The official start of summer—the June 21 solstice—is still weeks away, yet for many parts of the northern hemisphere unusually high temperatures are already providing a taste of what’s to come. American heat records were set from Texas to Massachusetts over the weekend, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicting a hotter-than-usual June, July, and August. While many of us can seek refuge from the heat by turning on the AC or going to the local community pool, outdoor workers—like farm laborers, garbage collectors, construction workers, and air conditioner mechanics—are likely to bear the brunt. These essential workers have some of the least protections when it comes to workplace heat. According to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last week, extreme heat events are associated with higher overall adult death rates across the U.S. Outdoor workers are particularly at risk. Between 1992 and 2017, heat stress injuries killed 815 U.S. laborers and seriously injured more than 70,000, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Another study published last year by the Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that if fossil fuel emissions are not significantly reduced, there will be “staggering increases in unsafe workdays” by 2050, particularly for outdoor workers, with a potential cumulative loss of $55.4 billion in earnings annually. Yet heat protection standards at worksites in the U.S. are piecemeal, outdated, and inadequate, if they exist at all—and in most states, they don’t. But as climate change drives temperatures even higher, making intense heat waves more likely, that may be starting to change. A version of this story first appeared in the Climate is Everything newsletter. To sign up, click here. Only four states currently have outdoor workplace heat standards: California, Colorado (for agricultural workers only), Oregon, and Washington. Last September, President Joe Biden announced a new initiative to address the impact of extreme heat on American labor and asked OSHA to set new federal heat protection standards that would apply to the approximately 32 million people who work outdoors. While it could take years for new rules to be implemented, on May 3 OSHA held its first stakeholder meeting, inviting public comment. Workers shared stories of passing out from the heat, of not being allowed to take breaks, and of not getting enough water. “I want important people to know that this is our reality,” one farmworker commented. “Our people are getting sick. We are thirsty. And no one seems to care.” The human body can only withstand a limited range of temperatures before it begins to break down. High heat triggers a series of emergency protocols in the body designed to protect vital functions while sacrificing everything else. First, blood flow to the skin increases, putting a strain on the heart. The brain tells the muscles to slow down, causing fatigue. Nerve cells misfire, leading to headache and nausea—the first signs of heat exhaustion. If the core temperature continues to rise past 104-105°F (40-41°C), organs start shutting down and cells deteriorate, leading to kidney failure, blood poisoning, and ultimately death. When heat is combined with humidity, which is likely to increase along with climate change in many areas, the risk of overheating is even more pronounced as the body loses its ability to self-cool through perspiration. Preventing heat exhaustion, heat stress, and ultimately heat stroke, is relatively simple: rest, find shade, and hydrate. Those remedies, however, are not always easy to find, or to ask for, on a work site, particularly for workers from marginalized groups who fear putting their jobs or their paychecks on the line. Per OSHA’s general duty clause, employers are supposed to ensure that workers are safe from “recognized hazards,” but the rule is neither heat specific nor regularly enforced. When OSHA does cite an employer for inadequate protection, it is usually only after workers have been hospitalized or died from heat exposure. The current small patchwork of state-level rules not only leaves millions of U.S. workers unprotected but it also creates unnecessary confusion for employers working across multiple states, says Juanita Constible, the senior advocate for climate and health at the New York-based environmental organization Natural Resources Defense Council. Constible says OSHA needs to expand and enforce standards that include: whistleblower protections; a requirement for employers to provide workers with water, rest breaks, and shade; establish heat acclimatization plans for new and returning workers; conduct heat stress prevention training for managers and employees; and set up a detailed plan for dealing with heat-health emergencies. Some industries are pushing back against the administration’s efforts to improve outdoor work conditions, arguing that establishing nationwide standards for locally defined heat hazards will be costly and impractical. But to Erick Bandala Gonzalez, an environmental scientist at the Desert Research Institute in Las Vegas, providing those kinds of worker protections is just common sense: “Heat protection regulations save money and lives.” Gonzales is the lead author on a new study published on May 11 in the International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology that looks at the growing threat of extreme heat on outdoor workforce health in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Phoenix— three of the hottest cities in North America. He found not just a strong correlation between high temperatures and heat illnesses, but also an increase in workplace injuries. “For outdoor workers, extreme heat poses extreme danger,” says Gonzalez. But as long as temperatures keep rising, and outdoor labor is necessary, “we have no choice but to create some adaptation strategies. That means protecting the workers and protecting them as soon as possible.” from https://ift.tt/P97xpMh Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/
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By now, it’s abundantly clear that COVID-19 is not always an illness that clears quickly and leaves no trace. Millions of people in the U.S., and even more around the world, have Long COVID, the name for symptoms that last months or even years after an infection. Now, a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) helps quantify just how often COVID-19 is linked to subsequent health issues. Among U.S. adults younger than 65 who have had COVID-19, roughly one in five has developed a health condition that may be related to the virus, the report says. Among people 65 or older, about one in four has. To reach those findings, CDC researchers used electronic health records to track more than 350,000 U.S. adults who had confirmed COVID-19 cases. They tracked these people for up to a year after their diagnoses to see if they developed at least one of 26 conditions linked to post-COVID-19 illness—including heart disease, respiratory problems, asthma, kidney disease, neurologic conditions, diabetes, and mental health conditions. For comparison, they also tracked a group of 1.6 million U.S. adults who had not had COVID-19, but sought medical care for other reasons during the study period. From that comparison, it was clear that COVID-19 survivors were at increased risk of developing almost all of the 26 conditions. The most dramatic risk differences between COVID-19 survivors and the general population were in developing respiratory symptoms and pulmonary embolisms, a type of blood clot that can lead to shortness of breath and chest pain. People who’d had COVID-19 were about twice as likely to develop both conditions. There were some limitations to the data. The researchers used one specific electronic health record network, so the patient base may not be perfectly representative of the U.S. population. It’s also possible that doctors were looking more closely for the analyzed conditions in COVID-19 survivors than in those who hadn’t had the virus, or that some people had undiagnosed conditions before they got infected. (People with a documented, recent history of one of the 26 conditions were excluded from the study.) The researchers also didn’t account for a person’s COVID-19 vaccination status, and data collection ran only through November 2021, so it’s impossible to say how newer COVID-19 variants like Omicron fit into the picture. Still, the study provides even more evidence that COVID-19 can cause problems that last much longer than an acute infection does. Even if symptoms like coughing, fever, and fatigue clear up in a matter of days, the virus can leave a lasting mark in ways that aren’t immediately apparent. That’s cause for serious concern, particularly given how contagious the currently circulating variants are. Almost 60% of the U.S. population had been infected as of February, according to CDC estimates, and that number is almost certainly much higher now. “As the cumulative number of persons ever having been infected with SARS-CoV-2 increases, the number of survivors suffering post-COVID conditions is also likely to increase,” the authors of the new report write. These conditions can be serious or even debilitating--some with Long COVID have had to leave their jobs or drastically change their lifestyles—and it’s not always possible to predict who will be affected. The best way to avoid post-COVID complications, experts often say, is to avoid catching the virus in the first place, and to be vaccinated and boosted if you do. from https://ift.tt/kWoRmCV Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ While the world has been preoccupied with COVID-19, deaths from non-communicable diseases (NCDs) continue to impact poor nations at an alarming rate. Each year around the world, more than 15 million people die from NCDs between the ages of 30 and 69, and 85% of these premature deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. In fact, more people die from cancer in Africa than from malaria. Yet, many of the latest cancer treatments have not yet reached lower income countries. While treatments for all of these conditions exist, the barriers that keep them from patients are persistent and complex. Over the last two years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have learned that when you let go of ‘business as usual’ and rethink the norm, we achieve breakthroughs. We developed in just nine months a vaccine and a treatment in 18 months that would previously have taken many years, and then we manufactured and shipped more than three billion of those vaccines to nearly 180 countries and territories in just one year. Now we need another breakthrough: to end the health inequities that exist between wealthy and poor nations. We can no longer tolerate this gap. Everyone, regardless of income or geography shares the same rights to receive high quality, safe and effective medicines and vaccines. So, now is the time we must ask ourselves, how can we apply what we have learned in our fight against COVID-19 to all diseases and redefine the norm for accessing quality health? The need is clear, but how we do this is more complicated. Recent estimates show it can take at least four to seven years longer for new medicines to be authorized for use in sub-Saharan Africa than in the U.S. or Europe, and many others are never made available, greatly limiting patient access to critically needed treatments. Procurement channels can be tedious and cumbersome, particularly for smaller nations. Initiatives like the Africa Medical Supplies Platform (AMSP) and the Africa Vaccines Acquisition Trust (AVAT) have helped during the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling pooled procurement and increasing cost effectiveness and transparency for emergency medicines and supplies. Still there’s more work to do. Today, Pfizer is launching ‘An Accord for a Healthier World’ as a major first step to apply what we have learned and bring new resources to address the health equity gap. The Accord is a first-of-its kind, comprehensive initiative that will focus on greatly increasing access for 1.2 billion people living in 45 lower-income countries – all 27 low-income countries and 18 countries that have transitioned from low-income to lower-middle-income classification in the last 10 years. We have committed to provide our patented, high-quality medicines and vaccines available in the U.S. or the European Union—both current and future products—on a not-for-profit basis to the governments of these countries. Hundreds of millions of COVID-19 vaccine doses are available for free yet the vaccination rate for adults in Africa is roughly 15%. The pandemic made clear that supply is only one element to helping patients, under the Accord, we will work with governments and global health partners to identify quick and efficient regulatory pathways and procurement system to speed access, identify unmet health system needs and mobilize the resources needed for success. This includes technical expertise to support regulatory processes, innovative supply chain solutions, greater diagnostic capacity, innovative financing solutions and more to help governments achieve long-term success. No one company or government can address generations of health inequity alone. Pfizer and many others have been working for a long time to try to address the barriers that limit health equity. While important progress has been made, we must challenge the norm. We need an enhanced framework for global partnership, innovative thinking and scalable solutions to address this seemingly impossible task. We aim for the Accord to be a catalyst that brings together multi-disciplinary partners to effectively apply solutions across the entire healthcare ecosystem. We are inviting all of those who share our commitment and who are ready to work in brave and bold new ways to make their own equity commitments and work collectively to remove barriers to better health to change the lives of people around the globe. from https://ift.tt/FesXdEt Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Air pollution poses a major threat to public health, having been associated with higher rates of heart disease, stroke, and respiratory illness. Now, new research also links it to worse outcomes of COVID-19. In a study published May 24 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, researchers looked at data from about 151,000 Canadians who tested positive for COVID-19 in Ontario and calculated their exposure to air pollution by looking at their addresses for the five years before the pandemic and assessing the air pollution in that area. It’s an imperfect metric, the study authors acknowledge; individuals’ pollutant exposure differs even within the same region, since people’s activities and travel vary. But people who had a residential address in areas with high levels of common air pollutants were more likely to have severe COVID-19 outcomes, including hospitalization, ICU admission, and death. The strongest associations were for ground-level ozone, which is gaseous pollution created in a reaction between pollutants in sun and air. People who lived in places with high levels were more likely to be hospitalized, admitted to the ICU, and even die after a COVID-19 diagnosis compared to people who lived in places with lower levels, the researchers found. Higher levels of fine particulate matter, which are tiny particles that can penetrate the lungs and enter the bloodstream, were also linked to a higher risk of hospitalization and ICU admission. However, these pollutants are likely not the only ones that can influence disease outcomes, the authors noted. Air pollution is a mix of hundreds of interacting gasses and particles, many of which are thought to affect people’s cardiovascular and pulmonary systems. The impact is probably even more dramatic elsewhere. Canada is routinely ranked as one of the countries with the best air quality and has some of the most stringent air pollution restrictions anywhere in the world. Still, “Research over the past several decades [shows] that there is no identified threshold of air pollution level under which adverse health effects from air pollution are absent,” said co-authors Chen Chen, a postdoctoral fellow at University of California San Diego, and Hong Chen, a research scientist for Health Canada, in an email. “This study enforces the idea that air pollution is pervasive and a silent killer.” The study was observational and therefore unable to establish a cause-and-effect relationship. But air pollution could make people more vulnerable to COVID-19 in a number of ways, the researchers hypothesize. For instance, air pollution might increase people’s viral loads by limiting the lungs’ immune responses and anti-microbial activities, the study authors say. It may also increase chronic inflammation in the body and trigger the over-expression of a key enzyme receptor that SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter cells. Since the start of the pandemic, evidence has mounted to show that air pollution makes COVID-19 worse, says Francesca Dominici, professor of biostatistics, population, and data science at Harvard University, who was not involved in the current study but was one of the first researchers to identify a relationship between pollution and COVID-19. Dominici, who is currently working on a review of the literature, said that she’s identified about 150 papers from around the world showing that exposure to air pollution drives more infections and more severe illness. Air pollution does not pose an equal threat to everyone, however. In North America, studies have repeatedly shown that people with lower socio-economic statuses and people of color are more likely to be exposed to air pollution—and suffer worse health outcomes from it—than white people and those with more financial security. In part, this is because they are more likely to live or work in areas polluted by vehicles and construction, two major sources of air pollutants. Over time, disparities have become more extreme as industries have moved to places where local communities don’t have the resources to pursue litigation against polluters, says Dominici. Besides buying air purifiers and filters, which can help reduce an individual’s pollutant exposure somewhat but are often prohibitively expensive, Dominici says, the most effective intervention would be for governments to set stricter standards for emissions. Fine particulate matter, specifically, has been most consistently linked to health harms and needs tighter regulation, she says. “Considering that, unfortunately, it seems we’re going to live with COVID for a very long time, this should be another really important piece of evidence to support implementing stringent regulation for fine particulate matter.” Improving air quality is essential, say Chen and Chen, because the interaction with COVID-19 may be the “tip of the iceberg” of how air pollution negatively affects human health. “There is a need to continue improving air quality to mitigate air health effects, before they become overwhelming and irreversible.” from https://ift.tt/XsVNxhW Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ NEW YORK — U.S. births bumped up last year, but the number of babies born was still lower than before the coronavirus pandemic. The 1% increase was a bit of a rebound from 2020, the first year of the pandemic, which witnessed the largest one-year drop in the U.S. births in nearly 50 years. But there were still about 86,000 fewer births last year than in 2019, according to a government report released Tuesday. “We’re still not returning to pre-pandemic levels,” said Dr. Denise Jamieson, chair of gynecology and obstetrics at Emory University School of Medicine. U.S. births had been declining for more than a decade before COVID-19 hit, and “I would expect that we would continue to see small, modest decreases,” she said. Officials think last year’s uptick reflects births from pregnancies that had been put off during the uncertain early days of the pandemic. Deliveries were way down in January 2021, but improved as the year went on, said Brady Hamilton of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Much of the increase was seen in older moms. Read More: Home Births Became More Popular During the Pandemic. But Many Insurers Still Don’t Cover Them “These are births that were postponed,” said Hamilton, lead author of the new report. The report is based on a review of nearly all birth certificates issued last year. Some of the key findings: — Nearly 3.7 million births were reported last year, up from the roughly 3.6 million recorded in 2020. — Birth rates dropped again for teens and for women younger than 25, but rose 3% for women in their early 30s, 5% for women in their late 30s, and 3% for women in their early 40s. — Birth rates rose 1% for Hispanic women and 3% for white women. But they fell 1% for Asian women, 3% for Black women, and 4% Native American and Alaska Native women. That may reflect the pandemic’s harsher impact on the health and lives of some racial groups, experts said. —The U.S. was once among only a few developed countries with a fertility rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace itself — about 2.1 kids per woman. But it’s been sliding, and in 2020 dropped to about 1.6, the lowest rate on record. It rose slightly last year, to nearly 1.7. —The percentage of infants born small and premature — at less than 37 weeks — rose 4%, to about 10.5%. It was the highest it’s been since 2007. The premature birth rate had declined slightly in 2020, and health officials aren’t sure why the increase occurred. But older moms are more likely to have preterm births, as are women infected with COVID-19, said the CDC’s Joyce Martin, a study co-author. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. from https://ift.tt/jqUeDGN Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Case counts of monkeypox continue to grow worldwide, raising concerns about how people can protect themselves. So far, the World Health Organization reports that in 12 countries, 92 cases have been confirmed in this recent emergence of the virus, and 28 possible cases are still being investigated. What alarms public health officials about the recent outbreaks is that monkeypox is generally not common or known to circulate in these nations; it’s endemic in parts of central and western Africa, but not in the European and North American nations—including the U.S.—that are currently seeing an uptick in infections. The U.S. recorded its first case this year in Massachusetts on May 18, and officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a briefing on May 23 that the agency is working with state health departments in New York, Florida, and Utah to investigate four additional potential cases. The good news is that an approved, effective, and relatively new monkeypox vaccine already exists. But do Americans need to get vaccinated? The monkeypox vaccineMade by the Danish company Bavarian Nordic and named Jynneos, the vaccine uses a live version of the smallpox virus that has been engineered so that it cannot replicate in the body or cause infection, but can still activate the immune system to mount defenses against both the smallpox and monkeypox viruses to protect people from getting infected. According to studies conducted among people who were vaccinated in Africa, where the virus has circulated for years, two doses of the vaccine, given 28 days apart, were up to 85% effective in protecting people from getting monkeypox. It was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2019 to protect against both smallpox and monkeypox. Americans don’t routinely get vaccinated against either disease. But in November 2021, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) within the CDC considered the question of who should be immunized against monkeypox, since cases in the U.S. have occurred after people traveled to areas in Africa where the disease is endemic. After analyzing the available studies, the ACIP recommended that those at highest risk of exposure and infection—including scientists who work in labs that study monkeypox virus, first responders who may treat those occupational cases, and health care workers who care for infected patients—should receive the vaccine. The recommendations were accepted by CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky but have not been published in the agency’s publication of record, the MMWR, which would make the advice official. “The ACIP did a very good job of considering all the different populations who might have occupational risks of exposure [to monkeypox],” says Brett Peterson, deputy chief of the pox virus and rabies branch of the CDC. But, he says, that was before the current clusters of cases, and the committee members focused primarily on how best to protect people at high occupational risk from getting infected, since there wasn’t a significant danger of cases in the wider population. Given the latest developments, that recommendation could be modified before it is published to provide additional guidance on the best strategy for vaccinating other people who might be exposed if more cases emerge. “There probably needs to be a call for the CDC to publish the decisions that the ACIP made about use of the monkeypox vaccine, given the recent cases,” says Dr. David Freedman, professor emeritus of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and president-elect of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. A possible vaccination approachUnlike with the COVID-19 vaccines, immunizing people against monkeypox likely won’t involve a mass campaign, because monkeypox isn’t as contagious or as easily spread as SARS-CoV-2. Monkeypox was discovered in 1958 and named after the colonies of monkeys, which were part of research studies, in which the virus was first identified. In recent years, human cases have been reported primarily in central and West African countries such as Nigeria and Cameroon, with the West African virus, which circulates widely in Nigeria, resulting in less severe disease than the central African version. As a poxvirus, its symptoms are similar to those of smallpox, and include fever, muscle aches, and headache. Unlike smallpox, however, monkeypox also causes the lymph nodes to swell, and several days after the initial fever, hallmark lesions start appearing throughout the body, eventually developing into larger fluid-filled vesicles and pustules before forming scabs. Most people with the disease recover without treatments after two to four weeks, although antiviral therapies could be helpful, especially for those with weakened immune systems. In the May 23 press briefing, CDC scientists noted that the data showing the efficacy of these antiviral treatments in human patients are still limited, and that most of the data supporting their use come from animal studies. The virus can spread through a number of routes, the most common and direct being via breaks in the skin or contact with body fluids. Monkeypox and also transmit from one person to another through respiratory droplets from sneezes or saliva—although infection is less likely to occur this way and more likely to happen with direct contact with the virus-laden lesions. That’s why vaccinating for monkeypox will most likely involve a version of what experts call a ring strategy, and focus on immunizing only those with contact with infected individuals. “If a case is reported in the country, a public health SWAT team goes out, finds out who the close contacts are of that first case, and vaccinates just those close contacts, and not the entire city or suburb,” says Freedman. “Because monkeypox is not a virus that is spread mainly through respiratory transmission, you don’t see huge numbers of infected people. So you can do ring vaccination around the known cases.” If that approach is used, “we have sufficient vaccine in the Strategic National Stockpile to vaccinate the entire U.S. population,” says Peterson. “I am confident that there is sufficient vaccine available for use in this situation.” The U.S.’s initial contract with Bavarian Nordic after the vaccine was approved called for 28 million doses of the vaccine to be provided for the stockpile over a number of years. But because some of those doses were delivered around 2019, some have expired, and the terms of the agreement require the company to replace expired doses with freshly manufactured ones. Captain Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director of the division of high consequence pathogens and pathology at CDC, said during the press briefing that about 1,000 doses of the vaccine are currently available, and that Bavarian Nordic expects to ramp up production to increase that supply. In addition, on May 18, the U.S.’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Department of Health and Human Services, called in an existing order for up to 13 million additional frozen doses to add to that stockpile. The versions of the vaccine currently in storage were manufactured as a liquid and then frozen, which gives them a shorter shelf life, according to Peterson. The newer, freeze-dried versions are first turned into a powder that makes them more resistant to changes in temperature before they are reconstituted just before being injected. But these more shelf-stable vaccines won’t be available until 2023 and 2024. McQuiston added that so far, officials at the Massachusetts Department of Health have identified more than 200 close contacts of the only confirmed monkeypox case in the U.S.—most of whom are health care workers—and that some of those contacts have been vaccinated with doses from the national stockpile. That stockpile also contains doses of a different, older smallpox vaccine, which has not been reviewed or approved by the FDA specifically for monkeypox, but could also be used to protect people against the latter disease, since the viruses are related and the shots can generate immunity that can cross react with both viruses. This vaccine, called ACAM2000, has been approved in the U.S., Australia, and Singapore to protect against smallpox but can cause side effects including inflammation of heart tissues, and it is not recommended for people with weakened immune systems. Unlike Jynneos, ACAM2000 is built around a disabled monkeypox virus that is still able to replicate, although it can’t cause disease. Jynneos was developed specifically to offer those with compromised immune systems an option for getting vaccinated against smallpox, but its safer profile led the FDA to approve it for the general population as well. The vaccine’s ability to cross-react and generate immune protection against monkeypox made it doubly useful. “It’s important to know that Jynneos can be given to people without needing a detailed health screening,” says Freedman. There isn’t strong enough evidence yet to suggest where and how the recent outbreaks began, but the clusters in Europe involve men who have sex with men, and “many of these global reports of monkeypox cases are occurring within sexual networks,” said Dr. Inger Damon, a poxvirus expert with the CDC, in a statement on the agency’s website. The first genetic analysis of the monkeypox viruses from the recent cases suggests that they originated in Nigeria, where one of two common versions of the virus are endemic, and were brought to other parts of the world via infected travelers. But researchers will continue to analyze the genetic data further to understand if and how the latest clusters of cases are related. In the meantime, should the outbreak grow significantly in scale and scope enough to warrant immunization, health experts in the U.S. are confident that there will be enough doses of the shot to be distributed to Americans who might need them. from https://ift.tt/unwZ1pt Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ 646,970 lives. This is the number of Americans who would be alive today if the United States had the same per capita death rate from COVID-19 as our northern neighbor, Canada. Reflect for a moment on the sheer magnitude of the lives lost. 646,970 is more than the entire population of Detroit. And it is more than the total number of American lives lost in World War I, World War II, and Vietnam combined. No country is more similar to the U.S. than Canada, whose economy and culture are closely intertwined with our own. Yet faced with a life-threatening pandemic of historic proportions, Canada showed far greater success in protecting the lives of its people than the U.S. How are we to understand Canada’s superior performance and the disastrous performance of our own country, which has the highest per capita death rate (3023 per one million, compared to Canada’s 1071) of any wealthy democratic country? In comparing the two countries, the starting point must be the different response at the highest levels of government. In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated in March 2020, “I’m going to make sure that we continue to follow all the recommendations of public health officers particularly around stay-at-home whenever possible and self-isolation and social distancing”. This message was reinforced by Dr. Teresa Tam, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, who in March delivered a message urging solidarity, declaring “We need to act now, and act together.” In the U.S., President Trump in striking contrast declared that he would not be wearing a mask, saying “I don’t think I will be doing it…I just don’t see it”. And instead of reinforcing the messages of Dr. Anthony Fauci and other leading public health officials, Trump actively undermined them, declaring in reference to stay-at-home orders in some states, “I think elements of what they’ve done are just too tough.” Not content with undercutting his top public health advisers, President Trump further undermined public confidence in science by suggesting “cures” for COVID-19, including at one point ingesting bleach and taking hydroxychloroquine, a drug that research confirmed had no efficacy as a COVD-19 treatment. These divergent responses at the national level were to shape responses at the state and provincial level of the U.S. and Canada, respectively, as well as the response of the public. By the beginning of July 2020, the impact of these divergent responses was already visible, with Canada’s death rate just 60 percent of the American rate. As Canada’s more stringent public health measures—which included larger and stricter stay-at-home orders, closure of restaurants, gyms, and other businesses, curfews, and limits on public gatherings—took effect, the gap between the two countries widened even more. By October 2020, the per capita death rate in Canada had dropped to just 40 percent of the rate in the U.S. It is tempting to blame America’s disastrous response to COVID-19 on Trump, and there is no question that he bungled the situation. But the pandemic revealed deep fault lines in America’s institutions and culture that would have made effective responses difficult no matter who was in the White House. Had Barack Obama, for example, been in office when COVID-19 arrived, he, too, would have faced the country without a national health care system, one with deep distrust of government, exceptionally high levels of poverty and inequality, sharp racial divisions, a polarized polity, and a culture with a powerful strand of libertarianism at odds with the individual sacrifices necessary for the collective good. The differences between the U.S. and Canada became even more starkly visible on the issue of vaccines. The U.S., which had purchased a massive supply of vaccines in advance, was initially far ahead, with 21 percent of Americans and only 2 percent of Canadians vaccinated by April 1, 2021. The U.S. was still ahead in July, but by October 1, 74 percent of Canadians were fully vaccinated, compared to just 58 percent of Americans. Part of the difference no doubt resides in the superior access provided by Canada’s system of universal, publicly funded healthcare. But equally, if not more important, is the far greater trust Canadians have in their national government: 73 percent versus 50 percent in the U.S. Coupled with greater vaccine resistance in the U.S., the net result is a vast gap in the proportion of the population that is not fully vaccinated: 32 percent in the U.S., but 13 percent in Canada. Also implicated in the far higher COVID-19 death rate in the U.S. is the simple fact that Americans are less healthy than Canadians. Lacking a system of universal healthcare and plagued by unusually high levels of class and racial inequality, Americans are more likely to have pre-existing medical conditions associated with death from COVID. Americans have an obesity rate of 42 percent versus 27 percent for Canadians and a diabetes rate of 9.4 percent versus 7.3 percent for Canadians. Overall, the health of Canadians is superior and they live longer lives, with an average life expectancy of 82.2 years compared to 78.3 years in the U.S. Exacerbating these differences in health are the deep cultural differences between the two countries. More than three decades ago, the sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset noted in Continental Divide that the ideologies of anti-statism and individualism were far more resonant in the U.S. than in Canada. For the many Americans influenced by the powerful libertarian strand in American culture and by its elaborate right-wing media apparatus, masks were a violation of freedom and vaccines a form of tyranny. Canada, which produced a trucker convoy that shut down the nation’s capital, is not immune to such sentiments. But they were far more pervasive in the U.S. and led to a degree of non-compliance with the government and public health officials that had no parallel in Canada; to take but one example, the percent of Canadians wearing masks in January 2022 when the Omicron variant was at its height was 80 percent compared to just 50 percent in the U.S. Following a national disaster of this magnitude, there must be a serious inquiry into what happened and how it might be prevented or mitigated in the future. This is what the nation did after the attack on September 11, forming a Commission that issued a major report within two years of its formation. Surely a pandemic that has taken the lives of more than one million Americans warrants a report of at least equal seriousness. But in the current atmosphere of intense political partisanship, it might be better if such an investigation were conducted by a nongovernmental entity composed of distinguished citizens and experts, or by a non-political body such as the National Academy of Sciences. But whatever form such a commission might take, it must address a pressing question: why so many countries, including Canada, proved so much more effective in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. We could—and should—learn from their experiences, so that the U.S. does better when the next pandemic arrives. from https://ift.tt/frlt94I Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ COVID-19 has been frustrating for gym rats. Even before scientists knew much about this particular virus, it was pretty clear that breathing heavily in a confined space with lots of other people around doing the same was an easy way to catch a respiratory illness, and gyms were among the first businesses to close early in the pandemic. These suspicions have since been borne out by science: aerosols—tiny droplets that spread through the air when we breathe—have been identified as a major source of COVID-19 transmission, especially when people are breathing faster and more deeply. Throughout the pandemic, exercise at spin classes, fitness clubs and sports games has been identified as the source of dozens of new cases. Now a new experiment has given us a more exact sense of just how many aerosols a single person can spew during an intense workout—and the results aren’t pretty. According to research by scientists in Germany published in PNAS on May 23, people emit about 132 times as many aerosols per minute during high intensity exercise than when they’re at rest, which the researchers warn raises the risk of a person infected with COVID-19 setting off a superspreader event. At rest, people emitted an average of 580 particles each minute, but during maximal exercise—in which researchers gradually increased intensity until the subjects were exhausted—people emitted an average of 76,200 particles a minute. The study authors acknowledge that their work has limitations. First and foremost, the sample size was just 16 people. In addition, none of the subjects were infected by COVID-19; in the paper, the researchers note there was no way to do so safely, due to ethical concerns about the health risks for participants. Nevertheless, there were some valuable findings to come out of the work. “[As an exercise physiologist], and we knew before that when you exercise, there’s more air coming out of a person,” says Henning Wackerhage, a co-author and professor of exercise biology at Technische Universität München. “But we didn’t know before, and which, quite frankly, I didn’t expect, is that also when we exercise hard: there are more particles per liter of air.” The unusual experiment design enabled the researchers to get a more exact sense of the particles released. While exercising on a stationary bike, each of the 16 subjects breathed clean air through a silicone face mask, and then exhaled into a plastic bag. This enabled the researchers to eliminate sources of contamination and get more reliable results, says Christian Kähler, a professor at the Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Aerodynamics at Universität der Bundeswehr München who co-authored the study. Some of the participants also emitted much more aerosols during high-intensity exercise than others; in particular, fitter people with more experience in endurance training emitted 85% more aerosols than people without such training. Dr. Michael Klompas, a hospital epidemiologist and infectious disease physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital who did not participate in the study, explains that this may be a function of the way individuals’ bodies become more efficient at moving large amounts of air. “They make their muscles do an enormous amount of work, and they need to support that by giving their muscles enormous amounts of oxygen and helping to clear waste products,” he says. If this gives you pause about your current exercise regimen, keep in mind that not all gyms are alike—and the right policies and set-up can help to keep you safe. For instance, the amount of space per person is essential; large spaces, especially those with high ceilings, give the air more space, says Thomas Allison, director of Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing Laboratories at the Mayo Clinic. Other things to look for at a gym, says Klompas, are a vaccination requirement, a facility that has professionally measured the air flow and put in place air filters, and, ideally, a testing requirement. In Klompas’ opinion, masks are potentially helpful, but aren’t likely to be reliable during workouts—looser masks won’t do much during vigorous exercise, and it’s impractical to expect people to wear N95s while exerting themselves. The researchers note that factors besides fitness status can also affect how many aerosols people emit. Wackerhage says they are also looking into how factors like body mass index, age, and lung condition play a role. Ultimately, says Klompas, whether or not you go to a gym comes down to your risk tolerance, and weighing the costs and benefits of going to the gym for you, personally. However, he says, you shouldn’t pretend that working out indoors, and around other people, doesn’t pose risks. “If you’re not willing to get COVID don’t go,” says Klompas. “At a time like now, when there’s a lot of COVID around, it is a high risk proposition.” from https://ift.tt/akidlZN Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Three doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine offer strong protection for children younger than 5, the company announced Monday. Pfizer plans to give the data to U.S. regulators later this week in a step toward letting the littlest kids get the shots. The news comes after months of anxious waiting by parents desperate to vaccinate their babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, especially as COVID-19 cases once again are rising. The 18 million tots under 5 are the only group in the U.S. not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccination. The Food and Drug Administration has begun evaluating data from rival Moderna, which hopes to begin offering two kid-sized shots by summer. Pfizer has had a bumpier time figuring out its approach. It aims to give tots an even lower dose—just one-tenth of the amount adults receive—but discovered during its trial that two shots didn’t seem quite strong enough for preschoolers. So researchers gave a third shot to more than 1,600 youngsters—from age 6 months to 4 years—during the winter surge of the omicron variant. In a press release, Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said the extra shot did the trick, revving up tots’ levels of virus-fighting antibodies enough to meet FDA criteria for emergency use of the vaccine with no safety problems. Preliminary data suggested the three-dose series is 80% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19, the companies said, but they cautioned the calculation is based on just 10 cases diagnosed among study participants by the end of April. The study rules state that at least 21 cases are needed to formally determine effectiveness, and Pfizer promised an update as soon as more data is available. Read More: COVID-19 Risks for Kids Under 5 Right Now: What Parents Should Know The companies already had submitted data on the first two doses to the FDA, and BioNTech’s CEO, Dr. Ugur Sahin, said the final third-shot data would be submitted this week. “The study suggests that a low, 3-microgram dose of our vaccine, carefully selected based on tolerability data, provides young children with a high level of protection against the recent COVID-19 strains,” he said in a statement. What’s next? FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks has pledged the agency will “move quickly without sacrificing our standards” in evaluating tot-sized doses from both Pfizer and Moderna. The agency has set tentative dates next month for its scientific advisers to publicly debate data from each company. Moderna is seeking to be the first to vaccinate the littlest kids. It submitted data to the FDA saying tots develop high levels of virus-fighting antibodies after two shots that contain a quarter of the dose given to adults. The Moderna study found effectiveness against symptomatic COVID-19 was 40% to 50% during the Omicron surge, much like for adults who’ve only had two vaccine doses. Complicating Moderna’s progress, the FDA so far has allowed its vaccine to be used only in adults. The FDA is expected to review Moderna’s data on both the youngest age group, plus its study of teens and elementary-age children. Other countries already have expanded Moderna’s shot to kids as young as 6. While COVID-19 generally isn’t as dangerous to youngsters as to adults, some children do become severely ill or even die. And the omicron variant hit children especially hard, with those under 5 hospitalized at higher rates than at the peak of the previous delta surge. It’s not clear how much demand there will be to vaccinate the youngest kids. Pfizer shots for 5- to 11-year-olds opened in November, but only about 30% of that age group have gotten the recommended initial two doses. Last week, U.S. health authorities said elementary-age children should get a booster shot just like everyone 12 and older is supposed to get, for the best protection against the latest coronavirus variants. from https://ift.tt/KgOzSJp Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ (Washington D.C.) — Consumers should double-check their jars of Jif peanut butter amid a recall, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say. Jif’s creamy, crunchy, natural and reduced fat peanut butters have been linked to a salmonella outbreak across 12 states that has left 14 ill, with two people being hospitalized. Side effects from salmonella poisoning include fever, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. The J.M. Smucker Co. announced a voluntary recall Friday of some Jif peanut butter products for potential salmonella contamination. Jars with lot codes 1274425 through 2140425 have been recalled and should be disposed, the company said. Jif is sold at retailers nationwide. States reporting salmonella cases are Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, New York, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia and Washington. from https://ift.tt/qTeCHgG Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ |
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