Good morning. In the pandemic's time warp, I'd almost forgotten about the first Covid superspreader event two years ago. Helen Branswell hasn't.

Sacklers agree to $6 billion Purdue bankruptcy deal over company's part in the opioid epidemic

The Sackler family members who own Purdue Pharma have agreed to a $6 billion settlement of a hotly contested bankruptcy plan, which will allow state governments and tens of thousands of people to be compensated for the company’s role in the opioid crisis. Yesterday’s deal comes after years of litigation over the marketing of the OxyContin painkiller, a cash cow for the drugmaker and a poster child for the nationwide epidemic. The company was blamed for helping to trigger these events by downplaying the risk of addiction while improperly encouraging physicians to write prescriptions. The settlement follows furious objections to an earlier version of the plan that called for a $4.3 billion payout. Notably, the Sacklers must issue a statement of regret for their role in the crisis to the victims, and may have to do so at a court hearing. STAT’s Ed Silverman has more.

Two years later, 'the virus isn't going anywhere'

It was a surreal scene two years ago, STAT’s Helen Branswell recalled last night, when Harvard’s Institute of Politics convened Harvard’s Juliette Kayyem and Michael Mina and Helen for a discussion about the new coronavirus, moderated by STAT’s Rick Berke. Mina, now at Covid testing company eMed, shared he had a busload of people outside his hospital waiting to be tested for Covid after attending the now-infamous Biogen superspreader event. Gathered again (masked this time), the four reflected on lessons learned — or not — since March 2020. A sample:

Kayyem: “When the book is written, the first chapter is going to be called 'squandered time.' … 900,000 [deaths] is about 800,000 more than I expected.”
Mina: “The vast majority of people have probably been infected. It means we’re on an offramp. But the virus isn’t going anywhere.”
Branswell: “I wish there was a reset button. People feel like if they’re tired of the virus, it will go away. ... Next time I’m afraid the memories we have will be the wrong ones.”
Berke: On the "freaking miracle" of vaccines, "We really got lucky on this."

STAT’s Isabella Cueto has more.

Urban-rural divide on Covid vaccination widens

A shrinking proportion of people living in rural counties have gotten Covid vaccinations compared with people in urban areas, a new CDC analysis reports. That gap — 59% rural people vs. 75% urban — has doubled since April 2021, with the biggest difference in children: 15% of 5- to 11-year olds were vaccinated in rural areas but 31% in urban areas, while 39% of rural 12- to 17-year olds were vaccinated but 65% in urban areas. Attitudes toward vaccination could be a factor. Rural adults were almost three times as likely as urban adults to refuse vaccination, and rural parents were twice as likely as urban parents to say no for their children. Another difference: Nearly 40% of rural parents said their child’s pediatrician did not recommend the vaccine, compared with 8% of parents in urban communities.

Closer look: Black biotech entrepreneurs struggle for funding amid industry pledges to diversify

CEO Paul Mola in a lab at Roswell Biotechnologies. (Ashley Waters for STAT)

After Paul Mola, the CEO of Roswell Biotechnologies, had to lay off nearly half his San Diego company after failing to raise enough money, he can’t shake the feeling that his race is a factor. Roswell had unveiled its first product a few months ago, and it had just published a paper on its innovative microchip built to help researchers diagnose disease and discover new drugs. “Something is off here,” Mola told STAT’s Jonathan Wosen. “I can get funding from abroad but not here.” What is clear is that people like Mola remain rare in biotech, both among industry bigwigs and the investors who hold the purse strings. Over the past year and a half, diversity, equity, and inclusion have become buzzwords in biotech, as in other industries. But Black entrepreneurs still struggle for support, funding, and recognition. Read more.

Where Black men live linked to whether they get MRIs for prostate cancer

Surviving prostate cancer requires accurate diagnosis and treatment. Black men are less likely than white men to get either of those, research has shown, and a Black man’s risk of dying from prostate cancer is twice as high as white man’s. A large new study in JAMA Oncology on the use of MRI in prostate cancer shows that Black patients were less likely than white patients to receive a prostate MRI, for reasons largely unrelated to the patient’s disease. The disparity was mostly associated with where people lived, their socioeconomic status, and how racially segregated their neighborhood was, likely as a result of redlining, the discriminatory home loan practice dating to the 1930s. “With emerging technologies becoming standard of care, racially marginalized populations are left at the wayside,” a companion editorial says.

Opinion: Time to drop unneeded PPE in hospitals

Every time they enter a Covid patient’s room, they first don gloves, and a disposable gown. When they come out, they remove that gear and put it in one of the many bulging disposal bags lining hospital halls. They go through the same process for up to 30 patients a day, Bruce Farber and Aradhana Khameraj of Northwell Health write in a STAT First Opinion. Donning and doffing personal protective equipment made sense in early 2020, they say, when more than 20 of their colleagues died of Covid-19, but now that more is known about disease transmission, “using unnecessary garb to interrupt a theoretical mechanism of spread is not worth the cost and damage to the environment and erodes public confidence in the CDC and its expertise,” they write. Read more.

What to read around the web today

What’s holding up the Covid vaccines for children under 5? ProPublica
The puzzling virus that infects almost everyone. The Atlantic
With Aduhelm in limbo, Biogen starts laying off employees. STAT+
It’s time to start studying the downside of psychedelics. Vice
Civica Rx has an ambitious plan to make low-cost insulin for all Americans. But can it work? STAT+