Friday, May 20, 2022 | Kaiser Health News

The Washington Post:
One Million Covid Deaths: Visualizing 114 Lives, Cut Short. 

One million Americans have died of covid-19, an incomprehensible weight. So we’re remembering one person for each week of the pandemic: what brought them joy and what they wanted to do next. And how that was cut short. Each of their stories stands for all who died the same week, those numbers marked by the exact point where the sentence cuts off. (5/18)

Politico:
‘Where Was The Strategy For Getting People Ready To Start Taking The Vaccine?’ 

Gus Perna is a national hero, and no one talks about it. The now-retired Army four-star general served as chief operating officer for Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s massive public-private effort to develop, approve and distribute a Covid-19 vaccine in the record time of less than a year. (The prior record, for the mumps vaccine, was more than four years.) At a time when U.S. generals are mostly famous for losing wars, Perna helped lead a mission that has saved easily a million American lives. Can any other recent endeavor involving the U.S. military say that? (Gilsinan, 5/12)

The Washington Post:
Why The Pandemic Has Made It So Hard And Exhausting To Make Decisions

You want to sit down for an indoor dinner with friends. A couple of years ago, this was a simple enough activity that required minimal planning. That is not the case in today’s world. Many people face a stream of further considerations about benefits and risks. Will I enjoy the experience? What are the potential downsides? Am I comfortable with the restaurant’s pandemic-related policies? What’s the ventilation like? Is it very busy there at this time of day? Am I planning to see lots of people, or people with compromised immune systems, in the near future? This is exhausting. As scientists at the Learning & Decision-Making Lab at Rutgers University-Newark, we’ve noticed how many decision-making processes are affected by the pandemic. The accumulation of choices people are making throughout the day leads to what psychologists call decision fatigue — you can end up feeling overwhelmed and make bad decisions. (Tricomi and Ameden, 5/14)

Bloomberg:
This Is How China Rounds Up Thousands Of People For Covid Quarantine

Thousands of people in a village near the Chinese port city of Tianjin were ordered into government quarantine, with videos circulated on social media showing residents being marched through streets and onto buses as officials continue to deploy the country’s strict Covid Zero playbook on new outbreaks. Residents of Liuanzhuang village in northern Tianjin were ordered on Monday to pack their belongings and prepare to be transported into isolation centers, a voice can be heard saying over a loudspeaker in one of the videos, after dozens of Covid-19 cases were detected in their district. Footage shared on social media networks like Weibo and Twitter showed crowds of people, luggage in tow, walking toward or waiting in line for buses. (Lew, 5/18)

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The New York Times:
Targeting The Uneven Burden Of Kidney Disease On Black Americans 

Kidney specialists have long known that Black Americans are disproportionately affected by kidney disease. While Black people make up about 12 percent of the U.S. population, they comprise 35 percent of Americans with kidney failure. Black patients tend to contract kidney disease at younger ages, and damage to their organs often progresses faster. … But there is hope now that much of this suffering can be alleviated. As many as 10 companies are working on drugs to target the APOL1 variants. And Dr. Opeyemi Olabisi, a kidney specialist at Duke University, has a federal grant to test whether baricitinib, a drug that treats rheumatoid arthritis, can help kidney patients with the variants. Yet the promise of treatments comes with difficult questions. (Kolata, 5/17)

The New York Times:
Doctors Gave Her Antipsychotics. She Decided To Live With Her Voices. 

Caroline Mazel-Carlton began hearing voices when she was in day care. Mornings, by the time she was in middle school, a bowl of oatmeal awaited her for breakfast next to a white saucer of colorful pills. Her voices remained vibrant. They weren’t within her head; they spoke and screamed from outside her skull. They belonged to beings she could not see. The voice who had been with her longest warned of catastrophes coming for her family in Zionsville, a town north of Indianapolis, calamities tied in some unspecified way to TV images from the gulf war: fighter planes, flashes in the sky, explosions on the ground, luminous and all-consuming. A woman’s voice castigated her at school, telling her that her clothes smelled and that she had better keep her hand down, no matter that she knew the answers to the teacher’s questions. Another voice tracked her every move, its tone faintly mocking. “She’s getting out of bed now; oh, she’s walking down the hall now.” (Bergner, 5/17)

The Washington Post:
What Is Topical Steroid Withdrawal? 

A recent social media trend is raising awareness — and perhaps stoking fears — about a relatively rare and potentially debilitating condition known as topical steroid withdrawal (TSW). As of mid-March, there had been more than 168 million views of TikTok videos with the hashtag #topicalsteroidwithdrawal, which show dramatic footage of people — many of them young — with red, cracked, scaling skin on their faces, torsos and feet describing the challenges of dealing with this often painful condition. We spoke with a dermatologist and a family medicine practitioner for a better understanding of TSW and to put the condition into perspective. (Russell, 5/16)

The New York Times:
Poppers, Once A Fixture At Gay Clubs, Now A ‘Party Girl’ Favorite 

The party blogger and aspiring “It” girl known as Meg Superstar Princess was at Rash, a club with a tiny dance floor in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn in March, when someone spilled a bottle of alkyl nitrites — better known as “poppers” — on the dance floor. “The whole place fumed up, it was amazing” said Meg, 24, whose real name is Meg Yates. “I feel like at any party I go to, eventually someone’s going to pull out the poppers.” … For those unfamiliar with the inhalant, poppers were popularized by gay men during the 1970s for sex and partying. Sold in little brown bottles, the alkyl nitrite is inhaled by the user. It typically causes a head rush and can be a muscle relaxant. (O’Neill, 5/18)

The Washington Post:
Recipe For Healthy Students: Add Garden And Cooking Class To School

The seven young chefs, all between 10 and 12 years old, mesmerized the audience. They sliced and diced onions, peppers, tomatoes and garlic. They sauteed spinach, boiled noodles and toasted tortillas. They worked with hot skillets and sharp knives, preparing tasty meals using their own recipes. They were finalists in the Future Chefs Challenge, a healthy cooking contest sponsored by SodexoMagic, a partnership between former National Basketball Association star Earvin “Magic” Johnson and the Sodexo food services company. The event was held last week at Kimball Elementary School in Southeast Washington — a nutrition education powerhouse that produced all of this year’s finalists from a field of 50 contestants citywide. (Milloy, 5/17)

CBS News:
Chef José Andrés On Serving Meals In A War Zone

In the sea of despair that is Ukraine, Chef José Andrés and his World Central Kitchen are a lifeline. They have been on the ground there for months, feeding thousands of Ukrainians whose lives have been upended by the war. Since Russia’s invasion began in February, Andrés has traveled back and forth, spending more than 40 days in Ukraine. And for him, that’s not all that unusual. For the past 12 years, Andrés has brought his not-for-profit kitchen to the front lines of catastrophe. They have served more than 60 million meals, from earthquake-ravaged Haiti to hurricane-battered Houston. (5/15)

The New York Times:
In Ukraine, Gruesome Injuries And Not Enough Doctors To Treat Them

Days after Russian forces invaded, Yaroslav Bohak, a young cardiovascular surgeon, was at home with his family in the relative safety of western Ukraine, when a colleague placed a desperate call from the east, pleading with him to come help. Many doctors had fled the fighting, his friend said, and conditions at the hospital resembled a bygone era of warfare, with the surgeons who remained amputating limbs, instead of trying to repair them, to save grievously wounded soldiers. “He called me and said he could no longer cut off the arms of young people,” Dr. Bohak said, as he stood in an operating room of a hospital in Kramatorsk. “When I came here, I had surgery on the first day.” (Schwirtz and Addario, 5/18)

USA Today:
Jane Roe’s Daughter On Her Mom’s Views On Abortion, Religion, Sex

Throughout the last half century, no other controversial issue has touched, united and divided more families in the United States than abortion. But perhaps never as intimately as for McCorvey’s eldest daughter, who grew up in the shadow of Jane Roe. Mills, the only child McCorvey would have a lifelong relationship with, described her mother as a tumultuous figure, first as an abortion rights activist and later a born-again Christian and anti-abortion crusader until her death in 2017. (Ruiz-Goiriena, 5/16)

Health News Florida:
A Doctor Who Trained Before Roe V. Wade Recalls Treating Abortion Complications 

Women who suffered from septic infections after risky attempts at abortions using sharp objects like knitting needles and coat hangers were common sights for doctors who learned medicine in the days before the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case was decided in 1973, establishing the right to abortion in the United States. Sarasota OB-GYN Dr. Washington Hill remembers treating women who sought abortion through illegal or dangerous means in those days. He spoke with Health News Florida’s Kerry Sheridan about learning medicine at that time, and what a new generation of doctors may need to expect if abortion is outlawed in some states. (Sheridan, 5/19)

Appleton Post-Crescent:
In Pre-Roe Wisconsin, Death Certificates Hid Illegal Abortion Deaths

Anna Boddy first met Edward Werner when she went to his Jackson Street apartment in Milwaukee. It was Jan. 29, 1931. She was seeking an abortion. Werner, who was performing between 50 and 60 abortions in Milwaukee per week, had already lost his license for performing an “illegal operation” on a woman in Oshkosh, according to newspaper clippings from 1931. Boddy came back to Werner days later, this time “feeling desperately ill,” the article says, and “Werner is said to have told her to remain at his apartment that she might be under his constant observation.” Boddy died the next morning. She was 23 years old. (Mueller, 5/19)

Stat:
Vague ‘Medical Emergency’ Exceptions In Abortion Laws Leave Pregnant People In Danger, Doctors Say

Kaitlyn was near the beginning of her second trimester last October when she boarded a plane from Texas to Kansas. On her return home a few days later, she was no longer pregnant, and the 34-year-old wanted to do little more than cry in her own bed. Being in public was a struggle, let alone standing in line and going through airport security. She had flown to Kansas for an abortion that was outlawed in her home state, though she and her doctor considered it medically appropriate. (Goldhill, 5/20)

CNN:
24 Hours In An America Where Roe V. Wade Barely Hangs On

Dr. Sarah Traxler’s “Sioux Falls day” starts early. On this day, as it has been twice a month for the last seven years, Traxler is the only abortion doctor in South Dakota. By 6:30 a.m., she’s at the airport in Minneapolis, headed to Sioux Falls. And by the day’s end, she’ll return. She makes this trek because no doctor in the state is willing or able to perform the procedure. (Jones and Lah, 5/19)

The Washington Post:
The Potential End Of Roe Won’t Stop This Abortion Provider-In-Training

My formal education from medical school about abortions was the basic information needed to pass the national board exams. Things like medications used, their side effects and up to what gestational age they are effective. We also were taught basic knowledge of the procedures — primarily first-trimester abortions. This was all theoretical. There was no hands-on training or education on advocacy. (Sturdivant Sani, 5/11)

The Washington Post:
Glimpsing A Potential Post-Roe Future Through Texas Women’s Stories

Kathaleen Pittman, director of Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, La., is relishing what feels like a moment of quiet, despite the drilling outside her office. On this Friday afternoon in mid-March, workers are replacing some of the abortion clinic’s phones, leaving hers briefly disconnected. Since Texas implemented a near-total ban on abortions last fall, the lines have been flooded with calls. “Our phones are literally worn out,” Pittman says. (Novack, 5/15)

CNN:
‘Pushed To The Margins’: Why Some Activists And Lawmakers Say Abortion Bans Are A Form Of White Supremacy

The first time Kenya Martin got an abortion, she was a 19-year-old college student who felt she wasn’t old enough or mature enough to raise a child. The second time, Martin was a 26-year-old single mom making $12 an hour as a bank teller, could barely afford childcare or health insurance and was in a custody battle with her daughter’s father. Martin would later have four more abortions, each time knowing she did not want another child. Now Martin, who is Black, worries that other women, particularly women of color, won’t have that choice if the Supreme Court affirms a leaked decision to overturn Roe v. Wade — the landmark ruling that legalized abortion in 1973. (Ellis, 5/18)

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FiveThirtyEight:
Better Birth Control Hasn’t Made Abortion Obsolete 

There’s a reason why vasectomies are touted as one of the most reliable forms of birth control: They have a failure rate of less than 1 percent, as opposed to something like condoms, which has a failure rate closer to 13 percent. But because a 1 percent chance isn’t zero, some vasectomies fail every year, just like every other form of birth control. As a result, thousands of Americans who took steps to avoid getting pregnant will seek an abortion anyway. (Koerth and Thomson-DeVeaux, 5/19)

Stateline:
Some States Already Are Targeting Birth Control 

Last year, conservative Republicans in the Missouri legislature took a run at blocking Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood, a frequent and prominent target of anti-abortion activists and politicians. But in the fine print of their measure, those Republicans revealed that their ambition wasn’t only to target a familiar abortion foe. They were going after specific forms of birth control as well, notably, emergency contraceptives, often sold under the brand name Plan B, and intrauterine devices, known as IUDs. (Ollove, 5/19)

Vox:
5 Ways Abortion Bans Could Hurt Women In The Workforce

Roe vs. Wade is all but certain to be overturned. … That decision affects a woman’s likelihood to work at all, what type of job she takes, how much education she receives, how much money she makes, and even the hopes and dreams she has for herself. In turn, her career affects nearly all other aspects of her life, from her likelihood to live in poverty to her view of herself. (Molla, 5/19)

The Washington Post:
Photos From The 1990s On Abortion Show How The Present Is Like The Past

Protests by abortion rights and antiabortion activists alike have sprouted up, including last weekend’s countrywide abortion rights demonstrations. The protests are reminiscent of those decades ago, when the abortion conversation was in full swing. (Handler and Dickerman, 5/17)

The Washington Post:
Abortion In The Founders’ Era: Violent, Chaotic And Unregulated

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. calls himself an originalist, someone who thinks the Constitution should be interpreted only by how it would have been understood by the Founders when they wrote it. So it’s no surprise that his draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade is full of history. At least seven times, Alito cited Sir Matthew Hale, a 17th-century jurist who didn’t think marital rape was possible because wives were the property of their husbands, and who sentenced at least two women to die for witchcraft. Alito also cited a legal text from 1250 by Henry de Bracton that, in another section, says women are inferior to men, and that they sometimes give birth to literal monsters. (Brockell, 5/15)

The Conversation:
What Ireland’s History With Abortion Might Teach Us About A Post-Roe America

If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion in the U.S., the nation may find itself on a path similar to that trod by the Irish people from 1983 to 2018. … Abortion was first prohibited in Ireland through what was called the Offenses Against the Person Act of 1861. That law became part of Irish law when Ireland gained independence from the U.K. in 1922. In the early 1980s, some anti-abortion Catholic activists noticed the liberalization of abortion laws in other Western democracies and worried the same might happen in Ireland. (Ely, 5/18)