Grandparenting

President Donald Trump has spent four years trying to undermine the Affordable Care Act. President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to bolster the law and give states new tools to expand coverage. Among them: more money and additional guides to help people buy health insurance on the ACA exchanges; support for states that want to allow more people onto Medicaid rather than fewer; and a crackdown on health care plans that don’t offer the minimum benefits required by Obamacare.   President Donald Trump has spent four years trying to undermine the Afforda… more »

"The CDC has advised that large in-person events, particularly in settings where participants do not wear masks or practice social distancing, pose a substantial risk of further contagion (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2020). There is reason to fear that such gatherings can serve as 'superspreader events,' severely undermining efforts to control the pandemic. The purpose of this study is to shed light on these issues by studying the impact of election rallies held by President Donald Trump’s campaign between June 20th and September 30th, 2020. Trump rallies have several distinguishing features that lend themselves to this inquiry. The degree of compliance with guidelines concerning the use of masks and social distancing was low, in part because the Trump campaign downplayed the risk of infection. This feature heightens the risk that a rally could become a 'superspreader event.'” more »

Voters in New York City waited hours to cast ballots during the first time early voting has been allowed in the state in a presidential election. Recent mishaps involving mail-in ballots seemed to drive many voters to the polls. Massachusetts acknowledged it has not been able to determine the source of infection in about half of COVID-19 cases, an information gap that epidemiologists say could limit the ability to respond to outbreaks and control transmission of the disease. The Trump campaign and Nevada Republicans asked a state judge to stop the count of Las Vegas-area mail-in ballots, alleging that “meaningful observation” of signature-checking is impossible in the state’s biggest and most Democratic-leaning county. more »

A newly developed light-sensing protein called the MCO1 opsin restores vision in blind mice when attached to retina bipolar cells using gene therapy. The National Eye Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, provided a Small Business Innovation Research grant to Nanoscope, LLC for development of MCO1. The company is planning a U.S. clinical trial for later this year. “The beauty of our strategy is its simplicity,” said Samarendra Mohanty, Ph.D., Nanoscope founder and corresponding author of a report on the mouse study that appears today in Nature Gene Therapy. “Bipolar cells are downstream from the photoreceptors, so when the MCO1 opsin gene is added to bipolar cells in a retina with nonfunctioning photoreceptors, light sensitivity is restored.” ... However, no one knows how the restored vision will compare to normal vision. more »