Stay Well

December 4, 2024

Cases Of RSV, Flu Ticking Up Among Young Children In U.S. As Respiratory Virus Season Begins

Cases of flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are ticking up across the United States even as overall respiratory virus activity remains low. Flu activity is increasing slightly among children while RSV activity is elevated in the southern, central and eastern U.S., according to data updated Monday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of the week ending Nov. 23, the latest date for which data is available, 0.6% of emergency department visits were for flu and 0.4% were for RSV. While the overall percentages are low, they are higher than the percentages at the beginning of October, CDC data shows. Meanwhile, about 5.6% of weekly tests are coming back positive for RSV and 2.5% are coming back positive for flu, according to CDC data. ABC News Read more

Nursing Homes Fell Behind On Vaccinating Patients For COVID

It seems no one is taking COVID-19 seriously anymore, said Mollee Loveland, a nursing home aide who lives outside Pittsburgh. Loveland has seen patients and coworkers at the nursing home where she works die from the viral disease. Now she has a new worry: bringing home the coronavirus and unwittingly infecting her infant daughter, Maya, born in May. Loveland’s maternity leave ended in late June, when Maya wasn’t yet 2 months old. Infants cannot be vaccinated against COVID until they are 6 months old. Children younger than that suffer the highest rates of hospitalization of any age group except people 75 or older. Between her patients’ complex medical needs and their close proximity to one another, covid continues to pose a grave threat to Loveland’s nursing home — and to the 15,000 other certified nursing homes in the U.S. where some 1.2 million people live. Despite this risk, a CDC report published in April found that just 4 in 10 nursing home residents in the U.S. received an updated covid vaccine in the winter of 2023-24. The analysis drew on data from Oct. 16, 2023, through Feb. 11, 2024, and was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. KFF Health News Read more

Long COVID Patients Push To See Federal Research Refocused On Treatments

Erica Hayes, 40, hasn't felt healthy since November 2020 when she first fell ill with COVID. Hayes is too sick to work, so she's spent much of the last four years sitting on her beige couch, often curled up under an electric blanket. "My blood flow now sucks, so my hands and my feet are freezing. Even if I'm sweating my toes are cold," says Hayes, who lives in Western Pennsylvania. She misses feeling well enough to play with her 9-year-old son, or attend her 17-year-old son's baseball games. Along with claiming the lives of 1.2 million Americans, the COVID pandemic has been described as a mass disabling event. Hayes is one of millions of Americans who suffer from long COVID. Depending on the patient, the condition can rob someone of energy, scramble the autonomic nervous system, or fog their memory, among many other symptoms. NPR Read more



S.F. To Cut Number Of Days That Homeless Families Can Stay In Shelters

San Francisco has set new limits on how long homeless families can stay in city shelters and restrict who is eligible, a move that critics said would push families back onto the street. The San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing confirmed the contents of a memo that the Chronicle obtained summarizing the policy changes, which its staff discussed with homeless service providers at a Nov. 4 meeting. The department said the changes, which will take effect Dec. 10, are an effort to improve a system that doesn’t prioritize families with the most critical needs, but homeless advocates warn the new rules will be catastrophic for families facing homelessness. SF Chronicle Read more

Busing People Out Of Homelessness: How California’s Relocation Programs Really Work

Mayor London Breed, outgoing mayor of San Francisco, made waves recently with a major policy shift: Before providing a shelter bed or any other services, city workers must first offer every homeless person they encounter a bus or train ticket to somewhere else. But while San Francisco has gotten an outsized amount of attention for putting its busing program at the forefront of its homelessness strategy, other California cities and nonprofits continue to quietly send small numbers of unhoused people all over the country. At least one new program is set to launch early next year. For an unhoused person who wants to move in with family in another city or state, or who got stuck somewhere after a job or housing prospect fell through and needs help getting home, these types of programs can be a gamechanger. But some activists worry they can be used coercively to move unhoused people out of sight instead of helping them. And once someone is bused away, it’s hard to tell what happens to them — whether they successfully reunite with family, or become homeless on another city’s sidewalks. CalMatters Read more

What Happened When A City Started Accepting - Not Evicting - Homeless Camps

As cities across North America grapple with homelessness, one Canadian city has taken a different approach by regulating tent encampments instead of banning them, as it tries to tackle what one official calls the issue "of the decade". Andrew Goodsell has called his small orange tent on a grassy patch in downtown Halifax home for almost a year. In late October, on a park bench outside his makeshift dwelling, the 38-year-old described life at the homeless encampment where he lives with about a dozen or so others as “depressing”. “I wake up in an area I don’t want to be,” Mr Goodsell said, as a stream of cars drove by. “I’d much rather wake up in a spot where I could take a shower and maybe make myself something to eat. But I’ll still get myself out of bed.” Mr Goodsell has been without a home on-and-off for a decade. He once got by with couch surfing or working minimum-wage jobs to pay rent, but with Halifax’s skyrocketing housing costs, he can no longer afford a place to live. His encampment is one of nine sites chosen by the city as a place where people without housing can lawfully camp outside. The sites were approved this summer as a temporary, but some argue necessary, solution while indoor shelters are at-capacity. BBC Read more

California Falling Short Of Enrollment Goal As Mental Health Courts Roll Out Statewide

California’s new initiative to compel treatment for some of the state’s most severely mentally ill residents — many of whom are living on the streets — is falling short of its initial objectives. But with the program expanding from 11 counties to all 58 on Dec. 1, state officials are projecting confidence that they can reach their goal to help 2,000 adults by the end of the year. In the first nine months of CARE Court, 557 petitions were filed by first responders, families, or local health officials, all of whom can now request help for individuals who are ill. As of the end of June, 100 people had been placed in court-approved treatment plans, according to the latest data available. But officials in counties that have already launched the program said the low number of cases reflects the amount of time it takes — sometimes weeks or months — to find people and persuade them to enroll. California Healthline Read more

The U.S. Is Facing A Youth Mental Health Crisis. These Skaters Want To Help

On an unseasonably warm fall afternoon, Frank "The Tank" Watkins welcomes me to one of his favorite places: the skatepark at Pier 62 in Manhattan. "This is my community, my sanctuary, my second home," says Watkins, 28, who's currently a psychology graduate student at the New School. As the park begins filling up, Watkins seems to know everyone arriving. While he chats with veteran skater Jon "Porkchop" Nicholson, a crew of young girls put on their gear and start whipping around the bowl. One of them is 12-year-old Sora Kaneko-Wolfe, who says one of her favorite things about the skatepark is the friends she's made there. "Everyone supports each other," she says. "If you had a bad week, you can come here and talk to everyone and relieve your stress." NPR Read more



They Went To Rehab To Kick Drugs. Instead, They Died In S.F.’s Biggest Treatment Program

Faye Mitchell felt an unfamiliar sense of hope in late 2023 that her son, Geno, would finally get the treatment he needed. After nearly a decade of false starts, Geno Sargent, 24, was optimistic, too. He was living at Walden House, a San Francisco residential treatment program for people experiencing addiction and mental illness. By the time he landed there, he was homeless, struggling to manage his bipolar disorder and snorting cocaine just to get up in the morning. But he told an intake worker that he felt the program would give him “the best chance of staying sober.” Indeed, a couple of months into treatment, Mitchell, who spoke to her son almost daily, sensed a shift. “It seemed like he was getting the hang of it,” she said. “He was really trying to work toward his goals.” Four months after he entered the program, though, staff members found Sargent unresponsive in bed. His cause of death: fentanyl intoxication. SF Chronicle Read more

"Pink Cocaine" Is The Latest Street Drug. This team Of Researchers Has Been Warning The Public About It For A Year

The death of music star Liam Payne. Sex trafficking allegations against Sean "Diddy" Combs. A deadly car crash involving an Instagram model. Many Americans have only recently learned of the drug known as "pink cocaine" from a deluge of celebrity horror stories. Joseph Palamar, an associate professor of population health at NYU Langone, would say they are late to the party. "A lot of people just think it's this new powder that's going around," Palamar said. "It's a pretty pink powder, and everyone's starting to use it, when it really started increasing was around mid-2023."  When Palamar first heard of pink cocaine, his team immediately scoured posts on Reddit as part of his research for the National Drug Early Warning System. The organization specializes in narcotics surveillance and collects data on drugs that could rise in popularity and lethality. "We've looked at other drugs, and what we found ... is that a lot of times the chatter increases before a lot of poisonings occur," said Palamar. CBS News Read more

She Didn’t Know She Was Pregnant. But A Surprise Birth Wasn’t Enough To Loosen Fentanyl’s Grip

Jessica DiDia was accustomed to her body feeling broken — her limbs swollen, her muscles aching. And after years of living on San Francisco’s streets in the grip of fentanyl, she was no stranger to the city’s emergency rooms, where she was often taken after overdosing or experiencing a seizure. So in early October, when severe back pain led Jessica, 37, to ask police officers to call an ambulance for her, she didn’t think much of it. Then an ER doctor took an ultrasound of her pelvis. “Congratulations! You’re pregnant,” she said the doctor told her. Not only was Jessica pregnant, but she was already in labor. She soon delivered a 5-pound, 6-ounce baby girl with a head full of dark hair and thick eyebrows. SF Chronicle Read more



Drinking Plenty Of Water May Actually Be Good For You

Public health recommendations generally suggest drinking eight cups of water a day. And many people just assume it’s healthy to drink plenty of water. Now researchers at UC San Francisco have taken a systematic look at the available evidence. They concluded that drinking enough water can help with weight loss and prevent kidney stones, as well as migraines, urinary tract infections and low blood pressure. “For such a ubiquitous and simple intervention, the evidence hasn’t been clear, and the benefits were not well established, so we wanted to take a closer look,” said Benjamin Breyer, MD, MAS, the Taube Family Distinguished Professor and chair of the UCSF Department of Urology. “The amount of rigorous research turned out to be limited, but in some specific areas, there was a statistically significant benefit,” said Breyer, the senior author of the study. “To our knowledge, this is the first study assessing the benefits of water consumption on clinical outcomes broadly.” UCSF Health News Read more