Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed
The Washington Post: What To Know About The Deadly Marburg Virus As New Outbreak Emerges
Marburg virus disease is a highly infectious viral hemorrhagic fever, according to the CDC. It is spawned by the animal-borne RNA virus of the same Filoviridae family as the Ebola virus. Both diseases are rare but have the capacity to cause outbreaks with high fatality rates. Fatality rates for Marburg cases in past outbreaks ranged between 24 percent and 88 percent, according to the WHO, depending on the virus strain and quality of case management. (Suliman, Parker and Masih, 2/15)
The New York Times: She Helped Unlock the Science of the Covid Vaccine
Kizzmekia Corbett had gone home to North Carolina for the holidays in 2019 when the headlines began to trickle in: A strange, pneumonialike illness was making dozens of people sick in China. By the first week of January 2020, the number of infected people in China had climbed to the hundreds, and Dr. Corbett, a viral immunologist, was back at her desk at the National Institutes of Health, where she served as a senior research fellow at the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. And that’s when the news was confirmed: The mysterious illness was a novel coronavirus, exactly the category of infection that she had been probing for the past five years in a bid to develop a vaccine. (Kamin, 2/9)
The Washington Post: A Virus Crippled U.S. Cities 150 Years Ago. It Didn’t Infect Humans
Known as the Great Epizootic, the outbreak of what was later determined to be the equine flu hit the vast majority of the country’s horses between October 1872 and March 1873, temporarily paralyzing cities in a crisis “comparable to what would happen today if gas pumps ran dry or the electric grid went down,” University of Tennessee historian Ernest Freeberg wrote. (Tillman, 2/12)
Also —
The Washington Post: Want To Live A Longer Life? Try Eating Like A Centenarian
There’s no way to guarantee that you’ll live to be 100. But we can learn a lot from studying the eating habits of the world’s centenarians. Researchers have identified five places in the world where people have exceptionally long life expectancies — frequently living to 100 or beyond. These areas, called “Blue Zones,” include the Nicoyan Peninsula in Costa Rica, the town of Loma Linda in California, and the islands of Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy and Ikaria in Greece. At first glance, the diets, lifestyles and habits of people in these Blue Zones can seem quite different from one another. (O'Connor, 2/14)
The New York Times: Psychedelics Are A Promising Therapy, But They Can Be Dangerous For Some
When Dr. Charles Nemeroff first met his patient, the 32-year-old woman had already been to see several psychiatrists. Initially, the woman, whose identity has been concealed to protect her privacy, had experienced paranoid and racing thoughts, insisting there were listening devices in her phone and that people were watching her; she even sold her home in an attempt to get away from them. After being given antipsychotic drugs, her mania and psychosis abated, but they were replaced by debilitating depression. “By the time she came to me, she said, ‘I have no feelings whatsoever. I have no mood variation. I am completely empty,’” said Dr. Nemeroff, who is chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School. (Smith, 2/11)
The Wall Street Journal: The Russian Double Strike That Killed A U.S. Medic In Ukraine. ‘They Had Us In Sight.’
Minutes after an explosion rang out near the bus station in this war-torn eastern city, a team of medics arrived to find a mangled car and an elderly woman lying wounded at the roadside. Seconds later, a missile slammed into the volunteers’ white van, unleashing a fireball that blew the medics off their feet. Simon Johnsen, a Norwegian, quickly came round, checked himself for injuries then ran for cover. Another Norwegian medic, his back burned and legs bloodied, screamed as he hobbled away. Four of the others also dashed for cover as Russian mortar rounds then began exploding around them. Sprawled alongside the burned-out rescue van lay Pete Reed, a 33-year-old trained paramedic, a former U.S. Marine, a one-time ski instructor, a jokester who had devoted his recent years to treating the wounded in wars in Iraq and, now, Ukraine. He was dead. (Marson and Sivorka, 2/15)
