The battle against the coronavirus pandemic has shifted anew with lingering wariness about the fast-ebbing Omicron surge, persistent concern about the still-high disease deaths, sustained worries about potential new viral variants, and mixed emotions and reactions by regular folks to the rapid easing of public health measures. The pandemic, experts caution, is not over, especially….
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Masks off for many: As virus surge ebbs, U.S. issues new guidelines
With the coronavirus pandemic and its most recent Omicron surge ebbing by the day, federal officials have recommended new guidelines on how regular folks can safeguard themselves against a disease that has killed at least one million Americans and infected almost 80 million of us. The latest advisory from the federal Centers for Disease Control….
Continue ReadingHealth workers hit deadline for coronavirus shots. Where’s the fuss now?
A proverbial tree fell in a forest — and did anyone hear it? The Biden Administration’s deadline came and went for health workers across the country to get vaccinated against the coronavirus or their employers might lose vital federal funding. And despite the political drama that engulfed that requirement, it apparently took force minus the….
Continue ReadingLet’s hear it for the right to be healthy, careful, safe, and follow science
Let’s flip the script on those who have rejected their role in quelling the pandemic and demanded their right to control their own bodies. It’s time to recapture common sense. Those who have advocated for increasingly unmoored and unfounded responses to the pandemic can’t stigmatize, criticize, mock, or abuse (physically or verbally) those who want….
Continue ReadingAs Biden reprises ‘moon shot,’ cancer battle’s constraints are clear, too
President Biden, returning to an important health issue with which he has deep, tragic personal connection, has reprised a White House call for a “moon shot” campaign to keep the public and the medical establishment focused on finding even more effective ways to battle cancer, a leading killer of Americans. Biden wants the nation to….
Continue ReadingJust ‘live with it’? U.S. pandemic deaths hit 900,000-plus and rising …
The coronavirus pandemic, which has confounded medical experts and their efforts to quell it, also has created a baffling assault on reality by a large segment of U.S. society. The evidence-free opponents of vaccines, face coverings, social distancing, and other common sense public health measures are gaining a growing new coterie of off-kilter advocates. The….
Continue ReadingDeaths no longer a lagging indicator of Omicron variant’s grim toll
The lethal toll of the latest Omicron surge in the coronavirus pandemic lags no more. But even as overwhelmed doctors, nurses, hospitals, and clinics record new highs in disease deaths (see chart, courtesy the New York Times), exceeding some of the worst daily fatality numbers in what has become the planet’s worst public health crisis….
Continue ReadingAs Omicron rips through hospitals, new governor lifts Virginia pandemic measures
Gov. Glenn Youngkin has thrust Virginia into the ferocious battles over evidence-based efforts to quell the coronavirus pandemic, with the newly installed Republican issuing executive orders to bar schools from requiring face coverings and forbidding state employers from having vaccine requirements. His decisions, in keeping with what has become a GOP policy orthodoxy and reversing….
Continue ReadingVaccine mandate upheld for health workers but not large companies
What is good for geese is not for ganders, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided. The justices ruled 5-4 that the Biden Administration may force health employers to require their staff to get vaccinated or lose important federal funds, but in a 6-3 vote they rejected a vaccine-or-test mandate for companies with more than 100….
Continue ReadingParents beware: Silicon Valley hypes inaccurate prenatal blood tests
Expectant parents have gotten an ugly exposure to a rapacious aspect of modern medicine: Over testing, over diagnosis, and over treatment, specifically with a new, fast-growing high-tech twist. The grownups — whether over-reaching to safeguard the unborn or in a simply silly way to determine the gender of their hoped-for bundle of joy — are….
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