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Studying the spread of infections in nursing homes and prisons may guide how best to prepare to return to school.

Last week Governor de Santis of Florida threatened to withhold funding (and salaries) from local superintendents and school board members who disregarded his executive order, effectively prohibiting mask mandates in local school districts. The order came in the face of the Fort Lauderdale-Broward County’s school district vote to require masks.
The President immediately interceded -- promising federal funds to cover local salaries. Some days later, the Governor seems to have backtracked. But conflict between local, state, and federal powers to regulate pandemic conduct has rooted and is spreading. Interestingly, this is nothing new. Pandemics invite politics, often including scientifically apathetic politicians. Exactly 129 years ago, it happened like this:

Perfluorooctanoate is a simple 8-member carbon molecule that has fluorine, rather than hydrogen, atoms. The result is a chemical that resembles simple forms of fat that occur naturally in our bodies – but does not break down significantly.

Despite its higher transmissibility, research continues to show that the authorized COVID-19 vaccines protect against the Delta variant. The latest evidence comes to us from the UK.

Vaccine skeptics continue to insist that the COVID shots are dangerous. As always, their favorite sources are the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and other similar passive surveillance databases. As cases of supposed vaccine injury are investigated, we come to the reassuring, though admittedly boring, conclusion that COVID-19 jabs pose a low risk to most people.

As the fall approaches, the Delta variant continues to infect our citizens as the climate becomes more hospitable to respiratory viruses. Booster immunizations have arrived, and they’ll be rolled out soon.

As was the case with other "instant therapies" for COVID, convalescent plasma showed no utility whatsoever in a well-designed randomized controlled trial, something that should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever waded in the treacherous waters of drug discovery research. Another one bites the dust.

As of today, people who are immunocompromised are allowed to receive a booster shot. Sounds simple, right? That is, until the madness becomes evident.

There hasn’t been much news recently on the “Collapse on Collins” -- the Miami building tragedy that resulted in nearly 100 fatalities. To date, no official cause has been determined. Could “bad” vibrations have contributed to the disaster?

Studying the nautilus, the beauty of lullabies, understanding stupid, the continuing hype of AI, separating signal from noise, and a worrisome note on bananas

It's no secret that the weed killer glyphosate shows up in our food. But how much of a health risk is this to consumers? A new review paper examining the evidence offers a reassuring conclusion.

Given the unabated rise in drug overdoses, the idea of safe injection sites has once again been raised. Dr. Jeffrey Singer of the Cato Institute (and also an advisor for ACSH) writes in the Providence Journal about Rhode Island's “overdose prevention sites.” It's all about harm reduction.

There’s an epidemic of obesity and diabetes, and everyone is trying to lose weight. Many individuals use artificial sweeteners to reduce their caloric intake. A recent article titled “Aspartame and cancer: new evidence for causation” is just the latest of several studies over the years that have attempted to link artificial sweeteners – in this case, aspartame – with cancer.
Is there any evidence for an association?

The COVID-19 media is saturated with vaccination information and news. Information includes vaccine performance, vaccination availability, hospital crowding. The news includes local mandates, compliance statistics, breakthrough infections, masking requirements. Data on demonstrated public health benefits of vaccination are scarce; we set out to fill that gap. Our primary goal was to define quantitative relationships between vaccination and subsequent rates of infections as of July 24, 2021.

As another wave of infections washes across the land, and officials call for or against the non-pharmacologic interventions (NPI) a new battle is being waged. Do these interventions work? Where is the science to follow? Let’s ignore your favorite expert or talking head; I’ll report, you decide.

Cato Institute's Dr. Jeffrey A. Singer, also an ACSH advisor, and Dr. Josh Bloom argue in The Philadelphia Inquirer that the unwinnable war on drugs is simply a losing proposition for pain patients.

The pushback over mask mandates has been fierce. It’s been portrayed in the media as another skirmish in the political and cultural wars. And while there’s an element of truth to that, framing all of the COVID controversies as political can lead us very much astray.

Thanks to genetic engineering, it's now possible to make this frozen dessert without cows, at least indirectly. Naturally, the anti-GMO industry is up in arms. They're making all sorts of baseless arguments in an attempt to scare people away from this so-called "animal-free" ice cream.

Maia Szalavitz's terrifying article in Wired, which described the cruel laws and punitive regulations that pain patients are forced to abide by, brought to mind hundreds of similarly tragic comments I've been reading for years. These can be found following any of my ~100 articles about pain, opioid denial, or government malfeasance and ineptitude. Here are a few.

Energy fuels our growth and maintenance. How exactly that changes, and the relative contributions of exercise and metabolism over time, is difficult to ascertain. A new study provides some answers. It is both dynamic and, as is often the case, nuanced.

The creative class, the elites and the bobos, deep concentrated work, death and evolution, shopping, and of course, COVID-19

After a short gestation period, COVID-19 vaccines arrived throughout the nation and became part of the daily scene. Questions about which vaccine to get have diminished replaced with concerns about who is getting shots and who is not. Here is what the latest statistics tell us.

The pandemic chaos continues...

Always eager to win friends and influence people, The Conversation recently published an article claiming that people who refuse to get COVID shots are selfish and un-American. This is not how you convert vaccine skeptics.

Dr. Jeff Singer of the Cato Institute, and also a member of the ACSH Board of Scientific Advisors was invited to participate in a panel discussion on ending the opioid crisis. Here is a description of the event and a link to a YouTube video of the discussion.