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Category: Health

Uncounted: Inaccurate death certificates across the country hide the true toll of COVID-19

Uncounted: Inaccurate death certificates across the country hide the true toll of COVID-19

Missouri Independent reports: In Cape Girardeau County, the coroner hasn’t pronounced a single person dead of COVID-19 in 2021. Wavis Jordan, a Republican who was elected last year to serve as coroner of the 80,000-person county, says his office “doesn’t do COVID deaths.” He does not investigate deaths himself, and requires families to provide proof of a positive COVID-19 test before including it on a death certificate. Meanwhile, deaths at home attributed to conditions with symptoms that look a lot…

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How zinc helps you fight off infections

How zinc helps you fight off infections

Diana Kwon writes: Walk down the cold-remedy aisle of almost any pharmacy and you’ll see a shelf full of zinc supplements. Clearly, people must be worried that they’re not getting enough zinc, a nutrient often touted for its ability to quash the common cold and other respiratory illnesses. But do many of us really need more zinc? And if so, what good does it do? As researchers learn more about how our bodies use zinc, they’re finding that the element…

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Trump finally decides to push back against Covid vaccine lies

Trump finally decides to push back against Covid vaccine lies

Eric Lutz writes: In a rare dalliance with the truth, Donald Trump championed COVID-19 vaccines in an interview published Wednesday, pushing back on an attempt by the Daily Wire’s Candace Owens to undermine the shots, calling them “very, very good.” The former president’s defense of the inoculations was, of course, as self-serving as anything he’s ever done, and by no means makes him some heroic defender of public health. But it is a welcome—albeit belated—gesture that one hopes will help…

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Omicron sweeps across nation, now 73% of U.S. Covid cases

Omicron sweeps across nation, now 73% of U.S. Covid cases

The Associated Press reports: Omicron has raced ahead of other variants and is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the U.S., accounting for 73% of new infections last week, federal health officials said Monday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers showed nearly a six-fold increase in omicron’s share of infections in only one week. In much of the country, it’s even higher. Omicron is responsible for an estimated 90% or more of new infections in the…

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Trump implores supporters to take credit for the vaccines — even if they don’t want to take the vaccines

Trump implores supporters to take credit for the vaccines — even if they don’t want to take the vaccines

CNN reports: According to video tweeted by O’Reilly’s “No Spin News,” the former Fox News host says, “Both the President and I are vaxxed” and then asks Trump, “Did you get the booster?” “Yes,” Trump says to a smattering of boos in the audience. “Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t,” Trump says in the video, seemingly trying to quiet the boos. “That’s all right, it’s a very tiny group over there.” CNN has reached out to a Trump spokesperson for more…

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Most of the world’s vaccines likely won’t prevent infection from Omicron

Most of the world’s vaccines likely won’t prevent infection from Omicron

The New York Times reports: A growing body of preliminary research suggests the Covid vaccines used in most of the world offer almost no defense against becoming infected by the highly contagious Omicron variant. All vaccines still seem to provide a significant degree of protection against serious illness from Omicron, which is the most crucial goal. But only the Pfizer and Moderna shots, when reinforced by a booster, appear to have initial success at stopping infections, and these vaccines are…

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Don’t panic about Omicron. But don’t be indifferent, either

Don’t panic about Omicron. But don’t be indifferent, either

Ashish K. Jha writes: The Omicron wave is upon us, and the national conversation is vacillating between panic and indifference. Those who are near panic point to rapidly rising case counts and lockdowns in several European nations. Those who are indifferent lean into reports of Omicron being a milder coronavirus variant; after nearly two years of COVID, that can feel like reason enough to put the pandemic in the rear-view mirror and get on with their life. Both perspectives are…

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In South Africa, Gauteng’s Omicron wave is already peaking. Why?

In South Africa, Gauteng’s Omicron wave is already peaking. Why?

David Wallace-Wells writes: In Gauteng, South Africa’s Omicron epicenter, the wave seems to be cresting. In other parts of the country, too, the terrifyingly fast rise of the new variant appears already to be slowing and even receding. This is very encouraging, since it suggests that Omicron waves elsewhere in the world may also be, if disorientingly fast, also mercifully short. But it is also a bit confusing, given that the wave has peaked well before anything like it had…

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Trump White House made ‘deliberate efforts’ to undermine Covid response, report says

Trump White House made ‘deliberate efforts’ to undermine Covid response, report says

NBC News reports: The Trump administration engaged in “deliberate efforts” to undermine the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic for political purposes, a congressional report released Friday concludes. The report, prepared by the House select subcommittee investigating the nation’s Covid response, says the White House repeatedly overruled public health and testing guidance by the nation’s top infectious disease experts and silenced officials in order to promote then-President Donald Trump’s political agenda. In August of last year, for example, Trump hosted…

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America is not ready for Omicron

America is not ready for Omicron

Ed Yong writes: America was not prepared for COVID-19 when it arrived. It was not prepared for last winter’s surge. It was not prepared for Delta’s arrival in the summer or its current winter assault. More than 1,000 Americans are still dying of COVID every day, and more have died this year than last. Hospitalizations are rising in 42 states. The University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, which entered the pandemic as arguably the best-prepared hospital in the country,…

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Unvaccinated Covid patients push hospital systems past the brink

Unvaccinated Covid patients push hospital systems past the brink

Bloomberg reports: In a Kentucky hospital bed at the end of November, a Covid-19 patient from the state’s latest wave of infections lay alone behind the glass isolation wall. A high-flow oxygen mask pushed extra air into his damaged lungs. His heart beat fast, though he lay frail and still. His mouth opened and closed to take tiny gulps of air. It looked like he was suffocating. Kentucky’s Covid landscape is a lot like what’s happening in the rest of…

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Will we always need Covid-19 boosters? Experts have theories

Will we always need Covid-19 boosters? Experts have theories

STAT reports: With the world facing the latest in a seemingly endless stream of coronavirus variants — and with bullish talk from manufacturers about a need for even more vaccine shots — you wouldn’t be alone if you were wondering: Are Covid boosters always going to be a fixture in our future? The simple truth is that, at this point, there’s no definitive answer to that question. But virologists, immunologists, and vaccinologists have opinions that are anchored in an understanding…

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Omicron has all the makings of a massive wave

Omicron has all the makings of a massive wave

David Wallace-Wells writes: For all their limitations, the models right now are flashing bright red. Over the course of the pandemic, again and again, projections based on simplistic extrapolations of current trends have missed the mark when the trajectories turned. Sometimes this has been for the good, with dire warnings looking excessive after waves peaked and declined well before a full penetration of the population; sometimes, unfortunately, the turn has been in the other direction. But right now we don’t…

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Pfizer’s Covid pill works well and is likely to work against Omicron, company confirms in final analysis

Pfizer’s Covid pill works well and is likely to work against Omicron, company confirms in final analysis

The New York Times reports: Pfizer announced on Tuesday that its Covid pill was found to stave off severe disease in a key clinical trial and that it is likely to work against the highly mutated Omicron variant of the virus. The results underscore the promise of the treatment, which health officials and doctors are counting on, to ease the burden on hospitals as the United States braces for a mounting fourth wave of the pandemic. If the Food and…

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Junk food and the brain: How modern diets lacking in micronutrients may contribute to angry rhetoric

Junk food and the brain: How modern diets lacking in micronutrients may contribute to angry rhetoric

Research reveals links between the irritability, explosive rage and unstable moods that have grown more common in recent years, and a lack of micronutrients that are important for brain function. (Shutterstock) Bonnie Kaplan, University of Calgary and Julia J Rucklidge, University of Canterbury Emotional, non-rational, even explosive remarks in public discourse have escalated in recent years. Politicians endure insults during legislative discussions; scientists receive emails and tweets containing verbal abuse and threats. What’s going on? This escalation in angry rhetoric…

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What has the Omicron variant changed?

What has the Omicron variant changed?

Dhruv Khullar writes: The Covid-19 pandemic, like every pandemic before it, is a story of equilibriums: between viral biology and human immune response; between news of the pathogen and fear of it; between the damage it inflicts and the social, economic, and political choices we make. A disease persists as a pandemic as long as these forces remain in flux; it becomes endemic when the balance is, more or less, set. The morning after Thanksgiving, Americans awoke to an unsettling…

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