Updated Experts: Spend opioid settlement funds on fighting opioids
As a $26 billion settlement over the toll of opioids looms, some public health experts are citing the 1998 agreement with tobacco companies as a cautionary tale of runaway government spending and missed opportunities for saving more lives.
Mere fractions of the $200 billion-plus tobacco settlement have gone toward preventing smoking and helping people quit in many states. Instead, much of the money has helped to balance state budgets, lay fiber-optic cable and repair roads.
And while the settlement was a success in many ways smoking rates have dropped significantly cigarettes are still blamed for more than 480,000 American deaths a year.
U S COVID vaccination rate still lags because of disinformation campaign, Hopkins epidemiologist warns
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Under the deal, Johnson & Johnson would not produce any opioids for at least a decade.
This Aug. 29, 2018, file photo shows an arrangement of Oxycodone pills in New York. | AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File
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The yearslong effort by state and local governments in the U.S. to force the pharmaceutical industry to help pay to fix a nationwide opioid addiction and overdose crisis took a major step forward Tuesday when lawyers for local governments announced they were on the verge of a $26 billion settlement with the nation’s three biggest drug distribution companies and the drugmaker Johnson & Johnson.
Unvaccinated staff linked to increased nursing home COVID-19 cases, deaths
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar and Jason Dearen
Published
CDC director says COVID-19 is becoming ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’
During a White House briefing, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said cases in the U.S. were up about 70% over the last week, hospital admissions were up 36% and deaths rose by 26%.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Lagging vaccination rates among nursing home staff are being linked to a national increase in COVID-19 infections and deaths at senior facilities, and are at the center of a federal investigation in a hard-hit Colorado location where disease detectives found many workers were not inoculated.
Unvaccinated nursing home staff are being linked to COVID-19 outbreaks at facilities across the country with only 57% of workers fully vaccinated compared to 80% of residents
Across the U.S., 57.3% of nursing home staff are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 compared to 80.2% of residents
Lagging vaccination rates among workers are being linked to breakthrough infections and deaths among seniors
At one facility in Grand Junction, Colorado, 16 fully vaccinated residents were infected and four died
In Indiana, seven residents died from COVID-19 at a facility where less than half the staff - 44% - was fully vaccinated
Fully vaccinated older adults are still at a higher risk of infection than the general population because they have weaker immune systems
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