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President Joe Biden renewed his call for private employers to require their workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19, saying "we are going to beat this pandemic" if more Americans get their shots. ... Biden's remarks came just hours after the White House released a new report outlining the importance of requirements in driving up vaccination rates and helping Americans return to work. The 26-page report says more than 185 million Americans are now fully vaccinated and that "the unprecedented pace of the president’s vaccination campaign saved over 100,000 lives and prevented 450,000 hospitalizations." (Gomez, 10/7)

Biden had ruled out such requirements before taking office in January, but they now are a tactic he feels forced into using by a stubborn slice of the public that has refused to be inoculated and has jeopardized the lives of others and the nation’s economic recovery. “There is no other way to beat the pandemic than to get the vast majority of the American people vaccinated,” Biden said in suburban Chicago at an event promoting the mandates. “While I didn’t race to do it right away, that’s why I’ve had to move toward requirements.” (Miller and Madhani, 10/7)

“I’ve tried everything in my power to get people vaccinated,” Biden said, naming lotteries, time off from work and providing the vaccine for free as incentives. “But even after all these efforts, we still had over a quarter of Americans eligible for vaccinations who didn’t get the shot. And we know there is no other way to end the pandemic than to get the vast majority of Americans vaccinated. “So while I didn’t race to do it right away, that’s why I’ve had to move toward requirements. . . . That wasn’t my first instinct,” Biden added, an acknowledgement of prior statements that he wouldn’t impose requirements. (Kopp, 10/7)

The Biden administration is preparing to enact vaccine mandates covering workers at large businesses, health care employers, and federal employees and contractors. The large-business mandate, which affects businesses with at least 100 employees, has the potential to dramatically boost the number of vaccinated Americans in counties where adult vaccination rates are lagging, according to a POLITICO analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and CDC data. Even so, pockets of unvaccinated adults would remain due to business size and because the mandate would not affect adults who aren’t working. (Thomas, Li, Rainey and Gardner, 10/7)

Companies from CVS Health to Tyson Foods to Walmart have adopted vaccine mandates for workers, a reflection of the fact that many C-suite executives still fear how any further Covid outbreaks could impact business. Chief financial officers view a Covid-19 outbreak as the biggest external risk factor that their businesses face, according to the CNBC Global CFO Council survey for the fourth quarter of 2021. (Thomas, 10/8)

Straining under a pandemic workload and battered by a string of public controversies, one of the leading agencies in the government’s fight against COVID-19 is finally on the verge of getting a new commissioner. After nearly nine months of searching, President Joe Biden says he’s close to naming his choice to lead the Food and Drug Administration, which oversees vaccines, drugs and tests. Former FDA officials and other experts say the decision cannot come soon enough for the agency’s beleaguered regulators. (Perrone, 10/8)

The tug of war between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and the Biden administration over mask mandates in schools escalated Thursday when the state Board of Education voted unanimously to penalize school districts that continue to require masks, a move the U.S. Department of Education warned could be illegal. The board found that eight districts were not in compliance with a new state law on parental rights and that they violated a recent state health department rule that says students exposed to the coronavirus cannot be ordered to quarantine if they are asymptomatic. (Rozsa and Strauss, 10/7)

San Francisco will loosen its mask mandate for certain indoor spaces on Oct. 15, but in the city and much of the rest of the Bay Area, people will still be required to wear face coverings in most public places for the next couple of months and possibly into 2022, according to new rules announced Thursday. In the eight Bay Area counties with indoor mask mandates, health officers will lift the local orders once they reach low COVID case and hospitalization rates and at least 80% of the total population is fully vaccinated. In lieu of the 80% goal, they can lift the mandates eight weeks after children ages 5 to 11 are eligible for vaccination; based on when federal authorization is expected, the earliest counties could meet that metric would be late December. (Allday, 10/7)

Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva said he will not force his employees to get vaccinated as required by a mandate the city council passed on Wednesday. "The issue has become so politicized," Villanueva said on Thursday. "There are entire groups of employees that are willing to be fired and laid off rather than get vaccinated, so I don't want to be in a position to lose 5 percent, 10 percent of my workforce overnight on a vaccine mandate." (Beals, 10/7)

The first state employees to lose a paycheck over a failure to comply with Gov. Ned Lamont’s COVID-19 vaccination-or-test mandate will come from a small pool of probationary employees, sources said Thursday. With compliance rates approaching 98%, the Lamont administration intends to make a measured first step Friday toward enforcing the mandate by suspending non-compliant workers still in their six-month test periods — a step tantamount to dismissal for those workers. (Pazniokas and Pananjady, 10/7)

Oklahoma’s top public education official on Thursday switched her party affiliation to Democratic and announced a bid for governor, blasting Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Joy Hofmeister, a lifelong member of the GOP first elected as state superintendent in 2014, stressed that her values have not changed and that her decision was not an easy one. But she said she was bothered by what she called Stitt’s “toothless health response.” She has previously broken with him over mask policies in schools. (Shammas, 10/7)

Nearly 15% of the students enrolled at Connecticut community colleges have received non-medical exemptions from the system’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, a rate that administrators suggested could be brought down with efforts to educate students about the vaccine. Of the 37,116 students enrolled at the state’s community colleges this semester, 71% are fully or partially vaccinated; 5,479 or 15% have received non-medical exemptions and 12% have not yet reported their status. Of the 22,698 who are studying on campus, 7,873 (79%) are fully or partially vaccinated, 2,030 (9%) have received non-medical exemptions and 2,423 (10.6%) have not yet reported their status. (Watson, 10/8)

Private school administrator Vic Michaels took notice when six students turned in mask waivers signed by a doctor located more than an hour away from their school. But when another set of families turned in similar waivers all signed by a doctor located hundreds of miles outside of Michigan, Michaels knew there was a broader problem. "When five families at a particular school can get a note from a doctor in Florida — the same doctor in Florida who doesn't tell us what their medical condition is, only that they can't wear a mask — there's a problem with that," said Michaels, an assistant superintendent with the Archdiocese of Detroit who oversees COVID-19 policies for 87 Catholic or private schools in six counties in southeast Michigan. (Boucher, 10/8)

Symptoms of depression and anxiety among U.S. adults fell over the first half of 2021, as Americans received COVID-19 vaccine shots and state lockdowns and other restrictions were lifted. According to a study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on Tuesday, increases and decreases in the frequency of reported symptoms at the state and national levels "mirrored the weekly number of new COVID-19 cases during the same period." (Musto, 10/7)

The union representing American Airlines warned that staffing shortages could start as the holiday travel season begins if employees lose their jobs for refusing to get the COVID vaccine. "What we're looking for is to ensure that there's a pilot in the cockpit," said Dennis Tajer, the spokesman for Allied Pilots Association. "If you suddenly one day have 4,000-plus pilots that are not able to fly, that's a big deal. That's worse than this past summer." But the largest pilots association and most major carriers — United Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue, Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines — confirm they will follow President Biden's executive order requiring workers to get the shots. (Barnett, 10/7)

America’s booster shots are booming. An NBC News analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows that the number of people receiving booster shots is outpacing those getting their first or second doses of the initial vaccination, and is contributing to a modest increase in Covid vaccinations in October. Of the 6.7 million shots administered from Sept. 30 to Oct. 6, nearly 2.7 million were booster shots. That’s compared to the nearly 2 million first doses and nearly 2 million second doses in the same period. (Ramos, 10/7)

Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on Thursday defended herself for having overruled an expert panel on whether health care workers and other frontline workers should be offered Covid-19 booster shots, saying her decision was based on how she would have voted, had she been able to cast a vote. Walensky insisted she made the call without consulting the White House, which had announced in mid-August a plan to give booster shots to all Americans 16 years of age and older, even though the Food and Drug Administration had not yet approved any company’s booster shots. Currently only one booster jab has been authorized — the one made by Pfizer and BioNTech. (Branswell and Gil, 10/7)

With federal health officials set to consider Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine for children 5 years and older, most Americans are slated to qualify for a shot soon. But a widening gap between vaccination rates could slow the country's progress in its fight against Covid-19, an expert warned Thursday. For 12-to-17-year-olds, a key demographic that lags other age groups with just 47% fully vaccinated nationwide, many Southern states are trailing even further behind. (Elamroussi, 10/8)

Parents tired of worrying about classroom outbreaks and sick of telling their elementary school-age children no to sleepovers and family gatherings felt a wave of relief Thursday when Pfizer asked the U.S. government to authorize its COVID-19 vaccine for youngsters ages 5 to 11. If regulators give the go-ahead, reduced-dose kids’ shots could begin within a matter of weeks. That could bring many families a step closer to being done with remote learning, virus scares and repeated school shutdowns and quarantines. (McDermott and Neergaard, 10/7)

Divorced parents who disagree about coronavirus vaccination are taking their fights to court. The tensions have been fueled by inconsistent mask rules, misinformation and reports of more children hospitalized for covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. ... Laws vary state to state. Jonathan Bates, a family lawyer in Dallas, says that in most Texas cases, “the parents each have the independent right to consent to noninvasive medical decisions.” But whether vaccination is invasive depends on whom you ask. (Nguyen, 10/7)

The devastating impact of the Delta variant helped push John Arthur Brown into action. Brown, an Atlanta photographer, had been reluctant to get vaccinated. “I was the hesitant one,’’ he said. His doubts were based on how quickly the Covid-19 vaccines were developed. He had what he called a mild case of Covid last June. But some time later, he began experiencing what he calls long-term Covid symptoms. “Much of it was fatigue,’’ he said. He recently read a Facebook post that said a person’s long-haul Covid symptoms had subsided after vaccination. With that in mind, and with Delta raging, Brown decided to get the shots in August. And he started feeling significantly better. (Miller, 10/7)

KHN: NY Reaches Agreement With DOJ Over Vaccine Access For Blind People 

Five New York state and local government agencies agreed to fix covid-19 vaccine websites to make them accessible for blind users following a Department of Justice investigation spurred by a KHN story. New York State’s Department of Health, the City of New York’s Department of Health, New York City Health and Hospitals Corp., Nassau County and Suffolk County entered into written agreements with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, saying they have corrected issues that prevent blind or visually impaired users from accessing forms or navigating vaccine websites. In the agreements announced Tuesday, they pledged to maintain accessibility on those sites. (Weber and Recht, 10/8)

KHN: Organ Centers To Transplant Patients: Get A Covid Shot Or Move Down On Waitlist 

A Colorado kidney transplant candidate who was bumped to inactive status for failing to get a covid-19 vaccine has become the most public example of an argument roiling the nation’s more than 250 organ transplant centers. Across the country, growing numbers of transplant programs have chosen to either bar patients who refuse to take the widely available covid vaccines from receiving transplants, or give them lower priority on crowded organ waitlists. Other programs, however, say they plan no such restrictions — for now. (Aleccia, 10/8)

Two new studies show the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine provided diminished protection over time against coronavirus infection, although one of them presented strong evidence the shots continue to offer powerful protection against severe COVID, hospitalization and death. The studies, conducted in Israel and Qatar, were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Both concluded that vaccine protection diminishes the most for people age 65 and older as well as the immunocompromised, supporting the Biden administration's moves to prioritize those groups for booster shots. (Bacon and Tebor, 10/7)

KHN: Covid Immunity Through Infection Or Vaccination: Are They Equal? 

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, a University of California-Irvine psychiatry professor, felt he didn’t need to be vaccinated against covid because he’d fallen ill with the disease in July 2020. So, in August, he sued to stop the university system’s vaccination mandate, saying “natural” immunity had given him and millions of others better protection than any vaccine could. A judge on Sept. 28 dismissed Kheriaty’s request for an injunction against the university over its mandate, which took effect Sept. 3. While Kheriaty intends to pursue the case further, legal experts doubt that his and similar lawsuits filed around the country will ultimately succeed. (Allen, 10/8)

A growing number of anecdotes about COVID-19 vaccines affecting a person's menstrual cycle is spurring attention and research funding. Efforts to halt the pandemic are being stymied by continued vaccine hesitancy, in part due to disinformation about side effects. A CDC scientist tells Axios "there is absolutely no evidence" that the altered periods reported by some are causing infertility, a common refrain among anti-vaxxers. "Women of childbearing age should absolutely be vaccinated," says CDC medical officer Christine Olson, who is head of the v-safe pregnancy registry. (O'Reilly, 10/7)

COVID-19 cases have been falling across the U.S. for weeks — and now deaths are finally on the decline, too. The Delta wave may truly be behind us, and though unvaccinated people in heavily unvaccinated areas will always remain at risk, getting the virus under control would allow the country as a whole to breathe a little easier this fall. The U.S. is now averaging roughly 102,000 new cases per day — a 22% drop over the past two weeks. (Baker, 10/7)

The U.S. is experiencing a decline in daily COVID-19 deaths after a two-month steady increase to mid-September, according to data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A seven-day moving average indicates a 12% decline over the last approximate two weeks, from 1,630 on Sept. 21 to 1,428 on Oct. 5, per the latest available figures. Nevertheless, the country logged a grim milestone late Friday when U.S. death toll from COVID-19 eclipsed 700,000. (Rivas, 10/7)

COVID-19 hospitalizations in Maine dropped by more than a quarter as of Thursday, a staggering change in a state where the delta variant surge and a workforce shortage have taxed health care providers for weeks. Hospitalizations dropped from 211 last Friday to 152 on Thursday, for a 28 percent decrease that played out differently across Maine’s biggest hospitals. Brewer-based Northern Light Health had 33 patients systemwide, compared with 65 a week prior, while MaineHealth had 60 cases system wide last Wednesday, up from 48 cases on Thursday. (Andrews, 10/8)

The number of Utahns who have died of COVID-19 since the start of the coronavirus pandemic now exceeds the number of victims who were killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Nine more Utahns died of the coronavirus in the past day, according to the Utah Department of Health. That brings the total number of deaths recorded since the pandemic began to 2,983 — six more than the number of victims killed on Sept. 11, 2001. A total of 2,977 victims were killed in the 9/11 attacks, not including the 19 terrorists who died after hijacking four planes. The victim death toll includes 2,606 killed at the World Trade Center site, 246 killed on the hijacked planes and 125 killed at the Pentagon. (Pierce, 10/7)

Each day in the last week, more than 375 children younger than 12 were infected with the coronavirus in Michigan, a new state analysis shows. Coronavirus cases in K-12 schools accounted for 56% of all known new outbreaks statewide last week — more than in every other setting combined, according to state health department data. In all, new and ongoing outbreaks and clusters affected at least 104 schools, causing children to lose instruction time because of illness or quarantine. Each outbreak was estimated to affect as many as 87 students and school staff members. (Jordan Shamus, 10/8)

Up until last week, Adrian James was a normal toddler who loved to jump on the couch, pretend to cook meals for his baby brother and sing his ABCs. He was especially proud of being able to name all the planets in the solar system. Now, Adrian needs high-flow oxygen through a tube in his nose, can’t eat on his own, won’t talk and struggles to sit up in his bed at SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital after a serious bout with COVID-19. (Munz, 10/7)

Over video calls from her bed in a Texas intensive care unit, Paige Ruiz gazed at the newborn girl who had gone home without her. Taking in baby Celeste’s round cheeks, brown eyes and fine hair, she sometimes became so overcome with longing that she started crying, recalled her mother, Robin Zinsou. Then crying would turn to coughing, and Ruiz would have to hang up. (Shammas, 10/7)

A Colorado woman who has stage 5 renal failure went on "The Ingraham Angle" Thursday to talk about being denied a kidney transplant due to her and her prospective donor's vaccination status. "I believe that my days are numbered as I continue to deteriorate in my GFR numbers," Leilani Lutali said. GFR, or glomerular filtration rate, measures how well the kidneys are functioning in filtering out toxins and waste from the blood. A number of 60 or higher is considered normal. Stage 5 is characterized by GFR numbers below 15, where the kidneys have almost or completely stopped their functioning. In September, the Colorado health system, UCHealth, denied the transplant due to the fact that she had not received a vaccine, Lutali said. (Grossman, 10/8)

Even after COVID-19 cases rose among children and district leaders worked to contain outbreaks among students, Pennsylvania schools have been slow to opt into a multimillion-dollar Wolf administration program providing free weekly testing. Just 396 schools signed up between mid-August and Sept. 30, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health. That’s out of more than 5,000 charter, private, and public schools statewide. Within that total, 60 of Pennsylvania’s 500 public school districts are represented — up from only 30 as of Sept. 14. Districts in Philadelphia and several of its collar counties are participating in a separate testing program. (Martines, 10/7)

As President Joe Biden puts his party on notice that the $3.5 trillion price tag on his social safety net agenda will get to secure a deal, congressional Democrats are confronting fresh divisions over how to scale back. In recent days, some Democrats have begun pushing to narrow the scope of the package to a few programs and to make them permanent so a future Republican-led Congress or White House cannot let them lapse. (Kapur and Caldwell, 10/8)

A group tied to major cigarette manufacturers is warning Congress that if lawmakers tax tobacco to help pay for President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda, suppliers will market smokes to children. That was the not-so-subtle message made last month by a coalition of trade associations, including the National Association of Convenience Stores, as Congress began hammering out the specifics of the president’s Build Back Better bill. (Fuchs, 10/7)

After weeks of brinkmanship, the Senate voted Thursday night to temporarily raise the debt limit by $480 billion until Dec. 3. The procedural move to break the GOP filibuster, which required 60 votes, was the first hurdle cleared, with a final count of 61-38. At least 10 Republicans needed to side with all Democrats to clear the hurdle to move forward to a final vote; 11 ultimately voted to advance the vote. (Turner, Pecorin and Cathey, 10/7)

In the days after cellphone camera-toting protesters trailed Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona into a university restroom to confront her for opposing parts of President Biden’s agenda, top Senate Democrats drafted a statement of outrage on behalf of their centrist colleague. “Following someone into a bathroom and filming the encounter is plainly inappropriate, and it crosses a clear line,” the senators wrote. “What happened in that video was a clear violation of Senator Sinema’s privacy that has no place in our public discourse, and we resolutely condemn it.” But the statement was never released. Senator Bernie Sanders, the progressive independent from Vermont, refused to sign after other Democrats rebuffed his demand that it include a call for Ms. Sinema to embrace Mr. Biden’s multitrillion-dollar social safety net, education, climate and tax plan. (Broadwater, 10/8)

Rep. Ro Khanna had a suggestion for President Joe Biden on a private conference call earlier this week: Have Sens. Joe Manchin and Bernie Sanders sit in the same room and try to cut a deal on the Democratic Party's massive social safety net expansion. Because once they do, the California Democrat suggested, it would almost certainly satisfy the moderate and liberal wings of the Democratic caucus, which have been battling over the size, scope and details of the plan for months. But Biden, according to multiple sources in the virtual meeting, told the progressive House Democrats that he's been in politics a long time -- and getting them together in the same room would almost be like "homicide." The group laughed, as Biden then made a joke about getting into the boxing ring with Khanna himself. (Raju, 10/8)

It was one of the great mysteries of his time in office. Why, exactly, did President Donald Trump make an unscheduled trip to Walter Reed National Medical Center one sunny Saturday afternoon in November 2019? A wide range of conspiracy theories was birthed from that moment — It was a heart ailment! He had a stroke! An impeachment driven anxiety attack? — further fueled by the fact that a White House famous for leaks steadfastly refused to explain it. Indeed, aides themselves didn’t know. And those who did were incredibly tight-lipped about it. Until now. (McGraw, 10/7)

At the time, the White House said Trump was at Walter Reed only for "a quick exam and labs" in order to get started on his annual physical, with Grisham herself dismissing what she called "conspiracy theories" about the hospital trip. A year later, however, New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt's book Donald Trump v. The United States reported that Trump's visit to Walter Reed came with serious implications: "In the hours leading up to Trump's trip to the hospital, word went out in the West Wing for the vice president to be on standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily if Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized." As Grisham writes in her book now, Trump opted not to go under anesthesia for the procedure, because he did not want Pence to take over the country, if only briefly. (Chamlee, 10/7)

President Donald Trump skipped anesthesia for a previously unreported 2019 colonoscopy at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center so he wouldn't have to temporarily relinquish his presidential powers, a new book says, according to The New York Times. Trump puzzled reporters with a mysterious, unscheduled November 2019 visit to Walter Reed and added to the confusion by saying the appointment was the first part of his routine annual physical, which is normally done in just one appointment. (Panetta and Lahut, 9/28)

Former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman in an interview that aired Sunday suggested former President Trump may not be in good enough physical condition to run for president again in 2024. "I think, going into 2024, I'm really more concerned that Donald Trump hasn't come forward and talked about his health," Manigault Newman said during an appearance on MSNBC."I don't know if he will even be healthy enough to run in 2024, and I think he needs to come clean to the American people about where he is on that before getting into a very stressful and strenuous race for the White House," added the former "Apprentice" contestant, who has known Trump for decades but fell out with the former president badly while he was in office. (Mastrangelo, 10/4)  

An artist has made a grim addition to former President Trump's Hollywood Walk of Fame star, installing a coffin that he says is in protest of those who oppose face masks and COVID-19 vaccines. The life-sized white coffin from Plastic Jesus, a Los Angeles-based street artist, could be seen Thursday on Trump's marker. "On the side it's got the 'USA Freedom Box,'" the artist said in an interview posted on Twitter. "It's really kind of a blow at the people saying vaccines and masks are impeding their freedoms," he said. "Once you're dead and you're in a coffin, you don't have any worries about losing freedoms." (Kurtz, 10/7)

In April 2017, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services grappled with an urgent request: how to get Tom Price from D.C. to a conference at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Laguna Niguel, Calif., after bad weather delayed the secretary’s planned flight aboard Delta Air Lines. ... Officials quickly secured a $29,000 charter flight — which also had to be scuttled, as tornadoes plagued the D.C. region. But the day’s events left a scar on Price’s top aides, who vowed that the Trump Cabinet official would never again wait on a commercial airline’s schedule, and foreshadowed a five-month travel sprint in which the health department spent $456,000 in taxpayer money on Price’s charter flights across the United States. (Diamond and Leonnig, 10/6)

Some clinics in Texas resumed performing abortions Thursday after a federal judge halted the state’s near-ban on the procedure, but others are waiting for a looming appeal to be resolved. U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday night that prevents enforcement of the new law known as Senate Bill 8. The law prohibits abortions after cardiac activity is detected in the fetus, usually around six weeks, and enlists private citizens to sue providers who violate the guidelines for damages of at least $10,000. The state said it will appeal. (Goldenstein and Blackman, 10/7)

Some Texas clinics again began performing abortions later than six weeks Thursday after a federal judge blocked a state law imposing a near ban on the procedure, while others are moving more slowly as legal challenges play out. Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four Texas abortion clinics, said it reached out Wednesday night to women who had been on a waiting list for abortions after being turned away in recent weeks. The Texas Heartbeat Act, also known as SB8, went into effect Sept 1. It prohibits abortions after an embryo’s cardiac activity can be detected, usually around six weeks into a pregnancy. (Findell, 10/7)

John Seago, legislative director of Texas Right to Life, which helped draft the law, said in an interview Thursday that he was confident any doctor who offered abortions would be sued if Pitman’s ruling is overturned. “The big question is, how will abortion providers respond?” Seago said. “They can’t just say, ‘I was acting under the protection of the injunction.’ Will a doctor or the industry be willing to take the risk?” The legal uncertainties have left Texas abortion providers in limbo. At Whole Woman’s Health, one of the largest abortion providers in Texas, the decision to perform the procedure after six weeks has been left to individual doctors. Many have opted to continue complying with the new law, said Joe Nelson, an abortion provider at Whole Woman’s Health in Austin. (Kitchener, Wax-Thibodeaux, Marimow and Parks, 10/7)

The day before a federal judge blocked enforcement of Texas' restrictive new abortion law, the parking lot of Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, La., was filled with Texas license plates. Women held the door open as the line spilled out onto the sidewalk and into the grass. "I drove 6 hours and 58 minutes," said M. from Corpus Christi, who didn't want to give her full name for privacy reasons. "I got here at 8:55 a.m. this morning. So I have not ate, we can't bring in anything to drink. My boyfriend's in the car asleep." M. is 20 years old and a college student. She says she worked double shifts at her service job all weekend to be able to afford the trip. (McCammon, Hodges and Mehta, 10/7)

Just after 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, federal court staff in Austin uploaded a 113-page document that — at least in theory — alters the way abortion services are provided for thousands of patients in Texas. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert L. Pitman is a scathing rebuke of SB 8, the Texas law that imposed the harshest restriction on abortion since Roe v. Wade. The judge highlights the fact that the law hangs the responsibility of enforcement on citizens and writes of “the absurdity and perversity of a law that incentivizes people who do not disagree with abortion care to sue abortion providers to make a quick buck.” (Banks, 10/7)

Actor Matthew McConaughey still isn’t ready to say if he’s running for governor, but the Uvalde native offered a sliver of insight into his political position on abortion during an interview on a podcast with the New York Times. McConaughey repeatedly veered away from policy specifics but made clear he is not a fan of Senate Bill 8, the legislation that has effectively banned abortion in Texas. McConaughey said parts of the law, which was blocked by a federal judge Wednesday evening, are “a little juvenile” and said he didn’t agree with not having any exceptions for women who are victims of rape or incest. “I’ve got a problem with that,” McConaughey said. (Wallace, 10/7)

KHN: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: Abortion Politics Front And Center

Abortion, an issue that has mostly been simmering under the surface lately, is taking center stage in fights at the Supreme Court, in Congress and in the states, as the fate of legalized abortion in the United States hangs in the balance. Meanwhile, Congress flirted with disaster as it appeared unlikely to meet deadlines to approve a series of budget bills, including an extension of the federal government’s lending authority. But lawmakers found ways to extend programs long enough to continue negotiating through the fall. (10/7)

The Manatee County Commission was considering a plan to explore banning abortions, and Carol Whitmore seemed to be a likely "yes" vote. She is a longtime Republican, serving on a board that is mostly Republican, in a county that voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. But when it was her turn to speak during deliberations last month, Whitmore publicly revealed an experience she'd only talked about in private: She had an abortion in 1973, the year Roe v. Wade was decided. She was a teenager then, pregnant from a nonconsensual relationship, and an aunt had given her the $150 needed for the procedure after her parents kicked her out of the house. “Do I regret it? Yes,” Whitmore said. “Do I still believe women should be pro-choice? Yes.” (Rozsa and Wax-Thibodeaux, 10/7)

Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin are continuing to push for changes to Wisconsin abortion laws, despite previous vetoes from Gov. Tony Evers. A state Assembly committee heard several hours of testimony on Thursday on a number of bills that would put new requirements and restrictions on abortion providers and cut off state funding for Planned Parenthood. Four of the bills were approved by the GOP-controlled Legislature last session and later vetoed by the governor. (White, 10/7)

New rules issued by Missouri's health department last week will tighten inspections for abortion facilities and could put the state's last provider at risk of losing Medicaid funds. Released by the Department of Health and Senior Services, the regulations increase scrutiny of health inspections and record-keeping, and allow the department to share that information with the Department of Social Services. DSS could then decide to cut off Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood, which operates the state's only abortion clinic in St. Louis. (Bacharier , 10/7)

A Yellowstone County District Court judge has blocked three abortion restrictions from taking effect while the case about their constitutionality proceeds. The ruling from Judge Michael Moses came a week after he issued a temporary restraining order in the same case prohibiting the state from enforcing the bills for 10 days following their Oct. 1 effective date. (Silvers, 10/7)

Florida hospitals are facing skyrocketing costs for temporary contract nurses as the COVID-19 pandemic burns out longtime staff members and workforce shortages continue to worsen. As staffing agencies for travel nurses double and triple their fees to hospitals, the Florida Hospital Association is tracking complaints of price gouging in other states. California's hospital association last month asked the state Department of Justice to conduct a probe on behalf of its 400 hospitals. (Freeman, 10/7)

It was one week in November. Every day, Illinois nurse Jacob Forsman had a COVID-19 patient. And every day, that patient died by noon. “That was for three days in a row,” he said. “That one just broke me.” Nearly a year later, he had hoped to be finished with COVID-19 body bags. But Forsman, an intensive care unit charge nurse at Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital, is one of the many hospital workers who continue to treat severely ill COVID-19 patients, a year and a half into a pandemic that many knew would be a slog but most had hoped would ease by now. “I think the reality has sunk in for me that we’re shifting into the year 2022, and it’s called COVID-19,” Forsman said. (Bowen and Schencker, 10/7)

Kira Farrington entered the nursing workforce last year as the COVID-19 pandemic took the world in its grasp. As part of a condition of her hire at an HCA Healthcare facility in Asheville, North Carolina, she had to sign a contract that bound her to the system for two years and carried a penalty of to $10,000 if she left sooner. "That's just not feasible for me who's a fairly new nurse and single mom," Farrington said. "It's a financial burden." National Nurses United, a union representing more than 175,000 members nationwide, believes contracts like that are "exploitative" and is asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate. "The true intent of the contracts is to indenture nurses to the employers," the union said in a news release. (Christ, 10/7)

When Keith Schroth, chief finance officer for the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, pushed for a hefty pay bump for his son who works there, the center’s human resources director called the request “infuriating and ridiculous” and urged her bosses to shoot it down. Jeremy Schroth didn’t get the raise, but he was named head of a new department, a move that also meant he would report to a new supervisor who worked closely with his father. The human resources director said she feared for her job after shooting down the raise and criticizing Jeremy Schroth’s work performance. She was fired in April. (Cranney, 10/7)

Mortimer Mishkin, a neuroscientist who received the National Medal of Science for his role in unlocking some of the most vexing mysteries of the brain, including how memories are made and kept, died Oct. 2 at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 94.His daughter Wendy Mishkin confirmed his death but did not cite a cause. (Langer, 10/6)

Early in her time as a medical student in the late 1950s, Paula J. Clayton watched a psychiatrist analyze a patient with clinical depression. The doctor, who had herself been analyzed by both Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud and now taught at Washington University in St. Louis, asked the patient to explain his dreams, and the two spent time discussing what they meant. But when the session was over, the doctor did something that Freud would never have done: She prescribed electroshock therapy. (Risen, 10/7)

A former Veterans Affairs employee says he notified managers last year about pallets of unopened mail — containing thousands of personal medical records and close to $200,000 in checks meant to go to medical providers — that sat for months in an Atlanta hospital basement. James Bell, who left his job as a warehouse supervisor four months ago, said he heard about the mail being stored in a rented space and had it taken to the Atlanta VA Health Care Center hospital in Decatur. He told managers about it. “This is serious. Veterans’ identities could have been stolen,” the 64-year-old Bell told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday. The unopened mail also may have led to unpaid doctors bills that resulted in liens being filed or legal actions taken against veterans, he said. (Quinn, 10/7)

Palantir Technologies Inc. said Thursday it won a contract with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the latest in a steady drumbeat of new government deals for the company. The contract -- a $90 million, four-year deal -- comes just days after Palantir renewed and expanded contracts with the U.S. Army and the National Institutes of Health. Those deals are worth nearly $900 million over several years. (Chapman, 10/7)

The owner of seven nursing homes that evacuated 843 residents to a squalid warehouse for Hurricane Ida has filed appeal documents to get his nursing home licenses back, arguing that the residents faced "no cruelty or indifference," though residents and their families have described living in inhumane conditions. In an Oct. 5 letter to the Louisiana Department of Health announcing that he would appeal his license revocations, Dean's attorney argued that the warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish had ample space and supplies for the 843 residents who he evacuated there. The storm was not expected to hit Independence, and its last-minute change in trajectory caused unexpected problems at the site. (Gallo and Simerman, 10/7)

University Medical Center is donating $12 million in in-kind services, programs and cash to a campaign to expand a transplantation center in Las Vegas, the Nevada Donor Network Foundation announced Wednesday. The donation is part of the foundation’s End the Wait capital campaign to raise $35 million to add more transplantation services and programs in Nevada. UMC is the state’s only transplantation center, providing kidney transplants. Currently, residents who need other organ, tissue and eye transplants must go to medical centers in surrounding states. (Ross, 10/7)

Money is flowing heavily into the business of medical billing as hospitals and doctors — whose revenues were disrupted by the coronavirus — focus on maximizing every dollar they can collect from patients and insurers. The rise and even existence of the billing industry is the result of a fragmented system that is designed around multiple types of insurance plans and a system that has increasingly forced patients to shoulder more of the costs of their care. (Herman, 10/8)

Senators and healthcare IT experts on Thursday raised concern that many Americans won't be able to benefit from virtual care services without affordable high-speed internet access across the country, and it's unclear where the bill should go. Telehealth proved essential for helping patients access healthcare services in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. "The digital divide is standing in our way of connecting all Americans to this vital service," said Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), chair of the Senate's Subcommittee on Communications, Media and Broadband, during Thursday's hearing. "We must connect every American to high-quality, affordable, resilient broadband—without it, the current patterns of inequity will continue to grow." (Kim Cohen, 10/7)

In a setback to AbbVie (ABBV), a U.S. federal court judge dismissed a lawsuit in which the drug maker claimed a would-be rival hired one of its employees, who then allegedly transferred a boatload of confidential information about its best-selling Humira treatment. AbbVie had contended that Alvotech recruited Rongzan Ho in its quest to jumpstart its entry into the market for biosimilar versions of Humira. The biologic treatment is widely prescribed to combat rheumatoid arthritis, among other ailments, and racked up $19.8 billion in worldwide sales last year, including $16.1 billion in the U.S. The medicine accounted for 43% of its revenue. (Silverman, 10/7)

Allogene Therapeutics said Thursday that the Food and Drug Administration had placed a hold on its clinical trials after a patient with blood cancer treated with its off-the-shelf CAR-T cell therapy was found to have a “chromosomal abnormality.” An investigation is underway to determine what might have caused the unexpected changes to the engineered T cells that make up the Allogene treatment, the company said. At this time, the clinical significance to the patient remains unclear. (Feuerstein, 10/7)

Combining Amgen’s KRAS-blocking cancer drug Lumakras with other targeted medicines led to higher rates of side effects without improving tumor responses, according to preliminary results from two clinical trials released Thursday. Amgen secured U.S. approval of Lumakras in May to treat patients with lung cancer caused by a genetic mutation to the KRAS protein. In the future, combining Lumakras with other targeted drugs may lead to more effective treatments for patients with cancer, but the data revealed Thursday show that goal not yet within reach. (Feuerstein, 10/7)

New research shows that roughly 40% of the deaths caused by the most common antibiotic-resistant infections occur in American 65 years and older. In a study published today in Clinical Infectious Diseases, researchers estimated that in 2017, more than 11,000 Americans 65 and over died from community- and hospital-onset invasive infections caused by six resistant bacterial pathogens. According to the most recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), those same pathogens killed an estimated 30,000 Americans in 2017. (Dall, 10/7)

For more than a decade, psychiatry has been a graveyard for new medicines. While in the 1990s and 2000s the pharmaceutical industry became rich off of the profits from big-name drugs like Prozac and Abilify, in recent years many firms have exited the neuroscience business entirely. Recent attempts to re-enter it have been underwhelming. On Thursday, ARCH Venture Partners, one of the biotechnology industry’s top venture capital firms, revealed new details about a company it has started to try to re-ignite the development of medicines for diseases such as depression, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s. Neumora, a roll-up of assets from several biotech firms and from the drug giant Amgen, is backed with $500 million in funding from ARCH and at least 12 other investors. (Herper, 10/7)

More than two dozen of the largest universities and hospitals in Europe have shown a “dramatic improvement” in reporting clinical trial results and most are actively working to clear their backlogs of missing results to a European Union database, according to a new analysis. The 26 research institutions have run nearly 4,600 trials testing medicines and, so far, 641 sets of results have been made available. Of the 2,300 of those studies with results due to be reported to the EU Clinical Trials Register, 28% have now been submitted. Only five trial sponsors have not shown any sign of progress, and all of these are located in Italy and the Netherlands. (Silverman, 10/7)

Eighteen former NBA players were charged Thursday with pocketing about $2.5 million illegally by defrauding the league’s health and welfare benefit plan in a scam that authorities said involved claiming fictitious medical and dental expenses. “The defendants’ playbook involved fraud and deception,” U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss told a news conference after FBI agents across the country arrested 15 ex-players and one of their wives in a three-year conspiracy that authorities say started in 2017. According to an indictment returned in Manhattan federal court, the ex-players teamed up to defraud the supplemental coverage plan by submitting fraudulent claims to get reimbursed for medical and dental procedures that never happened. (Neumeister and Reynolds (AP), 10/7)

Greg Smith had been out of the National Basketball Association for about two years in December 2018, when the former power forward for the Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks had what appeared to be a long day at a dental office in Beverly Hills. Invoices submitted on his behalf showed that he received IV sedation and root canals, and had crowns placed on eight teeth. But the invoices, totaling $47,900, were fake, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said on Thursday. (Weiser and Bromwich, 10/7)

In one instance, she said, an ex-player was playing basketball in Taiwan when he was supposedly getting $48,000 worth of root canals and crowns on eight teeth at a Beverly Hills, California, dental office in December 2018.The indictment said the scheme was carried out from at least 2017 to 2020, when the plan — funded primarily by NBA teams — received false claims totaling about $3.9 million. Of that, the defendants received about $2.5 million in fraudulent proceeds. (Neumeister and Reynolds, 10/7)

The Drug Enforcement Administration is investigating Ryan Vermillion, the Washington Football Team’s director of sports medicine and head athletic trainer, for the possible disbursement of prescription drugs, according to a person with direct knowledge of the investigation. Federal law prohibits anyone other than a physician or nurse practitioner from giving out prescription medication, and it bars physicians from dispensing prescription drugs where he or she is unauthorized to practice. (Jhabvala, 10/7)

The majority of Americans believe U.S. politicians and social media companies spread misinformation online more than China, Russia, or other foreign governments, a poll released Friday found.  According to a poll carried out by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs and the University of Chicago’s Pearson Institute, around three-quarters of respondents believe that politicians, social media companies, and social media users are responsible for spreading misinformation.  (Miller, 10/8)

YouTube decided last month to ban "harmful vaccine content" from the site, thereby cutting off a major vector of misinformation. Yet one especially high-profile and dangerous vaccine misinformation channel in Germany remains up and running. When tech giants announce major policy changes, there's always a suspicion they're doing so for their domestic audience, and specifically for U.S. journalists and policymakers. Which makes it easy for them to ignore content made in Berlin. (Salmon and McGill, 10/7)

YouTube soon won’t have worry about taking down St. Louis County Council meetings over people making false or unproven claims about COVID-19 and vaccines. After Oct. 19, all council meetings will be exclusively streamed to a new streaming platform, BoxCast. The County began looking for a new video host in August after YouTube temporarily censored at least four council meetings for violating guidelines barring COVID-19 misinformation. (Benchaabane, 10/7)

College football stadiums across Florida with tens of thousands of non-masked, screaming students and boosters packed closely together have so far resulted in no recognizable community outbreaks amid the pandemic, according to infection figures on the state’s biggest campuses. The season began amid fears that big games could become super-spreader events. Now, nearly halfway through the season – which kicked off as the highly infectious Delta variant was still spreading across the U.S. – the days and weeks after home games showed no significant surges on college campuses. (Velazquez, 10/7)

The CDC says its investigation into a Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak that was linked to packaged salads from BrightFarms has come to an end; it confirmed 31 cases in 4 states—Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania—20 more than in its most recent update. Four people were hospitalized during this outbreak, and no deaths were reported. Illness-onset dates range from Jun 10 to Aug 18. Illinois had the most illnesses, with 18, followed by Wisconsin (10), Pennsylvania (2), and Michigan (1). (10/7)

More than 4 in 10 Americans aren't sure about or aren't planning on getting a flu shot this year, a new survey found, in a worrying trend public health experts say could exacerbate a worse-than-average flu season. Last year's worries around a "twindemic" of influenza and COVID-19 overwhelming hospitals around the nation luckily went unfounded after a historically mild flu season. But with COVID-19 vaccinations affording many people a return to more "normal" lives of socialization and in-person work during flu season, hospitals and health systems could be strained in parts of the country where vaccination against both viruses remains low, doctors say. (Miller, 10/7)

Sarah Noll Wilson started feeling the sharp pain in her right shoulder last July any time she would try to reach her arm behind her. “It got to the point where it was like take-your-breath-away pain,” said Noll Wilson, 40, of Des Moines. “I knew it wasn’t right, but because it would only happen at certain times at that point, I didn’t think it was as serious as it was.” That pain, Noll Wilson later came to learn, marked the beginning of a condition that would disrupt her life for months: frozen shoulder. (Chiu, 10/7)

California just became the first state in the U.S. to outlaw 'stealthing,' a slang term for the nonconsensual removal of a condom during sex. The law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday, makes it a civil offense under state law for someone to remove a condom without their romantic partner's consent. "For a majority of the people, it's like, yeah, it makes sense that this is immoral and it should be illegal," State Assemblymember Cristina Garcia, who sponsored the legislation, told NPR. (Hernandez, 10/7)

Three lead risk assessors in the Milwaukee Health Department received letters notifying them that their work failed to meet state standards — and more notices are expected related to the long-troubled program that is now under greater state scrutiny.  The "notices of noncompliance" issued by the state Department of Health Services on Aug. 5 were related to six assessments of lead hazards conducted in homes where children had elevated levels of lead in their blood. Two of the assessments involved multiple units at the same street address, according to DHS. (Dirr, 10/7)

The signs on the side of the Community School for People Under Six, a child care and early learning center in Carrboro, were decorated on Thursday with large, brightly colored letters. “WELCOME,” the top banner stated. “Welcome Governor Roy Cooper” was spelled out across another one. With sounds of children playing outdoors in the background, Cooper and U.S. Rep. David Price, a Democrat whose congressional district includes Carrboro and all of Orange County, made an announcement outside the 51-year-old school that will be welcomed by many in the child care industry. (Blythe, 10/8)

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear floated a plan Monday to use $400 million of federal funds next year to give bonuses to front-line essential workers employed throughout two full years of the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposal received some tentative support from health care groups, along with some initial uncertainty over including bonuses for non-health workers and waiting until next year to implement them instead of a special session this fall. (Sonka, 10/7)

KHN: From Sewers To Golf Courses, Cities See Green With New Federal Covid Relief Dollars 

Duluth, Minnesota, is hiring a social worker to help people with addiction and mental health problems. Pueblo, Colorado, started paying homeless residents to clean city streets. Palm Beach Gardens, Florida — in Palm Beach County, home to 160 golf courses — is building a new golf course. These are among the thousands of ways cities and counties have started spending the first tranche of covid relief money from the American Rescue Plan Act passed by Congress in March. (Galewitz, 10/8)

Vaccine maker Moderna is resisting pressure from the White House to increase international donations of its Covid-19 shot in 2022, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter. The Biden administration has urged Moderna for months to increase its production domestically, in an attempt to help deliver on the president’s pledge to make the U.S. “an arsenal of vaccines” for the world. The White House has donated tens of millions of Moderna doses abroad. Its push for more comes despite the company’s agreement to supply 500 million doses to low- and middle-income countries, including 34 million doses this year, through the international vaccine aid program known as the COVAX Facility. (Banco, Cancryn and Owermohle, 10/7)

Around the world this spring, country after country awaited their first Covid-19 vaccine shipments. They’d been promised deliveries by COVAX, the ambitious global collaboration set up to give people in rich and poor nations equitable access to the shots, but now, the vaccines were failing to arrive. In many cases, COVAX officials wouldn’t even answer the phone or respond to emails from top diplomats when asked what was happening. (Rosa Furneaux and Olivia Goldhill, 10/8)

Amid intense concern that low-income countries lack access to Covid-19 vaccines, Moderna (MRNA) announced plans to build a manufacturing plant in Africa that can produce up to 500 million doses each year for different diseases in a bid to combat the pandemic and other illnesses on a wider scale. But the move was quickly panned by patient advocates who saw a public relations gambit for thwarting efforts to convince drug makers to share technology, which could be used by other companies to boost vaccine production for global distribution more quickly. (Silverman, 10/7)

A Swedish study found that a modest $24 incentive increased vaccination rates, lending support to measures that aim to get more people to take Covid jabs by handing out cash. The study, led by researchers at Lund University, found that the vaccination rate increased by 4% among participants who were offered 200 Swedish kronor, or $24, to get the jab. The effect was seen across all ages, genders and levels of education, Erik Wengstrom, professor of economics at Lund University, said. (Rolander, 10/8)

The U.K is mounting a drive to give 35 million people the flu shot as fears rise that respiratory illnesses will surge after months of lockdown lowered immunity levels. Extremely low flu infection rates when people were socially distanced means deaths could rise this winter, when Covid and influenza viruses will be circulating at the same time. This marks the largest flu vaccine program in the country’s history, the Department of Health said in a statement on Friday. The health department has launched a campaign to highlight the impact the combination of Covid and flu can have and encourage those eligible to book free flu vaccines and Covid booster shots as soon as possible. This is in part to help ease pressure on the National Health Service. (Leon, 10/8)

The World Health Organization's decision to recommend the widespread use of a long-awaited vaccine against malaria is an endorsement of the African scientists involved in developing it, a top official in the global health body told CNN on Thursday. Dr. Akpaka Kalu, WHO Regional Advisor for Tropical and Vector-borne Disease, said positive results from ongoing pilot programs of malaria vaccinations in three African countries -- Ghana, Malawi and Kenya -- had led the organization to recommend widespread use of RTS,S/AS0 or Mosquirix among children in sub-Saharan Africa. "The datasets that were generated in these studies and field trials were by African scientists," Kalu said. (Adebayo, 10/7)

Policymakers and health experts have welcomed the WHO’s authorization of the first ever malaria vaccine, which could be rolled out in sub-Saharan Africa by the end of 2022. The WHO signed off on wider use of GSK’s RTS,S malaria vaccine following pilot programs in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, which tracked 800,000 children since 2019. GSK Chief Global Health Officer Thomas Breuer said the vaccine, which began development in 1987, can “reinvigorate the fight against malaria in the region at a time when progress on malaria control has stalled.” (Smith, 10/8)

Have you ever been insulted by your own medical records? Medical jargon can be confusing, but it can also sometimes hurt a patient’s feelings. This week on Twitter, a group of health care workers shared stories of patients who became upset after reading the physician notes in their medical records. One patient read the notes from her colonoscopy report, which included a reference to a “time out.” The woman reportedly was upset by this, and called her doctor saying she was “well behaved during the procedure and did not need a ‘time out.’” (Parker-Pope, 9/30)

Jason Klein was umpiring a minor-league game in Durham, N.C., in 2007 when a business idea hit him in the face—literally.A foul tip slammed directly into Klein’s chin so viciously that he immediately turned to the catcher and asked if he was bleeding and still had all his teeth. He couldn’t feel anything. The blow left him incapacitated for several minutes. Umpires call a ball in that spot a “kill shot.” ... When his brain stopped rattling and the stars disappeared from his eyes, Klein realized there had to be a better way to protect umpires from this sort of trauma. It led to him creating the Force3 Defender mask, which uses a spring-cushioned shock-absorbing system to take the brunt of the force from foul tips. The son of a metallurgist and a teacher, Klein spent five years researching, developing and testing the product, which aims to minimize the risk of concussions and other head injuries. (Diamond, 10/4)

Say you’re a 65-year-old looking ahead, wondering about your health and your finances, pondering what life might be like in 20 years. You might get lucky, like Susan Green, a retired social worker. At 82, she enjoys hiking, golfing and cross-country skiing (although she has given up downhill) with her husband in Ketchum, Idaho. The only assistance they need: a weekly housekeeper. Or you might be as fortunate as Sally Dorst, also 82, a retired magazine editor who lives on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. A committed museum visitor and concertgoer (we couldn’t talk the first time I called because Ms. Dorst was attending the New York City Ballet’s reopening performance), she manages personal care and household tasks on her own, including toting heavy bags of litter home for her two cats. (Span, 10/2)

You might think of pull-ups as an upper-body exercise you’d never have the strength to tackle, but your first one might be closer than you think. While you need full-body strength, tenacity and patience to master the move, according to Angela Gargano — a certified personal trainer, four-time “American Ninja Warrior” contestant and founder of Strong Feels Good — it’s worth it. “Being able to lift yourself above a bar is invigorating,” she says. (Moore, 10/6)

Many people first learned about a pulse oximeter in the early days of the pandemic, after doctors warned that some patients with Covid-19 develop a form of oxygen deprivation called “silent hypoxia,” which occurs when blood oxygen levels drop so slowly that a patient doesn’t notice anything is wrong. Often these patients are so ill by the time they get to the hospital that they need to be put on a ventilator. New research from South Africa shows that using a pulse oximeter to check oxygen levels after a Covid diagnosis really does save lives. For the study, 8,115 high-risk patients were given a pulse oximeter to use at home after Covid-19 was diagnosed. The study focused on the highest-risk patients, including older people, those who were pregnant or those with chronic illnesses like heart disease, hypertension or diabetes. (Parker-Pope, 10/5)

For months, the postcards and letters have flowed in from across the world, slipped under the door of Drew Weissman’s austere fourth-floor office at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Brisbane, Australia. Lynnwood, Wash. New York City. In looping cursive, strangers write to thank this reticent 62-year-old scientist whose years of painstaking work with a scientific partner, Katalin Kariko, formed the backbone of coronavirus vaccines. “You’ve made hugs and closeness possible again.” (Johnson, 10/1)

Nearly three decades ago, Katalin Kariko called her husband and 10-year-old daughter into her home office in the Philadelphia suburbs to share a thrilling new scientific idea. “You have to sit down and now listen to my argument!” she told them. Kariko, a research assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, told her family about a fragile genetic material called messenger RNA. This profound molecule, a simple strand of four chemical letters, instructed cells how to make proteins. (Johnson, 10/1)

Weeks before the pandemic was officially a pandemic, vaccine scientist Barney Graham spent long days in a public health war room in Geneva. he death toll from the novel coronavirus had just passed 1,000. Graham and hundreds of other experts descended on a massive circular table at the World Health Organization’s headquarters for an urgent global brainstorming session: How could science help? (Johnson, 10/1)

“Fauci,” the new National Geographic documentary about Anthony S. Fauci airing on Disney Plus, kicks off in a fairly surprising way: with a chorus of skeptical, even contemptuous sound bites about the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). “Tony Fauci has not been elected to anything. He’s had the same job for nearly 40 years. That means the majority of American voters never even indirectly picked him,” says one commentator. “Yet in the last four months, Fauci has become one of the most powerful people in the world.” (Maloy, 10/6)

Joseph A. Ladapo, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ pick to be Florida’s next surgeon general, looks great on paper. He has medical and doctoral degrees from Harvard University and has held professorships at prestigious schools like New York University and UCLA. But public health experts and some Florida lawmakers have expressed grave concerns with Ladapo. Some say he lacks experience in public health policy. Others point to Ladapo’s questioning of the safety of Covid-19 vaccines or the effectiveness of lockdowns and mask mandates. He has also raised eyebrows for his support of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug heralded as a coronavirus treatment by former President Donald Trump. The FDA later withdrew emergency authorization for its use. (Sarkissian, 9/29)

A new pill to treat people with Covid-19 may be given emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before year’s end. The data from a late-stage clinical trial suggest that the drug, molnupiravir, can protect patients who are treated within the first five days of feeling symptoms — lowering their risk of hospitalization and death by half. But who will get them and how will they work? In this Q&A, Max Nisen and Sam Fazeli, who cover health care and the pharmaceutical industry for Bloomberg Opinion and Bloomberg Intelligence, discuss the first Covid-19 oral antivirals. (Fazeli and Nisen, 10/7)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is begging pregnant women to get the COVID-19 vaccine, and outcomes in our own backyard show why that plea is so urgent. A study by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers published in a medical journal this fall looked at data regarding pregnant Parkland patients spanning more than a year. Only one of the 82 pregnant patients hospitalized for severe COVID-19 was vaccinated. (10/7)

In 2015, in reaction to a measles outbreak linked to a single visitor to Disneyland, the state Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown banned “personal belief” vaccine exemptions for students. This recognized the obvious: Schools would never be safe if large numbers of parents who bought into anti-vaccination conspiracy theories could readily keep their kids from getting the shots needed to create herd immunity to infectious diseases. (10/7)

The Cancer Statistics Center estimates that 20,160 new cases of breast cancer have been diagnosed in the state of Florida this year. On Monday, that estimate grew by at least one: That is when Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that his wife, Casey — Florida's first lady — has breast cancer. We wish her the very best in medical care, in emotional support, in overcoming and in healing. Casey DeSantis is the mother of three small children and she is, as the governor said, "the centerpiece of our family." No doubt, women across the state can relate. The governor's very personal, very moving announcement coincides with the start of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which began on Oct. 1. (10/7)

Medical algorithms are used across the health care spectrum to diagnose disease, offer prognosis, monitor patients’ health and assist with administrative tasks such as scheduling patients. But recent news in the U.S. is filled with stories of these technologies running amok. From sexual trauma victims being unfairly labeled as “high-risk” by substance-abuse-scoring algorithms to diagnostic algorithms failing to detect sepsis cases in more than 100 health systems nationwide to clinical decision support (CDS) software systematically discriminating against millions of Black patients by discouraging necessary referrals to complex care—this problem abounds. And it extends our pandemic as well. In a review of 232 machine-learning algorithms designed to detect COVID-19, none were of clinical use. (Soleil Shah and Abdul El-Sayed, 10/7)

Much of the current drug-pricing agenda proposed by President Biden and by Congress is based on the belief that greater government control — rather than free market competition — is the best way to lower drug prices. This view that competition is not working is particularly true for U.S. biosimilars, which enter the market after patents on a biologic drug expire. (Dana P. Goldman and Tomas J. Philipson, 10/8)

President Biden's multi-trillion-dollar "Build Back Better" spending plan includes a proposal to radically expand health care. The President believes that his plan will make health care more affordable, but it's sparked a bitter partisan debate with Republicans that could leave the American people with no help or even worse off than before. But there is another way—a bipartisan way—to make health care more accessible: Let health savings accounts restore the rights of workers to control their health care dollars and choose their health plan. This would solve another problem, too: the fact that for 100 years, Congress has violated Americans' health care rights by taxing workers who want to make their own health care decisions. (Michael F. Cannon, 10/7)