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Delivered daily by 10 a.m., Pulse examines the latest news in health care politics and policy. | | | | |  | | By Krista Mahr and Daniel Payne | PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off tomorrow and Friday for Thanksgiving but will be back to our normal schedule on Monday, Nov. 28.
| | | |  Anthony Fauci is retiring next month after five decades in government service. | THE END OF AN ERA — Anthony Fauci stood behind the podium for what was billed as his last appearance in the White House briefing room Tuesday, ending a heady three years for the career civil servant in the national spotlight, Krista and POLITICO'S Adam Cancryn report . Even as the outgoing White House chief medical adviser beseeched Americans to overcome their concerns about the Covid-19 booster’s safety and efficacy, he couldn’t escape the partisan divide that has come to define his tenure helping lead the U.S. pandemic response. His farewell was interrupted multiple times when a reporter shouted down her colleagues, demanding to know what Fauci had personally done to investigate the virus’ origins. Fauci didn’t react, sticking to the message he’s been hammering home for months: Get the updated Covid booster shot ahead of the colder months, during which public health officials expect a surge in new infections. “As a physician, it pains me because I don’t want to see anybody get infected,” Fauci said. “I don’t want to see anybody hospitalized, and I don’t want to see anybody die from Covid. Whether you’re a far-right Republican or a far-left Democrat doesn’t make any difference to me.” Fauci, who turns 82 next month and has led the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for 38 years, gave no hint of what comes next but promised to cooperate with House Republicans who have pledged to probe his role in the Covid response. WELCOME TO WEDNESDAY PULSE — As you head into your long weekend, we leave you with Carrot, the 70-pound goldfish caught in France that has become a British media darling. Happy feasting! Send news and tips to kmahr@politico.com and dpayne@politico.com . TODAY ON OUR PULSE CHECK PODCAST , Carmen Paun talks with Alice Miranda Ollstein about her exclusive report on abortion opponents' new strategy — using environmental laws to curb medical abortion. The approach comes at a time when the pills mifepristone and misoprostol, taken at home during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, have become the most common method of abortion in the U.S.
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The Biden administration is launching a vaccine campaign to urge people to get boosted by the end of the year. | Scott Olson/Getty Images | A POST-TURKEY VACCINE CAMPAIGN — At the Tuesday briefing, the Biden administration rolled out a “six-week sprint” to improve the nation’s stubbornly low updated booster rate of 11.3 percent, focusing particularly on the elderly and communities hit hard by the pandemic. The sluggish pace of vaccinations against both Covid-19 and the flu in recent weeks is frustrating Biden health officials, who have lamented that hundreds of people are still dying each day, largely because of skepticism around the updated shots. The plan: The administration will send $350 million in new funding to community health centers to establish pop-up and mobile vaccine sites and $125 million to get the vaccine to older Americans and people with disabilities. CMS will remind nursing homes that they’re required to educate and offer vaccines to residents, and HHS will launch an ad campaign urging older adults to talk with providers about Covid treatment, among other measures. In recent weeks, Biden officials have scoured the health department for funding to make the post-Thanksgiving vaccination push. Earlier this month, the administration requested more money from Congress to stay ahead of a possible winter surge, but Republicans have said its inclusion in an end-of-year spending package is unlikely.
| | | EXCLUSIVE: ANTI-ABORTION ADVOCATES LOOK TO WASTEWATER — Abortion opponents and their allies in elected office are seizing on a new strategy after suffering a wave of election defeats : using environmental laws to try to block the distribution of abortion pills, Alice Miranda Ollstein reports . Last week, the group Students for Life of America filed a petition asking the FDA to require any doctor who prescribes mifepristone and misoprostol, which are taken at home during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, to be responsible for the disposal of fetal tissue. The group argues that the tissue should be bagged and treated as medical waste — not flushed down the toilet and into the wastewater. They claim that trace amounts of the drug pose environmental risks, threatening livestock, wildlife and humans. Abortion-rights advocates say the wastewater argument is baseless but fear it could have a chilling effect even in states where abortion remains legal, making doctors hesitant to prescribe the pills and patients afraid to seek them. The long game: This strategy to counter the pills, which have become the most common method of abortion in the U.S., is the culmination of years of brainstorming around how to restrict their access. If the FDA ignores or rejects the petition, as expected, Students for Life of America plans to sue the agency with the conservative legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom, whose attorneys helped draft and defend the Mississippi anti-abortion law that eventually toppled Roe v. Wade. Students for Life said the petition is just one part of a national strategy. The group is working on bills to implement the medical waste requirement with Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) and other members of the incoming GOP House majority as well as state lawmakers in Arizona, New Hampshire, Ohio and Wyoming.
| | | FIRST IN PULSE: AMERICANS SPLIT ON USING PERSONAL DATA TO TAILOR CARE — Americans are split almost evenly on whether the benefits of providing personal health data outweigh its risks, according to a new report from the Brunswick Group, an advisory firm. In the 1,200-person survey, 48 percent of participants believed the risks of exposing personal data were greater than the medical benefits personalized care could provide. The other 52 percent said the trade-offs were worth better care. Even where the health industry is willing to provide personalized care, not all Americans are ready to share data, including genetic information, that might be required. About a third of those surveyed said they consider such care “an invasion of privacy.” Also at play: trust in the health sector. Health tech companies, insurers and drug manufacturers were considered less trustworthy than doctors and hospitals. The report highlights the number of opinions — outside of Congress and the administration — that might need to be won over to push forward with extensive uses of data in health technology.
| | | A NEW NAME FOR MONKEYPOX — The World Health Organization plans to rename monkeypox, designating it as MPOX, in an effort to destigmatize the virus that gained a foothold in the U.S. earlier this year, Adam reports . The decision, which could be announced as early as Wednesday, follows an initial agreement the WHO made over the summer to consider suggestions for monkeypox’s new name. It comes in response to growing pressure from senior Biden officials, who privately urged WHO leaders to change the name and suggested the U.S. would act unilaterally if the international body didn’t move quickly enough. The WHO traditionally acts as a global coordinator on public health issues, declaring international health emergencies and recommending names for diseases. THE RACE FOR A NEW EBOLA VACCINE — The arrival of an experimental vaccine in Uganda this week offers hope for ending a two-month-old outbreak of one of the world’s most frightening diseases: the hemorrhagic fever Ebola, POLITICO’s Carmen Paun reports. But the human trials might not be speedy enough. Vaccines can only be tested for efficacy when the disease is spreading, and the outbreak may be fading too quickly to complete human trials. If the window closes, it may not reopen anytime soon; the variant at work, the Sudan strain, has been dormant for a decade. If public health officials miss the window, it could be because they were caught off guard when the first cases were reported in September. The developers of the three vaccine candidates didn’t have enough doses ready to distribute, and the WHO and Ugandan officials took weeks to work out regulatory and logistical matters.
| | | The New York Times reports on the far-right platforms spreading health misinformation that will endure after the pandemic is over. KHN reports on states’ wide array of plans to spend billions in opioid settlement money. STAT ponders why we don’t have at-home flu tests. Hint: It’s not because we don’t have the tech to do it.
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