firecat

https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/The-insidious-coronavirus-can-invade-heart-lungs-15230192.php

“One of the key things that’s different from the flu is that this seems to be an inflammatory process that’s affecting multiple organs,” said Dr. Junaid Khan, director of cardiovascular services and a cardiothoracic surgeon at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. “People from COVID-19 can get super sick, and when you’re super sick other organs can be affected. Is it from the COVID or from being super sick? Time will tell, but that’s one of the things we’re most concerned about.”...Because Bay Area hospitals aren’t overwhelmed with victims, doctors and nurses can provide more precise care based on what they’ve learned from cases around the world.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/science/article/Quick-publicity-of-coronavirus-research-leads-to-15230179.php

"this is how science works. Though invaluable, it’s not immediate and it’s messy. Research into the coronavirus, in fact, is happening at an unprecedented clip, and only because of technology and the public thirst for knowledge is the ugly process of trial and error so much in the spotlight."

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/we-still-dont-know-how-the-coronavirus-is-killing-us.html
By David Wallace-Wells

"the degree to which doctors and scientists are, still, feeling their way, as though blindfolded, toward a true picture of the disease cautions against any sense that things have stabilized."
...
"Six months since patient zero, we still have no drugs proven to even help treat the disease. Almost certainly, we are past the 'Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals' stage of this pandemic. But how far past?"
...
"The clinical shape of the disease, long presumed to be a relatively predictable respiratory infection, is getting less clear by the week."
...
"as many as 70 percent of [covid-19] patients sick enough to be admitted to New York State’s largest hospital system did not have a fever."
...
"as many as three in ten sick enough to be hospitalized won’t be coughing."
...
[most] "patients hospitalized for COVID-19 do not have shortness of breath"
...
"some doctors and scientists...theorize the virus might be attacking the immune system like HIV does"
...
"many coronavirus patients were registering lethally low blood-oxygenation levels while still appearing, by almost any vernacular measure, pretty okay. It’s one reason they’ve begun rethinking the initial clinical focus on ventilators"
...
"88 percent of New York patients put on ventilators, for whom an outcome as known, had died. In China, the figure was 86 percent."
...
"the ability of the disease to mutate has been 'vastly underestimated' — investigating the disease as it appeared in just 11 patients, they said they found 30 mutations. 'The most aggressive strains could generate 270 times as much viral load as the weakest type,' the South China Morning-Post reported. 'These strains also killed the cells the fastest.'"
...
“Autopsies have shown that some people’s lungs are filled with hundreds of microclots...Errant blood clots of a larger size can break off and travel to the brain or heart, causing a stroke or a heart attack.”
...
"only 53 percent of COVID-19 patients have died from respiratory failure alone"
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"In the space of a few months, we’ve gone from thinking there was no 'asymptomatic transmission' to believing it accounts for perhaps half or more of all cases"

S.F. to enable employees to access medical reimbursement funds: Mayor London Breed’s administration has found a way to get the $138 million stuck in hard-to-access medical reimbursement accounts back to the employees who earned the money
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/SF-will-return-138-million-of-health-care-funds-15230173.php

Recipients of CalFresh, the program federally known as SNAP, will be able to purchase groceries online from Walmart or Amazon starting [Wednesday], said Becky Gershon of the California Association of Food Banks. She encouraged people impacted by the pandemic to apply for CalFresh, which will provide an EBT card with benefits to purchase food. People of any age can apply online and the interview process has been waived.

California opens unemployment applications on Tuesday for self-employed residents: The state posted additional information on the program, which provides up to 39 weeks of federally funded benefits.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/California-issues-more-details-on-unemployment-15230082.php

The adult trend in San Francisco is leaning toward the apocalyptic. “People are reading ‘end of the world’ types of things,” Matsumoto said, noting that all 48 digital copies of John Barry’s “The Great Influenza” are out, with 188 people on the waiting list. “The Plague” by Albert Camus has 45 copies on loan with 186 waiting.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Coronavirus-closed-Bay-Area-libraries-but-15230120.php

humanity has rarely experienced “collective dreaming” on such a broad scale in recorded history — and certainly never while also being able to share those nightmares in real time.
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/04/28/us/ap-us-virus-outbreak-the-dreamers.html
(Also notes there’s a Twitter account dedicated to gathering them in a virtual library under the handle “I Dream of COVID.”)