Room for improvement

Georgia ranks second to last — behind only Oklahoma — in a nationwide ranking of quality of care for Medicare recipients. (What hurt the state’s ranking is lack of access to, and quality of, care. For cost, Georgia did pretty well.)

MedicareGuide looked at multiple factors such as prescription drug prices, doctors per capita, and life expectancy to determine which states offered the best (and worst) healthcare for adults over 65.

What works

The vaccines. Bigly. “CDC CoviD-19 Study Shows mRNA Vaccines Reduce Risk of Infection by 91 Percent for Fully Vaccinated People” (and if you do get it, it’s mild).

What doesn’t work

Aspirin for Covid-19.

What may or may not work

Biogen’s Aduhelm Alzheimer’s drug, recently and controversially approved by the FDA despite unclear evidence that it works. The advisory panel voted 10-1 against approval, but the agency gave a thumbs-up anyway, prompting one member to resign.

[T]he decision also raised questions about the role of the advisory committees — and what it meant that the agency, in its final adjudication, bucked the very panel it had convened.

That’s not stopping the company from going all out to get people to start paying… er, to start taking it. Here’s hoping it really does make a difference and doesn’t just bring false hope.

Oh, and because it’s FDA approved and Medicare can neither refuse to cover it nor negotiate the price*, guess who’s going to be paying the $56,000 annual list price Biogen has decided to charge for it?

* Capitalism fail!

Delta force

The delta variant of CoviD-19 (remember, it’s no longer “the Indian variant”) now accounts for about one out of every 17 new cases. It’s more virulent, but the jury is still out on whether it’s more dangerous.

Good news: The Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines are about 88 percent effective against it, but only after both doses.

Braaaaaaaaains

Summertime, when young researchers’ fancy turns to thoughts of … brain-eating amoebae.

Let’s cross our collective fingers for UGA’s Christopher Rice, who’s received a grant from the Jordan Smelski Foundation (established in 2014 by the parents of a victim of Naegleria fowleri) to continue his research.

If stock art is any indication, it’s especially dangerous for Dave Bautista.

This is news?

One of the largest and heavily regulated industries in the country donated money to many members of Congress.

Seventy-two senators and 302 members of the House of Representatives cashed a check from the pharmaceutical industry ahead of the 2020 election — representing more than two-thirds of Congress.

BB is UGA CoP EoY

High-five* to UGA’s Brad Brown, named College of Pharmacy Employee of the Year for the second time!

* Only if you’re vaccinated.

Captain Obvious admits his “hedonistic desire for palatable food”

Aussie researchers: “Children who consume too much sugar could be at greater risk of becoming obese, hyperactive, and cognitively impaired.”

To learn best, take a rest

It’s good for you. Looking at the workings of the brains of people learning a skill NIH researchers found that “during rest the volunteers’ brains rapidly and repeatedly replayed faster versions of the activity.”

“Our results support the idea that wakeful rest plays just as important a role as practice in learning a new skill. It appears to be the period when our brains compress and consolidate memories of what we just practiced.”

And, as cool as building your own transcranial direct current stimulator may sound, “taking a short break” seems a heck of a lot safer.

Elsewhere: Bad Pharmacist Follow-up edition

Remember that anti-vax pharmacist in Wisconsin who deliberately spoiled batches of the Covid-19 vaccine? He’ll be making all sorts of new friends in prison for the next three years. Then comes three years of supervised release; he also has to pay $83,800 in restitution to the hospital.