Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed

The New York Times: How Bacteria-Eating Bacteria Could Help Win The War Against Germs 
Henry N. Williams’s favorite movie-action sequence unfolds on a strip of glass just a few millimeters across. It’s a cinematic showdown between two bacterial cells: Vibrio coralliilyticus, a large, rod-shaped marine microbe, and a petite pursuant, Halobacteriovorax, that has latched onto the bigger bacterium. The Vibrio, desperate to jettison its assailant, wriggles and whirls through a pool of liquid, zigzagging in futility before finally coming to a “screeching halt,” as Dr. Williams described it. Then the Halobacteriovorax starts its dirty work: It punctures the Vibrio’s exterior and begins to bore inside, where it will gorge on its host’s innards, clone itself many times over and burst free to find its next meal. (Wu, 8/25)

The New York Times: Heat, Smoke And Covid Are Battering The Workers Who Feed America 
Work began in the dark. At 4 a.m., Briseida Flores could make out a fire burning in the distance. Floodlights illuminated the fields. And shoulder to shoulder with dozens of others, Ms. Flores pushed into the rows of corn. Swiftly, they plucked. One after the other. First under the lights, then by the first rays of daylight. By 10:30 a.m., it was unbearably hot. Hundreds of wildfires were burning to the north, and so much smoke was settling into the San Joaquin Valley that the local air pollution agency issued a health alert. Ms. Flores, 19, who had joined her mother in the fields after her father lost his job in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, found it hard to breathe in between the tightly planted rows. Her jeans were soaked with sweat. (Sengupta, 8/25)

The New York Times: The Extra Stigma Of Mental Illness For African-Americans 
I was a 22-year-old temp working for a high-profile company when I collapsed on the bathroom floor at work. I had no clue what was happening and neither did anyone around me. My heart was beating loudly, making it difficult to think, move or speak. When I was taken to a hospital, the doctor told me what I had experienced was a panic attack induced by severe stress. I went back to work the next day and acted as if nothing had happened. I was ashamed, and my pride wouldn’t let me discuss the matter with my worried co-workers. (Givens, 8/25)

Stories about the health care industry —

Vox: Obamacare Saved Health Insurance For Millions During Covid-19
The Covid-19 pandemic has been the first serious test for the Affordable Care Act as a new social safety net — and the law’s provisions have proven adept, if imperfect, in protecting Americans from losing health insurance in the middle of an infectious disease outbreak and an economic crisis. Two new analyses published in the last week explain concisely (as will I, aided by their charts) the depth of coverage losses resulting from the job losses of the last six months and the ACA’s success in catching many of those people to give them a new health insurance plan. (Scott, 8/26)

The New York Times: The Fine Line Between Choice And Confusion In Health Care 
American opponents of proposed government-run health systems have long used the word “choice” as a weapon. One reason “Medicare for all” met its end this year has been the decades-long priming of the public that a health system should preserve choice — of plans and doctors and hospitals. To have choice is to be free, according to many. So how many Americans actually have choices, and what type of freedom do choices provide? (Frakt, 8/24)

Fortune: Why An Amazon And Airbnb Vet Joined A Digital Health Company That Wants To Slash Drug Prices 
Geoffrey and Matt Chaiken have an ambitious plan to lower the price that consumers have to pay for their prescription drugs. And they've enlisted the help of a prominent player who's both an Amazon and Airbnb veteran to help achieve their mission through his knowledge of the interplay between consumers and technology: Vinayak Hegde is now the COO and president of the Chaiken brothers' company, Blink Health.While Blink made their announcement about Hegde's appointment earlier this month, this is the first time that Geoffrey Chaiken, and Hegde himself, have spoken with a media organization. (Mukherjee, 8/24)

The California Sunday Magazine: What Happened In Room 10?
The Life Care Center of Kirkland, Washington, was the first COVID hot spot in the U.S. Forty-six people associated with the nursing home died, exposing how ill-prepared we were for the pandemic — and how we take care of our elderly. This is their story. (Engelbart, 8/23)

Stat: The Scientist Behind #BlackInNeuro Is Building The Hastag Into A Community
Angeline Dukes, a graduate student in neuroscience, didn’t intend to organize an entire movement. But she did have a question. She had noticed other Twitter movements highlighting Black scientists in fields like birding, astronomy, and physics. She wondered: Where’s neuroscience? So in early July, Dukes, who is Black, tweeted:  “Sooo when are we doing a #BlackInNeuro week?” (Ortolano, 8/26)

The New York Times: Doctors Enter College Football’s Politics Amid Covid Pandemic, But Maybe Just For Show 
As Justin Fields, the star quarterback at Ohio State, was gathering more than 300,000 electronic signatures to beseech Big Ten university presidents to reverse their decision to postpone football this fall, he was applauded by his coach, Ryan Day, who in turn was being hailed by his athletic director, Gene Smith. Nobody, though, was cheering on Dr. Curt Daniels. Daniels, the director of sports cardiology at Ohio State, had also been busy, working to publish a three-month study whose preliminary findings were presented to Pac-12 and Big Ten leaders before they shut down football earlier this month. Daniels said that cardiac M.R.I.s, an expensive and sparingly used tool, revealed an alarmingly high rate of myocarditis — heart inflammation that can lead to cardiac arrest with exertion — among college athletes who had recovered from the coronavirus. (Witz, 8/23)

Stories about parenting and relationships —

The Washington Post: Our Baby Died After I Carried Him For 23 Weeks. A Simple Test Could Have Saved His Life. 
Our beautiful son, Eli Parker Levitt, was born July 5 at just 23 weeks. He came out sucking his thumb and was the most perfect being I had ever seen. In the moments between the time I laid my eyes on him and when the doctors handed him to me, Eli was dead. Our beautiful baby boy was gone. My story is tragic, but not unique. I had a fairly typical pregnancy, with only minor complications, raising our hopes that we were out of the woods for a miscarriage or loss. But like many women, I had an “incompetent cervix.” (Spiro-Levitt, 8/24)

The New York Times: How To Handle Separation Anxiety Meltdowns In Kids 
For Greg Clapp, it felt like a switch had flipped. Six weeks ago, Clapp’s son, Nolan, went from being a content, even-keeled soon-to-be 2-year-old to a toddling ball of nerves — almost overnight. During routine family walks around the neighborhood, Nolan, usually perfectly happy around new people, started running to his parents, whimpering to be picked up and held whenever a stranger passed. At bedtime, Nolan started attaching himself to the nearest parent, shrieking if his mother or father left the room even for a few minutes, and wailing as he was put him down for bed. (Couch, 8/20)

The New York Times: I Don’t Know If My Relationship Will Survive The Pandemic 
“I can’t take it anymore,” I told my partner of seven years and the father of my two children. “Maybe we should start looking for separate places.” Then I stormed out of our 700-square-foot apartment and took off down our quiet tree-lined street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Tears dampened the corners of my mask as I contemplated all that had brought me to this point: considering ending my relationship. It wasn’t a twin loss at 19 weeks; it wasn’t the several subsequent miscarriages; it wasn’t the birth of our two children, a cross-country move, or a contentious N.F.C. Championship game between my beloved Seattle Seahawks and his Green Bay Packers in January that threatened the longevity of our relationship. (Campaomor, 8/26)