Perspectives: Anti-Vaxxers, Unusual Covid Cases, Childbirth Complications, Vaping

Miami Herald: Americans Learned More About Who We Are, Who We Want To Be 
It’s getting harder and harder to remember the height of the pandemic, when some 4,000 Americans were dying every day. At the time, the overwhelmed hospitals, the lockdown, the unemployment, the closed schools, the grounded planes seemed unforgettable. It was staggering, surreal; it would stay with us forever.But in this “vaccine summer,” we seem to be celebrating our relative freedom with amnesia. (Virginia Heffernan, 7/12)

The Washington Post: GOP Anti-Vaxxers Are Sacrificing Citizens’ Lives For Political Gain 
Here is perhaps the most important medical and political fact of our time: 99.5 percent of all covid-19-related deaths in the United States occur among unvaccinated people; 0.5 percent of covid deaths occur among vaccinated people. If you tell people not to be vaccinated, you add to the former category. In this light, the recent outbreak of applause at the Conservative Political Action Conference for the United States’ failure to meet its vaccination target was macabre. Here were political activists — many of whom would call themselves “pro-life” — cheering for the advance of death. How did we get to such a strange, desperate place? (Michael Gerson, 7/12)

USA Today: Anti-Vaxxers And Antisemites Form Dangerous Alliance On Social Media
First, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., compared mask requirements to “gold stars” from the Holocaust. Then Gigi Gaskins, a store owner in Nashville, Tennessee, advertised anti-vaccination patches modeled on the yellow Stars of David that Nazis forced Jews to wear. And then Washington State Rep. Jim Walsh wore a yellow star as an anti-vaxxer stunt just before Independence Day. Now, just weeks after she visited the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Greene, a QAnon conspiracy theorist, has doubled down on the antisemitism by calling those leading the federal effort for COVID vaccinations “medical brown shirts,” a reference to the paramilitary operation that helped Adolf Hitler take power. (Imran Ahmed, 7/12)

The New York Times: Why The Most Unusual Covid Cases Matter 
Like many people around the world and in Brazil where she lives, Parouhi Darakjian Kouyoumdjian became infected with the coronavirus last year; she had mild symptoms and recovered. But her case is remarkable: Ms. Kouyoumdjian is a centenarian. Still, while the elderly are more likely to suffer severe and fatal cases of Covid-19, Ms. Kouyoumdjian is not alone. She is part of a study led by Mayana Zatz, director of the Human Genome Research Center at the University of São Paulo, to understand how very old people who became infected with SARS-CoV-2 can emerge unscathed. (Roxanne Khamsi, 7/12)

San Francisco Chronicle: The Bay Area Has Become A COVID Hot Spot. Here's What To Make Of That
The coronavirus has reliably disregarded all hopes that it would observe human holidays, deadlines or elections. Across California, evidence is once again accumulating that it responds only to caution and consistency. Despite high vaccination rates and low case numbers, the Bay Area saw infections rise quickly enough in recent weeks to rank on a federal list of viral hot spots. Alameda County has seen new cases more than double to over 70 a day during the past month. Los Angeles County’s cases grew at a rate of more than 1,000 a day over the weekend. (7/12)

Stat: Managed Care's Role In Preventing Childbirth-Related Complications 
The coronavirus pandemic brought the importance of public health to the forefront of national attention. While the Covid-19-related shutdowns at first significantly slowed the number of births in the U.S., the birth rate is expected to surge later this year. There will likely be close to 4 million births in the U.S. in 2021, the vast majority of which will be safe for both mother and child. More than 700 mothers, however, die each year in the U.S. from pregnancy- and birth-related complications — and an astonishing two-thirds of these deaths are preventable. (Alissa Erogbogbo, 7/13)

The Wall Street Journal: A Cancer Patient’s Brutal Commute 
Maki Inada is juggling a lot these days. She’s a biology professor at upstate New York’s Ithaca College, where she balances teaching and research on messenger RNA (suddenly a topic of global interest). She is a mother of a vivacious 10-year-old who just finished fourth grade, and that means lots of driving back and forth to gymnastics and swimming practice. And she has lung cancer. In April, after years of clean scans, the cancer was back. She just had major surgery and is starting chemotherapy again. She has a lot of appointments with her local oncologist and her oncology team at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. One silver lining of the pandemic for Ms. Inada was that she didn’t have to drive to Boston for her appointments. She began having video calls with her doctors and planned to conduct many of her postoperative and oncology appointments via telemedicine. But regulatory changes in the past month have thrown a wrench in those plans. Dana-Farber told Ms. Inada she’ll have to be physically located in Massachusetts for a visit. She doesn’t have to go all the way to the doctor’s office, a 5½-hour drive each way. She can drive 3½ hours, cross the border into Massachusetts, pull over, and have a telemedicine visit in the car. (Ateev Mehrotra and Barak Richman, 7/12)

Chicago Tribune: Tax E-Cigarettes? Yes, To Deter Youths From Vaping
When my eldest son started high school, our whole family looked forward to the new experiences he had ahead of him. Imagine our disappointment and concern when he told us that his first three weeks of high school had been marked by numerous invitations to vape with some of his new classmates. Unfortunately, this experience is not uncommon across our country. E-cigarettes, or “vapes” as they are known, are the most commonly used tobacco products among young people. Currently, nearly 4 million of them are vaping, including 1 out of every 5 U.S. high school students. (Raja Krishnamoorthi, 7/12)

NBC News: Wimbledon Finals Lack Rafael Nadal And Naomi Osaka Because They Put Their Well-Being First
The sporting experience can be pernicious for the mental health of an athlete. A toxic synergy of rigorous training methods, intensity of competition, injury, isolation, travel and pressure to excel commonly breed dangerous psychiatric diseases like anxiety and depression. As a British Journal of Sports Medicine analysis in 2019 showed, between roughly a quarter and a third of current and former elite athletes grapple with mental health symptoms and disorders. (Dr. Jalal Baig, 7/11)