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Comfortable Monday! Are you watching the Olympics this week? As a former distance swimmer, I’m an enormous fan of watching Katie Ledecky smoke everybody within the mile.
Ought to we use flu pictures on cows to cease chook flu from spreading?
An increasing number of dairy cow herds have gotten contaminated with H5N1 chook flu, and the necessity to cease transmission is urgent — if not for the cows, then for us. Because the virus travels amongst mammals, it’s attainable that it might adapt to develop into higher outfitted to transmit to, and amongst, people.
A number of animal vaccine producers are at work making an attempt to develop a chook flu vaccine for cows. However would a vaccine truly assist cease the unfold? Specialists who spoke to STAT’s Helen Branswell are divided on the concept. There are nonetheless questions on whether or not vaccinating cows can be an efficient resolution within the first place. And a few consultants wonder if farmers can be keen to soak up the prices of vaccines, or to conform to stringent post-vaccination surveillance.
Learn extra from Helen on the controversy. And after per week that noticed the human rely of chook flu circumstances hit 13 and the cumulative variety of contaminated herds climb to 172, don’t miss in the present day’s chook flu snapshot on all the most recent developments.
Stronger Covid restrictions saved lives, per research
If each state within the U.S. had imposed Covid insurance policies like these within the 10 most restrictive states, deaths from the virus would have been 10-21% decrease between July 2020 and June 2022, based on a research revealed Friday in JAMA Health Forum. State insurance policies have been largely related within the first few months of the pandemic, however started to diverge within the second half of 2020. Research evaluation discovered that masks necessities (particularly in faculties) and vaccine mandates have been related to decrease charges of extra deaths. On the flip aspect, an absence of mandates was related to greater extra deaths.
The evaluation can’t conclusively determine causation, solely associations. Nonetheless, the outcomes counsel that sturdy Covid restrictions saved lives, the authors wrote.
Mpox vaccine trial to start out in three African international locations
Researchers from McMaster College in Canada are planning a medical trial to check whether or not receiving Bavarian Nordic’s mpox vaccine can shield individuals who’ve been uncovered to the an infection from getting sick or scale back the severity of the sickness. The trial will launch subsequent month within the Democratic Republic of Congo and can later embody members in Uganda and Nigeria. The researchers obtained $4.9 million (U.S.) from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Improvements and the Canadian Institutes of Well being Analysis, per a CEPI press launch.
The trial’s outcomes might be essential to fight mpox within the DRC, which has seen 11,000 circumstances and 443 deaths this yr already, with youngsters making up nearly all of each, the press launch famous. The research will invite over 1500 members over the age of 10 from households with a confirmed mpox an infection to take part. CEPI and Bavarian Nordic even have a separate clinical trial that can launch later within the yr testing the mpox vaccine in youngsters ages 2-12.
Sustain on the most recent with STAT’s mpox protection.
Will there be a Mark Cuban impact on drug shortages?
We’ve acquired two huge issues with prescribed drugs proper now: They’re too costly, and there aren’t sufficient of an important ones. Mark Cuban — the billionaire entrepreneur maybe greatest identified for his assertive presence on the TV present “Shark Tank” — has determined to unravel these issues for us by the creation of the Mark Cuban Price Plus Drug Firm. (That’s MCCPDC for brief, if that title isn’t rolling off your tongue.)
Cuban claims that the pharmaceutical business is “the best business I’ve been in to disrupt.” However in a First Opinion essay, business vet Ezekiel Emanuel and doctor John Connolly argue that maybe Cuban shouldn’t be so assured. His present strategy will fail to make a major dent in drug costs, they write. However by increasing his manufacturing forays, they argue, Cuban might make actual progress addressing America’s drug scarcity points.
Learn extra from Emanuel and Connolly about why Cuban’s firm can’t save us from excessive drug costs.
Well being care employees have extra medical, academic debt, research says
An increasing number of medical faculties are going tuition-free — which is nice for docs, however what about different well being care employees? A brand new research revealed in JAMA Health Forum discovered that well being care employees general have extra medical and faculty debt than different employees.
Medical debt amongst all well being care employees tallied $19.8 billion nationally, whereas academic debt totalled $134.4 billion, based on the research’s evaluation of nationally consultant survey knowledge from 2018-2021. Medical debt was extra widespread amongst ladies than males and amongst Black well being care employees than white ones. Faculty debt was additionally extra widespread for Black individuals, and fewer widespread for older individuals.
forestall tragedies like Sonya Massey’s demise
Sonya Massey known as 911 on July 6 to report a possible house intruder. “Don’t harm me,” is what she stated to the police once they arrived. “Why would I harm you? You known as us,” is how Deputy Sean Grayson responded minutes earlier than he shot and killed her.
Massey had paranoid schizophrenia, and she or he was distracted, unsettled, and frightened. What she wanted was reassurance, two emergency physicians write in a First Opinion essay. The interplay with police turned rapidly from routine to lethal. “As two tutorial, Black ladies physicians, we’ve develop into acquainted with the identical pace at which we will flip from ‘pet to risk,’” they write.
Learn extra on the “pet to risk” phenomenon and the essential want for secure de-escalation ways and specialised, psychological well being disaster response groups.
What we’re studying
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America is operating out of generic drugmakers. One other one is on the brink, Wall Street Journal
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The recombinant shingles vaccine is related to decrease danger of dementia, Nature
- Disruptions loom for telehealth suppliers and sufferers as Congress inches nearer to deadline, STAT
- Iowa abortion ban taking impact as residents flee out of state for care, Washington Post
- I’m a Black psychiatrist. I’m by no means ready for the vacancy and grief I really feel when police shoot a Black particular person, STAT
