Crypto News: Can I Get Another Booster?

Hi folks, it's Kristen in New York. A reader wonders if it's (finally!) time for another Covid booster. But first…

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Listen: New obesity drugs really work, if you can afford them.
India is predicting blistering heat across swathes of the country in May, which could threaten lives.

Is there another booster available for seniors? Robert, Stamford, Connecticut

For a little while there, it looked like booster shots had become a part of our regular routine. Personally, I felt like I was getting them more often than I remembered to floss.

As Covid started becoming less of an immediate threat for healthy adults, our vaccine strategy started shifting. Health officials have started thinking about Covid like they do influenza — which requires an annual shot, right before sniffle season kicks off.

However, their approach to keeping seniors healthy is different. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that older and medically vulnerable people should get another dose of the bivalent shot as soon as possible.

"The vaccine's primary job is to reduce the risk of hospitalization, severe illness and death from Covid. The people that are most at risk for these bad outcomes are people that are over 65 years old and those who have compromised immune systems," says Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist at University of Illinois at Chicago.

"We still are losing over 1,000 people per week to Covid and mostly these are people in high-risk groups," she says.

That subset of people will benefit from another shot, according to recent data. Protection against emergency department visits for those 65 and older waned to 25% six months after their first bivalent booster, compared to 61% in the first 60 days, researchers found.

"It makes sense on a population level to target additional protections towards this vulnerable group," says Wallace.

The CDC also recommends that anyone older than six who hasn't received a bivalent booster (and most people haven't) go get one.

"If you have not had a Covid vaccine since September, you have not had the updated mRNA vaccine," says Wallace. "So you should go get one."

If you're all up to date, well, then just sit tight for now. You're likely not due for another until fall. — Kristen V. Brown

Extra pounds have always been treated differently from other conditions, in part because obesity has typically been seen as a lifestyle choice and weight loss drugs have a long, bad track record. But those things are starting to change. Doctors now say obesity is a disease, and new meds like the diabetes drug Ozempic are being used to help people slim down. More than 100 million Americans could be eligible for treatment with medication. Naturally, pharma companies and investors are seeing big dollar signs.

Except, well, insurers have yet to get on board, report Bloomberg's Emma Court and Robert Langreth. Insurance coverage of weight treatments was patchy at best, even before these new drugs became available. Their $10,000-a-year price tag doesn't help. At the heart of this looming battle over coverage are big, age-old questions: Is weight mainly a medical matter, or a cosmetic one? And when do excess pounds become a serious enough problem to justify costly drugs?

The medical medium and the true believer, from Vanity Fair.

Bugs and chemicals in your poo could give away what you've eaten, says the MIT Tech Review.

Washington state is protecting reproductive data, reports the Washington Post.

Ask us anything — well, anything health-related that is! Each week we're picking a reader question and putting it to our network of experts. So get in touch via AskPrognosis@bloomberg.net.