Login
Enlarge / A person sits at the slot machines at a casino. (credit: Getty | Octavio Jones)
A Tacoma, Washington, woman who has refused court-ordered tuberculosis treatment for over a year is evading arrest and has reportedly taken public transit to go to a casino while on the lam.
The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department has been trying to get the woman to comply with treatment since at least January 2022, when she received her first court order. Since then, she has received over a dozen court orders for treatment and isolation amid monthly court hearings and order renewals. Last month, Pierce County Superior Court Judge Philip Sorensen finally found her in contempt and issued a warrant for her arrest and involuntary detention at the county jail for treatment and isolation.
"In each case like this, we are constantly balancing risk to the public and the civil liberties of the patient," the health department wrote in a blog post days before the arrest warrant was issued. "We are always hopeful a patient will choose to comply voluntarily. Seeking to enforce a court order through a civil arrest warrant is always our last resort."
Peeps' psychedelic pink color is the best thing about the marshmallow treat, but a spoilsport state lawmaker wants to ban erythrosine, a food coloring known as Red No. 3 that's used to give Peeps their vibrant hue.
Erythrosine is linked to cancer and was banned from makeup more than 30 years, ago, according to AP. — Read the rest
Enlarge / A microscope image of Streptococcus pyogenes, a common type of group A strep. (credit: Getty | BSIP)
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid a tall wave of respiratory viruses, health officials in Colorado and Minnesota documented an unusual spike in deadly, invasive infections from Streptococcus bacteria late last year, according to a study published this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The spike is yet another oddity of post-pandemic disease transmission, but one that points to a simple prevention strategy: flu shots.
The infections are invasive group A strep, or iGAS for short, which is caused by the same group of bacteria that cause relatively minor diseases, such as strep throat and scarlet fever. But iGAS occurs when the bacteria spread in the body and cause severe infection, such as necrotizing fasciitis (flesh-eating disease), toxic shock syndrome, or sepsis. These conditions can occur quickly and be deadly.
Written by Rebecca Brown
This post is based on two recently accepted articles: Brown and de Barra ‘A Taxonomy of Non-Honesty in Public Health Communication’, and de Barra and Brown ‘Public Health Communication Should be More Transparent’.
In a previous post, I discussed some of the requirements for public health institutions to count as ‘honest’. I now want to follow that up to discuss some of the ways in which public health communication seems to fall short of honesty.
I’ll follow Christian Miller’s definition of the term ‘honesty’ to refer to a character trait that involves being disposed, centrally and reliably, to not intentionally distort the facts as one sees them. As discussed previously, it is pretty hard to get at the intentions of agents. We can rarely – if ever – say with certainty that a particular agent intended some outcome, since that information is available only to the agent herself. Instead, we must rely on extrapolating from whatever evidence is available to us.
This can make it hard to prove a failure of honesty, since we must often rely upon a ‘best guess’ as to the agent’s motivation when they acted in a particular way. For the kinds of cases I’m interested in – communications from public health organisations – it is even trickier, as it is not clear what agent is responsible for the communicative act in question (it could be an individual within an organisation, the organisation itself, or some subset of the organisation/individuals within it). But assuming certainty isn’t required, we might still judge that an agent (group or individual) probably intended to mislead or otherwise distort facts if the way they presented information could reliably be expected to create false beliefs in the recipient, and if we would reasonably expect the communicator to have known this. With that in mind, we might speculate about the honesty or otherwise of public health communication.
Public health communication frequently engages in a number of practices that look like they might not meet the demands of honesty. Some examples are:
Magnitude neglect where public health communication doesn’t provide an indication of the expected effect size of the benefit / harm discussed. This could include, for instance, saying that screening reduces your chance of dying from cervical cancer, without telling you by how much your risk of death is reduced.
Harm neglect involves providing information about the benefits of recommended behaviour changes / interventions without mentioning any possible harms.
Relative over absolute risk presentation. Whilst communicators rarely provide quantified effect sizes of the benefits associated with a recommended behaviour, when they do provide such estimates they often use relative risks rather than absolute risks. This will tend to inflate people’s estimate of the size of the benefit they can expect. For example, an intervention that reduces your risk of developing diabetes from 0.001% to 0.0005% cuts your risk in half – that is, reduces it by 50%. The first way of presenting this (using absolute risks) makes the change seem quite small; the second way (in relative risks) makes it seem much bigger. Public health communicators will often use relative risks to describe health benefits, which tend to make them seem much more impressive.
Mismatched reporting takes the above tendency, and pairs it with a tendency to report the harms of recommended behaviours in terms of absolute risks. If relative risks inflate people’s expectations, absolute risks deflate them. Pairing benefits described in relative risks with harms describes in absolute risks seems geared to encourage people to overestimate benefits whilst underestimating harms.
Causation laundering occurs when the content of public health communication implies a causal link between phenomena when it is difficult to know to what extent the relationship is causal. For instance, the health benefits of exercise are widely proclaimed (the NHS describes it as a “miracle cure”. Yet it is very difficult to extrapolate what health benefits associated with exercise are a result of exercise making people healthier, and what results from healthier people doing more exercise. Public health communicators sometimes gloss over such ambiguity, and imply that the causal relationship acts only in one direction – that is, exercise causes good health, rather than the other way around.
These ways of communicating health information, amongst others, seem likely to encourage people to form overoptimistic beliefs about the benefits of various health behaviour changes. Moreover, this seems predictably likely and – we might speculate – intentional. If this is indeed the case – if public health communicators intentionally frame their messages so as to encourage people to form overly optimistic (and inaccurate) beliefs about the likely benefits of health behaviour change – then this is inconsistent with communicating honestly.
This leaves out the question of whether or not there is anything wrong with failing to communicate honestly. Whilst there will almost certainly be cases where honesty is not all-things-considered desirable (e.g. it is better to tell a lie to protect an innocent victim from a murderer than to tell the truth and condemn them to death, contra Kant) it is not clear that public health communication is typically one such case. Indeed, it seems unlikely, given the emphasis on honesty in clinical communication, and the importance of allowing people to make well-informed decisions about how to lead their lives and take care of their health.
Most of the behaviours considered here – relating to diet, exercise, cancer screening and other preventative behaviours – require people to forego pleasures in the pursuit of longer term health. Whilst public health professionals might emphasise that there is “no safe” drinking level, individuals might reasonable decide that the benefits of alcohol consumption outweigh the risks. But people can only make these decisions sensibly if they are accurately informed about the harms and the benefits of these behaviours. And this requires public health communication to give a non-distorted, honest, picture of the available evidence.
References
Brown and de Barra (in press) ‘A Taxonomy of Non-Honesty in Public Health Communication’ Public Health Ethics
de Barra and Brown (in press) ‘Public Health Communication Should be More Transparent’ Nature Human Behaviour
Miller (2021) Honesty: The Philosophy and Psychology of a Neglected Virtue, Oxford University Press
Enlarge / Hughes Memorial Auditorium, where the outpouring event was hosted, on Asbury University's campus in Wilmore, Kentucky. (credit: Asbury University)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday issued a health alert for doctors and health officials to be on the lookout for measles cases after a person with a confirmed, contagious case attended a massive religious event in Kentucky last month, potentially exposing an estimated 20,000 people to one of the most infectious viruses on the planet.
The event was a spontaneous "outpouring" at Asbury University, which drew tens of thousands of worshippers to the small, private Christian institution in Wilmore from February 8 to 23. Attendees came from around Kentucky, other US states, and other countries.
A case of measles was confirmed in an unvaccinated person who had recently traveled out of the country before attending Asbury University's outpouring. The person was at the event from February 17 to 18, the CDC reported. The university added that the person attended before developing symptoms, suggesting the person did not know they were infected. But the CDC notes that people with measles are contagious four days before measles' telltale rash develops, and state health officials said the person was contagious while they were in attendance.
Enlarge / WHO's COVID-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, looks on during a press conference at the World Health Organization's headquarters in Geneva, on December 14, 2022. (credit: Getty | FABRICE COFFRINI)
While the World Health Organization says it's continuing to urge China to share data and cooperate with investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the United Nations' health agency is calling out another country for lack of transparency—the United States.
WHO officials on Friday said that the US has not shared reports or data from federal agencies that have assessed how the COVID-19 pandemic began. That includes the latest report by the Department of Energy, which determined with "low confidence" that the pandemic likely began due to a laboratory accident.
"As of right now, we don't have access to those reports or the data that is underlying how those reports were generated," Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO's technical lead on COVID-19, said in a press briefing Friday. "Again, we reiterate, that any agency that has information on this, it remains vital that that information is shared so that scientific debate, that this discussion, can move forward. Without that, we are not able to move forward in our understanding."
Enlarge / Mycobacterium tuberculosis. (credit: Getty | NIH/NIAID)
A judge in Washington issued an arrest warrant Thursday for a Tacoma woman who has refused to have her active, contagious case of tuberculosis treated for over a year, violating numerous court orders. The judge also upheld an earlier order to have her jailed, where she can be tested and treated in isolation.
On Thursday, the woman attended the 17th court hearing on the matter and once again refused a court order to isolate or comply with testing and treatment—an order that originally dates back to January 19, 2022. Pierce County Superior Court Judge Philip Sorensen rejected her objections to being treated and upheld a finding of contempt. Though it remains unclear what her objections are, the woman's lawyer suggested it may be a problem with understanding, according to The News Tribune. The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department, however, argued that she “knowingly, willfully, and contemptuously violated this court’s orders,” noting the lengthy process and numerous proceedings and discussions in which interpreters, translated documents, and speakers of her native language were made available.
Sorenson ordered a civil warrant for her arrest, to be enforced on or after March 3, and again ordered her to jail to undergo involuntary testing and treatment until health officials deem it safe to release her. The order also authorized the Pierce County Jail to place her in a facility equipped to handle her isolation, testing, and treatment.
Enlarge / A medical director in Germany sits in front of a monitor showing the real-time data of a patient with a heart attack. (credit: Getty | Arne Dedert)
A bout of COVID-19 is known to increase a person's long-term risks of having a major cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack or stroke. But being fully vaccinated or even partially vaccinated appears to bring that risk down, according to a study published this week in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
The study, led by researchers at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, drew on medical records from over 1.9 million patients who were infected with COVID-19 between March 2020 and February 2022. Of those 1.9 million patients, a "major adverse cardiac event," namely a heart attack, stroke, or another cardiac event, was identified in 13,948 patients, and 3,175 died following the event.
Overall, the researchers found that being vaccinated—fully or partially—was linked to fewer cardiac events in the six months following a case of COVID-19. After adjusting for demographics, comorbidities, and time since the pandemic began, the researchers found that being fully vaccinated reduced the risk of having a major cardiac event by about 41 percent, while being partially vaccinated reduced the risk by about 24 percent.
Enlarge / People queue for clean water on February 9, 2023, in Hatay, Turkey. (credit: Getty | Burak Kara)
Deaths from the massive earthquake and aftershocks that violently struck parts of southern Turkey and northern Syria in the early hours of Monday have now surpassed 20,000—a staggering toll of devastation.
As of Thursday, Turkey’s national emergency management agency reported more than 17,000 deaths, as well as over 70,000 injured. Syrian Ministry of Health, meanwhile, reported 1,347 deaths and 2,295 injured. Rescuers in rebel-held northwest areas of the country reported at least 2,030 deaths and at least 2,950 injured.
As heroic rescue crews continue sifting through the rubble of collapsed structures, concern is growing for those tens of thousands injured and countless others made more vulnerable by the crisis.
Enlarge / Transmission electron micrograph of poliovirus type 1. (credit: Getty | BSIP)
An eradicated form of wild polio surfaced in routine wastewater monitoring in the Netherlands last year, offering a cautionary tale on the importance of monitoring for the tenacious virus, researchers report this week in the journal Eurosurveilance.
The sewage sample came up positive for infectious poliovirus in mid-November and genome sequencing revealed a strain of wild poliovirus type 3, which was declared globally eradicated in 2019. Its potential revival would be a devastating setback in the decades-long effort to stamp out highly infectious and potentially paralytic germ for good.
For brief background, there are three types of wild polioviruses: type 2 and type 3 have been eradicated, with the former being knocked out in 2015. Wild poliovirus type 1 continues to circulate in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are also occasional vaccine-derived polioviruses that circulate in communities with low vaccination rates, which recently occurred in New York.
Enlarge / US President Joe Biden speaks to members of the media on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Jan. 30, 2023. (credit: Getty | Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg)
President Joe Biden plans to end two national emergency declarations over the COVID-19 pandemic on May 11, which will trigger a restructuring of the federal response to the deadly coronavirus and will end most federal support for COVID-19 vaccinations, testing, and hospital care.
The plan was revealed in a statement to Congress opposing House Republicans' efforts to end the emergency declarations immediately.
“An abrupt end to the emergency declarations would create wide-ranging chaos and uncertainty throughout the health care system—for states, for hospitals and doctors’ offices, and, most importantly, for tens of millions of Americans,” the Office of Management and Budget wrote in a Statement of Administration Policy.
Enlarge / Chicken eggs are disposed of at a quarantined farm in Israel's northern Moshav (village) of Margaliot on January 3, 2022. (credit: Getty | JALAA MAREY / AFP))
The ongoing bird flu outbreak in the US is now the longest and deadliest on record. More than 57 million birds have been killed by the virus or culled since a year ago, and the deadly disruption has helped propel skyrocketing egg prices and a spike in egg smuggling.
Since highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A(H5N1) was first detected in US birds in January 2022, the price of a carton of a dozen eggs has shot up from an average of about $1.79 in December 2021 to $4.25 in December 2022, a 137 percent increase, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Although inflation and supply chain issues partly explain the rise, eggs saw the largest percentage increase of any specific food, according to the consumer price index.
And the steep pricing is leading some at the US-Mexico border to try to smuggle in illegal cartons, which is prohibited. A US Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told NPR this week that people in El Paso, Texas, are buying eggs in Juárez, Mexico, because they are "significantly less expensive." Meanwhile, a customs official in San Diego tweeted a reminder amid a rise in egg interceptions that failure to declare such agriculture items at a port of entry can result in penalties up to $10,000.
Colorized scanning electron micrograph of Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacteria, which causes gonorrhea. (credit: NIAID)
The most highly drug-resistant cases of gonorrhea detected in the US to date appeared in two unrelated people in Massachusetts, state health officials announced Thursday.
The cases mark the first time that US isolates of the gonorrhea-causing bacterium, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, have shown complete resistance or reduced susceptibility to all drugs that are recommended for treatment.
Fortunately, both cases were successfully cured with potent injections of the antibiotic ceftriaxone, despite the bacterial isolates demonstrating reduced susceptibility to the drug. Ceftriaxone is currently the frontline recommended treatment for the sexually transmitted infection.
Enlarge / Passengers wearing face masks wait to board a high-speed railway train in Guangzhou South railway station on January 15, 2023, in Guangzhou, China. China is currently experiencing Spring Festival travel season, where millions of Chinese travel around the country before celebrating the Chinese or Lunar New Year. (credit: Getty | Vernon Yuen/NurPhoto )
China is now reporting that nearly 60,000 people had died of COVID-19 since early December when the country abruptly abandoned its zero-COVID policy and omicron subvariants began ripping through its population. The new death toll is a stark revision from China's previously reported figure for that period, which was just 37. But experts remain skeptical that the new, much larger tally is a complete accounting, and the World Health Organization continues to press the country to release more data.
In a Saturday press conference in Beijing, the Medical Administration Director of China's National Health Commission (NHC), Jiao Yahui, told reporters that the country recorded 59,938 COVID-related deaths between December 8 and January 12. Of those, 5,503 deaths were specifically linked to respiratory failure, and 54,435 were associated with underlying conditions, such as cancer and cardiovascular disease.
The new figures double the country's tally of COVID-19 deaths due specifically to COVID-19 respiratory failure, bringing the pandemic total to 10,775. Previously, those deaths—the ones due to COVID-19 respiratory failure or pneumonia—were the only deaths that China counted as caused by COVID-19, which drew criticism from WHO officials, who called the classification "too narrow."
FreshRSS 
