HEALTH AND SCIENCE HIGHLIGHTS

ly 23, 2021 (San Diego's East County) -- Our Health and Science Highlights provide cutting edge news that could impact your health and our future.

HEALTH

• Persistent vaccine myths (KFF)
• The New COVID Panic(Slate)
• Guillain-Barré and Vaccines: What You Need to Know (New York Times)
• The U.S. Surgeon General Is Calling COVID-19 Misinformation An 'Urgent Threat' (NPR)
• Virus Cases Start To Rise Again, Especially Where Vaccination Rates Lag (NPR) 

SCIENCE AND TECH

• Google Maps accused of offering 'potentially fatal' hiking routes (CNN)
• Hacking group behind widespread ransomware attacks disappears online (Washington Post)
• The USPS' Semi-Secret Internet Surveillance Apparatus (Reason)

For excerpts and links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

HEALTH

Persistent vaccine myths (KFF)

Big myths about COVID vaccines are showing real staying power among Americans who are not vaccinated. They are not the only factor fueling vaccine hesitancy, but they are a continuing problem the media, health leaders and trusted messengers ought to be able to chip away at to get more people vaccinated.

The New COVID Panic(Slate)

What vaccinated people should really know about their risk from the delta variant

Guillain-Barré and Vaccines: What You Need to Know (New York Times)

The link between the rare neurological disorder and the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine may be real, but the risk appears to be very small.

The U.S. Surgeon General Is Calling COVID-19 Misinformation An 'Urgent Threat' (NPR)

With about a third of adults in the U.S. still completely unvaccinated, and cases of COVID-19 on the rise, the U.S. surgeon general is calling for a war against "health misinformation."

Virus Cases Start To Rise Again, Especially Where Vaccination Rates Lag (NPR) 

New, localized hot spots are emerging, especially in stretches of the South, the Midwest and the West. And, according to an analysis NPR conducted with Johns Hopkins University, those surges are likely driven by pockets of dangerously low vaccination rates.

SCIENCE AND TECH

Google Maps accused of offering 'potentially fatal' hiking routes (CNN)

Hikers looking to summit Scotland's highest mountain and other peaks in the area are being sent up "potentially fatal" routes by Google Maps, the region's mountaineering organizations have warned… Heather Morning, Mountaineering Scotland's mountain safety adviser explained in a statement… "For An Teallach in the northwest, a 'walking' route was input into the search engine and the line offered would take people over a cliff," she warned. "It's all too easy these days to assume that information on the internet is all good stuff, correct, up to date and safe. Sadly, experience shows this is not the case and there have been a number of incidents recently where following routes downloaded off the internet have resulted in injury or worse," she said.

Hacking group behind widespread ransomware attacks disappears online (Washington Post)

REvil, a hacking group thought to be based in Russia, disappeared from sight this week after being blamed for the widespread Kaseya hack.

The USPS' Semi-Secret Internet Surveillance Apparatus (Reason)

The agency best known for delivering mail has a side hustle in online snooping.