Nancy Santos Gainer, spokeswoman, West Chester University.

William Schaffner, MD, professor of infectious ailments, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville.

Amesh Adalja, MD, infectious illness specialist, senior scholar, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Baltimore.

Leana Wen, MD, emergency physician, public well being coverage professor, George Washington University, Washington, DC.

Shilpa Bakre, spokesperson, University of Texas.

Georgetown University: “Public Health Alert: Presumptive Monkeypox Case.”

Bucknell University: “Monkeypox information.”

The Hill: “Monkeypox case found on George Washington campus.”

The GW Hatchet: “First case of monkeypox identified in GW community.”

STAT: “As monkeypox spreads, university campuses prepare for another outbreak.”

University of North Florida: “Monkeypox.”

Northwestern University: “Information About Monkeypox: Planning Our Approach to Preparation and Prevention”

Cornell University: “Monkeypox: What to Know.”

Heather Harper, spokesperson, University of California.

CDC: “2022 US Map & Case Count,” “Considerations for Reducing Monkeypox Transmission in Congregate Living Settings.”

Chicago Tribune: “Colleges, universities across Illinois begin monkeypox prep with students set to return this month.”

CNN: “To prepare for possible monkeypox spread, colleges focus on educating students.”

Community Impact Newspaper: “UT Austin responds to first confirmed monkeypox case on campus.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer: “West Chester student tests positive for monkeypox.”

Higher Ed Dive: “Here’s what colleges should know to prepare for monkeypox.”

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July 18, 2022 – Will Omicron’s latest subvariant, BA.2.75, be the subsequent one to fret about?

It was first present in early June in India. As of July 17, it had been present in 15 nations, together with seven states within the U.S., based on an Arkansas State University professor who has been monitoring the variant.

The World Health Organization says it’s watching the variant intently.

Infectious illness specialists say there’s no trigger for alarm – but – however the variant needs to be watched.

“Although detected in many other countries [besides India], there is no sign that it is spreading [in those countries],” says Eric Topol, MD, editor-in-chief of Medscape, WebMD’s sister website for well being care professionals, and government vice chairman of Scripps Research. “Any worry about this variant seems to be misplaced, at least at this juncture.”

“I wouldn’t panic yet,” agrees Rajendram Rajnarayanan, PhD, an assistant dean of analysis and affiliate professor at Arkansas State University, who has been monitoring BA.2.75.

But he’s involved about its unfold. Right now, he says, it’s spreading quicker than the BA.5 variant in India. He predicts that BA.2.75 will unfold extra within the United Kingdom subsequent (the place it’s already arrived) after which improve within the U.S. “This is exactly the pattern we’ve seen with every other variant,” he says.

As of July 17, he had tracked simply 14 instances in seven states: California, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin.

By September, it might peak within the U.S., he says. “Right now, BA.2.75. seems to be the fastest of them all” by way of unfold. But like different variants, it might observe the 2-month cycle and start to say no by October, Rajnarayanan says.

In a lab evaluation posted on Twitter, Peking University professor Yunlong Cao discovered that BA.2.75 is extra doubtless than BA.2.12.1 (which, earlier than BA. 5, was the dominant variant within the U.S.) to flee detection by the immune system.

But laboratory evaluation “is only half the equation,” says Peter Chin-Hong, MD, a professor of medication and an infectious illness specialist on the University of California, San Francisco. Many different issues play into whether or not a variant will unfold. “It’s too early to tell from a virus perspective what will happen,” he says of the brand new variant.

As infectious illness specialists debate the course of two.75, some additionally focus on the naming of variants. The World Health Organization has been utilizing letters of the Greek alphabet to call some variants.

But on July 1, Twitter person Xabier Ostale, who’s not an infectious illness skilled, apparently uninterested in ready for BA.2.75 to get a Greek title and took the duty on himself. In a tweet, he dubbed the brand new variant Centaurus, after a constellation and from Greek mythology describing a half-human, half-horse creature. The title has caught and is now a preferred on Twitter and in information stories.

Having a reputation, as an alternative of a string of letters and numbers, helps get messages throughout to the general public, says Rajnarayanan, who’s began to make use of #Centaurus on his Twitter posts. He would encourage the World Health Organization to call all of the variants. “You want to make sure people have something easy to go by,” he says.

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July 7, 2022 – At first look, Kyra’s Instagram profile appears to be like loads like that of every other influencer. According to her bio, she’s a dream chaser and mannequin. The 22-year-old from Mumbai, India, is skinny, light-skinned, and conventionally enticing. She takes rest room selfies and complains in regards to the hassles of contemporary airline journey. But there is a catch: She’s not actual.

Kyra is just the newest in a rising variety of Instagram influencers generated by synthetic intelligence. With solely 23 posts, Kyra has already amassed 113,000 followers, a quantity dwarfed by the web presence of different AI influencers, together with Miquela (with 3 million followers), Shudu, Blawko, and Imma. Despite their origins within the imaginations of entrepreneurs and programmers, the entire meta–influencers dress themselves in a skinny veneer of authenticity.

In a May submit on LinkedIn, Kyra’s creator, Himanshu Goel, enterprise head at TopSocial India, wrote, “Since her first submit, she has traveled to the mountains, seashores and the forts of Jaipur. She has finished a trend shoot, Valentine’s Day interplay with followers and even Yoga! Kyra’s journey has simply begun and there are lots of extra adventures and secrets and techniques to be revealed.”

Kyra is a fictional character, made by computer-generated photographs, who may have a storyline written for her. But to some psychologists, the arrival of AI influencers is the newest in a worrying development by which social media platforms manipulate the well-being and physique picture of younger folks world wide.

Social Media Models

“This will create an entire new set of magnificence beliefs that appear life like,” says Sophia Choukas-Bradley, PhD, a scientific psychologist and researcher on the University of Pittsburgh. “And as a result of they’re AI-generated, they are often manipulated to be very life like however exhibiting unattainable physique requirements.”

Humans are at all times evaluating themselves to the folks round them, says Jasmine Fardouly, PhD, a social psychologist on the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. And these comparisons are automated and widespread.

“From a younger age, we have internalized this concept that it is actually necessary to be bodily enticing as a result of then you definately’ll achieve success and completely happy, and all the things great will occur. But these magnificence beliefs are so particular that only a few folks can truly attain them,” she says.

Humans are social, so this is smart, Fardouly says. The social bonds which have enabled us to thrive as a species additionally imply that we’re always evaluating ourselves to the folks round us to see how we measure up. Just seeing a photograph of one other individual – even an entire stranger – invitations comparisons, she says.

Advertisers have lengthy used this a part of human nature, explains Choukas-Bradley. If we see a photograph or video of an individual we admire or wish to imitate, it is a easy and highly effective strategy to encourage folks to purchase what that individual is promoting. In the 1900s, advertisers used celebrities to each create magnificence beliefs and to promote the merchandise wanted to stay as much as these requirements.

For most of us, Choukas-Bradley says, these celebrities have been faraway from our on a regular basis lives. We did not run into them on the grocery retailer or see them in grubby sweats with out make-up. Still, psychologists have discovered that the perfect-looking photographs we noticed within the pages of shiny magazines, on TV, and on billboards had a dramatic impact on how folks thought of their very own our bodies. A 1999 survey of 548 tween and teenage women within the journal Pediatrics confirmed that studying trend magazines influenced perceptions of the “ideal” physique in two-thirds of respondents and made 47% wish to drop extra pounds.

Another examine within the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2003 discovered that women who regularly learn trend magazines have been seven occasions extra prone to weight-reduction plan for weight reduction and 6 occasions extra seemingly to make use of excessive, unhealthy weight reduction behaviors reminiscent of taking slimming capsules or laxatives. In whole, a 2010 assessment article by physique picture researcher Michael Levine, PhD, and colleagues confirmed a constant, robust relationship between publicity to mass media and destructive physique picture and disordered consuming.

“We’ve come about as shut as we are able to to proving a cause-and-effect relationship between skinny, idealized photographs, and younger girls particularly feeling worse about their our bodies,” says Jennifer Mills, PhD, a scientific psychologist at York University in Ontario, Canada.

Modified Images

Growing consciousness of the hurt of mass media photographs got here together with the rise of digital enhancing packages like Photoshop and with the arrival of social media. On one degree, says Jennifer Harriger, PhD, a psychologist at Pepperdine University in California, the photographs seen on social media are an extension of these seen in commercials. They promote the identical magnificence beliefs and infrequently promote the identical merchandise. And though many on social media prefer to faux that their pictures are spur-of-the-moment snaps, the fact is that almost all influencers closely edit their photographs utilizing Photoshop, digital filters, and extra.

Not surprisingly, extra analysis is revealing that social media has the identical robust hyperlinks between destructive physique picture and consuming dysfunction behaviors as conventional mass media. What makes social media doubtlessly extra difficult, Mills explains, is that the photographs proven aren’t simply celebrities, they’re additionally classmates and associates. Adding gasoline to the fireplace is that the photographs are always altering and are tailor-made to every individual’s pursuits.

“You may choose up a difficulty of Cosmo again within the day and one other one would not come out for one more month, so there was a finite quantity of content material that you can see. There’s an infinite quantity on social media,” she says.

This creates what researchers like Choukas-Bradley name a “excellent storm,” the place photographs of idealized our bodies be a part of with adolescent feminine tradition to emphasise the significance of a physique kind that’s unattainable to acquire.

“To me, it is an illustration of the best way by which a physique has turn out to be a supply of potential capital and social mobility in our societies,” says Rachel Rodgers, PhD, a psychologist at Northeastern University in Boston. “They’re not simply selling the concept you must appear like this, however that you can appear like that in case you solely spent the time, cash, and power on the appropriate services. That there is a highly effective kind of ethical obligation to look that means.”

Social media whistleblowers reminiscent of Frances Haugen – who testified earlier than Congress about how social media websites hurt youngsters – have revealed that corporations like Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) and TikTook are effectively conscious of the affect their platforms have on the well being and well-being of their youngest customers, Harriger explains.

Some nations have tried to deal with this downside via laws. In June 2021, Norway’s legislature overwhelmingly handed a regulation requiring influencers and advertisers to submit a disclaimer exhibiting when a photograph has been digitally altered. Though these disclaimers are well-intentioned, research have proven they haven’t any impact on our perceptions of the our bodies within the pictures and on our needs to appear like them.

The cause is that our brains first course of these photographs by way of an automated and emotional pathway. We may not even remember that we’re making these comparisons as a result of they occur so rapidly, and with out acutely aware thought, Fardouly explains. We can solely course of disclaimers later, by way of a second neural pathway that is slower, taking seconds reasonably than milliseconds. But by then, the picture has already hit house.

There is on analysis on AI influencers, in keeping with Fardouly and Choukas-Bradley. But all of the specialists who spoke with WebMD mentioned their years of labor means that the truth that these influencers are computer-generated may have little affect on how we understand their our bodies.

“People will nonetheless wish to look that means. They will nonetheless make comparisons to these photographs, and this can make them really feel unhealthy about themselves,” Fardouly says.

What Are You Watching?

To date, AI influencers like Kyra and Miquela have echoed current magnificence beliefs reasonably than difficult the boundaries of what society calls stunning. As a end result, they additional reinforce a slim vary of physique sizes and shapes. The proven fact that they are not actual would not make a lot of a distinction.

Mills hopes that AI influencers may supply a reprieve for real-life influencers who construct their lives across the whims of algorithms and advertisers. “Being an influencer is de facto exhausting. You at all times must be doing fascinating issues and look stunning. It’s the right job for an artificially created being as a result of it is not the lifetime of a standard teen,” Mills says.

Digital influencers are additionally, in fact, unpaid, by no means age the best way real-life characters do, and will probably be freed from the sorts of scandals different celebrities can typically get blended up in.

Rodgers says there’s nonetheless an excessive amount of cash to be made in preserving folks clicking, scrolling, and shopping for. Instead, she feels efforts are higher spent specializing in addressing the algorithms that management the photographs we see.

The means it really works now, you’ll be able to’t inform Instagram what you do not wish to see, she factors out. Instead, you need to intentionally fill your feed with the stuff you do wish to have a look at.

“The platforms have enormous accountability over the security and the well-being of their customers,” Rodgers says, “which is principally all people on the planet.”

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Dec. 17, 2021 — Top infectious illness officers count on a surge of COVID-19 instances after the vacations and say Omicron will quickly take over because the dominant pressure within the United States.

The greatest strategy to keep protected is by getting vaccinated and boosted, they are saying.

“For the unvaccinated, you’re looking at a winter of severe illness and death — for yourselves, families, and the hospitals who may soon overwhelm,” White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients mentioned at a information briefing Friday. “We need the American people to do their part.”

The Omicron variant has been detected in no less than 39 states and 75 international locations, in response to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD.

The pressure is extra transmissible than the already extremely infectious Delta variant, and though there was early proof that it prompted extra delicate illness, she mentioned that’s seemingly as a result of a lot of these contaminated have been vaccinated and boosted.

“Although Delta continues to circulate widely in the United States, Omicron is increasing rapidly and we expect it to become the dominant strain in the United States, as it has in other countries, in the coming weeks,” Walensky mentioned.

The U.S. is averaging near 1,300 deaths from COVID-19 every day. New instances, deaths, and hospitalizations are larger now than within the earlier winter — earlier than vaccines had been so extensively accessible. The New York Times reported Friday that new infections in Connecticut and Maine have grown 150% prior to now 2 weeks, and Ohio and Indiana are seeing hospitalization charges nearing the worst of final winter’s surge.

Dueling stories launched this week gave trigger for aid and concern about Omicron.

A examine from South Africa launched Tuesday reveals decrease hospitalizations in the course of the first 3 weeks of the Omicron wave than throughout earlier waves from different variants. That’s the excellent news.

The regarding information is out of the United Kingdom, the place Imperial College London reported Friday that the chance of re-infection with COVID-19 from Omicron is greater than 5 occasions as excessive and that instances of Omicron-based COVID-19 are doubling each 2 days.

What’s extra, the examine “finds no evidence of Omicron having lower severity than Delta, judged by either the proportion of people testing positive who report symptoms, or by the proportion of cases seeking hospital care after infection. However, hospitalization data remains very limited at this time,” researchers mentioned.

“We don’t have any proof that the virus itself is extra delicate,” Eric Topol, MD, govt vice chairman of Scripps Research and editor-in-chief of Medscape, WebMD’s sister web site for well being care professionals, informed PBS NewsHour. “Until we have now that, we have now to imagine that individuals who haven’t any safety are extremely susceptible to getting very unwell.”

The White House COVID-19 workforce continues to induce mother and father and guardians to get their youngsters vaccinated, particularly in anticipation of a post-holiday spike. Walensky mentioned the CDC’s vaccine advisory board met Thursday to proceed the security dialogue about COVID-19 vaccinations in youngsters.

So far, 20 million youngsters underneath 17 and 5 million underneath 11 have obtained their pictures.

“Looking specifically at vaccine safety data from over 50,000 children 5-11 years old, we found no evidence of serious safety concerns,” Walensky mentioned.

Top infectious illness skilled Anthony Fauci, MD, highlighted the significance of getting vaccinated and boosted to keep away from critical illness from Delta and Omicron.

“We’re in a situation where we are now facing a very important Delta surge and we are looking over our shoulder at an oncoming Omicron surge,” he mentioned. “The optimum protection is fully vaccinated plus a boost.”

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THURSDAY, Nov. 11 (HealthDay News) — The world faces an elevated danger of a measles outbreak as a result of 22 million infants didn’t get their measles photographs final 12 months as a result of pandemic, the World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Wednesday.

They stated that 3 million fewer infants have been vaccinated in opposition to measles in 2020 than in 2019, and simply 70% of infants acquired each doses of the two-dose measles vaccine, far wanting the 95% charge wanted to guard communities from an outbreak, CBS News reported.

Another concern is {that a} measles marketing campaign scheduled in 23 nations in 2020 was postponed as a result of pandemic, leaving greater than 93 million folks weak to measles, in line with the well being companies.

“Large numbers of unvaccinated kids, outbreaks of measles, and illness detection and diagnostics diverted to assist COVID-19 responses are components that improve the chance of measles-related deaths and severe issues in kids,” Kevin Cain, the CDC’s international immunization director, stated in a press release, CBS News reported.

“We should act now to strengthen illness surveillance programs and shut immunity gaps, earlier than journey and commerce return to pre-pandemic ranges, to stop lethal measles outbreaks and mitigate the danger of different vaccine-preventable ailments,” Cain urged.

“While reported measles instances dropped in 2020, proof suggests we’re seemingly seeing the calm earlier than the storm as the danger of outbreaks continues to develop world wide,” stated Dr. Kate O’Brien, director of WHO’s division of immunization, vaccines and biologicals, CBS News reported.

The measles vaccine protects in opposition to one of many world’s most contagious human viruses. The vaccine has prevented an estimated 30 million deaths up to now 20 years alone, CBS News reported. In 2020, an estimated 7.5 million folks had the illness and 60,700 folks died from it, the well being companies stated.

More data

Visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for extra on the measles.

SOURCE: CBS News

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Nov. 5, 2021 — Increasingly excessive and extra frequent warmth waves are clear indicators of the menace local weather change poses to human well being, however warmth isn’t the one necessary issue. High humidity will increase the risks of maximum warmth, and high-humidity days are on the rise, too.

New findings, revealed in Geophysical Research Letters, present that the planet has seen will increase in each dry warmth and humid warmth extremes. The will increase are related throughout many areas, together with Europe, northern South America, Africa, and most of North America. More densely populated areas are seeing essentially the most development in sizzling and humid days.

On common, every particular person worldwide has had 5 further days of maximum humid warmth per decade since 1979. If the calculation is made primarily based on land space as a substitute of per capita, the rise is much less, at 3.5 days since 1979. Extreme dry warmth, then again, has occurred about 4 further days per decade throughout the globe, no matter inhabitants density.

The folks hit hardest throughout these further sizzling and humid days are sometimes already sweltering greater than the remainder of the world. Extremes in dry warmth elevated principally in subtropical and desert areas, such because the Middle East and Australia. Extreme humid warmth occurred the place temperatures and humidity had been already at harmful ranges, together with northern India, elements of Southeast Asia, and parts of Bolivia and Brazil that border the Amazon rainforest.

In these areas, many individuals depend on agriculture and different out of doors labor, akin to building, and on human-powered transportation, akin to rickshaws. The rising tempo of maximum warmth and humidity occasions can smash crops, trigger spikes in heat-related sicknesses, and stop out of doors work, threatening productiveness in areas the place the economic system is struggling.

Rainfall patterns have a possible function in these tendencies, however a human issue could also be irrigation for farming. Although this analysis gives no options, it reveals the significance of figuring out causes of those extremes and the way they have an effect on folks residing in hardest-hit areas.

The researchers write that these most underneath menace in these areas embrace out of doors laborers, unhoused folks, older adults, and people residing with out air-con or warning methods for excessive warmth.

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