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"Repeal of Obamacare would ""take away health care for 10.3 million Americans"" who have received coverage since Oct. 1, 2013."
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"Schultz said repealing the Affordable Care Act would take away insurance coverage of about 10.3 million people. Based on multiple independent sources, the combination of the individual mandate, insurance subsidies through the insurance marketplaces, Medicaid expansion and raising the eligibility age for dependents delivers a total that is in the neighborhood of what Schultz said. But there is a bit of uncertainty in all of the numbers, and Schultz’s suggestion that health care would be ""taken away"" for everyone is a tad strong. Correction: A previous version of this story described Sen. Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader. The GOP election wins put him on track to assume the title, but he hadn't yet. He is described as Minority Leader."
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true
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Corrections and Updates, Health Care, PunditFact, Ed Schultz,
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"The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, is back in the news as the 2015 open enrollment season gets underway. So far, unlike last year, the roll-out has been smooth. This hasn’t made Republicans a whit more fond of the law. Many want to repeal and replace it. Just before sign-ups began, liberal pundit and MSNBC show host Ed Schultz challenged Republicans to make good on that line. Schultz said he’s yet to see a fully fleshed out GOP alternative. Several bills spell out key elements of a Republican approach, but their full scope and impact remain unclear. Schultz zeroed in on this lack of precision. ""The Republican agenda seems to want to reverse everything on health care,"" Schultz said on Nov. 13, 2014. ""This is what (Sen. Minority Leader Mitch) McConnell wants to repeal. 10 million people. 10.3 uninsured Americans have received coverage since Oct. 1, 2013. That's a hard number that can be verified."" Schultz picked Oct. 1, 2013, because that was the day the federal health insurance exchange opened (as best it could) for business. Would, as Schultz said, repeal of the Affordable Care Act take away the health coverage gained by 10.3 million people? The baseline numbers suggest Schultz is correct. Between October 2013 and June 2014, Gallup found that 10.3 million nonelderly adults gained health insurance coverage. It’s possible that this number has grown since the data cut off in June 2014. The New England Journal of Medicine estimated that, through June, 10.3 million adults gained health insurance coverage. Also through June, the Commonwealth Fund estimated the number at 9.5 million. And over the same period, the Urban Institute offered an estimate of 8 million. An earlier study -- through March -- by the RAND Corp. estimated a net gain of 9.3 million American adults with health insurance. These are net figures, meaning they include people who may have lost insurance. While there is some fluctuation, they largely support Schultz’s claim. The more difficult question to answer is, does the Affordable Care Act deserve all the credit? There are generally three ways people were added to the rolls of the insured since October 2013 -- through an employer, through Medicaid or through federal or state marketplaces. There are scenarios in each category whereby people gaining insurance could see their health care taken away if Obamacare is repealed, and there are scenarios where their health care would remain. Insurance through an employer The RAND survey — which will soon be updated — estimated that millions of newly insured Americans got coverage through an employer (Employer-sponsored insurance or ESI). Why? Partly because of the Affordable Care Act, and partly because the economy is improving and more people are finding work. ""Enrollment in ESI increased by 8.2 million,"" the RAND analysts wrote, ""Most of this increase was driven by people who were previously uninsured. Some of these newly insured individuals may have taken up an employer plan as a result of the incentive created by the individual mandate; others may have newly found a job."" Since employer coverage provides most of the insurance in America, and unemployment dropped during this period, at least a portion of the newly insured would have gained coverage without Obamacare. However, the lead author of the New England Journal of Medicine article, Benjamin Sommers at the Harvard School of Public Health, said his analysis aimed to factor out the employment impact. ""As best as we could do, without a true ‘control group,’ we were trying to estimate the changes in the uninsured rate attributable to the Affordable Care Act’s first open enrollment period,"" Sommers said. Sommers said even allowing for job growth, at least 10.3 million people gained coverage due solely to Obamacare. Insurance through Medicaid The RAND study also teased out that 3.6 million people relied on Medicaid to get out of the ranks of the uninsured. A major goal of the Affordable Care Act was to expand Medicaid by raising the income eligibility cut-off line to 138 percent of federal poverty. According to an analysis from the Urban Institute, virtually all of the higher Medicaid enrollment took place in the 24 states plus the District of Columbia that chose to expand Medicaid. Still, some portion of new Medicaid enrollees would have qualified under the previous terms. How big a portion is unclear, although Medicaid rolls increased by 5 percent even in states that did not raise the income limits. Insurance through marketplaces Lastly, the law created federal and state insurance marketplaces where people could pick and choose among private insurance plans. The RAND survey estimated that 1.4 million uninsured people wound up buying insurance this way. The total number is about 4 million, but that includes people who had insurance before. RAND economist Christine Eibner said the premium subsidies available through the marketplaces have helped millions of people. ""If the ACA were repealed many would lose access to subsidies or Medicaid coverage, and could no longer afford insurance,"" Eibner said. However, it’s not entirely clear if all of the 1.4 million uninsured people who purchased insurance wanted it in the first place. Some might have purchased insurance simply because it was required as part of the health care law. In that sense, it’s hard to say their insurance would be taken away if the health care law were repealed. Other cases of people getting covered The full impact of Obamacare goes beyond the marketplaces and Medicaid expansion, so the total number could be higher still. In 2012, the law gave parents the option to keep their kids on their health insurance policies until they turned 26. About 2.5 million to 3 million people had taken advantage of the change. However, some of those would have had coverage even without the new policy. Both Eibner and Sommers, who is a part-time advisor to the Health and Human Services Department, said all told, they believe at least 10.3 million people owe their coverage to Obamacare. It's hard to get a definitive number, but the estimates we find put Schultz in the ballpark. Our ruling Schultz said repealing the Affordable Care Act would take away insurance coverage of about 10.3 million people. Based on multiple independent sources, the combination of the individual mandate, insurance subsidies through the insurance marketplaces, Medicaid expansion and raising the eligibility age for dependents delivers a total that is in the neighborhood of what Schultz said. But there is a bit of uncertainty in all of the numbers, and Schultz’s suggestion that health care would be ""taken away"" for everyone is a tad strong. With those caveats. Correction: A previous version of this story described Sen. Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader. The GOP election wins put him on track to assume the title, but he hadn't yet. He is described as Minority Leader."
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35344
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A sprawling conspiracy theory proves numerous individuals and organizations schemed to promote the drug Remdesivir as a COVID-19 treatment over the purportedly highly effective Hydroxychloroquine.
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A sprawling conspiracy theory holds that numerous individuals and organizations schemed to promote Remdesivir over a drug that the U.S. president has touted.
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false
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Politics, COVID-19
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In May 2020, as the drug Remdesivir was being explored as a potential treatment for the COVID-19 coronavirus disease, a widespread social media post posited a sprawling conspiracy involving U.S. biopharmaceutical company Gilead, China, the international medical organization Unitaid, George Soros, Bill Gates, the World Health Organization, Hillary Clinton, and National Institute of Allergy, and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci. The theory holds that together they were trying to suppress the supposedly highly effective drug Hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 in favor of Remdesivir: The disconnected statements offered in support of the conspiracy theory added up to nothing, but some of them individually had varying amounts of truth to them, which we briefly survey below. Some very preliminary research has suggested that Remdesivir, a drug originally developed to target Ebola, may show some promise as a treatment (not a “cure”) for COVID-19. The patent for Remdesivir is held by Gilead Sciences, a California-based biopharmaceutical company. In January 2020, the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the China Academy of Sciences applied to patent the use of Remdesivir in China. Even if that application were granted, it would have very limited scope and would not mean that China would “own” the patent to Remdesivir: “Even if the Wuhan Institute’s application gets authorized, the role is very limited because Gilead still owns the fundamental patent of the drug,” said Zhao Youbin, a Shanghai-based intellectual property counsel at Purplevine IP Service Co. “Any exploitation of the patent must seek approval from Gilead.” Unitaid is an international organization that invests in innovations to prevent, diagnose, and treat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria more quickly, affordably and effectively. Unitaid also works to improve access to diagnostics and treatment for HIV co-infections such as hepatitis C and human papillomavirus (HPV), and they have “moved quickly to reshape its programs to contribute to the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.” Unitaid is not “Gilead’s drug patent sharing subsidiary branch” (or any other form subsidiary of Gilead), the organization told us, nor does Unitaid have an office near Wuhan, China. (Unitaid has a single office location in Geneva, Switzerland.)
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26217
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On keeping inspectors general independent of the president
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"When inspectors general were up for debate in 2015, Johnson spoke out strongly and repeatedly about the need for independence, saying they shouldn’t compromise their work ""to appease the agency or the president."" He specifically condemned the idea of retaliating against inspectors general for reports superiors didn’t like. A report from his committee even said the president’s ability to remove an inspector general ""threatens the IG’s independence at a very basic level."" Of course, that was under a Democratic president. With a Republican now in the Oval Office and removing several inspectors general for reasons many view as political, Johnson is singing a different tune. He talks about inspectors general serving ""at the president’s will,"" and how they ""work and serve the president of the United States."" That’s a complete change in position, or as we call it."
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false
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Government Regulation, Wisconsin, Ron Johnson,
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"When President Barack Obama was in office, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson was a fierce advocate for the independence of inspectors general, a group that serves as the internal watchdogs for the federal government. In comments before Congress, through reports of his committee and in news releases, he championed the need for oversight through these offices. But some prominent voices have noted a shift from the Wisconsin Republican under President Donald Trump — particularly as Trump has removed five inspectors general in a series of moves many have labeled political retaliation. ""The man who was so worried about politicization of the IGs under Obama has not even offered pro-forma objections to the defenestration of the watchdogs that he used to champion,"" the longtime Wisconsin radio voice Charlie Sykes, a conservative, wrote May 20, 2020, for The Bulwark. ""Even as Trump makes a joke of the independence of the inspectors general, Johnson remains one of Trump’s most eager lieutenants."" A May 18, 2020, Washington Post analysis headlined in part as ""Hypocrisy watch"" noted how Johnson had ""downplayed"" the removals in a recent CNN appearance. That makes this a good time to break out our Flip-O-Meter. Our requisite reminder: We are not measuring whether any change in position is good policy or good politics. We’re just examining whether a public official has been consistent in his or her stated views. Has Johnson changed his stance on the independence of inspectors general, particularly related to the president? Let’s check the archives. Inspectors general provide oversight and accountability throughout the federal government. The position was created in 1978 after the Watergate scandal. The 74 inspectors and their staff — a total of some 13,000 people across all departments — perform audits, investigations and inspections. They are tasked with finding and deterring waste, fraud and abuse, and reporting their findings to both the agency head and Congress. Inspectors general are appointed by the president for all cabinet-level departments, but are considered non-political positions. Their independence from political officials and the agencies they work in has been fiercely protected over the years — including by Johnson. Since March 2020, Trump has fired or replaced five inspectors general, three of whom the Washington Post described as being removed in apparent retaliation. The May 18, 2020 story laid out the background this way: Acting Health and Human Services Department inspector general Christi Grimm had issued a report on ""severe shortages"" of hospital equipment during the coronavirus outbreak — a report that Trump derided. (State Department inspector general Steve) Linick had issued a report critical of State Department officials and called an ""urgent"" briefing on Ukraine disinformation during Trump’s impeachment, in addition to reportedly investigating (Secretary of State Mike) Pompeo for potentially using official staff for personal errands. The now-ousted intelligence community inspector general, Michael Atkinson, had forwarded the whistleblower complaint that led to Trump’s impeachment. Trump was asked about firing Atkinson, and he cited the complaint. ""I thought he did a terrible job,"" Trump said. ""Absolutely terrible. He took a whistleblower report, which turned out to be a fake report … and he brought it to Congress with an emergency."" Trump has also removed acting Transportation Department inspector general Mitch Behm, and acting Defense Department inspector general Glenn Fine. Both were part of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, monitoring the Trump Administration’s dispersal of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package. Fine was chairman. An array of Democrats have blasted Trump’s actions. U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, joined the chorus, posting May 16, 2020 on Twitter: ""The firings of multiple Inspectors General is unprecedented; doing so without good cause chills the independence essential to their purpose. It is a threat to accountable democracy and a fissure in the constitutional balance of power."" Johnson took a prominent role defending inspectors general in 2015, when many Republicans in Congress were criticizing Obama for delays making permanent appointments. ""It’s just incredibly important to have permanent inspectors general that are completely independent that will provide Congress and the American public transparency and that watchdog assignment — that responsibility for departments and agencies — so that we have awareness of what’s happening,"" Johnson said at a hearing on inspectors general that he chaired. ""It’s the only way we’re going to be able to improve the efficiency, the effectiveness, the accountability of government is to have that type of transparency."" At that hearing, Johnson also criticized the act of ""retaliating against people that were issuing reports"" that their superiors didn’t like, the Washington Post reported. In a June 2015 statement before a Congressional committee hearing, Johnson said permanent inspectors general are needed because they are more secure in their position and less at risk of ""compromising their work to appease the agency or the president."" And a May 2015 report spoke even more directly to the present situation. The report, issued by the Homeland Security Committee, which Johnson chairs, said this in support of the proposed Inspector General Empowerment Act of 2015: ""The power of the President … to remove an IG threatens the IG's independence at a very basic level. The IG Act attempted to temper this power by adding procedural safeguards meant to protect IGs from being removed for political or other nefarious reasons."" On a May 17, 2020, appearance on Jake Tapper’s ""State of the Union’ show on CNN, Johnson addressed inspectors general for several minutes. He first described independence, with a key qualifier about the presidential role. ""I think their independence needs to remain within their agencies,"" Johnson said. ""I’m very mindful of the fact that inspectors general don’t work for Congress. They actually work for the administration. They are part of the executive branch. … They work and serve the president of the United States. … They serve at the president’s will."" As a quick aside, we’ll note it’s a significant stretch to say the inspectors general don’t work for Congress. The act creating the position expressly said one of their purposes is ""to provide a means for keeping the head of the (agency) and the Congress fully and currently informed about problems and deficiencies."" During the CNN appearance, Tapper told Johnson he finds it hard to believe the senator would ""have the same attitude you have now"" if Obama had removed multiple inspectors general in a short time. Johnson, addressing Linick specifically, downplayed the firing, after noting he had issues with Linick responding to one prior oversight request. ""I spoke with senior officials both with the White House and the State Department, I understand their reasoning,"" Johnson said. ""I’m not crying big crocodile tears over this termination: Let’s put it that way."" When inspectors general were up for debate in 2015, Johnson spoke out strongly and repeatedly about the need for independence, saying they shouldn’t compromise their work ""to appease the agency or the president."" He specifically condemned the idea of retaliating against inspectors general for reports superiors didn’t like. A report from his committee even said the president’s ability to remove an inspector general ""threatens the IG’s independence at a very basic level."" Of course, that was under a Democratic president. With a Republican now in the Oval Office and removing several inspectors general for reasons many view as political, Johnson is singing a different tune. He talks about inspectors general serving ""at the president’s will,"" and how they ""work and serve the president of the United States."" That’s a complete change in position, or as we call it, a ."
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7261
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UN says 1st local polio case found in Zambia since 1995.
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The World Health Organization says Zambia has reported its first local case of polio since 1995, in a 2-year-old boy paralyzed by a virus derived from the vaccine.
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true
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Africa, Health, Zambia, General News, United Nations
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In a report this week, WHO said the case was detected on the border with Congo, which has reported 37 cases of polio traced to the vaccine this year. The U.N. health agency said there is no established link between the Zambia case and the ongoing Congo outbreak but said increased surveillance and vaccination efforts are needed, warning that “there is a potential for international spread.” In rare cases, the live virus in oral polio vaccine can mutate into a form capable of sparking new outbreaks. Nine African countries are currently battling polio epidemics linked to the vaccine as WHO and partners struggle to keep their efforts to eradicate polio on track. Elsewhere, cases have been reported in China, Myanmar and the Philippines. On Thursday, WHO and partners are expected to announce they have rid the world of type 3 polio virus. There are three types of polio viruses. Type 2 was eliminated years ago. That now leaves only type 1. But that refers only to polio viruses in the wild. Type 2 viruses continue to cause problems since they are still contained in the oral polio vaccine and occasionally evolve into new strains responsible for some vaccine-derived outbreaks. The global effort to eradicate polio was launched in 1988 and originally aimed to wipe out the potentially fatal disease by 2000. While cases have dropped dramatically, the virus remains stubbornly entrenched in parts of Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan. This year there have been 72 cases of polio in Pakistan after only eight in 2018. In meeting notes from an expert polio oversight board in September, WHO’s Michel Zaffran said the status of eradication was “of great concern,” noting the Taliban’s ban on house-to-house vaccination in Afghanistan. Officials described the program in Pakistan as a “failing trajectory.”
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25757
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“[Steve] Bullock’s health care plan will force rural hospitals to close. Medicare as we know it will change, replaced by a government-run program with fewer doctors and longer wait times.”
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The National Republican Senatorial Committee campaign ad attacks Democratic challenger Steve Bullock on behalf of Montana Sen. Steve Daines. It takes issue with the Montana governor’s support for a public option ― generally defined as a federally administered health plan that would compete with private insurers on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. It assumes the implementation of a public option for health insurance would lead to lower reimbursement rates and cause rural hospitals to close. Experts say this conclusion is difficult to draw without knowing who would be covered by the public option and how it would pay providers. However, Bullock’s campaign said that no rural hospital in the state has closed during his tenure as governor and that he would support paying hospitals at rates higher than Medicare. The ad also assumes the public option would lead to “Medicare for All,” an outcome on which health care scholars disagree. Medicare for All is the single-payer health system advocated by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
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false
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Elections, Health Check, National Republican Senatorial Committee,
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"An attack ad, which was released in mid-July, states that Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democratic candidate for the Senate, supports a government-run health care program that would wreak havoc on the state’s health care infrastructure. ""Bullock’s health care plan will force rural hospitals to close. Medicare as we know it will change, replaced by a government-run program with fewer doctors and longer wait times,"" says the narrator in the dark and grainy advertisement paid for by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). Bullock is running against first-term incumbent Republican Sen. Steve Daines in a race viewed as a toss-up. Given the COVID-19 pandemic, both candidates have been focusing on health issues. Because this race is critical to determining whether Democrats or Republicans control the Senate, and considering that its themes are likely to be repeated in many congressional campaigns, we thought it was important to check the ad’s validity. We first asked the NRSC for the evidence on which the ad was based. A spokesperson pointed to Bullock’s support for a ""public option"" health plan and provided us with a report predicting this proposal’s negative impact on rural hospitals, as well as quotes from both Republicans and Democrats about how the public option could lead to the eventual implementation of a ""Medicare for All"" program. (Medicare for All refers to the single-payer health system, advocated by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, which would eliminate private insurance and replace it with a government-run health care system.) We also reached out to the Bullock campaign for its response. In a statement, Sean Manning, spokesperson for Montanans for Bullock said, ""The claims in this ad are . Montana hasn't lost one rural hospital under Governor Bullock, and he will continue to support policies that protect rural hospitals while making affordable healthcare available to all Montanans in the Senate."" (According to the University of North Carolina Sheps Center for Health Services Research, no rural hospitals have closed in Montana since 2005.) The ad vaguely refers to Bullock’s ""health care plan"" but doesn’t say outright what the candidate supports. According to Bullock’s campaign website, he supports the creation of a public option. A public option is generally defined as a health plan administered by the federal government that exists alongside and competes with private health insurance plans on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Public option proposals differ by political candidate, and can take various forms, including Medicare or Medicaid buy-ins as well as a new government-run entity. Opponents of such plans say that a public option, which would have the scale and regulatory power of the federal government to set lower reimbursement rates to providers, would have a competitive advantage and could put private insurance companies out of business. This would leave Americans with only one choice ― government-backed insurance. But that conclusion is debatable. Some health care scholars argue a public option would increase competition, leading to expanded access to health coverage, lower health care costs and lower premiums for consumers. In the end, the outcomes from implementing this approach are difficult to predict unless a specific plan is released, said Benedic Ippolito, a health care research scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. ""Things can be radically different based on what the public option looks like,"" said Ippolito. ""The two big variables are, who is covered? And how does that insurer actually pay health care providers? You can imagine two public options looking totally different."" Now to tackle the first part of the ad, which says that ""Bullock’s health care plan will force rural hospitals to close."" This argument stems from the idea that a public option would lead to lower reimbursement rates, based on the model provided by Medicare, which pays less than private insurance. And, because many rural hospitals are already severely financially strapped, lowered payments would do them in, the argument goes. When we asked the NRSC for the evidence to support this position, a spokesperson provided an August 2019 study conducted by Navigant, a consulting firm. The study was commissioned by the Partnership for America’s Healthcare Future, a health industry coalition including drugmakers, insurance companies and private hospitals. The organization opposes Medicare for All and a public option. The study modeled what would happen to rural hospitals if three separate public option approaches were implemented. While it found that a public option could, depending on the scenario, cause a revenue reduction for rural hospitals of between 2.3% and 14%, the study reached these findings by assuming that the hospitals would be paid at Medicare rates. Bullock’s campaign website, though, under his rural health care policy proposals, specifically states: ""We need a public option that includes higher reimbursements for rural hospitals."" We asked the Bullock campaign if it could provide us with details about what the ""higher reimbursement"" rate would be based on. It declined. A campaign staffer told us Bullock would support a public option that pays rural hospitals above Medicare rates. Since the reimbursement rates would be higher than Medicare’s, the assumptions in the Navigant study cannot be applied here. ""If the public option is a reasonably generous payer, that won’t be the end of rural health care,"" said Ippolito. ""But, you can easily imagine due to budgetary concerns, a public payer could have a lower reimbursement, which would have consequences."" Some health policy experts argue that a public option would help rural hospitals by increasing the number of people in rural areas who have health insurance. This would ""benefit rural hospitals, since getting virtually nothing from uninsured patients is worse than getting a reasonably good rate from the public option,"" said Gerard Anderson, a professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Next, we’re on to the NRSC ad’s second claim: ""Medicare as we know it will change, replaced by a government-run program with fewer doctors and longer wait times."" As several experts pointed out, this sentence doesn’t make a lot of sense. Medicare is already a government-run program. Also, the design of most public option proposals thus far keeps Medicare and the public option as two separate government programs, said Linda Blumberg, a health policy analyst at the Urban Institute, a think tank. The NRSC clarified its position and told us it was referring to the idea that a public option would stifle competition in the insurance market, eventually leading to only government-run insurance or Medicare for All. The evidence the NRSC provided to support this claim were quotes from a selection of Republicans, Democrats, professors, and experts from conservative think tanks saying that the public option is a stepping stone to this single-payer approach. But others suggest that’s a big leap in logic. ""I think that analysis is almost surely wrong,"" said Matthew Fiedler, a fellow with the Brookings Institution. ""In a world where there is a public option, the negotiating dynamics between insurers and providers would change substantially."" This would likely create an environment in which private insurers could negotiate lower rates and providers would have to respond to that change in revenue with more efficiencies, he added. However, depending on how a public option plan is structured -- specifically if providers can opt out of participating -- some in-demand providers may choose to stay in private-plan networks where they could negotiate higher payments. This would keep private plans competitive. ""I don’t think it’s reasonable to argue that a public option would drive all other plans out of the market,"" Fiedler said. Again, Ippolito said it all depends on how the public option program is designed, and he allowed that if providers and hospitals were paid at Medicare rates, the public option would have a huge competitive advantage over commercial insurers because it would be paying out less for services and then could charge lower premiums, and ""there’s no question in the short run, that it would be disruptive."" As we noted earlier, the prediction of any outcome is difficult without specifics. Without details of Bullock’s public option plan, it’s misleading to characterize the outcome of the public option as surely leading to Medicare for All. The race between Bullock and Daines is indicative of a trend occurring in campaigns across the country. Republicans often paint Democrats as left of the general public and health care has often been one of the issues the GOP highlights in that effort. In this case, the NRSC ad links Bullock to Medicare for All, despite his expressed support for a public option. Sean Manning, Bullock’s campaign spokesperson, said the governor does not support Medicare for All. Jeremy Johnson, an associate professor of political science at Carroll College in Helena, Montana, said that even before COVID-19 became a major campaign issue, Daines, echoing a Trump theme, had pushed the idea that he stood for freedom versus socialism. ""One of the things [Daines] gives as a symbol of socialism is Medicare for All,"" said Johnson. ""Because Bullock says he favors a public option, there is a conflation of that on the Republican side to mean Medicare for All."" But the public option and Medicare for All are not the same program and it’s misleading to lump them together. The NRSC claimed in a television ad that Steve Bullock’s support for the public option would cause rural hospitals to close. While the NRSC did provide us with one study that offered support for its rural hospital claim, the study was industry-funded and based on broad assumptions that don’t accurately reflect positions outlined on Bullock's website. Thus, this claim doesn’t stand up. The second part of the ad asserts that the public option would lead to the implementation of Medicare for All. While supporters and critics debate how a public option would affect the private health insurance market and some on both sides consider it a ""glide path"" to a single-payer health care system, it’s too big of a jump to say it would definitely trigger this outcome."
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9535
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Older Patients Can Benefit From Lung Cancer Surgery
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According to this story from NPR, new study findings apparently challenge the conventional wisdom that surgery to remove lung cancer is too hard to bear for older adults. The story overstates the findings, however, by saying patients “can benefit.” The study was observational only; it was a “competing risks analysis” to gather and assess data about the outcomes of surgery for early lung cancer. The researchers’ chief conclusion was “In patients who undergo curative-intent resection of stage I NSCLC [non-small cell lung cancer], noncancer-specific mortality is a significant competing event, with an increasing impact as patient age increases.” In plain language, many older lung cancer patients die of non-cancer problems. Somehow NPR translated that to “Older Patients Can Benefit From Lung Cancer Surgery.” An optimistic and potentially true statement, but certainly not in line with the researchers’ more conservative conclusion as written in the journal where the findings were published. Unfortunately the NPR story relies more on anecdote rather than evidence, and didn’t push back enough on what this study can and can’t tell us. The story may leave readers with the impression that this is solid evidence that surgery is a good option for older adults. The study gave researchers some insights into what happens to older adults after surgery, but it was not a randomized controlled trial that could show which interventions benefit patients most.
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false
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lung cancer
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There is no mention of the costs associated with the surgery. There is only one short paragraph dedicated to quantifying the benefits of surgery, and it’s inaccurate: “One year after surgery, more people had died from other causes than died from lung cancer. And, after five years, almost 9 out of 10 patients were alive and cancer free.” “9 out of 10” would mean 90% survived and 10% died within the five years. But as the study revealed, 19.9% of all patients had died within five years: “The 30-day, 90-day, 1-year, and 5-year mortality rates were 0.7%(n=15), 1.2%(n=27), 4.1%(n=90), and 19.9%(n= 436).” This means nearly twice as many people died than what the NPR study suggests. The article admits the conventional wisdom is that older patients don’t tolerate surgery for lung cancer, but from headline to the final sentence the NPR story is about older lung cancer patients thriving, based on a personal story and and experts’ opinions. There is no meaningful discussion of the harms of surgery. The story did not adequately explain how this study was performed and what it can and can’t reveal about surgery in older patients. For example, there was no control group to compare results. So it’s unclear how these patients would have fared if they hadn’t received surgery and instead been treated only with alternatives like radiation and chemotherapy. Unlike what the headline implies, we don’t actually know if patients “can benefit” from surgery. There is no disease-mongering. The story included an independent source and we didn’t note any potential conflicts of interest. For early stage lung cancer elderly patients who may be presented with a spectrum of choices from surgery to hospice, the article provides little evidence-based advice. The surgery is clearly already available. The article implicitly suggests the novelty of the study is that it overturns conventionally held beliefs about the benefits of surgery in older lunger cancer patients. But that’s not really the case. The researchers chief conclusion was “In patients who undergo curative-intent resection of stage I NSCLC, noncancer-specific mortality is a significant competing event, with an increasing impact as patient age increases.” In plain language, many older lung cancer patients die of non-cancer problems. This doesn’t prove that lung cancer surgery is beneficial and leads to a longer, better lifespan than other options. Nor does it prove the surgery was the best choice. The article does not appear to rely on a news release.
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505
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Ferries halted, alarms triggered as Sydney choked by bushfire smoke.
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Smoke from Australia’s fierce bushfires settled over Sydney in still conditions on Tuesday, setting off fire alarms, and halting ferry services as famous landmarks disappeared behind some of the worst haze seen in the harbor city.
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true
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Environment
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A 60 km (37.2 miles) firefront is devastating tinder-dry areas northwest of Sydney, Australia’s largest city, and sending hazardous smoke across the east and over the Pacific, even causing haze more than 2,000 km (1243 miles) away in New Zealand, satellite images show. “This smoky period we’ve been experiencing for the past month or so, it is unprecedented, so these conditions are a risk to people’s health,” said Richard Broome, the New South Wales government’s director of environmental health. Broome said while many people would experience sore eyes, nose and throat irritations, those with pre-existing health conditions and young children and the elderly were at particular risk. Sydney’s air quality index readings in some parts of the city on Tuesday were 11 times the threshold considered hazardous, government data showed. The wildfires have blanketed Sydney - home to more than 5 million people and better known for its clear skies and blue harbor - in smoke and ash for more than two weeks. That haze has turned the daytime sky orange, obscured visibility and prompted many commuters to wear breathing masks. Bushfires are common in Australia’s hot, dry summers, but the ferocity and early arrival of the fires last month in the southern hemisphere spring is unprecedented. Experts have said climate change has left bushland tinder-dry. While there is no official evacuation order, many locals in areas that are under threat have decided to leave their homes, Hawkesbury Mayor Barry Calvert told Reuters. “It is eerie, many people have decided to leave, and I’m going to do the same,” said Calvert, who lives north-west of Sydney. “I’ve been through this before about 20 years ago when I stood outside my house looking at flames 50 feet high, I decided then that I would leave early if it happened again.” All up, there are more than 100 fires ablaze in the eastern states of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, many of which have been burning since November. The fires have killed at least four people, destroyed more than 680 homes and burned more than 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) of bushland. Many outdoor events were canceled in smoke-filled areas on Tuesday, including a lead-up to the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race, that was scheduled to take place on the harbor. Sydney’s ferries, which started the day using foghorns as they cautiously moved through the thick smoke, were halted at lunch time as visibility fell even further. The dense smoke even seeped into buildings on Tuesday, triggering alarms in offices and homes, and at train stations and university campuses, authorities said.
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8929
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With Wuhan virus genetic code in hand, scientists begin work on a vaccine.
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When a newly organized vaccine research group at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) met for the first time this week, its members had expected to be able to ease into their work. But their mandate is to conduct human trials for emerging health threats - and their first assignment came at shocking speed.
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true
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Health News
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In just three months time, they likely will be testing the first of a number of potential experimental vaccines against the new SARS-like coronavirus that is spreading in China and beyond. “I told them, ‘you are going to have your baptism of fire, folks’,” Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases within NIH, said of his inaugural address to the group this week. Three months from gene sequence to initial human testing would be the fastest the agency has ever gotten such a vaccine off the ground, Fauci said. The outbreak, which began in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December, as of Friday had infected more than 800 people in China and killed 26. Cases have also been confirmed in Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Nepal and the United States. Chinese scientists were able to quickly identify the genetic sequence of the new coronavirus and officials posted it publicly within a few days, allowing scientific research teams to get to work right away. With the genetic code in hand, scientists can start vaccine development work without needing a sample of the virus. During the deadly 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak, it took U.S. scientists 20 months to go from genetic sequence to the first phase of human trials. By that time, the outbreak was under control. This time, research groups worldwide are already executing plans to test vaccines, treatments and other countermeasures to stop the newly identified virus from spreading globally. MULTI-PRONGED APPROACH They are attacking from several angles, with global health and epidemic response agencies hoping at least one treatment will be in human trials within a few months. Fauci’s agency is partnering with U.S. biotech Moderna Inc, which specializes in vaccines based on ribonucleic acid (RNA) - a chemical messenger that contains instructions for making proteins. That team hopes to make an RNA vaccine based on one of the crown-like spikes on the surface of the coronavirus that gives the family of viruses their name, an approach that, unlike many vaccines, would not expose people to the virus. At the University of Queensland in Australia, scientists backed by the global health emergency group the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) said they are working on what they describe as a “molecular clamp” vaccine approach. The technology adds a gene to viral proteins to stabilize them and trick the body into thinking it is seeing a live virus and create antibodies against it. Keith Chappell, an expert in the University’s school of chemistry and molecular biosciences, said the technology is designed as “a platform approach to generate vaccines against a range of human and animal viruses.” It has already shown promising results in lab tests on other dangerous viruses such as Ebola and the coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS)- a cousin of SARS and the Wuhan virus. Novavax, which already has a vaccine in development against MERS, says it is now working on one for the Wuhan coronavirus. Scientists also are turning to infection-fighting proteins known as monoclonal antibodies, or mAbs, that were developed against the SARS and MERS coronaviruses. The hope is that similarities with the Wuhan virus will offer enough overlap in the antibodies to help people infected in the China outbreak. Vir Biotechnology Chief Scientific Officer Herbert Virgin said his company has a library of monoclonal antibodies that have shown some success against SARS and MERS in lab tests. Some of these antibodies have been shown to neutralize coronaviruses, Virgin said, and “may have the potential to treat and prevent (the) Wuhan coronavirus.”
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10080
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Mix, match, and switch: Kidney exchanges between strangers
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The article describes paired organ donation, which might increase the number of people who are able to receive organ transplants, particularly those who have hard-to-match blood or tissue types. The article does a nice job of describing the availability and history of this practice and just what it is. However, the article is overly dramatic, anecdotal, and paints transplantation in a very rosy light. Perhaps the biggest limitation of this story is the minimizing of harms from transplantation, which could include risks of surgery and risks of life-long immunosuppresive treatment and/or organ failure. The risks to the donor are particularly minimized, considering a donor is generally a healthy volunteer undergoing a serious medical procedure that is not required to save his or her life. These implications are not even hinted at. Adding to the unbalanced nature of the story is the fact that all sources of information were experts connected to transplants, mostly transplant surgeons involved in swapping. The story does not obtain any perspective from someone who may think organ swapping may violate current laws, which is the reason stated for needing clarifying legislature. The article does not mention any costs, including who pays for travel, hospital, physician, or immunosuppresant medication expenses. Also, the kidney swap program entails huge logistical hurdles/challenges, as not every medical center can afford/provide 4 transplant teams working simultaneously; the swap entails 4 hospital rooms, 4 surgical teams, etc.
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mixture
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The article does not mention any costs, including who pays for travel, hospital, physician, or immunosuppresant medication expenses. Also, the kidney swap program entails huge logistical hurdles/challenges, as not every medical center can afford/provide 4 transplant teams working simultaneously; the swap entails 4 hospital rooms, 4 surgical teams, etc. An important benefit for people to know who may be thinking about this would be their chance of kidney survival with a live-organ donation. Those numbers are provided (84% at 5 years for live-donor kidneys). Another benefit of interest would be how many more people might be able to receive a transplant through organ swapping. Those estimates are provided, although they are based on theoretical modeling. Interestingly, large numbers of people are required to increase the number of matches made, and even then, the increases are quite small. The story doesn’t mention harms of transplant at all. Harms could include those from surgery itself, like problems with anesthesia, infection, and bleeding, and harms also include life-long effects of immunosuppresive therapy, which increase risk for infection, involve taking drugs every day for the rest of your life, and have other side effects. The story paints a very rosy picture of transplantation and is not balanced. One patient who is donating her kidney claims it’s “just a 3 inch incision,” which minimizes what’s involved, especially for the donor. Often, donors have more pain post-operatively and a longer recovery period than the recipients. Plus, this quote minimizes other potential harms to the donor, such as what happens if her one remaining kidney fails? The article reports a little about the evidence for organ swaps, mentioning a JAMA article that claims swaps can increase the number of live-donor transplants (vs. cadaver) by six-fold, but the type of research this claim is based on is unknown. There is no description of the strength of the study mentioned. Readers might also want to know how a live-donor transplant improves survival compared to traditional cadaver transplants. However, the story does not describe the type of evidence to support the data reported (e.g. how strong are these findings?). The story describes how many people are on waiting lists for kidney transplants. Although several sources are quoted, all of them have some connection to organ swapping and all of them praise it. It’s not clear if the reporter sought any independent opinion from physicians not directly tied to organ-swapping transplant efforts. The story does not obtain any perspective from someone who may think organ swapping may violate current laws, which is the reason stated for needing clarifying legislature. The story describes the primary treatment option for people with kidney failure, that is dialysis. However, the article doesn’t describe it any more than naming it. There is no assessment of effectiveness of dialysis and, indeed, it is painted in a very negative manner – “…slowly dying on dialysis.” While dialysis is by no means a cure, it does allow people to live who would otherwise die due to kidney failure. The article discusses several consortia or organizations of hospitals that participate in paired matching of organs. Based on the limited number of participating hospitals in selected regions, it seems clear this is not widely available at present. Plus, the article mentions that legislation is needed before a federally funded organ donation organization (UNOS) could get involved, potentially making this much more widely available. The story explains when the first paired organ donation took place, letting readers know this is not “new,” per se, although a national policy allowing widespread paired organ donation would be new. Because several different sources are used in the story, it appears that it did not rely solely or largely on a news release.
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4448
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University at Buffalo gets $1.1 million for genetics study.
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The University at Buffalo is getting $1.1 million in federal funding to study mosquito and fruit fly genetics.
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true
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Dengue fever, Genetics, Charles Schumer, Science, Kirsten Gillibrand, Buffalo
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Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand announced the funding Thursday. They say the university’s research on the nervous systems and genetics of mosquitoes and fruit flies will advance the science behind the spread of illnesses like Zika virus and dengue fever. The university will also use the funding to create a high school program focused on genetics. The money comes from the National Science Foundation.
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7911
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Coronavirus pandemic leads big drugmakers to hit pause on clinical trials.
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U.S. drugmakers Eli Lilly and Co and Bristol Myers Squibb said they are delaying the start of new clinical trials in part to free up doctors and healthcare facilities to deal with the surge in patients infected with the new coronavirus.
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true
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Health News
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Lilly and Bristol are the biggest drugmakers yet to announce clinical trial delays in the face of the pandemic that has killed over 16,000 people worldwide, after several small biotech companies said last week that they would be pulling back on drug studies. The moves are not related to clinical trials testing drugs or vaccines that could be used to treat or prevent COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week urged switching to virtual patient visits instead of in-person monitoring when conducting clinical studies as it anticipated the outbreak would disrupt them. Pfizer Inc, Merck & Co, AbbVie Inc, and Johnson & Johnson were not immediately available for comment on their trials policies. Delaying clinical trials could hurt future revenue for pharmaceutical companies as it lengthens the time it takes for drugs to receive approval and reach the market. It could also hurt patients by limiting their access to experimental treatments being studied. Lilly said the move would delay the timeline for ongoing late-stage studies of its experimental gastrointestinal disease treatment mirikizumab. The Indianapolis-based drugmaker said there will not be any delay in other ongoing late-stage trials. It added that it would analyze ongoing trials on a study-by-study basis, as discontinuing them would disrupt the treatment course for patients. But it plans to continue most trials where patients are already enrolled. Lilly said it does not anticipate any change to its full-year financial forecast as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. Bristol posted a message to clinical trial investigators on its website on Friday, saying it will put off beginning new clinical trials for at least three weeks because of the impact of the rapidly spreading coronavirus pandemic. The New York-based drugmaker said it will not initiate any new sites for clinical trials until April 13, noting that the timeframe of the halt could extend further. It also said studies involving healthy volunteers should be put on hold if they are at a natural break point until at least April 13. Bristol did not say how many trials or which drugs in development might be affected. Conducting clinical trials is a good source of revenue for non-profit and academic hospitals, but are not as significant for for-profit hospital companies, Jefferies analyst Brian Tanquilut said. Large publicly listed hospital operators in the United States include HCA Healthcare, Tenet Healthcare Corp and Community Health Systems. Lost revenue from clinical studies can directly impact staffing and operations as sites are usually paid per visit, according to Nariman Nasser, an executive at Continuum Clinical, an industry consultant that works with trial sites. Large hospitals and academic centers also stand to lose fees that cover costs for things like building space, maintenance and operating costs, Nasser said in an email. Last week, U.S.-based Iveric Bio Inc delayed enrollment in a trial of its eye disease drug, two days after Provention Bio paused a study of a diabetes drug but allowed trial patients to complete their treatment course.
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26132
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The Buffalo protester pushed to the ground “had been previously arrested 300 times. 82 times for incitement. Riots is what he does for a living.”
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In his personal blog, Gugino writes that he has been arrested four times. After research, we did not find evidence of other arrests. Friends describe him as a peaceful protester, not someone who riots “for a living.”
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false
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Criminal Justice, Crime, Race and Ethnicity, Public Safety, Facebook posts,
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"Friends and acquaintances described the 75-year-old man whom police shoved to the ground in Buffalo, N.Y., as a peaceable activist. But baseless posts on social media accuse Martin Gugino of having a very different background. One Facebook post claimed, without evidence, that Gugino is a lifelong criminal. ""This is the ‘kindly old man’ who was ‘pushed’ in Buffalo,"" the June 9 post said, alongside a photo that shows Gugino with a U.S. Park Police officer. ""Mr. Gugino had been previously arrested 300 times. 82 times for incitement. Riots is what he does for a living."" The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) It has since been removed. The photo in the post is real, said photographer Justin Norman, who confirmed to PolitiFact that he snapped it on Jan. 12, 2012, during a peaceful demonstration outside the White House. But the caption is another story. Kelly V. Zarcone, Gugino’s attorney, said the post is ""just making things up."" ""The statements in that Facebook post are preposterous,"" added Vicki Ross, executive director of the Western New York Peace Center and a friend of Gugino’s. Gugino has worked on causes around Buffalo and is involved in Catholic peace activism and nuclear disarmament, according to the Buffalo News. He remains hospitalized from the June 4 push that was captured on video and left him bleeding from his ear. We found no evidence he has been arrested anywhere close to 300 times. The record we could verify matches the one Gugino provides on his personal blog: four arrests and zero convictions. On his personal blog, Gugino says he’s been arrested four times: in 2009 in California’s Orange County, in 2012 and 2013 near the White House, and in 2016 outside the U.S. Capitol. We confirmed that each of those arrests took place through publicly available information. Gugino was found not guilty of a misdemeanor charge for trespassing in 2009, for example, according to online case records from the superior court in Orange County, Calif. The photo in the Facebook post shows Gugino’s 2012 arrest. The caption on Flickr, an image hosting service, says Gugino was ""arrested for peacefully protesting against the Guantanamo detention center in front of the White House."" The demonstration was organized by Witness Against Torture, a group that protests the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and Gugino was arrested as part of a larger group for trespassing, said Norman, the photographer. At the time, the group said that more than 30 activists wearing Guantanamo-style orange jumpsuits and holding signs were arrested after occupying a sidewalk in front of the White House for more than three hours. Gugino was arrested a third time in 2013 for demonstrating without a permit on a White House sidewalk, said Sgt. Eduardo Delgado, the public information officer for the U.S. Park Police. He was one of 19 protesters arrested for failure to obey lawful order under the district’s regulations. Delgado said the U.S. Park Police transitioned to a new database in 2013, so he could not find a record of Gugino’s 2012 arrest, which Norman’s photo shows was handled by the Park Police. Gugino’s fourth arrest came in 2016, during an afternoon protest on the rotunda steps of the U.S. Capitol, said Eva Malecki, public information officer for the U.S. Capitol Police. Gugino was one of 35 protesters arrested for unlawful demonstration, a misdemeanor. He was processed and released that same day. We found no public information to suggest Gugino has other arrests on his record. There could be records that were expunged or that we didn’t find, but 296 more would be a stretch. We searched Google, Nexis and the Internet Archive for news records of events involving Gugino. We checked PACER, which keeps case and docket information for federal courts. We also queried online databases, contacted courts or called police departments for each of the places where Gugino has lived, according to Whitepages. That includes cities and counties in Ohio, Wisconsin, California and New York — including Buffalo, where he lives now. ""This is a Catholic worker,"" said Ross, the Western New York Peace Center’s director, who said she has known Gugino for 10 years and likely been with him hundreds of times at meetings, events and protests. ""These people could not be more self-sacrificing and nonviolent."" ""I personally have never seen him make unnecessary trouble,"" added Sage Green, the former program manager of PUSH Buffalo, an economic and environmental justice group. Social media users who encountered posts claiming Gugino had been arrested 300 times might have been suspicious, and rightfully so. The Facebook post was uploaded without any supporting evidence, and it was removed shortly after we reached out to the poster for a response. In a reply to other comments questioning the post’s veracity, the poster said they tried to find proof that the claims were accurate but hadn’t ""been able to back it up."" ""If it’s so fake, I’m just wondering why Facebook hasn’t fact-checked me yet,"" the user wrote. A Twitter user who spread the same claim also cited no supporting evidence, instead claiming he got his information from a confidential FBI information system for law enforcement agencies. The Twitter user offered no additional evidence when we contacted him but suggested we run Gugino’s name through the same system — a move we’re not legally authorized to do. He did not answer when we asked why hundreds of alleged arrests were not showing up elsewhere. The FBI declined to comment on the accuracy of the claims about Gugino. A Facebook post said, ""Gugino had been previously arrested 300 times. 82 times for incitement. Riots is what he does for a living."" We found no evidence that Gugino has been arrested more than the four times he mentions on his personal blog, let alone 300 times. Friends describe him as a peaceful protester. PolitiFact researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report."
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1817
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Chocolate too bitter? Swap sugar for mushrooms.
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An upstart U.S. food technology company has developed a unique fermentation process using mushrooms to reduce bitterness in cocoa beans that it believes will cut sugar content in chocolate candy.
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true
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Health News
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A year after first launching its fermentation method to reduce bitterness in coffee beans, one of the world’s biggest commodity markets, MycoTechnology, Inc is expanding into cocoa and will launch its process on Tuesday. The market is smaller, but the potential may be bigger with health-conscious consumers seeking lower-calorie foods amid mounting concerns about obesity and diabetes. “We use mushrooms that we train specifically to remove unwanted aspects of food and infuse it with the natural health benefits of the mushroom,” said Alan Hahn, chief executive of MycoTechnology, Inc, formed in 2013 in Denver, Colorado. “Particularly with chocolate, the bitterness is a big issue. We remove that bitterness and the need for sugar is reduced drastically.” About half of the average milk chocolate bar is made of sugar, according to industry experts. Hahn said his MycoSmooth technology, invented by the company’s chief science officer Brooks J. Kelly, can cut the amount of sugar needed in the average chocolate bar by half, from 31 grams to about 15 grams. The company is in talks with “major chocolate players” in the United States, but Hahn declined to name them. From its Denver headquarters, the company will start processing its own beans as well as those on behalf of its customers and will license out the technology. The process will compete with other more widely used methods, including the “Dutching” process that was developed in the 1800s and modifies the bean’s taste with an alkalizing agent. MycoTechnology’s chemical-free process reduces the bitterness, rather than masking it, at minimal cost. It adds “pennies per lb” to the cost of cocoa, Hahn said. MycoTechnology’s chocolate plans may, however, not be as simple as they first appear. Cutting the sugar content may pose new hurdles for confectionery makers if they cut sugar use and replace it with higher cocoa or milk content. Both are more expensive than sugar. “If you wind up taking sugar out and raising the (cocoa) liquor content, you will raise the fat content of the bar, which will be higher calories,” said Ed Seguine, president of Seguine Cacao Cocoa & Chocolate Advisors in Hanover, Pennsylvania, with over 30 years’ experience in chocolate product research. “It doesn’t make economic sense because you’ve got to put something in its place,” Seguine said. After coffee and cocoa, MycoTechnology is looking at widening the use of its procedure to bulk agricultural markets like rice and other grains. In the process, MycoTechnology takes fermented beans, sterilizes them and then inoculates them with their unique strains of mushroom root systems that have been trained specifically to remove bitterness. The beans are then placed in a sealed bag and for the following seven to 21 days, the roots do their work. Mushrooms naturally feed on moisture, oxygen and sugars.
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20713
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"Students today ""take more years to get through"" college."
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The Federal Trade Commission issued civil subpoenas to Johnson and Johnson in June as part of an investigation into whether contracting practices for its blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug, Remicade, violated antitrust laws, the company said in a regulatory filing on Monday.
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false
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National, Education, Newt Gingrich,
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Shares of the company traded marginally down at $132.47, after having closed up 1.7% on Monday. (bit.ly/2ZkZGze) J&J said that the FTC had issued a “civil investigative demand,” or CID, the equivalent of a subpoena to determine if the contracting practices were legal. Pfizer Inc filed a lawsuit against J&J in 2017, saying its rival’s contracts with health insurers for blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug, Remicade, were anticompetitive and aimed at blocking sales of Pfizer’s biosimilar called Inflectra. Pfizer said in the lawsuit that J&J had contracted with many insurers to give discounts in exchange for giving preference to Remicade, and to only pay for Inflectra in cases where Remicade proved to be ineffective. Inflectra was approved in 2016 while Remicade went on the market in 1998. Remicade is an infused treatment for chronic autoimmune disorders and costs about $4,000 per dose, or $26,000 a year, Pfizer said in the lawsuit. J&J has denied any wrongdoing and is fighting the Pfizer lawsuit. Pfizer said in a statement that it had received a CID in June. “As Pfizer’s complaint alleges, J&J’s unlawful conduct is designed to prevent Inflectra from being able to compete on its primary point of differentiation – price. Today, Inflectra has an average selling price (ASP) that is more than 22% lower than Remicade,” the company said in a statement. “Despite these facts, J&J has not lost substantial volume or share of sales – counter to what should occur in a competitive market.” Biosimilars are intended to be lower-cost alternatives to expensive biotech medicines. But since they are made from living cells and it is not possible to make an exact copy of the branded medicine, they are not automatically substituted for the existing branded drug the way a generic drug would be. The drugs treat ailments like rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
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8769
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California stop-smoking campaign saved $86 billion: report.
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California’s large-scale tobacco control campaign has saved $86 billion in health care costs in its first 15 years, U.S. researchers said on Monday.
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true
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Health News
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A no-smoking sign is seen outside a restaurant in Beverly Hills, California October 1, 2007. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni The $86 billion reduction in health costs, based on 2004 dollars, represents about a 50-fold return on the $1.8 billion California spent on the program, they said. “The benefits of the program accrued very quickly and are very large,” Stanton Glantz, director of the University of California San Francisco Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, said in a statement. Unlike many programs which center on teens, the California program focuses its tobacco-control efforts on adults through an aggressive media campaign and changes in public policy, such as promoting smoke-free environments. “When adults stop smoking, you see immediate benefits in heart disease, with impacts on cancer and lung diseases starting to appear a year or two later,” said Glantz, whose findings appear in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine. According to the study, the program prevented the sale of 3.6 billion packs of cigarettes — worth $9.2 billion to the tobacco industry — between 1989 and 2004. The report may help persuade states to step up funding for such large-scale efforts to counteract the tobacco industry’s $13 billion annual spending on smoking-related advertising and promotions. A report by the National Cancer Institute last week found such advertising increases tobacco use. But it also found that large-scale tobacco control campaigns work, and called for more funding of such efforts. Tobacco accounts for one in 10 adult deaths worldwide and is the leading preventable cause of death in the world, according to the World Health Organization. In the United States, smoking kills more than 400,000 people prematurely each year. To study the effects of California’s program, Glantz and colleagues used statistical models that looked at the relationships between per capita spending on cigarettes and health costs between 1980 and 2004. They compared these with information gathered from 38 states that had no comprehensive tobacco control efforts and that had only increased cigarette taxes by 50 cents per pack within the study period. The researchers saw a steady rise in cost savings from the start of the program in 1996 until the study ended in 2004, despite major cuts in the program’s funding. If the state had maintained original funding levels at about $80 million per year, total health cost savings would have exceeded $150 billion over the 15-year period, they said. Glantz said the study shows tobacco control programs not only reduce smoking and prevent disease, but also quickly and significantly reduce health care costs. The study can be found here/journal.pmed.0050178
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21957
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"Sandy Pasch Says U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan promised to ""end health care for our seniors."
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Democratic Wisconsin state Rep. Sandy Pasch says GOP U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan would end health care for seniors
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false
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Health Care, Medicare, Wisconsin, Sandy Pasch,
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"When some Democrats look at the federal budget plan proposed by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., it’s as if they’ve caught sight of a tiki bar at the end of a hot summer day. They aren’t envisioning fruity drinks with tiny umbrellas, but rather electoral victories. The Democrats see Ryan’s plan, particularly its changes to Medicare, as distasteful to voters and therefore an advantage for their party. As evidence, they point to Democrat Kathy Hochul’s upset win in a western New York congressional race that was dominated by Ryan’s Medicare plan. That special election was held May 24, 2011, less than two months after Ryan released his plan, which would convert Medicare into a ""premium-support payment"" program starting in 2022. On June 6, 2011, Wisconsin state Rep. Sandy Pasch, D-Whitefish Bay, was asked in an online chat how Ryan would affect elections on another level. Pasch is running in a recall election against state Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, who aims to retain a seat she has held since 1992. It is one of an unprecedented nine state senator recall elections that will be held in Wisconsin in July 2011. In the chat, which was sponsored by Blue America, a political action committee that says it works to elect progressives, a questioner asked: ""I just read that (Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman) Mike Tate says that Paul Ryan will be a central focus in the recall elections. I hadn't heard that before. Will it work? Is it that connected in people's minds? Or is it too abstract for the average voter to make the connection?"" Pasch, a second-term lawmaker who formerly worked as a nurse and nursing professor for 30 years, gave this response: ""I think that Paul Ryan is the face of the radical plan to dismantle Medicare and Medicaid. People across Wisconsin depend on and like Medicare. If you stand with Paul Ryan, you stand with the promise to end health care for our seniors. It's not just a policy issue, it's a values issue."" So, according to Pasch, Ryan promised to end health care for senior citizens. No health care? That would be one stiff drink to swallow. Before we assess Pasch’s defense of her claim, a little background. Ryan’s budget -- passed by the GOP-controlled House, 235-193, but defeated in the Democrat-controlled Senate, 57-40 -- would make dramatic changes to Medicare if it ever became law. As it exists now, Medicare is government health insurance for people age 65 and over and for people under 65 with certain disabilities. It helps pay for doctor visits, inpatient and outpatient hospital care, other services and prescription drugs. Under Ryan’s plan, people who turn 65 before 2022 would remain in traditional Medicare, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Those who turn 65 in 2022 or after, the budget office said, would get a ""premium support payment"" from Medicare. Rather than getting health insurance from the government, Medicare recipients would use the payment toward the cost of buying private health insurance. That’s a major change. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that future Medicare recipients ""would pay more for their health care than they would pay under the current Medicare system."" But when MoveOn.org declared that Ryan’s budget ""abolishes Medicare within 10 years,"" the left-leaning political advocacy group earned a False from us, given that Medicare would change but not go away. Other critics, including U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, haven’t gone as far, arguing instead that Ryan’s plan would end Medicare ""as we know it."" But when Wasserman Schultz also claimed that under Ryan’s Medicare, insurance companies could ""deny you coverage and drop you for pre-existing conditions,"" she got a False from our colleagues at PolitiFact National. Yet Pasch goes even further, claiming Ryan has promised to ""end health care for our seniors."" Not just Medicare, but ""health care."" Now to Pasch’s defense. Pasch’s campaign manager, Phil Walzak, argued in an email to us that, under Ryan’s proposal, Medicare recipients would ""lose a guaranteed set of health benefits"" because they would instead receive money to be used toward buying private health insurance. He also predicted that Medicare recipients would get fewer benefits even though they would be paying more for their health care. He cited analyses by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the National Academy of Social Insurance. For her part, Pasch herself was more measured in an interview with PolitiFact Wisconsin than she was in the online chat, saying Ryan’s plan ""is clearly a move toward not promising health care to seniors."" She went on to say that as senior citizens are forced to pay more for health insurance, they will ""start neglecting their health care."" It’s time for the tab from our political tiki bar. Pasch originally claimed that Ryan promised to end health care for seniors and now she says his Medicare plan is a ""move toward not promising health care to seniors."" That’s quite a step back from the original claim. Moreover, we’ve established that, although it’s expected that senior citizens would pay more for health care under Ryan’s plan, they would still have health care. At PolitiFact, we have a name for the drink that’s made by mixing false and ridiculous."
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10366
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Study of 83,000 veterans finds cardiovascular benefits to testosterone replacement
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An observational study of some 83,000 men whose low levels of testosterone were either treated or untreated finds that returning those levels to “normal” was associated with a lower risk of death, stroke, or heart attack. The research joins a growing number of studies of the effects of testosterone therapy that, together, constitute a mixed landscape of results. It’s unclear if this release will help readers navigate that landscape with more confidence. There’s nothing sensational or overblown about the description of the study or its findings, and there is substantial detail on the methodology and at least a hint toward limitations. There is some solid, commendable writing here. What we were looking for was a more clear-cut statement regarding what this study can and cannot tell us — specifically that it’s unclear if testosterone treatment or some other factor is responsible for the cardiovascular benefits that were observed by the researchers. We thought that would help clear up what can be a confusing topic for consumers. “Low-T” has been raised to the level of a health problem in American society, making it important to figure out if the merits of testosterone therapy actually do trump the debits. This large observational study may serve as one important cog in that evaluative process, but patterns that would lead to treatment recommendations remain elusive.
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mixture
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cardiovascular disease,Government agency news release,Observational studies
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Cost is not mentioned in this document. Generic testosterone is relatively inexpensive, which suggests that if these results reflect a real benefit, the treatment might actually be cost saving. Although the press release does provide likelihood estimates of illness or death as a result of testosterone treatment, indicating that individuals whose treatment returned their testosterone to normal levels were less likely to suffer a heart attack, a stroke or to die during follow up, it provides no baseline numbers that would permit us to evaluate those ratios. We learn that the differences are statistically significant, but we have no means of determining if they are important. The absolute reductions are not quantified. The release mentions an FDA advisory about possible increased risk of heart attack and stroke with testosterone therapy. We’ll call this acknowledgment of possible risks good enough for a Satisfactory rating, although many other possible risks exist including exacerbating sleep apnea, skin reactions, and promoting noncancerous growths of the prostate. One of the researchers is quoted as urging individuals to get appropriate screening from a health professional before considering testosterone therapy, but the reader does not learn why this is important. Bottom line: we know the overall mortality was lower in the group that was treated to a normal testosterone level, so serious adverse events , within the time frame of the study, do not appear to outweigh benefits. However, prostate cancer, for instance, is slow growing and might not have manifested within the time frame studied. The reader will find a lot of methodological detail in this news release, enough to make it clear that this was not a clinical study but, rather, an observational one in which men with low levels of testosterone who had received VA care were divided into groups that reflected either no treatment for the condition or treatment that led to normal levels for some individuals and continued lower levels for others. The narrative indicates that the three groups were “propensity matched” across a range of biological markers, a strategy that is not as good as random assignment to conditions in a true experimental design but that does make comparisons possible. Still, this study can only speak to “association” between testosterone levels and health impacts, and while the wording used in the news release does mostly avoid the “causality” hole, the headline and other statements in the release suggest that the study “found a benefit” from testosterone that can be “maximized” through appropriate dosing and other strategies. As a result, readers may well infer that the testosterone “caused” the benefits and that supplementing testosterone levels is a good idea. In the end, while it could have been more clearly stated that cohort studies such as this are not the last word, we think the overall discussion of evidence was sufficient for a Satisfactory rating. This was a fairly strong research design and would be rated pretty highly for an observational study — though not as good as a randomized controlled trial. We are of two minds on this criterion. The news release leads the reader to infer that low testosterone levels are a health problem, but the existing research in this area offers only mixed support for that. If testosterone levels indeed are causally related to heart attacks and strokes, then this study has identified a substantive health issue. But it is not clear that existing research makes that conclusion possible. To the release’s credit, it does specifically warn that doctors should not write a prescription simply because an older man is complaining of symptoms such as low energy and low sex drive. In this sense, it does push back to some extent against drug company promotional efforts surrounding “low T,” which we’ve previously flagged for disease-mongering. Although the study itself offers full disclosure regarding funding and conflicts of interest (the investigators assert no such conflicts), none of this finds its way into the news release. Information about other ways to reduce mortality from heart attacks or stroke — whether lifestyle changes or other types of drugs — is not mentioned. It is clear that testosterone therapy is available to patients. The narrative does go to the trouble of noting that “off-label” use of testosterone is a no-no. The reader will find a reasonable contextual discussion of research on the impacts of low testosterone, which suggests that the proposed health link is not new and that outcomes of testosterone therapy remain mixed in the research literature. The news release makes a pitch for the novelty of this particular study “because of its large size and relatively long follow-up period.” While we felt that the news release worked hard to push the argument that testosterone therapy that returns the level of the hormone to “normal” offers a health benefit, the careful reader will find cautionary information that tempers that claim.
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37499
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Animated GIF accurately shows a massive spike in jobless claims and unemployment during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
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‘Mammoth Unemployment Claims in Their Historical Context’ GIF
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mixture
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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In early April 2020, the animated image below spread on Facebook and Twitter, bearing the label “U.S. Weekly Initial Jobless Claims (thousands, seasonally adjusted)”; no source for the shocking graph was immediately available.Blurry text at the bottom appeared to hint at a source, but it was difficult to read without context:View post on imgur.com(Although the image spread via the source linked above, we copied it to Imgur for ease of embedding. )The image began with a rising and falling line graph, showing first some spaced out peaks and valleys. The line continued condensing, the peaks becoming more concentrated, until what first looked almost like an EKG with even spikes and drops became nearly a flat line dwarfed by the graph’s final straight-line uptick.As the graph’s x axis approached 2020 it began with a valley — rapidly transitioning to a sharp vertical ascent parallel to the y axis. At the the end of the GIF, the parallel line continued skyrocketing up, straight through several of the y axis’s metric of thousands.Bear in mind that the graph’s vertical x axis represented one of two values — first, singular years (1967, then 1968), extending to the year 2020. Its y axis was numbered starting at 100 and ascending to more than 6,000, increasing by orders of magnitude at the very end. Huge spikes in the late 1960s were visualized just under 300 (thousands), rising to between 500 and 600 (thousands) in the 1970s. In the early-to-mid 1980s, the graph featured new highs of just under 700,000.That near-700,000 peak was not reached again until the very late 2000s (around 2008 or 2009), where the graph showed numbers nearly as high as the previous record high two and a half decades earlier. And from that part onward, the graph steadily decreased in a sustained downtrend, dropping below 300,000 around 2015, and again to just above 200,000 as the graph approached the year 2020.Then, the final moments of the animation put the x axis (beginning in the late 1960s) into staggering, alarming context. While its metric appeared to have previously had giant spikes matched with huge dips, representing times of record low unemployment and times of trending jobless claims, through seven decades, that line in perspective was nearly flat when it was dwarfed by the 2020 spike.For additional context, those numbers did not seem to be adjusted for increases in the population [PDF]. In 1970 (near the very start of the graph’s x axis), there were around 203,200,000 Americans according to the United States Census. In 2010, there were 308,700,000 Americans — a number that rose to about 330,559,000 in 2020:(Numbers in purple were projections by the Census as of 2014, and did not match current estimated population numbers for the United States.) Between the graph’s beginning years (around 1970) and its 2020 end, the United States population rose about 62.7 percent. Had the graph’s increases remained under 1,000 and 2,000 thousands or between one and two million, the increase in total Americans would be a bit more relevant to that spike. However, the peaks and valleys stayed relative to one another from the late 1960s through 2020 — until the big straight line.IterationsWe first spotted the graph being shared by individuals on Facebook, mainly via this link. We subsequently located the same animation in an April 2 2020 tweet from Ben Riley-Smith:The mammoth US unemployment claims in their historical context. pic.twitter.com/UNDwhBMpZt— Ben Riley-Smith (@benrileysmith) April 2, 2020Riley-Smith described it as “mammoth U.S. unemployment claims in their historical context,” adding a source and specific numbers in two follow-up tweets:His name is on there but for those asking all the credit for this wizzardry goes to creator @lenkiefer.And the stats: that final figure is 6.6 million. Previous high before coronavirus was not quite 700,000. @lenkiefer is Len Kiefer, Deputy Chief Economist for lender Freddie Mac.Graph source and attendant dataOn April 2 2020, Kiefer tweeted two versions of the graph animations (with much lower engagement than Riley-Smith’s tweet):as % of labor force 2/2 pic.twitter.com/2q2NZB81yX— 📈 𝙻𝚎𝚗 𝙺𝚒𝚎𝚏𝚎𝚛 📊 (@lenkiefer) April 2, 2020One of the graphs is the one in the embeds, and the other was “U.S. weekly initial jobless claims as a percent of the labor force.” Once again, the record highs were dwarfed by the new numbers; although the chart highs maxed out between 0.4 and 0.6 percent of the labor force, the illustrated peak was measured at four percent of the labor force in total.On April 3 2020, Kiefer stated that some suspected that the seasonal adjustment might be distorting the data, presumably referencing the eye-catching line-spike at the end. But he shared the “unadjusted claims data,” which bore a similar peak at just under 6,000,000 (versus the one near 6,500,000):some suspect the seasonal adjustment might be distorting the data.here's the unadjusted claims data pic.twitter.com/bZYcuI6srR— 📈 𝙻𝚎𝚗 𝙺𝚒𝚎𝚏𝚎𝚛 📊 (@lenkiefer) April 3, 2020On April 3 2020, Kiefer shared an attendant blog post published to LenKiefer.com, which explained his source and the context of the figures in the graphs:[On April 3 2020,] the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly employment situation summary for March 2020. While many were expecting the U.S. labor market to show some weakness as the U.S. economy shuts down to battle COVID-19, the magnitude of the contraction surprised many. Because the reference week for the employment report was March 8th through March 14th, before the nationwide shutdown took full effect, many were expecting a relatively mild report.Instead, we got a shock. Nonfarm payrolls, which had increased for 113 consecutive months, contracted by 701,000. And the unemployment rate increased from 3.5% in February to 4.4% in March.With weekly initial jobless claims increasing rapidly, with over 10 million claims (on a seasonally adjusted basis) filed after the March [2020] reference week the April [2020] report will likely show significant job losses above what we saw in March [2020].It’s likely going to be a few tough months ahead.Below, I share some charts on the labor market, and the R code I used to generate them.Kiefer explained that the data was sourced from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ March 2020 recap report, released in early April 2020. Although one of Kiefer’s graphs was widely shared and viewed, it lacked his commentary from his written analysis. Namely, a projection that April 2020 “will likely show significant job losses above what we saw in March [2020. ]”Kiefer embedded graphs and animations, concluding:Many smart analysts knew that [the] last two weeks of claims [in March 2020] covered weeks after the reference week, so [April 3 2020]’s employment situation was likely to understate the magnitude of job losses. Consensus forecasts were for employment to contract 100,000 in March [2020]. That would still be very bad, and break string of 113 consecutive months of job gains. Instead employment fell by 701,000. That is the sharpest decline since March of 2009, when we lost 800,000 jobs.After the Great Recession I used to think we would use fractional multipliers to describe future events. Something like 0.1x, 0.2x, where X was the indicator in the Great Recession. Right now it looks like we might need to use whole number multipliers, 1x, 2x, etc. Hopefully we’ll be able to apply those same multipliers once we start to recover.Stay safe out there.Kiefer also linked to the official Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report, which formed the basis of the graphs and was indeed released on April 3 2020. That report stated in part:Total nonfarm payroll employment fell by 701,000 in March [2020], and the unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported [on April 3 2020]. The changes in these measures reflect the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and efforts to contain it. Employment in leisure and hospitality fell by 459,000, mainly in food services and drinking places. Notable declines also occurred in health care and social assistance, professional and business services, retail trade, and construction. […]In March [2020], the unemployment rate increased by 0.9 percentage point to 4.4 percent. This is the largest over-the-month increase in the rate since January 1975, when the increase was also 0.9 percentage point. The number of unemployed persons rose by 1.4 million to 7.1 million in March [2020]. The sharp increases in these measures reflect the effects of the coronavirus and efforts to contain it.Kiefer and the BLS report referenced compounding month-over-month increases, and the BLS report repeatedly described “the effects of the coronavirus (COVID-19) and efforts to contain it” as a major factor.Confounding factorsDean Baker, Senior Economist at the Center for for Economic and Policy Research, was tagged by one Twitter user who saw the animations and asked for comment. Baker explained that the rates were at least in part due to unique aspects of an ongoing COVID-19 pandemic:we're preventing people from from working.This is not a surprise.We need to keep people whole for next two months, given that we are trying to keep people from working, we shouldn't be too upset that people are not working. (The rescue bill is pretty good in making up lost wages. https://t.co/T3hlU5iKWU— Dean Baker (@DeanBaker13) April 3, 2020As Baker indicated, the spike was in part due to the number of workforce participants under orders not to work due to the pandemic. He added that in his opinion, the government ought to “keep people whole for the next two months” due to ongoing stay-at-home orders in many states. In other words, the numbers were unprecedented — because the situation was unprecedented in modern times. The pandemic’s far-reaching effects shifted statistics and figures in multiple directions simultaneously.Baker also said “we shouldn’t be too upset” about the figures, and mentioned a “rescue bill” to offset loss of wages for affected Americans. Another commenter reiterated Baker’s response in plainer terms:it's not like those jobs went away though everything is going to be ok— XVGWhaleReal (@XVGWhaleReal) April 2, 2020The New York Times blog The Upshot published a report on the same figures on April 3 2020, updating it on April 6 2020. That piece began with some background about why unemployment numbers were both incredibly volatile and on the surface shocking:The jobless rate [on or around April 3 2020] is almost certainly higher than at any point since the Great Depression. We think it’s around 13 percent and rising at a speed unmatched in American history.The labor market is changing so fast that our official statistics — intended to measure changes over months and years rather than days or weeks — can’t really keep up. But a few simple calculations can help piece together a reasonable approximation.Be warned, these numbers yield an imprecise estimate of today’s unemployment rate, and the truth could easily be quite a lot higher or lower. This is not an estimate of the official unemployment rate for March [2020], which reports the state of the economy a few weeks [prior] when the labor market was in better shape, nor is it a forecast for the official rate in April [2020].The Upshot further explained the definitions behind the figures:There are important differences between who receives unemployment benefits and whom the official statistics measure as unemployed. (The former is based on eligibility for unemployment insurance, while the latter is based on who responds to government surveys that they are actively looking for work.) But it is likely that nearly all of these people will show up in the official statistics. After all, you qualify for unemployment benefits only if you’re actively looking for work.The analysis also described several confounding factors, issues large enough to have a strong impact, such as:The outlying high numbers were tied to a broader aberrant situation — the COVID-19 pandemic, its progression, and factors such as temporary job loss for workers who might be able return to their jobs. On top of that, the pandemic’s duration was unknown and volatile. If COVID-19 cases continued rising, so too would atypical employment figures; conversely, a slow-down in new infections would eventually be followed by the labor force slowly resuming its duties.The far-reaching effects of variables could not reasonably be measured well, as the blog explained:The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in a typical month, nearly six million workers are hired, a rate of 1.5 million per week. Again, it’s hard to know how much that has fallen, but if the hiring rate fell by a fifth over the past three weeks, that would mean that roughly one million fewer people found work than might otherwise be expected to.At this point, our calculations show 16 million more people without work, for an unemployment rate of 13 percent … Given the many uncertainties involved, perhaps it’s better to say that unemployment has risen by 10 million to 20 million, which means that the unemployment rate is probably between 10 percent and 15 percent. That might sound like an unsatisfyingly unclear conclusion, but it’s a product of how poorly our official statistics track labor market changes from day to day, and how rapidly the economy is shutting down.ConclusionAn animated graph titled “U.S. Weekly Initial Jobless Claims (thousands, seasonally adjusted)” went massively viral on social media platforms, decoupled from its source data due to limitations on labeling. Those numbers were real and originated with an April 3 2020 BLS report, but they were not entirely reflective of reality in terms of genuine unemployment. Blanket stay-at-home orders and expansion of unemployment benefits to those temporarily furloughed or out-of-work were counted in, and an unknown number of people had yet to be counted. It was further impossible to measure how many jobs would resume versus companies or businesses never to reopen, whether the scenario was stimulating or depressing the “gig economy,” and what the long term labor-related effects of the COVID-19 pandemic might be. Although the graph had underlying real numbers, they were hobbled by myriad variables in an unprecedented global pandemic.
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26582
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"Turning Point USA Says Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak ""has banned the use of an anti-malaria drug that might help cure coronavirus.”"
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A Nevada emergency regulation restricts the prescription of chloroquine for COVID-19 patients in outpatient settings, but not in hospitals and emergency rooms. Gov. Steve Sisolak signed the order on the recommendation of state health officials, who said there is the potential for stockpiling the drug. Federal regulators say the effectiveness of chloroquine in treating COVID-19 is anecdotal, and more research and clinical trials are needed.
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false
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Public Health, PunditFact, Coronavirus, Turning Point USA,
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"A malaria drug that could potentially be used to treat COVID-19 has become the latest political touchpoint of the coronavirus pandemic. A meme published on Facebook by Turning Point USA, a conservative group that targets high school and college students, claims Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak bucked doctors’ recommendations and outlawed the use of chloroquine to treat the coronavirus. ""WHAT?! Nevada’s Leftist Governor Has Banned The Use Of An Anti-Malaria Drug That Might Help Cure Coronavirus!"" reads the caption on the meme, which was posted March 25, 2020. ""Big Government Is Deadly!"" This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) It has been shared more than 10,000 times. (Screenshot from Facebook) We’ve seen a lot of confusion about chloroquine, which is also prescribed to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, and its application to COVID-19. So we wanted to check out Turning Point USA’s post. While Sisolak has limited the prescription of chloroquine for coronavirus patients, the move isn’t a ban — and his order didn’t contradict doctors’ advice about the drug, as this post suggests. Health officials and federal regulators have urged caution when using the drug to treat COVID-19 until more research is done. The order is also intended to prevent hoarding, so patients who need the drug still have access to it. Sisolak has restricted prescribing chloroquine for COVID-19. But the order has an exemption for doctors issuing the drug to patients in hospitals and emergency rooms. On March 24, Sisolak, a Democrat, signed an emergency regulation that safeguards the supply of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, which is sold under the brand name Plaquenil and as a generic. The order prohibits doctors in outpatient settings from prescribing and dispensing the drugs for COVID-19 treatment. It also limits prescriptions to 30-day supplies. ""While the two drugs serve necessary medical purposes, there is no conclusive evidence at this time among COVID-19 experts or Nevada’s own medical health advisory team that the drugs provide treatment for COVID-19 patients,"" Sisolak said during a press conference. ""The emergency regulation is aimed at preventing the hoarding of the drugs so those that actually need them can have access to them."" Sisolak’s order came after President Donald Trump touted the potential of chloroquine in treating COVID-19 patients during a March 19 press conference, saying it could be a ""game changer"" and a ""tremendous breakthrough."" But that coverage missed a key fact: there is an exemption. A spokesman for Sisolak told KSNV-TV in Las Vegas that the regulation allows for a ""chart order for an inpatient in an institutional setting,"" meaning that doctors in hospitals and emergency rooms can still prescribe chloroquine to treat patients diagnosed with COVID-19. The Associated Press, for one, corrected its initial story on the order to reflect that exemption. So while Sisolak’s order does restrict the prescription of chloroquine in Nevada, it does not constitute an outright ban, as Turning Point USA’s meme claims. Nevada health officials advocated for restricting chloroquine prescriptions given the potential for hoarding. That’s different from Turning Point USA’s post, which makes it look like Sisolak disregarded physicians’ recommendations by issuing the emergency regulation. In a March 20 letter, the state’s Board of Pharmacy noted that ""safety and efficacy have not been established"" for the use of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19. Its guidance allowed for the use of chloroquine to treat coronavirus patients, but only as treatment — not prevention. ""In the effort to prevent the stockpiling of these medications, the Nevada State Board of Pharmacy is restricting the dispensing of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine,"" wrote J. David Wuest, executive secretary of the board. That hoarding has led to drug shortages in some parts of the country, affecting patients who take chloroquine regularly to treat conditions like lupus and arthritis. Still, Sisolak’s order was quickly criticized by organizations like Turning Point USA and politicians like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who tweeted March 25 that the governor was ""trying to score political points against Trump."" Turning Point USA’s meme makes it seem like chloroquine is a potential cure for the coronavirus. But the science is not settled. Trump’s March 19 remarks on chloroquine were based on a recent French study that found the malaria drug could be effective in treating patients with COVID-19. The authors, which include researchers from universities in France and Vietnam, concluded that the use of chloroquine sped up healing, and the effect was reinforced by adding azithromycin, an antibiotic. But the study was based on only 20 people in France with COVID-19, and public health experts quickly put the findings into perspective. On March 19, the Food and Drug Administration published a statement in which it said that while ""there are no FDA-approved therapeutics or drugs to treat, cure or prevent COVID-19,"" the agency is investigating whether chloroquine ""can be used to treat patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 to potentially reduce the duration of symptoms."" During a press conference on March 20, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also tempered expectations for the malaria drug, saying the French study was based on anecdotal evidence. No, chloroquine effectiveness only anecdotal ""The information that you're referring to specifically is anecdotal; it was not done in a controlled clinical trial,"" Fauci told a reporter. ""So you really can't make any definitive statement about it."" Based on that limited data, chloroquine is recommended for treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in several countries, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The drug is ""currently under investigation in clinical trials."" We reached out to Turning Point USA for a comment, but we haven’t heard back. Turning Point USA said in a Facebook post that Sisolak banned the use of chloroquine for COVID-19 against doctors’ recommendations. Nevada’s emergency regulation restricts the prescription of chloroquine for COVID-19 patients in outpatient settings, but not in hospitals and emergency rooms. Sisolak signed the order on the recommendation of state health officials, who said the safety and efficacy of chloroquine in treating the coronavirus is unproven, and there is a potential for stockpiling the drug. While the Facebook post touts the potential of chloroquine in curing COVID-19, federal health officials and regulators have said that, as of now, the effectiveness of the drug is anecdotal. More research and clinical trials are needed before drawing a conclusion. Turning Point USA’s post contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."
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3451
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French group sues over toxic lead from Notre Dame fire.
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A French group has filed a lawsuit over potential public health threats from lead that was released into the environment during Notre Dame Cathedral’s devastating fire.
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true
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Health, Lawsuits, Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, Travel, Europe, General News, International News
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Hundreds of tons of toxic lead in Notre Dame’s spire and roof melted during the April fire. Exceptionally high levels of lead later were detected in the surrounding air. French environmental protection group Robin des Bois said it brought the lawsuit on grounds of deliberately endangering human life. The group alleged Paris officials should have immediately taken measures to protect the public. The lawsuit doesn’t name specific individuals as defendants. Paris City Hall would not comment. Children are especially vulnerable to health problems from lead poisoning and exposure, which can cause nerve and brain damage in severe cases. Paris officials last week ordered a deep cleaning for neighborhood schools, and health authorities recommended blood tests for children and pregnant women who live near Notre Dame. Three French charities and the country’s culture minister signed an agreement Monday ensuring transparency in how donations to rebuild the damaged cathedral are used. An estimated 850 million euros ($946 million) have poured in from both within France and other parts of the rest of the world. The agreement specifies that donations will be used exclusively for preservation and restoration work at Notre Dame and training experts with needed skills, the Culture Ministry said.
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10085
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Close Look at Orthotics Raises a Welter of Doubts
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The question posed in the article is basically the following: “Are shoe inserts (foot orthotics) effective in the prevention and treatment of injuries among athletes?”’ Why is this impossibly broad? This question encompasses dozens of musculoskeletal, neurologic, and degenerative conditions involving scores of scientific studies. It would have been better for the article to define its scope more narrowly—e.g., foot injuries, lower limb injuries, or low back pain— and look at the evidence more carefully. Gazing through the prism of a single scientist’s work, the article presents an interesting narrative about the difficulties of performing biomechanical and clinical research in this area. And it endorses a skeptical attitude in interpreting the claims of proponents in this multi-billion dollar industry. However, the answer to the main question is fundamentally unsatisfying—and “soft” from an evidence perspective: “Shoe inserts may be helpful as a short-term solution, preventing injuries in some athletes,” according to the New York Times. This is a soft statement because almost any prevention method or treatment will help somebody over the short-term some of the time. And this permissive conclusion will certainly not deter athletes from seeking out orthotics for dozens of conditions on the premise that they might work. However, this broad-brush conclusion doesn’t adequately characterize the evidence regarding shoe inserts. That evidence cleaves a little more neatly than this article implies. By conventional medical standards (well-designed clinical trials) there is no conclusive evidence that shoe inserts are effective in the prevention and treatment of the majority of athletic injuries. There are a few conditions for which there is preliminary evidence that shoe inserts may offer modest preventive or therapeutic benefits. But importantly, and never mentioned in this article, there are also conditions in which the effectiveness of shoe inserts has been tested and disproven. There is credible evidence, for example, that shoe inserts do not prevent low back pain. If scientists are going to go to the trouble of performing demanding research, it is important that journalists report those results. (See Sahar et al., 2009). Reference: Sahar T et al., Insoles for prevention and treatment of low back pain: a systematic review within the framework of the Cochrane Collaboration Back Review Group, Spine, 2009; 34(9): 924-933. The role of shoe inserts in the prevention and treatment of athletic injuries remains one of the most controversial topics in sports medicine, orthopedics and podiatry. Musculoskeletal pain is a universal complaint in the general population and prompts tens of millions of physician visits every year. The idea of relieving and preventing pain and dysfunction with a simple insole or insert is beguiling. The aging of the general population—and the rising tide of weight gain and obesity—are colliding to create a growth industry for orthotics. Shoe inserts—including inexpensive off-the-shelf products and costly custom-made orthotics— are widely prescribed and used in the prevention and treatment of foot problems, knee and hip pain, shin splints, low back pain and many other musculoskeletal conditions. Yet after several decades of research the benefit of shoe inserts for most injuries and conditions remains uncertain. And it is not clear if the billions of dollars spent on shoe inserts translates into the wholesale alleviation of pain and dysfunction—or just the wholesale transfer of dollars.
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false
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New York Times
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It would have been useful to discuss the relative costs of off-the-shelf and custom shoe inserts. The former are generally less than $50 while the latter can run into many hundreds of dollars. The article mentions the expensive price-tag of custom-made orthotics. It didn’t, however, discuss the overall costs of off-the-shelf shoe inserts, which have to be replaced with regularity. The article offered a brief characterization of the magnitude of benefits related to orthotics among soldiers in one study. But in general the article did not adequately frame the potential benefits of shoe inserts. For instance, in the review that reported a benefit for orthotics in the prevention and treatment of plantar fasciitis and tibial stress fractures, how impressive was that benefit? This article focused largely on the potential upside of shoe inserts—and didn’t explicitly address potential harms from the use of orthotics. It mentioned that inserts could increase muscle work requirements but didn’t discuss the significance of this point in terms of pain and function. Some of the potential harms— such as exacerbating injury risk and/or pain and dysfunction—are obvious. There are more subtle harms as well, such as creating the expectation among athletes that they cannot safely exercise, perform normal daily activities, and work without the aid of an orthotic. It would be difficult if not impossible for a journalist to evaluate the evidence on such a broad topic. And the article didn’t adequately characterize the evidence regarding shoe inserts in the prevention or treatment of most common athletic injuries. It cited a single published review on orthotics and injury prevention for lower leg injuries, but didn’t discuss other reviews of the evidence. There was no suggestion of disease mongering. In fact, the article rebutted the need for orthotics in the correction of mechanical/alignment problems and in the management of asymptomatic abnormalities such as flat feet. The article did present the views of several independent sources. However, the article did not address or identify potential financial conflicts among the contributors beyond identifying their organizations or institutions. Both biomechanical research and footwear research rely heavily on industry funding, which may skew the views of researchers. So this is an important issue. And we can’t give a satisfactory score for half a loaf. The article did not discuss alternatives to orthotics for athletes. Yet there are many other preventive and therapeutic strategies such as flexibility and strength training, proprioceptive work, and attention to technique which may offer superior benefits to simple insoles and inserts. The article focused mainly on orthotics compared to no intervention. This might be appropriate for prevention, but a symptomatic patient would also be considering other physical treatments and interventions. Both off-the-shelf and custom shoe inserts are widely available. This doesn’t merit discussion. The shoe inserts described in this study are widely available and are not particularly novel in concept or design. The article did not “hype” particular orthotics because of innovative characteristics or qualities. The article did not appear to rely on a press release.
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36357
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Infant mortality rates are accurately represented in a meme about state abortion bans.
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Infant Mortality Rates vs. Abortion Bans Meme
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true
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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On May 30 2019 the Facebook page “Occupy Democrats” shared the following meme (archived here), purportedly contrasting rates of infant mortality in states which had recently passed or had pending restrictions on abortion:In a column on the left side of the meme, nine states were numbered under a column, “states passing abortion bans.” Those states were: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah.The same states were listed in a different order on the right side of the meme, with assigned numbers for purported infant mortality rate rankings in the United States:No citations were included in the status update itself, but lettering at the bottom-left middle of the meme read “Source: CDC.” As mentioned, each state mentioned had recently passed or proposed laws restricting access to abortion procedures.A page on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, “Infant Mortality Rates by State,” provided the most recent available statistics for infant mortality by state (2017). On that list, the states listed above were as follows:As noted in boldface above, the list was mostly accurate, with the exception of the final two states — Missouri and Utah. Each state was ranked one number lower than provided in the meme, at 19 and 27 (versus 18 and 26 respectively.) Otherwise, the numbers provided in the meme were accurate.
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7398
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Genetic sleuthing bolsters food poisoning searches.
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Disease hunters are using genetic sequencing in their investigation of the ongoing food poisoning outbreak linked to romaine lettuce, a technique that is revolutionizing the detection of germs in food.
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true
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Food poisoning, AP Top News, Health, Genetic Frontiers, North America, Science, Poisoning, Atlanta, U.S. News
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The genetic analysis is being used to bolster investigations and — in some cases — connect the dots between what were once seemingly unrelated illnesses. It also is uncovering previously unfathomed sources of food poisoning, including one outbreak from apples dipped in caramel. So far, most of the work has largely focused on one germ, listeria. But it is expanding. By the end of this year, labs in all 50 states are expected to also be using genetic sequencing for much more common causes of food poisoning outbreaks, including salmonella and the E. coli bacteria linked to recent lettuce outbreak. That means the number of identifiable outbreaks are likely to explode even if the number of illnesses don’t. “There are a lot of outbreaks where they don’t connect the dots. Now they’re going to be connected,” said Michael Doyle, a retired University of Georgia professor who is an expert on foodborne illness. Not only that: The new DNA testing is enabling disease detectives to spot food contamination before anyone is aware of a resulting human illness — the equivalent of starting a murder investigation by finding a gun first and then looking for someone with a gunshot wound. “It’s turning around how outbreaks are figured out,” said Bill Marler, a prominent Seattle lawyer who has made a business of suing companies whose products sicken people. Marler added that the program is in its early stages and it’s too early to call it a success. But he said the new approach has the potential to transform how and when outbreaks come to light. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is driving the program. It estimates that 48 million Americans get sick — and 3,000 die — from food poisoning each year. The new technique relies on whole genome sequencing, which has been used in biology for more than two decades. The laboratory process determines nearly all of an organism’s DNA, the genetic material needed to build and maintain an organism. And scientists use software to compare the DNA of specimens to see if they are the same strain and how resistant they are to current medicines. The technique allows the analysis to become faster, cheaper and more automated, said Dr. Robert Tauxe, one of the CDC’s leading experts on food poisoning. Plans are to use the technology against several germs that cause food poisoning, but so far all the work has concentrated on listeria. The bacteria cause around 1,600 illnesses each year, a tiny fraction of U.S. foodborne disease diagnoses. But it is a particularly lethal infection, killing nearly one in five people who get it. Historically, listeria-caused outbreaks were known as “the graveyard of epidemiology.” It could take weeks for people to develop symptoms, meaning food evidence was discarded — and some of the patients were dead — by the time officials began to sort things out. From 1983 to 1997, only five listeria outbreaks were identified in the United States. They were obvious and large — with a median of 54 cases per outbreak. That’s how it was with other food poisoning outbreaks, too. “Most foodborne outbreaks were detected because it happened in one place,” like in a town where a popular restaurant’s customers grew ill, Tauxe said. Outbreaks were investigated by asking people what they ate before they got sick, and then comparing notes to see what patients had in common. The field took a big step in the 1990s, after a frightening outbreak erupted in the Seattle area. Four deaths and more than 700 illnesses in four states eventually were traced to undercooked Jack in the Box restaurant hamburgers contaminated with E. coli. The outbreak prodded the CDC to develop a program that relied on a technique called pulsed-field gel electrophoresis in which investigators could look at a germ’s DNA in clumps. It helped health officials more easily link illnesses, but it was imperfect: It couldn’t make exact matches and sometimes missed when cases were related. Then came whole genome sequencing. The CDC began using the technique in food poisoning investigations in 2013. Initially state labs sent samples to a CDC lab in Atlanta for testing. Now, the CDC is working to get labs in all 50 states up and running. Last year, the federal agency awarded about $32 million to state and city health departments to work on foodborne, waterborne and fungal disease outbreaks. That included $12 million to help them set up whole genome sequencing technology. Since whole genome sequencing began, the CDC says it’s catching more listeria outbreaks with a food source identified. By that measure, the number rose from about two per year to an average of more than six per year from 2014 to 2016. One of the first success stories came a couple of weeks after Halloween in 2014, when listeria cases began popping up in Arizona, New Mexico and the Midwest. Through whole genome sequencing, investigators discovered about three dozen people had been sickened. In interviews, patients and their families didn’t mention foods commonly associated with listeria. But most did say they had eaten packaged caramel apples. Scientists hadn’t considered them a threat, because apples and caramel aren’t hospitable to listeria individually. But it turns out that putting a stick in a caramel-covered apple gives germs a door into tiny spaces between caramel and the apple’s skin. Besides fingering foods previously seen as unthreatening, whole genome sequencing has the potential to turn investigations around: In several outbreaks recently, germs found in food plant inspections prompted product recalls before anyone knew about an outbreak. Then whole genome sequencing helped find and confirm illnesses. In 2015, state officials in South Carolina and Texas found listeria in tests of Blue Bell-brand ice cream products. Investigators used pulsed-field gel electrophoresis to find 11 illnesses with a similar genetic pattern, but whole genome sequencing definitively linked 10 and caused one to be tossed out as unrelated. Some of the illnesses had happened as far back as 2010. “They’re picking up cases that are five years old. This is revolutionary,” Doyle said. Whole genome sequencing is becoming increasingly important, but it’s not yet the basis of outbreak solving. It was used in the current investigation of E. coli bacteria found in romaine lettuce grown in Arizona, which has sickened at least 84 people in 19 states, according to a CDC update released Wednesday. But “that’s not how we first detected the outbreak,” said Matthew Wise, a CDC food poisoning investigator. It was more crucial in an investigation last year of a 21-state salmonella outbreak that ultimately was linked to ground beef. Whole genome sequencing allowed health officials to wade through a wave of cases to parse out the illnesses that were most closely matched and then look for a common origin, Wise said. “Using our previous technology,” Wise said, “we would have had a really difficult time solving that one.” ___ AP video journalist Robert Ray in Atlanta contributed to this report. ___ This Associated Press series was produced in partnership with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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2796
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Germany faces chickenpox jab shortage after GSK problems.
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German doctors have been told to ration two chickenpox vaccines for children after drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline stopped deliveries, saying production quality standards had not been met.
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true
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Health News
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Healthcare regulators have issued guidelines to physicians to deal with shortages of Priorix-Tetra, a combined vaccine for measles, mumps, rubella and varicella (chickenpox) known as MMRV; and Varilrix, a chickenpox jab. Vaccines that have already been delivered are safe, said Germany’s federal agency for infectious diseases and its vaccination agency, adding they expect GSK to resume deliveries during the second quarter, without being more specific. Their advice to doctors include using MMR vaccines instead of MMRV for initial shots, and delaying booster jabs. A spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in Germany said it decided to stop all chickenpox vaccine deliveries after it found internal production quality standards had not been met, without elaborating. The spokeswoman could not say whether other countries were also affected. The drugmaker said it would not resume deliveries until the cause of the problem was identified. Separately, GSK said it also expects a shortage of Boostrix-Polio, a combined vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and polio, of more two weeks in February because an unexpected increase in demand amid limited production capacity.
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26816
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"Coronavirus patients are being ""cremated alive"" in China."
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A popular video shows a woman who was purportedly hospitalized for the coronavirus saying she saw Chinese officials put a man who was still breathing in several plastic bags and take him away. The Chinese government has ordered the swift cremation of patients who die after contracting the coronavirus. But there is no evidence they are being cremated alive.
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false
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Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
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"As American officials brace for new potential coronavirus outbreaks, a conspiracy theory about the cremation of victims in China is gaining traction online. The source is a website connected to Steve Bannon and an exiled Chinese billionaire. A Facebook video published Feb. 25 by a page called China Declassified asserts that coronavirus patients in Wuhan are being ""cremated alive."" The Chinese city was where the virus, officially known as COVID-19, first broke out in December. The 15-minute clip starts by showing two people wearing face masks in a car. Speaking in Chinese, a woman who is purportedly a Wuhan resident claims she witnessed Chinese officials put a coronavirus patient in plastic bags while still alive. The video then cuts to unrelated footage of the coronavirus outbreak and a newscast from NTD News. (Screenshot from Facebook) The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) It has been shared thousands of times on several different social media platforms. According to the World Health Organization, the 2019 coronavirus has infected more than 81,000 people in 37 countries. The vast majority of the 2,761 deaths have occurred in China. The Chinese government has ordered the swift cremation of patients who die after contracting the coronavirus. But there is no evidence they are being cremated alive. About two months after the first 2019 coronavirus cases emerged in Wuhan, China’s National Health Commission issued an order requiring hospitals to notify funeral parlors and family members as soon as a patient dies. ""The funeral parlour is responsible for receiving and transporting the remains in time, setting up a special funeral service channel and a special cremation furnace, doing cremation work in accordance with the operating procedures, and issuing a cremation certificate,"" reads the order, which we translated using Google Translate. ""Remains must not be stored or visited, and it is strictly forbidden to open the sealed remains bag during the whole process."" The order states that cremation can take place without their permission, and it prohibits funeral ceremonies. The claim that officials are burning coronavirus patients alive stems from a YouTube video uploaded Feb. 24. According to subtitles, the woman was purportedly hospitalized for the coronavirus and claims she saw officials put a male patient who was still breathing in several plastic bags and take him away. The video was uploaded by Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire and political activist. Wengui fled China in 2014 in anticipation of corruption charges from the Communist Party. Since then, Wengui, who is a member of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, has become known for his criticism of Chinese leaders. A watermark for G News, the media arm of Wengui’s company Guo Media, appears on the YouTube video. The site, which also employs Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist and former executive chairman of Breitbart News, has previously published misinformation about the coronavirus. Other conspiratorial websites, such as pro-Trump outlet the Epoch Times, have amplified the video on social media. We could find no other evidence that Chinese officials are cremating coronavirus victims alive. And to be clear, at no point does the video offer any firsthand evidence. We reached out to G News for the source of Wengui’s video, but we haven’t heard back. The Facebook post is inaccurate."
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26797
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“Three Chinese nationals were apprehended trying to cross our Southern border illegally. Each had flu-like symptoms. Border Patrol quickly quarantined them and assessed any threat of coronavirus.”
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Kirk’s tweet gets some things right, but includes inaccurate details, like the number of people with symptoms and whether individuals were quarantined. The tweet is also missing a key detail: All three people were medically cleared.
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true
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Texas, Coronavirus, Charlie Kirk,
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"Health officials across the country are bracing for the likely spread of the new coronavirus in the United States, which federal officials have said is inevitable. The new virus was first reported in China, which remains the epicenter of the outbreak. The virus has spread to at least 57 other countries. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has procedures in place when it comes to apprehending individuals attempting to cross the border illegally who may be infected with a communicable disease — regardless of their country of origin. In a Feb. 26 tweet starting with ""BREAKING,"" Charlie Kirk, a conservative pundit who founded Turning Point USA, said three people from China were apprehended after attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border and were quarantined after displaying flu-like symptoms. Kirk asked people to retweet his post, which included a call for heightened border security in the face of the new virus. ""Three Chinese nationals were apprehended trying to cross our Southern border illegally,"" he wrote. ""Each had flu-like symptoms. Border patrol quickly quarantined them and assessed any threat of Coronavirus. Our weak border is a health risk. Close the border—Build. The. Wall. RT!"" Kirk’s tweet gets some things right, but is missing a key detail: All three of the people apprehended by border patrol were medically cleared and returned to the custody of immigration officials. Kirk’s spokesman Andrew Kolvet pointed to a Fox News segment about the apprehensions, which featured an interview with Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council. In the clip, Judd says that three Chinese citizens were apprehended in Del Rio and had flu-like symptoms. ""Our agents acted like champs, they quarantined them immediately and transferred them to a local hospital,"" Judd said. ""Luckily, they did not have the coronavirus."" Details from Border Patrol A Customs and Border Patrol spokesman said agents apprehend approximately five Chinese nationals a day within the agency’s Rio Grande Valley Sector on the Texas-Mexico border, a number that represents ""an extremely small percentage of our overall daily apprehension totals."" ""Although we haven’t encountered any issues to date, we do have measures in place to identify individuals with signs of illness who may be potentially infected with a communicable disease,"" he said in a statement from the agency. ""Individuals identified with symptoms of illness are referred to (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) or local health officials for additional health screening."" The agency put this protocol into action on Feb. 10, when agents apprehended three Chinese nationals near Eagle Pass, after they crossed the Rio Grande along the Texas-Mexico border, according to a description of the event provided by the spokesman. The individuals were taken to the Eagle Pass Station, where officials determined that two of the three people had a fever, according to a Border Patrol official. At that point, all three individuals were taken immediately to a local hospital for assessment, before being taken inside the station. All three people were medically cleared for travel and turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Since the individuals were taken directly to the hospital after a health assessment, they were not placed in quarantine at the Border Patrol station or taken to a designated quarantine station. Our ruling Kirk said: ""Three Chinese nationals were apprehended trying to cross our Southern border illegally. Each had flu-like symptoms. Border Patrol quickly quarantined them and assessed any threat of Coronavirus."" On Feb. 10, three people from China were apprehended at the border and two had a fever. All three were taken to a local hospital for assessment and were medically cleared for travel. None of the individuals were quarantined at the station. Kirk’s tweet gets some things right, but includes inaccurate details, like the number of people with symptoms and whether individuals were quarantined. He also leaves out the conclusion of this saga: None of the people had coronavirus."
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26520
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Viral image Says a California surfer was “alone, in the ocean,” when he was arrested for violating the state’s stay-at-home order.
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Beaches in Los Angeles County are closed to slow the spread of coronavirus. A paddle boarder in Malibu was arrested because authorities say he violated the state’s stay-at-home order. The man was also arrested on suspicion of disobeying a lifeguard.
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true
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Facebook Fact-checks, California, Coronavirus, Viral image,
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"California health officials have warned that beaches pose a health threat during the pandemic because they draw large crowds of people who cluster together, according to the Los Angeles Times. In March, Los Angeles County closed all of its beaches to try to slow the spread of coronavirus. But an image being shared on social media suggests authorities are taking this directive to an extreme. ""A California surfer was arrested for violating the state’s stay-at-home order,"" reads the text over an image of what looks like two sheriff deputies walking a man in handcuffs down a beach. ""He was alone, in the ocean, when police violated social distancing protocols to arrest him, and potentially expose him to infection. This isn’t about safety, it’s about control!"" This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The photo is authentic. On April 2, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies arrested a paddle boarder — not a surfer — on grounds he ignored lifeguards’ orders to get out of the ocean near Malibu Pier for at least 30 minutes, the Times reports. Lifeguards contacted the deputies who responded by boat, according to the sheriff’s department. In video taken by bystanders and posted to Instagram it appears that the man was paddle boarding alone. ""The man, who was not identified by authorities, eventually made his way to the beach, where he was arrested on suspicion of disobeying a lifeguard and violating Gov. Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home order, a misdemeanor,"" the story says. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department confirmed to PolitiFact that the man was arrested for violating a lifeguard’s orders. But Newsom’s order says that it ""shall be enforceable pursuant to California law, including, but not limited to, Government Code section 8665."" That law says that anyone who ""refuses or willfully neglects to obey any lawful order or regulation promulgated or issued as provided in this chapter, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction thereof, shall be punishable by a fine of not to exceed one thousand dollars ($1,000) or by imprisonment for not to exceed six months or by both such fine and imprisonment."" The paddle boarder was booked at a sheriff’s station and released on a promise to appear in court, according to the Times. On its website, the California Department of Public Health advises that public health officials recommend social distancing — including maintaining approximately six feet away from other people — to slow the spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19. Our ruling The Facebook post says a lone surfer in California was arrested for flouting the state’s stay-at-home order. That’s mostly right — it was a paddle boarder, not a surfer, out on the water at a beach that was closed to slow the spread of COVID-19. Authorities say he was arrested for disobeying a lifeguard and violating the state’s restrictions."
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26420
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“Hundreds and hundreds of labs are ready, willing, and able.”
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The president said the White House has a list that shows many untapped labs are ready to go to do more testing. Labs exist, but how many are ready to handle the patient specimens sent to them is unknown.
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false
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National, Coronavirus, Donald Trump,
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"At a coronavirus press conference, President Donald Trump said he has a newly assembled list of labs across the country that have the equipment needed to conduct tests for the novel coronavirus. ""We provided each governor with a list of the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the labs where they can find additional testing capacity within their states — many, many labs,"" Trump told reporters April 20. ""We’re providing you with the list. We’ll show it to you now if you need it. We’ll give you the details. But hundreds and hundreds of labs are ready, willing, and able."" Is there a vast, untapped reservoir of labs at the states’ disposal? Not in the way Trump described it. Many labs exist, but it’s not yet clear they have the capacity and equipment needed to do the job. We asked the White House for the data to back up Trump’s assertion about hundreds of labs, but the press office declined to comment and did not provide the list Trump referenced. A spokesperson for the Health and Human Services Department said it couldn’t provide a tally of these untapped labs. The spokesperson there did point to the Food and Drug Administration, which lists 109 labs nationwide that are already offering COVID-19 testing. The FDA also has a separate list of labs that are processing tests under emergency authorization. That adds 18 for a total of 127. But Trump was describing labs that could conduct tests, not ones that already were. White House press staff provided an image of a map that included any lab that had equipment for identifying the genetic sequence of a virus. The image quality was too low for counting each dot. But Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, and chair of the National Governors Association, said that not only were many on the list already known to officials in his state, they had reached out to them before. Credit: White House ""We’ve been trying for over a month to get access to use labs, like at National Institutes of Health, with no success,"" Hogan said in an April 21 interview with MSNBC. Even if the labs exist and are willing, it could be challenging to harness the capacity of new facilities identified by the White House in the anti-coronavirus fight. That’s because all these labs are outfitted for the work they do in non-COVID scenarios, whether in defense, agriculture, basic research, or some other area. Each lab has testing equipment designed to meet those particular needs. Testing experts say it’s unrealistic to expect that each of these labs is able to analyze any specimen it receives. ""Just because the machine exists, you can't will it to work,"" said Scott Becker, Association of Public Health Laboratories chief executive officer. ""You can’t just show up with a sample, plug it in and expect it to work."" Louise Serio, spokeswoman for the American Clinical Laboratory Association, a trade group that includes the largest commercial labs, echoed the point that much depends on the kind of equipment — or ""platform"" — the lab has. Test kits vary. They can contain different materials for a different range of steps in the process, and some are more complete than others. They are not interchangeable. ""For a lab to run a manufacturer’s test kit on a platform, the materials have to match up — the test kit and the platform must be from the same manufacturer,"" Serio said. Part of the challenge of using any lab is that testing is a three-step process. It starts by collecting the specimen with a swab, preserving it in a stable medium for transport, and doing all the data entry that clearly ties that particular specimen to the patient it came from. At the lab, the RNA from the specimen is extracted and amplified so that it can be identified in a testing machine. Then the results are reviewed and shared with health care providers and public health departments. The first two steps are vulnerable to supply shortages — especially of the nasal swabs used to collect patient samples and the chemicals referred to as ""reagents"" that are needed to study them. States have been competing against each other and Washington for the same limited supply of essential goods, a situation that has become one of the primary constraints on testing in the U.S. At the April 20 press conference, Vice President Mike Pence said a team at Walter Reed Medical Center was calling the labs on the list to see what they would need in order to help meet testing needs. That outreach suggests that the government is still learning which labs are able to work with the states. Trump said he had a list with hundreds and hundreds of labs ""ready"" and ""able"" to provide coronavirus testing. The White House declined to provide the list, and the Health and Human Services Department did not provide a tally. The closest we found was a FDA list of about 130 labs nationwide. The people who work with testing said that simply possessing the laboratory equipment to process tests is insufficient to pull off the assignment. The vice president described how the government was still in the process of learning which labs could do what. The labs exist, but the ready and able piece is a work in progress.ostly False."
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82
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Cause of Philadelphia fire sounds alarm over aging U.S. refineries.
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How did a piece of piping installed when Richard Nixon was U.S. president go without once being checked before leading to a fire that devastated the East Coast’s largest and oldest oil refinery?
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true
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Environment
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That’s a question safety experts and activists are putting to regulators after the devastating fire at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) refinery in June, worried more disasters are waiting to happen in an industry reliant on old equipment. Last year, U.S. refiners processed nearly 17 million barrels of crude oil every day, the most in the country’s history as it cashes in on a boom in shale oil. But many have decades-old infrastructure, risking outages that could cost the industry billions. The PES refinery is one of nearly 30 in the United States that are more than a century old, while a Reuters review of over 100 operating U.S. refineries that process more than 10,000 barrels of crude oil a day showed they are on average 80 years old. [GRAPHIC: Aging U.S. refineries: tmsnrt.rs/33guhA8] Refineries frequently update their systems and replace old parts, but the PES fire, along with incidents in Washington state and California earlier this decade, stemmed from equipment installed in the 1970s that had been allowed to run to failure, according to U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) reports. The suspected cause of the PES explosion has raised fears about future incidents because of the leeway given to refiners for inspecting parts, and because some older equipment is exempt from more stringent standards for newly installed parts. “A lot of these refineries around the U.S. are quite old now,” said former CSB managing director Daniel Horowitz, who left the agency last year. “That doesn’t mean that every single piece of equipment dates back to the founding, but they are old and eventually all sorts of components can fail.” The June 21 Philadelphia blaze was linked to corroded piping that had not been checked since it was installed in 1973, according to the CSB’s initial findings. The fire is still under investigation by the CSB and other public agencies. It caused a fuel leak and explosions that sent toxic hydrofluoric acid (HF) into the air and hurled debris the size of a tractor-trailer across a nearby river, the CSB’s report said. Shortly after the fire, PES filed for bankruptcy protection. Failing, decades-old equipment also sparked a 2010 Tesoro refinery explosion in Anacortes, Washington, that killed seven people, and a Chevron refinery blast in Richmond, California, two years later, according to past CSB reports. In all three cases, the failed equipment contained metal components or designs that were no longer up to industry standards, but their use did not necessarily violate regulations. Regulators offer exemptions for older components, and do not require all pieces of plant machinery to be checked. “That’s a huge problem in this sector, that a lot of codes allow grandfathered equipment to be used even if later standards would have prohibited it,” said Horowitz. The CSB report spurred a letter from top law enforcement official in 13 states, including Pennsylvania, to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), arguing against a proposed rollback of regulations aimed at preventing accidents involving chemicals such as HF. Regulators overseeing U.S. oil refinery safety, primarily the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the EPA, and code-setting industry groups allow some refinery components to keep being used even if they don’t meet newer standards. The EPA and OSHA were not available for comment. The ruptured PES pipe contained levels of nickel and copper that were permitted when installed, but not under recommendations made two decades later by the American Society for Testing and Materials, now called ASTM International, that still stand, according to the CSB. That pipe elbow corroded at a faster rate than other pieces of the system. Oil industry group the American Petroleum Institute (API) has about 175 recommended codes that act as the refinery industry’s standards. The API inspection standards for HF alkylation units used in about one-third of U.S. refineries do not call for every piping component to be inspected. API spokesman Scott Lauermann said that its standard for HF units was recognized as the safest way to operate those units, having been recommended by the CSB. PES said it monitored other parts of the piping system according to industry standards, including an examination of a metal elbow near the one that ruptured, and the testing did not show high levels of corrosion. “PES would not have expected the piping to corrode at different rates because the elbows were installed at the same time and the construction specifications indicated that they were the same materials of construction,” PES vice president of strategy and business development Mark Brandon said via email. The CSB findings added to existing concerns by workers about maintenance at the PES refinery, which was already struggling financially, and in January cut back the scope of a planned large-scale maintenance project days before it was scheduled to begin. PES business agents and managers told union officials and major contractors the work would require between 1,500 and 1,800 contract workers, but that was slashed to just 300 contractors, according to five sources familiar with the plan, while pipes and other materials delivered to the plant were never used. Maintaining and inspecting equipment at refineries is required by the OSHA and EPA, but those agencies don’t tell refineries how or when to inspect. Those details are filled in by industry standards that may not have the enforcement of law. The CSB found that prior to the California and Washington fires, as well as the BP Texas City blast in 2005 that killed 15, internal and external instructions for keeping plants operating safely were either ignored or not followed correctly. That regulatory approach makes rules difficult to enforce and allows problems at refineries to go undiscovered, said Jeff Ruch of environmental advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. In the aftermath of the Washington explosion, a judge dismissed $2.4 million in fines against Tesoro because the state could not prove the refinery failed to comply with enforceable rules for inspection and maintenance of equipment. “In terms of, are we making sure in some sort of holistic way that these refineries are safe, there’s nothing there,” said Ruch. “There’s sort of a vacuum.”
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2918
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New York's medical marijuana law excludes some who seek the drug.
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When New York moves ahead with its planned legalization of medical marijuana for the chronically ill, Missy Miller’s epileptic son Oliver will be left behind.
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true
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Health News
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Oliver suffered a brain stem injury in utero and now, at 14, has hundreds of seizures a day. For months, his family has pinned their hopes on a strain of marijuana developed in Colorado that has helped children with similar conditions. But under an executive order by Governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday making New York the 21st state to allow medical marijuana, it will remain illegal to grow marijuana or to import specialized plants from other states. The order limits the number of hospitals that can dispense marijuana and allows its use only to treat diseases such as cancer and glaucoma, according to several people briefed on the plan. Patients will have little say in the marijuana they are prescribed and people like Oliver - who could benefit from a specialized strain known as Charlotte’s Web that is high in the compound cannabidiol, or CBD, - would be cut out entirely. “With this one medication, it’s stopping their seizures or dramatically reducing their seizures,” said Miller, 49, as her son lay in a playpen in their home near in Atlantic Beach, east of New York City. While anecdotal evidence gives reasons for patients to be encouraged by the use of the strain, doctors urge caution. Orrin Devinsky, an epilepsy expert at New York University who has treated Oliver, said data about the safety and effectiveness of “Charlotte’s Web” is scant. “In medicine, the roadside is littered with drugs and compounds and plants that people have sworn by,” said Devinsky, who is preparing a clinical trial using a nearly pure form of CBD. “The available data right now in humans is anecdotal - single cases where there could be a tremendous amount of bias in the results.” Cuomo’s announcement comes one week after Colorado began allowing the sale of marijuana for recreational use. A second state, Washington, will follow suit later this year. The move is an about-face for Cuomo, who previously opposed marijuana legalization, but the Democrat has not come under the same pressure as his counterpart in neighboring New Jersey. There, Governor Chris Christie in September signed a bill loosening rules on medical marijuana access for sick children. Dubbed “pot for tots,” by tabloids, Christie approved it one month after he was confronted by the parents of a two-year-old girl who suffers from a form of epilepsy. The family has since said they will move to Colorado where marijuana is sold in edible form, while in New Jersey it may only be sold in smokable form. Medical marijuana has long faced an uphill battle in New York state. The Compassionate Care Act, which provides for medical marijuana, has come up repeatedly in the state legislature since 1997, and has been approved by the state assembly four times. But has never made it to a vote in the State Senate. State Assemblymen Richard Gottfried, a leading proponent of medical marijuana, called Cuomo’s order a “key interim step”. He said he planned to introduce a more comprehensive measure. “The law is very limited and cumbersome and will leave out a lot of people,” said Gottfried. The Charlotte’s Web strain of marijuana, which the Millers have placed such hope in, comes from a medical marijuana dispensary in Colorado Springs called Indispensary. The product, which comes as an oil, is low in THC, the psychoactive compound that gives users the feeling of being high, and has close to no value to traditional marijuana consumers. But others tout the medicinal value of CBD. A Gallup poll in October found, for the first time, a clear majority of Americans - 58 percent - favor legalizing marijuana, while 38 percent of Americans admitted they had tried the drug. A Siena College poll in May found that 82 percent of New Yorkers support legalizing medical marijuana. On Tuesday, on the eve of Cuomo’s announcement, Miller led Oliver through their home from his playpen - a cheerfully decorated space under a row of enlarged family portraits - across the living room. Standing at 4 feet 5 inches with bouncy curls that fall almost to his shoulders, Oliver is about as tall as his mother, who struggled to help him stand upright. At one point, Oliver froze up and Miller explained he was having a seizure. “All done,” the boy said a moment later, and they continued. “Oliver has a lot of other medical problems, and we’ve been very successful at overcoming” many of them, said Miller. “The one thing we haven’t been able to get any control over are these seizures. And, in spite of all these other medical problems, these are stealing him from us.” Miller, who has a healthy 19-year-old daughter, learned the extent of Oliver’s health issues when he was a few weeks old. She had already lost one child, at the age of 7, and took multiple tests to ensure she would have a healthy baby. Oliver is blind, cannot eat normally and has difficulty standing on his own or walking. As he grows up, Miller’s main concern is that Oliver’s seizures could damage his brain severely and further limit his quality of life. Their lives have been a constant process of trying new medications and Miller said she is cautiously optimistic about Charlotte’s Web marijuana. “You see the glimpses of what he is,” said Miller. “I just want him to have and to meet his full potential.” (The story corrects paragraph 18 to show 82 percent, not 57 percent, of New Yorkers support medical marijuana, according to Siena poll)
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7744
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Macedonia takes emergency measures as smog engulfs cities.
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The Macedonian government has extended the school break until Jan. 23 and introduced measures to protect people from dangerous air pollution levels which have soared to 10 times above the European Union’s regulatory limits.
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true
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Environment
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Authorities in the capital Skopje, where face masks have become a common sight, introduced free train and bus rides and doubled parking fees to discourage the use of cars. People with chronic illnesses and the elderly have been excused from work. “The air pollution has become one of the biggest problems in Macedonia,” Jani Makraduli, the country’s deputy minister of environment, told Reuters on Monday. The annual winter scourge is caused by a mixture of emissions from old cars, coal burning and aging industry, as well as poor spatial planning and solid fuel based heating. The government has endorsed a program to combat air pollution and set aside funds to help residents and public institutions switch to more ecological sources of heating. It has also launched stricter control of industrial emitters, but the policies are seen by many as inadequate. Environmentalists say the timeline for government activities, especially in the energy sector which relies mainly on heavy polluting lignite, is unclear and that improvements are long overdue. “We are suffocating ourselves,” Skopje resident Petar Stefanovski said. “Alternative solutions for heating are costly, there are too many cars and new buildings have created the Chinese Wall that stops air circulation.” The World Bank estimates that in Macedonia there are 1,350 deaths related to air pollution per year, which cost the country an equivalent of 3.2 percent of national output, or more than $360 million a year.
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3745
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Italy health authorities investigate pneumonia outbreak.
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Health authorities in northern Italy are investigating whether bacteria — including the one that causes Legionnaires’ disease — inhaled from the water supply is behind an outbreak of pneumonia that has afflicted nearly 150 people.
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true
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Health, Italy, Europe, Legionnaires disease, Pneumonia
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Experts said Monday that a single contamination but spread out over several towns and villages in Brescia was likely responsible since the cases were mostly reported in a short timeframe, not the usual person-to-person transmission that would drag out during a typical outbreak. At least two of the cases reportedly involved victims with Legionnaire’s disease — a severe form of pneumonia that is usually caused by inhaling droplets from a contaminated water source such as air conditioning systems or cooling towers. Pneumonia is typically caused by viruses, bacteria or fungi and is spread by airborne droplets. It is usually treated with antibiotics. Brescia prosecutors on Monday opened an investigation, the ANSA news agency reported. The Brescia public health authority issued an advisory over the weekend for residents to take basic precautions, such as changing water filters or letting water flow for some time before using it. But the notice stressed that the water in the nine hardest hit towns and villages — many located along rivers and streams — was safe to drink. Officials were taking water samples and conducting an epidemiological investigation, the results of which were expected in a few days. News reports say some 150 people in Brescia had come down with pneumonia, though the head of the city’s health authority, Dr. Carmelo Scarcella, said the number of new cases had fallen after the peak hospital admissions were registered Sept. 2-6. The research director for the health ministry’s Superior Institute for Health, Dr. Giovanni Rezza, said he couldn’t exclude that Legionnaire’s bacteria was to blame.
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8070
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Beware second waves of COVID-19 if lockdowns eased early: study.
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Extending school and work closures at the coronavirus’ ground zero in China may delay a second wave of infections, researchers said on Thursday, urging the rest of the world to take note.
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true
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Health News
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With containment measures largely successful and the epidemic’s epicenter now in Europe, China has loosened a two-month lockdown in the city of Wuhan where the new coronavirus is thought to have jumped from wildlife to people late last year. But a study in The Lancet Public Health journal suggested continuing Wuhan’s shutdowns until April would push a potential second wave of COVID-19 - the disease caused by the new virus - until later in the year. That would give health services more time to recover and expand, potentially saving lives. “The city now needs to be really careful to avoid prematurely lifting physical distancing measures, because that could lead to an earlier secondary peak in cases,” said Kiesha Prem, a specialist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), who co-led the research. “If they relax the restrictions gradually, this is likely to both delay and flatten the peak.” The study used mathematical modeling to simulate either extending or relaxing school and workplace closures in Wuhan, a city of 11 million people whose name has become synonymous with the coronavirus for much of the world. By lifting control measures now, a second rush of infections may occur in late August, the analysis suggested. But keeping lockdown measures until April would likely delay a second peak until October — giving healthcare workers a chance to regroup. Those findings were “crucial for policy makers everywhere”, said Tim Colbourn, an expert in global health epidemiology at University College London, who was not directly involved in the study. Stunned by the disease’s rapid spread, governments around the world are trying to replicate China’s draconian lockdown measures while also working out the risk of recurrences once the epidemic peaks have passed in their countries. “Our results won’t look exactly the same in another country,” said Yang Liu, an LSHTM expert who also worked on the research. “But we think one thing probably applies everywhere: physical distancing measures are very useful, and we need to carefully adjust their lifting to avoid subsequent waves of infection ... If those waves come too quickly, that could overwhelm health systems.” World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday expressed the same view, saying lockdowns were the best way to curb transmission. “The last thing any country needs is to open schools and businesses only to be forced to close them again because of a resurgence,” he said.
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23387
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"Ed Schultz said Alan Grayson is ""what it's all about."
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Was MSNBC's Ed Schultz talking about Alan Grayson in Grayson's flashy new ad?
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true
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Message Machine 2010, Pundits, Florida, Alan Grayson,
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"With friends like Oliver Stone, it's no surprise Alan Grayson is blitzing Central Florida airwaves with glitzy, Hollywood-style campaign ads. Grayson, a Democrat considered vulnerable in his re-election campaign against former Florida House Speaker Dan Webster, is airing a series of ads called ""When They Lie."" The couple of ads we've seen are slightly different, but all follow a simple pattern. The screen flashes black and white images of conservative figures like Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter. Then, MSNBC's Ed Schultz, looks directly into the camera and shouts, ""This guy is what it's all about."" Next the movie action music ramps up along with images from around the world, mixing in messages in black and white, like ""Vote Truth,"" ""Vote Grayson,"" or ""When They Lie,"" ""Vote Grayson."" The ads certainly are different, but we wanted to check the one real line included, the quote from liberal commentator Ed Schultz. Viewers have been tricked before by splicing together snippets of television, and in this case, the rest of the images in the ad have almost nothing directly to do with Grayson. So we wondered if the impression the ad leaves -- that Schultz is talking specifically about Grayson -- matches reality. Grayson, whom Democrats love because he's so blunt and Republicans hate because he's so blunt, took to the House floor Sept. 29, 2009, to detail what he called the Republicans' plan for health care. ""The Republicans' health care plan for America ... don't get sick,"" Grayson said, with a simple white poster board proclaiming the same message. ""That's what the Republicans have in mind for you, America."" But, Grayson added, Republicans recognize that plan isn't foolproof and said the GOP had a backup plan. ""If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is die quickly,"" Grayson added. ""The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick."" Conservative Republicans demanded an apology for the ""die quickly"" comment while liberal Democrats praised Grayson. Among the chorus of praise: Schultz, one the country's more prominent liberal pundits. On his Oct. 1, 2009, MSNBC show, Schultz interviewed Grayson about his comments and referred to Grayson as the ""new lefty hero on the block."" Here's one exchange between the two, according to an transcript: Schultz: Congressman, do you take anything back? I mean, are we going to see more of this? Grayson: Absolutely not. The people who should be apologizing are the Republicans. They're the ones who should apologize for dragging us all through the mud here while we're just trying to improve health care in America. That's all we're trying to do. Schultz: Now, the thing I liked about it is that you had charts. I mean, this was planned out. You must have known that this was going to kick up a lot of dust. Did you fire and fire for effect? Grayson: Listen, Ed, we've got to get past this point where everything is stalled, where the Republicans are winning just through inertia. We have a majority. We have to use it. We have to change America. That's the promise that President Obama made. We have to keep it. After nearly an eight-minute interview, Schultz wraps the segment up with his own take on Grayson, and the political impact of his comments. ""For all of the hooey and the prognostication that's going on out there about the midterms -- 'Oh, Grayson's doing this, he might hurt the Democrats in the midterms' -- the hell with that,"" Schultz said (about 7:55 in). ""This guy is what it's all about."" The end of the full quote is the line in the Grayson ad -- Schultz is specifically talking about Grayson. For the record, Grayson did apologize for his comments. Sarcastically. Here was part of that apology. (Video here.) ""Well, I would like to apologize. I would like to apologize to the dead, and here's why. According to this study, 'Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults,' which was published two weeks ago, 44,789 Americans die every year because they have no health insurance. So I call upon the Democratic members of the House. I call upon the Republican members of the House. I call upon all of us to do our jobs for the sake of America, for the sake of those dying people and their families. I apologize to the dead and their families that we haven't voted sooner to end this holocaust in America."" In his new Hollywood-style ad, Grayson uses a quote from a charged-up Schultz that suggests Grayson is ""what it's all about."" Grayson clips the full quote -- and omits the suggestion that some think Grayson's antics could hurt Democrats in the 2010 elections -- but Schultz is indeed talking about Grayson, according to transcript and video."
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29297
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Florida residents affected by Hurricane Irma can receive $197 in food stamp benefits, but only if they can show that their homes lost power for more than two hours.
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What's true: Florida residents who normally receive food stamps (SNAP) can continue to do so, and SNAP benefits have been improved in response to Hurricane Irma. Food stamps have also been extended beyond ordinary recipients under a program called Disaster-SNAP. What's false: Disaster-SNAP does not require individual households to have experienced power outages for any period of time, and maximum income limits apply. Benefits include no set payments of $197 per person; rather, allotments vary depending on household size.
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false
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Viral Phenomena, FEMA, florida, food stamps
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In September 2017, Facebook users spread several rumors about government benefits and assistance available to Florida residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma. One of these rumors involved the provision of food stamps for Floridians whose homes had experienced power outages of at least two hours in duration. A typical expression of the rumor read as follows: #FLORIDA If your power was out for more than two hours. You are eligible for food stamps. $197.00 per person. Go to www.myflorida.com/accessflorida … Apply for benefits..create an account. Click on food stamps or snaps..DO NOT APPLY FOR CASH…Make sure you have a valid phone number so they can verify your zip code… A similar rumor claimed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), rather than the state of Florida, was overseeing food stamp benefits: FEMA assistance is available to those whose power was out for more than 2 hours they’re eligible for food stamps 197 per person go to myflorida.com Access Florida apply for benefits create an account click food stamps or snaps do not apply for cash make sure you have valid phone number so they can verify zip code. A separate but related rumor held that FEMA was directly providing Floridians with $500 for food purchases: For those in need FEMA is giving $500 direct deposit that can be used for food. Apply at disasterassistance.gov FEMA 1-800-621-3362 or 1-800-462-7585 None of these rumors was quite right, and they all seemed to be based on misunderstandings of a federal disaster relief program known as Disaster-SNAP (or D-SNAP), which was extended to parts of Florida on 22 September 2017. D-SNAP is a program that temporarily extends the benefits usually available under SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps) to individuals affected by natural disasters. One does not have to be an existing recipient of SNAP benefits in order to qualify for D-SNAP, but the latter program does incorporate maximum income limits. D-SNAP assistance typically lasts for one month, but Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced on 22 September that the program would be in place for two months in Florida. Recipients are provided with a temporary EBT card containing an amount of credit based upon household size and income. A one-person household with a gross monthly income of $1,664 or less would receive $194 in D-SNAP credit for one month (a figure that may be the source of the “$197 per person” claim in some Facebook rumors). An eight-person household (provided it has a gross monthly income of $4,151 or less) would be eligible to receive $1,169 in D-SNAP assistance (an average of $146 per person). A two-person household (provided it met the income requirements) would be eligible for $357 in benefits, or $179.50 per person. (There is no set benefit amount per person, a common element of the rumors which is misleading.) The extension of D-SNAP in Florida applies to certain counties. A county is considered eligible based upon the percentage of power outages experienced over a period of 72 hours, as well as the level of structural and flood damage suffered. So power outages do play a role in the provision of extended SNAP benefits, but only on the county level. Such benefits come with no requirement that an individual household must have experienced a power outage for “more than two hours,” or that applicants must provide photographic evidence of such outages. The appropriate place to apply for Disaster-SNAP assistance in Florida is the ACCESS Florida web page. Other assistance is available As well as Disaster-SNAP, existing food stamp recipients can avail themselves of certain other enhanced benefits in light of the damage and disruption caused by Hurricane Irma. According to the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service, which oversees SNAP, regular Florida recipients can (as of 12 September 2017) temporarily use EBT cards to buy hot food (something they cannot normally do) and should have received their monthly allotment earlier than usual in September: USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) recently approved a temporary waiver and supported other actions that will help households participating in the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in Florida, Georgia, and the Virgin Islands, and the Nutrition Assistance Program in Puerto Rico, to access food in the wake of Hurricane Irma, including: In addition to these modifications, several types of federally-provided assistance are available to those affected by disasters such as Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, both in Florida and in other states. These benefits include monetary assistance with rent and home repairs as well as funeral and medical care costs, as well as direct assistance such as FEMA’s entering into lease agreements with owners of multi-family rental properties and performing repairs, with the aim of providing temporary accommodation for individuals. Variations in eligibility, rates of payment, duration of assistance, and type of assistance mean that it’s virtually impossible to say how much an individual household or person might receive. Residents of states that have been affected by hurricanes and other disasters can check whether they are eligible for federal assistance, and apply for such assistance, by visiting DisasterAssistance.gov. The claim asserted in one of the Facebook rumors, that FEMA is offering individuals $500 via direct deposit to be used for purchasing food, has a grain of truth to it. As part of the assistance that the federal government provides to individuals and households in state where major disasters have been declared (as was the case in Florida), individuals who have lost their homes or been displaced can apply for what’s known as Critical Needs Assistance, which consists of a one-time payment of $500, as explained by FEMA: FEMA may provide financial assistance to individuals and households who, as a result of the disaster, have immediate or critical needs because they are displaced from their primary dwelling. Immediate or critical needs are life-saving and life-sustaining items including, but not limited to: water, food, first aid, prescriptions, infant formula, diapers, consumable medical supplies, durable medical equipment, personal hygiene items, and fuel for transportation … It is a one-time $500 payment per household. However, the state must first ask FEMA to authorize Critical Needs Assistance in specific counties particularly badly hit by a disaster, FEMA must then grant that authorization, and the individual must go through an application process. FEMA has authorized Critical Needs Assistance in certain Florida counties, which are listed on the FEMA web site. The Critical Needs Assistance application is available only to individuals who have lost their homes or been displaced, and who had previously resided in counties where FEMA has authorized Critical Needs Assistance.
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7349
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Iraqi doctor’s fight with virus lays bare a battered system.
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Dr. Marwa al-Khafaji’s homecoming after 20 days in a hospital isolation ward was met by spite. Someone had barricaded her family home’s gate with a concrete block.
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true
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AP Top News, Understanding the Outbreak, Health, Middle East, Pandemics, Virus Outbreak, Iraq, General News
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The message from the neighbors was clear: She had survived coronavirus, but the stigma surrounding the disease would be a more pernicious fight. The young physician was catapulted into the front lines of Iraq’s battle with the virus in early March. The Associated Press followed her tale from inside a squalid quarantine room to her return to the streets of her childhood, where she found piercing glares had displaced greetings. Her struggles mirror those of Iraq’s battered health system, laid bare by the pandemic: Hospitals without supplies, medical staff intimidated by an unknown disease, and widespread stigma associated with infection. Fear of stigma — driven by religious beliefs, customs and a deep mistrust of the health system — has been a main driver of the pandemic in Iraq, doctors say, as people hide their illness and avoid seeking help. At least 115 people have died among more than 3,030 confirmed coronavirus cases across Iraq, according to Health Ministry statistics. The daily rate of cases jumped after curfew hours were shortened for the holy month of Ramadan, from 29 on April 22 to 119 on Wednesday. Officials fear a flare-up would be catastrophic. Iraqi officials described the ministry’s response as adequate and said Iraq was spared the exponential rise in cases seen in neighboring Iran and Turkey. Ministry spokesman Saif al-Badr blamed the spread on people who had symptoms or came from an affected country and “didn’t disclose these facts due to arrogance.” But Khafaji’s story, as well as interviews with half a dozen doctors and nurses, reveal a haphazard response with no comprehensive strategy from a hobbled government that until recently had only caretaker status. “Inside quarantine, the future felt uncertain,” Khafaji said. “Outside it’s no different.” In mid-March, Khafaji, 39, grew alarmed when her elderly mother, Dhikra Saoud, showed signs of respiratory distress. The virus had just started to hit Iraq and had yet to leave its mark on the city of Karbala where she lives. But the doctor connected the dots. Days before, her father showed mild flu-like symptoms that she treated at home. Now her mother was presenting the same, but in acute form. She was certain it was coronavirus. But at three different hospitals, doctors refused to test her mother. At the time, the limited test kits were rationed for those who had been to Iran. At each hospital visit, Khafaji’s mother was afraid the neighbors would hear where she was. “I beg you. Take me home,” she said. Her symptoms worsened, until a tearful Khafaji pleaded to a physician friend at 3 a.m.: Please, “give my mother the test.” He agreed. On March 19, policemen came to the house to take both mother and daughter to the hospital. Both had tested positive. Here again was a repercussion of the stigma: People often refuse to be quarantined, so police are sent to force them. Khafaji knew the shortcomings of the system she worked in. Inside quarantine, she experienced it from the eyes of a patient. On the first day, Khafaji’s mother looked at the squalid ward in disgust. “You have brought me to a prison,” she said. The quarantine zone of the Imam Hussein teaching hospital was a communal ward, with patients separated by metal screens. The floors were cracked, mold bloomed in the shared bathroom, dust coated surfaces despite daily cleanings. Khafaji was no stranger to hardship: The mother of a 5-year-old, she recently divorced a husband who shot her in the leg following a domestic dispute. She asked the staff for cleaning materials and scrubbed the room and bathrooms herself. When the sheets and blankets remained unwashed for days, she threw hers out in protest. Iraq’s centralized health system, largely unchanged since the 1970s, has been ground down by decades of wars, sanctions and prolonged unrest since the 2003 U.S. invasion, with little investment from successive governments. There are eight physicians and 1.4 hospital beds per 10,000 people. The country of 38 million has at most 600 ventilators, a Health Ministry official said. One Karbala doctor, Assel Saad Saleh, said his hospital sees 1,000 patients a day, well over triple its capacity. “Patients get angry with lack of supplies, drugs and testing kits,” he said. The patients who flowed into the quarantine during Khafaji’s stay reflected the course of the virus in Iraq. First came pilgrims returning from Iran, then those from Syria. Finally, patients with no travel history whatsoever. Khafaji took solace in routine. At 8 a.m. she woke her mother, served breakfast and waited for the doctor’s morning check to see what treatment or testing he might order. She often interjected with her own medical opinion. When one doctor proscribed a patient nebulizer therapy twice daily, she said it was needed every hour. At night, given the doctor shortage, Khafaji monitored patients and reported changes to nurses who checked in only every six hours, trembling as they approached virus patients. She stood aghast when an emergency physician told her he didn’t know how to intubate a patient’s airway. “They are untrained,” she said. “And they are afraid of us.” On her worst day she suffered fatigue, headache and a high fever. “My eyes were like rocks,” she said. On April 10, Khafaji and her mother tested negative for the virus and could leave. But another crisis awaited: the cement blocks that neighbors had erected, blocking their home’s front and back gates. Even after they were removed, things weren’t the same. When her son goes to play in the garden, Khafaji hears other mothers calling their children back into the house. By May, she was back putting in 12-hour shifts at the hospital on an $800 a month stipend, the average physician’s salary in Iraq. At her request, she works in the waiting room, helping diagnose potential virus patients. “Everyone has a limit,” she said. “I haven’t reached it till now.” ___ Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed from Baghdad.
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9824
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Drug Eases Gout Flare-ups in Some Patients: Study
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Two powerful storms that struck Spain and Portugal in quick succession over the past three days have killed at least eight people and caused widespread flooding and damage.
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false
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Gout
|
In the southern region of Andalusia, a spokesman for the emergency services said they had recovered the body of a windsurfer in the province of Huelva, and a second man died in Granada attempting to ford a swollen river in his car. In Madrid a woman died on Saturday after being injured by a piece of falling masonry dislodged by strong winds in the city center on Friday. The arrival of Storm Fabien on Saturday brought a fresh round of high winds and heavy rainfall to the region, just as Storm Elsa, which hit the Iberian peninsula on Wednesday, began to subside. Spain’s civil defense agency said the latest front could bring winds of up to 140 km per hour (85 mph) and waves of up to 9 meters (30 feet), to the country’s northwest Atlantic coast. However, the effects of the storms have been felt across the peninsula. On Friday a person died in a landslide in Asturias, a second was killed when a stone wall crumbled in Galicia and a third person was swept away by floodwaters in Castile and Leon, a government spokeswoman said. In Portugal, one man died in Montijo, near Lisbon, on Thursday after a tree fell on his truck, and a second man was killed in Castro Daire, northern Portugal, when his house collapsed, officials said. Portugal’s civil protection authority said on Saturday the heavy rain and strong winds had felled trees and caused flooding and damage to infrastructure. More than 250 people were evacuated from their homes in villages in central Portugal on Saturday due to rising river waters, Portuguese news agency Lusa said. EDP, the country’s largest utility, said on Friday that thousands of people were without electricity due to storm damage. (This story has been refiled to fix a typo in the headline)
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18347
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"Carolyn Tomei Says, ""In Oregon in 2010, 49 percent of all pregnancies were unintended."
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Were half of all pregnancies in Oregon unintended?
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true
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Oregon, Children, Families, Health Care, Women, Carolyn Tomei,
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"In honor of National Women’s Health Week, Oregon Rep. Carolyn Tomei, D-Milwaukie, talked up the benefits of a health initiative that encourages primary care providers to ask women whether they wish to get pregnant within the year or not. The goal is to provide prenatal care to women who want a baby and contraception options to those who do not. Unintended pregnancies stress out family finances as well as taxpayers, who pick up the cost for half of all births in Oregon, Tomei said on the floor of the Oregon House. ""In Oregon in 2010, 49 percent of all pregnancies were unintended. Fifty-three percent of all deliveries were paid for by Medicaid,"" she said. PolitiFact Oregon was intrigued by the statistic that nearly half of all pregnancies in Oregon in 2010 were unintended. How would anyone track that? What does it mean? Plus, we wanted to know if Medicaid -- a portion of which is called the Oregon Health Plan in Oregon -- paid for 53 percent of all deliveries. PRAMS Tomei said she relied on information from the Oregon Health Authority’s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring Systemsurvey. The questions asked of a sampling of new mothers include alcohol consumption, child safety, breast feeding and family planning. Here’s the question Tomei said was relevant to this fact check: When you got pregnant with your new baby, were you trying to get pregnant? In 2010, 46.4 percent of new mothers surveyed said they were not trying to get pregnant. Nearly 53 percent of women said that the Oregon Health Plan or Medicaid helped pay for delivery, according to the survey. So part of what she said on the floor is backed up by the Oregon Health Authority, but the statement we’re checking is off by a few percentage points. At the same time, we found an analysis by PolitiFact Rhode Island, which checked a similar claim by a R.I. state representative who said in 2011 that ""nearly half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unintended."" The representative received a True. The source was the Guttmacher Institute, a New York City-based group well known for its research on reproductive health. Researchers reported 49 percent of pregnancies in the United States were unintendedin 2006. In Oregon, 49 percent of pregnancies were unintended as well. So Tomei might be correct, albeit for a different year, based on Guttmacher. But bear with us, because the issue, we learned, is rather complicated. An unintended pregnancy is defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Oregon Health Authority as one where the woman wanted to be pregnant later or not at all. An intended pregnancy is one where the woman wanted to be pregnant at that moment, or sooner. However, and this is important, the ""pregnancy intendedness"" question on the PRAMS survey is not the one that Tomei relied on to derive intention. In 2010, the percentage of new moms who wanted to be pregnant at that moment, or sooner, was 63.3. The percentage of new moms who wanted to be pregnant later or not at all was 36.6, and not 49 percent or 46.4 percent. A 2012 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds Oregon is the norm: about 37 percent of births in the United States in 2006-10 stemmed from unintended pregnancies. So why are Guttmacher numbers higher? The group based its analysis on all pregnancies, including those resulting in births, abortions and miscarriages. We can see how that would increase the percentage of mistimed or unwanted pregnancies. The question relied on by Tomei has to do with family planning. The other question has to do with ""pregnancy intendedness."" We honestly doubt the average person -- even a lawmaker -- could tell the difference without explanatory assistance from public health officials. The ruling If you accept Tomei’s interpretation of intended as meaning ""trying to get pregnant,"" 49 percent is just a few points shy of 46. 4 percent. We’d give that a since the numbers are so close. If you want to stick to a more rigid definition of unintended pregnancy, she would also be largely correct, albeit for the year 2006, based on the Guttmacher statistic. Remember, Guttmacher includes a broader universe of pregnancies, including not only births but abortions and miscarriages as well. Tomei would not be correct, however, based on the intendedness question in the PRAMS survey, which limits results to new moms who gave birth in 2010. And, according to a state epidemiologist with whom we spoke, this question is perhaps not the best way to gauge intention. PolitiFact Oregon rates the accuracy of the statement, not the ins and outs of the survey from which the statement comes. In the colloquial sense, Tomei is off by a few points. In the survey sense, she is backed up by a national study, although for a different year. We find those two factors are enough to find her statement accurate, but needing both clarification and additional information. We rule the statement ."
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11285
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Ginkgo fails to prevent Alzheimer’s in large study
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Ginkgo biloba (ginkgo), a botanical dietary supplement, is widely used by people hoping to improve memory and those who want to prevent or treat dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. However, scientific research to prove these benefits has not been convincing. Now the results of a research study, called the Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory study, have convincingly shown that ginkgo does not stop older people from developing dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. This article does an excellent job of reporting important details of the study in depth. For example, it included that 3,000 people 75 and over who took the usual ‘dose’ of ginkgo (240 mg) each day were followed for 6 years. The piece was particularly strong in providing absolute differences, citing an array of sources, and providing context about the funding agency and how the results differed from prior studies. Well done.
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true
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Yes, this story reported that a four month supply of ginkgo cost about $10. After reading this article there is no mistaking that ginkgo is not beneficial for preventing dementia or Alzheimer’s disease in older adults. The absolute differences in outcomes between groups was reported. There has been concern in the medical community that ginkgo could increase the risk of blood clots and stroke. This is of particular concern in people taking warfarin, a drug that is intended to reduce the risk of blood clots and stroke. Remarks from the lead investigator indicate that ginkgo appears to be relatively safe. However, the investigator also notes that the new study could not definitively answer the question about risk of strokes. Directly after these comments, the article explicitly states that people on warfarin should not take ginkgo. This is not the case. However, both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) indicate that caution should be exercised when taking warfarin and ginkgo. But they do not definitively state that ginko should not be taken. We’ll give the article a passing grade on this one. This story provided an in depth review of the new clinical evidence relating to the use of ginkgo. For example, details of the study were reported in a manner that was easy to understand. The reader was able to see the superior design of this new study compared to previous studies without this being explicitly presented in the article. This story did not fail prey to disease mongering. In fact, it accurately refuted disease mongering reports that are often found for the use of ginkgo as a memory aid. This article meets all of the criteria for providing good sources of information. The source of the new research is given. All potential differing opinions are presented through interviews with the lead investigator, a credible independent expert, and a representative of herbal products. This story did not mention that there are currently no treatments that can prevent dementia or improve mental abilities in people with mild cognitive impairment. The story could have easily mentioned this. It should have indicated that there are a few medications that can temporarily slow decline in a small number of people. They should have also added clearly stated that unfortunate news that results from medication are minimal. This story accurately reported the widespread availability and use of ginkgo is in the U.S. The story noted that annual sales of ginkgo are estimated to be more than $100 million dollars per year. This article does not pretend that ginkgo is a new treatment. It indicates up front that it has long been promoted as a memory aid. This article did not rely on a press release.
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23223
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Shows in a television ad that police took evidence from Solantic, Rick Scott's new health care company, after allegations emerged that the company was engaging in fraud.
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Problems at Rick Scott's new health care business, Solantic, alleged in new ad
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false
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Health Care, Legal Issues, Message Machine 2010, Florida, Florida Democratic Party,
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"Democrat Alex Sink is airing a rare, two-minute campaign ad that tries to link Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott to alleged fraud at a urgent patient care business he founded in 2001, Solantic. The spot, called ""Fraud Files,"" opens more like an introduction to a Dateline NBC episode than a campaign commercial, mixing a narrator's voice with short clips from TV. The first half of the ad deals with Scott's time running Columbia/HCA. The second half talks about Solantic, the company he built after resigning from Columbia/HCA. ""In 2008, new allegations emerged that Solantic was also engaging in multiple forms of fraud,"" the narrator says over visuals of flapping yellow sheriff's police tape, a detective in a suit taking notes and men in police T-shirts carrying boxes out of a building. The ad essentially is blending together two fraud allegations. The first is a 2008 lawsuit filed by Dr. P. Mark Glencross. Glencross alleged that Solantic improperly used his medical license in 2004 when the company filed paperwork saying each clinic had a medical director in charge. Scott was deposed during the case -- Scott has declined to release that deposition. The two-year-old case was settled within a month of Scott's deposition and both parties signed a confidentiality agreement. The second stems from allegations by another former Solantic physician, Dr. Randy Prokes. During the gubernatorial primary, Prokes sent an e-mail to Bill McCollum's Republican campaign for governor claiming that Solantic billed Medicare at full rates for patients seen by a nurse practitioner, when federal rules require that billing be at 85 percent of the fee paid for physician examinations. The McCollum campaign passed the letter on to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The FDLE then sent the letter on to the inspector general’s office at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That's where the letter sits today. The Department of Health and Human Services has not said whether it's investigating Prokes' claims. The claims of fraud are real, but suggesting through images that police raided or seized records from Solantic is entirely misleading. Ads are about both the visuals and the words campaigns choose. In this case, the Democratic Party is inflating the allegations against Solantic by including video of sheriff's tape and police collecting evidence. There have been no reports that we could find of police raiding a Solantic facility, and the Democratic Party, when asked, could provide no evidence of any such search."
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29937
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Senator Kamala Harris is not eligible to serve as U.S. President because neither of her parents was “a legal resident for 5 years prior to [her] birth” and she was “not raised in the United States.”
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Regardless, Kamala Harris has resided in the United States since she left Montreal for Howard University in 1982. She has been a United States citizen her entire life, and she is constitutionally eligible to run for president.
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false
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Politics, constitutional law, jacob wohl, Kamala Harris
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In January 2019, Jacob Wohl — a Twitter political troll and veteran of a failed smear campaign against Robert Mueller — dipped his toes into the topic of constitutional law, asserting his view that 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris of California was constitutionally ineligible to hold the office of President of the United States: Kamala Harris is NOT eligible to be President. Her father arrived from Jamaica in 1961—mother from India arrived in 1960 Neither parent was a legal resident for 5 years prior to Harris’s birth, a requirement for naturalization Kamala was raised in Canada — Jacob Wohl (@JacobAWohl) January 22, 2019 Kamala Harris is NOT eligible to be President. Her father arrived from Jamaica in 1961 — mother from India arrived in 1960. Neither parent was a legal resident for 5 years prior to Harris’s birth, a requirement for naturalization. Kamala was raised in Canada … Just like the worst President in American History, Barack Hussein Obama, Kamala Harris was NOT raised in the United States. Is it too much to ask to have a President that was born and RAISED in America? The constitutional requirements for the office of U.S. president are few. As stated in Article II Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, they encompass only citizenship, residency, and age: No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States. The term “natural born citizen” is not defined in the constitution, but “natural born” was a term commonly used in the English colonies during the time the Founding Fathers were crafting the Constitution. Like the U.S. constitution itself, the term has roots in English common law, and in cases when constitutional terms are undefined, English common law is generally cited to clarify them — as explained in a 2011 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report: At the time of independence, and at the time of the framing of the Constitution, the term “natural born” with respect to citizenship was in use for many years in the American colonies, and then in the states, from British common law and legal usage. Under the common law principle of jus soli (law of the soil), persons born on English soil, even of two alien parents, were “natural born” subjects and, as noted by the Supreme Court, this “same rule” was applicable in the American colonies and “in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the Constitution …” with respect to citizens. In textual constitutional analysis, it is understood that terms used but not defined in the document must, as explained by the Supreme Court, “be read in light of British common law” since the Constitution is “framed in the language of the English common law.” The requirements for President are therefore simple and have nothing to do with the naturalization status of one’s parents: Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, California, on 20 October 1964, making her at least 35 years old and unambiguously a natural-born United States citizen. Any child born on U.S. soil is a citizen of the United States from birth, regardless of the naturalization status of the child’s parents, and regardless of Jacob Wohl’s perplexing assertion to the contrary. Though Harris spent her high school years in Canada, she has been resident in the United States since her time as an undergraduate at Howard University that began in 1982, and she has served in public office in the U.S. continuously since the 1990s. Jacob Wohl is no stranger to invective targeting foreigners, and he seemingly attempted to portray Harris’ high school years in Canada as some sort of nefarious evidence of (perhaps ironically) foreign influence in American politics. “Is it too much to ask to have a President that was born and RAISED in America?” Wohl implored his audience. Kamala Harris, the daughter of a Stanford professor father and breast cancer researcher mother, describes herself as having been raised “in Berkeley and in Oakland and in Montreal.” Her parents divorced when she was seven years old, after which she lived with her mother, Shayamala Harris, whose work took her to positions with the Jewish General Hospital and the McGill University Department of Medicine, both of which are located in Montreal, in the Canadian province of Quebec.
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3941
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North Carolina health officials report pediatric flu death.
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North Carolina has its first pediatric flu death for the 2019-2020 flu season, health officials said.
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true
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Health, General News, North Carolina, Flu
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A child in the western part of the state died in December from complications from the flu, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services said in a news release on Thursday. The department said it won’t release any additional information on the child. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been 27 pediatric flu deaths across the country as of Jan. 4. According to the department, there have been 22 deaths in North Carolina from the flu this season. Of those deaths, 14 involve people aged 65 and older.
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5225
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Trump escapes blame for ethanol policy hurting corn farmers.
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Midwest farmers and their Republican elected officials rarely miss a chance to shower President Donald Trump with praise when he takes actions they believe help agriculture, but they’re now parsing their words over the administration’s policies dealing with ethanol.
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true
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Iowa, General News, Environment, Tom Vilsack, Agriculture, Biofuels, Donald Trump
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While they have offered their effusive thanks to Trump for his support for the Environmental Protection Agency to allow year-round sales of E15, a higher blend of ethanol, they have criticized that same agency but not the president over an EPA recommendation last week that could limit growth of the biofuels industry. Tom Vilsack, a former U.S. agriculture secretary and Iowa governor, said the mixed policies have caused confusion. “What we need is a clear indication from the Trump administration consistent with the president’s promises that it is in support of the ethanol industry and biofuels industry,” said Vilsack, a Democrat. “You’re either with the industry or you’re not.” It’s hard to overstate the importance in the Midwest of the ethanol industry, which consumes roughly 40% of the nation’s corn crop. Corn production has nearly doubled in the past 30 years, and without an ever-larger ethanol market farmers fear demand for the grain could plunge. With that in mind, Trump has repeatedly told farmers he supported the ethanol industry, and in his push to have the EPA allow more sales of the higher ethanol blend, he’s kept his promise. But it’s been a different story when it comes to another EPA recommendation. Last week, the EPA released its annual rule for the level of ethanol that must be blended into the nation’s gasoline supply. The 15 billion gallon (56.78 billion liter) target for corn-based ethanol disappointed the industry because many expected the EPA to expand the requirement to offset exemptions given to many fuel refineries that have reduced demand by an estimated 2.6 billion gallons (9.84 billion liters) since Trump took office. The EPA also ignored a 2017 order from a federal appeals court to restore 500 million gallons (1892.65 million liters) exempted by the EPA from 2016. For this rule, Republicans chided EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler but not Trump, who appointed the former coal industry lobbyist to head the agency. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, for example, didn’t blame Trump but instead stated, “I urge Administrator Wheeler to reallocate waived gallons and ensure that the agency is giving our farmers and ethanol producers the predictability they need, especially during tough times for agriculture.” U.S. Representative Cindy Axne, a Democrat whose southwest Iowa district includes thousands of farmers and six ethanol refineries, said Trump isn’t taking responsibility for policies that hurt farmers already reeling from trade disputes. “I think that this administration definitely has an ability to hold the president away from the decisions that the EPA is making and not show them as part of the administration’s decision,” she said. “It is the administration’s decision to allow one of its departments to create policy that does this.” Perhaps the most direct criticism of Trump by a Republican has been by U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, who said some farmers think the EPA is breaking the president’s commitments to farmers to uphold the ethanol laws. “I urge President Trump to compel EPA to reverse course and keep his word to the forgotten Americans who have faithfully stood with him,” Grassley said. Asked whether the president was ultimately accountable, Grassley referenced a phrase displayed on the desk of President Harry Truman. “I can’t help but answer yes to your question because Truman made it very clear the buck stops here,” he said. Harold Wolle, a farmer near St. James in southern Minnesota, said people are disappointed the EPA is letting some refineries reduce their ethanol use. “The news that I’m reading and hearing is that the president is pushing the EPA to change how it grants these waivers but the proof will be in the pudding. We’ll see,” said Wolle, a member of the National Corn Growers Association board. Northwest Iowa farmer Kelly Nieuwenhuis said blame is focusing on the EPA but farmers realize Trump appointed former administrator Scott Pruitt and then named Wheeler. “There’s always politics involved and that’s the frustrating part,” he said. “It seems definitely that the oil industry has some control over the EPA in our view. It comes down to money, campaign contributions basically.” Nieuwenhuis, 60, who farms 2,100 acres with two brothers growing corn and soybeans, said the EPA doesn’t seem to answer to anyone. The EPA has argued in court that the Clean Air Act gives the agency substantial discretion to decide small refinery exemptions. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, said she’s talked with Trump, Wheeler and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue recently about the refinery waivers and the renewable fuel standard, which sets the ethanol limits. She said they understand the concerns of Iowa, the nation’s largest ethanol producer and biggest corn grower. She blames the EPA, not Trump. “I urge EPA Secretary Wheeler to reverse course and uphold President Trump’s commitment to rural America by strengthening the RFS and putting an end to the abusive practice of granting waivers to profitable oil refineries,” Reynolds said. Release of the draft rule last week begins a public comment process during which the pressure is sure to increase on the administration to revise the final rule with higher ethanol targets for 2020. ___ Follow David Pitt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/davepitt
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7073
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Tina Turner reveals husband gave her kidney for transplant.
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Tina Turner has revealed that she underwent a kidney transplant with an organ donated by her husband.
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true
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Tina Turner, Erwin Bach, AP Top News, Music, Entertainment, Health, Kidney transplants, Europe
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The 78-year-old singer says in an upcoming autobiography that she has suffered from kidney disease, and by 2016 her kidneys were at “20 percent and plunging rapidly.” She says her husband, Erwin Bach, “shocked me by saying that he wanted to give me one of his kidneys.” Turner says she was “overwhelmed by the enormity of his offer.” Turner writes that afterward she felt “happy, overwhelmed and relieved that we’d come through this alive.” Turner, whose hits include “Proud Mary” and “What’s Love Got to do With It?,” married German music executive Bach in 2013 after a long relationship. Extracts from “Tina Turner: My Love Story” were published Saturday in the Daily Mail newspaper and released by its U.K. publisher Penguin Random House. The book is published in Britain and North America later this month. In the book, Turner encourages people to sign up to donate organs in order to save lives.
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24602
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"Page 992 of the health care bill will ""establish school-based 'health' clinics. Your children will be indoctrinated and your grandchildren may be aborted!"
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School health clinics would not provide abortions
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false
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Abortion, National, Health Care, Liberty Counsel,
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"Critics of the Democratic health care proposal have been increasingly raising concerns that the plan would provide taxpayer-subsidized abortions (a claim we address here ). The Liberty Counsel, a conservative group, puts a different twist on that concern, alleging that Page 992 of the bill ""will establish school-based 'health' clinics. Your children will be indoctrinated and your grandchildren may be aborted!"" The claim comes from a long list of items allegedly in the bill that is posted on the group's Web site and has been widely circulated in a chain e-mail. The list looks a lot like one that we checked in July, based partly on blog postings by Peter Fleckenstein on his blog Common Sense from a Common Man . In fact, the Liberty Counsel says it adapted its memo from Fleckenstein's original work. The group describes its mission as an ""education and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and the traditional family"" and is affiliated with Liberty University School of Law in Lynchburg, Va. The group said it was so troubled by Fleckenstein's analysis that it ""doubted its accuracy, so the staff in our D.C. office compared it to the voluminous bill. What they found astonished us so much that we had to share it with you today. You can read our updated and revised overview of HR 3200 and you will be alarmed, too."" It appears to us that Liberty Counsel elaborated on Fleckenstein's original take on the clinics. He wrote, ""PG 993 Govt will establish school based health clinics. Ur kids wont have a chance."" School-based health clinics are different from the traditional nurse's offices that schools have long had. Typically, the clinics are staffed with nurse practitioners, doctors and social workers who do everything from administer immunizations to provide nutrition advice. They can also provide counseling. Federal and state governments have long provided funding to support these clinics, which tend to crop up in areas where students have limited access to other health care services. ""These clinics have been around for 30 years,"" said Divya Mohan Little, communications director for the National Assembly on School-Based Health Care. ""They've been getting a lot of attention recently in a time of recession because fewer kids are being covered and aren't able to see doctors."" Of the 2,000 clinics nationwide, none provide abortions and the bill would not change that, said Mohan Little. There are three major versions of the bill floating around the House — one in the Energy and Commerce Committee, one in the Ways and Means Committee and one in the Education and Labor Committee — and we checked all three just to make sure. All three bills have identical language when it comes to the school clinics. Basically, the bill would provide grants so the clinics can continue providing ""comprehensive health assessments, diagnosis, and treatment of minor, acute, and chronic medical conditions and referrals to, and follow-up for, specialty care."" The money could also be used to provide ""mental health assessments, crisis interventions, counseling, treatment and referral to a continuum of services including emergency psychiatric care, community support programs, inpatient care and outpatient care."" The clinics would have the option to provide, ""oral health, social and age-appropriate health education services including nutritional counseling."" Clinics getting federal dollars must act in accordance with federal, state and local law, according to the bills. For example, clinics in Louisiana are not even allowed to counsel students on abortion, according to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. And here's the important part: the bills now before the House say nothing about the school clinics being able to offer abortions. Perplexed, we called the Liberty Counsel to see how they could make the connection from innocuous langauge about clinics that have been around for 30 years to the claim that ""children will be indoctrinated and your grandchildren may be aborted!"" We spoke with Sarah Speller at the Liberty Counsel, who told us that the group had been getting a lot of calls about the memo and that everyone there was very busy as a result. However, she assured us that ""as far as our office can tell, everything in the overview is accurate. That's about all I can tell you,"" she said. ""I'm just relaying what I've been told to say."" That's not persuasive. We see no language in the three main versions of the bill that would allow school-based clinics, which have a long history of providing basic health services to underprivileged students, to provide abortions. Nor would the clinics even be new — they have been around for three decades."
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16078
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The reason why Cubans don't have access to 21st century telecommunications — like smart phones, like access to the Internet — is because it is illegal in Cuba.
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"Rubio said that rather than the U.S. embargo, the reason why Cubans ""don't have access to 21st century telecommunications — like smart phones, like access to the Internet — is because it is illegal in Cuba."" ""Illegal"" is probably the wrong word. There are some ways to legally access the Internet in Cuba, but not in one's home, or on mobile devices, and not by connecting to the full World Wide Web. Internet use is primarily restricted to government-run access points that are heavily monitored. The usage rates, set by the regime, are so expensive that it is cost prohibitive for most Cubans to log on. Political dissenters are barred from publishing online and are punished if they do. The end result is similar to full prohibition: Cuba has one of the lowest rates of Internet access in the world. The U.S. sanctions have played a role in limited availability of technology. However, Rubio is right that the Cuban government has nearly complete control over the Internet. That isn’t a result of sanctions on telecommunication business activity in Cuba. Even if the United States fully repeals its embargo, government control over Internet access could continue."
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true
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National, Economy, Foreign Policy, Technology, Marco Rubio,
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"There’s a good chance most Cubans won’t be able to read this article. And the reason why — lack of Internet access — is a point of a contention between President Barack Obama and Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. Obama on Wednesday, Dec. 17 announced sweeping changes to the United States’ decades-old isolation policy against Cuba, promising renewed diplomatic relations and an easing of regulations on commerce. Obama said the drastic shift in approach to the Communist-controlled island would help bolster the Cuban people, who he said have suffered from America’s cold shoulder. ""I believe in the free flow of information,"" Obama said. ""Unfortunately, our sanctions on Cuba have denied Cubans access to technology that has empowered individuals around the globe."" Rubio, a Florida Republican and a Cuban American, chastised Obama’s comments in an animated rebuttal. ""The president said that the people of Cuba do not have access to advanced, 21st century modern technology for communications and telecommunications because of the U.S. embargo. That is false,"" Rubio said. ""The reason why they don't have access to 21st century telecommunications — like smart phones, like access to the Internet — is because it is illegal in Cuba."" Obama’s statement wasn’t as full-throated as Rubio made it sound. And some of what Obama suggested is true, experts told us. That said, Rubio has the better part of the argument that Cuba’s restrictive policies loom large over the debate. Cuba’s restrictions Cuba has less access to the Internet than most countries in the world. It is the only country in the Western Hemisphere with an Internet access rating of ""not free"" by Freedom House, a human rights advocacy group. Citing the National Statistics Office in Cuba, Freedom House said about 23 percent of Cubans have access to the Internet. But those numbers, while very low, are likely inflated: Many of those people have access only to a tightly controlled Cuban intranet that includes email and government-approved sites. Outside experts, Freedom House said, estimate only about 5 percent of people have access to the full World Wide Web. The government of Cuba maintains almost complete control over telecommunications industries in the country, and it uses a mix of repressive policies and price gouging to keep Cubans offline. Regulations essentially prohibit private Internet use in homes and it is illegal to access the Internet outside government-controlled methods. On top of that, the cost of even a basic computer is more than twice the average Cuban’s annual salary. Cubans who log on to the Internet do so via public, government-run access points. There, patrons deal with some of the slowest speeds in the world. And rates set by the government make it difficult for the average worker on a $20 weekly salary to consistently log on. Checking email costs $1.50 an hour. Access to the national intranet is $0.60 per hour, and international websites are $4.50 per hour, Freedom House said. Bloggers and dissenters are quickly shut down and, in many cases, imprisoned. Alan Gross, the imprisoned American contractor released by Cuba this week, was arrested for building telecommunications infrastructure on the island. As for smartphones, most mobile phones can send messages, even internationally, but cannot access the Internet. GPS and satellite capabilities are prohibited. An iPhone, if procured, would be a pretty dumb phone in Cuba. Cuban officials have recently indicated a potential shift in policy that could open the Internet to personal and mobile usage, but it’s also possible it will be limited to Cuba’s intranet and email. Such promises have been made before. Cuba installed a 1,600 kilometer fiber-optic cable between the island and Venezuela in 2011 with financial help from China (a project completed despite the U.S. embargo, it should be noted). It was supposed to increase speeds and access for Cubans. Actual advances have been modest. And it’s not as though the United States is the only country capable of supplying Cuba with telecommunications technology in today’s global economy. The regime has prioritized preventing political dissent over technological advancement. There’s no guarantee that will change if U.S. policy does. This is why Rubio is right in saying that the U.S. embargo is far from the only factor affecting access. Sure, Cuba is poor and has bad infrastructure, but there are poorer countries with better Internet access, said Larry Press, an information systems professor at California State University Dominguez Hills who writes a blog on Internet access in Cuba. When infrastructure improved in Cuba, access largely did not. ""I think Rubio is closer to the truth than Obama,"" Press said. ""Both have a degree of truth, but the Cuban government's fear of the Internet was a bigger hindrance than the embargo."" The embargo effect Rubio was not quite right, however, when he said that Obama’s comment was unequivocally false. Obama said that U.S. sanctions on Cuba ""have denied Cubans access to technology."" This is true to a certain extent. Part of Cubans’ access problem has to do with the exorbitant cost of technology, relative to how poor the country is, and lifting those restrictions could help that problem. In 2009, Obama cracked the door open marginally for American telecommunications companies to operate in Cuba by allowing them to establish connectivity between Cuba and the United States, and letting satellite radio and television companies serve Cuban customers. Additionally, people could donate (but not sell) telecommunication devices like computers and phones to Cubans. The changes announced Dec. 17 further opened up the ability for U.S. companies to build telecommunications infrastructure in Cuba and it allows for the commercial sale of communication devices and software. Matt Borman, deputy assistant secretary of export administration, told PolitiFact that if American companies were able to compete with other foreign telecommunications suppliers in Cuba, there is an expectation that it would pressure the government to create more viable infrastructure. That could spur more Internet freedom. In a report published in 2010, the Brookings Institution made a similar argument. A of couple experts told us that Obama’s side carries weight because Castro has made an effort in recent years to ease some restrictions, such as lifting the ban on personal computers. (It may be hard to believe, but internet access in Cuba used to be even worse.) So the United States’ sanctions prevent Cubans from acquiring technology that is now legal, said Julia Sweig, an expert on Cuba and Latin America at the Council on Foreign Relations. Our ruling Rubio said that rather than the U.S. embargo, the reason why Cubans ""don't have access to 21st century telecommunications — like smart phones, like access to the Internet — is because it is illegal in Cuba."" ""Illegal"" is probably the wrong word. There are some ways to legally access the Internet in Cuba, but not in one's home, or on mobile devices, and not by connecting to the full World Wide Web. Internet use is primarily restricted to government-run access points that are heavily monitored. The usage rates, set by the regime, are so expensive that it is cost prohibitive for most Cubans to log on. Political dissenters are barred from publishing online and are punished if they do. The end result is similar to full prohibition: Cuba has one of the lowest rates of Internet access in the world. The U.S. sanctions have played a role in limited availability of technology. However, Rubio is right that the Cuban government has nearly complete control over the Internet. That isn’t a result of sanctions on telecommunication business activity in Cuba. Even if the United States fully repeals its embargo, government control over Internet access could continue."
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7413
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Oregon sees 1st case of childhood disease linked to virus.
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Oregon has confirmed its first confirmed case of a rare inflammatory disease in children that has been linked to COVID-19.
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true
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Health, General News, Oregon, Infectious diseases, Portland, Virus Outbreak, Public health
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The Oregon Health Authority announced the case of pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome Wednesday. The case in Oregon involves a girl who had confirmed COVID-19. She is being treated at Randall Children’s Hospital at Legacy Emanuel in Portland. Officials said the syndrome is similar to Kawasaki disease, which causes fever, rash, swelling of hands and feet and inflammation of the mouth, lips and throat, among other symptoms. The syndrome appears to be an uncommon but serious complication of COVID-19 in children, said Paul Cieslak, M.D., medical director for infectious diseases and immunizations at the Health Authority Public Health Division. The syndrome is rare and most children infected with the virus develop only mild illness. The Oregon Health Authority also on Wednesday reported four new deaths linked to the coronavirus, raising the total number of deaths to at least 134. The number of people in Oregon who have tested positive for the disease increased to 3,416. The health authority says two women, ages 90 and 100, and a 91-year-old man in Polk County, and a 91-year-old Washington County woman most recently died of the virus. Also as of Wednesday, 33 of Oregon’s 36 counties had turned in plans for gradually lifting the state’s stay-home order. Only Oregon’s three largest counties, Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties, have yet not submitted plans, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. Multnomah County officials said Friday they have no firm timeline for the application, but it would take at least three weeks to hire the contact tracers required by the state to reopen. Washington County health officials are hoping to have a plan for their Board of Commissioners to vote on by May 19. They have targeted reopening in early to mid-June. Clackamas County officials say they are about two weeks out from filing an application to reopen. Brown began accepting applications Friday, saying her office would process them in the order received and consult with the Oregon Health Authority in giving approval. Some counties could be approved to reopen as early as May 15. Counties must meet seven criteria, including declining levels of COVID-19 hospital admissions over a 14-day period; minimum levels of testing and contact tracing capacity; adequate hospital surge capacity, quarantine facilities and personal protection equipment; and finalized sector guidelines from the state to communicate to individual businesses. The virus causes mild to moderate symptoms in most patients, and the vast majority recover. But it is highly contagious and can cause severe illness and death in some patients, particularly the elderly and those with underlying health conditions.
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7507
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WHO chief ‘very encouraged’ by dip in Congo Ebola cases.
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The head of the World Health Organization said Tuesday that experts are “very encouraged” after only three new cases of Ebola have been reported in the past week in eastern Congo, a sign that the world’s second deadliest Ebola epidemic in history could finally be waning after 18 months.
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true
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International News, Ebola virus, Public health, Africa, Epidemics, Senegal, United Nations, Virus Outbreak, General News
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The epidemic that already has killed at least 2,249 people has posed challenges never faced before in public health — the deadly Ebola virus in a conflict zone where not only militia fighters but also communities frightened of outsiders have attacked health workers. Those security risks have brought vaccination efforts to a standstill for days at a time, while the virus continued to spread in areas where WHO and others didn’t have safe passage. But health officials also have new ways to fight Ebola that didn’t exist during the 2014-2016 outbreak that killed 11,325 people. Two experimental vaccines were given on a compassionate use basis, one of which later received regulatory approval in both the U.S. and Europe. Officials are also testing a number of Ebola treatments though none is yet licensed. “We are very encouraged by the current trend. There have only been three cases in the past week, and no cases in the past 3 days,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Tuesday before offering an update on the new virus that has sickened tens of thousands in Asia and put health authorities around the world on high alert. “But until we have no cases for 42 days, it’s not over,” he said, referring to Ebola. “As you know, any single case could re-ignite the epidemic, and the security situation in eastern (Congo) remains extremely fragile. So we take the progress on Ebola with caution, although it’s a big success.” The latest Ebola outbreak in Congo began in August 2018, only about two years after the massive epidemic in West Africa finally ended in June 2016. That public health disaster also showed how hard it can be to declare victory in the battle against Ebola, which has an incubation period of 21 days. Health officials must wait for twice that length — 42 days — without new cases before they can declare a country Ebola-free. Statements to that effect later had to be retracted in each of the three countries hardest hit during that 2014-2016 epidemic: Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. Liberia finally announced being Ebola-free in January 2016, after additional cases were discovered after previous proclamations in September 2015 and May 2015. Similarly, Sierra Leone also had to make an Ebola-free declaration twice, first in November 2015 and then in March 2016. Guinea, where the West African epidemic began, was the last of the three countries to declare a conclusive end to Ebola in June 2016, after an earlier statement in December 2015 proved false when more cases were discovered.
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“In a matter of days, and in some cases the moment may even have passed, that we’ve reached the peak of the rate of infections.”
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U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey wants the president to reopen the economy, and in an interview with Politico, he said he sees clear signs that the country is ready – even as top public health officials studying the coronavirus warn against moving too quickly. On Monday, states reported at least 1,500 new fatalities, a figure below last week’s running tally of roughly 2,000 deaths every 24 hours. And the number of new cases reported Monday – about 23,000 – was also well below last week’s trend of 30,000 to 50,000 new cases each day. Models created by a University of Washington global health research center indicate it’s been five days since the use of hospital resources peaked nationwide. But these models don’t account for the sort of relaxation of social distancing rules that Toomey is pushing for.
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mixture
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National, Coronavirus, Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey,
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"U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey wants the president to reopen the economy, and in an interview with Politico, he said he sees clear signs that the country is ready – even as top public health officials studying the coronavirus warn against moving too quickly. ""In a matter of days, and in some cases the moment may even have passed, that we’ve reached the peak of the rate of infections,"" said Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania. We wondered whether the number of new cases reported each day has subsided and whether case counts are likely to stay down if the economy roars back to life like Toomey wants. Toomey is right that the coronavirus crisis in the U.S. has begun to stabilize. On Monday, states reported at least 1,500 new fatalities, a figure below last week’s running tally of roughly 2,000 deaths every 24 hours. And the number of new cases reported Monday – about 23,000 – was also well below last week’s trend of 30,000 to 50,000 new cases each day. These signs led a coalition of mostly Democratic governors on the east and west coasts to announce plans to coordinate the reopening of their economies. But even as they announced their pacts, the governors offered no timeline for ending the lockdowns that have kept the vast majority of more than 100 million residents of their states stuck at home. Toomey relied on a statement made last week by Pennsylvania Department of Health Secretary Rachel Levine when he made his claim about reaching the outbreak’s peak, said Steve Kelly, a spokesman for the senator. Levine said she believes Pennsylvania has enough hospital beds, ICU beds and ventilators to meet demand but that ""we’re watching that data very closely."" Data compiled by her department shows that 41 percent of hospital beds, 39 percent of ICU beds and nearly 70 percent of ventilators across the state are still available, meaning Pennsylvania’s health care system is not at risk of being overrun. This is what makes the senator believe it’s time to reopen the economy in ""a gradual and safe way,"" Kelly said. Models created by a University of Washington global health research center indicate it’s been five days since the use of hospital resources peaked nationwide. But these models don’t account for the sort of relaxation of social distancing rules that Toomey and other Republicans are pushing for. Hospital capacity will be tested again once social distancing ends, and a new Washington Post analysis shows that in many parts of the country, including large swathes of Pennsylvania, it won’t hold up. A team of Post reporters analyzed the availability of critical care resources across the country using data sets assembled by Definitive Healthcare, an analytics company that mines government filings, including those of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as well as commercial insurance claims. Imagining a scenario where the coronavirus infects two in 10 adults over the next year, the reporters found a patchwork of possible preparedness shortcomings in cities and towns where the full force of the virus has yet to hit and where people may not be following isolation and social distancing orders. The Post determined that more than half of the nation’s population lives in areas that are less prepared for the virus than New York City, where in early April officials scrambled to add more ICU beds and find extra ventilators amid a surge or coronavirus patients. Parts of Pennsylvania that border Maryland and Ohio would fall especially short, the Post found. Making the case to reopen the nation’s economy, Toomey said, ""In a matter of days, and in some cases the moment may even have passed, that we’ve reached the peak of the rate of infections."" Data on coronavirus case counts and fatalities show that the country’s outbreak is subsiding. But Toomey’s comments don’t account for what will happen once social distancing ends. A new Washington Post analysis shows that hospitals in many parts of the country will be overrun, including large swathes of Pennsylvania, if two in 10 adults contract the virus over the next year. Toomey’s comments to Politico are partially accurate but leave out important details."
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Barley lowers not one but two types of 'bad cholesterol', review suggests
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This news release summarizes a meta-analysis of studies measuring the cholesterol-lowering properties of barley. The analysis found that barley consumption was associated with lower cholesterol but its effectiveness in reducing risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) is implied, not proven. The release would have been much stronger had it quantified benefits and been more descriptive of what the research actually found: that barley can modify various cholesterol levels, but whether this contributes to lower CVD risk is still an open question. This is important research that is essentially gathering together (and meta-analyzing) randomized trials that examine the cholesterol-lowering potential of barley β-glucan on low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (non-HDL-C) and apolipoprotein B (apoB). Since modifications of these cholesterol markers may contribute to CVD risk reduction, they are worth studying. It is important, however, that dietary or nutritional studies include appropriate caveats, and not claim effects that are not seen in the research.
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mixture
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Hospital news release
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Barley, like oats or other grains are cheap and plentiful. Mentioning their cost in the story is unlikely to be an important factor. There was no quantification of benefits. You have to go back to the original study to learn this: “A median dose of 6.5 and 6.9 g/day of barley β-glucan for a median duration of 4 weeks significantly reduced LDL-C (MD = − 0.25 mmol/l (95% CI: − 0.30, − 0.20)) and non-HDL-C (MD = − 0.31 mmol/l (95% CI: − 0.39, − 0.23)), respectively, with no significant changes to apoB levels, compared with control diets.” It would have been nice to have had these reductions contextualized in a form that makes sense to the readers. There are unlikely to be harms for most people if they increased their barley consumption, but upping their daily intake could also lead to gastrointestinal problems in some people. The recommended daily consumption of barley in Canada is 3 grams but the study recommends that it be increased to 6.5 to 7 grams daily. People diagnosed with Celiac disease have most likely already been advised that consuming barley (as well as other foods containing gluten) can cause complications. The claim here is unsubstantiated: “‘After looking at the evidence, we can also say that barley is comparably effective as oats in reducing overall risk of cardiovascular disease’ said Dr. Vuksan. '” Were oats compared directly with barley in this meta-analysis? No. The study in question was a meta-analysis of more than a dozen studies on barley. It was a well conducted meta-analysis with pretty high-level evidence. The release does not mention that and muddies the waters by saying this was the first study of barley on several types of cholesterol. Well, if this is a meta-analysis of 14 studies on this question, how can it be the first? No obvious disease mongering. There’s no mention of funders and financial ties to industry which should always be disclosed as a potential conflict of interest. Several of the researchers involved have financial ties to both trade groups and corporations, according to the published report. For example, one of the authors holds Canadian and U.S. patents on a medical use of viscous fiber for certain health conditions. The release makes brief mention of barley in comparison to oats. It states that “barley is higher in fibre, has twice the protein and almost half the calories of oats, which are important considerations for those with weight or dietary concerns,” We aren’t provided any quantification of the claim. The release also skipped over some of the other common ways there are to lower cholesterol including medications, exercise, other foods and dietary supplements, and weight loss. We learn that barley is everywhere, readily available and ready to add to your food. We don’t think the release established the novelty of the research in the manner it’s claimed: “It is the first study to look at the effects of barley and barley products on both LDL and non-HDL cholesterol in addition to apolipoprotein B, or apoB, a lipoprotein that carries bad cholesterol through the blood.” How could it be the “first study” when it is looking at a group of studies? Is it the first meta-analysis to examine this question? If so, that should be mentioned. The release doesn’t engage in sensationalist or unjustified language.
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WHO says tainted food outbreak threatens 16 African nations.
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A deadly outbreak linked to tainted food in South Africa is now threatening other African nations, with neighboring Namibia reporting a confirmed case that might be connected, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.
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true
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World Health Organization, Health, Africa, Southern Africa, South Africa, Namibia, West Africa
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In a statement, WHO said it has reached out to 16 countries to help with preparedness and response to the listeriosis outbreak that has killed nearly 200 people since January 2017. South Africa’s health minister has said there have been 950 cases in all. Contaminated meat products may have been exported to two West African countries and a dozen southern African ones, the U.N. health agency said. The countries include Nigeria, the continent’s most populous nation. A South African factory has been identified as the outbreak’s source. Despite an international recall of the products, further cases are likely because of listeriosis’ potentially long incubation period, WHO said. “This outbreak is a wake-up call for countries in the region to strengthen their national food safety and disease surveillance systems,” said Matshidiso Moeti, WHO’s regional director for Africa. The 16 countries are Angola, Botswana, Congo, Ghana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
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10896
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Vitamin D supplements could help reduce falls in homebound elderly
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This release started out very strong in describing the major findings of a study of vitamin D for preventing falls — an issue of critical importance to the nation’s growing universe of senior citizens and the people who care for them. The release offers a clear summary of the problem and intervention. It also describes the intermediate endpoint (raising vitamin D levels) and the clinically important endpoint (falls). It would have been stronger if it had given the absolute reduction in fall risk (we need to know the fall rate in the control or intervention group to figure out how important the 50% reduction mentioned in the story would be), discussed cost and harm, and told us more about prior similar research. More than a third of home-bound older adults fall in any given year, and about one in 10 of those falls results in serious injury that can result in disability, placement in long-term care or death, according to a 2003 New England Journal of Medicine study. If Vitamin D supplementation via Meals on Wheels can reduce that risk, that would be important information that could help guide this vulnerable population and their caregivers. Although we have some interventions to reduce falls (e.g. balance programs), simple ways to reduce risk like vitamin supplementation are also important.
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Academic medical center news release
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The news release makes no mention of the cost of Vitamin D supplements, which would likely be important to the elderly population, many of whom live on fixed incomes. Nor does it mention a key fact about the Older Americans Act that was cited in the study itself: “Although OAA nutrition programs can provide education and counseling to encourage the use of vitamin-mineral supplements, the provision of vitamin-mineral supplements is currently not a fundable OAA service.” Relatively speaking, the cost of such supplements is minimal, but readers may not be aware of that. On the positive side, the release notes that participants in the vitamin D group had higher blood levels of the vitamin and tells us how many achieved “sufficient” and “optimal” levels. It provides the cutoffs that were used to determine those outcomes. However, with respect to the key clinical outcome — falls — the story says, “people in the vitamin D group reported approximately half the falls of those in the control group.” It’s not clear from this description how many falls were actually prevented. The study itself clarifies this in absolute terms: “The mean number of reported falls over the 5-month follow-up period was 0.5 (range 0– 4) in participants randomized to vitamin D3 and 1.1 (range 0–8) in participants randomized to active placebo.” The release makes no mention of possible harms caused by Vitamin D supplements, though the FDA website cites a laundry list of concerns that it attributes to the American Association of Family Physicians: Nausea, vomiting, poor appetite, constipation, weakness, weight loss, confusion, heart rhythm problems, deposits of calcium and phosphate in soft tissues. The release makes it clear that this was a randomized placebo-controlled trial and explained the purpose and delivery of the vitamin. It also closes with a restraining comment from one of the study researchers: “Although these initial findings are encouraging, we need to confirm the results in a larger trial,” Houston said. We’ll call that good enough for a Satisfactory rating here. The news release did not appear to exaggerate the severity of the problem. The news release cites funding sources. It makes no mention of possible conflicts of interest, but the study itself says none were found. Neither the news release nor the study makes any mention of other possible interventions that might result in fewer or less-serious falls. For example, balance programs such as Tai Chi are known to decrease fall risk. Other steps that may help include the installation of hand rails, the use of carpeting on steps, the use of bright-colored tape on steps to increase depth perception, etc. We’ll rate this Not Applicable. Although no mention was made of the availability of the vitamin supplements, it is fair to assume most readers know that they are readily available in nearly any supermarket or drug store. However, the high dose vitamin D used in this study is typically available by prescription only. The news release says that “some studies suggest vitamin D may reduce the risk of falls,” but this area has been more thoroughly studied than this statement would suggest. On the basis of available research summarized in a systematic review, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends vitamin D supplementation in community-dwelling adults aged 65 years or older who are at increased risk for falls. In addition, the study authors state that they believe their work to be the first such study conducted in homebound older adults — an important statement of novelty. The release doesn’t mention this. The news release does not use language that goes beyond what the study itself justifies.
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37416
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"Ear-piercing ""guns"" are inherently dangerous and piercing with a hollow needle is always a safer option for ear piercing."
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‘Say NO to Piercing Guns’ Viral Facebook Post
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false
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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On December 29 2019, Facebook user Stephanie Lipscy shared the following post beginning with “say NO to piercing guns,” alongside an illustration of an ear being pierced:Lipscy said that the use of ear piercing guns caused “a blunt-force trauma” that is always damaging to ears, claiming that until recently, “we didn’t have this kind of knowledge that we have now” regarding the best way to pierce ears:This is why you should say NO to piercing guns.Most guns causes a blunt-force trauma that’ll damage your ears. Yes, “back in the days”, we didn’t have this kind of knowledge that we have now. Cartilage does not respond well to the guns and could cause your cartilage to be *shattered* from the trauma. It’s harder to clean a piercing gun since it cannot be properly sterilized because it’s made of plastic. That can cause risk of infection (since it already harder to heal) and disease transmission.Why would you want to be pierced with a dull backing of an earring over a sharp, sterilize needle? It take two weeks to train someone how to use a piercing gun, and it takes 6 months to a year to fully train a piercer the knowledge of proper placements and learning of sterilization of the needles, tapers, jewelry, etc.We don’t all have the same “standard” ear.Of course there’s risk with any piercings. Proper technique and aftercare is a biggy. Go to a tattoo shop/piercing shop over going to the mall to Claire’s. Spend your money to properly get your ears pierced by a *professional piercer*.Do your research! Protect your health! Say YES to needles. ☺️Lipscy’s post mentioned Claire’s, a nationwide chain of mall stores known (along with Piercing Pagoda) for its ear piercing services using a gun. Although the post contained no citations for its claims, it did feature an illustration of what was presumably an ear being pierced. On the left side of the drawing, a hollow-tipped medical-style needle created a neat aperture in the earlobe flesh. On the right, a blunter earring post appeared to be irregularly tearing the flesh of a lobe, meeting resistance the entire way.In a little more than a week, the post had been shared over 55,000 times; since the commenting portion of the post was locked to the poster’s friends, no debate over its veracity or accuracy appeared in the comments underneath it.Immediately, the post’s claims raised a few questions apparent even to those whose familiarity with ear piercing came largely from having attending the piercing of their own or their child’s ears. Claire’s, mentioned in the post, was a common destination for the rite of ear piercing.However, perhaps as common depending on ability to pay was another prominent and long-available option: piercing at the office of a pediatrician or other doctor. Many pediatricians offer ear piercing for their patients, and pediatricians or their nurses do not seem to be using body piercing-style needles like the one seen in the illustration used for the viral post.It seemed reasonable to infer from this that doctors and other medical professionals performing ear piercing on children and adults were aware of arguments for and against the use of piercing guns, as well as the rise in professional body piercing and its practices. The Association for Professional Piercers’ (APP) “Safe Piercing” FAQ contained a section on the use of piercing guns, which began:It is the position of the Association of Professional Piercers that only sterile disposable equipment is suitable for body piercing, and that only materials which are certified as safe for internal implant should be placed in inside a fresh or unhealed piercing. We consider unsafe any procedure that places vulnerable tissue in contact with either non-sterile equipment or jewelry that is not considered medically safe for long-term internal wear. Such procedures place the health of recipients at an unacceptable risk. For this reason, APP members may not use reusable ear piercing guns for any type of piercing procedure.In a detailed answer, the APP cited sterilization concerns as well as commonly spring-loaded mechanisms exerting force (using often blunt piercing tips) as additional reasons:Although they can become contaminated with bloodborne pathogens dozens of times in one day, ear piercing guns are often not sanitized in a medically recognized way. Plastic ear piercing guns cannot be autoclave sterilized and may not be sufficiently cleaned between use on multiple clients. Even if the antiseptic wipes used were able to kill all pathogens on contact, simply wiping the external surfaces of the gun with isopropyl alcohol or other antiseptics does not kill pathogens within the working parts of the gun. Blood from one client can aerosolize, becoming airborne in microscopic particles, and contaminate the inside of the gun. The next client’s tissue and jewelry may come into contact with these contaminated surfaces. There is thus a possibility of transmitting bloodborne disease-causing microorganisms through such ear piercing, as many medical studies report.APP concluded by indicating that standards regarding sterilization and reuse of piercing guns on multiple clients were not nationally adopted, and that the practice continued with little oversight.Nevertheless, doctors and clinics seemed to eschew that manner of piercing in their practices. Guidance released by the American Academy of Pediatrics on piercing and body modifications in 2017 had largely to do with piercings other than those in earlobes, perhaps reflecting a growing trend of piercing in general (but providing little useful information on the subject of pierced ears. )Research published in 1990 in the International Journal of Pediatric Otorhinolaryngology noted that spring-loaded piercing guns in combination with a lack of training seemed to result in higher incidence of embedded earring backs, but recommendations in the research’s abstract hewed to a broader set of practices and did not recommend avoiding piercing guns altogether:The embedded earring complication may result from improper aseptic technique, insufficient training of personnel at ear-piercing centers, or piercing the ears of young. To diminish the risk of embedded earrings we recommend aseptic technique, proper training, limiting ear piercing to the lobe, frequent cleansing of the lobe, and removal of the earring if signs of infection develop.In intervening years, the AAP (as opposed to the APP) has weighed in with recommendations for safe piercing, but those guidelines remained focused on the broader context of a piercing versus the manner in which the piercing was done:Pediatric resident Suzanne Rossi had heard the questions more than once from parents of a newborn, usually at the 2- or 4-month wellness check … Not fully informed herself, she looked into literature on the subject, which she found to be sparse on infants, and shared her findings at a recent Children’s Center Grand Rounds. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), she noted, has one major recommendation: Postpone ear piercings until the child is mature enough to take care of the pierced site herself.“That’s clearly the best way to reduce the risk of infection,” Rossi said.Over and over again, when pediatricians commented on the practice of piercing the ears of infants or children, factors such as age and the child’s ability to care for the piercing site came up. Another common recommendation was to avail oneself of pediatricians‘ office piercing if at all possible, versus a kiosk in a mall:The AAP recommends that your child’s pediatrician or a well-trained nurse pierces your child’s ears, and most doctor’s offices are willing to do the piercing for a fee, which isn’t covered by insurance. If you want to go to a jewelry store to get the piercings done, check to see if the person doing the procedure is a trained professional.Tattoo parlors and body piercing salons were not mentioned in the guidance we located. More often than not, a “sterile environment” was recommended; a specific type of piercing implement was not.In instances when a specific pediatric practice explained their ear piercing methodology [PDF], more often than not they described “medical ear piercing.” Typically that involved a proprietary piercing system available only to medical professionals, marketed by a company known as Blomdahl.The first office linked above provided a series of images to demonstrate “medical ear piercing” using Blomdahl’s system. Sterility concerns raised about piercing guns appeared to be addressed through the use of a “sterile cassette” containing the earrings, discarded after each patient:Pediatricians were not the only doctors seemingly using guns in a clinical setting to pierce the ears of patients. A Manhattan Beach, California dermatologist shared video of in-office ear piercing to their page, in which a small gun is clearly used to pierce the ears of a child.Guidance available at sites like MayoClinic.com often recommending avoiding a gun for body piercing, but content with those recommendations appeared to be exclusively pertinent to body piercing (not ear piercing).The American Academy of Dermatology had scattered recommendations regarding safe ear piercing, and one such instance mentioned guns. But that organization didn’t say guns themselves were unsafe, and advised only to insist on sterile piercing environments:Some people say piercing guns aren’t the best because they’re hard to keep clean. If your piercer uses a piercing gun, be sure the part that touches you hasn’t been used on anyone else.In an age of medical spas and other businesses straddling a line of clinical and aesthetic, businesses marketing a hybrid solution between doctors’ offices and retail locations were common. One was a startup called Rowan, which offered in-home ear piercing carried out by nurses as well as a safe earring subscription box.Typically, coverage of Rowan’s services did not explain how Rowan’s staff nurses pierced the ears of its young clients. But an in-depth review published on January 2 2020 — after the post above began circulating on Facebook — included a photograph of one of Rowan’s nurses piercing a girl’s ears. In the photograph, the nurse was using a piercing gun, a detail reiterated by a commenter on a subscription box review of Rowan.In the review, its writer notes the piercing tool is not spring-loaded:Our nurse, Melissa, was sweet and patient with Ruby and her pal Amara, who wasn’t quite ready to get pierced. Nurse Melissa applied numbing cream to Ruby’s earlobes and carefully marked where the holes would go. When the big moment came, Melissa got out the piercing apparatus, which parents and kids will appreciate because it’s unassuming; no needle is visible. It’s not spring-loaded, like the piercing “guns” of the ’80s and ’90s; Rowan’s manual method is better for delicate little lobes. In fact, the company consulted with one of the top earlobe plastic surgeons in the United States to determine the best — and safest — way to pierce children’s ears.A similar business in New York City called Clinical Ear Piercing seemed to feature piercing services similar to Rowan. A FAQ on Clinical Ear Piercing’s website explicitly described its equipment as a “gun”:The piercing is performed using a medical ear piercing system used exclusively by medical practitioners. Earrings are prepackaged in sterile cassettes. You can be assured that anything that comes into direct contact with your skin is one-time use and disposed of after every client, therefore there is no chance of cross-contamination. We pierce babies using only a medical-grade piercing gun. Some older children can be pierced with a needle if they are able to sit still for the entire procedure.Rachel Smith, nurse and owner of Clinical Ear Piercing, started the business in 2014. In an April 2017 piece in National Jeweler, Smith explained why she believed piercing guns were a safer option for young patients and earring-wearers:Smith, a registered pediatric nurse, developed a reputation for expertly piercing newborn babies and children, so much so that in 2014 she founded a company dedicated to the service, Clinical Ear Piercing. […]Smith uses a piercing gun rather than a needle because of the former’s stability, which is essential with infants in particular.Debate over piercing guns appeared in a very extensive 2016 Racked piece about the history and culture of ear piercings. Smith was quoted, as was piercer Miro Hernandez:This brings us to the other site of potential controversy in the piercing world, piercing guns. “We have a no-piercing-guns stance because of all the repercussions and potential damage they can cause, the questions about sterility and the quality of jewelry, all this stuff comes into play.” Rachel Smith of Clinical Ear Piercing says there is limited research on the difference between piercing with a gun or a needle, but that it is one of the most common questions she gets. She ultimately concluded that “there’s no difference. The tissue damage is virtually the same.”Still, people like Hernandez take a hard line against the guns: “With a piercing gun, it’s a stud that’s basically loaded in a spring-load cartridge and it’s forced through, and it’s ripping and it’s causing trauma and damage. Whereas with a piercing needle you can make a really clean, simple single incision.” With the rare family doctor who still does piercings, they tend to use guns, though maybe a dermatologist — again, the rare one who actually bothers doing them — will opt for a needle.Hernandez’s “hard line” stance on piercing guns was, in part, because they were spring-loaded. But the medical grade equipment favored by clinical ear piercers and doctors’ offices appeared to not be spring loaded, thereby not exerting the same force. The article noted that clinicians typically used piercing guns, but dermatologists sometimes opted to pierce with needles — a practice that did not sound especially well-suited for infants or small children.Smith said she was asked most about claims that piercing guns were less safe than needles for earlobes, and she opined that there was “no difference” between the two methods when it specifically came to piercing ears. Smith also indicated there was “limited research” on the methods.We attempted to contact Rowan, Blomdahl, and Clinical Ear Piercing to ask about why clinicians appeared to opt for guns more often than needles, but have not yet received responses. On occasion, clinicians using Blomdahl’s medical ear piercing system indicated [PDF] the piercing implement was “not a gun”:No. Our instrument is a medical grade piercer. EVERY part of the instrument that comes in contact with the ears is disposable. The earrings are packaged singly and are completely encapsulated so there is no cross contamination whatsoever.In contrast, reviewers typically described the system as “a piercing gun.” Based on the above information, the primary differences between retail piercing guns and medical setting piercing tools were single-use cassettes or implements, and whether the device was spring-loaded or not.We did locate research contrasting the methods, published in 2008 in the Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive & Aesthetic Surgery. Researchers, writing that “literature suggests that a piercing gun, mainly used by jewellers to pierce the [ear lobe], may [cause] excessive cartilaginous damage,” noted that “no comparative histological studies [had] been performed” prior to their study to “evaluate the extent of damage to ear cartilage using different piercing techniques.” In the course of their research, they contrasted different piercing tools and piercing guns with needles, and described their methodology:Twenty-two fresh human cadaver ears were pierced using two spring loaded piercing guns (Caflon and Blomdahl), one hand force system (Studex) and a piercing needle (16G i.v. catheter). Extent of damage to the perichondrium and cartilage was quantified using a transverse section along the pin tract and compared between the different methods.They found “significant difference in the amount of injury between the different techniques was observed,” writing that the “pattern of injury was similar in all techniques, showing perichondrium stripped from the cartilage around the pin tract, with most damage present on the exit site.” The study’s conclusion noted assumptions in literature about the purported superiority of needles over piercing guns, finding that they appeared to be unfounded, but reiterating a focus on sterility and aftercare:In contradiction with assumptions in the literature, all piercing methods give the same extent of damage to cartilage and perichondrium. Each method is expected to have the same risk for perichondritis, thus in the prevention of post-piercing perichondritis focus should be on other factors such as hygiene and after-care.A Facebook post about “why you should say NO to piercing guns” was one of several popular pieces of circulating advice about ear piercing (lobes, not cartilage) and the purported “blunt-force trauma that’ll damage your ears” inherent. A rise in the popularity of body piercing undoubtedly influenced claims of that type, but the circulating post lacked citations and information from doctors and clinicians. Ear piercing stood apart from body piercing due to the former occurring in doctors’ offices (and mall kiosks) with regularity.A spike in the popularity of piercing has not led most medical and clinical ear piercing procedures to transition to needle piercing, and companies like Clinical Ear Piercing cited stability and sterility as reasons for using a piercing implement sometimes described as a “gun” in its practice. The only relevant clinical research comparing ear piercing guns with needles demonstrated identical outcomes between the two, suggesting that it was at the very least not necessary to have infants and childrens’ ears pierced at body piercing studios. Doctors particularly seemed to favor the Blomdahl system, marketed exclusively to medical professionals and reliant on what was often described as a piercing gun. Companies staffed by nurses also used a “gun” to pierce ears, as did some dermatologists. It seemed a reasonable inference that if needle-only piercing was in any way a preferable procedure to a gun, doctors offices and clinical settings would have adopted it; they have not.
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3491
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Is the stethoscope dying? High-tech rivals pose a threat.
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Two centuries after its invention, the stethoscope — the very symbol of the medical profession — is facing an uncertain prognosis.
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true
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AP Top News, Chicago, Health, General News, Medical schools, Ultrasound, Business, Smartphones, Artificial intelligence, Technology, Weekend Reads, U.S. News
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It is threatened by hand-held devices that are also pressed against the chest but rely on ultrasound technology, artificial intelligence and smartphone apps instead of doctors’ ears to help detect leaks, murmurs, abnormal rhythms and other problems in the heart, lungs and elsewhere. Some of these instruments can yield images of the beating heart or create electrocardiogram graphs. Dr. Eric Topol, a world-renowned cardiologist, considers the stethoscope obsolete, nothing more than a pair of “rubber tubes.” It “was OK for 200 years,” Topol said. But “we need to go beyond that. We can do better.” In a longstanding tradition, nearly every U.S. medical school presents incoming students with a white coat and stethoscope to launch their careers. It’s more than symbolic — stethoscope skills are still taught, and proficiency is required for doctors to get their licenses. Over the last decade, though, the tech industry has downsized ultrasound scanners into devices resembling TV remotes. It has also created digital stethoscopes that can be paired with smartphones to create moving pictures and readouts. Proponents say these devices are nearly as easy to use as stethoscopes and allow doctors to watch the body in motion and actually see things such as leaky valves. “There’s no reason you would listen to sounds when you can see everything,” Topol said. At many medical schools, it’s the newer devices that really get students’ hearts pumping. “Wow!” ″Whoa!” ″This is awesome,” Indiana University medical students exclaimed in a recent class as they learned how to use a hand-held ultrasound device on a classmate, watching images of his lub-dubbing heart on a tablet screen. The Butterfly iQ device, made by Guilford, Connecticut-based Butterfly Network Inc., went on the market last year. An update will include artificial intelligence to help users position the probe and interpret the images. Students at the Indianapolis-based medical school, one of the nation’s largest, learn stethoscope skills but also get training in hand-held ultrasound in a program launched there last year by Dr. Paul Wallach, an executive associate dean. He created a similar program five years ago at the Medical College of Georgia and predicts that within the next decade, hand-held ultrasound devices will become part of the routine physical exam, just like the reflex hammer. The devices advance “our ability to take peek under the skin into the body,” he said. But Wallach added that, unlike some of his colleagues, he isn’t ready to declare the stethoscope dead. He envisions the next generation of physicians wearing “a stethoscope around the neck and an ultrasound in the pocket.” Modern-day stethoscopes bear little resemblance to the first stethoscope, invented in the early 1800s by Frenchman Rene Laennec, but they work essentially the same way. Laennec’s creation was a hollow tube of wood, almost a foot long, that made it easier to hear heart and lung sounds than pressing an ear against the chest. Rubber tubes, earpieces and the often cold metal attachment that is placed against the chest came later, helping to amplify the sounds. When the stethoscope is pressed against the body, sound waves make the diaphragm — the flat metal disc part of the device — and the bell-shaped underside vibrate. That channels the sound waves up through the tubes to the ears. Conventional stethoscopes typically cost under $200, compared with at least a few thousand dollars for some of the high-tech devices. But picking up and interpreting body sounds is subjective and requires a sensitive ear — and a trained one. With medical advances and competing devices over the past few decades, “the old stethoscope is kind of falling on hard times in terms of rigorous training,” said Dr. James Thomas, a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. “Some recent studies have shown that graduates in internal medicine and emergency medicine may miss as many of half of murmurs using a stethoscope.” Northwestern is involved in testing new technology created by Eko, a Berkeley, California-based maker of smart stethoscopes. To improve detection of heart murmurs, Eko is developing artificial intelligence algorithms for its devices, using recordings of thousands of heartbeats. The devices produce a screen message telling the doctor whether the heart sounds are normal or if murmurs are present. Dennis Callinan, a retired Chicago city employee with heart disease, is among the study participants. At age 70, he has had plenty of stethoscope exams but said he feels no nostalgia for the devices. “If they can get a better reading using the new technology, great,” Callinan said. Chicago pediatrician Dr. Dave Drelicharz has been in practice for just over a decade and knows the allure of newer devices. But until the price comes down, the old stalwart “is still your best tool,” Drelicharz said. Once you learn to use the stethoscope, he said, it “becomes second nature.” “During my work hours in my office, if I don’t have it around my shoulders,” he said, “it’s as though I was feeling almost naked.” ___ Follow AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner: @LindseyTanner ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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14256
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Studies have consistently failed to establish the existence of a link between the harshness of a country’s drug laws and its levels of drug use.
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Annan said that studies consistently fail to find a link between the harshness of a country’s drug laws and its levels of drug use. The experts we reached and the data and reports we found largely backed that up. In some places, tougher penalties led to less use. In others, tougher laws had no effect at all. In the United States, while there are shifting patterns of drug use, there is no simple relationship to the severity of the nation’s drug laws. The caveat is that from the European study, relaxing penalties had equally unpredictable results. Annan’s statement needs that bit of context.
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true
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Global News Service, Drugs, Crime, Kofi Annan,
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"Several Latin American and European countries pressed their case to decriminalize drugs at a special session of the United Nations this week. They came up short. The document that emerged maintained a basic prohibitionist stance. But the advocates for a softer touch did garner some prominent backers, including former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who argued in an op-ed that the war on drugs has failed. ""Prohibition has had little impact on the supply of or demand for drugs,"" Annan wrote. ""When law enforcement succeeds in one area, drug production simply moves to another region or country, drug trafficking moves to another route and drug users switch to a different drug. Nor has prohibition significantly reduced use. Studies have consistently failed to establish the existence of a link between the harshness of a country’s drug laws and its levels of drug use."" Measuring the effectiveness of prohibitions can be tricky. For this fact-check, we're looking into the connection between getting tough on drugs and less use. We reached out to the Kofi Annan Foundation and did not hear back, so we don’t know what specific studies he had in mind. We reached out to several experts in the field and generally, they agreed with his statement. Jonathan Caulkins, professor of public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, has worked on some of the broadest examinations of drugs in America. Caulkins was part of the team that wrote the U.S. Office of National Drug Policy’s latest assessment of how much users spend on drugs. ""There is some research that finds increased harshness reduces use, but the overall statement is true,"" Caulkins told PolitiFact. ""By and large, expanding toughness beyond a basic prohibition plus the usual amount of enforcement does not drive down use."" European countries created a natural laboratory of sorts on the interplay of marijuana laws and marijuana use. Over the decades, different countries have adopted a variety of approaches. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction examined the results in each place. The center’s legal analyst Brendan Hughes told us no clear relationship emerged. The following chart shows why. In Italy, for example, penalties went up but so did use. Denmark also tightened its laws and saw almost no change. On the flip side, the United Kingdom adopted lighter sanctions and the prevalence of marijuana fell. But when Slovakia did the same, usage rose. One approach to gauging the impact of enforcement is to track trends in the price of drugs, after factoring in changes in purity. Based on the basic rules of supply and demand, if the price falls, use is expected to rise, and vice versa. The most recent analysis from the U.S. Office of National Drug Policy dates back to 2008. While the numbers could have changed since then, that report had discouraging news for the zero-tolerance camp. The price of heroin had fallen about 30 percent for all grades or purity in 10 years, cocaine showed a modest but steady decline, and some grades of marijuana saw a 50 percent drop in price. (This predates by many years the decriminalization moves in Colorado and Washington State.) Thomas Kerr, Co-Director of the Urban Health Research Initiative at the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, said the federal data provide ""compelling evidence"" of the limits of a get-tough policy. ""As expenditures on drug control increased dramatically, use has not gone down, nor has price, while purity has gone up,"" Kerr said. Kerr pointed to research in Thailand, where simple possession of heroin can lead to up to 10 years in prison, that found harsh enforcement tactics had no apparent impact on heroin users. We did find one study that concluded that greater incarceration reduced drug use. Economist Steven Levitt at the University of Chicago co-authored a 2001 article that examined cocaine patterns between 1980 and 2000. It was a time, Levitt wrote, when the number of prisoners jailed for drug-related offenses rose 15-fold. ""We estimate that cocaine prices are 10 to 15 percent higher today as a consequence of increases in drug punishment since 1985,"" Levitt wrote. ""Based on previous estimates of the price elasticity of demand for cocaine, this implies a reduction in cocaine consumed of as much as 20 percent."" However, that conclusion hangs on a rising price of cocaine, and data gathered after that report showed prices falling, not rising. That doesn’t mean that cocaine use rose in response. As a sign of the complicated nature of drug consumption, federal data showed that from 2002 to 2010, the amount of cocaine used in the United States fell by half. An article by Caulkins and his colleague Peter Reuter at the RAND Corporation, a prominent think tank, concluded that enforcement can sometimes help stop a mass market from forming, such as in the case of a new drug coming on the scene. But once a drug takes hold, ""there may be little return to intense enforcement. A modest level of enforcement may generate most of the benefits from prohibition."" Caulkins emphasized that the policy choice is not between a total ban and no ban at all. ""If one goes from the basic enforcement necessary to make a prohibition real to no prohibition at all, then use and abuse would go way up,"" he warned. Our ruling Annan said that studies consistently fail to find a link between the harshness of a country’s drug laws and its levels of drug use. The experts we reached and the data and reports we found largely backed that up. In some places, tougher penalties led to less use. In others, tougher laws had no effect at all. In the United States, while there are shifting patterns of drug use, there is no simple relationship to the severity of the nation’s drug laws. The caveat is that from the European study, relaxing penalties had equally unpredictable results. Annan’s statement needs that bit of context.
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23849
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Without representation, (the IRS) can increase taxes.
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"Alabama Congressional candidate Rick Barber's ""Gather your armies"" ad goes viral"
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false
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National, Health Care, Message Machine 2010, Taxes, Rick Barber,
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"Say this for Alabama candidates, they know how to make political ads that get noticed. The latest ad making a bid to join Dale ""Cowboy"" Peterson and Tim ""Learn It"" James in the Viral Ad Hall of Fame comes from Rick Barber, a tea party enthusiast running for Congress in Alabama's Second District Republican run-off. The ad features Barber holding a fictitious conversation with three Founding Fathers -- Sam Adams, George Washington and Ben Franklin, all dressed in period garb. Barber rails against the IRS and the health care bill. The idea is that the Founding Fathers would be appalled to see where things have gone in America. As Barber reaches a fevered pitch, he concludes, ""You gentlemen revolted over a tea tax. A tea tax! Now look at us! Are you with me?"" The kicker comes from the George Washington character, who delivers his response through gritted teeth: ""Gather ... your ... armies."" Enter the national media. David Weigel of the Washington Post weighed in, calling it ""the latest performance art TV ad from Alabama."" Keith Olbermann designated Barber the ""Worst Person in the World,"" and called the ad a treasonous attempt to incite the violent overthrow of the government, for which he hoped Barber would be prosecuted. Conservative radio host G. Gordon Liddy was kinder, but Barber got some harsh treatment from fellow tea party cheerleader Glenn Beck. On his radio show, Beck called Barber, ""one of the dumbest people I have seen."" Ouch. Added Beck, ""What the hell are you thinking? What is wrong with you? ... I know it's been a tough couple of years. It may not be time, yet, to 'Gather your armies.' This Republican is a dope."" Double ouch. Barber insists his ad was not intended to advocate a violent overthrow of the government. ""That couldn't be further from the truth,"" Barber said. ""It's a call to action."" We won't get into that debate, but we did think it was worth assessing some of Barber's claims about the IRS. Here's some of what Barber says in the ad (remember, he's supposedly talking to some Founding Fathers). ""Some of you men owned taverns,"" Barber said. ""Sam, you were a brewer, Mr. President, a distiller. You know how tough it is to run a small business without a tyrannical government on your back. ""Today, we have an Internal Revenue Service that enforces what they call 'a progressive income tax.' You'll love this: Every year, if not every quarter, we're basically required to spy on ourselves -- report what we earn, who we hire and fire, with an all-powerful separate court system. Without representation, they can increase taxes, impose costly regulation or conduct malicious audits. ""Now this same IRS is going to force us to buy health insurance. Cram it down our throats, or else. Now I took a took an oath to defend that with my life [points at copy of Constitution] and I can't stand by while these evils are perpetrated."" Let's start with the claim that ""without representation, they (the IRS) can increase taxes, impose costly regulation or conduct malicious audits."" The IRS has does not have the statutory authority to increase taxes. That's entirely up to Congress. We'll cite that Constitution Barber poked in the ad. Section 8 begins, ""The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes ..."" And Amendment 16, ratified in 1913, lays out Congress' ability to levy income taxes: ""The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration."" So it's Congress that controls whether to increase taxes. We spoke to Barber, and he said some people are taking the ad way too literally. ""Some pieces of that ad are metaphorically speaking,"" Barber said. Barber said that when he said that ""without representation"" the IRS ""can increase taxes,"" he meant that our elected leaders in Washington are not ""properly representing their constituents."" ""Unfortunately we don't have good representation in office that listens to the voice of the people,"" Barber said. For the record, Barber explained, he's not opposed to taxes. Rather, he's in favor of a ""Fair Tax."" Under that plan, all federal income taxes would be replaced with a consumption tax on retail sales. But we think it's disingenuous for Barber to hide behind a claim that his ad is meant figuratively. How else can one interpret a claim that ""without representation,"" the IRS can increase taxes? The IRS doesn't increase taxes. Congress does. You may not agree with what legislators have done with the tax codes, but legislators are duly-elected representatives. It's also misleading for Barber to claim ""this same IRS is going to force us to buy health insurance."" Congress is the body that passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. And the bill establishes that in 2013, there will be a penalty for those who are deemed to be able to afford insurance, but choose not to. The mechanism for enforcing the policy is the tax code. The full penalty will be phased in over several years, but according to a Kaiser Family Foundation summary of the law, it will ultimately come to ""those without coverage pay a tax penalty of the greater of $695 per year up to a maximum of three times that amount ($2,085) per family or 2.5 percent of household income."" The IRS, of course, would enforce those tax penalties. Because people could opt to simply pay the tax penalty and refuse to buy insurance, there is some debate over whether it's correct to say that people will be ""forced"" to buy health insurance. We think many people would reasonably describe a tax penalty as a mandate. But it would be wrong to suggest the IRS is the one requiring people to buy insurance. To the extent insurance will be required, that was a decision of a duly-elected Congress. Lastly, we take issue with Barber's comment that the Founding Fathers revolted against the British over a tea tax. We'll let Robert Middlekauff, a professor emeritus of colonial and early United States history at the University of California, Berkeley, take it from here. ""The issues that divided Americans and the British government were far more complicated than the tax levied on tea,"" said Middlekauff, who has written several books on early American history. ""The Americans insisted from the Stamp Act crisis on that a free people could be taxed only with their own consent, and only their own representatives could give it. They were not represented in Parliament, and could not be, given the character of that body and the problems of representation in an empire. ... There were other related uses involving the British use of troops against the colonies, the corruption of imperial officials, and the essential rights of Americans."" Barber said he was constricted by the limits of a 60-second commercial. ""It's such a short period of time to try to give a history of how the American Revolution started,"" Barber said. ""You only get 60 seconds to get your message out, to start a discussion,"" he said. There's no doubt Barber's ad has started a discussion. As of press time, ad was viewed more than 252,000 times on YouTube. That doesn't yet put the ad in the same league as the ones from Alabama candidates Dale Peterson (1.6 million views) or Tim James (nearly 1 million views). But give it time. We have no doubt that the Founding Fathers would be displeased if things had gotten to the point where ""without representation,"" the IRS could increase taxes. But it can't. The tax codes, complicated as they may be, unfair as they may seem to some, were voted on and approved by duly-elected legislators. That's the very definition of representation. Call it figurative or metaphorical language, the bottom line is the statement is flat-out wrong. And we suspect the Founding Fathers wouldn't like being misled. We rule Barber's statement ."
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8772
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Imaging industry seeks more coverage for cancer scans.
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The medical imaging industry called for the Medicare government health plan to broaden its coverage of PET scans to additional cancer types, asking an advisory panel on Wednesday to recommend wider payments.
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true
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Health News
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Representatives of the Academy of Molecular Imaging and other groups said that data collected from a nationwide patient registry showed positron emission tomography (PET) scans helped doctors adjust their treatment plans for roughly one-third of enrolled patients. “This is a broadly applicable technique to cancers in general,” Dr. David Mankoff, a University of Washington radiologist, said on behalf of several industry associations. The groups, which also include several medical societies, initially had asked Medicare to lift restrictions on payments for nine cancers: brain, cervical, bladder, small-cell lung, ovarian, testicular, prostate, kidney and pancreatic cancers. Medicare, which covers 44 million elderly and disabled Americans, said in 2005 it would cover the nine cancers if patients were enrolled in the registry. In March, the groups said they had enough information to support easing the policy by allowing routine coverage without registration. The government agency is seeking advice from outside medical advisers before deciding whether to broaden payments or otherwise change the current program. Some panelists questioned the data’s ability to support so many cancer uses, especially after several researchers commissioned by Medicare said the quality of available studies was poor to moderate. “I don’t see how you make the leap,” said panel member and consumer representative Linda Bergthold “The quality of the data ... was really stunningly poor.” Eliminating the patient registration requirement would allow greater use of PET among Medicare patients, in part because it would be easier for doctors to order the scans. That could be a boost for PET scan makers such as General Electric Co, Siemens AG and Philips Electronics NV. More than 2 million PET scans are given in the United States each year, according to Philips. The companies do not break out PET scan sales figures, and a spokeswoman for Medicare said data on how much the agency has spent for the test was not readily available. There has been disagreement over the effectiveness of PET scans compared to other imaging techniques such as computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans in detecting cancer cells. With PET, patients are injected with radioactive sugars that collect in metabolically active parts of the body, which could signal growth and possibly cancer. The ability to pinpoint biologically active areas is a key difference between PET and CT scans or MRI scans. While PET can find some cancers that CT and MRI miss, its images can be less detailed or trigger false positives. Medicare is expected to make a draft decision in January and a final ruling in April.
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9188
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High rates of satisfaction for applicator free local estrogen softgel ovule
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Screenshot: TherapeuticsMD The news release reports the results of a study examining women’s satisfaction with an applicator-free softgel used for vaginal estrogen therapy to treat post-menopausal vaginal dryness that can cause pain during sexual intercourse. The study involved 731 post-menopausal women who used a placebo softgel or one of three containing varying levels of an investigational low-dose estrogen therapy. The release provides good context on what post-menopausal vaginal dryness is and how often it shows up in women. But the release was weak on describing attributes that readers need to know when assessing this potential new therapy — such as cost, harms, benefits, evidence, and what makes it different from existing estrogen-based treatments. While the study itself pointed out the softgels’ ability to dissolve quickly as a benefit, the release omitted this but added “elegant” as an abstract, less informative, benefit. Readers would have been better served with a more concrete approach to addressing usefulness. Numerous studies have shown that as women age, they are more likely to report problems with sexual functioning, including a lack of desire, vaginal dryness and pain during intercourse. These problems are common, by some estimates affecting nearly two-thirds of American women. The result, especially for women for whom sex is painful, is reduced intercourse frequency, which can be distressing to some women and may cause relationship problems for some couples. On the other hand, some health officials argue that changes such as reduced desire and vaginal dryness are naturally occurring aspects of a woman’s life cycle and therefore should not be treated as medical “problems.”
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false
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estrogen therapy,University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center
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The news release provides no information about how much the softgels might cost. The release includes next to nothing in the way of numbers to back up its claim. It includes only one measured benefit: the majority of around 700 women or “(85.4 – 92.1 percent) found the product easy to use.” This was based on a post-trial survey, according to the release. An interesting finding of the survey not mentioned in the news release was that 57% of women were satisfied with the placebo, compared with 69% to 76% of those treated with the active drug. While it is not surprising that the study, which was supported by the pharmaceutical manufacturer, chose not to focus on this result, it would have provided useful context for understanding the product’s impact on symptoms. Neither the news release nor the original study on which it reported provided any detailed information about the safety of the investigational drug, other than to say that the estrogen product used has been shown to be “safe and effective.” The product being discussed may offer a lower dose of estrogen than other currently available alternatives, but nonetheless, full disclosure requires some discussion of potential risks. The purpose of this arm (the “post trial” survey) of a larger trial was to report on the acceptability of the softgel delivery system itself. It tells us that 96% of the trial volunteers (or 731 individuals) responded to the survey. The release would have been more informative had it told us more about the survey instrument — even the basics such as which questions were asked and how many questions were included. A separate study examined the benefits and risks of the active drug. That was a randomized double-blind study — the highest quality of evidence — involving 731 postmenopausal women aged 40-75. A survey is not in the same category of evidence as a randomized controlled trial. The news release states that “50 to 70 percent of post-menopausal women” suffer from vaginal dryness and discomfort or painful intercourse. Another reliable source put the prevalence of vulvovaginal atrophy (VVA) at about half of postmenopausal women, although not all of them experience painful intercourse. Nonetheless, most sources suggest this condition may affect 32 million women in the United States. Given that other research shows that more than 90% of those who experience these symptoms find them troubling, it seems reasonable to conclude that it is a legitimate problem, despite being a normal development as women age. The news release notes that Dr. Sheryl Kingsberg, the study’s first author, has been a consultant for TherapeuticsMD, which manufactures the active ingredient in the softgels, and for a number of other pharmaceutical companies. It did not mention that several of the study’s other authors also have received research support or consulting fees from TherepauticsMD. This study carries a strong imprint of its funder, the manufacturer. The acknowledgement in the study notes that even the authorship of the paper was contracted out to a professional medical writing firm, which is a practice that is often criticized. The journal manuscript acknowledged it; the news release could have as well. The news release mentions several other over-the-counter and prescription products used to treat symptoms of VVA, including creams, moisturizers, tablets, vaginal rings and oral drugs. However, it does not explicitly compare the softgels to these products but mentions that women preferred the softgels to them. The only reference to this comparison comes in a quote from the first author, who described the softgels as “a more elegant delivery system that is easier to use and not messy.” It would have been nice to see the data on how those women who had previously used another product felt the softgels compared. The news release says nothing about when these softgels might be available. The news release does not specify how the softgels differ from previously available vaginal tablets. The study itself suggested that the softgels were formulated to dissolve quickly and without vaginal secretions; it’s somewhat surprising that the news release does not mention this and instead just refers to the product as “elegant.” It would have been helpful to have more description of the softgel delivery system to help the reader understand how it differed from existing tablets, creams, and rings. As noted, other than perhaps overestimating the percentage of women affected by VVA, especially by painful sexual intercourse, the news release was relatively low key. It quotes Dr. Kingston, the study’s first author, as saying that health professionals “still have to find better ways to educate the millions of women suffering with VVA about the symptoms, however, so that more of them know it is common, decide to discuss treatment with their healthcare professional, and seek symptom relief with appropriate treatment.” Given that health sources generally seem to agree that VVA is common, reduces quality of life for post-menopausal women and remains under-treated, that statement does not seem terribly out of line.
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41654
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There are 5,240 fewer mental health nurses since 2010.
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This seems to be looking at different months in 2010 and 2017, which isn’t the best comparison. Comparing the number of full-time equivalent mental health nurses between January 2010 and January 2018 (the latest figures), the drop is closer to 4,500.
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true
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health
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There are 16,481 fewer beds in hospitals since 2010. This is in the right ballpark, but it doesn’t seem to be the best comparison. It seems to compare the number of beds at different times of the year, but the number available fluctuates seasonally. Comparing July-September in 2010 and 2017, the decrease in beds available overnight in England is closer to 13,200. 66 A&E and maternity wards have been closed. We don’t know, as this information isn’t collected nationally. In 2014, there were reportedly plans to close or downgrade 66 in England, but while some have been, others have stayed open. 103 NHS walk-in centres have closed or been downgraded since 2010. We don’t know exactly, as this information isn’t collected centrally. Research from an NHS regulator and from campaign group 38 Degrees suggests more than 90 have been closed or downgraded. 60 ambulance stations have closed since 2010. We don’t know how many ambulance stations have closed since 2010 as national figures on this aren’t regularly published. 1,000 GP practices have closed since 2010. There are around 1,000 fewer GP practices in England in 2017 than in 2010. Some practices may have merged together, rather than closing completely, but we don’t know how many have done so. A&E four hour targets have been missed more than 10 million times since 2010. Correct. Between 2010/11 and 2017/18, around 12 million A&E attendances in England took over four hours from arrival to admission, transfer or discharge. The number of patients waiting more than 12 hours in A&E is up 2,700% since 2010. Correct (although not all patients will necessarily have been waiting in A&E). In 2011/12, 120 patients in England waited 12 hours between the decision to admit them to emergency admissions and their actual admission, compared to 3,500 in 2017/18. Spending on social care is down 8% since 2010. Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies last year said that between 2009/10 and 2016/17, councils’ spending on adult social care in England fell 8% in real terms. Newer analysis says that it fell by 6% over the same period. We’ve asked it for more information. There are 5,240 fewer mental health nurses since 2010. This seems to be looking at different months in 2010 and 2017, which isn’t the best comparison. Comparing the number of full-time equivalent mental health nurses between January 2010 and January 2018 (the latest figures), the drop is closer to 4,500. The number of operations classed as urgent that have been cancelled twice have doubled since 2010. Correct. The number of urgent operations in England cancelled for the second time or more for non-medical reasons more than doubled between 2011/12 and 2017/18. There has been a 22% drop in ambulances meeting their 15 minute transfer target since 2010. The decrease is actually greater—28%. In 2010/11 in England 80% of ambulance transfers were done in 15 minutes, in 2015/16 it was 58%. Claim 1 of 12
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Olympian Michael Phelps honored for mental health advocacy.
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Michael Phelps is picking up more hardware — this time for what he’s been doing outside the pool.
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true
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Mental health, Health, Boston, Celebrities, Michael Phelps
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The Boston-based Ruderman Family Foundation, a leading voice in calling for more opportunities for the disabled, said Tuesday the Olympic champion is the recipient of its fifth annual Morton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion. The foundation told The Associated Press it picked the world’s most decorated swimmer of all time to recognize his advocacy for people with disabilities and “his own journey with mental health.” Phelps has gone public about his struggles with depression and thoughts of suicide. Last year, the 23-time Olympic gold medalist announced a partnership with Talkspace , which provides online therapy for those who are going through tough times. Phelps said helping people overcome the dark chapters in their lives is “way bigger than ever winning gold medals.” In a statement, the 33-year-old Olympian thanked the Ruderman Family Foundation for “their continued efforts to help eliminate the shame and stigma that surrounds mental illness.” “Together, we can normalize the mental health conversation and recognize the potential in every person — with or without mental illness — to contribute to our world in their own unique way,” Phelps said. The foundation works for more inclusion and opportunities for the disabled. Previous recipients of its award include Oscar-winning actress Marlee Matlin and former Democratic U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, of Iowa, a driving force behind the Americans with Disabilities Act. Jay Ruderman, the foundation’s president, called Phelps an example of the importance of self-care and of reaching out for help when it’s needed. That helps take the stigma and shame away from mental health struggles, he said. Phelps “has changed the landscape of mental health awareness,” Ruderman said. Since retiring from competition after the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, the swimmer has been promoting the importance of not just physical fitness but mental health. In 2017, he was honorary chairman of the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Mental Health Awareness Day. He’s also served as an ambassador for the Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit group working to help children who struggle with mental health and learning disorders. ___ Follow Bill Kole on Twitter at https://twitter.com/billkole .
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11050
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New Brain Scan May Predict Alzheimer’s
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This is a story reporting on a very recent paper with results suggesting that diffusion MRI may be used as a tool for assessing memory function and may thus someday have a role in predicting future cognitive decline including that of Alzheimer’s disease. However the research itself did not involve individuals with Alzheimer’s disease, nor did it study individuals over time to establish whether the technique could be used to predict changes that occur for a given individual. The story provided only the best case scenario for the value of this technique while acknowledging that ‘a good clinical evaluation’ is still the best tool available. For individuals concerned about development about Alzheimer’s disease, this article is overly enthusiastic about the promise of this scan for enhancing the ability to detect Alzheimer’s disease.
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false
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"There was no discussion about direct costs for this test. The story always qualified any potential benefit as possibility by qualifying every claim with the term ‘may’. It would have improved this piece to include an explicit statement that there is currently no way to quantify what the benefit of early detection might be. The story did not mention that 13% of the individuals in the study were unable to complete the test due to claustrophobia and that for 17% of the individuals tested, there were technical difficulties which made their test results unusable. Although it was good that the story qualified every claim made for this new method of assessment with the term ""may"" ( as in ‘may prove useful’), it did not mention that the study merely assessed a group of individuals at a single time point and found that this test correlated with some verbal tests of memory. Because it is not possible to determine whether what appears to be age-related differences may relate to other ways in which the tested individuals differ, it is premature to conclude that this test will be found to successfully distinguish between those who will and will not develop Alzheimer’s Disease. In fact, since individuals with cognitive impairment were from excluded from the study, the study did not provide any evidence that the test could actually distinguish between people with and without Alzheimer’s Disease, let alone those who will develop the disease. The story did not engage in overt disease-mongering. The story did include a quote from a neurologist who did not appear to be directly connected with the study. That said, his comments were general in nature and were not explicitly about the research reported on. The story mentioned that the testing procedure reported on ‘shows evidence of being more sensitive’ than other tests, while acknowledging that ‘a good clinical evaluation is still the best tool’. The story provided no insight about whether hospitals have the facilities needed for this test. While the story reported on a most recent study using DTI technology for assessment of Alzheimer’s disease, there is medical literature on this dating back several years, a context the story didn’t provide. We can’t be sure of the extent to which the story was primarily driven by a news release. The story acknowledges that the quote from the lead author of the research came from a news release."
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7387
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EPA sidesteps public comment, allows cancer-linked pesticide.
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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced that soybean farmers in 25 states are now able to spray a pesticide that the agency has determined is likely to cause cancer and drift hundreds of feet from where it is applied.
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true
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Plants, Genetics, Technology, Champaign, General News, Environment, Business, Weeds
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The move was widely praised by farmers, who view the weedkiller as a new tool in an ever-increasing battle with “super weeds” that have developed resistance to as many as six different types of weedkillers, including glyphosate, the most widely used pesticide in the U.S. The herbicide, isoxaflutole, will be able to be sprayed on soybeans that have been genetically engineered to withstand it. The weedkiller kills broadleaf plants and is already used on corn in 33 states. Isoxaflutole is manufactured by German agribusiness giant BASF and sold under the brand name Alite 27. Bayer originally commercialized the modified soybeans and herbicide under its LibertyLink system but was required to sell it to BASF as part of the merger agreement when it bought Monsanto in 2018. In a press release announcing the decision on a recent Monday, the EPA touted the feedback the agency received from farmers on the need for the herbicide. But the agency sidestepped the usual public input process for the decision. The herbicide’s registration was opened for public comment, but not listed in the federal register, where agencies provide notice that they are considering opening a new rule. The agency generally publishes significant rule changes in the register. “The press release caught everyone off guard, we were just waiting for the EPA to open the comment period, and we never saw it,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, a national, nonprofit conservation organization. ___ The nonprofit news outlet Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting provided this article to The Associated Press through a collaboration with Institute for Nonprofit News. ___ As a result, all 54 comments received by the agency were praising the technology or asking the agency to allow wider use of the herbicide. “Clearly no one from the public health community knew about this because no one commented,” Donley said. “Yet there was all these industry comments, all these positive comments. Someone was tipped off that this docket had been opened. One side was able to comment, the other wasn’t.” Asked why the agency did not post the notice in the federal register, an EPA spokesman said via email the agency “requested public comment on the proposed registration decision. Based on EPA’s risk analysis and careful consideration of public input, EPA concluded that the application of isoxaflutole on genetically engineered soybeans with certain use conditions could be done in an environmentally-protective manner in certain parts of the country.” When asked if BASF knew why there was no federal register notice, company spokeswoman Odessa Hines said in an email response there was a 30-day open comment period from Jan. 15, 2020 to Feb. 13, 2020: Even without significant public comment, the EPA severely limited the areas where the weedkiller can be sprayed because of its likelihood to harm endangered species. The weedkiller, which kills broadleaf plants, is already used on corn in 33 states, but was only approved in specific counties in 25 states. The herbicide was not approved for use in Illinois and Iowa, two of the nation’s leading soybean producing states. The registration is good for five years. “This is basically an herbicide that shouldn’t be approved at all for any use. It’s that bad really on both the human health and environmental fronts,” said Bill Freese, science policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety, a national nonprofit public interest and environmental advocacy organization working to protect human health and the environment. Freese co-authored a comment in 2013 for the U.S. Department of Agriculture when the agency was considering deregulating soybeans genetically engineered to withstand being sprayed by the herbicide. The USDA approved the soybeans. He said he was ready for an EPA public comment period but never saw it. Among his complaints, Freese said the EPA has determined isoxaflutole is a likely human carcinogen and inhibits a human liver enzyme. Additionally, even very small amounts of the herbicide can cause significant damage to plants and EPA studies show the herbicide is likely to cause harm at up to 1,000 feet. The label is also extremely complicated, requiring farmers to know their soil type and how high the water table is, Freese said. “It’s outrageous,” Freese said. “They knew this is a bad news chemical, and it was very likely done because they didn’t want to give environmental groups the opportunity to comment on this, so they can avoid scrutiny.” Donley and Freese said their organizations are reviewing the legal options to challenge the herbicide’s approval. The organizations are already suing over the EPA”s approval of dicamba, another volatile herbicide sprayed on genetically engineered soybeans. The pesticide will not be widely available until 2021, BASF said in a press release praising the EPA’s decision. It is unclear how widely sprayed isoxaflutole will be, but Freese and Donley said the product wouldn’t have been commercialized if the company didn’t think it was likely to be used. Additionally, use is only likely to grow. Right now, about 600,000 pounds of the herbicide are sprayed on corn each year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. BASF said that nearly three out of four farmers are dealing with glyphosate-resistant weeds and 58% are dealing with resistance to other herbicides as well. Weeds have already been documented to develop resistance to the class of herbicide that isoxaflutole belongs to. “Today’s management practices of relying on a single mode of action are not sustainable for long-term control of problem weeds,” said Scott Kay, vice president of U.S. Crop, BASF Agricultural Solutions, in a press release. “BASF continues to bring new innovations, like Alite 27 herbicide, to market to give growers more operational control over their crops and to help eliminate troublesome weeds in their fields.” Bill Gordon, a Minnesota soybean farmer and president of the American Soybean Association, was one of the people to submit a public comment on the weedkiller’s approval. In the EPA press release announcing the decision, Gordon said the ASA “appreciates the diligence by EPA to provide farmers access to this new tool with the necessary guidance for using it safely to protect people, our wildlife, and the environment.” Gordon’s home state of Minnesota, along with Wisconsin and Michigan, has already banned the use of the pesticide on corn in many counties due to its likelihood to contaminate groundwater, which is one of the ways the EPA says it can cause cancer.
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1785
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Allowing blood donations from gay men could help save over a million lives: U.S. study.
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Lifting a ban on blood donations from gay men would increase the amount of available blood by hundreds of thousands of pints (liters) each year and save more than a million lives a year, a California study showed on Friday.
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true
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Health News
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The U.S. Federal Drug Administration has banned gay men from donating blood since 1983, when it was discovered that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was being transmitted through transfusions. Eliminating the ban could bring in roughly 615,300 pints (291,145 liters) of blood annually, while allowing donations from gay men who had not had a sexual partner in a year could yield 317,000 pints (150,000 liters), the study estimated. With a five-year policy, nearly 300,000 pints (142,000 liters) could be collected, according to the study by the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The American Red Cross suggests that each blood donation has the potential to be used in life-saving procedures on three individuals,” said study co-author Ayako Miyashita. “Our estimates suggest that lifting the blood donation ban ... could be used to help save the lives of more than 1.8 million people.” The American Medical Association, the American Red Cross and the American Association of Blood Banks in a statement this summer called the FDA ban discriminatory and not based on sound science.” HIV has targeted a disproportionate number of gay men since the 1970s, with 72 percent of new HIV infections in 2010 affecting gay and bisexual male youth. The United Kingdom allows gay men to donate blood if they have not had a sexual partner in 12 months. In Canada, the cut-off is five years. An FDA spokeswoman said the agency was continuing to re-evaluate policies but does not plan to lift the ban until scientific evidence can show that won’t increase the risk of infection for patients receiving blood transfusions. “We applaud the critical contributions made by blood donors and we are sensitive to the concerns of potential donors and other individuals affected by current blood safety policies,” said the spokeswoman, Jennifer Rodriguez. The study analyzed data collected in 2008, 2010 and 2012 through the General Social Survey, a national poll conducted by University of Chicago researchers, with a sampling error of plus or minus one percent. It also relied on data from the American Red Cross.
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33633
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"A new drug called Jenkem, made by fermenting raw sewage, is a ""popular drug in American schools."
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“I’ve heard some things and I’m sure it’s out there, we just haven’t made any arrests yet on it.”
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false
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Crime, drug warnings, jenkem, social media panics
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Jenkem (or jekem) is the common name given to an inhalant made by fermenting raw sewage (i.e., fecal matter and urine), reportedly used as a cheap means of producing a dissociative or hallucinogenic high (particularly by children in third world countries). A Collier County, Florida, police informational bulletin about Jenkem was widely circulated via e-mail in October 2007: Example: [Collected via e-mail, October 2007] Information Bulletin New Drug – JENKEM On 09/19/07 Cpl. Disarro received and email from a concerned parent regarding a new drug called “Jenkem.” The parent advised their child learned about this drug through various conversations with several students at Palmetto Ridge High. Jenkem originated in Africa and other third world countries by fermenting raw sewage to create a gas which is inhaled to achieve a high. Jenkem is now a popular drug in American Schools. Jenkem is a homemade substance which consists of fecal matter and urine. The fecal matter and urine are placed in a bottle or jar and covered most commonly with a balloon. The container is then placed in a sunny area for several hours or days until fermented. The contents of the container will separate and release a gas, which is captured in the balloon. Inhaling the gas is said to have a euphoric high similar to ingesting cocaine but with strong hallucinations of times past. Once ingested the onset of the high takes approximately 10 seconds with the most severe hallucinations happening in approximately 20 minutes. Several articles indicate that the subject immediately passes out after ingesting the gas then regains a magical/hallucinogenic state within seconds of regaining consciousness. The high has been described by subjects as a feeling of “being out of it” and talking to dead people. The feeling of being “out of it” may last for several hours or days. All subjects who used the Jenkem disliked the taste of sewage in their mouth and the fact that the taste continued for several days. Slang terms: Winnie, Shit, Runners, Fruit from Crack Pipe, Leroy Jenkems, Might, Butthash, and Waste. But evidence that jenkem use is a significant phenomenon in the U.S. (or indeed, anywhere in the world) or that the substance can even product the effects described is scant. The informational bulletin was apparently issued merely on the basis of a few high school students’ having mentioned hearing about jenkem in schoolyard chat, and its contents originated with a source who said he had fabricated them: The hoopla over Jenkem, also known as Waste, Fruit from Crack Pipe and Butthash, started at the beginning of the school year when a parent of a student who attends Palmetto Ridge High School in Golden Gate Estates heard about the drug from their son. The parent brought Jenkem to the attention of the school’s administration, which passed it on to the Sheriff’s Office. “Other than the one memo I received from that parent, I haven’t heard the name of it mentioned,” Palmetto Ridge Principal Roy Terry said. “I’m sure that something like this can be done, but I have not heard of anybody doing it nor anyone at our school doing it at all.” A deputy spoke to some students on the Palmetto Ridge campus and a few had heard of Jenkem. Still, there have been no reported cases of Jenkem use in Collier County. Internet pundits were quick to jump on the[sheriff’s] intelligence briefing, noting that the photos and descriptions of the high jenkem produced came from “Pickwick,” a contributor to the Web site Totse.com, who later admitted his “use” of jenkem was faked using flour, water, beer and Nutella. “I never inhaled any poop gas and got high off it,” he wrote on Sept. 24. “I have deleted the pictures, hopefully no weirdo saved them to his computer. I just don’t want people to ever recognize me as the kid who huffed poop gas.” Descriptions of jenkem starting appearing in the press in the mid-1990s, most of them merely referencing it in passing, and nearly all of them specifically mentioning its use as being unique to street children in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia. The earliest reference to jenkem we’ve found so far comes from a 1995 Inter Press Service (IPS) wire report: People used to wonder why a gang of scruffy pre-teen boys hung around the sewer ponds of the Garden Township here [in Lusaka]. The stench is so overpowering that people literally speed through that stretch of the slum area wondering how those who live close by ever got used to it. The answer has finally dawned on Zambians, and it has left them pondering the desperation of its street children. The boys at the garden township have discovered “jenkem,” a new way of getting high. The process is simple. Human excreta is scooped up from the edges of the sewer ponds in old cans and containers which are covered with a polyethylene bag and left to stew or ferment for a week. The contents are then inhaled and the result is a lungful of biogases and a powerful “hit.” Jenkem “huffers” bury their entire face in the ghastly mess, gasping it all in. “Ba mudala, niyikali kuchila dobo,” Mukela Nyambe, a fifth grade drop out, told IPS with teary eyes and a running nose. “Old man, this is more potent than cannabis.” The Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) says there is nothing they can do about it. It may be a terrible health hazard but is completely legal, as are glue or petrol sniffing, previously the most common way street kids numbed their senses. Jenkem use also turned up in a brief 1999 BBC News article on the subject: At the Lusaka sewage ponds, two teenage boys plunge their hands into the dark brown sludge, gathering up fistfuls and stuffing it into small plastic bottles. They tap the bottles on the ground, taking care to leave enough room for methane to form at the top. A sour smell rises in the hot sun, but the boys seem oblivious to the stench and the foul nature of their task. They are manufacturing “Jenkem”, a disgusting, noxious mixture made from fermented sewage. It is cheap, potent and very popular among the thousands of street-children in Lusaka. When they cannot afford glue or are too scared to steal petrol, these youngsters turn to Jenkem as a way of getting high. “It lasts about an hour”, says one user, 16-year-old Luke Mpande, who prefers Jenkem to other substances. “With glue, I just hear voices in my head. But with Jenkem, I see visions. I see my mother who is dead and I forget about the problems in my life.” Sniffing sewage is a symptom of the desperate plight of Zambia’s street-children. There are thought to be some 75,000 in the country as a whole — a number that has doubled in the past eight years. Nobody knows exactly where the idea for making Jenkem came from, but it has been used by street-children in Lusaka for at least two years. Nason Banda of the Drug Enforcement Agency is not proud when he says that it is unique to Zambia. He shudders when he sees the boys at the sewage ponds, scavenging for faecal matter to make Jenkem. “It’s unimaginable” he says. “It hits right at the heart to see a human being coming down a level, to be able to dip his hand into a sewage pond, picking out the material and not caring about anything but the feeling of getting high.” Those few mid-1990s articles are the only substantive information about jenkem use we’ve turned up so far, and even those are difficult to verify. We’ve haven’t found anything to substantiate the claim that youngsters in the U.S. are indulging in jenkem to the extent that it is now a “popular drug in American schools,” other than some vague statements from drug enforcement officials who assert the phenomenon is real because they’ve heard rumors about it: Coffee County Sheriff’s Department Narcotics Investigator Neal Bradley said jenkem is already in use on the west coast. “Whatever they’re using on the west coast is also used in Coffee County,” he said. “We’ve heard that this was something students were doing and it sounds crazy, but don’t think they’re not doing it here.” Bradley said because of the diversity of Coffee County with people moving in, “drugs that people think aren’t in our county really are.” Bradley said no arrests have been made in Coffee County yet.
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17921
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Cuccinelli wants to make all abortion illegal, even in cases of rape and incest, even to protect a woman’s health.
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"McAuliffe’s ad says, ""Cuccinelli wants to make all abortion illegal, even in cases of rape and incest, even to protect a woman’s health."" Cuccinelli is an adamant opponent of abortion, but he has consistently supported one rare exception: Allowing abortion when a mother’s life is endangered by pregnancy. His position was known to McAuliffe’s campaign and incongruously cited in its news release announcing the ad. It’s not easy to overstate Cuccinelli’s objections to abortion, but McAuliffe’s ad manages to do just that."
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false
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Abortion, Virginia, Terry McAuliffe,
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"Democrat Terry McAuliffe keeps returning to abortion in his effort to paint Republican Ken Cuccinelli as a conservative extremist. A new ad by McAuliffe features Holly Puritz, a Norfolk obstetrician and gynecologist, saying she’s ""offended"" by Cuccinelli. ""Cuccinelli wants to make all abortion illegal, even in cases of rape and incest, even to protect a woman’s health,"" she says. We asked McAuliffe’s campaign for proof of its blanket claim. Spokesman Josh Schwerin pointed to Cuccinelli’s support of personhood bills in 2007 and 2012 that would have granted legal rights to human embryos from the moment of conception. Those bills, he said, would have banned all abortions. Cuccinelli, as we’ve noted before, did support personhood bills. But that doesn’t mean he opposes abortion in every circumstance. Since his first campaign for the state Senate in 2002, he has backed a narrow exception for abortions in cases where a mother’s life would be endangered by remaining pregnant. Cuccinelli’s position was well known to McAuliffe’s campaign. In a Sept. 17 news release announcing the ad and justifying its claims, McAuliffe’s camp noted that during a 2009 debate, ""Cuccinelli said he would support abortion only when the woman’s life was at risk."" While researching another abortion-related claim this summer, we asked Cuccinelli’s camp if the candidate still carved out that lone exception. His advisers declined to answer. The Cuccinelli campaign did, however, confirm for FactCheck.org and The Washington Post, earlier this month that the candidate still holds that abortions should be allowed only to save a mother’s life. Both organizations published articles containing the information about a week before McAuliffe’s commercial debuted. Statistics are not available for the number of abortions that are performed to save the life of a mother. Neither the Guttmacher Institute nor the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collect such data. Guttmacher, in a 2004, conducted a survey of 1,209 abortion patients. Four percent of the women cited personal health problems as the chief reason they were having an abortion. Our ruling McAuliffe’s ad says, ""Cuccinelli wants to make all abortion illegal, even in cases of rape and incest, even to protect a woman’s health."" Cuccinelli is an adamant opponent of abortion, but he has consistently supported one rare exception: Allowing abortion when a mother’s life is endangered by pregnancy. His position was known to McAuliffe’s campaign and incongruously cited in its news release announcing the ad. It’s not easy to overstate Cuccinelli’s objections to abortion, but McAuliffe’s ad manages to do just that."
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10358
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Acupuncture Reduces Painful Side Effects of Breast Cancer Treatments
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"The side effects of chemotherapy are many and very bothersome. If acupuncture could help ease these symptoms, it would be welcome news. This story reports on the presentation of a new study at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology meeting this week suggesting that acupuncture relieves side effects in women undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. But this story ultimately fails to deliver important information to the reader. It never described the current study, didn’t evaluate the quality of the evidence, and didn’t mention that the study has only been presented at a scientific meeting and has not been published and peer-reviewed. It also left out other details such as the costs of acupuncture, any potential harms of the treatment and the pros and cons of the available alternatives. Finally, the story does not adequately quantify the benefits of acupuncture. The story states that ""as many as three-quarters of cancer patients report being helped by acupuncture."" Compared to how many in the control group? How much were they helped by it? How did they measure improvement? Readers may be interested in the critique on The Junkfood Science blog, which comments on this and other news stories on this study."
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false
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"The story does not mention the costs of acupuncture and whether or not insurance would likely cover it. The story does not adequately quantify the benefits of acupuncture. The story states that ""as many as three-quarters of cancer patients report being helped by acupuncture."" Compared to how many in the control group? How much were they helped by it? How did they measure improvement? The story does not mention any potential drawbacks to acupuncture. The experts quoted claim that ""there are no risks involved"" in acupuncture. The few potential risks of acupuncture (albeit rare) include skin infections, hepatitis (if disposable needles are not used), pneumothorax (if too deep over the chest), and local hematoma. Also many ""local"" acupuncturists may also recommend Chinese herbal remedies which have known herb-drug interactions and potential for organ toxicity. The story does not describe the current study at all. Nor does the story mention that the study has only been presented at a scientific meeting and has not been published and peer-reviewed. This is a major weakness of the piece. The story does not exaggerate the seriousness or prevalence of side effects of chemotherapy. The story only quotes one expert, who is at the center discussed in the story. The story could have been improved by including other, independent experts. The story mentions anti-depressants to treat hot flashes but does not mention any other medications or alternative therapies that are available. Clearly acupuncture is available, but the story wasn’t clear about just how available it is. The story mentions that ""at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, many patients with different types of cancer are now offered acupuncture as a routine part of their care."" How widespread is this? Are there specially trained acupuncturists for this indication? Is this a ""targeted"" type of acupuncture for chemotherapy side effects, or a more general treatment, say for nausea? The story didn’t make any claims about the novelty of this area of research. Clearly acupuncture is not a new idea. Neither is research into its potential to curb chemotherapy side effects. There is no direct evidence that the story relied solely or largely on a news release. In fact, the story doesn’t even interview the lead author of the study who is from Detroit and who is mentioned in hospital and conference news releases. Instead, it looks like the network turned to an expert who was more available and convenient."
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23155
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Scientists have shown us (that) the greater possibilities, the real science movement, has been with adult stem cell research. It has not been with embryonic.
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Scott Walker says scientists agree that adult stem cell research holds more promise than embryonic
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false
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Health Care, Wisconsin, Scott Walker,
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"Stem cell research has emerged as a bright line separating the 2010 candidates for governor in Wisconsin. Democrat Tom Barrett supports both adult and embryonic stem cell research and sought to portray Republican rival Scott Walker as extreme with a TV ad that claimed Walker wants to ban stem cell research. We rated that claim , since it made no distinction between adult stem cell research, which Walker supports, and embryonic stem cell research, which he opposes. In the wake of the ad, Walker refused to say whether he supports an outright ban on embryonic stem cell research, though he told a pro-life group in the spring he would sign such a bill. In explaining his views at an Oct. 12, 2010 news conference, Walker made this pronouncement about stem cell research: ""Scientists have shown us (that) the greater possibilities, the real science movement, has been with adult stem cell research. It has not been with embryonic,"" Walker said. He then added for emphasis: ""That’s not a political statement; that’s a statement of scientific fact out there."" We went to the lab -- and several experts on stem cell research -- to see if Walker’s claim on the merits of both sorts of research is true. First, we’ll note two things: 1) There is great hope that stem cell research, which has been used to treat some blood diseases and cancers, may one day treat and cure many diseases. 2) Adult stem cell research is older and generally not controversial, while embryonic is newer and controversial because it involves the destruction of a human embryo. In this item, we are not trying to settle the debate over what is morally right or ethically responsible. We are strictly looking at Walker’s statement. Asked to support Walker’s claim that adult stem cell research is considered by scientists to be superior to embryonic, his campaign cited statements by a federal agency -- the National Institutes of Health -- that differentiate the two: Walker quotes the National Institutes of Health accurately -- but selectively. The NIH also says adult and embryonic stem cells each have advantages and disadvantages -- and that there is a major difference between them: Embryonic stem cells can become all cell types of the body, while adult stem cells ""are thought to be limited to differentiating into different cell types of their tissue of origin."" Momentum for embryonic stem cell research connected with the National Institutes of Health grew with an executive order issued by President Barack Obama in March 2009. It lifted restrictions on the work that had been imposed by President George W. Bush. Obama’s order said in part: ""Advances over the past decade in this promising scientific field have been encouraging, leading to broad agreement in the scientific community that the research should be supported by federal funds."" The future of federally funded embryonic stem cell work has been uncertain since a judge in August 2010 blocked Obama’s order; that ruling is being appealed. But experts we consulted said, as Obama’s order did, that there is broad agreement among scientists about the potential of embryonic stem cell research. International Society for Stem Cell Research: Lawrence Goldstein, a member of the society’s board and director of the stem cell program at the University of California, San Diego, told PolitiFact Wisconsin ""there is no scientific basis"" for Walker’s statement. ""While adult stem cells show promise in some therapeutic settings, there are many therapeutic needs that adult stem cells do not appear likely to meet,"" said Goldstein, who has testified before Congress on National Institutes of Health funding and stem cell research. ""In particular, for neurodegenerative diseases such as (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and other related disorders, embryonic stem cells and related stem cell types show great promise both for therapy and for teaching us what is going wrong in these disorders so that we may develop better therapies in the future. ""Thus, based on scientific considerations and data, it is far too early to conclude that one stem cell type or another will solve all the medical problems we seek to solve, so research with all types must proceed so that we can find out what is best for each type of disease."" National Academies of Science: In September 2008, the academies noted developments in efforts to reprogram adult stem cells to an embryonic stem cell-like state. But ""it is far from clear at this point which cell types will prove to be the most useful for regenerative medicine,"" the academies said, ""and it is likely that each will have some utility."" Earlier this year, the academies again said it is important to not cut off some areas of stem cell research. Medical College of Wisconsin: Stephen Duncan, director of the college’s stem cell biology program, said no one knows whether embryonic or adult stem cells hold the most promise because research is ongoing. ""We just can’t answer whether embryonic or adult stem cells are the best,"" he said. ""The tests haven’t been done."" We’ve done enough research, however, to draw a conclusion about Walker’s claim. In supporting his views, Walker said scientists agree the most promising research is focused on adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells. In supporting that claim, he selectively cites part of a statement by the National Institutes of Health. A broader look at the evidence shows the consensus among scientists is that embryonic stem cells hold great promise in treating diseases, in some ways may be superior to adult stem cells and are deserving of more research."
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36615
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More Americans have been killed by guns than have died in all the wars that have occurred since the United States was founded.
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Have More Americans Died in Gun-Related Incidents Than Wars Since the Founding of the United States?
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true
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Fact Checks, guns, Politics
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On December 7 2018, the Facebook page Change The Ref shared this meme (text below):FACT: MORE AMERICANS HAVE DIED OF GUN-RELATED INCIDENTS IN THE LAST FIFTY YEARS THAN HAVE DIED IN WAR SINCE THE COUNTRY’S FOUNDING.A caption with the image read:#FckThat Fact of the Day: Did you know that more Americans have died of gun-related incidents in the last Fifty years than have died in war since the country’s founding? smh… #FckThat / If its the last thing we do, CHANGE WILL COME! #changetherefNo links to an article or statistics were provided alongside the meme in its caption, nor did the image feature any such reference.However, after the Las Vegas mass shooting on October 1 2017, NBC News’ “More Americans Killed by Guns Since 1968 Than in All U.S. Wars — Combined” supplied data from the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC):Since 1968, more than 1.5 million Americans have died in gun-related incidents, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By comparison, approximately 1.2 million service members have been killed in every war in U.S. history, according to estimates from the Department of Veterans Affairs and iCasualties.org, a website that maintains an ongoing database of casualties from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.PolitiFact revisited the claim in August 2015, after first tackling it in 2013:In a column published shortly after the on-air slayings of two TV journalists in southwestern Virginia, the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof offered some “data points” about the pervasiveness of gun violence in the United States.One of them was: “More Americans have died from guns in the United States since 1968 than on battlefields of all the wars in American history.”That sounded familiar. Really familiar. As it turns out, the web version of Kristof’s column sourced a PolitiFact article from Jan. 18, 2013, that fact-checked commentator Mark Shields’ claim that since 1968, “more Americans have died from gunfire than died in … all the wars of this country’s history.” (Shields used the year 1968 because it was the year presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated by gunman Sirhan Sirhan. )We rated the claim True.Two and a half years later, we wondered whether the statistic still held up, so we took a new look at the data.In 2013 and 2015, based on two more sets of statistics, PolitiFact rated the claim “true.”Tables provided by both PolitiFact and NBC News were nearly identical, but with some key differences. NBC included a thousand deaths during “Indian Wars” between 1817 and 1898; PolitiFact did not. NBC included about a quarter of a million fewer deaths for the Civil War than PolitiFact. And NBC News referenced 54,246 and 90,220 deaths in the Korean and Vietnam wars, respectively; PolitiFact provided those numbers as 36,574 and 58,220.In their final counts, PolitiFact provided 1,396,733 total war deaths as of August 2015 (nearly 1.4 million). NBC News arrived at a number of 1,197,014 (roughly 1.2 million).NBC’s most recent count of deaths involving Americans in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars stood at 6,929 as of October 2017. The same source (icasualties.org) included 50 additional deaths as of December 2018 (6,979). In PolitiFact’s 2015 count, that number was 6,857. The overall difference between war statistics in August 2015 and December 2018 was 122 casualties. The higher count of fatalities estimated still stood at about 1.4 million. (PolitiFact noted, “Where possible, we’ve used the broadest definition of ‘death’ — that is, all war-related deaths, not just those that occurred in combat,” likely accounting for the slightly different numbers.) Finally, statistics from the Congressional Research Service update in September 2018 on war deaths are available here [PDF. ]Tallying all deaths from gun-related causes (suicide, homicide, and accidental discharge among them) wasn’t entirely straightforward. Data provided by the CDC didn’t seem to exist in a single set — its search tool’s range extended from 1999-2015 or 2016. The same held for war deaths. Nearly all examinations of the two data sets drew from historical data for early war deaths, and fluid statistics for more recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.Gun deaths from 1968 forward were also a changing number. In 2015, PolitiFact tallied 1,516,863 deaths from firearms between 1968 and 2015, the last year of which was based on estimates. In October 2017, NBC News reported that [s]ince 1968, more than 1.5 million Americans have died in gun-related incidents, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” Despite the two-year difference, both worked with the number 1.5 million, derived from CDC statistics. PolitiFact estimated gun deaths in 2014 and 2015 to reach the following figure:1968 to 1980: 377,000 [unchanged]1981 to 1998: 620,5251999 to 2013: 464,0332014 (estimated based on rate from 2011-2013): 33,1832015 (estimated based on rate from 2011-2013): 22,122TOTAL, 1968-2015: 1,516,863Initially, PolitiFact estimated the total number of deaths from 1999 to 2015 as 519,338.Using the same statistics for deaths in the United States between 1968 and 2018, the most recent numbers were as follows:1968 to 1980: 377,0001981 to 1998: 620,5251999 to 2015: 533,879With final statistics available in December 2018, the actual tally underestimated firearm-related deaths by roughly 14,500. The number we reached as of December 2018 was 1,531,404 firearm-related deaths between 1981 and 2015. By the highest count, deaths in all wars in the United States sat at under 1.4 million. Firearm deaths in the 47-year period between 1968 and 2015 numbered more than 1.5 million, which was indeed more than the number of war-related deaths.The claim remains true.
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33309
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"Dustin Diamond (aka ""Screech"") was charged with second-degree murder after stabbing a man at a bar."
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Diamond was eventually convicted of two misdemeanors, carrying a concealed weapon and disorderly conduct (but not recklessly endangering public safety, and was sentenced to four months in prison. He was released after serving three months of his sentence but was rearrested for violating his probation.
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false
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Media Matters, Not Necessarily The News
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On 30 December 2014, the entertainment web site Empire News published an article claiming Dustin Diamond, the actor who played the character Screech on the popular 1990s television series Saved by the Bell, had been charged with second-degree murder after stabbing a man at a bar in Wisconsin: Former Saved By The Bell star Dustin Diamond, best known for his awkwardly hilarious character Samuel “Screech” Powers on the timeless popular hit teen television series Saved By The Bell, has been charged with second-degree murder after a man he stabbed during a barroom brawl has died at a Wisconsin hospital. Diamond, 37, initially told police that he accidentally stabbed the man with what he said was a ‘pen’, although he later referred to the weapon, which was never found, as a knife. According to Diamond, while trying to defend his fiance, 27-year-old Amanda Schutz, at the Grand Avenue Saloon in Port Washington, where Diamond is a resident, he was forced to brandish the weapon. Diamond was initially charged with second-degree recklessly endangering safety, disorderly conduct, and carrying a concealed weapon and was released on $10,000 bail before the man, only being referred to by the name of ‘Casey’ per request of family, passed away. Originally reported that Casey was completely fine and his wounds mostly superficial, reports say he took a turn for the worse after a wound from the fight became infected. He died on the operating room table. Empire News is a fake news website that does not publish factual articles. While it’s true Dustin Diamond was arrested on Christmas Day 2014 for allegedly stabbing a bar patron in Wisconsin, the incident did not prove fatal to the victim, and the actor was not charged with any form of murder.
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26227
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“Cases, numbers and deaths (of COVID-19) are going down all over the Country!”
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Nationally, the data show a shrinking number of new daily infections and deaths. That downward pattern is also being mirrored in many states. However, some states are bucking that general pattern and seeing a rising number of new daily cases over time. This suggests a patchwork pattern where the coronavirus is accelerating in some places even as its spread is slowing overall. In the states that are seeing a rising number of new daily infections, the rise is not as rapid as it was earlier in the pandemic.
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mixture
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Public Health, Coronavirus, Donald Trump,
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"As the number of coronavirus deaths neared 100,000, President Donald Trump struck an optimistic note about the state of the pandemic. ""Cases, numbers and deaths are going down all over the Country!"" Trump tweeted May 24. Broadly, Trump has a point that the known spread of the virus has slowed in much of the United States. That said, the virus does continue to spread in some places, even if its rate of spread has declined from its level a few weeks ago. Let’s start with the big picture. Coronavirus deaths shot up quickly in March, peaked in April, and have been falling, though fairly slowly, in May. (The trend line in the following charts is jagged because the daily numbers for both measures tend to be smaller on the weekends before catching up early in the week.) The same pattern can be found in data for the daily increases in positive coronavirus tests nationally: In other words, the pandemic is easing, but not disappearing. The velocity of the spread is slowing, but it hasn’t stopped. The number of cases continues to grow. And the national picture hides substantial variation within states. ""The U.S. is a patchwork of local epidemics right now, and looking at an overall national trend will mask sub-national trends,"" said Joshua Michaud, associate director for global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. ""Some places have seen significant declines in case numbers and shrinking epidemics. Some places have not yet seen significant numbers of cases at all. Still other places see ongoing transmission and, in certain locations, epidemics that are growing, albeit slowly."" Let’s look at a few states where the daily number of new cases has declined steadily. Here is the data for New York and New Jersey. And New York and New Jersey aren’t the only states that have seen clear declines. Using the Kaiser Family Foundation’s data tracker, we found several other states that saw a distinct pattern of declining cases over time: Colorado, Connecticut, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. (You can see the patterns most clearly if you visit Kaiser’s data page, click on ""daily trends,"" and select ""seven-day rolling average change in cases"" for each of these states.) By the same token, other states have seen distinct increases over time, something that undercuts Trump’s argument. For instance, here’s a chart showing the daily increase in cases in Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia: Using Kaiser’s data tracker, we found several other states that had a distinct pattern of rising cases over time: Arkansas, California, Maine, West Virginia and Wisconsin. And if you drill down beyond the state level, there are localities where coronavirus continues to spread quickly. These ""hot spots"" include counties like Trousdale and Lake, Tenn.; Dakota and Colfax, Neb. ; Lincoln, Ark. ; Nobles, Minn.; and Ford, Kan., according to New York Times calculations. Often, hot spots have meatpacking plants or prisons where the coronavirus spreads easily. Overall, death rates are declining in large cities and their suburbs, but have leveled off at a high level in medium-sized cities, small cities, towns, and rural areas, according to a data analysis by the Washington Post. Brooke Nichols, an assistant professor in Boston University’s department of global health, noted that the sharp decline in cases in New York City has driven the decline nationally, and that separating out the rest of the country shows only a very small decrease: Infection counts are subject to external factors, particularly the number of tests conducted. The more you test, the more infections you’ll find. ""Looking at case counts alone can be misleading if you want to know whether local epidemics are getting better,"" said Forrest W. Crawford, a Yale University biostatistician. Still, data from the New York Times show that all states are making progress in at least one regard: a slower increase in infections than earlier in the epidemic. ""The lockdowns and social distancing did work to slow growth, but not completely extinguish it,"" said Tara C. Smith, a professor of epidemiology at Kent State University. Ultimately, the data is varied enough that observers can choose to look at the glass as either half full or half empty. ""People who want to argue that things are getting better focus on slowing rates of growth,"" Crawford said, while those who argue that things are getting worse focus on declining case counts. Trump said, ""Cases, numbers and deaths (of COVID-19) are going down all over the Country!"" In general, the daily number of new infections and deaths is going down nationally, and in many states. However, a significant minority of states are seeing the number of new, daily infections rise, and some counties are ""hot spots"" with rapid spread. This suggests a patchwork pattern with generally slower spread than earlier in the pandemic."
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31608
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The FitnessGram Pacer Test was banned from schools after it was deemed too cruel for children.
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Although the FitnessGram Pacer Test may still strike fear into people of a certain age, this test was not banned from schools for being overly cruel to children.
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false
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Junk News, neomongolia news network
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On 12 March 2017, the Twitter account @memeprovider recirculated an old rumor holding that the FitnessGram Pacer Test (a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues) had been banned from schools because it was deemed too cruel for children: A controversial fitness test has been banned from all schools in Neomongolia today after an executive order by President Chinkus. The test has been subject to a ton of blast after becoming a viral sensation online. Many coming forth saying that the test has damaged their psyche, giving them PTSD. There was no truth to either the tweet or the earlier article it echoed. Although the Neomongolia News Network web site does not carry a readily available disclaimer labeling its content as fiction, the article was clearly written in jest. The story takes place in a fictional location (“Neomongolia”) and references a non-existent president (“President Chinkus”) and an imaginary currency (“250,000 Neomongolian dollars”). A brief perusal of some of the web site’s other headlines (“Bernie Sanders Returns to Assisted Living Facility,” “Cruz, Bush Share Room in Psychiatric Hospital,” and “Chinese Smog Crisis Solved After Vape Shop Raids”) reveals that this web site is clearly an “entertainment” outlet and not a news source. The FitnessGram Pacer (Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run) Test is a real cardio activity developed in 1982. A common copypasta explains the rules of the exercise: The FitnessGram Pacer Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. The 20 meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start. The running speed starts slowly but gets faster each minute after you hear this signal [beep]. A single lap should be completed every time you hear this sound [ding]. Remember to run in a straight line and run as long as possible. The second time you fail to complete a lap before the sound, your test is over. The test will begin on the word start. On your mark. Get ready! … Start. ding This test became a bit of a meme in 2016 as Vine users took audio from a recording of the exercise and placed into various videos:
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4003
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UN: Measles cases spike in numerous outbreaks worldwide.
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The World Health Organization says cases of measles are continuing to spike globally, with multiple large outbreaks being reported across Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East.
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true
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Health, Measles, General News, Africa, Infectious diseases, United Nations, Europe, Middle East
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In an update on Wednesday, the U.N. health agency said Congo has reported more than 250,000 suspected cases this year, including 5,110 deaths. In Europe, there have been more than 56,000 cases in Ukraine. Sizeable outbreaks have also been reported in Brazil, Bangladesh and elsewhere. WHO noted that two large epidemics in New York are over but small outbreaks elsewhere in the U.S. continue. As of Nov. 5, there were more than 440,200 measles cases worldwide reported to WHO. In 2018, there were about 350,000 cases. Measles is among the most infectious diseases and can be prevented with two doses of vaccine.
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34154
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A photograph of U.S. President Donald Trump in his Trump Tower office in 2016 with several boxes of Sudafed in the background provides credible evidence of stimulant abuse.
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Because the central facts used to make the argument that Trump is abusing Sudafed based on this photograph are rooted in fatally flawed logic and incorrect statements of fact, we rank the claim as “False.”
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false
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Politics
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In October 2019, a picture from 2016 of U.S. President Donald Trump eating a taco bowl with the caption “I love Hispanics” re-entered online discourse, this time as evidence that “then-candidate Trump was abusing Sudafed.” The photo — which appears to show three boxes of the name brand nasal decongestant Sudafed in a drawer in the background — is authentic. But claims of his drug abuse stem from a factually challenged Twitter thread. On Oct. 5, 2019, Twitter user JRehling published a thread that highlighted the Sudafed, identified it as a UK formulation, and then made these points as evidence of a nefarious drug-abuse problem: These talking points, in turn, were repeated uncritically by several media outlets, most notably Inquisitr, which also suggested the Sudafed was an example of a broader pattern of stimulant abuse by the president. This argument, we show below, is flawed on numerous accounts. “Sudafed is sometimes used for a high that includes increased alertness.” Sudafed is a brand name for a series of nasal decongestant and cold medication products. Sudafed products generally come with one of two drugs as their active decongestant ingredient: either phenylephrine or pseudoephedrine. Pseudoephedrine is the more powerful of the two chemicals, and it is this chemical that people sometimes abuse for a high or stockpile to make methamphetamine. As such, its use is regulated in the United States. Taking at face value the reasonable-appearing claim proffered in that thread that the drugs in the drawer are the product “Sudafed Mucus Relief Day & Night” would suggest that the drug abuse claim is fatally flawed. This formulation contains phenylephrine, which would mean that the drug Trump is allegedly abusing for a high is not capable of delivering such a high in the first place. “The desk drawer full of Sudafed … indicate that the legal limits of purchase are being circumvented.” As previously discussed, the Sudafed product at issue here does not contain a chemical with any legal limits on purchase. In the U.S., pseudoephedrine is regulated more tightly than other over-the-counter drugs thanks to the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005. That law imposes monthly limits on retail or online purchases of pseudoephedrine-containing products and requires the collection of some personal details when purchasing them. Phenylephrine is not regulated under this law, and as such there is no “legal limit” for Trump to be circumventing by purchasing or stockpiling the drug. “The boxes include a type that is only sold in the United Kingdom, with a different box and distinctive ingredients not found in the U.S.” Sudafed Mucus Relief contains three ingredients, all of which are commonly found in the United States: paracetamol, phenylephrine, and caffeine. Paracetamol is what Tylenol (acetaminophen), a common drug in the United States, goes by in Europe. Caffeine is ubiquitous in the United States, and often used as an ingredient to enhance the pain-relieving impact in headache drugs like Excedrin. Phenylephrine, as discussed earlier, is the most common over-the-counter decongestant in America. While the specific formulation of acetaminophen, caffeine, and phenylephrine does not appear to exist as an over-the-counter product in the United States, it would be ridiculous to suggest than any of these three ingredients are “not found in the U.S.,” or to suggest that any of them are used for a high.
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28522
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President Trump abruptly closed the Dogs for Wounded Warriors program.
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What's true: Walter Reed National Military Medical Center issued a stop work order to the Warrior Canine Connection on 27 October 2017, citing patient safety concerns. What's false: The stop work order was issued by Walter Reed officials, not President Trump, and concerns about the Warrior Canine Connection had been raised several months earlier.
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mixture
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Politics Military, donald trump, the political voice, walter reed
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On 11 November 2017, multiple web sites published identical articles claiming that President Trump had “abruptly” and personally halted a program involving therapy dogs and wounded veterans, leaving the latter “high and dry” on Veterans Day: Trump Abruptly Shuts Down Dogs for Wounded Warriors Program, Leaving Vets High and Dry on Veteran’s Day! This week, the useful Warrior Canine Connection program received a shocking letter at the program’s office in the Washington D.C. area. The letter instructed personnel to leave their posts immediately and shut down the program for vets. They have since closed their offices at Fort Belvoir in Northern Virginia and on the campus of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Washington. Warrior Canine Connection Executive Director Rick Yount stated: “At two o’clock in the afternoon, I received a phone call saying there was a stop work order. There was no explanation whatsoever as to why that was the decision.” He asked, “Why would — all of the sudden — a program be halted that was serving patients?” These articles did not link to (or cite) any credible news report or other information corroborating their claims that President Trump had ordered a program involving service dogs and veterans closed as of Veterans Day 2017. Many readers inferred that the shutdown of a canine program for veterans had actually occurred on Veterans Day itself. But while Washington, D.C., radio station WTOP reported that operations of the Warrior Canine Connection at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center had indeed been abruptly terminated, they noted that the stoppage had been ordered and implemented a couple of weeks prior to Veterans Day: The Warrior Canine Connection, a program that uses an army of volunteer puppy raisers, dog trainers and veterans to prepare service dogs for wounded veterans and their families, has been partnering with military facilities in the D.C. region since 2009. But suddenly — and without explanation — that came to a stop, says Warrior Canine Connection Executive Director Rick Yount. He said his trainers and puppy raisers at Fort Belvoir and at two locations on the campus of the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, were told on Oct. 27 to vacate their offices that afternoon. “At 2 o’clock in the afternoon, I received a phone call saying there was a stop work order. There was no explanation whatsoever as to why that was the decision,” Yount said. Washington, D.C., television station WTTG-TV also covered the story, reporting that “a popular service dog program at Walter Reed and Fort Belvoir was told to close up shop immediately, leaving many frustrated with a lack of answers for the shutdown.” But neither WTOP nor WTTG reported that the closure had been ordered by President Trump himself. Moreover, another article on the subject from WTOP reported that concerns about risks to both disabled vets and animals within the program had been reported in a letter from a military contract officer to the National Intrepid Center of Excellence several months earlier: An April [2017] letter from a military contract officer laid out several complaints about the performance of Warrior Canine Connection, the group that trains veterans to train service dogs for their fellow disabled vets. A letter sent to the firm managing the contract for Warrior Canine Connection complained about the “health and well-being of animals, specifically as it pertains to standard precautions in a health care setting”. According to the letter, there had been several instances when dogs who appeared to be sick, described as unable to control their bowels, were brought to the National Intrepid Center of Excellence. The contract states that animals with any sign of illness — from runny noses to diarrhea — could not be brought to the facility. The complaints also included concerns that the dogs suffering those signs of illness went untreated and that one dog had issues that “were allowed to persist for months.” Rick Yount, Executive Director of Warrior Canine Connection told WTOP that there had been some concern about health issues among some dogs, but that a veterinarian was brought in and those issues were resolved. Marvin Davis, of MD Consulting in Waldorf, Maryland, was the prime contractor for Warrior Canine Connection. He told WTOP that the issues in the April letter “had been resolved” and that they were not the cause of the stop-work order that Warrior Canine Connection got on [27 October 2017]. Instead, Davis said, “Based on my communications with the government, the letter of concern was not the basis of the stop-work order.” Davis said he was told “The Walter Reed National Military Medical Center medical director wanted to go in a different direction as it related to the canine program at Walter Reed.” In an email statement, Communications Director for Walter Reed Sandy Dean wrote to WTOP to say that the stop-work order was issued “so that we could restructure the contract to enhance oversight of patient care.” She added that canine-assisted therapy programming would continue at Walter Reed, but didn’t say whether that would include dogs from Warrior Canine Connection. On both Facebook and Twitter, the Warrior Canine Connection opted to respond privately to an avalanche of inquiries prompted by the articles: For more information, please DM us. Thanks for your support! — WarriorCanineConnect (@WarriorCanineCn) November 13, 2017 Washington, D.C., television station WRC provided details missing from many of the other news reports, primarily that Walter Reed (and not President Trump) had issued the stop work order, and that the reason given for the order was patient safety: Walter Reed spokesperson Sandy Dean [said] the military hospital effectively canceled its contract with Warrior Canine Connection. “We issued a stop work order to the prime contractor so that we could restructure the contract to enhance oversight of patient care,” Dean said … Dean said the contract did not provide Walter Reed enough oversight over the program. As a result, Walter Reed will restructure its Canine Assisted Therapy program, according to Dean. The government contract will then go out to bid. “We are expeditiously updating our Canine Assisted Therapy program to bring an enhanced version back on-line and apologize for any inconvenience or disturbance this temporary pause may bring to our patents and staff’s normal routine,” Dean said. In the meantime, Dean said patients who worked with Warrior Canine Connection’s service dogs at their facility will still receive services through the hospital’s other therapy programs. Warrior Canine Connection Executive Director Rick Yount told WTOP no one had given him any information about why the program was halted at the military sites. “At two o’clock in the afternoon, I received a phone call saying there was a stop work order. There was no explanation whatsoever as to why that was the decision,” Yount told WTOP. “Legally we are not permitted to discuss contract matters with subcontractors. That responsibility rests with the prime contractor,” Dean said. Dean said the prime contractor is MD Consulting. Although the Warrior Canine Connection’s stop work order was reported as having been “abrupt” or “without warning,” local news stations repeatedly referenced a letter of concern sent to an oversight agency in April 2017. The order was handed down not by President Trump, but by officials at the Walter Reed medical facility due to patient safety issues. We contacted the Warrior Canine Connection for further information, and they provided us with the following statement: This week several news outlets published stories about the interruption of our service dog contract at Department of Defense sites in the national capital region. While WCC has not received any information or guidance from Walter Reed, these stories included a statement from Walter Reed indicating that the “Canine Assisted Therapy program is popular with both our patients and staff at Walter Reed Bethesda. We issued a Stop Work Order to the prime contractor so that we could restructure the contact to enhance oversight of patient care.” The statement stressed their intention to update the canine assisted therapy program to bring an enhanced version back on-line soon. WCC has always been transparent with our work and we would welcome any additional involvement or oversight by the hospital leadership that would make the program better or more effective for our wounded Warriors. We would also welcome the opportunity to work with the leadership at Walter Reed and others to restructure the contract or make other adjustments that would allow the program to be restored, and allow WCC to again provide our assistance to the 105 wounded soldiers who were participating in our programs prior to the stop work order. WCC will continue to provide its unique form of animal assisted therapy and dog placement services to Service Members and Veterans who need our help. Our commitment to this critical mission is unwavering, and our programs at locations not impacted by the stop work order continue to operate as usual. We have received countless inquiries from hundreds of concerned friends, patients, members of the medical community, and lawmakers offering their support and assistance.
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17136
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From 1972 until 2011, the number of EPA employees increased by 107 percent while the number of total federal personnel decreased by 15 percent.
|
"Griffith said, ""From 1972 until 2011, the number of EPA employees increased by 107 percent while the number of total federal personnel decreased by 15 percent."" There are a few minor issues with Griffith’s choice of dates and numbers, but we won’t quibble. The EPA increase would have dipped below 100 percent if Griffith had used the most current employment figures from 2013. On the other had, Griffith could have made the growth sound more dramatic if he had started his comparison in 1970, when the EPA was born."
|
true
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Environment, Jobs, Virginia, Morgan Griffith,
|
"U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith has long blamed regulations by the Environmental Protection Agency for the decline of the coal industry across the nation and in his Southwest Virginia district. Griffith, R-9th, introduced a bill to cut 15 percent of the EPA’s budget, saying the agency has grown ""out of control."" ""From 1972 until 2011, the number of EPA employees increased by 107 percent while the number of total federal personnel decreased by 15 percent,"" he said on March 25 during testimony before the House Budget Committee. We wondered whether Griffith’s figures are correct. His spokeswoman, Andrea Pivarunas, sent us sources for the numbers. The EPA had a staff of 8,358 in 1972 and it grew to 17,359 in 2011, according to data from the agency. That’s an increase of 107.7 percent -- matching what Griffith said. We should note that EPA dropped to 15,913 employees last year as many cashed in on an early retirement incentive offered to federal workers. So if Griffith had used the the most current data available, the increase since 1972 would have translated to 90.4 percent. The total number of federal employees was 5.2 million in 1972 and 4.4 million in 2011, according to the federal Office of Personnel Management. That’s a decrease of 15.4 percent -- again, what Griffith said. The federal workforce figure requires elaboration because it includes civilians and uniformed military personnel, which have experienced different trends since 1972. Executive branch civilian employees numbered 2.82 million in 1972 and 2.76 million in 2011, a drop of 2.1 percent. Meanwhile, uniformed military personnel numbered 2.36 million in 1972 and 1.58 million in 2011, a decrease of 33.1 percent. So the reduction in federal employees has more to do with a smaller fighting force than with a shrinking bureaucracy. Now, let’s return to the EPA. What accounted for its sharp rise in employment? The answer is that the agency was barely out of infancy in 1972 when Griffith begins his timeline. The EPA was created on Dec. 2, 1970, to consolidate environmental quality programs in several federal departments. For example, the Interior Department worked on water quality and pesticides, while the Department of Health, Education and Welfare worked on air pollution, and the Food and Drug Administration conducted pesticides research. In areas where the federal government didn’t have oversight, state or local governments were left to fill in the gaps. Congress passed a number of laws in the 1970s that expanded the EPA’s authority: Clean Air Act to set national air quality, automobile emission and anti-pollution standards Lead-Based Paint Poisoning Prevention to to restrict lead-based paints in government-subsidized housing, cribs and toys Clean Water Act to control discharges of pollution in surface water Dumping Act to control dumping chemicals and material in the ocean waters Safe Drinking Water Act to regulate public drinking water Resource Conservation and Recovery Act to control hazardous waste from creation to disposal Toxic Substances Control Act to cut health risks from synthetic and organic chemicals Superfund Act to identify those responsible for chemical contamination of land and compel them to clean up the contamination ""The 1970s is known as the environmental decade because so much happened so quickly,"" said Daniel Fiorino, director of American University’s Center for Environmental Policy and a former EPA official. The agency started with 4,084 employees in 1970 and grew to 13,078 in 1980. Employment tapered in the early 1980s, but grew again in the 1990s with a sweeping expansion of the Clean Water Act and as concerns emerged about global warming. The EPA peaked in 1999, with 18,110 employees. From 1980 to 2011, employment at the EPA grew by 32.4 percent while the total number of federal employees -- military and civilian -- dropped by 11.3 percent. Our ruling Griffith said, ""From 1972 until 2011, the number of EPA employees increased by 107 percent while the number of total federal personnel decreased by 15 percent."" There are a few minor issues with Griffith’s choice of dates and numbers, but we won’t quibble. The EPA increase would have dipped below 100 percent if Griffith had used the most current employment figures from 2013. On the other had, Griffith could have made the growth sound more dramatic if he had started his comparison in 1970, when the EPA was born."
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26759
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Cuba has a lung cancer vaccine we in the US had no access to because we sanctioned Cuba.”
|
Cancer vaccines don’t prevent disease; the focus is on slowing tumor growth. The Cuban vaccine Cimavax was developed in the 1990s and extended life by about three months in trials there. After the United States normalized relations with Cuba, the drug became available for a small clinical trial in the United States in 2016. American access to the drug remains limited.
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mixture
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National, Elections, Health Care, Facebook Fact-checks, Bloggers,
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"Online supporters of Bernie Sanders came to his defense on the issue of Cuba, touting the communist island nation’s accomplishments beyond improving literacy rates. ""Cuba has a lung cancer vaccine we in the US had no access to because we sanctioned Cuba,"" the Feb. 24 post said. ""Cuba eliminated HIV transmission from mother to child. Cuba has a literacy rate of nearly 98% now."" The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) We’ll focus on the claim about the lung cancer vaccine because the facts behind the statement lead to a less certain conclusion than the Facebook post suggests. (The other elements in the post are accurate.) Though we tend to think of vaccines as protecting you from getting sick, cancer vaccines work differently. In 2016, nearly 150,000 people died from lung cancer in the United States. Neither the United States nor Cuba nor anyone else has developed a vaccine that would stop those deaths. That’s because cancer vaccines don’t block disease; their purpose is to shrink existing tumors, and failing that, slow them down. There are 91 lung cancer vaccines under study today in the United States, according to the National Institutes of Health. During the 1990s, Cuba began testing a drug called Cimavax and found that it extended lung cancer patients’ lives by about three months. In 2011, Cuba began offering the drug to Cubans for free. That same year, Cuban researchers discussed the results with the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y. Four years later — the same year that the United States and Cuba re-opened embassies in each other’s capitals — scientists from both countries agreed on a collaborative research project. It was the first time since the Cuban revolution that Cuban and American institutions had been permitted to engage in such a joint venture, Roswell Park’s chief executive, Candace S. Johnson told the New York Times. The initial results in Cuba were ambiguous, and they needed to be replicated in the United States to meet Food and Drug Administration rules. Ultimately, the Roswell Park study hopes to have 180 patients. These are people with advanced cancer who have exhausted other treatments. So far, the study has not met its goal. Approximately 100 people have gone to Cuba on their own for treatment. With about 200,000 new cases of lung cancer each year, the fraction of patients accessing Cimavax is about one tenth of one percent. When the Trump administration re-imposed restrictions on travel to Cuba, it created a legal bind for Americans — about 100 since 2016 — who have gone there for this treatment. According to the new rules, they were now breaking the law. But this highlights that opening the doors to Cuba also increased access to the drug, although access was limited to patients who could afford to make the trip. A Facebook post said Cuba had a lung cancer vaccine that the United States had no access to due to the decades-long embargo. There is an element of accuracy here, but it lacks several important pieces of information. A lung cancer vaccine doesn’t prevent the disease; it is judged a success if it slows down or stops tumor growth. The drug in this case, Cimavax, extended life by about three months in the Cuban study. Access to Cimavax is limited to about 180 patients in one American study and those who go on their own to Cuba. The combined total represents a tiny fraction of people with lung cancer. There are about 90 cancer vaccines under study in America today. None of this would be apparent to people who read the Facebook post."
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534
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Japan clears restart at nuclear reactor closest to epicenter of 2011 quake.
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Japan’s Tohoku Electric Power said on Wednesday it has won initial regulatory approval to restart a reactor at its Onagawa power plant, more than 8 years after it was damaged in the earthquake and tsunami that caused the Fukushima disaster.
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true
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Environment
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Tohoku Electric said in a statement it has received a first green light from Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority to restart the No. 2 reactor at Onagawa, subject to a public consultation period. Onagawa was the closest among Japan’s nuclear stations to the epicenter of the magnitude-9 quake in March 2011, which triggered a tsunami that killed nearly 20,000 people, as well as causing the worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl in 1986. The station was swamped by the tsunami, but survived with its cooling system intact, saving its reactors from the threat of meltdowns similar to those that occurred at Tokyo Electric Power’s Fukushima Daiichi station to the south. Further approvals will be required before the restart, along with the consent of local authorities, which is not guaranteed. The reactor is a boiling water reactor (BWR) with the same basic design as those that melted down in the Fukushima crisis. Tohoku Electric expects to spend 340 billion yen ($3.1 billion) on safety upgrades at the Onagawa plant, including for a wall stretching 800 meters (2,625-ft) in length and standing as tall as 29 meters above sea level to protect it from tsunamis. Restarting the No. 2 reactor will save the utility 35 billion yen each year in fuel costs, he said. The Fukushima disaster led to the eventual shutdown of the country’s then-54 operational reactors, which once provided nearly a third of Japan’s electricity. All had to be relicensed under new standards after the disaster highlighted operational and regulatory failings. While the approval will be a boost for Japan’s resurgent nuclear industry, the sector will still miss a government target of providing at least a fifth of the country’s electricity by 2030, an analysis by Reuters showed last year. Nine reactors have been restarted, all of them pressurized water reactors located far from Tokyo, while the stigma of Fukushima still hangs over use of the older BWR technology. The issue of nuclear safety in Japan was highlighted again earlier this week when Pope Francis - who met victims of the Fukushima nuclear disaster while in Japan over the weekend - said nuclear energy should not be used until there are ironclad guarantees that it is safe for people and the environment. For a graphic on status of Japan's reactor fleet: here
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17395
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If you have a union job, you're making on average $950 a week. If you have a non-union job, you're making $750 a week.
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"Perez said. ""If you have a union job, you're making on average $950 a week. If you have a non-union job, you're making $750 a week."" His figures are correct, but with an asterisk -- Perez should have specified ""median"" when he said ""average."" In general, though, his overall point is backed up by the data."
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true
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National, Jobs, Workers, Thomas Perez,
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"Do union members really make $200 a week more than people who aren’t in unions? Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez said so during the Feb. 4, 2014, edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, Perez said, ""just came out with their data on union membership. … If you have a union job, you're making on average $950 a week. If you have a non-union job, you're making $750 a week. So collective bargaining is a big part of how this middle class grew in America and it continues to be an important part of who we are as Americans."" We located the report Perez was talking about. In this table, BLS summarizes median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers in 2012 and 2013 by whether they are in a union or not. The table shows that the median weekly earnings for union members in 2013 was $950, compared to $750 for non-union workers. So Perez is basically right, with one exception. He should have referred to median earnings, rather than average earnings. A median takes the exact middle value from a list that’s ordered from biggest to smallest, rather than taking the sum of all earnings and dividing it by the number of people. The two calculations usually aren’t the same; a median is less likely to be skewed by very small or very large values. Meanwhile, it’s worth pointing out a few other bits of context, none of which make Perez’s claim less accurate. • This is an overall median; the ratios by occupation differ. In some sectors, being a union member doesn’t matter much, BLS found. In several sectors -- including ""management, professional, and related occupations,"" ""financial activities,"" ""professional and technical services,"" ""sales and related occupations,"" ""mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction,"" and the federal government -- non-union workers actually earn modestly more than union members do. And union members earn only marginally more than non-union workers in such fields as ""telecommunications"" and ""arts, entertainment, and recreation."" By contrast, the biggest gaps come in fields such as ""protective service occupations"" (a difference of $459 a week) and ""construction"" (a difference of $383 a week). Protective service occupations includes correctional officers, police, firefighters, animal control workers, lifeguards, and security guards. ""Unions do more to raise the wages of workers with less-than-average education than they do to boost the wages of those with better-than-average education,"" said Gary Burtless, an economist with the Brookings Institution. ""Unionized Ph.D.s do not gain as much from being in a union as high school dropouts, though even unionized Ph.D.s may enjoy a bit better job security and receive bigger helpings of health and retirement benefits than their non-union counterparts."" • If you include fringe benefits, the difference between union members and non-union workers grows. According to BLS data from 2011, workers’ pay plus benefts for a 40-hour week was $1,508 for a union employee and $1,083 for a non-union worker. That’s a gap of $425 -- more than double the gap in the figures cited by Perez. ""Unions are typically more successful in getting good fringe benefits – especially health benefits, sickness pay, and retirement benefits – than in raising workers’ money wages,"" Burtless said. Our ruling Perez said. ""If you have a union job, you're making on average $950 a week. If you have a non-union job, you're making $750 a week."" His figures are correct, but with an asterisk -- Perez should have specified ""median"" when he said ""average."" In general, though, his overall point is backed up by the data."
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29282
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"Orson Welles' 30 October 1938 radio adaptation of ""The War of the Worlds"" caused mass hysteria, convincing thousands of panicked listeners across North America that Earth was being attacked by Mars."
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"Accounts conflict about how terrified Americans really were by Orson Welles' infamous 1938 ""War of the Worlds"" Halloween broadcast."
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false
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Entertainment, halloween, Radio
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Of the countless adaptations made of H.G. Wells’ 1897 science fiction classic The War of the Worlds over the past century, the one that remains most talked and written about to this day was Orson Welles’ live radio broadcast on 30 October 1938. It boasted a distinctly modern twist. Keen on cementing his reputation as a theatrical wunderkind (Welles was on the cover of Time magazine only months earlier), the 23-year-old actor-director reworked the plodding Victorian narrative about a Martian invasion of Earth into a gripping faux newscast with real moments of shock and awe. (Contrary to common nomenclature, Welles’ “War of the Worlds” broadcast was not a “hoax” sprung on an unsuspecting audience. Rather, the show was a regularly scheduled and announced episode of The Mercury Theatre on the Air, a radio program dedicated to presenting dramatizations of literary works.) A brief excerpt from the script by Howard Koch shows why Welles’ hour-long production of The War of the Worlds is justly regarded as a mini-masterpiece of horror: ANNOUNCER: We are bringing you an eyewitness account of what’s happening on the Wilmuth farm, Grovers Mill, New Jersey. (MORE PIANO) We now return you to Carl Phillips at Grovers Mill. PHILLIPS: Ladies and gentlemen (Am I on?). Ladies and gentlemen, here I am, back of a stone wall that adjoins Mr. Wilmuth’s garden. From here I get a sweep of the whole scene. I’ll give you every detail as long as I can talk. As long as I can see. More state police have arrived They’re drawing up a cordon in front of the pit, about thirty of them. No need to push the crowd back now. They’re willing to keep their distance. The captain is conferring with someone. We can’t quite see who. Oh yes, I believe it’s Professor Pierson. Yes, it is. Now they’ve parted. The Professor moves around one side, studying the object, while the captain and two policemen advance with something in their hands. I can see it now. It’s a white handkerchief tied to a pole . . . a flag of truce. If those creatures know what that means . . . what anything means!. . . Wait! Something’s happening! (HISSING SOUND FOLLOWED BY A HUMMING THAT INCREASES IN INTENSITY) PHILLIPS: A humped shape is rising out of the pit. I can make out a small beam of light against a mirror. What’s that? There’s a jet of flame springing from the mirror, and it leaps right at the advancing men. It strikes them head on! Good Lord, they’re turning into flame! (SCREAMS AND UNEARTHLY SHRIEKS) PHILLIPS: Now the whole field’s caught fire. (EXPLOSION) The woods . . . the barns . . . the gas tanks of automobiles . . . it’s spreading everywhere. It’s coming this way. About twenty yards to my right . . . (CRASH OF MICROPHONE … THEN DEAD SILENCE) The broadcast was legendary overnight for supposedly having been too realistic and frightening for its audience. Morning papers from coast to coast reveled in the “mass hysteria” it had caused — even the staid New York Times, whose front-page headline blared, “Radio Listeners in Panic, Taking War Drama as Fact“: Many Flee Homes to Escape ‘Gas Raid From Mars’ — Phone Calls Swamp Police at Broadcast of Wells Fantasy A wave of mass hysteria seized thousands of radio listeners between 8:15 and 9:30 o’clock last night when a broadcast of a dramatization of H. G. Wells’s fantasy, “The War of the Worlds,” led thousands to believe that an interplanetary conflict had started with invading Martians spreading wide death and destruction in New Jersey and New York. The broadcast, which disrupted households, interrupted religious services, created traffic jams and clogged communications systems, was made by Orson Welles, who as the radio character, “The Shadow,” used to give “the creeps” to countless child listeners. This time at least a score of adults required medical treatment for shock and hysteria. In Newark, in a single block at Heddon Terrace and Hawthorne Avenue, more than twenty families rushed out of their houses with wet handkerchiefs and towels over their faces to flee from what they believed was to be a gas raid. Some began moving household furniture. Throughout New York families left their homes, some to flee to near-by parks. Thousands of persons called the police, newspapers and radio stations here and in other cities of the United States and Canada seeking advice on protective measures against the raids. In Providence, Rhode Island, “weeping and hysterical women” swamped the Providence Journal with calls asking for more details of the “massacre.” In Pittsburgh, Associated Press reported, a man returned home in the middle of the broadcast and found his wife with a bottle of poison in her hand, saying, “I’d rather die this way than like that.” In San Francisco, police fielded hundreds of calls from frightened listeners, including one man who wanted to volunteer to help fight the Martian invaders. When Orson Welles was asked to comment on the hysteria he was blamed for causing, he was incredulous. “We’ve been putting on all sorts of things from the most realistic situations to the wildest fantasy, but nobody ever bothered to get serious about them before,” he was quoted as saying. “We just can’t understand why this should have such an amazing reaction. It’s too bad that so many people got excited, but after all, we kept reminding them that it wasn’t really true.” WABC, which aired the program in New York, issued this statement one hour after the broadcast ended: For those listeners who tuned in to Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast from 8 to 9 p.m. tonight, and did not realize that the program was merely a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’ famous novel, “War of the Worlds,” we are repeating the fact, which was made clear four times on the program, that the entire content of the play was entirely fictitious. For decades, the conventional wisdom based on the sensationalized reporting of the time was that the Mercury Theatre broadcast had indeed spread mass hysteria from one end of the country to the other. By the 2000s, however, sociologists and historians were questioning the true severity of “the War of the Worlds panic.” W. Joseph Campbell, an American University professor of communication studies, observed in 2010 that the contemporaneous news coverage was “almost entirely anecdotal and largely based on sketch wire service roundups that emphasized breadth over in-depth detail”: In short, the notion that the War of the Worlds program sent untold thousands of people into the streets in panic is a media-driven myth that offers a deceptive message about the power radio wielded over listeners in its early days and, more broadly, about the media’s potential to sow fright, panic, and alarm. Such data as exist about the listening audience that night support Campbell’s thesis. The C.E. Hooper ratings service reported that only 2 percent of national respondents were tuned into Welles’ broadcast on 30 October 1938. The rest were either listening to something else (most likely ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s Chase and Sanborn Hour, one of the most popular programs on radio), or nothing at all. Based on the network’s own audience survey, CBS executive Frank Stanton concluded that most Americans didn’t hear the show. “But those who did hear it,” he added, “looked at it as a prank and accepted it that way.” Recapping the event on its 75th anniversary in Slate, media historians Jefferson Pooley and Michael J. Socolow pointed out that few, if any, of the anecdotal reports of hysterical reactions to the program were ever investigated and confirmed: Wire service reports did relay sensational stories of (unnamed) panicked listeners saved only by the timely intervention of friends or neighbors, but not one newspaper reported a verified suicide connected to the broadcast. Researchers in Princeton’s Office of Radio Research, working under the direction of Cantril, sought to verify a rumor that several people were treated for shock at St. Michael’s Hospital in Newark, N.J. The rumor was checked and found to be inaccurate. When the same researchers surveyed six New York City hospitals six weeks after the broadcast, “none of them had any record of any cases brought in specifically on account of the broadcast.” No specific death has ever been conclusively attributed to the drama. The Washington Post reported that one Baltimore listener died of a heart attack during the show, but unfortunately no one followed up to confirm the story or provide corroborative details. One particularly frightened listener did sue CBS for $50,000, claiming the network caused her “nervous shock.” Her lawsuit was quickly dismissed. In addition to overblown press coverage, another reason the event went down in history as an instance of “mass hysteria” was the publication of a book in 1940 called The Invasion from Mars. Written by Princeton psychology professor Hadley Cantril, the book purported to explain the War of the Worlds “panic” in sociological terms but suffered from being overly reliant on a skewed report hastily compiled six weeks after the broadcast. On the basis of the report, which Jefferson and Socolow say was “tainted by the sensationalistic newspaper publicity,” Cantril estimated that one million listeners had been “frightened” by the show — an impossible number, based on every other known measure of the size of the listening audience. “Worse,” Jefferson and Socolow wrote, “Cantril committed an obvious categorical error by conflating being ‘frightened,’ ‘disturbed,’ or ‘excited’ by the program with being ‘panicked. '” Was a small percentage of listeners frightened — and a few even panicked, perhaps — by The War of the Worlds on the night of the broadcast? Clearly, yes. Many of those, it was determined afterwards, had tuned in late and missed obvious clues that it was fiction (and a large percentage of those assumed the U.S. was under attack by Germany, not Mars). But was it an instance of mass hysteria overtaking tens of thousands of people throughout the U.S.? The evidence shows otherwise.
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26026
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Rick Scott Says “Joe Biden supported the Castro regime and meeting with Maduro.”
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Biden has said that if he’s elected, he wants to resume Obama’s re-engagement with Cuba. Biden spoke with Maduro at the swearing-in ceremony for the president in Brazil in 2015. Experts told us that Biden’s support for Obama’s engagement policy with Cuba does not equal supporting the regime. Some conservatives have argued that any relationship with the regime shows support.
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false
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Foreign Policy, Florida, Rick Scott,
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"When asked about President Donald Trump’s sagging poll numbers in Florida, Trump ally and Florida Sen. Rick Scott accused presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden of being an ally of Latin American dictators. ""Biden supported the Castro regime and meeting with Maduro,"" Scott told Greta Van Susteren on her news show ""Full Court Press"" on June 28. For voters of Cuban or Venezuelan descent in Florida, any suggestion that a politician supports repressive regimes that committed human rights abuses is a serious accusation. Cuban American voters in South Florida are an important voting bloc for Republicans, although Democrats point to generational differences with hopes of winning over younger voters. Scott knows the power of his words about Latin American dictators. In 2018, Scott focused heavily on Hispanic voters and delivered an anti-socialism message when he successfully ousted Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson by a tiny margin. But is his statement accurate? We found that Biden supports normalizing relations with Cuba as President Barack Obama did, but experts told us that doesn’t equal supporting the regime. Biden had a brief encounter with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in 2015, but that meeting alone doesn’t tell the full story about Biden’s position with respect to the socialist leader. Scott’s spokesperson pointed to Biden’s comments in April when he told CBS’ Jim DeFede that he would restore Obama’s policy of engagement with Cuba. ""In large part, I would go back,"" Biden said. ""I’d still insist they keep the commitments they said they would make when we, in fact, set the policy in place."" DeFede asked Biden if re-engagement would reward Cuba at a time when its leaders are propping Maduro in Venezuela. ""Well, they’re having great difficulty propping up Maduro,"" Biden said. ""Number one, Maduro is in real trouble. Number two, there’s no reason why we cannot still sanction them, but failing to recognize them at all is a different thing than sanctioning them."" While Biden supports engagement with Cuba, he has repeatedly criticized the regime’s record on human rights and political prisoners. ""I have no illusions about the situation in Cuba, and it’s deeply concerning that the Cuban government continues to assert strong political and economic control while failing to respect press freedom and the freedom of assembly,"" Biden told the Washington Post during the primary. ""But Cuba is not represented solely by its leadership. There are many different sectors that we can and should work with to support progress in Cuba — including entrepreneurs, religious groups, universities, young people and human rights defenders."" There are varying opinions about whether the U.S. should engage with Cuba, including among Cuban American residents in Miami-Dade County. Conservative Cuban Americans have argued that any U.S. engagement with Cuba ultimately helps the socialist regime. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., argued against any softening of policy toward Cuba. During the primary debate in March, Biden said that Obama was trying to ""change Cuban policies so the Cuban people would get out from under the thumb of Castro and his brother."" Experts told us that support for engaging Cuba is not the same as endorsing the regime. Engagement policies are always with adversaries, said Bert Hoffmann, Latin America expert at the GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies. ""Trump met with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, and that was not ‘supporting the regime’ but trying engagement policies,"" Hoffmann told PolitiFact. ""In the case of Cuba, Obama was always very clear that his engagement policy toward Cuba was in no way support of the regime, but a strategy to help the Cuban people and to stimulate change in a context where the Cold War-type confrontation between Cuba and the U.S. had been effectively stabilizing the Cuban regime for decades."" William LeoGrande, professor of government at American University, said the charge that the Obama administration supported the Cuban regime amounts to ""partisan name-calling."" ""President Obama’s policy of opening a diplomatic dialogue with Cuba was based on the fact that the old policy of hostility and isolation was a failure,"" LeoGrande said. ""It hadn’t worked for 60 years."" Obama challenged the Cuban regime on human rights and encouraged it to move toward democracy, LeoGrande said. U.S. interests required dialogue with Cuba on issues such as narcotics interdiction and environmental protection. There is debate about whether Obama’s approach improved human rights for the Cuban people. Jorge Duany, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, said it’s clear Obama’s intention was to influence democratic change — not to support the regime. Scott’s spokeswoman pointed to a photo showing Biden and Maduro smiling at each other. It stems from their encounter in January 2015 during former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's swearing-in ceremony in Brazil. We did not find an official transcript of their conversation, so we can only rely on what Biden and others said about their encounter and media reports. The AP at the time described it as a ""brief, impromptu meeting."" An unnamed U.S. administration official said Maduro told Biden that he wanted improved ties, but was concerned about sanctions. Biden said one step Venezuela could take would be to release political prisoners. Maduro described the meeting as ""cordial."" Speaking in Miami in September, Biden called ""it a coming to the Lord meeting with Maduro."" ""I told (Maduro), we’d talk with him if he did the following things, starting with setting up elections, making sure he’d release political prisoners, a whole range of things. That kind of ended our conversation,"" Biden said. So why was Biden laughing in the photo? We found a couple of different explanations. A Biden adviser, Juan S. Gonzalez, who identified himself in one of the photos, tweeted that Biden ""laughed when Maduro asked him to raise the price of oil (market didn't work that way) and that if he wanted to talk he first needed to release political prisoners and negotiate in earnest."" Hey @TrumpWarRoom - I’m the bald guy in that picture. He laughed when #Maduro asked him to raise the price of oil (market didn’t work that way) and that if he wanted to talk he first needed to release political prisoners and negotiate in earnest. https://t.co/Xe1Q58icyU The Brazilian publication Valor at the time wrote that Biden said to Maduro, ""If I had your hair, I'd be president of the United States."" (The Venezuelan government website in 2020 recounted a similar statement.) Other events point to rockier times. One month later, Maduro accused Biden of trying to organize an effort to overthrow him. Biden’s office denied the accusation but said Venezuela had violated freedom of speech, assembly and due process. Biden has ""been very clear that Maduro's government is illegitimate, and that Venezuela needs free and fair elections,"" LeoGrande said. About a month after he met with Maduro, Biden met with Lilian Tintori, the wife of opposition leader and then-political prisoner Leopoldo Lopez. During his campaign, Biden has repeatedly criticized Maduro. In February 2019, Biden called Maduro a ""tyrant"" and called on the international community to support Juan Guaidó as president. Trump, too, recognized Guaidó as the interim president. Biden has also called for extending Temporary Protected Status to Venezuelans who have fled for the United States. It is tough for Venezuelans to get asylum in the U.S. Democrats, including Biden, have criticized Trump’s comments about Maduro. In June, Trump told Axios that he was open to meeting with Maduro. In response to the backlash, Trump tweeted: ""I would only meet with Maduro to discuss one thing: a peaceful exit from power!"" John Bolton wrote in his book that Trump thought Guaido was ""weak"" as opposed to Maduro, whom he called ""strong."" Scott said, ""Joe Biden supported the Castro regime and meeting with Maduro."" Scott pointed to Biden’s statements in April that he would engage with Cuba, as Obama did. But Scott ignores that Biden has repeatedly criticized Cuba’s human rights record. Experts told us that Biden’s plan to engage Cuba doesn’t mean he supports the regime, although Cuba hardliners view it that way. Biden did have a brief encounter with Maduro in 2015 in Brazil, which was captured in photos. We don’t have an official transcript of what was said but the fact that the two men spoke to each other doesn’t mean they were in agreement. The AP reported that Biden suggested to Maduro that he should release political prisoners. Other reports say Biden made a joke about Maduro’s hair. Biden has frequently called Maduro a ""tyrant"" and supported Guaidó as his replacement. PolitiFact staff writer Miriam Valverde contributed to this fact-check."
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15097
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"Honduras ""bans citizens from owning guns"" and has the ""highest homicide rate in the entire world."" Switzerland, with a similar population, ""requires citizens to own guns"" and has the ""lowest homicide rate in the entire world."
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The viral post aims to jolt readers with a counterintuitive implication: Gun laws can lead to deadly unintended consequences. But the post is flawed on many levels. The comparison based on similar population size alone is shallow, and non-scientific. Moreover, Switzerland does not have the world’s lowest homicide level, and the post is flatly wrong about the laws in each country.
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false
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Crime, PunditFact, Viral image,
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"There’s a reason they don’t call it Factbook. The latest example of a misleading factoid gone viral casts restrictive gun policy as a backfiring failure, with two countries as case studies. On one side of the post is Honduras, with a population of 8.2 million people and a government that ""bans citizens from owning guns."" Honduras has ""the highest homicide rate in the entire world,"" the post claims. On the other side is similarly populated Switzerland, which ""requires citizens to own guns"" and has the ""lowest homicide rate in the entire world."" A reader wanted to know if the post’s counterintuitive message is right. The source of the claim was not immediately clear, though we found some examples of websites and figures repeating the message. Here’s why it’s flawed. Population We’ll pause on the numbers and start with an overriding issue with the post’s premise. It holds up population as the sole constant that justifies comparing these countries’ gun policy and violence. Even though Honduras and Switzerland are No. 94 and No. 96 in the CIA’s list of countries by population, this metric alone is not enough reason to compare the effect of different gun control laws in either country. There’s really no point in comparing the challenges of Honduras, a lower middle-income country in Central America beleaguered by corruption and violence from the drug trade and gangs, to Switzerland, an affluent country nestled in western Europe. ""Of course, what you want to do is compare countries where everything else is the same, except for guns and gun laws, to see if guns and gun laws have any effect,"" said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center at the Harvard School of Public Health. ""Switzerland and Honduras are not even close to being the same in many aspects of their society that will influence the levels of violence and homicide."" The post ignores a litany of cultural, political and socioeconomic factors that play into gun violence, or a lack thereof. The gross domestic product per capita, to name one, is $2,435 in Honduras and $84,733 in Switzerland, according to the World Bank. ""The determinants of homicide rates are multiple and not very well understood, and guns laws may indeed be one among many, many determinants,"" said Christopher Mikton, World Health Organization technical officer for violence prevention. ""But to point them out as the sole cause is wrong."" But even if you choose to ignore the macrofactors, the post messes up the particulars, too. Rates Honduras indisputably has the highest homicide rate in the world, with estimates ranging from a rate of 90.4 intentional homicides per 100,000 people in 2012, according to the United Nations, to 103.9 per 100,000 population, according to the World Health Organization. This was significantly higher than the rates of neighboring El Salvador (41.2), which has reduced its homicide rate following a truce among gangs, the UN said in its 2013 Global Study on Homicide. The vast majority, more than 80 percent, of those homicides are linked to a firearm. Lethal shootings most often occur in urban centers and areas along the Atlantic coast and border regions, which suggests the violence is linked to drug trafficking patterns and gangs, according to a report on Honduras by the Small Arms Survey, a Swiss-based research project. Switzerland’s homicide rate is among the lowest in the world, but the meme goes too far in saying it’s the very lowest. By the UN and WHO measures, the most recent Swiss intentional homicide rate is 0.6 deaths per population. Several countries — including Japan and Singapore, which have very strict gun laws, as well as Iceland and Luxembourg — posted lower rates than Switzerland in either one or both of the UN and WHO data sets. Laws The post is wrong about the gun laws in each country. Honduras doesn’t ""ban"" citizens from owning guns. The Small Arms Survey says the most popular gun in Honduras is the 9mm handgun, ""which can be legally purchased and owned"" — undermining the meme’s claim that Hondurans are banned from owning guns. Because this weapon is banned in nearby Mexico, the UN has said the difference in laws fosters the exchange of illegal weapons between the countries. An analysis of gun laws in six Latin American countries by Insight Crime, a foundation that studies crime and policy in Central America, characterizes Honduras’ regulations as ""light"" compared to the ""restrictive"" laws of Brazil and Mexico and ""moderate"" laws of Venezuela and Chile. Uruguay also has ""light"" gun control laws but an incredibly smaller homicide rate than Honduras of about 5.9 percent per 100,000 people. (It also has less organized crime.) The disparity in homicide rates and gun control laws showed ""gun legislation, on its own, means little in terms of gun violence,"" the Insight Crime analysis found. The gun culture in Switzerland is altogether different. The country boasts the third-highest firearm ownership per capita rate, trailing the top-ranked United States and Yemen. Honduras is No. 88. A 2012 Time story about Switzerland’s gun culture notes how citizens hold their right to own guns as a patriotic duty, and Swiss children often join sharpshooting groups to hone their skills. But, again, Switzerland does not require ""citizens to own guns."" The government issues a gun to men for their mandatory military service, but the gun is taken home under ""carefully controlled conditions without ammunition,"" said Mikton, the WHO officer who is also Swiss. ""As soon as they have finished their military service — typically around 30 years of age — they have to return the gun,"" he said. Swiss gun laws are more strict than the post implies, though less tough than some other European Union countries. Swiss law requires mandatory background checks on civilian handgun purchases and licenses for the concealed carry of weapons, and it bans automatic weapons. Our ruling The viral post aims to jolt readers with a counterintuitive implication: Gun laws can lead to deadly unintended consequences. But the post is flawed on many levels. The comparison based on similar population size alone is shallow, and non-scientific. Moreover, Switzerland does not have the world’s lowest homicide level, and the post is flatly wrong about the laws in each country. This claim rates !"
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29525
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Bill O'Reilly was denied custody of his children because he physically attacked their mother.
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"What's true: In February 2016, a New York State appellate court decided that a standing custody arrangement between Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly and his wife be upheld and remain unaltered. What's false: Published court documents didn't suggest O'Reilly ""lost custody"" of his children due to domestic violence or for any other salacious reason; O'Reilly's ""young daughter"" was 17 at the time of the ruling; O'Reilly was not originally awarded sole or primary custody of his children and thus was unable to ""lose"" it. What's undetermined: Whether altercations between O'Reilly and his former wife factored into the court's decision, an assertion not supported by available court documents."
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false
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Entertainment, bill o'reilly, child custody, misleading
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On 10 May 2016, the Facebook page “Occupy Democrats” published a post claiming that Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly lost custody of his two children because he abused his ex-wife: Clicking through the link led to an article from Occupy Democrats, this one in February 2016: Notorious FOX pundit Bill O’Reilly has been denied custody of his children by a New York appeals court after they were convinced that he was unfit to care for them after a vicious domestic violence incident. His kids, a 12-year-old boy and 17-year-old girl, will stay with his ex-wife Maureen McPhilmy. The court ruling announced that: “Viewing the totality of the circumstances, there is a sound and substantial basis for the Supreme Court’s determination that it is in the best interests of the children for the mother to be awarded primary residential custody. Particularly relevant in this case are the clearly stated preferences of the children, especially considering their age and maturity, and the quality of the home environment provided by the mother.” The right-wing propagandist and shameless liar initially lost custody of his kids following O’Reilly’s horrific attack on his ex-wife; his daughter told a court psychologist that he “was choking her mom or had his hands around her neck and dragged her down some stairs.” The article did not back the headline’s assertions: it stated first that O’Reilly specifically lost custody of the children because he was deemed “unfit to care for them” following a “vicious domestic violence incident.” But the portion of a court document quoted simply said that it was in the best interest of the children to remain in their mother’s care. Occupy Democrats cited Raw Story, which in turn cited Gawker, which reported that O’Reilly had “lost custody” of his children in February 2016, but that article, again, did not suggest that O’Reilly was denied custodial care of the children due to violent behavior: The lengthy decision affirms the holding of a Nassau County Supreme Court justice last year that the children, now aged 13 and 17, should live full-time with their mother (the former couple had been splitting residential custody). As we reported at the time, O’Reilly appealed that ruling, thereby delaying its enforcement (and, of course, extending his multi-front battle against McPhilmy and her new family). The Appellate Division issued its 1,400-word opinion on February 24, a little over a month after attorneys for O’Reilly and McPhilmy—known in court documents as Anonymous 2011-1 and Anonymous 2011-2—presented oral arguments at the division’s courthouse in Brooklyn Heights. According to the opinion, the court’s four justices unanimously ruled in McPhilmy’s favor based upon “the clearly stated preferences of the children”[.] The February 2016 court documents from to the hearing can be read in full here. They make little mention of contention between O’Reilly and his ex-wife (aside from a brief description of ongoing acrimony, not violence): Here, viewing the totality of the circumstances, there is a sound and substantial basis for the Supreme Court’s determination that it is in the best interests of the children for the mother to be awarded primary residential custody. Particularly relevant in this case are the clearly stated preferences of the children, especially considering their age and maturity, and the quality of the home environment provided by the mother (see Matter of Manfredo v Manfredo, 53 AD3d 498, 500 [2008]; Matter of O’Connor v Dyer, 18 AD3d 757 [2005]). Moreover, under the circumstances of this case, the Supreme Court did not err in denying the father’s motion for an award of sole decision-making authority with respect to the children, and continuing instead the existing provisions of the judgment of divorce, which call for joint legal custody and joint decision-making authority. While ordinarily it is not appropriate to award joint legal custody and decision-making authority where the parties are antagonistic toward one another (see Irizarry v Irizarry, 115 AD3d 913 [2014]), in this case, the record supports the court’s finding that, despite their antagonism, the parties have been able to agree on most decisions concerning the children (see Matter of Thorpe v Homoet, 116 AD3d 962, 963 [2014]). Moreover, the record supports the court’s finding that if either parent were awarded sole decision-making authority, there would be a danger that it would be used to exclude the other parent from meaningful participation [*3]in the children’s lives. In addition, the court appointed a parenting coordinator, who can assist the parents in resolving any disputes they may have concerning decisions about the children. It is possible that arguments or physical altercations between Bill O’Reilly and his ex-wife were a factor in the court’s 2016 decision to uphold the family’s custody arrangements, but if that were the case, the ruling on which news reports did not indicate such a circumstance. The appellate court’s opinion read as a standard custody arrangement, and the sole factor emphasized in it was the preference (not safety) of the children. Occupy Democrats‘ May 2016 rehash of the February 2016 news insinuated that custody hinged on allegations made by his “young daughter.” However, that “young daughter” was described as 17 years old as of February 2016 court documents, and no reference was made to any “damning” accusations levied by her. It is true O’Reilly was accused by Gawker in May 2015 of abusing his ex-wife verbally and physically, but — despite reporting to the contrary — those accusations weren’t referenced or hinted at in the February 2016 appellate court’s decision to uphold a custody arrangement involving his children.
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2049
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Second-hand smoke kills 600,000 a year: WHO study.
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Around one in a hundred deaths worldwide is due to passive smoking, which kills an estimated 600,000 people a year, World Health Organization (WHO) researchers said on Friday.
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true
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Health News
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An advisory image printed on cigarette packs sold in Brazil. Around one in a hundred deaths worldwide is due to passive smoking, which kills an estimated 600,000 people a year, says the WHO. REUTERS/Health Ministry/Handout In the first study to assess the global impact of second-hand smoke, WHO experts found that children are more heavily exposed to second-hand smoke than any other age-group, and around 165,000 of them a year die because of it. “Two-thirds of these deaths occur in Africa and south Asia,” the researchers, led by Annette Pruss-Ustun of the WHO in Geneva, wrote in their study. Children’s exposure to second-hand smoke is most likely to happen at home, and the double blow of infectious diseases and tobacco “seems to be a deadly combination for children in these regions,” they said. Commenting on the findings in the Lancet journal, Heather Wipfli and Jonathan Samet from the University of Southern California said policymakers try to motivate families to stop smoking in the home. “In some countries, smokefree homes are becoming the norm, but far from universally,” they wrote. The WHO researchers looked at data from 192 countries for their study. To get comprehensive data from all 192, they had to go back to 2004. They used mathematical modeling to estimate deaths and the number of years lost of life in good health. Worldwide, 40 percent of children, 33 percent of non-smoking men and 35 percent non-smoking women were exposed to second-hand smoke in 2004, they found. This exposure was estimated to have caused 379,000 deaths from heart disease, 165,000 from lower respiratory infections, 36,900 from asthma and 21,400 from lung cancer. For the full impact of smoking, these deaths should be added to the estimated 5.1 million deaths a year attributable to active tobacco use, the researchers said. While deaths due to passive smoking in children were skewed toward poor and middle-income countries, deaths in adults were spread across countries at all income levels. In Europe’s high-income countries, only 71 child deaths occurred, while 35,388 deaths were in adults. Yet in the countries assessed in Africa, an estimated 43,375 deaths due to passive smoking were in children compared with 9,514 in adults. Pruss-Ustun urged countries to enforce the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which includes higher tobacco taxes, plain packaging and advertising bans, among other steps. “Policy-makers should bear in mind that enforcing complete smoke-free laws will probably substantially reduce the number of deaths attributable to exposure to second-hand smoke within the first year of its implementation, with accompanying reduction in costs of illness in social and health systems,” she wrote. Only 7.4 percent of the world population currently lives in jurisdictions with comprehensive smoke-free laws, and those laws are not always robustly enforced. In places where smoke-free rules are adhered to, research shows that exposure to second hand smoke in high-risk places like bars and restaurants can be cut by 90 percent, and in general by 60 percent, the researchers said. Studies also show such laws help to reduce the number of cigarettes smoked by smokers and lead to higher success rates in those trying to quit.
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3912
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Health counselor sentenced for $200k in fraudulent claims.
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A mental health counselor in Connecticut who authorities say billed nearly $200,000 in fraudulent Medicaid claims has been sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison.
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true
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Mental health, Norwich, Health, General News, Connecticut, Medicaid
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Susan Britt, of Norwich, was sentenced Tuesday to five years for each of two counts of health insurance fraud, suspended after 2 ½ years served. The Department of Social Services opened an investigation into Britt’s business when they noticed she was using Medicaid despite her high pay. Britt’s practice, An Inner Peace, provided counseling for patients with mental and emotional disorders. Officials say they discovered Britt had submitted fraudulent claims for herself, her patients and relatives over a five-year span. Britt has paid nearly $52,000 in restitution and voluntarily relinquished her license to work as a counselor under the terms of her plea agreement.
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27526
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The bite of a rare breed of tick most commonly called the lone star tick can cause itching, stomach cramps, breathing difficulties, and an allergic reaction to red meat.
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Although the incidence of tick-induced meat allergies remains comparatively uncommon to date, experts say, they also remind the public at large that tick bites can transmit any number of serious diseases, so a familiarity with basic tick avoidance strategies is recommended.
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true
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Medical
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Spring and summer 2017 saw a rash of media reports warning of the spread of a rare tick whose bite, in addition to causing skin irritation, stomach cramping, breathing problems, and other familiar tick-related symptoms in human beings, purportedly triggers an allergic reaction to red meat. “Meet the N.J. Tick that Can Turn You into a Vegetarian,” joked the headline of a story published on NJ.com in mid-May: Lasagna. Cheeseburgers. Pizza. Ice cream. Jerry Dotoli has enjoyed them all for most of his 73 years with no discomfort, only pleasure. Until last December, that is. The Ocean County man had gone to Florida for the winter, where he was beset by frequent hives accompanied by a ferocious itching “four times worse than poison ivy.” After enduring one misdiagnosis after another, Dotoli finally learned from a blood test that he had become allergic to meat, pork and dairy — the very allergens he’d been happily ingesting nearly every day. And the culprit? Most likely a bite from the Lone Star tick…. Among the dozens of similar stories published around the same time, the Williamsburg Yorktown Daily reported that tick-borne meat allergies were “on the rise” in Hampton Roads, Virginia, Minnesota Public Radio noted that a “rare, tick-triggered meat allergy” is becoming more common in northern Minnesota, and a 17 June 2017 post on popular science blog IFLScience warned that a tick responsible for causing meat allergies is currently “spreading around America”: The lone star tick, aka the “reverse zombie” tick, makes you shy away from meat rather than crave it. One bite from the tick, in fact, and you can develop a life-threatening allergy to a sugar molecule found within red meat. Once you’ve been bitten, your immune system can become triggered by the presence of galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose (alpha gal) and go into overdrive. So the next time you eat meat from a mammal that produces this sugar (e.g. pork and beef), you may find yourself breaking out in massive hives or going into anaphylactic shock (if you’ve been bitten that is). Apart from the attention-grabbing phrase “reverse zombie,” which is new in this context, the 2017 reports echoed a spate of stories published three years earlier reporting on the same phenomenon. Common to all of them are the claims that the lone star tick is believed responsible for causing a red meat allergy and that the tick’s habitat is expanding. Although they were undeniably sensationalized, the claims are true. Scientists have been aware for some time that the lone star tick (Amblyomma americanum), first discovered in 1754, transmits pathogens associated with three rare but potentially fatal infections (Ehrlichia chaffeensis, Ehrlichia ewingii, and Borrelia lonestari), though it wasn’t until the late 2000s that its connection to mammalian meat allergy (MMA for short, and also known as alpha-gal allergy), was established. A link between tick bites and MMA was first proposed by Australian researchers who discovered that 24 of the 25 people they were monitoring for a study on meat allergies reported that they had been bitten by ticks (in Australia, the culprit was identified as the Australian paralysis tick). At around the same time, U.S. researchers identified a specific allergen that triggered red meat reactions, a carbohydrate found in mammalian cell membranes called galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose (“alpha-gal”). Despite being aware that the geographical ranges of reported meat allergies and occurrences of the tick-borne illness Rocky Mountain spotted fever roughly coincided, it wasn’t until the U.S. researchers shared a moment of pain-inspired serendipity that they narrowed down the cause: At this time, three members of our group developed red meat allergy and each one distinctly remembered being bitten by ticks weeks or months prior to the development of symptoms. Sera from these individuals that had been obtained prior to the tick bite was compared to sera collected after the bite and it was found that serum levels of IgE to alpha-gal had increased dramatically (4 to 10-fold). In plain English, it turned out that all three researchers had been bitten by ticks, developed red meat allergies, and experienced a dramatic increase in blood serum levels of alpha-gal antibodies, suggesting that the tick bites had triggered their sensitivity to the carbohydrate. Further research confirmed their suspicions, though questions remain about the precise mechanism by which a tick bite triggers the alpha-gal autoimmune response. (The fascinating story of the chain of events leading to the discovery is told by the researchers themselves in “The Alpha-Gal Story: Lessons Learned from Connecting the Dots” in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology [March 2015], and also to entertaining effect in a March 2014 article by New Yorker writer Peter Andrey Smith.) With regard to its geographical distribution, the Centers for Disease Control confirms that the lone star tick population has been on the increase for the past few decades: The lone star tick, Amblyomma americanum, is found throughout the eastern, southeastern and south-central states. The distribution, range and abundance of the lone star tick have increased over the past 20-30 years, and lone star ticks have been recorded in large numbers as far north as Maine and as far west as central Texas and Oklahoma. These two CDC maps shared with us by allergy researcher Dr. Scott Commins shows how the distribution of the lone star tick in the U.S. changed between 2010 and 2012: According to the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology, an allergic reaction to red meat (regardless of the specific trigger) can result in symptoms ranging from a mild case of hives to life-threatening anaphylaxis. The “good” news is that those afflicted by the MMA response can still either eat only poultry and fish or mitigate their symptoms somewhat by taking antihistamines before consuming red meat, and the allergy may recede over time; however, the immune response is generally thought to linger for life.
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31000
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Planned Parenthood and the Satanic Temple have worked together to oppose laws restricting abortion rights in Missouri.
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In October 2017, an investigation by Buzzfeed revealed that the Breitbart article containing the false ‘teaming up’ claim was prompted by an email to the web site from Mitchell Sunderland, who was then managing editor of Vice’s Broadly platform.
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false
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Politics, breitbart, planned parenthood
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On 13 September 2017, the right-wing web site Breitbart reported that Planned Parenthood had “teamed up” with the Satanic Temple, a group that describes itself as a “nontheistic religious organization,” to reverse restrictions in Missouri on the provision of abortion services. Breitbart’s reporter, Thomas D. Williams, wrote: Missouri has reportedly doubled its abortion capacity this year “thanks to the Satanic Temple and Planned Parenthood,” who have worked in tandem to fight the state’s restrictions on abortion…The Satanic Temple has often lent its muscle to pro-abortion efforts alongside Planned Parenthood, and in this case has pressured Missouri legislators and worked through the courts to bring about a relaxing of abortion restrictions, according to reports. One of the Temple’s fundamental tenets is that “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.” Planned Parenthood and the Satanic Temple have taken separate court cases, both seeking to lower or remove restrictions on abortion rights in Missouri. However, Breitbart’s claim that the two organisations had ‘teamed up’ and “worked in tandem” is false. We searched court records, press releases and statements from both organizations, as well as news coverage of the Missouri campaigns, but we could find no evidence of collaboration between the two groups. The Satanic Temple tweeted on 14 September: Despite some reports @PPact & TST are independently fighting arbitrary abortion restrictions. There is neither collusion nor competition. — The Satanic Temple (@satanicpsalms) September 14, 2017 Satanic Temple spokesperson and co-founder Lucien Greaves told us: Planned Parenthood has not reached out to The Satanic Temple for any purpose, we’ve never shared resources, and we are in no way acting in collaboration, even if some of our efforts are simultaneous as a result of a shared interest in fighting against oppressive reproductive rights restrictions. Planned Parenthood also confirmed to us that they had not collaborated or shared resources in any way whatsoever with the Satanic Temple. The Planned Parenthood Case In November 2016, Planned Parenthood sued Missouri’s Attorney General, its Director of the Department of Health and Senior Services, and four county prosecutors in an effort to overturn state laws which require abortion clinics to be licensed as “ambulatory surgical centers” and require doctors who perform abortions to have agreements with nearby hospitals to admit or transfer patients there. The laws have had the effect of reducing Planned Parenthood’s capacity to provide abortions in the state to one clinic in St. Louis. The organization argues that these restrictions are not medically necessary and “unconstitutionally burden access to abortion in Missouri.” In April 2017, U.S. District Court judge Jeffrey Sachs ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood, and on 11 September 2017, the organization announced it had been licensed to provide abortion services at a second location in Kansas City, and that it would reopen a third clinic in Columbia. Missouri Attorney General Randall Williams is appealing the case. The Satanic Temple has played no part whatsoever in this lawsuit. The Satanic Temple Case The religious group has taken a separate case on both the state and federal levels seeking to overturn Missouri’s informed consent and 72-hour waiting period requirements for women seeking abortions. The case revolves around a Missouri Satanic Temple member named as Mary Doe, who argues that the state is violating the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment, which forbid the state from endorsing a particular religious viewpoint or curtailing an individual’s right to exercise and follow their personal religious beliefs. Missouri is doing this, Mary Doe argues, by forcing women to read a booklet which includes religiously-founded claims that human life begins at conception and that abortion therefore entails the destruction of a separate human life, a stance which is reenforced, in her view, by requiring women to look at an ultrasound of the fetus and then wait 72 hours before they can proceed with an abortion. She also argues that this set of requirements violates her right to live according to her personal religious beliefs, which include the conviction that “a woman’s body is inviolable and subject to her will alone.” In July 2016, a judge dismissed the case on the basis that Mary Doe was by then no longer pregnant and therefore no longer had standing to sue. However, the Satanic Temple has appealed this decision, and the case has gone before the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. A similar case is moving forward at the state level. We could find no evidence of Planned Parenthood taking any part or making any intervention in either of these court cases.
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5222
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New school program helps Sioux Falls youth express emotions.
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Several Sioux Falls elementary schools have implemented a new mental health program that uses emoji and educational videos to help young students better understand how they’re feeling.
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true
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Sioux Falls, Mental health, Health, General News, Education, Mitchell
|
Cleveland Elementary is among the elementary schools in the district that are using the Move This World program this school year, the Argus Leader reported. The program offers online curriculum and videos that teach students about bullying prevention, stress management and conflict resolution, among other things. Mitchell Sheaffer, the school’s principal, said the program also helps teachers identify which students might need extra support. “All of our teachers are great at identifying and reading kids when they come in through the door in the morning, but this might kind of take them to that next level to see where they’re at,” he said. Teacher Lindsey Olson said she uses a list of about 100 emoji for students to reference throughout the day to express their emotions. She also has posters that encourage students to practice cool-down mechanisms or positive coping skills. Olson uses the program’s videos to lead her students through movement exercises, including one that asks them to express their excitement level with different smiles and grins. Another video pushes students to celebrate their mistakes rather than criticize themselves. Olson said the program has helped her students understand how to respond to the emotions they’re experiencing. “Now as a class, we’re not only able to celebrate successes with each other, but push each other through some of those difficult times we have,” Olson said. ___ Information from: Argus Leader, http://www.argusleader.com
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15448
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Under the Affordable Care Act, anyone on Medicare who is admitted to a hospital for observation will be responsible for the bill. Medicare won't pay a cent.
|
"The chain email said that ""under the Affordable Care Act, anyone on Medicare who is admitted to a hospital for observation will be responsible for the bill. Medicare won't pay a cent."" That’s wrong. Medicare will cover the hospital stay, minus standard copayments and the like. Patients kept in the hospital under observation will not be able to receive Medicare reimbursements for follow-up care such as nursing-home stays, however. Even more inaccurate is the charge that this policy stemmed from the Affordable Care Act. In reality, this stems from a separate policy decision and had nothing to do with Obama’s law. The claim is not only ridiculous but also dangerous, by urging ailing patients to leave the hospital for no good reason."
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false
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National, Health Care, Medicare, Chain email,
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"A reader recently sent us a chain email we hadn’t seen before. The lengthy missive, purportedly written by a ""senior gentleman in Mesa, Arizona,"" details a visit to a hospital made contentious by Medicare payment rules. The anonymous author claims to have experienced ""a medical situation that made it very clear that the ‘Affordable Care Act’ is neither affordable, nor do they care."" The full email, which is lengthy, is accessible in its entirety here. But briefly, the author relates what happened after he sought treatment for a suspected urinary-tract infection. After collapsing in a local urgent-care clinic, he was taken to a hospital. There, the medical staff feared he could be experiencing sepsis, a potentially serious inflammation caused by an infection, so they ordered a battery of tests, including one that could take a day or two to complete. As a result, they told him that he would need to stay in the hospital ""for observation"" rather than going home. Here’s what happened next: ""I said, ‘Doctor, correct me if I'm wrong, but if you admit me for observation, my Medicare will not pay anything. This is due to the Affordable Care Act.’ He said, ‘That's right, it won't.’ I then grabbed for my bag of clothing and said, ‘Then I'm going home.’ He said you're really too sick to be going home, but I understand your position. This health program is going to hit seniors especially hard."" Then another doctor came into the room. ""I said, ‘Doc, you and I both know that under the Affordable Care Act anyone on Medicare who is admitted to a hospital for observation will be responsible for the bill. Medicare won't pay a cent.’ At which point he nodded in affirmation. I said, ‘You will either admit me for a specific treatment or you won't admit me.’ Realizing he wasn't going to win this one, he said he would prepare my release papers."" We zeroed in on the core claim of this story, that ""under the Affordable Care Act, anyone on Medicare who is admitted to a hospital for observation will be responsible for the bill. Medicare won't pay a cent."" When we looked into it, we found that Medicare does indeed have different reimbursement policies for patients who had been admitted to hospitals for observation as opposed to being admitted to treat a specific diagnosis. However, the email’s author (and, if his recounting is accurate, each of the medical professionals he spoke to) were sorely misinformed about how Medicare rules operate. The different reimbursement rates have to do with follow-up in-home care, not the original hospital stay. And crucially, the controversy over reimbursement for patients under ""observation care"" has nothing whatsoever to do with President Barack Obama’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act. What is ‘observation care’? According to Kaiser Health News, ""hospitals provide observation care for patients who are not well enough to go home but not sick enough to be admitted. This care requires a doctor’s order and is considered an outpatient service, even though patients may stay as long as several days. The hospitalization can include short-term treatment and tests to help doctors decide whether the patient should be admitted."" Because observation care is considered outpatient treatment, Medicare generally covers such visits, minus things like copayments and the cost of routine drugs. Where Medicare reimbursement significantly falls short is once an observation patient leaves the hospital. ""Observation patients cannot receive Medicare coverage for follow-up care in a nursing home, even though their doctors recommend it,"" according to Kaiser. ""To be eligible for nursing home coverage, seniors must have first spent at least three consecutive days (or through three midnights) as an admitted patient, not counting the day of discharge."" In other words, assuming the email author’s story actually happened, he shouldn’t have had to worry about Medicare paying for his time in the hospital while under observation. Medicare would have paid, minus copayments and the like; there was no need for him to go home while in a fragile state just to avoid being responsible for the full cost of his care. Is this related to the Affordable Care Act? Tying this policy to Obama’s law is flat-out wrong. ""The Affordable Care Act has nothing to do with observation status,"" said Mary T. (Terry) Berthelot, a senior attorney with the Center for Medicare Advocacy. Several other health-policy experts confirmed that. The policy was established by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. While we’re at it, we’ll take a moment to debunk an additional Affordable Care Act-related claim included in the email. The author writes that during a visit to his family practitioner, ""I told him that I had heard that the Affordable Care Act would no longer pay for cancer treatment for those 76 and older, is that true? His understanding is that it is true."" In reality, there are no such age limits. In October 2014, we rated a chain email that claimed that under the Affordable Care Act, ""at age 76 when you most need it most, you are not eligible for cancer treatment. … Cancer hospital will ration care according to the patient's age."" Our ruling The chain email said that ""under the Affordable Care Act, anyone on Medicare who is admitted to a hospital for observation will be responsible for the bill. Medicare won't pay a cent."" That’s wrong. Medicare will cover the hospital stay, minus standard copayments and the like. Patients kept in the hospital under observation will not be able to receive Medicare reimbursements for follow-up care such as nursing-home stays, however. Even more inaccurate is the charge that this policy stemmed from the Affordable Care Act. In reality, this stems from a separate policy decision and had nothing to do with Obama’s law. The claim is not only ridiculous but also dangerous, by urging ailing patients to leave the hospital for no good reason. This claim rates ."
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29076
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McDonald's is importing foreign beef for use in its restaurants in the United States and Canada.
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Is McDonald's importing beef for use in the United States?
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mixture
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Business, beef, mcdonald's
|
For several years now McDonald’s has been “testing” the use of imported beef to augment supplies tendered by American ranchers, but not beef from South America, and not necessarily for the reason advanced in the e-mail quoted below: Examples: [Collected via e-mail, June 2002] Guys — We as cattle producers are very passionate about this. McDonald’s claims that there is not enough beef in the USA to support their restaurants. Well we know that is not so. My opinion is they are looking to save money at our expense. The sad thing of it is that the people of the USA are the ones who made McDonalds successful in the first place, but we are not good enough to purchase beef from. We personally are no longer eating at McDonalds, which I am sure does not make an impact, but if we pass this around maybe there will be an impact felt. Please pass on your opinion. This has Me just fighting mad. Just to add a note, all Americans that sell cows at a livestock auction barn had to sign a paper stating that we do NOT EVER feed our cows any part of another cow. South Americans are not required to do this as of yet. McDonalds has announced that they are going to start importing much of their beef from South America. The problem is that South Americans aren’t under the same regulations as American beef producers and the regulations they have are loosely controlled. They can spray numerous pesticides on their pastures that have been banned here at home because of residues found in the beef. They can also use various hormones and growth regulators that we can’t. The American public needs to be aware of this problem and that they may be putting themselves at risk from now on by eating at good old McDonalds. American ranchers raise the highest quality beef in the world and this is what Americans deserve to eat. Not beef from countries where quality is loosely controlled. Therefore I am proposing a boycott of McDonalds until they see the light. I’m sorry but everything is not always about the bottom line, and when it comes to jeopardizing my family’s health that is where I draw the line. I am sending this note to about thirty people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) … and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) … and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it….. THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!! Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That’s all, I’ll bet you didn’t think you and I had that much potential, did you? Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. Those who feel stirred by the entreaty to boycott McDonald’s in protest of its treatment of American ranchers would be well advised to first acquaint themselves with all sides of the issue before giving up their daily Big Macs. Not everything in much-forwarded e-mails is always necessarily the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. According to McDonald’s, it cannot satisfy its need for lean beef by buying solely from American sources and has to turn to beef exporters outside the USA to make up the shortfall. It’s not a question of there not being enough beef in the USA; it’s a matter of the beef available for sale not meeting McDonald’s standards for leanness. American beef cattle are primarily grain-fed and produce fattier meat, while grass-fed cattle produce leaner beef. Yes, the imported beef is 8 to 15 cents per pound cheaper than U.S.-produced lean beef, which definitely sweetens matters for the Golden Arches. Yet, price difference aside, there’s still not enough lean beef available in the USA to meet the needs of the restaurant chain. American ranchers, however, claim that McDonald’s leanness standards are too high, and that if McDonald’s lowered its standards to a more reasonable level, it could easily purchase all the lean beef it needs without resorting to foreign imports. Up until 2002, McDonald’s was already using grass-fed Australian beef in many of its restaurants outside the United States, but for food served in its home country it had bought American. It is the single largest buyer of U.S. beef, thus the concern of American ranchers over the potential loss of any of the chain’s business. McDonald’s says the importation of foreign grass-fed beef will be a test amounting to less than 1% of the beef sold in restaurants nationwide, which is a far cry from the “they are going to start importing much of their beef from South America” the exhortation to boycott lays claim to. Additionally, the references to McDonald’s using South American beef in its U.S. restaurants are wrong. The imported beef American ranchers are up in arms about comes not from South America but from Australia and New Zealand, where government beef standards are even more stringent than in the U.S. And grass-fed cattle, such as the sort McDonald’s is purchasing from Australia and New Zealand, don’t have to be given the large amounts of antibiotics that grain-fed American cattle are typically dosed with. Cows take much longer to fatten on a grass diet than a grain diet, so American cattle are primarily fed grain (mostly corn) to get them up to market weight more quickly. However, as cows are ruminants whose natural diet is grass, a grain diet severely taxes their digestive systems, so they are often given a variety of antibiotics to fight off bacterial infections. Possibly the erroneous bit about “dangerous South American beef” was included in the call to arms to bolster support for the boycott — average consumers that might not be moved by the plight of American ranchers would be motivated by hints that McDonald’s use of beef from non-U.S. sources would endanger them and their loved ones. A Canadian version of this item has also been circulating, sent out under the name of the Alberta Cattle Feeders Association. This version is also specious, as indicated by the following statement from Jeff Kroll, Senior Vice-President, National Supply Chain, with McDonald’s Restaurants of Canada Limited: There have been a number of people at McDonald’s Canada who’ve seen the email circulating about where we source our beef. Please feel free to pass my response on to anyone who has sent the email to you. This email is a hoax. We currently source 100% of our beef from farms and ranches right across Canada and have no plans today to purchase any beef from South America. In the past we’ve purchased small quantities of beef from New Zealand, Australia and the United States, but have always sourced the vast majority of our beef from Canada. The first email on this topic originally surfaced in the US in 2002 — at that time referencing the Texas Cattle Feeders Association — and it has resurfaced again in 2005, 2007, and again in 2008. McDonald’s representatives in the US have spoken with the Texas Cattle Feeders Association and they deny any association with the email. In 2009, a Canadian version emerged that’s practically identical to the one that originated in the US. McDonald’s Canada remains one of the largest purchasers of Canadian beef, and we are proud supporters of the Canadian beef industry. I hope this clears up the confusion. Variations: Some of the versions in circulation specify the e-mail comes from the Texas Cattle Feeders Association (TCFA). It didn’t. The TCFA says on its web site that: It’s Not Our Email! An email message that makes negative remarks about the McDonald’s restaurant chain has been in wide circulation for several years now. We want anyone receiving such an email to know that Texas Cattle Feeders Association is not associated with it in any way. The email makes a false claim when it identifies Texas Cattle Feeders Association as the original source of the message. No such message has ever been put out by our organization. Unfortunately, we do not know the identity or motive of the person or persons making this improper use of our name. Additional information:
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10686
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Weighing the options: With obesity surgery on rise, patients need to explore risks, rewards
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This article does a fairly complete job of providing information on outcomes from different surgical approaches for treating morbid obesity in terms of magnitude of potential weight loss, cost, length of hospital stay, associated mortality rate, and other types of complications. But in terms of balance, it does not do a sufficient job of presenting the effects of calorie reduction on weight loss. To its credit, however, the piece mentions that no surgery will provide lasting weight loss unless there is sustained change to eating and exercise habits.
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true
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Table does a good job with this. Table and text disagree about weight loss for biliopancreatic diversion. Is it loss of 80% of excess weight for at least 10 years (text) or loss of 60-80% of excess weight in a year (table)? Table does a good job with this. Did not mention the source of the data used in the article. Because the article started by discussing weight loss in general, it should have included information for people who are not candidates for surgery. Otherwise the story seems to frame obesity surgery as a reasonble option for all trying to lose weight. Interviewed some clinicians involved in treating weight loss Provided a reasonable overview of the treatment options; could have devoted more attention to caloric reduction and activity increase. Did not indicate that banding and biliopancreatic diversion procedures are not available everywhere. Implied but not explicit was the notion that vagus nerve stimulators and rimonabant were not currently FDA approved at the time of publication. Available approaches are delineated from approaches that are being tested.
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37508
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Samaritan's Purse, a non-profit headed by anti-LGBTQ evangelical Christian Franklin Graham, is providing care to COVID-19 patients in New York City.
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Is a Homophobic Church Group Running a COVID-19 Clinic in New York City?
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mixture
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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A mobile clinic erected in New York City to help residents infected by COVID-19 (a.k.a. the “coronavirus”) is not only run by radical homophobic cleric Franklin Graham, it is requiring volunteer workers to express support for an anti-LGBTQ view of matrimony before being allowed to join their effort.State lawmakers have been critical of the decision to allow Graham’s group, Samaritan’s Purse, to set up the 68-bed facility in Central Park, which opened on April 1 2020. State Sen. Brad Hoylman told NBC News he was disappointed that New York had “to accept charity from such bigots.”“This health crisis is too delicate to leave it to televangelists, purveyors of the faith, to handle our medical needs,” he added:This is a man, after all, who has said that the LGBTQ community recruits children, he’s said that families like mine are invalid, he compares the transgender community to pedophiles and perverts, so I think it would behoove us to watch him and his followers’ actions extremely closely.Graham has claimed that he does not fear gay people, but has made statements that indicate otherwise, such as: “I love them enough to care to warn them that if they want to continue living like this, it’s the flames of hell for you.”As Graham has publicly called for Christians to join staff at the makeshift facility, the group is requiring people looking to volunteer to agree by its guidelines; one item in the group’s “statement of faith” contains one such guideline:We believe God’s plan for human sexuality is to be expressed only within the context of marriage, that God created man and woman as unique biological persons made to complete each other. God instituted monogamous marriage between male and female as the foundation of the family and the basic structure of human society. For this reason, we believe that marriage is exclusively the union of one genetic male and one genetic female.However, Jane Meyer, a spokesperson for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, told the local news site Gothamist that because it is operating as a Mount Sinai Health System facility while treating COVID-19 patients, Samaritan’s Purse must adhere to Mount Sinai’s non-discrimination policy, which includes gender identity and sexual orientation.“Our record on human rights is clear,” Meyer said. “We are confident that the joint effort by Mt. Sinai and Samaritan’s Purse will save New Yorkers’ lives while adhering to the values we hold dear by providing care to anyone who needs it, regardless of background.”In a statement, Hoylman urged residents to contact either his office or the city’s commission on human rights if they had reports of discrimination committed by the staff of Graham’s non-profit group.“Sadly, beggars can’t be choosers: New York needs every ventilator we can get,” the statement read. “But homophobic pastor Franklin Graham and his field hospital operation in Central Park must guarantee all LGBTQ patients with COVID-19 are treated with dignity and respect. We’ll be watching.”Graham responded with his own statement:We do not make distinctions about an individual’s religion, race, sexual orientation, or economic status. We certainly do not discriminate, and we have a decades-long track record that confirms just that. This is a time for all of us to unite and work together, regardless of our political views. Let’s support one another during this crisis, and we pray that God will bless the efforts of all those battling this vicious virus.Graham has a long history of homophobic remarks. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination (GLAAD) compiled a list of some of his public statements on the matter, including:— Says: “LGBT agenda wants to force everyone to accept & condone their lifestyle which God’s Word defines as sin.”— Says: “LGBT activists are trying to hook their caboose to the “freedom train” & drag an immoral agenda into our communities”— When HB2 was rolled back in North Carolina, tweeted: “Thanks to the gov, people of NC will be exposed to pedophiles & sexually perverted men in women’s public restrooms.”In January 2020, a number of venues in the United Kingdom canceled plans to host appearances by Graham that May, following opposition by LGTBTQ activists as well as local officials and a group of seventeen evangelical Christians who wrote a letter to the newspaper The Guardian saying that they “find it hard to reconcile his public and partisan statements on such issues as immigration, poverty, gun control and Israel with our understanding of the teaching and values of Jesus Christ.”At the time, Graham said his attorneys were working on reversing the cancellations. “We had contracts signed and, in some cases, deposits paid,” he said. “I haven’t broken any laws. We are being denied because of religious beliefs and our faith. It’s a freedom of religion issue and also a free speech issue.”
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6224
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Rescuers comb Indonesia earthquake rubble for second day.
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Rescue workers, soldiers and police combed through the rubble of a devastated town in Indonesia’s Aceh province Thursday, resuming a search for earthquake survivors that was halted at night by rain and blackouts.
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true
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Aceh, International News, Indonesia, Sumatra, AP Top News, Science, Asia Pacific, Earthquakes
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More than 100 people died in the shallow and powerful quake that struck northeast Sumatra before dawn on Wednesday. Hundreds were injured and dozens of buildings were destroyed. The worst damage appears to be in Pidie Jaya district near the epicenter, but assessments of the region are still underway. Scores of rescue personnel were crawling over a market in Meureudu, the hard-hit town, where many shop houses collapsed. One shop owner, Hajj Yusri Abdullah, didn’t hold out much hope of finding survivors. He said nearly two dozen bodies were pulled from the market debris the day before. They included a group of eight made up of a newlywed couple and family members holding an ornate celebration known as Antar Dara Baro. Some people spent the night outdoors while thousands of others took refuge in mosques and temporary shelters. Many were homeless after the magnitude 6.5 quake destroyed or damaged their homes and others were too scared to return home. Killer quakes occur regularly in the region, where many live with the terrifying memory of a giant Dec. 26, 2004, earthquake that struck off Sumatra. The magnitude 9.1 quake triggered a devastating tsunami that killed more than 100,000 Acehnese. A spokesman for Indonesia’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency said the death toll had risen to 102, spread across three districts in northern Aceh but concentrated in Pidie Jaya. Aceh’s disaster mitigation agency said more than 8,000 displaced people were at several shelters in the district. The Indonesian government has declared a two-week emergency period in Aceh and some aid was already reaching hard-hit areas. Humanitarian organization CARE said it would was leading a joint assessment mission of four international aid organizations. “It will take several more days to get a full picture of the impact,” CARE’s Indonesia director Helen Vanwel said in a statement. “We know from experience that after an earthquake of such a scale, people urgently need water, shelter, food and medicine,” she said. The Indonesian Red Cross deployed emergency response teams and announced bank accounts for donations. Its head of disaster management, Arifin Hadi, said five water trucks had been sent into the quake area. Aid, including hygiene kits, tarpaulins, jerry cans, blankets and family assistance kits, is being distributed, with more to be sent from Jakarta, he said. The International Organization for Migration sent an assessment team to Aceh. The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake was centered about 19 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of Sigli, a town near the northern tip of Sumatra, at a depth of 17 kilometers (11 miles). The agency had initially placed the epicenter undersea. It did not generate a tsunami. Siti Rukiah, 51, a mother of four, was among the many people who took refuge for the night in local mosques. She and about 100 other people from Pante Raja, a seaside village in Pidie Jaya district, fled to Nur Abdullah mosque located on higher ground in a nearby hamlet. She said the quake felt so powerful she had to grab onto a table to keep from falling down. She was sure a tsunami was coming. “I’m really scared about a tsunami,” said Rukiah, whose brother and neighbors died in the 2004 disaster. She said she didn’t want to return home “not only because my house is damaged, but I am still afraid an aftershock could cause a tsunami.” Aceh’s disaster mitigation agency said more than 600 people were injured. The national disaster agency said about 245 buildings were seriously damaged or destroyed in Pidie Jaya and neighboring Bireuen district, including 14 mosques. The rest were mainly dwellings and shop houses. Roads also cracked and power poles toppled over. The world’s largest archipelago, Indonesia is prone to earthquakes due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin. The 2004 quake and tsunami killed a total of 230,000 people in a dozen countries, most of them in Aceh. John Ebel, professor of earth and environmental sciences at Boston College, said there is a risk of aftershocks that even if relatively weak could cause further damage to buildings, particularly because modern building codes aren’t consistently enforced in Indonesia. The general hospital in Pidie Jaya was overwhelmed with the numbers of injured, and many people were being treated in tents pitched on its grounds, according to its director Muhammad Reza Faisal. ___ AP writers Stephen Wright, Niniek Karmini and Ali Kotarumalos in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed.
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Under an executive order, “expensive insulin went from big dollars to virtual pennies … especially (for) our seniors.”
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Between 2017 and 2018, insulin copays for seniors rose. A recent executive order on insulin would touch fewer than 20% of clinics through a program that provides 10% or less of all prescription drugs.
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false
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National, Drugs, Health Care, Donald Trump,
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"President Donald Trump sometimes speaks as if a hoped-for result is the same as a done-deal. A day after he signed an executive order on insulin at the end of July, he took a victory lap on Twitter. ""Nothing like this has ever been done before because Big Pharma, with its vast power, would not let it happen,"" he said in his July 25 tweet. ""Expensive insulin went from big dollars to virtual pennies."" ...to virtual pennies. Epi-pens went from their incredibly high, jacked up prices, to lower than their original give away bargains. Biggest price reductions in history, by far! Nothing like this has ever for our citizens, especially our Seniors. REMEMBER YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT! ""Biggest price reductions in history, by far!"" Trump continued. ""Nothing like this has ever (happened) for our citizens, especially our Seniors. REMEMBER YOUR FAVORITE PRESIDENT!"" If words matter, Trump’s manner of talking about the future as if it were already in the past clearly runs afoul of the facts. But there’s a more subtle effect in play. He presents his move on insulin as a boon to diabetics in general. But the scope of his executive order is more limited than he presents. The most recent pricing trends, made available to PolitiFact with help from the Schaeffer Center at the University of Southern California, provides a bigger picture that reveals some encouraging news and some stubborn problems. Trump’s order targeted a select group of health care providers, Federally Qualified Health Centers. These centers serve people of limited means, focusing on rural and low-income communities. The gist of Trump’s order, a Health and Human Service Department spokesperson told us, requires these centers ""to provide these drugs to medically underserved patients at close to acquisition cost."" That cost, HHS said, is ""very low,"" but the department isn’t allowed to give the exact number. We note that it would take several months to implement this policy as it wends its way through the rulemaking process. But the substance of the measure doesn’t match Trump’s soaring rhetoric. There are over 1,300 of these health centers. That’s a lot, but in terms of the particular federal drug discount program that they use to buy insulin — something called the 340B program — they represent less than a fifth of the 340B participating clinics and hospitals nationwide. And out of all operations that contract with the program, which includes individual pharmacies, these clinics represent less than 2%. So the executive order affects only a slice of providers, and it hinges on the 340B drug program. That program itself doesn’t dominate the drug marketplace. Details on insulin sales through the program are lacking, but looking at all prescription drug sales, the program represents about 8% to 10% of the overall market. ""It doesn't help most Americans with their out-of-pocket prices,"" said Vanderbilt University health policy professor Stacie Dusetzina. Further limiting the potential impact of Trump’s order on patients’ costs, these Federally Qualified Health Centers have a good reputation of passing along the discounts they get from the government’s 340B program to their patients. These health centers charge people on a sliding scale. That led drug policy researcher Karen Schwartz with the Kaiser Family Foundation to question the reach of this executive order. ""Most patients likely would still have been protected by the sliding fee scale without this change,"" Schwartz tweeted July 24. Trump targeted seniors in his tweet, and it’s worth looking at the insulin prices they, as well as other diabetics, have faced on his watch. It’s important to note that with prescription drugs, the price isn’t the price. There’s a list price, but what someone actually pays depends on drug maker discounts and rebates given to drug distribution intermediaries, a person’s insurance plan (if they have one) and where they stand with their deductibles and copays. According to the drug research firm IQVIA, insulin copays generally rose from 2017 to 2018. That was particularly true for those on Medicare who saw their costs go up by about 10%. That took place even as some insulin prices declined or leveled off. It turns out that in the world of prescription drugs, there’s no guaranteed link between trends in prices and what patients pay out of their own pockets. Researchers at the University of Southern California’s Schaeffer Center culled the latest numbers for six of the most common insulin products. They found that looking at the list prices — the initial price set by the manufacturer — half of the drugs generally held steady, and half showed moderate increases between 2017 and 2020. The leveling off of list prices after years of steep increases seems to be driven by public pressure. Some leading drug makers reduced prices on some insulin products on their own. ""The timing does coincide with greater attention to the ‘high cost of insulin’ issue in the media and among policy makers,"" Schaeffer Center fellow and project executive director Karen Van Nuys said. List prices matter to anyone who has to pay the difference between what they are charged and what the insurance company will pay. ""High list prices harm those without insurance, and those who are insured but are in the deductible phase or pay coinsurance for their medications,"" said Van Nuys. Prices after discounts and rebates to the firms that are part of the drug sales chain (net prices) showed a different pattern. Some drug prices fell dramatically. The ones that fell the fastest, Lantus and Levemir, started declining in 2015, two years before Trump took office. For three of the other drugs, prices remained about the same, or fell a bit. The IQVIA report suggested that several Trump administration policies could help in the months ahead, including a move that would cap copays for some Medicare beneficiaries. The impact on Medicare recipients remains to be seen. An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, along with one published in the New England Journal of Medicine, note that the reach would be limited. Right now, publicly available data doesn’t show that patients are better off. ""The truth is that patients who need drugs like insulin are having a hard time affording them, particularly for the many who are now uninsured,"" said Vanderbilit’s Dusetzina. Trump said that his executive order had produced a steep drop in the price of insulin, and urged seniors to take note. No one can predict what the future will bring, but setting that aside, Trump’s move focused on a limited slice of the insulin market. His executive order touched less than 20% of the clinics that might provide insulin through a key government drug discount program. That drug program itself represents perhaps 10% of the total prescription drug market. The latest market analysis shows that between 2017 and 2018, insulin copays for seniors rose by about 10%. Trump’s efforts to make insulin more affordable for seniors may have helped some, but have yet to prove themselves.ostly False."
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29604
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Lemon Fresh Joy (a dishwashing liquid), Listerine (a mouthwash), and limes with cloves will repeal mosquitoes or knock them dead from the sky.
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In general, you get what you pay for: DEET will typically repel mosquitoes more effectively and for much longer than solutions concocted from commercial household products intended for completely different purposes.
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false
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Inboxer Rebellion, Household Hints
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[Collected via e-mail, April 2013] Have a mosquito problem??? At your next outdoor gathering try this SAFE and EFFECTIVE method of keeping mosquitoes at bay! Simply slice a lime in half and press in a good amount of cloves for an ALL NATURAL mosquito repellent… Make sure to SHARE THIS with your friends! [Collected via e-mail, June 2002] Pass this on to anyone who likes being out in the evening or is having a cook out. Here is a good thing for the summer, for those who like to sit and enjoy the out of doors, but don’t like those pesky mosquitoes. It was given at a gardening forum. Put some water in a white dinner plate and add just a couple of drops of Lemon Fresh Joy dishwashing soap. Set the dish on a porch or patio. Not sure what attracts them, the lemon smell, the white color, or what, but mosquitoes flock to it, and drop dead, or fall into the water, or on the floor within about 10 ft. Works just super! Enjoy the mosquito free summer! [Collected via e-mail, August 2007] Mosquito spray….. I was at a deck party awhile back, and the bugs were having a ball biting everyone. A man at the party sprayed the lawn and deck floor with Listerine, and the little demons disappeared. The next year I filled a 4-ounce spray bottle and used it around my seat whenever I saw mosquitoes. And voila! That worked as well. It worked at a picnic where we sprayed the area around the food table, the children’s swing area, and the standing water nearby. During the summer, I don’t leave home without it….. Pass it on. OUR FRIEND’S COMMENTS: I tried this on my deck and around all of my doors. It works – in fact, it killed them instantly. I bought my bottle from Target and it cost me $1.89. It really doesn’t take much, and it is a big bottle, too; so it is not as expensive to use as the can of spray you buy that doesn’t last 30 minutes. So, try this, please. It will last a couple of days. Don’t spray directly on a wood door (like your front door), but spray around the frame. Spray around the window frames, and even inside the dog house The ongoing war between man and bug prompts in many people a continual search for an inexpensive and effective weapon against mosquitoes, preferably something “natural” (or at least something that isn’t specifically a pesticide and therefore poses less danger of harming or killing humans and their pets). The perennial struggle often leaves warriors confused about the difference between substances that kill mosquitoes, substances that merely repel them, and substances that do neither. The good news in the mosquito wars is that one need only worry about the females of the species, because male mosquitoes don’t bite. Male and female mosquitoes both feed on nectar for sustenance; the female, however, requires blood to lay her eggs. It matters not how many male mosquitoes she’s been with; without the blood she draws from her victims she will not gain entry into the ranks of mosquito motherhood, so instinct drives her to take a piece out of someone. (That’s the bad news, of course: mosquito bites signify that more batches of little skeeters are on the way.) Female mosquitoes are attracted to carbon dioxide (the more carbon dioxide a person emits, the more likely that person is to be singled out by a motherhood-driven mosquito) as well as moisture, warmth, and body odor. Mosquito repellents such as DEET work not by “repelling” mosquitoes in a literal sense, but by blocking the receptors on their antennae that allow them to home in on human beings. A few drops of Lemon Joy dishwashing soap in a plate or bowl of water is neither an effective mosquito repellent (although it might have limited effectiveness for that purpose if you slathered it all over your body) nor a concoction that will cause flocks of mosquitoes to fall out of the sky dead. As noted, mosquitoes are attracted to moisture, so putting out an open container of water mixed with soap can draw some of the critters into landing and coating themselves with a sticky film that prevents them from escaping, but that’s about it. There’s nothing special about Lemon Joy that attracts hordes of skeeters and sends them plummeting to the ground dead. Likewise, spraying Listerine around your home or outdoor areas isn’t an all-purpose mosquito preventive. It may kill some mosquitoes on which it is directly sprayed, but it won’t serve to keep knocking mosquitoes dead for hours and hours afterwards. Because it contains trace amounts of eucalyptol, mouthwash may also have limited effectiveness as a mosquito repellent, but it needs be kept in mind that actual eucalyptus-based mosquito repellents contain the compound in concentrations as high as 75 percent whereas the eucalyptol in mouthwash is usually below 1 percent, which means if it works at all, it isn’t going to work very well or for very long. The latest entry in the “cheap and easy” litany of mosquito solutions is the suggestion that limes pressed with cloves forms an effective “ALL NATURAL mosquito repellent.” We haven’t yet gauged the effectiveness of this approach.
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26489
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“Everyone is only dying of coronavirus now.”
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Patients who test positive for the coronavirus are likely being included in nationwide death counts. But doctors say that’s actually an undercount because of a lack of available testing, among other factors. Coronavirus is more difficult for people with pre-existing heart and lung problems, which could lead to respiratory or cardiac arrest.
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false
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National, Coronavirus, Candace Owens,
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"On the day that doctors and nurses in New York City treated over 1,500 new COVID-19 patients, conservative pundit Candace Owens claimed that deaths from the pandemic coronavirus have been inflated. ""Apparently, doctors and nurses around the world are wondering why no one is dying from heart attacks or strokes any more, Owens tweeted April 6. ""Flu and pneumonia deaths also went off a cliff. Turns out everyone is only dying of coronavirus now. Gee, I wonder why."" Apparently, doctors and nurses around the world are wondering why no one is dying from heart attacks and strokes anymore. Flu and pneumonia deaths also went off a cliff. Turns out everyone is only dying of #Coronavirus now. Gee. I wonder why. https://t.co/HOX2Tc5PWt An exaggerated death count is a persistent talking point. On April 4, Owens tweeted ""State departments of Public Health are reporting the number of deaths BEFORE the medical examiners have even concluded the cause of death,"" she said. ""There would be no legitimate way to report how many people die daily."" Are Owens’ claims correct? We asked her for evidence but did not hear back. What we found is that her statement is at odds with doctors, who say the data, in fact, reflects an undercount. Here’s why the details of death reporting back up the doctors more than the pundits. Owens is wrong that only medical examiners determine a person’s cause of death. Formal death certificates start with the attending doctor. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells physicians to list the immediate cause of death, such as cardiac or respiratory arrest, and then proceed to the underlying disease that caused the heart or breathing to stop. The underlying cause should be ""the disease or injury which initiated the train of morbid events leading directly to death."" If a person showed up in the emergency room with COVID-19 symptoms and a heart attack, there could be a judgement call as to what goes in as the underlying cause. But Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said there would be strong argument to note the key role of COVID-19. ""I would put COVID-19 as the primary cause,"" Plescia said. ""Because most likely, the heart attack was caused by the fever or a difficulty in breathing."" There’s no question that the virus lands harder on people with pre-existing heart and lung problems. ""If those individuals are positive for COVID-19 and have symptoms, COVID-19 is typically being listed on the death certificate as the cause of death, with their other diseases listed as contributory,"" said Dr. Sally Aiken, president of the National Association of Medical Examiners. Aiken added, ""it is not a conspiracy, or any different than what occurs during non-COVID-19 times."" The CDC said in a statement that if it works with death certificate data, it will add a death to the COVID-19 tally regardless on which line the disease is listed. It’s important to note that death certificates are not the only — or even primary way — the states report coronavirus deaths. New York, which to date accounts for over 40% of deaths nationwide, does not use death certificate data for reporting COVID-19 fatalities. When a person with the virus dies, hospitals or nursing homes tell their local health officials who then notify the state health department, which in turn sends a report to Washington. Providers in New York use this form to record the death, and unlike a full death certificate, it provides just one place to note the disease. This quick reporting form lacks the details that go into a death certificate. Like seasonal flu, COVID-19 is what is known as a nationally notifiable disease. Heart attacks and strokes fall into the larger group of diseases that are not tracked in real time. The system to gather COVID-19 data is designed to help public health officials track what is happening as quickly as possible. Death certificates are processed at a slower pace. There are several reasons COVID-19 victims might not make it into the quick reporting system. ""Doctors won't record a death until they are certain,"" Plescia said. ""And with the high volume of cases, they may not be reporting because they move on to other things."" Plescia added that if a person dies on the way to the hospital, or very soon after, they won’t be tested for the virus. ""There’s nothing any more you can do for them,"" he said. Aiken said if the person had no symptoms of the coronavirus, her department wouldn’t test them. ""These decedents are not being tested for COVID-19 as a matter of course,"" Aiken said. Given the scarcity of tests, Aiken said, that’s generally true across the country. Plescia said, ""if there’s any error, it’s in under-reporting."" Aiken echoed the point, and said it applies to death certificates as well. ""COVID-19 deaths will likely be under-reported on death certificates and not over-reported,"" Aiken said. ""This will be especially true as deaths that occur in homes, and not the hospital, mount."" Owens said that ""everyone is dying of coronavirus now."" Her post reflects a misunderstanding of how COVID-19 interacts with other health conditions and how deaths are reported. The physicians we reached said it’s important to track when COVID-19 triggers a pre-existing heart or lung condition. To meet the need for immediate data, New York sends the CDC summaries of COVID-19 deaths, and not the full death certificates. People familiar with the tracking system say some victims go uncounted. They told us that the limited supply of testing, the pace of work at hospitals and deaths that take place outside any medical facility point to an underreporting of COVID-19 deaths, not an overreporting."
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3699
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Hong Kong steps up response to mystery disease from China.
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Hong Kong authorities activated a newly created “serious response” level as fears spread about a mysterious infectious disease that may have been brought back by visitors to a mainland Chinese city.
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true
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Pneumonia, Health, Hong Kong, General News, Wuhan, Epidemics, Infectious diseases, Asia Pacific, China
|
Eight possible cases have been reported of a viral pneumonia that has also infected at least 44 people in Wuhan, an inland city west of Shanghai, about 900 kilometers (570 miles) north of Hong Kong. The outbreak, which emerged last month, has revived memories of the 2002-2003 SARS epidemic that started in southern China and killed more than 700 people in the mainland, Hong Kong and elsewhere. The serious response level indicates a moderate impact on Hong Kong’s population of 7.5 million people. It is the second highest in a three-tier system that is part of a new government plan launched Saturday to respond to infectious diseases of unknown cause. The city’s health department added an additional thermal imaging system at Hong Kong’s airport on Friday to check the body temperature of arriving passengers. More staff have been assigned for temperature checks at the West Kowloon high-speed rail station that connects Hong Kong to the mainland. City leader Carrie Lam, on a visit to the train station Friday to review the health surveillance measures, urged any travelers who develop respiratory symptoms to wear surgical masks, seek medical attention and let doctors know where they have been. The Wuhan health commission said 11 of the 44 people diagnosed with the pneumonia were in critical condition as of Friday. All were being treated in isolation and 121 others who had been in close contact with them were under observation. Most of the cases have been traced to the South China Seafood City food market in the suburbs of sprawling Wuhan, where offerings reportedly include wild animals that can carry viruses dangerous to humans. The commission said the market has been disinfected. The most common symptom has been fever, with shortness of breath and lung infections in a small number of cases, the commission said, There have been no clear indications of human-to-human transmission of the disease. The latest cases in Hong Kong are two women and one man, aged between 4 and 50 years old, who had been to Wuhan in the past 14 days and had fever and respiratory infection or pneumonia symptoms, the Hospital Authority said. They were in stable condition and being treated at hospitals in isolation. Besides SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, Hong Kong also was hit by bird flu in 1997 and swine flu in 2009.
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7513
|
China confirms 1st death outside epicenter of viral outbreak.
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China moved to lock down at least three cities with a combined population of more than 18 million in an unprecedented effort to contain the deadly new virus that has sickened hundreds of people and spread to other parts of the world during the busy Lunar New Year holiday.
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true
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Beijing, AP Top News, United Nations, Health, General News, Wuhan, International News, Business, China, Travel, Asia Pacific, New York, New York City
|
The open-ended lockdowns are unmatched in size, embracing more people than New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago put together. The train station and airport in Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, were shut down, and ferry, subway and bus service was halted. Normally bustling streets, shopping malls, restaurants and other public spaces in the city of 11 million were eerily quiet. Police checked all incoming vehicles but did not close off the roads. Similar measures were being imposed Friday in the nearby cities of Huanggang and Ezhou. In Huanggang, theaters, internet cafes and other entertainment centers were also ordered closed. In the capital, Beijing, major events were canceled indefinitely, including traditional temple fairs that are a staple of holiday celebrations, to stop the spread of the virus. The Forbidden City, the palace complex in Beijing that is now a museum, announced it will close indefinitely on Saturday. China’s National Health Commission said Friday morning the confirmed cases of the new coronavirus had risen to 830 with 25 deaths. The first death was also confirmed outside the central province of Hubei, where the capital, Wuhan, has been the epicenter of the outbreak. The health commission in Hebei, a northern province bordering Beijing, said an 80-year-old man died after returning from a two-month stay in Wuhan to see relatives. The vast majority of cases have been in and around Wuhan or people with connections the city. Other cases have been confirmed in the United States, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Thailand. Singapore and Vietnam reported their first cases Thursday, and cases have also been confirmed in the Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macao. Many countries are screening travelers from China for symptoms of the virus, which can cause fever, coughing, breathing difficulties and pneumonia. The World Health Organization has decided against declaring the outbreak a global emergency, a step that can bring more money and resources to fight a threat but that can also cause trade and travel restrictions and other economic damage, making the decision a politically fraught one. The decision “should not be taken as a sign that WHO does not think the situation is serious or that we’re not taking it seriously. Nothing could be further from the truth,” WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “WHO is following this outbreak every minute of every day.” Chinese officials have not said how long the shutdowns of the cities will last. While sweeping measures are typical of China’s Communist Party-led government, large-scale quarantines are rare around the world, even in deadly epidemics, because of concerns about infringing on people’s liberties. And the effectiveness of such measures is unclear. “To my knowledge, trying to contain a city of 11 million people is new to science,” said Gauden Galea, the WHO″s representative in China. “It has not been tried before as a public health measure. We cannot at this stage say it will or it will not work.” Jonathan Ball, a professor of virology at molecular virology at the University of Nottingham in Britain, said the lockdowns appear to be justified scientifically. “Until there’s a better understanding of what the situation is, I think it’s not an unreasonable thing to do,” he said. “Anything that limits people’s travels during an outbreak would obviously work.” But Ball cautioned that any such quarantine should be strictly time-limited. He added: “You have to make sure you communicate effectively about why this is being done. Otherwise you will lose the goodwill of the people.” During the devastating West Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014, Sierra Leone imposed a national three-day quarantine as health workers went door to door, searching for hidden cases. Burial teams collecting corpses and people taking the sick to Ebola centers were the only ones allowed to move freely. Frustrated residents complained of food shortages. In China, the illnesses from the newly identified coronavirus first appeared last month in Wuhan, an industrial and transportation hub. Local authorities demanded all residents wear masks in public places and urged civil servants wear them at work. After the city was closed off Thursday, images showed long lines and empty shelves at supermarkets, as people stocked up. Trucks carrying supplies into the city are not being restricted, although many Chinese recall shortages in the years before the country’s recent economic boom. Analysts predicted cases will continue to multiply, although the jump in numbers is also attributable in part to increased monitoring. “Even if (cases) are in the thousands, this would not surprise us,” the WHO’s Galea said, adding, however, that the number of infected is not an indicator of the outbreak’s severity so long as the death rate remains low. The coronavirus family includes the common cold as well as viruses that cause more serious illnesses, such as the SARS outbreak that spread from China to more than a dozen countries in 2002-03 and killed about 800 people, and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, or MERS, which is thought to have originated from camels. China is keen to avoid repeating mistakes with its handling of SARS. For months, even after the illness had spread around the world, China parked patients in hotels and drove them around in ambulances to conceal the true number of cases and avoid WHO experts. This time, China has been credited with sharing information rapidly, and President Xi Jinping has emphasized that as a priority. Health authorities are taking extraordinary measures to prevent the spread of the virus, placing those believed infected in plastic tubes and wheeled boxes, with air passed through filters. The first cases in the Wuhan outbreak were connected to people who worked at or visited a seafood market, now closed for an investigation. Experts suspect that the virus was first transmitted from wild animals but that it may also be mutating. Mutations can make it deadlier or more contagious. ___ Associated Press journalists Shanshan Wang in Shanghai, Maria Cheng in London and Krista Larson in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report.
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6669
|
Downtown LA sees cases of flea-borne typhus.
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Public health authorities are investigating an outbreak of flea-borne typhus in downtown Los Angeles.
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true
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Los Angeles, Rats, Health, Animals, Public health
|
County Health Officer Dr. Muntu Davis announced this week that although typhus can occur throughout the county, several cases have occurred in the downtown area. Typhus is a disease caused by bacteria found in infected fleas that can come from many kinds of animals including cats, rats and opossums. Symptoms can include high fever, chills, headaches and rashes. Accumulations of trash that attract animals like rats may increase the risk of exposure. Typhus is treated with antibiotics. It is not transmitted person-to-person.
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2103
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U.S. scores dead last again in healthcare study.
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Americans spend twice as much as residents of other developed countries on healthcare, but get lower quality, less efficiency and have the least equitable system, according to a report released on Wednesday.
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true
|
Health News
|
A patient waits in the hallway for a room to open up in the emergency room at a hospital in Houston, Texas, July 27, 2009. REUTERS/Jessica Rinaldi The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries — Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found. “As an American it just bothers me that with all of our know-how, all of our wealth, that we are not assuring that people who need healthcare can get it,” Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis told reporters in a telephone briefing. Previous reports by the nonprofit fund, which conducts research into healthcare performance and promotes changes in the U.S. system, have been heavily used by policymakers and politicians pressing for healthcare reform. Davis said she hoped health reform legislation passed in March would lead to improvements. The current report uses data from nationally representative patient and physician surveys in seven countries in 2007, 2008, and 2009. It is available here In 2007, health spending was $7,290 per person in the United States, more than double that of any other country in the survey. Australians spent $3,357, Canadians $3,895, Germans $3,588, the Netherlands $3,837 and Britons spent $2,992 per capita on health in 2007. New Zealand spent the least at $2,454. This is a big rise from the Fund’s last similar survey, in 2007, which found Americans spent $6,697 per capita on healthcare in 2005, or 16 percent of gross domestic product. “We rank last on safety and do poorly on several dimensions of quality,” Schoen told reporters. “We do particularly poorly on going without care because of cost. And we also do surprisingly poorly on access to primary care and after-hours care.” The report looks at five measures of healthcare — quality, efficiency, access to care, equity and the ability to lead long, healthy, productive lives. Britain, whose nationalized healthcare system was widely derided by opponents of U.S. healthcare reform, ranks first in quality while the Netherlands ranked first overall on all scores, the Commonwealth team found. U.S. patients with chronic conditions were the most likely to say they gotten the wrong drug or had to wait to learn of abnormal test results. “The findings demonstrate the need to quickly implement provisions in the new health reform law,” the report reads. Critics of reports that show Europeans or Australians are healthier than Americans point to the U.S. lifestyle as a bigger factor than healthcare. Americans have higher rates of obesity than other developed countries, for instance. “On the other hand, the other countries have higher rates of smoking,” Davis countered. And Germany, for instance, has a much older population more prone to chronic disease. Every other system covers all its citizens, the report noted and said the U.S. system, which leaves 46 million Americans or 15 percent of the population without health insurance, is the most unfair. “The lower the performance score for equity, the lower the performance on other measures. This suggests that, when a country fails to meet the needs of the most vulnerable, it also fails to meet the needs of the average citizen,” the report reads.
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9223
|
Mayo Clinic finds surprising results on first-ever test of stem cell therapy to treat arthritis
|
This release from the Mayo Clinic describes the essentially negative results of a small, randomized and partly controlled trial of a widely used, but unproven treatment for arthritis. The treatment involves injecting a person’s own bone marrow containing pluripotent stem cells directly into arthritis-damaged knees. Popular in “regenerative medicine” clinics, Bone Marrow Aspirate Concentrate (BMAC) therapy, and a related therapy using Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) from blood, cost many thousands of dollars and are not covered by insurance. BMAC therapy currently does not require FDA approval since many of its practitioners have argued successfully that harvesting cells from one’s own body and re-injecting them without complex processing does not constitute “a drug.” But neither has there been rigorous scientific testing for efficacy, adverse side effects, benefit compared with other treatments, and safety. The good news is that the Mayo Clinic study was designed to put some science behind a choice to use BMAC, which a few published articles conclude has helped many patients and for long periods of time. The release notes that the study failed to make a scientific case that the therapy works to heal, cure or diminish osteoarthritic pain mainly because the 25 patients — each with two bad knees — served as their own controls for BMAC and it turns out that the “control” knees injected with plain saline benefited just as much as the stem cell treated knees. Overall, the release uses weaselly language to give the stem cell treatment more benefit of the doubt than it deserves here, and devotes a lot of space making a case for the possibility that the injection of stem cells in one set of knees somehow “spread” systemically to the other knees. A meaningful discussion of harms and benefits are also missing. Painful, debilitating osteoarthritis of the knees and other joints, especially in the elderly and in athletes, joggers, and sports enthusiasts, are a major cause of disability. Treatments with anti-inflammatories, steroids, surgery and painkillers all carry potential risks and the overall health care cost to individuals and society is significant. As the release notes, at least 600 stem cell clinics in the U.S. alone have offered at least one form of BMAC to more than 100,000 patients seeking cures or long-lasting pain-reducing treatment. This study seeks to assess whether the use of a patient’s own bone marrow stem cells is a treatment for osteoarthritis, or arthritis of aging. This treatment and similar ones seek to find an option that is less invasive than surgery but more effective than existing treatments. The investigators report that both knees improved “dramatically,” but unexpectedly. The knee injected with the salt water solution did just as well as the knee injected with the active stem cell treatment. In summary, the study is an important one in that it calls into question the unproven benefit of using a patient’s own bone marrow as a treatment for painful arthritis. Further studies should include double-blind design where one patient gets stem cells while another only gets the saline placebo.
|
mixture
|
knee osteoarthritis,Mayo Clinic,stem cells
|
The release notes that patients may pay “thousands” out of pocket. It could have offered some information on the cost of alternative therapies, which would have put the cost burden in context. The release talks about “dramatic improvement” in the injected knees, but gives the reader no clue about what the baseline level of pain was, or how the improvement was measured. The investigators used a standard international measure of pain relief and function to score the patients before and after treatment. The release needed to describe the results more meaningfully. For example, it could have noted the range of improvement in the 25 patient volunteers. It’s unclear why the release positioned this as a positive study suggesting that the treated knee got better. The problem is that the study design was testing to see if there was a difference between treatment and placebo — and there wasn’t. This means that the stem cell treatment was no better than the saline placebo, or a sham treatment. In claiming that the stem cell treatment was effective, the release quotes a study investigator saying that it is possible that the injection of stem cells into one knee resulted in benefit to the other. No evidence is provided to support this hypothesis. Descriptions of BMAC treatments note that there are minimal side effects, mostly pain at the injection site that lasts a few days and can be treated with painkillers. But there are potential short- and long-term complications (including infection) of bone marrow aspiration and injections into a joint which were not addressed. The results were framed in a way that may lead readers to conclude that this was a positive study showing benefit from stem cell therapy when the opposite is in fact the case. The whole point of the study was to compare improvement in stem cell vs. placebo-treated knees. The fact that no difference was found means, quite simply, that there was no benefit for the stem cell treatment compared with a placebo. By failing to state this plain fact, the release demonstrates an inability to grasp the purpose of blinded, placebo-controlled research — which is necessary to distinguish between real, effective treatments and expensive scams. The release’s tortured attempts to find a silver lining in this study may have a harmful effect on readers. No mongering here; this is a painful and widespread disorder. However, the severity of symptoms in this population were limited to those experiencing mild to moderate pain. The release duly notes that funding was by the Mayo Clinic in Florida’s Center for Regenerative Medicine. As noted earlier in this review, other treatments — tested and untested — exist, including Platelet Rich Plasma presumed to carry biological growth factors to arthritic joints; steroid injections; exercise; surgery; and analgesics. None were mentioned. The release prominently notes the wide availability of regenerative medicine clinics and their offerings of BMAC for knees and other arthritic joints. And it makes clear that the results of this new small trial cannot underpin recommendations for its “routine” use. The release would have been stronger if it had explained what “non routine” use means in the context of the study’s findings. We give them the benefit of the doubt here since the release reports on the meticulous stem cell count and the use of the patients’ own knees serving as both treatment recipients and controls. These are newsworthy parts of the study protocol. But the claim that it’s the “world’s first” probably should have been explained better or in the abscence of an explanation, avoided altogether. The release in too many places hedges on affirmative conclusions and as such may leave the impression that there is evidence from this study to encourage patients to keep spending thousands on BMAC. The possibility that there was systemic spread of the BMAC to the saline-injected knee is speculative and remains a hypothesis. This study showed no benefit. Indeed the knee that received the placebo treatment appeared to fare better, according to the study.
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