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Respiratory illnesses see surge
New Mexico’s hospitals remain under stress due to high incidents of respiratory illness, including what state Health Sec. Dr. David Scrase called “a chilling number of children” on ventilators during a news conference Thursday. Scrase appeared with Dr. Anna Duran, associate chief medical director at University of New Mexico Children’s Hospital, who appealed to residents to be judicious about arriving at its emergency rooms and to expect long waits. “At any given moment in the UNM Health System, there may be 90 to 100 adults and 10 to 20 children waiting in our emergency rooms for a bed,” Duran said. The hospital typically has two to four intubated patients in its 20-bed intensive care unit, she said, but of its current 22 patients in the ICU, 20 are on breathing tubes. While RSV is responsible for the most cases, the hospital is also seeing an increase in influenza and COVID-19 among children and, Duran said, “children who have multiple viral strains at the same time—so very sick.”
UNM issued a resource guide to help parents determine how to respond to illness in children. It recommends the emergency room if children are wheezing, highly dehydrated, or have had a fever for more than five days (or any fever at all in an infant less than 6 weeks old). Urgent care, according to hospital officials, is appropriate if kids have a cold for a week or more; are vomiting or have diarrhea; or suspicion of a sinus infection. New Mexico is one of 12 states that the CDC Influenza Surveillance Report ranks as “very high” for “influenza-like” activity increasing across the nation.
Richardson had role in Griner’s release
Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson had a role leading up to yesterday’s prisoner trade that released WNBA basketball player and two-time gold-medal Olympian Brittney Griner from a Russian labor camp in exchange for the United States’ release of a Russian arms dealer. Richardson says he won’t stop efforts to secure the release of Paul Whelan, an American serving a 16-year sentence in Russia after a trial US officials denounced as unfair. “Often, the price we pay for bringing our fellow Americans home to their families is unseemly, but it is the right thing to do—for our fellow Americans, their families, and for our nation,” Richardson said in a statement. “We remain very concerned for Paul Whelan and committed to continue to work on his safe return, as we have been for the last four years.” Richardson, whose political career also included federal energy secretary, congressman and diplomat, now runs a nonprofit called The Richardson Center for Global Engagement. He’s since met with leaders in nations such as Iran, Myanmar, Korea and Cuba on various topics. The center’s vice president, Mickey Bergman, told the Albuquerque Journal the two traveled to Moscow “numerous times” and met with Russian leaders and Russian Embassy officials in Washington, DC. Griner’s wife, Cherelle Griner, specifically thanked Richardson during remarks at the White House, saying, “Today my family is whole, but as you are all aware, there’s so many other families who are not whole.”
Cannabis dispensaries lose “cashless” ATMs
Some New Mexico cannabis companies have lost one of their primary methods to take payments from customers amid a nationwide crackdown on so-called “cashless ATMs,” reporter Andy Lyman writes for SFR. Ambiguity in federal law leaves dispensaries to seek out cash alternatives for commerce, but until Congress acts on a perpetually in-limbo fix, it appears cannabis companies will return to cash. PurLife, a New Mexico cannabis company that predates the Cannabis Regulation Act, the state’s adult-use law, on Wednesday sent a notice to its customers announcing the company would revert back to only accepting cash. “Sadly, an industry wide shutdown of debit solutions has taken place and we are no longer able to process debit transactions,” the notification reads. Dan Pabon, a former Colorado state legislator and current legal counsel for Schwazze, the parent company of R. Greenleaf, tells SFR the ultimate solution is for Congress to pass the SAFE Banking Act, which aims to clear the way for above-board cannabis banking. The US House has passed versions of the legislation half a dozen times in recent years, but the US Senate on Wednesday removed the act from a national defense bill, essentially leaving it in the lurch.
COVID-19 by the numbers
Reported Dec. 8: New cases: 742; 651,520 total cases. The most recent report on geographic trends, dated Dec. 5, shows a 28.3% increase in reported cases over the prior seven-day period compared to the Nov. 28 report. Deaths: 7; Santa Fe County has had 374 total deaths; 8,736 total fatalities statewide. Statewide hospitalizations: 208; Patients on ventilators: 13.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent Dec. 8 “community levels” map, which uses a combination of hospital and case rate metrics to calculate COVID-19 risk for the prior seven-day period, shows eight counties categorized as “orange”—high risk—for COVID-19, versus three last week. They are: Cibola, Guadalupe, McKinley, Otero, San Juan, San Miguel, Torrance and Valencia. Santa Fe County remains “green,” identifying lower risk. Twelve counties are “yellow,” with medium risk. Corresponding recommendations for each level can be found here.
Resources: CDC interactive booster eligibility tool; NM DOH vaccine & booster registration; CDC isolation and exposure interactive tool; Curative testing sites; COVID-19 treatment info; NMDOH immunocompromised tool kit. People seeking treatment who do not have a medical provider can call NMDOH’s COVID-19 hotline at 1-855-600-3453. DOH encourages residents to download the NM Notify app and to report positive COVID-19 home tests on the app.
You can read all of SFR’s COVID-19 coverage here.
Listen up
If you think you know lots of stuff about dinosaurs, think again. The hosts of I Know Dino: The Big Dinosaur Podcast clearly know more than the average dinophile. Recent episodes have been reporting on new research featured at the 2022 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference last month, and No. 419 includes details from the Coelophysis bonebed in New Mexico, where scientists discovered pathology in the bones using histology, or microscopic study of the tissues. (Coelophysis is the official state fossil, found near Abiquiu.) Warning: There’s a long and detailed segment about T-Rex teeth and later one about dinosaur skin before the hosts get to this part, which starts around 54 minutes.
Cowboy drive
“Driven” delves in the history and modern context of Black cowboys in the new issue of El Palacio magazine through the lens of the “Outriders: Legacy of the Black Cowboy” at Harwood Museum of Art. Writer Almah LaVon Rice unpacks the works in the exhibition, including archival photographs and present-day representations of the lifestyle. “Even a cursory look into the annals of the cattle driving industry reveals that African American outriders were no outliers,” La Ron writes, also noting “Contemporary Black artists ([Ron] Tarver, Praise Fuller, Nate Young, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, Kennedi Carter, Ivan B. McClellan, and Alexander Harrison) aptly demonstrate in this show that the Black cowboy tradition still breathes and bronco-busts through barriers.” The exhibit opened in October and runs through May 7, 2023.
Tracking the fun train
Trains owned by some of Santa Fe’s longtime Railyard movie masters made Thrillist with the headline “The Wild West Meets ‘Game of Thrones’ on This Revitalized New Mexico Railway.” Locals know the story of how the Santa Fe Southern Railway sold its historic excursion and freight line to George R.R. Martin, Bill Banowsky and other investors. Now the colorful rolling stock chugs away from the Jean Cocteau Cinema (owned by Martin) and the Violet Crown Cinema (owned by Banowsky), through the city and out into the edge of the Galisteo Basin, often loaded with musicians and bearing festive themes such as “Jazz Under the Stars,” “Murder on the Lamy Line,” “the Stargazer Train” and more. “As part of the railroad’s revival, Martin used his creative talents to design an original immersive experience for passengers,” writes Thrillist. “It wasn’t the first time the novelist had branched out into crafting IRL adventures—he is, after all, co-creator of Meow Wolf—and his vision for the revamped train, now dubbed Sky Railway, combined history and fantasy into something totally unique. He enlisted local graffiti artist Jorael Numina to paint one train like a wolf and the other as a dragon, giving passengers...that intriguing first glimpse of the train as it approached the station.” The piece recommends “Pablo’s Holiday Train,” which features a recounting of how Santa helped Pablo the Dragon save Christmas and the requisite mugs of hot chocolate.
Weekend outlook
The National Weather Service calls for another clear and sunny day with a high near 46 today, then similar weather through the weekend with snow likely Monday.
Thanks for reading! The (Substitute) Word resonates with the phrase “our collective digital exhaustion,” and agrees that it “may have been compounded by the fact that tech companies this year acted sketchier than ever,” as Kyle Chayka writes in The New Yorker, “The Year in Apps I Gave Up On.”
