All things Chinese CoronaVirus

[CU88]

The Pandemic and the Protests: Knowledge, Authority, and the Highbrow Delusions Sustaining Trump

https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-pand ... ing-trump/

"When it comes to the pandemic, elite intellectuals on the right leveraged two particular insights to lend cover and legitimacy to the president. The first has to do with the uncertain nature of science, and the second is about the exceptional character of political action and statecraft. Taken together, these insights amount to the highbrow version of Trump’s perennial claims to political genius. But whether it’s Trump, or Laura Ingraham, or Peter Navarro, or Richard Epstein, the basic thought is always the same: I may not be a doctor or epidemiologist, but the science is uncertain, and I’ve got that certain je-ne-sais-quoi that gives me a superior understanding.

Unlike with full-on conspiracy theories, these clever arguments work, when they do, because they contain real kernels of truth. Science does need to be interpreted by political actors, after all, and some people have better political judgment than others. But a closer look at the most sophisticated versions of these claims can help us to see how little truths are sometimes put in the service of much bigger lies. This is a set of ideas that denigrates expertise and professes respect for dynamic political action, but which ends up empowering ignorance and denigrating civic virtue. As we form our judgements about ongoing events, we need to keep this stark reality in mind. "

[RedFromMI]

The Pandemic and the Protests: Knowledge, Authority, and the Highbrow Delusions Sustaining Trump

https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-pand ... ing-trump/

"When it comes to the pandemic, elite intellectuals on the right leveraged two particular insights to lend cover and legitimacy to the president. The first has to do with the uncertain nature of science, and the second is about the exceptional character of political action and statecraft. Taken together, these insights amount to the highbrow version of Trump’s perennial claims to political genius. But whether it’s Trump, or Laura Ingraham, or Peter Navarro, or Richard Epstein, the basic thought is always the same: I may not be a doctor or epidemiologist, but the science is uncertain, and I’ve got that certain je-ne-sais-quoi that gives me a superior understanding.

Unlike with full-on conspiracy theories, these clever arguments work, when they do, because they contain real kernels of truth. Science does need to be interpreted by political actors, after all, and some people have better political judgment than others. But a closer look at the most sophisticated versions of these claims can help us to see how little truths are sometimes put in the service of much bigger lies. This is a set of ideas that denigrates expertise and professes respect for dynamic political action, but which ends up empowering ignorance and denigrating civic virtue. As we form our judgements about ongoing events, we need to keep this stark reality in mind. "

Pretty much nails it.

[6ftstick]

the casual indifference to racism and bigotry has been an embarassment for the country for quite a long time.
the indignation of some is, too.

we're going to go kicking and screaming together until we figure out the best ways to root it out. i have hope for a generation or 2 from now.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. expressed the same hope over half-a-century ago.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mlks-conte ... es-debate/

We have traveled far, but as this forum and the world around us have shown ... we have a long way to go

DocBarrister

For someone who hates whites, conservatives and christians to lecture us on how far we have to go is beyond presumptive.

I've never had the feeling that Doc hates me.

And I'm definitely white, more conservative than not, and certainly by own beliefs am Christian.

Heck, I'm even a Republican and I never have had the feeling that Doc hates me.

Perhaps you mean that Doc has a low opinion of white supremacists, or those who claim that one must be a certain type of Christian to be welcome in heaven, and 'conservatives' who are entirely hypocritical in their condemnation of others' personal choices, yet excuse the worst amongst them.

Is that what you mean?

I doubt you're from MD

[Typical Lax Dad]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/30/europe/e ... index.html

MAGA

[dislaxxic]

...empowering ignorance and denigrating civic virtue...

Kinda sums up the GOP in the Age of Trump, no?

..

[CU88]

A brutal read, but puts names to the numbers.
Those in the first wave bore the brunt of the medical learning curve. Let's hope the education here and now benefits us all with the lower death rate.


What a Family That Lost 5 to the Virus Wants You to Know

The family’s 73-year-old matriarch, three of her 11 children and her sister all died of Covid-19. Her survivors are focused on finding a remedy.

“Tell me how you’re going to save my brother and sister,” Elizabeth Fusco, left, recalls saying as her brother, Joe, and her sister, Maria Reid, were on ventilators.

By Tracey Tully
June 30, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET

FREEHOLD, N.J. — Each morning they awake with fingers curled inward, stiffened like claws.
Their schedules are dictated by doctors’ appointments, physical therapy sessions and bouts of exhaustion. After weeks on ventilators, two siblings remain too weak to work even as their medical bills mount.
But at a table filled with several members of a tight-knit New Jersey family, the Fuscos, who lost five relatives to the coronavirus, the conversation repeatedly veers away from the chaos and pain of the last three months.
They do not avoid talk of their family’s devastating collective loss. But they also speak of a new focus: finding a remedy for the disease that killed their mother, three siblings and an aunt.
At least 19 other family members contracted the virus, and those who survived Covid-19 did not emerge unscathed.
Joe Fusco, 49, lost 55 pounds and spent 30 days on a ventilator. His sister, Maria Reid, 44, cannot shake the memory of the disjointed hallucinations that dogged her during the 19 or 20 days she was unconscious, or the terror of waking up convinced that her 10-year-old daughter was dead.
“This ain’t over,” Mr. Fusco said of the pandemic on a recent afternoon in the backyard of his home in Freehold, N.J. “This ain’t over in the least bit.”
“I want to help somebody,” he added. “I don’t want anyone else to have to lose five family members.”
The Fuscos were unwilling pioneers charting an early course through all that was unknown about a virus that has killed more than 126,000 people in the United States.
They are now trailblazers of another kind, subjects of at least three scientific studies.
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is conducting research that involves evaluating the DNA of the surviving and deceased members of the large Italian-American family for genetic clues. DNA from those who died will be retrieved from hairbrushes, a toothbrush, a blood sample and tissue from an unrelated gallbladder surgery.
Each Thursday, Elizabeth Fusco, the youngest of the 11 children, donates antibody-rich blood plasma that is used to treat patients with the virus to determine if it can help boost their immune response.
“We know another wave is going to come,” Ms. Fusco said. “It’s inevitable. Whatever will help this world is all I care about.”
Their help may prove useful well before the predicted second wave hits as states like Florida and Texas confront an alarming surge in new cases.
The Fusco family’s trauma began just before the state’s lockdown, as a slow cascade of closures marked the start of a new normal.
On March 13, Rita Fusco Jackson, 56, became the second person to die of Covid-19 in New Jersey, which has since recorded 14,992 deaths, making it No. 2 in the nation behind New York for virus-related fatalities.
Within a week, her mother, Grace Fusco, 73, and two brothers, Carmine, 55, and Vincent, 53, had also died. Grace Fusco’s sister on Staten Island died weeks later.
During the first week of March, Carmine Fusco, the eldest son who was visiting from Pennsylvania, had described feeling chilled during a routine Tuesday dinner in Freehold that drew about 25 family members, his siblings said.
The precise source of the extended family’s infection is unclear, said Mr. Fusco, a horse owner like his father and brothers who had spent time in the weeks beforehand with both brothers who died. He recalls waking up feeling “beat up” the morning after the dinner, which was held at the house where his mother lived with three of his siblings and their families.
He was admitted to the hospital days later, beginning a medical odyssey that would last 44 days. Much of the treatment was experimental, he said, and involved trial and error.
“When I was leaving the hospital, the doctor said, ‘You don’t realize the debt of gratitude the world owes your family,’” said Mr. Fusco, the father of three children aged 10 to 18.
As news accounts of their story swept the globe, the family was cited by state health officials as a prime reason for staying apart.
Still, even as they were being held up as the family no one wanted to become, Elizabeth Fusco was stepping into the role of the little sister everyone might hope to have.
Ms. Fusco, 42, and her daughter were among those who contracted the virus; like many other family members, they never showed symptoms.
With four people already dead, two on ventilators and a sister hospitalized and receiving oxygen, Ms. Fusco emerged as a ferocious advocate, even as she feared for her own daughter, Alexandra, who is 12 and was born with a serious health condition, congenital diaphragmatic hernia.
“They would tell me to calm down,” she said. “No. I’m not going to calm down. Tell someone who didn’t lose a mom, a sister and two brothers in a matter of less than seven days to calm down.
“Tell me how you’re going to save my brother and sister.”
The family held a four-person funeral on April 1. They remain anguished that the two siblings who were on ventilators at the time were not there and are planning a memorial celebration and burial after a full Mass in early August.
Ms. Fusco said she temporarily shoved mourning aside. “I consumed my time with — I’m not going to lose another one,” she said.
Desperate, she and other relatives pushed doctors to try a variety of treatments: remdesivir, convalescent plasma, hydroxychloroquine.
“I don’t care if you were giving them rat poison — if you told me that that was going to fix them,” she said, her voice trailing off.
She called the governor on his cellphone. She and her mother’s cousin, Roseann Paradiso Fodera, a family spokeswoman, were on a first-name basis with congressional aides. They lobbied anyone who would listen for access to experimental medicines, and, later, for autopsies that never happened.
In that mad flurry, they were buoyed by neighbors, acquaintances half a world away and lifelong friends.
“You’d open your door,” said Dana Fusco, Joe’s wife. “You’d have groceries at your door. You’d have meals. The community was truly amazing.”
The nurses and the medical staff at CentraState Medical Center, the hospital in Freehold where Grace Fusco and five of her children were treated, served as the family’s eyes, ears and loving hands at a time when visitors were not allowed inside.
“For 44 days, every three to four hours, I was on the phone with them,” Dana Fusco said. The hospital declined to comment, citing privacy concerns.
When her husband awoke on Easter Sunday, she asked that he not be immediately told of the deaths. Once he was stronger, she was allowed a visit to tell him in person.
To the Fuscos, the virus’s path showed little logic. An infected relative who is a heavy smoker showed no symptoms, and two older uncles with myriad underlying health problems rebounded in about a week. Several of the sickest family members had no serious underlying health problems, Mr. Fusco said.
More than three months later, a numb calm has set in.
“Like it didn’t happen,” Ms. Reid said. “It’s just they’re not here.”
Dwelling on the past, she said, is a luxury she does not have. “I’ve got to move on,” said Ms. Reid, who, along with her husband and daughter, shares a house with Joe’s family. “I’ve got a young daughter.”
Joe Fusco said he remained frustrated by the lackadaisical attitudes of people shown crowding together near beaches or outside bars without masks.
“These idiots are out there and not taking precautions,” he said. “Not wearing a mask. And not doing what they’re supposed to do. They’re out of their minds.”
Doctors say patients who recover from Covid-19 frequently need to rebuild muscle strength, and some may struggle with a range of respiratory, cardiac and kidney problems or be at increased risk of blood clots and stroke. Some patients who experienced delirium while on ventilators may be at greater risk of depression.
And those placed in induced comas also may lose muscle tone in their hands, causing fingers to clamp shut.
Much about the recovery from Covid-19 is unknown, said Dr. Laurie G. Jacobs, chairwoman of the Department of Medicine at Hackensack University Medical Center, which is setting up a clinic for patients recovering from Covid-19 to better understand, track and treat their varied needs.
“There’s a desperation for answers,” Dr. Jacobs said.
Mr. Fusco said he found the seeming absence of uniform guidance for doctors treating patients recovering from Covid-19 frustrating. His doctor has ordered a battery of tests, he said, but his sister’s has not.
“You’d think there would be some sort of protocol to follow, but there’s not,” he said.
When Grace Fusco got sick enough to need a ventilator, she asked for a pillow that had belonged to her husband, who died in 2017, her rosary beads and a scapular, a small cloth pendant worn during prayer. She reminded her daughter to bring a tray of chicken the next night to the program for homeless people that she cooked for each week.
“She said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m going to be OK,’” Elizabeth Fusco recalled. “Tell everyone I love them.”
She never awoke, and never knew that any of her children had died.
“It would have killed her,” Joe Fusco said. “She was always — and I’m the same way — there’s a sequence to life, and burying your kids is not part of it.
“It’s not the way it’s supposed to go.”

[wgdsr]

there isn't an issue i can think of that either side wouldn't rather win, in lieu of the realization that a win is more easily gotten with a solution.

my way or highway. we're pushed on by the cycle of politicians seeking power and influence, an amenable media, which fosters affirmation to our beliefs being "right" or more righteous. rinse and repeat.

this isn't new, it's been building. there are other inputs of course, but what we have at our fingertips for tech has probably been the biggest accelerant of all.

[runrussellrun]

A brutal read, but puts names to the numbers.
Those in the first wave bore the brunt of the medical learning curve. Let's hope the education here and now benefits us all with the lower death rate.


What a Family That Lost 5 to the Virus Wants You to Know

The family’s 73-year-old matriarch, three of her 11 children and her sister all died of Covid-19. Her survivors are focused on finding a remedy.

“Tell me how you’re going to save my brother and sister,” Elizabeth Fusco, left, recalls saying as her brother, Joe, and her sister, Maria Reid, were on ventilators.

By Tracey Tully
June 30, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET

FREEHOLD, N.J. — Each morning they awake with fingers curled inward, stiffened like claws.
Their schedules are dictated by doctors’ appointments, physical therapy sessions and bouts of exhaustion. After weeks on ventilators, two siblings remain too weak to work even as their medical bills mount.
But at a table filled with several members of a tight-knit New Jersey family, the Fuscos, who lost five relatives to the coronavirus, the conversation repeatedly veers away from the chaos and pain of the last three months.
They do not avoid talk of their family’s devastating collective loss. But they also speak of a new focus: finding a remedy for the disease that killed their mother, three siblings and an aunt.
At least 19 other family members contracted the virus, and those who survived Covid-19 did not emerge unscathed.
Joe Fusco, 49, lost 55 pounds and spent 30 days on a ventilator. His sister, Maria Reid, 44, cannot shake the memory of the disjointed hallucinations that dogged her during the 19 or 20 days she was unconscious, or the terror of waking up convinced that her 10-year-old daughter was dead.
“This ain’t over,” Mr. Fusco said of the pandemic on a recent afternoon in the backyard of his home in Freehold, N.J. “This ain’t over in the least bit.”
“I want to help somebody,” he added. “I don’t want anyone else to have to lose five family members.”
The Fuscos were unwilling pioneers charting an early course through all that was unknown about a virus that has killed more than 126,000 people in the United States.
They are now trailblazers of another kind, subjects of at least three scientific studies.
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is conducting research that involves evaluating the DNA of the surviving and deceased members of the large Italian-American family for genetic clues. DNA from those who died will be retrieved from hairbrushes, a toothbrush, a blood sample and tissue from an unrelated gallbladder surgery.
Each Thursday, Elizabeth Fusco, the youngest of the 11 children, donates antibody-rich blood plasma that is used to treat patients with the virus to determine if it can help boost their immune response.
“We know another wave is going to come,” Ms. Fusco said. “It’s inevitable. Whatever will help this world is all I care about.”
Their help may prove useful well before the predicted second wave hits as states like Florida and Texas confront an alarming surge in new cases.
The Fusco family’s trauma began just before the state’s lockdown, as a slow cascade of closures marked the start of a new normal.
On March 13, Rita Fusco Jackson, 56, became the second person to die of Covid-19 in New Jersey, which has since recorded 14,992 deaths, making it No. 2 in the nation behind New York for virus-related fatalities.
Within a week, her mother, Grace Fusco, 73, and two brothers, Carmine, 55, and Vincent, 53, had also died. Grace Fusco’s sister on Staten Island died weeks later.
During the first week of March, Carmine Fusco, the eldest son who was visiting from Pennsylvania, had described feeling chilled during a routine Tuesday dinner in Freehold that drew about 25 family members, his siblings said.
The precise source of the extended family’s infection is unclear, said Mr. Fusco, a horse owner like his father and brothers who had spent time in the weeks beforehand with both brothers who died. He recalls waking up feeling “beat up” the morning after the dinner, which was held at the house where his mother lived with three of his siblings and their families.
He was admitted to the hospital days later, beginning a medical odyssey that would last 44 days. Much of the treatment was experimental, he said, and involved trial and error.
“When I was leaving the hospital, the doctor said, ‘You don’t realize the debt of gratitude the world owes your family,’” said Mr. Fusco, the father of three children aged 10 to 18.
As news accounts of their story swept the globe, the family was cited by state health officials as a prime reason for staying apart.
Still, even as they were being held up as the family no one wanted to become, Elizabeth Fusco was stepping into the role of the little sister everyone might hope to have.
Ms. Fusco, 42, and her daughter were among those who contracted the virus; like many other family members, they never showed symptoms.
With four people already dead, two on ventilators and a sister hospitalized and receiving oxygen, Ms. Fusco emerged as a ferocious advocate, even as she feared for her own daughter, Alexandra, who is 12 and was born with a serious health condition, congenital diaphragmatic hernia.
“They would tell me to calm down,” she said. “No. I’m not going to calm down. Tell someone who didn’t lose a mom, a sister and two brothers in a matter of less than seven days to calm down.
“Tell me how you’re going to save my brother and sister.”
The family held a four-person funeral on April 1. They remain anguished that the two siblings who were on ventilators at the time were not there and are planning a memorial celebration and burial after a full Mass in early August.
Ms. Fusco said she temporarily shoved mourning aside. “I consumed my time with — I’m not going to lose another one,” she said.
Desperate, she and other relatives pushed doctors to try a variety of treatments: remdesivir, convalescent plasma, hydroxychloroquine.
“I don’t care if you were giving them rat poison — if you told me that that was going to fix them,” she said, her voice trailing off.
She called the governor on his cellphone. She and her mother’s cousin, Roseann Paradiso Fodera, a family spokeswoman, were on a first-name basis with congressional aides. They lobbied anyone who would listen for access to experimental medicines, and, later, for autopsies that never happened.
In that mad flurry, they were buoyed by neighbors, acquaintances half a world away and lifelong friends.
“You’d open your door,” said Dana Fusco, Joe’s wife. “You’d have groceries at your door. You’d have meals. The community was truly amazing.”
The nurses and the medical staff at CentraState Medical Center, the hospital in Freehold where Grace Fusco and five of her children were treated, served as the family’s eyes, ears and loving hands at a time when visitors were not allowed inside.
“For 44 days, every three to four hours, I was on the phone with them,” Dana Fusco said. The hospital declined to comment, citing privacy concerns.
When her husband awoke on Easter Sunday, she asked that he not be immediately told of the deaths. Once he was stronger, she was allowed a visit to tell him in person.
To the Fuscos, the virus’s path showed little logic. An infected relative who is a heavy smoker showed no symptoms, and two older uncles with myriad underlying health problems rebounded in about a week. Several of the sickest family members had no serious underlying health problems, Mr. Fusco said.
More than three months later, a numb calm has set in.
“Like it didn’t happen,” Ms. Reid said. “It’s just they’re not here.”
Dwelling on the past, she said, is a luxury she does not have. “I’ve got to move on,” said Ms. Reid, who, along with her husband and daughter, shares a house with Joe’s family. “I’ve got a young daughter.”
Joe Fusco said he remained frustrated by the lackadaisical attitudes of people shown crowding together near beaches or outside bars without masks.
“These idiots are out there and not taking precautions,” he said. “Not wearing a mask. And not doing what they’re supposed to do. They’re out of their minds.”
Doctors say patients who recover from Covid-19 frequently need to rebuild muscle strength, and some may struggle with a range of respiratory, cardiac and kidney problems or be at increased risk of blood clots and stroke. Some patients who experienced delirium while on ventilators may be at greater risk of depression.
And those placed in induced comas also may lose muscle tone in their hands, causing fingers to clamp shut.
Much about the recovery from Covid-19 is unknown, said Dr. Laurie G. Jacobs, chairwoman of the Department of Medicine at Hackensack University Medical Center, which is setting up a clinic for patients recovering from Covid-19 to better understand, track and treat their varied needs.
“There’s a desperation for answers,” Dr. Jacobs said.
Mr. Fusco said he found the seeming absence of uniform guidance for doctors treating patients recovering from Covid-19 frustrating. His doctor has ordered a battery of tests, he said, but his sister’s has not.
“You’d think there would be some sort of protocol to follow, but there’s not,” he said.
When Grace Fusco got sick enough to need a ventilator, she asked for a pillow that had belonged to her husband, who died in 2017, her rosary beads and a scapular, a small cloth pendant worn during prayer. She reminded her daughter to bring a tray of chicken the next night to the program for homeless people that she cooked for each week.
“She said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m going to be OK,’” Elizabeth Fusco recalled. “Tell everyone I love them.”
She never awoke, and never knew that any of her children had died.
“It would have killed her,” Joe Fusco said. “She was always — and I’m the same way — there’s a sequence to life, and burying your kids is not part of it.
“It’s not the way it’s supposed to go.”

Were they wearing masks? If not, why should we care? Only tRump supporters go to parties and family gatherings NOT wearing masks.

See how idiotic THAT narrative is?

Meanwhile...."doctors say patients recovering ......need to rebuild muscle strength, blah blah blah....."

two weeks ago, Arnold Arbureetum STILL had "do not sit" on it's benchs because the OLD cdc guidelines about surface life of the virus

In other words.....how the heck do the doctors know ANYTHING about recovery processes? Also, thought ventalators were bad, oxygen good?
So confused.

fear porn....thank you for the daily dose of fear porn.

[MDlaxfan76]

the casual indifference to racism and bigotry has been an embarassment for the country for quite a long time.
the indignation of some is, too.

we're going to go kicking and screaming together until we figure out the best ways to root it out. i have hope for a generation or 2 from now.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. expressed the same hope over half-a-century ago.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mlks-conte ... es-debate/

We have traveled far, but as this forum and the world around us have shown ... we have a long way to go

DocBarrister

For someone who hates whites, conservatives and christians to lecture us on how far we have to go is beyond presumptive.

I've never had the feeling that Doc hates me.

And I'm definitely white, more conservative than not, and certainly by own beliefs am Christian.

Heck, I'm even a Republican and I never have had the feeling that Doc hates me.

Perhaps you mean that Doc has a low opinion of white supremacists, or those who claim that one must be a certain type of Christian to be welcome in heaven, and 'conservatives' who are entirely hypocritical in their condemnation of others' personal choices, yet excuse the worst amongst them.

Is that what you mean?

I doubt you're from MD

I'm not even sure I get the joke, 6ft, I'm "not from MD"??

[runrussellrun]

there isn't an issue i can think of that either side wouldn't rather win, in lieu of the realization that a win is more easily gotten with a solution.

my way or highway. we're pushed on by the cycle of politicians seeking power and influence, an amenable media, which fosters affirmation to our beliefs being "right" or more righteous. rinse and repeat.

this isn't new, it's been building. there are other inputs of course, but what we have at our fingertips for tech has probably been the biggest accelerant of all.

"...other inputs.."

you are being kind. , still horrible, his loss, BUT. clean living matters. Pictures of 55 year old Carmine (cigar) tell much.

Mayor Bloomie agrees.

[CU88]

A brutal read, but puts names to the numbers.
Those in the first wave bore the brunt of the medical learning curve. Let's hope the education here and now benefits us all with the lower death rate.


What a Family That Lost 5 to the Virus Wants You to Know

The family’s 73-year-old matriarch, three of her 11 children and her sister all died of Covid-19. Her survivors are focused on finding a remedy.

“Tell me how you’re going to save my brother and sister,” Elizabeth Fusco, left, recalls saying as her brother, Joe, and her sister, Maria Reid, were on ventilators.

By Tracey Tully
June 30, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET

FREEHOLD, N.J. — Each morning they awake with fingers curled inward, stiffened like claws.
Their schedules are dictated by doctors’ appointments, physical therapy sessions and bouts of exhaustion. After weeks on ventilators, two siblings remain too weak to work even as their medical bills mount.
But at a table filled with several members of a tight-knit New Jersey family, the Fuscos, who lost five relatives to the coronavirus, the conversation repeatedly veers away from the chaos and pain of the last three months.
They do not avoid talk of their family’s devastating collective loss. But they also speak of a new focus: finding a remedy for the disease that killed their mother, three siblings and an aunt.
At least 19 other family members contracted the virus, and those who survived Covid-19 did not emerge unscathed.
Joe Fusco, 49, lost 55 pounds and spent 30 days on a ventilator. His sister, Maria Reid, 44, cannot shake the memory of the disjointed hallucinations that dogged her during the 19 or 20 days she was unconscious, or the terror of waking up convinced that her 10-year-old daughter was dead.
“This ain’t over,” Mr. Fusco said of the pandemic on a recent afternoon in the backyard of his home in Freehold, N.J. “This ain’t over in the least bit.”
“I want to help somebody,” he added. “I don’t want anyone else to have to lose five family members.”
The Fuscos were unwilling pioneers charting an early course through all that was unknown about a virus that has killed more than 126,000 people in the United States.
They are now trailblazers of another kind, subjects of at least three scientific studies.
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is conducting research that involves evaluating the DNA of the surviving and deceased members of the large Italian-American family for genetic clues. DNA from those who died will be retrieved from hairbrushes, a toothbrush, a blood sample and tissue from an unrelated gallbladder surgery.
Each Thursday, Elizabeth Fusco, the youngest of the 11 children, donates antibody-rich blood plasma that is used to treat patients with the virus to determine if it can help boost their immune response.
“We know another wave is going to come,” Ms. Fusco said. “It’s inevitable. Whatever will help this world is all I care about.”
Their help may prove useful well before the predicted second wave hits as states like Florida and Texas confront an alarming surge in new cases.
The Fusco family’s trauma began just before the state’s lockdown, as a slow cascade of closures marked the start of a new normal.
On March 13, Rita Fusco Jackson, 56, became the second person to die of Covid-19 in New Jersey, which has since recorded 14,992 deaths, making it No. 2 in the nation behind New York for virus-related fatalities.
Within a week, her mother, Grace Fusco, 73, and two brothers, Carmine, 55, and Vincent, 53, had also died. Grace Fusco’s sister on Staten Island died weeks later.
During the first week of March, Carmine Fusco, the eldest son who was visiting from Pennsylvania, had described feeling chilled during a routine Tuesday dinner in Freehold that drew about 25 family members, his siblings said.
The precise source of the extended family’s infection is unclear, said Mr. Fusco, a horse owner like his father and brothers who had spent time in the weeks beforehand with both brothers who died. He recalls waking up feeling “beat up” the morning after the dinner, which was held at the house where his mother lived with three of his siblings and their families.
He was admitted to the hospital days later, beginning a medical odyssey that would last 44 days. Much of the treatment was experimental, he said, and involved trial and error.
“When I was leaving the hospital, the doctor said, ‘You don’t realize the debt of gratitude the world owes your family,’” said Mr. Fusco, the father of three children aged 10 to 18.
As news accounts of their story swept the globe, the family was cited by state health officials as a prime reason for staying apart.
Still, even as they were being held up as the family no one wanted to become, Elizabeth Fusco was stepping into the role of the little sister everyone might hope to have.
Ms. Fusco, 42, and her daughter were among those who contracted the virus; like many other family members, they never showed symptoms.
With four people already dead, two on ventilators and a sister hospitalized and receiving oxygen, Ms. Fusco emerged as a ferocious advocate, even as she feared for her own daughter, Alexandra, who is 12 and was born with a serious health condition, congenital diaphragmatic hernia.
“They would tell me to calm down,” she said. “No. I’m not going to calm down. Tell someone who didn’t lose a mom, a sister and two brothers in a matter of less than seven days to calm down.
“Tell me how you’re going to save my brother and sister.”
The family held a four-person funeral on April 1. They remain anguished that the two siblings who were on ventilators at the time were not there and are planning a memorial celebration and burial after a full Mass in early August.
Ms. Fusco said she temporarily shoved mourning aside. “I consumed my time with — I’m not going to lose another one,” she said.
Desperate, she and other relatives pushed doctors to try a variety of treatments: remdesivir, convalescent plasma, hydroxychloroquine.
“I don’t care if you were giving them rat poison — if you told me that that was going to fix them,” she said, her voice trailing off.
She called the governor on his cellphone. She and her mother’s cousin, Roseann Paradiso Fodera, a family spokeswoman, were on a first-name basis with congressional aides. They lobbied anyone who would listen for access to experimental medicines, and, later, for autopsies that never happened.
In that mad flurry, they were buoyed by neighbors, acquaintances half a world away and lifelong friends.
“You’d open your door,” said Dana Fusco, Joe’s wife. “You’d have groceries at your door. You’d have meals. The community was truly amazing.”
The nurses and the medical staff at CentraState Medical Center, the hospital in Freehold where Grace Fusco and five of her children were treated, served as the family’s eyes, ears and loving hands at a time when visitors were not allowed inside.
“For 44 days, every three to four hours, I was on the phone with them,” Dana Fusco said. The hospital declined to comment, citing privacy concerns.
When her husband awoke on Easter Sunday, she asked that he not be immediately told of the deaths. Once he was stronger, she was allowed a visit to tell him in person.
To the Fuscos, the virus’s path showed little logic. An infected relative who is a heavy smoker showed no symptoms, and two older uncles with myriad underlying health problems rebounded in about a week. Several of the sickest family members had no serious underlying health problems, Mr. Fusco said.
More than three months later, a numb calm has set in.
“Like it didn’t happen,” Ms. Reid said. “It’s just they’re not here.”
Dwelling on the past, she said, is a luxury she does not have. “I’ve got to move on,” said Ms. Reid, who, along with her husband and daughter, shares a house with Joe’s family. “I’ve got a young daughter.”
Joe Fusco said he remained frustrated by the lackadaisical attitudes of people shown crowding together near beaches or outside bars without masks.
“These idiots are out there and not taking precautions,” he said. “Not wearing a mask. And not doing what they’re supposed to do. They’re out of their minds.”
Doctors say patients who recover from Covid-19 frequently need to rebuild muscle strength, and some may struggle with a range of respiratory, cardiac and kidney problems or be at increased risk of blood clots and stroke. Some patients who experienced delirium while on ventilators may be at greater risk of depression.
And those placed in induced comas also may lose muscle tone in their hands, causing fingers to clamp shut.
Much about the recovery from Covid-19 is unknown, said Dr. Laurie G. Jacobs, chairwoman of the Department of Medicine at Hackensack University Medical Center, which is setting up a clinic for patients recovering from Covid-19 to better understand, track and treat their varied needs.
“There’s a desperation for answers,” Dr. Jacobs said.
Mr. Fusco said he found the seeming absence of uniform guidance for doctors treating patients recovering from Covid-19 frustrating. His doctor has ordered a battery of tests, he said, but his sister’s has not.
“You’d think there would be some sort of protocol to follow, but there’s not,” he said.
When Grace Fusco got sick enough to need a ventilator, she asked for a pillow that had belonged to her husband, who died in 2017, her rosary beads and a scapular, a small cloth pendant worn during prayer. She reminded her daughter to bring a tray of chicken the next night to the program for homeless people that she cooked for each week.
“She said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m going to be OK,’” Elizabeth Fusco recalled. “Tell everyone I love them.”
She never awoke, and never knew that any of her children had died.
“It would have killed her,” Joe Fusco said. “She was always — and I’m the same way — there’s a sequence to life, and burying your kids is not part of it.
“It’s not the way it’s supposed to go.”

Were they wearing masks? If not, why should we care? Only tRump supporters go to parties and family gatherings NOT wearing masks.

See how idiotic THAT narrative is?

Meanwhile...."doctors say patients recovering ......need to rebuild muscle strength, blah blah blah....."

two weeks ago, Arnold Arbureetum STILL had "do not sit" on it's benchs because the OLD cdc guidelines about surface life of the virus

In other words.....how the heck do the doctors know ANYTHING about recovery processes? Also, thought ventalators were bad, oxygen good?
So confused.

fear porn....thank you for the daily dose of fear porn.

How can you be so obtuse?

Is it deliberate?

[runrussellrun]

No narrative exists, that lumps tRump supporters with anti-maskers? None at all?

It doesn't matter that the Fusco's were, or were NOT, wearing masks? If not, it would highlite the NEED to wear them, or else. Would it not?

[runrussellrun]

No narrative exists, that lumps tRump supporters with anti-maskers? None at all?

It doesn't matter that the Fusco's were, or were NOT, wearing masks? If not, it would highlite the NEED to wear them, or else. Would it not?

And I posted this BEFORE reading your above post, which does exactly what I asked.

Thank you for proving that NO narrative exists that ONLY tRump supporters are anti-maskers......none at all.

[runrussellrun]

the casual indifference to racism and bigotry has been an embarassment for the country for quite a long time.
the indignation of some is, too.

we're going to go kicking and screaming together until we figure out the best ways to root it out. i have hope for a generation or 2 from now.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. expressed the same hope over half-a-century ago.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mlks-conte ... es-debate/

We have traveled far, but as this forum and the world around us have shown ... we have a long way to go

DocBarrister

For someone who hates whites, conservatives and christians to lecture us on how far we have to go is beyond presumptive.

I've never had the feeling that Doc hates me.

And I'm definitely white, more conservative than not, and certainly by own beliefs am Christian.

Heck, I'm even a Republican and I never have had the feeling that Doc hates me.

Perhaps you mean that Doc has a low opinion of white supremacists, or those who claim that one must be a certain type of Christian to be welcome in heaven, and 'conservatives' who are entirely hypocritical in their condemnation of others' personal choices, yet excuse the worst amongst them.

Is that what you mean?

how about me, mdlaxfan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFT0jGibz80

boy, did they nail the "target rich" atmosphere of fly boy bars?

[CU88]

THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
Federal Agency Tells Employees 'No Reference To Anything COVID Related'
June 26, 20204:10 PM ET

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviru ... id-related

What the heck?!

[wgdsr]

Socialize the risk, privatize the profits.

6ft and others, please tell me again why you think this isn't the dumbest thing our nation does? Give this stupid publicly traded company $70Million+ for R&D...and when it pays off? We don't take an equity stake for the investment.

Who the F "invests" like this? How Fing stupid are we as a nation? We have to wear swim trunks to deal with all the nonstop drool coming out of our collective mouths...that's how stupid Americans are.

Unfreakingbelieveable.


Gilead is pricing its COVID drug remdesivir at $3,120 for patients w/ insurance.

That's *10 times higher* than the suggested benchmark price.

US taxpayers have paid *at least* $70 million to develop this drug.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gilead-cor ... ance-cost/

this is the part i liked best:

We believe that we had to really deviate from the normal circumstances" and price the drug to ensure wide access rather than based solely on value to patients, O'Day said.
https://www.cnet.com/health/us-to-buy-5 ... 2340-each/

so evidently hhs made the order and either worked with or agreed to their terms.

knowing there'd be some backlash, are they simply going to weigh that and see where it goes? flip it into a bill if it gets too hot?

"To the extent possible, we want to ensure that any American patient who needs remdesivir can get it," HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in a release.

to the extent possible is my fav in azar's released statement.

does the hospital bill come with a pre-print of the trial?

how are we doing on clinical trials for all drugs? we have 2.5 + million patients now?

[youthathletics]

U.S. Pediatricians Call For In-Person School This Fall

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviru ... VZLu1MP394

The nation's pediatricians have come out with a strong statement in favor of bringing children back to the classroom this fall wherever and whenever they can do so safely. The American Academy of Pediatrics' guidance "strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school."

The guidance says "schools are fundamental to child and adolescent development and well-being."

[tech37]

U.S. Pediatricians Call For In-Person School This Fall

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviru ... VZLu1MP394

The nation's pediatricians have come out with a strong statement in favor of bringing children back to the classroom this fall wherever and whenever they can do so safely. The American Academy of Pediatrics' guidance "strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school."

The guidance says "schools are fundamental to child and adolescent development and well-being."

PLEASE tell Cuomo!

[runrussellrun]

Socialize the risk, privatize the profits.

6ft and others, please tell me again why you think this isn't the dumbest thing our nation does? Give this stupid publicly traded company $70Million+ for R&D...and when it pays off? We don't take an equity stake for the investment.

Who the F "invests" like this? How Fing stupid are we as a nation? We have to wear swim trunks to deal with all the nonstop drool coming out of our collective mouths...that's how stupid Americans are.

Unfreakingbelieveable.


Gilead is pricing its COVID drug remdesivir at $3,120 for patients w/ insurance.

That's *10 times higher* than the suggested benchmark price.

US taxpayers have paid *at least* $70 million to develop this drug.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gilead-cor ... ance-cost/

this is the part i liked best:

We believe that we had to really deviate from the normal circumstances" and price the drug to ensure wide access rather than based solely on value to patients, O'Day said.
https://www.cnet.com/health/us-to-buy-5 ... 2340-each/

so evidently hhs made the order and either worked with or agreed to their terms.

knowing there'd be some backlash, are they simply going to weigh that and see where it goes? flip it into a bill if it gets too hot?

"To the extent possible, we want to ensure that any American patient who needs remdesivir can get it," HHS Secretary Alex Azar said in a release.

to the extent possible is my fav in azar's released statement.

does the hospital bill come with a pre-print of the trial?

how are we doing on clinical trials for all drugs? we have 2.5 + million patients now?

could have sworn Typical Lacrosse Dad was pushing Gilead stock a few weeks ago...........of course he did, why would I bring up something I was unsure of? This time, he can't pull the , "why don't you ask......" when, he knows ALL about that hot fitness guru.

[Peter Brown]

U.S. Pediatricians Call For In-Person School This Fall

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronaviru ... VZLu1MP394

The nation's pediatricians have come out with a strong statement in favor of bringing children back to the classroom this fall wherever and whenever they can do so safely. The American Academy of Pediatrics' guidance "strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school."

The guidance says "schools are fundamental to child and adolescent development and well-being."

PLEASE tell Cuomo!

Cuomo is by far the worst performing governor in America re: Covid. For some reason, CNN hasn't gotten the memo.