#public health crisis

[iwriteaboutfeminism]

(source) August 16, 2024

The patient is a 10-month old baby.

This is the first case of polio in Gaza in 25 years.

Information on polio from the World Health Organization:

Poliomyelitis (polio) is a highly infectious viral disease that largely affects children under 5 years of age. The virus is transmitted by person-to-person spread mainly through the faecal-oral route or, less frequently, by a common vehicle (e.g. contaminated water or food) and multiplies in the intestine, from where it can invade the nervous system and cause paralysis.

...

Up to 90% of those infected experience no or mild symptoms and the disease usually goes unrecognized. In others, initial symptoms include fever, fatigue, headache, vomiting, stiffness in the neck, and pain in the limbs. These symptoms usually last for 2–10 days and most recovery is complete in almost all cases. However, in the remaining proportion of cases the virus causes paralysis, usually of the legs, which is most often permanent. Paralysis can occur as rapidly as within a few hours of infection. Of those paralysed, 5-10% die when their breathing muscles become immobilized.

...

There is no cure for polio; it can only be prevented by immunization.

[alwaysbewoke]

[dicapiito]

This is fucking alarming. Also know why this is happening because of who Covid affects the most…

[ausetkmt]

Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions

Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions

From the author of Salt Sugar Fat comes a “gripping” (The Wall Street Journal) exposé of how the processed food industry exploits our evolutionary instincts, the emotions we associate with food, and legal loopholes in their pursuit of profit over public health.

“The processed food industry has managed to avoid being lumped in with Big Tobacco - which is why Michael Moss’s new book is so important.” (Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit)

I came to the question of food and addiction inadvertently with the 2013 publication of my book Salt Sugar Fat. In it, I argued that grocery manufacturers were competing with fast-food chains in a race to the bottom that rewarded profits over health.

Over the past four decades, salt, sugar, and fat had enabled the industries to engineer products that were immensely alluring. Brilliant marketing campaigns pushed the emotional buttons that convinced us to eat when we weren’t even hungry.

Yet the book tried to end on a hopeful note. Knowing all that the companies did to prop up their unwholesome products, I argued, was oddly empowering. We could use that insight to make better choices because, ultimately, we were the ones deciding what to buy and how much to eat.

Thus, the initial imperative for this book: to sort out and size up the true peril in food. To see if addiction is the best way to think about our trouble with food and eating, given what we’ve learned from other substances and habits. And to peer inside the processed food industry to see how it is dealing with what, in its view, would be a monumental threat to the power it holds over us.

Everyone knows how hard it can be to maintain a healthy diet. But what if some of the decisions we make about what to eat are beyond our control? Is it possible that food is addictive, like drugs or alcohol? And to what extent does the food industry know, or care, about these vulnerabilities? In Hooked, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Michael Moss sets out to answer these questions - and to find the true peril in our food.

Moss uses the latest research on addiction to uncover what the scientific and medical communities - as well as food manufacturers - already know: that food, in some cases, is even more addictive than alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs.

Our bodies are hardwired for sweets, so food giants have developed fifty-six types of sugar to add to their products, creating in us the expectation that everything should be cloying; we’ve evolved to prefer fast, convenient meals, hence our modern-day preference for ready-to-eat foods. Moss goes on to show how the processed food industry - including major companies like Nestlé, Mars, and Kellogg’s - has tried not only to evade this troubling discovery about the addictiveness of food but to actually exploit it.

For instance, in response to recent dieting trends, food manufacturers have simply turned junk food into junk diets, filling grocery stores with “diet” foods that are hardly distinguishable from the products that got us into trouble in the first place. As obesity rates continue to climb, manufacturers are now claiming to add ingredients that can effortlessly cure our compulsive eating habits.

A gripping account of the legal battles, insidious marketing campaigns, and cutting-edge food science that have brought us to our current public health crisis, Hooked lays out all that the food industry is doing to exploit and deepen our addictions, and shows us why what we eat has never mattered more.

[qcsupermom]

Friday Four: Calling All Black Dads To Be: Here's How You Can Save Mom And Your Newborn's Life!

Dear Daddy To Be: It’s time to declare a public health crisis! I know you’re excited about your baby’s arrival. And you believe all you have to do is hold your birthing mama’s hand, but the hard truth is that it’s gonna require a little more in this day and age. Black Parents are at the most Risk When Giving Birth- I think it’s fair to say. Considering statistics about the dangers that Black…

[weneverlearn]

Have a Bloody Christmas!

Below are two articles I wrote for my day job at GVPedia, concerning America's fucked-up focus on guns and the presumably peace-loving holiday of Christmas.

This first one originally posted last Xmastime; I updated it for a recent re-post:

"Try This One, Partner": The Evolution of Toy Gun TV Advertisements -- A video history of the selling of make-believe firearms

The second -- a collection of articles about our stupid American fruitcake of weapons of war and holiday cheer -- went up last week:

"Firing of the Christmas Guns" -- America's bizarre conflation of Christmas and firearms

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I think they're fun and frightening. Check 'em out!

[shrinksinsneakers]

🔥 Antidepressants and School Shootings: Debunking Ungrounded Claims in a Complex Crisis 📣 In times of societal turmoil, it's natural for people to search for reasons behind tragedies. However, as scientists and clinicians, it’s our duty to address myths with evidence and guide public discourse toward meaningful solutions. Linking antidepressants to school shootings oversimplifies a multifaceted problem, diverts attention from real issues, and perpetuates harmful misconceptions.

[familythings]

The Alarming Rise of Antibiotic Resistance: A Global Health Crisis

I was raised in a culture where antibiotics were bought very easily in the drugstore. Fortunately, my parents were against the use of antibiotics in particular and medications in general. So, my siblings and I have used them very rarely. Sadly, that’s not the reality for a lot of folks out there. A recent study is sounding the alarm about antibiotic resistance, and it’s predicting that more than…

[redgearguru]

In 2021 Data Reveals Nearly 49,000 People in The U.S. Died From Gun-Related Injuries

In 2021, the U.S. saw a huge jump in deaths from gun violence. This year, nearly 49,000 people lost their lives to gun injuries. This is a shocking number, with gun murders and suicides on the rise. The CDC statistics show a 23% increase in gun deaths over two years. This highlights the urgent need to address the gun violence epidemic in America. Handguns are the most used in homicides, and…

[thewitfire]

Xylazine: From Animal Sedative to Public Health Crisis

Xylazine: From Animal Sedative to Public Health Crisis. #Xylazine #PublicHealthCrisis #OpioidCrisis #DrugMisuse #HealthRisks #SubstanceAbuse #NationalResponsePlan #ONDCP #OverdosePrevention #HarmReduction #sciencenews #science #FDAnews

July 12, 2023 – In the realm of veterinary medicine, xylazine hydrochloride, approved by the FDA in 1972, has been long revered as an invaluable sedative for large animals like horses, cattle, and deer. The drug’s tranquilizing effects help calm injured or aggressive animals, allowing for their safe examination and treatment. However, the recent discovery of xylazine in illicit drug supplies has…

[reasonsforhope]

"Since it was first identified in 1983, HIV has infected more than 85 million people and caused some 40 million deaths worldwide.

While medication known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, can significantly reduce the risk of getting HIV, it has to be taken every day to be effective. A vaccine to provide lasting protection has eluded researchers for decades. Now, there may finally be a viable strategy for making one.

An experimental vaccine developed at Duke University triggered an elusive type of broadly neutralizing antibody in a small group of people enrolled in a 2019 clinical trial. The findings were published today [May 17, 2024] in the scientific journal Cell.

“This is one of the most pivotal studies in the HIV vaccine field to date,” says Glenda Gray, an HIV expert and the president and CEO of the South African Medical Research Council, who was not involved in the study.

A few years ago, a team from Scripps Research and the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) showed that it was possible to stimulate the precursor cells needed to make these rare antibodies in people. The Duke study goes a step further to generate these antibodies, albeit at low levels.

“This is a scientific feat and gives the field great hope that one can construct an HIV vaccine regimen that directs the immune response along a path that is required for protection,” Gray says.

-via WIRED, May 17, 2024. Article continues below.

Vaccines work by training the immune system to recognize a virus or other pathogen. They introduce something that looks like the virus—a piece of it, for example, or a weakened version of it—and by doing so, spur the body’s B cells into producing protective antibodies against it. Those antibodies stick around so that when a person later encounters the real virus, the immune system remembers and is poised to attack.

While researchers were able to produce Covid-19 vaccines in a matter of months, creating a vaccine against HIV has proven much more challenging. The problem is the unique nature of the virus. HIV mutates rapidly, meaning it can quickly outmaneuver immune defenses. It also integrates into the human genome within a few days of exposure, hiding out from the immune system.

“Parts of the virus look like our own cells, and we don’t like to make antibodies against our own selves,” says Barton Haynes, director of the Duke Human Vaccine Institute and one of the authors on the paper.

The particular antibodies that researchers are interested in are known as broadly neutralizing antibodies, which can recognize and block different versions of the virus. Because of HIV’s shape-shifting nature, there are two main types of HIV and each has several strains. An effective vaccine will need to target many of them.

Some HIV-infected individuals generate broadly neutralizing antibodies, although it often takes years of living with HIV to do so, Haynes says. Even then, people don’t make enough of them to fight off the virus. These special antibodies are made by unusual B cells that are loaded with mutations they’ve acquired over time in reaction to the virus changing inside the body. “These are weird antibodies,” Haynes says. “The body doesn’t make them easily.”

Haynes and his colleagues aimed to speed up that process in healthy, HIV-negative people. Their vaccine uses synthetic molecules that mimic a part of HIV’s outer coat, or envelope, called the membrane proximal external region. This area remains stable even as the virus mutates. Antibodies against this region can block many circulating strains of HIV.

The trial enrolled 20 healthy participants who were HIV-negative. Of those, 15 people received two of four planned doses of the investigational vaccine, and five received three doses. The trial was halted when one participant experienced an allergic reaction that was not life-threatening. The team found that the reaction was likely due to an additive in the vaccine, which they plan to remove in future testing.

Still, they found that two doses of the vaccine were enough to induce low levels of broadly neutralizing antibodies within a few weeks. Notably, B cells seemed to remain in a state of development to allow them to continue acquiring mutations, so they could evolve along with the virus. Researchers tested the antibodies on HIV samples in the lab and found that they were able to neutralize between 15 and 35 percent of them.

Jeffrey Laurence, a scientific consultant at the Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR) and a professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, says the findings represent a step forward, but that challenges remain. “It outlines a path for vaccine development, but there’s a lot of work that needs to be done,” he says.

For one, he says, a vaccine would need to generate antibody levels that are significantly higher and able to neutralize with greater efficacy. He also says a one-dose vaccine would be ideal. “If you’re ever going to have a vaccine that’s helpful to the world, you’re going to need one dose,” he says.

Targeting more regions of the virus envelope could produce a more robust response. Haynes says the next step is designing a vaccine with at least three components, all aimed at distinct regions of the virus. The goal is to guide the B cells to become much stronger neutralizers, Haynes says. “We’re going to move forward and build on what we have learned.”

-via WIRED, May 17, 2024

[cedarspiced]

constantly fighting the urge to start mauling people like a rabid dog whenever someone acts like covid isn't that big a deal and ppl who don't want to get covid just need to get over themselves

[liberaljane]

We need climate action.

Digital illustration of a blonde woman wearing a mask facing the New York City skyline. She is standing on a fire-escape wearing a tan dress that reads, ‘climate change is a public health crisis.’