase of calls among chemical cleaners, while nonalcohol disinfectants and hand sanitizers were responsible for the largest increase in disinfectant calls. Reasons for the calls included people improperly mixing bleach with other cleaners and toddlers swallowing sanitizer. Studies have linked the chemical with an increased chance of developing respiratory problems, leaving those who use the bleach more vulnerable to COVID-19.
Economic Recession Will Likely Kill More Children Than Total Coronavirus Death Toll
The pandemic is real, but the puppet masters of the world are using this situation for abhorrent and frightening power grabs, leaving people seemingly helpless to do anything about it while we are told to “shelter in place” as our rights get stripped away. It’s very convenient for those in power, and it’s frightening what they’re getting away with.
We are addressing this pandemic all wrong.
People with compromised immune systems should be taking precautions while the rest of the world builds immunity. The government should be pushing for the population to make healthier, safer lifestyle choices and this should be a huge reminder to us all that both how we take care of our environment and how we talk care of our bodies is paramount. And on that note, as necessary as they may be in some situations, wearing a face mask for long periods of time really isn’t good for you. This whole face-mask obsession could end up causing a lot of illness as well as environmental problems. I’m not recommending wearing face masks. I’m not recommending not to wear them. It’s complicated.
On the other hand, it’s fascinating to see what’s happening, and there’s lots of good news resulting from the way we are “sheltering in place.” The environment is showing signs of remarkable resiliency, people are generally eating much better (restaurant food is really bad for you), homeschooling is the new normal, we’re finally taking a serious look at how we’ve set up “capitalism” and what it means for us in such dire times, and it’s really just a fascinating experiment at a time when we need to look hard at these issues.
But this perspective comes from a place of immense privilege. All across the world business and schools and daycares are closed, incomes have stopped, people are hungry, family members are stuck with abusive family members at such incredibly stressful times, and so much more. The reaction to the pandemic is ruining a lot of lives right now. Even if everything were to get better from today on and just go back to normal, the reverberations would still last a very long time. And this is mostly due to how poorly the U.S. and many other governments are handling the situation.
Hundreds of thousands of children could die this year due to the global economic downturn sparked by the coronavirus pandemic and tens of millions more could fall into extreme poverty as a result of the crisis, the United Nations warned on Thursday.”
It’s likely that more people will die from the economic collapse of our financial system than from the virus itself. That’s not to say that the measures taken are pointless. It’s hard to know for sure, but it’s possible that if we had gone about business-as-usual we likely would have endured far more deaths and economic destruction than we’re dealing with now. Also, you never know how seriously a novel pathogen can impact us until it does. So it’s pretty hard to justify lax measures.
The estimate could be low. The risk report included that nearly 369 million children who normally rely on school meals for daily nutrition no longer have this as an option. According to the UN, malnutrition is still the leading cause of death in the world today. The foreseen is being considered, but there’s also going to be a heck of a lot of unforeseen in this very novel, globally-connected situation we’re in now.
The potential losses that may accrue in learning for today’s young generation, and for the development of their human capital, are hard to fathom. More than two-thirds of countries have introduced a national distance learning platform, but among low-income countries, the share is only 30 percent.
We’re radically underestimating the number of coronavirus cases but with that, we’re also radically underestimating the numbers of people who have gotten the virus, recovered, and developed antibodies.
A coronavirus vaccine is not going to work any better than the flu vaccine works, which is to say it will make pharmaceutical companies a lot of money only to damage a lot of people. There are multiple reports of people getting the virus more than once and we now know the virus has mutated at least twice. Whether or not the virus was made in a lab or is a result of environmental destruction, more is sure to come. We need a totally different approach for the economy, the environment, and our health. Allopathic medicine, our profit-driven pharmaceutical system, and our economic system are showing everyone around the world that there needs to be a better way, for our health and the environment.
Under the current system, if I ruled the world, but if I only had a conventional understanding of health, I would implement free healthcare to everyone, a UBI of 80% of everyone’s income up to 100,000 a year, paid weekly via direct deposit or debit card or cash (no restrictions that disproportionately affect poor or minorities).
Small businesses should be able to apply for loans and grants should be available for the ones that are trying to do the work that most needs to be done (like medical and environmental for instance).
Big businesses should be left to file for bankruptcy and have to restructure and get more component CEOs who like to save money for such instances instead of continually relying on government bailouts.
We should be making sure everyone has access to raw, fresh, healthy, organic produce. People should start growing as much of their own food as they can, and the government should be helping to facilitate this as well as helping get the food we currently have to the people who need it.
There should be educational campaigns about how people should take care of themselves.
But none of this would really be necessary if we already knew how to take care of ourselves. The virus is rarely if ever killing healthy people. If it did, it would exhaust it’s host supply too quickly and be far less likely to be an epidemic. Ideally, the immunocompromised would be told to shelter in place, wear masks for short periods of time if they must go out, wash their hands obsessively while out, etc. Grocery stores would know how to reduce transmission and would be disinfecting properly. Then we wouldn’t need an economic shutdown.
We really shouldn’t even worry so much about “germs.” We should be taking better care of ourselves and doing what Sweden is doing to build up herd immunity.
What Am I doing?
My family and I are fortunate, so far, due to the nature of the businesses we are involved in, and the fact that we were already growing our own food and homeschooling our kids.
We have started an urban farm, both to feed us and for the whole neighborhood.
We have to take certain sanitization measures with our businesses, with which we are using a spray of 65% alcohol and 35% industrial strength vinegar. But other than that, we’re doing our normal thing of eating salads and drinking cranberry lemonade every day. We are sure to have on stock Echinacea, Shillington’s Blood Detox, reishi mushroom, and our favorite root cider. If we were to feel a tickle in the through or a snuffy sinus we’d take them all until symptoms are gone, but we haven’t had any such issues. Our gut health is as good as it gets, and this is absolutely paramount when it comes to staying healthy. For more on supplements for coronavirus, click here.
Coronavirus Could Be More Widespread than Current Numbers Indicate, New Stanford Study Says
A new study from Stanford University has suggested that CoVID-19 is 50 to 85 times more common than the official numbers have shown. At the time the study was conducted, Santa Clara County had 1,094 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 50 deaths. This study posits that the number of people with the virus was from 48,000 to 81,000, based on the count of participants in the study who had antibodies for the virus.
This has implications for learning how far we are in the course of the epidemic…It has implications for epidemic models that are being used to design policies and estimate what it means for our healthcare system.”
This is the first large-scale of this kind in the U.S., and it has yet to be peer-reviewed. Participants representative of nationwide demographics and geography were recruited through targeted Facebook ads and researchers administered a finger prick test to test for antibodies. If the study’s results are valid, that would indicate that the death rate from CoVID-19 is closer to 0.2 percent than the currently estimated rate of 4.1 percent.
It is absolutely critical that similar studies be done all around the country…It’s very clear that the virus is more prevalent in some areas than in others, and understanding the prevalence of viruses in each region is a critical step forward to making some policy.”
Jayanta Bhattacharya, a professor at Stanford and author on the study.
Other large scale studies are being conducted on healthy individuals. Both the National Institute of Health and UC Berkeley are in the process of testing 10,000 and 5,000 people, respectively.
Keystone XL Pipeline Permit Canceled by Federal Judge in Montana
A Montana-based judge has canceled a key permit needed by the Keystone XL pipeline. Federal judge Brian Morris ruled in favor of environmental conservation groups by revoking the projects’ Nationwide Permit 12, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had not adequately considered endangered species in the waterways the pipeline would cross. Senior Attorney for the Sierra Club, Doug Hayes, issued a statement.
The Trump administration has repeatedly violated the law in their relentless pursuit of seeing this dirty tar sands pipeline built…Today’s ruling confirms, once again, that there’s just no getting around the fact that Keystone XL would devastate communities, wildlife, and clean drinking water…It was true a decade ago, and it’s just as true today: Keystone XL would be a bad deal for the American people and should never be built.”
There are more hearings scheduled for this week, with Judge Morris listening to arguments from Native American peoples, who have been on the front lines of pipeline protests since Congress’ approval of the project in 2015. Judge Morris has ruled in favor of conservation before, halting construction on the pipeline in 2018 until further environmental study could be done. Environmental concerns continue to be a key part of the discussion surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline, despite the current administration’s repeated efforts to ignore them.
The Trump Administration’s ongoing effort to give out goodies to Big Oil hit another setback. Whether they like it or not, the Corps cannot skirt foundational environmental laws. And projects like the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline will remain stalled as long as the Administration keeps trying to illegally fast-track them…”
This ruling has not canceled the pipeline project. According to the court documents filed by TC Energy, the company sponsoring the Keystone XL, work at camps in Montana and South Dakota could start this month.
US Airlines Fly Nearly Empty Flights to Keep 50 Billion Bailout
Worldwide air travel volume is down with more than 8 in 10 flights canceled. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in the United States has reported a 96% drop in airline passenger volume and passenger levels are at their lowest since 1954. In spite of this, airlines in the U.S. have only canceled about 60 percent of their flights.
The evidence suggests that the number of people flying is dropping faster than the flights so there are a lot of empty planes…The airlines are left to figure this out for themselves and they are playing catch-up.”
Many of these flights are mandatory, courtesy of the recent government bailout. The airline industry has been promised 50 billion of the 2 trillion dollar stimulus, also known as the CARES Act. Airline carriers are required to preserve air service as it had been on March 1, 2020. These measures are designed to ensure customers in less busy or profitable locales will be able to travel, but the environmental cost does not seem to have been part of the discussion.
Distilleries Struggling to Make Sanitizer Amidst FDA Regulations
To help combat the lack of essential supplies, many industries have stopped normal production to produce things like masks, ventilators, and hand sanitizer.
Some industries, however, are having a more difficult time than others. Many distilleries have stopped normal production to produce hand sanitizer. However, due to FDA regulations and the lack of supplies, distilleries are not able to get hand sanitizer out to the general public as quickly as they should be able to.
FDA regulations require hand sanitizer to be denatured, to prevent people from drinking it. This is done through additives that make it extremely bitter or otherwise undrinkable. Due to high demand, however, distilleries are having a difficult time obtaining isopropyl alcohol, the most common denaturant.
Locally, we’ve scoured the stores and most of the online sources are back-ordered. We’d be able to get sanitizer out much more quickly if this wasn’t the case.
Additionally, distilled alcohol that is not denatured (generally intended for human consumption) is taxed at a high rate. This means, even if the FDA regulations were removed the potential cost of the hand sanitizer could be much greater than if it was denatured. The $2 trillion stimulus bill signed on March 27th waived the excise tax for alcohol used in sanitizer until January 2021. However, the bill states that manufacturers must follow FDA guidelines that require a denaturant despite the World Health Organization’s recipe that does not require a denaturant.
