Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed
The Washington Post: The Quest To Detect CTE In The Living And What It Means For Football’s Concussion Crisis
Red and yellow were bad. Blue and green were good. The rest, Sam Gandy explained, remains unclear. It was December 2015, and Gandy, a neurologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, was showing a former National Football League player named Sean Morey scans of his brain. A professional athlete for 10 seasons, Morey retired from the NFL in 2010 after doctors told him he had suffered too many concussions. Morey subsequently became a behind-the-scenes health and safety advocate, co-chairing an NFL Players Association committee devoted to brain injuries and leading a mid-2010s effort to improve the settlement terms of a class action concussion lawsuit brought by retirees against the league. Just 39 years old, he also was suffering debilitating headaches, memory lapses, angry outbursts and other symptoms associated with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease linked to repeated blows to the head. (Hruby, 9/2)
NPR: The Warsaw Ghetto Beat Back Typhus. There Are Lessons For Today's Pandemic
Alex Hershaft remembers the special comb.He and his family were living in the Warsaw ghetto. It was 1940. He was a little boy, about 6 years old.A disease known as epidemic typhus was spreading among the close to half a million Jews confined in 1.3 square miles of Warsaw, Poland, in what became known as the Warsaw ghetto. Records kept by ghetto leaders and unearthed after World War II show six or more people lived in a single room in some apartments. Many homes had no running water, and there were few public baths, according to records from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. (Kritz, 9/2)
The Wall Street Journal: The 1918 Pandemic Was Deadlier, But College Football Continued. Here’s Why.
On Sept. 28, 1918, Riley Shue played in his first college football game. Eleven days later, the Miami (Ohio) guard died of the flu.A starter at Texas also died of influenza that fall. So did a player at West Virginia, and Ohio State’s team captain from the year before. That’s just a few we know about. It isn’t clear how many college football players died of the flu in fall 1918.The 1918-19 flu scourge was more lethal than the current coronavirus pandemic, killing 675,000 in the U.S., and was especially fatal in 20- to 40-year-olds. Covid-19 infections have killed more than 180,000 this year, and the U.S. has more than three times the population it did a century ago. (Bachman, 9/2)
The Wall Street Journal: As Trash Piles Up During Covid-19, Residents Raise A Stink
The coronavirus pandemic is snarling municipal trash pickup in several U.S. cities, sparking complaints from frustrated residents as uncollected garbage bakes in the summer sun. The problem stems in part from the sheer volume of residential trash and recycling, which is far higher than usual with so many people at home. Some cities are struggling because many sanitation workers have contracted the virus, have had to quarantine due to possible exposure or have been afraid to go to work. (Calvert, 8/30)
MarketWatch: It Seemed Safe To Reopen Israel’s Schools, But Then Came COVID-19 Outbreaks — What Can We All Learn From Those Mistakes?
After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu implemented a strict lockdown in Israel in February, by early May, roughly a dozen daily new cases of coronavirus down from more than 750 per day were being reported among the country’s population of roughly 9 million people. By last month, Israel had hit 2,300 new cases in one day.But three months ago, the cost of reopening schools with so few cases of coronavirus did not seem to come close to the benefits that were believed to be gained from holding in-person classes — or so the Israeli government thought. (Buchwald, 9/3)
The New York Times: My Job? Telling People What Happens Next
All my life, I’ve been assigned to cover the past. That’s what reporters do, whether it’s a news conference that has just ended, or a killing hushed up decades ago. Now, for the first time, I’m being asked to cover the future. I’ve been at The Times since 1976 and have covered global health since the 1990s, when I was a correspondent in South Africa and it was becoming the world’s biggest H.I.V. hot spot. (McNeil Jr., 8/27)
The New York Times: Parenting In Front Of A Live Audience Of In-Laws
Somewhere in rural Pennsylvania, my husband and I whisper-argue on a mattress strewn across the floor. His hand gestures say, “Lower your voice.” Mine say, “I’m a big-haired Spanish woman from Jersey. Fat chance.” But his Anglo-Southern penchant for quiet subtlety is probably the best approach right now. We don’t want to wake the 13-month-old who co-sleeps between us, but our real concern is my parents. They might overhear our debate: to stay or go back. (Madrazo, 8/27)
The New York Times: In An Era Of Face Masks, We’re All A Little More Face Blind
We’re all getting used to face masks, either wearing them or figuring out who we’re looking at. They can even trip up those of us who are experts in faces. “Actually, I just had an experience today,” said Marlene Behrmann, a cognitive neuroscientist at Carnegie Mellon University who has spent decades studying the science of facial recognition. She went to meet a colleague outside the hospital where they collaborate, and didn’t realize the person was sitting right in front of her, wearing a mask. In fairness, “She’s cut her hair very short,” Dr. Behrmann said. (Preston, 8/31)
