COVID-19 no longer a top cause of US death as stroke, injuries rise

 COVID-19 is no longer a top cause of death for Americans, dropping from fourth place in 2022 to 10th place last year.

The disease was listed on 49,928 death certificates in 2023 — down from 186,552 in 2022 and a peak of 416,893 in 2021.

Just over 3 million fatalities were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics last year, with heart disease and cancer once again leading the way. The rate of fatal heart disease increased 0.4% from 2019 to 2023, with 680,909 deaths logged last year.

Dr. David Majure, medical director of the heart transplant program at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, said heart disease needs to be taken more seriously.

“Cardiovascular disease is a slow killer that over time leads to premature death,” Majure told The Post. “Meaningfully impacting the toll of cardiovascular disease requires more than solutions in the clinic or hospital.”

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A resident funeral director at an NYC funeral home moves a deceased person in April 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic gets underway. The virus is no longer a top cause of death for Americans, dropping from fourth place in 2022 to 10th place in 2023.REUTERS

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Heart disease, cancer and “unintentional injuries” such as drug overdoses are the main reasons for the 3 million US fatalities last year.Getty Images

He said the focus should be on improving diets, exercising and preventing diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

After heart disease and cancer, the third most common cause of death is “unintentional injuries.” The rate for this collection of preventable deaths spiked 26.3% from 2019 to 2023, fueled by a significant increase in fatal drug overdoses.

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These are the leading causes of death for Americans in 2023.National Center for Health Statistics

The CDC recently reported an estimated 107,543 US drug overdose deaths in 2023 — a slight dip from 2022 but the third consecutive year this number has topped 100,000.

“The US is facing an unprecedented epidemic of opioid use and related deaths,” Dr. Aimee Chiligiris, a clinical psychologist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, told The Post.

“A current driver of substance-related overdose deaths is fentanyl,” she continued. “Fentanyl has increasingly been laced with substances, and places individuals at a much higher risk of lethality.”

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Here’s a look at how the top causes of US deaths have changed over the past five years.National Center for Health Statistics

Fentanyl, which is up to 50 times more potent than heroin, emerged as crisis in the country about a decade ago.

The synthetic opioid is being smuggled across the border by Mexican cartels who produce it from chemicals obtained from China. China recently agreed to enact stricter controls on these chemicals.

Fentanyl has infiltrated just about every aspect of the illicit drug market — it was responsible for an estimated 75,000 US deaths last year.

Meanwhile, stroke has replaced COVID-19 as the fourth leading cause of death, with 162,639 deaths reported. That’s a slight drop from 2022 but an increase from 2020 and 2019.

Also concerning researchers is the rate of deaths from chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, which rose 15.3% from 2019 to 2023, owing to excessive drinking during the pandemic.

The 2023 data is preliminary, with final numbers expected later in the year.

https://nypost.com/2024/08/08/lifestyle/covid-19-no-longer-a-top-cause-of-us-death-2023-data-shows/

Planned Florida electric bus center poses new challenges, including potential EV fires

 A lieutenant from a South Florida fire department says they are preparing for the opening of a planned transit operations center that will house 100 60-foot articulated battery-electric-buses, which poses a variety of new challenges. 

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue (MDFR) Lt. Mike Adams says the EV industry is changing so rapidly and is so new that departments are trying to keep up. The South Dade Transit Operations Center is set to house Miami-Dade County’s Metrobus fleet as early as next summer, with project completion slated for summer 2026. 

Adams said he and his team are as "equipped as we can be" for electric vehicle (EV) fires, which are more difficult to handle than standard car fires.

"They burn a lot hotter, a lot faster, and they take a lot more water to put out," Adams told FOX Business over the phone about EV fires, adding that a typical car fire takes about 300 to 400 gallons to put out, whereas an electric vehicle fire could take 10 times as much.

Six Tesla electric cars burn on a trailer in Istanbul, Turkey, on Oct. 6, 2023. (Muhammed Gencebay Gur/Anadolu Agency via / Getty Images)

MDFR firefighters are "constantly" getting new training and industry standards because there is no "silver bullet" to putting EV fires out. Along with taking more water, Adams said EV fires also take more time and labor to extinguish, which means greater cost. Most EV fires are just doused with water until they burn out on their own, he said. 

Adams said he is involved in state-level EV testing in an attempt to get some sort of standard operating procedure or policy for fire departments. 

While the EV fire trend is picking up, according to Adams they are still rare. 

In terms of the transit center, which Adams said is still in the design and engineering phase, many people are involved due to the lack of building codes specific for EV housing structures.

"An EV vehicle is a lot heavier than a regular car," Adams said. "You have to reinforce the building for structural, especially if it's goinna be like a parking garage where there's multiple floors. So you gotta re-engineer the building to handle the extra load, then you gotta re-engineer the electrical to handle the charging requirements for them, and then you have to do the same thing for automatic sprinklers and suppression systems on the fire side."

Several burnt-out Tesla Model Y electric vehicles sit in a parking lot in Frankfurt, Germany, on Sept. 14, 2023. (Alex Kraus/Bloomberg via / Getty Images)

When it comes to buses, Adams said the bigger the vehicle, the bigger the battery. Diagrams of the buses he has seen show the batteries on the roof, which creates height and access problems. 

Just last month, a driver crashed his Tesla in Texas before it caught fire. Video released by the Colony Police Department showed officers breaking a window to rescue the driver. 

Officers attempted to put the flames out, according to KLTV, but it kept reigniting. 

In June, what appears to be a newer Tesla Model 3 burned for two hours and took 45,000 gallons of water until it was put out, Panama City Beach Fire Rescue said on Facebook.

"The protective casing around the batteries suffered major damage causing thermal runaway," the post reads. Thermal runaway is "a chain reaction within a battery cell that can be very difficult to stop once it has started," Dragonfly Energy states.

Adams said every carmaker is now in the EV business, and those choosing to hit the roads in them need to be aware of potential risks.

"Consumers have to be aware of their vehicles," he said. "They have to look for telltale signs of a failure. They have to use the right charging cords or charging stations. They have to watch out for damage, like running things over on the road. They have to be more aware that there is potential danger."

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/planned-florida-electric-bus-center-poses-new-challenges-including-potential-ev-fires

Huge Revisions Leave Traders Questioning Biden Admin's Energy Data

 Just over a year ago, we commented on the "massive" revisions that the statistical arm of Biden administration's Department of Energy - the Energy Information Administration (EIA)...

The Biden admin will not stop fabricating data and draining the SPR to push the price of oil lower https://t.co/mxYq4hyCnY

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 30, 2023

Adding to those who questioned the 'fabrication' that:

When is the last time demand estimates were revised lower

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 30, 2023

Zoom forward a year and the 'revisions' across multiple (government-supplied) macro data items are now well known and widespread... and statistically noteworthy that the revisions tend to be negative (implying the initial data was 'optimistic')...

Payrolls (7 of the last 10 months have seen downward revisions)...

Consumer Confidence (9 of the last 12 months have seen confidence revised lower)...

The situation has become so widespread that even the mainstream media is forced to admit that there is something odd going on.

Specifically, circling back to our initial thoughts, Reuters reports this morning that a string of dramatic revisions to official U.S. oil consumption data have unnerved market participants who rely on the figures to trade.

The EIA published a monthly update last week that showed U.S. oil consumption at a seasonal record in May as motorists burnt more gasoline than even before the pandemic.

That data conflicted with weekly updates published that month showing oil and fuel demand struggling to even match last year's levels.

The EIA says the weekly figures for May were off because preliminary readings overestimated gasoline output and undercounted exports. The agency does not expect weekly estimates to be as accurate as monthly data, but to be consistent in showing general trends.

Of course it just happens that the initially 'weak' demand figures helped lower crude and gasoline prices at a time when inflation was rearing its ugly head once again and Bidenomics was hitting the wall. And as is the case with payrolls revisions (or consumer confidence), traders reactions to the revisions are dramatically less sensitive than they are to the original prints.

However, as Reuters reports, these discrepancies (we are being polite) are starting to make market participants question the version of reality they are being sold.

"It makes you wonder why anyone is paying attention to the weekly numbers," said Tom Kloza, head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service (OPIS). Many fuel marketers have expressed disbelief over the revisions the EIA made to its numbers in May, he added.

A trader at one of the largest commodities distribution firms said the revisions left them befuddled, and warned such changes could ultimately hurt consumers as decisions on how much fuel to import are influenced by the EIA data.

"It's a trend that's a little concerning to me," GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan says.

"The EIA has been the bedrock for analysts, but skeptics may be gaining more validity to arguments that the EIA numbers aren't jiving to the real world."

Since when did the 'real world' have anything to do with macro data during an election year?

https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/numbers-arent-jiving-real-world-huge-revisions-leave-traders-questioning-biden-admins-energy

Lilly faces phase 2 failure of tau-targeting Alzheimer's med

 The confetti is still flying from Eli Lilly’s party celebrating the approval of Alzheimer’s disease therapy donanemab, but the company is yet again facing the harsh reality of the neurodegenerative disease with the failure of an early tau-targeting med.

Lilly Chief Scientific Officer and President, Lilly Research Laboratories Daniel Skovronsky, M.D., Ph.D., said the O-GlcNAcase Inhibitor called LY3372689 failed on the primary endpoint of a phase 2 clinical trial recently. The therapy, which targets the OGA enzyme, did not spur a change in baseline to endpoint time in a rating scale of Alzheimer’s severity in either dose tested.

“While this negative outcome was disappointing, we remain committed to tap as a high conviction target in Alzheimer's disease and plan to continue studying tau biology,” Skovronsky said, speaking on a second-quarter earnings call Thursday. 

The executive said the company is currently reviewing the data for presentation at an upcoming medical conference.

LY3372689 was a key part of Lilly’s next wave of Alzheimer’s efforts. After getting donanemab approved in July, to be marketed as Kisunla, the company was hoping that tau would be the next front in the fight against the memory-robbing disease.

Behind Kisunla, Lilly has remternetug in phase 3 development, which targets amyloid plaques in the brain. Positive allosteric modulator mevidalen is in phase 2 testing. The company also has two undisclosed neurodegeneration medicines in phase 1.

Lilly also trimmed around the edges of other programs after getting some early data on a few candidates.

They include LOXO-783, a highly mutant-selective, brain-penetrant, allosteric small molecule PI3Kα H1047R inhibitor that was acquired as part of the acquisition of Loxo Oncology. The drug was being investigated in a phase 1 study in patients with PIK3CA H1047R-mutant advanced breast cancer and other solid tumors.

Lilly had taken LOXO-783 into the clinic on the basis of preclinical data showing activity without on-target wild-type PI3Kα mediated toxicity.

“We evaluated the ongoing clinical data for the program and compared the molecule to next-generation candidates that we have progressed from our discovery efforts,” Skovronsky said on the call. “We believe our next molecules have greater potential benefits to patients.”

Also on the discard pile is an unnamed NRG4 agonist. Neuregulin 4 acts locally on brown and white adipose tissue and works to protect against obesity-related inflammatory and hypoxic events.

The Big Pharma had halted work on the asset as “the profile is insufficient for further clinical development,” Skovronsky explained.

 
A GITR antagonist has also been removed from the phase 1 immunology pipeline “due to insufficient efficacy,” Skovronsky said. At the time of publication, Lilly had not confirmed to Fierce whether this was LY3461767, a GITR antagonist that was being evaluated in a phase 1 trial of the drug in patients with chronic heart failure with reduced ejection fraction.

Acadamic researchers have named glucocorticoid-induced tumor necrosis factor receptor (GITR), a co-stimulatory immune checkpoint protein, as playing a pivotal in cardiovascular disease. It’s also been suggested as a potential target to enhance immunotherapy, in particular immune checkpoint inhibitors.

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/still-feting-donanemab-approval-lilly-faces-phase-2-failure-tau-targeting-med

Health Care Giant McKesson Dives Amid Big Revenue Miss

McKesson (MCK), the drug and health supplies distribution giant, badly missed sales estimates for the June fiscal first quarter late Wednesday. Its earnings topped views, with the help of stock buybacks. MCK stock took a beating in early Thursday stock market action.

However, McKesson rivals Cencora (COR) and Cardinal Health (CAH) largely sidestepped any selling pressure. That suggests McKesson's issues are specific to its business, rather than surfacing a wider problem for the health care sector.

McKesson cited a number of factors for the weaker-than-expected revenue, including a key customer's "shift from brand to biosimilar" for Humira, used to treat arthritis. The company also cited "significant less demand" for Covid test kits and related products. Additionally, McKesson noted a slow pace of product launches in the quarter.

https://www.investors.com/news/mckesson-earnings-beat-sales-miss-mck-stock/