Hundreds more Hamilton students out of class for vaccine suspensions
On Friday, 1,215 elementary students at Catholic schools, as well as students at French and private schools, were removed from class, associate medical officer of health Dr. Brendan Lew said in an email.
Seven hundred of this group remained suspended as of Monday.
This is the third round of post-pandemic enforcement, which numbers show has been effective in ensuring records are up to date.
Of the 3,197 Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board elementary students missing records in January, 76 hadn't complied following suspensions of up to 20 days, the maximum time permitted under the Immunization of School Pupils Act.
Among public and Catholic high school students, 316 were still missing records after 20-day suspensions, down from 7,615 in March.
To comply with the act, Ontario students must submit proof of vaccination against nine illnesses — diphtheria, mumps, tetanus, polio, rubella, pertussis, varicella (if born after 2010), measles and meningococcal disease — to public health units, or request an exemption for medical or religious or philosophical reasons.
As of late March,
4.5 per cent
of Hamilton students were exempt, up from less than 2.5 per cent about a year ago and nearly three per cent before the pandemic in 2018-19.
It's a 'worrisome' figure, Dawn Bowdish, a professor in the department of medicine at McMaster University, said at the time.
The March rate was lower among elementary students at 3.9 per cent, and higher among secondary students at 6.3 per cent.
About
six per cent
are exempt in Haldimand-Norfolk, the location of a measles outbreak of more than 100 cases, The Spectator reported in March.
The highly contagious disease continues to spread in Ontario, with one case confirmed in Hamilton earlier this year.
In Brantford and Brant County, the exemption rate is lower at about four per cent.
Students without records or an exemption return to school after 20 days and 'would be subject to future enforcement' in future school years, Lew said.
Public health will continue to remind these families to update their records.
Planning for next year is 'ongoing,' he said, noting that elementary cohorts that didn't undergo enforcement this year, which includes those born between 2013 and 2016, will be prioritized.
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UPI
35 minutes ago
- UPI
State Department halts Gazan visitors' visas amid review
The State Department on Saturday announced a halt in visa approvals for Gazans after podcaster Laura Loomer on Friday questioned their arrivals in locations across the United States. File Photo by Louis Lanzano/UPI | License Photo Aug. 16 (UPI) -- A review of medical-humanitarian visa processing temporarily has stopped the State Department from approving visitors' visas for Gazans as of Saturday. The State Department announced the halt in visa processing for Gazans after podcaster Laura Loomer on Friday questioned flights that carry injured Gazans needing medical care into the United States, Politico reported on Saturday. Loomer reported "flights of Gazans arriving at airports all across" the United States, and the State Department reported the halt in visa processing for Gazans on Saturday. "All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days," State Department staff posted on X on Saturday morning. Neither the State Department nor Secretary of State Marco Rubio provided additional information regarding the decision. The State Department's decision comes after the Trump administration in June increased its vetting of visa applicants to include social media posts and other online activities by respective applicants. Officials in France likewise suspended the evacuation of Gazans to France after a female student identified as a "Palestinian" allegedly circulated a social media post depicting former German dictator Adolf Hitler calling for the killing of Jews, according to Fox News. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told media the woman must leave France and said no further evacuations of Gazans will occur while the matter is investigated to learn how she obtained a student visa. In the United States, Kent, Ohio-based non-profit HEAL Palestine is sponsoring the evacuation of injured Gazans to obtain medical care in the United States. HEAL Palestine says it has evacuated 148 Gazans, including 63 children, and brought them to the United States for medical care. The evacuees are being treated in locations across the nation, including Atlanta, Boston, San Antonio and Seattle and will return to Egypt upon completion of their medical care, the non-profit says. HEAL Palestine was founded in 2024 and says it primarily helps children between ages 6 and 15, but its numbers show it has brought more adults to the United States than children.
Vox
9 hours ago
- Vox
The decline of drinking, explained in one chart
is a senior editorial director at Vox overseeing the climate teams and the Unexplainable and The Gray Area podcasts. He is also the editor of Vox's Future Perfect section and writes the Good News newsletter. He worked at Time magazine for 15 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia, a climate writer, and an international editor, and he wrote a book on existential risk. Today, around 8,200 or so Americans will turn 21. Which means, of course, they will become eligible to engage in that time-honored habit of adulthood: drinking alcohol. (I'm sure absolutely none of them did so before they turned 21. I certainly did not, or at least, would not admit to doing so in this piece, which I know my parents read.) Yet those who get the chance to legally order a beer or a wine or, God help them, a Long Island iced tea, may find the bar a little less crowded these days. According to a new survey released by Gallup this week, just 54 percent of Americans now say they drink alcohol. That's the lowest share since Gallup began tracking the question way back in 1939, six years after Prohibition was repealed. Even Americans who do continue to drink say they are drinking less, and say they're increasingly concerned about the health impacts of alcohol. A narrow majority of Americans say that even moderate drinking is unhealthy, while reported drinking frequency also hit record lows. (Only 24 percent reported having a drink over the past 24 hours, while 40 percent said it had been more than a week since their last glass.) And while you might be skeptical of self-reporting drinking habits — doctors certainly are — the most recent sales data says that per-capita ethanol consumption in the US has fallen from nearly 2.8 gallons in the early 1980s to around 2.5 in 2022. Related Unless you happen to be in the booze business, this shift is 100-proof good news (with a few caveats). Drinking can lead to various social and medical ills, from the familial and financial devastation of alcoholism at the high end to increases in the risk of cancer and other diseases even at the lower end. But in a culture which seems to celebrate and encourage drinking, what's up with more Americans putting down their glasses? No safe level Americans of a certain age — i.e., me — probably remember hearing that a glass of red wine a day could be good for you. Which, looking back, seems absurd. Ethanol in any form is a toxin. But thanks in part to what became known as the 'French paradox' — the fact that the French showed low levels of heart disease despite their love of rich, fatty foods and glasses of Bordeaux — conventional wisdom settled on the idea that moderate drinking could actually benefit our overall health. If only. In the argot of Alcoholics Anonymous, medical science is having a 'moment of clarity' around alcohol. It turns out that 'no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health,' as the World Health Organization put it in 2023. One major meta-analysis that same year found that there are in fact no mortality benefits at low levels of alcohol consumption, and that risk for a number of health threats rises as consumption increases. The decline and fall of teen drinking Whether or not American adults are actually listening to their doctors, the decline in alcohol consumption is real. What's even more remarkable — and even better news — is the sharper decline in drinking among people who legally shouldn't be doing it at all: the underage. In 2024, according to one long-running youth survey, 42 percent of 12th graders reported drinking alcohol, down significantly from 75 percent in 1997 (which happens to be the year I graduated high school, and no, I will not be commenting on which side of the survey I fell on). For 10th graders it was 26 percent (down from 65 percent) and for eighth graders it was 13 percent (down from 46 percent in 1997, which yikes). For those underage Americans who are drinking, the percentage who engage in binge drinking has also fallen in recent years, albeit less sharply. Alcohol is really bad — with one caveat Here's one of the more unbelievable stats I've ever seen: scholars believe that something like 40 percent of all murders involve the use of alcohol. That's just one example of the effects of dangerous levels of alcohol consumption. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates around 178,000 excess deaths each year from alcohol abuse, of which over 12,000 were deaths in drunk driving accidents — meaning one out of every three car crash deaths might not have happened without alcohol. Less alcohol consumption means less of all of this. 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National Geographic
a day ago
- National Geographic
What was a drugstore like in medieval Europe?
Emerging in monasteries and convents, apothecaries were later incorporated into guilds to serve the general public. But the medicine they prescribed was much different than what we know today. The fresco reproduced above shows the interior of an apothecary's shop in northwestern Italy in the 15th century. The pharmacist, dressed in secular clothing, holds precision scales in front of an elegantly attired customer. On the right, dressed in tattered clothes and missing a shoe, the man who is grinding components using a pestle and mortar may have been employed to carry out simple tasks in the pharmacy in exchange for food and lodging. On the far left of the scene, a monk writes on a piece of paper, likely keeping the pharmacy's accounts. Europeans in the Middle Ages were no strangers to diseases and plagues. When suffering from health problems, they did the same as people today: They looked to medicine in the hope for a cure, or at least for the easing of pain. People bought, ingested, or applied items that are still familiar—potions, ointments, and pills. The chemistry of such medication, however, was very different, made from natural substances once believed to have curative, even miraculous, properties. These included precious stones (agate was a remedy for eye complaints, while jasper was thought to counter hemorrhoids); mineral waters; products derived from animals or even humans (nails, urine, blood); and, above all, a great variety of plants. A pharmacopoeia called De Materia Medica by the Greek physician Dioscorides was widely circulated both in the medieval West and the Arab and Muslim world. It included botanical descriptions and medicinal applications for hundreds of plants. Certain plants were credited with a wide range of curative properties. According to Dioscorides, the cyclamen plant can be made into a potion and used to treat everything from jaundice and headaches to constipation, chilblains, acne, and alopecia. Spice merchants (épiciers in French, speziali in Italian) had close ties with apothecaries, as some of the spices they traded from the East were believed to have medicinal properties. Cinnamon and anise, for example, were used to prevent bad breath. Lotions, potions, and poultices would sometimes be prepared by itinerant healers who sold their wares in the streets or door-to-door. But there were also dispensaries called apothecaries (from the Greek word meaning 'storehouse'), the precursors of modern pharmacies and drugstores. (The gory history of Europeans eating mummies for health) A garden in a 15th-century French miniature, British Library. Monasteries often had a special garden or herbularius dedicated to cultivating medicinal plants, known in French as simples, a word that entered English usage. The plants were placed in square beds separated by pathways. Monk hospital The origin of these apothecaries is closely linked to convents, monasteries, and abbeys. Monastic foundations often had places where they could offer hospitality to pilgrims and the poor. Since many of those using these houses, called hospitals, were also sick, the monks sought ways to treat their ailments, and so the word 'hospital' acquired its modern sense Monks were suited to be physicians. They had access to scientific books in their libraries, such as the treatise by Dioscorides, and many other texts in circulation in medieval Europe and the Muslim world. They also had the physical resources. Based on their knowledge, monks knew which medicinal plants to cultivate in their monastery gardens. Lithuania's timeless city In this way, the first pharmacies were established as distinct rooms or spaces. In Camaldoli, east of Florence, in the 11th century, a monk named Romuald founded a community of Benedictine monks who ran a hospital for the poor. The pharmacy at Camaldoli was referenced as early as 1048. Sixteenth-century sources describe the provision of medicinal herbs from the well-stocked botanical garden. FROM THE GARDEN TO THE APOTHECARY'S SHOP This 15th-century miniature by an unknown artist was featured in the illuminated manuscript of a collectorium chirurgicum, Latin for surgical collection. Held in the National Library of France in Paris, the image shows (right to left) an herbalist gathering medicinal herbs, a physician, and an apothecary preparing a medicine. WHITE IMAGES/SCALA, FLORENCE Another example, also in Italy, is the Dominican convent built in 1221 in Florence next to the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, built later. When the the friars healed a wealthy Florentine merchant, the fame of the friars' pharmacy spread to the general public, who flocked to its doors, making Santa Maria Novella a Renaissance-era precursor to the modern drugstore. The division of the role between doctor and apothecary began to harden in the 13th century, coinciding with the rise of guilds for physicians. Since physicians considered preparing medicines to be beneath their dignity, apothecaries took on this task. The Constitutions of Melfi were promulgated in Sicily in 1231 by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Sicily. They established that physicians were not to prepare remedies but only prescribe them. Conversely, apothecaries could not prescribe remedies but only prepare them, and always under the supervision of a physician. (Why plague doctors wore those strange beaked masks) At times apothecaries would push the limits of their practice. In Paris in 1281, the statutes of the Faculty of Medicine clamped down on apothecaries and forbade them to visit the sick or dispense any medicine without a prescription from a physician. Carved by Nino Pisano for the bell tower of Florence Cathedral, this 14th-century panel represents medicine. Guilded Age The rise of guilds subjected apothecaries' work to regulation by law. In 1353 royal statutes governing the Guild of Spice Merchants-Apothecaries of Paris established that no one could practice as an apothecary 'if he did not know how to read prescriptions or had no one who knew how to do so.' The selling of 'poisonous or dangerous medicines' was outlawed, and labeling bottles with the year and month the remedy had been prepared was made obligatory. In addition, apothecaries were urged to sell their products 'at a loyal, fair, and moderate price.' To monitor compliance with the rules, a master of apothecaries was appointed and, assisted by two physicians appointed by the dean of the Faculty of Medicine, inspected each apothecary's shop at least twice a year,'carefully examining all the substances to be found therein.' (Fast and lethal, the Black Death spread more than a mile per day) The herbalist's shop of Santa Maria Novella, Florence, is the oldest pharmacy in the world still in use. Despite evidence of women physicians in antiquity, the idea of women as druggists, pharmacists, and physicians generated hostility in Europe's male-dominated medical guilds. Attempts were made to restrict women's medical activities to midwifery. Nevertheless, women's traditional roles as caregivers provided them with the knowledge to work as healers. In 17th-century England, reflecting a surge in female literacy, it became fashionable for women to compile books of receipts, or recipes, detailing how to make remedies for a range of conditions (only later were recipes associated with food). One of the best known such writers was the late 17th-century English author Hannah Woolley. In The Gentlewoman's Companion, attributed to Woolley, she associated the work of pharmacist and physician with upward social mobility, and urged women to acquire competent skills in 'Physick and Chyrugery [medicine and surgery]' as a means to attain social 'usefulness.' (What life in medieval Europe was really like) Among the Quaker colonists who set sail from England for America with William Penn in 1682 were women skilled in medicine and healing. The knowledge they passed on to their fellow settlers would prove a crucial public service in the daily life of the colony that became Pennsylvania. Saffron, 15th-century watercolor. In 1462 Spanish apothecary Fernando López de Aguilar prepared these two remedies for King Henry IV of Castile. Poultice for the kidneys: Diapalma, 4 ounces Diaquilon, 3 ounces Saffron, 1/2 ounce Chamomile flower, 1 ounce Cumin, 1 ouncePrice: 130 maravedis (coins) Water for the stomach: Chamomile flower, 2 ounces Roses, 2 ouncesViolets, 2 ouncesKing's crown (Pyrenean saxifrage), 2 ouncesPrice: 48 maravedis J.L. VALVERDE AND C.A. GONZÁLEZ, CUADERNOS DE ESTUDIOS MEDIEVALES Y CIENCIAS Y TÉCNICAS HISTORIOGRÁFICAS, VOL. 4–5, 1979 This story appeared in the July/August 2025 issue of National Geographic History magazine.
