Tag Archives: Healthcare

disease, drugs, Health

Three hundred health initiatives have been introduced

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More than three hundred health initiatives have been introduced under the Trump presidency. The little-used statute recognized as the Congressional Review Act helps a new government to oversee the revocation of the regulations. However, Congress has not attempted to use it to date, and the president has not requested it. The legislation extends, with a few variations, to policies concluded between 21 August 2020 and 20 January 2021. It is only valid for the first 60 parliamentary days of the current Congress.

In 2017, Republicans abrogated a family planning policy by the Congressional Review Act. The administration of Biden may well be the one to assess it. Using the act is dangerous, too. No administration will issue an “equivalent” rule under its provisions. Many revisions to Trump’s agenda are part of broader legislation affecting a wide range of topics. The Senate also has a chief for the Management and Budget Bureau to confirm, and the current Secretary for Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, was sworn in last week.

Congress could shift to the Act of Congressional Review. The act was not included during the transfer from Obama to Biden. For both the Biden government and the new Congress, the change process was turbulent. It is not too late for Congress to apply the act to a Trump law at the last minute, which allows HHS to revise 18,000 regulations. This might be a cleaner approach to avoid the sunset clause, which asks for a range of laws to be checked.

Reference

How Biden Could Quickly Undo Trump Era Health Policies, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/03/26/981410515/how-biden-could-quickly-undo-trump-era-health-policies

disease, drugs, Health, medications

Health experts say that at least 70 percent of the country needs to be vaccinated

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Health experts say that at least 70 percent of the country needs to be vaccinated to ensure herd immunity and completely eradicate the epidemic that killed more than 300,000 Americans. National polls show a growing number of Americans are willing to get a coronavirus vaccine, but some populations, especially Black and Latinos, are reticent. Federal officials are releasing a 95 percent effective vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech, and on Friday the Food and Drug Administration cleared a second vaccine from Moderna that was almost equally effective in preventing COVID-19 cases. Some people have quoted what the Trump administration calls politicizing a vaccine, despite officials’ denial that policy plays a role in rapid development.

These groups have been reinforced by the coronavirus epidemic, which both eroded trust in traditional institutions and left millions of people with few options for social interaction beyond the internet. Paul Barrett, deputy director of the Stern Center for Business and Human Rights at New York University, told The Hill that the biggest source of coronavirus vaccine disinformation is “the transformation of long-standing anti-vaccine activists. “There is a considerable foundation that existed before anyone heard of COVID-19,” he explained. The same mistrust in institutions that have revived anti-vaccination communities has also led thousands to conspiracy theories.

QAnon, whose followers believe President Trump is trying to expose a dark elite group running child sex trafficking gangs in the media and government, has had a clear benefit of shifting towards this conspiratorial notion. The growth of QAnon may make it difficult to achieve herd immunity as its supporters increase the lies about COVID-19 vaccines, as it is applied with a microchip to control and monitor citizens or Bill Gates is responsible for the coronavirus. “These conspiracy theories are wrong, but I am very concerned that they could enter the mainstream. And if we have people who will not be vaccinated, this makes it much more difficult for us to achieve herd immunity through vaccination and therefore end the epidemic, ”said Leana Wen.

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey revealed that 42 percent of Republicans would likely not be or definitely would not be vaccinated against the coronavirus. Vice President Pence and his wife Karen were vaccinated live on television Friday in an attempt to bridge the partisan gap. “Today there are millions of Americans whose most trusted envoy is President Trump. And that’s why it’s really important for President Trump to speak to correct misinformation, ”Wen said.

Trump has repeatedly raised doubts about the seriousness of the epidemic and mocked his use of masks to limit its spread. According to a report from Cornell University, 38 percent of all articles published in January that contained misinformation about the coronavirus outbreak, lawmakers in Congress supporting Trump also said things that could deter vaccine use. Ken Buck said in a Fox Business interview Friday morning that he would not receive the vaccine because he was “more concerned with the illness about the side effects of the vaccine”.

His office later announced that Buck believes people at risk should “get the vaccine immediately”. Right-wing media has also been the driving force of coronavirus misinformation. Beyond restricting current coronavirus misinformation, Barrett said platforms should work to increase information about vaccines from trusted sources. Still, healthcare professionals said tech companies can only go so far.

Reference

Health officials, social media scramble to fight vaccine misinformation. https://thehill.com/policy/technology/530943-health-officials-social-media-scramble-to-fight-vaccine-misinformation

disease, drugs, Health

Pfizer will only be able to deliver 2.9 million doses in the first few days

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It is expected that Pfizer will only be able to deliver 2.9 million doses in the first few days and only up to 6.4 million doses by 19 December, according to Operation Warp Speed, the government’s vaccine effort.

“As part of the discussion on who should qualify for phase 1b access to the vaccine, ACIP has so far discussed individuals with high-risk medical conditions such as cancer, chronic kidney disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), immunocompromised organ transplant status, obesity, severe heart disease, sickle cell disease, and type 2 diabetes,” said the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

For example, last month, the head of the Hawaii Healthcare Association told CNN that not a single hospital in Hawaii had a freezer that could remain cold enough to store Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine and that the state may not have enough access to dry ice to make proper use of the company’s distribution boxes.

They resolve quickly, but CDC and other officials are worried that they might scare some people away from getting a second dose of vaccine and are preparing educational materials to let people know the symptoms are a sign that the vaccine is working to reactivate the body’s immune response and is harmless.

Vaccine counselors have already broken down priority groups into subgroups, and only the first people to receive vaccines have been identified.

Operation Warp Speed Chief Counselor Moncef Slaoui has projected that Pfizer and Moderna can make and deliver between 60 million and 70 million vaccines in January and hopes that two other vaccine makers, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson, will join the vaccine mix in the coming months.

Moderna and Pfizer each claim that they can take up to a billion doses by the end of 2021, but Moderna say that it could be half that—a product that has never been sold before—and Pfizer has already severely adjusted its timeline for delivery of vaccines after unspecified manufacturing problems.

Slaoui said that up to 15% of Pfizer and Moderna vaccine participants had quite noticeable side effects,” including nausea, body aches, headaches, and chills.

Pfizer’s vaccine had its first scare in the US with a health worker in Juneau, Alaska, suffering from an allergic reaction.

“Around one in every million people who get a vaccine can have a severe allergic reaction to the vaccine,” Dr.

And what about the essential workers? ACIP’s expert bodies, including Johns Hopkins University and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, suggest it will be prudent to vaccinate those who work in food processing, emergency responders, and service workers before the general public.

The US Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization for Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine on Friday, and it is widely expected that EUA will give a similar vaccine to Moderna next week.

Reference

Trump says he is ‘not scheduled’ to take Covid-19 vaccine …. https://www.rt.com/usa/509567-trump-white-house-vaccine-later/

Diet, disease, Fitness, Health, Healthy eating

Consuming red meat and heavily processed foods raises the risk of heart disease and stroke

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Consuming red meat and heavily processed foods raises the risk of heart disease and stroke, according to a new report. The research followed almost 166,000 women and 44,000 men over a span of 24 to 30 years. Red meat, organic meat, processed meat, refined grains, sugary drinks are associated with increased inflammation. Leafy greens, carrots, tomatoes, whole grains, berries, nuts, fatty fish, and olive oil may provide a safe inflammatory response, according to the report. “When selecting food in our diet, we should take care of their pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory capacity,” says the editorial. The analysis cannot determine cause and effect, says the Food Information Council official. These results are published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 
Reference
Choose anti-inflammatory foods to lower heart disease and stroke risk, study says.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/02/health/anti-inflammatory-foods-heart-disease-wellness/index.html

Diet, disease, Health

Processed foods raises the risk of heart disease and stroke

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Consuming red meat and heavily processed foods raises the risk of heart disease and stroke. Nearly 166,000 women and 44,000 men followed the study for 24-30 years. Red meat, organ meat, processed meat, refined grains, drinks are associated with increased inflammation. Leafy greens, carrots, onions, whole grains, fruits, nuts, fatty fish, and olive oil, experts claim, will promote the safe inflammatory reaction. Mediterranean diet is one of the world’s healthiest diets, the International Food Knowledge Council stated.

The western diet is full of over-processed, fat-laden foods, sugar beverages, and red and processed meats. Chronic inflammation is related to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, depression, and many other conditions. Ninety percent of Americans don’t consume the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables, he says. Many unhealthy, “ultra-processed” foods can also shorten your life, studies have shown. The good news is that anti-inflammatory elements like vitamins, carotenoids, flavonoids can neutralize free radicals.

Reference
Choose anti-inflammatory foods to lower heart disease and stroke risk, study says. https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/02/health/anti-inflammatory-foods-heart-disease-wellness/index.html

disease, Health

COVID-19 assaults our immune system

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In an isolated laboratory at the Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, East Harlem, virologist Benjamin never has been able to decipher how the virus that causes COVID-19 assaults our immune system, wreaking havoc like no other virus he has ever examined.

Every cell of our body shares the same DNA and single-strand RNA, which functions like a machine programming the cell to generate proteins, according to New Yorker. SARS-CoV-2 disrupts programming by replacing 60 percent of this software in every cell it infects. Just 1% of the RNA in each cell is replaced by a normal virus.

The novel coronavirus shuts down just one arm of our immune system — the one that alerts other cells to protect themselves from viral spread — while leaving the other arm to run wild. In comparison to other viruses, SARS-CoV-2 does not modulate the second immune response that sends cytokines across the body to summon white blood cells.

Reference
Researchers Discover How COVID-19 Attacks Our Immune …. https://www.newsmax.com/health/headline/immune-system-cytokine-storm-viral-spread/2020/11/03/id/995070/.

disease, Health

It has been more than 300 days since Chinese authorities first told the World Health Organisation

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It has been more than 300 days since Chinese authorities first told the World Health Organisation that Wuhan residents were sick with a mysterious virus. Scientists discovered soon what the virus was (a coronavirus) and what it did (make people ill with a disease called COVID-19), and it spread across the globe like flames.

More than 1 million people have died worldwide, hundreds of thousands get sick every day, and the United States is the world’s most significant disease.

Researchers were still unsure how the virus spread, why people were infectious, or whether one could get it twice when we released our first guide to the coronavirus. These questions may have some residual confusion, but scientists have made some remarkable strides in responses.

Reference
The global death toll from COVID-19 surpasses 1 million – CNET. https://www.cnet.com/health/global-death-toll-from-covid-19-surpasses-1-million/

disease, Health

Resistance to Covid-19 infection remains for at least five months

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Resistance to Covid-19 infection remains for at least five months, investigators reported — and probably lengthier than that.

While the study may seem perplexing and contradictory to a comparable report out of Britain this week, it is not. People’s bodies generate an army of immune substances in response to an infection, and many are complicated at first, succumbing off quickly, while others develop more gradually.

The new account out Wednesday reveals 90% of men and women who recover from #Covid-19 infections maintain a stable antibody reaction.

British study demonstrates proof of subsiding immunity to Covid-19.

Although some researchers have suggested antibodies to this virus go away rapidly, experts have found just the reverse — that more than 90% of individuals who were moderately or averagely ill produce an antibody response strong adequate to counteract the virus, and the response is preserved for countless months.
This is important for successful vaccine improvement.

Can one get infected with Covid-19 two times? It is challenging
The team examined the antibody responses of more than 30,000 people who tested positive for Covid-19 at Mount Sinai’s Health System between March and October. They characterized their antibody reactions as minimal, moderate, or high. At least 90% had moderate to high amounts, or titers, of antibodies to the virus’s surge protein — the structure it uses to grip the cells it infects.

They then accurately studied 121 individuals who restored and contributed their plasma — once three months after they first produced signs, and again five months later.
Reference
Immunity to coronavirus lingers for months, study finds. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/29/health/covid-immunity-lingers-months-wellness/index.html

disease, Health

A sizable English study showed the sheer number of individuals with Covid-19 antibodies declined significantly

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A sizable English study showed the sheer number of individuals with Covid-19 antibodies declined significantly throughout the summer, suggesting that having the virus may well not confer long-lasting immunity from future infection.

The survey of 365,000 adults in England who tested themselves in the home using a finger-prick test showed the proportion of men and women testing positive for #Covid-19 antibodies declined by 26.5% between June 20—12 weeks following the peak of infections when looking at the country—and Sept. 28.

The outcome also suggested that folks who did not display symptoms were expected to lose detectable antibodies before they showed symptoms. The analysis, conducted by Imperial College London and Ipsos Mori polling organization, was funded because of the British government, which announced the outcome and published the analysis on Monday night. Other experts have not yet reviewed the outcome.

Doctors do not yet know whether antibodies confer any effective immunity against reinfection by Covid-19. However, just because they are doing, and the link between this survey is confirmed, it suggests the outlook of widespread, long-term herd immunity into the virus should be tough to achieve. Herd immunity occurs when enough people in a population develop an immune response, either through previous infection or vaccination, so the virus cannot spread quickly, and those who are not immune have protection.

The findings showed that 18-24-year-olds lost antibodies at a slower rate than those aged 75 and over. The littlest decline of 14.9% was of men and women aged between 18 and 24 years, together with the largest decline of 29% was of men and women aged 75 and over.

The analysis reflects earlier smaller trials and implies that antibodies into the virus decline over 6-12 months after infection, such as other seasonal coronaviruses, for instance, the common cold. The analysis does not indicate whether other kinds of immune responses—such as that contributed by so-called T cells—would help drive back reinfection.

The analysis showed that 6% of England’s population had antibodies on June 20, compared to 4.4% on Sept. 28. After September, 9% of individuals displayed antibodies in London, compared to just 1.6% in all affected regions when looking at England’s southwest.

Among ethnic groups, 13.8% of Black people tested with antibodies at end-September and 9.7% of Asians—mainly South Asians. This is compared to 3.6% of white people. Minority ethnic groups, when looking at the U.K., such as the U.S., have suffered disproportionately through the virus.
Reference
Study Shows Covid-19 Antibodies Waning Over Time, Suggesting Immunity May Wear Off. https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/study-shows-covid-19-antibodies-waning-over-time-suggesting-immunity-may-wear-off/ar-BB1aqa1Z?li=BBnb7Kz

disease, Health, human rights

The early voting place has already generated long, long lines in many states

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The early voting place has already generated long, long lines in many states, counties, and with the November election just 11 days away, many states, counties, and cities have imposed security precautions to protect voters and poll workers from contact with the coronavirus.

However, polling places still have the potential in order to become “mass gathering events for people,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention educated and warned the American people in an advisory released on Friday of this week, adding that measures to stop the spread of Covid-19 might be improved.

The C.D.C. based its latest suggestions on a study through 522 poll workers’ experiences in Delaware’s statewide the month of September.

Guidelines and rules issued by the agency in June recommended various ways to attenuate crowds at polling locations in the United States, including absentee voting and extended voting hours.

To cut down on disease transmission of the virus, the C.D.C. also recommended setting up physical barriers, protecting self by wearing masks between voting machines; spacing the machines aside from the other person; indicating 6-foot distances with signs or floor markings for those of you waiting in line to vote for a long time; designating separate entrances and exits for voters; the use of protective gear — masks, face shields, gloves and gowns for individuals — for poll workers assisting sick voters and those who are carriers; and allowing curbside voting for folks who are ill.

“Ensuring that ill or potential voters who may be a carrier can vote while maintaining poll worker and voter safety may be important to minimizing transmission without restricting voting rights,” the report said.
Voting in the Covid-19 Pandemic: Wear a Mask and Bring Your Pen. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/23/health/Covid-voting-safety.html