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Just 1 in 4 nursing home residents who were diagnosed with covid-19 between May 2021 and December 2022 were prescribed an antiviral medication such as Paxlovid to treat the disease. In fact, an astounding 40 percent of nursing home facilities said they had no residents who received antiviral treatments. (Leana S. Wen, 8/3)

Listeria is just one of a host of pathogens that, from time to time, contaminate foods and infect the consumers who eat them. Salmonella, hepatitis, E. coli and Cyclospora, too, have been the cause of major outbreaks. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 48 million people contract foodborne illnesses each year in the US, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die. This leaves consumers in a quandary: how to feed ourselves and our loved ones without risking illness. Even harder to contend with is the fact that the food products most susceptible to contamination are often those we eat for their health benefits – produce items. (Kirsi Goldynia, 8/3)

I had never met a dying man before. Or, at least, a man an inch away from death and so eager for eternal rest. Michael Swearingen had been told he had six months to live back in September but his body keeps hanging on until the bitter end. And boy, has it been bitter. (Regina Lankenau, 8/4)

Driven in part by Nolan’s "Oppenheimer" and the cries of affected communities nationwide, the Senate recently passed an amendment to expand compensation for victims of radiation exposure from the production and testing of nuclear weapons. It’s well past time that we are recognized as the true legacy of Oppenheimer’s bomb. (Mary Dickson, 8/4)

I thought I was a trans kid. From as early as age 11, I played with the idea of living as the opposite sex. Chronic social media usage, early exposure to pornography, insistent bullying, rapid-onset puberty and a history of abuse and neglect (among other things) made girlhood painful and traumatic. (Soren Aldaco, 8/3)

“All of your medical and surgical expenses will be paid by your recipient’s insurance,” the nurse coordinator at the Mayo Clinic told me. Naïve, I nodded into the phone at this reassurance. I had already worked with her to have several vials of my blood shipped from my home in Kansas City to Mayo in Rochester, Minnesota, all at no cost to me. Now she was calling to tell me the astounding news: Tests on that blood had revealed I was a perfect match for Deb Porter Gill, a kidney patient I had read about in the newspaper two months before. “But insurance will not pay for your travel or other non-medical expenses,” the nurse coordinator continued. “There are some sources of assistance we can discuss, but if you don’t qualify, you will have to pay for those yourself.” (Martha Gershun, 8/4)

American women have a problem with booze. A new study from The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) shows that alcohol-related deaths are rising generally, but are rising more quickly among women than among men. (Jill Filipovic, 8/1)

A few years ago one could hardly escape talking about the epidemic of opioid addiction. Get together a group of community leaders and politicians, ask what problem to discuss, and the best bet was opioids. (William Lyons, 8/3)