Tag: health

More Immigration Leads to Better Nursing Home Care, Says New Paper

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The paper found “strong and consistent evidence that increased immigration leads to improved patient care,” as well as a decline in hospitalizations corresponding with an increase in female immigrants.”

Need an Adderall Prescription? Good Luck Getting It Over Telehealth.

Posted on by Lone Candle

“During the early stages of the COVID pandemic, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) temporarily lifted restrictions on doctors’ ability to write prescriptions for controlled drugs via telehealth. However, the agency is poised to bring telehealth under regulation again, bringing back strict limits on how and when doctors can prescribe certain drugs.

DEA officials announced the proposed regulations on Friday. The rules would render most controlled drugs ineligible for prescription via telemedicine appointment—severely restricting patients’ ability to obtain drugs without an in-person examination.”

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“However, the proposal contains several carve-outs. Under the policy, Schedule III-V controlled medications can still be prescribed via telemedicine. But patients would be limited to a 30-day supply, after which the patient would be required to have an in-person visit in order to get a refill. The same exception applies to buprenorphine, a drug used to treat opioid substance abuse. Further, under the proposed rule, patients can get indefinite prescriptions for controlled substances via telehealth but only if they are referred to a telehealth physician after receiving an in-person examination by another doctor.”

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“Officials justified the regulations by citing concerns over the risk of overprescription of controlled drugs. While administration officials did mention the benefits that telehealth services bring to rural Americans, there is little consideration of how these services are equally important to many who rely on controlled drugs—and the increased risk that desperate patients will turn to significantly more dangerous drugs to alleviate their symptoms.
“As a health policy lawyer w. chronic pain & ADHD, I cannot overstate how unnecessary & cruel this policy is given what visits look like in person v. Telehealth,” wrote health policy lawyer Madeline T. Morcelle on Twitter. “Or how deadly this could be for those who struggle to get to [appointments] due to disability or transport/geographic barriers.””

Masks Make ‘Little or No Difference’ on COVID-19, Flu Rates: New Study

Posted on by Lone Candle

“The wearing of masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses had almost no effect at the societal level, according to a rigorous new review of the available research.
“Interestingly, 12 trials in the review, ten in the community and two among healthcare workers, found that wearing masks in the community probably makes little or no difference to influenza-like or COVID-19-like illness transmission,” writes Tom Jefferson, a British epidemiologist and co-author of the Cochrane Library’s new report on masking trials. “Equally, the review found that masks had no effect on laboratory-confirmed influenza or SARS-CoV-2 outcomes. Five other trials showed no difference between one type of mask over another.”

That finding is significant, given how comprehensive Cochrane’s review was. The randomized control trials had hundreds of thousands of participants, and made useful comparisons: people who received masks—and, according to self-reporting, actually wore them—versus people who did not. Other studies that have tried to uncover the efficacy of mask requirements have tended to compare one municipality with another, without taking into account relevant differences between the groups. This was true of an infamous study of masking in Arizona schools conducted at the county level; the findings were cited by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as reason to keep mask mandates in place.”

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“While individual mask wearers might get some benefit for a while if they consistently, perfectly wear masks, this does not comport with the aggregate experience.”

Believe it or not, we are not going to be sick forever

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Infectious disease experts knew this year might be an outlier. Covid-19 has been the biggest disruption to the normal cycle of disease in a century, and we know from prior experience that major pandemics can be followed by a year or two of chaotic viral behavior before settling into a more normal pattern. It happened with both the 1918 flu and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.

For RSV and influenza, the past two years have been aberrations; it is reasonable to expect more normal patterns will resume in the future as immunity builds back up. (Still, every cold-and-flu season will be different — variation from season to season is a constant.)
“My guess is that this is entirely temporary and things will settle down into more routine patterns in coming seasons as typical population immunity gets back on track,” said Richard Webby, an infectious disease researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Covid-19 is trickier to project, given its continuing evolution toward more transmissibility. So far, the protection from prior infection and vaccines seems to be effective for most people, at least in preventing them from ending up in the hospital. But it also continues to pose a threat to the unvaccinated, the elderly, and the immunocompromised — and yearly surges when the conditions are more favorable for viral spread (i.e., the winter) are to be expected.”

4 things to know about the gas stove frenzy

Posted on by Lone Candle

“Cooking emits about 13 percent of on-site greenhouse emissions in U.S. buildings, according to the EIA. 68 percent of emissions stem from space heating, while 19 percent comes from water heating.

Some studies, including one published by Stanford University scientists last year, examined methane leaks from gas stoves and concluded that their global warming impact could be far higher than previously believed — equivalent to the emissions of a half-million cars (Energywire, Jan. 27, 2022).

But environmentalists and public health groups most often focus on indoor air quality as the chief problem with gas stoves, rather than greenhouse gas emissions.”

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“Last April, researchers at the Institute for Policy Integrity released a report calling for gas stoves to be sold with warning labels and requirements for better ventilation, while pointing to studies concluding that low-income households and people of color were more likely to live in homes with poor ventilation (Energywire, April 25, 2022).
As far back as 2010, the World Health Organization recommended that governments develop guidelines for indoor air quality — which the EPA does not do — while citing studies that linked gas stoves to increased respiratory problems in children.

Gas industry advocates have rejected any connection between health risks and use of gas stoves, at times pointing to a 2013 study based on a 47-country questionnaire that turned up no association between cooking gas and asthma.”

What the right’s gas stove freakout was really about

Posted on by Lone Candle

“touches on a real, coast-to-coast crusade by liberal city and state leaders to prohibit gas stoves and furnaces in new buildings, on the grounds that they endanger health and contribute to climate change. But the White House has disavowed enacting any such ban at the federal level. (“The president does not support banning gas stoves,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters after the issue came up repeatedly at Wednesday’s news briefing.)”

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“In December, Beyer and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) asked the Consumer Product Safety Commission to look at the health risks posed by gas stoves’ methane emissions.
Then a member of that five-person commission suggested to Bloomberg News in a story this week that a ban on new gas stoves could be one of many options to be pursued in the future. But the member, Biden nominee Richard Trumka Jr., had previously failed to get his fellow commissioners to support even regulating stoves, as POLITICO’s E&E News reported Tuesday. Instead, the commission plans to gather “public input” on stoves’ health hazards and possible solutions.

“I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so,” Chair Alexander Hoehn-Saric later said in a statement.

By then, though, the issue had escalated to culture-war level — and lawmakers unleashed a barrage of snarky comments.”

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“a rising number of studies point to possible health hazards, increasing the urgency of squelch any potential federal ban.

A recently published study nabbed headlines for concluding that gas stove emissions contribute to one in eight cases of childhood asthma — likening it to the dangers posed by second-hand tobacco smoke. And a 2022 report from the American Lung Association that looked at dozens of prior studies found that gas stoves and ovens are major sources of harmful indoor air pollutants that the federal government doesn’t regulate because they occur indoors.”

How an NFL hit could stop a heart

Posted on by Lone Candle

“it’s rare for an adult athlete to have their heart stopped by an impact.
Commotio cordis is also rare in youth sports — but when it happens, the consequences are enormous. It’s associated with such high death rates that chest protection is now becoming the standard across a range of youth and young adult sports.

The National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment has approved chest protectors that are now mandated by the National Collegiate Athletic Association for lacrosse goalies and by the organization that governs US high school baseball for catchers. And while other sports or positions may not mandate this gear, players who are concerned can certainly use it.

It’s unlikely these items will become mandated for professional athletes because the risk of the event is so much lower than it is among youth, said Link. “Mandating chest protection for them doesn’t make as much sense because they’re just so much less susceptible,” he said.

Although what happened to Hamlin was shocking, Link said it’s important to view the event in context. Athletes are more likely to die of a motor vehicle accident on their way to the field than they are of being struck in the chest during a game.

“Sports are great for kids and they should continue to play them — and wear their seat belts on their way to practice,” he said.”