Your source for health news for the Pacific Northwest
Child vaccination rates dipped into dangerous territory during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when schools were shuttered, and most doctors were only seeing emergency patients. But instead of recovering after schools reopened in 2021, those historically low rates worsened. Experts fear that the skepticism of science and distrust of government that flared up during the pandemic are contributing to the decrease.
Continue reading
Birth rates are falling in the U.S.and are now close to the lowest level in a century. Is this decline because, as some suggest, young people aren’t interested in having children? Or are people facing increasing barriers to becoming parents?
Continue reading
What percentage of children in your child’s school are vaccinated against measles? How does your school district compare to others in King County? How have student immunization rates changed over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic? Find this and more on Public Health’s School Immunizations Data Dashboard, recently updated to include data for the 2021-22 school year.
Continue reading
In response to the steep rise in out-of-pocket costs for insulin over the past two decades — enough to compel many diabetic patients to ration their use of the medicine — nearly two dozen states have passed measures in the past few years capping the out-of-pocket costs for some patients.
Continue reading
Here’s why the federal government is considering new safety regulations.
Continue reading
“When there’s not enough housing for all, rents and prices skyrocket beyond what many can afford,” Inslee said. “An until we fix our housing crisis, thousands of people will remain homeless.”
Continue reading
By one expert’s estimate, perhaps 30,000 scientists worldwide have the skills to build a strain of pandemic influenza, provided they can find someone to synthesize the DNA for them. The consequences of unleashing such a pathogen could be catastrophic.
Continue reading
Adam Pyle, University of Toronto Football — a sport that involves violent collisions — came under shocking scrutiny on Jan.
Continue reading
In contrast to China at the outset of this wave, most countries by now have high immunity and protection against severe disease and death from COVID. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control has noted that China’s surge “is not expected to impact the COVID-19 epidemiological situation” in Europe.
Continue reading
Damar Hamlin’s cardiac arrest during ‘Monday Night Football’ could be commotio cordis or a more common condition – a heart doctor answers 4 questions
Continue reading
Research increasingly shows that the dangers of alcohol have been downplayed and its benefits exaggerated. In fact, having even one drink a day can have a negative effect on your health.
Continue reading
Study found that a staggering 90% of people living with long COVID initially experienced only mild illness with COVID-19. After developing long COVID, however, the typical person experienced symptoms including fatigue, shortness of breath and cognitive problems such as brain fog – or a combination of these – that affected daily functioning. These symptoms had an impact on health as severe as the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury. Our study also found that women have twice the risk of men and four times the risk of children for developing long COVID.
Continue reading
The mechanics of weight loss are quite straightforward and are rooted in the laws of thermodynamics. Basically this means that in order to lose weight, you must expend more calories than you consume. But where you actually lose this weight isn’t quite so straightforward. This is because where our bodies store fat is governed by our hormones.
Continue reading
You can become dehydrated. It can can play havoc with your ears, sinuses, gut and sleep. You could develop blood clots. Then there’s jet lag, radiation, COVID. Have a nice flight!
Continue reading
With COVID, it appears that the make-up of the gut microbiome can influence the course of disease. Research has shown an association between the microbiome profile and levels of inflammatory markers in patients with COVID, where patients with a poorer combination of gut bacteria show signs of too much inflammation. This suggests the microbiome influences the severity of a COVID infection via effects on the immune response.
Continue reading