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Sept. 16, 2022 – You brought your computer home from work “for 2 weeks” in March 2020 and stayed home for 2 years. Schools went virtual. Club meetings got canceled. Gyms closed.

Friends and family became off-limits. Remember avoiding other people on the street?

It’s gotten better since the outbreak, but we’ve remained in relative isolation far longer than expected. And that’s a little sad – and bad for us. Turns out avoiding a virus can harm your health, because togetherness and connection are foundations of our well-being.

“We as humans are engineered by evolution to crave contact with other humans,” says Richard B. Slatcher, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia. “This has been called the ‘need to belong,’ and it’s up there as a basic need with food and water.”

Makes sense: Primitive humans who banded with others were more likely to find food, protect each other, and survive to pass along their genes, he says.

When we were suddenly thrust into isolation in 2020, social ties were already fraying. The book Bowling Alone came out 2 decades earlier. Author Robert D. Putnam lamented the decline in “social capital,” the value we get from connections and our sense of community support. The Atlantic ran a story called “Why You Never See Your Friends Anymore” months before any of us heard of COVID-19.

The pandemic sped up those feelings of isolation. Even after getting vaccinated and boosted, many of us feel we’re not connecting as we would like. And for some, politics has deepened that divide.

Should we care? Yes, say the experts. Social relationships are strongly linked to health and longevity. A famous study published in 2010 in PLOS Medicine concluded that social connections were as important to health as not smoking and more impactful than exercise.

That review, which drew on data from 148 studies, found that people with stronger social relationships were 50% more likely to survive over the 7.5-year follow-up (that is, not die from such causes as cancer or heart disease), compared to those with weaker ties.

Evidence continues to come in. The American Heart Association published a statement this August saying social isolation and loneliness are associated with a 30% increased risk of heart attack and stroke.

“Given the prevalence of social disconnectedness across the U.S., the public health impact is quite significant,” Crystal Wiley Cené, MD, chair of the group that wrote the statement, said in a news release.

The organization said data supports what we suspected: Isolation and loneliness have increased during the pandemic, especially among adults ages 18 to 25, older adults, women, and low-income people.

Your Shrinking Circle

In the first year of the pandemic, there was a slight uptick in loneliness and psychological distress and a slight decrease in life satisfaction, according to a 2022 study in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

For about 1 in 4 people, social circles shrank, says study author Emily Long, PhD, “even after lockdown restrictions were eased.”
When your circle shrinks, you tend to keep those closest to you – the people who probably are most like you. You lose the diversity in opinion and point of view that you might get chatting with someone in your pickleball league, say, or even a stranger.

“Our exposure to diverse people, lifestyles, and opinions dropped significantly,” says Long. Many of us have seen ties with others weaken or sever altogether over disagreements about COVID restrictions and vaccinations.

This happened with acquaintances, once-close pals, or family members as their views on hot-button topics came to the forefront – topics we may have avoided in the past to keep the peace.

Some of these relationships may not be rebuilt, Long says, though it’s too early to say.

How to Make Better Connections Online

Many of us jumped online for our social interaction. Did Zoom and Instagram and Facebook help us connect?

Sure, in a way.

“It might be more difficult at times, but people can establish meaningful relationships without being physically close,” says John Caughlin, PhD, head of the Communication Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who studies “computer-mediated communication.”

It all depends on how you use it. Late-night “doom scrolling” is not relationship-building. But you can forge new or stronger connections via social media if you’re “treating each other as people,” he says.

Here’s one way: Don’t tap a lazy “like” on a post, but instead leave a thoughtful comment that adds value to the conversation. Maybe chime in with your experience or offer words of support. Give a restaurant recommendation if they’re traveling.

But remember that social media became a minefield during the pandemic, Caughlin says. People blasted out their views on staying home, vaccinations, and masks. You quickly learned who shared your views and rethought your relationship with others.

It’s tempting to view social media as a scourge. But that may just be our inherent panic-button reaction to newish technology, Caughlin says. Surprisingly, overall research – and there has been a lot – has shown that social media has little impact on well-being, he says.

A recent meta-analysis from Stanford University on 226 studies from 2006 to 2018 looked for a link between social media use and well-being. What they found: zero. Some studies show a link between social media and anxiety and depression, true, but that may be because those who have depression or anxiety are more likely to spend more time on social as a way to distract themselves.

Make Someone Happy, Including You

Does this sound familiar? You tend to keep up with friends as a social media voyeur rather than, say, calling, texting, or meeting face-to-face. If that sounds like you, you’re not alone.

But if you reverse course and start reaching out again, it’s likely that both you and the other person will benefit. New research from the American Psychological Association on nearly 6,000 people found that when someone reaches out to us – even if it’s with a quick text – we deeply appreciate it. The study was not only about the pandemic, but researchers say that the results could help people rebuild relationships, especially if they’re not confident about trying.

At the same time, Slatcher, the Georgia professor, notes that more screen time “is not the solution” to loneliness or separation.

“All the work out there has shown that social media use isn’t associated with people being happier or less depressed,” he says.

According to Slatcher, the two key parts of building and maintaining relationships are:

• Self-disclosure, which means sharing something about yourself or being vulnerable by letting others know personal information.
• Responsiveness, which simply means reacting to what someone is saying, asking follow-up questions, and maybe gently sharing something about yourself, too, without taking over the conversation.

These happen in person all the time. On social, not so much.

“Both men and women feel happier when they feel emotionally close with another person, and that’s more difficult to do online,” Slatcher says.

Turns out the strongest connections – those best for your well-being – happen when you put the phone down.

A Surprising Bright Spot in Pandemic Connection

We felt more divided than ever during the pandemic, something affirmed by Pew research. By some measures, Americans have the lowest levels of social trust since World War II, says Frederick J. Riley, executive director of Weave: The Social Fabric Project at The Aspen Institute. If neighbors within a community don’t trust each other, they can’t trust society at large.

But it’s not all bad news.

Researchers have seen connections within communities get stronger during the pandemic, Riley says. These are the people who run errands for elderly neighbors, donate supplies and clothes, set up family-friendly meetups, build community gardens, and more.

The “we’re all in this together” mindset arose early in the pandemic, Long and colleagues found. A meta-analysis in 2022 in Psychological Bulletin found that there’s been more cooperation among strangers. This may be due to greater urbanization or living alone – distance from our close-knit crew forces some to cooperate with others when they wouldn’t otherwise.

This, too, is healthy: A sense of belonging in your community, or “neighborhood cohesion,” as a 2020 study from Canadian researchers points out, has been linked to a lower risk of strokes, heart attacks, and early death. It also helps with mental health.

You can tap into this by, say, volunteering at your child’s school, attending religious services, joining a fitness group, or going to festivals in your city. These deliver a sense of identity, higher self-esteem, and can lower stress and make you feel less lonely, the study authors say. It also fosters a sense that we can make meaningful change in our towns.

Certainly, we’ve all been arguing a lot these days – gun control, abortion, politics. Riley says deeper issues, such as a sense of community safety and creating a better place for kids to grow up, help us transcend these hot-button issues.

Sharing goals brings people together, he says, and that’s fueled by that innate urge for connection and togetherness.

“I am really optimistic for what the future will hold,” he says. “We’ve been in this place [of social distrust] before, and it’s the people in local communities showing that anyone can stand up and make the place they live in better.”

Sept. 16, 2022 – You’ve been doing deep focus work all day. Now you’re mentally fried. Wiped out. Exhausted. But you’re trying to wrap up a project. Should you power through?

New science has the answer: No, you should not.

In a Current Biology study, French researchers found that doing mentally hard tasks for more than 6 hours leads to a buildup in the brain’s prefrontal cortex of glutamate, a molecule involved in learning and memory, that can be toxic in high levels.

“Fatigue might be an adaptation to reduce the accumulation of glutamate,” says study author Antonius Wiehler, PhD, a researcher at the Paris Brain Institute. In other words, that tired feeling could be your brain’s way of telling you to stop so your glutamate levels won’t get any higher.

The researchers divided 40 people into two groups. One group spent more than 6 hours on mentally draining assignments, while the other was given easier tasks to do.

At the end of the day, the group that had to think hard showed more signs of fatigue, including reduced pupil dilation (linked to lower levels of effort, Wiehler explains) and a tendency to favor fast rewards and less effort.

For example, they chose to receive a smaller amount of money right away versus a larger amount later. And they were more likely than the other group to choose a lower difficulty level for a 30-minute task, and a lower resistance level for a 30-minute ride on a stationary bike.

In other words, they made choices that called for less self-control and therefore less effort.

“It must have become more costly for them to apply control,” says Wiehler.

Using magnetic resonance spectroscopy, the researchers also monitored the brain chemistry of the people studied, spotting the higher glutamate levels in the hard thinkers.

“It is important to limit glutamate release,” Wiehler says, explaining that’s because glutamate is a useful resource inside cells, but potentially toxic in excess outside or between cells.

How Can You Restore Brain Function?

One takeaway from this research: You are not a machine. You need rest to restore your brain after a mentally tough day.

“Breaks and sleep are important,” Wiehler says. So, make sure you’re taking 10- to 15-minute breaks throughout the day and getting that solid 8 hours of shut-eye at night.

And try to make important decisions when you’re rested, he suggests.

You might consider planning meals ahead of time to avoid eating unhealthy food after a hard day, or you can try exercising earlier so you can bring more effort to your workout.

Still, Wiehler notes that more research is needed to show that these tips can help.

“We’ll ask the questions: How is [glutamate level] restored during sleep? How long does [sleep] have to be? How long should breaks be?”

While nearly two-thirds of participants said that joint pain and their overall state of health had interfered with their ability to do their jobs before surgery, that dropped to 43% seven years later.

“I was impressed by the durability of initial pre- to post-surgery improvements in pain, function and work productivity,” said King, who added that the declines between three and seven years were small, especially considering that participants getting older.

Overall, the findings add to the conviction that “the benefits of modern day bariatric surgical procedures — that is, Roux-en-Y gastric bypass and sleeve gastrectomy — far outweigh the risks,” King said.

Lona Sandon, a program director in the School of Health Professions at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, reviewed the findings.

She said that the additional benefits highlighted in the study are well known to doctors, who typically point them out to potential patients, even when patients’ primary motivation for surgery may be weight loss rather than pain relief.

“Insurance does not approve surgery based on pain scales or movement capacity, as these are not considered medical diagnoses,” while obesity is, Sandon said.

“Insurance is also not good at paying for prevention. Therefore, weight gets the primary focus,” she said, leaving patients to regard any additional benefits of surgery as a “bonus” if and when they experience them.

“It is nice to see a long-term study showing these benefits last over time,” Sandon said. “Physically feeling better with less pain and greater ability to move can do a lot to improve mood and quality of life.”

The findings were published Sept. 14 in JAMA Network Open .

More information

The American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery has more about the benefits of weight-loss surgery.

If you haven’t had or been vaccinated against COVID-19 in the last few months, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says you should get a new booster shot this fall. The latest shots, which were authorized in late August and are available now, were designed to target currently circulating Omicron variants.

The new boosters can be given at the same time as a seasonal flu shot, the CDC says. But should you get both jabs at once, or space them out? It’s a simple question with a surprisingly complex answer.

Though the opinion isn’t universal, many experts, including White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, say you should get your COVID-19 booster as soon as you’re eligible—which is at least two months after your last vaccine dose or three months after your last SARS-CoV-2 infection. In a recent podcast interview, Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID-19 response coordinator, recommended getting boosted by Halloween to ensure you’re protected for the holidays and the usual winter virus season.

“Get it now. If you’ve been vaccinated or [recently] infected, it’s fine to wait a little longer,” Jha said. “But don’t wait too long. Don’t wait until you get into late November, December. Do it sooner rather than later.”

Jha’s suggested booster timing lines up with the CDC’s advice on flu shots, which is to get vaccinated by the end of October. And he has suggested that people get both shots at once. “I really believe this is why God gave us two arms—one for the flu shot and the other one for the COVID shot,” Jha said during a recent press briefing.

Read More: COVID-19 Is Still Messing Up Our Sleep. Here’s How to Sleep Better

It is safe to get both shots on the same day. Both vaccines can cause side effects—including soreness at the injection site, headache, fever, nausea, fatigue, and muscle aches—so while you may feel crummy if you double up, there’s no medical reason to avoid doing so. “If a person wants to get both at the same time, they can,” says Dr. Alicia Fry, chief of the epidemiology and prevention branch within the CDC’s influenza division. “If that works for that person, that is a very efficient use of their time.”

Dr. Richard Zimmerman, who directs the Pittsburgh Vaccination Research Group and has served on the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, agrees that now is a good time to get a COVID-19 booster, since case counts remain high across the country. (Zimmerman got his Omicron booster in early September.) But in his opinion, September is a little early to get a flu shot.

“The ideal is to time vaccines before the season of whichever infectious disease it is,” he says. “Influenza season typically happens from December to March, so I’m personally holding off on my flu vaccine until October or November.”

A 2021 study found that flu shot efficacy wanes by roughly 10% each month after vaccination—so if someone gets vaccinated against the flu in September, they may be vulnerable to the virus if they’re exposed in February or March. Another study, which was published in 2019 and looked specifically at elderly adults, found that if all seniors who normally get vaccinated against the flu got their shots starting in October, instead of August or September, more than 11,000 cases of influenza among older adults could be avoided in a typical season. The CDC says it’s okay to get vaccinated in November or later, since influenza can circulate until May.

There’s another complicating factor, though. Scientists in the U.S. often look to Australia, which has its flu season during the U.S.’ spring and summer, to predict what’s going to happen in the U.S—and Australia had an unusually early flu season this year. The flu isn’t widely circulating in the U.S. yet, but based on what happened in Australia, it’s possible that will change soon. “This year, I do think there’s some rationale to getting the influenza vaccine early in the fall,” says Dr. Brandon Webb, an infectious disease specialist at Utah’s Intermountain Medical Center.

Clearly, plenty of variables go into gaming out the ideal vaccination schedule. For people at high risk of severe COVID-19 or influenza, it may be worth having a conversation with a health care provider to weigh those specifics—but most people don’t need to stress too much about timing, Zimmerman says. In the end, the best time to get vaccinated is whenever you’ll actually do it. And if getting a flu shot and a COVID-19 booster simultaneously is the only way you’ll get both, a two-shot appointment may be the way to go.

“For some people, it’s hard to get to the doctor or a medical facility. For them, the convenience of having both vaccines at the same time may outweigh the risk of waning [protection],” Zimmerman says. “If you don’t get in because you’re trying to time it perfectly,” you’ll be left with no protection at all.

Write to Jamie Ducharme at [email protected].

Write to Jamie Ducharme at [email protected].

As someone with dog allergies who nevertheless has been around many dogs as a trainer, a fosterer, and an owner, Candice has learned not to trust the promise of a “hypoallergenic” dog. She’s met low-shedding, hypoallergenic poodles and Portuguese water dogs that supposedly shouldn’t trigger her allergies yet very much did. But she has also met fluffy, longhaired breeds such as huskies and spitzes that set off nary a sneeze. “I’ve had more misery with short-haired dogs,” she told me. That includes her own Belgian Malinois, Fiore, with whom her symptoms got so bad that she started allergy shots. Fiore’s equally furry full sister Fernando, though? Totally fine. No reaction!

Candice—whose last name I’m not using for medical-privacy reasons—is not alone in discerning no rhyme or reason to which dogs she’s allergic to. In studies, scientists have found no difference in how much of the dog allergen Can f 1 is present in homes with hypoallergenic versus non-hypoallergenic breeds. One study found no difference in the amount of allergen on the fur of different dogs either. Another actually found more allergen on the fur of hypoallergenic breeds. Hypoallergenic doesn’t seem to mean much at all.

“There’s really, truly no completely, 100 percent hypoallergenic dog. Even hairless dogs can make the allergen,” says John James, a spokesperson for the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. “It’s really a marketing term,” says David Stukus, an allergist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and a member of AAFA’s Medical Scientific Council. When I asked several allergists around the country if perplexed owners ever come in allergic to their expensive, supposedly hypoallergenic dog, their answers were unequivocal: “All the time.” One of the biggest sources of misinformation on this topic is, in fact, a former U.S. president. “When President Obama was in office, they allegedly had a hypoallergenic dog because their daughter had allergies, and that didn’t help matters,” Stukus told me, referring to the Obamas’ first Portuguese water dog, Bo. “Everybody got Portuguese water dogs.”  And—surprise—they can still cause allergies.

Technically, hypoallergenic means that a dog is less likely to cause allergies, not that it never causes allergies, though this distinction is often lost in colloquial use. But even then, there is no such thing as a consistently hypoallergenic breed. That’s because, although breeds that shed less fur or hair are commonly considered hypoallergenic, the fur or hair itself is not what causes allergies. Rather, it is proteins present in the dander, or small flakes of skin, or saliva. All dogs make these proteins, and all dogs have skin and saliva.

It is true, though, that a person might find one dog less allergenic than another. The studies that couldn’t find a clear pattern of lower allergens in hypoallergenic breeds did find differences among individual dogs of the same breed. And a smaller dog is generally going to shed less dander than a big one. On size alone, “it does make sense that a chihuahua is less problematic than a Great Dane,” says Richard Lockey, an allergist at the University of South Florida. Dogs also make a whole suite of proteins that can cause allergies. The best known is Can f 1, although there are seven others. Some people might be more allergic to one of these proteins than another; some dogs might make more of one of these proteins than another. Whether a particular human actually ends up allergic to a particular dog depends on these details—and can’t be predicted from the breed alone. For this reason, doctors recommend that anyone with allergies spend time with a specific dog before taking it home. “I literally say, ‘Have your child hug them, rub their face on them.’ If nothing happens, that’s a good sign,” Stukus said.

People who are allergic can also develop tolerance to a specific dog over time. Candice, for example, eventually developed a tolerance to her German-shepherd mix, Tesla, despite getting all watery-eyed and sneezy at first. In addition, allergy shots, also called immunotherapy, can help people build up tolerance by gradually increasing exposure to an allergen; Candice eventually resorted to them with Fiore. The inverse of this principle explains the Thanksgiving effect, where people who leave for college come home suddenly allergic to their childhood pet after not being exposed for a long time.

Nasal steroid sprays and antihistamines such as Claritin and Allegra, which are available over the counter, can also be used to manage allergies these days. That wasn’t always the case, recalls Lockey, who began practicing medicine in the 1960s. Back then, there weren’t good medications for controlling allergies, and he would just tell patients to keep their pets outdoors. “That just doesn’t go anymore,” he told me. Now few dogs are kept exclusively outdoors, especially in cities. They sleep in our homes and even our beds. As dogs have become physically enmeshed in our lives, dog allergies can no longer be as easily ignored as when the animals lived outside.

The myth of an allergy-free dog persists, though, and Stukus often sees this frustration play out in families with allergic kids. “This is the point that I hear all the time from families: It’s the grandparents,” he told me. Parents might quickly discover that their kids are allergic to “hypoallergenic” dogs. But grandparents, eager for their grandkids to visit, push back because their expensive pet is supposed to be hypoallergenic—“The Obamas had the same dog. It’s fine!”—only for the kids to end up coughing and miserable. He keeps hearing the same lament. “They just don’t understand,” the parents tell him, “that there’s no such thing as a hypoallergenic dog.”

At a press briefing earlier this month, Ashish Jha, the White House’s COVID czar, laid out some pretty lofty expectations for America’s immunity this fall. “Millions” of Americans, he said, would be flocking to pharmacies for the newest version of the COVID vaccine in September and October, at the same appointment where they’d get their yearly flu shot. “It’s actually a good idea,” he told the press. “I really believe this is why God gave us two arms.”

That’s how I got immunized last week at my local CVS: COVID shot on the left, flu shot on the right. I spent the next day or so nursing not one but two achy upper arms. Reaching high shelves was hard; putting on deodorant was worse. And it did make me wonder what would have happened if I’d ignored Jha’s teleological advice and gotten both jabs in the same arm. Maybe my annoyance would have been lessened. Or perhaps the same-side shots would have made the soreness in my left arm way worse. When I posed this puzzle to immunologists, vaccinologists, and pharmacists, I got back a lot of hems and haws. For the millions of Americans who will be getting two-shot appointments by fall’s end, they told me, the choice really does come down to personal preference in the absence of clear data: You’ve just gotta pick a side. Or, you know, two.

On the one hand (sorry), there are the vaccine double-downers. Sallie Permar, a pediatrician at Cornell University, and Stephanie Langel, an immunologist at Duke University, both said they’d probably get both shots in the same shoulder; so would Rishi Goel, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania. “Personally, I’d rather have one arm that’s slightly uncomfortable than both,” Goel told me.

On the other hand, we’ve got Team Divide-and-Conquer. Several experts said they’d follow the White House protocol of splitting shots left and right. Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told me he’d prefer to have two slightly sore arms to one totally dead one. Jacinda Abdul-Mutakabbir, a pharmacist at Loma Linda University, says she generally recommends that her patients get the vaccines on separate sides “for comfort.” Last year, she opted to get the flu shot and a COVID booster within a few inches of each other, and “I wanted to chop my arm off,” she told me. “Never again.”

Read: America’s fall booster plan has a fatal paradox

The deciding logic here should be pretty intuitive, Permar told me. Two shots on one side might be expected to double how sore that arm will get, though the experience of each vaccine recipient will depend on a bevy of factors, including the ingredients in the shots and that person’s infection and vaccination history, as well as their immune-system health. Also, for people like my husband—who’s prone to very heavy vaccine side effects—the choice may not matter at all. He was so knocked out by the fever and chills that came with his COVID-flu-shot combo, he couldn’t have cared less which arms got the shots.

I dug around for studies examining the consequences of the one-versus-two-arm choice and found only one: a Canadian trial from 2003, which vaccinated a few hundred sixth-graders at two dozen middle schools against group C meningitis and hepatitis B at the same time. Roughly half the kids got both shots in the same arm; the others received one on each side. (Some kids in the latter group requested that their shots be administered by a pair of nurses who could plunge both syringes at the same time.) Among students in the same-arm group, 18 percent ended up with tenderness at the injection site that they rated “moderate or severe.” But those kids fared better than the ones in the two-arm group, 28 percent of whom experienced moderate or severe tenderness in at least one arm, and 8 percent of whom had it in both arms at the same time.

But those results apply only to that group of kids in that setting, with those two specific vaccines; there’s no telling whether the same trends would be seen with flu shots and COVID shots when given to children or adults. Michela Locci, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania, told me she suspects that combining flu and COVID inoculations in the same arm could actually drive extra side effects: “The overall inflammation might be higher,” she said.

Many pediatricians, who often have to administer four or five shots to a baby at once, are habitual splitters. “If there’s more than one vaccine syringe to give to a baby, generally, two legs are used,” Permar told me. (Kids usually upgrade to arm shots sometime in toddlerhood—it’s all about finding a muscle that’s big enough for the needle to hit its mark.) Doctors also have a nerdy reason to split shots between arms or legs. “If there’s a local reaction to the vaccine,” Permar said, “you can identify which vaccine it was if you separate them by space.” (For the record, I had a more painful reaction in my left arm, where I got the COVID shot. Others I’ve spoken with have reported the same disparity.)

Read: Families are going rogue with rapid tests

The CDC advocates for separating vaccination shots by at least one inch of space. Per the agency, if a COVID shot is being given at the same time as a vaccine “that might be more likely to cause a local injection site reaction,” the shots should be dosed into “different limbs, if possible.” Two types of flu shots cleared for use in people 65 years and older—the high-dose vaccine and the adjuvanted one—fall into that category. But the different-limb advice doesn’t seem to apply to other flu shots, including those cleared for use in younger adults and kids.

However someone ends up taking simultaneous flu and COVID shots, the placement is unlikely to affect how much protection the vaccines provide. There could be an argument for letting “each side focus on its own thing,” says Gabriel Victora, an immunologist at Rockefeller University. “But it probably doesn’t make a whole lot of difference.” Children routinely get combo vaccines, such as DTaP and MMR, each of which combines multiple disease-fighting ingredients in a single syringe. The triple-threat formulas work just as well as injecting their individual parts. The immune system is used to multitasking: It spends all day being bombarded by microbes, so there’s good reason to believe that with vaccines, too, our body will see simultaneous shots “as independent events,” Goel told me.

Which arm gets picked for which shot, though, will affect where the jab’s contents end up. After a vaccine is injected, its immunity-inducing ingredients meander to the nearest lymph node, such as the ones in the armpits. There, hordes of immune cells fight over the vaccine’s bits, and the fittest and fiercest among them are selected to leave the lymph node and fight. Here, again, doubling up on one arm shouldn’t be an issue, Goel said: The immune-cell boot camps in these lymph nodes have “a good amount of real estate.”

It might even be a good idea to stick the same limb—and thereby, the same lymph node—every time you get another dose of a particular vaccine. After immune cells in a lymph node spot a particular bit of pathogen, some of them march off into battle, but others may hang around like reserve troops, mulling over what they’ve learned. A couple of recent studies, one of them in mice, hint that repeated delivery of the same ingredients to those veteran learners could give the body a slight edge—though the extent of that advantage “might be marginal,” Victora told me. Still, Langel, of Duke, told me jokingly that because she usually gets all of her vaccines in her “non-writing” arm, the lymph node beneath it could now be especially superpowered—a “nice bonus” for her defenses on the whole.

That said, no one should stress too much about getting a shot in the “wrong” arm. “It’s not like you’re immune on the left side and not on the right side,” Goel told me. Immune cells travel throughout the body; there is no midline DMZ. Permar even points out that getting the newly formulated COVID vaccine, which includes new ingredients tailored to fight Omicron subvariants, on the opposite side from the previous rounds could help its ingredients reach a fresher slate of cells. “I think you could convince yourself either way,” she told me. Which, honestly, leaves me totally at peace with my choice. Apart from arm achiness, I had no other side effects—and in a way, I preferred the symmetry of the one-on-each-side injections.

With all that said, it’s worth briefly acknowledging a third option: Splitting the flu and COVID vaccines into separate visits. I was, before my most recent COVID shot, some 10 months out from my previous dose. But it felt awfully early for my flu shot, which might be better timed for peak protection if taken later in the season. Still, the allure of getting it all over with was too tantalizing, especially because I happen to have a lot of travel up ahead. In the grand scheme of things, the bigger, more important choice was opting into the shots at all.

Has COVID-19 become no more dangerous than the flu for most people?

That’s a question that scientists are debating as the country heads into a third pandemic winter. Early in the pandemic, COVID was estimated to be 10 times more lethal than the flu, fueling many people’s fears.

“We have all been questioning, ‘When does COVID look like influenza?”’ says Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. “And, I would say, ‘Yes, we are there.'”

Gandhi and other researchers argue that most people today have enough immunity — gained from vaccination, infection or both — to protect them against getting seriously ill from COVID. And this is especially so since the omicron variant doesn’t appear to make people as sick as earlier strains, Gandhi says.

So unless a more virulent variant emerges, COVID’s menace has diminished considerably for most people, which means that they can go about their daily lives, says Gandhi, “in a way that you used to live with endemic seasonal flu.”

But there’s still plenty of differing views on this topic. While the threat from COVID-19 may be approaching the peril the flu poses, skeptics doubt it’s hit that point yet.

“I’m sorry — I just disagree,” says Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House’s medical adviser, and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “The severity of one compared to the other is really quite stark. And the potential to kill of one versus the other is really quite stark.”

COVID is still killing hundreds of people every day, which means more than 125,000 additional COVID deaths could occur over the next 12 month if deaths continue at that pace, Fauci notes. COVID has already killed more than 1 million Americans and it was the third leading cause of death in 2021.

A bad flu season kills about 50,000 people.

“COVID is a much more serious public health issue than is influenza,” Fauci says, noting this is especially true for older people, the group at the highest risk dying from the disease.

Debating the way deaths are counted

The debate over COVID’s mortality rate hinges on what counts as a COVID death. Gandhi and other researchers argue that the daily death toll attributed to COVID is exaggerated because many deaths blamed on the disease are actually from other causes. Some of the people who died for other reasons happened to also test positive for the coronavirus.

“We are now seeing consistently that more than 70% of our COVID hospitalizations are in that category,” says Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease specialist and professor at Tufts University School of Medicine. “If you’re counting them all as hospitalizations, and then those people die and you count them all as COVID deaths, you are pretty dramatically overcounting.”

If deaths were classified more accurately, than the daily death toll would be closer to the toll the flu takes during a typical season, Doron says. If this is true, the odds of a person dying if they get a COVID infection — what’s called the case fatality rate — would be about the same as the flu now, which is estimated to be around 0.1%, or perhaps even lower.

In a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published Thursday, researchers attempted to filter out other deaths to analyze mortality rates for people hospitalized “primarily for COVID-19.” They find the death rate has dropped significantly in the omicron era, compared to the delta period.

But Fauci argues that it’s difficult to distinguish between deaths that are caused “because of” COVID and those “with” COVID. The disease has been found to put stress on many systems of the body.

“What’s the difference with someone who has mild congestive heart failure, goes into the hospital and gets COVID, and then dies from profound congestive heart failure?” he asks. “Is that with COVID or because of COVID? COVID certainly contributed to it.”

A second reason many experts estimate that COVID’s mortality rate is probably lower than it appears is that many infections aren’t being reported now because of home testing.

The fatality rate is a ratio — the number of deaths over the number of confirmed cases — so if there are more actual cases, that means that the likelihood of an individual dying is lower.

“I believe that we have reached the point where, for an individual, COVID poses less of a risk of hospitalization and death than does influenza,” Doron says.

Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator, agrees, especially because the vaccines and treatments for COVID are better than those for the flu.

“If you are up-to-date on your vaccines today, and you avail yourself of the treatments, your chances of dying COVID are vanishingly rare and certainly much lower than your risk of getting into trouble with the flu,” Jha told NPR.

Risk remains high for the elderly and frail

But Jha stresses that omicron is so contagious and is infecting so many people that it overall “on a population level poses a much greater threat to the American population than flu does,” and it can still cause a greater number of total deaths.

And, mortality rates for any disease vary by age and other demographic factors. Importantly, COVID remains much more lethal for older and medically frail people than younger people. Recent data from the CDC shows that compared to 18- to 29-year-olds, people aged 65 to 74 have 60 times the risk of dying; those aged 75 to 84 have 140 times the risk; and those 85 and older have 330 times greater risk.

The danger is especially high for those not vaccinated, boosted and treated properly. And with COVID still spreading widely, they remain vulnerable to exposure from social contact.

While younger, otherwise healthy people can sometimes get very sick and even die from COVID, that’s gotten rare.

“I think it’s really important people have an accurate sense of the reality in order to go about their lives,” says Dr. Jake Scott, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University. “If their risk assessments are being driven by or influenced by these overestimated hospitalization and death rates, I think that’s problematic.”

Waiting to see if the pattern in confirmed

Other researchers still argue that COVID remains far riskier than the flu.

“However you slice it, there was never an instance where COVID-19 was milder than the flu,” says Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly of Washington University in St. Louis, who has done research comparing COVID to the flu.

“We’ve never, ever in the history of the pandemic, in all our studies from the beginning until now, have found that COVID-19 is equally risky to the flu,” Al-Aly says. “It’s always carried a higher risk.”

Some experts are waiting for more data showing a clear trend in reduced mortality rates.

“I’ll probably feel more comfortable saying something like, ‘Oh COVID is similar to the flu’ when we actually see a pattern that resembles that,” says Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in the division of health policy and public health. “We’re sort of just starting to see that, and I haven’t really seen that in a sustained way.”

Many also point out that COVID can increase the risk of experiencing long-term health problems, such as long COVID.

“Even people with mild to moderate symptoms from COVID can end up with long COVID,” Fauci says. “That doesn’t happen with influenza. It’s a totally different ball game.”

But Gandhi also questions that. Much of the estimated risk for long COVID comes from people who got seriously ill at the start of the pandemic, she says. And if you account for that, the risk of long-term health problems may not be greater from COVID than from other viral infections like the flu, she says.

“It was really severe COVID that led to long COVID. And as the disease has become milder, we’re seeing lower rates of long COVID,” Gandhi says.

In fact, some experts even fear that this year’s flu season could be more severe than this winter’s COVID surge. After very mild or even non-existent flu seasons during the pandemic, the flu hit Australia hard this year. And what happens in the Southern hemisphere often predicts what happens in North America.

“If we have a serious influenza season, and if the omicron variants continue to cause principally mild disease, this coming winter could be a much worse flu season than COVID,” says Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease researcher at Vanderbilt University.

ex-Propeller Health CEO to advise Aevice Health’s board

Singapore-based medtech company Aevice Health has appointed David Van Sickle, former CEO of mobile respiratory health firm Propeller Health, as its strategic board advisor.

According to a media release, Van Sickle, who has over 15 years of experience in digital health, will assist Aevice Health’s team in developing a US commercialisation strategy. He will also support the company’s efforts in building clinical evidence for its remote monitoring solutions.

“David’s experience and expertise will be instrumental in helping Aevice Health excel in the US market and beyond. He brought Propeller Health to the global stage and revolutionised the way asthma and COPD are managed. I look forward to his guidance and believe he will serve as a similar catalyst to the growth of Aevice Health,” said CEO Adrian Ang.

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Surgical robot maker Brain Navi to enter Middle East, Egypt markets

Taiwanese surgical robot maker Brain Navi is set to enter the GCC region and Egypt through its latest distribution partnership with Medtreq Medical Equipment.

The deal involves the distribution of its NaoTrac surgical navigation robot, which combines machine vision and a proprietary algorithm to perform robot-assisted surgery, streamlining surgical procedures with real-time imaging and minimal invasive outcomes.

Aside from the Middle East and Egypt, the companies will also market the NaoTrac robots in Jordan, as well as in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, through Medtreq’s Philippine branch.

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Olympus introduces third-gen Visera Elite surgical visualisation platform

Olympus Corp., a Japanese optical and digital precision technology manufacturer, has unveiled its latest surgical visualisation platform for endoscopic procedures across multiple medical disciplines.

The Visera Elite III offers multiple observation modes, integrating 3D and infrared imaging functions from its predecessor Visera Elite II and a 4K imaging function from VISERA 4K UHD system.

It comes with a focus adjust mode during 4K surgical observation and an EDOF (Extended Depth of Field) function that allows precise endoscopic observations through continuous broad focus and seamless magnification. It also provides C-AF (Continuous Auto Focus) capability that automatically adjusts the focus in accordance with the movement of the camera head and endoscope. It also supports fluorescence-guided surgery and Narrow Band Imaging, a unique observation mode developed by Olympus for examining features such as small blood vessels in the mucosa and surface patterns. 

Moreover, this latest system allows users to set up customised departmental profiles for different medical disciplines.

Olympus now allows software upgrades to Visera Elite III to add new surgical imaging functions, making it no longer necessary to replace an entire surgical visualisation system to access the latest technology. 

Visera Elite III will become available across Europe, EMEA, parts of Asia, Oceania, and Japan from September this year.

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Andhra Pradesh’s NATCO Cancer Center adopts Dozee’s RPM solution

The NATCO Cancer Center, the flagship cancer hospital of the state of Andhra Pradesh in India, has started installing a contactless remote patient monitoring solution from Dozee.

The connected bed platform uses AI to track vital parameters such as heart rate, respiration rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, ECG, and temperature. It also has an early warning system that helps staff identify signs of patient deterioration. 

In adopting the solution, Dr Durgaprasad, professor and head of Radiation Oncology at NATCO Guntur, said: “Cancer patients need constant vital monitoring, timely critical care, and at the same time are highly prone to associated infections. By adopting Dozee’s contactless patient monitoring [solution], nurses and doctors can prioritise critical patients as a result of the timely alerts.”

The remote patient monitoring solution is being provided through Dozee’s MillionICU initiative, which seeks to convert one million hospital ward beds into smart connected beds.