After nearly three years of Covid, here’s how infectious disease experts deal with it

We’re almost three years into the pandemic, but you wouldn’t know it from the packed restaurants now common and mask sightings now rare these days. That’s a sign of how well and truly sick of Covid-19 everyone is — and the accommodations made to co-exist with it, STAT’s Helen Branswell points out. With Thanksgiving only days away, she asked infectious diseases experts how they’re handling the risk of catching Covid at this point. She’s done this twice before, when the Delta wave was surging in August 2021, and a few months later, just before Thanksgiving.

Most experts told her trying to avoid Covid doesn’t mean skipping a traditional Thanksgiving this year. Most of them are hosting or attending a large, multi-generational Thanksgiving feast. Last year, the experts were virtually split on the idea of a large family gathering for the holiday. Read more about what’s different this time.

How a cash-only pharmacy strives to make drugs more affordable

(MATTHEW ORR/STAT)

A small-town pharmacy in Virginia operates like any other pharmacy — with one big exception. It doesn’t accept health insurance. After more than 20 years of working in and managing other pharmacies, pharmacist and owner Matthew Garner (above) opened Honest Rx this year. He had seen how chain pharmacies, insurers, and pharmacy benefit managers obscured the true cost of drugs, so he set out to try a transparent business model that supplies affordable medication directly to patients. Garner sells most medications at wholesale cost plus 20% and a $6.50 dispensing fee.

“Allowing these pharmacies to not be involved in third parties … and just being a pure cash business, it allows them flexibility to price, frankly, much more favorably for patients,” Kurt Proctor of the National Community Pharmacists Association said. Garner said it allows him to be "a pharmacist, not a vending machine." Watch this video from STAT’s Hyacinth Empinado and Matthew Orr.

What if you knew how much your health care would cost before you got it?

Speaking of prices in health care, there's a move afoot to end the longtime practice of telling people how much their care costs only after the fact. As STAT's Bob Herman points out, people don’t receive bills after going to a grocery store or a mechanic’s shop. But in health care, patients get bills and “explanations of benefits” afterward — usually creating confusion or shock as to how much they owe.

Now consumer groups are demanding the federal government start enforcing some under-the-radar provisions of the new surprise billing law, the ones that require providers and insurers to give patients price and cost estimates before they get care when possible. Sounds simple, but hospitals, doctors, and health insurers are begging the federal government for more time. Bob has more.

Closer look: How parasites use their own clocks to infect people

You need night-vision goggles to study circadian rhythms. (FERNANDO AUGUSTO)

Circadian rhythms are something we’re all familiar with, especially twice a year when the clocks change. The natural world is no exception: Plants, animals, fungi, and cyanobacteria have all independently evolved circadian clock genes to anticipate changes in their environments. Until recently, scientists hadn’t looked for those genes in parasites. After all, living inside hosts means they don’t see daylight. While there were hints they might run on a similar clock — malaria patients develop fevers every 24, 48, or 72 hours — most researchers assumed parasites respond to changes in their hosts.

Not Filipa Rijo-Ferreira, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley and STAT Wunderkind. Her research suggests a complex synchrony between parasites and their hosts. She is focused on pinning down clock genes in Plasmodium parasites, which cause malaria. “I started thinking that this might not be the full story,” she told STAT contributor Allessandra DiCorato. Read more about how Rijo-Ferreira has "dreamed small" since her childhood in Portugal.

After IBM Watson, rescuing data from the wreckage

You could say all is not lost. Merative, a company being built from the ashes of IBM’s Watson Health division, is launching new lines of business with a new message: The real value is in the health data, not the fancy AI engine it might eventually power. Watson Health crumbled after STAT investigations detailed the company’s struggle to deliver promised insights. STAT’s Casey Ross asked Merative’s CEO, Gerry McCarthy, what’s different now.

What did IBM do wrong and what will you do?
I wasn’t part of IBM. First and foremost, it’s transparency and communication both internally and externally. The second thing I’m doing is reinforcing quick decision-making.

What about patients, who can’t always tell if decisions about care are in their best interests?
The patient has to have a larger voice in what’s happening with these types of decisions.

Read the full interview.

Discussing vaccination dipped for some parents

There’s one place where vaccines haven’t universally been a hot topic of conversation. A subset of parents haven’t discussed immunization with their child’s primary care provider, a poll out today from C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital and the University of Michigan says. About 1 out of 7 parents haven’t turned to their child’s regular provider over the last two years to discuss vaccines. Asked in August and September, 82% of parents said they discussed immunizations required for school, but only 68% talked about flu shots and 57% brought up Covid vaccinations.

Those who did discuss vaccination were more likely to have their children get those shots. “The lower rates of discussions for the Covid vaccine may suggest a downturn in the role of the primary care provider as the go-to source on this topic,” Mott Poll co-director Sarah Clark said in a statement released with the poll.

What we're reading

Opinion: Twitter was influential in the pandemic. Are we better for it? New York Times
Holmes gets more than 11 years in prison for Theranos scam, Associated Press
Doctor says she shouldn’t have to turn over patients’ abortion records, Washington Post
I found out my biological age — and was annoyed by the result, MIT Technology Review
Stagnant scientific productivity holding back growth, Wall Street Journal
Opinion: Congress: Confront the superbug crisis and pass PASTEUR, STAT