Ms. Stevenson, an intensive care unit nurse at Eskenazi Health in Indianapolis for the past seven years, cries as she talks about her patients and their families, making clear the grinding toll of the pandemic on already exhausted hospital work forces.

“We’re pretty short-staffed,” Ms. Stevenson said. She added: “It’s getting harder.”

Instead of taking holiday vacations this weekend, workers at strained hospitals across the nation are working 16-hour shifts. Some have been on the job every day for weeks. Festive meals have been replaced with protein bars and sports drinks.

This Christmas weekend, with the United States facing another surge of illness stoked by a proportion of the population that remains unvaccinated, frontline workers are again sacrificing time at home with family to tend to Covid patients. In Indiana, which has among the highest rates of hospitalization and lowest rates of vaccination in the country, the situation is especially acute.

from the New York Times  Dec 25 2021

The post The Challenges Of Being A Front Line Healthcare Worker During COVID: Raymond Rupert patient advocate appeared first on Raymond Rupert.

The common cold and flu are endemic.

We just co-exist with the cold and the flu.

Unfortunately, some patients do die from the flu.

A winning combination for COVID will likely be tripartite:

1. full vaccination including annual boosters
2. rapid testing at least weekly or possibly more often and certainly with any coryza like symptoms
3. oral anti-virals for COVID.

Welcome to our new world. Now all we need is for Health Canada to approve the oral antivirals and we are on our way to co-existing with COVID.

The post A Winning Combo For COVID: full vaxx, boosters, rapid tests and oral antivirals- soon please. Raymond Rupert patient advocate appeared first on Raymond Rupert.

Molnupiravir, made by Merck, a big pharma firm, and a Florida-based biotech called Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, is the first oral antiviral medicine available to treat covid-19. The approval marks another milestone in the world’s fight against covid-19.

Other countries are also working quickly to approve the new medicine, which has provoked keen interest.

Last month the interim results of a trial found that patients with a risk factor for covid-19 were 50% less likely to be hospitalised or die if the oral antibiotic was taken in the first five days after symptoms.

Britain has secured 480,000 courses of molnupiravir, and sales of the drug are already brisk. America, Australia, Britain, the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, New Zealand, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam are some of the countries that have secured deals, or are in the process of doing so.

The post A Game Changing Oral Medicine For COVID From Merck Is Ready To Roll: Raymond Rupert patient advocate appeared first on Raymond Rupert.

Then I told him that I could predict if he will die of COVID by examining his genome.

It seems that those who get very sick and die have a genetic defect in their cytokine metabolism.

This genetic defect causes a cytokine storm and can lead to death with a high probability of occurence.

So when I told the psychologist that he might die if he had this genetic defect irrespective of how healthy he is- he reconsidered and will likely get COVID vaccine, even if it is m-RNA. He was also concerned about the long term consequences of m-RNA vaccine.

But I reminded him that if he is dead, it won’t matter.

Hope he gets the vaccine.

Raymond Rupert patient advocate

healthy system disruptor ( part time)

The post Our Genome Can Tell Us Who Is Likely To Die Of COVID? Raymond Rupert appeared first on Raymond Rupert.

In the scramble for COVID-19 vaccines, the UK emerged in November as the first country to offer a shot outside of clinical trials — and one woman bears the credit.

Kate Bingham put her role as a life-sciences venture capitalist on hold last July when she was approached by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to head up the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce.

A year into the pandemic — despite limited buying power — the UK has secured deals for 407 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from several companies, according to the government.

As of February 1, 13.7% of the country’s population has had at least a first dose of the two-part Pfizer vaccine, according to The Times of London — outstripping progress in the US and European Union.

As a direct appointee of Johnson, she was given wide discretion to speed up the process and lay steep bets on vaccine candidates. Her six-month, unpaid appointment ended in December.

In that time, she also faced questions about potential conflicts of interest and her handling of government information marked as confidential.

At the outset, the VTF was given three objectives: To get the UK access to the most promising vaccines, shore up global vaccine distribution, and develop the country’s long-term vaccine strategy.

Almost nothing about that list of tasks looked promising. As COVID-19 spread across Britain, the country was embroiled in Brexit negotiations, the economy was tanking, the National Health Service was getting overwhelmed, and the government was reeling from multiple accusations of incompetence in its pandemic response.

So Bingham got to work.

• Kate Bingham, a biotech VC in the UK, was very successful in working with pharma to supply vaccine to the UK.
• Kate simplified the decision-making process of getting vaccines. “I just asked for everything to be streamlined,” she told The Times in December.
• “I didn’t know much about government but when you have 58 people cc’d you are not going to be able to make decisions quickly. We had one shot at getting it right and no time.”
• VTF (vaccine task force) rejected the chance to join the EU’s vaccine-buying bloc. According to a VTF end-of-year report, the partnership would have barred the UK from making outside negotiations.
• Bingham’s existing VC contacts in the pharmaceutical industry helped get the UK’s negotiators at the table, despite the country’s waning influence and small budget, The Times reported.
• Kate placed numerous high-risk bets by ordering early from several promising vaccine candidates at once. In total, the VTF bought doses from seven different candidates, across four different types of development processes. Some of those processes had never been approved.
• Doing this early meant that the NHS could buy up the refrigerators needed for some of the vaccines’ storage, and prepare for distribution, the VTF report said. 
• Kate created the 360,000-strong “National Citizen Registry” to get people on board with the country’s clinical trials as quickly as possible, the report said. 
• Kate made it easy for manufacturers to sell without onerous liabilities if things went wrong 

But while the UK may have secured access to a hefty vaccine supply, many of the risks remain. According to the VTF report, the group used “creative deal structures and approaches.”

When asked to explain what that meant, a spokesperson for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) — which oversees the VTF — told Insider the deals were commercially sensitive and would not give further detail.

According to The Times, the UK gave vaccine manufacturers enormous legal leeway should any of the vaccines go wrong.

As part of the VTF, Bingham was tasked with keeping the UK on board with the COVAX initiative — the UN-led project to ensure equitable vaccine distribution around the world.

The UK government contributed $751 million to this, and also shared expertise, according to the report.

But the World Health Organization has warned that COVAX is on the brink of failure, in part because richer countries — like the UK, Canada, and the US — have bought up huge amounts of the current vaccine supply.

The BEIS spokesperson denied that the UK’s success in ordering vaccines ran counter to COVAX’s mission.

There was a public outcry when Dido Harding, another MP’s wife, led the country’s largely failed Test and Trace system with no relevant experience. Meanwhile, companies with personal ties to government were also scooping up personal protective equipment contracts.

But as a life-sciences investor, Bingham had much more relevant knowledge and extremely useful high-level contacts in the pharmaceutical industry.

Source: The Business Insider, The Times.

The post Kate Bingham Is A UK Vaccine All Star: How She Succeeded Raymond Rupert patient advocate appeared first on Raymond Rupert.

An employee’s wife had received her COVID vaccine ( both shots) in January 2021. She is a healthcare worker.

Her two year old son got the sniffles. She was concerned. She took her son for his COVID test. She also got tested.

Her COVID PCR test came back as positive. Her son’s test was negative.

That was a stunner for us.

But this means that even though a person has been vaccinated, they can still spread COVID.

But an Israeli study of about 3,000 patients who had all been vaccinated, indicated that the viral load in those who have been vaccinated is low.

That means that the vaccinated persons even if they test COVID positive are much less likely transmit the virus to others.

But to be safe, it will be important to wear a mask and do social distancing even after you are vaccinated.

Raymond Rupert patient advocate and health educator.

The post I Got Vaccinated But My COVID Test Was Positive? what’s up? Raymond Rupert patient advocate appeared first on Raymond Rupert.

She tested negative for COVID in early January. Her 5 family members all tested positive.

She did develop symptoms of COVID with productive cough, loss of sense of smell and taste, muscle aches, myalgia, gut pains and intermittent headaches.

This was classic for COVID and post COVID syndrome even though her COVID test was negative.

She reached out to her GP who had been her GP for 20 years. His office announced that they don’t see or treat COVID patients.Betsy said that he is much more interested in the botox part of his practice.

Betsy was feeling worse and somewhat short of breath. She went to the ER. The ER doctor measured her oxygen saturation. It was 84% which is low. It should be over 95%.  He admitted her to the hospital. When she got upstairs, another doctor saw her. Her oxygen sat was 95% so the doctor discharged her with no meds. No followup. Nothing.

Betsy’s company has a corporate account with an executive checkup company. This is a concierge care service. When she called, the nurse would only text with her. They never spoke. The nurse said that she could not do anything. She had no access to the ER records and she must go back to her GP.

So that is the state of the customer experience in some primary care settings.

I feel sorry for these patients who are not getting the support, advice and care that they want and need.

That is why we offer a service to meet these types of needs on an expedited basis.

It is described at www.quest-executive.com

Raymond Rupert  CEO  RCM Health Consultancy Inc.

The post The Customer Experience In Primary Care Can Suck Big Time. Raymond Rupert patient advocate appeared first on Raymond Rupert.