China Faces COVID-19 Resurgence With Symptoms of Sharp, Burning Sore Throat
Zhong Nanshan, one of China's leading pulmonologists and epidemiologists,
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hill
9 hours ago
- The Hill
Tennessee school won't accept doctor's notes for absences
(NewsNation) — One Tennessee school district will no longer accept doctors' notes to excuse an absence despite objections from parents. Lawrence County School System officials said the school is instituting the policy to teach students work ethic and reliability, saying that students will be expected to go to work sick or injured as adults. It is also intended to address chronic absenteeism, defined as missing 10 percent or more of instructional time. In the 2023-2024 school year, Lawrence County had a 14 percent rate of chronic absenteeism. With no federally mandated sick leave, many Americans do go to work when sick, but public health officials advise against it. Staying home when sick can reduce the spread of viruses like the flu and COVID-19 and protect vulnerable people in the community. The new attendance policy says students will simply be marked absent or present, with no options for doctors to verify a child is absent because they are sick or injured, need to stay home to recover or to prevent spreading contagious illnesses to their classmates. The policy is meant to help improve attendance rates, but parents have objected, noting that an absence for an illness like the flu could now mean a referral to the Lawrence County Juvenile Court for truancy. Children who get sick at school or are sent to school sick and sent home by a nurse will be counted as tardy. Three tardies will equal an absence. The new policy also says schools will start intervention after just three days, and eight or more days marked absent will result in a court referral. Other penalties could include failing a class or grade, not being allowed to participate in graduation or get a driver's license or permit. There will be exemptions for students with documented chronic illnesses and emergencies out of the student's control, as well as allowances for deaths in the family and some religious observances. The school district sent a letter to medical providers asking them to emphasize regular school attendance and warning that medical notes could imply students should stay home even after their health improves.
Los Angeles Times
11 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Trump voters wanted relief from Medical bills. For millions, the bills are about to get bigger
President Trump rode to reelection last fall on voter concerns about prices. But as his administration pares back federal rules and programs designed to protect patients from the high cost of health care, Trump risks pushing more Americans into debt, further straining family budgets already stressed by medical bills. Millions of people are expected to lose health insurance in the coming years as a result of the tax cut legislation Trump signed this month, leaving them with fewer protections from large bills if they get sick or suffer an accident. At the same time, significant increases in health plan premiums on state insurance marketplaces next year will likely push more Americans to either drop coverage or switch to higher-deductible plans that will require them to pay more out-of-pocket before their insurance kicks in. Smaller changes to federal rules are poised to bump up patients' bills, as well. New federal guidelines for COVID -19 vaccines, for example, will allow health insurers to stop covering the shots for millions, so if patients want the protection, some may have to pay out-of-pocket. The new tax cut legislation will also raise the cost of certain doctor visits, requiring copays of up to $35 for some Medicaid enrollees. And for those who do end up in debt, there will be fewer protections. This month, the Trump administration secured permission from a federal court to roll back regulations that would have removed medical debt from consumer credit reports. That puts Americans who cannot pay their medical bills at risk of lower credit scores, hindering their ability to get a loan or forcing them to pay higher interest rates. 'For tens of millions of Americans, balancing the budget is like walking a tightrope,' said Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. 'The Trump administration is just throwing them off.' White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not respond to questions about how the administration's health care policies will affect Americans' medical bills. The president and his Republican congressional allies have brushed off the health care cuts, including hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid retrenchment in the mammoth tax law. 'You won't even notice it,' Trump said at the White House after the bill signing July 4. 'Just waste, fraud, and abuse.' But consumer and patient advocates around the country warn that the erosion of federal health care protections since Trump took office in January threatens to significantly undermine Americans' financial security. 'These changes will hit our communities hard,' said Arika Sánchez, who oversees health care policy at the nonprofit New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty. Sánchez predicted many more people the center works with will end up with medical debt. 'When families get stuck with medical debt, it hurts their credit scores, makes it harder to get a car, a home, or even a job,' she said. 'Medical debt wrecks people's lives.' For Americans with serious illnesses such as cancer, weakened federal protections from medical debt pose yet one more risk, said Elizabeth Darnall, senior director of federal advocacy at the American Cancer Society's Cancer Action Network. 'People will not seek out the treatment they need,' she said. Trump promised a rosier future while campaigning last year, pledging to 'make America affordable again' and 'expand access to new Affordable Healthcare.' Polls suggest voters were looking for relief. About 6 in 10 adults — Democrats and Republicans — say they are worried about being able to afford health care, according to one recent survey, outpacing concerns about the cost of food or housing. And medical debt remains a widespread problem: As many as 100 million adults in the U.S. are burdened by some kind of health care debt. Despite this, key tools that have helped prevent even more Americans from sinking into debt are now on the chopping block. Medicaid and other government health insurance programs, in particular, have proved to be a powerful economic backstop for low-income patients and their families, said Kyle Caswell, an economist at the Urban Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. Caswell and other researchers found, for example, that Medicaid expansion made possible by the 2010 Affordable Care Act led to measurable declines in medical debt and improvements in consumers' credit scores in states that implemented the expansion. 'We've seen that these programs have a meaningful impact on people's financial well-being,' Caswell said. Trump's tax law — which will slash more than $1 trillion in federal health spending over the next decade, mostly through Medicaid cuts — is expected to leave 10 million more people without health coverage by 2034, according to the latest estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The tax cuts, which primarily benefit wealthy Americans, will add $3.4 trillion to U.S. deficits over a decade, the office calculated. The number of uninsured could spike further if Trump and his congressional allies don't renew additional federal subsidies for low- and moderate-income Americans who buy health coverage on state insurance marketplaces. This aid — enacted under former President Joe Biden — lowers insurance premiums and reduces medical bills enrollees face when they go to the doctor or the hospital. But unless congressional Republicans act, those subsidies will expire later this year, leaving many with bigger bills. Federal debt regulations developed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the Biden administration would have protected these people and others if they couldn't pay their medical bills. The agency issued rules in January that would have removed medical debts from consumer credit reports. That would have helped an estimated 15 million people. But the Trump administration chose not to defend the new regulations when they were challenged in court by debt collectors and the credit bureaus, who argued the federal agency had exceeded its authority in issuing the rules. A federal judge in Texas appointed by Trump ruled that the regulation should be scrapped. Levey writes for KFF Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism.
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Yahoo
Fact Check: Ozzy Osbourne's death revives COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theory
Claim: Ozzy Osbourne died from years of illness caused by the COVID-19 vaccine. Rating: On July 22, 2025, famed heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne died at age 76. Although his family did not release a cause of death, he had been battling a range of health issues over the years, including a variant of Parkinson's disease. However, soon after his death, rumors spread that the COVID-19 vaccine caused his illness. Right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones shared an old article in which Osbourne said he was "relieved" after getting his COVID-19 vaccine. Jones wrote on X in response to the article: The iconic Ozzy Osbourne has died suddenly after years of illness which mysteriously started after getting vaccinated. The Black Sabbath lead singer cancelled concerts after experiencing blood clots in his legs, and had a filter placed in his artery to protect spread to his heart and brain. Ozzy was excited when he first got his shot. He's now dead… Rest in peace Ozzy Osbourne. (X user @RealAlexJones) Osbourne's various health concerns had been widely documented long before he ever received the COVID-19 vaccine and before the pandemic took place. He publicly spoke about his decades of health challenges and attributed many of them to years of drug and alcohol abuse. As such, we rate the above claim as false. In January 2020, Osbourne publicly announced he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. In an interview, he said the diagnosis came after he had a fall in 2019 that led to neck surgery. Around that time he also had pneumonia and had to go into the ICU. Osborne also had a near-fatal quad bike accident in 2003. Jones' claim that blood clots in Osbourne's leg were connected to the vaccine also is false. Osbourne described having blood clots in his legs in an August 2019 interview with Rolling Stone, saying he developed them while he recovered from his neck surgery. In a May 2025 interview with The Guardian, Osbourne described his difficulties training for his final concert because of blood clots and other issues: I do weights, bike riding, I've got a guy living at my house who's working with me. It's tough — I've been laid up for such a long time. I've been lying on my back doing nothing and the first thing to go is your strength. It's like starting all over again. I've got a vocal coach coming round four days a week to keep my voice going. I have problems walking. I also get blood pressure issues, from blood clots on my legs. I'm used to doing two hours on stage, jumping and running around. I don't think I'll be doing much jumping or running around this time. I may be sitting down, but the point is I'll be there, and I'll do the best I can. So all I can do is turn up. Again, he first spoke about having blood clots in 2019, and there is no evidence tying them to his getting the COVID-19 vaccine. The musician has had a long history of poor health in the years before he took the COVID-19 vaccine and even before the pandemic took place. In his 2011 memoir "I Am Ozzy," Osbourne described his addiction to a range of intoxicants and how it affected his health. In one passage described experiencing a tremor in his hand in the early 1990s: I started to notice a tremor in my hand. My speech was slurred. I was always exhausted. I tried to escape from it all by getting loaded, but I'd developed such a tolerance to all the drugs I was taking, I had to overdose to get high. It reached the point where I was getting my stomach pumped every other week. I had a few very close calls. One time, I scammed a bottle of codeine off a doctor in New York and downed the whole f***ing lot. I nearly went into respiratory arrest. All I remember is lying in this hotel bed, sweating and feeling like I was suffocating, and the doc telling me over the phone that if you take too much codeine, your brain stops telling your lungs to work. I was very lucky to survive. Although, the way I was feeling, I would have been happy never to wake up again. He also described being diagnosed in 2003 with "Parkinson-ian syndrome": Finally, me and Sharon went back to [Dr. Ropper's] office to find out what the f*** was wrong with me, once and for all. "I think I've got to the bottom of this," he said. "Basically, Mr Osbourne, you have a very, very rare condition, which is caused by your mother and your father both having the same damaged chromosome in their DNA. And when I say it's very rare, think one-in-a-billion rare. The good news is that it's not MS or Parkinson's disease. The bad news is that we don't really have a name for it. The best description is probably Parkinson -ian syndrome." "Is that what's been giving me the tremor?" "Absolutely." "And it's hereditary? It has nothing to do with the booze or the drugs?" "The alcohol and some of the drugs you were taking were definitely making it worse. But they weren't the primary cause." "Can you treat it?" "Yes. But first I have to tell you something, Mr Osbourne. If you keep drinking, and if you keep abusing drugs, you'll have to find another doctor, because I won't have you as a patient. I'm a busy man, I have a very long waiting list and I can't afford to have my time wasted." I'd never been spoken to like that by a doctor before. And the way he looked at me, I knew he was serious. "OK, doc," I said. "I'll try my hardest." Because of all his health issues, Osbourne described being "relieved" that he got the COVID-19 vaccine in February 2021. In an interview he gave before getting the shot, he said he wanted the two-dose vaccine: "I want to get the shot. … I look at it like this — if I don't get the shot and I get the virus, there's a good chance I ain't going to be here." Osbourne performed his final live show a few weeks before his death. His wife, Sharon Osbourne, told the media that this performance was his goodbye to his fans. The claim about his health and the COVID-19 vaccine is consistent with a common conspiracy theory that spread online during the pandemic, falsely attributing numerous famous peoples' deaths to the vaccine. We have previously fact-checked such claims about Betty White, Lisa Loring and even Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. We also reported in 2021 that there was very little evidence tying blood clot cases to the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. An investigation by the European Medicine Agency found that the vaccine was "safe and effective." While the EMA said that it would add a warning label to the vaccine to alert doctors and patients to the extremely rare possibility of blood clots, the agency said that "benefits of the vaccine clearly outweigh the risks." Emery, David. "Did Betty White Say She Got COVID Booster 3 Days Before She Died?" Snopes, 2 Jan. 2022, Accessed July 25, 2025. Evon, Dan. "Does AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine Cause Blood Clots?" Snopes, 16 Mar. 2021, Accessed July 25, 2025. Grow, Kory. "Ozzy Osbourne on His Road Back From Hell: 'I Was Absolutely in Agony.'" Rolling Stone, 20 Aug. 2019, Accessed July 25, 2025. Liles, Jordan. "No Evidence Lisa Loring's Cause of Death Was COVID-19 Vaccine." Snopes, 31 Jan. 2023, Accessed July 25, 2025. Osbourne, Ozzy. I Am Ozzy. Grand Central Publishing, 2010. Accessed July 25, 2025. "Ozzy Osbourne Dies at 76: What He Shared About His Health Over the Years." 23 July 2025, Accessed July 25, 2025. Peters, Mitchell. "Ozzy Osbourne Says He's Feeling 'Relieved' After Getting His First COVID-19 Shot: Watch." Billboard, 15 Feb. 2021, Accessed July 25, 2025. Petridis, Alexis. "'I Don't Want to Die in a Hotel Room Somewhere': Black Sabbath on Reconciling for Their Final Gig – and How Ozzy Is Living through Hell." The Guardian, 2 May 2025. The Guardian, Accessed July 25, 2025. "Rocker Ozzy Osbourne Announces Parkinson's Diagnosis." AP News, 21 Jan. 2020, Accessed July 25, 2025. Wrona, Aleksandra. "Did Alexei Navalny Die from COVID-19 Vaccine?" Snopes, 21 Feb. 2024, Accessed July 25, 2025.
