Crypto News: Coughing up a storm

Greetings. It's Michelle in Virginia. Whooping cough has been on my mind and I'm taking steps to make sure it doesn't make it anywhere else. But before we get to that ...

Humana's rating debacle exacerbates a tough year for the health insurer's new CEO.
Gilead is licensing an experimental HIV prevention medicine to generic drugmakers after being criticized for prioritizing profit over patients.
Lilly's building spree continues as it pours $4.5 billion into a new manufacturing plant in Indiana to shore up its supply chain.
Big Food is warming to Ozempic.

Whooping cough is brutal, for those with it and those listening to it. Formally known as Bordetella pertussis, the more colorful moniker for the highly contagious bacterial infection stems from the sound patients make as they struggle to regain their breath.

The racking cough makes it hard for adults to hold a conversation. In children and particularly infants, it's even more terrifying. In rare cases, it can be fatal. And the US is currently in the middle of an outbreak, with more than 15,000 infections so far this year — a 10-year high.

"Fall is the season when whooping cough cases typically increase, but not by this much," says Juanita Mora, an allergist and chief executive officer at the Chicago Allergy Center. One big reason? "Kids who aren't immunized."

My colleague Rthvika Suvarna explored the topic earlier this week after discovering that even fully vaccinated children were coming down with it. Their parents were being prescribed antibiotics to keep potential infections at bay.

It turned into a hot topic in the office. One colleague debated whether she should ask about getting a booster shot early for her 10-year-old, given the rise in infections among children whose immunizations were a few year out.

I didn't hesitate, and got immunized last month to try to reduce any risk of exposing my newborn grandson to the virus. I wasn't surprised when Rthvika told me that the Chinese call it the 100-day cough, for good reason. It can take months to clear, especially in infants.

She talked to several mothers who watched their kids struggle with the infection. In some cases, it changed their minds about the need for vaccination. While the shots offer protection shortly after they are given, the benefit wanes over time. Many people fell behind in their immunizations during the pandemic, and not everyone has caught up.

That needs to change, public health officials say. The delays and missed vaccinations are interfering with herd immunity, which occurs when so many people are immunized that the pathogen can't gain a foothold in a community.

I hope rolling up my sleeve helps prevent pertussis from taking root in my neighborhood, and in my grandson's. Just getting the shot is a win. You should join me. — Michelle Fay Cortez

Hurricanes lead to thousands of deaths in the years after they hit, according to the Washington Post.

For years, unclaimed dead bodies were used for medical research without consent from survivors, an NBC News investigation reveals.

Employers are increasingly giving an allowance to their workers for health coverage, CBS News reports.

Health questions? Have a tip that we should investigate? Contact us at AskPrognosis@bloomberg.net.

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