Today’s Big Story

Superbugs

A new report is the latest to show that superbugs will become an increasingly deadly threat to our public health

Brace yourself. A landmark new study published in the Lancet estimates that antimicrobial resistant pathogens, or AMR, will kill more than 39 million people by 2050. The study also predicts that 169 million deaths will be associated with drug-resistant infections by that year.

“These findings highlight that AMR has been a significant global health threat for decades and that this threat is growing,” said Mohsen Naghavi, a professor at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and the study’s author. AMR is becoming an especially large problem for the elderly. Adults above the age of 70 have experienced an over 80% increase in deaths attributed to AMR from 1990 to 2021, while deaths among children have decreased by more than 50%. All populations over the age of 25 experienced an increase in deaths attributable to antimicrobial resistance, the study found.

The World Health Organization has called AMR “one of the top global public health and development threats,” driven by the misuse and overuse of antimicrobial medications in humans, animals and plants, which can help pathogens develop a resistance to them.

According to the data, the regions of the world most affected by AMR and attributable deaths are South Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa—and many of these regions don’t have equitable access to quality care, lead author Dr. Chris Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington told CNN.

The team’s findings are roughly in line with other estimates of antibiotic resistance’s deadly potential. A 2014 report commissioned by the UK government estimated that drug-resistant infection could kill up to 10 million people by 2050, for instance. If either estimate is correct, it’s possible that superbugs will eventually kill more people than cancer does annually.

According to Gizmodo, there are some new antibiotics poised to reach the public in the near future, including antibiotics that can hopefully tackle drug-resistant strains of gonorrhea and other common superbugs. And there have been some success in incentivizing drug companies to once again pour their resources into antibiotic research and development. But much more action is needed to forestall the worst-case public health scenarios posed by these infections, the researchers warn. Otherwise, plenty of death and misery is sure to come.

Hezbollah Pagers Explode Across Lebanon

Israel conducted Lebanon pager attack fearing Hezbollah was onto the operation

Like something out of an action movie, thousands of people have been injured in Lebanon, after pagers used by the armed group Hezbollah to communicate dramatically exploded almost simultaneously across the country on Tuesday. At least nine people were killed and some 2,800 injured, many of them seriously.

CNN reports the attack was a joint operation between Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, and the Israeli military. Israel has refused to comment publicly on the explosions, but three U.S. officials told Axios Israel made the decision to detonate the pager devices out of concern its secret operation might have been discovered by the group. “It was a use it or lose it moment,” one U.S. official said describing the reasoning Israel gave the U.S. for the timing of the attack.

Taiwanese company Gold Apollo said early Wednesday that it authorized its brand on the pagers that exploded in Lebanon and Syria but that another company based in Budapest manufactured them. Hezbollah said in a statement Wednesday morning that it would retaliate for the pager attack and continue its normal strikes against Israel “as in all the past days” as part of what it describes as a support front for its ally, Hamas, and Palestinians in Gaza.

Let’s Talk Voting Rights

Newly enacted laws, glitches and politics

As the United States gears up for the upcoming presidential election, the spotlight is once again cast on the range of voter ID laws that govern the voting process across the nation. According to Newsweek, these regulations, varying dramatically from state to state, are now the focus of heightened scrutiny and contentious debate.

Since the 2020 election, photo ID laws have been implemented in four states, bringing the total count of states with these laws to 10. As of April 2024, 35 states require some form of ID at the polls, according to Ballotpedia. Of those, 24 states mandate photo identification, while 11 allow non-photo IDs. The remaining 15 states do not require IDs to vote in person on Election Day.

Recently, election officials in Arizona discovered a flaw in the state’s voter registration system that could disqualify nearly 100,000 people from voting in state and local races just weeks before early ballots will hit mailboxes. NPR reports that Arizona’s voter registration system pulls information from the state’s driver's license database as a method of proving citizenship, but the Maricopa County Recorder’s office found a flaw with the database. Meanwhile, Nebraska was among at least 26 states in recent decades that had made it easier for people convicted of felonies to vote. But the state’s attorney general not only cast doubt on a newly enacted law, but also on the state’s longstanding policy of allowing many people who finished criminal sentences to vote.

Obesity Pill Races Heat Up

GLP-1 pills are coming, and they could revolutionize weight-loss treatment

Everyone’s talking about the GLP-1 drugs for weight loss. Who’s taking them, how much they cost and how quickly they seem to work. But one inconvenient truth is that the medications, from Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy to Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro and Zepbound, all require the drugs to be injected into the body via needles.

But the need for needles may soon change. At least a dozen similar experimental weight-loss drugs designed to be taken as pills are working their way through clinical trials, with the most advanced now in the third and final stage of testing. They’re likely to “drastically change the landscape for weight management in several ways,” one physician told CNN.

She hopes that pill versions of GLP-1 drugs could ease shortages, come at lower cost and enhance convenience. But she and other doctors also warn about the potential for misuse, a problem that could become more pervasive with daily pills instead of weekly injections; they could make it easier to take more than recommended or to share medication inappropriately. Of course, not all of these experimental drugs will necessarily make it to market, but one of the primary roles they may play if they do is as “long-term maintenance dosing” for people who’ve lost a sufficient amount of weight on injectable medications.

The Long Read

Musings from an oldster for today’s younger generation

Don't give up.