Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed

The Atlantic: Why Can’t We Just Call BA.2 Omicron? 
When coronavirus variants emerged in full force in late 2020, the news suddenly turned into alphanumeric soup. Remember? The U.K. variant, B.1.351, GR/501Y.V3. After this initial period of chaos, the World Health Organization came up with a sanity-preserving system that renamed those variants, respectively, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. And down the Greek alphabet we went, until we got to Omicron. The system worked. Lately however, the post-Omicron news landscape is turning into alphanumeric soup again. An Omicron subvariant called BA.2 is now globally dominant. BA.4 and BA.5 have just been discovered. And a cornucopia of new recombinants have names that seem to follow some inscrutable logic: XD (a recombinant of Delta and BA.1), XE (a recombinant of BA.1 and BA.2), XF (a different recombinant of Delta and BA.1), and so on, all the way down to XS (a recombinant of Delta and BA.1.1). (Zhang, 4/14)

The Washington Post: How Russia’s Ukraine Invasion Doomed The Sputnik V Coronavirus Vaccine 
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine probably sabotaged any further aspirations for the Sputnik coronavirus vaccine, the first injection approved by any country. Manufacturing of the vaccine has slowed, further research is stalled and a much-anticipated March 7 visit by the World Health Organization to Russia’s Sputnik manufacturing plants, the last step in its long-awaited international approval process, was once again delayed — this time indefinitely. (Hoffman, 4/9)

The Atlantic: The Grief Of 1 Million COVID Deaths Is Not Going Away 
Lucy Esparza-Casarez thinks she caught the coronavirus while working the polls during California’s 2020 primary election, before bringing it home to her husband, David, her sister-in-law Yolanda, and her mother-in-law, Balvina. Though Lucy herself developed what she calls “the worst flu times 100,” David fared worse. Lucy took him to the hospital on March 20, the last time she saw him in the flesh. He died on April 3, nine days before their wedding anniversary, at the age of 69. Lucy said goodbye over Skype. During that time, Yolanda fell ill too; after two months in the hospital, she died on June 1. Balvina, meanwhile, recovered from her bout with COVID-19, but, distraught after losing two children in as many months, she died on June 16. Lucy found herself alone in her home for the first time in 23 years. Because the hospital never returned David’s belongings, she didn’t even have his wedding ring. (Yong, 4/13)

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The New York Times: ‘Transient Ischemic Attacks,’ Which Can Be Serious, May Need a New Name
In a recent editorial in JAMA, two neurologists called for doctors and patients to abandon the term transient ischemic attack. It’s too reassuring, they argued, and too likely to lead someone with passing symptoms to wait until the next morning to call a doctor or let a week go by before arranging an appointment. That’s dangerous. Better, they said, to call a T.I.A. what it is: a stroke. More specifically, a minor ischemic stroke. (Almost 90 percent of strokes, which afflict 795,000 Americans a year, are ischemic, meaning they result from a clot that reduces blood flow to the brain.) (Span, 4/9)

The Washington Post: What Is Atrial Fibrillation, And When Should You See A Doctor About It? 
When considering problems with the heart, you might first think of clogged arteries that lead to heart attacks. But the heart has an electrical system, which guides how it beats, that can separately go haywire. When that happens, the heart can’t pump in a rhythmic manner and blood flow to organs may be compromised. If this arrhythmia goes undetected or isn’t managed properly, it can cause strokes, heart failure and death. The most common — and frequently undiagnosed — arrhythmia is atrial fibrillation (AF), also known as AFib. An estimated 3 million to 6 million Americans have it, and studies show that the number will balloon to 12.1 million by 2030 as the population gets older. Recent studies also found that people who had covid-19 have a higher risk of AFib and other heart diseases, even among those without a prior history of heart problems. And there is growing evidence that AFib significantly increases the risk of cognitive impairment and dementia. That is why it’s important to know the warning signs of atrial fibrillation and to get treatment early: It could save a person’s life. (Das, 4/12)

The Wall Street Journal: How Hospitals Are Using AI To Save Lives
An algorithm may hold the key to saving your life in the emergency room. Hospitals are making a bet that artificial intelligence can help identify and treat patients at highest risk in their ERs, inpatient wards and intensive-care units, for dangers including the deadly infection sepsis and an impending cardiac arrest or stroke. (Landro, 4/10)

The Washington Post: Britney Spears Said She Had Perinatal Depression. Here’s What It Is
When Britney Spears announced her third pregnancy in an Instagram post on Monday, she also made another disclosure: She said she suffered from perinatal depression during a previous pregnancy. “I have to say it is absolutely horrible,” Spears wrote. Spears, 40, has two children — Sean Preston, 16, and Jayden James, 15 — with ex-husband Kevin Federline. She didn’t specify when she suffered from perinatal depression, what her symptoms were or how long they lasted. But her post resonated, with more than 2 million people leaving likes and comments. (McShane, 4/12)

Politico: Eat Your Spinach — If You Dare
Contaminated spinach last fall made people sick in 10 states, and sent three people into kidney failure, but the agency reacted too slowly to get to the bottom of it. There was no recall. That was just one of many examples in recent years of foods that sound like the diet of a healthy eater but instead sent hundreds of people to the hospital or the morgue: Romaine lettuce contaminated by E.coli bacteria, cucumbers tainted by salmonella, cantaloupes infected with listeria. And so on, with such regularity that many outbreaks no longer even make much news. (Harris, 4/14)

San Francisco Chronicle: 'Clean Wine' Is A Manipulative Term, And Now The Feds Agree
This week marked a major victory for truth in wine advertising. The days of bandying about "clean wine," a poorly defined term that has been widely exploited as of late, have come to an end. The federal government issued official guidance warning wine companies against using this term on their labels or in their ads because it constitutes a misleading health claim. (Mobley, 4/14)