Deadly vapor claims fifth Manhattan victim: Doctors list no-go areas... and reveal 'mind-altering' symptoms that mimic flu but can kill in days
The city announced Monday that, since an outbreak in late July, 108 people have been infected with Legionnaire's disease, a type of pneumonia that spreads through bacteria lurking in warm later.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
4 minutes ago
- Reuters
US pediatric group breaks with federal policy, recommends COVID vaccines for young children
Aug 20 (Reuters) - The American Academy of Pediatrics on Tuesday recommended that all young children get vaccinated against COVID-19, differing from federal policy that no longer recommends routine vaccination for healthy children. In its latest policy document, AAP said all young children aged 6-23 months should receive a COVID-19 shot regardless of previous doses or SARS-CoV-2 infection. It also advised vaccination for older children in certain risk groups. The U.S. pediatric group's recommendations diverge from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which in May said healthy children can take the shots if parents and doctors agree it is needed. Shared clinical decision-making, which involves parents and doctors, can be difficult to implement as it lacks clear guidance and does not emphasize the importance of vaccinating high risk individuals, AAP said. "We call on the AAP to strengthen conflict-of-interest safeguards and keep its publications free from financial influence," the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said on Tuesday. In a post on social media platform X, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said AAP should also inform doctors that recommendations that are not in line with CDC's official vaccine list are not covered under the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act, which protect manufacturers and healthcare providers from lawsuits. Prior to the new guidance, CDC routinely recommended updated COVID vaccines for everyone aged six months and older, in line with the advice of its panel of outside experts. In early July, the AAP and other major medical groups sued Secretary Kennedy Jr. for unilaterally removing routine vaccination recommendations. The rate of COVID-19 hospitalization for children under 2 years is the highest among pediatric age groups, and for children aged 6-23 months, it is comparable to people aged 50-64 years, AAP said, citing CDC data.
The Guardian
34 minutes ago
- The Guardian
More than 2.8m people in US identify as trans, including 724,000 youth, data shows
More than 2.8 million people now identify as transgender in the US, including an estimated 724,000 youth, according to a new data analysis that is the largest of its kind to date. Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Williams Institute used federal surveys and data from state health agencies to identify the size and demographics of the trans population in each state. The analysis, shared with the Guardian and released on Wednesday, documented thousands of trans youth living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The findings counter Donald Trump's aggressive efforts to deny the existence of trans minors, as his administration removes references to trans people across federal agencies and widely erodes protections and programs for LGBTQ+ communities. The report builds on federal data collection efforts that the White House is now eliminating. The authors warn their study could be the last comprehensive portrait of the nation's trans population for a decade or more as trans people are erased from vital US surveys, including health reports and crime data analyses. The Williams Institute primarily relied on 2021 to 2023 data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) surveys and records disclosed by state health agencies. Some of the key findings include: 1% of the total US population aged 13 and older identifies as trans, including 0.8% of adults (more than 2.1 million people) and 3.3% of youth ages 13 to 17 (roughly 724,000 people). Young adults ages 18 to 24 are significantly more likely to identify as trans (2.72%) than those 35 to 64 (0.42%) and those aged 65 and older (0.26%). Of the 2.1 million trans adults, 32.7% (698,500) are trans women, 34.2% (730,500) are trans men and 33.1% (707,100) are trans non-binary people. The trans populations are fairly consistent across regions, with 0.9% of adults in the west, midwest and north-east identifying as trans, compared with 0.7% of adults in the south. Minnesota had the highest rate of adults who identify as trans (1.2%), and Hawaii had the highest rate of trans youth (3.6%), though the ranges were similar across states. 'Trans people live everywhere and are represented in every state,' said Dr Jody Herman, senior scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute and co-author of the report, noting the total US trans population was larger than the individual size of more than a dozen states. 'This is a substantial population that has unique concerns and barriers to getting their needs met, and lawmakers need to keep that in mind.' The Williams Institute, a leading LGBTQ+ policy research center, has published national trans population counts since its 2011 report, which was the first of its kind as state-level data on gender identity became available. The estimates are considered the best available data and were cited by the US supreme court in its recent majority opinion upholding Tennessee's ban on trans youth healthcare. The quality and sources of the researchers' data have improved from one report to the next, the researchers said, making it difficult to assess changes over time. But the researchers noted that its overall estimates of trans adults have remained relatively steady, while the latest data shows how younger people are now significantly more likely to identify as trans than older groups. There are many factors contributing to youth identifying as trans at higher rates, including that younger people are more likely to answer these kinds of survey questions, said Dr Andrew Flores, Williams Institute distinguished visiting scholar and associate professor of government at American University. 'Younger people are growing up among other younger people who already hold more accepting attitudes toward LGBT and transgender people more broadly,' said Flores, a report co-author, citing increasingly visible signs of support, such as student walkouts in Florida in protest of anti-trans policies. 'In this generation, they might be more willing and safe to identify that they are transgender, because they don't see as much of a harm or threat as older generations.' While some conservatives and anti-trans advocates have presented a reported rise in trans youth as a 'social contagion', suggesting youth are copying their peers, 'The growth comes as people are now in an environment that allows them to fully express who they are,' Flores said. Shifting language also affected generational differences, he said, noting how older groups were more likely to identify as lesbian or gay while younger people are more likely to identify as bisexual or pansexual. And while older trans people are more likely to identify as men or women, younger trans people more frequently identify as non-binary. The report also found that the race and ethnicity of trans people was largely similar to broader US demographics, with Indigenous, Latino and multiracial adults slightly more likely to identify as trans than other groups. The Trump administration, which has widely attacked data collection efforts across government, has moved to remove trans identity questions from two critical CDC behavioral health surveys and from Department of Justice surveys on crime victimization and sexual violence. The US Census Bureau has also taken steps to exclude gender identity from multiple surveys, according to the former director who resigned in February. Those efforts followed Trump's day-one executive order 'restoring biological truth' to the government, which suggested that trans identity was 'false' and directed the state department to deny trans people accurate passports. The data loss will make it impossible for the Williams Institute to continue its analyses in their current form, and even if the next administration restored the surveys, the public would still be losing up to 10 years of data, which would be a devastating erosion of knowledge, the researchers said. 'We didn't really have decent national data until around 10 years ago, so we just very recently got a grasp on how many people identify as trans in the US and what their characteristics are,' said Herman. 'For these data sources to just suddenly disappear, it is a major setback. The population is not going to go away, we're just not going to know more about them than what we have from our current sources.' The data has frequently been cited by journalists, school boards, public health experts, civil rights lawyers, advocates fighting discriminatory legislation and lawmakers expanding trans rights. The researchers had hoped federal data could help illuminate how trans people were moving within the US as some have fled red states due to anti-trans laws, but that will be hard to track without national surveys, they said. 'In some policy circles, they say if you can't be counted, you don't count,' Flores added. 'And for members of the LGBTQ+ community, to be able to see numbers that reflect their lived experiences is quite important.' Imara Jones, founder of news organization TransLash Media, said there was no easy fix for the loss of national data backed by federal resources. 'It is meant to erase, and that erasure is meant to have real-world impacts, making it harder for people to be who they are.' Flores said the institute and others were discussing ways to fill the gaps and continue data collection without the federal government: 'We're not just going to close up shop. We're going to try to find a way to keep telling these stories and be persistent.'
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Alabama teacher calls state's new law banning phones in class ‘magic'
An Alabama teacher has lauded the benefits of a new state law banning cell phones in school classrooms. 'It's magic,' Tuscaloosa County High School 11th-grade history teacher Jonathan Buchwalter said in a TikTok earlier this month that reached nearly two million views. Across the U.S., thirty-three states have enacted legislation regarding school cellphone usage, amid a growing effort to restrict students' smartphone access in schools, over concerns about mental health and academic attentiveness, according to 'Today, all of my students, 100% of them, took notes in my class, did their assignment, asked for help when they got stuck, and turned it in, and then when they were done, they talked to each other,' he said. Buchwalter explained it was still early days, and a complete assessment of the legislation's impact could only be determined at the end of the school year. 'I have been pulling my hair out for like, eight years. Has it been this easy a solution the whole time?' Buchwalter asked his followers in the video. Just days before Buchwalter revealed the benefits in his classroom, two studies identified links between problematic smartphone use (PSU) and depression, anxiety, and insomnia in teenagers. Almost half of teens have admitted to being online constantly, according to 2024 data from the Pew Research Center. While 72% said they sometimes or frequently check their notifications from the minute they wake up. 'They're chemically addicted to their phones,' Buchwalter said, adding, 'They cannot experience anything that isn't constant stimulation.' As of July this year, 26 states – Arizona, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Ohio, Oregon, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and West Virginia – enforced a full ban or cellphone limit in classrooms. Other state departments, including the Connecticut Department of Education, the Kansas Department of Education, and the Washington Department of Education, have opted to create policies that limit classroom usage. Meanwhile, Idaho Gov. Brad Little issued an executive order encouraging districts to limit cellphones in schools. In Alaska, Colorado, and Minnesota, legislation requires K-12 public school districts to adopt policies around student cellphone use; however, the laws do not specify how the policies should be implemented. Back in February, the National Center for Education Statistics outlined the benefits of the bans. 'The latest School Pulse Panel data underscore that school leaders see cell phones as more than just a classroom distraction,' said NCES Commissioner Peggy Carr. 'With 53 percent of school leaders reporting negative impacts of cell phone use on academic performance, and even more citing negative impacts on students' mental health and attention spans, schools are facing a critical issue. Schools are responding with practical solutions, like banning or restricting phone use.'
