Here is the headline: Covid may raise the risk of diabetes in children, CDC researchers reported. [1] Of course, the study comes with more caveats than what’s in the article. So, what actually did the CDC find, and what does it mean?
Disease
The Michelson Philanthropy Prize in Immunology was awarded on Feb. 24 to Dr. Paul Bastard at the Necker Hospital for Sick Children in Paris. Why should you care? Because his work helps us better understand the biology of why some die from COVID-19, while others are seemingly – and are – immune.
In considering traumatic deaths, firearms have overtaken motor vehicle collisions as the primary cause of lost potential years of life. This is not the gun violence that captures the headlines; it is the slow daily attrition we have, in large part, to which we have become numb.
The American public has been concerned with radiation safety as far back as the tragic story of the “Radium Girls,” female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with self-luminous paint between 1917 and 1920. While there is substantial data demonstrating powerful carcinogenesis from high-dose radiation, e.g., an atomic bomb explosion, can small doses of radiation cause cancer? Some believe that they can.
Infection of a vaccinated person is referred to as a “breakthrough” case. Such cases are infrequent, but they raise questions about the long-term efficacy of vaccination. Here we examine some of the available breakthrough data.
Notable changes have occurred since our last COVID-19 progress report [1]. The Omicron variant has taken hold nationwide. The pace of booster inoculation has picked up but resistance to the original primary series persists. Local efforts to reduce exposure to the virus vary widely, creating confusion as to whether the end of the pandemic may finally be in sight.
Let us leave aside our obsession with COVID and consider two more significant health problems that have long plagued us, obesity and cardiometabolic disease resulting in hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. As a new review article suggests, “Adipose tissue lies at the center of these health problems….” Fat is more than something that insulates and gives our body a shape.
There is a tussle between those that believe that our COVID vaccines are net beneficial and those that argue that there are too many adverse side effects. The combatants cite data from varying sources, always pointing out that their opponents’ data are, as Mark Twain states, “lies, damn lies, and statistics.” A new paper from JAMA Network Open puts some context to the numbers.
In an essay in the London Review of Books, David Wallace-Wells contrasted the 5.5 million annual global deaths from COVID [1] with the 7 million deaths attributed to air pollution (AP) projected by the World Health Organization [2]; he bemoaned the lack of attention being given to the latter. [1] He noted that other AP mortality estimates run as high as 8.7 million and 10 million if indoor air pollution were included. This is getting downright scary.
The CDC has reported that COVID-19 vaccines are working well, but reduced protection against mild and moderate disease over time is apparent. It is appropriate to examine trends now that our primary vaccination program has been in place for a year. While recently vaccinated members of a population have much lower rates of infection, some suffered breakthrough infections that may be associated with reduced vaccine effectiveness.
According to a recent paper, fatigability – how physically tired we feel after specific activities – is a reliable marker of our aging. It can also be used to identify those of us who might be moving towards an eternal nap faster than others.
The World Health Organization (WHO) adopted a dose-response function for PM2.5 that lumps outdoor ambient air quality, second-hand (passive) smoking, and indoor household air pollution. It has been used in 80 published studies of the “Global Burden of Health” (GBD). Here I take a closer look and incorporate some additional risk estimates.