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COVID-19 Exposed the Faults in America ’s Elder Care System. This Is Our Best Shot to Fix Them
For the American public, one of the first signs of the COVID-19 pandemic to come was a tragedy at a nursing home near Seattle. On Feb. 29, 2020, officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Washington State announced the U.S. had its first outbreak of the novel coronavirus. Three people in the area had tested positive the day before; two of them were associated with Life Care Center of Kirkland, and officials expected more to follow soon. When asked what steps the nursing home could take to control the spread, Dr. Jeff Duchin, health officer for Seattle and King County, said he was working w...
Source: TIME: Health - June 15, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Abigail Abrams Tags: Uncategorized Aging COVID-19 feature franchise Magazine TIME for Health Source Type: news

A bummer for kids: Nasal flu vaccine not effective
Follow me at @drClaire Every year, many of my patients have been able to skip the needle — and still get vaccinated against the flu. That was the great thing about the nasal spray version of the flu vaccine, known as the LAIV (live attenuated influenza vaccine): kids scared of needles could get a squirt up each nostril and be all set. This coming flu season, everyone is getting the shot. It turns out that the nasal spray just didn’t work that well. Despite studies from the 2002-2003 and 2004-2005 flu seasons that seemed to show that the nasal spray actually worked better than the shot in children ages 2-8 years, over t...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - June 28, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Children's Health Cold and Flu Infectious diseases Parenting Prevention Source Type: news

Don’t shrug off shingles
If you had chickenpox as a kid, there is a good chance you may develop shingles later in life. “In fact, one in three is predicted to get shingles during their lifetime,” says Dr. Anne Louise Oaklander, director of the Nerve Unit at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. The same varicella-zoster virus that causes chickenpox also causes shingles. After the telltale spots of chickenpox vanish, the virus lies dormant in your nerve cells near the spinal cord and brain. When your immunity weakens from normal aging or from illnesses or medications, the virus can re-emerge. It then travels along a nerve to trigge...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - February 18, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Matthew Solan Tags: Healthy Aging Infectious diseases Vaccines Source Type: news

Do statins interfere with the flu vaccine?
Statins are powerful, unusual, and, like El Niño and Tom Cruise, not well understood. Statins have a huge upside. They improve survival after heart attacks and lower the risk of recurrent strokes. They are also the only cholesterol-lowering medications that have been clearly shown to reduce heart attacks and deaths in high-risk patients without heart disease. In addition to reducing cholesterol, statins also lower levels of inflammation in the body. Reducing inflammation probably helps statins to prevent heart attack and stroke. However, evidence is emerging that these statin effects may also have a downside, hindering th...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - November 30, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Ross, MD, FIDSA Tags: Cold and Flu Drugs and Supplements Health Heart Health Vaccines flu vaccine statins Source Type: news

Kids and flu shots: Two common myths
As a pediatrician, I am really passionate about the flu shot. Influenza can be a nasty illness; every year, thousands of people are hospitalized with influenza and its complications, and some of those people die. The flu shot can protect my patients and their families, and I enthusiastically recommend it to all of them. And yet many of them refuse, despite my best efforts. What is particularly frustrating is that many of them refuse because of misunderstandings about the flu shot. There is all sorts of misinformation out there, but here are the two most common myths: 1. The flu shot can make you sick. This is the one I hea...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - October 9, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Claire McCarthy, MD Tags: Cold and Flu Vaccines flu vaccine Source Type: news

Get the flu vaccine, reduce your risk of death
Last year was a lousy year for the flu vaccine. Hospitalizations for flu hit a nine-year high, and the vaccine prevented flu in only 23% of all recipients, compared with 50% to 60% of recipients in prior years. Why does the flu vaccine work well in some winters and not others? The flu vaccine primes the immune system to attack two proteins on the surface of the influenza A virus, hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N). Different flu strains have different combinations of these proteins — for example, the strains targeted by recent flu vaccines are H3N2 and H1N1. Unfortunately, the influenza virus is microbiology’s ans...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - September 15, 2015 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Ross, MD, FIDSA Tags: Cold and Flu Vaccines Flu Shot flu vaccine Source Type: news

10 Good Reasons To Get A Flu Shot
By Melaina Juntti for Men's Journal How many times have you heard you should get a flu shot? There's good reason for the hype: Over the past few years, the influenza vaccine has prevented millions of flu cases and tens of thousands of related hospitalizations, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although an increasing number of people are getting vaccinated every year, more than half of American men still aren't doing it, for a variety of reasons, most of which aren't backed by science. "Men have this macho sense that if they do get the flu, they can tough it out," says William Schaffner, M.D., chair...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - November 29, 2014 Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news