Outside the Beltway

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1. OzarkHillbilly says:
   Monday, 9 May 2022 at 08:22

   How restrictions on syringe programs led to a severe HIV outbreak in West Virginia

   “I was really trying to be proactive in getting out into the community, and [to] educate people about the importance of using clean syringes,” said Teague, who along with local public health authorities was able to keep HIV numbers lower by distributing clean needles. “Hundreds” of people showed up for sterile syringes each week.

   But in 2018, the city imposed severe restrictions on syringe service programs. Soon, cases were rising. Now, amid an HIV outbreak in her city, Teague says her program can only work “with our hands tied behind our back”.

   The outbreak has been severe. Kanawha county, where Charleston is the seat, diagnosed 40 people who inject drugs with HIV in 2020, about as many as New York City, a place 47 times more populous than the rural county of 178,000. Last year, the head of HIV prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned Kanawha had the nation’s “most concerning” outbreak of HIV among injection drug users.

   Last month, the Biden administration pushed to expand access to clean needles for people who inject drugs. Its National Drug Control Strategy outlined a plan to expand syringe service programs by 85% in high-overdose counties.

   But there is little chance of that happening here, where the same syringe restrictions pioneered in Charleston and the nearby city of Huntington were later adopted statewide by West Virginia lawmakers. A Guardian analysis has found that between 2018 and early 2022, nearly half of all syringe service programs registered with health authorities in West Virginia shuttered – and the local fight against clean needles even drew in the Democratic US senator Joe Manchin.

   Stupid is as stupid does.

   By 2021, less than two months after the CDC’s warning that Kanawha’s outbreak was among the nation’s worst, and fully aware of the situation, West Virginia lawmakers passed the most restrictive syringe program requirements in the nation.

   It happened amid an acceleration of the American drug overdose epidemic. More than 100,000 people in the US died of drug overdoses in 2021, worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic. The disaster is now, in 2022, driving the most interest in syringe service programs and other harm reduction policies in “recent memory”, according Gibson. For the first time in decades, a $30m fund in the Covid-19 stimulus bill allowed for government purchase of sterile syringes.

   But it also stoked conservative outrage, sucking in lawmakers including Manchin. When the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) issued a grant for organizations to buy and distribute clean syringes in February, the Biden administration was pilloried. A conservative news outlet described it as “distribution of crack pipes to drug addicts”; the Republican senator Ted Cruz tweeted the Biden administration’s “crime policy” was “crack pipes for all”.

   In response, Manchin joined two Republican colleagues to express concern about the plan. The following day, he introduced a bill to expand a decades-old, government-wide ban on the purchase of sterile syringes for drug use. He co-sponsored the bill with the Republican Florida senator Marco Rubio, whose home state has the second worst rate of new HIV diagnoses in the country. Although Manchin’s bill did not pass, it showed the political perils of trying to help people who inject drugs, even as the horror of death and disease ravage communities.

   Pro-Life my ass.

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2. Just nutha says:
   Monday, 9 May 2022 at 08:31

   @OzarkHillbilly: WV gets to do what it wants. Perhaps Teague should go do good somewhere that wants good done.

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3. OzarkHillbilly says:
   Monday, 9 May 2022 at 08:32

   Consider my gob to be thoroughly smacked:

   Scientists are developing magnetically guided microscopic projectiles that can be injected into patients’ blood to attack breast, prostate and other tumours.

   The project – led by researchers at Sheffield University – builds on progress in two key medical fields. The first involves viruses that specifically attack tumours. The second focuses on soil bacteria that manufacture magnets which they use to align themselves in the Earth’s magnetic field.

   “The essence of this approach is straightforward: we are using bugs as drugs,” said Dr Munitta Muthana, one of the project’s leaders. “We are taking a class of viruses that naturally target tumours and are developing ways to help them reach internal tumours by exploiting bacteria that make magnets. It’s a twin approach and it has a lot of promise, we believe.”
   ……………………………………..
   “The problem is that oncolytic viruses attract the attention of the body’s immune defences and only skin-deep tumours can be tackled this way before the viruses are blocked fairly quickly by our cell defences,” said Dr Faith Howard, another project leader.

   A solution, the scientists say, is to coat the viruses in magnetic particles. Injected into the blood, these microscopic projectiles could then be directed quickly to a tumour – by using magnets placed over a patient’s body – before their progress can be blocked by immune defences.

   “It’s like having a coat of armour or a shield,” added Muthana. “The magnets help protect the virus but crucially they also help them to target a tumour. We place a magnet over a tumour and it will draw the virus speedily and directly to it.”

   An oncolytic virus had a diameter of about 180 nanometres while the magnets needed to be about 50 nanometres in size, added Howard. (A nanometre is a billionth of a metre.) “These tiny magnets could be made in the laboratory but we have found bacteria do a better job of manufacturing them than we could,” she added.

   Some species of soil bacteria synthesise iron oxide nanoparticles that are called magnetosomes. These are used as compasses that allow the microbes to navigate in Earth’s magnetic field and help them find optimum conditions for their growth and survival. “These microscopic magnets they make are perfectly shaped and ideally suited to the microscopic packages we need to target deep cancers,” Howard said.

   To quote the immortal Jesse Pinkman, “Science bitches!”

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4. OzarkHillbilly says:
   Monday, 9 May 2022 at 08:58

   Chad Loder
   @chadloder
   People are protesting outside Justice Kavanaugh’s house. Someone said “But think of his neighbors” and Kavanaugh’s neighbor replied “We ARE his neighbors. We organized the protest”

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5. Sleeping Dog says:
   Monday, 9 May 2022 at 09:18

   What Happened to Jon Stewart?

   He disappeared and the medium moved on. The Daily Show, just didn’t happen, what worked and didn’t developed overtime. Stewart essentially leaving the business, also lost the regular cues and reminders of where and who the audience is. He returns with a Big Idea, and the audience wonders, who’s John Stewart, whatever and this sucks.
6. OzarkHillbilly says:
   Monday, 9 May 2022 at 09:21

   Oh brother, only the top 2 posts show on my screen when OTB displays and I thought this was the open forum. My apologies. Steven.
7. OzarkHillbilly says:
   Monday, 9 May 2022 at 09:27

   @OzarkHillbilly: Now reposted where they belong, feel free to delete.

   eta: not that you need my permission
8. Tony W says:
   Monday, 9 May 2022 at 10:12

   @OzarkHillbilly: So we’re going to create viruses that shield themselves from detection from our immune system? And we are, in the short term, going to use that technology for good.

   What could go wrong?

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9. OzarkHillbilly says:
   Monday, 9 May 2022 at 11:09

   @Tony W: Valid question.

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10. Shepard Wilson says:
    Monday, 9 May 2022 at 11:38

    Are you all aware someone is using “Outside the Beltway” as a name for their podcast?

    https://outsidethebeltway.libsyn.com/
11. CSK says:
    Monday, 9 May 2022 at 11:46

    @Shepard Wilson:
    Titles can’t be copyrighted in book publishing. I don’t know how it works with podcasts.
12. Steven L. Taylor says:
    Monday, 9 May 2022 at 11:50

    @Shepard Wilson: Thanks for the heads up. We were unaware.

    @CSK: Good question. I am pretty sure we couldn’t start up a “New York Times Podcast” but, who knows?
13. Mu Yixiao says:
    Monday, 9 May 2022 at 12:24

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    I am pretty sure we couldn’t start up a “New York Times Podcast” but, who knows?

    Ooo! Ohh! Mr. Kotter! Mr. Kotter! I know! 🙂

    You could not. Because “New York Times” is trademarked, and there would be significant likelihood of market confusion. You’d get your ass sued off. 🙂
14. Kathy says:
    Monday, 9 May 2022 at 12:31

    @CSK:

    I don’t think there’s much to do without a trademark.
15. KM says:
    Monday, 9 May 2022 at 12:43

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Yep. It’s so funny that pro-lifers live in such a bubble they don’t realize the people living next door will be (1) inconvenienced by this decision no matter what, it’s only a matter of how badly they are screwed and (2) no longer willing to let such BS go. This decision will mess up people’s insurance, workload and place, social relationships and access to healthcare even if they or their loved ones never need an abortion; you can’t add a ton of new patients to the healthcare system and take a larger percentage of workers out of play all at once without having it echo up and down society.

    His neighbors are probably wealthy and in high level or prestigious jobs overseeing employees. Think it’s irritating that you can’t keep workers and cost are high due to the pandemic? It’s about to get a whole lot worse for management types so buckle up for the HR nightmare that’s coming. Even if they are conservative and MAGA AF (likely not from that quote but still), the effect this will have on business is reason enough to be protesting outside his door.
16. Joe says:
    Monday, 9 May 2022 at 15:00

    @Steven L. Taylor: While single book titles cannot be copyrighted or trademarked, a book series (Animorphs, anyone?), a newspaper (The New York Times) or a blog like this can be subject to trademark (more technically, service mark). You have service mark rights simply by using the mark consistently for this blog service and you could legally exclude confusingly similar uses. Federal registration is a separate matter, but might be a good idea and would definitely improve you ability to enforce your rights and to fend off potential competitors and copycats.

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