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Covid precautions have turned many parts of our world into a giant salad bar, with plastic barriers separating sales clerks from shoppers, dividing customers at nail salons and shielding students from their classmates. Intuition tells us a plastic shield would be protective against germs. But scientists who study aerosols, air flow and ventilation say that much of the time, the barriers don’t help and probably give people a false sense of security. And sometimes the barriers can make things worse. (Parker-Pope, 8/19)

Early use of convalescent plasma didn't prevent COVID-19 progression in a group of high-risk adult outpatients, concludes a National Institutes of Health (NIH) study yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).The randomized, controlled Clinical Trial of COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma in Outpatients (C3PO) trial enrolled more than 500 participants who visited 1 of 48 US emergency departments within 7 days of COVID-19 symptom onset. Enrollees were 50 and older and had one or more risk factors for severe COVID-19 (eg, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, chronic lung disease). (8/19)

In an unexpected turn of events, the Food and Drug Administration will hold a hearing on whether Covis Pharma should voluntarily withdraw its controversial treatment for preventing premature births after a key study found the medicine is ineffective. The move comes nearly two years after an FDA advisory panel recommended that the medication, known as Makena, should be withdrawn after the trial failed to verify a clinical benefit. The 9-to-7 vote called into question the future of a medication that has been the standard of care across the U.S. since it was approved a decade ago. (Silverman, 8/19)

On a chilly morning last November, Michael Segel stepped through the glass doors of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., rode the elevator up to the 10th floor, dropped his jacket and bag at his desk and made a beeline to the tissue culture room. He found his lab mate Blake Lash already there. And Lash had news: Their cells had turned green. (Molteni, 8/19)

Alisa Bigham was looking for a new beginning. She’d recently left her marriage of 47 years and was trying to understand who she was outside of that union. “I kept having the thought, ‘You just need to go on a retreat and get away from everything,’” she says. “My intention was a reset of who I am, something that could bring me a big transformation.” Bigham, 64, had read Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind, which chronicles the new research into psychedelics and their medicinal properties. She came away from it interested in exploring those possibilities for herself. So she booked a retreat at Silo Wellness, which operates in Jamaica’s Montego Bay resort community. She was drawn to its nightly ceremonies, during which participants take psilocybin mushrooms and, led by local Rastafarians, embark on a series of transcendental journeys that might include visions and an altered emotional state. (Berlinger, 8/19)