What happens to extra doses?

“CVS and Walmart Decide Who Gets Leftover Covid-19 Vaccine Doses”. (Well, more like pharmacies and grocers have to decide what to do with them.)

Retail pharmacies are taking varied approaches to extra doses, with some saying they’ll give priority to their employees while others say they’ll try to find takers among the public and only vaccinate employees as a last resort, if at all.

Psst, techs

GPhA’s added another vaccination training session. Get trained, give vaccines, save the world, be home for dinner.

“Immunization Delivery Training for Pharmacy Technicians” gives 5.75 hours of CE (home study + live training) — the live part is on Friday, March 5. Space is limited due to social distancing guidelines.

Click here to register!

Trust, but also keep your fingers crossed

The Biden administration says there’ll be enough vaccine for 300 million Americans by July. Also “This won’t hurt a bit,” “I’ll still respect you in the morning,” and “The check’s in the mail.” (We’re hopeful, but we’ll believe it when we see it.)

Is it safe?

What happens if people have a reaction to the vaccine? Unfortunately, the reporting system for adverse effects is a bit of a patchwork affair at the moment, with no central repository.

The government is now relying most on a 30-year-old safety monitoring system that the F.D.A. shares with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and a new smartphone app that people who get vaccinated can download and use to report problems if they wish.

Won’t someone think of the children?

Kids’ vaccines are being tested, but Junior probably won’t be able to get one until summer.

[I]t made sense for coronavirus vaccines to be first tested in and authorized for adults because the risk of severe illness and death from Covid-19 increases sharply with age.

Mask mess

As I tell Son of Buzz, “Nothing is simple.” All these statements appear to be true; make of that what you will:

• There’s a shortage of N95 masks.
• Small U.S. manufacturers, such as one in Miami, have millions on hand that no one wants to buy because Chinese masks are cheaper.
• The market is being flooded with counterfeit masks.
• Many (if not most) of those counterfeits work as well as the real thing.

Thanks for playing

No, apparently neither zinc nor vitamin C helps patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 — not even in high doses: “[B]ased on the current study, these supplements cannot be recommended to reduce symptom morbidity.”

Synthetic progesterone danger

This is a bit disturbing, although it could be worse. Apparently “Prolonged Use of Synthetic Progestogen Strongly Linked to Brain Tumors.” In this case, “prolonged use” means at least five years of taking cyproterone acetate, according to data from more than 250,000 women and girls, and going back to 2007.

[The] higher the dose and the longer the drug is taken for, the greater the risk of meningioma, a mostly noncancerous brain tumor arising in the meninges that surround and protect the brain and spinal cord.

Another study, another thumbs-up for ketamine

Yet another study shows that ketamine can reduce or eliminate chronic suicidal thoughts — this time, the oral version. (A ketamine nasal spray is already in use.)

No, we still don’t know how it works, just that that it works.

Podcast Episode of the Week

Science Vs: “Magic Mushrooms: Trip Through the Science” (December 10). A cool episode looking at the emergence of psilocybin as a potential depression treatment.