Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed
Bloomberg: Money Could Motivate Some People To Get A Covid-19 Vaccine, Survey Shows
Economists have suggested paying people to get a Covid-19 vaccine, but there’s never been a survey to find out whether payments would work. Now there is, and the results are … murky. A Harris Poll conducted Nov. 19-21 asked about 2,000 Americans how much the government should pay if it were to pay people to get a vaccine against the novel coronavirus. Of those, 24% mentioned sums of $100 or less, 16% mentioned higher amounts. (Coy, 11/24)
Los Angeles Times: The Real Reasons Black People Won't Trust COVID-19 Vaccines
As a Black man and a nurse practitioner working at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Long Beach, Walter Perez hears a lot of cringeworthy stuff from his Black patients. Like how the forthcoming COVID-19 vaccines won’t be safe because Big Pharma is cutting corners to make more money. Or how the medical establishment wants to use Black people as guinea pigs to test those vaccines. Or how the vaccines could actually prove more harmful than getting COVID-19. The list goes on. “The only way I can describe it is there’s a paranoia,” Perez said. “A lot of people are just really paranoid about it.” (Smith, 11/29)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Underreporting Has Plagued FDA Side Effects Tracking System
For decades, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's adverse events system has been the primary surveillance tool for monitoring potential side effects caused by drugs after they get on the market. However, the largely voluntary system has been plagued by underreporting of adverse events since its inception. (Fauber, 11/30)
Southern California News Group: Here's How California Plans To Vaccinate 40 Million People
It’s an audacious, unprecedented task straight out of “Mission Impossible”: Inoculate some 40 million people in a matter of months with a coronavirus vaccine. California is on the cusp of a mass campaign that faces colossal complexities, and it only starts with the now-well-publicized challenge of having enough cold storage for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines once they finally arrive. (Sforza, 11/29)
Bloomberg: How France Could Vaccinate A Nation Of Skeptics Against Covid
A Covid-19 vaccine is getting closer, and governments are scrambling to meet the financial and logistical challenge of immunizing their populations in a short space of time. Hopes for a pickup in global economic growth next year depend on it. But the bigger challenge may end up being psychological: How to convince people to actually take the shot. Achieving herd immunity may mean at least 80% of people will need the vaccine, leaving little room for error. (Laurent, 11/30)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Coronavirus Pandemic Pushes Health Care Industry To Go More Virtual
When 2020 began, many segments of the health care industry were making a steady march toward using telemedicine more to treat patients. Then the pandemic happened. That steady march became an insistent sprint, as the industry scrambled to provide care for patients who were unable to see a physician in person because of lockdowns, quarantines or other restrictions necessitated by COVID-19. (Dohr, 11/24)
Indianapolis Star: New Organ Donation Rules Open Door To Living Liver Transplants
For years IU Health had little trouble finding sufficient livers for patients who required a transplant, said Dr. Shekhar Kubal, surgical director of the liver transplant program. Last winter, the United Network for Organ Sharing changed its rules for how livers are allocated to allow greater geographic equity. Now about 70% of livers donated in Indiana head outside the state, meaning patients here must be sicker and wait longer before becoming candidates for a deceased liver. (Rudavsky, 11/30)
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The Atlantic: Galaxy Brain Is Real
“Some people do have the sense when they’re looking across millions of light-years, that our ups and downs are ultimately meaningless on that scale,” says David Yaden, a research scientist in psychopharmacology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and who has studied self-transcendent experiences, including in astronauts. “But I think [space images] can also draw our attention to the preciousness of local meaning—our loved ones, people close to us, this Earth. It’s not a leap that I think always occurs, but I think the benefits flow to people who do make that leap." (Koren, 12/1)
Los Angeles Times: An Infant Dies, A Millionaire Doctor Calls 911, And A Tale Emerges Of Drugs, Love And Suspected Crime
The death of a newborn named Boaz Yoder in an Altadena apartment seemed at first glance like a case of sudden infant death syndrome. His mother told investigators she had put the baby boy to sleep under blankets on a chilly autumn night in 2017 and found him the next morning lifeless in his crib. The closer investigators from the sheriff’s Homicide Bureau looked, however, the more doubts they had. The search for the truth plunged Dets. Mike Davis and Gene Morse into a murky world of desperate young addicts and small-time drug dealers with a disgraced multimillionaire at the center: Dr. Carmen Puliafito, the former dean of USC’s Keck School of Medicine. (Hamilton and Rayan, 12/2)
The New York Times: Can These Period Underwear Crusaders Convert You?
The concept of “blood” and “bleeding” is generally avoided in mass marketing for period products. It was only recently, and with some fanfare, that commercials showed red liquid being absorbed, instead of blue. But when it comes to period underwear — an increasingly popular type of underwear made with extra-absorbent fabric — it’s difficult to avoid. At least when talking to the founders of the Period Company, a brand that was introduced in October, touting period underwear that was more affordable and sustainable than other menstrual products. For them, bleeding is a kind of profound act. (Testa, 12/2)
