Elon Musk opened up on Thursday about his experience growing up with Asperger's syndrome,or autism spectrum disorder.
Why it matters: Most adults with "invisible disabilities" such as Asperger’sconceal them professionally to avoid stigmas and potential discrimination, research has found.
Public unhappiness with the pandemic response is nearly universal and is taking a toll on approval ratings of every state's governor as well as the president, according to a new report from the COVID States Project.
Why it matters: It's a startling fall from grace for governors compared to early in the pandemic, when 38 of them registered approval ratings higher than 60%.
The Biden administration is giving a $226.5 million boost to efforts to build up the community health worker pipeline, HHS announced first to Axios.
Why it matters: Community health workers took on a new level of importance as trusted messengers during the pandemic amid efforts to overcome vaccine hesitancy and expand access to care.
In a society that generally respects authority, Chinese citizens are rebelling against COVID lockdowns that have brought food shortages, family separations and lost wages, Reuters reports.
Driving the news: Videos on social media show citizens scuffling with health workers and screaming in anger from their apartment windows.
Life in a COVID world is getting awkward again as Americans rush headlong back to their old ways of life even as case counts rise and new variants threaten to dash their hopes.
Why it matters: We can't say we're in a post-pandemic period yet. But large segments of the public are embracing pre-COVID norms, a fact that's maddening for those who are — or must — continue taking precautions.
California will not mandate COVID-19 vaccines for schoolchildren until at least summer of 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom's office announced on Thursday, the AP reports.
The big picture: The state was the first to announce a K-12 vaccine mandate back in October.
What they're saying: “Today’s authorization is yet another example of the rapid innovation occurring with diagnostic tests for COVID-19,” Jeff Shuren, director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in the press release.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Thursday signed into law a bill that bans all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy in the state.
Driving the news: The legislation includes no exceptions for rape or incest and only allows abortions past 15 weeks in cases of a medical emergency or if there's a "fatal fetal abnormality."
Planned Parenthood and EMW Women’s Surgical Center, Kentucky's only abortion providers, will not perform the procedure unless the state's new 15-week abortion ban is blocked by the court.
Driving the news: Patients seeking abortions in Kentucky are advised to reach out to the clinic for their first appointment "so that we can coordinate care in Indiana or another state that can provide the care they need," Nicole Erwin, a Kentucky-based Planned Parenthood spokesperson, told Axios.
The economic cost of multiple sclerosis, or MS, was about $85.4 billion in the U.S. in 2019, according to research published Wednesday in the online issue of Neurology.
Driving the news: According to the report, MS has a direct medical cost of $63.3 billion and indirect and non-medical costs of $22.1 billion.
Pfizer-BioNTech said Thursday that, in a trial, a booster dose of its coronavirus vaccine in children ages 5 to 11 increased the level of antibodies that neutralized the original version of the virus and the Omicron variant.
Why it matters: If federal regulators verify the companies' claims, children over the age of 5 could gain access to boosters.
As more states and school districts move to address children's mental health, some parents and activists aremaking school-based support programs a political flashpoint, saying they put school officials in inappropriate roles and could indoctrinate students in progressive thinking.
Why it matters: The pandemic has created a greater sense of urgency around children's mental health, but statistics have beentrending in the wrong direction for years, with sometimes tragic consequences for families and communities.
After two months of plummeting COVID cases across the U.S., the virus is on the rise again, with the Northeast accounting for many of the new cases.
The big picture:We knew this was coming. Now it's just a matter of seeing how large an impact this surge of the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron has in the U.S.
