The US Supreme Court tossed competing appellate rulings on an executive order President Biden has since revoked that required all federal employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19. https://t.co/dlL4YzWUIB
— Bloomberg Law (@BLaw) December 11, 2023
For nearly a month, COVID-19 hospitalizations have been increasing following weeks of decline and relatively low levels throughout the summer, according to CDC data. https://t.co/wirYZcA0i0
— ABC News (@ABC) December 11, 2023
Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Good People, Not-So-Good People
After all, the original St. Nick rescued three desperate unmarried women by gifting them dowries. And the holiday celebrates a child born to a woman pregnant by someone other than her husband…
Won’t be here for holiday giving, but if you want the gamer in your life to feel recognized (or just old):
Agreed, although stamps are now almost less mainstream than D&D was 50 years ago ??
— Christian Schaller (@cfkschaller) December 4, 2023
Jewish Americans embody what the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said:
“A people whose capacity for joy cannot be destroyed is itself indestructible.”
Rallying with pride, unity, and even joy in the face of pain – just like the Hanukkah candles that defiantly burned miraculously. pic.twitter.com/34ppL7o4M7
— President Biden (@POTUS) December 12, 2023
Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Good People, Not-So-Good PeoplePost + Comments (185)
A Big Biden Deal
The FDA has just approved two drugs that could change for the better millions of lives.
Both address sickle cell anemia. Casgevy is the first CRISPR-Cas based drug to get the nod for its gene editing approach to enabling a sickle cell patient’s body to produce the type of hemoglobin needed to carry oxygen through the bloodstream, while the other therapy, Lyfgenia uses a different approach.
Casgevy, which was called exa-cel in clinical trials, works by editing a patient’s bone marrow stem cells to make high levels of fetal hemoglobin — the healthy, oxygen-carrying form of hemoglobin produced during fetal development that is replaced by adult hemoglobin soon after birth.
Unlike adult hemoglobin, fetal hemoglobin resists forming a crescent shape in sickle cell patients, and scientists have long searched for a way to restart it. The researchers behind Casgevy solved the problem by editing a gene called BCL11A, which regulates fetal hemoglobin.
Crucially, these offer something approaching a cure for the disease. A clinical trial of Casgevy saw 29 out of 30 patients eliminated sickle cell flares for at least a year after treatment. Lyfgenia has seen similarly promising results.
The catch: both treatments are difficult and not tolerated by everyone who might benefit:
Casgevy and Lyfgenia requires several months of preparation, including a grueling regimen of chemotherapy to make room in patients’ blood marrow for genetically edited or modified stem cells.
The treatment involves multiple steps over several months. Patients must donate stem cells to be modified at a laboratory. Then the patients undergo chemotherapy. Finally, they get the cells back through a single infusion.
One consequence of the complexity involved is that, at least for now, not that many people will get the treatment. There are only a handful of medical centers able to deliver Casgevy right now, and they can handle roughly ten patients per year each–not a huge bite out of the ~800,000 or so sickle cell patients in the US, much less the roughly eight million world wide. And, of course, both drugs, though still unpriced, are going to be costly as hell:
Although both treatments are expected to cost at least $1 million per patient, advocates for makers of gene-based drugs said people need to compare such transformative medicines to major medical procedures — not to ordinary drugs.
That is, a one time treatment for a chronic and/or ultimately fatal condition can have a huge upfront cost and still be worth it–the example given in the Globe article is the cost of a heart transplant, also well over million bucks. There’s a lot more to be said about this, and David Anderson is the one to say it.
There is of course one elephant in the room. This first gene-editing therapy targets a debilitating and sometimes killing disease that hits mostly Black Americans. The argument over whether private insurance and/or Federal health care coverage should be required to pay for these therapies will be…interesting.
But all those caveats–complexity, cost, equity–aside, this is still an amazing result. It’s not quite like the inflection point when the prospect of vaccinating against infectious disease utterly altered the balance between humans and microbes/viruses. But it’s the same kind of conceptual change. We live in way-too-interesting times, but not all the news is bad.
To put it differently: Science, peeps!
Open thread.
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: December 6, 2023
The dregs of the 2019 pandemic have been firmly relegated to ‘just another chronic complaint, now’ status. There will be ongoing research, not least concerning those unfortunates who are living with Long Covid, but barring more flare-ups, looks like we’ll be seeing fewer news reports going forward.
US Covid hospitalizations are on the rise, now >20,000 new admits/week, and this wave is just getting started as the JN.1 variant becomes dominant and wastewater levels surging in the Midwest with other regions to follow.
The booster protects vs JN.1! pic.twitter.com/IvxASAY23s— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) December 5, 2023
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: December 6, 2023Post + Comments (29)
Thursday Morning Open Thread: Looks Like We’re Gonna Have to Defend the ACA *Again*
A brief history of the ACA:
Obama campaigns on health reform.
ACA passes, barely.
Opposition grows.
Republicans try to repeal and replace.
The backlash builds support for the ACA.
Trump backs lawsuit to overturn the ACA.
Biden enhances subsidies, leading to record enrollment.— Larry Levitt (@larry_levitt) November 29, 2023
I guess we’ll be recreating this battle in *every* election cycle for the foreseeable future, because one of America’s only two presidential political parties has turned into a cult with a senile nutbag as its figurehead. Happy holidays, y’all!
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: November 29, 2023
Last night's update: Nearly 200,000 new cases https://t.co/Bf6oeUf8F6
— BNO News (@BNOFeed) November 28, 2023
Nationwide, COVID hospital admissions increased by 10%, with nearly 14,000 people currently in hospital, the highest in nearly 2 months.
Deaths remain elevated from the wave in September with more than 1,000 deaths for 11 weeks in a row, or nearly 16,000 during the same period.
— BNO News (@BNOFeed) November 28, 2023
‘Interesting’ Read: ‘Zoom fatigue’ may take toll on the brain and the heart, researchers say
Since videoconferencing skyrocketed in popularity during the pandemic, use of such technology has soared. So have anecdotal accounts of what some call “Zoom fatigue” — a unique state of exhaustion reported by those who feel wrung out after video calls. https://t.co/V9tUN9aqmH
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) November 26, 2023
Small study, biased observers, all the usual caveats. Still… From the Washington Post, “‘Zoom fatigue’ may take toll on the brain and the heart, researchers say” [unpaywalled gift link]:
Does a session on Zoom, FaceTime or Microsoft Teams leave you drained and listless?…
A recent brain-monitoring study supports the phenomenon, finding a connection between videoconferencing in educational settings and physical symptoms linked to fatigue.
The study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, looked for physiological signs of fatigue in 35 students attending lectures on engineering at an Austrian university. Half of the class attended the 50-minute lecture via videoconference in a nearby lab and a face-to-face lecture the following week, while the other half attended first in person, then online.
Participants were monitored with electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) instruments that recorded electrical activity in the brain and their heart rhythms. They also participated in surveys about their mood and fatigue levels…
There were “notable” differences between the in-person and online groups, the researchers write. Video participants’ fatigue mounted over the course of the session, and their brain states showed they were struggling to pay attention. The groups’ moods varied, too, with in-person participants reporting they felt livelier, happier and more active, and online participants saying they felt tired, drowsy and “fed up.”
Overall, the researchers write, the study offers evidence of the physical toll of videoconferencing and suggests that it “should be considered as a complement to face-to-face interaction, but not as a substitute.”
They say the research should be replicated in business settings and homes to get a more accurate sense of how such sessions affect participants, calling for further studies that include more portions of the brain and a broader participant base…
If nothing else, it’s probably useful to know there’s actual physical effects, if only to be prepared in advance.