Follow the money

Wondering who in Georgia (or any state) got some of that sweet, sweet Provider Relief Fund money? Wonder no more — Stat News published a searchable database.

Tops in the Peach State: Atlanta’s Northside Hospital, which received $195,160,037, and Grady Memorial, recipient of $127,067,090.

But we’d be remiss without a big shout-out to Reagan’s Pharmacy in Conyers, which received … one dollar. Don’t spend it all in one place.

In case you were confused about the booster stories…

It’s like this:

On September 17, a CDC advisory panel* recommended boosters of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine for older people and those at severe risk. Notably absent: frontline healthcare workers.

Then, on September 22, the FDA authorized those boosters for the same groups, but also for frontline health workers.

The same day, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky overruled that advisory panel, and the CDC officially endorsed boosters for frontline workers — aligning itself with the FDA.

This is great news for everyone: Conspiracy theorists can talk about Walensky overruling the panel, while pro-health folks can say that the agencies’ recommendations are aligned. Everyone has something to talk about!

* The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices

Covid pills: Just you wait

It could be months — months! — before we have an antiviral pill that works as a Covid-19 treatment. They have to go through, you know, testing before it’s clear that they work — you can’t rely on “My sister’s friend’s mother took it and she got better.”

At least three promising antivirals for Covid are being tested in clinical trials, with results expected as soon as late fall or winter, said Carl Dieffenbach, director of the Division of AIDS at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who is overseeing antiviral development.

TikTok’s hug of death

If you’re doing a scientific study that includes online behavioral research, be sure to screen your respondents. Otherwise, a well-meaning teen on TikTok can destroy your research by sending her followers (almost all young women) to participate — and skewing your results so they’re unusable.

“We have noticed a huge leap in the number of participants on the platform in the US Pool, from 40k to 80k. Which is great, however, now a lot of our studies have a gender skew where maybe 85% of participants are women. Plus the age has been averaging around 21.”

Exercise won’t save you now

Even older folks who got plenty of physical activity were at higher risk of diabetes if their air quality was bad — about 1.5 times higher, per a study out of the University of California.

“Physical activity is well known and widely recognized for its health benefits, but the beneficial effects that outdoor physical activities have on human health may have to be weighed against the detrimental impacts of air pollution in areas affected by high pollution levels.”

Better antibodies coming soon

Monoclonal antibodies can be an effective treatment for people who have been exposed to Covid-19 but aren’t too sick — it’s a treatment of first resort. And now bioinformatics researchers at Vanderbilt University say they’ve got “an ‘ultra-potent’ monoclonal antibody” that works against all existing variants … and should fight future ones, too.

The antibody has uncommon genetic and structural characteristics that distinguish it from other monoclonal antibodies commonly used to treat COVID-19. The thought is that SARS-CoV-2 will be less likely to mutate to escape an antibody it hasn’t “seen” before.

Good news for Popeye

Eating spinach (say Texas A&M researchers) can prevent colon cancer. It’s not, as they expected, because of the anti-cancer effects of chlorophyll. It turns out that the spinach increases diversity in — you guessed it — the gut microbiome, helping it create more fatty acids that reduced inflammation and, apparently, reduced the chance of cancer.

When it comes to how soon people should start adding spinach into their diet to help prevent colon cancer, it doesn’t hurt to start now. “The sooner the better. You shouldn’t wait until polyps arise.”