ABSTRACT
In late February 2020, a time when severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2, or COVID-19) still felt like an abstraction in the United States, New York City's first infected patient was admitted to Mount Sinai Hospital's emergency room. Working a few doors down was Sean Pinney, the Director of Advanced Heart Failure and Transplantation. Little did he know, but "that night was the beginning of hell," he said.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Cardiovascular Diseases/epidemiology , COVID-19/epidemiology , Hospitalization , Humans , Male , New York/epidemiology , SARS-CoV-2ABSTRACT
In spring 2020, the pandemic began shutting down the world-restaurants, colleges, even entire cities felt emptied and closed. A cloud of uncertainty lingered over most parts of the world and altered our daily schedules and tasks. But for a wide segment of society, it wasn't the toilet paper, or the masks, or the isolation from their families that hurt the worst-it was the sudden uncertainty around one of the most fundamental aspects of our lives: reproduction.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Reproductive Health , Breast Feeding , COVID-19/prevention & control , COVID-19/psychology , COVID-19/transmission , Female , Humans , Infant, Newborn , Male , Pregnancy , SARS-CoV-2 , UncertaintyABSTRACT
In March 2020 -still the early days of the U.K.'s COVID-19 crisis-Rhys Thomas, a neurologist at Newcastle University, got a call at home from a concerned colleague. The colleague's cousin was hospitalized, critically ill with COVID-19, and had developed brainstem encephalitis, a severe inflammatory condition of the brain causing a suite of symptoms, from eye problems to balance problems and drowsiness. He wanted to know if Thomas knew anything about these conditions. At the time, the research coming out of Wuhan, China, only suggested a mild whiff of neurological symptoms-headache, dizziness, and the loss of taste and smell. Clearly the virus could affect the brain in some ways, but it wasn't, Thomas thought then, anything serious. But this report sounded much more concerning. Symptoms like this patient's would mean the virus was accessing more of the nervous system than scientists originally thought.
Subject(s)
Brain Diseases/etiology , COVID-19/complications , Pandemics , SARS-CoV-2 , Brain Diseases/physiopathology , Brain Diseases/psychology , COVID-19/physiopathology , COVID-19/psychology , Cytokine Release Syndrome/etiology , Cytokine Release Syndrome/physiopathology , Encephalitis/etiology , Encephalitis/physiopathology , Humans , Nervous System Diseases/etiology , Nervous System Diseases/physiopathology , Nervous System Diseases/psychology , SARS-CoV-2/pathogenicity , Stroke/etiology , Stroke/physiopathology , COVID-19 Drug TreatmentABSTRACT
In March 2020, before COVID-19 laid claim to the United States, Vice President Mike Pence briefed the press about the coronavirus outbreak, which at the time was a threat to passengers aboard the Grand Princess cruise ship moored off the coast of California [1]. At the time, cases had spiked in Iran, Italy, and Spain, but the disease was still an abstraction to most Americans. When asked about a potential outbreak in Washington, D.C., Pence called on Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and a member of the U.S. Task Force, to address the question. Fauci replied that any individual who tested positive for the disease would undergo contact tracing, which he deemed "the public health weapon" for catching outbreaks before they start. Not long after, the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, and the virus began spreading across the country.