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The Covid-19 pandemic has abated in much of the world and, with it, many of the social restrictions implemented to curb its spread, as people have been eager to return to pre-lockdown life.

But in its place have emerged a series of viruses behaving in new and peculiar ways.

Take seasonal influenza, more commonly known as the flu. The 2020 and 2021 U.S. winter flu seasons were some of the mildest on record both in terms of deaths and hospitalizations. Yet cases ticked up in February and climbed further into the spring and summer as Covid restrictions were stripped back.

"We've never seen a flu season in the U.S. extend into June," Dr. Scott Roberts, associate medical director for infection prevention at the Yale School of Medicine, told CNBC Tuesday.

"Covid has clearly had a very big impact on that. Now that people have unmasked, places are opening up, we're seeing viruses behave in very odd ways that they weren't before," he said.

And flu is just the beginning.

We are seeing very atypical behaviors in a number of ways for a number of viruses.

Dr Scott Roberts

associate medical director for infection prevention, Yale School of Medicine

Respiratory syncytial virus, a cold-like virus common during winter months, exhibited an uptick last summer, with cases surging among children in Europe, the U.S and Japan. Then, in January this year, an outbreak of adenovirus 41, usually responsible for gastrointestinal illness, became the apparent cause of a mysterious and severe liver disease among young children.

Elsewhere, Washington State has been experiencing its worst flare-up of tuberculosis in 20 years.

And now, a recent outbreak of monkeypox, a rare viral infection typically found in Central and West Africa, is baffling health experts with over 1,000 confirmed and suspected cases emerging in 29 non-endemic countries.

At least two genetically distinct monkeypox variants are now circulating in the U.S., likely stemming from two different spillover infections from animals to humans, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week.

The World Health Organization noted earlier last week that the virus, whose symptoms include fever and skin lesions, may have been going undetected in society for "months or possibly a couple of years."

A section of skin tissue, harvested from a lesion on the skin of a monkey, that had been infected with monkeypox virus, is seen at 50X magnification on day four of rash development in 1968.

CDC | Reuters

"The two strains probably indicate this has been going on longer than we first thought. We're at a concerning time right now," said Roberts. He noted that the coming weeks will be telling for the course of the virus, which has an incubation period of 5 to 21 days.

It is not yet clear whether the smallpox-like virus has mutated, though health experts have reported that it is behaving in new and atypical ways. Most notably, it appears to be spreading within the community most commonly through sex as opposed to via travel from places where it is typically found. Symptoms are also appearing in new ways.

"Patients are presenting differently than we were previously taught," said Roberts, noting that some infected patients are bypassing initial flu-like symptoms and immediately developing rashes and lesions, specifically and unusually on the genitals and anus.

"There's a lot of unknowns that do make me uneasy. We are seeing very atypical behaviors in a number of ways for a number of viruses," he said.

One explanation, of course, is that Covid-induced restrictions and mask-wearing over the past two years have given other infectious diseases little opportunity to spread in the ways they once did.

Where viruses did manage to slip through, they were frequently missed as public health surveillance centered largely on the pandemic.

That indeed was the case in Washington's tuberculosis outbreak, according to local health authorities, who said parallels between the two illnesses allowed TB cases to go undiagnosed.

During the Covid pandemic, access to primary care, including childhood vaccinations, was unavailable to many children.

Jennifer Horney

professor of epidemiology, University of Delaware

Now, as pandemic-induced restrictions have eased and usual habits resumed, viruses that were in retreat have found a fertile breeding ground in newly social and travel-hungry hosts.

The recent monkeypox outbreak is thought to have stemmed, at least in part, from two mass events in Europe, a lead adviser to the WHO said last month.

Meantime, two years of reduced exposure have lowered individual immunity to diseases and made society as a whole more vulnerable. That is especially true for young children typically germ amplifiers who missed opportunities to gain antibodies against common viruses, either through their mother's womb or early years socializing.

That could explain the uptick in curious severe acute hepatitis cases among children, according to health experts who are looking into possible links to Covid restrictions.

"We are also exploring whether increased susceptibility due to reduced exposure during the Covid-19 pandemic could be playing a role," the U.K. Health Security Agency said in April.

Morsa Images | Digitalvision | Getty Images

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also expressed concern that lockdowns may have caused many children to miss childhood vaccinations, potentially raising the risks of other vaccine-preventable illnesses such as measles and pertussis.

"During the Covid pandemic, access to primary care, including childhood vaccinations, was unavailable to many children," Jennifer Horney, professor of epidemiology at the University of Delaware, told CNBC.

"To prevent increases in these diseases, catch-up vaccination campaigns are needed globally," she added.

That said, there is also now greater awareness and surveillance of public health issues in the wake of the pandemic, making diagnoses of some outbreaks more commonplace.

"Covid has raised the profile of public health matters so that we are perhaps paying more attention to these events when they occur," said Horney, adding that public health systems set up to identify Covid have also helped diagnose other diseases.

Professor Eyal Leshem, infectious disease specialist at Sheba Medical Center, agreed: "The general population and the media have become much more interested in zoonotic outbreaks and infectious diseases."

It's not that the disease is more prevalent, but that it gets more attention.

Professor Eyal Leshem

infectious disease specialist, Sheba Medical Center

However, he also warned of the role of "surveillance bias," whereby individuals and medical professionals are more likely to report cases of diseases as they grow more high profile. That suggests that some viruses, such as monkeypox, may appear to be growing when in fact they were previously underreported.

"It's not that the disease is more prevalent, but that it gets more attention," Leshem said.

Still, the increased monitoring of infectious disease outbreaks is no bad thing, he noted. With the increased spread and mutation of infectious diseases as seen with Covid-19 the more awareness and understanding of the changing nature of diseases, the better.

"The public and media attention will help governments and global organizations direct more resources into surveillance and protection of future pandemics," Leshem said, highlighting research, surveillance and intervention as three key areas of focus.

"These investments have to occur globally to prevent and mitigate the next pandemic," he said.

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Diseases suppressed during Covid are coming back in new and peculiar ways - CNBC

Monkeypox was spread by prairie dogs in the U.S. in 2003. Above: The prairie dog Chuckles was a pet belonging to Tammy and Steve Kautzer and their 3-year-old daughter, of Dorchester, Wisconsin. They caught monkeypox from another pet prairie dog that since died. Mike Roemer/Getty Images hide caption

Monkeypox was spread by prairie dogs in the U.S. in 2003. Above: The prairie dog Chuckles was a pet belonging to Tammy and Steve Kautzer and their 3-year-old daughter, of Dorchester, Wisconsin. They caught monkeypox from another pet prairie dog that since died.

The world is in the midst of a monkeypox outbreak. The World Health Organization has recorded more than 500 cases in 30 countries this year including the United Kingdom, the United States and a number of European nations.

And how do Western media outlets illustrate the story? The BBC, the Independent, CNBC and ABC News are among those that have used a stock photo of a Black person with monkeypox blisters.

It would be as if Nigeria, which has seen 247 cases since 2017 and 66 so far this year, would use photos exclusively of white people with monkeypox in covering its national epidemic.

Absurd, right?

Africans and health equity advocates have been swift in reacting to the Western media's use of Black arms and faces with monkeypox. Nigerian journalist Mercy Abang tweeted, "Here is an example of media bias at its finest; monkeypox has been reported in nations worldwide, but a search shows only [photos of] blacks. Tragic."

Dr. Madhu Pai, professor of epidemiology and global health at McGill University, tweeted, "Journalists and editors of global North media outlets badly need training on how to not be racist & stigmatizing in their reporting Ebola, Covid, monkeypox."

The coverage echoes media reporting following the outbreak in Nigeria in 2017. I was a co-author of a BMJ Global Health Journal review of media coverage of monkeypox. Here's how a story from the publication "Voice from Europe" described the first case of monkeypox in England in 2018: a "horrible Nigerian disease called monkeypox spreads in the United Kingdom for the first time."

The message then and now: Blame Africa for monkeypox.

Here are my suggestions for Western journalists on how to frame the monkeypox story and advice for public health officials on how to deal with the spread of this disease.

Present the facts.

The World Health Organization describes monkeypox as a zoonosis: a disease transmitted from animals to humans. The virus primarily occurs in Central and West Africa, often in proximity to tropical rainforests. However, it can crop up anywhere in the world.

In 2003, the first outbreak of monkeypox outside Africa was reported in six U.S. states Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin. That outbreak was caused by human contact with infected prairie dogs kept as pets. Prairie dogs are herbivorous burrowing mammals native to the grasslands of North America; the pets were reportedly infected after an Illinois animal distributor had reportedly housed them near imported small mammals from Ghana.

That outbreak resulted in more than 70 reported cases, all transmitted by contact with an infected prairie dog or with a person who had been infected by a prairie dog.

Genetic evidence shows that the international outbreak likely originated in Nigeria, but the virus has likely been spreading by person-to-person contact in Europe and the U.K. for months.

Investigate the reasons behind the current outbreak.

There has always been a threat of monkeypox spreading internationally. But it hasn't until now. So the job for journalists is to talk to scientists who are trying to see if something changed about the virus and the way it spreads.

Look at how Africa is responding to monkeypox.

There is no need for the affected countries to reinvent the wheel in fighting the spread of this virus. Africa has the expertise to prevent, detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks. We do this routinely, including for monkeypox. Recently, Ifedayo Adetifa, director-general of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, tweeted about Nigeria's monkeypox experience:

Nigeria's 1st case of #MonkeyPox was identified in 1971 and after a 40-year hiatus, monkeypox revisited in 2017. Since then, we have experienced sporadic cases and managed them. Now that there is increased attention being paid to #Monkeypox, these are @NCDCgov resources on the subject.

The resources Adetifa shared includes the National Monkeypox Public Health Response Guidelines. The document provides important information that would help Western nations in responding to this outbreak as well as improve detection and prevention of future outbreaks. One important lesson from Nigeria is the setting up of a monkeypox emergency operations center to coordinate all aspects of the response, led by a senior staff member of the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and supported by other global health agencies working in the country.

In conclusion, here's what I'd tell my kids.

If my two daughters, Yagazie, age 12, and Chimamanda, age 9, were to ask me to explain what's happening with monkeypox, here's what I'd tell them: Monkeypox outbreaks are common in Africa but can happen anywhere. The infection is transmitted from some animals to humans. Human to human transmission happens when one comes into contact with sores and body fluids of those infected. Cases are now being reported in countries outside Africa, and this is scaring people in those countries.

I would also give them some monkeypox prevention advice: Monkeypox is not as deadly as it looks. The strain currently circulating is not typically fatal. However, they must always remember to wash their hands anytime they get back home from an outing, just as their mother and I have taught them to do that's one of the measures that helps keep you safe from infection

And if they wanted to know why there's biased reporting in Western media, I'd tell them that global health has a colonial history and some Western media outlets are holding on to the vestiges of colonialism by depicting Africa as a backwards, disease-ridden continent.

I would also tell them not to allow the media or for that matter, anyone make them feel inferior because they are Black, and they must keep pushing back.

Ifeanyi Nsofor is the director of policy and advocacy at Nigeria Health Watch and is a senior New Voices fellow at the Aspen Institute.

Excerpt from:
OPINION: Why this Nigerian doctor is angry at media coverage of monkeypox : Goats and Soda - NPR

TheBig Tech problemis a moral crisis first. As Heritage Foundation President Kevin Robertswrotelast month:

Big Tech is the enemy of the people not merely because they have taken advantage of our free-market principles. They have earned this untoward distinction because of what Big Tech does to us in our relationships with one another as human persons.

While Big Techmenacesmany levels of society, how it is impacting the next generation of citizens is of particular consequence.

Social medias deleterious effects on teens and preteens the world over are well known by now. In April, The Atlanticcitedsocial media as a major factor in rising rates of depression in American youth. A Marchstudyby Cambridge University revealed a direct relationship between social media use and life satisfaction in adolescence.

It found that for certain age groups, higher estimated social media use predicts a decrease in life satisfaction ratings and lower estimated social media use predicts an increase in life satisfaction ratings.

Facebooksown researchallowed that 6% of teen Instagram users who reported suicidal thoughts traced these feelings directly to Instagram. The platform was responsible for body image issues in teen girls, as well.

In another study, a team composed of university researchers Jean M. Twenge, Jonathan Haidt, and othersfounda consistent and substantial association between mental health and social media use among girlsan association stronger than links between their mental health and hard drug use, sexual assault, obesity, and binge drinking.

The Heritage Foundation hascapturedthis and similarresearchthroughout 2021, and offered our ownsolutionsto contend with its findings.

Big Tech companies areawareof the effect they have on young people and yet continue toforge aheadand evenexpandtheir efforts. Mental health aside, these companies poison American youth withcontentthatwarpstheir perceptions of reality and even impairs the development of their consciences.

Big Tech companiesbuild addictive properties, now aimed deliberately at children, directly into the design of their products. With the race to court, the next generationgrowing more competitive, no doubt they will enhance these properties for a valuable but untapped preteen audience.

We can see the effects with our own eyes. The erosion of character, increasing atomization, and difficulty forming genuine relationships in real life among todays children are enough to stunt a nation going forward. Children and adolescents in our cities walk around like zombies, ride slack-jawed in backseats, and sit hunched over at dinner tables across the country glued to their phones and the ersatz connections they peddle.

But with these technologies so entrenched, what can be done?

Peggy Noonansuggests a solution: When we know children are being harmed by something, why cant the state help? She remarks that one faction of conservatives maintains that its greater responsibility is not to simply maximize shareholder value for Big Tech companies but to see to it that an entire generation of young people not be made shallow and mentally ill through addictive social media use.

It follows that legislation has a role to play. To that end, two senators have stepped into the breach.

Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduced theKids Online Safety Act. This bill attempts to address and mitigate future fallout from Big Techs reckless push for growth at the expense of Americas kids. This policy proposal aligns with The Heritage Foundationsrecommendationsfor companies to expand and strengthen parental controls and protections for minors.

Additionally, the bill creates provisions for platform accountability and transparency in order to safeguard children and teens online. As such, the Kids Online Safety Act could go a long way in addressing the areas where Congress 1998 effort, the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act, falls short. In addition, it provides recourse for kids and parents against companies that have become more aggressive in targeting younger and younger audiences.

The bill fills a vacuum in three key areas: platform accountability, transparency, and user empowerment in the form of parental controls. To ensure accountability, the legislation requires companies to institute independent, third-party audit and compliance requirements through state attorneys general where none currently exist, especially with regard to systemic risk to minors.

Two of its provisionsone for detailed public reports on areas like breaches of parental tools and another requiring limited access to datasets on the impact of these platforms practices on minorsare foundational transparency efforts in this arena.

In terms of user control, the Kids Online Safety Acts emphasis on platform-generated controls allows for additional user empowerment. A common theme in Heritage Foundation analysis, this linchpin of the bill provides a framework for digital platforms to follow when designing products used by children. In addition, it would help institute necessary technical safeguards that include privacy by design, opt-in features, and stringent default settings.

A recourse mechanism for parents who identify harm to their children caused by these platformswhich could also provide the basis for additional public reporting and transparencywould help rebalance the relationship between users and platforms.

As with a number of the Big Tech bills circulating on the Hill, the Kids Online Safety Act itself cannot solve every problem. For instance, the use of the word harm, if not tightly defined, could potentially be used as a cudgel against conservative speech. But when it comes to tech policy, this proposal embodies policymakers hard-won intuition that a scalpel over a sledgehammer is more efficacious.

None of these bills will solve these issues in and of themselves. Instead, proposals like the Kids Online Safety Act serve as the initial salvo upon which to layer additional legislative efforts. This policy change, when coupled with efforts like a 2022billfocused on child sexual exploitation online and updates to the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act, would bring Congress one step closer to truly tackling online safety for minors.

And once obvious constraints are placed on the reckless drafting of children into the digital maw, we can then start rebuilding the moral fabric of our nationone young citizen at a time.

This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal

Read more here:
Social Media Is Hurting Kids, but a Fix May Be on Horizon - Heritage.org

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Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr is one of the most esteemed personalities in the National Basketball Association.

After yet another school shooting in the United States, this time at an elementary school in Texas following a mass shooting at a grocery store and another at a church Kerr spoke up. His righteous anger was directed at the politicians in his country who refuse to pass legislation to require background checks for gun ownership, even though the vast majority of Americans would like to see such a law.

During a pre-game press conference, Kerr didnt talk about basketball. Instead, he stated: We are being held hostage by 50 senators in Washington who refuse to put it to a vote, despite what we, the American people, want. They wont vote on it because they want to hold onto their own power. Its pathetic. Ive had enough. He then stormed out of the room.

We may be seeing a shift in American sentiment, and just as it was after the George Floyd murder two years ago, the professional basketball community is speaking out in a voice that can no longer be ignored.

The arms industry is very wealthy and powerful, and they make generous contributions to the politicians, who make sure that the industrys coffers continue to expand. Gun violence is out of control in the United States because of the well-funded lobby of the arms industry working on all levels of the American government. This has led to some very dangerous trends in the United States.

According to the liberal advocacy group Public Citizen:

The United States is not the only country in the world with school shootings, but theyre much less frequent elsewhere because of the collaborative efforts of school administrators, law enforcement agents and other significant players to prevent them. In those countries, officials have studied the incidents, their causes and effective means of responding to them. Theyve implemented plans and protocols to keep children safe.

No system is perfect, and we always need to be on guard, but the data illustrates whats working and whats not.

Kerr is reasonable and honourable. The vast majority of people in the United States agree with him. Gun control is only one of several issues on which American elected officials are far out of sync with their constituents. Democracy is, by its nature, an imperfect form of government, but a government cant continue to function as a democracy if it doesnt eventually bend to the will of its people.

Canada shares the largest undefended border in the world with the United States and they remain our largest trading partner. How do we respond to the problems south of our border?

For one thing, we need to be informed and aware of which practices are life-giving and which arent. We also need to keep our house in order. And sometimes, like Kerr, we need to let the world know that were angry.

Troy Media columnist Gerry Chidiac specializes in languages, genocide studies and works with at-risk students. He is the recipient of an award from the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre for excellence in teaching about the Holocaust. For interview requests, click here.

The opinions expressed by our columnists and contributors are theirs alone and do not inherently or expressly reflect the views of our publication.

Troy MediaTroy Media is an editorial content provider to media outlets and its own hosted community news outlets across Canada.

Gun control, Law, NBA, Public safety, USA

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Why the U.S. continues to drag its feet on gun control - Troy Media

A police officer arranges bouquets of flowers in rows at a side entrance to Dunblane Primary School following a school shooting that left 16 students and one teacher dead. Lynne Sladky | AP

As Americans continue to reel from the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas that left 19 students and 2 teachers dead, headlines and commentators repeat a common refrain: The U.S is the only country where this happens.

Nowadays that may be true, but 26 years ago, it happened in Scotland. In March 1996, a gunman entered Dunblane Primary School, killing 16 students, a teacher, and injuring 15 others. To this day, it is the deadliest mass shooting in UK history.

But that's where the similarities end. In the aftermath of the shooting, parents in Dunblane were able to mobilize with the kind of effectiveness that has eluded American gun control activists. By the following year, Parliament had banned private ownership of most handguns, as well as semi-automatic weapons, and required mandatory registration for shotgun owners. There have been no school shootings in the U.K since then.

"The comparisons between the U.S. and Britain now should make shocking reading to anyone in America," says Mick North, whose five-year-old daughter, Sophie, was killed at Dunblane. He's one of the founding members of the group Gun Control Network, which advocated for new laws in the aftermath of the Dunblane shooting.

Over the past several years, England, Scotland and Wales combined have seen around thirty gun deaths a year. By comparison, according to the CDC, the number of murders involving firearms in the United States in 2020 was 19,384.

"Even setting aside the difference in the size of the country, that is a horrendous difference," says North.

At the time of the Dunblane shooting, he and other activists did face difficulties making their schools safer including skepticism from members of the Royal Family. In an interview with the BBC, Prince Philip compared the banning of guns to the banning of cricket bats, saying that both had the potential for danger if misused. It's an argument that's similar to those made by the gun lobby in the United States.

"The criticism of others that these people might choose some other means of causing harm doesn't really acknowledge how very dangerous guns are compared with other weapons," says North. "It is too easy for somebody to pick up something like a gun and cause havoc within seconds and certainly within minutes."

The strong heritage of gun ownership in the U.S. and the Constitutional right to bear arms is an obstacle that British gun control activists like North didn't have to wrestle with in the aftermath of the Dunblane shooting. And yet, he sees other countries with similar histories which have successfully passed strict gun control measures.

"Yes, the whole culture around guns is different in the U.S. But there are other countries in the world where there's a frontier mentality - shall we say, Canada, Australia - who have adopted tighter controls over guns," North says. "So I think America should perhaps be comparing itself not necessarily with Britain alone but with a whole range of countries who have unfortunately experienced mass shootings but only a small number of them."

Read more from the original source:
In Britain, it took just one school shooting to pass major gun control - Houston Public Media