First Edition: Oct. 18, 2022

KHN: Don’t Drill Your Own Teeth! And Quashing Other Rotten Dental Advice On TikTok
Watch enough TikTok videos and you’re sure to see one extolling a special kind of do-it-yourself dentistry. Not about brushing and flossing, except maybe flossing with strands of your hair. These are videos on drilling into your teeth and cementing gems to them or filing your teeth to reshape them. People have been styling their teeth for centuries across the globe throughout North and South America, Africa, and Asia. But social media — particularly TikTok, where everything old and new is nip/tucked into short videos with trendy sounds and served up fresh to young eyes — has breathed life into trends like tooth gems. Celebrities such as Drake, Rihanna, and Bella Hadid wore them years ago. Now, some TikTok influencers are selling DIY gem kits. (Giles, 10/18)

KHN: Campaigning Ramps Up As South Dakota Voters Decide On Medicaid Expansion
A silver minivan decorated with a large sticker reading “Love Your Neighbor Tour” recently circumnavigated South Dakota. Catholic nuns, Protestant pastors, a synagogue president, and a Muslim nonprofit professional were among the interfaith leaders who packed into the rented six-seater or caravanned behind. The road trip’s mission: to register voters and urge them to support expansion of the state’s Medicaid program to cover thousands more low-income adults. (Zionts, 10/18)

AP: FDA Pushes To Remove Pregnancy Drug, Company Pushes Back
The maker of the only U.S. drug intended to prevent premature births is making a last-ditch effort this week to keep its medication on the market, even as health regulators insist that it doesn’t work. A Food and Drug Administration meeting that opened Monday comes more than two years after the agency declared the drug ineffective and called for its removal. Drugmaker Covis Pharma has challenged the agency’s conclusion, setting up the highly unusual three-day public hearing. (Perrone, 10/17)

San Francisco Chronicle: Trump Aides Fudged Weekly CDC Reports, House Panel Says
Officials in the Trump administration “usurped control of CDC communications and blocked public health officials from providing accurate information about the coronavirus to the American people,” according to a report published Monday by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. (Vaziri and Fracassa, 10/17)

The Washington Post: CDC Officials Describe Intense Pressure, Job Threats From Trump White House 
Former CDC director Robert Redfield, former top deputy Anne Schuchat and others described how the Trump White House and its allies repeatedly “bullied” staff, tried to rewrite their publications and threatened their jobs in an attempt to align the CDC with the more optimistic view of the pandemic espoused by Donald Trump, the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis concluded in a report released Monday. Several public health officials detailed a months-long campaign against Schuchat sparked by Trump appointees’ belief that her grim assessments of the pandemic reflected poorly on the president, leading Schuchat, a 32-year CDC veteran, to openly wonder if she would be fired in the summer of 2020, her colleagues told the panel. (Diamond, 10/17)

Reuters: Trump Administration Blocked CDC Transit Mask Mandate, Report Shows
Former President Donald Trump's administration at a crucial time in the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 blocked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from adopting a federal mandate requiring face masks on airline flights and other forms of transit, a congressional report released on Monday said. Marty Cetron, a senior CDC official, is cited in the report as saying the federal public health agency began working on the proposed order in July 2020 after its experts determined that there was scientific evidence to support requiring masks in public and commercial transportation. (Shepardson, 10/17)

Insider: Fauci Had 'Bad Feeling' Before Trump Floated Using Disinfectants For COVID-19
"I didn't want to go up on there with this because I had a bad feeling about when Homeland Security brought this guy in, he briefed the people in the Situation Room beforehand. And as soon as I heard it, I said, holy [expletive], this is going to go bad. Why don't I bow out of this one?" Dr. Anthony Fauci said. (Dorman, 10/16)

Stat: Boston University Researchers’ Testing Of Lab-Made Version Of Covid Virus Draws Government Scrutiny
Research at Boston University that involved testing a lab-made hybrid version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is garnering heated headlines alleging the scientists involved could have unleashed a new pathogen. (Branswell, 10/17)

The Hill: US Warned To Get Ready As Europe Deals With New COVID-19 Rise 
The most recent data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control shows that cases began going up around the beginning of September in Europe.  The seven-day average is roughly 230,000 cases per day, reflecting rates that were seen in late July when Europe was still dealing with the omicron BA.4/BA.5 subvariant wave. (Choi, 10/17)

The Atlantic: How To Make Sense Of This Fall's Messy COVID Data
Official case numbers now represent “the tip of the iceberg” of actual infections, Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at the City University of New York, told me. Although case rates may seem low now, true infections may be up to 20 times higher. And even those case numbers are no longer available on a daily basis in many places, as the CDC and most state agencies have switched to updating their data once a week instead of every day. (Ladyzhets, 10/17)

CNBC: Dr. Fauci: Covid Omicron Subvariants BQ.1, BQ.1.1 Are 'Troublesome'
As winter inches closer, Dr. Fauci is sounding the alarm about a pair of “pretty troublesome” Covid variants. The two descendants of omicron’s BA.5 subvariant, called BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, both have dangerous “qualities or characteristics that could evade some of the interventions we have,” Fauci told CBS News on Friday. (Constantino, 10/17)

CNBC: White House Covid Czar Calls On Seniors To Get Omicron Booster Now
A top White House health official on Monday issued a stark warning to older people about the health risk they face this fall and winter from Covid-19. (Kimball, 10/17)

Stat: Biden Officials Scramble As Covid Variants Test Evusheld's Effectiveness
Biden health officials are bracing for the prospect that the country’s sole preventive Covid-19 treatment for immunocompromised people could be ineffective this winter. (Owermohle, 10/18)

AP: Governor To End California Coronavirus Emergency In February 
California’s coronavirus emergency will officially end in February, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday, nearly three years after the state’s first confirmed death from the disease prompted a raft of restrictions that upended public life. (Beam, 10/17)

Reuters: Planned Parenthood Asks N. Carolina Court To Let More Health Workers Provide Abortions 
North Carolina abortion providers on Monday asked a state court to allow health professionals other than physicians to provide medication abortions, as clinics struggle to accommodate an influx of abortion patients from across the U.S. South. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective filed a motion seeking temporary relief from a state law that bans "advanced practice clinicians," including nurse practitioners and physician assistants, from providing abortions. (Borter, 10/17)

AP: Physicians Want Voter Pamphlet Correction On Abortion Bill 
Two physician groups have asked Montana election officials to issue a correction to statements printed in a voter information pamphlet that they argue are false and and could confuse voters as they consider an abortion-related ballot measure. The complaint comes from two groups that oppose a referendum that would raise the prospect of criminal charges for health care providers unless they take “all medically appropriate and reasonable actions to preserve the life” of an infant born alive, including after an attempted abortion. (10/17)

Stat: Milestone's Nasal Spray Rapidly Restores Normal Heart Rhythm 
Milestone Pharmaceuticals said Monday that an experimental nasal-spray medicine acted quickly to treat people experiencing episodes of a rapid but non-fatal heart rate — more than doubling the conversion to normal heart rhythm and achieving the primary goal of a late-stage clinical trial. (Feuerstein, 10/17)

Modern Healthcare: Justice Department Sues Cigna Over Medicare Fraud
The lawsuit alleges that from 2012 to 2019, Cigna hired health professionals to visit patients’ homes and falsely document medical conditions to increase the revenue it generated from taxpayers. (Tepper, 10/17)

Las Vegas Review-Journal: Biden Signs Bill To Improve Rural Health Care In Nevada
The Nevada Primary Care Association endorsed legislation that would allow community health centers to use federal funds to provide mobile health care units to better serve residents in rural areas of states where facilities are often hard to reach for elderly, disabled or poor patients. (Martin, 10/17)

The Texas Tribune: Greg Abbott: Texas Must Fund Distribution Of Overdose Reversal Medication
Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday said the state should fund the distribution of an overdose reversal medication to help curb the growing number of opioid-related deaths. (Salhotra, 10/17)

Axios: Florida Sees Surge In Deadly Bacterial Infections Post-Hurricane Ian
Florida is reporting a surge in deadly infections caused by the bacteria Vibrio vulnificus in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. (Chen, 10/17)

The Boston Globe: 94-Year-Old Rhode Islander Creates Tech Device To Make Using A Walker More Enjoyable
“You constantly heard everyone getting told to use their walker. If one of us fell, it would be a disaster,” she said during a recent interview. She spoke to her daughter, who was working at Hasbro Toys at the time, and said there needed to be a product out there that would make a noise and attract seniors to use their walker. (Gagosz, 10/17)

USA Today: As US Life Expectancy Drops, Europe Shows Signs Of Recovery Post-COVID
Researchers examined data from 29 countries around the world and found seven countries in Western Europe saw a significant increase in life expectancy in 2021, according to the study published Monday in Nature Human Behavior. Four of those countries – France, Belgium, Switzerland and Sweden – returned to pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, the U.S. reported the third-largest decline in life expectancy, following closely behind Bulgaria and Slovakia. (Rodriguez, 10/17)