17 Burst results for "Josh Fishman"
60-Second Science
"josh fishman" Discussed on 60-Second Science
"We discuss diseases, treatments, and some controversies. And we demystify the medical research in ways you can use to stay healthy. I'm Tonya Lewis. I'm Josh fishman. We are scientific American senior health editors. On the show today, we've got some surprising news about cholesterol. The so called good kind is supposed to protect your heart and arteries. But it actually makes things worse under certain circumstances. And doctors are just figuring this out. You go to the doctor for an annual check up, right? Tanya? Yeah, sure. As any good health editor would. Me too. You get asked a bunch of personal questions, a cold stethoscope on your skin and the doctor draws some blood for some standard lab tests. Among those tests, when you get them back, are two cholesterol numbers. Right. What is your level of low density lipoprotein cholesterol, or LDL? It's supposed to stay under a 130 milligrams per deciliter. The lower the better. And the other one is high density lipoprotein, or HDL. And that's supposed to stay above 40 milligrams per deciliter. The higher it is, the better we're told. And that's because LDL is the bad cholesterol. The one that leads to artery clogging plaques, heart disease, strokes, and other nasty stuff. We want less of it. HDL, on the other hand, is good cholesterol. We want more of it. HDL has this good reputation because it binds to LDL, carrying the bad stuff to the liver. From there it gets flushed out of your body, where it can't hurt you. But you know the old saying about having too much of a good thing, that seems to be true of good cholesterol. So is it possible to have too much HDL? It's totally possible. Turns out that too much HDL actually raises the chances of artery and heart disease the very things we're trying to avoid. Once you get above 80 for men and a hundred for women, and I'm going to stop saying milligrams per deciliter because it's a mouthful. You're in the danger zone. A bunch of recent studies have found this effect, but generally, that's not what doctors have told patients. The teaching has been up until recently that the higher the HDL, the lower the risk. So traditionally transitions have been using very high HDL levels as a marker of really healthy cholesterol profile. That's the researcher behind some of the newer studies. My name is Professor of medicine in the division of cardiology at Henry university school of medicine Atlanta, Georgia. He did a study of more than 400,000 people in the UK. People without other predisposing risk factors for heart disease. For men, cardiac and other disease risks went up if their HDL levels were under 40, or over 80. For women, the risk climbed once HDL levels topped 100. When you say climbed, how much of a risk are we talking about? A few percentage points, or much bigger increase. Excellent question. And I ask kayumi about the amount of extra risk that people face. If she just took them without any other evaluation of other risk factors like LDL cholesterol or blood pressure, diabetes, et cetera. It's almost too far higher compared to the lowest risk group which would have levels between 40 to 60. Even when he and his team took into account those other factors, those with very high HDL had a risk that was 80% higher than normal. And other studies back this up. One of them looked at more than 11,000 people with high blood pressure. It found a much higher rate of cardiovascular problems and people with HDL levels, both under 40 and over 80. Okay, let me run through the numbers. HDL is bad if it's under 40. It's good if it's 40 to 60. Possibly a risk in the 60 to 80 range and a pretty big risk if it's above 80 for men and a hundred for women. Is that right? Yep. Good cholesterol is really bad cholesterol over 80 or over 100, depending on your sex, and under 40. The middle zone is the safe zone. Now, it's a bit of a mystery why HDL should turn bad when it gets really high. Why should a molecule help you it? Level 45, for instance, but hurt you at level 85. It's possible that the shape of the molecule changes. So they don't latch on tightly to circulating cholesterol and help ferry it out of the body. Interesting. But I want to go back to something intriguing you mentioned. There's a difference between where men and women enter this HDL danger zone. You said it was over 80 for men, but over a hundred for women. Why is that? You're right. There was a 20 point difference between men and women. And honestly, neither kayumi team nor anyone else really knows why. Part of everything is taught to be just sex hormonal differences, estrogen, testosterone, differences between men and women. There are some genetic reasons for that as well. It's not really what worked out. I've read that estrogen can increase HDL in women, and that it can be protective. But once women reach menopause, their estrogen levels drop, and HDL becomes less protective. In any event, it sounds like women shouldn't freak out if their HDL is slightly over 80, according to these studies. Though men in that range should probably be aware that they are at risk. Yeah, and there shouldn't be a huge number of people freaking out, period. Overall, the research shows that about 7% of the general population reaches these scary HDL levels. But still, that's nothing to ignore. If a doctor sees 100 patients in a week, 7 of them will be in this HDL danger zone. So if people are in the danger zone, what should they do? I ask kayumi about that one too. Drinking a lot of alcohol drives HDL up. So he tell patients guzzling one or two glasses of wine or booze daily to cut it out. There aren't drugs that bring down high HDL. So the big thing he'd do is focus on treating LDL. Statins, for instance, are very effective at lowering LDL levels, and he'd use those. Baby aspirin used carefully can reduce blood clots that lead to heart attacks. Check with your doctor on that one. Aspirin can have side effects. And there's one more thing. If they are sedentary, they should be encouraged to exercise, exercise is helpful for everything. I guess I'm going to keep going for my morning runs then. And I'll try to keep my bad cholesterol low and good cholesterol in that happy middle zone. Our colleague, Lydia Denver, calls that the Goldilocks zone, not too low and not too high, but just right. You can read her new science of health column on HDL in the middle of May on Siam dot com. And now I'm going to call my doctor to schedule my yearly checkup. Your health quickly is produced and edited by Toledo bows, Jeff del vizio, Kelso Harper, and Alexa Lim. Our music is composed by Dominic Smith. Our show is part of scientific American's podcast science quickly. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to go to Siam dot com for updated and in depth health news. I'm Tanya Lewis. I'm Josh fishman. We'll be back in two weeks. Thanks for listening.
60-Second Science
"josh fishman" Discussed on 60-Second Science
"Diseases, treatments, and some controversies. And we demystify the medical research in ways you can use to stay healthy. I'm Tonya Lewis. I'm Josh fishman. We're scientific American senior health editors. Today, we're talking about new research on long COVID. It shows that this puzzling and disabling condition may have its roots in the brain. I think the biggest long COVID challenge I did face was like having so much pain in my legs that I couldn't walk. I use a wheelchair for a few weeks and it came for around a year and a half to two years. It really sucked. Like, I used to run races and marathons. And now I have to have a stick to walk around. That's Ibrahim Rashid. He's 23 years old and from Chicago. I met him at a conference a few weeks ago. You can hear some of the conference buzz in the background. I got COVID in November 2020 and my life hasn't been the same since. In December of 2020, I noticed that I was still having trouble breathing. I was waking up at night with intense heart palpitations, waking up very quickly, gasping for air. Man, that sounds really rough. It seems like he's been through a lot. He's had a difficult time, and he's one of an estimated 16 million people in the U.S. who've had long COVID, with two to 4 million being forced out of work. Generally, long COVID means that months to years after infection, you've still got symptoms such as pain or extreme fatigue, or something called brain fog, which is when you have a lot of trouble concentrating or remembering things. More than the normal amount, at least. Recently, though, a common thread has started to emerge among this maze of symptoms, the brain. Huh. The brain makes a lot of sense for things like memory problems, but how are physical pain and exhaustion connected to the brain. Fair question. Well, first of all, signs of the virus has shown up in the brain and central nervous system. We often think of COVID as an infection that mainly hits the lungs. The throat and the nose, but it also affects many other organ systems. One study is found evidence for viral particles in the brains of people with long COVID. Another found virus genetic material in the brain as long as 230 days after infection. Wow, that's almost 8 months. Yeah. And the nose it turns out is actually a root where the virus could reach the brain. Viral material has shown up deep in the lining of nasal passages. Next to neurons. Projections from those neurons go up into the brain to areas that control breathing and the heart. Plus, autopsies of the brains of people who've died of COVID find signs of immune system activation, like there's been a response to some infection. There are cells called macrophages that go after invading microbes. The trouble is that macrophages aren't very precise. When they go on the attack, they produce chemicals that chew up nearby cells. There can be a lot of inflammation and damage. Immune cells also travel through the blood and spinal fluid and the brain is filled with tiny blood vessels. So an ongoing immune response could damage those vessels and neighboring brain cells. Exactly. This is why William Pittman a doctorate UCLA health who works at a long COVID clinic says he now thinks of the condition as a neurological disorder, as much as it is a respiratory one. That's interesting. But how does that explain the wide variety of symptoms people experience? Because of something called dysautonomia. Um, I've heard of that. What did you find out about it? Well, there are all these activities in your body that the brain usually takes care of automatically, like breathing, blood pressure, heartbeat, and balance. Sending signals all on nerves throughout the body. Dysautonomia is when the brain kind of loses that control. Ibrahim described it to me. If I would try to like move my leg, it would feel like it was taking longer. Like there was like a few millisecond delay. And I'd be looking at it. I'm like, I'm moving it back and forth. But it's moving slower. And then I would feel like unstable and I was like, wait. Why am I losing my stability? I do feel like there's this disconnect. This loss of control can also happen with the heart. For a lot of long COVID patients, when they stand or sit up, their heart starts racing, it can speed up by 30 beats a minute. And that creates exhaustion among other problems. Plenty of people with long COVID simply crash if they push themselves. Ibrahim told me about one episode when he was studying for a big exam, he was a grad student, and afterwards he couldn't get out of bed for ten days. Oh, jeez. There are some ways to treat this, right? I mean, beta blockers, a type of drug that lowers the heart rate, have been effective for some people. Yeah, there's still a lot of uncertainty around long COVID treatments. What works for one person may not work for another. But looking at it as a brain body disorder can help focus therapy. That's right. For long COVID patients who might have nervous system inflammation, doctors have tried giving them a cocktail of proteins and antibodies called intravenous immunoglobulin or IVIg. This dampens the immune response that triggers inflammation. Our colleagues, Stephanie Sutherland, wrote about that therapy and some others in a Siam cover story in the march issue. She said that some long COVID cases may be caused by the virus lingering in the body, and you and I talked about the evidence for that. Right. For those people, it might make sense to treat them with antiviral drugs. In fact, there's an ongoing clinical trial looking at using pax lova to treat long COVID. And a veteran's affairs study found that taking PEX lovid when infected reduced the risk of developing long COVID symptoms by 25%. There's also some evidence that COVID vaccines reduce the risk of long COVID symptoms. It's not clear by how much though, one recent study said that it cut the risk in half. But another one showed us slimmer reduction by about 15%. It's not all about drugs, though, for people with long COVID, as with other diseases that don't have easy medical answers. The big issue is finding people who believe you. Doctors, Friends, and even family to easily say things like it's all in your head. Ibrahim heard that a lot. People didn't understand why young people like thee were still struggling. I lost friends who just 6 months into my illness were just sick and tired of me being sick. So how's he doing now? Better, much better. He was walking without a cane when I saw him. He is adjusted his diet and he gets plenty of rest, all to reduce the chances of ongoing inflammation. And he cofounded a company called strong haulers. They're developing an app that can pull data from wearables like fitbits and Apple watches. The idea is to give people with chronic conditions info on activities that trigger symptoms, and on activities that reduce them. That's really cool. That seems like it's helping patients to help themselves, and it could give them data they could share with their doctors to validate their symptoms. And those symptoms are telling the medical community that long COVID isn't all in the head. But it does seem to be in the brain. Your health quickly is produced and edited by Kelso harbor to leak a Bose and Jeff del vicio. Our theme music is composed by Dominic Smith. Our show is part of scientific Americans podcast science quickly. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to go to Siam dot com for updated and in depth health news. I'm Tony Lewis. I'm Josh fishman. We'll be back in two weeks. Thanks for listening.
60-Second Science
"josh fishman" Discussed on 60-Second Science
"We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus and the disease we demystify the research and help you understand what it really means. I'm Tanya Lewis. I'm Josh fishman. And we're scientific American senior health editors. Today we're going to talk about how COVID has driven a notable decline in U.S. life expectancy. And some new monoclonal antibodies that could protect us from variants. People in the U.S. have been living longer and longer during most of the past century. Then COVID hit, and all of a sudden we're going backwards. Why are we losing years of our lives? Life expectancy has only declined a few times in recent memory. During the 1918 pandemic, during World War II, and during the HIV aids crisis. But over the last two years, it's declined by almost three years. That's equivalent to the U.S. life expectancy in 1996. That's really astounding. It is. But while almost every demographic group saw a drop, some groups lost more years of lights than others. Which of those groups had the biggest declines? Native American and Alaska native populations lost a total of 6.6 years from 2019 to 2021. The Hispanic population lost 4.2 years. The non Hispanic black population lost four years, the white population lost 2.4 years and the Asian population lost 2.1 years. These data come from the CDC's national center for health statistics, which recently published provisional data for 2021. Elizabeth Arias and her NCHS colleagues calculated something called a life table. It basically takes a hypothetical group of infants born in 2021 and applies the real world death rates of ever group to those infants across their whole lives. The result is an estimate of the total population's life expectancy. So what are the reasons for all those lost years? Well, COVID was the primary cause. More than a million people in the U.S. have died from the disease. But unintentional injuries, mostly drug overdoses, were also a big reason for the decline. Deaths from heart disease, chronic liver disease, and suicide also contributed to this decline in life expectancy over the past year. Economists and case and Angus deaton first brought attention to these deaths of despair. Deaths from overdoses, alcoholism, and suicide. They were already rising before the pandemic, which just accelerated the trend. In other words, COVID pushed people who were already struggling over the edge. Most likely, and this was especially true for the Native American population. Native American people have some of the poorest levels of housing, education, and healthcare in this country, and a lot of this stems from the U.S. government's colonialist policies. According to crystal Lee an assistant professor at the university of New Mexico's college of population health. Lee is DNA, a member of the Navajo Nation, and is also CEO of the nonprofit organization united natives and the company indigenous health. We need to hold the U.S. government accountable by honoring the existent treaties Lee says. Those treaties would improve healthcare, among other things. Exactly. I think the biggest take home message here is really that we weren't prepared for this pandemic, and that we really need to revamp our whole healthcare system and make it work for everyone in this country if we want to stop this backsliding and live longer, healthier lives. Josh, we've talked about the several hundred people who are getting severely sick and dying from COVID every day. And some of the medicines developed to treat sick people don't work well against the new variants. You've been hearing about some drugs that might work better though, right? I have. The new drugs are variants themselves. Versions of older medicines called monoclonal antibodies. They have usually got long difficult names, but they typically end in mab, so that's the giveaway. For COVID, those have been around for a year or so, haven't they? Yep, they were developed to glom onto the early 2020 form of the virus and prevent it from penetrating into a cell, and originally they did a pretty good job. Recently, not so much, right? I saw a study in which scientists tested 21 different mabs against the BA four and 5 variants, and only one was able to neutralize them. And that is precisely the problem. These mabs were configured to fit that early virus, like a key fitting into a lock. But now there are 5 or so newer variants making the rounds, BA 5 is still the dominant one. And those have mutations that essentially change the shape of the lock. So, most of the mabs don't fit anymore. One, called beetle ova mob, still does a pretty good job, but most of the others that have been authorized by the FDA do not. So what's the solution? To go abroad. Scientists used to pick these mabs based on how strongly they attached to a particular virus. But now they're looking for antibodies that are broadly neutralizing. They grab onto a wider range of variants, not just one. I've been talking about this with Bill haseltine, the molecular biologist who worked on some of the original aids therapies. He thinks this approach is very promising. Map developers are picking antibodies that take aim at what scientists call highly conserved regions of the virus, in plain English that means spots that don't mutate from variant to variant. So the mabs can still lock on. Can people use these now? Not yet. There are about ten of these mabs in various stages of testing. Some are now being tried on people and some are still in animal tests. But don't a lot of drugs that work well in animals actually fail when they get to humans? Not mabs in general. The antibodies are often developed in mice that have been genetically modified to have human like immune systems, a technique that goes back to the days of aids, drug development. Because of that, they generally translate well to people has says. Another advantage mabs have is they can be used to prevent infection in people who are in high risk situations. Some may be immunocompromised and don't get much benefit from vaccines, so mabs can play a prevention role for them. Others may work in nursing homes which have had high rates of outbreaks. I can see that. Look, I don't want to keep tossing out problems, but mabs aren't a pill like pax Logan. They have to be infused, or at least inject it. Doesn't that create an accessibility problem? You're right. It's not like you can easily use these at home. But the injection technology is getting easier. And just for instance, plenty of people with diabetes have learned to inject themselves with insulin. Now cost will be an issue too. Mab manufacturers can charge just over $2000 per dose. Right now the government picks up the tab for COVID patients. It turns out, though, that mabs are actually cheap to produce these days, just over one or $200 a pop. So there is a chance we'll be seeing new and affordable therapies. Able to handle the range of variants that COVID keeps tossing mass. Now you're up to speed, thanks for joining us. Our show is edited by Jeff del vizio and tulika Bose. Come back in two weeks for the next episode of COVID quickly and check out Siam dot com for updated and in depth COVID news.
60-Second Science
"josh fishman" Discussed on 60-Second Science
"We bring you up to speed on the science behind most urgent questions about the virus and the disease. We demystify the research and help you understand what it really means. I'm Tanya Lewis. I'm Josh fishman. And we're scientific Americans, senior health editors. Today we're going to take a personal look at a moderate case of COVID. If Josh's voice holds up. And we'll talk about how we decide when pandemics are really over. Not just when presidents say they are. Can you hear me okay? Do I sound too rough? Actually, you sound fairly normal. Good, that's a change for the better yesterday I sounded like I was at the bottom of a well, but without that cool echoey effect and with a lot more gurgling. Because I have COVID. I started showing symptoms about two weeks ago, and I still have them. Oh man, that sucks. I'm so sorry. Thanks. I don't want to make this episode all about me, though. I don't either, but we do talk a lot about scientific studies, and we don't often talk about what it's like to actually have COVID. I didn't believe I caught it at first. I've spent two and a half years avoiding it. I'm vaccinated and I'm boosted and so to see that positive line on a rapid antigen test made me go, wait, what? That can't be right. So I took another test, and there was that line again. Do you know how you got infected? I'm pretty sure it was on a business trip to New York City. That meant trains and subways and sitting in a big meeting with about 200 other people, most of whom didn't wear masks. I wore a mask. But I did go to an outside bar with some friends from work, and there was a nice breeze and while you can't drink beer through a mask. So I took mine off. Let's understandable. When did you know there was a problem?
60-Second Science
"josh fishman" Discussed on 60-Second Science
"To speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus and the disease. We demystify the research and help you understand what it really means. I'm Tonya Lewis. I'm Josh fishman. And we're scientific American senior health editors. This is our back to school special episode part two. We'll talk about why so few young children have gotten their COVID vaccines. And how long we should really be isolating when we get sick. Many kids are back in or heading back to school and preschool right now. We know that means the risk of spreading COVID will increase, yet very few young children have gotten the vaccine. That's right. COVID vaccines have been available for all ages since mid June, but only about a third of children ages 5 through 11 are fully vaccinated, and among kids under 5, the numbers are even lower, just a couple percent. That's really low. Why is it so low? Well, there are lots of reasons. The Kaiser family foundation pulled the parents of young children about why they chose not to vaccinate their child against COVID. The top reason parents cited was that the vaccines were too new and had not been tested enough. Others were worried about their child having side effects that would mean having to stay home and look after them. But a considerable group of parents, about one in ten, said they simply weren't that worried about COVID anymore, so they didn't think their kid needed a vaccine. Tell me more about those people. Why weren't they worried about COVID? Well, since pretty early in the pandemic, the messaging from some experts and the media was that kids don't get as sick from COVID, especially if they didn't have any underlying health conditions. And that's true to some extent, but we also know that more than 1400 children have died from the disease, including more than 500 under the age of 5. Others have been hospitalized with a condition called MIS-C, which affects many different organs, and some kids have developed long COVID. While these complications are rare, being vaccinated could help protect kids against them. Exactly. But the message that
60-Second Science
"josh fishman" Discussed on 60-Second Science
"We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus and the disease. We demystify the research and help you understand what it really means. I'm Tonya Lewis. I'm Josh fishman. And we're a scientific American senior health editor. Today, we'll explain how to interpret COVID deaths among vaccinated and unvaccinated people. We'll discuss why so few people are getting booster shots. Plus, the latest news on new vaccines. In.
60-Second Science
"josh fishman" Discussed on 60-Second Science
"We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus and the disease. We demystify the research and help you understand what it really means. I'm Tanya Lewis. I'm Josh fishman. And we're scientific Americans, senior health editors. Today, we'll talk about the plan for a second vaccine booster shot. The prospects of a new COVID wave and whether people will put on masks to stop it. And how to think about COVID risk when it comes to everyday activities. This week, the FDA authorized a second booster shot on top of the ones given last year. That would be four shots total for me, Tanya. Why this new one. It happens sooner than I expected Josh, although the scientific community had been debating whether additional booster shots were needed for some time. Normally, the FDA holds a meeting of its advisory committee before deciding whether to authorize vaccines or boosters. But that didn't happen this time. The move makes boosters available to adults age 50 and older and anyone 12 and older who is immunocompromised, four months after their first booster shot. For people who had two shots and a booster, this would be their fourth shot. For some immunocompromised folks, this would be their 5th shot. That's a bunch of jabs. Why does the FDA think we need this new one? It was based on some evidence that immune protection against severe disease wanes over time in these groups. A recent CDC report found that protection against hospitalization waned from 91% to 78%, four months after a third dose. But some experts are not convinced that a second booster shot will significantly improve immunity. It may top up antibodies for a few months, but at a certain point with additional shots, we may see diminishing returns. For those who haven't gotten their first booster yet, that is important to do, and if you're older or higher risk, you might want to consider getting a second booster after four months to top up your protection. It seems like many people have ditched their masks and health officials are allowing it. But if a new COVID surge comes, Josh, will people put them on again? That's a really important question, because some kind of surge is coming, and we know masks stop infections. The effectiveness of a good mask like an N95 is beyond dispute, as you've pointed out, Tanya, and we will face more COVID, infections and hospitalizations have started to rise in Europe. The new BA two variant is becoming more common there and in the U.S., and like Europe we've cut back on masks and on restrictions. So we're likely to see something a spike a surge or whatever you want to call it. It's not clear how big it will be. But if it gets above a certain level, we should put masks back on, according to the CDC. If cases and hospitalizations per 100,000 people in your area jump up by 20 hospitalizations a week, if you're starting from a low level of cases, then put on a mask when you're indoors with other people. But masks aren't just health aids. During the pandemic, they've become political symbols. Some people are really pro mask and others are adamantly opposed to them. Exactly. So how's that going to play out in the future? I ask an expert on mask attitudes, Emily mendenhall, a medical anthropologist at Georgetown university. She just published a book called unmasked based on research and communities in Iowa and in California. Emily's talked with us about masks on an earlier episode. She says anti mask feelings stem partly from perceptions of low disease risk. People would unmask if they weren't worried about themselves. Maybe they were younger and didn't think the disease would make them sick, and partly it was political. People said they didn't want governments dictating their behavior. They had legitimate worries about business closures, and their ability to make a living. But it was also about making a public show of defiance. Masks got caught up in all that. Pro mask feelings come from an idea that we faced a collective risk. In the street, Emily says, people would talk about the need to work together and protect one another, and obviously they also felt they were in danger as individuals, and they trusted government guidelines. As the pandemic has worn on, these collective worries have faded in many places, and mask wearing is faded with them. Without actual rules such as mandates, people in those areas are unlikely to put masks back on. But Emily says there's another group that we overlook. The sometimes maskers. That's about one in three people in her research. They're all political moderates, sometimes government does a good job, they say, and sometimes not. Sometimes the media is trustable, other times not so much. And sometimes they wear a mask. There are huge swaths of Americans who would put on a mask if they were around someone with a weak immune system, or someone older, or at risk in some way. So the focus should be on sometimes maskers. That's who's willing to listen to mask promotion if COVID starts to peak in their communities. It's a sizable group, Emily says, they could be part of making mask wearing seem normal, especially in times of danger, and making it normal is key. Emily still thinks mandates are important, but she understands there's a lot of resistance. If these sometimes maskers put on N95s, they could start a whole surge of protection. Clearly, people are growing tired of restrictions as we head into pandemic year three. Many are eager to get back to doing things they enjoy again. Is there a smart way to evaluate any risks as we venture out more often? We're definitely getting to the point, Josh, where people are tired of wearing masks of social distancing and avoiding the people in places they enjoy. But the virus hasn't gone away, and it isn't likely to anytime soon. There will always be some level of risk, but as with everything in life, we have to find ways to balance risks with benefits. One of our freelancers, is working on a story for us about this. He asked a number of experts in epidemiology, risk assessment and related fields, how they make their own decisions about COVID risk. We can think about risk in three different ways, they said. There's personal risk, which is the risk of you or people in your household contracting COVID. There's community risk, which is the likelihood of encountering someone with COVID in your local community, and there's exposure risk, which accounts for the chances of getting COVID from a particular setting based on things like airflow and the behavior of other people. Caitlyn jetliner, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas Houston, says that age is the biggest personal risk factor, followed by having certain comorbidities or being immunocompromised. She estimates that vaccinated and boosted people in their 60s have a ten times higher likelihood of dying from severe breakthrough cases than 18 to 49 year olds. People who are at higher risk should talk with their doctors about what risks or reasonable..
Animal Radio
"josh fishman" Discussed on Animal Radio
"Well, it's obvious cats are much smarter. They opt not to speak English or become the servant or the master. Of any person. The way that my dog is much smarter because he can listen to me and follow my directions and do tricks and just understands me before I even think something they know what I'm thinking. Kids are smart enough to know though to kind of make that decision for themselves. That's what I'm saying. Exactly what I'm saying. Well, the fight continues in studio and probably all across the country we've started it all up again. The age old question are cats or dogs? Which one is smarter? On the phone with a senior editor of scientific American Josh fishman is joining us. He's actually just written an article on this very topic called battle of the brains. Hi, Josh. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Hi guys. You sound like you're arguing like cats and dogs. And you know what? You're going to be you're going to be the guy who's going to put an end to this whole age old argument. Oh, I don't think I'll put an end to it, but maybe I'll keep you onto the fire. Okay. Sure. So in your article, you talk about the actual neurons that these animals have and how many they have. And does that correlate to brain size? They're smartness intelligence. Well, those are two different questions. Okay. It does correlate to brain size, it does not really correlate to smartness because what is margin is. And you guys are having this argument in the studio about my cat does a certain kind of behavior and my dog does a different kind of behavior and one of those things makes one of these animals smarter than the other. And that's exactly why scientists undertook this research. They thought, well, we're not going to be able to settle this with subjective definitions of what is smartness. But we can count cells and we can particularly count the brain cells that are in the part of the brain that does complicated thinking. It's called the neocortex. Let's go ahead and count them. There's a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt university named designer herculina housel, who decided that she actually had a way of doing this. And how do you count themselves? Well, you take brains and you turn them into kind of soup. Oh. Sorry. But science is messy sometimes. So what she did was she figured out a methodology where you take the brain and you cut away the neocortex that outer little lines and you put it in essentially a blender. And you turn it into soup. And it looks a little bit like unfiltered apple cider untold. Unfiltered. Oh, that's good. I just won't have that anymore. But here's the thing, once you turn this into a liquid, you can put a molecular probe in that acts kind of like a very specific fish hook that only grabs neurons, then you can just count the neurons and once you count the neurons, you can compare that count to other animals. And so she did a cat. She did a dog, a mutt, a raccoon, a human up there. And you want to know the results of? Yeah, I want to know at least the top 5 there. I assume the human comes in first, right? Right. The human comes in first. So the count of neurons in the neocortex versions, humans, about 16 billion. But among those animals that I just named, the one that comes in after you lose? Yeah, well, that would probably be the cat, right? The dog. That would be the dog. Yay. That would be sad was 429 million neurons. The cat has almost half that. 250 million. And where did the raccoon plays? So raccoons are interesting. Raccoons are fascinating. The raccoons have 438 million neurons, so that's more than a dog. But they have it packed into a cat sized brain, which is half the size of a dog. Which, if you've ever tried to keep a raccoon out of your garbage can, you totally understand this, right? Yeah. And what comes in also is a surprise given how big they are and how big their brains are is a bear. A bear has 250 million neurons. And it's brain is 220 grams, which is, I don't know, like 7 times the size of a dog. So when you the pooh talked about being a bear a very little brain, you was telling the truth. And bears seem to get by largely upon bronze. They seem to go with hibernating and just being very opportunistic. There's this great webcam of a national park up in the last I can't remember the name that shows. Yes, it is. Yes. Yes, I do. And they stand standing in the middle of the waterfall watching the salmon jump into their mouths. Yes. So it doesn't take a lot of brains to do that. But if you actually have to go and figure out where to find the salmon and catch them, maybe beta hop. I would rather have a raccoon brain. I don't have a dog brain. We're going to take a quick break. We are with Josh fishman. He's the senior editor at scientific American magazine. We're talking about brain size and especially as it pertains to our cats and dogs will be back. Do you have Medicare and do you use a CPAP machine? This is a national healthcare alert regarding your CPAP supplies. Using a clean CPAP mask and clean supplies is important to staying healthy. The best way to make sure your CPAP equipment is clean is to get new supplies. If you have Medicare, we have great news. Medicare will pay for you to have new clean supplies every 90 days. We'll even do all the paperwork for you to make sure that there's little to no out of pocket cost to you. And you don't even have to leave your home. We provide free in home delivery. So if you're a CPAP user and you have Medicare, staying healthy with.
Animal Radio
"josh fishman" Discussed on Animal Radio
"It's animal radio. And for years, cat owners and dog owners have been battling over the simple concept of who is smarter a cat or the dog. And some of you may have your guesses. See, I've had both in the same species. I've had cats that were smart and cats that weren't quite so smart and same thing with dogs I've had dogs that weren't the brightest in some that were really intelligent. Well, that's just like humans. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you got the Kardashians. Oh my gosh. And who's on the opposite saying, look at this in this room. Yes, Sal. Thanks, Lori. Well, this guy that we're going to be talking to this hour, Josh fishman. He studies brain size. We'll study his brains and in particular what he studied brain size of raccoons and cats and dogs and bears and humans. And he found out that, yes, indeed, dogs may hold some more intelligence than cats. Significantly. And so if you're a cat lover, you may be shocked to hear that. And I'll give you fair warning. You may want to turn the station right now. Go to another station or something. Because I'm a cat lover and I'm a little bit offended by this. I'll tell you that right now. But we're going to find out if size matters. Exactly. What doctor Debbie said right there, that's coming up in just a few minutes right here on the animal radio. Thank you for saving me on that one. Lori, what are you working on for this hour? You know, the Internet is known for cat photos, right? The Internet was made for cats, but what all those cats are giving away free to the whole wide world. We'll tell you. Okay, I'm sticking around for that. Doctor Debbie, you ready to take some calls? Yeah, let's do it. Are we going to line 7? Yes. Okay. And we have Bill there. Hey Bill, how are you doing? Hey, pretty good. Get the question for you. I have a 12 pound little like a murky mix dog. And about last Sunday, not the Sunday, this just passed, but yesterday but before that, I noticed it started throwing up white.
Animal Radio
"josh fishman" Discussed on Animal Radio
"And there are always some concerns when we are starting a long-term medicine. Like a seizure medicine. So he's correct. And we want to watch things like their liver values. And make sure that those are staying in check and then we're not having problems. But I wouldn't let the fear of those side effects in your situation hold you back from doing something that's going to be very important medically to help your kid be comfortable. What are you lucky dog? Don't forget you can get your fix of animal radio anytime you want with the animal radio app for iPhone and Android. Download it now. It's made possible by fear free happy homes, helping your pets live their happiest, healthiest, fullest lives at home at the vent and everywhere in between. Visit them at fear free, happy homes, dot com, and thanks for your free for underwriting animal radio. You're listening to animal radio, call the Dream Team now with the free animal radio app for iPhone and Android. Hi, I'm Charlotte Ross and animal radio. Please remember to stay in new to your pets. The old way of living with diabetes is a pain. You've got to remember to do your testing and always need to stick your fingers to test your blood sugar. The new way to live your life with diabetes is with a continuous glucose monitor, apply a discrete sensor on your body, and it continuously monitors your glucose levels, helping you spend more time in range and freeing you from painful finger sticks. If you are living with type one or type two diabetes, and you administer insulin three or more times per day or use an insulin pump, you might be eligible for a CGM through your insurance benefits. U.S. met partners with over 500 private insurance companies and Medicare, we offer free shipping, 90 day supplies, and we Bill your insurance. Call us today for a free benefits check. 807 8 5 one 6 7 three 807 8 5 one 6 7 three 807 8 5 one 6 7 three. That's 807 8 5 1673. You're listening to animal radio. If you missed any part of today's show, visit us at animal radio dot com or download the animal radio app for iPhone and Android. It's animal radio. Celebrating the connection with our pets. By your show of hands, how many of you have a Kong? Oh, I do I do. If you have a dog chances are you have a con. That's what I thought. You know, Kong has become a name just like Kleenex or band aid, the brand names that have become part of the vernacular for us. And you know, you say, hey, go out and get a calling for your dog. It may not actually be the Kong brand that you get. But everybody knows what you're talking about. Yeah. So how was the Kong invented? It actually is a pretty cool story. And the inventor and owner of Kong is going to be joining us Joe Markham this hour. And he'll tell you about this cool way that it was invented. Now they figured out this would be a great chewable toy for dogs. But you know what? They're harnesses are great too. They do have a whole product line of great things, but none is successful as the actual Kong toy there. So that's going to be fun talking to him. He's going to at least spend a decade since he's been on the show. Also, coming up next hour, we're going to be talking to a guy who studies brains. Don't get him too near me. Let me just say that right now. Oh, he wouldn't have anything to work with. But yeah, there you go. He has determined the size of various animals brains, and their cognitive power. And you'd be very surprised to find out if you're a cat lover, you may want to turn it off. Turn the radio off. They don't fare well. They don't fare well on the study here. In fact, raccoons, fair better than cats. Do you know what boogers are smart? They are. They are. They actually fare better than dogs. They have more brains than dogs. Yeah, okay, so we're going to talk to this guy in just a few minutes, the brain expert. Josh fishman. Is that his name? Yes. Josh fishman. So stick around for that. Let's go to Arnold. Hey, Arnold, how are you doing? I'm okay, thank you. Were you calling from today? Well, I'm actually in Newport Beach, California at the moment. How can we help you today? Okay. Well, I'm in an RV and I've driven up from Miami. And it's got a two and a half year old bridge back mixed a lot from a shelter down there. And for the last little bit more than 24 hours now, he has bound them as tools are kind of like soupy. It's not water, but it's more of a consistency of mud. And so I was concerned about it. He has no temperature that I know of. He has been eating his food regularly. He's been playing regularly. I take him out every morning into the beach. So he's been running and playing, so I don't see anything other than just about. Movement being very loose. Okay, does he normally travel with you in the RV? They've been together for 8 months. Okay, so he's a seasoned RV traveler saying. Absolutely. Okay. Because that's an important thing, because I can tell you, I had a family members that took their two dogs out on an RV trip. And the first trip was a horrible experience, both dogs developed bloody diarrhea from the stress. And they were so out of their element that it was just too much for them. So that's always something that I look at. Sure. When I drive, he lays right down by the well and he's very calm and like I said, this is not related to I don't think it's related to that. Anyway, not from driving. Okay. Well, there are other than stress. There are oodles of causes of diarrhea. So if nothing else really jumps out with a change in feeding regimen, water that he's drank out of any kind of natural source. He grazes a little bit and he gets stuff off the ground sometimes, which I try to avoid. But the other thing, I take him to the beach to the ocean and he drinks sometimes he'll drink to salt water. That'll do it. That'll do it. Oh, that's salt water. It's a powerful osmotic. It will cause diarrhea definitely. Some dogs never learn. So yeah, so all of those, all of those things are certainly suspect. He's eating things, you're drinking a lot of salt water. That can definitely cause diarrhea. If we don't have a lot of other real serious symptoms we're not having a change in appetite, vomiting, and seeming in pain. Then it may not be anything we need to necessarily do anything for. You know, my simple solution for a dog with diarrhea that's just started for 24 hours and nothing else has happened is really to take the food away. And make sure we can control everything that's going in his mouth and supervise him. So he really ought not to be running the beach by himself. Keep up the water. In some cases, I will use canned pumpkin. And that can actually be an effective tool for both diarrhea and for constipation. I missed that. Canned pumpkin, the kind without the spice. And pumpkin. Like stuff that they put in a pumpkin pie. No, no, no, no, no, no, not that stuff because I made that mistake before. I don't know what you can't pump it in. Yeah, so there is canned pumpkins. There's the plain cam pumpkin in Cannes. And then there's also the one that's got all the nutmeg and the cinnamon. You don't want the one that's spiced. But the plane can pumpkin, you can give that for a large dog. I might give a tablespoon each meal just to see if that would help to solid up things. Well, I appreciate your time and I appreciate you taking my call very much. Thank you. Thank you. We hope that works for you, Arnold. You're listening to animal radio. Call the Dream Team now with the free animal radio app for iPhone and Android. Alan cable every day across America, people welcome new kids into their homes. Babies. Here's Tanya. I'm on maternity leave for my new puppy. You're on maternity leave because you have a new puppy? Yes. It's a beautiful thing when you have a four legged child. How.
Animal Radio
"josh fishman" Discussed on Animal Radio
"I just sit here and watch and listen to the answers and I learned so much from these two. Coming up on the show today, this hour we're going to be talking to Joe Markham. He is the top dog at Kong. You know, Kong, everybody has a Kong. If you're a dog owner, you probably have a Kong. It may not even be a Kong brand. But it may be similar to the conch. We know this is a great toy to occupy a dog as you put a little peanut butter in there. They can lick it out, a lot of fun for them. How did this Kong toy get invented? I kind of thought that it was probably a lot of scientists behind it, looking at shapes and that kind of thing. Trying to find something that they couldn't destroy. Yeah, because it's hard to find something that a dog won't chew up into little pieces. Well, you'll be interested to know how the Kong was invented and you're going to find out this hour with Joe Markham from Kong on animal radio. Also on the show today, we're going to put an end to this age long battle about who is smarter. The dog or the cat. Finally. Because we know it's the cat, right? No, no, no. You're wrong, Hal. We have Josh fishman. He's the senior editor of scientific American. He's just written an article about this and has some interesting information for you. Cat lovers and dog lovers and raccoon lovers. And bears oh my. Lori, what are you working on for this hour? You said you were going to talk with the guy who invented kongs. Who invented flaky pet parents? Flaky pet parents. Is that a thing? You know who was responsible for flaky pet parents? Who's that? Their pets. I'll tell you how this works out, but we're all guilty of this. There's new research out, how and it's not in our favor. Can I just say when you put together a tease, you go overboard? I mean, I am so hooked. I just. I just want to find out what she's talking about. I'm gonna stick around for that. Thanks. It's toll free when the free animal radio app for iPhone and Android and BlackBerry. And we go to Nancy hi Nancy, how are you? You got to push the button now. There you go. There you go. Hey, Nancy, how are you? I'm good. How are you doing? Very good. Where are you calling from today? I am calling from Beverly Hills, Michigan. There's a Beverly Hills in Michigan, really? Yes. You didn't know that, did you? Is it anything like the one in LA? Almost except we don't have palm trees. So what's going on today? I have the whole team here for you. Well, we have a German Shepherd's about 5 years old. And during the day, now both of us are gone. And so max.
60-Second Science
"josh fishman" Discussed on 60-Second Science
"We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus and the disease. We demystify the research and help you understand what it really means. I'm Tanya Lewis. I'm Josh fishman. And we're scientific Americans senior health editors. Today we'll explain the new official methods to determine if you're in a pandemic safe zone or danger area. Then we'll discuss what other pandemics look like when they were ending and whether this one at long last is heading down a similar path. The map of the U.S. shifted last week, or at least the map of COVID danger did. Suddenly, a lot of hazardous regions were deemed safer. What happened, Josh, did COVID disappear? It was a weird moment, Tanya, and no COVID hasn't gone away. But last Friday morning, people looked at an official Centers for Disease Control map showing much of the nation was in a high risk area, and the next day that map showed about 60% of the U.S. was really at low or medium risk. And people in those areas didn't need to wear a mask anymore. The agency said. What happened was three things. One, now we have more tools to keep people safer, such as vaccinations, and new antiviral drugs. We are seeing fewer infections as we slide down from the scary omicron wave, though about 2000 Americans are still dying every day, and none of us should tolerate that level of death. And three, because of the first two, the CDC decided to recalculate how it measured COVID risk. That's what changed the map. In the old scheme, the agency used only case counts in a particular county, 100 cases or more per 100,000 meant high risk of virus transmission, and the CDC said people in those places should wear masks. The new scheme shifts the calculation to measures of severe disease. It emphasizes the number of new hospital admissions and how much of a hospital is filled with existing COVID patients..
60-Second Science
"josh fishman" Discussed on 60-Second Science
"We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus and the disease. We demystify the research and help you understand what it really means. I'm Josh fishman, scientific American senior health editor. Tanya Lewis usually here with me has the day off. Today, new research shows how old coal viruses may help protect you against the coronavirus causing the pandemic. And vaccine makers are not rushing out shots against the Akron variant, even though the original shots have lost some effectiveness. What's the hold up? We'll explain. From early in the pandemic, it's been clear that not everyone is equally vulnerable to SARS CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID. Some people get really sick while others have mild symptoms or none at all. And this was true before any of us were protected by vaccines. Overall, about 80% of infected people get a mild illness. The virus is so wildly infectious, though, that the 20% of serious cases have been a global catastrophe. 5 and a half million people dead, 850,000 of them in the U.S.. But in people who don't get very ill, what's protecting them? We hear a lot about neutralizing antibodies, but this is a new virus to us. You don't get antibodies until after you've been exposed or vaccinated. Well, it turns out that some people might be getting help from another part of the immune system. T cells, which were triggered years ago, by exposure to different but related coronaviruses. These microbes have been with us forever, and they cause sneezing and runny noses, a common cold. The cold coronavirus and the pandemic coronavirus are distantly related, but they do share similar proteins. Early in the pandemic, scientists noticed that T cells that reacted to the cold virus also reacted to the pandemic virus. These are called cross reactive T cells. But since researchers saw this in test tubes, they had no idea what this meant for immunity in real life. Ajit levonian infectious disease physician at imperial college London decided to find out. England has a really good contact tracing system. It allowed Lal vani and his colleagues to find 52 people who lived with individuals who tested positive for COVID. These 52 started out negative themselves. Within about three days, half of that group or 26 turned positive. The other 26 stayed negative. Taking a closer look at the negative people who didn't get COVID while vani's team found that 7 of them had a lot of these cross reactive T cells. None of the people who got COVID had such cells. Zero. Lalvani told me this is a very substantial protective effect, and his team just published the results in the journal nature communications. The T cells primed by that older cold virus recognized the new pandemic virus because it has those similar proteins, and they work to fight it off. Immunologist Alex city from the la Jolla institute for immunology told me he thinks this research is on the right track. Other studies have linked recent exposure to these cold viruses with less severe COVID, says SETI, who is not involved in la vani's work. Research has also tied preexisting T cells to a stronger immune response to a COVID vaccine. The important thing about the T cells is that they point to new targets to add to second generation vaccines. The proteins these T cells reacted to went beyond the well-known spike protein at the heart of the first gen shots. The cells respond to other proteins called N and ORF, for instance. Adding those to a new vaccine formula both lalvani and SETI suggest could widen the protection of vaccines against variance. The proteins do seem to trigger a broader immune response to different forms of the coronavirus. And a few companies have such T cell enhanced vaccines in the works. Grit stone and immunity bio BioTech firms in California are two that have started clinical trials, including more of these proteins in a shot could create a vaccine capable of boosting your immunity against whatever variant comes along. The variant that has come along right now is, of course, a, and it is exhibit a for the case that vaccines rolled out a year ago have lost a bit of their edge. Remember, the original vaccine trials showed that Pfizer and Moderna shots were 90 to 95% effective at stopping infection. Now, two shots of the Pfizer vaccine are only 33% effective at stopping a infection. Scientists looking at cases in South Africa found. A booster shot does increase the amount of Akron neutralizing antibodies, and the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines with that booster are tremendously effective at preventing hospitalization and serious illness. Still, I'm a crown's wild spread has many people asking why we don't have a specific shot to stop it. mRNA vaccine makers have been saying that they could roll out new formulas fast if needed. But my colleague Charlie Schmidt did some reporting on this for scientific American, and he found out that really fast may not be fast enough. Designing a variant vaccine then testing and mass producing it can take four to 6 months. But now we know that variants can burst out in shorter time periods, followed by other variants. That makes companies reluctant to change all of their production over to a shot that may be irrelevant by the time it reaches your arm. As long as the current shots keep hospitalizations down, we should stick with them, says Paul offit vaccine specialist at children's hospital in Philadelphia. Right now, hospitalizations are running at about 2% of cases. Office says that if that number climbs to 15%, then it's time to change to a new shot. Not everyone agrees. Ralph barrack of virologist at the university of North Carolina told Schmidt that aron could be the backbone for the next set of variants since it's so good at spreading. So vaccines designed around a could offer more protection against future waves. What barrack would really like to see is a more universal vaccine that covers more variants. So we're not constantly playing catch up. The T cell stimulating shots I mentioned are one way to get there. So are vaccines that incorporate proteins from several closely related coronaviruses. Researchers at the University of Washington are working on one of those, using proteins that don't mutate much, so they should work from variant to variant. Other groups are trying related approaches, but it might be two years before those are ready. So companies may have to bite the bullet and roll out.
60-Second Science
"josh fishman" Discussed on 60-Second Science
"Quickly, a scientific American podcast series. This is your fast track update on the COVID pandemic. We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus and the disease. We demystify the research and help you understand what it really means. I'm Tonya Lewis. I'm Josh fishman. And we're scientific Americans senior health editors. Today we're going to talk about kids vaccines, the low risks and the considerable benefits. And why the shots protect people better than previous COVID infections do? The big news this week is that the FDA and the CDC have made COVID vaccines available to kids aged 5 11. How are parents reacting and what do we know about the vaccine safety in this age group, Tanya? Well, Josh, many parents are breathing a collective sigh of relief that they can now protect their young ones from COVID. They're also thrilled that their kids can get back to doing activities that they had to give up during the pandemic, like seeing their grandparents or playing with friends. But other parents are reluctant to get their kids vaccinated or still on the fence. Here's what we do know. While COVID is generally milder in children, more than a million kids were infected with the virus in September alone, and 41 died, according to the CDC. That's 41 sets of parents who had to bury a child who died from a preventable illness. The Pfizer vaccine was tested in more than 1500 kids in the 5 to 11 age group. They were given one third of the dose adults get. The vaccine was more than 90% effective at preventing symptomatic COVID, and the few infections that did occur in vaccinated kids were all mild. Vaccinated 5 to 11 year olds also had a similar level of antibodies as teenagers who got the adult dose. The side effects from the vaccine were similar to those in teens, but milder, they included fatigue, headache, fever, chills, and pain at the injection site. And there were no cases of myocarditis or pericarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle or lining, which have occurred in a small percentage of teens and young adults who got the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Myocarditis is more common in boys, but it's still so rare that it would be nearly impossible to have a big enough clinical trial to see the effects. Myocarditis can also be caused by infections, including COVID itself, where it is often more severe. While some young adults have been hospitalized with vaccine related myocarditis, most cases resolve on their own, and there have been no deaths linked to the vaccine. The CDC and FDA both concluded in separate meetings that the benefits of recommending the COVID vaccine for 5 to 11 year olds outweigh the risks. And we routinely vaccinate kids against diseases that hospitalized or kill far fewer children. Vaccinating kids also protects communities and could get as closer to ending this pandemic. I keep hearing some people say they don't need a COVID vaccine because they've already been infected. They say they are immune. Is that true? That's actually a reasonable thing to wonder. If you've been infected by the COVID causing virus already, do you have enough natural immunity to prevent a second infection? The quick answer is that COVID vaccines work better. Prior infection does give your immune system some resistance. However, when studies compare that to the immunity you gain from vaccines, it's not as strong or as long-lasting, or as good at keeping you out of the hospital. Now, here's the longer, more complicated answer. Infections with some other viruses do give people lasting immunity. It happens with chickenpox. It happens with the mumps, for instance. But the COVID virus, SARS CoV-2 behaves differently from these other viruses. Immunity to it doesn't last as long. Yet this idea that you can maintain natural immunity has become part of the pushback against vaccine mandates. There's even a vaguely worded bill in Congress promoting it. A new study does kind of a head to head comparison of natural immunity and vaccines. It looked at 7000 patients in the U.S. hospitalized with COVID like breathing trouble. Some had been previously infected with the virus and were not vaccinated. Others had been, with either Pfizer or Moderna. When tested, the previously infected patients were more than 5 times more likely to be positive for the virus than were vaccinated patients. They had been reinfected. Many of the vaccinated people in contrast turned out to have some non COVID illness. The study was led by Catherine bozio of the CDC if you want to look it up. Another CDC study of a few hundred people in Kentucky published in August found that previously infected but unvaccinated people were twice as likely to get reinfected, then were vaccinated folks. And there's more. A study in the journal science from July indicated that vaccination actually helps previously infected people. Vaccines boosted their antibodies against the virus by 1000 fold. So vaccine immunity is always better than. Well, remember, I said it's complicated. A study of thousands of people in Israel found their previous infections prevented new infections more often than vaccines did. There are some cautions, though. The researchers didn't test all the unvaccinated people. Some may have had undetected mild or asymptomatic reinfections. There might have been enough of those to swing the numbers in favor of vaccination. Also, that study hasn't been peer reviewed. Finally, it found that previous infections plus vaccinations produced the best protection of all. Here's the bottom line. The CDC just reviewed dozens of studies on this. It says that broadly, both natural infections and vaccines keep risk low for about 6 months. But getting down to the individual level, there are wide swings in antibody levels after natural infection. Some high some low. Antibodies after vaccination, though, are consistently higher and go after the virus harder. Given a virus that is killed 5 million people around the world. 750,000 in the U.S. and put 8300 young kids in this country in the hospital. The evidence says that vaccines.
60-Second Science
"josh fishman" Discussed on 60-Second Science
"We bring you up to speed on the science behind the most urgent questions about the virus and the disease demystify the research and help you understand what it really means. I'm tanya lewis. I'm josh fishman. We're scientific american. Senior health editors today. We're going to talk about masks. I why people resist wearing them despite all the evidence that they work. Then we'll explain. Why the kind of mask you wear matters and how to find a good one and president biden's latest update it's been baffling to watch. How angry some people get about wearing masks. They refused and some politicians back them up. It's a simple piece of fabric or material that stops the spread of kobe. So where does the pushback come from. Josh you've spoken to an expert on mask attitudes any explanation. Well like many strong reactions mask. Backlash combines a bunch of different causes and personal values emily mendenhall. A medical anthropologist at georgetown university has spent many months talking with anti mask people in an iowa town called oko boji for her book called unmasked which is coming out next year. I talked with emily this week about what she's found out. Oh kabbage is a small town on a lake in northwestern iowa. It's also where. Emily grew up so she knows a lot of people there. She knows steelworkers grocery store managers and her father's on the city council. The town sits in clay county which has about seventeen thousand residents but it balloons up to about one hundred thousand during the summer because the lake is a big local vacation spot and the economy depends on summer. People going to restaurants and amusement parks marinas the need to make money was partly why people resisted activity restrictions. Emily says and mask wearing got caught up in all that people push back. When local health agencies wanted to limit occupancy at businesses that was expressed as we don't want government telling us what to do the attitude extended to mask mandates to many people it was another example of pushy government overreach. Emily says this view is very much a part of a midwestern value of rugged individualism. You're tough enough to make it on your own and you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. It's a fiction. She says and it ignores the history of agricultural subsidies and other government help that dominates the region. yet it's a very powerful fiction that people really believe all of that made for very fertile ground in twenty twenty when donald trump repeatedly said the virus was no big deal. His message was echoed by the iowa. Governor and at the time there were not many cova cases in this area so trump's falsehoods really worm their way into the thinking of many people in clay county. Who felt that. Since the virus wasn't a threat there was little benefit to wearing a mask. They were tough enough to deal with the disease and government. Safety measures simply took away their freedoms for no good reason. Finally mask rejection is very public act. In clay county and oko boji it gives people legitimacy among their community. Emily says it shows your neighbors that you're knowledgeable that you're smart enough not to buy into the line that liberals and scientists and the government or push it that public stance increases your standing in the eyes of many people around you now privately. Some people told emily they worried about a child getting sick or their father falling ill but publicly so many of these different anti mass cultural values came together that they became an overwhelming force. Tanya we often talk about face masks or coverings as if they're all the same but you've been looking into it. I know and you've found some masks or better than others. Can the public at their hands on and their faces into the better ones. Yes in fact the masks that work the best are those that fit well and filter the air you breathe adequately a type of mass known as respirator. Such as an end ninety five provide some of the best protection early in the pandemic health agencies including the cdc h. o. Told the general public not to wear ninety five's or other medical grade masks because they were in short supply and healthcare workers needed them. But now these masks as well as similar masks made in china or korea are much more available we also know that the virus that causes. Kobe is spread through aerosols tiny droplets float in the air and can get around a loose-fitting cloth or surgical mask. I spoke to several experts in aerosol science including lindsay mar of virginia tech and kimberly author of uc. San diego. who say that it's high time experts start recommending that people wear these high filtration better fitting masks especially with the extremely transmissible delta variant circulating and kids going back to school. These masks include ninety. Five chinese made k. And ninety five and korean made kf ninety four us. They're pretty easy to find. Nowadays online and many of them are affordable. Less than one dollar mask. I talked to a guy named aaron collins who calls himself the mass nerd. He's a mechanical engineer. With a background in aerosol science and he has converted his home bathroom into our facility where he tests different masks and reviews them on youtube he measures three parameters filtration fit and comfort which is important filtration refers to the amount of particles that get through the mask or through gaps around the edges of the mask fit is how well it fits on your face and he measures comfort in part based on the pressure drop of air entering the mask. Basically how hard it is to breathe on. The mask nerds youtube channel. You can find videos of his top mask. Picks including mass for kids for ninety five. He recommends ones made by well known brands. Such as three m mold-ex honeywell. He also recommends several types of kf ninety four's and cayenne ninety five's many of which filter upwards of ninety eight percent of particles and are often more comfortable to wear. These fit a lot better than most cloth or surgical masks and are more likely to protect both you and others counterfeit masks are concerned but you can find reputable brands through sites like project and ninety. Five dot org. You can't access these types of masks. You can still get some pretty good protection if you wear surgical mask with a well fitting cloth mask over it. But it's time to ditch those loose bandannas and gaping me masks. That hang off your nose. The dvd my fellow americans talk about where we are in the battle against cove. Nineteen the progress. We've made new work. We have left to do president. Joe biden made tens of millions of jobs contingent on vaccinations. This week in a speech biden said he'll require millions of federal workers to get vaccinated. He also said companies with one hundred or more employees will have to give workers the shots or test them. weekly one trick will be enforcement. It's not clear whether the labor department which is in charge of workplace safety as a way to make sure companies are really doing this. He's also requiring that healthcare workers at hospitals and other providers receive federal funding be vaccinated. And that's not all. He aims to make rapid testing more widely available by enacting. The defense production act to make more tests and having walmart amazon and kroger seldom and amid the anxiety over school starting and some elected officials obstructing basic safety measures. He said that the government would compensate any educator who faced retaliation biden admitted that these measures will take time. But it's clear. His approach is moving from carrots to sticks..
60-Second Science
"josh fishman" Discussed on 60-Second Science
"Just a few months ago. The cdc said vaccinated. People didn't have to wear masks in most settings but this week the agency reversed course saying vaccinated. People should wear masks at times. What do the recommendations actually say tania and why the sudden shift in position so in its latest guidance the c. d. c. says vaccinated people should once again wear masks in public indoor settings under certain circumstances for example if you live in an area with high levels of kobe transmission which includes people who live in places with more than fifty cases per one hundred thousand people in the last week the agency also recommended universal. Masking all k. Through twelve schools including all students teachers and staff. The cdc says the reason for the shift is new data about the delta variant and breakthrough infections. Delta's known to be much more transmissible than previous strains and appears to produce about a thousand times as much virus in the body as the original strain there have been reports of breakthrough infections among fully vaccinated people and in rare cases they may be able to transmit it to others so the reason behind vaccinated people wearing masks is to prevent them from transmitting the virus people who cannot get vaccinated such as children under twelve. Or those who are immuno-compromised breakthrough infections are expected as no vaccine is one hundred percent effective and they may be more common than we thought with the delta variant according to data from the uk in israel the vaccines are still extremely good at preventing severe disease and death. The vast majority of those hospitalized with kobe right now are unvaccinated. If you're vaccinated and you get co bid it doesn't mean the vaccine didn't work as former surgeon general jerome atoms. Put it in a tweet. Think of the virus like the ocean the vaccine like a life vest. You may still get wet but your life vest vaccine significantly lessens. The chance you'll drown and getting wet doesn't mean the life vest didn't work
60-Second Science
"josh fishman" Discussed on 60-Second Science
"Early. In the pandemic there were some reports of people with odd symptoms such as fatigue and memory issues that continued long after their acute infection. Now these long haulers are getting some specialized help more and more. Data's coming out about long cohen. That's serious physical and mental effects that can last half the year after people. I get infected. The latest study came out last week in the journal. Nature medicine researchers looked at health records for a few hundred people in bergen norway. That was almost everyone in the city. Diagnosed with cohen. During several months in twenty twenty overall sixty one percent of the group had symptoms six months after they were first infected. Their most common problem was fatigue followed by difficulty concentrating. Disturb smell or taste memory trouble and a hard time breathing to striking things about these patients. One was that many had just a mild or moderate case of kobe at the star. The other was that a were young age. Sixteen to thirty other. Studies have reported similar symptom cluster. Such as one by university washington. Researchers that found about thirty percent of people was covered. Had these lingering troubles to doctors know what's causing these problems. That still a mystery. Tanya some people have organ damage related to the virus infection but some do not doctors are trying to figure out how best to treat them. Siam contributor melville newsome wrote this week about new covered recovery clinics that treat the whole patient rather than making people run from a lung doctor to a neurologist to an immunologist patients say the coordinated care helps and they feel more hopeful since they're being taken seriously and not dismissed as crank cases the nih is also taking it seriously spending about a billion dollars to study the disease. It now has an official job breaker of name post acute so calais of sars kobe to infection melba notes. However there's racial imbalance showing up at these clinics overwhelmingly. The people referred there are white but people of color are more likely to get cove it so access barriers. Such as lack of health insurance are likely keeping care away from many people who need it.