Do you smell something?

Apparently some Covid survivors (recoverers?) have reported yet another disturbing symptom: Parosmia, where everything smells rotten. Literally, rotten.

The condition can cause one to lose the intensity of their smell. But, more frequently, it can cause one to experience an overpowering rancid scent. It can happen either around smells that are normally pleasant or around nothing at all, just lingering in the air.

Big ol’ caveat: There is only a single news story about this (from a single TV station in North Carolina), although it’s been picked up in a few places. So keep your grain of salt handy.

Breaking on through to the other side (Legislative Update, Week 9)

It was crossover day at the Georgia legislature, which means bills either pass one house and move to the other, or they die*.

GPhA’s legislative priority, SB 46 (pharmacist vaccine expansion), had already crossed over, as had another bill central to pharmacy, HB 316 (increasing the pharmacist-to-technician ratio). Other bills weren’t so lucky.

Greg Reybold has all the details, of course, of what made it (extending Covid-19 immunity protections) and what didn’t (insulin copay cap) — check it out!

* If you think about it, either one could be “crossing over.”

Registration is OPEN!

The 2021 Georgia Pharmacy Convention is the biggest gathering of Georgia’s pharmacy professionals all year.

Hundreds of pharmacists, pharmacy owners, technicians, and students from across Georgia will come to Amelia Island to grow, play, and connect*. Be sure to check out all the courses and events — and the ways to have fun, including the new clothing-optional beaches and We’ll see you at the beach!

Room block is open! Registration is open! Don’t wait! Go to GPhAConvention.com now!

* Georgia Pharmacy Convention — Grow Play Connect. Get it?

Covid vaccine quickies

Novavax says its vaccine is 86 percent effective against the UK “B.1.1.7” variant. It’s not yet approved (in the UK, the US, or Europe). Bad news: It’s only 55.4 percent effective against the South African variant.

The WHO reviewed the data and says there isn’t a connection between blood clots and the AstraZeneca vaccine. (Denmark, Iceland, and Norway had paused using it while they investigated reports.)

The EU would like the US to share its stockpile of that AZ vaccine (it’s not yet approved here), but President Biden said, “No.”

Instead, Biden said, the US will help expand vaccine manufacturing overseas to alleviate shortages.

A better syphilis treatment?

If you catch — sorry, if you diagnose — syphilis early, oral cefixime twice a day can cure it 90 percent of the time. And it’s a lot less expensive than injectable penicillin.

As usual, more research is needed, but the first result is promising, and other cephalosporins are probably worth looking into.

A twist to eating fish

Eating fish, especially oily fish, is supposed to be good for heart health. But the latest twist: It seems to make a much bigger difference for people who have already had some kind of cardiovascular disease. For them, it can help lower the risk for another “event,” but for the general population … meh.

Or, in more science-y terms:

[B]eneficial effects on triglyceride levels are more pronounced in people with elevated triglyceride levels, a common characteristic of people at high risk for vascular disease.

While we’re talking triglycerides…

For folks taking statins, adding a dash of icosapent ethyl — aka Vascepa — seems to cut the risk of a first stroke by an additional 36 percent.

It’s not for everyone, of course, and these data are still preliminary, but it’s certainly worth keeping in the back of your mind.

The latest on beta blockers

Wondering whether beta blockers cause depression? Wonder no more: No, they don’t. At least not according to the latest research from the American Heart Association.

BUT (there’s always a but) they do seem to cause “sleep-related symptoms such as unusual dreams or insomnia” for some patients. How they classify “unusual” dreams is beyond me.

BUT that doesn’t mean those patients aren’t affected by depression or other psychological issues:

“Patients with a history of cardiovascular events such as a heart attack or stroke were prone to develop psychological complications. Though we found beta-blockers were not causally linked, these patients should be monitored.”

ICYMI: Lilly drug could help with Alzheimer’s

Lilly’s experimental donanemab seems to slow the effects of Alzheimer’s disease — although it’s still from an early phase 2 trial.

“Out of 18 months, in comparison to the people that did not get the drug, these folks were declining six months slower. That’s six more months of better cognition, better memories, better enjoyable times with your family.”

What’s notable is that, while other Alzheimer’s trials are looking for ways to cure the disease, the goal of donanemab is to actually slow cognitive decline.

The Long Read: Looking back

When all this is over, and we examine what went wrong with America’s response to the pandemic, one place to put the blame, argues the Atlantic — whose Covid Tracking Project found itself as the country’s de facto source of pandemic data — is the lack of data.

[D]ata are how our leaders apprehend reality. In a sense, data are the federal government’s reality. As a gap opened between the data that leaders imagined should exist and the data that actually did exist, it swallowed the country’s pandemic planning and response.