Monday, March 18, 2024

Reprint: Covid Vaccines Essential for Elders

 

COVID-19 vaccines: CDC says people ages 65 and up should get a shot this spring – a geriatrician explains why it’s vitally important

Even if you got a COVID-19 shot last fall, the spring shot is still essential for the 65 and up age group. whyframestudio/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Laurie Archbald-Pannone, University of Virginia

In my mind, the spring season will always be associated with COVID-19.

In spring 2020, the federal government declared a nationwide emergency, and life drastically changed. Schools and businesses closed, and masks and social distancing were mandated across much of the nation.

In spring 2021, after the vaccine rollout, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said those who were fully vaccinated against COVID-19 could safely gather with others who were vaccinated without masks or social distancing.

In spring 2022, with the increased rates of vaccination across the U.S., the universal indoor mask mandate came to an end.

In spring 2023, the federal declaration of COVID-19 as a public health emergency ended.

Now, as spring 2024 fast approaches, the CDC reminds Americans that even though the public health emergency is over, the risks associated with COVID-19 are not. But those risks are higher in some groups than others. Therefore, the agency recommends that adults age 65 and older receive an additional COVID-19 vaccine, which is updated to protect against a recently dominant variant and is effective against the current dominant strain.

You have a 54% less chance of being hospitalized with severe COVID-19 if you’ve had the vaccine.

Increased age means increased risk

The shot is covered by Medicare. But do you really need yet another COVID-19 shot?

As a geriatrician who exclusively cares for people over 65 years of age, this is a question I’ve been asked many times over the past few years.

In early 2024, the short answer is yes.

Compared with other age groups, older adults have the worst outcomes with a COVID-19 infection. Increased age is, simply put, a major risk factor.

In January 2024, the average death rate from COVID-19 for all ages was just under 3 in 100,000 people. But for those ages 65 to 74, it was higher – about 5 for every 100,000. And for people 75 and older, the rate jumped to nearly 30 in 100,000.

Even now, four years after the start of the pandemic, people 65 years old and up are about twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than the rest of the population. People 75 years old and up are 10 times more likely to die from COVID-19.

Vaccination is still essential

These numbers are scary. But the No. 1 action people can take to decrease their risk is to get vaccinated and keep up to date on vaccinations to ensure top immune response. Being appropriately vaccinated is as critical in 2024 as it was in 2021 to help prevent infection, hospitalization and death from COVID-19.

The updated COVID-19 vaccine has been shown to be safe and effective, with the benefits of vaccination continuing to outweigh the potential risks of infection.

The CDC has been observing side effects on the more than 230 million Americans who are considered fully vaccinated with what it calls the “most intense safety monitoring in U.S. history.” Common side effects soon after receiving the vaccine include discomfort at the injection site, transient muscle or joint aches, and fever.

These symptoms can be alleviated with over-the-counter pain medicines or a cold compress to the site after receiving the vaccine. Side effects are less likely if you are well hydrated when you get your vaccine.

Getting vaccinated is at the top of the list of the new recommendations from the CDC.

Long COVID and your immune system

Repeat infections carry increased risk, not just from the infection itself, but also for developing long COVID as well as other illnesses. Recent evidence shows that even mild to moderate COVID-19 infection can negatively affect cognition, with changes similar to seven years of brain aging. But being up to date with COVID-19 immunization has a fourfold decrease in risk of developing long COVID symptoms if you do get infected.

Known as immunosenescence, this puts people at higher risk of infection, including severe infection, and decreased ability to maintain immune response to vaccination as they get older. The older one gets – over 75, or over 65 with other medical conditions – the more immunosenescence takes effect.

All this is why, if you’re in this age group, even if you received your last COVID-19 vaccine in fall 2023, the spring 2024 shot is still essential to boost your immune system so it can act quickly if you are exposed to the virus.

The bottom line: If you’re 65 or older, it’s time for another COVID-19 shot.The Conversation

Laurie Archbald-Pannone, Associate Professor of Medicine and Geriatrics, University of Virginia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Friday, March 8, 2024

More Praise for The Laran Gambit

Praise for The Laran Gambit, my latest #Darkover novel. 


"A compelling and excellent return to Darkover…such a great conflict and resolution… " 
--Amazon review


Amazon: https://buff.ly/3Pf03r4 
Barnes and Noble: https://buff.ly/4a5GjOy and other vendors. 
Also in hardcover and trade paperback

Monday, March 4, 2024

Science Fiction Worldbuilding: Orbiting a White Dwarf

I'm always on the lookout for great information about world-building, especially fascinating astronomy discoveries. This is an excerpt from an article in Universe Today by Evan Gough. Check it out for the full story. (I find this image evocative and beautiful -- do you?)




Stars end their lives in different ways. Some meet their end as supernovae, cataclysmic explosions that destroy any orbiting planets and even sterilize planets light-years away. Our Sun is not massive enough to explode as a supernova. Instead, it’ll spend time as a red giant. The red giant phase occurs when a star runs out of hydrogen to feed fusion. It’s a complicated process that astronomers are still working hard to understand. But red giants shed layers of material into space that light up as planetary nebulae. Eventually, the red giant is no more, and only a tiny, yet extraordinarily dense, white dwarf resides in the middle of all the expelled material.

Can some planets can survive as stars transition from the main sequence to red giant to white dwarf?  Researchers at the Space Telescope Science Institute, Goddard Space Flight Center, and other institutions have found what seem to be two giant planets orbiting two white dwarfs in two different systems.

If the researchers are correct, and the planets formed at the same time as the stars, this is an important leap in our understanding of exoplanets and the stars they orbit. It may also have implications for life on any moons that might be orbiting these planets.

Some white dwarfs appear to be polluted with metals, elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. Astronomers think that these metals come from asteroids in the asteroid belt, perturbed and sent into the white dwarf by giant planets. “Confirmation of these two planet candidates with future MIRI imaging would provide evidence that directly links giant planets to metal pollution in white dwarf stars,” the authors write.

Astronomers have found that up to 50% of isolated white dwarfs with hydrogen atmospheres have metals in their photospheres, the stars’ surface layer. These white dwarfs must be actively accreting metals from their surroundings. The favoured source for these metals is asteroids and comets.

This artist's illustration shows rocky debris being drawn toward a white dwarf. Astronomers think that giant planets perturb smaller objects like asteroids and comets inside the WD's Roche limit. They're destroyed, and the debris is drawn onto the star's surface. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

This artist’s illustration shows rocky debris being drawn toward a white dwarf. Astronomers think that giant planets perturb smaller objects like asteroids and comets inside the WD’s Roche limit. They’re destroyed, and the debris is drawn onto the star’s surface. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)


Friday, February 16, 2024

Short Book Reviews: A Murder Magnet Takes on a Sentient Spaceship

 Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty (Ace)


Poor Mallory! Ever since she can remember, she’s been a magnet for murders. To make matters worse, only she has the intuition and insight to solve them. This hasn’t put her in favor with law enforcement, once they figure out she isn’t the killer, she’s just bad luck. As a social pariah, she’s tried to fly under the radar. Then aliens contact Earth and agree to accept a human ambassador to their space station (Eternity). For some reason, the sentient station allows Mallory to come onboard, too. For Mallory, getting as far away from other humans as possible seems like the solution to murders always happening near her.

Until word comes that a shuttle filled with humans is on its way to Eternity, perfect fodder for the next round of killings. What a great set-up!

There’s more, of course. It turns out that Mallory and the quintessentially nasty ambassador are not the only humans onboard Eternity. There’s a third, Xan, AWOL from the military after all evidence points to him as the perpetrator of the last murder Mallory found herself involved in. Actually, he was the target, but it takes the two of them overcoming their extreme reluctance to interact to figure it out.

In the midst of all this, Eternity’s hostile-to-the-point-of-rudeness symbiote who is her link to organic beings is killed and the station goes berserk.

Lafferty shifts from the focus on two people, Mallory and Lan, to a widening cast of characters in a manner that reminds me strongly of her brilliant science fiction murder-mystery-on-a-spaceship, Six Wakes. The characters all have ties to one another, and such a pattern of interactions and relationships precipitates a murder, or so Mallory believes. If she doesn’t figure out what’s happening, the list of victims is sure to skyrocket. What seems at first to be a series of side-tracks is really a spiral network of connections that all come together in a most satisfying manner.


 

Friday, February 9, 2024

Book Review: A Time Traveling Romance With Pirates and a Ghost

 A Turn of the Tide (A Stitch in Time - Book 3) by Kelley Armstrong (KLA Fricke)

A Turn of the Tide is the third book of Kelley Armstrong’s “A Stitch in Time” series, the “stitch” being a time portal between modern and Victorian times, a room in Thorne Manor, England (now kept locked!). The first two were fun adventure-romances, linked by the women of Thorne Manor. These women also have “second sight,” the ability to see and communicate with ghosts, and to lay to rest the spirits of those who have been murdered by naming aloud their killers. (There’s a catch, which plays a part in the plot, which is that if the person calling aloud the name the murderer gets it wrong, dire consequences ensue for the ghost.)

This third “Stitch” novel features Miranda, a Victorian woman writer of “risqué pirate adventures who, having learned about the wonders and liberation of the 20th Century, decides to embark upon her own time-travel adventure. Miranda’s plans go astray when the “stitch” lands her not in modern times but a century earlier, in the late 1700s. She encounters the love interest, a French expat named Nicolas, on the run from the French Revolution and repaying the locals who have given him shelter by acting as a Robin Hood, stealing from a corrupt lord and fencing smuggled goods on the village’s behalf. Almost immediately, before the couple can even begin to get to know one another, chemistry ignites.

This is where my interest bobbled. I feared I was in for the rest of the book being the typical Romance attraction/pulling back two-step. I enjoy a love story as the frosting on a compelling plot with strong ideas, but not the entire central driving force of the book. However, I’d enjoyed Armstrong’s other books and found her writing to be both pleasant and engaging, so I kept going.