“about 600 Americans under the age of 18 have died of COVID-19 during the pandemic. A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) took a closer look at young people who were hospitalized for COVID-19 in July and August, while the delta variant wave took hold, and largely found that healthy young people continue to mostly evade the worst of COVID-19.
The study found that most young people who suffer severe COVID-19 outcomes had underlying health conditions. The most common, especially for teenagers, was obesity.”
“The highly contagious omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus often does an end run around the immunological protections of vaccination or prior infection. But recent data from the U.K. and Canada indicate that these breakthrough omicron infections are much less dangerous than first-time infections in unvaccinated people.
Ontario public health authorities report that as of yesterday, 2,093 and 288 people are being treated for omicron variant infections in hospitals and intensive care units (ICUs), respectively. The hospitalization rate per million among unvaccinated people stands at 532.7; it’s 105.9 for folks vaccinated with at least two doses. This means that the reduction of hospitalization risk for those inoculated with at least two doses is 80.1 percent.
The ICU occupancy rate per million is 135.6 for unvaccinated people and just 9.2 for those who have gotten two doses of COVID-19 vaccines. So vaccination reduces the ICU risk by 93.2 percent.”
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“These British and Canadian findings mirror those most recently reported by the New York State Health Department. It finds that the daily rate per 100,000 of COVID-19 hospitalizations stands at 4.56 for fully vaccinated people, compared to 58.27 for unvaccinated people. That means vaccinations are 92.3 percent effective at preventing hospitalization from COVID-19.”
“Electronic cigarettes, which deliver nicotine without tobacco or combustion, are the most important harm-reducing alternative to smoking ever developed, one that could prevent millions of premature deaths in the U.S. alone. Yet bureaucrats and politicians seem determined to negate that historic opportunity through regulations and taxes that threaten to cripple the industry.”
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“Survey data indicate that the vast majority of teenagers who vape regularly are current or former smokers. That means the FDA’s fear that ENDS are causing an “epidemic” of adolescent nicotine addiction is overblown—especially since vaping by teenagers dropped substantially in 2019 and 2020, a development the agency prefers to ignore.”
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” In an August American Journal of Public Health article, 15 prominent tobacco researchers warned that “policies intended to reduce adolescent vaping,” including flavor bans, “may also reduce adult smokers’ use of e-cigarettes in quit attempts.” They emphasized that “the potential lifesaving benefits of e-cigarettes for adult smokers deserve attention equal to the risks to youths.”
That article summarized “a growing body of evidence” that “vaping can foster smoking cessation.” Yet Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D–Ill.), who wrote a bill he called the END ENDS Act, insists “there’s simply no evidence that vapes help [smokers] quit.” He also claims to believe “adults can do what they want,” which is likewise demonstrably false given the severe restrictions he favors.”
“Many of pot’s effects are tangled in contradictory research, but there are a few clear health risks to consuming the drug. Smoking cannabis regularly can cause bronchitis-like symptoms, and research published last month found that chronic cannabis users, defined as people who used pot at least four times a week for more than three years, had impaired pancreatic function. There have also been cases of daily cannabis users developing pancreatitis without having any other obvious risk factors.
Regular pot use has also been associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety and poorer life outcomes like being unemployed, but causality has not been established because other factors could predispose someone both to using cannabis and having a mental illness or not having a job.
There’s also evidence that cannabis can be dangerous when used in certain situations, like during pregnancy or while driving a vehicle. A recent study linked increasing rates of childhood leukemia to an increase in cannabis use, and a separate study found a correlation between women using cannabis while pregnant and their children having higher rates of anxiety. There’s also evidence that using pot while pregnant can lead to lower birth weights, although that evidence is still considered limited. And driving a car while high has been shown to moderately increase the risk of getting into a motor vehicle accident.
Addiction can be an issue as well. Some people who smoke pot develop what’s called cannabis use disorder (CUD), a clinical diagnosis of problematic and uncontrollable cannabis use. There’s evidence that CUD rates have increased since 2008, but Dr. Kevin Hill, an addiction psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School, told FiveThirtyEight in an email that “it is still important to point out that most people who use cannabis don’t have a problem with it.”
The 2020 NSDUH found that 4.1 percent of people ages 12-17 met the criteria for CUD,1 13.5 percent of people ages 18 to 25 had the disorder, and 4 percent of people over age 26 had the disorder. Yet those numbers were below rates of alcohol use disorder across all age groups in 2020’s survey.
Deborah Hasin, an epidemiologist at Columbia University, said she is very concerned about adults’ increasing use of cannabis because CUD is associated with poorer quality of life, cognitive decline and impaired educational and occupational employment. Hasin’s research has found that 19.5 percent of people who use cannabis met the criteria of CUD in their lifetimes.
“It’s clear that not everybody who smokes marijuana has all of these problems, but the risk is there, and it’s a greater risk than people assume,” Hasin said.
Using cannabis frequently increases the risks of developing CUD, and frequent pot use is growing among adults. Monthly use for 26-to-34-year-olds has more than doubled since 2008, and the share of people getting at least five days a week increased from 5.8 to 13.8 percent between 2008 and 2019, according to NSDUH survey results.”
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“A 2016 study that followed a group of New Zealand adults for 20 years found that cannabis use was associated with worse gum health, but better cholesterol levels, lower BMI and reduced waist circumference.
Those results were further substantiated in a 2020 study that looked at cannabis use among people over the age of 60. Cannabis users in the study exercised more often and had a significantly lower BMI than non-users.
While there’s evidence that BMI, which measures only weight and height, is not the best way to gauge health for people who are normal weight or are slightly overweight, very high BMI scores are significantly associated with mortality.”
“The omicron variant, the latest curveball in the pandemic, may lead to less severe cases of Covid-19 than earlier strains of the coronavirus, according to one of the largest real-world studies of omicron released so far.
That’s good news, but it could be overshadowed by other data showing that the variant is far more contagious than any version of the virus to date — and that it can evade some immune protection from vaccines and prior infection.
Taken together, these traits make for a counterintuitive situation: Omicron poses a lower risk to most individuals, at least for those who are vaccinated, but the threat to the overall population is high. The question now is whether omicron will infect so many people that it overwhelms the health care system and drives up hospitalizations and deaths — in spite of the smaller percentage of people who come down with severe disease.
The answer is partly in our hands. The strategies that have contained Covid-19 throughout the pandemic still work against omicron, but governments, institutions, and individuals have to be willing to use them.”
“Israeli presenters provided slide after slide showing the power of booster shots. But not all of the FDA advisors were convinced. “What they’re seeing in Israel is not necessarily what we’re seeing here in the U.S.,” said Dr. Archana Chatterjee, dean of Chicago Medical School and member of the advisory committee, during the meeting. In an interview with FiveThirtyEight, she explained that Israel’s data is “interesting and very compelling,” but that Israel differs from the U.S. on key characteristics: Namely, a higher share of the Israeli population is inoculated, and a larger proportion of breakthrough cases in Israel led to hospitalization prior to the booster shot rollout. As a result, she said, Israel had a clear need for additional shots to bump up immunity. In the U.S., meanwhile, the vaccines were still highly protective against severe COVID-19 disease and death.
Chatterjee said that her eventual votes — in favor of booster shots — were not based on data from Israel. Still, the Israeli scientists’ very presence at the meeting demonstrated the shortcomings of the U.S. health system. If the U.S. doesn’t comprehensively track its own data, it has to rely on other countries to tell it how to keep Americans safe. Meanwhile, without clear evidence that they can refer to in making their own COVID-19 decisions, many Americans have been confused about whether they are eligible for — or even need — a booster shot.
Israel has a universal health care system for all citizens and permanent residents. So does the U.K., another country that the U.S. looks to for COVID-19 data. Beyond the health care benefits that such policies provide to residents, universal health care has a clear advantage for data scientists seeking to answer medical questions. When every person in the country is plugged into the same health care system, it’s very easy to standardize your data.”
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“In the U.S., vaccine research is far more complicated. Rather than one singular, standardized system housing health care data, 50 different states have their own systems, along with hundreds of local health departments and thousands of hospitals. “In the U.S., everything is incredibly fragmented,” said Zoë McLaren, a health economist at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. “And so you get a very fragmented view of what’s going on in the country.””
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“Without a unified dataset allowing U.S. researchers to analyze how well the vaccines are working, policymakers are left with limited information to make crucial decisions, such as determining who should be first in line for a booster shot.”
“The story goes something like this: Tiny marine organisms called phytoplankton absorb carbon from the water and air around them. As the plankton are eaten by increasingly larger creatures, the carbon then travels up the food chain and into fish. Those fish then release a lot of it back into the ocean through their poop, much of which sinks to the seafloor and can store away carbon for centuries. The scientific term for carbon storage is sequestration.
“We think this is one of the most effective carbon-sequestration mechanisms in the ocean,” Bianchi told Vox. “It reaches the deep layers, where carbon is sequestered for hundreds or thousands of years.”
Carbon that’s stored in the deep sea is carbon that’s not making the oceans more acidic or trapping heat in the atmosphere. In other words, fish poop could be a bulwark against climate change.
The problem is that commercial fishing has sliced the global fish population to a fraction of its former level. As scientists figure out the importance of fish poop, they’re also recognizing a new danger of large-scale fishing. Beyond putting ecosystems at risk, the industry is messing with big nutrient cycles — and perhaps eating into an important carbon sink.”