COVID Long-Haulers + My Pitch for Astragalus

The New York Times published a story earlier in the month about COVID "long-haulers," people, such as myself, who continue to struggle months after being infected. The NYT story emphasizes the psychological struggles of long-haulers. 

The story re-posted today by Naked Capitalism, "Thousands of New York ‘Long Haulers’ Struggle with COVID-19 Months After Diagnosis," is much more sympathetic to the plight of the long-haulers, situating them in a larger health crisis that has to date been under-reported rather than shading the story as an example of pandemic mass psychosis.

I can bear witness to the brutal reality of the long haul. For the most part I've stopped walking home from work, choosing the bus instead, because the two-mile uphill climb is too much for me now. My heart isn't right.

After a ridiculously unproductive couple of visits to my primary care physician (and ridiculously expensive, even though I have good employer-based health insurance) I decided to forego further rabbit-holing in the corporate health industrial complex and take charge of my own recovery.

One positive that I can report is the Chinese herb Astragalus. I read online that it helped with myocarditis.  German studies published this summer revealed a connection between COVID-19 and cardiac problems. Astragalus has made a difference. Three capsules taken daily -- one morning, noon and night -- have reduced my nasty and incapacitating arrhythmia. 

Daily COVID Deaths Predicted to Climb Next Month

 From this morning's Slog:

The key question: Just how much did we fuck things up this weekend? Experts worried Labor Day weekend could cause a new surge in the virus. "The warnings came as a widely cited model by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington projected a worsening outbreak in the U.S. that will peak in early December at about 2,900 deaths per day, up from about 860 a day now, unless government officials take action," according to the AP. As county health officer Dr. Jeff Duchin told Slog: If we all made the same decisions on Labor Day weekend as on Memorial Day weekend and the Fourth of July weekend, we will have trouble sending children back into school this fall. “You have to think, are these social activities and going out to eat more important right now than educating our children?”

Also, from today's WSWS:

Daily deaths are projected to start climbing after October 1 and then rise sharply after November 1. By December 1, current projections for the daily number of deaths stand at 26,870. Hospital resources expected in use in December include 1.87 million hospital beds, 399,463 intensive care unit (ICU) beds and 340,307 ventilators. These projections are driven by dropping temperatures in the fall and winter season that drive people indoors, compounded by declining mask usage, which stands at around 60 percent, and declining social distancing measures.

COVID is already back on the rise in Europe. Spain and France have experienced a resurgence this summer. In the midst of this resurgence children are being sent back to school. The result is going to be an infection spike prior to the anticipated seasonal spike in October. Not a pretty picture.

Western governments have basically given up on the idea of developing a comprehensive diagnostic system of the sort you see practiced, for instance, by NFL teams: regular testing, quarantine and contact tracing. It's not even mentioned anymore, replaced by bullshit happy talk about a vaccine. 

Western governments have adopted a de facto policy of herd immunity, something that could prove to be illusory given that reinfections have now been documented.

New York City should give us a good idea. After the city's truly horrific spring, infections were reduced to such an extent that there has been speculation that it has achieved herd immunity. If this is true, there should be no spike when schools reopen on September 21.

As COVID deaths begin to tick back up markets are on their way down. The Fed's "QE forever" was able to buy all-time market highs for a spell, but the reality of long-term unemployment has finally appeared to have crashed the party.

Minnesota on My Mind

In his afternoon Water Cooler Lambert Strether devotes three paragraphs, the first of which can be found below, to liberal Minnesota's perplexing status as a tossup battleground state:

UPDATE Trump (R)(2): “An unlikely state tightens up” [Politico]. “Minnesota, which once looked like a vanity project for Donald Trump, is suddenly emerging as a critical test of his effort to turn his campaign around. Interviews with more than a dozen officials and strategists from both parties in recent days depict a state in which Joe Biden is leading, but where the president is making inroads in rural Minnesota. … In the run-up to the 2016 election, Minnesota seemed like a stretch for Trump. No Republican had carried the state since Richard Nixon in 1972, and Trump made minimal effort there. Even so, Trump came close to victory, carrying 78 of Minnesota’s 87 counties and losing the state by fewer than 45,000 votes. Following the election, Trump said he regretted not doing more. The state’s 10 electoral votes — the same number as neighboring Wisconsin — became an enduring source of infatuation for him. He’s still preoccupied with his near-miss four years later. ‘One more speech, I would have won,’ Trump told a crowd recently in Mankato, a small college town in southern Minnesota. ‘It was so close.'” • A Trump crowd in a college town? Can any Minnesotans comment on this?

It's hard to believe that the cradle of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party is going to swing to Trump in 2020, a year of social upheaval not unlike 1968, the year the Democratic Party standard bearer was vice president Hubert Humphrey, stalwart champion of civil rights and a former mayor of Minneapolis.

Humphrey carried his home state that year of course, but he also carried Michigan, a state which was a key to Trump's victory in 2016.

Sagaar Enjeti thinks Trump wins reelection if he carries Michigan, Arizona and Florida. The problem for Trump is winning all these battleground states in 2020 is going to be a lot different than how he won in 2016. In 2016 he won as a stealth candidate who very few analysts took seriously. That's not the case this year.

I prefer to look at 1988. If Michael Dukakis won Minnesota so will Joe Biden. On the other hand, Dukakis also won in Wisconsin and Iowa, states Trump won in 2016 and will likely win again.

Dukakis was the last losing Democratic Party presidential candidate for whom I voted. Shamefully, I voted for Clinton twice; voted Green until Obama; then voted Green again in 2016. After much internal wrestling I have decided to vote for Biden.

It's not a naive vote, nor a hesitant one. I am confident in the decision, and I can justify it based on several different arguments.

Let's take one that impacts me personally. Labor rights. The Mitch McConnell GOP castrated Obama after Scalia died in early 2016 and Obama's pick to replace him on the Supreme Court never came to a vote. Subsequently, Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch, who was approved and assumed office in April of 2017. Next year, in June, Gorsuch, voted with the majority in Janus v. AFSCME.

Janus vs. AFSCME allows public-sector workers, say, state department of transportation employees, to opt out of union membership. The initial fear among unions was that the Supreme Court decision would lead to a loss of upwards of 30% of their membership. Nothing like that ended up happening. As I believe I mentioned before, the overwhelming majority of union members realize that having a union and a collective bargaining agreement is a significant advantage.

Nonetheless, the low single-digit percentage of workers who do opt out creates an overabundance of administrative chores. And I am the person on staff for whom it falls to expedite those chores. It's a lot of correspondence and database work. I figure that each worker who opts out consumes about 20-30 minutes of my time. Since June of 2018  many hours of my worklife have been chewed up thanks to Janus.

Even if Trump loses in November, the GOP will hold a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court for the foreseeable future. Nationwide right-to-work is rumored to be in the offing. I think a second term for Trump basically guarantees some form of private sector right-to-work. Trump is a bomb thrower. Though many in his base are rank'n'file trade unionists, I don't have to tell you that he would revel in diminishing their ability to make a living.

So there's one reason to vote for Biden. Labor rights. I'll include some more as we slouch toward election day.

Also, in the pipeline I have the second installment of The Republican Party Must Be Destroyed. It's a look at that hatemonger from yesteryear, the father of the Christ of the Ozarks, Gerald L.K. Smith.