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.”

Eran Bendavid, associate professor of medicine at Stanford University and study lead author

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.

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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.”

The Hill

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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…”

National Resources Defense Council attorney Ceceila Segal – NRDC

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.

Sources:

• US judge cancels permit for Keystone XL pipeline from Canada – AP News
• Judge cancels Keystone XL pipeline permit – The Hill

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.”

Dan Rutherford, aviation director at the International Council on Clean Transportation

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.

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• ABC Says Homemade Sanitizers Don’t Work For Coronavirus – We Disagree, So Here’s a Recipe
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• Coronavirus – Your Guide to the CoVID-19 Pandemic

Sources:

• Economic Recession Will Likely Kill More Children Than Total Coronavirus Death Toll
• Flying during coronavirus is nothing like it used to be. Who’s doing it? – Los Angeles Times
• Confusion Among US Airlines as Airplanes Fly Virtually Empty to Get Bailout Funds – The Air Current
• What the $2 Trillion U.S. Stimulus Package Means for Travel Businesses – Skift

To help combat the lack of essential supplies, many industries have stopped normal production to produce things like masks, ventilators, and hand sanitizer.

Image credit: Holladay Distillery starts hand sanitizer production

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.

Related: ABC Says Homemade Sanitizers Don’t Work For Coronavirus – We Disagree, So Here’s a Recipe

The complication facing many distillers is denaturing, or rendering the base alcohol unfit for human consumption.”

–Why aren’t distilleries making more hand sanitizer? Because FDA forces them to make their alcohol undrinkable first

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.

-Distiller Shawn Hogan

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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.

Sources:

• Why aren’t distilleries making more hand sanitizer? Because FDA forces them to make their alcohol undrinkable first

While much of the human population is inside quarantining, skies are clearing up, water is less polluted, and the Earth is making small recoveries from the damages caused as a result of day to day life. The COVID-19 pandemic could result in one of the greatest drops in carbon emissions in history. The last significant drop in global emissions was in 2009 after the recession and the last drop in emissions of this magnitude was seen at the end of World War 2.

Four billion people worldwide are being told to shelter in their homes, the world economy has stalled, and scientists are anxiously awaiting what could be one of the largest drops in carbon emissions in history.

Coronavirus could cause the first big emissions drop in a decade

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Some scientists say it’s still too early to expect a significant change while others say we could see an emissions drop of more than 5%. Emissions from transportation make up around 14% of global emissions and in some states, city traffic has decreased by more than 30%. Additionally, air pollution in some of the countries’ most polluted cities, Los Angeles and Seattle have seen a significant drop.

The short-term implications are much easier to see. Many of the behaviors people have given up — like driving to work everyday or taking international flights — are extremely carbon intensive

The coronavirus is giving the environment a break — but experts think it’s unlikely to stay that way

While the pandemic has some unforeseen environmental benefits, there are also many drawbacks. Due to the large quantities being used, masks and gloves that are not properly disposed of are washing up on ocean shores. Additionally, the EPA and the Trump Administration have made cutbacks to environmental regulations for the time being. Also, planes are still flying even when they’re nearly empty.

Related: Sold Out – How To Get Vitamin C (Recipe/DIY)

Sources:

• Coronavirus could cause the first big emissions drop in a decade -Grist
• The coronavirus is giving the environment a break — but experts think it’s unlikely to stay that way -Business Insider

At the time of the publishing of this article, World Meter reports that 152,318 people have died from COVID-19 around the world, with 34,641 deaths within the United States.

Unlike flu deaths, which are radically over-reported, I suspect that Coronavirus deaths are under-reported. Although, there is evidence to the contrary: The hospitals are eerily quiet, except for Covid-19. Fewer people are being treated for or dying from heart attacks and strokes and many other common diseases that normally fill up the hospitals. An argument many on the political right are making is that hospitals are basically just assuming that everyone has Coronavirus when they may just have cardiovascular disease or even the flu.

Some, including I, suspect the triggers for many of the illnesses that normally fill up the hospitals and inflate the death statistics are not happening as much. For instance, restaurant food is horrible for you! Not to mention the bars. Cooking at home and not working are likely two of the healthiest things people can do for themselves – until the money runs out, of course.

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Another argument from the right, and one I think has a lot more validity, is that people who are dying from other diseases who are having CoVID-19 listed as their cause of death would have died regardless. At the very least, most (if not all) of these people who died were very unhealthy.

Like other infectious diseases that are capable of causing a pandemic, CoVID-19 is not likely to cause death in someone who is healthy (we would argue it’s impossible, but that’s speculation for another article). I’m aware of the deaths of people who reportedly seemed healthy, but conventional health standards leave much to be desired.

New York Requires Covering Face In Public

New York is dealing with the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreak. Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Wednesday, April 15th that all people must wear a mask or something to cover the face while in public. The executive order is scheduled to take effect after a three-day grace period.

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If you are going to be in a situation, in public, where you come into contact with other people in a situation that is not socially distanced, you must have a mask or a cloth covering nose and mouth.

Andrew Cuomo

More than a third of the nation’s 600,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 are in New York, according to Johns Hopkins University. Experts say the outbreak appears to be leveling off. Cuomo said the economy won’t be able to make a full comeback until there’s a vaccine, which scientists have said will take up to a year and a half.

With local economy all but shutdown, Cuomo started outlining a gradual reopening of businesses, saying the state is moving toward a “new normal.”

Where we’re going, it’s not a reopening in that we’re going to reopen what was. We’re going to a different place.

Andrew Cuomo

Related: Coronavirus – Your Guide to the CoVID-19 Pandemic

A recent study from Harvard research has shown that air pollution in the US is linked to higher death rates of CoVID-19. Research shows that people who live in counties with high levels of PM 2.5 were 15% more likely to die from CoVID-19.

PM 2.5 is an invisible pollutant made up of microparticles that can seep into the lungs and bloodstream. PM 2.5 comes from burning wood and coal, power plants, and automobile exhaust. It is considered one of the most dangerous invisible pollutants, and high levels have been linked to heart disease, diabetes, and chronic bronchitis as well as other respiratory illnesses. All of these conditions are underlying conditions that can make CoVID-19 fatal. An estimated 78% of US patients in the ICU from CoVID-19 have underlying health conditions.

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Polluted air is linked to some of the underlying conditions that make COVID-19 more fatal. Seventy-eight percent of U.S. patients who have ended up in intensive care units from COVID-19 have underlying health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, or chronic lung disease.

Zuofeng Zhang, professor of epidemiology

A study done in Italy has found similar results, linking air pollution to chronic respiratory conditions. Additionally, research done in 2003 in China showed a correlation between air pollution and death from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which is closely related to CoVID-19.

…it is well known that pollution impairs the first line of defense of upper airways, namely cilia (Cao et al., 2020), thus a subject living in an area with high levels of pollutant is more prone to develop chronic respiratory conditions and suitable to any infective agent

Can atmospheric pollution be considered a co-factor in extremely high level of SARS-CoV-2 lethality in Northern Italy?

Despite the links of air pollution to CoVID-19 deaths, both the Trump administration and the EPA have cut back on environmental regulations in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. The EPA has announced that it would be letting factories and power plants, as well as other similar facilities, regulate themselves in the middle of the pandemic. The EPA will no longer issue fines for water, air or hazardous waste violations. Some states have discouraged or banned the use of reusable bags. Other states have passed laws to penalize pipeline protestors. Along with the EPA, the Trump administration has said they will no longer expect corporations to comply with pollution reporting or routine monitoring and that they will not be pursuing penalties for breaking these laws.

Related:

• Sold Out – How To Get Vitamin C (Recipe/DIY)
• Does Elderberry Increase Risk Of Death With CoVID-19?
• Coronavirus – Your Guide to the CoVID-19 Pandemic

Sources:

• Study: The tiniest bit of air pollution makes COVID-19 more deadly -Grist
• Exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States
• Can atmospheric pollution be considered a co-factor in extremely high level of SARS-CoV-2 lethality in Northern Italy? -Science Direct
• Trump is sneaking environmental rollbacks past a nation in quarantine -Grist
• Trump administration allows companies to break pollution laws during coronavirus pandemic –The Guardian