Awww, who’s a widdle virus weservoir?

If you thought your cat was trying to kill you by tripping you on the stairs, wait till you get a load of this. Pet owners are being warned: If you have Covid, keep away from your pet. Not to save Fluffy, but because Fluffy might get the virus, have no symptoms, and pass it on to other humans.

“[T]he potential risk [is] that pets could act as a reservoir of the virus and reintroduce it into the human population.”

Bad vaccine news

Despite incentives and, you know, a desire to protect patients, many of Georgia’s hospitals have a high percentage of unvaccinated workers. Georgia Health News reports.

The high percentages of unvaccinated hospital workers being reported are “startling,’’ Ebell said. [That’s Dr. Mark Ebell of the University of Georgia College of Public Health]. “They are people who should know better’’ after having lived through the pandemic.

Breathe deep (for your BP)

They call it “strength training for your breathing muscles,” but the gist is that a particular breathing exercise — a mere five minutes long — can not only lower your blood pressure, but can do it better than exercise can.

It’s called “High-Resistance Inspiratory Muscle Strength Training” or IMST. In short, it’s about breathing through a tube that resists you — “Imagine sucking hard through a tube that sucks back” — and was originally designed to help respiratory disease patients.

University of Arizona physiologists, though, found it has a big benefit for blood pressure with just 30 inhalations per day (figure about five minutes, tops) at high resistance, six days per week.

When assessed after six weeks, the IMST group saw their systolic blood pressure (the top number) dip nine points on average, a reduction which generally exceeds that achieved by walking 30 minutes a day five days a week. That decline is also equal to the effects of some blood pressure-lowering drug regimens.

Good vaccine news

A study out of Spain found that even a year after infection, people still have plenty of antibodies to Covid’s spike protein, and those results, they say, “suggest that vaccine-generated immunity will also be long-lasting.”

So maybe no booster shot after all?

Fighting migraines with oil

A team of researchers led by the NIH (and composed of people from a whole lotta agencies (and UNC)) found a way for migraine sufferers to reduce the frequency and intensity of their migraines: Eat a diet with more fish fats and less vegetable fats.

Why? It’s all about the immunoglobulin G reactivity — and the fact that linoleic acid (from fruits and veggies) has a different effect than omega-3 fatty acids (from fish).

Many people with migraine are highly motivated and interested in dietary changes, and clinicians might want to provide patients with information about the diets described in the study.

Scent of a raspberry

Those shifty Danes have discovered that, while folks’ sense of smell does decline with age, it’s not every smell that fades. Old folks are still good at smelling orange, raspberry, and vanilla, but not so much fried meat, onions, or mushrooms. Sadly, the ability to enjoy the smell of coffee also declined.

“[A] declining sense of smell in older adults seems rather odor specific. What is really interesting is that how much you like an odor is not necessarily dependent on the intensity perception.”

Ockham’s chainsaw

What’s the most over-the-top solution to stopping zoogenic viruses from jumping from bats to humans? How about…

Amid the devastating Covid-19 pandemic, two researchers are proposing a drastic way to stop future pandemics: using a technology called a gene drive to rewrite the DNA of bats to prevent them from becoming infected with coronaviruses.

Get your movie quotes ready!

• “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
• “Don’t worry, we did everything right.”
• “They mostly come out at night. Mostly.”
• “That’s the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!”
• “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
• “Nuke the site from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.”

The Long Read/Elsewhere: Walden, Colorado

With the last pharmacy in town now a barbecue restaurant, the nearest drugstore is an hour away through mountain passes — bad for three seasons, impassible in winter. The townsfolk have some solutions.