Home delivery of alcohol expanded during pandemic, with permanent effects on health During the COVID-19 pandemic home liquor delivery soared in the United States, as did binge drinking along with it, a new study finds. Steven Reinberg

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"Although the number of states that allowed home delivery was already trending upwards during the last two decades, the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically increased these numbers."

Warming causes more extreme rain, not snow, over mountains. Scientists say that’s a problem A new study says climate change is turning major snowfalls into more extreme rain over mountains, somehow worsening both dangerous flooding like the type that devastated Pakistan last year and long-term water shortages. AP News

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Drifting smoke from the wildfires has lowered curtains of haze on broad swaths of Canada and the United States, pushing into southern Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, and moving into parts of West Virginia.

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ALSO SEE: More than a third of the US population, from the Midwest to the East Coast, under air quality alerts from Canadian wildfire smoke

It’s past time to address the problem of indoor air quality. A new technology can help Indoor air quality is a public health issue. Torie Bosch STAT

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Early studies from China in 2020 suggested people with certain blood types—specifically blood type A—might be at greater risk for getting infected—while those with type O may be protected against infection. Some small studies confirmed the connections, while others did not, leaving public health experts agnostic about how important blood type might be as a potential risk factor for COVID-19.

Study suggests vaccination plays role in making Omicron waves less severe CIDRAP

A new analysis suggests that the Omicron variant has comparable intrinsic severity to the ancestral (Wuhan) SARS-CoV-2 strain, but its effective severity is substantially lower because of vaccination.

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Case-patients with at least one dose of Pfizer-BioNTech or CoronaVac vaccine had significantly lower odds of mortality than unvaccinated patients, the authors said, with the lowest odds observed in people who had received three Pfizer doses (odds ratio, 0.31; 95% CI, 0.18 to 0.49).

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New scheme aims to get vaccines to outbreaks faster, Gavi says Three global health bodies are teaming up to investigate stockpiling experimental vaccines for rare infectious diseases so the shots can be tested more quickly when outbreaks happen, a top official from vaccine alliance Gavi told Reuters. Jennifer Rigby Reuters

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The Great Grift: More than $200 billion in COVID-19 aid may have been stolen, federal watchdog says More than $200 billion may have been stolen from two large COVID-19 relief initiatives. That's according to new estimates from a federal watchdog investigating federally funded programs designed to help small businesses survive the worst public health crisis in more than a hundred years. AP News

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