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Category: Health

Covid vaccines have higher approval in less affluent countries

Covid vaccines have higher approval in less affluent countries

Nature reports: People in low- and middle-income countries tend to be much more willing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine than are those in the United States, according to an analysis that included poll results from a dozen countries. The analysis, reported on 16 July in Nature Medicine, found that 80% of individuals surveyed in ten low- and middle- income countries (LMICs) in Asia, Africa and South America were willing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine, compared with 65% in the United…

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Suddenly, (some) Republicans are all in on the vaccine

Suddenly, (some) Republicans are all in on the vaccine

Susan Glasser writes: Since the end of the Trump Presidency, Republicans have been ratcheting up the doom-and-gloom quotient in their rhetoric. By this spring, they settled on a narrative of permanent crisis—to be blamed on President Biden, of course. There was the Biden Border Crisis. The Crime Crisis. The Inflation Crisis and its corollary, the High-Gas-Price Crisis. The Critical-Race-Theory Crisis. Even, this week, the Ben & Jerry’s-Is-Mean-to-Israel Crisis. America under Biden, to hear them tell it, has become a hellscape…

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Why vaccinated people are getting ‘breakthrough’ infections

Why vaccinated people are getting ‘breakthrough’ infections

The New York Times reports: A wedding in Oklahoma leads to 15 vaccinated guests becoming infected with the coronavirus. Raucous Fourth of July celebrations disperse the virus from Provincetown, Mass., to dozens of places across the country, sometimes carried by fully vaccinated celebrants. As the Delta variant surges across the nation, reports of infections in vaccinated people have become increasingly frequent — including, most recently, among at least six Texas Democrats, a White House aide and an aide to Speaker…

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Coexisting with the coronavirus

Coexisting with the coronavirus

Katherine S. Xue writes: In the spring of 1846, a Dutch physician named Peter Ludwig Panum arrived on the Faroe Islands, a volcanic chain about two hundred miles northwest of Scotland. He found the Faroes to be a harsh and unforgiving place. The islands’ eight thousand inhabitants, who were Danish subjects at that time, spent their days outdoors, buffeted by sea winds, fishing and tending sheep. The conditions, Panum wrote, were unlikely “to prolong the lives of the inhabitants.” And…

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New York air quality among worst in world as haze from Western wildfires shrouds city

New York air quality among worst in world as haze from Western wildfires shrouds city

The Guardian reports: New York City air quality was among the worst in the world as cities across the eastern US were shrouded in smoke from wildfires raging several thousand miles away on the country’s west coast. State officials in New York advised vulnerable people, such as those with asthma and heart disease, to avoid strenuous outdoor activity as air pollution soared to eclipse Lima in Peru and Kolkata in India to be ranked as the worst in the world…

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India’s true pandemic death toll likely to be well over 3 million, new study finds

India’s true pandemic death toll likely to be well over 3 million, new study finds

The New York Times reports: The number of people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic in India so far is likely to exceed three million — nearly 10 times the official Covid-19 death toll — making it one of the worst human tragedies in the nation’s history, according to a new study. In a comprehensive examination of the true toll of the pandemic in the sprawling nation of 1.4 billion, the Center for Global Development, a Washington research institute,…

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Ivermectin Covid-19 scandal shows how vulnerable science is to fraud

Ivermectin Covid-19 scandal shows how vulnerable science is to fraud

James Heathers and Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz write: Most scientists assume they will never come across a single case of fraud in their careers, and so even the thought of checking calculations in reviewable papers, re-running analyses, or checking if experimental protocols were properly deployed is deemed unnecessary. Worse, the accompanying raw data and analytical code often needed to forensically analyze a paper are not routinely published, and performing this kind of stringent review is often considered to be a hostile act,…

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Is it time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

Is it time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, writes: Health research is based on trust. Health professionals and journal editors reading the results of a clinical trial assume that the trial happened and that the results were honestly reported. But about 20% of the time, said Ben Mol, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at Monash Health, they would be wrong. As I’ve been concerned about research fraud for 40 years, I wasn’t that surprised as many would be by…

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Humans started growing cannabis 12,000 years ago

Humans started growing cannabis 12,000 years ago

ZME Science reports: A new study traced back the origin of cannabis agriculture to nearly 12,000 years ago in East Asia. During this time cannabis was likely a multipurpose crop — it was only 4,000 years ago that farmers started growing different strains for either fiber or drug production. Although it’s largely understudied due to legal reasons, cannabis is one of the first plants to be domesticated by humans. Archaeological studies have found traces of cannabis in various different cultures…

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How Covid-19 has upended life in undervaccinated Arkansas

How Covid-19 has upended life in undervaccinated Arkansas

The New York Times reports: When the boat factory in this leafy Ozark Mountains city offered free coronavirus vaccinations this spring, Susan Johnson, 62, a receptionist there, declined the offer, figuring she was protected as long as she never left her house without a mask. Linda Marion, 68, a widow with chronic pulmonary disease, worried that a vaccination might actually trigger Covid-19 and kill her. Barbara Billigmeier, 74, an avid golfer who retired here from California, believed she did not…

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Africa’s Covid crisis deepens, but vaccines are still far off

Africa’s Covid crisis deepens, but vaccines are still far off

The New York Times reports: Africa is now in the deadliest stage of its pandemic, and there is little prospect of relief in sight. The Delta variant is sweeping across the continent. Namibia and Tunisia are reporting more deaths per capita than any other country. Hospitals across the continent are filling up, oxygen supplies and medical workers are stretched thin and recorded deaths jumped 40 percent last week alone. But only about 1 percent of Africans have been fully vaccinated….

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In parts of America, the pandemic is now the worst it’s ever been

In parts of America, the pandemic is now the worst it’s ever been

Ed Yong writes: The summer wasn’t meant to be like this. By April, Greene County, in southwestern Missouri, seemed to be past the worst of the pandemic. Intensive-care units that once overflowed had emptied. Vaccinations were rising. Health-care workers who had been fighting the coronavirus for months felt relieved—perhaps even hopeful. Then, in late May, cases started ticking up again. By July, the surge was so pronounced that “it took the wind out of everyone,” Erik Frederick, the chief administrative…

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Huge study supporting ivermectin as Covid treatment withdrawn. Data appears ‘totally faked’

Huge study supporting ivermectin as Covid treatment withdrawn. Data appears ‘totally faked’

The Guardian reports: The efficacy of a drug being promoted by rightwing figures worldwide for treating Covid-19 is in serious doubt after a major study suggesting the treatment is effective against the virus was withdrawn due to “ethical concerns”. The preprint study on the efficacy and safety of ivermectin – a drug used against parasites such as worms and headlice – in treating Covid-19, led by Dr Ahmed Elgazzar from Benha University in Egypt, was published on the Research Square…

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Immunized but banned: EU says not all Covid vaccines equal

Immunized but banned: EU says not all Covid vaccines equal

The Associated Press reports: After Dr. Ifeanyi Nsofor and his wife received two doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine in Nigeria, they assumed they would be free to travel this summer to a European destination of their choice. They were wrong. The couple — and millions of other people vaccinated through a U.N.-backed effort — could find themselves barred from entering many European and other countries because those nations don’t recognize the Indian-made version of the vaccine for travel. Although AstraZeneca…

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Tennessee abandons vaccine outreach to children

Tennessee abandons vaccine outreach to children

The Tennessean reports: The Tennessee Department of Health will halt all adolescent vaccine outreach – not just for coronavirus, but all diseases – amid pressure from Republican state lawmakers, according to an internal report and agency emails obtained by the Tennessean. If the health department must issue any information about vaccines, staff are instructed to strip the agency logo off the documents. The health department will also stop all COVID-19 vaccine events on school property, despite holding at least one…

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Will Covid-19 change science? Past pandemics offer clues

Will Covid-19 change science? Past pandemics offer clues

Science reports: Although the past may not presage the future, epidemic history illuminates how change unfolds. “Historians often say that what an epidemic will do is expose underlying fault lines,” says Erica Charters, a historian of medicine at the University of Oxford who is studying how epidemics end. But how we respond is up to us. “When we ask, ‘How does the epidemic change society?’ it suggests there’s something in the disease that will guide us. But the disease doesn’t…

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