Health Highlights: Oct. 2, 2020

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Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:

Chrissy Teigen Speaks Openly About Loss of Baby

Model Chrissy Teigen is speaking openly about the loss of her third child with husband, singer John Legend.

The couple said Wednesday that they’d lost their unborn boy – who they’d decided to call Jack — due to pregnancy complications, The New York Times reported.

“Driving home from the hospital with no baby,” Teigen, 34, wrote on Twitter. “How can this be real.”

She also posted a photograph on social media showing her sitting on a hospital bed with her hands clasped in a prayer-like position, seemingly in tears, and another Instagram photo showing her holding her baby as Legend kisses her shoulder, the Times reported.

It was believed that Teigen — who announced last month that she was expecting a baby boy — was halfway along in her pregnancy. She was hospitalized Sunday for excessive bleeding from her placenta.

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AMA Takes Fight Against Trump Abortion Rule to Supreme Court

The American Medical Association has asked the Supreme Court to scrap a Trump administration abortion rule.

It prohibits taxpayer-funded clinics — which mainly serve low-income women — from referring women for abortions and has had a significant impact on family planning, the Associated Press reported.

Two U.S. appeals courts issued conflicting rulings on the legality of the rule, so the AMA asked the Supreme Court to hear the case.

“We do think this conflict needs to be resolved and we need to figure out how to deliver services under a program that has had bipartisan support for decades,” said AMA President Dr. Susan Bailey, the AP reported.

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Nearly 20,000 Amazon Workers Positive for New Coronavirus

Nearly 20,000 front-line Amazon workers in the United States have tested positive or been presumed positive for the new coronavirus, the company said Thursday.

The findings are from an analysis of data from March 1 to Sept. 19 on nearly 1.4 million workers at Amazon and Whole Foods Market nationwide, the Associated Press reported.

The information was released after months of pressure from Amazon workers and labor groups.

Amazon said the infection rate of its employees is well below that of the general U.S. population, the AP reported.

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Trump Leading Driver of Coronavirus Pandemic Misinformation: Study

U.S. President Donald Trump is the leading driver of misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, a new study finds.

Cornell University researchers analyzed 38 million articles about the pandemic published in English-language media worldwide from Jan. 1 to May 26. Of those, more than 1.1 million (just under 3%) contained misinformation, The New York Times reported.

Mentions by Trump accounted for nearly 38% of the overall “misinformation conversation,” according to the study.

That makes Trump the largest driver of false information about the pandemic, which the researchers called an “infodemic.”

“The biggest surprise was that the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around COVID,” said study author Sarah Evanega, director of the Cornell Alliance for Science, the Times reported.

“That’s concerning in that there are real-world dire health implications.”

Eleven topics of misinformation were identified by the researchers, including various conspiracy theories. The most common type of misinformation was “miracle cures,” including Trump’s promotion of anti-malarial drugs and disinfectants as potential treatments for COVID-19, the Times reported.

Miracle cures accounted for more misinformation than the other 10 topics combined, according to the study.

Misinformation about the pandemic is “one of the major reasons” the United States isn’t doing as well as other countries in fighting it, said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former principal deputy commissioner at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“There is a science of rumors. It’s when there is uncertainty and fear,” he told the Times.

Without treatments or vaccines, honest and consistent messaging is crucial in combating the pandemic, said Sharfstein, who teaches on public health crisis communications.

“This is what we need to save lives,” he said. “If it’s not done well, you get far more infections and deaths.”

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