Ask the Pediatrician: Tips for Fourth of July fireworks safety

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S. Nichole Holzhauer-Feeney, MD, FAAP | (TNS) American Academy of Pediatrics

On any other day of the year, would you hand your child matches or a flaming candle to play with? Probably, a hard no.

You work so hard all year long to keep your child safe. Don’t let the Fourth of July mess with your common sense.

Lighting fireworks in the backyard or nearby field might seem like a festive way to entertain the kids. However, thousands of people, most of them children, teens and young adults, are injured each year while using fireworks. Most of these injuries happen in the month around the Fourth of July.

Help keep the holiday fun and safe by leaving any fireworks to trained professionals.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) received reports of eight deaths and about 9,700 injuries that involved fireworks in 2023. Teens between the ages of 15 and 19 had the highest rate of injuries treated in emergency departments, and children ages 5 to 9 years old had the second highest rate.

About 66% of these fireworks-related injuries took place between June 16 and July 16. Among parts of the body most often burned or wounded were hands and fingers (35%); head, face and ears (22%); and eyes (19%).

A safer way to celebrate on the Fourth is to view fireworks from a safe distance. Professional fireworks shows are going to be more spectacular, and safer, than backyard fireworks. Enjoy them at a safe distance, at least 500 feet away from the fireworks launch site. This will help avoid injuries and protect your child’s hearing.

Fireworks and firecrackers can be as loud as 150 decibels — a lot louder than what’s considered a safe listening level (75–80 decibels). At close distance, even one loud burst is enough to cause some permanent hearing damage.

Also keep in mind that if you find any unexploded or “dud” fireworks that fell to the ground, they may still go off. Keep your distance and call your local fire or police department right away.

If public fireworks displays are canceled in your area because of dry conditions and the risk of wildfires, consider viewing a laser or drone light show that a growing number of communities offer instead. Many cities and other areas also have dangerous air quality levels due to wildfires. Make sure to check your local regulations about safe outdoor activities and events.

Wave a flag (or glow stick) instead of a sparkler. Sparklers may seem relatively harmless, as fireworks go. But according to the CPSC, nearly half of fireworks injuries to children under age 5 are related to sparklers. Surprised? Consider this:

Sparklers burn at an extremely high heat: 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit—hot enough to melt some metals.
Sparks can ignite clothing on fire and cause eye injuries.
Touching a lit sparkler to skin can result in third-degree burns.

There were about 700 emergency department-treated injuries associated with sparklers in 2023. Roughly 800 injuries were related to firecrackers.

Remember that even if fireworks are legal to purchase and use in your community, they are not safe around children. Talk with your pediatrician if you have any questions about safely enjoying fireworks displays.

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About Dr. Feeney

S. Nichole Holzhauer-Feeney, MD, FAAP, is a board certified pediatrician and emergency physician at Grand River Hospital in Rifle, CO. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and its Colorado chapter, and serves as a state immunization representative. She also serves on the Colorado State Emergency Medical and Trauma Services Advisory Council.

©2024 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Battleground Wisconsin: Voters feel nickel-and-dimed by health care costs

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Angela Hart | (TNS) KFF Health News

BIRNAMWOOD, Wis. — The land of fried cheese curds and the Green Bay Packers is among a half-dozen battleground states that could determine the outcome of the expected November rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump — a contest in which the cost and availability of health care are emerging as defining issues.

At church picnics and summertime polka festivals that draw voters of all political stripes, Wisconsinites said they’re struggling to pay for even the most basic health care, from common blood tests to insulin prescriptions. A proposal by Wisconsin’s Democratic governor to expand the state’s Medicaid program to thousands of low-income residents has become a partisan lightning rod in the affordability debate: Democrats want it; Republicans don’t.

In 2020, voters here gave Biden, a Democrat, a narrow win after favoring Trump, a Republican, in 2016. Recent polling indicates that the two rivals were neck and neck in this year’s race.

Many Wisconsin voters still can’t figure out whom to vote for — or whether to vote at all.

“I know he’s trying to improve health care and inflation, but I’m not happy with Biden,” said Bob Prelipp, 79, a Republican who lives in Birnamwood, a village of about 700 people in rural central Wisconsin. He reluctantly voted for Biden in 2020, after voting for Trump in 2016.

Prelipp was serving beer at the Birnamwood Polka Days festival on a muggy June day. Pro-Trump hats peppered the crowd, and against the backdrop of cheerful polka tunes, peppy dancing, and the sweet smell of freshly cut hay, candidates for local and state office mingled with voters.

This rural part of the state is ruby red. Trump flags fly over the landscape and businesses proudly display pro-Trump paraphernalia. Biden supporters are more visible and vocal in the Wisconsin population centers of Madison, the capital, and Milwaukee.

Biden “needs to get prices down. Everything is getting so unaffordable, even health care,” said Prelipp, a Vietnam War veteran who said his federal health care for veterans has improved markedly under Biden, including wait times for appointments. Yet he said he can’t stomach the idea of voting for him again, or for Trump, who has disparaged military veterans.

Prelipp said people are feeling nickel-and-dimed, not only at the grocery store and gas pump, but also at doctors’ offices and hospitals.

Greg Laabs, a musician in one of the polka bands at Birnamwood, displayed a pro-Trump sticker on his tuba. He said he likes his federal Medicare health coverage but worries that if Biden is reelected Democrats will provide publicly subsidized health care to immigrants lacking legal residency.

“There are thousands of people coming across the border,” said Laabs, 71. He noted that both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris endorsed providing public health care to immigrants without legal residency as presidential candidates in 2019, a position that Harris’ home state of California has enthusiastically embraced. “We cannot support the whole world,” Laabs said.

The two main political parties will pick presidential nominees at their national conventions, and Biden and Trump are widely expected to be their choices. Republicans will gather in Milwaukee in July. Democrats will convene in Chicago in August.

Biden is trying to make health care a key issue ahead of the Nov. 5 election, arguing that he has slashed the cost of some prescription medications, lowered health insurance premiums, and helped get more Americans covered under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. He has also been a strong supporter of reproductive rights and access to abortion, particularly since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade two years ago.

“The choice is clear: President Biden will protect our health care,” claims one of Biden’s campaign commercials.

Trump has said he wants to repeal Obamacare, despite multiple failed Republican attempts to do so over several years. “The cost of Obamacare is out of control,” Trump wrote last year. “I’m seriously looking at alternatives.”

Even Democrats who back Biden say the president must make it easier and cheaper to get medical care.

“I signed up for one of the Obamacare plans and got my cholesterol and blood sugar tested and it was like $500,” said Mary Vils, 63, a Democrat who lives in Portage County in central Wisconsin.

Beth Gehred, a Democrat who lives in Ashland County in northern Wisconsin, says rural communities need better access to health care, and she believes President Joe Biden is working on it. However, she says she is more worried about the state of democracy in the United States. “I know a lot of people on the fence right now between Trump and Biden,” she says. “People need to vote.” (Angela Hart/KFF Health News/TNS)

She strongly supports Biden but said people are feeling squeezed. “We’re fortunate because we had some savings, but that’s a lot of money out-of-pocket.”

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, said he understands “the frustration that people have.”

Evers has repeatedly attempted to expand Medicaid to low-income adults who don’t have children, which all but 10 states have done since the enactment of Obamacare in 2010. The state’s Republican-controlled legislature has repeatedly blocked his efforts, yet Evers is trying again. Expanding Medicaid would provide coverage to nearly 90,000 low-income people, according to his administration.

Evers, who supports Biden, has argued that expanding Medicaid would bring in $2 billion in federal funding that would help reimburse hospitals and insurers for uncompensated care, and ultimately “make health care more affordable.”

Many states that have expanded Medicaid have realized savings in health care spending while providing coverage to more people, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.

“We have to get the Medicaid expansion money,” Evers told KFF Health News. “That would solve a lot of problems.”

Biden’s campaign is opening field offices in Wisconsin, and he and federal health care officials make frequent visits to the state. They’re touting Biden’s record of increasing subsidies for Obamacare insurance plans, and promising to expand access to care, especially in rural communities.

“Millions more people have coverage today,” said Neera Tanden, a domestic policy adviser to Biden, at a mid-June town hall event in Rothschild, Wisconsin, to announce $11 million in new federal funding to recruit and train health care workers.

She said the gains in Obamacare coverage have helped achieve “the lowest rate of uninsurance at any time in American history. That’s not an accident.”

Xavier Becerra, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, speaks in support of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, alongside Neera Tanden, a domestic policy adviser to President Joe Biden, at a town hall event in Rothschild, Wisconsin, on June 13, 2024. (Angela Hart/KFF Health News/TNS)

But attendees at the town hall event told Tanden and the secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, that they have lost access to care as hospitals and rural health clinics have closed.

“We had a hospital that’s been serving our community for over 100 years close very suddenly,” said Michael Golat, an Altoona, Wisconsin, resident who described himself as an independent voter. “It’s really a crisis here.”

Becerra encouraged Wisconsin lawmakers to expand Medicaid. “Instantaneously, you would have hundreds of thousands of Americans in rural America, and including in rural Wisconsin, who now have access to care,” he said.

Cory Sillars, a Republican running for the Wisconsin State Assembly who campaigned at the Birnamwood polka festival, opposes Medicaid expansion and said the state should instead grant nurses the authority to practice medicine without doctor supervision, which he argued would help address gaps in rural care.

“If you’re always expanding government programs, you get people hooked on government and they don’t want to do it themselves. They expect it,” he said.

Sillars is running as a “pro-life” candidate with “traditional, Christian values,” an anti-abortion stance that some Democrats hope will backfire up and down the ballot.

Kristin Lyerly, an obstetrician-gynecologist and a Democrat, has made access to abortion and contraception central to her campaign to fill the congressional seat vacated by Mike Gallagher, a Republican who resigned in April.

Lyerly lives outside Green Bay but practices in Minnesota after facing threats and harassment, largely from conservative extremists, she said. She was a plaintiff in the state’s legal bid to block Republicans from halting access to abortions. Abortions still are not available everywhere in Wisconsin, she said.

“It is incumbent upon me as a physician and a woman to stand up and to use my voice,” Lyerly said. “This is an issue that people in this district might not be shouting about, but they’re having conversations about it, and they’re going to vote on it.”

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This article was produced by KFF Health News , which publishes California Healthline , an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation .

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(KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2024 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

‘A course correct’: How Biden resets his campaign since he’s likely not going anywhere

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Benjamin Oreskes | (TNS) Los Angeles Times

President Joe Biden’s widely panned debate performance Thursday night in Atlanta has many prominent Democrats asking a simple question:

What do we do now?

Swapping out Biden for someone else is likely not possible — unless he quits the race himself. He’s won the requisite number of delegates to capture the Democratic nomination, and Biden said Friday at a rally that he was in the race to win. So now strategists and donors are mulling how the 81-year-old can reset his campaign and take the fight to former President Donald Trump.

Some said the president needed to take a moment to survey the damage. Others said it was important that he increase his campaign travel schedule, do more media availabilities and emphasize how he’s always been an underdog. Some added that he needed to acknowledge his years and what Father Time has wrought rather than act as though age weren’t an issue.

Finally, there was broad agreement that Biden needs to home in on a message that contrasts his values and those of Trump, whom they describe as vain and vindictive.

“Bad debate nights happen,” former President Barack Obama wrote on X. “Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”

Guests at the Old Town Pour House watch the debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump on Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Chicago. (Scott Olson/Getty Images/TNS)

Biden missed a chance to hit that note Thursday, several strategists said. They had wanted him to pick an issue such as reproductive rights or the economy, for example, and stay far more focused on how Americans would be worse off if Trump returned to the White House. They want him to do the same moving forward.

The president’s campaign “definitely needs more to offer clarity on the larger message they’re trying to convey with respect to Trump and how horrible he is,” Democratic strategist Bill Carrick said.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., said Biden remained best positioned to lead the Democratic Party and that his past ability to overcome setbacks, tragedy and adversity offers a guide for how he should approach this moment.

Khanna, a frequent Biden surrogate on the campaign trail, suggested that the president stage a rally on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to evoke the image of Sylvester Stallone running up them in the iconic moment from the movie “Rocky.”

Biden has always styled himself as an underdog, and that shouldn’t change now, Khanna said. Thursday night’s debate was not Biden’s best showing, the congressman said, but doesn’t define him.

“Rocky wasn’t the most eloquent, but he was a fighter, and his eloquence was his character. I think that’s the line that we need to use: that Biden’s eloquence is his character,” Khanna told The Times.

“He needs to embrace the role of an underdog. He needs to embrace his role as having gotten knocked down in life and gotten back up,” Khanna said. “He’s not going to be a John F. Kennedy. He’s not going to be an Obama. He’s not going to be a Reagan. But he can be a Truman. He can be a Johnson. He can be a fighter.”

Being out among Americans right now is essential, Khanna added, suggesting that Biden barnstorm through the Midwest and meet with blue-collar workers and small-business owners.

Biden has done very few sit-down interviews or news conferences since taking office. He skipped the traditional Super Bowl halftime interview this year. In his first three years in office, Biden held 33 news conferences — half as many as Obama and fewer than Trump’s 52 over the same period, according to The American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara.

On Thursday night, the reviews of President Biden flowing in after the 90-minute were generally bad, with one accompanied by seven head-exploding emojis. Even allies have acknowledged he appeared off his A game.

It was “Bad night for Trump — but worse night for Biden,” Christine Pelosi, a Democratic National Committee delegate and daughter of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said in a text message.

Biden “needs a course correct and a timely, long unscripted interview to show that this was a terrible debate — as Obama and Reagan both had with their first reelect debates — and not an ongoing condition,” she said.

One surprising element about Biden’s performance Thursday was how it differed from his energetic and forceful State of the Union Address in March. Biden was so strong that Trump and other Republicans suggested the president had been “jacked up” on drugs to perform so well.

But in the debate, Biden sounded hoarse and and at times struggled to complete sentences. Trump also spoke incoherently at times and, as fact-checkers pointed out, lied repeatedly. But Trump also spoke with more confidence, and the contrast in energy — Trump revved up, Biden halting — was startling to many viewers.

CNN announced that the debate averaged 51.3 million television viewers Thursday. The data do not include online viewing.

“I am very fond of ‘Joey Biden.’ But I believe he may well have done himself and those of us who understand what an effective president he has been existential damage,” said Joey Kaempfer, a real estate developer who has donated heavily to Democrats through the years. He has given close to $1 million to groups supporting Biden’s reelection and has dined with the president.

“We must be patient and see how the next week or two shakes out,” he said. “But yes, I am very concerned.”

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden, with “Vote” printed on her dress, gesture to supporters during a campaign rally on Friday, June 28, 2024, in Raleigh, North Carolina. (Allison Joyce/Getty Images/TNS)

At a rally Friday in North Carolina, Biden appeared to heed some of this advice, particularly from those who said he needed to more fulsomely address the fact that he’d be the oldest president in history by the end of his second term. He delivered his points with more gusto and clarity than the night before and sounded more cogent.

Biden continued to attack the lies and lack of empathy Trump espoused at the debate — pointing to his comments on abortion, immigration and respecting democracy — and contrasting them with the accomplishments of his administration’s first term. He also addressed his age.

“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” Biden said Friday. “I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong, and I know how to do this job.

“I know, like millions of Americans know,” he said, “when you get knocked down, you get back up.”

Biden at one point trumpeted his relationships with every world leader, “because I’ve been around, as you kind [of] have noticed,” which prompted laughs from the crowd. Exuding energy and not being defensive appeared to endear him to the supporters, and would it put him on a good path forward after the disastrous debate.

“Even with a great speech today — which I think is a good start — he needs many, many, of those, and he needs many many surrogates in the course of this,” former Republican strategist Matthew Dowd said on MSNBC.

There are 75 days until the next debate, he added, which means it will be a long time before many people tune into politics again. That’s a problem for Biden, Dowd said.

As if to address concerns about his stamina, Biden also attended two events Friday in New York City. The Associated Press reported that he joined Elton John in inaugurating a visitor center at the Stonewall National Monument, then attended a Pride Month fundraiser.

This was one of the earliest presidential debates in recent political history. Many analysts said it would focus voters’ attention on the race earlier and offer Biden a chance to shake up the trajectory.

Analysts had theorized that the Biden campaign also wanted an early debate because it would give him more time to repair any damage from a poor outing. That will now be put to the test.

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(L.A. Times staff writers Seema Mehta and Noah Bierman contributed to this report.)

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©2024 Los Angeles Times. Visit latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Source: Wild sign forward Yakov Trenin to four-year, $14 million free-agent deal

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Like some of their peers, the Wild wasted little time jumping into the free agent pool, signing heavy wing Yakov Trenin, who played most of the past five seasons in Nashville — nearly four of them under current Minnesota head coach John Hynes.

The deal, first reported by Michael Russo of The Athletic, is worth $3.5 million annually over four years and was confirmed to the Pioneer Press by a league source. Trenin finished last season with 12 goals and seven assists in 76 games.

General manager Bill Guerin has been looking for help up front, particularly on his back two lines, and Trenin, 27, is one of the NHL’s better defensive forwards, a career plus player who was a combined plus-15 with the Predators and, after being traded to Colorado at the deadline, the Avalanche.

On Friday, Guerin traded Vinni Lettieri to Boston for bottom-six forward Jakub Lauko.

In the playoffs this spring with Colorado, Trenin had one goal and 37 hits in 10 games. He finished last season with 207 hits and has averaged 193 over the past four seasons.

Marcus Foligno, limited to 55 games by a core injury last season, led the Wild with 179 hits.

Capuano added to staff

The Wild added former Islanders head coach Jack Capuano to Hynes’ staff as associated head coach on Monday. He had spent the past five seasons as associate head coach in Ottawa.

Capuano, 57, spent two seasons as the Florida Panthers’ associate head coach (2017-19) and 12 seasons with the Islanders organization — serving as head coach for parts of seven (227-192-64 from 2010-17).

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