CDC Director Says We Could Control Covid-19 in 4-8 Weeks with 100% Mask Compliance

ON MONDAY 7/13/20, in response to a recent spike in COVID-19 numbers, California governor Newsom rolled back reopening in several business sectors. This is disheartening as our state was the first to take steps to control community spread and up until now had appeared to be pushing back the virus.

However, all is not lost. At the time of this unfortunate set-back, I just read a very encouraging message from CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield, virologist, that I would like to share.

On Tuesday 7/14/20, just one day after Governor Newsom’s rollback, Dr. Redfield made a very positive statement in JAMA. Dr. Redfield said that current research papers show that the number of novel coronavirus cases can be dramatically decreased with 100% cooperation by the American public with masking.

The time is now he went on to say. The director says by following this simple guideline we could have the epidemic under control in as little as 4 to 8 weeks!

As proof, Dr. Redfield mentioned a recent case study where 139 clients were exposed to two symptomatic hair stylists with confirmed COVID-19. Both the stylists and customers wore face masks and the number of symptomatic secondary cases was zero-That is significant proof of the benefit of masking in preventing transmission!

Please share this post with your friends, co-workers, and loved ones. Let’s make sure everyone is wearing their masks-We can beat this!

The Dangers of DIY Braces

DO-IT-YOURSELF PROJECTS can be wonderful ways to explore creativity, build something new, fix something broken, make something better, or simply save a little money. However, as medical experts who care very much about the health of your teeth, we have to draw the line at do-it-yourself braces.

The Alarming Trend of DIY Braces

We’ve noticed a disturbing trend in YouTube videos and social media where enterprising teens attempt to, in true MacGyver fashion, use household items like paper clips, rubber bands, fishing line, earring backs, and dental floss to straighten their teeth as an alternative to professional orthodontic treatment.

If shifting teeth into their proper position were as simple as applying pressure to cause movement, we might be impressed, but it’s much more complex than that. Orthodontists design treatment plans around patients’ overall oral health, growth patterns in the bones and tissues of the face, whether the wisdom teeth pose a potential problem, and more — not just the current position of their teeth.

Damaged Enamel and Root Strangulation

David Campbell is one example of how serious the consequences of DIY teeth-straightening can be. He used rubber bands to try to close the gap between his front teeth. He thought the rubber bands were disappearing at night, but they were actually working their way up into his gums, where they strangled the roots of his teeth. In the end, repairing the damage was more expensive than professional orthodontic treatment would have been.

Another danger is damage to the protective enamel layer on the tooth. Without the right materials and tools that orthodontists use, metal and rubber bands scraping against teeth can wear away the enamel, leaving teeth more vulnerable to tooth decay and temperature sensitivity.

Braces Are a Job for Professionals

We want to be clear: DIY braces are not cool life hacks, they are dangerous. Correcting bad bites and crowded dental arches is a complex and delicate process. Trying to get a straighter smile without the years of training and study to become a dentist, followed by additional years gaining the proper orthodontic specialization, is a recipe for disaster. If you want a straighter smile, leave it to the experts.

A Word from the AAO

At best, these “treatments” will merely be unsuccessful. At worst, they can lead to losing teeth. The American Association of Orthodontics put it best: “Moving teeth is a medical procedure and needs personal supervision by an orthodontist…Moving teeth without a thorough examination of the overall health of the teeth and gums could result in the permanent loss of teeth, which may result in expensive and lifelong dental problems.”

Take good care of your smile!

Top image by Flickr user Many Wonderful Artists used under Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 4.0 license. Image cropped and modified from original.

The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

Impacted Teeth and Orthodontic Treatment

NO TWO SMILES ARE the same, and the teeth that make them don’t always come in at the same rates. Some people get their adult teeth ahead of schedule, others get them late, and a few are left wondering if a tooth got lost on its way out. These are the impacted teeth. Most of the time, wisdom teeth are the ones that end up impacted, but not always.

Impacted Wisdom Teeth

If there isn’t enough room for an adult tooth to come in, it might remain partially or fully beneath the gums, or even headed in the wrong direction entirely. This happens to a lot of wisdom teeth, and that can mean trouble for the roots of the neighboring molars if they aren’t extracted in time. Impacted wisdom teeth don’t necessarily impact orthodontic treatment.

Other Impacted Teeth

After the wisdom teeth, the most likely teeth to be impacted are the upper canines. This issue can even be genetic. In most cases, only one of the canines will be impacted, but sometimes they both are. Why the upper canines in particular? These are the teeth affected because they come in last after the incisors and premolars that neighbor them, and there isn’t always enough room left for them.

Tooth Impaction Complications

When teeth can’t erupt like they’re supposed to, there can be complications like infections, gum disease, nerve damage, and cavities. Symptoms include bad breath or a persistent bad taste, tenderness and pain around the jaw, jaw and headaches, and swollen gums or lymph nodes. They also leave visible gaps between teeth where the impacted tooth should be.

These symptoms don’t affect everyone with an impacted tooth. If it’s the upper canine, the baby tooth might not ever become loose because the adult tooth isn’t in the right place to push on it. The canine teeth form the “corners” of the smile, in a sense, so this can have a big affect on appearance.

Pulling Impacted Teeth Into Place

Tooth impaction can’t really be prevented, but impacted wisdom teeth can be extracted and impacted canines can often be moved into place with a combination of oral surgery and orthodontic treatment. Dental X-rays will identify the impacted tooth, and then the orthodontist will make a plan for how to go forward.

Don’t Leave a Gap in That Smile!

If you have an impacted canine tooth and haven’t begun orthodontic treatment, we recommend scheduling a consultation. If correction is recommended rather than extraction, people with an impacted canine can expect their treatment to take a little longer than it would otherwise, but they’ll have a complete, straight smile in the end!

Our goal is getting our patients the straight, healthy smiles of their dreams!

Top image used under CC0 Public Domain license. Image cropped and modified from original.

The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

We Are Committed to Your Safety!

THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC has been challenging in ways many of us have never experienced and never imagined. Hopefully it’s the last time we have to face this kind of situation, but that doesn’t mean our practice won’t be taking every step to prepare.

Planning Ahead

In a couple of weeks we will be re-opening. Expect to see many changes geared towards our first and foremost commitment which has always been a safe and positive experience for our highly valued patients. Being prepared is part of staying positive!

At your next visit you can look forward to the following:

• Increased levels of protection: temperature and health screening of patients and staff, face shields, N-95 respirators, and level 2,3 surgical masks, gloves, over coats, and gowns.
• Custom plexiglass sneeze guards and patient privacy barriers.
• New check-in system for enhanced social distancing.
• Increased safety training for our team.
• New! Virtual Consultations in the comfort of your own home for new patients, mid-treatment progress consults, and case completion.

We’re Always Looking for Ways to Serve Our Patients

Our mission as a practice is to always be ready to help our patients with their orthodontic needs, and sometimes that means making a few changes.

The one thing that will never change is how much we love our patients.

See you soon. We miss you and can’t wait to catch up!

Team Kineret

Top image used under CC0 Public Domain license. Image cropped and modified from original.

Progress on a COVID-19 Vaccine!

Great news recently appeared that I am very excited to share — please pass this on to your friends and family!

According to a post on 4.30.2020 by Sebastian Siebt, a vaccine against COVID-19 developed at Oxford University, UK has shown extremely positive results when tested on macaque monkeys.

These animals are very close in genetic makeup to humans, which suggests the vaccine could work similarly on us. The scientists working on the vaccine say it could be ready as soon as September of this year.

The scientific name for the vaccine is ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 and it has just shot ahead to become the most promising potential vaccine against the novel coronavirus. British drug maker AstraZeneca said it would help Oxford develop, produce, and distribute the vaccine. The partnership hopes to produce 100 million doses by the end of the year!

The first good news came last week from a laboratory in Montana, where six rhesus macaques, who received a dose of the British vaccine last month, did not contract COVID-19 after being exposed to it. Other monkeys who had not been vaccinated caught the virus and fell ill.

Morgane Bomsel, a molecular biologist working on COVID-19 at the Cochin Institute in Paris, considers the results very encouraging, but warns against celebrating too soon as results have not yet been scientifically reviewed and published.

Meanwhile, work on the ChAdOx1 nCov-19 vaccine is moving ahead quickly in Britain. On April 24, the Oxford vaccine was the first in Europe to enter the human trial stage, with 1,110 healthy volunteers recruited for the tests.

Next Steps in Vaccine Development

It is important to ensure that the vaccine is not toxic for the human body; before checking whether it protects from COVID-19, the researchers first need to guarantee that it is not dangerous.

The next step is to “take samples from the subjects to check for the presence of antibodies and the effectiveness of the vaccine against the coronavirus.”

If the trial produces positive results, millions of doses of ChAdOx1 nCov-19 could be available as early as September, Oxford researchers told the New York Times, months ahead of other known efforts. Typically, it takes about 18 months, so that is very fast!

The Oxford scientists might be able to work at record speed because this vaccine isn’t totally new. The researchers used a technological platform with which they already have quite a lot of experience.

The core of the vaccine, ChAdOx1, is an adenovirus that belongs to a family of viruses that have a mild effect on humans and chimpanzees. It is then combined with parts of another virus to make a vaccine.

For the current coronavirus, researchers simply “added the surface protein of COVID-19 to ChAdOx1.” The Oxford scientists were quickly able to adapt it to the current pandemic and develop the clinical trial protocols.

Ring Vaccination Strategy

Even if the results of the clinical trial currently under way end up being promising, it will still be a little early to celebrate.

Phase III of the vaccine’s development, will be to administer it to volunteers who will then be released back into their regular environments where they could be exposed naturally to the virus.

The idea is to administer the vaccine to members of the first circle of contacts of people who fall ill with the virus, and then to observe whether the virus contaminates the second circle. That way, it’s possible both to vaccinate and to evaluate.

This was done during the 2018 Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and could be replicated to fight against Covid-19.

While the experts recognize that the work of the Oxford team was very promising, they said other possible vaccines, like those being developed by the American pharmaceutical companies Inovio and Moderna, might also be in advanced stages of research by the autumn.

Despite the encouraging news, there is no guarantee that the vaccines will work. But even if the efforts at Oxford University are not completely successful we will have learned a lot about how the body’s immune system fights this virus and it is likely that it will still reduce the severity of the virus, which is a great silver lining!

Great Kids’ Quarantine Content

LOOKING FOR GOOD CONTENT to help your kids deal with Covid 19? Take a look at Nickelodeon. According to a recent Channel 3000 post, Nickelodeon put up a new site to help kids keep learning and stay busy while safely remaining at home.

The new site is called #KidsTogether and the content helps kids understand the guidelines for the COVID-19 outbreak. It also has several downloadable kid-friendly activities.

On the site, kids will recognize their favorite characters like the Bubble Guppies, the Casagrandes, and SpongeBob SquarePants. The site offers kid-friendly videos that teach the children about social distancing and proper hand washing, and it has indoor games and activities to promote physical and mental activity.

So if you are running low on tactics and the kids are getting a bit stir-crazy with the stay at home directive, take a look!

Practice Updates Regarding Coronavirus

BASED ON RECOMMENDATIONS from the ADA and the CDC, we’re temporarily changing the way our practice operates. We recommend that all of our patients check the CDC’s website for information on the coronavirus and what we can do to slow the spread.

Temporary Changes to Our Schedule

For now, the office will remain closed until the governor’s shelter-in-place directive is modified (hopefully in May?). The front office team (admin, scheduling) are working remotely, monitoring and answering phone calls, texts, and emails.

Emergency Treatment

Most orthodontic problems (like poking wires and loose brackets) can be managed at home until we reopen. We have short video clips that will help on the website. We also have instructions on how to make temporary retainers should you lose your custom made ones. These will hold teeth until we can reopen and make you new custom ones.

If you have rubber band or aligner questions, please call us and send photos so we can help. If you are running out of elastics, please call and send a photo of your bag so we can mail you more. If you have a true dental emergency like significant swelling with pain and infection or trauma, please contact your dentist immediately; if you do not get a prompt response, go to the E.R.

We Are Strong When We Work Together

Right now, one of the best ways that we as healthcare professionals can help to slow the spread of coronavirus is to follow the guidance of these health organizations, and we encourage our patients to do the same. We will be sure to update you about additional changes at our practice.

We love all our patients!

Top image used under CC0 Public Domain license. Image cropped and modified from original.

The content on this blog is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.

Dealing with COVID-19: How to Shelter at Home and Not Go Stir Crazy

IF YOU ARE LIKE me, the hardest part of managing the current pandemic is to stay at home and not go completely bonkers! We are a nation that has always been an on-the-go-and-get-stuff-done society, so hunkering down for several weeks can be a huge challenge — not just to our physical well-being and economy but to our mental and emotional balance as well.

The good news is that social distancing and other mitigation measures are starting to work and we are about to turn the corner. So it is important to remember that if we stay vigilant and follow the rules, this is temporary and it will get better soon. In the meantime, I am including in this article some good ideas to help you weather the storm, stay home and safe, and deal with the “cabin fever” of self-quarantine.

Here are a couple of ideas I read in a great article posted on March 12, 2020 in the Wall Street Journal by author Ruth Margolis.

First, Ruth suggests dividing your home into zones to maintain the peace when adults are trying to get work done at home and still educate, enrich, and raise their kids. She says make sure to establish a work zone/room, a quiet or rest zone/room, and lastly to zone off a play and recreation area or room. Then figure out a schedule for when different family members are in each respective zone. Enforce penalties and offer rewards for compliance. Oh yes, this is important too: one adult monitors the kids and the other does their work, then switch.

Second, right now, screens are your friend. So keep iPads and phones charged and don’t worry about excessive screen time for now if it keeps the peace. We’ll wean ourselves off of them once quarantines are lifted.

In most situations, as long as we follow social distancing rules, we can still go outside and avail ourselves of the wonderful spring weather. For me, exercise (primarily walking with family members) has been the best release for cabin fever. Plus it offers the double benefit of improving your physical health and immunity while lifting spirits — and importantly, you get to wave at the neighbors, feel less isolated, and realize we are all in this together.

Another way to stay sane is to engage in your hobbies or start new ones, watch all those documentaries you shelved when there wasn’t enough time, or do some catch-up reading. This is all about making lemonade out of lemons right now; don’t feel guilty about it or that you should be working on something. Life is a balance of work, rest, and play. Some extra rest and play right now won’t hurt and will sure help a lot in getting through this and maintaining your sanity!

SK

Top image used under CC0 Public Domain license. Image cropped and modified from original.