Sex In The Time Of COVID: Gay Men Begin To Embrace A ‘New Normal’
Like other people, many men who have sex with men have done all they could to avoid the coronavirus. Now some are braving renewed contact while balancing risk.
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Like other people, many men who have sex with men have done all they could to avoid the coronavirus. Now some are braving renewed contact while balancing risk.
A review by KHN and the Associated Press finds at least 49 state and local public health leaders have resigned, retired or been fired since April across 23 states. One of the latest departures came Sunday, when California’s public health director was ousted.
Vaccines engineered to protect the public from influenza, hepatitis B, tetanus and rabies are less effective for obese people, leaving them more vulnerable to serious illness. As scientists race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, experts say obesity could prove an impediment — a sobering prospect for a nation in which nearly half of all adults are obese.
Furious over Republicans’ handling of the pandemic, Wisconsin health care workers are speaking out against the president — and running for office.
The COVID-19 pandemic brought knee and hip replacements to a virtual halt because they aren’t usually considered emergency procedures. But they are profitable, and hospital systems are now counting on the surgeries to help restore their financial health.
Gov. Steve Bullock’s response to the pandemic has helped raise his profile as he challenges incumbent Republican Sen. Steve Daines. But it also complicates the campaign as the state sees a resurgence of COVID-19 cases and voters question some of the governor’s actions.
Check out KHN’s video series Behind the Byline: How the Story Got Made. Come along as journalists and producers offer an insider’s view of health care coverage that does not quit.
The coronavirus was a critical theme throughout the evening.
A family plan costs, on average, more than $21,000 this year and workers pay nearly $5,600 toward that cost, the annual KFF survey of employers finds.
In North Carolina, staffs at nursing homes and assisted living facilities are prohibited by law from helping residents vote. So community members fill the gap, venturing into some of the places hit hardest by the coronavirus.
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
As California workers and schoolchildren struggled to work from home, state lawmakers met in person. And as their legislative session came to a close in late August, they broke COVID rules: They huddled, let their masks slip below their noses, removed their masks to drink coffee — and required a new mom to vote in person while toting her hungry newborn.
More than 70,000 residents and staff members at nursing homes and assisted living facilities have died of COVID-19, and others are under strict rules designed to keep the disease from spreading. That has evoked concern that living in a communal facility could be dangerous.
Amid overcrowding and a shortage of personal protective equipment, at least 208 workers and 83 inmates in the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office jail system have been infected with the coronavirus.
Human clinical trials are scheduled for a drug that could prevent some of the 100,000-plus deaths from snakebites worldwide each year. The same drug may also help people suffering from COVID-related acute respiratory distress.
A 15-year-old high school student in New Jersey is memorializing doctors, nurses and others who died after tending to coronavirus patients.
Thousands of firefighters from across the U.S. have converged on the West as the wildfire season enters its peak. The inherently dangerous job now carries the additional risk of COVID-19 transmission, and fire managers are adapting their plans for crowded fire camps in the hope of preventing outbreaks that could sideline crews and weaken the nation’s firefighting infrastructure.
President Donald Trump has, for now at least, become a realist on the extent of the COVID-19 crisis around the country, and he is urging Americans to socially distance and wear masks. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Republicans facing a July 31 deadline are scrambling to come together on their version of the next COVID relief bill. Joanne Kenen of Politico, Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times and Tami Luhby of CNN join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss this and more. Also, Rovner interviews NPR’s Pam Fessler, author of the new book “Carville’s Cure,” which traces the history of the United States’ only federal leprosarium.
California’s ping-ponging approach to managing the pandemic — twice reopening large portions of the service sector economy only to shut them again — has residents and business owners on edge. But experts say the push and pull on businesses may be what success looks like in much of the U.S. for months to come, given COVID-19’s pervasive spread.
While the Harvard Business School gently chided returnees to be on their best behavior, Stanford deployed green-vested enforcers and campus police who sometimes threatened students if they violated the rules. Both, apparently, succeeded.
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