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☆ Fauci says China has done a bad job of vaccinating the elderly and their shots are not very effective against Covid
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Spencer Kimball | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease expert in the U.S., criticized China's Covid lockdowns as "draconian" and said the Beijing government should focus on vaccinating the elderly. Fauci said lockdowns are only justifiable as a temporary measure to serve a larger public health goal that will make society safer when it reopens. But China's strict Covid controls don't seem to have any endgame, he said. Rare protests broke out across China over the weekend against Covid lockdowns and strict quarantine procedures. "The efficacy of the China-made vaccines are not at the level of the vaccines that have been used in the United States, particularly the mRNA vaccines of Moderna and Pfizer," Fauci said.

☆ HIV vaccine candidate induces immune response in early clinical trial
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-01 | by ( Jacqueline Howard | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

CNN —An experimental HIV vaccine has been found to induce broadly neutralizing antibodies among a small group of volunteers in a Phase 1 study. “We know that broadly neutralizing antibodies are a potentially effective strategy to prevent HIV,” del Rio said. “However, the incorporation of many different shots into an HIV vaccine regimen is unappealing. More than 20 HIV vaccine clinical trials are ongoing around the world, according to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. But having an HIV vaccine available would make protection against the virus more accessible, he said.

☆ FDA Plans to Allow More Gay, Bisexual Men to Donate Blood
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Liz Essley Whyte | Amy Dockser Marcus | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

People donating at a blood drive hosted by the New York Blood Center in the East Village in New York. Gay and bisexual men in monogamous relationships would be allowed to donate blood without abstaining from sex under guidelines being drafted by the Food and Drug Administration, people familiar with the plans said. The change would be a departure from U.S. policy that for many years barred men who have sex with men from donating blood at all. The FDA policy originated in the 1980s during the AIDS epidemic when tests for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, weren’t considered sensitive enough to protect the blood supply.

☆ FDA to Allow More Gay, Bisexual Men to Donate Blood
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Liz Essley Whyte | Amy Dockser Marcus | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

☆ COVID hit HIV detection in Europe, threatens eradication progress
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Ajose Koilparambil | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Hendrik Schmidt/Pool via Reuters/File PhotoLONDON, Nov 30 (Reuters) - The number of people in Europe with undiagnosed HIV has risen as testing rates fell during the COVID-19 pandemic, threatening a global goal of ending the disease by 2030, a report said. This region includes Russia and Ukraine, which have the area's highest rates of HIV infection. This setback was likely because services related to HIV, including testing, were sidelined in many European countries during the two years of the pandemic, the report found. The report used modelling to predict the number of estimated infections and compared that to testing data provided by 46 of the 53 countries in the WHO's European region. An estimated one in eight people living with HIV in that region remains undiagnosed, it found.

☆ Long Covid may be 'the next public health disaster' — with a $3.7 trillion economic impact rivaling the Great Recession
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Greg Iacurci | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +12 min

Norpel is one of millions of Americans with long Covid, also known as long-haul Covid, post-Covid or post-acute Covid syndrome. Key symptoms: Long Covid has been linked to more than 200 symptoms, according to The Rockefeller Foundation. Duration: There's no consistent definition of how long symptoms must persist for someone to be considered a long Covid patient. What experts do know is that for some, long Covid symptoms can last months or even years. "I don't know if it's for the rest of my life or not," Hurst said of feeling long Covid symptoms.

☆ FDA considering shift toward individual risk-based assessments for blood donors
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-30 | by ( Carma Hassan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —The US Food and Drug Administration is considering shifting its blood donation policy away from blanket assessments toward questionnaires that focus more on individual risk, it said Wednesday. “The FDA remains committed to gathering the scientific data related to alternative donor deferral policies that maintain a high level of blood safety,” the statement says. Those who have not would be allowed to donate blood, an FDA official told the Journal. The current policy requires men who have sex with men to wait three months after sexual contact with other men before they can donate blood. Other men who have sex with men are still required to refrain from sex for three months before donating in the UK.

☆ Rare success for Alzheimer's research unlocks hope for future therapies
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-29 | by ( Julie Steenhuysen | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

Eisai and Biogen are scheduled to present full data from their lecanemab study on Tuesday at the Clinical Trials on Alzheimer's Disease conference in San Francisco. Lecanemab’s success rests on years of research into the causes of Alzheimer’s as well as advances in measuring amyloid deposits through brain scans and spinal fluids. At least 16 treatments are being tested in clinical trials, with results expected over the next three years, according to a Reuters review of the clinicaltrials.gov registry. The drugmaker has been largely absent from the Alzheimer's space after the high-profile failure of its drug verubecestat five years ago. But several antibody therapies from Lilly, Biogen and AbbVie(ABBV.N) that were designed to slow the rate of tau accumulations failed outright last year.

☆ Texas Lawsuit Challenges Key Plank of Affordable Care Act
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-28 | by ( Stephanie Armour | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

Employers have often supported preventive-care services because they say it helps reduce healthcare costs. WASHINGTON—A key element of the Affordable Care Act hangs in the balance as a federal lawsuit in Texas is challenging the law’s requirement that most insurers cover an array of preventive health services that range from screenings for depression to mammograms. A district court judge ruled in September that the way a federal task force determines which services are covered is unconstitutional and said the health-insurance requirement for HIV-prevention medications violated a company’s religious freedom.

☆ The U.S. is 'certainly' still in a Covid-19 pandemic, Dr. Fauci says
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-27 | by ( Ashley Capoot | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Dr. Anthony Fauci, White House chief medical advisor, speaks during a briefing on COVID-19 at the White House on November 22, 2022 in Washington, DC. The nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said the U.S. is "certainly" still in the middle of a Covid-19 pandemic and he is "very troubled" by the divisive state of American politics. "I don't care if you're a far-right Republican or a far-left Democrat, everybody deserves to have the safety of good public health and that's not happening." The 81-year-old became a household name during the Covid-19 pandemic, battling back against misinformation — sometimes from the highest levels of government. White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said Sunday he knows it has been a long two years for Americans, but that it is still "incredibly important" to get vaccinated ahead of the holiday season.

☆ In California, 10% of Legislature now identifies as LGBTQ
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +8 min

People by and large are totally fine with LGBTQ people, they support us, they are accepting and willing to vote for LGBTQ candidates,” California state Sen. Scott Wiener, a member of the LGBTQ Caucus, said Monday. Meanwhile, the Legislature has not yet reached parity in gender or in race and ethnicity, according to statistics from the California State Library. New Hampshire and Vermont have each had more LGBTQ legislators, according to the institute, but their legislatures are bigger than California’s and so have not reached the 10% threshold. Alaska and South Dakota elected their first out LGBTQ legislators, and Montana and Minnesota elected their first transgender legislators, according to the Human Rights Campaign. By contrast, “as California’s Legislative LGBTQ Caucus has grown, the state has led the nation in passing groundbreaking legislation protecting LGBTQ+ civil rights,” said Equality California spokesperson Samuel Garrett-Pate.

WASHINGTON, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. health official celebrated and vilified as the face of the country's COVID-19 pandemic response, used his final White House briefing on Tuesday to denounce division and promote vaccines. True to form, Fauci used his final press briefing to strongly encourage Americans to get COVID vaccines and booster shots, and touted the effectiveness of masks, all of which became partisan totems in the United States. NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci joins White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, U.S. November 22, 2022. He made his first appearance at the White House press briefing in 2001, according to the broadcaster C-SPAN. Democrats accused Trump of presiding over a disjointed response to the pandemic and of disregarding advice from public health experts including Fauci.

Elizabeth Holmes, the founder and CEO of Theranos, the failed blood-testing company at the center of her downfall, will be sentenced Friday. Holmes was convicted in January of four counts of fraud for misleading Theranos investors about the company's technology and its financial health. Theranos had simply repurposed commercially available blood analysis technology to run on smaller amounts of blood, The Wall Street Journal revealed in October 2015. During Holmes’ trial, former employees testified that Theranos would also frequently delete erroneous results from its tests to make its machines appear more accurate. Holmes said Balwani lied to her about the company's financial models and subjected her to intimate partner abuse.

☆ Grindr shares soar in post-SPAC debut as advocates weigh progress of LGBTQ inclusion within finance world
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-18 | by ( Alex Harring | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

The group of performers, some known for appearances on the competition show "RuPaul's Drag Race," performed on a rainbow stage set in the front of the New York Stock Exchange. It was part of a celebration of LGBTQ dating app Grindr's public-markets debut following a merger with blank-check company Tiga Acquisition. The New York Stock Exchange was lined with rainbow markers and pride flags in recognition of the event. Before the opening bell, New York Stock Exchange President Lynn Martin spoke about the importance of an LGBTQ-centered company's place in the equities market. watch now'The power of the app'The excitement around Grindr's debut does not diminish the difficulties of the current bear market.

☆ Over a decade after founding Grindr, Joel Simkhai wants a do-over
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Zachary Schermele | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +7 min

When Joel Simkhai left Grindr five years ago, he had a lot of time to think. Simkhai, a gay man and tech entrepreneur, helped launch the groundbreaking gay hookup and dating app in 2009. As recently as this year, the average daily time spent on Grindr per user was about an hour, according to The Guardian. The results of an online survey of nearly 100 Grindr users published in 2017 in the peer-reviewed journal Behavioral Medicine showed obese users reported significantly greater feelings of body dissatisfaction. But racist, discriminatory and exclusionist tropes — or euphemisms for them — continue to pervade a number of LGBTQ hookup and dating apps.

☆ Man who had COVID-19 for 400 days finally cured after getting treated with antibodies, study says
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-16 | by ( Marianne Guenot | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A man carried COVID-19 for more than 400 days. The patient was paucisymptomatic, meaning he did not have the symptoms typical of COVID-19, like cough, fever, or loss of smell. But doctors finally managed to cure the patient by giving him anti-COVID-19 antibodies in February 2022. Though the patient's case is characteristically long, it is not the longest-ever reported infection for COVID-19. In another case, reported in June 2021, the virus mutated more than 30 times in a patient whose immune system was weakened by HIV.

☆ RSV hospitalization rate for seniors is 10 times higher than usual for this point in the season
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Jen Christensen | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

In the years before the Covid-19 pandemic, hospitalization rates for seniors were about 10 times lower at this point in the season. Based on best estimates, there are between 10,000 and 15,000 adult deaths in the United States from RSV each year and around 150,000 hospitalizations for RSV, Falsey said. Adults with weakened immune systems need to be careful in RSV season. Doctors’ offices have swab tests that can determine whether an illness is flu, RSV or Covid. Protective measures for this busy RSV season will sound familiar: Wash your hands frequently, disinfect surfaces, and wear a mask in crowded spaces.

☆ These transformative leaders in healthcare are dealing with an unprecedented era of politics in the medical industry amid the COVID-19 pandemic
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Rebecca Torrence | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Sign up for our newsletter to get the latest healthcare news and analysis — delivered weekly to your inbox. But while the peak of the pandemic appears to be in the rearview, the healthcare industry has continued to be governed by political forces. This year, healthcare focused on transgender people and abortion rights has come under attack. Other healthcare professionals are using federal power to prevent the spread of infectious diseases other than COVID-19. Social stigma from the monkeypox outbreaks has mildly echoed the intense social and political stigma of HIV, which Daskalakis has focused on for the majority of his career.

☆ World population reaches 8 billion people, with India expected to surpass China as most populous nation
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-15 | by ( Spencer Kimball | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +1 min

Indian passengers stand and hang onto a train as it departs from a station on the outskirts of New Delhi. The world population reached 8 billion people on Tuesday, and India is expected to surpass China as the most populous country in the next year, according to projections from the United Nations. The global population has more than tripled since 1950 as mortality dropped and life expectancy increased, due in large part to better sanitation, access to clean drinking water and the development of vaccines and antibiotics, along with improved nutrition. Life expectancy fell by a year to 71 in 2021, due in large part of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Still, people born in 2050 are expected to live until age 77 on average.

☆ A top Wall Street analyst names 6 major events that could send biotech stocks soaring between now and the end of 2022
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Yeji Jesse Lee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Cantor Fitzgerald analysts named six big events to mark on your calendar. While the majority of the expected events are set to come from smaller biotech companies, bigger companies — like Roche, Gilead, and Alnylam — have their own events coming through the pipeline. Here are the six major events from big biotech companies that could send stocks soaring:1. Cantor Fitzgerald analysts give Gilead's stock a neutral rating and they have an overweight rating on Arcus. Lenacapavir "could become a much bigger piece of the HIV growth narrative over the next few years," according to Cantor Fitzgerald analysts.

☆ Pentagon and Army sued over decades-old policy barring recruits with HIV
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( Zachary Schermele | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

After a successful effort earlier this year to ease longstanding restrictions on service members living with HIV, LGBTQ rights advocates are now pushing for more change. They want to end the U.S. military’s decades-old policy of barring people with HIV from enlisting. Isaiah Wilkins, 23, tested positive for HIV while trying to join the Army Reserves. Lambda LegalThe lawsuit describes the ban on HIV-positive recruits as “incompatible” with modern medical advancements. Before the court ruling, U.S. military policy was to place restrictions on service members if they were diagnosed with HIV after they had successfully enlisted.

☆ Australia blames Russians for health insurance data theft
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( Associated Press | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

Moscow must he held to account for Russian cybercriminals accused of hacking Australia’s largest health insurer and dumping customers’ personal medical records on the dark web, Australian officials said Friday. Australian Federal Police took the unusual step of attributing blame for the unsolved cybercrime that resulted in the personal data of 9.7 million current and former Medibank customers being stolen. An old REvil dark web site had started redirecting traffic to a new site that hosts the stolen Medibank data. A Medibank employee’s stolen username and password, which allowed the hackers to enter the company’s database, had been sold on a Russian dark web forum, Hanson said. “These are real people behind this data and the misuse of their data is deplorable and may discourage them from seeking medical care,” he added.

☆ Bono’s new book is more than a rock star memoir. It’s also a powerful tribute to America
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( John Blake | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +12 min

Born Paul David Hewson in Dublin, Ireland, Bono is a global rock star, an activist and an entrepreneur who is currently touring the US to promote his memoir. Bono’s book, though, is more than a rock star’s memoir. A belief in America as an idea, not a religionAs any casual fan of U2 knows, U2 has long had a close relationship with the US. Martin Luther King Jr., with their song, “Pride (In The Name of Love).”In “Surrender,” Bono pays tribute to America itself. “The search for common ground starts with a search for higher ground,” Bono writes in the memoir.

‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’Even before making its way to theaters, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” — the long-awaited sequel to the 2018 film starring Chadwick Boseman — has birthed some of this fall’s biggest pop culture moments, including a Rihanna song drop. “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” opens in U.S. theaters Nov. 11. “The Inspection” opens in U.S. theaters Nov. 18. “Bones and All” opens in U.S. theaters Nov. 23. “Strange World” opens in U.S. theaters Nov. 23.

☆ Patrick Haggerty, trailblazing gay country star, dies at 78
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-01 | by ( Scottie Andrew | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

CNN —When Patrick Haggerty was gearing up to record his very first country music album, he had a choice to make. He chose the latter, and 1973’s “Lavender Country,” Haggerty’s first album recorded under the same name, is now widely considered the first country album recorded by an out gay musician. He became a country music star after all. That call with Greaves was the first step to reintroducing Haggerty and Lavender Country to new listeners, many of whom had been hungry for an out gay country star. “My life changed completely and forever that day.”He became a country star his wayAs more people heard “Lavender Country” and learned Haggerty’s story, his contributions to country music were acknowledged and appreciated more widely.

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