This is why supplements need to be regulated as well

It is a common problem around the world that supplements are not regulated as heavily as medicine and food in general, which causes some serious problems from time to time. Here is the latest example from Japan:

5 dead, 114 hospitalized from recalled Japanese health supplements

In the week since a line of Japanese health supplements began being recalled, five people have died and more than 100 people were hospitalized as of Friday.

Osaka-based Kobayashi Pharmaceutical Co came under fire for not going public quickly with problems known internally as early as January. The first public announcement came March 22.

Company officials said 114 people were being treated in hospitals after taking products, including Benikoji Choleste Help meant to lower cholesterol, that contain an ingredient called benikoji, a red species of mold. Earlier in the week, the number of deaths stood at two people.

Some people developed kidney problems after taking the supplements, but the exact cause was still under investigation in cooperation with government laboratories, according to the manufacturer.

…

The company’s products have been recalled — as have dozens of other products that contain benikoji, including miso paste, crackers and a vinegar dressing. Japan’s health ministry put up a list on its official site of all the recalled products, including some that use benikoji for food coloring.

The ministry warned the deaths could keep growing. The supplements could be bought at drug stores without a prescription from a doctor, and some may have been purchased or exported before the recall, including by tourists who may not be aware of the health risks.

Kobayashi Pharmaceutical had been selling benikoji products for years, with a million packages sold over the past three fiscal years, but a problem crept up with the supplements produced in 2023. Kobayashi Pharmaceutical said it produced 18.5 tons of benikoji last year.

Some analysts blame the recent deregulation initiatives, which simplified and sped up approval for health products to spur economic growth.

Note the last line – there has been deregulation initiatives for “health products”. I hope they are rolled back quickly, or this will not be the last time something like this happens in Japan.

Atheists for Liberty are anti-vax

There are a number of Atheist organizations out there, working to promote atheism and try to protect the rights of atheists. Some of them are good, such as the Freedom From Religion Foundation, others are more problematic, and some are outright horrible.

In the latter group, falls Atheists for Liberty, a right-winged organization which participates in CPAC, and have David P. Silverman as the advisory board chair.

Atheists for Liberty at CPAC tweet

As their pinned tweet shows, they are proud of both of these things.

If there is any doubt about how horrible, the organization is, on the whole, just take a look at the books they promote, and the words they use to sell them.

This is nearly a literal who’s who of horrible people connected to atheism (some more of these can be found in the organization’s board of advisors)

Looking at the Atheists for Liberty’s website, I was not surprised to see that their major cause right now, is to allow atheist to get exemptions from the vaccine mandate. They couch it in the argument that allowing religious exemptions only, is discriminatory towards atheists, but instead of trying to get the religious exemptions removed, they are instead trying to get them expanded, showing that they are supporting the anti-vaxers.

Atheists for Liberty writes on their website:

Vaccine Mandate Equality Project

Atheists for Liberty has a firm stance on vaccine mandates:  Atheists musts be treated equally.  Across this nation, atheists, like our client/member Patrick Wilmers who are opposed to the Covid Vaccine, are being fired, while their religious counterparts are being allowed to stay because of “religious exemptions”.  This policy writ large, as promoted by the US Government, effectively thins atheists from the workforce while allowing religious people to stay.  It’s religious discrimination and it’s illegal.

Left unchallenged, it would set nationwide precedent – we would effectively lose a right – the right to equal treatment – and it would surely be used against us in the future as precedent for even more erosion.

We simply cannot stand and let our rights be reduced under the guise of safety.  Civil rights still count, even and especially in difficult times.  Atheists for Liberty ALONE (so far) is working to defend equal protection under the law for atheists with regards to vaccine mandates. We seek plaintiffs, lawyers, and your financial support for this important effort.

Read the full letter >

On the surface, it might seem like a reasonable stance that it is discriminatory to allow for religious exemptions, but not secular ones, but the right remedy would be to work for the removal of religious exemptions, not for allowing atheists to not be vaccinated when holding jobs as nurses or working together with other people in large companies. This probably explains why Atheists for Liberty are “ALONE” in working for this.

One of the Atheists for Liberty people at CPAC, was transbigot and Trump-fan Arielle Scarcella, who is actively promoting anti-vax propaganda by retweeting it

All in all, it is pretty clear that Atheists for Liberty are anti-vax, but I guess that is hardly surprising for a group that have notorious bigot and anti-vax promoter, James Lindsay on it’s board of advisors.

Science Vs limiting their output

I have listened to the Science Vs podcast for a while, but had somehow missed the fact that they had become exclusive to Spotify. This is not a good situation to be in for a podcast promoting the understanding of science, and the host/producer Wendy Zukerman and the editor Blythe Terrell have taken the consequences and are now limiting their output to shows that debunk stuff released on the Spotify platform

Zukerman, the host and executive producer for “Science Vs,” and Terrell, an editor for the science podcast, plan to limit their production on new episodes because they do not believe Spotify’s rules regarding misinformation go far enough.

“Until Spotify implements stronger methods to prevent the spread of misinformation on the platform, we will no longer be making new Science Vs episodes, except those intended to counteract misinformation being spread on Spotify,” they wrote in a letter to Ek, posted on Twitter on Monday.

“Science Vs,” which is exclusive to Spotify, looks at the science behind topics including pandemics.

They have already started doing this, with their latest episode Joe Rogan: The Malone Interview, which you can listen to here.

I applaud the principled stance that they have taken. You can find their twitter feed here.

Engadget have a few more details in Spotify’s ‘Science VS’ podcast will only fact-check misinformation being spread on Spotify

Words have consequences: Hospital drops anti-vaxxer as spokesperson

I don’t follow US sports, and especially not the commercial vehicle claiming to be a sport, that NFL is, so I don’t really know how big a name Kirk Cousins is, but being a quarterback on a NFL team does give you a certain reach, no matter how good you are. This is why it is rather bad that Kirk Cousins has been saying stuff that is clearly anti-vaccination. It turns out that one of his sponsors, the Holland Hospital in Michigan feels the same way.

Michigan hospital ends relationship with Kirk Cousins after anti-vaccination remarks

“While we acknowledge that each person is entitled to their own viewpoints, those who speak on our behalf must support messages that align with the hospital’s position on matters of vital importance to individual and community health,” the hospital’s statement on the matter read. “For this reason, Holland Hospital will discontinue using Kirk Cousins as our spokesperson for now. We are proud of our association with Kirk. He embodies many values we respect and share as part of our work culture. However, we must be certain that our communications about COVID vaccination are consistent and unequivocal.

“Evidence also indicates that vaccinated individuals may be less likely to carry and transmit the virus to others including children, family members and friends,” the statement said. “For these reasons, Holland Hospital has and will continue to strongly recommend the COVID vaccine to those who are eligible to receive it.”

It is a pity that they feel the need to sugarcoat the breakup, instead of just saying that having using Kirk Cousins as a spokesperson was a mistake, given his anti-science and anti-evidence stance on health care and disease prevention.

Kirk Cousins is not the only sportsperson who has made dangerous remarks about COVID-19 and vaccinations, and I hope more companies will take the lead from Holland Hospital, and distance themselves from people promoting dangerous views.

The vaccine rollout has started in Denmark

Like everywhere there has been some bumps during the upstart, but the vaccinations has started in Denmark, and there is now a plan for how the vaccine roll-out is going to happen.

The plan is obviously in Danish, but it runs through June, and most people will probably be in group 12 (over 16 or 18 years). The name of the category shows that it hasn’t been decided the age cut-off for vaccination is 16 or 18 years. I am guessing that it is likely that children will get vaccinated after all the adults are (high-risk children are already vaccinated in this plan).

Currently just over 100,000 people have received their first dose, which is approximately 1.75% of the population. This number includes everyone living in nursing homes.

I will almost certainly be in the general group of vaccinations, so it might take up to half a year before I get my vaccine. I obviously hope to be get it already in April, but fully understand why those of us not at risk, have to wait until it is our turn.

The plan is going to be updated regularly so it reflects the actual progress and the delivery rate of vaccinations, but even if it subject to change, the mere fact that there is a plan that one can look at/follow along, is somewhat of a relief.

More good medical news

Currently, the focus of the medical world is pretty much on the Corona virus, but that is hardly the only medical threat to people. One of the more worrisome medical problems, have been antimicrobial resistance in bacterial pathogens, since it makes it harder and harder to treat things like tuberculosis.

Now, via ScienceDaily I see that the Wistar Institute has release a press release

Wistar Reports New Class of Antibiotics Active Against a Wide Range of Bacteria

Wistar Institute scientists have discovered a new class of compounds that uniquely combine direct antibiotic killing of pan drug-resistant bacterial pathogens with a simultaneous rapid immune response for combatting antimicrobial resistance (AMR). These finding were published today in Nature.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared AMR as one of the top 10 global public health threats against humanity. It is estimated that by 2050, antibiotic-resistant infections could claim 10 million lives each year and impose a cumulative $100 trillion burden on the global economy. The list of bacteria that are becoming resistant to treatment with all available antibiotic options is growing and few new drugs are in the pipeline, creating a pressing need for new classes of antibiotics to prevent public health crises.

This is definitely good news, even if it is quite a way before it will be ready for general use.

When I clicked the link to the article in the Wistar press release, I was provided free access to the article, which was a pleasant surprise. I guess this is due to it being a health related article, which might mean that it was accessible due to the general agreement to let COVID-19 related articles be freely available across all medicial journals. I hope this can create some kind of precedence for health-related, and other subject of general public interest, articles in scientific and medical journal becoming available for free.

Bette Midler should stay in her lane

I am generally not a great fan of people telling actors that they should stay in their lane, but occasionally they really should stay in their lane. Bette Midler demonstrates a clear example of this.

It all started with a tweet by Dr. Jen Gunter

Which caused Bette Midler to write the following

It is hard to surprise me these days, but I must admit I hadn’t considered Bette Midler attacking Dr. Jen Gunter as being alt-right as one of the missing ingredients of 2020. Bette Midler’s defense was much appreciated by Marianne Williamson

Unsurprisingly, Dr. Jen Gunter actually knew what she was talking about.

Bette Midler is probably not going to admit that she is wrong about Marianne Williamson, but hopefully this will be a lecture in humility, making her actually do a little research before tweeting, and especially before accusing someone like Dr. Jen Gunter as being alt-right.

The mother of all super spreader events

One of the things we learned early about COVID-19, was that a lot of the cases comes from so-called super spreader events. Events where a lot of people got infected, and then spread the virus after going home.

So far, the biggest super spreader event has probably been the Atalanta-Valencia Champions League match in February, which is thought to have pretty much been the reason for the rapid spreading in Italy. It could probably be considered a number of super spreader event. The actual football match at the stadium, where a lot of people got infected, but also the many gatherings of people watching the game, where many people undoubtedly got infected.

Back then, people at least had the excuse of not knowing any better. The virus was not yet well known in Italy, and few cases, if any, had been identified. This changed rapidly after the match, where Italy became one of the worst hit countries.

The same excuse cannot be made by anyone now, especially not in the US, which is one of the worst hit countries.

This is one of the things that makes this year’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally such a baffling event. Who in their right mind would think it would be a good idea to gather nearly half a million people during a pandemic? Many of these people not even doing the simplest measures, e.g. masks and social distancing, to avoid the spreading of the COVID-19 virus.

Sadly someone obviously thought it was a perfectly acceptable idea, and allowed the event to go ahead.

Now, a study, The Contagion Externality of a Superspreading Event: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and COVID-19 (pdf), has evaluated the results of the rally, and have estimated that it has resulted in up to 219,000 infected people since the start of the rally, which is approximately 19% of all cases in the US during that period. Due to the diverse geographical origins of the participants of the rally, the spreading is not just in South Dakota where the rally took place, but in the surrounding states as well.

On top of looking at the spreading of the virus, the paper also estimates the financial costs to society. The paper estimates that the rally has cost more than $12B so far.

In other words, the human and financial costs of the rally is truly staggering, and is probably only going to grow, as time goes on.

Will this event be a lesson for other organizers and local authorities? One would think so, but sadly there is nothing in past behavior to indicate that this will be the case

The state of COVID-19 vaccine and treatment research

Yesterday I spoke with a couple of colleagues about COVID-19 vaccines, and it became clear for me that there is a lot of news about potential vaccines, but it is hard for people to get a grip of the current state.

This made me recommend the New York Times vaccine tracker to several people.

Here is the status of all the vaccines that have reached trials in humans, along with a selection of promising vaccines still being tested in cells or animals.

As the description explains, it is an overview of vaccines that has reached a stage where they are relevant to talk about.

There is a companion site to the vaccine tracker, the Coronavirus Drug and Treatment Tracker, which is described thus:

The Covid-19 pandemic is one of the greatest challenges modern medicine has ever faced. Doctors and scientists are scrambling to find treatments and drugs that can save the lives of infected people and perhaps even prevent them from getting sick in the first place.

Below is an updated list of 21 of the most-talked-about treatments for the coronavirus. While some are accumulating evidence that they’re effective, most are still at early stages of research. We also included a warning about a few that are just bunk.

Both of these sites are great resources on the current state of the research, and well worth checking up on from time to time.

This is why you cancel conferences in times like this

A facebook friend posted this link to an overview of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Cases in MA (pdf link), and pointed out that three quarters of coronavirus cases in Massachusetts are attributable to a conference in Boston for a company called Biogen.

NBC Boston has more: After Spreading Coronavirus, Boston Biogen Meeting Serves as Stark Warning

As the NBC Boston link says, this should serve as a warning. Don’t hold these large gatherings while a pandemic is going on. It will create a easy path for the virus to spread, making it more likely it will get in contact with vulnerable people.