{"source":"Health","paragraphs":["\u003cp\u003eThe government’s Office of National

Statistics released figures indicating that deaths could be at least 10 percent

higher than the official toll — 12,107 as of Tuesday — which does not take into
account many people who die in nursing homes or at home. More than 2,000 nursing
homes, about 13 percent of the country’s total, have had coronavirus cases, said
Dr. Chris Whitty, the government’s chief medical adviser. Workers in many of the
homes have complained of an acute shortage of protective gear. Care England, a
charity representing independent care agencies, has estimated that nearly 1,000
Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes have gone uncounted. Two major home operators have
reported 521 deaths in recent days, many of which are not yet included in official
totals.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eA US study saw 12,000 people who were either
obese or overweight given the pills or a placebo – with those who took the drug
shedding an average of 4kg (9lbs) in 40 months. Further analysis showed no big
differences in tests for heart valve damage. Tam Fry, of Britain’s National Obesity
Forum, said the drug is potentially the \"holy grail\" of weight-loss medicine. \"I
think it is the thing everybody has been looking for,\" he
said.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eDr. Fauci and Dr. Birx showed charts indicating
that coronavirus cases in New York and New Jersey had risen far higher than in
other parts of the country, a fact that they said gave them hope that the overall
number of deaths might be lower if people in the rest of the states followed the
guidelines for at least the next month. Mr. Trump displayed none of the carefree
dismissiveness that characterized his reaction to the virus in February and early
March, when he repeatedly said that \"we have it totally under control\" and
that \"it’s going to be just fine.\"\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eDespite the
benign assessment of the medical establishment, Dr. Curry’s flawed reports were
amplified by alarmist websites, prompted articles linking cellphones to brain
cancer and served as evidence in lawsuits urging the removal of wireless classroom
technology. In time, echoes of his reports fed Russian news sites noted for stoking
misinformation about 5G technology. What began as a simple graph became a case
study in how bad science can take root and flourish. \"I still think there are
health effects,\" Dr. Curry said in an interview. \"The federal government needs to
look at it more closely.\"\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003ePublic health investigators
asked people what they’d eaten, and 79 percent said they’d had romaine — both at
restaurants, and at home. So far, no one knows whether there’s a common link. E.
coli naturally hangs out in animal intestines, and one of the grossest ways it
spreads is through poop. Produce can become contaminated if poop-tainted water gets
into the field where it’s grown, or if the produce comes into contact with
contaminated surfaces during harvest, shipping, or at the
store.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eThe advice left many medical experts scratching
their heads. The coronavirus is a new pathogen, and little is known about the
disease it causes, called Covid-19, or how patients respond to common medications.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organization said it was aware of no research
showing that ibuprofen should not be taken by patients with Covid-
19.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eThe study, published today in the journal
Neurology, reports smaller brain volumes and worse memories in people with higher-
than-average levels of cortisol — popularly known as the stress hormone. But any
media coverage that warns stress is going to shrink your brain is
premature. \"Right now all we can say is A is associated with B, we can’t really
say anything about causality,\" says Sudha Seshadri, a professor of neurology at
the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and senior author on
the study.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eArchie Cochrane, the doyen of evidence-
based medicine, said we should ask three questions of any intervention: can it
work, does it work and is it worth it? The relative risk reduction you quote tells
us of population benefit and answers the first two questions, but it is the
absolute risk reduction that answers the \"is it worth it?\"question. Many patients
would be reluctant to take a tablet if told there was a greater than 97% chance
that they would derive no benefit from taking it over five years and it had no
positive effect on their length of life.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eThe study is
the work of researchers at Nottingham University’s School of Medicine who focused
on chemicals known as antigens. These are produced by cancer cells and trigger an
immune response inside humans. In particular, they cause our bodies to make auto-
antibodies that target and try to block those invading antigens. Researchers wanted
to know if they could detect the presence of specific auto-antibodies in patients
and show whether they had been triggered by antigens from tumour
cells.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eThe hunt began Jan. 10, when Chinese scientists
posted the genetic makeup of the virus on a public database. The next morning,
researchers at the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center in
Maryland went to work. Within hours, they had pinpointed the letters of the genetic
code that could be used to make a vaccine. Historically, vaccines have been one of
the greatest public health tools to prevent disease. But even as technology,
genomics and global coordination have improved, allowing researchers to move at top
speed, vaccine development remains an expensive and risky process.\u003c/p\u003e"]}