For the first time in 25 years, child mortality rates for preventable diseases are projected to increase, after having declined for 25 years.
The new estimate comes from models created by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and was released for the first time in the Goalkeepers report from the Gates Foundation. It shows that an additional 200,000 children under age five may die this year of a disease that modern medicine can prevent, either with vaccines or other treatments. The deaths can be traced to a number of economic and political factors, the most important of which are significant cuts to spending in global health from the world’s largest donors, including the U.S., according to the report.
“It’s a tragedy that the world is richer, and yet because we have made disproportionate cuts to the money that helps the world’s poorest children, more of them are dying,” says Bill Gates, chair of the Gates Foundation, in an interview with TIME.
Many of the foundation’s programs focus on improving the health of mothers and children around the world in order to reduce childhood mortality, and Gates said earlier in 2025 that he plans to spend the foundation’s remaining funds over the next 20 years. One of his goals is to halve the childhood mortality rate by that time, from the current 4.8 million children under five who die each year to around 2.5 million. But “you can’t cut something in half if it’s going up,” he says.
In the past year, the largest donors to global health have reduced their spending by nearly 27%, and the report estimates that if such reductions continue or even expand to 30%, an additional 16 million more children (or more) will die of preventable causes by 2045.
The reduced spending on global health sets in motion a vicious cycle, says Gates, that can keep countries, especially those in Africa, in poverty and unable to build and sustain their own health systems. “Being generous now means kids in those countries are surviving and well-nourished enough to contribute to the countries’ economic growth,” he says. “Investments now will make that possible.”
But Gates believes the increase in childhood mortality may continue over the next few years, mainly because of the depth of the aid cuts. “There will very likely be no near-term reversal on aid generosity,” he says, “so the risk is that [childhood mortality] will get a lot worse.”
While some wealthier nations are prioritizing other funding areas —including defense spending—it doesn’t take much to make a difference, according to Gates. “For rich countries, it is less than 1% of the budget,” he says. The impact of ensuring that pregnant mothers and kids are vaccinated and fed “ is so great that you see very good health outcomes when you focus on those first few interventions alone,” he says. Investing in primary care is one of the key priorities in optimizing scarce resources, since basic health care can prevent more serious and costly medical needs in the long run.
While the reversal in childhood mortality rates is alarming, Gates remains optimistic that in a few years, the trend will start moving in the right direction again, thanks to innovations such as new vaccines for RSV and treatments for malaria and tuberculosis that are on the horizon. AI-based programs that accelerate the development of new treatments and make it easier for more people to access health care will also start having an impact on health outcomes like mortality. The shortage of doctors in Africa is so severe that “most people will spend their entire lifetime never seeing a doctor—not when they are born, not when they die, and not in between,” says Gates. That’s where AI systems could help fill the gap and keep people connected to quality care. The Gates Foundation is involved in pilot programs that use AI to monitor and advise expectant moms as well as people with HIV to help them manage their conditions and guide them about if and when they need to seek care.
But how quickly these innovations reach people will depend on continued funding in global health, says Gates, both from philanthropies like the foundation and governments. “It is money extremely well spent, so we need to get the generosity back,” Gates says. “And I will do my best to work with the President and with Congress to do that.”
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a way to help identify people at risk of overdosing on stimulants, including cocaine and methamphetamine.
“We wanted a tool that would help us predict people at high risk in order to be able to provide them with the services and interventions and supports,” said Dr. Rebecca Arden Harris, who specializes in addiction medicine and research at Penn.
Harris and colleagues used data from more than 70 million Medicaid recipients to track emergency department visits related to stimulant overdoses. Then the team identified key risk factors, including diagnosis of substance use disorders, prior overdoses, higher poverty rates, crowded housing and being male.
The motivation for the research is a spike in overdose deaths involving stimulants, Harris said.
Nationwide, fatal overdoses linked to stimulant use jumped from 4,681 in 2011 to 29,449 in 2023 nationwide. Nearly 60% of fatal overdoses between 2021 and 2024 involved stimulants, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
And while opioids, fentanyl in particular, remain the primary cause of fatal overdoses in Philadelphia, 70% of people who died from opioid overdoses in 2023 had cocaine, meth or other stimulants in their systems. About one-quarter of illicit opioid samples between January and June also contained cocaine or crack, according to the city’s drug-checking program.
People who think they are buying dope on the street may be getting bags with stimulants mixed in. Also, people who use opioids, which are sedatives, sometimes also use stimulants, or uppers, to combat the drowsiness, according to the Philadelphia Department of Public Health.
City addressing cardiovascular dangers
In reaction to the spike in overdose deaths involving cocaine and meth, Philadelphia recently started a campaign to educate people about the links among stimulant use, heart disease and overdose risk.
Cocaine and other stimulants increase heart rate and blood pressure and cause vasoconstriction and vasospasm – so people who use them have heightened risks of stroke, heart failure, sudden cardiac death and other cardiovascular problems.
Stimulant use poses other serious health problems, including the potential of meth-induced psychosis and permanent brain damage.
Philadelphia’s outreach focuses on the heart health risks of stimulant use. It also aims to reduce barriers to primary care and help people learn how to talk to providers about stimulants, said Fatimah Maiga, a spokesperson for the health department’s Substance Use Prevention and Harm Reduction Division.
“We really want people to be able to have an open conversation with their provider, make sure that they’re reporting their drug history, any symptoms and signs that they’ve experienced that might be related to heart disease, and then talk to their doctor about next steps, what they hope to accomplish from that visit, or continued visits with that provider,” Maiga said.
The campaign’s website lists walk-in primary care clinics around the city. It also has a guide for how to talk to health care providers about substance use and tools for clinicians for assessing people who use stimulants.
Limited of treatment options
Part of the challenge of helping people who use stimulants is that no medication exists to reduce cravings or to help prevent and reverse overdoses.
For people who use opioids, there are medications, like methadone and buprenorphine, which help reduce cravings and dependency. Narcan, the brand name for naloxone, reverses opioid overdoses by temporarily blocking their effects.
Although research is ongoing, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved such medications for cocaine or meth addiction. In the meantime, contingency management – which offers monetary or other tangible rewards for people who reach specific goals for reducing or stopping cocaine or meth use – is considered the most effective treatment for people addicted to stimulants.
The health department wants providers to consider a harm-reduction approach, advising that “reduction in stimulant use is often more achievable than total abstinence” and that “reduced use improves health outcomes” and “should be considered a valid, positive outcome for patients who use stimulants.”
Prediction as means to help prevention
Penn’s Dr. Harris hopes the stimulant overdose prediction model she and her colleagues developed will assist in efforts to address the dangers of using cocaine, meth and other stimulants.
Limitations of the study include the fact that it was confined to people with Medicaid and only looked at overdoses that resulted in emergency department visits. While more research is needed, Harris said the tool has potential for integration into public health surveillance systems. It could help identify not just individuals at risk of stimulant overdoses, but also neighborhoods that could benefit from targeted interventions, she said.
“Part of prevention is being able to match the intervention and resources to the individuals who would most benefit from it,” Harris said.
It’s the start of Thanksgiving week, the time when home cooks across America suddenly recognize the daunting task ahead.
More than 90% of people in the U.S. celebrate the food-centric holiday and more than 1 in 4 attend meals that include more than 10 other people, according to the Pew Research Center.
Under that kind of pressure, what host wouldn’t want the best tools to make sure the holiday dinner goes off without a hitch?
With that in mind, we asked national food safety experts which kitchen devices and aids are essential to ensure a safe and tasty Thanksgiving meal.
Here are their top four suggestions for aids that can make or break your holiday dinner, plus two bonus tips for after the meal:
Our panel of experts unanimously agreed that an instant-read digital thermometer is vital to making sure roast turkey and other dishes reach 165 degrees Fahrenheit (74 degrees Celsius) to eliminate the risk of food poisoning from germs like salmonella and Campylobacter.
“This is non-negotiable,” said Darin Detwiler, a Northeastern University food safety expert. “A reliable thermometer ensures you’re not guessing, because guessing is not a food safety strategy.”
Color-coded cutting boards
In the hustle of a holiday kitchen, the risk of cross-contamination is real. That’s when germs from one food, such as raw turkey, may be spread to other foods, such as fresh vegetables or fruits.
It’s best to use dedicated cutting boards for each type of food, and color-coding — red for meat, yellow for poultry, green for veggies — can help, said Barbara Kowalcyk, director of the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security at George Washington University.
“I try not to use wooden cutting boards,” said Kowalcyk, noting that they can retain bacteria that thrive and grow to large enough quantities to cause illness.
As an emergency medicine doctor who has stitched up many Thanksgiving injuries, Dr. Tony Cirillo urges home cooks to make sure their kitchen knives are sharp.
A sharp knife cuts cleanly, while a dull knife requires more pressure that can cause dangerous slips, said Cirillo, a spokesperson for the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Pulling a hot turkey out of the oven is tricky, especially if the pan you cook it in is flimsy, Cirillo added. Use a sturdy metal roasting pan or, in a pinch, stack two foil roasting pans together for strength.
“I’m a big fan of double-panning,” Cirillo said. “Dropping the turkey is generally not good on Thanksgiving.”
Just as important as getting food to the table is making sure it doesn’t sit out too long, said Don Schaffner, a food safety expert at Rutgers University.
Use a cooking timer or clock alarm to make sure to pack away leftovers within two hours to prevent bacterial growth that can cause illness.
And when you’re storing those leftovers, make sure to put them in shallow containers, Schaffner said.
Measure using a ruler — or even the short side of a credit card — to make sure that dense foods like stuffing and sweet potatoes reach a depth of no more than 2 inches (5 centimeters) to allow for quick and complete cooling in the refrigerator.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that military strikes on suspected drug boats his administration has been carrying out for more than two months in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean are saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S.
He most recently cited these numbers on Monday while answering questions from reporters after announcing a new initiative that will allow foreigners traveling to the U.S. for the World Cup next year to get interviews for visas more quickly.
But experts say that this is a grossly simplistic interpretation of the situation.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
TRUMP: “Every boat we knock out, we save 25,000 American lives.”
THE FACTS: The numbers to support Trump’s claim don’t add up, and sometimes don’t exist. For example, people in the U.S. who die from drug overdoses each year are far fewer than the amount Trump suggests have been saved by the boat strikes his administration has carried out since September.
“The statement that each of the administration’s strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats saves 25,000 lives is absurd,” said Carl Latkin, a professor of public health at Johns Hopkins University who studies substance use. “The evidence is similar to that of the moon being made of blue cheese. If you look carefully, you will see a resemblance. However, a close analysis of this claim suggests that it lacks all credibility.”
According to the latest preliminary data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, there were about 97,000 drug overdose deaths in the U.S. during the 12-month period that ended June 30. That’s down 14% from the estimated 113,000 for the previous 12-month period.
Final CDC data reports 53,336 overdose deaths in 2024 and 75,118 in 2023.
The U.S. military has attacked 21 boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since strikes began on Sept. 2, most recently on Nov. 15. Using Trump’s numbers, that would mean the strikes have prevented 525,000 fatal drug overdoses in the U.S — far more than the number of overdose deaths that have occurred in recent two-month periods. This essentially implies that the administration is saving more lives than would have ever been lost.
Lori Ann Post, the director of the Institute for Public Health and Medicine at Northwestern University, explained that “there’s no empirically sound way to say a single strike ‘saves 25,000 lives,’” even if the statement is interpreted more broadly to mean preventing substance use disorders and resulting ripple effects. Among the issues she pointed to are a lack of verifiable cargo data or published models linking such boat strikes to changes in drug use, as well as markets that will adapt to isolated supply losses.
“The math and the data are not there,” said Post, who studies drug overdose deaths and economic drivers of the opioid crisis.
Latkin added that claiming one lethal dose of a drug automatically translates to one death is a “very simple way of looking at it,” as different people have different tolerances.
Trump has justified the attacks by saying the U.S. is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels and claiming the boats are operated by foreign terror organizations that are flooding America’s cities with drugs. Neither Trump nor his administration have publicly confirmed the amount of drugs allegedly destroyed in the strikes.
White House spokesperson Anna Kelly reiterated Trump’s numbers when asked for evidence to support his claims about how many lives are being saved. She wrote in an email: “President Trump is right — any boat bringing deadly poison to our shores has the potential to kill 25,000 Americans or more. The President is prepared to use every element of American power to stop drugs from flooding in to our country and to bring those responsible for justice.”
Latkin noted that this estimate also ignores the reality that even if the Trump administration manages to shut off one source of illegal drugs with its boat strikes, there will still be others. He offered a comparison to the fast food industry, explaining that getting rid of a couple of restaurants would not greatly improve Americans’ health since there are so many other sources where consumers could get the same or similar products.
“It’s incredibly naive to think that reducing the supply in one place will eradicate the problem because it’s such a massive business,” he said.
Opioids accounted for 73.4% of drug overdose deaths in 2024, according to the CDC. That includes 65.1% from illegally made fentanyls. But while the boat strikes have targeted vessels largely in the Caribbean Sea, fentanyl is typically trafficked to the U.S. overland from Mexico, where it is produced with chemicals imported from China and India.
Overdose death rates began steadily climbing in the 1990s because of opioid painkillers, followed by waves of deaths led by other opioids like heroin and — more recently — illicit fentanyl. New numbers from the CDC show that a decline that began in 2023 has continued. Experts aren’t certain about the reasons for the decline, but they cite a combination of possible factors. Among them are the end of the COVID-19 pandemic; years of efforts to increase the availability of the overdose-reversing drug naloxone and addiction treatments; and changes to the drugs themselves.
Norfolk Southern railroad worked with the state of Ohio and Youngstown State University to revive plans for a $20 million first responder training center near the site of the worst derailment in a decade in East Palestine, Ohio.
Building a training center to help prepare firefighters to deal with a railroad disaster was quickly part of the plan after the derailment on Feb. 3, 2023, that forced the evacuation of roughly half the small town near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border and left residents with worries about the potential long-term health impacts.
But Norfolk Southern said last January that East Palestine officials had agreed with the railroad as part of the town’s $22 million settlement that the training center wasn’t going to be feasible because of concerns about the ongoing operating costs. The railroad even agreed to give 15 acres of land it had bought for the center to the town.
Now the railroad is going to partner with Youngstown State to build and operate the training center to help prepare first responders to deal with the unique challenges of a train derailment that can spill hazardous chemicals being carried in railcars. In East Palestine, the derailed train cars burned for days, and officials decided to blow open five tank cars of vinyl chloride because they feared those cars might explode.
“By working together, we’ve turned this vision of an economic and educational center dedicated to enhancing community safety into a sustainable reality,” railroad CEO Mark George said.
The railroad has committed more than $135 million to help the town recover from the derailment and agreed to pay $600 million in a class-action settlement with residents, though those settlement payments are on hold because of a pending appeal and accounting problems with the first company that was distributing checks.
Local East Palestine first responders will have free access to training at the facility. Mayor Trent Conaway said this will “better prepare them to serve our village and the communities in our region.”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
On a Friday morning in October, about 100 high school and college students gathered in a Utah ballroom to play a game. Some students were assigned specific roles and given costumes to wear. “Government officials” slung ties over their T-shirts; “store clerks” sported aprons; and a trio of “journalists” wore fedoras and carried fake microphones.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
Kambree Carlile, 16, played a “health care worker” and was given full protective gear to wear, including goggles and gloves. As students started getting “sick” with a mysterious and deadly pathogen, panic surged, Carlile says. “It wasn’t a real scenario, but people still got very frantic,” she says.
“Oh no! I’m infected,” students yelled intermittently. Many thronged the health care and public-health stations for advice, treatments, and vaccines, ignoring calls by workers to socially distance. One “infected” student ran around, intentionally coughing on people, causing panic.
One of the “journalists,” 17-year-old Kenadi Burlingame, complained that it had been hard at times to get anyone to listen to her. “The ‘public-health’ people told us that we need to start getting people to quarantine, but I felt like no one really did that. They didn’t see the importance in it,” she says. “That was frustrating.”
Meanwhile, the “biomedical researchers,” who donned white lab coats and were tasked with identifying the pathogen, were baffled by the myriad symptoms that sick people were reporting, including fever, aching muscles, and malaise. “It could be anything,” one of them lamented as she googled people’s symptoms and uncovered a long list of possible diseases.
The students were playing Operation Outbreak, a game that simulates the spread of an infectious disease. During the game, participants use an app on their phones, which alerts them when their avatars are infected and lists their symptoms. The pathogen “spreads” via Bluetooth, from phone to phone.
Creators of the game say it can model how people really behave when disease outbreaks strike. The game has become so good at this that U.S. government agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have run its simulations.
In Utah, students who weren’t given specific roles were designated as members of the public and grouped together in “families.” The families moved around the room together, visiting stations where they had to answer questions about infectious diseases and public health. The “bank” paid the families in tokens for correct answers. The tokens could be used by the students to buy food from the “store” to keep their avatars alive, as well as masks, treatments, and vaccines.
“I thought it’d be just a little school activity, but it was realistic,” says Burlingame. “It made me feel sympathetic for people during COVID.”
Burlingame was in fifth grade when COVID first gripped the globe in 2020. “I just remember that one day I was at school and everything was normal, and then the next day the world had shut down,” she says. She remembers it seeming almost apocalyptic at first: the same week that Utah public schools were shuttered, the Salt Lake City area where she lives was shaken by an earthquake and dozens of after-shocks. Burlingame, then only 11, was spooked. Some 5,400 people died from COVID in Utah from 2020 to November 2023.
The teenager is prudent when reflecting on that strange and tumultuous time. “There could be another outbreak,” she says, “and what would we do about it?”
The creators of Operation Outbreak say the game is designed precisely to address this question. It seeks to teach students about the science and risks of infectious diseases, and how interventions such as vaccines and quarantining can curb their spread, says Todd Brown, a former middle-school teacher and one of the game’s co-creators. It also aims to highlight the vital role that every member of society—whether scientist, doctor, government official, or everyday person—plays when outbreaks strike.
“This is a test run,” Brown says. “This is a chance for students to learn how they can potentially save lives, how they could help stop the spread of something in…their school or community.”
Upping the urgency for such preparedness is the prediction by many public-health experts that another pandemic is not just inevitable but close at hand. “We need to be prepared for another pandemic in the next 10 years,” says Pardis Sabeti, an infectious-disease professor at Harvard University and researcher at the Broad Institute who helped create Operation Outbreak.
COVID was still a distant, unknown threat when the game launched in 2017. Versions of it have since been played by thousands of students in two dozen U.S. states and 10 countries. Its creators say interest in the game increased sharply post-COVID.
“We’ve found that the students tell us the zeitgeist. They tell us the pulse of society, everything that might be coming,” Sabeti says. “We could have predicted a lot of what happened during COVID based on simulations that we did pre-pandemic.”
Students in pre-COVID simulations spontaneously came up with “immunity passports”—ways that participants could prove their vaccination status to get into certain spaces. In some of those same simulations, students figured out how to fake their vaccination status—similar to the fraudulent vaccination cards used by some people during COVID, Sabeti says.
Participants also hoarded supplies, broke quarantine, and even intentionally tried to become superspreaders, a phenomenon later also seen during the pandemic. “We saw chaos, protests, people acting out,” Sabeti says. “Outbreaks expose and exploit all the cracks in our society. Any kind of injustice or issues you have are going to go on steroids—and that’s what we saw in these simulations.”
In some cases, students who had roles of authority, such as members of government, public-health workers, or journalists, disseminated information about the outbreak that later proved to be wrong, often because they spoke too soon in response to public pressure or because new information later became available. “That showed students how science can change as you get new information,” says Brown, the former teacher who now serves as Operation Outbreak’s director of innovation and training. But the fluctuations in messaging often triggered doubt and malcontent among other members of the community.
Game organizers say that mistrust of officials, scientists, and journalists has only deepened and become more common in simulations post-COVID. “The speed of putting up a wall is much faster,” Brown says.
Participants are also more prone to divisiveness and unruly behavior. “At some of our schools, we’ve seen complete societal breakdown, anarchy, and militia,” Sabeti says. (And that was despite students’ taking the game seriously.) “These are things we hadn’t seen before COVID,” Sabeti says.
She recalls, for example, a March 2024 simulation at a Utah high school that ended in total chaos. After the “government” struggled to fund health agencies and “researchers” were slow to identify the pathogen and develop a vaccine, disorder and misinformation swelled. A “journalist” spread fake news about masking, people began stealing from the “store” and selling counterfeit goods, others started gambling to increase their own wealth, and a “government official” went rogue—robbing the “bank” and throwing tokens at a crowd. “I represent government intervention,” he declared, according to an internal report of the simulation compiled by game organizers and shared with TIME. “Money to the people!”
Amid the bedlam, participants called for a police force to be established and a “jail” was created. The “government official” who stole from the bank was impeached, and people clamored for his arrest. About an hour into the simulation, the new police force issued arrest warrants for multiple people, including someone who “sold ‘fake vaccines’ to make a profit,” said the report. At 80 minutes, as the simulation came to an end, the report said several students were “running and fighting each other, some arresting others.”
“It scared me,” says Sabeti of the simulation’s outcome. “It suggests that society has formed antibodies to the idea of an outbreak. People are easily triggered, so the next time someone comes on the television and says we are having a lockdown, we could see militia and anarchy.”
Since the COVID pandemic, Americans have lost faith in officials and previously respected institutions. Almost 1 in 4 U.S. adults said in 2024 that they had little or no confidence that scientists would act in the best interests of the public, according to a Pew Research Center survey. In 2019, that figure was 1 in 8.
Only 22% of Americans said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing always or most of the time, according to a different Pew survey from 2024. And more Americans—36%—have no trust at all in the media compared to Americans who have a lot or some trust, according to a 2024 Gallup poll.
“We need to do a lot to repair, because when the next pandemic hits we will be in trouble,” Sabeti says.
Pandemics are expected to occur more often and become more deadly because of climate change, globalization, and more frequent encounters between people and the billions of livestock we raise to eat, as well as wild animals whose habitats we have diminished, public-health experts say.
“It’s going to be less of a freak biological occurrence and more like hurricanes, which are increasing and becoming more devastating,” says Jennifer Nuzzo, director of Brown University’s pandemic center.
There is about a 28% chance that a pandemic as deadly as COVID will happen in the next decade, according to a 2023 report by the disease-forecasting company Airfinity.
It is hard to predict which pathogen could launch the next global health crisis, but infectious-disease experts say they are closely watching various outbreaks worldwide for signs of pandemic potential. A rapidly mutating strain of mpox continues to spread across Africa and beyond. Avian-flu strains are circulating in livestock and poultry with some spillover in people. “There are also wildcard viruses out there,” says Sabeti, such as Nipah virus and Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), which have very high mortality rates and could wreak havoc if they mutate in such a way that makes them more transmissible among people.
A manufactured pathogen is also a danger, Sabeti says. Thanks to advances in biotechnology and AI, a single rogue actor can now feasibly create a biothreat, and because of that, “anything is possible,” she says. “Whether the COVID virus was man-made in Wuhan is beside the point. What is the point is that during COVID, the threat of man-made biothreats went from impossible to improbable to probable.”
Operation Outbreak was first conceived in 2015: Ebola was ravaging West Africa, and Brown was a civics teacher in a Florida middle school. One day, a student in his class asked what would happen if Ebola came to the U.S.
“I responded honestly. I said, ‘I have no idea,’” Brown recalls. “So I posed the question back to the class, and we had this exciting discussion.”
Encouraged by his students’ enthusiasm, Brown brainstormed ways to further engage them on the subject of infectious diseases. It was a topic that was deeply personal to him. Brown’s son is severely immunocompromised, and outbreaks—including the yearly flu season—terrify his family.
Brown had recently read a profile of Sabeti, who had helped develop tools to detect and track deadly diseases including Ebola, in an issue of TIME. Impressed by her work, Brown emailed her, and the pair ended up on the phone. He told her that he had been teaching his students about infectious diseases and that he was planning to put together a simple outbreak simulation so they could get some hands-on experience. Sabeti, who had herself experimented with outbreak simulations in her Harvard classes, was intrigued by Brown’s plans and asked him to stay in touch.
A few months later, Brown assembled some middle schoolers in a field and, using stickers to indicate who had been infected, attempted to simulate what an Ebola outbreak might look like. It wasn’t very sophisticated, but the kids loved it, Brown says. “I reached back out to Pardis with pictures, and she was very excited about it. And it all kind of snowballed from there.”
Sabeti says she saw an opportunity to create something fun, educational, and sorely needed. She knew that some simple outbreak simulations existed, but nothing that provided students with an immersive, first-hand experience. Her lab already had expertise about how to detect and track diseases, and also how to create educational tools for public-health purposes. She and her collaborators, for example, had helped train researchers across West Africa during the Ebola outbreak.
Her lab set about designing an Operation Outbreak app that could realistically mimic an outbreak. Andres Colubri, a researcher in her lab, had been working on contact-tracing software, which he adapted so it could be used as part of the app to spread a hypothetical pathogen via Bluetooth.
With the help of data-visualization expert Ben Fry, the group also created a dashboard that could display data generated during the simulation, including contact-tracing data and the number of people infected and vaccinated. “The tools we made for the app are the same tools we are creating for outbreaks around the world. Students are working with best-in-class technology,” Sabeti says.
Operation Outbreak is free to use and has been played by schoolchildren from Shanghai and Sierra Leone to Paris and Toronto. Game organizers can choose from a variety of possible pathogens to simulate—from coronaviruses and measles to Marburg virus and tuberculosis.
Kian Sani, Operation Outbreak’s chief of staff, says the hope is to bring the simulation to more professional groups in the near future—including public-health departments, first responders, and companies that might want to bolster their employees’ outbreak preparedness. “A bigger-picture idea that we’re exploring is having a potential city of sorts, maybe using an abandoned parking lot and having multiple buildings. We could invite a bunch of people—public-health workers, doctors, journalists—and have regular people play the general population,” Sani says. “The possibilities are really endless. How can we continually improve how realistic our simulation is?”
Teachers who have organized the game say they like the simulation because, though outbreak science is not typically taught in schools, it complements what students are already learning about biology and civics.
“It helps kids understand the science behind vaccines and being sick and how research works, but also it’s a great pipeline for careers because they get to learn more about different career paths,” says Nichole Kellerman, a biology teacher who has organized Operation Outbreak simulations in two Maryland high schools.
Carlile, the 16-year-old who took part in the Operation Outbreak simulation in Utah, was surprised by how much she enjoyed the game. “I thought it would be weird, just this thing you’d play on your phone, but it was actually really neat to see this virus spreading really quickly and this whole city that was created,” she says.
Along with about 70 of her classmates, Carlile, a junior at Utah’s Lehi High School, played the game at Utah Valley University (UVU) in Orem on Oct. 3. About 30 college students also took part.
Micah Ross, an assistant professor of biology at UVU who organized the simulation, says that despite some turmoil, the students managed the outbreak well. The “biomedical researchers” cracked the mystery of the pathogen’s identity—it was influenza—in just 40 minutes. Once a vaccine was introduced, most students chose to get immunized, and the spread of the disease slowed.
Ross has organized several Operation Outbreak simulations since 2020, both in high schools and at UVU. She sees the game as a chance for younger students to become more scientifically literate. For college students, she thinks Operation Outbreak can be a useful research tool.
Ross co-leads a research group at UVU and runs a class every year in which students are encouraged to use Operation Outbreak as a way to collect and analyze novel data. Her research group is currently working on a study probing whether certain demographic factors influence participants’ decision-making in simulations conducted in Utah.
“We’re curious if there are some decisions that are made more often, say, down south that aren’t made by populations up north. What leads people to getting vaccinated? What factors may cause them not to get tested?” Ross says, noting that the outcome of the study could help inform public-health policy.
Exposure to Operation Outbreak has prompted many of her students to pursue career paths in public health or research, Ross says. “It also helps students become a little more confident in their ability to relate to what’s happening in the world and say, ‘Hey, I’ve been in that position, even if only for an hour.’”
Flu season has come early in the U.K. Cases began to tick up in October, more than a month ahead of when epidemiologists generally expect the season to start. Driving the surge is a new variant, and while flu viruses are always evolving, this one has racked up an impressive number of mutations relatively quickly.
“This one has evolved a bit more rapidly, with more changes than we normally see,” says Jamie Bernal Lopez, a consultant epidemiologist at the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA).
What is subclade K?
The variant is known as influenza A subtype H3N2 subclade K–sometimes called “subclade K” for short—and it has been detected in Japan as well, where public health authorities declared a flu epidemic last month.
The mutations mean the variant is a bit different from the viral material included in this year’s updated vaccines. At the end of October, Canadian scientists warned that the mutations warranted close observation, including regular sequencing of virus DNA and checks to see whether current vaccines are working.
On Nov. 12, Bernal Lopez and his colleagues at the UKHSA released preliminary results from the U.K. suggesting that so far, vaccination is still providing significant protection against hospitalization and severe illness.
However, they note that the level of protection is closer to what they usually expect to see at the end of a flu season, when vaccine effectiveness has waned a bit and the mismatch between the vaccine and the virus has increased.
Does that mean the later stages of this season will be especially bad?
“Flu is notoriously unpredictable, so it’s very difficult for us to say what’s going to happen,” says Bernal Lopez. It’s possible “that we’ve got an earlier season and that it finishes earlier, but I think the fact that we have seen earlier activity—and the fact that we have this concerning subclade—increases the chance that we’re going to see a more intensive flu season than we normally do.”
Dr. Antonia Ho, professor and consultant in infectious diseases at the University of Glasgow, adds that earlier flu seasons often mean more people get the flu. What’s more, seasons driven by H3N2 flus, like this one, also tend to hit the elderly quite hard, she says.
Is subclade K in the U.S.?
During the government shutdown, the flu-tracking website maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not been updated. As of Nov. 13, the last available numbers are from the last week of September, when flu activity was low.
However, the New York State Department of Health’s flu surveillance report for the week ending Nov. 1 showed an increase in laboratory-confirmed flu cases, up 49% from the previous week. Flu hospitalizations were up 71%, with levels matching approximately where they were last year at this point in the flu season. The data do not include detailed subtyping, so they can’t reveal whether the new variant has arrived.
How to protect yourself from the flu
The best protection against flu, Bernal Lopez stresses, is to get vaccinated. Each year influenza kills thousands of people, and it is particularly dangerous to the young and the elderly. “Children are at increased risk of severe disease with flu, so it’s very important that they get vaccinated themselves. But it also provides protection [for] their relatives, and in particular, any vulnerable relatives or elderly relatives that might be exposed,” says Bernal Lopez. Even with this new variant’s mutations, the vaccine is still an important tool against the disease.
It can take up to two weeks for the flu vaccine to take effect, so the sooner you get one, the better.
“It remains our best tool to protect each other,” says Ho.
There’s something invisible that can put us in an early grave. And I’m not talking about sentient AI, but something much more ubiquitous and real. While AI doomers predict the existential risk that artificial intelligence poses to humanity, air pollution—specifically, ultrafine particulate matter, PM 2.5—has been an efficient killer for decades. Many people don’t realize there are volumes of scientific evidence that link cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and brain damage to the growing list of bleak health consequences of bad air.
According to the World Health Organization, air pollution caused 4.2 million premature deaths worldwide in 2019. As Trump’s EPA continues to roll back standards and deregulate industries that cause air pollution, the burden of maintaining a safe breathing environment is increasingly falling on individuals. Luckily, there are some steps you can take.
Turning Back the Clock
PM 2.5, produced by wildfires, automobile exhaust, power plants, and industries like mining, enters the body through the nose and mouth through the simple act of breathing. Once inside the body, PM 2.5 can enter the bloodstream and the brain. Air pollution’s impact on public health and life expectancy isn’t novel. In 1970, 22 years after the deadly Donora Smog Event that killed 20 people and sickened over 6,000 in Western Pennsylvania, the Clean Air Act became federal law.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration repealed the Biden administration’s new standards for air pollutants from taconite iron ore processing, exempting private sectors from complying, saying, “Preserving and enhancing domestic taconite processing capabilities … ensuring [the] resilience of American industrial supply chains.”
Taconite iron ore processing creates a major amount of PM 2.5. Trump’s White House also repealed recent emissions standards for coal- and oil-fired electric utility steam, along with several other industries. As America’s commitment to limiting air pollution declines, there are appliances and actions you can take to keep the air you breathe healthier, both indoors and outside.
It Can Cause Heart Disease
Courtesy of Coway
When people think of high blood pressure, air pollution might not be what they envision. More often, stress, smoking, poor diet, or genetics might come to mind, but air pollution, PM 2.5, can cause and/or contribute to hypertension. NYU cardiologist Jonathan Newman, an expert on the link between the environment and cardiovascular disease, says that “in broad strokes, air pollution can affect cardiovascular risk factors, blood sugar/diabetes, blood pressure/hypertension.”
Invisible PM 2.5 reaches the deepest part of the lungs, entering the lung’s tiny air sacs, where it passes through the barrier to enter the bloodstream. There, it can build up into plaque on the arterial walls, known as atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. According to Newman, “Generally this occurs through direct effects of inflammation, neurohormonal effects, direct particle effects.” The interaction of PM 2.5 causes an imbalance with free radicals and antioxidants that puts stress on the body, causing inflammation and oxidative stress that leads to cell damage.
In other words, PM 2.5 can wreak havoc on the molecular level. The World Health Organization recommends that average annual concentrations not exceed 10 micrograms per cubic meter, with daily levels under 20 micrograms per cubic meter. Those guidelines are difficult to live by. A study found that “over 90 percent of the world population lives at PM 2.5 levels above World Health Organization standards.” The cheapest and easiest protection is to use a well-made N95 face mask. I carry an N95 mask with me at all times, as I cannot predict if a good-air day will turn into a bad-air night. The practice of carrying a just-in-case mask is one way to have agency over the air you breathe.
Photograph: Lisa Wood Shapiro
3M
Particulate Respirator N95
It Can Progress Diabetes
Newman was one of the coauthors of last year’s study that found that “air pollution exposure has been implicated in the onset and progression of diabetes. Increased exposure to fine particulate matter air pollution (PM 2.5) is associated with increases in blood glucose and all forms of diabetes.” The findings are not new; in studies going as far back as 1967, researchers have found a link between high levels of PM 2.5 in ambient air (outdoor air) and an increase in diabetes deaths. And while there are other contributors to diabetes such as obesity and genetics, there is a link between the inflammation caused by PM 2.5 and diabetes.
It Can Impair Brain Development
While respiratory disease has long been studied as a negative outcome of air pollution, recent studies show that it also impacts the nervous system and brain development, linking PM 2.5 with stroke, changes in cognitive function, dementia, and psychiatric disorders. In particular, that fine and ultrafine particulate matter has an outsized impact, as it can be absorbed into the bloodstream to reach the central nervous system.
And how does this happen? One possible and terrifying way is through the olfactory nerve, the shortest nerve in your body, which enables us to smell. It goes from your brain to the upper inside part of your nose. To understand how something tiny like PM 2.5 can cause inflammation, a 2022 study reiterated, “PM 2.5 can pass through the lung-gas-blood barrier and the ‘gut-microbial-brain’ axis to cause systemic oxidative stress and inflammation, or directly enter brain tissue via the olfactory nerve.” That PM 2.5 accumulates and results in oxidative stress (the free radicals and antioxidants have an imbalance), where it can “cause systemic inflammation and brain tissue damage.”
It’s no secret that we live in a sleep-deprived society. More than a third of Americans don’t get enough shuteye, defined as a minimum of seven hours a night. It’s not just the U.S.: much of the developed world is in a similar situation. “Sleep deprivation abounds,” says Eva Winnebeck, a chronobiologist at the University of Surrey in the U.K. “People do struggle to get up. Alarm clock use is high, lack of sleep is high.” (A rule of thumb: If you need an alarm clock to wake up, it probably means you aren’t sleeping enough.)
So why, exactly, do we compound the problem of sleep deprivation twice a year with Daylight Saving Time? Why do we, in spring and fall—on November 2 for Americans—mess with our internal clocks?
Experts think we should put this practice to rest. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) and various European societies for sleep medicine and biological rhythms have spoken out against switching the clocks. “These seasonal time changes should be abolished,” reads the AASM statement, and the European groups’ statement likewise pushes for a single standard time, since keeping to one time throughout the year may line us up better with the sun. But while these organizations have been vocal, governments have resisted making a change to the status quo.
What sleep deprivation does to the body
Public-health researchers have found that sleep deprivation leads to more car accidents, greater risk of diabetes, and even a higher risk of heart attacks. That’s because long-term sleep deprivation influences the body’s biology in ways that go beyond merely feeling groggy. It can raise blood pressure and increase risk-taking behavior, and it can mean the disarrangement of the linkage between your body’s internal clock and the sun, something that’s especially common among shiftworkers.
Biological processes that should be happening at separate times start to overlap, while those that should be in sync start to spread out, a state that may be behind the elevated risks of heart disease and cancer in people who work nights.
Why we keep changing the clocks
This biannual disarrangement of our sleep schedules is not all that old. It is a policy set by governments, and the current U.S. practice of it dates back to 1966 with the passage of the Uniform Time Act. Before that, during the World Wars, the U.S. temporarily made use of twiddling with clocks in order to save on energy. The idea was to take the daily period of time that humans are active and move it so that more of it fell during natural hours of daylight, saving on fuel costs.
It restarted in the 1960s, when the Interstate Commerce Commission, which regulated transportation, pushed for a standardized approach to time. Companies managing planes and trains traveling across state borders needed a clear sense of what time it was where, and as part of the Act, regular Daylight Saving Time became mandated by law.
As of 2025, most Americans are on Daylight Saving Time eight months of the year, from March to November. Standard Time is only around for four months. (Hawaii and Arizona, among other localities, do not observe Daylight Saving Time.)
Seasonal shifts are natural, but not these shifts
It’s not that human biology requires an unchanging day and night.
Because Earth’s axis is tilted, in many places daylight hours wax and wane over the course of the year. It’s particularly evident farther from the equator; in Northern England, for instance, the shortest day of the year has fewer than eight hours of sun, while in San Antonio, it’s more than 10 hours.
Studies have revealed humans may be naturally set up to change the duration of their sleep over the seasons, says Manuel Schabus, a professor at the University of Salzburg in Austria who studies sleep. In a 2015 paper, researchers found that people in three different pre-industrialized societies got up just before sunset year-round, and they tended to fall asleep about three hours after sunset. They were awake about an hour longer in summer than in the winter. And studies on people from industrialized societies on camping trips without access to artificial light show them falling into rhythm with the sun.
But Daylight Saving Time requires an unnatural change that puts many people in conflict with the sun’s signals, says chronobiologist Martha Merrow, a professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.
With Daylight Saving Time, “you need to use the alarm more,” she says. “We should be looking for ways to not use an alarm clock. Every time we use an alarm clock, we deprive ourselves of sleep.”
How to assess the biological ramifications of these policies, though, has been hard to pin down. “It’s really difficult to say what it does for an individual,” says Winnebeck. “But it affects everyone in a society. It does that over eight months of the year. And we do that multiple years in a row to millions of people.”
It might be the circadian equivalent, she says, of eating unhealthfully every day for years. “The problem is proving this. It’s very difficult.”
A hunch with a data problem
Does living on Daylight Saving Time for so much of the year impact health? It’s hard to answer this question, says Dr. Elizabeth Klerman, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, but there are some hints in studies that compare health outcomes on the edges of timezones. That’s because people on the eastern rim of a timezone are in a privileged situation: The sun’s time and their clock time line up more precisely. Those on the western rim suffer a mismatch between solar time and clock time. In effect, this is similar to what Daylight Saving Time produces, says Klerman.
These studies show a fascinating pattern: “There’s more cancer on the western edge of the time zone,” she says. Higher levels of obesity and diabetes, which have been linked to circadian disruption, crop up more, too. People are also more likely to be sleep deprived.
That suggests that there might be real health consequences to Daylight Saving Time.
There are a number of studies asserting shorter-term risks to Daylight Saving Time: more traffic accidents the day after the shift, for instance. Russell Foster, a circadian neuroscientist at University of Oxford who has recently looked into much of this data, says that the studies tend not to be as conclusive as you might think.
However, the shift away from Standard Time does correlate with a spike in heart attacks; shifting back to Standard, back into sync with the sun, correlates with a decline.
Living on solar time
Scrapping seasonal time changes is a perennial subject of public-policy debate. In 2019, the European Parliament voted to end the practice. “But there is still no progress,” says Schabus. It’s proven hard to agree on what to do instead: Would some E.U. countries adopt a kind of permanent Daylight Saving Time year round? Would others use Standard Time?
Some sleep scientists wonder whether something more radical would ever be possible. What if we could actually follow the sun’s time, without artificial constructs like Daylight Saving Time, or even time zones? If we did that, it would be noon when the sun is right overhead, and wake times could follow the sun through the year. “Until we had a train system in Europe, people did use sun time,” says Merrow. When it comes to ensuring long-distance coordination—the kind of thing that time zones are used for now–perhaps computer tools could run the calculations for us, she muses.
Schabus, for his part, also prefers a sleep-wake cycle that can shift with the seasons, and he points to increased focus on flexible work hours in the E.U. as a potential boon to those interested in following the sun. “I think it’s easiest for our bodies to follow those rules,” he said. It’s how we evolved, after all.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hormel Foods is recalling nearly 4.9 million pounds of frozen boneless chicken products it sold to restaurants, cafeterias and other outlets, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced Saturday.
Customers reported finding metal in the chicken breast and thigh products. Hormel concluded that the metal came from a conveyor belt used in production, the food safety service said. There have been no reports of illnesses or injuries.
The recalled Hormel Fire Braised chicken items were distributed to HRI Commercial Food Service, a restaurant supply company, at locations nationwide from Feb. 10 through Sept. 19. The products are only sold to food service companies, not directly to consumers.
The food safety service said that some of the recalled chicken may be in freezers at hotels, restaurants and cafeterias and urged that it be thrown away. Hormel said it has notified all customers who received the products.
Consumers with questions about the recall can reach out to Hormel Foods through the company website or by calling 1-800-523-4635.
Photo: Andrew Burke-Stevenson/Boston Globe/Getty Images
One morning in late September, I drank a cup of coffee without sugar and ate half an English muffin for breakfast. Boring choices, but I like routines; I always drink coffee in the morning, and I always drink it with some milk. If I eat breakfast, I don’t eat much. I didn’t think it mattered — I still wouldn’t, if I had any choice, but two hours later, a medical assistant pricked my fingertip and told me that my blood glucose was 330 milligrams per deciliter. That seems bad, I thought. A few minutes later, I learned my A1C was also much too high, which supported one undesirable conclusion: I have type 2 diabetes, like my mother and millions of other people in the United States, and I’ve likely had it for a while. The doctor sent me home with a sample continuous glucose monitor along with prescriptions for metformin and Mounjaro, a popular GIP and GLP-1 receptor agonist. The following morning, I checked the data from my CGM and saw that my fasting glucose had reached 400 milligrams per deciliter. I did not eat an English muffin.
Still, there is good news: Mounjaro and metformin are effective medications. I know that from my doctor, the scientific literature, and my CGM. A month after getting diagnosed, my blood glucose has declined to safer levels, and the disease frightens me less than it initially did. Pragmatism has taken over. I already have mild neuropathy in my feet, and I’d rather it didn’t get worse. If I want to feel all my toes again, the solution is medication, a better diet, and exercise. There isn’t an easy way to reverse the symptoms of type 2 diabetes, and I knew that the day I found out I had it. I also knew that my illness wasn’t my fault — or I thought I did. People develop type 2 diabetes for a combination of reasons, like a sedentary lifestyle and an unhealthy diet, but genetics matter, too, and I have a family history of the disease. Also, so what? Nobody deserves a life-threatening illness, and a medical diagnosis is not a moral failure. I’ve never thought I should blame my mother for getting sick.
Still, I began to berate myself. I thought about my meals — the small ones, the big ones, the occasional snack — and wondered when I’d crossed the line. Was it the Coke I drank for my headaches? Those English muffins? I told my husband that I felt stupid. I should’ve taken more Pilates classes, eaten fewer carbs, ordered more salads. My husband, an ex-Catholic, told me to be less of a Protestant. Shame has its place in the world, but not here, in this conversation or this illness. He’s right, but in the Make America Healthy Again era, I find it difficult to silence that angry voice in my head. Every time I scroll through Instagram, I see ads and videos that promote dubious supplements and fad diets — and then there is the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of it all. Diabetes is a fixation for our Health and Human Services secretary, who believes America suffers from a “chronic-disease epidemic” that can be resolved through better nutrition. “Sugar is poison,” he said this year, and it is “giving us a diabetes crisis.” Conditions like diabetes deserve more attention than measles, he claimed amid a deadly outbreak of the infectious disease. Pharma companies want to sell GLP-1s like Mounjaro because “we’re so stupid and so addicted to drugs,” Kennedy told Fox News last year, adding, “If we just gave good food, three meals a day, to every man, woman, and child in our country, we could solve the obesity and diabetes epidemic overnight.”
The MAHA ethos contains an element of truth, which makes it even more insidious. Our choices do influence our physical condition, whether we’re at risk for type 2 diabetes or not, but we are also more complicated than MAHA admits. A woman who lives in a food desert needs more from her government than nutrition education; she can’t simply bootstrap her way out of medical danger. Neither can I despite my relative security. By the time I found out I was diabetic, I was too sick to manage my blood sugar through diet and exercise alone, and I may need medication for the rest of my life. My health depends on my salary and my health insurance, not my choices alone, and that’s the reality most of us live with. Instead, MAHA prefers a commonplace American myth, and so does my inner scold: Fix your mind, make better choices, and health will follow. Self-mastery is free-market logic in another guise, and it won’t make Americans healthy at all.
If the key to health lies in the mind, our “chronic disease” crisis is more spiritual than material. We are making ourselves sick, so we must heal ourselves. When MAHA attempts any structural diagnosis, it complains of big pharma and big agriculture, but individual choices are still the principal focus. Industry is bad because it encourages bad decision-making; it provides shortcuts, like antidepressants or GLP-1s, so we can avoid the hard work of good health. The underlying theme is “mind-power,” as scholar Kate Bowler wrote in Blessed, her 2018 history of the prosperity gospel. Mind-power and “its discourse of control and efficacy” is “centered on the role of thought and speech,” according to Bowler, who traced it back to a Victorian-age religious awakening in American life. “Self-mastery became an art and occupation, as people sought to consolidate the era’s advances with improvements to their own lives,” she wrote. Faith healers promised miraculous cures to believers who paid their tithes and said the right prayers to the right version of God.
In an extreme case, Mary Baker Eddy “discovered” Christian Science and taught her followers that all matter “is infinitely malleable through the power of mind,” as the journalist and ex–Church of Christ, Scientist member Caroline Fraser explained in God’s Perfect Child. Disease was a mental error that should be rectified by good thoughts. Christian Scientists reject most medical interventions and rely, often, on Church practitioners, who say they guide physical healing through the pursuit of spiritual truth. The results can be deadly, as Fraser showed in her book. Children have died because of their parents’ religious convictions. “The history of the United States of America is a history of religious sects that have sanctified the power of self,” Fraser argued, which is hard to dispute.
Now, mind-power as a concept is more powerful than Christian Science or even organized religion, and it is embedded deeply in our national bedrock. Though MAHA is an eclectic perspective, and most who fall under its umbrella accept some medical intervention, its rejection of expertise and reliance on the self are familiar enough. When Kennedy conflates type 2 diabetes with its type 1 counterpart, as he has done in the past, he makes a scientific error that is shaped by his ideology. When he says in the same interview that “juvenile diabetes and prediabetes” can “be reversed completely by changing diet,” he makes a different mistake for the same reasons. Kennedy isn’t asking us to pray, but he is telling us to purify ourselves, and, like Eddy, he takes that moralism and calls it science.
MAHA shifts responsibility for health and well-being onto the individual, and that too is an old trick. Mind-power may emphasize thought, but it still requires some labor from believers, who may depend on objects and ritualized behavior to attract health and wealth or dispel spiritual and mental attacks. Bowler wrote that Creflo Dollar, the prosperity-gospel preacher, once “advised the saints to cure poverty with dollar bills hidden in their shoes.” Kennedy and Martin Makary, the FDA commissioner, recommend wearable health technologies, like my CGM. Unlike a dollar bill inside a shoe, a CGM can have a real purpose, but that also depends on who’s wearing it. Right now, I use a sample Dexcom G7. A sensor in my left arm takes a reading every five minutes and feeds that information into an app on my phone. If my blood sugar gets too low or too high, an alarm sounds and I can take action. Most people don’t need a CGM, but Makary assigns the device a near-talismanic power: Make it widely available and users can ward off a dreadful fate. “Why are we holding these tools to help people empower them with knowledge about their health until after they’re sick?” he said during his Senate confirmation hearing.
Donald Trump’s surgeon-general nominee, Casey Means, founded the Levels app, which connects to a CGM and warns users if they’re experiencing a glucose “spike.” This is not as helpful as it sounds. Blood sugar always rises after a meal and returns to baseline sometime later, and there’s no evidence that spikes lead to health problems in most people, according to a recent story from The Cut. Levels may promise a path to well-being, but that’s marketing, not science. The app merely creates busywork for whoever is using it, and it relies on mind-power. Levels bombards the average person with information they don’t need so they can adjust habits that may not require correction. Once they’re convinced of their own inner failures, an “expert” steps in with a fix. The app’s backers include Mark Hyman, a celebrity in the pseudoscientific field of functional medicine. Hyman’s views on GLP-1 drugs are mixed at best; for blood-sugar control, he once recommended Himalayan Tartary-buckwheat-sprout powder, an unproven supplement.
MAHA sells a seductive idea: Take this powder, wear this device, or use this app and you’ll become the captain of your own body and the master of your own future. The implications are grim — if you get sick anyway, you’ve failed, and you are rightly on your own. “By tying health outcomes to individual choices and digital self-surveillance, MAHA policies risk making healthcare less equitable and overall, less effective,” the writer Scott Gavura observed at Science-Based Medicine. “Unproven technologies” can feel empowering, he added, but in practice they divert “attention away from public health interventions that actually work, like vaccinations, nutrition assistance, and access to primary care.” Mind-power and self-mastery are useful concepts to the White House and the rapacious capitalism it worships. Why should anyone care about type 2 diabetes or what it does to the people who have it? Just eat less pizza.
Here’s a little secret about type 2 diabetes (it’s not really a secret): The disease is expensive. I’ve already spent hundreds of dollars on co-pays, prescriptions, and supplies, and I still don’t know if my insurance plan will cover the Dexcom G7 that I’ve been sampling. If it doesn’t and I want to keep using the device, I’ll likely pay hundreds more out of pocket every month. My insurance does cover a different CGM, the FreeStyle Libre 3, but a month’s supply still costs me $77. A lot of people with diabetes forgo a CGM and track their blood sugar with a blood-glucose meter and finger sticks, but I need both thanks to a genetic quirk. I was born with a hereditary red-blood-cell disorder, which makes my case more complicated to manage; thank you, God, for your intelligent design. At least I have insurance, a decent salary, and a reliable work schedule, so I can keep up with my doctor’s appointments. I’m a union member, which provides a level of security that I would otherwise lack. And I live in a neighborhood where I can walk to the nearest grocery store and choose from a variety of fresh vegetables.
My prognosis is good because I have material advantages that many people lack. According to one analysis from GoodRx, people pay an average of $2,712 per year to self-manage their blood glucose, whether they have insurance or not. That figure includes a blood-glucose monitor, lancets, and test strips but not a CGM. Costs may be higher or lower depending on the specifics of a person’s treatment and their socioeconomic circumstances. For uninsured and underinsured Americans, test strips alone “could add up to thousands of dollars a year,” the New York Timesreported in 2019. Out-of-pocket costs are higher for Americans with type 1 diabetes, one study found, but as I’ve learned, type 2 is not exactly affordable, either, and the expense can make it more difficult to manage the condition while preventing future complications. Self-mastery only gets us so far. The choices we make depend in part on the decisions of others, including policy-makers who allow inequality to flourish owing to inaction or malice. Research cited by the CDC says that “adults who experience food insecurity are 2 to 3 times more likely to have type 2 diabetes.” If you’re poor and can’t afford healthy food and a safe place to live, your health tends to suffer. I’ve seen that at home in southwest Virginia, a rural and predominantly white area, but the crisis is widespread and pronounced among members of some racial minority groups. Inequality helps explain why Black Americans develop type 2 diabetes at much higher rates, as do Latinos, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans. In MAHA logic, people of color are more likely to get type 2 diabetes because something’s wrong with their character, their minds, and it’s DEI to say otherwise.
The MAHA prescription mostly ignores reality because it must. Universal health care would violate its deepest conviction, which is that people who get sick deserve to be punished for it. When Senator Bernie Sanders asked Kennedy if he thought health care is a human right, he demurred. Health care is not a right like free speech is a right, he said, because “if you smoke cigarettes for 20 years and you get cancer, you … you are now taking from the pool,” draining valuable resources. Now that he’s in power, he and the Trump administration have done nothing to make America healthier than usual. Nutrition experts say that MAHA’s favorite solutions, like the removal of high-fructose corn syrup, synthetic dyes, and seed oils from our food, ignore riskier ingredients in ultraprocessed items. Kennedy will soon release new dietary guidelines urging Americans to eat foods high in saturated fat, but as MedPage Today has reported, there’s no real evidence to support the recommendation. Trump has said he wants to lower the cost of GLP-1 agonists, but he also lies, and Mehmet Oz of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has only uttered vague assurances that Medicare will negotiate better prices for the drugs. On Friday, the Washington Postsaid the average Obamacare premium will rise by 30 percent next year, based on rates set by Oz’s agency and the probable “expiration of pandemic-era subsidies.”
My inner scold is quieter now, and in its place, there is rage — not just for myself but for my mother, who has struggled sometimes to afford diabetes care, and for people I do not know. A society can become so obsessed with the self that an individual life no longer matters.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hormel Foods is recalling nearly 4.9 million pounds of frozen boneless chicken products it sold to restaurants, cafeterias and other outlets, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced Saturday.
Customers reported finding metal in the chicken breast and thigh products. Hormel concluded that the metal came from a conveyor belt used in production, the food safety service said. There have been no reports of illnesses or injuries.
The recalled Hormel Fire Braised chicken items were distributed to HRI Commercial Food Service, a restaurant supply company, at locations nationwide from Feb. 10 through Sept. 19. The products are only sold to food service companies, not directly to consumers.
The food safety service said that some of the recalled chicken may be in freezers at hotels, restaurants and cafeterias and urged that it be thrown away. Hormel said it has notified all customers who received the products.
Consumers with questions about the recall can reach out to Hormel Foods through the company website or by calling 1-800-523-4635.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The first recorded death from West Nile virus this year in L.A. County was confirmed Friday by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
The individual, whose details have been kept anonymous, was hospitalized in the San Fernando Valley for neurological illness caused by the mosquito-borne virus. In Southern California, October is the middle of mosquito season.
Across Los Angeles County, 14 West Nile virus infections have been documented in 2025; half have been in the San Fernando Valley.
L.A. has had an average of 58 West Nile infections per year since 2020, with an average of one death per year, according to data from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
West Nile virus affects around 2,000 Americans a year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Viral infection can a number of symptoms, with mild illness symptoms consisting of fever, headache, body aches, vomiting, rash or diarrhea, the CDC says.
A more severe and concerning case can cause neck stiffness, stupor, disorientation, tremors, convulsions, muscle weakness, vision loss, numbness, or paralysis. Officials warn that the effects of severe illness could be permanent or result in death.
In some cases, infection does not cause symptoms.
The California Public Health Department notes that there are a number of species within the Culex mosquito genus, which is a primary carrier of the virus, found throughout Los Angeles County.
In a 2025 study from the National Institutes of Health, research showed that droughts raised risk factors for West Nile virus. Data from more than 50,000 traps revealed that while drought conditions reduced overall mosquito populations and standing bodies of water, it consolidated the infected mosquitos and birds, which also carry the disease, around limited water sources. The result is faster transmission rate among the smaller populations, which go on to infect humans. In the San Fernando Valley, where drought conditions are expect to continue through a dry La Niña season, the reduced water sources may lead to higher infection rates.
To avoid contracting West Nile virus, the CDC recommends reducing outside activities during the daytime, when mosquitos are most active. Officials also say that emptying or replacing containers of standing water (where mosquitos tend to breed), installing window screens, and wearing protective skin coverings or using insect repellent when outside can also reduce exposure.
Nevadans looking for health insurance on the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace this fall have a new, more budget-friendly option to review: Battle Born State Plans.
The plans are the culmination of legislation passed in 2021 building on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by establishing a public health insurance option at a lower price by reducing premiums. It’s a twist on an idea that failed to make it in the final version of Obamacare 15 years ago: a public option that would compete with private insurance.
Approximately 35,000 people are projected to purchase the Battle Born Plans, a number that could vary given rising health care costs and the expiration of certain federal subsidies.
Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, D-Las Vegas, who spearheaded the legislation to establish the public option in 2021, has celebrated the Battle Born State Plans (BBSPs) as key to reducing health care coverage costs and increasing access.
But not everyone has lauded the launch of the new plans.
Later, his administration adopted a reinsurance program as part of the implementation of the plans that he said will stabilize the venture.
Nevada is the third state to launch a public health insurance option after Washington and Colorado.
Below, we break down what you need to know about the Battle Born State Plans and the reinsurance program.
What are the Battle Born State Plans?
Established during the 2021 legislative session, Battle Born State Plans, like other plans available on Nevada Health Link, are “qualified health plans.” That means they cover all 10 essential health benefits stipulated under the ACA, including guaranteeing that consumers will not be denied coverage or charged more for pre-existing health conditions.
The only difference between the Battle Born plans and others is they must meet premium reduction targets, with the goal of lowering overall health insurance costs.
To ensure a competitive bidding process for the plans, the state required managed care organizations contracted to deliver services for the state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program and Medicaid programs to submit a proposal to administer the public option.
Out of eight carriers on the marketplace this open enrollment period, three are offering the state plans:
1. Anthem (Community Care Health Plan of Nevada)
2. SilverSummit Health Plan (Ambetter)
3. Health Plan of Nevada (HPN)
Insurance carriers offering the plans are required to align their networks with Medicaid managed care networks to ensure sufficient access to care.
How do the premium reduction targets lead to lower costs?
Under Nevada law, carriers offering the new state plans must satisfy premium reduction targets over the next four years, finishing at 15% lower than the average premium on the market.
What did plans do to offer lower cost premiums?
To meet the required targets, officials with the Nevada Health Authority said carriers have two options: One is to reduce administrative costs, such as salaries, overhead, and broker costs, and the other is to reduce medical costs, such as provider reimbursements.
Actuaries for the state indicated that for 2026, Battle Born carriers primarily met their targets by reducing the cost of broker fees and commissions. An insurance broker is a licensed professional who helps clients find insurance coverage; they primarily make money through commissions paid by insurance companies on the policies they sell and renew.
What are the enforcement mechanisms surrounding the plans and premium reduction targets?
If carriers don’t follow the reductions, the state can impose corrective action plans and issue fines and penalties.
If that noncompliance continues, the state can declare a breach of contract, which could prevent the carrier from participating in large public programs such as Nevada Medicaid.
“After four years, the state intends to examine trend changes to see if carriers will voluntarily maintain the reductions achieved beyond 2029,” a health official said. “If not, the state may need to impose additional reductions if necessary through its contract authority with carriers.”
Who is expected to purchase the plans?
The majority of enrollees on Nevada Health Link are people who do not have access to employer-sponsored insurance coverage and do not qualify for Medicaid or Medicare benefits. This group includes Nevadans who may be self-employed, owners of a small business or those reliant on contract-based work.
Buying through the marketplace allows consumers access to federal subsidies that can substantially lower the out-of-pocket cost of insurance.
The Battle Born plans are offered to people with moderate-to-higher incomes who shop for their own health insurance on Nevada Health Link. Like every plan on the marketplace, there are no caps on the number of Nevadans who can enroll in the plans.
The plans come as health insurance costs are rising across the country and enhanced ACA subsidies (in the form of tax credits) are set to sunset at the end of the year. The enhanced subsidies increased financial assistance for existing marketplace enrollees and expanded eligibility for tax credits to middle-income earners or those making more than 400% of federal poverty levels ( nearly $130,000 for a family of four).
Officials with Nevada Health Link said Nevadans who are no longer eligible to receive subsidies, or are receiving lower subsidies than previous years, may also want to take advantage of the Battle Born plans because these products keep costs lower through premium reduction requirements.
They added that Nevadans can also connect with a navigator or a broker to get free enrollment assistance and determine if the plan in their area best meets their needs and budget.
This might be especially valuable to Nevadans in rural areas, where the plans are bringing more carrier participation and more options than have historically been available.
What is the reinsurance program and how does it work?
As implementation of the public option moved forward, Lombardo proposed and adopted a reinsurance program.
Reinsurance essentially works as insurance for insurance companies, paying a portion of high-cost claims and thus allowing insurers to lower the premiums for individual health insurance plans.
As reinsurance programs help lower insurance premiums, the amount of federal dollars spent on ACA tax credits also goes down. Instead of keeping those dollars, the federal government passes that money through to the state to help fund the reinsurance program and maintain lower premiums and market stability.
State officials said the savings will be felt marketwide as the reinsurance payments will be available to all licensed carriers in the individual market. The reinsurance program also helps the three state plan carriers meet their premium reduction targets.
Lombardo’s administration has described the reinsurance program, which goes into effect in 2026, as a way to mitigate threats from the public option and make it more sustainable for insurers.
Though a lawsuit challenging Nevada’s public health insurance option was filed in July, state officials did not respond to questions about it, saying they could not comment on pending litigation. A review of court records indicates that no significant changes have taken place since the lawsuit was filed.
Lombardo and Cannizzaro did not respond to emailed questions from The Nevada Independent.
What are the savings projections from the public option plans and the reinsurance program?
By the end of 2029, state officials estimate that the reinsurance program and public option will bring between $290 million and $322 million in new federal savings to Nevada.
Under the agreement approved by the federal government, a large portion of these funds will be used to implement a reinsurance program, with additional funds in future years being spent on a loan retention program for health care providers and a quality incentive program for carriers and provider networks.
The reinsurance program will begin in 2026, with payments to insurers anticipated early to mid-year of 2027. The program was approved by the federal government for a five-year period.
How can buyers choose the right insurance?
Medicaid, Nevada Health Link and the state plans are under one umbrella — the Nevada Health Authority — which helps streamline and better serve Nevadans by creating a front door approach, said Stacie Weeks, the director of the Nevada Health Authority.
If a Nevadan applies for a plan through Nevada Health Link but actually qualifies for Medicaid, Weeks said the agency can help them get enrolled in Medicaid and vice versa.
Account transfer processes are improving because the different programs are under one umbrella.
“That means we can better communicate with these populations and make it easier for them to stay insured, even if their eligibility changes,” she said.
This story was originally published by The Nevada Independent and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
After the latest round of mass firings at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over the weekend, the union that represents agency employees estimates that around 3,000 people this year—about a quarter of the agency’s workforce—have departed the agency.
That number includes workers affected by layoffs earlier this year, as well those who have accepted the Trump administration’s “Fork in the Road” buyout program.
The most recent cuts came down amid the ongoing government shutdown. On October 10, more than 1,300 CDC employees received termination notices. Soon after, however, about 700 of those people were told via email that they were mistakenly terminated and were not in fact subject to the reduction in force. An estimated 600 people remain terminated.
An additional 1,300 CDC employees are, according to the union, on administrative leave and being paid but not working.
The Trump administration has not shared official numbers of those targeted by the reductions. The estimate was compiled by the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 2883, which represents CDC workers.
The current round of reductions affects the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, the National Center for Health Statistics, the CDC library, the agency’s human resources department, campus safety staff, as well as the CDC’s office in Washington, DC, which acts as a liaison to Congress and provides public health information to policymakers.
“All HHS employees receiving reduction-in-force notices were designated nonessential by their respective divisions,” Andrew Nixon, director of communication at the Department of Health and Human Services, told WIRED via email.
Among those reinstated include staff that publish the agency’s flagship publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, as well as leadership in the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, according to AFGE. Members of the Epidemic Intelligence Service, the CDC’s “disease detectives” unit, were also brought back.
(CNN) — Hundreds of staff fired from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late Friday have been reinstated, according to the American Federation of Government Employees.
After a new round of layoff notices sent late Friday night to around 1,300 workers at the CDC, approximately 700 were reinstated on Saturday, while about 600 remain laid off, according to the union, which represents federal workers.
“The employees who received incorrect notifications were never separated from the agency and have all been notified that they are not subject to the reduction in force,” said Andrew Nixon, director of communications for the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Among reinstated employees are staff that publish the agency’s flagship journal, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, according to Dr. Debra Houry, who recently resigned as the agency’s chief medical officer and deputy director for program and science. Houry and other high-level CDC officials resigned in August in protest over the firing of recently confirmed CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez.
Athalia Christie, the incident commander for the measles response, was among hundreds of employees mistakenly fired on Friday. The annual total of measles cases in the US – now up to 1,563 cases since January – is the highest by a significant margin since measles was declared eliminated in America a quarter-century ago.
Staff were also reinstated at the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, the Global Health Center, and the Public Health Infrastructure Center, which manages more than $3 billion in grants to 107 state and local governments to help build local public health workforces, said Dr. Brian Castrucci, who is president and chief executive officer of the de Beaumont Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for public health workers.
Staff and officers at the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service who were able to check their emails have also received notices that their firings were in error, according to a CDC official with knowledge of the situation who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.
Epidemic Intelligence Service officers, also known as “disease detectives,” are often the first to respond to disease threats when they arise.
“We think all staff and all officers” are back, the official said.
The mistakenly fired employees were sent incorrect notifications because of a coding error on the notices, according to an HHS official. The employees who got the miscoded notifications were all told about the glitch on Friday or Saturday, the person said.
“It’s pure managerial incompetence,” said Dr. Nirav Shah, who resigned earlier this year as principal deputy director of the CDC. “I used to think that chaos was the byproduct of this managerial incompetence. Now I start to wonder whether the chaos is the point.”
Staff at CDC’s Washington office, in its Violence Prevention programs, and in the Office of the Director of the Injury Center, remain separated from the agency as part of the latest round of the Trump administration’s Reduction in Force initiatives. In total, the cuts total about 600 positions.
The impact of these job losses may not be immediately apparent to people going about their day-to-day lives, but they leave the country less prepared, said Shah, who is currently a visiting professor at Colby College in Maine.
“These cuts will mean that when the next health crisis comes along, precious days, weeks, months will be spent getting ready when we should have been ready,” Shah said.
President Donald Trump said late Friday afternoon that he planned to fire “a lot” of federal workers in retaliation for the government shutdown, vowing to target those deemed to be aligned with the Democratic Party.
“We figure they started this thing, so they should be Democrat-oriented,” Trump said, placing blame for the shutdown on Democratic lawmakers. Trump did not provide details on what qualified the affected workers as “Democrat-oriented.”
The legality of firing federal workers during a government shutdown is also in question. Shortly after Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought posted “The RIFs have begun” on X on Friday AFGE replied “The lawsuit has been filed.”
A court filing in that case indicates more than 4,100 federal workers were impacted by the cuts at HHS as well as the departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Homeland Security and Treasury.
“My message for the CDC staff is the work they do has never been more important,” Shah said.
Dozens of employees were fired from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) late on Friday, as the Trump Administration made good on its promise to begin mass firings in response to a prolonged government shutdown.
The layoffs targeted leaders in departments related to respiratory diseases, chronic diseases, injury prevention and global health, the New York Times reported. Roughly 70 Epidemic Intelligence Service officers, also known as “disease detectives”, the entire staff and editors of the CDC’s publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), and the agency’s Washington office were all notified of their termination, according to the report.
It comes as the agency is still reeling from months of uncertainty after a change in leadership and priorities under new Health and Human Services (HHS) head Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, said Friday’s layoffs would be a death blow for an agency that has already been gutted by previous cuts under Kennedy’s leadership.
“CDC will have lost its ability to detect outbreaks and respond to them. It will no longer be able to track diseases, in America and around the globe. That includes infectious threats like flu, foodborne illnesses, and Ebola, as well as chronic diseases and injuries,” she said.
Rasmussen added that the loss of the MMWR would remove the CDC’s ability to communicate with the public.
“Together, this means the CDC is not functional. It cannot carry out any of its mission,” she says. “America has no national public health agency any more.”
Other physicians, including Michelle Au, Georgia State Representative and anesthesiologist, noted on social media that the U.S. is “barreling into respiratory season—when viruses like flu, COVID, and RSV surge—flying blind.”
The CDC did not respond to a request for comment from TIME.
It comes at a time when the country’s top public health agency has dealt with blow after blow, from a tragic shooting at their Atlanta headquarters, to Kennedy’s firing of former CDC director, Susan Monarez.
The gap between the two parties is primarily due to a Democratic demand to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies for low-and middle-income Americans, which are set to expire at the end of the year.
The White House and Republicans have sought to blame Democratic leaders for the shutdown, and President Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that firings would target those who are “Democrat-oriented.”
“These are largely people that the Democrats want and many of them will be fired,” Trump said. “It will be a lot.”
The mass firings come just two months after the CDC experienced a mass exodus of top officials from the agency, who said they were prompted to resign in August after Kennedy sidelined officials and ignored scientific research and protocols since he was assigned to his role to lead the department.
“Having worked in local and national public health for years, I have never experienced such radical non-transparency, nor have I seen such unskilled manipulation of data to achieve a political end rather than the good of the American people,” the CDC’s former vaccine chief Dr. Demetre Daskalakis said in his resignation statement.
In a hearing with Senate lawmakers after her ousting by Kennedy, former director Monarez described heated meetings with the HHS head, who she says called the CDC “the most corrupt federal agency” in the government and asked her to fire vaccine scientists without cause.
“I was fired for holding the line on scientific integrity,” Monarez said.
In Alabama, adoptive parents can get permanent custody of the child within six weeks, says Mancuso. That’s a rapid timeline in a country where most adoptions can take a year or longer.
Still, for many, baby boxes are not a reminder of a tragedy for a woman who carried a baby, gave birth alone, and then abandoned that child. Instead, they’re seen with joy.
“It’s a fun thing for our foster and adoptive workers,” Mancuso says. Families who want to adopt usually want babies, and through these surrenders, care workers can make a family’s dream come true. “We have a lot of families who are interested in these children,” she says, “and we want to serve those families and serve those children.”
The downside to baby boxes
Compared with other safe-haven options, the value of baby boxes is an open question. Micah Orliss, a psychologist and founder of the Safe Surrender Clinic at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, argues that leaving a baby in a box does not add any benefit to the current safe-haven system in many states, in which a mother engages in a “warm handoff,” surrendering her baby to a medical professional or EMT.
Federal health officials late Monday warned people not to eat certain Hello Fresh subscription meal kits containing spinach that may be contaminated with listeria.
The U.S. Agriculture Department issued a public health alert for the meals, which were produced by FreshRealm, the San Clemente, California-based company linked to an expanding listeria outbreak tied to heat-and-eat pasta meals.
The products include 10.1-ounce containers of Hello Fresh Ready Made Meals Cheesy Pulled Pork Pepper Pasta and 10-ounce containers of Hello Fresh Ready Made Meals Unstuffed Peppers with Ground Turkey. Both were shipped directly to consumers.
The pork pepper pasta is identified with establishment number Est. 47718 and lot code 49107 or Est. 2937 and lot code 48840. The unstuffed peppers with ground turkey is identified with Est. P-47718 and lot codes 50069, 50073 or 50698.
The problem was discovered when FreshRealm notified the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service that the spinach used in the products tested positive for listeria bacteria.
Last month, FreshRealm said that tests confirmed that pasta used in linguine dishes sold at Walmart contained the same strain of listeria linked to an outbreak in June. That outbreak, originally tied to chicken fettucine Alfredo, has killed at least four people and sickened 20, with the most recent illness reported Sept. 11.
FreshRealm officials said genetic testing found the outbreak strain of listeria in samples of pasta made and supplied by Nate’s Fine Foods of Roseville, California.
Several additional companies including Kroger, Giant Eagle and Albertson’s have recalled pasta salads and other dishes made with products from Nate’s Fine Foods for potential listeria contamination.
Listeria infections can cause serious illness, particularly in older adults, people with weakened immune systems and those who are pregnant or their newborns. Symptoms include fever, muscle aches, headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance and convulsions.
About 1,600 people get sick each year from listeria infections and about 260 die, the CDC says. Federal officials in December said they were revamping protocols to prevent listeria infections after several high-profile outbreaks, including one linked to Boar’s Head deli meats that led to 10 deaths and more than 60 illnesses last year.
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
TODAY– WALMART ANNOUNCED IT PLANS TO REMOVE SYNTHETIC FOOD DYES AND 30 OTHER INGREDIENTS FROM ITS STORE BRANDS BY JANUARY 20-27. IT INCLUDES SOME PRESERVATIVES, ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS AND FAT SUBSTITUTES. WALMART SAYS THIS WILL AFFECT ABOUT A THOUSAND OF ITS PRODUCTS. THIS INVOLVES ITS BRANDS INCLUDING GREAT VALUE, MARKETSIDE, AND BETTER GOODS. EARLIER THIS Y
Walmart will remove dyes and other additives from its US house-brand products by 2027
Walmart will remove artificial dyes and 30 other additives — such as artificial sweeteners, fat substitutes and various preservatives — from its U.S. private-brand food and beverage products, the company announced Wednesday. The decision marks the latest corporate move in response to evolving consumer tastes and the yearslong crackdown on food additives that began with state lawmakers, particularly those in California. The momentum has picked up steam this year amid Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement.The change in Walmart brands, including Great Value, Marketside, Freshness Guaranteed and bettergoods, will be in full effect by 2027.”Our customers have told us that they want products made with simpler, more familiar ingredients — and we’ve listened,” Walmart US President and CEO John Furner said in a news release. “By eliminating synthetic dyes and other ingredients, we’re reinforcing our promise to deliver affordable food that families can feel good about.”The 11 dyes being removed are blue dyes No. 1 and No. 2; green dye No. 3; red dyes No. 3, No. 4 and No. 40; yellow dyes No. 5 and No. 6; citrus red dye; orange B dye; and canthaxanthin, an orange-red pigment naturally found in some bacteria, algae, fungi, crustaceans, and tissues and egg yolk from wild birds. Except for canthaxanthin and orange B dye, the other colorants are made from petroleum. All of these dyes are commonly used to make food and beverage products brightly colored and more appealing to consumers.The push to rid the food system of artificial dyes stems from concerns about negative impacts on animal and human health, including a potentially increased risk of cancer and neurobehavioral issues. California banned red dye No. 3 statewide in October 2023, followed by a ban of six other common dyes in school foods in September.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned red dye No. 3 in January, effective for food on Jan. 15, 2027, and for drugs on Jan. 18, 2028 — but the agency has since asked food companies to eliminate the dye sooner. In March, West Virginia passed the most sweeping law thus far, prohibiting seven dyes and two preservatives.The other additives Walmart plans to remove include preservatives such as butylparaben and propylparaben; fat substitutes such as synthetic trans fatty acid and sucrose polyester; and artificial sweeteners advantame and neotame.”This commitment is a bold declaration and response to consumer sentiment that has become increasingly wary of the long list of chemicals found in so many processed foods,” Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports, said in a statement. “Walmart’s decision shows that food companies don’t have to wait for the FDA’s regulatory process to catch up with the science.”Several of the ingredients Walmart is nixing, including red dye No. 3, are already banned or not commonly used. About 90% of Walmart’s house-brand products are already free of synthetic dyes, according to the news release.”Walmart accounts for 25% to 30% of all grocery sales in the United States and anything it does reverberates throughout the entire industry,” Dr. Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard Professor Emerita of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University, said via email. “If it is removing the artificial colors from its house brands, other retailers … will have to follow suit.”Major food companies including Kraft Heinz, General Mills, WK Kellogg Co, The Campbell’s Company, PepsiCo and Utz have pledged to remove artificial dyes by 2027, Nestle added — all following the Trump administration’s April request that companies voluntarily alter their product formulations.”This is a big MAHA win, and one that food advocates have urged for decades,” Nestle said. “I’m hoping MAHA will build on this and now take on more important issues.”State actions also likely influenced the Walmart decision, Dr. Jennifer Pomeranz, associate professor of public health policy and management at the New York University School of Global Public Health, said via email.”The food companies are not going to create ‘better’ products for one state — especially California which has one of the biggest economies in the world — or for several states, so they are forced to change the ingredients in their food nationally,” she added.If you want to avoid food dyes and other additives until various restrictions, bans and reformulations take place, reading ingredient lists when you shop is always your best bet, experts said.On ingredient lists, these artificial dyes are sometimes referred to using the following terms:Red dye No. 3: red 3, FD&C Red No. 3 or erythrosineRed dye No. 40: red 40, FD&C Red No. 40 or Allura Red ACBlue dye No. 1: blue 1, FD&C Blue No. 1 or Brilliant Blue FCFBlue dye No. 2: FD&C Blue No. 2 or indigotineGreen dye No. 3: FD&C Green No. 3 or Fast Green FCFYellow dye No. 5: yellow 5, FD&C Yellow No. 5 or tartrazineYellow dye No. 6: yellow 6, FD&C Yellow No. 6 or sunset yellowDyes listed with the word “lake” in any ingredient list indicate the dye is a water-insoluble version, meaning it can dissolve in oily foods or low-moisture foods.Since these ingredients are typically found in ultraprocessed foods, not eating those is a shortcut to eliminating the additives from your diet. Ultraprocessed foods are made with industrial techniques and ingredients “never or rarely used in kitchens,” according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. These foods are typically low in fiber and high in calories, added sugar, refined grains and fats, sodium, and additives, all of which are designed to help make food more appealing.Accordingly, shifting away from these products may result in more significant health benefits, as numerous studies have linked consumption of ultraprocessed foods with health issues including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, premature death, cancer, depression, cognitive decline, stroke and sleep disorders.
Walmart will remove artificial dyes and 30 other additives — such as artificial sweeteners, fat substitutes and various preservatives — from its U.S. private-brand food and beverage products, the company announced Wednesday. The decision marks the latest corporate move in response to evolving consumer tastes and the yearslong crackdown on food additives that began with state lawmakers, particularly those in California. The momentum has picked up steam this year amid Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
The change in Walmart brands, including Great Value, Marketside, Freshness Guaranteed and bettergoods, will be in full effect by 2027.
“Our customers have told us that they want products made with simpler, more familiar ingredients — and we’ve listened,” Walmart US President and CEO John Furner said in a news release. “By eliminating synthetic dyes and other ingredients, we’re reinforcing our promise to deliver affordable food that families can feel good about.”
The 11 dyes being removed are blue dyes No. 1 and No. 2; green dye No. 3; red dyes No. 3, No. 4 and No. 40; yellow dyes No. 5 and No. 6; citrus red dye; orange B dye; and canthaxanthin, an orange-red pigment naturally found in some bacteria, algae, fungi, crustaceans, and tissues and egg yolk from wild birds. Except for canthaxanthin and orange B dye, the other colorants are made from petroleum. All of these dyes are commonly used to make food and beverage products brightly colored and more appealing to consumers.
The push to rid the food system of artificial dyes stems from concerns about negative impacts on animal and human health, including a potentially increased risk of cancer and neurobehavioral issues. California banned red dye No. 3 statewide in October 2023, followed by a ban of six other common dyes in school foods in September.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned red dye No. 3 in January, effective for food on Jan. 15, 2027, and for drugs on Jan. 18, 2028 — but the agency has since asked food companies to eliminate the dye sooner. In March, West Virginia passed the most sweeping law thus far, prohibiting seven dyes and two preservatives.
The other additives Walmart plans to remove include preservatives such as butylparaben and propylparaben; fat substitutes such as synthetic trans fatty acid and sucrose polyester; and artificial sweeteners advantame and neotame.
“This commitment is a bold declaration and response to consumer sentiment that has become increasingly wary of the long list of chemicals found in so many processed foods,” Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports, said in a statement. “Walmart’s decision shows that food companies don’t have to wait for the FDA’s regulatory process to catch up with the science.”
Several of the ingredients Walmart is nixing, including red dye No. 3, are already banned or not commonly used. About 90% of Walmart’s house-brand products are already free of synthetic dyes, according to the news release.
“Walmart accounts for 25% to 30% of all grocery sales in the United States and anything it does reverberates throughout the entire industry,” Dr. Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard Professor Emerita of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University, said via email. “If it is removing the artificial colors from its house brands, other retailers … will have to follow suit.”
Major food companies including Kraft Heinz, General Mills, WK Kellogg Co, The Campbell’s Company, PepsiCo and Utz have pledged to remove artificial dyes by 2027, Nestle added — all following the Trump administration’s April request that companies voluntarily alter their product formulations.
“This is a big MAHA win, and one that food advocates have urged for decades,” Nestle said. “I’m hoping MAHA will build on this and now take on more important issues.”
State actions also likely influenced the Walmart decision, Dr. Jennifer Pomeranz, associate professor of public health policy and management at the New York University School of Global Public Health, said via email.
“The food companies are not going to create ‘better’ products for one state — especially California which has one of the biggest economies in the world — or for several states, so they are forced to change the ingredients in their food nationally,” she added.
If you want to avoid food dyes and other additives until various restrictions, bans and reformulations take place, reading ingredient lists when you shop is always your best bet, experts said.
On ingredient lists, these artificial dyes are sometimes referred to using the following terms:
Red dye No. 3: red 3, FD&C Red No. 3 or erythrosine
Red dye No. 40: red 40, FD&C Red No. 40 or Allura Red AC
Blue dye No. 1: blue 1, FD&C Blue No. 1 or Brilliant Blue FCF
Blue dye No. 2: FD&C Blue No. 2 or indigotine
Green dye No. 3: FD&C Green No. 3 or Fast Green FCF
Dyes listed with the word “lake” in any ingredient list indicate the dye is a water-insoluble version, meaning it can dissolve in oily foods or low-moisture foods.
Since these ingredients are typically found in ultraprocessed foods, not eating those is a shortcut to eliminating the additives from your diet. Ultraprocessed foods are made with industrial techniques and ingredients “never or rarely used in kitchens,” according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. These foods are typically low in fiber and high in calories, added sugar, refined grains and fats, sodium, and additives, all of which are designed to help make food more appealing.
Accordingly,shifting away from these products may result in more significant health benefits, as numerous studies have linked consumption of ultraprocessed foods with health issues including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, premature death, cancer, depression, cognitive decline, stroke and sleep disorders.
