by tyler | Jun 20, 2023 | CNN, health
Another woman has come forward with the harrowing details of how the Supreme Court’s decision four months ago to overturn Roe v. Wade put her life in danger.
CNN has told the stories of several women – including one from Houston, one from central Texas and one from Cleveland – and what they had to do to obtain medically necessary abortions.
Now, a woman from Austin, Texas, has come forward because she nearly died when she couldn’t get a timely abortion.
This is her story.
Amanda Eid and Josh Zurawski, both now 35, met in 1991 at Aldersgate Academy preschool in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and dated in high school.
“Josh always tells me he’s been in love with me since we were 4 years old,” Amanda said.
Three years ago, they married in Austin, Texas, where they both work in high-tech jobs.
They tried to have a family but failed. Amanda had fertility treatments for a year and a half and finally became pregnant.
“Very excited to share that Baby Zurawski is expected in late January,” Amanda shared on Instagram in July. The post included a picture of her and her husband in “Mama” and “Dad” hats, Amanda holding a strip of ultrasound photos of their baby girl.
“The fact that we were pregnant at all was a miracle, and we were beside ourselves with happiness,” she said.
But then, 18 weeks – just four months – into her pregnancy, Amanda’s water broke.
The amniotic fluid that her baby depended upon was leaking out. She says her doctor told her the baby would not survive.
“We found out that we were going to lose our baby,” Amanda said. “My cervix was dilating fully 22 weeks prematurely, and I was inevitably going to miscarry.”
She and Josh begged the doctor to see if there was any way to save the baby.
“I just kept asking, ‘isn’t there anything we can do?’ And the answer was ‘no,’ ” Amanda said.
When a woman’s water breaks, she’s at high risk for a life-threatening infection. While Amanda and Josh’s baby – they named her Willow – was sure to die, she still had a heartbeat, and so doctors said that under Texas law, they were unable to terminate the pregnancy.
“My doctor said, ‘Well, right now we just have to wait, because we can’t induce labor, even though you’re 100% for sure going to lose your baby,’ ” Amanda said. “[The doctors] were unable to do their own jobs because of the way that the laws are written in Texas.”
Texas law allows for abortion if the mother “has a life-threatening physical condition aggravated, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.”
But Texas lawmakers haven’t spelled out exactly what that means, and a doctor found to be in violation of the law can face loss of their medical license and a possible life sentence in prison.
“They’re extremely vague,” said Katie Keith, director of the Health Policy and Law Initiative at Georgetown University Law Center. “They don’t spell out exactly the situations when an abortion can be provided.”
In September, CNN reached out to 28 Texas legislators who sponsored anti-abortion legislation, asking them for their response to CNN stories about the woman in Houston and the woman in central Texas.
Only one legislator responded.
“Like any other law, there are unintended consequences. We do not want to see any unintended consequences; if we do, it is our responsibility as legislators to fix those flaws,” wrote state Sen. Eddie Lucio, who will be leaving the Senate at the end of the year.
The Zurawskis participated in an ad for Beto O’Rourke’s unsuccessful Texas gubernatorial campaign.
After her water broke, Amanda’s doctors sent her home and told her to watch for signs of infection, and that only when she was “considered sick enough that my life was at risk” would they terminate the pregnancy, Amanda said.
“My doctor said it could take hours, it could take days, it could take weeks,” she remembers.
Once they heard “hours,” they decided there was no time to travel to another state for an abortion.
“The nearest ‘sanctuary’ state is at least an eight-hour drive,” Amanda wrote in an online essay on The Meteor. “Developing sepsis – which can kill quickly – in a car in the middle of the West Texas desert, or 30,000 feet above the ground, is a death sentence.”
So they waited it out in Texas.
On August 26, three days after her water broke, Amanda found herself shivering in the Texas heat.
“We were having a heat wave, I think it was 105 degrees that day, and I was freezing cold, and I was shaking, my teeth were chattering. I was trying to tell Josh that I didn’t feel good, and my teeth were chattering so hard that I could not even get the sentence out,” she said.
Josh was shocked by his wife’s condition.
“To see in a matter of maybe five minutes, for her to go from a normal temperature to the condition she was in was really, really scary,” he said. “Very quickly, she went downhill very, very fast. She was in a state I’ve never seen her in.”
Josh rushed his wife to the hospital. Her temperature was 102 degrees. She was too weak to walk on her own.
Her temperature went up to 103 degrees. Finally, Amanda was sick enough that the doctors felt legally safe to terminate the pregnancy, she said.
But Amanda was so sick that antibiotics wouldn’t stop the bacterial infection raging through her body. A blood transfusion didn’t cure her, either.
About 12 hours after her pregnancy was terminated, doctors and nurses flooded her room.
“There’s a lot of commotion, and I said, ‘what’s going on?’ and they said, ‘we’re moving you to the ICU,’ and I said, ‘why?’ and they said, ‘you’re developing symptoms of sepsis,’ ” she said.
Sepsis, the body’s extreme response to an infection, is a life-threatening medical emergency.
Amanda’s blood pressure plummeted. Her platelets dropped. She doesn’t remember much from that time.
But Josh does.
“It was really scary to see Amanda crash,” he said. “I was really scared I was going to lose her.”
Family members flew in from across the country because they feared it would be the last time they would see Amanda.
Doctors inserted an intravenous line near her heart to deliver antibiotics and medication to stabilize her blood pressure. Finally, Amanda turned the corner and survived.
But her medical ordeal isn’t over.
Amanda’s uterus suffered scarring from the infection, and she may not be able to have more children. She had a surgery recently to fix the scarring, but it’s unclear whether it will be successful.
That leaves the Zurawskis scared – and furious that they might never have a family because of a Texas law.
“[This] didn’t have to happen,” Amanda said. “That’s what’s so infuriating about all of this, is that we didn’t have to – we shouldn’t have had to – go through all of this trauma.”
The Zurawskis say the politicians who voted for the anti-abortion law call themselves “pro-life” – but they don’t see it that way.
“Amanda almost died. That’s not pro-life. Amanda will have challenges in the future having more kids. That’s not pro-life,” Josh said.
“Nothing about [this] feels pro-life,” his wife added.
In many ways, Amanda feels fortunate. She wonders whether she’d be alive today if it weren’t for her husband, who rushed her to the hospital and made sure she got the best care possible. And they have good jobs with good health insurance and they live in a big city with high quality health care.
“All of these things I had going for me, and still, this was the outcome,” she said.
She and Josh worry about women in rural areas, or poor women, or young, single mothers in states like Texas. What would happen to them, considering what happened to Amanda?
“These barbaric laws prevented her from getting any amount of health care when she needed it, until it was at a life-threatening moment,” Josh said.
by tyler | Jun 8, 2023 | CNN, health
Here’s a look at Ebola, a virus with a high fatality rate that was first identified in Africa in 1976.
Ebola hemorrhagic fever is a disease caused by one of five different Ebola viruses. Four of the strains can cause severe illness in humans and animals. The fifth, Reston virus, has caused illness in some animals, but not in humans.
The first human outbreaks occurred in 1976, one in northern Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) in central Africa: and the other, in southern Sudan (now South Sudan). The virus is named after the Ebola River, where the virus was first recognized in 1976, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Ebola is extremely infectious but not extremely contagious. It is infectious, because an infinitesimally small amount can cause illness. Laboratory experiments on nonhuman primates suggest that even a single virus may be enough to trigger a fatal infection.
Ebola is considered moderately contagious because the virus is not transmitted through the air.
Humans can be infected by other humans if they come in contact with body fluids from an infected person or contaminated objects from infected persons. Humans can also be exposed to the virus, for example, by butchering infected animals.
Symptoms of Ebola typically include: weakness, fever, aches, diarrhea, vomiting and stomach pain. Additional experiences include rash, red eyes, chest pain, throat soreness, difficulty breathing or swallowing and bleeding (including internal).
Typically, symptoms appear eight to 10 days after exposure to the virus, but the incubation period can span two to 21 days.
Ebola is not transmissible if someone is asymptomatic and usually not after someone has recovered from it. However, the virus has been found in the semen of men who have recovered from Ebola and possibly could be transmitted from contact with that semen.
There are five subspecies of the Ebola virus: Zaire ebolavirus (EBOV), Bundibugyo ebolavirus (BDBV), Sudan ebolavirus (SUDV), Taï Forest ebolavirus (TAFV) and Reston ebolavirus (RESTV).
Click here for the CDC’s list of known cases and outbreaks.
(Full historical timeline at bottom)
March 2014 – The CDC issues its initial announcement on an outbreak in Guinea, and reports of cases in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
April 16, 2014 – The New England Journal of Medicine publishes a report, speculating that the current outbreak’s Patient Zero was a 2-year-old from Guinea. The child died on December 6, 2013, followed by his mother, sister and grandmother over the next month.
August 8, 2014 – Experts at the World Health Organization (WHO) declare the Ebola epidemic ravaging West Africa an international health emergency that requires a coordinated global approach, describing it as the worst outbreak in the four-decade history of tracking the disease.
August 19, 2014 – Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf declares a nationwide curfew beginning August 20 and orders two communities to be completely quarantined, with no movement into or out of the areas.
September 16, 2014 – US President Barack Obama calls the efforts to combat the Ebola outbreak centered in West Africa “the largest international response in the history of the CDC.” Speaking from the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, Obama adds that “faced with this outbreak, the world is looking to” the United States to lead international efforts to combat the virus.
October 6, 2014 – A nurse’s assistant in Spain becomes the first person known to have contracted Ebola outside Africa in the current outbreak. The woman helped treat two Spanish missionaries, both of whom had contracted Ebola in West Africa, one in Liberia and the other in Sierra Leone. Both died after returning to Spain. On October 19, Spain’s Special Ebola Committee says that nurse’s aide Teresa Romero Ramos is considered free of the Ebola virus.
October 8, 2014 – Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian citizen who was visiting the United States, dies of Ebola in Dallas.
October 11, 2014 – Nina Pham, a Dallas nurse who cared for Duncan, tests positive for Ebola during a preliminary blood test. She is the first person to contract Ebola on American soil.
October 15, 2014 – Amber Vinson, a second Dallas nurse who cared for Duncan, is diagnosed with Ebola. Authorities say Vinson flew on a commercial jet from Cleveland to Dallas days before testing positive for Ebola.
October 20, 2014 – Under fire in the wake of Ebola cases involving two Dallas nurses, the CDC issues updated Ebola guidelines that stress the importance of more training and supervision, and recommend that no skin be exposed when workers are wearing personal protective equipment, or PPE.
October 23, 2014 – Craig Spencer, a 33-year-old doctor who recently returned from Guinea, tests positive for Ebola – the first case of the deadly virus in New York and the fourth diagnosed in the United States.
October 24, 2014 – In response to the New York Ebola case, the governors of New York and New Jersey announce that their states are stepping up airport screening beyond federal requirements for travelers from West Africa. The new protocol mandates a quarantine for any individual, including medical personnel, who has had direct contact with individuals infected with Ebola while in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea. The policy allows the states to determine hospitalization or quarantine for up to 21 days for other travelers from affected countries.
January 18, 2015 – Mali is declared Ebola free after no new cases in 42 days.
February 22, 2015 – Liberia reopens its land border crossings shut down during the Ebola outbreak, and President Sirleaf also lifts a nationwide curfew imposed in August to help combat the virus.
May 9, 2015 – The WHO declares an end to the Ebola outbreak in Liberia. More than 4,000 people died.
November 2015 – Liberia’s health ministry says three new, confirmed cases of Ebola have emerged in the country.
December 29, 2015 – WHO declares Guinea is free of Ebola after 42 days pass since the last person confirmed to have the virus was tested negative for a second time.
January 14, 2016 – A statement is released by the UN stating that “For the first time since this devastating outbreak began, all known chains of transmission of Ebola in West Africa have been stopped and no new cases have been reported since the end of November.”
March 29, 2016 – The WHO director-general lifts the Public Health Emergency of International Concern related to the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
*Includes information about Ebola and other outbreaks resulting in more than 100 deaths or special cases.
1976 – First recognition of the EBOV disease is in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo). The outbreak has 318 reported human cases, leading to 280 deaths. An SUDV outbreak also occurs in Sudan (now South Sudan), which incurs 284 cases and 151 deaths.
1995 – An outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) leads to 315 reported cases and at least 250 deaths.
2000-2001 – A Ugandan outbreak (SUDV) results in 425 human cases and 224 deaths.
December 2002-April 2003 – An EBOV outbreak in ROC results in 143 reported cases and 128 deaths.
2007 – An EBOV outbreak occurs in the DRC, 187 of the 264 cases reported result in death. In late 2007, an outbreak in Uganda leads to 37 deaths, with 149 cases reported in total.
September 30, 2014 – Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, announces the first diagnosed case of Ebola in the United States. The person has been hospitalized and isolated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas since September 28.
July 31, 2015 – The CDC announces that a newly developed Ebola vaccine is “highly effective” and could help prevent its spread in the current and future outbreaks.
December 22, 2016 – The British medical journal The Lancet publishes a story about a new Ebola vaccine that tested 100% effective during trials of the drug. The study was conducted in Guinea with more than 11,000 people.
August 1, 2018 – The DRC’s Ministry of Health declares an Ebola virus outbreak in five health zones in North Kivu province and one health zone in Ituri province. On July 17, 2019, the WHO announces that the outbreak constitutes a public health emergency of international concern. On June 25, 2020, the DRC announces that the outbreak is officially over. A total of 3,481 cases were reported, including 2,299 deaths and 1,162 survivors.
August 12, 2019 – Two new Ebola treatments are proving so effective they are being offered to all patients in the DRC. Initial results found that 499 patients who received the two effective drugs had a higher chance of survival – the mortality rate for REGN-EB3 and mAb114 was 29% and 34% respectively. The two drugs worked even better for patients who were treated early – the mortality rate dropped to 6% for REGN-EB3 and 11% for mAb114, according to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and one of the researchers leading the trial.
December 19, 2019 – The US Food and Drug administration announces the approval of a vaccine for the prevention of the Ebola virus for the first time in the United States. The vaccine, Ervebo, was developed by Merck and protects against Ebola virus disease caused by Zaire ebolavirus in people 18 and older.
October 14, 2020 – Inmazeb (REGN-EB3), a mixture of three monoclonal antibodies, becomes the first FDA-approved treatment for the Ebola virus. In December, the FDA approves a second treatment, Ebanga (mAb114).
January 14, 2023 – Ugandan authorities officially declare the end of a recent Ebola outbreak after 42 consecutive days with no new cases.
by tyler | Jun 1, 2023 | CNN, health
Polite society considers swearing to be a vulgar sign of low intelligence and education, for why would one rely on rude language when blessed with a rich vocabulary?
That perception, as it turns out, is full of, uh … baloney. In fact, swearing may be a sign of verbal superiority, studies have shown, and may provide other possible rewards as well.
“The advantages of swearing are many,” said Timothy Jay, professor emeritus of psychology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, who has studied swearing for more than 40 years.
“The benefits of swearing have just emerged in the last two decades as a result of a lot of research on brain and emotion, along with much better technology to study brain anatomy.”
Well-educated people with plenty of words at their disposal, a 2015 study found, were better at coming up with curse words than those who were less verbally fluent.
Participants were asked to list as many words that start with F, A or S in one minute. Another minute was devoted to coming up with curse words that start with those three letters. The study found those who came up with the most F, A and S words also produced the most swear words.
That’s a sign of intelligence “to the degree that language is correlated with intelligence,” said Jay, who authored the study. “People that are good at language are good at generating a swearing vocabulary.”
Swearing can also be associated with social intelligence, Jay added.
“Having the strategies to know where and when it’s appropriate to swear, and when it’s not,” Jay said, “is a social cognitive skill like picking the right clothes for the right occasion. That’s a pretty sophisticated social tool.”
Science has also found a positive link between profanity and honesty. People who cursed lied less on an interpersonal level, and had higher levels of integrity overall, a series of three studies published in 2017 found.
“When you’re honestly expressing your emotions with powerful words, then you’re going to come across as more honest,” said Jay, who was not involved in the studies.
While a higher rate of profanity use was associated with more honesty, the study authors cautioned that “the findings should not be interpreted to mean that the more a person uses profanity, the less likely he or she would engage in more serious unethical or immoral behaviors.”
Want to push through that workout? Go ahead and drop an f-bomb.
People on bikes who swore while pedaling against resistance had more power and strength than people who used “neutral” words, studies have shown.
Research also found that people who cursed while squeezing a hand vice were able to squeeze harder and longer.
Spouting obscenities doesn’t just help your endurance: If you pinch your finger in the car door, you may well feel less pain if you say “sh*t” instead of “shoot.”
People who cursed as they plunged their hand into icy water, another study found, felt less pain and were able to keep their hands in the water longer than those who said a neutral word.
“The headline message is that swearing helps you cope with pain,” said lead author and psychologist Richard Stephens, in an earlier CNN interview. Stephens is a senior lecturer at Keele University in Staffordshire, England, where he leads the Psychobiology Research Laboratory.
Stephens said it works like this: Cussing produces a stress response that initiates the body’s ancient defensive reflex. A flush of adrenaline increases heart rate and breathing, prepping muscles for fight or flight.
Simultaneously, there is another physiological reaction called an analgesic response, which makes the body more impervious to pain.
“That would make evolutionary sense because you’re going to be a better fighter and better runner if you’re not being slowed down by concerns about pain,” Stephens said.
“So it seems like by swearing you’re triggering an emotional response in yourself, which triggers a mild stress response, which carries with it a stress-induced reduction in pain.”
Careful, however, the next time you decide to extend your workout by swearing. Curse words lose their power over pain when they are used too much, research has also discovered.
Some of us get more out of swearing than others. Take people who are more afraid of pain, called “catastrophizers.” A catastrophizer, Stephens explained, is someone who might have a tiny wound and think, “Oh, this is life threatening. I’m going to get gangrene, I’m going to die.”
“The research found men who were lower catastrophizers seemed to get a benefit from swearing, whereas men who are higher catastrophizers didn’t,” Stephens said. “Whereas with women there wasn’t any difference.”
Swearing appears to be centered in the right side of the brain, the part people often call the “creative brain.”
“We do know patients who have strokes on the right side tend to become less emotional, less able to understand and tell jokes, and they tend to just stop swearing even if they swore quite a lot before,” said Emma Byrne, author of “Swearing Is Good for You.”
Research on swearing dates back to Victorian times, when physicians discovered that patients who lost their ability to speak could still curse.
“They swore incredibly fluently,” Byrne said. “Childhood reprimands, swear words and terms of endearment — words with strong emotional content learned early on tend to be preserved in the brain even when all the rest of our language is lost.”
Why do we choose to swear? Perhaps because profanity provides an evolutionary advantage that can protect us from physical harm, Jay said.
“A dog or a cat will scratch you, bite you when they’re scared or angry,” he said. “Swearing allows us to express our emotions symbolically without doing it tooth and nail.
“In other words, I can give somebody the finger or say f**k you across the street. I don’t have to get up into their face.”
Cursing then becomes a remote form of aggression, Jay said, offering the chance to express feelings quickly while hopefully avoiding repercussions.
“The purpose of swearing is to vent my emotion, and there’s an advantage in that it allows me to cope,” he said. “And then it communicates very readily to bystanders what my emotional state is. It has that advantage of emotional efficiency — it’s very quick and clear.”
What makes the use of naughty words so powerful? The power of the taboo, of course. That reality is universally recognized: Just about every language in the world contains curse words.
“It seems that as soon as you have a taboo word, and the emotional insight that the word is going to cause discomfort for other people, the rest seems to follow naturally,” Byrne said.
It’s not just people who swear. Even primates curse when given the chance.
“Chimpanzees in the wild tend to use their excrement as a social signal, one that’s designed to keep people away,” Byrne said.
Hand-raised chimps who were potty-trained learned sign language for “poo” so they could tell their handlers when they needed the toilet.
“And as soon as they learned the poo sign they began using it like we do the word sh*t,” Byrne said. “Cursing is just a way of expressing your feelings that doesn’t involve throwing actual sh*t. You just throw the idea of sh*t around.”
Does that mean that we should curse whenever we feel like it, regardless of our environment or the feelings of others? Of course not. But at least you can cut yourself some slack the next time you inadvertently let an f-bomb slip.
After all, you’re just being human.
by tyler | May 30, 2023 | CNN, health
I’ve been working steadily for hours but feel as if I haven’t even started. My attention is being pulled from my assigned task — writing this story — by a myriad of what I believe are necessary work interruptions. (OK, a couple were from my cat, who also firmly believes in their necessity.)
My kids and I call days like this “squirrel days” in honor of Dug, the talking dog in (squirrel !!) the 2009 Pixar movie “Up,” who (squirrel !!) was constantly distracted by well, just about (squirrel !!) …
Unfortunately, all too many of us are having “squirrel” days, according to Dr. Gloria Mark, a professor of informatics at the University of California, Irvine, who studies how digital media affects our lives. In her book “Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity,” Mark explains how decades of research have tracked the decline of the ability to focus.
“In 2004, we measured the average attention on a screen to be 2½ minutes,” Mark said. “Some years later, we found attention spans to be about 75 seconds. Now we find people can only pay attention to one screen for an average of 47 seconds.”
Not only do people concentrate for less than a minute on any one screen, Mark said, but when attention is diverted from an active work project, they take about 25 minutes to refocus on that task. (Wait, what??)
“In fact, our research shows it takes 25 minutes, 26 seconds, before we go back to the original working sphere or project,” Mark said.
How can that be? “If we look at work in terms of switching projects, as opposed to the micro view of switching screens, we find people spend about 10½ minutes in any work project before being interrupted — internally or by someone else — and then switch to another work project,” Mark said.
Yes, but then we go back to the original work, right? Wrong, Mark said. Instead, when we are interrupted on project two, we switch yet again to a different task — call it project three. Unbelievably, her research has shown we are also interrupted on project three and move on to project four.
“And then you go back and pick up the original interrupted project,” Mark said. “But it’s not like you’re interrupted and you do nothing. For over 25 minutes, you’re actually working on other things.”
(At least I can tell my boss that when I miss my deadline.)
“However, there’s also a switch cost,” Mark added. “A switch cost is the time it takes you to reorient back to your work: ‘Where was I? What was I thinking of?’ That additional effort can also lead to errors and stress.”
Why is all of this a problem? After all, it’s called multitasking, thought by many to be a highly prized skill for coping with the demands of the information age.
“With the exception of a few rare individuals, there is no such thing as multitasking,” Mark said. “Unless one of the tasks is automatic, like chewing gum or walking, you cannot do two effortful things at the same time.”
For example, she said, you can’t read email and be in a video meeting. When you focus on one thing, you lose the other. “You’re actually switching your attention very quickly between the two,” Mark said. “And when you switch your attention fast, it’s correlated with stress.”
Blood pressure rises. Heart rate speeds up. Psychological measures of stress also show negative outcomes, she said, such as more fatigue and mistakes and less productivity: “The more people multitask, the more errors they make.”
Who did this to us? We did, of course, with the help of tech culprits such as social media, tablets and television. But Mark blames email the most.
“To me, email is probably the worst because it’s become a symbol of work,” she said, adding that her research has found a direct correlation between email and more stress.
“We cut off email for some workers in an organization for one workweek,” she said. “Using heart rate monitors, we found that they became significantly less stressed and were able to focus significantly longer.”
(I find myself pausing to look up flights to Bora Bora. Oh, right. They have email there, too.)
“There’s no way that a person can just completely cut off from technology and work in today’s world,” Mark said. “So let’s learn how to live with it in a way that maintains our positive well-being.”
Regaining your focus requires you to be mindful of how you are using technology, Mark said, a daunting task if you consider the average American spends at least 10 hours a day on screens.
Paradoxically, you can use technology to help, she said. Schedule rote work for the first part of the day when you’re not fully alert, then use technology to block distractions when you’re at your mental best. At night, offload tasks from your brain by writing them down and then put the list away.
Distracted by social media sites? Hide them, Mark said: “Take the icons off your desktop and bury the apps on your phone inside folders, where it takes an extra effort to find them. Leave your phone in another room or put it in a drawer and lock it.”
It’s also important to learn when to take a break. “If you have to read something more than once or if the words are just not registering, it’s time to stop and replenish,” she said.
The best break is a walk in nature: “Just a 20-minute walk in nature can help significantly relax people,” Mark said. “And we found it can help people produce significantly more ideas — it’s called divergent thinking.”
Too cold to walk outside? Do something engaging that takes no mental effort. “I have a friend who is an MIT professor, and his favorite activity is matching socks,” Mark said. “Another friend likes to iron. Ideas can incubate and then we come back to the hard work, and we see it with fresh eyes.”
by tyler | May 25, 2023 | CNN, health
Here’s a look at the 2001 anthrax attacks, also referred to as Amerithrax.
There are four types of anthrax infection: cutaneous (through the skin), inhalation (through the lungs; the most deadly), gastrointestinal (through digestion) and injection anthrax. Injection anthrax is common in heroin-injecting users in northern Europe. This has never been reported in the United States.
Anthrax can be contracted by handling products from infected animals or by breathing in anthrax spores and by eating undercooked meat from infected animals.
It has been blamed for several plagues over the ages that killed both humans and livestock. It emerged in World War I as a biological weapon.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention categorizes anthrax as a Category A agent: one that poses the greatest possible threat for a negative impact on public health; one that may spread across a large area or need public awareness and requires planning to protect the public’s health.
Read more: America’s long and frightening history of attacks by mail
Five people died and 17 people were sickened during anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001; outbreak is often referred to as Amerithrax.
Anthrax was sent via anonymous letters to news agencies in Florida and New York and a congressional office building in Washington, DC.
Of the five victims who died of inhalation anthrax, two were postal workers. The other three victims were an elderly woman from rural Connecticut, a Manhattan hospital worker from the Bronx and an employee at a Florida tabloid magazine who may have contracted anthrax through cross-contamination.
The letters were sent to NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, Sen. Majority Leader Tom Daschle, Sen. Patrick Leahy, and the New York Post offices. The letters were postmarked Trenton, New Jersey.
No arrests were made in the attacks.
The FBI has interviewed more than 10,000 people and issued more than 6,000 subpoenas in the case.
4.8 million masks and 88 million gloves were purchased by the Postal Service for its employees, and 300 postal facilities were tested for anthrax.
Over 32,000 people took antibiotics after possible exposure to anthrax.
Stevens, Bob – photo editor at American Media Inc, died of inhalation anthrax, October 5, 2001
Morris, Thomas Jr. – DC postal worker, died of inhalation anthrax, October 21, 2001
Curseen, Joseph Jr. – DC area postal worker, died of inhalation anthrax, October 22, 2001
Nguyen, Kathy – employee at Manhattan hospital, died of inhalation anthrax, October 31, 2001
Lundgren, Ottilie – Connecticut woman, died of inhalation anthrax, November 22, 2001
October 5, 2001 – Sun photo editor Stevens dies of inhalation anthrax.
October 12, 2001 – NBC News announces that an employee has contracted anthrax.
October 15, 2001 – A letter postmarked Trenton, New Jersey, opened by an employee of Senate Majority Leader Daschle contains white powdery substance later found to be “weapons grade” strain of anthrax spores. More than two dozen people in Daschle’s office test positive for anthrax after the envelope is discovered.
October 19, 2001 – An unopened letter tainted with anthrax is found in the offices of the New York Post. One Post employee is confirmed to have a cutaneous infection and a second shows symptoms of the same infection.
October 21, 2001 – DC postal worker Morris Jr. dies of inhalation anthrax.
October 22, 2001 – DC postal worker Curseen dies of inhalation anthrax.
October 31, 2001 – Nguyen, a stockroom worker for the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital, dies of inhalation anthrax.
November 9, 2001 – The FBI releases a behavioral profile of the suspect, who is probably a male loner and might work in a laboratory.
November 16, 2001 – A letter sent to Senator Leahy is found to contain anthrax. The letter is among those at the Capitol that has been quarantined. The letter contains at least 23,000 anthrax spores and is postmarked October 9, in Trenton, New Jersey.
November 22, 2001 – Lundgren, a 94-year-old Connecticut woman, dies of inhalation anthrax.
January 2002 – FBI agents interview former US Army bioweapons scientist Steven Hatfill as part of the anthrax investigation.
June 2002 – Bioweapons researcher Hatfill is named a “person of interest” by the FBI.
June 25, 2002 – The FBI searches Hatfill’s Maryland apartment and Florida storage locker with his consent.
June 27, 2002 – The FBI says it is focusing on 30 biological weapons experts in its probe.
August 1, 2002 – The FBI uses a criminal search warrant to search Hatfill’s Maryland apartment and Florida storage locker a second time; anthrax swab tests come back negative.
August 6, 2002 – Attorney General John Ashcroft refers to Hatfill as a “person of interest.”
August 11, 2002 – Hatfill holds a press conference declaring his innocence. He holds a second one on August 25, 2002.
September 11, 2002 – The FBI searches Hatfill’s former apartment in Maryland for the third time.
August 26, 2003 – Hatfill files a civil lawsuit against Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Justice Department and the FBI claiming his constitutional rights have been violated. The suit alleges violations of Hatfill’s Fifth Amendment rights by preventing him from earning a living, violations of his Fifth Amendment rights by retaliating against him after he sought to have his name cleared in the anthrax probe and the disclosure of information from his FBI file. The suit also seeks an undetermined amount of monetary damages.
July 11, 2004 – The former headquarters of American Media, Inc. in Boca Raton, Florida, where Stevens contracted the anthrax is pumped full of chlorine dioxide gas for decontamination. This was the last building exposed to anthrax in the fall of 2001.
June 27, 2008 – The Justice Department reaches a settlement with Hatfill. The settlement requires the Justice Department to pay Hatfill a one-time payment of $2.825 million and to buy a $3 million annuity that will pay Hatfill $150,000 a year for 20 years. In return, Hatfill drops his lawsuit, and the government admits no wrongdoing.
July 29, 2008 – Bruce Ivins, a former researcher at the Army’s bioweapons laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, dies after overdosing during a suicide attempt on July 27.
August 6, 2008 – Judge unseals and releases hundreds of documents in the 2001 FBI Anthrax investigation that detail Ivins’ role in the attacks.
August 8, 2008 – The Justice Department formally exonerates Hatfill.
September 25, 2008 – The court releases more documents including emails that Ivins sent to himself.
February 19, 2010 – The Justice Department, FBI and US Postal Inspection Service announce its investigation into the 2001 anthrax mailings is at an end.
March 23, 2011 – A report, entitled The Amerithrax Case, is released through the Research Strategies Network, a non-profit think tank based in Virginia. According to the report, old mental health records suggest Ivins should have been prevented from holding a job at a US Army research facility in Maryland. The report was requested by the US Department of Justice.
October 9, 2011 – The New York Times reports indicate there are scientists questioning the FBI assertions regarding Ivins. Possibly Ivins, if he was involved, worked with a partner. Also, the scientists say the presence of tin in the dried anthrax warrants that the investigation be reopened.
November 23, 2011 – The Justice Department settles for $2.5 million with Stevens’ family. The family originally sued for $50 million in 2003, arguing that the military laboratory should have had tighter security.
December 19, 2014 – The Government Accountability Office releases a 77-page report reviewing the genetic testing used by the FBI during the investigation into the anthrax attacks.
by tyler | May 24, 2023 | CNN, health
Here’s a look at information and statistics concerning vaccines in the United States. For vaccines related to coronavirus, see Coronavirus Outbreak Timeline Fast Facts.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provides vaccine recommendations by age, as well as by disease.
For more than 100 years, there has been public discord regarding vaccines based on issues like individual rights, religious freedoms, distrust of government and the effects that vaccines may have on the health of children.
Exemptions to vaccines fall into three general categories: medical, religious and philosophical.
As of May 25, 2022, 44 states and the District of Columbia have enacted legislation allowing religious exemptions from vaccines, and 15 states allow philosophical (non-spiritual) exemptions.
1796 – Edward Jenner develops the smallpox vaccine, the world’s first successful vaccine.
1855 – Massachusetts mandates that school children are to be vaccinated (only the smallpox vaccine is available at the time).
February 20, 1905 – In Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the US Supreme Court upholds the State’s right to compel immunizing against smallpox.
November 13, 1922 – The US Supreme Court denies any constitutional violation in Zucht v. King in which Rosalyn Zucht believes that requiring vaccines violates her right to liberty without due process. The High Court opines that city ordinances that require vaccinations for children to attend school are a “discretion required for the protection of the public health.”
1952 – Dr. Jonas Salk and his team develop a vaccine for polio. A nationwide trial leads to the vaccine being declared in 1955 to be safe and effective.
1963 – The first measles vaccine is released. In 2000, the CDC declares the US has achieved measles elimination, defined as “the absence of continuous disease transmission for 12 months or more in a specific geographic area.” While the US has maintained measles elimination since, there are occasional outbreaks.
1986 – Congress passes the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. This coordinates vaccine activities across several government agencies to monitor vaccine safety, requires vaccine information statements are provided to those receiving vaccines, and creates the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program to compensate those injured by vaccines on a “no fault” basis.
March 19, 1992 – Rolling Stone publishes an article by Tom Curtis, “The Origin of AIDS,” which presents a theory that ties HIV/AIDS to polio vaccines. Curtis writes that in the late 1950s, during a vaccination campaign in Africa, at least 325,000 people were immunized with a contaminated polio vaccine. The article alleges that the vaccine may have been contaminated with a monkey virus and is the cause of the human immunodeficiency virus, later known as HIV/AIDS.
August 10, 1993 – Congress passes the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act which creates the Vaccines for Children Program, providing qualified children free vaccines.
December 9, 1993 – Rolling Stone publishes an update to the Curtis article, clarifying that his theory was not fact, and Rolling Stone did not mean to suggest there was any scientific proof to support it, and the magazine regrets any damage caused by the article.
1998 – British researcher Andrew Wakefield and 12 other authors publish a paper stating they had evidence that linked the vaccination for Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) to autism. They claim they discovered the measles virus in the digestive systems of autistic children who were given the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The publication leads to a widespread increase in the number of parents choosing not to vaccinate their children for fear of its link to autism.
2004 – Co-authors of the Wakefield study begin removing their names from the article when they discover Wakefield had been paid by lawyers representing parents who planned to sue vaccine manufacturers.
May 14, 2004 – The Institute of Medicine releases a report “rejecting a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism.”
February 2010 – The Lancet, the British medical journal that published Wakefield’s study, officially retracts the article. Britain also revokes Wakefield’s medical license.
2011 – Investigative reporter Brian Deer writes a series of articles in the BMJ exposing Wakefield’s fraud. The articles state that he used distorted data and falsified medical histories of children that may have led to an unfounded relationship between vaccines and the development of autism.
2011 – The US Public Health Service finds that 63% of parents who refuse and delay vaccines do so for fear their children could have serious side effects.
June 17, 2014 – After analyzing 10 studies, all of which looked at whether there was a link between vaccines and autism and involved a total of over one million children, the University of Sydney publishes a report saying there is no correlation between vaccinations and the development of autism.
February 2015 – Advocacy group Autism Speaks releases a statement, “Over the last two decades, extensive research has asked whether there is any link between childhood vaccinations and autism. The results of this research are clear: Vaccines do not cause autism. We urge that all children be fully vaccinated.
August 23, 2018 – A study published in the American Journal of Public Health finds that Twitter accounts run by automated bots and Russian trolls masqueraded as legitimate users engaging in online vaccine debates. The bots and trolls posted a variety of anti-, pro- and neutral tweets and directly confronted vaccine skeptics, which “legitimize” the vaccine debate, according to the researchers.
October 11, 2018 – Two reports published by the CDC find that vaccine exemption rates and the percentage of unvaccinated children are on the rise.
January 2019 – The World Health Organization names vaccine hesitancy as one of 10 threats to global health in 2019.
September 4, 2019 – Facebook announces that educational pop-up windows will appear on the social media platforms when a user searches for vaccine-related content, visits vaccine-related Facebook groups and pages, or taps a vaccine-related hashtag on Instagram
December 19, 2019 – The US Food and Drug administration announces the approval of a vaccine for the prevention of the Ebola virus for the first time in the United States. The vaccine, Ervebo, was developed by Merck and protects against Ebola virus disease caused by Zaire ebolavirus in people 18 and older.
December 27, 2019 – A study published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open finds that a single dose of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine may be just as effective as two or three doses at preventing cancer-causing HPV infection.
February 3, 2020 – The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) announces that a clinical trial for an HIV vaccine has been discontinued since the vaccine was not found to prevent infections of human immunodeficiency virus, the virus that causes AIDS.
May 3, 2023 – The US FDA approves, Arexvy, the first vaccine to protect against respiratory syncytial virus or RSV. It is a single shot for adults 60 or older.
