When a contagious, deadly pandemic sweeps around the globe, people look to the World Health Organization (WHO) for guidance. It’s not easy to be the person in charge under those circumstances, but as director-general of the WHO, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has led the way. Tedros, as he likes to be called, is one of the TIME100 honorees for 2020. During a TIME100 Talks interview with Senior Correspondent Alice Park, he discussed the WHO’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and the dangers of politicizing a virus that knows no boundaries. March 11, 2020—the day the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic—is seared into many people’s minds. But by then, the WHO had been ringing the alarm for more than a month; on Jan. 30, when most cases were in China, the WHO declared the outbreak a global health emergency. “We were using language asking the world to wake up in early February,” Tedros said. “From the start, we knew it was serious. It was dangerous. It was public enemy number one.” There was so much more to come. Dealing with a brand-new virus meant starting with little knowledge, and the WHO made missteps along the way. It’s been criticized for being late to recommend that the general public wear face coverings, guidance that only came in early June. Previously, it had only advised that health care workers, people with the disease and those taking care of them should wear medical masks. “There was a shortage of masks that our health workers can use,” Tedros said. “We were really concerned, so we said priority should be given to health workers, especially with regard to medical masks.” The WHO also faced backlash in June when the COVID-19 lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, said at a press briefing that asymptomatic transmission appears to be “very rare.” (She later clarified that the actual rates aren’t yet known.) But the WHO predicted early on the dangers of politicizing the virus. “From day one we have been saying, please, you need national unity and global solidarity,” Tedros said. “We called on political parties and others to actually unite on the fight against the pandemic. I know some countries”—including Finland—”have even formed a committee of the ruling and the opposition party to fight the pandemic together.” It’s an understatement to say that that didn’t happen in the U.S. President Donald Trump blamed the WHO for the spread of the virus, and in April said he would stop U.S. funding for the WHO. On May 29, he terminated the U.S.’s relationship with the WHO. “My first reaction was, to be honest, I didn’t believe it,” Tedros said. “Even now I believe that the U.S. Administration doesn’t have any good reason to withdraw from WHO.” The move was especially surprising to Tedros because he spoke to President Trump in March and said the conversation was “very good,” he said. “We don’t agree on everything; it’s normal. He was very cordial.” “We still don’t know the impact of the withdrawal,” Tedros said. “But I don’t see the U.S. membership or the relationship with the U.S. as a financial transaction. It’s not the money which matters. It’s actually the global leadership of the U.S.” “When the world is not working together and there is a crack, a division between them,” he said, “the virus gets the advantage.” The next step forward in the global fight against the pandemic will be the development and distribution of vaccines. “There is a chance to have vaccines by the end of this year or early next year,” Tedros said. “The basic principle we’re following now, in terms of distribution of the vaccines, is to give vaccines to some people in all countries, not all people in some countries.” For instance, “20-30% of the population could be covered in each and every country,” he said; priority will be given to senior citizens, health care workers and people with underlying health conditions. “There should be a political commitment, a decision by all leaders, to make vaccines a global public good and use the formula that WHO is proposing.” The pandemic has laid bare how weak the public health systems are in many nations—and not just low- and middle-income countries. This must change, Tedros said. “The most important thing is treating health as a fundamental human right issue: real commitment, not lip service, to universal health coverage and primary health care as a foundation, and big investment in public health. Simple public health solutions are important, especially to prevent pandemics.” from https://ift.tt/36hMO3x Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/
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A fresh analysis of age-based statistics offers solid evidence that COVID-19 is becoming more widespread among young Americans. According to data released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Sept. 23, children and adults under 30 accounted for more than a third of all COVID-19 cases reported in the U.S. in July and August. That’s up from around 16% in January through April.
The trend is particularly stark among people in their 20s, who made up more than 20% of reported cases in recent months, a higher number than any other age group. Though younger people are less likely to develop severe coronavirus symptoms, this is yet another signal that those of all age groups need to follow guidelines like social distancing and wearing face coverings if we want to tamp down the pandemic. In addition, the data show that the growth rate of new cases among younger people recently accelerated: the monthly case count more than doubled for kids, teens and 20-somethings over the summer. For instance, there were 189,000 cases among 20-year-olds in August—a nearly 100,000 increase from May. In contrast, the month-by-month case numbers didn’t increase dramatically among elderly groups, and actually decreased among those older than 80. The CDC’s report affirms that the age demographics of COVID-19, on a national level, continue to skew younger as the pandemic progresses. In August, the most recent month presented in the report, the median age of COVID-19 cases stood at 38. Earlier in the pandemic, the median age was 48, according to previously published data from the agency. The reason for the shifting case loads is likely due to a variety of factors. Outbreaks at colleges and universities may be one. But testing among younger people has expanded as well, particularly as schools and workplaces are requiring COVID-19 tests to contain the virus on their premises. More testing of this group is exposing cases, both symptomatic and asymptomatic, that would otherwise not get tallied. Despite their growing share of cases, younger people still appear less likely to get severely ill from COVID-19, and the vast majority of deaths related to COVID-19 have consistently been adults 65 and older. But to contain a viral pandemic, even those unlikely to get critical symptoms need to follow public health measures to prevent the virus from spreading—especially to those who are at higher risk, in this case parents, grandparents and other older adults in young people’s lives. from https://ift.tt/3mQ57CE Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ COVID-19 is a devilishly versatile disease, attacking all manner of body systems and doing all manner of damage—to the lungs, the heart, the liver, the kidneys. Though it doesn’t attack the mind directly, the pandemic the virus has caused has been devastating to mental health, and in many cases, the most vulnerable group is women. In a new study conducted by CARE, a non-profit international aid organization, investigators have found that while almost nobody is spared from the anxiety, worry and overall emotional fatigue of the coronavirus pandemic, women are almost three times as likely as men to report suffering from significant mental health consequences (27% compared to 10%), including anxiety, loss of appetite, inability to sleep and trouble completing everyday tasks. The study was ambitious, involving surveys of 10,400 women and men in 38 countries including the U.S., as well as others in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. The investigators explored two different avenues of inquiry, first asking respondents about their emotional state and then looking into what might be behind the problems. “We had a lot of qualitative data from women about stress, fear, anxiety, worry for the future,” says Emily Janoch, director of knowledge management and learning at CARE, who led the study. “Then we dug into those responses and looked for the causative factor.” Weathering Economic BlowsTime and again, what Janoch and her colleagues found was that women were subjected to specific stressors men were more likely to be spared, and overwhelmingly, those stressors were economic. In the U.S., for example, from February to May, 11.5 million women were laid off compared to 9 million men. And those job losses took place in a system in which women already make up 66.6% of the workforce in the country’s 40 lowest paying jobs. The division of labor in the home places a heavier emotional burden on women too. In the U.S., 55% of employed women do housework compared to 18% of men, and women tend to spend twice the amount of time with their children than men do. When schools close and children are left with only remote learning, the burden to keep them focused and check their assignments falls disproportionately on women. In Latin America, the CARE study found, this disparity is even worse, with 95% of schools in the region shuttered and entrenched social practice putting virtually all of the childcare burden on women. Things are even harder in the developing world. In Bangladesh, where women are six times likelier than men to have been laid off during the coronavirus recession and where an astounding 100% of 542 women surveyed reported increased mental health problems, the emotional toll is exacerbated by lack of mobility—either due to religious strictures that forbid women from leaving home without the accompaniment of a male family member or because of lack of access to public transportation. Either way, this limits their access to services like mental health care—and in many cases, they sorely need it. “When you ask women if their anxiety has gone up, they say ‘Yes, and here’s why: I’m not sure how many more days I can feed my family. I’m afraid I’m going to lose my job, and I have no back-up plan,'” reports Janoch. High-Risk WorkSimilar problems showed up in the Middle East, with 49% of women in Lebanon reporting job losses compared to 21% of men. In Palestinian communities, women who do have jobs tend to be employed in high-risk fields, with 44% of them working as teachers, nurses or other front-line positions. And if they begin to suffer emotionally from the strain, they often have little recourse: only 8% of women said they have access to adequate mental health care, compared to 67% of men. “Often,” Janoch says, “women are only allowed to go to women healthcare professionals, and many fewer doctors are women. Also, women are often expected to go to healthcare with a male family member accompanying them, which is not always possible—especially during COVID.” Elsewhere across Asia, women also tend to work in fields that expose them to greater risk of contracting the coronavirus, including crowded factory work, the hospitality industry and the sex trade. Across the world, women are overwhelmingly likelier than men to be employed as housekeepers as well, and when lockdowns hit, many were faced with a terrible choice: they could quarantine with their employer’s family and hold on to their job, or quarantine with their own family, and lose the source of income that made it possible to support them. Broader economic structures play a role too. In general, more women than men are employed in the informal economy or so-called gray markets—outdoor stalls and bazaars that are often unlicensed and unregulated but that provide an income for millions. In a typical recession, it’s formal businesses that tend to suffer while the ones at the fringes keep operating. The coronavirus recession has played out the opposite way, with social distancing making the typically crowded markets no-go zones. “The informal economy got completely devastated by the restrictions,” says Janoch. “Devastated” is a fair description of so much else that has been touched by the pandemic. Shuttered businesses, shattered economies, families grieving lost loved ones—all have been the most visible consequences of the global plague. Less visible, but no less terrible, is the quieter emotional pain of so many millions of people—too many of whom are paying a higher price simply because of their gender. from https://ift.tt/2G9Yeej Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Johnson & Johnson announced today (Sept. 23) that it is launching a large-scale Phase 3 test of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, which was developed based on science supported by the National Institutes of Health. The vaccine, being tested through the company’s Janssen Pharmaceuticals arm, will be the fourth to enter late stage studies, following candidates from Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and AstraZeneca. Unlike those vaccine candidates, which all require two shots, J&J’s vaccine involves a single injection. That means it could require half the number of doses to immunize the same number of people. J&J’s study, named ENSEMBLE, will recruit 60,000 volunteers across eight countries—Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and the U.S. Given the data showing that some groups are more vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19, Dr. Paul Stoffels, chief scientific officer at J&J, said the company and its study leaders are focusing on ensuring that the study includes a diverse population of participants. The vaccine uses a weakened cold virus, called AD26, to deliver the COVID-19 virus’s genetic material to the right immune cells in the body. Those cells then process the viral material to train the immune system to recognize and destroy any similar incoming virus. Based on studies in hamsters and monkeys, the vaccine produced sufficient immune responses that could neutralize the virus in the lab, and early tests in people which began in mid-July produced similarly encouraging results, which Stoffels says the company will publish in coming weeks. J&J’s coronavirus vaccine relies on a platform that the company had previously used to create Zika, HIV, RSV and Ebola vaccine candidates; only the Ebola vaccine has been approved so far, and only in the European Union. However, Stoffels said in a briefing, “We have studied this vaccine platform in more than 100,000 people [in other diseases] so that enabled us to go very fast and optimize for a COVID-19 vaccine,” As with the other late-stage trials, this study will be supervised by the same data safety monitoring board, which will analyze the data regularly for safety signals and signs of effectiveness or futility. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is supporting the trial, said that the timing for results from the J&J study (and the other three late-stage vaccine studies) will depend on how many cases of COVID-19 are recorded among both the vaccinated and the placebo groups. Only that comparison will give researchers a strong enough signal about whether or not a vaccine creates sufficient immunity. “I have said in the past that we predict we could have an answer from [the first vaccine trial from Moderna] that started in July, sometime in November or December,” he said in a briefing discussing the J&J trial. “It’s conceivable it could be earlier, that it could be October, but I think that is unlikely but not impossible. We are now in September and this trial is starting later, so I think the projection would be maybe a month or two later [than the others].” One factor that could save J&J some time is the fact that it’s vaccine only requires a single dose, which could cut a month off its study time—the other vaccine candidates require three to four weeks between shots. Either way, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said in the briefing, “People may have heard the term warp speed, and are maybe slightly nervous that it means things are going to be rushed through and that corners will be cut on safety and efficacy. I want to reassure [everyone] that will absolutely not happen. I doubt that many vaccine trials of this size have ever been subjected to the rigor with which these trials are evaluated.” from https://ift.tt/36e2RiP Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ It didn’t take more than one day of virtual kindergarten for Ryan Greenberg’s 5-year-old daughter, Samantha, to break down in tears, begging to go back to regular school where she could see other kids face-to-face. “I’ll wear two masks,” she told him. But for Samantha, in Montclair, N.J., and for hundreds of thousands of other children across the country, school will continue to be remote for at least the first weeks of school due to the coronavirus pandemic. And while this school year has posed new challenges for students of all ages, it’s proving especially challenging for children as young as 4 or 5 years old to sit in front of computer screens for hours each day, learning how to navigate websites and how to mute and unmute their microphones during virtual lessons. Viral videos have captured the patience and energy required of teachers to keep young students engaged. Such obstacles could help explain why kindergarten enrollment has declined in many districts across the country this year. That may translate to less money for school districts, which often receive funding based on enrollment, and to long-term losses for children who miss out on a critical year of early education. In 2018, 84% of 5-year-olds in the U.S. were enrolled in preschool or kindergarten, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But most states don’t require kindergarten attendance, making it possible for parents to opt out if they’re unable to help their child with remote learning this year or if they think the virtual offering is not as valuable as traditional kindergarten. There are no national kindergarten enrollment numbers available for this school year yet, but several districts reporting sharp declines of kindergarteners are not seeing the same enrollment drops in other grades. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school system in the country, which began the school year with online-only instruction, has nearly 6,000 fewer kindergarteners enrolled this year, a decline of 14% compared to last year. “The biggest drops in kindergarten enrollment are generally in neighborhoods with the lowest household incomes,” Superintendent Austin Beutner said in a briefing on Aug. 31. “We suspect some of this is because families may lack the ability to provide full-time support at home for online learning, which is necessary for very young learners.” Read more: As the School Year Approaches, Education May Become the Pandemic’s Latest Casualty Eric Mackey, the state superintendent of education in Alabama, mentioned the same trend during a state Board of Education meeting on Sept. 10. “Anecdotal information we’re getting is that kindergarten numbers are way down because parents are just saying, ‘Rather than do whatever we have to do this year, we’ll just hold our kids back one year,'” he said. “Which causes us two concerns: One is when they bring those children in next year, do they want to bring them into kindergarten or do they want to skip kindergarten and just start first grade?” Though official enrollment numbers have not yet been finalized in many places, other districts are reporting similar early figures. In Montgomery County Public Schools, the largest school district in Maryland, which will remain remote through January, kindergarten enrollment is down by 1,011 students, about 9% compared to last year. In Florida, kindergarten enrollment decreased by 12% in Miami-Dade County Public Schools and by almost 14%, or 1,976 students, in Broward County Public Schools, the largest enrollment decline of all grade levels. A spokesperson for Broward schools said the district is “working to attract kindergarten students and is hopeful more families will enroll their children once our District returns to in-person instruction.” <strong>“Anecdotal information we’re getting is that kindergarten numbers are way down because parents are saying, ‘Rather than do whatever we have to do this year, we’ll just hold our kids back one year.'”</strong>The San Diego Unified School District, which also started the school year virtually, reported on Friday that kindergarteners represent two-thirds of its enrollment decline this year, and it encouraged families to enroll their 5-year-olds now. “Those early grade-levels are critical times in the life of a student,” Superintendent Cindy Marten said in a statement. “They set a child up for success in later grades, not just academically, but socially and emotionally as well.” Jenna Conway, the chief school readiness officer for Virginia, is anticipating a 15% to 25% drop in kindergarten enrollment across the state this year, based on numbers reported by districts thus far, though official enrollment numbers won’t be available until the end of the month. “Everybody’s asking, where are the kids?” she says. And the answer is not yet clear. Some families might be holding their child back a year, a practice known as “redshirting.” Some might be enrolling their children in private school. Some might be homeschooling. And others have placed their child in daycare. Conway says about half of the Virginia child care providers that reopened have reported taking in some school-aged children, with a mix of daycares expanding to offer a kindergarten program or supervising children who are enrolled remotely in a public kindergarten. Nearly half of school districts across the country have reopened for fully in-person instruction, according to an analysis in late August by the Center on Reinventing Public Education. But 26% of districts, including many of the country’s largest school systems, have started the year fully remote. In recognition of the challenges facing the youngest learners, some districts have prioritized bringing kindergarteners and elementary schoolers back face-to-face first, before phasing in other grades. “One of the biggest challenges is going to be the variability of experiences,” Conway says, noting that students in some districts will receive in-person instruction, while others remain fully remote, and that kids in affluent families will have the opportunity to learn just as much as they would in a typical school year, while many other children will fall further behind. She says policymakers and education leaders will have to rethink early education and kindergarten and provide additional support to students who don’t have the full-time help of a caregiver, a quiet place to learn or consistent Internet access. “The hardest part about virtual kindergarten and pre-K is that the kids cannot do it on their own. They just can’t. I’ve both been able to observe classrooms and, downstairs in my house, observe my own child, and you know, there’s a lot of parents and caregivers in the frame,” Conway says. “Where are the places where parents aren’t able to support that? Where are the places where kids kind of go missing, either they’re absent or don’t log in?” ‘A lifetime of trying to catch up’Traneisha Sanford, a kindergarten teacher at Sims Elementary School in Conyers, Ga., which is continuing with virtual learning through the first semester, says she has 13 students in her class this year, down from about 23 in a typical year. She turned her guest bedroom into a remote classroom, decorating it with bookshelves, posters and a colorful bulletin board that says, “Our kinder class is virtually the best,” in neon letters. She starts each day by asking students to give her a thumbs-up or thumbs-down based on how they’re feeling. They sing alphabet songs, count to 100, decorate letters cut from construction paper and take “brain breaks” in between lessons. “It’s not easy, but I’m very dedicated to my craft and my career. I am doing the best I can and making it work, but this is not an easy task at all for us teachers as well as the kids,” she says. “My fingers are crossed that we are able to go back inside our buildings, if we can, in January.” Vatesha Bouler, a kindergarten teacher at Barack Obama Elementary School in Upper Marlboro, Md., who just began her 21st year as an educator, says she spent the first week of virtual school teaching students how to mute and unmute their microphones and turn their videos on and off, in between lessons about letter sounds, shapes and cooperation. Behind her desk at home, she hung up a list of distance learning rules, reminding students to “stay in one place” and “keep your sound on mute until you are asked to speak.” “It takes a lot more work, a lot more patience, a lot more planning to teach not only kindergarten, but in my opinion, any grade level with distance learning versus being in the classroom,” she says. “I tell parents this is a learning experience for all of us. We are all holding each other’s hand during this.” But some parents have found it overwhelming to juggle working and supervising virtual kindergarten. Jacquelyn Allsopp, who has three children, is considering unenrolling her 5-year-old from kindergarten in the South Orange-Maplewood School District in New Jersey after two weeks of remote learning, during which her daughter has grown restless and bored by hours in front of the computer each day. “She’s running away all the time, and it’s like, ‘Can you please come back and look at the screen?’ She’s like, ‘Mommy, I don’t want to learn like this,'” Allsopp says. “And I can’t force her to sit there. She’s 5.” Allsopp wrote to district leaders, raising concerns about whether four to six hours of screen time was age-appropriate for 5-year-olds. In a letter to families on Friday, the school district announced some changes for the youngest grades, shifting to three hours of live virtual instruction each morning, and offering art, music and physical education classes asynchronously instead, allowing families to choose when to participate in them. If she decides to unenroll her daughter, Allsopp says she would homeschool her this year and send her to first grade next year. “I feel sad that this is not really school for her. Children at this age should be learning through play, and so much of kindergarten is learning through play, socialization, learning how to get in line, how to do the morning meeting, how to do all these things in a classroom setting,” Allsopp says. “If you’re not learning that, how is this productive?” The benefits of traditional kindergarten have been well-documented. “We have a lot of evidence that these early learning experiences matter a lot for kids, both in the short and the very long run, into adulthood really,” says Chloe Gibbs, an assistant economics professor at the University of Notre Dame who has researched the impact of kindergarten, noting that quality kindergarten and pre-K can affect a child’s future educational attainment and earnings. And the stakes of missing or delaying kindergarten are higher for children who would most benefit from an early-education boost, including children from low-income households or children who are learning English. “That delay could be really costly for them because it could mean a lifetime of trying to catch up on developing those skills,” she says. “We worry that just further disadvantages the kids who would most benefit from having these early learning investments in school.” Education experts agree that, while kindergarten provides an important academic foundation, it is also key to helping children develop social-emotional and behavior skills — how to interact with classmates, how to listen to a teacher, how to follow classroom rules — which is harder to replicate over a computer screen. And while remote learning continues, some parents are trying to make up for that. Greenberg, the father in Montclair, N.J., says a few parents from his daughter’s kindergarten class recently organized a small outing to a park, so their kids could play. He asked Samantha if she wanted to go meet some of her classmates. “On the computer?” she said. In a park, he told her, “and she lit up instantly.” Wearing masks, the kids ran around in the park for two hours, he said: “It was probably the highlight of the week.” from https://ift.tt/2Espapm Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Body count has long been the yardstick by which we measure calamity. There were the 58,000 U.S. lives lives lost in the Vietnam war; the 1,496 souls who perished on the Titanic. In the hours after the September 11 attacks, when the death toll was not known, then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani famously said, “The number of casualties will be more than any of us can bear, ultimately.” We are, once again, trying to bear the unbearable as the U.S. today surpassed 200,000 deaths caused in the still-rampaging COVID-19 pandemic. We remain, as we have long been, the world’s hardest-hit country, with just 4% of the global population but roughy 21% of both deaths and overall cases; it’s a dubious distinction that was fast in coming. It was not long ago, on Feb. 29, that the U.S.’s first COVID-19 death was recorded, in Washington state. By March 29, the death count had exceeded the 2,977 people who ultimately did die in the 9/11 attacks. At that time, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted that total deaths would be between 100,000 and 200,000, and the disease promptly set out to prove that prediction a tragic low-ball. On April 29, the Vietnam death toll was surpassed. On May 23 we had reached 100,000 deaths. On July 29 it was 150,000. With the 200,000 threshold now having been crossed, the outlook for the rest of the year remains grim. The Institute for Health Metrics (IMHE) at the University of Washington School of medicine now predicts a likely scenario of 410,000 deaths by the end of the year. The fact that we find ourselves here was a result of serial failures in our politics, our culture and in our ability to imagine that the world’s most powerful nation could fail to rise to a health challenge many people had long predicted was inevitable. As TIME’s Elijah Wolfson and Alex Fitzpatrick have reported, 45 days before the first COVID-19 case was diagnosed, the Global Health Security Index was published, assessing 195 countries on their perceived ability to handle a major disease outbreak, and ranking the U.S. first. “It’s clear the report was wildly overconfident in the U.S.,” Wolfson and Fitzpatrick write, “failing to account for social ills that had accumulated in the country over the past few years, rendering it unprepared for what was about to hit.” Exceedingly unprepared, as the families of the 200,000 dead could sorrowfully attest. Still, there are glimmers of good news obscured by the bad. A handful of states, including Maine, Vermont, New York and Massachusetts, have new-infection rates below 1% of all people tested. But 27 states exceed the 5% positivity line the World Health Organization sets as a standard that must be maintained for at least two weeks before a country or region should consider reopening its economy. Only 14 states have seen daily case counts hold steady or fall over the past 14 days. Battling the pandemic remains difficult, especially with mixed messages continuing to come out of the White House and Washington. President Donald Trump continues to downplay the significance of mask-wearing, publicly breaking with CDC Director Robert Redfield, and calling him “confused,” after he testified before Congress that a simple face mask could be as effective in stopping disease spread as a vaccine. The President continues to hold public rallies with little social distancing or mask use, and claims that the 200,000 death toll is, in some ways, a success story since the numbers could have been much worse. “If we didn’t do our job, it would be three and a half, two and a half, maybe 3 million people,” he said on Friday. “We have done a phenomenal job with respect to COVID-19.” History will be the ultimate judge of what kind of job the Administration and the nation as a whole have done in responding to the pandemic. But with a vaccine still months away and the coming winter forcing people back indoors—and into close, infectious quarters—the 400,000-plus figure is almost certain to be reached before the end of the year, with numbers equally certain to keep climbing after that. The final number of lives lost will, once again, be more than any of us can bear. from https://ift.tt/3i1xElb Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ Blood tests can tell us a lot about what’s going on in our bodies—from whether we’re eating too much sugar to whether we’re harboring any infectious diseases. Scientists lately have been working on ways to use similar diagnostic tools for cancer, which have the potential to dramatically increase the amount of information doctors use to figure out the best treatments for their patients. Called liquid biopsies, these tests are designed to pick up genetic material shed by cancer tumors into the blood, which lets doctors avoid the invasive procedures needed to extract samples directly from tumors. That advantage over tissue-based biopsies is especially important in cases where tumors are deeply embedded in internal organs, and hard to reach. For now, the blood-based tests are not used to screen for cancers in healthy people but to guide treatments in those who are already diagnosed. A biopsy, whether from the tissues or the blood, can provide genetic clues about the mutations that are driving the tumors, and can direct doctors to the best drugs for treating them. That’s why these tests have developed in tandem with drugs designed to specifically block the effects of certain mutations that help cancers grow, and have made a huge difference in the world of cancer treatment. Matching these so-called targeted therapies to the right tumor mutations can improve survival rates for patients with lung and breast cancers, among others. Earlier this summer the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a blood-based test from Guardant Health to track 55 genetic mutations in any solid cancer. The agency also approved the use of the Guardant test as a so-called companion diagnostic, meaning its results could be used to direct doctors to a specific drug, osimertinib, made by AstraZeneca, to treat certain lung cancers. The FDA also this summer approved a liquid biopsy test from Foundation Medicine that analyzes more than 300 cancer-related genes. These tests build on earlier generation versions that were approved by the FDA and scanned blood for a limited number—often even single—mutations. The new ones pick up fragments of DNA shed by dying or dead tumors into the blood; these fragments are analyzed to see if there are any matches with a larger number of common mutations known to drive tumor growth. Dr. Edward Garon is an associate professor of medicine at University of California, Los Angeles, and an oncologist who treats lung cancer patients. Blood-based biopsies of lung tumors, he says, make it possible for him to keep closer tabs on how his patients are doing—since they are far less invasive and less dangerous than a biopsy procedure, liquid biopsies can be done much more regularly. This gives him a better sense for how patients’ tumors are changing, and possibly even developing new mutations to resist the medications he gives them. “Liquid biopsies at this point have become part of our standard practice,” Garon says. And because liquid biopsies represent the universe of genetic changes shed by tumor cells, they may have yet another advantage over tissue biopsies. When doctors perform a tissue biopsy, they can generally only sample one or a limited number of sites in a tumor at a time. But tumors often possess more than one genetic mutation that fuel their growth. Because many of these genetic fragments will end up in the bloodstream, liquid biopsies may be able to pick up more genetic mutations wherever they are in the tumor. The liquid biopsies may also provide results faster than tissue-based tests. After doctors send Guardant blood samples, for example, the company takes about six days to sequence the tumor DNA it contains and provide a report on which mutations it found. “Sometimes that’s faster than the analysis that can be done from a tumor biopsy,” says Garon. Foundation Medicine’s test takes one to two weeks, according to the company. Dozens of anti-cancer drugs that are designed to target specific genetic mutations behind abnormal growth are now available, but only about a quarter of cancer patients get detailed genetic testing of their tumors. Many instead get tests that look for single genetic mutations, (such as the BRCA 1 and 2 mutations that contribute to breast cancer) but in-depth profiling can give a much more accurate picture of which mutations are behind a patient’s cancer, and which drugs might be best to treat it. While education among both doctors and patients about the benefits of such genetic profiling is growing, many doctors are still unsure of how to interpret the results and how best to apply them to treat patients in a more precise way, which is slowing uptake. The data on how and when liquid biopsies can be useful to guide treatments are growing, as are studies on when liquid biopsies might be sufficient and when they need to be supplemented with tissue biopsies. Though still incomplete, these data are encouraging. For example, a 2019 study led by researchers at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center looked at 282 patients with metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who had both a traditional tissue biopsy and gave blood for the Guardant Health liquid biopsy test. It found that the Guardant test picked up signs of tumor mutations in 77 patients, while the tissue biopsies detected these in 60. The liquid biopsy also provided results in an average of nine days compared to 15 days for the tissue-based tests. In another study, Johns Hopkins researchers found that blood-based tests could detect NSCLC patients’ response to treatment anywhere from four to nine weeks before CT images of the lung could. Those weeks are critical for cancer patients whose tumors may be developing resistance to their current therapies, and who could potentially get a step ahead of their cancer if that resistance, in the form of new mutations, is picked up sooner rather than later. But the field of liquid biopsy is still young, and questions about the accuracy and reliability of the tests remain. While a positive test result means that the mutations it picked up are most likely present—which also means doctors can generally treat their patients based on that information—negative results are trickier to interpret. Because the blood tests rely on finding fragments of DNA shed by tumors, and amplifying them, it’s possible that negative results aren’t actually negative, but mean instead that there wasn’t enough DNA material to work with. “Not all tumors have the same amount of circulating tumor DNA,” says Garon. “So a negative test for a gene mutation does not definitively rule out the idea that a mutation is present.” That’s when a tissue biopsy could be ordered to verify the result. Nevertheless, liquid biopsies are already reducing the need for invasive tissue biopsies and giving doctors a way to better track their patients’ progression. Ultimately, say officials from both Guardant and Foundation Medicine, the goal is to look to the blood not only as a guide for which drugs to use for which patients, but to screen for cancer at even earlier stages, before it’s diagnosed. Grail, an Illumina spinoff that is poised to go public, is focusing its efforts on such screening, and published data from thousands of patients showing its test can pick up 50 different cancers. If it becomes as easy to pick up tumors from a blood test as it is to learn your cholesterol levels, then it may be possible to get ahead of new cancers so they don’t progress into serious and advanced disease when they’re harder to treat. from https://ift.tt/3cnxnaF Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories Are Spreading Rapidlyand Theyre a Public Health Risk All Their Own9/21/2020 Public health crises have spawned conspiracy theories as far back as when the Black Death ravaged Europe in the 1300s, as people desperately try to make sense of the chaotic forces disrupting their lives. While modern science offers a better understanding of how diseases infect people and how to contain them, COVID-19 conspiracy theories are spreading rapidly via social media, unreliable news outlets and from our own political leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump. The result: many Americans now believe pandemic-related conspiracy theories—and, alarmingly, those same people are less likely to take steps to prevent the virus from spreading. In a University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Public Policy Center study published Monday in Social Science & Medicine, researchers surveyed a group of 840 U.S. adults—first in late March, and then again in mid-July—to determine how Americans’ beliefs and actions regarding the pandemic changed over time. Overall, they found that COVID-19 conspiracy theories are not only commonplace, they’re gaining traction. Back in March, 28% of people believed a debunked rumor that the Chinese government created the coronavirus as a bioweapon; that number rose to 37% by July. About 24% believed that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exaggerated the virus’ danger to hurt Trump politically despite a lack of evidence; by July, that figure rose to 32%. And in March, about 15% of respondents said they believed that the pharmaceutical industry created the virus to boost drug and vaccine sales—another unfounded theory—compared to 17% in July. Whether or not someone thinks NASA hired Stanley Kubrick to fake the moon landing has little bearing on the world beyond that person. But in the case of a pandemic—which requires people to follow public health guidance in order to keep one another safe—conspiratorial thinking can have disturbing consequences. Indeed, the Annenberg study found that only 62% of people who were most likely to believe the coronavirus conspiracies said they wear a mask every day when they’re around other people away from home, compared to 95% of non-believers. Furthermore, people who believe COVID-19 conspiracy theories were 2.2 times less likely to say they wanted to receive a vaccine in March; by July, they were 3.5 times less likely to want to be vaccinated. “Belief in pandemic conspiracy theories appears to be an obstacle to minimizing the spread of COVID-19,” said Dan Romer, Annenberg Public Policy Center research director and a study co-author, in a statement. Where are people picking up COVID-19 conspiracy theories? Believers were more likely to be heavy users of social media and viewers of conservative media like Fox News, the study found. Meanwhile, people who watch other television news channels were more likely to follow public health guidance and to desire vaccination. While the researchers say they understand how pandemic conspiracy theories are spreading, they say it’s still a challenge to get believers to reconsider once they’re sucked in. Other research suggests that simply correcting false information doesn’t usually work—and can even cause some people to believe conspiracies even more deeply. “Conspiracy theories are difficult to displace because they provide explanations for events that are not fully understood, such as the current pandemic, play on people’s distrust of government and other powerful actors, and involve accusations that cannot be easily fact-checked,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Annenberg Public Policy Center director and study co-author, in a statement. from https://ift.tt/3cj02xL Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ The CDC PostedBut Then Suddenly DeletedCritical Guidance About How COVID-19 Actually Spreads9/21/2020 New language acknowledging that the virus that causes COVID-19 spreads more easily than once believed disappeared from a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website Monday just days after being published, replaced with a message saying the previously uploaded information was a mistakenly posted “draft version of proposed changes.” The now-missing language, which was posted Friday to a page titled “How COVID-19 Spreads,” cited small droplets called aerosols as the most common method of viral spread—reversing the agency’s previous stance that the virus was mostly spread by larger droplets that typically don’t travel as far. The move was lauded by scientists who have for months argued that aerosols account for a significant share of coronavirus transmission. (Mounting pressure from experts led the World Health Organization to acknowledge the threat of aerosol spread this past July.) “CDC is currently updating its recommendations regarding airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19),” reads a note on the altered page. “Once this process has been completed, the update language will be posted.” In the original change, the CDC cited “growing evidence that droplets and airborne particles can remain suspended in the air and be breathed in by others, and travel distances beyond 6 feet.” It also cautioned against spending time at poorly ventilated indoor locations. Now the page cites risk of spread “between people who are in close contact with one another (within about 6 feet)”—contradicting the public health guidance posted Friday. The CDC’s confusing about-face comes amid reports that political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, had been influencing the agency’s weekly health reports to make the U.S. pandemic situation seem better than it is in reality. Monday’s reversal may also increase public skepticism about the agency’s messaging on COVID-19 more broadly. The CDC did not immediately return TIME’s request for comment. from https://ift.tt/3hOCFgM Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ How Am I Going To Make It? Months of Eviction Uncertainty Are Taking a Toll on Millions of Families9/21/2020 Nine months into the COVID-19 pandemic, Marlenis Zambrano is out of money. A 48-year-old single mother in Virginia, she tried her best to get by after being furloughed from her Defense Department daycare job in March by selling homemade face masks and empanadas to help support her two dependent children, both in college. She twice applied for housing relief from Arlington County, but was denied because, at the time, she had $5,000 in savings intended for her daughter’s tuition. With that money long gone, Zambrano is living off her credit card, racking up $5,000 in charges to pay for her Arlington, Virginia apartment. If she stops paying rent, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s evictions moratorium, enacted earlier this month, should help keep her and her family housed at least until 2021. But with debt piling up and no further financial relief in sight, she feels the CDC rule has merely delayed the inevitable. “You close one hole, but you open many,” says Zambrano, of trying to keep up with her bills. “We don’t know how we’re going to get out of this situation if I don’t get back to work.” Under the CDC moratorium, which superseded a patchwork of state eviction orders, families like the Zambranos can submit a pandemic hardship declaration to their landlords, which can block eviction for nonpayment of rent until the end of the year. The rule has postponed the imminent threat of eviction for up to 40 million Americans at risk of homelessness. However, true rent relief, as well as extended federal unemployment benefits and other forms of direct stimulus, remain stalled in Congress. Faced with a severe affordable housing shortage and a prolonged economic downturn amid a seemingly endless public health nightmare, struggling Americans are feeling the effects beyond their bank accounts, as months of uncertainty are wearing down people’s resolve and potentially exacerbating the country’s pandemic-era mental health crisis. “It’s really stressful,” says Zambrano. “I try my best to be positive, but it’s hard to maintain it because at some point you think, ‘How am I going to make it?’” Months of such uncertainty can have real consequences. In order to keep a roof over their heads, families may compromise on food, energy and health care bills, experts say. “These things not only take a physical toll, but they take a mental health toll,” says Dr. Megan Sandel, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Boston University School of Medicine. In a 2018 study published in the journal Pediatrics surveying more than 22,000 U.S. families, Sandel and other researchers found that those who had recently been behind on rent faced quadruple rates of food insecurity, twice the rate of maternal depression, and higher rates of child hospitalizations and developmental delays compared to those with stable housing. During the current recession and unemployment crisis, researchers think two or three times as many people may be feeling those effects. Indeed, recent studies have found that three times as many Americans are experiencing depression during the COVID-19 pandemic than beforehand. “It’s no longer just a low-income family problem,” says Sandel. “This is something that is hitting more and more middle-income families.” And like so many other effects of the coronavirus pandemic, housing insecurity disproportionately affects households of color, with Black and Hispanic households reporting far higher rates of missed rent payments compared to white households, according to early June reports from the U.S. Census Bureau. These conditions can have long-term consequences for young children especially. Developmental delays caused by persistent childhood stresses can have enormous effects along the course of a person’s life, reducing their likelihood to graduate high school or their lifetime earning potential. “This is a critical window of time,” Sandel says. “Being able to have that stable, decent, affordable home that allows kids to reach their potential is a public health emergency.” Experts say the CDC eviction moratorium is only a temporary relief for families. It’s an unfunded program, meaning renters will still be expected to make up for their missed payments eventually. “This pushes the problem down the road,” says Peter Hepburn, an analyst at Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. “What needs to happen now is that Congress needs to step in to provide some sort of emergency rental assistance.” Until it does, struggling families are likely to fall farther behind as back rent piles up. As of Sept. 13, nearly 14% of U.S. households failed to make that month’s rent payment—more than a quarter million more than had not paid as of the same date last year, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council. Furthermore, while the CDC moratorium prohibits evictions due to nonpayment of rent, it still allows evictions for other lease infringements. That means at least some landlords are likely to claim other non-rent related violations, which in some lease agreements could be as minor as watching television too loudly, in order to kick renters out. While four months without the threat of eviction is welcome for many on the edge, months of congressional deadlock have left families in a seemingly perpetual limbo. “The tracks are being laid right in front of the train,” says John Gainey, a staff attorney at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society. “The uncertainty puts a real strain on tenants.” One of Gainey’s clients, Monique Jackson, is at least grateful for the bit of breathing room the CDC rule provides. She and her husband Shan fell more than $5,000 behind on rent for their one-story Jonesboro, Georgia ranch house after Shan lost his trucking job in March. Recently, Monique has been juggling her 13-year-old daughter’s remote learning schedule with calls to bill collectors, bargaining for an extra week here, an extra month there, trying to keep the lights on and prevent the furniture from getting carted out the door. “It’s a little relief that you’re knowing that you have a while before you have to be out, but it’s still going to be a big thing once January comes and you don’t have the money,” says Monique of the CDC moratorium. “It’s just really buying a little bit of time. That’s it.” The Jacksons worked for years to afford rent on a home they are now likely to lose once the moratorium expires. Shan, now 48, spent a decade working nearly 80-hour weeks in a Savannah sandwich shop. Before that, he spent three years handling 10-pound pork shoulders at a Tyson slaughterhouse in Iowa. Yet for years, the Jacksons could hardly afford decent housing, living in a state where rising living costs and weak affordable housing infrastructure have stacked the odds against low-income residents. In Atlanta, average rents have climbed 65% since 2010, while in Jonesboro, the suburb where the Jacksons live, rents shot up more than 25% in just the past three years. In Savannah, where average rents have increased more than 40% since 2005, Shan, Monique, their daughter Shania, and Monique’s grandson once lived together in a single hotel room. Now, the prospect of losing their single-family home and all the progress it represents weighs on the Jacksons—though there is some hope. Shan is back to work at a new trucking job, and the family is expecting a check for unemployment benefits backpay that could pull them out of debt. “We’re just trusting in God that he knows the situation, he knows what we’re going through,” says Monique. “I believe he’s not going to let us be out there [homeless] like that.” While the CDC moratorium may temporarily keep millions of families in their homes, it’s unclear when, or even if, further assistance will arrive. House Democrats’ $3 trillion HEROES Act, stalled in Congress since May, allocated $100 billion for emergency rental assistance for those at risk of homelessness. A Republican counterproposal included just $3.3 billion for families already receiving federal housing assistance—an amount the National Low Income Housing Coalition called “a drop in an ocean of need.” Some housing experts have proposed federal loan programs, which could help tenants make rent while also keeping landlords solvent as they contend with mortgages or other financial pressures of their own, potentially helping to stabilize the wider economy in the process. While some are pushing for short-term emergency relief, such measures won’t address what some say is a deeper issue that precipitated today’s crisis: a national shortage of affordable housing for low-income households. For families judged to be “extremely low income”—those at or beneath the poverty line or who earn 30% of their area’s median income—experts say the U.S. is short 7 million units nationwide. Advocates have proposed expanding national Housing Trust Fund state block grants for low-income housing and rental assistance programs like the Housing Choice Voucher program, as well as providing tax credits for rent-burdened families and reforming developers’ subsidies to incentivize building housing for the poorest renters. “[Local governments] don’t really have the resources to deal with the magnitude of the problem,” says Mel Jones, a research scientist at the Virginia Center for Housing Research. “The problem was so big before COVID, and now it’s that much bigger.” In absence of substantial help, there’s little for families like the Zombranos and the Jacksons to do but care for their families and hope for the best. “All I can do is go to work and try to make money so I can keep my bills paid the best way I know how,” says Shan Jackson. “That’s all I know how to do.” from https://ift.tt/3ckgZrE Check out https://takiaisfobia.blogspot.com/ |
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