The Biden Administration has officially withdrawn a rule that would have required workers at big companies to get vaccinated or face regular COVID testing requirements. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration confirmed the withdrawal Tuesday. But the agency said it still strongly encourages workers to get vaccinated. In early November, OSHA announced a vaccine-or-test mandate for companies with at least 100 employees. The rule—which would have impacted more than 80 million U.S. workers—was originally set to go into effect on Jan. 4. But numerous states and business groups challenged the rule in court. On Jan. 13, the Supreme Court halted the plan. In a 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservative majority concluded that OSHA had overstepped its authority. “OSHA has never before imposed such a mandate. Nor has Congress,″ the court’s majority wrote. ”Indeed, although Congress has enacted significant legislation addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, it has declined to enact any measure similar to what OSHA has promulgated here.” The justices left in place a vaccine mandate for health care providers who receive federal Medicare or Medicaid funding. That rule affects 10.4 million workers. U.S. corporations have been split over whether to mandate employee vaccinations. United Airlines began requiring vaccines in August; the company says 99% of its workers have been vaccinated or have requested medical or religious exemptions. Tyson Foods, which also announced a mandate in August, says 96% of its workers were vaccinated by a Nov. 1 deadline. But other big businesses, including Starbucks and General Electric, scrapped previously announced vaccine mandates for their employees after the Supreme Court’s ruling. OSHA indicated that the rule could return in some form. While it is no longer an enforceable standard, it remains a proposed rule, OSHA said. For now, the agency said it will prioritize the health care mandate. David Michaels, an epidemiologist and former OSHA administrator who now teaches at The George Washington University, said the agency could consider a new rule that would include other measures designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in workplaces, such as requiring face masks, distancing, and better ventilation systems. from https://ift.tt/34bHf7n Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/
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On a cold October morning in Lander, Wyo., Liz Lightner makes a few mental notes as she sits by a stranger’s bedside. The man is 79, has lung cancer and is in a deep-sleep coma. He’s wearing a blue scuba-diving shirt that’s worn out and looks as if it’s been loved, washed and rewashed for many years. Besides the company of his cat, the man is alone and moments from dying. Using only words, Lightner, 49, carries him away from a home that he can’t physically leave anymore and guides him under the sea, where she knows he used to be happy. She leans her head against his chest and tells him they’re now swimming together in the tropical ocean, where so many vibrant schools of fish surround them. She describes for him the striking blues and oranges of their fins, how the sun pierces through the still water and lights up the coral beneath them. She tells him he’s warm, weightless and floating. Lightner sits beside the man for nearly seven hours. Before she leaves, she gently places his frail hand on his sleeping cat and reassures him that his beloved pet will be fine when he’s gone. Then she opens a window—a symbolic and spiritual gesture of passage to whatever comes next. The man died the next day, which is expected in Lightner’s new line of work. She’s a death doula, an end-of-life coach who helps the terminally ill be at peace with dying—and she’s among hundreds of Americans who’ve embraced the rising occupation during the pandemic. Since COVID-19 emerged in early 2020, organizations that support and train U.S. death doulas have seen significant spikes in membership and enrollment. The National End-of-Life Doula Alliance grew to more than 1,000 members in 2021, from just 200 in 2019. More than 600 people enrolled in the University of Vermont’s end-of-life doula program in 2021, compared with fewer than 200 in 2017 when the program began. Some training groups say enrollment has more than tripled during the pandemic, as has the number of people seeking help for themselves and others facing imminent death. Pre-pandemic, Merilynne Rush says her training group, the Dying Year, would get about six calls a year from people looking for an end-of-life doula. Now she fields three to four calls a month. “We’re seeing a huge flurry of interest,” she says. <strong>“We’re seeing a huge flurry of interest.”</strong>That’s no surprise as the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 surpasses 866,000. In the past 22 months, “the awareness of death was in all of our faces,” says Suzanne O’Brien, whose group, Doulagivers, trained more than 1,000 people in 2021, up from roughly 380 in 2019. At the height of the pandemic in New York City, temporary morgues, including refrigerated trucks, appeared near overwhelmed hospitals. On the Internet, pleas for funeral assistance flooded in from thousands of families who’d lost loved ones to the virus. “Whether we wanted to look away or not, we really couldn’t,” O’Brien says. That’s forced many Americans to reckon with their own mortality in new ways. For one, more young people are writing living wills, according to several estate planners and national surveys. In 2020, a Gallup poll found that the percentage of Americans who said they have a will increased only to 45% from 40% in 2005. But for the first time, according to a Caring.com survey, people ages 18 to 34 were more likely in 2021 to have a will than those ages 35 to 54. The younger generation was the most likely to cite COVID-19 as a major reason to plan for death. “For the first time in a generation, everyone is experiencing the possibility that death may touch their lives—not someday, but now,” says Ann Burns, president of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel. The Sept. 11 attacks prompted a similar uptick in end-of-life planning after Americans saw nearly 3,000 people die in one day, according to Bill Kirchick, a Boston-based estate attorney. The pandemic was a far greater shock to the system. “To some people,” Kirchick says, “it was a wake-up call.” For many others, it was a call to action. After Tracy Yost, who lives in Danbury, Conn., was furloughed from her job as a fitness manager at a retirement community in 2020, she says she’d call 100 of the residents twice a week to check in. It didn’t take long to hear how “wildly isolated” they sounded. At the same time, Yost’s friends were saying their final goodbyes to their dying parents through video calls. “I just thought, Oh my God. We have lost our way,” says Yost, 52, who became a death doula largely because she feared the pandemic would create a new generation of people traumatized by death. “We already live in a society that doesn’t talk about dying,” Yost says, adding that the taboo nature of death may be reflected in the majority of Americans who don’t have their advanced health care directives in order. Without the pandemic, Yost says she likely never would have become a doula. On a September day in Chattanooga, Tenn., Sara Web, 38, meets with a young woman in her 20s. The woman is lost, scared and confused as her mother nears the end of her decade-long battle with cancer. Web gently draws information from the daughter as they talk about what her mother has meant to her at every stage of life. The way she cared for her daughter when she was ill; the way they decorated the house at Christmas; the beautiful moments that the younger woman will always carry with her. One recurring happy moment stands out—the mother and daughter’s shared love of The Wizard of Oz. The dying woman has been sleeping more and more, but when Web puts on the movie, she smiles and stays mostly awake for the film. The mother and daughter absorb their final moments together on the couch as Web watches over them. Soon after, as the mother loses consciousness and enters the final stages of dying, her daughter quietly sings Over the Rainbow. Before the pandemic, Web’s job description looked vastly different. As a former animal-enrichment coordinator, she spent her workdays coming up with creative ways to entertain the creatures at the Tennessee Aquarium—a job she lovingly compares to that of a cruise-ship director. She’s filled kiddie pools with colorful plastic balls for the mongooses to dive in and out of. She’s made giant turkeys out of construction paper and paper bags, filling them with fruits and vegetables for the lemurs. She’s fed alligators in front of live audiences. When she was laid off in October 2020, Web says, she faced low prospects of finding another comparable zoo or aquarium job, so she pursued a career that’s been at the back of her mind since her grandmother died of pancreatic cancer more than 17 years ago. She became a death doula, in hopes that fewer people would spend their final moments surrounded by panicked loved ones the way her 82-year-old grandmother did in 2004. At age 21, it was the first time Web had experienced such a major loss. The diagnosis rocked the rest of the family. “I was very lost in that experience,” says Web, who was more than 1,000 miles away when her grandmother died. “No one else seemed to know what to do.” Web wishes she and her family could have better understood the disease, the dying process and how much time they realistically had left, so they could’ve better comforted their matriarch. “I promised, no matter what, I would never let that happen again,” Web says. Before she was laid off at the aquarium, Web kept two reminders of the finality of life on her office desk: a computer background image of the universe and a papier-mâché skull. “My motto was, the universe is big and life is short,” she says. Besides a whole lot of compassion, not much is needed to be a death doula. During a recent day’s work with a woman who had stopped treatments for breast cancer, Yost helped her jot down stories to share with her children about her childhood visits to her family in Italy. When she noticed how animated the woman had become, Yost pulled up Google maps so they could virtually walk through the same mountain village where her grandparents lived. The woman cried as the memories came flooding back. “The gift of time is what makes doula work so special and meaningful,” says Angela Shook, president of the National End-of-Life Doula Alliance. Since doulas do not administer or prescribe medication, the industry is unregulated and does not require a license. Most prospective doulas take training courses that several organizations offer in person or online for as little as $40 up to $1,000. The lessons are as scientific as they are emotional. Depending on the courses, which can span weeks, prospective doulas typically learn how to identify end-of-life stages. They study the 10 most common terminal illnesses and their leading or unique symptoms. They learn the physiology of how the human body works, the order in which organs usually shut down. Some courses focus on how to care for a terminally ill child, while others teach doulas simply how to talk to families. Death doulas often work in tandem with hospice workers, who are authorized to give pain-relief medication, treat wounds, monitor vitals and assist in other clinical tasks that the doulas aren’t qualified to do. But death doulas, who are usually less restricted by work schedules, step in to fill the emotional voids, says Michelle Thornhill, 52, who has been a death doula for 12 years. They can help write farewell letters or stockpile memos to surviving loved ones for milestones they’ll miss, such as weddings, birthdays and graduations. They can listen to someone’s life story for hours on end or hear out their proudest moments and worst mistakes. “I hear stories that maybe they’ve never told anyone before,” Web says. “I hear stories that may never be heard again.” Upon request, death doulas can make sure Whitney Houston is playing in the background, fill the house with scents of Christmas cookies at the moment of death or find new homes for pets that will be left behind. In June, Shook says, she helped a woman find a loving new family for her two cats, which was instrumental to giving her peace. Before the woman entered a hospital for the last time, Shook bought her stuffed animals that looked just like the felines, so that she’d have them near as she died. “It’s very human to want to nurture and support somebody through any type of suffering,” says Shook, who is also a volunteer hospice manager in northern Michigan. To free up family members to focus solely on their dying loved one, death doulas can help make funeral arrangements and handle other logistics. In Pennsylvania, Thornhill spends six days a week caring for her 101-year-old client, Estella Stackhouse, who has dementia. She also supports Stackhouse’s granddaughter and primary caregiver by creating care checklists and meal schedules, crafting responses to people who call and text, and limiting the granddaughter to making only one important decision a day. With COVID-19 reducing the number of visitors Stackhouse gets, Thornhill’s role as a caretaker and liaison has become more important. “It ranks right up there with oxygen,” she says. The impact, and not the pay, is why many are drawn to the work. Some doulas offer their services for free, Shook says, while some operate on a sliding scale based on the client’s ability to pay. Others, including those who have their own private business, typically can charge $45 to $100 per hour, though prices depend on many factors, including location and duration of service. Many doulas offer packaged rates that Shook has seen go from $500 to $5,000. “It’s all over the place,” Shook says, adding that the costs are not covered by any health-insurance plans. Web has yet to make a profit after leaving her over-$40,000-a-year aquarium job and pouring about $5,000 into her new doula business, including costs for training courses, office space, licenses, advertising, websites and insurance. But in the past six months, she’s felt her impact, which has helped heal some of her own internal wounds from her grandmother’s death. The job is often misunderstood, partially because many feel it’s a morbid occupation. But death doulas disagree, saying there’s often more dignity in the work than sadness. Web says her mother was horrified when she started training to become a doula in spring 2021. “She thought I would be devastated 24/7 because I’m a sensitive person,” Web says. But since Web launched her doula business early in June, she hasn’t felt that way at all. “I can’t stop people from dying,” she says. “All I can do is be there to support them.” Dying is one experience every person has to go through. But that doesn’t necessarily get easier to accept with time, Yost has learned. “Fear is present at all ages,” she says. And because there’s only one chance to do death right, several doulas say it’s common for personal grief and regrets to drive many toward end-of-life work. In March 2019, Lightner’s father died following complications from a lung biopsy. Before that, he had spent about two months intubated and hooked to a feeding tube and other life-sustaining equipment before he was removed from life support. Those months were challenging for Lightner, who knew her father had not wanted that for himself. “We carry guilt and we carry what-ifs,” she says. “Me becoming a death doula is partially me grieving this loss.” Every Tuesday evening, Lightner virtually meets with about a dozen other new death doulas from around the country. They help one another navigate their careers, understand the logistics of their businesses and launch their websites. But most of the time, she says, they’re spending their weekly Zoom sessions working through their personal struggles and renewing one another’s hope. Among the new doulas are Patty and Greg Howe, a longtime married couple who are both terminally ill. In the five years since Greg was diagnosed with leukemia, the 66-year-old says he has come to a “place of just complete liberation.” His acceptance helped shape Patty’s outlook when she was diagnosed in February with liver cancer at age 69. “We have the choice to choose joy in everything,” Greg says. “It transformed me.” The Howes have shed what they don’t need, including most of their material possessions and any petty problems that once burdened them. They now live out of a candlelit yurt in Ketchikan, Alaska, as they plan arrangements for other terminally ill people to use their beachfront house nearby as an end-of-life resort, where they can spend their last moments with their families. Since the pandemic, the Howes have immersed themselves in death-doula work, helping others reach the same sense of peace. “It’s almost like we’ve taken a master’s class in death,” Greg says. Death wasn’t always so industrialized. More than a century ago, before there were coroners and funeral directors, it was normal for families and communities to take care of the deceased, according to Nukhet Varlik, a Rutgers University professor who specializes in the history of pandemics. Hospice care wasn’t introduced in the U.S. until the early 1970s, though people were still informally taking on the role of a death doula. “Death used to be revered as a sacred part of life’s journey, and we’ve completely removed it from our awareness,” O’Brien says. “In fact, we’re doing everything to run the other way.” Death doulas today are trying to change that. In January 2021, when a dying man in frigid northern Michigan said he wanted to be back on a beach but was too sick to leave his house, Shook dipped his hand in a bowl she’d filled with sand. She lit citrus-scented candles around him and brought in a sunlamp to warm his body as the sound of ocean waves crashed out of speakers in the background. A month later, when Shook realized a dying woman who loved lilacs would not live long enough to watch them bloom again in her yard, she burned lilac candles in the woman’s room, hung large photos of the purple plants on her walls and massaged her hands and feet with lilac-scented oils. “Death doesn’t have to be this medical event,” Shook says. “There’s a lot of beauty.” from https://ift.tt/3fYNdLD Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Pfizer and BioNTech announced today that they have started testing an Omicron-specific COVID-19 vaccine in healthy adults. While data show that the current vaccine made by the companies and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration continues to protect against severe disease, the vaccine is less effective at preventing infection with the virus. Studies also show that the level of immune cells generated by the vaccine wanes over time, which led the FDA to authorize a booster dose. The quick dominance of the Omicron variant made clear the need to increase the protection provided by the existing vaccine, and the shot’s mRNA technology allowed scientists to modify the genetic base of the vaccine to reflect the Omicron variant in only about six weeks. The new study will include more than 1,400 people divided into three groups. One group includes people who have been vaccinated with two doses of the current vaccine and will receive one or two doses of the new Omicron vaccine; another group includes those who have been vaccinated and boosted with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and will receive a fourth dose of the existing vaccine or a dose of the Omicron shot; the final group includes unvaccinated people who will get three doses of the Omicron vaccine. The data will allow researchers to compare infections and symptoms among people who are currently vaccinated and who get one dose or two doses of the Omicron shot to those who have been boosted with the current vaccine and receive a dose of the Omicron vaccine. The data will help scientists and public health experts to learn more about how beneficial variant-specific vaccines might be, and whether they will be necessary going forward. from https://ift.tt/3KGvqXK Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Giving Cash to Low-Income Mothers Linked to Increased Brain Activity in Their Babies Study Suggests1/24/2022 New research suggests giving extra cash to low-income mothers can change their infants’ brain development. Brain measurements at age 1 showed faster activity in key brain regions in infants whose low-income families received $300-plus monthly for a year, compared with those who got $20 each month, U.S. researchers reported Monday. The same type of brain activity has been linked in older children to learning skills and other development, although it’s unclear whether the differences found will persist or influence the infants’ future. The researchers are investigating whether the payments led to better nutrition, less parent stress or other benefits to the infants. There were no restrictions on how the money was spent. The results suggest reducing poverty can directly affect infant brain development, said senior author, Dr. Kimberly Noble, a neuroscience and education professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. “The brain changes speak to the remarkable malleability of the brain, especially early in childhood,” she said. While the researchers can’t rule out that differences seen in total brain activity in both groups were due to chance, they did find meaningful differences in the frontal region, linked with learning and thinking skills. Higher-frequency activity was about 20% greater in infants whose families received the larger payments. The findings build on evidence that cash support can improve outcomes for older children, said co-author Katherine Magnuson, director of the National Institute for Research on Poverty and Economic Mobility, based at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. It’s also the first rigorous evidence of how the payments may affect children in the earliest years of life, she said. Results were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study recruited mothers shortly after childbirth at hospitals in four metropolitan areas: Minneapolis-St. Paul, New Orleans, New York City and Omaha. The women reported an average household income of about $20,000 and were randomly assigned to receive $333 or $20 each month on debit cards. The money was provided by private funders and the recipients could spend it as they wished. The larger cash payments in the study were similar to those distributed to low-income families during the pandemic in President Joe Biden’s child tax credit program, which ended last month. The study “couldn’t be more relevant to the current moment,’’ Dr. Joan Luby, a professor of child psychiatry at Washington University’s medical school. While renewal of the tax credit is uncertain, “this study should really inform Congress about how tremendously important’’ it is, said Luby. She reviewed the study for the scientific journal but was not involved in the research. Mothers enrolled in the study were mostly Black and Hispanic without a college education. As the infants neared their first birthday, researchers made home visits to test the children in person. Infants were fitted with special caps covered with electrodes that detect electrical signals brain cells use to communicate with each other. Home visits stopped because of the pandemic, so researchers don’t have full data on all 1,000 mothers who enrolled since 2018. They reported on the results for 435 but hope to resume home visits this year. The study is ongoing and payments to families will continue until at least their children’s fourth birthdays. Natasha Pilkauskas, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, called it “a very important study,’’ but said more research is needed to confirm the results and to see if they hold true for children older than infants. from https://ift.tt/3ICEjzA Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ (BEIJING, China) — A cluster of COVID-19 cases in Beijing has prompted authorities to test millions and impose new measures two weeks ahead of the opening of the Winter Olympics, even as the city of Xi’an in north-central China lifted on Monday a monthlong lockdown that had isolated its 13 million residents. Officials in Beijing said they would conduct a second round of mass testing of the Fengtai district’s 2 million residents, where the majority of the capital’s 40 coronavirus cases since Jan. 15 have been found. That came a day after authorities announced that anyone who buys or who has bought fever, cough or certain other medicines in the past two weeks would be required to take a COVID-19 test within 72 hours. The severe measures, despite a relatively low number of cases, illustrate the acute concern of government officials in the run-up to the Olympics, which open in Beijing on Feb. 4. “The current epidemic prevention situation is still grim and complicated and all departments across the city must act proactively and swiftly,” Beijing city spokesperson Xu Hejian said. “The overall situation is controllable,” he added. The ruling Communist Party’s “zero tolerance” COVID-19 policy has brought with it drastic efforts to stamp out any signs of new outbreaks — including last month’s lockdowns of Xi’an and two other cities, and the partial suspension of train and plane routes to Beijing to isolate it from outbreak areas. Overall, the number of reported new cases has been falling in China from more than 100 a day at the peak of the Xi’an outbreak to 18 on Sunday, six of which were in Beijing. Despite the drop, pandemic controls remain stepped-up ahead of the Games, where all participants will be tested every day and be completely isolated from the general public. Visiting Olympic athletes are required to be vaccinated or undergo a quarantine after arriving in China. Ben Cowling, a public health expert at Hong Kong University, said that COVID-19 infections still could leak out of the Olympic bubble. “I would estimate there is a good chance of at least one lockdown being implemented in Beijing in the coming month,” he said. On top of the first round of mass testing in the capital’s Fengtai area, targeted testing was conducted Sunday at residential communities in six other districts, the Beijing Daily reported. It wasn’t fully clear who was being tested. The newspaper said that in one community, an official said that if a resident had been to a high-risk area in Fengtai or Fangshan, another affected district, occupants of the entire building would have to be tested twice. The government told people in areas of Beijing deemed at high risk for infection not to leave the city. A number of nearby provinces reported cases linked to the outbreaks in the capital, including Shandong and Hebei provinces. Beijing officials said an Omicron cluster that infected six people had been brought under control. The Fengtai outbreak is Delta-driven and Chinese health officials have alleged it is linked to imported frozen food. Pang Xinghuo, deputy director of the Beijing Center for Disease Control, said that gene sequencing of virus samples from the frozen food was consistent with that in 28 infected people. Foreign experts are skeptical that COVID-19 can spread easily from packaging. The announcement of the end of the lockdown in Xi’an followed the restart of commercial flights from the city over the weekend. The major tourism center and former imperial capital, famed as the home of the Terracotta Warrior statue army, struggled to get food to some residents in the early days of the lockdown, after people were confined to their homes. Access to Xi’an was suspended Dec. 22 following a Delta outbreak. More than 2,000 people were infected in the city, which is about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) southwest of Beijing. Other outbreaks prompted the government to impose travel bans on a number of cities, including the port of Tianjin, about an hour from Beijing. The stiff regulations are credited with preventing major nationwide outbreaks and China has reported relatively few cases of the highly infectious Omicron variant. More than 3,000 people have arrived for the Games from Jan. 4 through Sunday, including more than 300 athletes and team officials, organizers said Monday. The rest are media and other participants. So far, 78 people have tested positive, including one who was an athlete or team official. China has waived the usual 21 days of hotel quarantine for those coming for the Olympics. The IOC announced Monday some changes in the COVID-19 policy for the Games, including a reduction in the period an infected person is considered a close contact from 14 to 7 days. ___ Associated Press writer Huizhong Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed. from https://ift.tt/3KDpjn2 Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Hosting the Olympic Games is a daunting challenge during any year. Add a global pandemic, and the logistics of welcoming the world’s athletes in while keeping the virus out become complicated fast. But China believes its aggressive stance against COVID-19 is up to the task. While the rest of the world is struggling to keep up with the virus, China’s strategy is to stay ahead of it. With its so-called “dynamic zero-COVID-19” policy, health officials try to contain any new cases by quickly testing, contact tracing, isolating and instituting lockdowns that block the spread of the virus. China’s plan for crushing COVID-19 during the Beijing Olympics is just as draconian. If it works, the country’s approach could become a leading example of one way to learn to live with SARS-CoV-2: detecting new cases and extinguishing them as quickly as possible. If it doesn’t, this year’s Olympics could be a sobering lesson in the hubris of trying to keep up with a virus as adaptable as this one has proven to be. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] China has used a “zero COVID” approach over the past two years with impressive results—even at the expense of greatly inconveniencing residents. A month before the Games were scheduled to start, government officials issued restrictions for the 14 million people living in the port city of Tianjin after a cluster of 20 cases erupted. In the immediate area where the infections occurred, people were confined to their homes, while in outlying areas, residents had to comply with restrictions like staying indoors (except for one person per household, who was allowed a food-shopping trip every other day) or having to remain in their neighborhoods. On Jan. 17, after an office worker in Beijing tested positive with the new Omicron variant, the entire building was abruptly locked down with employees still inside. Government officials lugged in bedding and food for the stranded workers, who will likely only be allowed to leave once they test negative after a designated period of time. The home of the office worker who tested positive was sealed off as well, and neighbors were tested. While the measures seem extreme, they appear to work, at least according to the latest government COVID-19 tallies, which political and public health leaders have criticized for downplaying the actual impact of the pandemic. If accurate, China’s reported case numbers are “way, way, way lower than what we have in the U.S.,” says Jeremy Luban, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Currently, China has reported just over 5,000 cases in the past month, compared with more than 15 million in the U.S. “The idea that we have taken in the U.S. is to flatten the curve so fewer people die. China’s concept is even before that: don’t get a curve.” China’s graph of new infections over the past year is the complete opposite of that of the U.S. While average cases in China peaked in February 2020 at just under 70,000 per month and then steadily declined—with only a small blip due to Omicron—the U.S. case count was stable at a relatively low rate over the summer as more people became vaccinated, but has climbed steadily over the past few months because of Omicron, hitting a pandemic high in January 2022. Read More: Asia Has Kept COVID-19 at Bay for 2 Years. Omicron Could Change That Much of China’s success in quashing SARS-CoV-2 can be traced to strict travel restrictions into the country and rigid quarantine rules that require any visitors from overseas—who are already required to test negative before boarding their flights—to remain in an isolation hotel for 14 days to ensure they aren’t harboring an infection. This even applies to Chinese citizens returning home from abroad. Athletes, coaches, support staff and media arriving for the Olympics must be vaccinated to avoid such quarantines, but Chinese officials are hedging against any risk with an intensive testing and semi-isolation policy that will separate Olympics visitors from local residents. All Games travelers will be required to test negative 72 hours before they board their Beijing-bound flights and will be tested using deep nasal and throat swabs when they arrive at the airport. They will then be shuttled directly to their hotels, where they are supposed to remain until they receive word that their test was negative and that they may leave. If they are negative, then athletes, coaches, media and other staff will remain in a pseudo bubble for their entire stay. They may only use dedicated transportation and dine in designated restaurants. Everyone will be tested daily and expected to isolate immediately if they test positive; no one can leave isolation until they test negative twice with 24 hours in between. These measures aren’t foolproof, however. It’s not clear, for instance, whether local volunteers and support staff for the Olympics—bus drivers, food service personnel, health care workers performing the testing—will also be required to remain within the bubble or whether they will be allowed to return to their homes each evening. “The bigger the bubble, the more opportunity you have for something to go wrong,” says Tara Kirk Sell, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “And it’s more difficult when you have something so transmissible like Omicron.” There’s a lot at stake for Chinese officials, both politically and from a public-health perspective. Their management of the pandemic will inevitably be compared with the way the Japanese government handled the Summer Olympics just six months ago, during which 865 reported cases were associated with the Games. If major outbreaks occur during the Olympics, it will be very public proof that a zero-tolerance approach, even a dynamic one, is not the most effective way to control transmission. Read More: An N95 Is the Best Mask for Omicron. Here’s Why Even if China’s zero-COVID policy succeeds at keeping Olympics visitors safe, this approach has potentially dire downsides for the overall population in the long term, including a lower level of immunity to the virus. Once lockdowns are eventually lifted, people could still be vulnerable to infection and—more concerning—serious disease. While 87% of the Chinese population is vaccinated, this high rate may not confer as much protection as it suggests; recent studies show that one of the most commonly used Chinese-developed vaccines did not produce enough antibodies to neutralize the Omicron variant in lab studies. As a result, some experts predict that reaching herd immunity—in which most of the population is protected, either by vaccination or by having been infected with COVID-19—will be much more elusive for China than for many other countries. Because Omicron tends to cause less severe disease in vaccinated people, some experts say it could help some populations in which it circulates widely to reach herd immunity more quickly, and—hopefully—with less disease and death than could be expected from previous variants. From that perspective, stamping out the virus wherever it flares up might provide a temporary (though costly and labor-intensive) solution, but not necessarily a long-term or durable one. In a recent report, the risk-assessment firm Eurasia Group, whose president writes a column for TIME, warned that “China’s policy will fail to contain infections, leading to larger outbreaks, requiring, in turn, more severe lockdowns.” Omicron’s stunning ability to spread so quickly and efficiently will pose obstacles to China that no other Olympics host country has faced. With such a high level of transmission, even rigorous testing could miss cases that spark outbreaks. “Omicron is the ultimate challenge to any program based on zero cases,” says Michael Osterholm, director of the center for infectious-disease research and policy at the University of Minnesota. Studies show that Delta, which was circulating during the Tokyo Olympics last summer, is twice as contagious as previous variants—and Omicron is up to four times more infectious than Delta. While vaccines can protect against severe disease, they can’t fully prevent people from getting infected, as the growing number of breakthrough infections reveals. “I’m not sure we will ever get to the point of zero COVID-19,” says Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, a global health research foundation. “I would suspect that SARS-CoV-2 is not going away; when it’s been in this number of people and beautifully adapted to humanity, why would it leave? The best hope is that it shifts over time, as more people develop immunity, to become the 21st century flu.” Other countries that have adopted zero-COVID strategies, including Australia and New Zealand, were forced to abandon them over the summer and fall. The Delta variant crushed these nations’ efforts to stay on top of cases, and lockdowns became socially unbearable and detrimental to people’s mental health. In accepting that it may not be possible to eliminate SARS-CoV-2, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said it was time to “come out of the cave.” His admission acknowledged that while vaccines provide protection, they can’t prevent people from getting infected, so cases are inevitable. The goal is to prevent people who become infected from getting seriously ill or needing hospitalization. The U.S., whether by intention or inaction, never adopted the fortress mentality, instead relying on vaccinating as much of the population as quickly as possible and, more recently, encouraging more widespread testing so people who are positive can take the proper safety precautions and avoid public interactions. While cases have skyrocketed in the U.S. since Omicron emerged, some models predict that the combination of immunity from the shots and from natural infections will ultimately throw up a formidable enough wall to relegate significant damage from COVID-19 to outbreaks among the more vulnerable people, who are either unvaccinated or have weakened immune systems—at least that’s the hope. “Countries are going to have to accept a period of high transmission in communities,” says Farrar. “And I think that is the path that China will ultimately have to go through.” For now, China’s aggressive approach to COVID-19 may put it in a strong position to host the Olympics as safely as can be expected. But how the virus will ultimately perform there throughout the Games—and after them—will be the contest everyone watches most closely. from https://ift.tt/3FXAXpo Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ This week, nearly two full years into the on-going pandemic, the Biden Administration told Americans that they would, at long last, be given access to free, rapid COVID-19 tests — a key tool in containing the spread of the virus. The government’s plan was two-fold. First, on Jan. 15, federal agencies implemented new rules requiring private health insurers to cover at-home tests. And second, on Jan. 18, the feds launched a new website to deliver free rapid antigen tests directly to Americans’ homes. The effort was a major step in the right direction, public health experts say. But it has also been kludgy, overly-complicated—and it doesn’t go nearly far enough, they say. “It’s a well intentioned effort to try to give people some financial relief,” says Sabrina Corlette, a research professor and co-director of Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms. “But I think it is a highly inefficient, cumbersome and confusing way to go about it.” The new federal rules require private insurers to pay for eight tests per person each month, people have to get them at specific locations to have their costs covered up-front, and those new rules don’t apply to the tens of millions of people who are on Medicare, Medicaid or are uninsured. The federal website, for its part, won’t ship antigen tests for 7-12 days — too late to address the spike in new cases this week — and the program is limiting orders to four tests per household, which is hardly enough for people, including frontline workers and caretakers, who need to test regularly. Cumbersome and confusingThe White House unveiled its plan in December to compel insurers to cover the tests, but Department of Health and Human Services didn’t release detailed regulations until Jan. 10—just days before they were set to kick in. Many insurers, which don’t currently have billing codes assigned to at-home Covid-19 tests and aren’t used to either processing retail receipts or sending physical checks for reimbursement, scrambled to formulate new plans this past week. Many published FAQs and posted links to downloadable forms, but each insurer is handling the situation differently, leading to a confusing blizzard of new forms, requirements, and protocols. Read More: Biden’s ‘Free’ At-Home COVID Test Plan Isn’t as Straightforward as it Sounds Customers, for their part, are finding the process bewildering. Social media lit up with people complaining about their insurers’ forms or asking for advice on how they could actually get their “free” COVID-19 tests. A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of the 13 private insurers with at least 1 million fully insured members found that most of the top plans require customers to print and mail in physical forms if they want to be reimbursed for their COVID-19 test, one offered the option to submit its form via fax, and just three offered an online option. Ceci Connolly, president and CEO of the Alliance of Community Health Plans, which represents small nonprofit insurers, predicts a nationwide “shoe box effect” — people “are going to be collecting and hanging on to all of these paper receipts, and one day, stuffing them in an envelope and putting them in the mail,” she says. “That raises all kinds of questions about the authenticity. Who used this test kit? Was it a covered member? How many did they have in a given period of time? Just endless practicality questions.” That’s not good for insurers. But it’s also not good for public health. Research has repeatedly found that adding costs and other burdens actively discourages people from getting the care they need. Even small costs, such as a $10 increase for prescription drugs, can make patients less likely to take their medications, a study last year found. Half of U.S. adults say they skipped or put off health or dental care in the last year due to the cost, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2021 Employer Health Benefits Survey. Jumping through hoopsUnder the new federal rules, insurers are encouraged to set up networks of “preferred” pharmacies or retailers where customers can get the costs of their at-home tests covered up front. If people go to a different pharmacy or website to buy a test, they have to pay out of pocket, then submit their receipts and additional paperwork for reimbursement in the future. In that case, insurers must reimburse up to $12 per test, so if people spend more — and the costs range from $17.98 for a pack of two to $50 for a single test at various retailers — they’re likely out of luck. (If an insurer doesn’t designate “preferred” pharmacies, then it’s on the hook for the whole cost of the test.) Several of the top insurers are also requiring customers to submit the bar code on the rapid test’s box along with their receipt, so Jenny Chumbley Hogue, an insurance broker in north Texas, has recommended all of her clients keep both their receipts and their test boxes. But she says these kinds of instructions are likely to discourage people from following through. Read More: An N95 Is the Best Mask for Omicron. Here’s Why “In essence telling somebody to file a paper claim means either A they’re not going to get [the test] or B they’re not going to file it,” Chumbley Hogue says. Another wrinkle in the new system is that some insurers, including Humana, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas and Premera Blue Cross in Washington, are putting other limits on how the rapid tests can be used, requiring customers to attest that they will not use the tests for purposes such as travel, “recreation,” “entertainment” or “school.” “For a lot of people who might want to buy tests and keep them in their medicine cabinet for a future use, does that process give you a little bit of pause?” says Corlette. “People might think, what if I have to use this for my kid to make sure he can go to school? Am I now at risk of insurance fraud?” With all of these hurdles, it might seem easier to stick with the “preferred” pharmacy chosen by your insurance company. But at least during the first week of the new plan, many insurers have yet to set up arrangements with pharmacies or other retailers. Some of the major insurers have announced agreements. United Health Care, for example, lists Walmart, Sam’s Club, Rite Aid and Bartell Drugs as “preferred retailers.” But other plans have fewer options or say they will update members soon. While the paperwork and supply issues get worked out, Chumbley Hogue recommends her clients use drive thru testing sites or make appointments to get tested at a pharmacy, where testing was already covered by insurance. Connolly says that the smaller nonprofit plans she represents are having trouble finding pharmacies that want to partner with them. But the biggest issue, she says, is that there is still a shortage of tests around the country. Even if health plans strike a deal with a pharmacy or direct members to a retail location, the store is frequently out of stock. “We’re very worried that consumers are going to get frustrated,” she says. “And then you might just have more of that boomerang effect where somebody tried to get tests, they couldn’t and so then they stop.” from https://ift.tt/3fLDNmF Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Welcome to COVID Questions, TIME’s advice column. We’re trying to make living through the pandemic a little easier, with expert-backed answers to your toughest coronavirus-related dilemmas. While we can’t and don’t offer medical advice—those questions should go to your doctor—we hope this column will help you sort through this stressful and confusing time. Got a question? Write to us at [email protected]. Today, A.B. asks:
There are certain pathogens that the human immune system learns to block forever after a single encounter. But others, like coronaviruses that cause the common cold, can sicken a person year after year. Unfortunately, the virus that causes COVID-19 is, like other coronaviruses, able to infect the same person multiple times. The body gets better at fighting it after each exposure or vaccine dose, meaning future brushes with the virus will likely be milder, but there doesn’t seem to be a point at which the risk of infection completely disappears. “There’s probably always a level of exposure to the virus that could overcome the level of immunity you have,” says Dr. Rachel Presti, an infectious disease researcher at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. That’s especially true if you’re elderly, have underlying medical conditions or are immunocompromised. Even with those caveats, there’s a lot of good news for fully vaccinated and boosted people who have recovered from a recent COVID-19 infection. People in that category have several layers of defense against the virus. And, assuming you’re generally healthy, experts say that leaves you with a grace period of at least three to six months during which you’re unlikely to get sick again. According to the latest federal analysis, which included data from fall 2021, a fully vaccinated and boosted person in the U.S. was 10 times less likely to test positive for COVID-19—and 20 times less likely to die from it—compared to an unvaccinated adult. More recent data gathered during the Omicron surge in the U.K. confirms that fully vaccinated and boosted people remain significantly less likely to get infected than unvaccinated people. Still, breakthrough infections happen. Among boosted adults who experience them, cases tend to be mild. You should never try to catch COVID-19, but there is a silver lining to getting it. The infection sparks an immune response that imparts an extra layer of safety. The body mounts a wider-ranging immune response when it encounters the actual virus as opposed to a vaccine, Presti says. So if you had a breakthrough infection, you probably walked away from the (hopefully mild) experience with an even stronger and more robust immune profile than you had before you got sick. One small study of fully vaccinated health care workers who had breakthrough infections before the Omicron surge found that they experienced “substantial” jumps in antibodies after their illnesses, even though most were mild. Other research has found that people who recover from Omicron infections gain immunity against both the Omicron and Delta variants. And a recent report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that case rates during the Delta wave—which was before Omicron and widespread boosters—were lower among people who were previously diagnosed with COVID-19 than people who were just vaccinated. So why get vaccinated at all, if infection-derived immunity provides strong protection? For one thing, vaccination is a much safer way to gain immunity. Post-infection immunity is also less predictable than vaccine-derived protection, Presti says. Some people generate many antibodies after an infection while others are left with few, and the average person won’t know how many they have. Infection-derived immunity also wanes over time, so you can’t count on it forever. One December 2021 study suggested reinfection could occur anywhere from three months to multiple years after a COVID-19 illness, with variations from person to person depending on age, health status and many other factors. Immunity gained from vaccines wanes over time, too, but early evidence suggests booster shots provide longer-lasting protection than initial shots, says Dr. Abinash Virk, an infectious disease physician at the Mayo Clinic. Based on what researchers know about how the immune system responds to this coronavirus and others, Virk says a fully vaccinated, boosted person who recovers from COVID-19 can feel pretty safe for the months following their breakthrough infection. “We don’t know” exactly how long protection lasts, Virk says. “But we think you will be protected for at least three to six months after your infection.” During this window of time, when your immunity is strongest and you’re unlikely to get sick, you can also be fairly confident that you aren’t spreading the virus to anyone else. That makes activities like indoor dining and visiting loved ones safer, if not 100% risk-free. “If somebody just recently had Omicron after they already got boosted, maybe [they can be] a little bit more cavalier about wearing a mask and social distancing,” Virk says. But you shouldn’t ignore COVID-19 completely. While you may be well protected—at least for a few months—others in your community are more vulnerable, which makes it important to slow COVID-19’s spread as much as possible. It’s always smart to limit your exposure to sick people, stay home if you develop respiratory symptoms and keep an eye on hospitalization trends in your area. If the health system is struggling, authorities might ask everyone to temporarily resume some precautions, like indoor mask wearing, to avoid a collapse. There’s also no predicting if or when there will be another new variant that challenges your hard-won immunity. And researchers are still learning about long-term complications from the virus that could affect both unvaccinated and vaccinated people, like Long COVID. Still, many Americans are far more protected than they were in 2020 or even last year, thanks to vaccines and prior exposures to the virus. If you’re generally healthy, fully vaccinated and boosted and have recently recovered from a breakthrough infection, you are currently about as safe from COVID-19 as you can be. “For a lot of people, the risk is kind of the same as the risk of getting a cold or a mild flu,” Presti says. “We used to live with that.” And before too long, we will again. from https://ift.tt/3qPe1Em Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines increased protection against both the Delta and Omicron variants in three studies that looked at infections, hospital admissions and deaths in thousands of U.S. patients. Third doses of messenger RNA vaccines made by Moderna Inc. and the partnership of Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE were at least 90% effective in preventing hospitalizations during both the Delta and Omicron periods, according to an analysis of hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and clinic visits. The shots’ protection against COVID deaths was diminished after Omicron’s rise, but remained significant, according to a separate study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The urgency for vaccinations and boosters has been flagging amid reports that Omicron causes milder disease than earlier variants. Yet many hospitals remain overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of Omicron-infected patients, making prevention a key part of the battle against the coronavirus. Booster doses have been controversial, as many low- and middle-income countries have been unable to secure even first shots for their populations. Covax, the World Health Organization-backed program to distribute doses equitably around the globe, recently reached the milestone of delivering 1 billion doses, while more than 500 million have been administered in the U.S. alone. The WHO hasn’t endorsed the use of boosters, except for vulnerable populations, such as the sick and elderly. About 63% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated, and just 24% have received a booster dose, according to Bloomberg’s vaccine tracker. That compares with 49% boosted in Germany and 55% in the U.K. Read More: Yes, You Should Get a COVID-19 Booster The hospitalization study, published in CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, analyzed more than 300,000 visits for COVID-like illness in emergency departments, urgent care clinics, and hospitalizations in 10 states between August and January. Boosters reduced hospitalization risk by 94% in the Delta era, and by 90% after Omicron’s rise. In the other study published by CDC, unvaccinated people had 53 times greater risk of death from COVID during October and November compared with those who were vaccinated and boosted. The increase in risk for the unvaccinated fell to 13 times during the rise of Omicron, which has shown ability to evade the protection offered by vaccines. Boosters were further supported by a third study that found the extra doses provide significant protection against symptomatic COVID caused by both Delta and Omicron. People who received a third dose were less likely to seek care for symptomatic infections than those who received just two or none, according to the study in the JAMA medical journal. Health officials have been looking for other ways to limit the spread of Omicron, such as encouraging wider use of medical-grade face masks that had been earmarked for health workers. The highly transmissible variant was first detected late last year in South Africa and Botswana and quickly spread around the world in a matter of weeks. The variant was first confirmed in a U.S. patient Dec. 1, but genetic evidence from wastewater indicates it began spreading in the country days to weeks earlier. from https://ift.tt/3Ak5mwX Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Austrian lawmakers passed the European Union’s first law making coronavirus vaccinations mandatory as other member states ease restrictions in the latest wave of the pandemic. The parliament’s lower house approved the policy on Thursday with additional support from most deputies in two opposition groups. The far-right Freedom Party rejected the plan. The mandate will come into force next month, and officials will start imposing fines as high as 3,600 euro ($4,084) for dissenters from mid-March. The government will also introduce a lottery system to reward people willing to take the shot. After months of preparation, Austria is forging ahead with a policy that goes beyond the efforts of other nations to convince people to get vaccinated. It has enforced some of the strictest restrictions in the latest wave of the virus, including a nation-wide lockdown in November that has persisted, in principle, for the unvaccinated. Some European countries have been relaxing their policies with the spread of the omicron variant, which has caused spiraling infection rates but fewer hospitalizations. The U.K. will end requirements for a Covid-pass or face masks next week and the Netherlands ended a strict lockdown earlier in the week. Protesters gathered in central Vienna during the debate on Thursday, marching along a major avenue, following demonstrations that attracted tens of thousands in recent weeks. Police cleared a security zone around parliament. Herbert Kickl, the leader of the Freedom Party, pledged to stay unvaccinated. Despite potential difficulties in implementing the mandate, the government hopes to further boost vaccination rates from about 72% of the population. It’s now turning to a carrot-and-stick approach, announcing a lottery for the vaccinated with 500 euro ($568) handouts that are valid for hotels, restaurants and other services. Municipalities will also get progressive state grants after reaching vaccination rates of 80%, 85% and 90%, respectively. from https://ift.tt/3IotEss Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ |
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