RSV Vaccine

Researchers have been working on a way to prevent RSV since the 1960s, without success. But on August 3, 2023, the CDC approved a drug called nirsevimab (trade name Beyfortus): a long-acting monoclonal antibody that is 80 percent effective at preventing hospitalizations and 90 percent effective at preventing intensive care unit admissions. Nirsevimab is administered as a single, intramuscular injection and can be given at the same time as other vaccines.

A Breakthrough Product for Babies

Boundaries

When imposed on us, boundaries can feel upsetting. Because many people view happy relationships as problem free, a request to behave differently can feel like a rejection. Some people—out of trauma or other wounds—interpret a “no” from a loved one as the end of a relationship. But boundaries are supposed to help preserve relationships, not destroy them. “People typically believe that boundaries are to control people, and in actuality, they are safeguards for yourself and for peace and comfort in your relationships,” says the therapist and Drama Free author Nedra Glover Tawwab.

THE MOST MISUNDERSTOOD CONCEPT IN PSYCHOLOGY

Grocery Prices

Paul Krugman:

The bottom line is that even though many people would like someone to blame for high grocery prices, it’s really hard to find domestic villains. Despite what the American right claims, Joe Biden didn’t do this. Despite what some on the left would like to believe, neither, at least for the most part, did greedy corporations.

Why Are Groceries So Expensive?

You can blame Putin and weather, he does say.

Saving Humanity

Oliver Sacks on saving humanity:

I think we have to preserve the human scale — in life, in building, in architecture, in technology. The human scale doesn’t mean we can’t have grand visions of the universe, it doesn’t preclude the development of physics and cosmology, but it does mean one shouldn’t be an anonymous person — an anonymous non-person, one of a thousand non-people — in a skyscraper.

Henry Miller, concluding Tropic of Cancer:

Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; close up they are apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything they need to be surrounded with sufficient space―space even more than time.

The Human Scale: Oliver Sacks on How to Save Humanity from Itself