Modern Healthcare: Senate Votes To Avert Medicare Cuts To Providers
The Senate on Thursday evening voted 59-34 to avert looming Medicare cuts to providers, sending the legislation to President Biden's desk for signature. The highly-anticipated vote comes weeks before the cuts were set to take effect, putting providers on edge as lawmakers hammered out a final deal. The bill, which passed the House earlier this week, will delay 2% cuts to Medicare rates through March 2022 and punt a separate round of 4% Medicare cuts totaling about $36 billion to 2023. (Hellmann, 12/9)

The New York Times: Senate Clears Last Major Hurdle To Raising Debt Ceiling 
The Senate on Thursday cleared away the last major hurdle to raising the debt ceiling, approving legislation that would all but guarantee that Congress will be able to move quickly in the coming days to steer the government away from a first-ever federal default. ... The measure was packaged with legislation that would postpone scheduled cuts to Medicare, farm aid and other mandatory spending programs, a sweetener for reluctant Republicans who have held firm against giving Democrats the ability to raise the debt ceiling. (Cochrane, 12/9)

Politico: Congress Clears Schumer-McConnell Debt Pact
The Senate passed a one-time loophole Thursday night to empower Democrats to raise the debt limit on their own, a major step toward warding off mid-December economic fallout. The chamber cleared the bill in a 59-35 vote, sending it on to President Joe Biden. Once signed into law, the measure would give Senate Democrats a free pass to raise the U.S. borrowing limit in a simple-majority vote, rather than facing the usual 60-vote hurdle to move legislation forward. ... The bill the Senate passed Thursday would also avert another fiscal cliff, staving off billions of dollars in cuts to Medicare payments and agriculture subsidies that come as a side effect of using the budget reconciliation process Democrats employed to enact a $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package in March. (Scholtes, 12/9)

In related news —

The Wall Street Journal: Democrats Drop Vaping Tax From Senate Plan As They Negotiate Bill Details 
Senate Democrats are dropping a proposal that would have imposed taxes on vaping, removing a $9 billion provision backed by some public-health advocates from the party’s healthcare, education and climate-change bill, people familiar with the matter said. Lawmakers made the decision as they wrap up the details of the $2 trillion Build Back Better package and attempt to get it through the Senate before Christmas. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D., Nev.), a Finance Committee member in a tough re-election race, pushed to remove the tax and helped force its deletion. (Duehren and Rubin, 12/9)

Modern Healthcare: Key Lawmakers Seek To Make Telehealth Flexibilities Permanent
A powerful House chairman introduced a bill Thursday that would permanently remove restrictions on where Medicare patients can access telehealth services but would make other telehealth coverage policies only temporary. The bill, sponsored by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), would permanently lift a restriction that says patients must live in rural areas and receive telehealth services at participating health facilities for it to be covered by Medicare. Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), the senior Republican on the panel's health subcommittee, is a cosponsor. (Hellman, 12/9)

KHN: West Virginia Sen. Manchin Takes The Teeth Out Of Democrats’ Plan For Seniors’ Dental Care 
Sharon Marchio misses having teeth for eating, speaking and smiling. For the past few years, after the last of her teeth were extracted, she’s used dentures. “My dentist calls them my floating teeth because no matter how much adhesive you use, if you eat something hot or warm, they loosen up and it is a pain,” said Marchio, 73, of Clarksburg, West Virginia. Marchio believes that losing her teeth was merely part of getting older. It’s quite common in West Virginia, where a quarter of people 65 and older have no natural teeth, the highest rate of any state in the country, according to federal data. (Galewitz, 12/10)

In other news from Capitol Hill —

The Washington Post: Democratic Ad Claims Cortez Masto Helped ‘Lower Costs’ For Prescription Drugs
“Catherine Cortez Masto knows working families deserve better. That’s why she worked with both parties to help lower Nevadans’ costs. Lower costs for our health-care premiums and prescription drugs.”— Ad from Majority Forward, a political advocacy group supporting Senate Democrats, Dec. 8, 2021. Blink and you’ll miss it: This ad takes a sudden turn into deceptive territory between the second and third sentences. (Rizzo, 12/10)

Bangor Daily News: Maine Providers Question How Democrats’ Social Spending Bill Will Help Solve Child Care Woes
Anita McCurdy has raised her weekly rates five times in the 27 years she’s been working as a child care provider. She now charges parents $150 per week to watch over their children at her home in Machias, where she oversees 10 kids who range in age from six weeks to 7 years old. “I’m one of the lowest priced [providers] around,” McCurdy said. She recently had to raise her rate to the current one to account for increasing oil and electricity prices and sanitation supplies. (Russell, 12/10)

NBC News: CDC Signs Off On Pfizer Booster Shot For 16- And 17-Year Olds Amid Omicron Concerns
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday signed off on booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for 16- and 17-year-olds for emergency use. The final approval, from CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, came hours after the Food and Drug Administration authorized third shots for the age group. (Lovelace Jr., 12/9)

Also —

Cincinnati Enquirer: Vaccinated Teens Lead Ad Campaign Targeted To Hesitant Black Residents
A teenage girl looks into the camera and speaks openly about why she got the COVID-19 vaccine. "I didn't want my mom to die from COVID."Another shares her reason: "One of my family members catching COVID, I think it just opened my eyes to see that anyone can get it." (Demio, 12/9)

In other news about the vaccine rollout —

NPR: 1 In 10 Americans Say The COVID Vaccine Conflicts With Their Religious Beliefs
Only 10% of Americans believe that getting a COVID-19 vaccine conflicts with their religious beliefs, and 59% of Americans say too many people are using religious beliefs as an excuse not to get vaccinated, a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) shows. A majority of Americans, 60%, also say there is no valid religious reason to refuse a COVID-19 vaccine – but the number changes when it comes to white evangelicals. While a majority of every other major religious group says their faith doesn't include a valid reason to refuse the vaccine, just 41% of white evangelicals believe the same. (Shivaram, 12/9)

Clarion Ledger: Mississippi Immigrant Organizations to Offer COVID-19 Boosters, Vaccines for Hispanic Community
Several Mississippi organizations will host a COVID-19 vaccination day event on Saturday in Forest, Mississippi for the Hispanic community. Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, along with Mississippi Free Clinic and El Pueblo, will host the clinic from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. at El Pueblo offices, 203 E. First St., according to a Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance news release. (Szymanowska, 12/9)

The Boston Globe: As Omicron Looms, Mayor Wu Turns City Hall Into A Mass Vaccination Site
City Hall opened its doors Thursday to offer residents COVID-19 vaccinations, including booster shots, in a first-of-its-kind clinic to help combat a spike in cases and fears of the new, possibly more transmissible Omicron variant. And residents arrived — by the hundreds, the demand for shots so high that a steady line of eager patients snaked down the stairs from the third-floor mezzanine where the shots were offered. “Boston needs to lead the way in closing vaccination gaps, in getting people boosted,” Mayor Michelle Wu said Thursday, moments after receiving a booster dose of the Moderna vaccine in her left arm. (Valencia and Carlin, 12/9)

The Baltimore Sun: Amid Push For Third Doses Of COVID Vaccine, Some Maryland Residents Never Got Their Second 
With COVID-19 cases again on the rise and a new strain emerging, those in public health are urging all U.S. adults to get booster shots of the vaccine. But another group — people who never came back for their second dose — is getting less attention. At least 6.5% of the more than 4 million vaccinated Marylanders haven’t returned for the second shot of the two-dose regimen on the recommended timeline, an analysis of state data by The Baltimore Sun shows. The shots are typically scheduled three or four weeks apart, respectively, for the most widely used vaccines: Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. (Cohn, 12/9)

Stat: Fauci Says Omicron-Specific Version Of Covid-19 Vaccines May Not Be Necessary
Anthony Fauci isn’t convinced Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers are going to need to produce an Omicron-specific version of their vaccines. Rather, the long-time director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases suggested to STAT in an interview Thursday, it’s possible the current vaccines will provide enough protection against the new variant for most vaccinated and boosted individuals. (Branswell, 12/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Covid-19 Vaccine Makers Are Unsure If Fine-Tuning Shots For Omicron Is Worthwhile 
A big hurdle for developing variant vaccines is what immunologists call “original antigenic sin,” a phenomenon documented in flu and other infectious diseases, where the body returns to the immune response mounted against its first encounter with a pathogen—or vaccine—when faced with a slightly different variant. Evidence is building that this phenomenon, also known as immune imprinting, is at work in Covid-19. The implication: Boosting with an Omicron-specific vaccine might only reawaken earlier immune responses, whether they were spurred by vaccination or infection. In other words, an Omicron-specific vaccine may have no advantage over simply boosting with the original vaccines. (Roland, 12/9)

In other news about the omicron variant —

NPR: Poop Sleuths Hunt For Early Signs Of Omicron In Sewage
Scientists have detected traces of omicron in wastewater in Houston, Boulder, Colo., and two cities in Northern California. It's a signal that indicates the coronavirus variant is present in those cities, and it highlights the useful data produced by wastewater surveillance research as omicron looms. Gathering this data requires careful collaboration among wastewater facilities, engineers, epidemiologists and labs. Scientists and public health officials say the data derived from samples of feces can help fill in the gaps from other forms of surveillance and help them see the big picture of the coronavirus pandemic, especially as a new variant emerges. (Maria Dillon, 12/9)

San Francisco Chronicle: Omicron In Oakland: How A Wisconsin Wedding With ‘Super Responsible’ Vaccinated People Led To Outbreak
Most if not all of the guests wore masks when the Nov. 27 wedding ceremony started at a Wisconsin celebration that is now the suspected origin of an outbreak of COVID-19 and the omicron variant among Kaiser Permanente’s Oakland Medical Center staff, according to an attendee. But as the celebration wore on, the cocktails came out and people took to the dance floor, many leaving their masks behind, said Debra Furr-Holden, an epidemiologist and associate dean of public health at Michigan State University, who was in attendance and believes she contracted the coronavirus there. (Johnson, 12/9)

AP: Companies Rethink Return-To-Office Plans Amid Omicron Cases 
Companies of all sizes are rethinking their plans to send workers back to the office as the new omicron variant adds another layer of uncertainty. Alphabet’s Google and the nation’s second largest automaker Ford Co. are among those once again delaying their return-to-office plans, while other businesses whose employees have already returned are considering adding extra precautions like requiring masks. Officials in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway and Sweden also have asked people in recent days to work from home if they can because of concerns about the variant. (D'Innocenzio, 12/10)

The Atlantic: Omicron Will Change The Risk Landscape For Vaccinated People
Here’s the upshot: Each fully vaccinated person might still be at minimal risk of getting seriously ill or dying from COVID this winter, but the vestiges of normalcy around them could start to buckle or even break. In the worst-case scenario, highly vaccinated areas could also see “the kind of overwhelmed hospital systems that we saw back in 2020 with the early phase in Boston and New York City,” Samuel Scarpino, a network scientist at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Institute, told me. If only a small percentage of Omicron infections lead to hospitalization, the variant is still spreading with such ferocity that millions of people could need a bed. (Gutman, 12/9)

CNBC: Bill Gates: How Covid Pandemic Ends And Becomes Endemic With Omicron
By the end of next year, the Covid pandemic could be over.But that doesn’t mean the coronavirus will disappear. In a blog post on Tuesday, Bill Gates laid out one seemingly likely scenario: “At some point next year, Covid-19 will become an endemic disease in most places. ”If Covid becomes an endemic illness — a disease of relatively low severity that constantly circulates throughout certain parts of the world — the sickness’ pandemic phase could come to a close in 2022, the Microsoft co-founder and billionaire health philanthropist wrote. (Stieg, 12/9)

Indianapolis Star: IU Health Requests Indiana National Guard Help In Its Hospitals
As hospitals across the state fill to capacity with both COVID and non-COVID patients, Indiana National Guard teams are providing staff support in 13 hospitals around the state with "several others" expected to join them next week, Indiana Department of Health officials said in an email. (Rudavsky, 12/9)

AP: Pandemic Nurse Shortage: Kentucky Gov Declares An Emergency
Kentucky’s governor declared the state’s chronic nursing shortage to be an emergency Thursday, taking executive actions amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic to boost enrollment in nurse-training programs. Kentucky is projected to need more than 16,000 additional nurses by 2024, to help fill gaps caused by retirements and people leaving the profession, Gov. Andy Beshear said. His new executive order includes “immediate actions that we believe will provide some relief,” the Democratic governor said. “Obviously long term there is a lot to do.” (Schreiner, 12/9)

Stateline: With Too Few Nurses, It Won't Take Much To Overwhelm Hospitals This Winter
Even as a new COVID-19 variant starts to spread in the United States, staff shortages have made it impossible for many hospitals to operate at full capacity. That means they’re less prepared to manage an influx of patients this winter, whether those patients have complications from COVID-19 or other significant health problems. Hospitals nationwide are canceling nonemergency surgeries, struggling to quickly find beds for patients and failing to meet the minimum nurse-patient ratios experts recommend. Some even have had to turn away critical patients. While hospitals are under the most strain in Midwestern and Northeastern states where COVID-19 cases are surging, workforce shortages also are creating problems in Southern states where cases are relatively low—for now. (Quinton, 12/9)

New Hampshire Public Radio: N.H. Health Care Worker Shortage Causes Limited Response To COVID Spike
Construction took longer than expected, but workers are now finally finishing the newly-renovated Maplewood Nursing Home, a county-run facility in Westmoreland. But rather than accepting patients from a waiting list that runs more than two-dozen names deep, the recently spruced up Maplewood is doing the opposite: A shortage of workers, from nurses to janitors to food service, forced Maplewood to shut down a portion of its building. Despite having the space to care for 150 patients, just 95 currently live there. (Bookman, 12/9)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin COVID-19: Hospital ICU Beds, Staff In Short Supply
Wisconsin hospitals are facing staffing shortages and a severe lack of beds in intensive care units as COVID-19 infections rise. Fewer than 3% of ICU beds were available statewide Thursday, with several multicounty regions reporting just one or two beds available. In five of Wisconsin's seven regions — as designated by the Healthcare Emergency Readiness Coalition — three or fewer ICU beds were available. The southeast and south-central regions, home to Milwaukee and Dane counties, were the only counties with more than a handful of open ICU beds, and even then, only about 3% to 4% are available. (Carson, 12/9)

In related news about health care personnel shortages —

Philadelphia Inquirer: Pennsylvania Council On The Arts Funds Music Therapy For Hospital Staff
Thanks to a $500,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (PCA), some of the state’s hospitals will fight pandemic exhaustion among their frontline employees next year with a new weapon: music therapy. PCA encouraged health-care providers to apply for the creative arts funding, and the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania (HAP) won with its proposal to try using the universal appeal of music to soothe frayed nerves and help burned-out, grieving workers cope with the pain of 20 months of relentless work and fear of COVID-19 infection. (Burling, 12/9)

The 19th News: Home Care Workers Are Far More Likely To Have Poor Mental Health, New Study Shows
One in 5 home healthcare workers said they experienced poor mental health — about double what typical American workers experience — a new study published Wednesday found. The data, from a paper published in the American Journal of Public Health, looks at how home care workers evaluated their own health and well-being between 2014 and 2018. Researchers examined responses from almost 3,000 workers to a behavioral health study collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Luthra, 12/9)

The Wall Street Journal: Covid Spurs Biggest Rise In Life-Insurance Payouts In A Century 
The Covid-19 pandemic last year drove the biggest increase in death benefits paid by U.S. life insurers since the 1918 influenza epidemic, an industry trade group said. Death-benefit payments rose 15.4% in 2020 to $90.43 billion, mostly due to the pandemic, according to the American Council of Life Insurers. In 1918, payments surged 41%. (Scism, 12/9)

In other news about the spread of covid —

Washington Post: Long COVID Is Destroying Careers, Leaving Economic Distress In Its Wake
Across America, many of the nearly 50 million people infected with the coronavirus continue to suffer from some persistent symptoms, with a smaller subset experiencing such unbearable fatigue and other maladies that they can’t work, forcing them to drop out of the workforce, abandon careers and rack up huge debts. (Rowland, 12/9)

CNN: Covid-19 Patients At This Hospital Are Dying 'At A Rate We've Never Seen Die Before' -- And It's Taking A Toll On Health Care Workers 
Nurse Katie Sefton never thought Covid-19 could get this bad -- and certainly not this late in the pandemic. "I was really hoping that we'd (all) get vaccinated and things would be back to normal," said Sefton, an assistant manager at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan. But this week Michigan had more patients hospitalized for Covid-19 than ever before. Covid-19 hospitalizations jumped 88% in the past month, according to the Michigan Health & Hospital Association. "We have more patients than we've ever had at any point, and we're seeing more people die at a rate we've never seen die before," said Jim Dover, president and CEO of Sparrow Health System. (Marquez and Yan, 12/10)

NBC News: Apple Store In Texas Closes In Covid Outbreak
An Apple store in Southlake, Texas, is closed Wednesday through Sunday this week following an outbreak of positive Covid-19 cases among staff members. The store, which has 151 employees, reported four positive cases immediately after Black Friday on Nov. 26, according to an internal email obtained by NBC. Now, 22 employees "have shared that they’re positive for Covid-19,” a store manager told staff during a Webex meeting on Wednesday, according to employees who attended. (Schiffer, 12/9)

West Virginia Gazette Mail: Judge Rules 'Tentative Agreement' On Jails COVID Policy Not Legally Binding
A federal judge on Wednesday determined that West Virginia jails officials and attorneys representing inmates had not reached a legally binding agreement about COVID-19 policies and practices in jails. (Pierson, 12/9)

AP: Phoenix Zoo Vaccinates Susceptible Animals Against COVID-19
The Phoenix Zoo is the latest among several dozen in the United States to vaccinate animals considered susceptible to getting COVID-19 from close contact with people. Big cats such as Sumatran tigers, jaguars and African lions; many of the zoo’s primates like Bornean orangutans and tiny emperor tamarins; and Egyptian fruit bats, armadillos and two-toed sloths are among the 75 animals that have already received their first shots. (Snow, 12/9)

And in news about covid testing —

Politico: Biden Health Team Ruled Out Free Covid Tests For All Over Cost, Logistics 
The Biden administration opted for a controversial plan to pay for at-home Covid-19 testing through private insurance after officials concluded it would be too costly and inefficient to simply send the tests to all Americans for free, three administration officials told POLITICO. The decision to forgo a European-style approach to testing — which hinges on the government buying and widely distributing rapid tests — has sparked days of backlash, putting the White House on the defensive over its newest plan for containing the virus. (Cancryn and Lim, 12/9)

Dallas Morning News: Texas Has Millions For School COVID-19 Testing. The Money Has Largely Gone Untouched
Texas has hundreds of millions of dollars to help stop the coronavirus from spreading in schools. But education leaders aren’t spending much of it. An $800 million federal grant -- largely intended to bolster COVID-19 testing in schools -- has gone mostly unused so far, even as students have spent months learning in-person this year. Some district officials say that’s because they’re still working through logistical hurdles and paperwork issues. Others are finding that families are uninterested in getting their children tested on campus. And school nurses, who would in many cases take the lead on testing, are stretched thin even without this extra task. (Richman, 12/9)

Also —

The New York Times: William Hartmann, 63, Michigan Official Who Disputed Election, Dies 
William Hartmann, one of two Republican election officials from Michigan who initially refused to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election in Wayne County, where Joseph R. Biden Jr. had trounced Donald J. Trump, died on Nov. 30 at a hospital in Wyandotte, Mich., near Detroit. He was 63. About two weeks before his death, which was confirmed by the Michigan Republican Party, his sister, Elizabeth Hartmann, wrote on Facebook that Mr. Hartmann was “in ICU with Covid pneumonia and currently on a ventilator.” He had been outspoken in his opposition to Covid vaccines. (Seelye, 12/9)

Axios: Chris Christie Says It's "Undeniable" He Got COVID From Trump 
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said in an interview with PBS that he believes it's "undeniable" he got COVID-19 from then-President Trump last year. Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows revealed in his new book that Trump tested positive for COVID-19 on Sept. 26, 2020 — six days before it was publically announced on Oct. 2. Christie tested positive for COVID-19 on Oct. 3, 2020. (Frazier, 12/10)

Axios: Chief Justice John Roberts Rejects Air Travel Mask Mandate Block Request 
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Thursday dismissed an emergency request to block the federal mask mandate for air travel amid litigation in the lower courts. Michael Seklecki, a Florida resident, filed a lawsuit against the Transportation Security Administration on behalf of himself and his 4-year-old son, and Lucas Wall, from Washington joined the suit, all citing medical reasons. (Falconer, 12/10)

In related travel news —

The Washington Post: Amtrak Likely To Cut Service Over Coronavirus Vaccine Rules 
An Amtrak executive told Congress on Thursday the railroad doesn’t expect to have enough people to operate all of its trains next month, when a federal coronavirus vaccination mandate takes effect. Amtrak President Stephen Gardner said about 5 percent of its workforce has yet to get vaccinated less than four weeks before the Jan. 4 deadline. (Lazo, 12/9)

In other news about covid mandates —

Crain's Detroit Business: Employers Should Prep For Possibility Federal COVID Vaccination Mandates Pass Legal Muster, Experts Say
With all three federal COVID-19 vaccination mandate rules held up in court, employers are left in limbo. Prior to the court injunctions, health systems, federal contractors and employers with 100 or more employees were obligated to have in place a mandate in place for their employees by Jan. 4. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration rule allowed employers to also install a weekly testing regimen for unvaccinated employees. The other two federal rules prohibit the testing portion. (Walsh, 12/9)

Dallas Morning News: Texas Governor Urges Workers To Report Employers ‘Illegally’ Mandating Vaccines For Prosecution
Texas businesses received a letter from the Texas Workforce Commission on Wednesday reminding them of the governor’s executive order restricting their ability to mandate vaccines for workers. The letter also urges workers to report their employers to a newly created hotline and email address if they are subjected to a vaccine mandate at work that would violate the executive order. Verified tips will be passed along to “the appropriate authorities for prosecution,” the letter states. “Since day one, the state of Texas has taken a stand against the federal government’s unconstitutional COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the workplace, three of which have since been deemed illegal by federal courts,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement. (DiFurio, 12/9)

Philadelphia Inquirer: Philly Could Require COVID Vaccine Proof For Indoor Dining
Philadelphia officials are considering implementing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate at all indoor dining establishments, requiring both patrons and employees to show proof of vaccination, according to two sources briefed on the matter. The proposed mandate would bring Philly closer in line with cities like New York and San Francisco that have required proof of vaccination since August for entry at restaurants and indoor events. According to sources who were briefed by Philadelphia officials this week, the mandate would likely include standard exemptions for religious and medical reasons, as well as for children under 5. (Marin and McCrystal, 12/9)

AP: SC GOP Removes Private COVID-19 Vaccine Ban In Sudden Switch
For five hours Thursday, the South Carolina House debated a proposal to prevent private companies in South Carolina from firing employees who refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Then, just before members were set to vote, Republican leadership stripped that ban from the bill, leaving it only banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates for state and local government employees, contractors and public school students. (Collins, 12/10)

AP: St. Louis County Rescinds Mask Mandate After Judge's Ruling
Weeks after a Missouri judge barred public mask mandates issued by local health departments, the state’s largest county, St. Louis County, rescinded its. The county’s decision was announced Thursday during a court hearing in a lawsuit filed by Republican Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt. The lawsuit filed in July was in response to a previous mask mandate aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19. (12/9)

St. Louis Public Radio: Experts Say Missouri Health Ruling Doesn’t Apply To Schools 
Many St. Louis-area school districts will not lift mask mandates and other health orders, despite a call to do so from Missouri’s attorney general. In response to a letter from Attorney General Eric Schmitt, multiple school districts in the region said a court ruling invalidating health orders does not apply to them, because they did not enact those orders using the authority that was ruled unconstitutional. (Grumke, 12/9)

KHN: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: Much Ado About (Vaccine) Mandates 
Even with the new omicron variant of the covid virus spreading in the U.S., Republicans on Capitol Hill are pushing to stop President Joe Biden from requiring workers to either be tested regularly or vaccinated. The effort is likely to end in failure — even if it reaches Biden’s desk, he has vowed to veto it. But apparently Republicans think the effort will boost their popularity with their base. Meanwhile, Congress is also moving to block scheduled Medicare cuts, and the Supreme Court heard two health cases that are not about abortion. (12/9)

The Texas Tribune: Texas Abortion Law Ruled Unconstitutional By State Judge 
A Texas judge on Thursday ruled that the state’s controversial law restricting abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy violates the Texas Constitution, saying it should not be enforced in court. Although Thursday’s ruling is a win for abortion rights advocates, the order only has direct consequences for the 14 lawsuits in the case that the judge oversaw. The judge did not issue an injunction to block cases from being filed, though experts say it would likely be used as precedent in those cases. (Oxner and Klibanoff, 12/9)

Houston Chronicle: Texas Judge Finds State Abortion Ban Unconstitutional, As Supreme Court Decision Looms
A Texas judge on Thursday ruled that parts of the state’s new abortion ban violate the state constitution, but stopped short of declaring an injunction against its enforcement. The ruling, by state District Judge David Peeples, is the first opinion issued on the law’s legality in state courts, where it is designed to be enforced. It was not immediately clear if the ruling, which is certain to be appealed, would lead to any change in abortion access. (Blackman, 12/9)

The New York Times: Citizen Enforcement Of Abortion Law Violates Texas Constitution, Judge Rules 
A state district court judge in Texas ruled on Thursday that the unique enforcement scheme of a restrictive abortion law violated the State Constitution by allowing any private citizen to sue abortion providers or others accused of breaking the law. In a 48-page opinion, Judge David Peeples found that the approach, which had been seen by anti-abortion groups as its greatest strength, unconstitutionally granted standing to those who were not injured, denied due process and represented an “unlawful delegation of enforcement power to a private person.” (Goodman, 12/9)

CNN: Vaping Doubled The Risk Of Erectile Dysfunction, Or ED, In Men Age 20 And Older, Study Finds
Healthy men between the ages of 20 and 65 who vaped nicotine daily were more than twice as likely to report experiencing erectile dysfunction, commonly known as ED, than men who did not vape, a recent study discovered. This association held true even for men without any other health concerns or habits connected to sexual dysfunction, including smoking, a known contributor to erectile dysfunction. (LaMotte, 12/10)

In other public health news —

The Boston Globe: The US Has The Highest Rate Of Pregnancy-Related Deaths Of Industrialized Nations. The Biden Administration Is Pushing To Address That — But Its Efforts Might Not Be Enough
The Biden administration is making a major push to expand Medicaid coverage for new mothers from two months to a full year in an effort to address a shocking reality: the United States has the highest rate of pregnancy-related deaths of any industrialized nation. Starting in the spring, states have the option to expand Medicaid postpartum benefits over the next five years as part of the American Rescue Plan enacted in March. Money for further expansion is included in the Democrats’ other big legislative priority, the social safety net and climate change bill known as Build Back Better. (Thanikachalam, 12/9)

Louisville Courier Journal: More Than 1/3 of Americans Are Obese. Here's Why Many of Us Can't Break Bad Eating Habits
The implications of our horrible eating habits are obvious. More than a third of Americans are obese (36.5%), and another 32.5% are overweight, which means two out of three of us has a weight problem. This contributes to Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and some forms of cancer. Can the message be more clear? What we eat creates health problems and kills us prematurely. (Stamford, 12/9)

The New York Times: How Tech Is Helping Poor People Get Government Aid
In making his case that safety net programs should be easier to use, Jimmy Chen, a tech entrepreneur, recalled visiting a welfare office where people on food stamps endured long waits to submit routine paperwork. They passed the time as people in lines do, staring at their phones — which had the potential to do the work online with greater convenience, accuracy and speed. ... “Too much bureaucracy prevents people from getting the help they need,” said Mr. Chen, whose start-up, Propel, offers a free app that five million households now use to manage their food stamp benefits. (DeParle, 12/8)

KHN: Sex Apps For Gay Men Join Forces To Fight Online Insults
Corey Baker, a gay man in Columbus, Ohio, has seen many dating app profiles that include phrases like “Blacks — don’t apply.” Sometimes when he declines invitations, he said, men lash out with insults like “you’re an ugly Black person anyway.” And some of his friends have been slammed with the N-word in similar situations. Many of these events occurred “when I didn’t think I was attractive or deserving of love,” he said. And they took an emotional toll. “If you’re experiencing a wall of people saying they’re not attracted to you, I think that does impact your mental health,” said Baker, who is 35 and a school librarian. (Tuller, 12/10)

In updates about the flu —

USA Today: Flu On The Rise During COVID: Experts Urge Americans To Get Flu Shots
The U.S. may have dodged a ‘twindemic’ last year, but health experts say the country may not be so lucky this season. While the U.S. continues to report more than 800,000 coronavirus cases per week, flu cases and hospitalizations are also steadily increasing. Flu is back, said Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. “We talked about a ‘twindemic’ last year, but I think we’re going to see it now this year because there’s been a relaxation of masks and social distancing," he said. (Rodriguez, 12/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Did Covid-19 Cause Flu Strain To Go Extinct? 
Australian researchers who have spent much of the past two years studying Covid-19 recently turned their attention to another public-health mystery: the possible disappearance of one of the four main strains of flu that infect humans. Around the world, labs that use genetic sequencing to determine which flu strain has sickened a patient upload their findings to an international database known as GISAID. Since early last year, none of those labs have confirmed the presence of the influenza B Yamagata lineage, the technical name for one of the four strains. (Cherney, 12/9)

Also —

The Wall Street Journal: Peloton: Don’t Blame Us For What Happened In ‘And Just Like That…’ 
Spoiler alert: Mr. Big dies in the “Sex and the City” reboot. Surprised? So was Peloton Interactive Inc., according to a company spokeswoman. Peloton said it knew the company’s stationary bike would be used in the new show and approved one of its instructors to appear in “And Just Like That…” But it didn’t know Mr. Big would drop dead after a 45-minute ride in the first episode. Peloton insisted it wasn’t to blame for his demise. “Mr. Big lived what many would call an extravagant lifestyle—including cocktails, cigars, and big steaks—and was at serious risk,” said Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, a cardiologist on Peloton’s health and wellness advisory council, in a statement from the company. (Pisani and Graham, 12/9)

Modern Healthcare: AHA, AMA Sue Over Surprise Billing Arbitration Process
The American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association sued the federal government Thursday over its planned surprise billing arbitration process, which the groups say unfairly favors insurers and goes against Congress' intent. The organizations asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to block only the provisions of the interim final rule that require arbitrators assisting payers and out-of-network providers through a billing dispute should first consider a plan's median in-network rate when parties can't resolve the situation themselves. (Goldman, 12/9)

KHN: Suit By Doctors, Hospitals Seeks Change In How Arbitrators Settle Surprise Billing Cases
Two of the largest lobbying groups representing physicians and hospitals filed a lawsuit Thursday challenging a Biden administration decision on how to implement the law shielding patients from most surprise medical bills. The lawsuit from the American Hospital Association and the American Medical Association does not seek to halt the law from going into effect in January. Instead, it seeks a change in a key provision in regulations issued in September. At issue is how arbitrators will decide the amount insurers pay toward disputed out-of-network bills. (Appleby, 12/9)

In other health care industry news —

Houston Chronicle: United Memorial Medical Center Loses Medicare Contract Over Safety, Health Violations
United Memorial Medical Center, a hospital system with four locations in Houston, will lose its contracts with Medicare after several inspections found health and safety violations from failing to screen staff for COVID-19 to rusted equipment to cockroaches in the operating room, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The centers, which oversee the government health insurance for the elderly, said they will terminate the contract with United Memorial Medical Center on Dec. 11, meaning Medicare will no longer cover patients who use the hospital system. That likely will cost United Memorial millions of dollars in reimbursements from and potentially force the closure of the hospital system. (Carballo, 12/9)

AP: Report: Hospitals, Health Systems Took Pandemic Revenue Hit 
Hospitals and health care systems across the state took a major revenue hit during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic but most have managed to remain profitable, according to a new report from the Connecticut Office of Health Strategy. The total statewide gain in operating revenue for Connecticut hospitals was nearly $41 million over the recent federal fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. That’s a 93% decline compared to the operating revenue gains from the prior fiscal year. (12/9)

Philadelphia Inquirer: Tower Health Will Close Brandywine And Jennersville Hospitals After Sale Collapses
Tower Health’s sale of Jennersville and Brandywine Hospitals, announced just a few days before Thanksgiving, has collapsed because the buyer had no secure financing. Instead, the two Chester County hospitals will close, Tower officials said Thursday. The closures, slated for Dec. 31 at Jennersville and Jan. 31 at Brandywine, will force residents of western Chester County, including those who live in poor sections of Pennsylvania’s wealthiest county, to travel farther for emergency care. (Brubaker, 12/10)

ProPublica: Legislator Pushes For Law Requiring Illinois Hospitals To Report All Assaults To Police
An Illinois lawmaker said she will propose legislation to require hospital employees to report suspected patient-on-patient sexual assaults to law enforcement.The proposal, from State Sen. Julie Morrison, a Lake Forest Democrat, was prompted by a ProPublica investigation that found that Roseland Community Hospital officials failed to report a possible sexual assault of a patient in its psychiatric ward, even though it was captured on surveillance video. (Briscoe and Eldeib, 12/10)

KHN: A Rural Georgia Community Reels After Its Hospital Closes
Lacandie Gipson struggled to breathe. The 33-year-old woman with multiple health conditions was in respiratory distress and awaiting an ambulance. About 20 minutes after the emergency call, it arrived. The Cuthbert home where Gipson lived was less than a mile from Southwest Georgia Regional Medical Center, but the ambulance couldn’t take her to the one-story brick hospital because it had closed three months earlier, in October 2020. Instead, the EMTs loaded Gipson into the ambulance and drove her more than 25 miles to the hospital in Eufaula, Alabama, where she was pronounced dead. “They said it was a heart attack,” said Keila Davis, who, along with her husband, lived with Gipson. “If the hospital was still open, it could have saved her.” (Miller, 12/10)

AP: CVS Outlines Push Into Primary Care Services
CVS Health is launching a plan to use telemedicine, new clinics and teams of doctors, nurses and pharmacists to push deeper into managing customer health. (Murphy, 12/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Former Unilever CIO Moves Into Health Care 
Jane Moran, a former global chief information officer at Unilever PLC, is working to improve technology at a Boston-based health system, including by enhancing the hospital experience for patients and their families. Ms. Moran joined Mass General Brigham Inc. in September as chief information and digital officer, a newly created position, overseeing some 2,000 people. Mass General Brigham has 14 hospitals, including Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, and is affiliated with Harvard Medical School. (McCormick, 12/3)

Modern Healthcare: Hydrogen Health Banks On Texting, AI In Crowded Virtual Care Market
Digital health startup Hydrogen Health expects to double its user base by the end of 2022 to cover more than 10 million enrollees through new partnerships with health plans and employers. Hydrogen Health, the result of a recently inked joint venture between Anthem and private equity group Blackstone, is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to answer common consumer health questions and diagnose routine conditions via text. If necessary, Hydrogen Health connects members to one of its clinicians virtually or can schedule an in-person visit to one of its 400 affiliated Knowledge Health clinics across the U.S. (Tepper, 12/9)

Also —

The CT Mirror: Health Care Workers' Union Reaches Deal To End Strike Against Nonprofit
Connecticut’s largest health care workers’ union reached a tentative agreement this week, ending its two-month-long strike against a major provider of residential and other services for the developmentally disabled. More than 180 members of SEIU District 1199 New England must now vote on the tentative deal with Sunrise Northeast Inc., which operates 28 group home and day services programs spread across 17 communities in eastern and central Connecticut. They serve more than 160 disabled clients. (Phaneuf, 12/9)

The New York Times: Met Museum Removes Sackler Name From Wing Over Opioid Ties 
In the wake of growing outrage over the role the Sacklers may have played in the opioid crisis, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Sackler family jointly announced on Thursday that the Sackler name would be removed from seven exhibition spaces, including the wing that houses the Temple of Dendur. “Our families have always strongly supported the Met, and we believe this to be in the best interest of the museum and the important mission that it serves,” the descendants of Dr. Mortimer Sackler and Dr. Raymond Sackler said in a statement. “The earliest of these gifts were made almost 50 years ago, and now we are passing the torch to others who might wish to step forward to support the museum.” (Pogrebin, 12/9)

Gwinnett Daily Post: Senate Passes Jon Ossoff Bill Targeting Opioid Epidemic 
The U.S. Senate has passed bipartisan legislation sponsored by Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., aimed at America’s opioid crisis. The Rural Opioid Abuse Prevention Act cleared the Senate Wednesday night and now moves to the U.S. House of Representatives. More than 75,000 Americans died of opioid overdoses between April 2020 and April of last year, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Williams, 12/9)

In other pharmaceutical industry news —

Bloomberg: J&J Overhauls Executive Team Before Spinning Off Consumer Unit
Johnson & Johnson expanded a leadership overhaul as the health-care giant prepares for its chief executive officer and top scientist to depart before spinning off its consumer business. Mathai Mammen, head of research and development for the Janssen pharmaceutical unit, and Bill Hait, global head of external innovation, will be elevated to executive vice president roles. They will share the duties of retiring Chief Scientific Officer Paul Stoffels though neither will take his title. “We’ve got a tremendous and deep bench of leaders to replace him,” said Alex Gorsky, J&J’s outgoing CEO, in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Balance of Power With David Westin.” (Griffin, 12/9)

Bloomberg: Bayer Scores Another Roundup Trial Victory in California
Bayer AG won a second consecutive trial in California over its top-selling Roundup weedkiller as a jury rejected a woman’s claim that it caused her cancer. The verdict Thursday in state court in San Bernardino follows a Los Angeles jury’s Oct. 5 decision rejecting a mother’s claim that her young son developed cancer from exposure to the herbicide in the family’s yard. (Feeley, 12/9)

In other biotech and research news —

Modern Healthcare: Google, WHO Partner On Software Developer Kit
Google this week unveiled a project in partnership with the World Health Organization designed to provide technology support to software developers in low- and middle-income countries looking to create digital health apps. The tech giant is working on an open-source software developer kit that could be used to create mobile apps that help frontline healthcare workers treat patients when internet connectivity is unstable and to share health data more easily, according to a blog post a Google Health product manager and Android software engineer published Wednesday. (Kim Cohen, 12/9)

Axios: 35-Year-Old Stool, Blood Samples Reap New HIV Discovery 
A tranche of blood and stool samples that have been in storage since 1984 are now helping scientists learn more about HIV and AIDS. Applying modern science to these decades-old samples offers a glimpse back in time into the role gut microbes may have played in the early spread of HIV and AIDS. Men who contracted HIV back in the 1980s appear to have had a different microbiome than their counterparts who remained HIV-negative, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Microbiome. (Reed, 12/10)

Stat: In Marathoning Mice, Clues Found To How Exercise Benefits The Brain 
If you give a mouse a wheel, it will run, and run, and run: between 4 to 6 miles every night, a marathon every few days. All that paw-pounding does good things for the creature’s brain — more blood flow, more neurons, better navigation and memory. And if you transfuse blood from that well-exercised mouse into a sedentary one, it will get the same brain-function boost as if the furry little layabout had put in all those miles itself. (Molteni, 12/8)

Politico: Texas, Florida See Uptick In Obamacare Enrollment 
About 4.6 million people signed up for Obamacare through the fifth week of open enrollment, with roughly 923,000 people newly enrolled, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Enrollment is up 20 percent in Texas and 9 percent in Florida compared to this time last year, administration officials told reporters Wednesday evening, crediting increased subsidies from the American Rescue Plan. (Levy, 12/9)

In nursing home news —

The New York Times: How Nursing Homes’ Worst Offenses Are Hidden From The Public 
In Arizona, a nursing home resident was sexually assaulted in the dining room. In Minnesota, a woman caught Covid-19 after workers moved a coughing resident into her room. And in Texas, a woman with dementia was found in her nursing home’s parking lot, lying in a pool of blood. State inspectors determined that all three homes had endangered residents and violated federal regulations. Yet the federal government didn’t report the incidents to the public or factor them into its influential ratings system. The homes kept their glowing grades. (Gebeloff, Thomas and Silver-Greenberg, 12/9)

In other news from across the United States —

AP: Indiana To Place 19 Naloxone Vending Machines Around State 
The first of 19 naloxone vending machines to be located around the state will be placed at the St. Joseph County Jail in South Bend, Gov. Eric Holcomb has announced. Naloxone, also known as Narcan, is a drug to reverse overdoses from opioids. ... The machine holds up to 300 naloxone kits and is free to the public to access. (12/9)

Billings Gazette: Committee Rejects Marijuana Rules, Meets Again Monday
An interim legislative committee on Thursday unanimously voted to reject industry rules proposed by the Department of Revenue's new cannabis division, with plans to rework the proposal early next week. The deadline to wrap up the department's rules is quickly approaching, with legalization taking full effect Jan. 1 and marijuana providers gearing up for the state's first recreational market. (Larson, 12/9)

Albuquerque Journal: Medical Malpractice Issue Added To Session Agenda
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham authorized legislators Thursday to take emergency action to update New Mexico’s new medical malpractice law to address insurance concerns raised by independent medical practices and physicians. She amended her proclamation for the special legislative session that began this week to allow lawmakers to take up a bill clarifying that independent physicians aren’t considered employees or agents of a hospital – and thus exposed to more legal liability – if they visit a hospital to perform surgery or handle other work. (McKay, 12/9)

West Virginia Gazette: State Lawmaking Panel Approves Ceding Water Pollution Permit Limit Oversight, Weakening Some Water Quality Standards
A panel of West Virginia lawmakers has approved giving up its power to review environmental regulator-approved changes to water pollution control permit limits based on revisions to water quality criteria. (Tony, 12/9)

Bangor Daily News: Cost And A Tight Deadline Loom Over Maine’s Revived Paid-Leave Push
A new push for a family and medical leave program in Maine faces a tight Feb. 1 deadline to establish details and get an expert’s estimate on the thorny questions of how much it will cost and who will pay for it. If enacted, its recommendations would make Maine the 14th state with a specific family and medical paid leave law, which would allow paid time off for workers welcoming a child, recovering from a health issue or taking care of a loved one. (Valigra, 12/10)

Los Angeles Times: Lawsuit Alleges Sexual Battery By UCLA Doctor
A former UCLA student has sued the university, alleging she was sexually battered as a patient by gynecologist Edward Wiesmeier, who oversaw student health services for a quarter-century. As an undergraduate in 2000 or 2001, the woman, identified as Jane Doe in the lawsuit, went to the UCLA Student Health Center for routine gynecological care. Instead, court documents show, she “was subjected to sexual contact and — later — to an excruciatingly painful and sexually abusive ‘procedure’ by Dr. Wiesmeier,” who at the time was an assistant vice chancellor at the university. (Winton, 12/9)

Also —

Bangor Daily News: Salamanders At A Bar Harbor Lab May One Day Help People Regrow Missing Limbs
With the help of pink alien-looking salamanders about the size of a hot dog, scientists at a Bar Harbor laboratory are hoping to unlock secrets about how humans can regrow their limbs and bodily organs. Used for the research at Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, the axolotl, pronounced “aksuh-lottle,” has an uncanny ability to regrow legs, or significant parts of its retinas, heart and brain, as well as other parts of its body. It’s native to Mexico. (Trotter, 12/10)

Bloomberg: Europe Sees Early Signs Latest Virus Surge Is Leveling Off
Europe’s virus surge appears to be leveling off after governments across the continent clamped down with another round of tough measures, including lockdowns and restrictions on the unvaccinated. While the trend varies across countries, overall European Union numbers look to have hit a plateau. Austria and Germany have seen a dramatic shift, with the former’s seven-day case rate plunging by more than half since late last month. (O'Brien, 12/10)

Bloomberg: U.K. Omicron Spread May Be Faster Than In South Africa
The omicron strain may be spreading faster in England than in South Africa, with U.K. cases of the variant possibly topping 60,000 a day by Christmas, according to epidemiologist John Edmunds. It’s likely there are more omicron cases than confirmed by tests, Edmunds, who works at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said on a webinar organized by the Royal Society of Medicine on Thursday. The U.K. may be at risk of more hospitalizations because the average age of the population is higher than in South Africa, Edmunds also said. (Gretler, 12/10)

On vaccine equity around the globe —

The Washington Post: Warning Of Vaccine Inequality, WHO Again Avoids Endorsing Boosters For General Public
A World Health Organization advisory group has decided against endorsing a broad-based global rollout of coronavirus vaccine booster shots. The experts reiterated the wide disparity in access to vaccines between rich and poor countries and continued to recommend that first vaccine doses remain the priority. (Jeong and Suliman, 12/10)

The New York Times: What Data Shows About Vaccine Supply And Demand In The Most Vulnerable Places 
Most wealthy countries have vaccinated significant shares of their populations and have rapidly moved into the booster-dose phase. But one year into the global vaccine rollout, the gap between vaccination rates in high- and low-income countries is wider than ever. Poorly vaccinated countries face several challenges. Early in the rollout process, some countries were not able to secure enough doses to inoculate their residents, and many still face shortages. In others, supply is only part of the story. A New York Times analysis of available data highlights the countries where infrastructure issues and the public’s level of willingness to get vaccinated may pose larger obstacles than supply. (Collins and Holder, 12/9)

Bloomberg: Mexico’s Vaccine Stockpile Surpasses 50 Million Doses
Mexico’s stockpile of unused vaccine surpassed 50 million doses Thursday, according to Health Ministry data, as the country’s vaccination campaign lags regional peers. Mexico was the first Latin American nation to deliver a jab of vaccine against the coronavirus last December and the daily rate of doses administered peaked at more than 1.5 million in late July. The number of doses delivered daily has plunged since then and hasn’t hit 500,000 in the last seven days, according to the Health Ministry. (Quinn, 12/10)

In other global news about the coronavirus —

Bloomberg: Sinovac Vaccine Efficacy: Study Finds Longer Gap For Booster Improves Protection
A longer gap between second and third doses of China’s Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine provides more protection against the virus than a shorter wait, according to a study published in medical journal the Lancet. Antibody levels in people who received a third dose eight months after their second dose rose more than twice as much as people who got a booster shot within two months of their second dose, according to researchers from Sinovac Biotech Ltd., Fudan University and several regional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (12/10)

Reuters: S.Korea To Cut COVID-19 Booster Shot Interval Again As Infections Rise 
South Korea will further cut the interval for coronavirus booster vaccines for all adults from four to five months to three, officials said on Friday, as it struggles to fight record levels of infections amid concerns over the Omicron variant. The move came three weeks after the government reduced the booster gap for people aged 60 and older and primary groups to four months from six. The interval for all other adults had been five months. (Shin, 12/10)

Bloomberg: Mouse With Covid Sparks Taiwan Alert After Biting Lab Worker
A mouse bite is at the center of an investigation into a possible new Covid-19 outbreak in Taiwan, after a worker at a high-security laboratory was confirmed as the island’s first local case in more than a month. The lab worker, a woman in her 20s, tested positive for Covid this week after coming into contact with the virus during her work at Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s top research institute, in mid-November, Health Minister Chen Shih-chung said at a quickly organized briefing Thursday evening. She had not traveled abroad recently and had received two doses of Moderna Inc.’s vaccine. (Ellis, Wan and Matsuyama, 12/10)

AP: Pandemic Mystery: Scientists Focus On COVID's Animal Origins
Nearly two years into the COVID-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus tormenting the world remains shrouded in mystery. Most scientists believe it emerged in the wild and jumped from bats to humans, either directly or through another animal. Others theorize it escaped from a Chinese lab. Now, with the global COVID-19 death toll surpassing 5.2 million on the second anniversary of the earliest human cases, a growing chorus of scientists is trying to keep the focus on what they regard as the more plausible “zoonotic,” or animal-to-human, theory, in the hope that what’s learned will help humankind fend off new viruses and variants. (Ungar, 12/10)

In other news —

Reuters: Chinese Woman Dies From H5N6 Strain Of Bird Flu 
A woman in China's Sichuan province died from the H5N6 strain of avian influenza last month, a regional health bureau said this week, in the latest human fatality from the lethal disease. The 54-year-old woman from Zigong city developed symptoms on Nov. 17 and was admitted to hospital on Nov. 21. She died on Nov. 23, according to a Wednesday statement on the website of the health bureau of semi-autonomous region Macau. (12/8)

The Washington Post: Canada Bans LGBTQ ‘Conversion Therapy’ As France Moves To Criminalize It
Canada has approved a law banning “conversion therapy” and criminalizing profiting off the discredited, anti-LGBTQ practice with sentences of two to five years in prison. The legislation — which describes the practice as seeking to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender — makes promoting the practice a criminal offense and authorizes courts to order the removal of ads for it. The bill became law Wednesday after members of Parliament passed it unanimously this month. (Francis, 12/9)

The Washington Post: Mark Lenzi, Diplomat With Havana Syndrome, Sues State Department, Blinken 
A U.S. diplomat who says he suffers from a mysterious illness known as “Havana Syndrome” has sued the State Department and Secretary of State Antony Blinken for disability discrimination, alleging that he was poorly treated compared with colleagues who reported similar ailments, and that he suffered retaliation from the U.S. government. In a complaint filed Wednesday in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Mark Lenzi also accused the State Department of initially downplaying the health risks of Havana Syndrome. He said an agency-affiliated doctor refused to diagnose him with the condition, meaning he received less support than other colleagues. (Cheng, 12/10)

Kansas City Star: Will Bob Dole’s Death Spur UN Disability Rights Treaty? 
Disability rights advocates say if lawmakers want to honor Sen. Bob Dole’s legacy, they should finally ratify a United Nations treaty on disability rights the Kansas Republican icon championed in his later years. But advocates acknowledge that passing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in the evenly divided Senate will be difficult even with President Joe Biden’s backing. (Lowry and Desrochers, 12/10)

The Atlantic: Our First Preview Of How Vaccines Will Work Against Omicron 
And there it is, the first trickle of data to confirm it. In the eyes of vaccinated immune systems, Omicron looks like a big old weirdo—but also, a kind of familiar one. That’s the verdict served up by several preliminary studies and press releases out this week, describing how well antibodies, isolated from the blood of vaccinated people, recognize and sequester the new variant in a lab. The news is … well, pretty much the middling outcome that experts have been anticipating for weeks: a blunting of a certain type of immune protection, but not an obliteration. (Wu, 12/8)

The Washington Post: The Uninsured Are Eager For Congress To Fill A Coverage Gap — Even For A Few Years 
Since she was diagnosed with HIV in the 1990s, Deneen Robinson has worked as an advocate, promoting health, abortion rights and AIDS education for other Black women. But it was not until June, when her job as a policy director for a Dallas nonprofit organization was eliminated — leaving her with insurance premiums she no longer could pay — that Robinson discovered a gap she had never known existed. Unable to find work beyond a few hours a day as a friend’s caregiver, Robinson descended into poverty. In Texas, even that scanty income is too much for adults to qualify for Medicaid. But it is too little to make her eligible for a subsidized Affordable Care Act health plan. So with a worsening endocrine problem, she cannot afford to see the cardiologist she needs as her blood pressure has spiked, threatening her heart. “The irony is not lost,” Robinson said. “Now, I’m fighting to get the things I advocated for for everyone else.” (Goldstein, 12/8)

The New York Times: In Chicago, A New Approach To Gay And Bisexual Men With Prostate Cancer 
Matthew Curtin learned he had prostate cancer after a routine physical examination in October 2019, when test results indicated there was a problem. A biopsy confirmed the news, and doctors told him that surgery to remove his prostate was the best option. The surgery went well, and, two years later, there is no indication that the cancer has returned. But for Mr. Curtin, 66, diagnosis and surgery were only the beginning of a “clinical and psychological and emotional adventure” — one he felt that many urologists were not equipped to handle, because he was gay and the majority of doctors and their patients were not. (Kenny, 12/7)

The Washington Post: One Woman’s Resolve To Beat Cancer During Covid 
When Djohariah Singer was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer two years ago, she fully expected to beat the disease — despite long odds. But the pandemic hit just a few months after her first surgery, to remove her reproductive organs. The cancer had spread throughout her body, complicating Singer’s battle to stay alive even as she endured debilitating chemo and further surgeries. Since the beginning of the pandemic, she has sheltered in place with her partner and teenage daughter at their home in Middletown, Md., venturing out only for her medical appointments and emergencies. (Carioti and Gowen, 12/8)

Yahoo: An Ob-Gyn Asked Women How He Should Redesign His Office
On Sunday, urogynecologist Ryan Stewart, D.O., tweeted that he had the opportunity to redesign his new Indianapolis practice, Midwest Center for Pelvic Health, from scratch. In his tweet, he asked women and people who need gynecological care to suggest improvements for office design, from the waiting room to the exam table. NBCLX compiled 12 of the top suggestions, including stirrup warmers, size-inclusive gowns and equipment, and a patient-controlled thermostat for when you're naked and afraid and also cold. (Reed, 12/8)

The Wall Street Journal: Millennials, Feeling Their Mortality During Covid-19, Start Writing Their Wills 
Millennials are finally embracing one of the cornerstones of adulthood by writing their wills. Lawyers and financial advisers are hearing more frequently from younger people who want to get their affairs in order should they die unexpectedly. Thirty-two percent of the adults under 35 who wrote a will said it was because of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a 2020 survey by online legal documents company LegalZoom. Caring.com, a senior-care referral service, said about 27% of 18- to 34-year-olds had a will in 2021, compared with 18% in 2019. (Dagher, 12/6)

The Washington Post: Bob Dole’s World War II Heroism Ended His Medical, Athletic Ambitions 
Bob Dole was an athlete. As a 6-foot-2 freshman at the University of Kansas, Dole had joined the track team, football team and — his favorite — the basketball team. His grades weren’t amazing, but still he planned to enroll in the pre-med program and become a doctor. After his athletic career, of course. Then Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Like millions of other young men, Dole signed up to serve in World War II. But what the future GOP leader, senator and presidential candidate had hoped would be a short detour on his life path turned out to change it forever. Dole, who died Sunday at the age of 98, was severely injured in a battle in Italy in the waning days of the war. In an instant, his athletic career and medical aspirations were finished. (Brockell, 12/5)

Also —

The New York Times: Can An Athlete’s Blood Enhance Brainpower? 
What if something in the blood of an athlete could boost the brainpower of someone who doesn’t or can’t exercise? Could a protein that gets amplified when people exercise help stave off symptoms of Alzheimer’s and other memory disorders? That’s the tantalizing prospect raised by a new study in which researchers injected sedentary mice with blood from mice that ran for miles on exercise wheels, and found that the sedentary mice then did better on tests of learning and memory. The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, also found that the type of brain inflammation involved in Alzheimer’s and other neurological disorders was reduced in sedentary mice after they received their athletic counterparts’ blood. (Belluck, 12/8)

The Washington Post: Certain Foods And Beverages Can Interact With Drugs
Pharmacist Danielle Hess often fields questions from patients about whether their medications will interact with other drugs they are taking. Rarely, however, do they ask if consuming specific foods or beverages can be risky, she says. But they should. “Certain foods and beverages can reduce, enhance or alter a drug’s absorption in the body, so you should talk to your health-care provider about whether to avoid these while on a given medication,” says Hess, an ambulatory-care pharmacy resident at the Mayo Clinic. These interactions can be complicated. Not only do consumers have to worry about what foods to abandon entirely, but they also need to keep track of which drugs need to be taken on an empty stomach and which should be combined with food. (Cimons, 12/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Which Fitness Tracker Is Best For You? Apple Watch Vs. Fitbit Vs. Oura Vs. Garmin Vs. Whoop
I have two watches on my left wrist, another on my right arm, a ring on my finger and a sensor embedded in my bra. No one should ever wear this many fitness trackers simultaneously. But in this moment, I am letting the latest heart-rate-sensing, sleep-capturing, workout-recording wearables from Apple, Fitbit, Garmin, GRMN 0.77% Whoop and Oura capture all my data, to see which ones do the best job. Whether you are training for a race or trying to lose the Quarantine 15, a fitness tracker can provide a helpful motivational nudge. But choosing the right one depends on your preferred activities and health goals—and requires an understanding of what data is most useful to you. (Nguyen, 12/5)

And more details have emerged about former President Donald Trump's battle with covid —

The New York Times: Trump’s Blood Oxygen Level In Covid Bout Was Dangerously Low, Former Aide Says 
President Donald J. Trump’s blood oxygen level sank to a precariously low level after he announced that he had tested positive for the coronavirus last year, according to a new book by Mark Meadows, his former chief of staff. The new details contradict Mr. Trump’s denials this year that his Covid bout was more dire than White House medical officials had acknowledged at the time. (Haberman and Weiland, 12/6)

The Washington Post: Seven Days: Following Trump's Reckless Coronavirus Trail
When he first learned he had tested positive for the corona­virus, President Donald Trump was already aboard Air Force One, en route to a massive rally in Middletown, Pa. With him on the plane that Saturday evening were dozens of people — senior aides, Air Force One personnel, junior staffers, journalists and other members of the large entourage typical for a presidential trip — all squeezed together in the recirculating air of a jetliner. (Parker and Dawsey, 12/5)

The Washington Post: The Wide And Dangerous Gap Between Trump’s Covid Recommendations And His Treatments 
There’s a telling scene in Mark Meadows’s new book about his time as Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff. It comes just after Meadows had pulled aside reporters to inform them that, despite the vague claims made by doctors from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center about the president’s coronavirus infection, Trump’s health was in bad shape. Meadows had asked to be unnamed in news reports, but he’d been caught on camera asking to do so. In other words, it wasn’t hard to figure out the source for the information — accurate information, but not what Trump wanted Americans to hear. “President Trump was not happy when he read the original anonymous quote, and he was even less happy when he found out that it was me, his chief of staff, who had let the press know what rough shape he was in,” Meadows writes. Trump called him in to his hospital room. “Although he didn’t have much to say about the incident,” Meadows says, “he pointed out that the stories were all about my comments” — what he says Trump called a “rookie mistake.” (Bump, 12/7)

The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer: Why COVID-19 Herd Immunity Now Looks Unattainable: Sheldon H. Jacobson
As COVID-19 cases soared during Fall 2020, discussions of herd immunity were ubiquitous. Yet, with effective vaccines available, and nearly 50 million confirmed U.S. cases reported, herd immunity is no longer a viable landing runway for COVID-19. What happened? (Sheldon H. Jacobson, 12/10)

The Atlantic: We Know A Lot More About Omicron Now 
The flood of Omicron news can be overwhelming. The endless data, anecdotes, and studies are hard enough to synthesize. But what makes the information even harder to parse is that so much evidence (i.e., what people are seeing) is intertwined with opinion (i.e., what people are hoping and fearing). To round up the week’s Omicron news, I wanted to write something that disentangled evidence and opinion, to help people make decisions right now—about travel, and school, and weddings, and funerals, and holidays—even though we’re dealing with lots of imperfect information. (Derek Thompson, 12/9)

The New York Times: Will Covid Evolve To Be Milder? 
As the world braces to deal with yet another SARS-CoV-2 variant, this one called Omicron, there’s speculation on social media and elsewhere that the virus will become milder, as if this is a predetermined outcome. Some believe that logically the inevitable path of any virus is to become more transmissible and less lethal over time, as this is the most effective way to infect the highest number of hosts and continue spreading. (Andrew Pekosz, 12/10)

Bloomberg: Omicron Spread: Even Mild Variant Could Create Chaos In Early 2022 
While projections for the spread of the omicron variant of Covid-19 remain tentative, it seems to be much more transmissible (almost certain) and more benign (far less certain). It’s not only that more people are vaccinated or have some form of natural immunity, but also that the variant itself may be somewhat less dangerous, even to those hospitalized by it. With all this in mind, it’s worth thinking about one possible path for the virus over the next few months, to better understand how to cope with it. (Tyler Cowen, 12/9)

CIDRAP: 8 Things US Pandemic Communicators Still Get Wrong 
As we approach 2 years of COVID-19, US pandemic messaging has settled into some counterproductive patterns. I want to address eight of these risk communication mistakes that public health officials and experts keep making. Turning them around can rebuild trust and help save lives. (Peter M. Sandman, 12/9)

CNN: The Infectious Disease Expert Who Warned Us 800,000 Americans Would Die Of Covid-19 
Michael Osterholm is director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and author of The New York Times bestseller, "Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs." He has been publicly warning of the dangers of a global pandemic for more than a decade and half and was a member of Joe Biden's Covid task force during the presidential transition. In April 2020, he told me that he estimated that there could be 800,000 deaths from Covid-19 within 18 months in the US. That prediction has proven eerily prescient; a year and a half after Osterholm made that prediction more than 793,000 Americans have died from the disease. I spoke to Osterholm this week about what he sees ahead for the pandemic. (Peter Bergen, 12/9)

NBC News: Covid And A Blood Cancer Diagnosis Changed What Freedom Looked Like In My Own Home
I first met my partner’s family in a hospital lobby in November of last year — one night, one person at a time, as they left so I could enter. The 2020 late fall Covid-19 surge was accelerating at an alarming rate, and stringent Covid-19 rules permitted only one visitor at a time. And later, that would turn into just one per day. (Brianna Wilson, 12/9)

Stat: In Parents, Vaccine Skepticism Is Healthy. Cynicism Is Not 
Misinformation is tightening its stranglehold on the American psyche. My 9-year-old daughter, Sonia, knows no other world than one where truth and fiction are often indistinguishable. That’s the reality for a generation well-versed with social media and the internet. This stranglehold is not a looming threat — it’s affecting children right now. Most parents, including many who accepted other childhood vaccines, are hesitant or outright opposed to vaccinating their children against Covid-19. This is despite sound evidence that vaccines are safe and effective and recent endorsements from the Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Geeta Nayyar, 12/10)

The Washington Post: ‘Tree Equity’ In Build Back Better Has Health Benefits 
As physician-scientists who conduct research on the impact of urban environments on health and safety, we are troubled by the casual disparagement of the Biden administration’s proposal to plant trees in communities that lack them. The overall mocking tone of some criticisms of “tree equity” would be easy to ignore if our surroundings, generally, and trees, specifically, did not have a profound influence on our physical, mental and social health. But they indisputably do. Equally indisputable is the fact that trees are not evenly distributed across communities. Formerly redlined Black neighborhoods have the least amount of green space today, while predominantly White neighborhoods have seen an increase in tree canopy cover. (Max Jordan Nguemeni Tiako and Eugenia C. South, 12/9)

Los Angeles Times: FDA May Be About To Make Abortion Pill More Accessible
In the course of just a few weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court heard two cases on abortion access. The first, SB 8, is a Texas law banning abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy. The second, Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, is a Mississippi law banning abortion after the 15th week of pregnancy. Both cases could bring an end to the ability to access abortion as a federal right. While the constitutional fight continues in court, there is another opportunity in the coming days for the federal government to help maintain abortion access: by allowing people to get abortion pills as soon as they need them. (Ushma Upadhyay, 12/10)

The Baltimore Sun: A Deadly Decision: Pharmacists Are Afraid To Stock Opioid Use Disorder Medication 
Imagine being unable to obtain medication from your pharmacy that you desperately need and must take daily. Imagine if there was no insulin available for several days in a row, week after week; or no medication to treat your high blood pressure. Now imagine being unable to obtain your medication in time to stave off an extremely painful and dangerous withdrawal because you suffer from opioid use disorder. This is the situation facing our patients who rely on daily medication to keep them healthy. Known as MAT, for Medication-Assisted Treatment, the medication is a combination of buprenorphine and naloxone that blocks the effects of opioids and diminishes physical dependency on them. (Deborah Agus, 12/9)

Stat: Traumatized Asylum Seekers Benefit From Forensic Medical Exams 
After a decade of horrific abuse by her husband, Ms. A. felt she had no choice but to flee with her children to the United States, where she was greeted with a complex, multi-stage asylum process that required her to prove that her trauma amounted to persecution. In a system in which only a minority of applicants prevail, a forensic medical evaluation helped Ms. A. attain asylum. (Nermeen S. Arastu and Holly G. Atkinson, 12/10)

The Tennessean: A Value-Based System Can Put An End To Unnecessary Health Care Spending
I accompanied my wife to a doctor’s appointment the other day. We were there for a little over an hour. When we got home my wife expressed how she didn’t feel like her concerns were dealt with during her visit. We were already scheduled for a follow up so I mentioned that she should write down all the questions she wanted to ask that weren’t answered during the appointment. While we do have insurance, each individual visit will accrue more cost just to figure out the one question we had going into the first appointment. For the price that we pay for healthcare no one should leave a doctor’s office and not feel like their issues were fully addressed. (Kenneth Mapp, 12/9)

Dallas Morning News: Follow The Science Behind Transgender Care
While politicians have been battling transgender groups over restrooms and sports teams, a quieter, more scientific dispute has been taking place, and it may have taken a Dallas clinic down with it. Recently, officials at Children’s Medical Center Dallas and UT Southwestern Medical Center announced that the Genecis clinic would no longer accept new patients for puberty suppression or hormone therapy. Genecis, which stands for Gender Education and Care, Interdisciplinary Support, provided mental health counseling and hormone therapy to patients experiencing gender dysphoria. That’s a condition, as described by Randi Kaufman, a 20-year veteran of the field, as a persistent conflict between biology and psychology. (12/10)

Modern Healthcare: Forming Partnerships And Building Trust 
Our community advocates program utilizes students to help navigate key social determinants of health needs for patients in our facilities and clinics. With students from varying geographies, fields of studies and backgrounds, we have been able to do two key things: foster a workforce that understands and has the desire to impact care transformation among the underserved, and provide our patients with additional resources that really close a loop in a relaxed, empathetic way. (Niki Shah, 12/7)