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Category: Health

In the calm before the superbug storm, the world needs to prepare

In the calm before the superbug storm, the world needs to prepare

Kevin Outterson writes: Failing to plan, it’s been said, is planning to fail. By this standard, the United States and other countries are planning for failure when it comes to preparing for the next public health crises, one of which will certainly be antimicrobial resistance, the phenomenon in which bacteria and fungi evolve to resist even the strongest treatments. Covid-19 has demonstrated the catastrophic result of a virus catching the world unprepared. But over human history, bacteria have been our…

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Science vs. medical bureaucracy

Science vs. medical bureaucracy

David Leonhardt writes: For the 15 million Americans who have received the Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine, the confusing messages from the federal government just keep coming. An F.D.A. advisory panel is scheduled to vote today on whether J. & J. recipients should receive a booster shot. But the panel is not likely to vote on what seems to be the most relevant question: Should the booster shot come from one of the other vaccines — Pfizer’s or Moderna’s, which…

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Ivermectin is a Nobel Prize-winning wonder drug – but not for Covid

Ivermectin is a Nobel Prize-winning wonder drug – but not for Covid

While ivermectin was originally used to treat river blindness, it has also been repurposed to treat other human parasitic infections. ISSOUF SANOGO/AFP via Getty Images By Jeffrey R. Aeschlimann, University of Connecticut Ivermectin is an over 30-year-old wonder drug that treats life- and sight-threatening parasitic infections. Its lasting influence on global health has been so profound that two of the key researchers in its discovery and development won the Nobel Prize in 2015. I’ve been an infectious disease pharmacist for…

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‘I hope you die’: How the Covid pandemic unleashed attacks on scientists

‘I hope you die’: How the Covid pandemic unleashed attacks on scientists

Nature reports: Infectious-diseases physician Krutika Kuppalli had been in her new job for barely a week in September 2020, when someone phoned her at home and threatened to kill her. Kuppalli, who had just moved from California to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, had been dealing with online abuse for months after she’d given high-profile media interviews on COVID-19, and had recently testified to a US congressional committee on how to hold safe elections during the pandemic….

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The mysterious case of the coronavirus lab-leak theory

The mysterious case of the coronavirus lab-leak theory

Carolyn Kormann writes: Since the coronavirus first appeared, at the end of 2019, four and a half million people have died, countless more have suffered, whole economies have been upended, schools have been shuttered. Why? Did the virus jump from an animal to its first human host, its patient zero? Or, as some suspect, was the catastrophe the result of a laboratory accident in Wuhan, a city of eleven million people in central China? Kristian Andersen, an infectious-disease expert at…

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Covid is the most common cause of duty-related deaths among police officers

Covid is the most common cause of duty-related deaths among police officers

The New York Times reports: Over the last year and a half, a majority of the roughly 40 police officers who patrol Baker, La., a suburb of Baton Rouge, tested positive for the coronavirus. All of them recovered and went back to work — until Lt. DeMarcus Dunn got sick. Lieutenant Dunn, a 36-year-old shift supervisor who coached youth sports and once chased down someone who fled the police station after being arrested, died from Covid-19 on Aug. 13. His…

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Moderna, racing for profits, keeps Covid vaccine out of reach of poor

Moderna, racing for profits, keeps Covid vaccine out of reach of poor

The New York Times reports: Moderna, whose coronavirus vaccine appears to be the world’s best defense against Covid-19, has been supplying its shots almost exclusively to wealthy nations, keeping poorer countries waiting and earning billions in profit. After developing a breakthrough vaccine with the financial and scientific support of the U.S. government, Moderna has shipped a greater share of its doses to wealthy countries than any other vaccine manufacturer, according to Airfinity, a data firm that tracks vaccine shipments. About…

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An ‘historic event’: First malaria vaccine approved by WHO

An ‘historic event’: First malaria vaccine approved by WHO

The New York Times reports: The world has gained a new weapon in the war on malaria, among the oldest known and deadliest of infectious diseases: the first vaccine shown to help prevent the disease. By one estimate, it will save tens of thousands of children each year. Malaria kills about half a million people each year, nearly all of them in sub-Saharan Africa — including 260,000 children under 5. The new vaccine, made by GlaxoSmithKline, rouses a child’s immune…

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In Alaska’s Covid crisis, doctors must decide who lives and who dies

In Alaska’s Covid crisis, doctors must decide who lives and who dies

The New York Times reports: There was one bed coming available in the intensive care unit in Alaska’s largest hospital. It was the middle of the night, and the hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, had been hit with a deluge of coronavirus patients. Doctors now had a choice to make: Several more patients at the hospital, most of them with Covid-19, were in line to take that last I.C.U. spot. But there was also someone from one of…

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Facebook struggles to suppress uproar over Instagram’s harmful effects on teens

Facebook struggles to suppress uproar over Instagram’s harmful effects on teens

The New York Times reports: Over the past few weeks, top Facebook executives assembled virtually for a series of emergency meetings. In one gathering last weekend, half a dozen managers — including Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, and Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs — discussed pausing the development of an Instagram service for children ages 13 and under, said two people briefed on the meeting. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, weighed in to approve the decision, the…

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How military leadership assisted Portugal’s vaccination success

How military leadership assisted Portugal’s vaccination success

The New York Times reports: Portugal’s health care system was on the verge of collapse. Hospitals in the capital, Lisbon, were overflowing and the authorities were asking people to treat themselves at home. In the last week of January, nearly 2,000 people died as the virus spread. The country’s vaccine program was in a shambles, so the government turned to Vice Adm. Henrique Gouveia e Melo, a former submarine squadron commander, to right the ship. Eight months later, Portugal is…

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Merck pill intended to treat Covid-19 succeeds in key study

Merck pill intended to treat Covid-19 succeeds in key study

The Wall Street Journal reports: Merck and its partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP said their experimental Covid-19 pill helped prevent high-risk people early in the course of the disease in a pivotal study from becoming seriously ill and dying, a big step toward providing the pandemic’s first easy-to-use, at-home treatment. The pill cut the risk of hospitalization or death in study subjects with mild to moderate Covid-19 by about 50%, the companies said Friday. The drug, called molnupiravir, was performing so…

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How immunizations helped create America

How immunizations helped create America

David Leonhardt writes: The United States owes its existence as a nation partly to an immunization mandate. In 1777, smallpox was a big enough problem for the bedraggled American army that George Washington thought it could jeopardize the Revolution. An outbreak had already led to one American defeat, at the Battle of Quebec. To prevent more, Washington ordered immunizations — done quietly, so the British would not hear how many Americans were sick — for all troops who had not…

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Covid is killing rural Americans at twice the rate of people in urban areas

Covid is killing rural Americans at twice the rate of people in urban areas

NBC News reports: Rural Americans are dying of Covid at more than twice the rate of their urban counterparts — a divide that health experts say is likely to widen as access to medical care shrinks for a population that tends to be older, sicker, heavier, poorer and less vaccinated. While the initial surge of Covid-19 deaths skipped over much of rural America, where roughly 15 percent of Americans live, nonmetropolitan mortality rates quickly started to outpace those of metropolitan…

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We’re already barreling toward the next pandemic

We’re already barreling toward the next pandemic

Ed Yong writes: A year after the United States bombed its pandemic performance in front of the world, the Delta variant opened the stage for a face-saving encore. If the U.S. had learned from its mishandling of the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, it would have been better prepared for the variant that was already ravaging India. Instead, after a quiet spring, President Joe Biden all but declared victory against SARS-CoV-2. The CDC ended indoor masking for vaccinated people, pitting two of…

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As California burns, much of America breathes toxic smoke

As California burns, much of America breathes toxic smoke

Inside Climate News reports: Western wildfires pose a much broader threat to human health than to just those forced to evacuate the path of the blazes. Smoke from these fires, which have burned millions of acres in California alone, is choking vast swaths of the country, an analysis of federal satellite imagery by NPR’s California Newsroom and Stanford University’s Environmental Change and Human Outcomes Lab found. The months-long analysis, based on more than 10 years of data collected by the…

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