Well being Care — Twitter to cease moderating COVID-19 misinformation

🎭 Appears like we’ll be caught with the Phantom for only a bit longer. A lift in ticket gross sales has pushed again the top of “The Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway by two months. 

At present in well being, Twitter will not be imposing its COVID-19 misinformation coverage as a part of Elon Musk’s goals of rolling again content material moderation on the platform. 

Welcome to In a single day Well being Care, the place we’re following the newest strikes on coverage and information affecting your well being. For The Hill, we’re Nathaniel Weixel and Joseph Choi. Somebody ahead you this text?

Twitter received’t implement COVID misinformation coverage

Twitter is not imposing its coverage about COVID-19 misinformation as a part of adjustments made underneath new CEO Elon Musk.  

Twitter didn’t formally announce the change, however a notice was added to the highest of the web page concerning the coverage to say that the rule was being rolled again. 

“Efficient November 23, 2022, Twitter is not imposing the COVID-19 deceptive info coverage,” the notice said. 

• The platform suspended greater than 11,000 accounts for violating the coverage between January 2020 and September 2022, in line with information printed by Twitter. 
• The cessation of the coverage’s enforcement is a part of adjustments Musk has made since closing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter on the finish of October. He has pledged to create a “free speech” platform, detailing a imaginative and prescient for having much less content material moderation measures in place in a means that critics have warned will result in extra hate speech and misinformation on the positioning. 

Civil rights and different advocacy teams have been placing strain on Musk to vary course and convey again content material moderation measures by way of a marketing campaign urging advertisers to drag their advertisements from Twitter. 

Imran Ahmed, CEO of the the Heart for Countering Digital Hate, known as the rollback of the COVID-19 misinformation coverage an “irresponsible determination” that places lives in danger and “opens the floodgates to those that unfold lethal lies.” 

Learn extra right here. 

Flu season intensifies with 6M contaminated in US: CDC

Flu season is intensifying within the U.S. with greater than 6 million instances confirmed thus far, the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) reported on Monday. 

The federal well being company stated in a weekly replace it has already recorded greater than 53,000 hospitalizations and a pair of,900 deaths from the flu this season, as of the week ending Nov. 19. 

Twelve youngsters have died from the flu thus far, the CDC stated, and the cumulative hospitalization fee is the best it’s been at this level within the flu season since
2010-2011. 

Flu season sometimes begins in October and ends round Might, with a peak in December or January. It started six weeks early this yr, inflicting a spike in hospitalization charges. 

• Influenza A is the dominant virus, making up near one hundred pc of all confirmed flu instances, in line with the CDC. 
• Of the confirmed instances of Influenza A, 78 % are the H3N2 pressure and
  22 % are the H1N1 pressure. 

As of the week ending Nov. 19, the states most affected by the flu thus far this season embrace California, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Washington, Virginia and New Jersey, that are amongst these the CDC lists with a really excessive exercise stage. 

The influenza surge comes as instances of RSV are beginning to recede, which means hospitals — which had been overwhelmed with pediatric rSV sufferers — can’t catch a break.  

Learn extra right here. 

NYC TO INVOLUNTARILY HOSPITALIZE MORE MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE

New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams (D) revealed a brand new plan Tuesday to take away individuals with extreme, untreated psychological sickness from metropolis streets and subways.  

Underneath the plan, New York Metropolis companies would be capable to forcibly hospitalize individuals who look like mentally in poor health even when they don’t pose a risk to others round them.   

In a Tuesday press convention, Adams directed metropolis companies just like the New York Police Division, the New York Metropolis Fireplace Division, and emergency responders to carry the mentally in poor health to hospitals for prolonged emergency care. 

“The frequent misunderstanding persists that we can not present involuntary help until the individual is violent, suicidal, or presenting a danger of imminent hurt,” Adams stated. 

“This fantasy should be put to relaxation. Going ahead we’ll make each effort to help those that are affected by psychological sickness and whose sickness is endangering them by stopping them from assembly their fundamental human wants.”  

Learn extra right here. 

YOUNG PEOPLE MADE UP GREATER PROPORTION OF 2021 COVID DEATHS

The proportion of younger individuals who died from COVID-19 in 2021 surpassed that of 2020, marking a shift within the pandemic’s mortality dynamics. 

That’s in line with new analysis from investigators at Brigham and Girls’s Hospital in Boston. Outcomes additionally confirmed the median age of COVID-19 loss of life decreased from 78 years in 2020 to 69 years in 2021. 

“A shift in COVID-19 mortality to comparatively youthful individuals within the second pandemic yr contributed to markedly elevated untimely mortality from this more and more preventable loss of life,” stated research co-author Mark Czeisler, a medical scholar at Harvard Medical Faculty, in a launch.  

“Understanding the components that contribute to this age shift is important as we proceed growing our information of the COVID-19 pandemic.” 

Older adults tended to have greater vaccination charges than their youthful counterparts, and these susceptible people tended to stick extra strictly to nonpharmaceutical interventions in 2021, researchers wrote. 

Learn extra right here.

Medical firm, Google companion on most cancers screenings

Medical know-how firm iCAD Inc. introduced on Monday it has signed a commercialization settlement with Google Well being to make the most of its synthetic intelligence know-how for the advance of breast most cancers screenings. 

In a assertion, iCAD stated Google can be licensing its AI tech for “breast most cancers and personalised danger evaluation.” This marks the primary occasion during which Google has entered right into a business partnership to make use of its AI imaging know-how for scientific apply. 

Google stated in its personal assertion that its mammography AI know-how can be included into iCAD’s merchandise. In keeping with each corporations, the final word objective of this partnership is to enhance breast most cancers detection and evaluation of short-term private most cancers danger. 

• “Becoming a member of forces with Google marks a historic milestone for our Firm, as leveraging Google’s world-class AI and Cloud know-how elevates the caliber of our market-leading breast AI applied sciences and might also speed up adoption and increase entry on a worldwide scale,” stated Stacey Stevens, iCAD’s president and CEO. 
• iCAD already makes use of AI know-how in its breast most cancers screenings. Steven stated the inclusion of Google’s AI will permit her firm to “enhance the efficiency of our algorithms for each 2D and 3D mammography.” 

In 2020, a research was printed that discovered Google’s AI outperformed radiologists in each the U.Ok. and the U.S. when it got here to precisely detecting breast cancers, lowering the charges of false-positives and false-negatives. 

Learn extra right here.

WHAT WE’RE READING

• One step nearer to a common flu vaccine? (The New York Occasions) 
• Former Merck CEO: Democracy and the drug trade are each in peril (Stat) 
• RSV instances might have peaked within the US however the flu is surging (Bloomberg)

STATE BY STATE

• Rural Colorado tries to fill well being employee gaps with apprenticeships (Kaiser Well being Information) 
• Invoice would maintain unelected Texas well being officers from mandating scholar vaccines (CBS Information) 
• Hospitals needed to put charity care guidelines on their web sites months in the past. Some didn’t do it (Los Angeles Occasions) 
• Massachusetts residents can earn $75 by getting a COVID shot at these areas (MassLive.com) 

That’s it for immediately, thanks for studying. Take a look at The Hill’s Well being Care web page for the newest information and protection. See you tomorrow.