Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed

USA Today: COVID Deaths Obscured By Inaccurate Death Certificates
In late January, the official death toll from COVID-19 in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, stood at 210. At a makeshift memorial at a local Episcopal church, friends and relatives planted small, white flags representing how many people had died. Some inscribed flags with the names of those they had lost. But a couple hundred flags were missing. Those people almost certainly died from COVID-19, according to an examination of newly released data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but their death certificates don’t mention it. Instead, they list conditions with symptoms that look a lot like COVID-19, such as Alzheimer’s disease, hypertension and diabetes. (12/22)

The Wall Street Journal: Behind A New Pill To Treat Covid: A Husband-And-Wife Team And A Hunch 
The bright orange capsule that could transform Covid-19 treatment wasn’t on the radar in January 2020 when the pandemic was unfolding. The drug had never been tested in humans. Lab experiments suggested people would need an enormous dose. And some scientists had raised concerns it might be toxic. Wayne Holman had a hunch. The antiviral, discovered by an Emory University scientist, had fought off two coronaviruses in lab experiments. It might work against the new coronavirus too, he thought. Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP, a company founded by Dr. Holman and his wife, Wendy Holman, licensed the drug’s rights. (McKay and Hopkins, 12/20)

The Wall Street Journal: The Pandemic Didn’t Unfold How Dr. Christine Hancock Expected 
On Feb. 26, Christine Hancock thought Jaime Milton was about to die. Her 48-year-old patient had skipped the dialysis that kept him alive. The day before, she called him six times before he picked up. He was gasping for breath and unable to complete a full sentence. Dr. Hancock told him he might not live until the next day. He promised to go to the hospital. When he failed to arrive at the emergency room, she called the police. He wouldn’t go with the paramedics who came to his house. (Mathews, 12/16)

Also —

The Washington Post: MIT Professor’s AI Predicts Breast Cancer Risk From Mammograms 
When Regina Barzilay returned to work after her breast cancer leave seven years ago, she was struck by an unexpected thought. The MIT artificial-intelligence expert had just endured chemotherapy, two lumpectomies and radiation at Massachusetts General Hospital, and all the brutal side effects that come along with those treatments. “I walked in the door to my office and thought, ‘We here at MIT are doing all this sophisticated algorithmic work that could have so many applications,’” Barzilay said. “‘And one subway stop away the people who could benefit from it are dying.’” (Zeitchik, 12/21)

The New York Times: ‘Schizophrenia’ Still Carries A Stigma. Will Changing The Name Help? 
For decades, Linda Larson has been trying to distance herself from the diagnosis she was given as a teenager: schizophrenia. She accepts that she has the mental disorder but deeply resents the term’s stigma. People hear it and think, “violent, amoral, unhygienic,” she said. Ms. Larson, 74, is part of a group trying to remove that association — by changing the name of the illness. The idea is that replacing the term “schizophrenia” with something less frightening and more descriptive will not only change how the public perceives people with the diagnosis, but also how these people see themselves. (Brown, 12/20)

The Boston Globe: ‘The Urgency Is Greater Than It Has Ever Been’: Four Suicides Rock WPI Campus As Colleges Grapple With Student Mental Health Concerns 
The first student loved Legos, the quiet camaraderie of hours spent alongside his classmates, piecing the tiny bricks into intricate designs of his own invention. The second played the bass guitar and liked venturing with his friends through the virtual worlds of Pokémon Go. The third was a heavy metal fan who shared their time at Worcester Polytechnic Institute with a circle of friends from their fraternity. The fourth, an Eagle Scout, led a Boy Scout trip to the vast wilderness of northern Minnesota; he spent the pandemic learning cooking and beekeeping. All four were students at WPI, a rigorous school filled with students who excel in science and technology, and have an eclectic array of other interests. And all four died in the last five months — three from suicide, and one from an apparent suicide, according to death records, the school, and family members. (Krantz, 12/20)

AP: Another Danger To Illicit Drug Users: Animal Tranquilizer
Brooke Goodwin came home one night last March after being out with friends. She had just turned 23 the day before, had a good job and was planning to go away with friends the following weekend. Her mother, whose bedroom is next door to the kitchen, heard her daughter get some food and go to bed. But Brooke never came downstairs the next day. Her older sister found her in her room. She had overdosed on a toxic mix of the powerful opioid fentanyl cut with xylazine, an animal sedative that is making its way into the illicit drug supply, particularly in the Northeast. (Rathke, 12/23)

The New York Times: How The Building Industry Blocked Better Tornado Safeguards 
After a tornado killed 162 people in Joplin, Mo., safety experts and cement manufacturers proposed a way to save lives: Require most new apartments, commercial structures and other large buildings in tornado-prone areas to have safe rooms — concrete boxes where people can shelter, even if the building around them is torn to shreds. Safe rooms provide “near-absolute protection” during a tornado, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They can cost as little as $15,000 for a small shelter in a commercial building, and possibly could have saved the six workers who died when a tornado destroyed the Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Ill., two weeks ago. But the 2012 proposal was blocked by a little-known organization that sets the building codes widely used by states and cities around the country.

Stat: How Medicine Erased Black Women From A 'White Man's Disease'
What Christi Taylor-Gentry remembers most about third grade are the times when the teaching stopped and she and her twin sister were sent out of the room. They were new at Lanier Elementary. Their parents were newly divorced, their mom living in a subdivision on the northwestern edge of Tulsa, Okla., with manmade ponds and curvy sidewalk-less streets. It was the 1970s — two decades after Brown v. Board of Education, but Tulsa schools had only just been dragged toward desegregation. Taylor-Gentry’s parents chose Lanier, on the south side: A school in the white part of town, they figured, would have more to put into their kids’ education. Every morning, before the 20-minute drive, she and her sister would wake at 5, submit to their mom’s vociferous combing or get a light comb-clunk on the head. (Boodman, 12/21)

Arkansas Democrat Gazette: Officer With Tourette, Fired For Uttering Racial Slur, Quits Legal Battle
A former Rogers police officer with Tourette syndrome recently gave up his legal battle to regain his job after being fired for saying a racial slur during a training exercise. Byron Flickinger sued the city on Oct. 8 in response to the Civil Service Commission upholding his firing at a Sept. 3 hearing. The lawsuit was dismissed Nov. 29 at Flickinger's request. George Rozzell, one of Flickinger's attorneys, said Thursday that his client resolved the matter with the city. Flickinger's appeal was in Benton County Circuit Court. "Mr. Flickinger is a dedicated police officer and will continue in that role," he said. Flickinger, 31, is now an officer with the Decatur Police Department. (Neal, 12/20)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Indepth: Children’s Healthcare Of Atlanta Amasses Immense Wealth As A Nonprofit Hospital System
Andy and Mandy Johnson were devastated when doctors told them their baby had an inoperable brain tumor. Determined to give their daughter a fighting chance, the Ben Hill County couple made a commitment to get the 7-month-old seen by clinicians at Children’s Scottish Rite Hospital. So for most of her young life, Ashlynn, who is now 4, has made weekly trips under blankets in the backseat of her parents’ car to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. For her parents, that has meant hours on the road from daybreak to nightfall, nursing a sick toddler, while leaving behind their two other young children at home in Fitzgerald, nearly 200 miles away. (Berard, 12/19)

In obituaries —

The New York Times: Darby Penney, Who Crusaded For Better Psychiatric Care, Dies At 68 
In 1995, the old Willard Psychiatric Center in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York was closed down, and hundreds of dusty trunks and suitcases that belonged to deceased patients were found in an attic. Many of those patients had never left Willard, which opened in 1869, their lives concluding in unmarked graves in its cemetery. Much like those graves, this trove of objects was destined to be forgotten. But that changed when a crusading New York State Office of Mental Health worker named Darby Penney learned of its existence. (Vadukul, 12/21)

The New York Times: Anne Emerman, Champion of Disability Rights, Dies at 84
Anne Emerman, a lifelong New York City activist for the civil rights of people with disabilities, was particularly outspoken about voting rights. When asked in 1991 why, if she couldn’t get to her polling place, she couldn’t just vote by absentee ballot, she replied: “I am not absent, I am not on vacation, I am part of my community.” Her answer reflected her belief that unless people with disabilities could show up at the ballot box and be seen as voters, they would be ignored by politicians. (Seelye, 12/22)