Month: September 2021

(STACKER) — The deployment of vaccines beginning in December signaled a turning point in the pandemic. By Feb. 2, more Americans had been vaccinated for COVID-19 than had been infected. But as vaccination rates lagged over the summer, new surges of COVID-19 came. More than 80% of these cases by late July were caused by the Delta variant, which is more contagious than the original virus. This has resulted in growing rates of community transmission and—especially in areas with lower vaccination rates—increasing rates of hospitalization and death. The United States reached 684,360 COVID-19-related deaths and nearly 42.7 million COVID-19 cases as of Sep. 23, according to Johns Hopkins University. Currently, 55% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated. Epidemiologists sa...

PISCO, Peru—Several nights a week, 4-year-old Sofia Felices jolts awake in tears and calls out for her mother, who used to cuddle her youngest daughter in bed. Sofia’s mom died from the coronavirus in April, so that job now falls to the girl’s great-aunt, Janette Navarro. “She cries and she cries,” said Ms. Navarro, who has three children of her own but has become caregiver to her niece’s five children in this coastal fishing city. “She screams with her eyes closed, ‘I want my mommy. I want my mommy.’ ”

Since a Michigan doctor penned a Facebook post earlier this month detailing the aggressive and combative responses he has faced from eight patients seriously ill with COVID-19, six of those patients have died.  On Sept. 11, Michigan pulmonologist Matthew Trunsky listed eight incidents in the preceding two days in which patients declined to heed his medical advice. The post has so far received nearly 3,000 engagements and has been shared more than 1,400 times. In an interview with The Washington Post published Friday, Trunsky said six of the eight patients he mentioned in his Facebook post have since died. “We are physically tired as a whole, me included, and we are emotionally exhausted," he said. "I don’t think a week goes by that I don’t see someone pass away." In his Faceb...

September-October and the seasonal changes setting in right now are big caveats for flu cases to shoot up . While there's no saying how severe or manageable a particular flu season could be, some preventive measures right now, apart from COVID-appropriate behaviour and timely vaccination can save us from facing dangers of a twindemic: -Washing and disinfecting hands frequently. Do not touch eyes, nose or the mouth with contaminated, germy hands. -Maintain your distance when you are out, and limit touching frequently-accessed surfaces -Limit your contact if you feel sick, or develop some symptoms, even if it's just a cold or a slight fever -Wear a mask when you step outside. A mask would be able to garner protection even when others around you do not wear one. -Carry a sanitizer with you...

You are what you eat. But what you eat also shapes who you become. Decades of nutritional studies repeatedly confirm this. However, missing from the equation was a diet specifically tailored for brain health. Realizing this, the late Martha Clare Morris, a nutritional epidemiologist, studied foods and nutrients associated explicitly with lower cognitive decline and lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and in 2015, premiered the MIND diet. The MIND diet is a hybrid of the Mediterranean diet and the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension diet (its name is a combo of those two diets). And it just passed its latest test. In a study published in September in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease scientists show the MIND diet can slow cognitive decline and reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease dem...