22 Aug 2024

FDA authorizes first over-the-counter syphilis test to use at home

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Morayo Ogunbayo | (TNS) The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Worried you might have syphilis but are afraid to go to a clinic? Now you can get tested at home.

The Food and Drug Administration has authorized the first over-the counter antibody test for detecting syphilis in human blood. The move is an effort to stall the recent increase in cases within the United States.

This new test will be available without a prescription and inform the user of their status within 15 minutes, according to the FDA. The test is just an indicator of syphilis antibodies, however. Anyone who tests positive should see their doctor.

Between 2018 and 2022, the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported an 80% increase in syphilis cases within the U.S., moving from 115,000 cases to more than 207,000, a development that had been part of a decades-long trend.

Syphilis, if left untreated, can cause heart damage, brain damage, deafness, blindness and paralysis. If the transmission happens during pregnancy, it can cause a miscarriage, or lifelong or terminal health issues for infants.

“Access to home tests may help increase initial screening for syphilis, including in individuals who may be reluctant to see their health care provider about possible sexually transmitted infection exposure,” Michelle Tarver, M.D., Ph.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a statement. “This can lead to increased lab testing to confirm diagnosis, which can result in increased treatment and reduction in the spread of infection.”

Today, medical professionals are well-versed in treating syphilis, and typically a penicillin-based treatment is all it takes to recover from this sexually transmitted illness. With increased access to over-the-counter test kits, the hope is fewer Americans will unknowingly spread this disease.

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©2024 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Visit at ajc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

22 Aug 2024

Other voices: Criminal meddling in U.S. elections and protests

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Back in 2016, it was the Russians who interfered with the U.S. presidential election, stealing emails and computer files from the Democrats and giving them to WikiLeaks to publish, seeking to embarrass the party and damage nominee Hillary Clinton.

The culprit was the FSB, the Kremlin’s successor to the KGB, the old Cold War spy agency where Vladimir Putin rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel before he entered politics. Several Russians were prosecuted for this abject violation of American sovereignty.

This time, it is America’s adversaries in Tehran who are meddling in our democratic process. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency jointly conclude that agents of Iran have successfully stolen emails and computer files from the Donald Trump campaign. Most likely they got access through GOP operative Roger Stone, who was pardoned by Trump in the waning weeks of his presidency.

The feds also believe that the Iranians tried to hack into the Democrats’ campaign, but seem to have been unsuccessful. At least they were bipartisan.

However, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines did go public last month that Iran was successfully manipulating the protests over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, saying: “We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”

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So Iran arms and funds Hamas (and Hezbollah and the Houthis) and then helps whip up street protests in America’s streets and campuses to support their cause.

Americans have plenty of opinions on presidential politics and the war in Gaza and it shouldn’t be the mullahs pulling strings to achieve their aims. It is a federal crime and a very hostile act by a hostile government.

They are not lobbing missiles and setting off bombs like their proxies are doing against Israel, but it is still a premeditated and pernicious attack against this country.

The Trump campaign was properly candid in declaring that it had been victimized by the Iranians, who may be trying to defeat the former president, who promised to get tough with Tehran, or they may just be trying to sow discord and cause division in this country without taking sides in the election.

However, their motives with bolstering the Gaza protests are much clearer. Iran supports Hamas and opposes Israel. Having Americans marching and rallying in agreement serves their needs perfectly. We assume most protesters are not willing dupes of Iran’s foreign policy and they should object to being used.

The Iranians, like the Russians, are trying to use our strengths of free speech and free assembly and free elections against us for their own purposes — purposes at odds with U.S. national interests.

Terrorists like Hamas look for soft targets to attack, like a music festival for young people. The mullahs see our open society as likewise a soft target. But they are wrong. It is very hard, the foundation that we have built for almost 250 years in this experiment in self government. Iran can’t defeat that unless we let them.

— The New York Daily News

22 Aug 2024

Nir Kaissar: Harris’ price controls are a solution in search of a problem

by | posted in: Politics | 0

Vice President Kamala Harris proposed price controls on groceries last Friday to stop food companies from “gouging” American consumers. It’s a terrible idea from the Democratic presidential nominee, as many have already pointed out, because price controls lead to shortages and other bad outcomes. It’s also doubtful Harris could push such a policy through Congress.

But before debating the merits, there’s a question about whether food companies are in fact gouging people. There’s been talk about price gouging ever since inflation spiked in 2021, so in early 2022, I looked at the financial results of companies in the S&P 500 Index to see if they were exploiting consumers or merely passing on their own higher costs. It looked to me at the time that they were raising prices to beef up profits.

For example, the S&P 500’s operating margin — that is, the percentage of revenue companies keep after deducting operating expenses such as materials, wages, rent and utilities — was meaningfully higher in 2021 than before the COVID pandemic, and Wall Street analysts expected it to remain that high. The same was true for the S&P 500 Equal Weight Index, which suggested that most companies were exploiting a post-pandemic surge in consumer demand by hiking prices faster than their own costs were rising.

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After hearing Harris’s plan, I decided to take another look and am now compelled to the opposite conclusion. Operating margins have declined since 2022. The S&P 500’s margin is back down to where it was before the pandemic, and that of the equal weight index is even lower, all of which suggests that most companies have not raised prices enough to fully absorb their own higher costs.

Financial results for the consumer staples sector, which is where food and beverage companies reside, tell a similar story. The sector’s operating margin climbed to 10% in 2021 from 8% in 2019, but it is now down to 7%. Here, too, it appears that companies have absorbed more inflation than they’ve passed on to consumers.

I suspect what happened was that companies raised prices in 2021 in anticipation of higher operating costs, but that those higher expenses didn’t show up until 2022 or later. The mismatch caused margins to inflate on higher revenue in 2021 and deflate when higher operating expenses hit financial statements in subsequent years, leaving companies on the whole no better off than before the pandemic and perhaps slightly worse off.

There’s a related question about whether mega-companies have used their size to raise prices more than smaller ones. I see no indication of that in the numbers. The big three in the staples sector — Walmart Inc., Procter & Gamble Co. and Costco Wholesale Corp. — have maintained their pre-pandemic margins, as have more than half of companies in the sector. It’s not clear, in other words, that the biggest companies have wielded more pricing power since the pandemic.

The answer is roughly the same when isolating the food products industry within the staples sector. There’s more parity among food companies than in the broader sector. The industry’s standout is Oreo-maker Mondelez International Inc., whose market value is twice that of Kraft Heinz Co., the second most-valuable company. Even so, among food companies that have managed to expand margins since the pandemic, Mondelez’s margin growth is the weakest.

For the food products industry overall, margins are only modestly higher than before the pandemic, so like the broader S&P 500, it appears companies mostly attempted to pass on their own higher costs to consumers.

To be clear, businesses have a right — but not a duty — to charge as much as the market will bear for their goods and services. Indeed, free markets depend on that right. The fact that margins have stabilized since the pandemic is a sign that markets are working as they should to match supply with demand even during a very chaotic time. (It’s true, as the Harris campaign intimates, that the S&P 500’s operating margin rose by 50% from the early 1990s through the late 2010s. That’s a discussion for another day, but I’ll note that margin expansion does not necessarily lead to higher prices as that period coincided with some of the lowest inflation on record.)

At the same time, limited government intervention is appropriate if companies exploit a crisis that disrupts the normal operation of markets and the economy, as the pandemic did for a time.

But the U.S. is no longer in crisis, and Harris did not offer enough details about how she would handle price gouging now or in such an emergency. She would do better to abandon the idea because, at least for now, price controls seem to be a solution in search of a problem.

Nir Kaissar is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering markets. He is the founder of Unison Advisors, an asset management firm.

22 Aug 2024

Supreme Court rejects GOP push to block 41K Arizona voters, but partly OKs proof of citizenship law

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By LINDSAY WHITEHURST and JACQUES BILLEAUD

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a Republican push that could have blocked more than 41,000 Arizona voters from casting ballots for president in the state that Democratic President Joe Biden won by less than 11,000 votes four years ago.

But in a 5-4 order, the high court allowed some enforcement of regulations barring people from voting if they don’t provide proof of citizenship when they register.

The justices acted on an emergency appeal filed by state and national Republicans that sought to give full effect to voting measures enacted in 2022 following Biden’s narrow win over Republican Donald Trump.

The court did not detail its reasoning in a brief order. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch would have allowed the law to be fully enforced, while Justice Amy Coney Barrett would have joined with the court’s three liberals in fully rejecting the push, the order states.

The legal fight will continue in lower courts.

National and state Republicans had asked the Supreme Court to get involved in a legal fight over voter registration restrictions that Republicans enacted in Arizona in 2022 following Biden’s thin victory in the state in 2020.

The court’s action came after a lower court had blocked a requirement that called for state voter registration forms to be rejected if they are not accompanied by documents proving U.S. citizenship. A second measure, also not in effect, would have prohibited voting in presidential elections or by mail if registrants don’t prove they are U.S. citizens. Federal law requires voters to swear they are U.S. citizens under penalty of perjury but does not require proof of citizenship either to vote in federal elections in person or cast ballots by mail.

An appellate panel of three Trump appointees initially blocked the lower court ruling in part and allowed enforcement of a provision dealing with state voter registration forms. But another appellate panel voted 2-1 to keep both provisions on hold, with two Bill Clinton appointees allowing the voter registrations to go forward over the dissent of a Trump appointee.

The measures were passed on party-line votes and signed into law by then-Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, amid a wave of proposals that Republicans introduced around the country after Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump, including in Arizona.

For state and local elections, voters must provide proof of citizenship when they register or have it on file with the state. Since that isn’t a requirement for federal elections for Congress or president, tens of thousands of voters who haven’t provided proof of citizenship are registered only for federal elections.

There were 41,352 of those voters registered as of August 9 in Arizona, Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said.

Fontes warned in a court filing that an order in favor of the state and national Republicans this close to the November election “will create chaos and confusion.”

The voters most affected would include military service members, students and Native Americans, Fontes said. About 27% of those voters are registered Democrats and 15% are Republicans. More than half, 54%, are registered independents, according to state data.

Voting rights groups and the Biden administration had sued over the Arizona laws.

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach led Republican attorneys general in 24 states in supporting the restrictions, saying the “case threatens to continue chipping away Arizona’s authority to secure its own elections.”

Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma, who along with Senate President Warren Petersen had asked the court to take up the issue, said in a statement that the order was “a step in the right direction to require proof of citizenship in all our elections.” Toma and Peterson are both Republicans.

Federal-only voters have been a subject of political wrangling since the Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that Arizona cannot require documentary proof of citizenship for people to vote in national elections. The state responded by creating two classes of voters: those who can vote in all races and those who can vote only in federal elections.

One of the new laws sought to further divide voters, allowing votes in congressional elections without proof of citizenship, but denying the vote in presidential contests.

The 2022 law has drawn fierce opposition from voting rights advocates, who described the statute as an attempt to get the issue back in front of the now more conservative Supreme Court.

Proponents say the measure is about eliminating opportunities for fraud. There is no evidence that the existence of federal-only voters has allowed noncitizens to illegally vote, but Republican skeptics have nonetheless worked aggressively to crack down on federal-only voting.

The Legislature’s own lawyers had said much of the measure was unconstitutional, directly contradicted the earlier Supreme Court decision and was likely to be thrown out in court.

___

Billeaud reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writer Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this story.