by Julia Sneden
The other day at the doctor’s office, I noticed that his nurse, Karen, had a new, really short hairdo. When I commented on it (because it did look very unusual for her), she rolled her eyes, and groaned “Right. Short.”
“Blame my hairdresser,” she said. “She’s someone who loves to talk about herself and her problems. She and her husband have been in the process of separating or of reconciling, alternately and non-stop, for years. The worse her life gets, the shorter she cuts my hair. When I had an appointment the other day, I learned that she was having husband trouble yet again, and wanted to tell me all about it. She just grew angrier and angrier as she spoke, snip-snip-snip, and by the time she was through with her sorry tale, I was nearly bald.
“The visit before that one, she and her husband had recently made up. Beyond offering that information, she just gave a dreamy smile and said not another word. She quietly shaped my hair with a light hand, and I was in and out in less than ten minutes. My hair looked great.
“I’ve been going to her for a long time, and she’s a great hair person, but by now I should have known enough to walk out as soon as she said: ‘Well, the rat is gone again.’ She carried on for about 30 minutes, and my hair just kept getting shorter and shorter. That was two weeks ago, and I still don’t recognize myself in the mirror.”
It’s a funny little story, but it triggered something that got me to thinking about the effect that a hairdo can have on one’s equilibrium. Anyone who has ever suffered a disastrous haircut can relate to Karen’s story.
There’s no question that hair occupies an absurdly powerful position in relation to a woman’s self-esteem. Why else have so many of us fallen in with the kill-the-gray, color-in-a-bottle industry?
Our skin may crinkle and sag; the roses in our cheeks may fade; our eyesight may mandate bifocals; our undergarments may sequé from lacy, sexy stuff to sturdy cotton-cum-underwire; our fingernails may ridge-up or turn brittle; our feet may grow calluses or odd bumps: but somehow we can live with those changes, and maybe even take them with a sense of humor.
But when hair begins to thin, and patches of pink scalp show through; when curly hair becomes limp or limp hair develops odd cowlicks where none ever existed; when hair absolutely refuses to be controlled by gel or spray or hot curler or back-brushing, a woman finds herself bang up against that universal truth: Hair matters.
I recall the blue hair of my high school history teacher, back in the pre-Clairol days when, if they were over 60, ladies who regularly put bluing into their loads of white laundry always saved a few drops for their post-shampoo rinse. My teacher obviously had a rather heavy hand in the matter, as her hair often verged on a blue that was closer to lavender.
Stanford Medicine: COVID-19 Vaccine Effective in People Wth Cancer
The Moderna and Pfizer BioNTech vaccines prevented COVID-19 infection in cancer patients, particularly in those whose treatment concluded more than six months before vaccination, say researchers at Stanford, Harvard and the Veterans Administration.
By Krista Conger, December 2, 2021
Julie Wu
The mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing infection in most cancer patients, according to a nationwide study of veterans diagnosed with cancer in the past decade.
But the researchers found that some vaccinated patients, including those who had received therapies that suppressed their immune systems within the six months before vaccination, were less protected than their peers from COVID-19 infection for the duration of the study.
“We know that, in general, cancer patients with COVID-19 have poor outcomes,” said postdoctoral scholar Julie Tsu-Yu Wu, MD, PhD. “Our goal was to identify those patients who might benefit from additional interventions like a vaccine booster shot or who should be candidates after exposure for prophylactic interventions like oral antivirals or monoclonal antibody treatments. But the main finding of our study is that COVID-19 vaccination is an effective way to prevent infection in most cancer patients.”
Wu shares lead authorship of the study, which will be published Dec. 2 in JAMA Oncology, with Jennifer La, PhD, a principal data scientist at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System. Senior authors of the study are Albert Lin, MD, staff physician at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System; Nikhil Munshi, MD, staff physician at VA Boston and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School; and Nathanael Fillmore, PhD, associate director of the Cooperative Studies Program Informatics Center at VA Boston and instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
“This study highlights the strengths of the national VA health care system,” Fillmore said. “Access to high-quality data from veterans across the country was crucial for enabling the study’s rigorous trial emulation approach.”
COVID-19 risky for cancer patients
Many cancer patients infected with COVID-19 have poor outcomes, with an estimated mortality rate of 13% to 33%. But because cancer patients were excluded from early vaccine trials, it hasn’t been clear whether or to what extent the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines protect people with cancer.
The researchers studied the medical records of more than 180,000 VA patients who received systemic, or whole-body, treatments, including chemotherapy or hormone therapy, between August 2010 and May 2021. The patients’ median age was 73.7, and 94% were men. Of these, about 113,000 were vaccinated with one of the two mRNA-based vaccines approved by the Food and Drug Administration — Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna — between Dec. 15, 2020, and May 4, 2021. (People who had been previously diagnosed with COVID-19 were excluded from the study, as were those who received the adenovirus-based vaccine produced by Johnson & Johnson.)
COVID-19 vaccination is an effective way to prevent infection in most cancer patients.
For each day of the study period, the researchers matched a patient who had been vaccinated with a peer of similar medical history and demographic background who had not been vaccinated, comparing the rates of COVID-19 infection in each pair.
To calculate vaccine effectiveness, the researchers compared the number of COVID-19 diagnoses in the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups. If 10 of 100 unvaccinated people became infected versus 1 of 100 vaccinated people, the vaccine prevented 9 of 10 possible infections, and the vaccine effectiveness would be 90%.
Effectiveness depends on timing
The researchers found that, overall, the vaccines were about 58% effective at preventing infection starting at two weeks after the second dose. But the vaccines were about 85% effective in people whose last cancer treatment had concluded six or more months before their first dose. The vaccines were about 63% effective among people whose cancer treatments concluded three to six months before their first dose, and 54% among people whose treatments concluded within three months of their first dose. (The two vaccines were similarly effective.)
Systemic cancer treatments include chemotherapy, which can suppress the immune system, and hormone therapy, which is less likely to do so. Among people whose cancer treatments concluded less than three months before their first dose, the vaccine was about 57% effective in those who had received chemotherapy; it was about 76% effective in people who had received hormone treatment. (The vaccines were found to be substantially less effective in a small subset of patients with certain kinds of blood cancers, which can suppress the immune system.)
“This is the first study in people with cancer that looked at a clinically significant outcome — documented infection — rather than surrogate markers like the levels of antibody production,” Wu said. “We found that, although the vaccines tended to be less effective in some subgroups of people, there is no reason to avoid vaccination.”
Summer Han, PhD, an assistant professor of neurosurgery and of biomedical informatics at Stanford, is a co-author of the study.
The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grants P01-155258-07 and P50-100707), the Veterans Affairs Office of Research and Development, the Department of Defense and a Stanford Cancer Institute Innovation Award.
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Krista Conger is a Senior Science Writer in the Office of Communications. Email her at kristac@stanford.edu.
Stanford Medicine integrates research, medical education and health care at its three institutions – Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Health Care (formerly Stanford Hospital & Clinics), and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford. For more information, please visit the Office of Communication & Public Affairs site at http://mednews.stanford.edu.
The Stanford Center on Longevity: The New Map of Life
The 100-year life is here. We’re not ready.
Age Diversity Is a Net Positive
The speed, strength, and zest for discovery common in younger people, combined with the emotional intelligence and wisdom prevalent among older people, create possibilities for families, communities, and workplaces that haven’t existed before. Rather than dwelling so anxiously on the costs incurred by an “aging” society, we can measure and reap the remarkable dividends of a society that is, in fact, age-diverse.
Invest in Future Centenarians to Deliver Big Returns
We can invest in future centenarians by optimizing each stage of life, so that benefits can compound for decades, while allowing for more time to recover from disadvantages and setbacks. The pivotal years between birth and kindergarten are the optimal time for children to acquire many of the cognitive, emotional, and social skills needed for a healthy, happy, and active life.
Align Health Spans to Life Spans
A key principle of The New Map of Life is that healthy longevity requires investments in public health at every life stage, and health span should be the metric for determining how, when and where to invest. Addressing health disparities means investing not only in better access to healthcare, but in the health of communities, especially those affected by poverty, discrimination, and environmental damage.
Prepare to Be Amazed by the Future of Aging
Today’s 5-year-olds will benefit from an astonishing array of medical advances and emerging technologies that will make their experience of aging far different from that of today’s older adults. And while there is no way to stop the process of aging, the emerging field of geroscience has the potential to transform how we age, by seeking to identify—and “reprogram”—the genetic, molecular, and cellular mechanisms that make age the dominant risk factor for certain diseases and degenerative conditions.
Work More Years with More Flexibility
Over the course of 100-year lives, we can expect to work 60 years or more. But we won’t work as we do now, cramming 40-hour weeks into lives impossibly packed from morning until night with parenting, family, caregiving, schooling and other obligations. Workers seek flexibility, whether that means working from home at times, or having flexible routes in and out of the workplace, including paid and unpaid intervals for caregiving, health needs, lifelong learning, and other transitions to be expected over century-long lives.
Learn Throughout Life
Rather than front-loading formal education into the first two decades of life, The New Map of Life envisions new options for learning outside the confines of formal education, with people of all ages able to acquire the knowledge they need at each stage of their lives, and to access it in ways that fit their needs, interests, abilities, schedules, and budgets.
Build Longevity-Ready Communities
The impacts of the physical environment begin before birth, with advantages and disadvantages accumulating over the entire course of life, determining how likely an individual is to be physically active, whether they are isolated or socially engaged, and how likely they are to develop obesity, respiratory, cardiovascular, or neurodegenerative disease. We must start now to design and build neighborhoods that are longevity-ready, and to assess potential investments in infrastructure through the lens of longevity.
The Road Ahead
Meeting the challenges of longevity is not the sole responsibility of government, employers, healthcare providers, or insurance companies; it is an all-hands, all-sector undertaking, requiring the best ideas from the private sector, government, medicine, academia, and philanthropy. It is not enough to reimagine or rethink society to become longevity-ready; we must build it, and fast. The policies and investments we undertake today will determine how the current young become the future old—and whether we make the most of the 30 extra years of life that have been handed to us.
Federal Reserve Governor Michelle W. Bowman: Integrating Indigenous Voices into Economic Inclusion; No Great Nation Can Prosper When Its People Are Left Behind
November 29, 2021
At Virtual Symposium on Indigenous Economies: Bank of Canada, Tulo Centre of Indigenous Economics, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand. Right, illustration, Tulo Centre
The economic well-being of Indigenous people is an important aspect of the Federal Reserve’s goal to increase economic inclusion for all Americans, and it is one of the reasons we are participating in today’s symposium and the Central Bank Network for Indigenous Inclusion. Over time, it has become evident that opportunities to succeed and build a better life for all economic participants is a central concept for a healthy and growing economy and a stable and strong financial system. The negative effects of past policies and a lack of economic opportunity have impacted Indigenous people for generations. I would like to acknowledge this history, but also to acknowledge that no great nation can prosper when its people are left behind. The Federal Reserve, with all of the powerful tools at its disposal, can’t fully succeed unless Native people, and others that have existed on the margins of the economy, have the opportunity to become full participants. The discussions today, including those regarding access to credit for Indigenous communities, can advance this goal.
The Federal Reserve also makes progress on economic inclusion through the process of engagement. We rely on discussions like those from our Fed Listens events series to supplement the quantitative data upon which central bankers rely to make decisions that may have life-changing consequences for households across the United States.2 In partnership with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, the Board of Governors recently held a Fed Listens event in Oklahoma to learn from tribal leaders that represent the 39 federally recognized tribes in that state.
The Board also gains perspective from formal advisory bodies like its Community Advisory Council. The council “provides the Board with diverse perspectives on the economic circumstances and financial services needs of consumers and communities, with a particular focus on the concerns of low- and moderate-income populations.”3 An Indigenous leader on the council regularly shares insights on the economic conditions and opportunities within Indigenous communities.
In the U.S. context, effective outreach must be regular and extensive, so we are able to capture the wide range of perspectives represented within and across 574 federally recognized tribes. Each tribal community’s experience differs and is shaped by its own often-complex history. I met with some of these leaders on a recent trip to South Dakota, and they reminded me of the importance of building understanding by meeting people where they are to better grasp what they have experienced. That said, there are some common experiences across Native American communities that are reflected in data: Per-capita income among Native Americans is about half that of the rest of the United States.4 But since 1990, Native Americans’ gross domestic product per capita has nearly doubled in real terms.5 While reservation economies often offer fewer, less-diverse job opportunities relative to other rural areas,6 firms in Indian Country showed high levels of resiliency during the last financial crisis.7
Bank branches are harder to find in Indian Country.8 Credit is often more expensive for reasons not fully explained by available borrower characteristics alone.9 As an example, 14 percent of American Indian/Alaska Native mortgages were “high-priced” compared with eight percent for other populations.10 In response, the number of Native-led Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) has quadrupled over the past two decades.11 These Native CDFIs cannot singlehandedly resolve Indian Country’s credit needs, but research and pilot programs demonstrate the power of cultural fit as they bring credit, financial services, and consumer education into tribal communities.12
Jo Freeman Reviews: Gendered Citizenship: The Original Conflict Over the Equal Rights Amendment, 1920 – 1963
Statement by President Joe Biden on the Omicron COVID-19 Variant today, Friday 26, 2021
Biden on Nantucket, Massachusetts
This morning I was briefed by my chief medical advisor, Dr. Tony Fauci, and the members of our COVID response team, about the Omicron variant, which is spreading through Southern Africa. As a precautionary measure until we have more information, I am ordering additional air travel restrictions from South Africa and seven other countries. These new restrictions will take effect on November 29. As we move forward, we will continue to be guided by what the science and my medical team advises.
For now, I have two important messages for the American people, and one for the world community.
First, for those Americans who are fully vaccinated against severe COVID illness – fortunately, for the vast majority of our adults — the best way to strengthen your protection is to get a booster shot, as soon as you are eligible. Boosters are approved for all adults over 18, six months past their vaccination and are available at 80,000 locations coast-to-coast. They are safe, free, and convenient. Get your booster shot now, so you can have this additional protection during the holiday season.
Second, for those not yet fully vaccinated: get vaccinated today. This includes both children and adults. America is leading the world in vaccinating children ages 5-11, and has been vaccinating teens for many months now – but we need more Americans in all age groups to get this life-saving protection. If you have not gotten vaccinated, or have not taken your children to get vaccinated, now is the time.
Finally, for the world community: the news about this new variant should make clearer than ever why this pandemic will not end until we have global vaccinations. The United States has already donated more vaccines to other countries than every other country combined. It is time for other countries to match America’s speed and generosity.
In addition, I call on the nations gathering next week for the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting to meet the U.S. challenge to waive intellectual property protections for COVID vaccines, so these vaccines can be manufactured globally. I endorsed this position in April; this news today reiterates the importance of moving on this quickly.
Kaiser Health News: Why You Can’t Find Cheap At-Home Covid Tests
While developing a rapid test that detects the coronavirus in someone’s saliva, Blink Science, a Florida-based startup, heard something startling: The Food and Drug Administration had more than 3,000 emergency use authorization applications (EUA) and didn’t have the resources to get through them.
From Houston Methodist On Health, right
“We want to try to avoid the EUA quagmire,” said Peb Hendrix, the startup’s vice president of operations. Its test is still in early development. On the advice of consultants, the company is weighing an alternative route through the FDA to the U.S. market.
“It’s just the way our government works,” Hendrix said, which is a challenge for businesses that are “anxious to get started and think they’ve got something that can help.”
The U.S. produced covid-19 vaccines in record time, but, nearly two years into the pandemic, consumers have few options for cheap tests that quickly screen for infection, though they are widely available in Europe. Experts say the paucity of tests and their high prices undermine efforts in the U.S. to return to normal life.
Some experts say the FDA’s approach to clearing rapid tests has been onerous and overly focused on exceptional accuracy to detect positive results, rather than on what would really benefit people en masse: speedy results. The main use of rapid tests is to screen people so they can safely attend work, school, meetings or gatherings. This screening can then be followed up with a more sensitive, lab-based polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test for diagnosis.
The FDA has authorized just 12 over-the-counter options for rapid tests. But the problems go beyond that agency: The Biden administration recently put $3 billion toward boosting the supply of rapid tests, but public health and industry experts say the government didn’t move quickly enough early in the pandemic to support development and manufacturing.
“Should we have had an equivalent of Operation Warp Speed for testing?” asked Mara Aspinall, a co-founder of life sciences fund BlueStone Venture Partners and a board member for OraSure Technologies, which received FDA authorization for an over-the-counter rapid test. “Absolutely. … For too long, people thought of testing as an extra and not the core, and it needs to be thought of as the core.”
During the pandemic, the FDA has received more than 4,500 emergency use authorization and related requests for covid tests, according to FDA spokesperson Jim McKinney. The agency says it is prioritizing reviews of at-home and point-of-care tests that can be produced in high volumes. Two recently authorized tests alone could boost availability by as much as 13 million tests a day, McKinney said, adding that it would “efficiently review the submissions that will have the biggest impact on the nation’s testing needs.”
In addition to the slow pace of approvals, manufacturing bottlenecks created by materials and labor shortages are keeping prices high. Prices of rapid tests range from $14 for a two-pack to well over $50 a test, far from affordable for regular use.
The FDA says it can’t move more quickly as it balances ensuring that safe and useful devices reach the marketplace with the urgent need to deliver options for widespread daily testing.
“The FDA carefully weighs the known and potential risks and … benefits of emergency use authorization for COVID-19 diagnostic tests based on sound science,” McKinney said in response to questions. But he noted many submissions “are incomplete or contain insufficient information.”
Startups said navigating the ins and outs of this regulatory apparatus is daunting. E25Bio of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is developing a low-cost antigen test, which detects covid by identifying proteins called antigens. Since July 2020, the company has repeatedly adjusted its FDA application as the agency updates its recommendations. The requirement that test results be reported directly to federal health authorities has added to delays.
Andrea Sachs Writes Sacré Bleu – Case No. 31107938694 Of Dining Grievances; Ladies Who Lunch, Unite!
by Andrea Sachs*; This article appeared originally in Nu?Detroit
Move over, Netflix. Don’t get me wrong — there’s plenty of perfectly good stuff to stream out there. But if you come to my place, you’ll find MSNBC blaring on my TV. After 30 years as a reporter, old habits die hard. And why would anyone choose the flimsy fictions of Hollywood over the real-life drama of Washington and its cast of characters, including duplicitous Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema the cypher and drecky Steve Bannon?
Which is why the story of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen was in heavy rotation chez Sachs last month. There she was, in front of Congress, unspooling hour after hour the bad deeds of Mark Zuckerberg, who Grandma Esther would have spotted a mile away as a gonif (a disreputable or dishonest person).
Frances Haugen, right.
Wikipedia
In 2002, while I was working at Time magazine, three women jointly selected as the Persons of the Year were dubbed The Whistleblowers. (Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten their names already — Coleen Rowley of the FBI, Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom and Sherron Watkins of Enron. Ah, fame is fleeting.) Like Haugen, these women had spilled the beans. At the time, the choice struck me as kinda gimmicky, but looking back a couple of decades in the rear-view mirror, it now seems prescient.
Which is why, on October 7 at 6:50 pm, I found myself musing about the virtues of female whistleblowing. (Being able to keep track of dates and times is critical for would-be whistleblowers.) I was waiting for my good friend and fellow journo Evy to arrive for dinner. I never suspected that our meal would mark the nanosecond when I, too, would attain whistleblower status.
The evening began as a rendezvous with indigestion. The plan was for me to meet Evy at Maison de Faux Cuisine (name changed to protect the busboys) on West 73rd Street, in the heart of the Upper West Side. I got there ten minutes early, in hopes of snaring a good outside table, since the pandemic has driven hordes of local diners en plein air.
A dark-haired waiter brusquely took me to the least desirable table in Manhattan. I don’t mean to sound like a kvetch, but the corner of the table had a big chunk missing, and the view was of two wooden sawhorses no one had bothered to drag away after some recent construction. The setting had all of the charm of the Paris city dump.
The waiter who had seated me in this junkheap looked more like a scowling ruffian than an employee in a fine establishment. I’ll admit it — I was scared of him. I summoned up an embarrassingly timid voice and squeaked, “I don’t think my friend Evy will want to sit at this table.” He dismissively mumbled something about the fact that it was the only table available. I spotted several empty tables with stylish bar stools at unchipped tables. What about those? I motioned. “You wouldn’t want to sit there, would you?” he replied. You’re damn right I would.
At that moment, the situation was thrown into sharp relief. While I am no nonagenarian, I’m not a coed either. (OPHS, Class of 1970 — do the math.) Evy in absentia and I were getting the treatment that two women alone often get in restaurants once they no longer get carded. Lousier tables, lousier service. Which is plenty ironic, because I am actually quite a good tipper. My experience in high school waiting tables at Blazo’s, a decidedly non-franco eatery in Oak Park, had left me with a permanent sense of sisterhood with servers.
Ferida Wolff’s Backyard: Lots and Lots of Boxelders
Lots and Lots of Boxelders
I can understand their motivation. As we open our front door, we are embraced by a delightful heat even when the outdoor temperature is cool. So I can’t blame the boxelders for congregating at this spot but I don’t want them here, either.
They aren’t harmful to humans, yet having so many insects meet us at our door is not exactly a welcome greeting. They take winter refuge on boxelder and ash trees, which we don’t have, and maple trees, which we do. So we have started spraying them with diluted dish soap which was suggested instead of pesticides and we’ve noticed a slowing down of their invasion. I hope they will be gone soon. I hate to be so stern with Mother Nature but sometimes it’s necessary to balance how we live together.
A quick insight into boxelder bugs:
https://www.pestworld.org/news-hub/pest-articles/boxelder-bugs-101/
Quick facts
- Boxelder bugs like warm areas and are attracted to buildings with a lot of southern or western exposure.
- The best time to control them is in the fall and is most effective by sealing openings and the timely use of insecticides
- They normally do not cause property damage but they can potentially stain surfaces.
- Once they are indoors, the only practical control is physical removal.
- They are not a serious problem every year.
Boxelder bugs (Boisea trivittatus) are a nuisance because they enter homes and other buildings, often in large numbers. You might not notice them during summer, but they can become an issue when they try to move into homes during fall to find a warm place to hide for winter.
Ferida Wolff is author of 19 books for children and three essay books for adults. Her essays appear in anthologies, newspapers and magazines. She is a frequent contributor to the Chicken Soup for the Soul Series. Her picture book IS A WORRY WORRYING YOU? coauthored with Harriet May Savitz (Tanglewood Books) is pertinent to our current times. Her latest book RACHEL’S ROSES (A Sydney Taylor Book Award Notable Title) is an historical mid-grade novel.