Growers and show-ers

People with asymptomatic Covid-19 have a lower viral load — i.e., they’re less infectious — than those who have symptoms. That’s what Boston University researchers found when they studied about 1,600 students and employees who tested positive during the university’s routine testing.

The results demonstrated that symptomatic individuals had, on average, higher viral loads than those who were presymptomatic or asymptomatic, thereby suggesting that they are more infectious.

Fun side note: They quarantined everyone for the same amount of time, regardless of symptoms, so people couldn’t lie about how they felt so they could get out early.

Suppose they gave a trend and nobody came

The hands are a-wringing over a new TikTok trend called the “sleepy chicken challenge” where you cook your chicken breasts in … NyQuil. Why? Because.

Don’t do it (“NyQuil is not seasoning!”) warn docs, and certainly don’t breathe the vapors — haven’t you heard of distillation?

But before you can start rolling your eyes, hang on. GPhA Buzz’s research division checked on this “trend,” and found that, well, it doesn’t seem to exist. Sure, there may have been one or two #sleepychicken videos, but it’s not worthy of any kind of Satanic panic.

Mild symptoms, long Covid

Even a mild Covid-19 infection often “results in a startling rate of persistent symptoms.” So found a big ol’ group of researchers from across the country; they described “profound multi-cellular dysregulation in the brain caused by even mild respiratory SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

In other words, mild Covid can mess with your brain. How much? At the level of chemotherapy:

Taken together, the findings presented here illustrate striking similarities between neuropathophysiology after cancer therapy and after SARS-CoV-2 infection, and elucidate cellular deficits that may contribute to lasting neurological symptoms following even mild SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Tell your pregnant patients

Unvaccinated pregnant women who contract Covid-19 have a much higher chance of having a still birth, a premature baby, or a baby who dies within a month — that’ s what Scottish researchers

A separate but related study found that “the earlier in pregnancy a mother was infected with SARS-CoV-2, the earlier a baby was likely to be born.”

Oh, and what about fears of getting vaccinated?

They found no indication that vaccination during pregnancy, including receiving a shot within 28 days of giving birth, increased preterm births or deaths of infants in the weeks before and after birth.

Mask news

• Cloth masks are just about useless, says the CDC — “little more than facial decorations,” in the words of one analyst.
• N95 (and, by extension, reliable Powecom-brand KN95) masks block the SARS-CoV-2 virus a heck of a lot better than surgical masks … which makes me wonder why the heck surgeons don’t wear them.
• Restaurant servers who wear a mask are, on average, not likely to get a different tip than the maskless ones. However, found Wayne State University sociologists, they need to be more chipper to overcome “diminished perceptions of […] friendliness.”
• The new kid in town: KF94 masks — the South Korean equivalent of N95, and for all intents and purposes just as good … as long as they’re made in Korea.

Want more? Here’s everything you want to know about masks — including how to find the good ones.

Beware: dragons

The CDC is warning people not to eat or drink around their bearded dragon. No, that’s no a euphemism: Pet bearded dragons are responsible for a salmonella outbreak in 25 states that’s hospitalized at least 14 people. Georgia isn’t one … yet. But it’s happened in Alabama, Florida, and South Carolina.

For what it’s worth, the danger is in their fewmets — dragon droppings, as Madeleine L’Engle fans know — not the animals themselves.

ICYMI: No mo’ bro

Former hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli — who, as CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, raised the price of rare-disease treatment Daraprim by more than 5,000 percent — has been banned from working in the pharmaceutical industry again, and has to pay $64.6 million in fines.

Correction: An earlier version of this story reported that he had raised the price of insulin. That, in fact, is legal and common practice. We regret the error.

The FDA makes a bold move

After 24 years of lobbying by the Association for Dressing and Sauces, the FDA has finally — finally! — agreed to drop its ‘identity’ regulation for French dressing.