Imagine that

Not to be left out of the booster business, Johnson & Johnson now says that two doses of its Covid-19 vaccine are better than one, and it looks like the company will ask for authorization for booster shots.

J&J argued that available data, in aggregate, show both that the effectiveness of its single-shot vaccine does not wane and that adding a booster dose will make the vaccine more effective.

Well what’d’ya know?

You can take it with you

Technically you aren’t allowed to take home your gun from Ready. Aim. Phire! on September 24, but there’s one exception: Enter our raffle and you could win a 20ga. Retay Masai Mara shotgun (26-inch barrel, chambered in 3 inch), worth $1,225, courtesy of Dennard’s Gun and Ammo of Soperton.

Raffle tickets are $25.00 each, and they’re only available at the event.

So join us in for Ready. Aim. Phire! — a great afternoon of sporting clay shooting — on Friday, September 24, 2021, from 1:00 – 5:30 p.m. at Big Red Oak Shooting Preserve in Gay, Georgia. Click here for info and to sign up today!

Georgia companies worth working for

A shout out to two Georgia companies: Morrison Healthcare of Sandy Springs and Jackson Physician Search of Alpharetta were both named among the top 10 best healthcare suppliers to work for by Modern Healthcare (#1 and #3, respectively).

This isn’t your mom’s breast milk

Thanks to exposure to PFAS chemicals, women’s breast milk has become less nutritious because the lipids in the milk are being broken down, resulting in (among other issues) an “increase in saturated fats at the expense of the healthier unsaturated ones.” That’s the result of a rather disturbing study out of Sweden’s Örebro University.

The most disturbing part:

These changes in the milk lipid composition were further associated with slower infant growth and with elevated intestinal inflammatory markers. Our data suggest that the maternal exposure to PFAS impacts the nutritional quality of the breast milk, which, in turn, may have detrimental impact on the health and growth of the children later in life.

Variant Watch™

The R.1 variant — no Greek name yet — has emerged in a Kentucky nursing home.

R.1 is a variant to watch. It has established a foothold in both Japan and the United States. In addition to several mutations notably in the spike and nucleocapsid protein in common with variants of concern, R.1 has a set of unique mutations that may confer an additional advantage in transmission, replication, and immune suppression.

Here’s the super-technical Forbes article. And here’s a more lay-friendly breakdown.

That said…

U.S.-based Gritstone, along with researchers in Britain, is beginning clinical trials of a ‘variant-proof’ mRNA Covid-19 vaccine booster called GRT-R910.

The idea is that the SARS-CoV-2’s well-known spike protein changes in variants. Those changes can make existing vaccines less effective against new variants. Gritstone’s booster will therefore target more than just that, while generating a “strong memory T-cell response.”

“Since viral surface proteins like the spike protein are evolving and sometimes partially evading vaccine-induced immunity, we designed GRT-R910 to have broad therapeutic potential against a wide array of SARS-CoV-2 variants by also delivering highly conserved viral proteins that may be less prone to genetic variation in the virus.

Now hear this?

“Hearing aids to go OTC” we wrote way back in 2017 — that’s when Congress finally made it legal. Sort of. But, as NBC News explains, “Four years later, federal regulators have yet to issue rules to implement the law.”

While Joe Biden has upped the pressure for those rules, companies like Bose are already selling … well, not hearing aids, but “personal sound amplification products” direct to consumers. The University of Pittsburgh even offers a course for pharmacists on how to help patients choose one.

With hearing aids and audiologists not covered by Medicare, the market is huge, so it might be a good time to think about helping your customers choose one.

Don’t you worry about them

“Not-for-profit” hospitals and UnitedHealth are each saying the other is more profitable. But really, the bottom line is that both are raking in billions during the pandemic. (“24 major tax-exempt hospital systems that combined for roughly $72 billion of revenue, on par with UnitedHealth.”)

Elsewhere: Longmire edition

A Wyoming woman has caught pneumonic plague — the rarest form of the Black Death — from her cat. (She is currently still sick, but plague is treatable. Here’s hoping for a full recovery … and a story to tell her kids. No word on the cat.)