The Washington Post: $100 Repair Bill Put Half Moon Bay Gunman Over The Edge, Prosecutor Says
More details have emerged about the workplace dispute that led Zhao Chunli, 66, to allegedly kill seven people and attempt to kill another at two mushroom farms in Northern California a week ago. Zhao told investigators that his Half Moon Bay shooting was sparked after his boss asked him to pay a $100 repair bill for damage that had been done to heavy construction equipment, according to local news reports confirmed by San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe. (Bonos and Lau, 1/30)

San Francisco Chronicle: Half Moon Bay Massacre: Leaders Call For Mental Health Access For Chinese Farmworkers, Gun Control
Four days after a farmworker fatally shot seven people at two Half Moon Bay mushroom farms, local lawmakers and Asian American community leaders called for stricter gun laws and better working conditions for farmworkers, and urged Asian Americans to reject the longheld cultural stigma of seeking mental health services. (Ho, 1/27)

KQED: 'Deplorable, Heartbreaking': Officials Pledge To Investigate Labor Conditions At Mushroom Farms Targeted In Half Moon Bay Shootings
California and local officials say they plan to investigate potential wage theft and safety violations at the two Half Moon Bay farms where a gunman murdered seven of his co-workers on Monday. “The workers were living in very, very poor conditions. Some were in very old trailers and others were living in shacks without running water or electricity,” San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe told KQED, after his staff this week toured workers’ living quarters at California Terra Garden, the site of the first shooting, and where the suspect lived. (Johnson and Romero, 1/28)

San Francisco Chronicle: Half Moon Bay Needs More Homes For Farmworkers. Experts Blame An ‘Anti-Housing Constituency’
The deadly shooting of seven agricultural workers in Half Moon Bay last week brought national attention to an issue that San Mateo County planners have been grappling with for decades: the scarcity of housing for the workers who farm the crops — mushrooms and Brussels sprouts, artichokes and pumpkins — that pump about $150 million into the local economy. At a news conference on the day after the shooting, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other public officials talked about some of the deplorable housing environments for many of the farmworkers, saying that they were “living in shipping containers, making $9 an hour.” (Dineen, 1/29)

USA Today: Hero Who Wrestled Gun From Monterey Park Shooter Honored At Festival
The man who disarmed the Monterey Park gunman one week ago was honored Sunday by the city at its Lunar New Year Festival as the community begins to heal. Alhambra has hosted its annual celebration since 1993, but concerns were raised if the event would go forward after the Jan. 21 shooting at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio, less than three miles away. The Monterey Park rampage left 11 people dead and nine injured after that city's Lunar New Year festival. (Mendoza, 1/29)

Los Angeles Times: Dancing Resumes At Studio Targeted By Monterey Park Gunman 
Lucy Wong was not sure at first whether it was safe to go back to Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio in Alhambra. It was here where 72-year-old gunman Huu Can Tran went after fatally shooting 11 at another dance studio in nearby Monterey Park. Authorities believe he planned another attack in Alhambra, but a man at the studio wrestled the gun away from him and Tran fled. But as more details emerged in the days since Saturday’s shooting, Wong and other Lai Lai patrons decided it was important to come back. (De Loera, 1/27)

KQED: In Defiance Of Fear And Tragedy, Oakland's Chinatown Celebrates Its First Lunar New Year Parade In Decades
Bay Area residents gathered in Oakland’s Chinatown today for the city's first Lunar New Year Parade in decades. January 22 marks the start of the Year of the Rabbit (and the Vietnamese Year of the Cat). Hosted by the Oakland Chinatown Improvement Council, the parade comes at a time when community members are hoping to augur a fresh and positive start after the COVID pandemic, a rise in anti-Asian hate since the start of the pandemic, and two recent mass shootings in January that claimed the lives of 18 people in Half Moon Bay and Monterey Park. (1/29)

Los Angeles Times: Los Angeles Youth Activists Hold Vigil Following Monterey Park Shooting 
Following the string of mass shootings in recent days, youth activists gathered Saturday evening near the steps of Los Angeles City Hall to express their frustration and anger at the lack of action to end gun violence. (Gomez, 1/28)

The New York Times: California Has More Than 100 Gun Laws. Why Don’t They Stop More Mass Shootings?
California bans guns for domestic violence offenders. It bans them for people deemed a danger to others or themselves. There is a ban on large-capacity magazines, and a ban on noise-muffling silencers. Semiautomatic guns of the sort colloquially known as “assault weapons” are, famously, banned. More than 100 gun laws — the most of any state — are on the books in California. They have saved lives, policymakers say: Californians have among the lowest rates of gun death in the United States. (Hubler and Harmon, 1/29)

Fierce Healthcare: Kaiser Permanente Earmarks $25M For Gun Violence Prevention
Kaiser Permanente has unveiled a five-year, $25 million commitment and new partnership that will scale up its research and community-based work into gun violence prevention. The investment—announced during a gathering of healthcare leaders, gun safety advocates and researchers—will support the Center for Gun Violence Research and Education that was established by the organization last summer. It was initially funded with $1.3 million to explore and collaborate on possible gun violence prevention strategies in collaboration with other nonprofit partners. (Muoio, 1/27)

KQED: Anti Police-Terror Project Held Vigil And Rally For Tyre Nichols In Oakland
As the nation — and the world — reels following the public release of the Memphis Police Department’s shockingly brutal body camera footage showing five officers savagely beating Tyre Nichols, who later died from his injuries, rallies and vigils have been held across the country. Politicians, law enforcement officials, police unions and protesters are condemning not just the Memphis police officers who were involved, but also drawing attention to what many consider to be systemic violence in law enforcement across the United States. In Oakland, a city with a long history of deadly confrontations involving law enforcement, a rally and vigil was held by the Anti Police-Terror Project with hundreds of people in attendance on Sunday at 5 p.m. at Oscar Grant Plaza — named in honor of yet another unarmed Black man who was killed as a result of police violence. (1/29)

San Francisco Chronicle: Over 96% Of American Children Estimated To Have Virus Antibodies
The latest figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that an estimated 96.3% of the U.S. pediatric population — ages 6 months to 17 years — have detectable antibodies from vaccination or infection against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in their blood. Based on the data published Friday, the agency estimates that nearly 65.7 million American children have been infected. (Vaziri, 1/27)

Reuters: WHO Maintains Highest Alert Over COVID, But Sees Hope Ahead
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday that COVID-19 continues to constitute a public health emergency of international concern, its highest form of alert. The pandemic was likely in a "transition point" that continues to need careful management to "mitigate the potential negative consequences", the agency added in a statement. (1/30)

USA Today: CDC Offers Advice To Those With Weakened Immune Systems Avoid COVID
Now, though, more than 90% of circulating variants of the virus that causes COVID-19 are resistant to the drug. On Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration officially announced that Evusheld is no longer authorized to prevent SARS-CoV-2 infection in the U.S. People who are immunocompromised, perhaps because of blood cancer treatment or an organ transplant, are unlikely to mount a strong response to a COVID-19 vaccine. (Weintraub, 1/28)

CIDRAP: Rate Of Americans Reporting Long-COVID Symptoms Declining 
The share of Americans reporting symptoms of long COVID appears to be declining, according to a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), and a second study reports that vaccination may contribute to lower levels of long COVID. The KFF analysis of the Household Pulse Survey, on online survey administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), found that the percentage of respondents who have had COVID-19 and currently report long COVID symptoms declined from 19% in June 2022 to 11% in January, and the share of people who have ever reported long COVID fell from 35% to 28% over the same period. (Dall, 1/27)

Stat: U.S. Panel Approves Plans To Safeguard Lab-Made Virus Research
A panel of federal advisers voted unanimously Friday to advance a set of proposals to bolster government oversight of pathogen research that could make viruses more transmissible. (Owermohle, 1/27)

Fierce Healthcare: How COVID-19 May Have Enhanced The Status Of Preprint Studies
COVID-19 changed the way public policy experts, the healthcare industry and journalists covering the pandemic weighed the value of clinical studies that had not yet been peer-reviewed, a new analysis found. The peer-review process used by major publications like the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association takes “a median time of 186 days from preprint to publication,” according to a study published today in JAMA Network that examines the reliability of preprint studies. (Diamond, 1/27)

CIDRAP: Flu Continues Hasty Retreat In US; COVID, RSV Markers Fall 
After an early and brisk surge, US flu activity last week declined to near-baseline levels, with trends for other respiratory viruses also dropping, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its latest updates. The fall in COVID-19 cases is occurring despite steady increases in the proportions of the more transmissible Omicron XBB.1.5 subvariant, the agency said. (Schnirring, 1/27)

Axios: SNAP Benefits Returning To Pre-COVID Amounts In February
The extra food assistance benefits put into place during the COVID-19 pandemic will end nationwide in February, per the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. The emergency allotments allowed SNAP households to receive an additional $95 or more in monthly benefits. (Habeshian, 1/28)

The New Republic: A Nationwide Fight Over Food Insecurity Is Just Beginning 
A new bill introduced by Republican state lawmakers in Iowa would significantly restrict food purchases for recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, previously known as food stamps. Among the excluded products are American cheese, white rice, baked or refried beans and fresh meat—limits to which recipients of another nutrition assistance program are already subjected. The legislation is not a fringe proposal; it is co-sponsored by dozens of Republicans, including the state House speaker. But the bill, which garnered national headlines, represents in microcosm a larger conversation about welfare policies: questions about who should have access to such benefits and the conditions for receiving them. (Segers, 1/27)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Health Care Workers At East County's Only Hospital May Unionize Amid Concerns Over Staffing, Pay 
Hundreds of health care workers at East County’s only hospital will be able to vote early next month on whether to form a union, part of a wave of organizing around the country amid a never-ending pandemic, inflation and the threat of a recession. (Nelson, 1/29)

CBS News: Pharmacies CVS, Walmart And Walgreens To Reduce Hours As Staffing Challenges Persist 
CVS and Walmart are reducing their pharmacy operating hours across the U.S. to improve employees' work-life balance as the chains continue to struggle with staffing shortages in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. CVS said it will be "adjusting hours in select stores" come spring, as part of a periodic review of "operating hours to make sure we're open during peak customer demand." The move will affect roughly two-thirds of the company's approximately 9,000 retail pharmacies beginning in March, a company spokesperson said in a statement to CBS MoneyWatch. ... Walmart also said it's cutting hours at its pharmacy locations nationwide to improve "work-life balance" for its associates. Walmart pharmacies will be open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday. Previously they were open until 9 p.m. on weekdays. (Cerullo, 1/27)

Reveal: A Miracle Cure For AIDS Or Snake Oil?
Dr. Gary Davis, an Ivy League-trained Black physician from Tulsa, Oklahoma, had a dream one night that the cure for AIDS would come from a goat. In the new podcast Serum, a reporting team at WHYY’s The Pulse and Local Trance Media delve into the unusual story of a Davis’ quest to develop the cure. At the height of the AIDS epidemic in the early ’90s, Davis created a serum from goat blood that he believed could help cure HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. He brought his research to the FDA, but it failed to win approval. (1/28)

The Hill: White House Blasts McCarthy For Comments On Strengthening Social Security, Medicare
The White House hit back after Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he wants to “strengthen” Medicare and Social Security, arguing on Sunday that the House GOP leader and his conference actually want to slash spending on the entitlement programs. McCarthy said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” earlier Sunday that he wants to take cuts to Medicare and Social Security off the table in talks with Democrats over the debt ceiling, even though Republicans do want commitments on spending cuts generally. Instead, McCarthy said Republicans were committed to strengthening the programs. (Neukam, 1/29)

The Hill: McCarthy: Social Security, Medicare Cuts ‘Off The Table’
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said ahead of a meeting with President Biden this week that cuts to Medicare and Social Security are off the table in talks around raising the debt limit. McCarthy has said that Republicans want commitments to spending reductions in exchange for raising the debt limit but has been unclear about what exactly the GOP would be willing to cut. While he said Medicare and Social Security slashes are off the table in his interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, he essentially said everything else, including defense spending, is under the microscope. (Neukam, 1/29)

NBC News: Medicare Negotiating Drug Prices Will Likely Save The U.S. Billions, Study Says
Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School estimated how much money the new policy would have saved the U.S. had it been in effect from 2018 to 2020 — the most recent years for which data is available on Medicare spending. They identified 40 drugs that would have been selected by Medicare for drug pricing negotiation under the Inflation Reduction Act's provision. (Lovelace Jr., 1/27)

Stat: Lengthy Battle Over Medicare Advantage Audits Comes To A Head
The federal government and health insurance companies have been clashing for more than a decade over how Medicare Advantage plans should be audited and how the well-documented overpayments to those plans should be clawed back. That fight is about to hit an inflection point this week, when Medicare makes a final determination about how aggressively it will probe the industry. (Herman, 1/30)

Los Angeles Daily News: LA Is Losing The Battle Against Mental Illness Among Its Homeless 
Dr. Brian Benjamin, a psychiatrist specializing in serving the homeless, was excited to tell one of his regular clients that a shelter spot had opened up, but unfortunately there were 20 murders in that building every day and the Mafia lived there – or so the client told him. (Harter and Scauzillo, 1/28)

Los Angeles Daily News: With LA’s Homeless Count Done, Volunteers Ponder Meeting Homeless Neighbors 
Two days after volunteering to help count the homeless in Los Angeles County, Anthony Manousos, 73, couldn’t put out of his mind the face of a woman living on the street who was exactly his age. “She had a good job and grew up in San Marino. You could say ‘This could be me,’” he said just before sitting down for lunch at his Pasadena home on Friday afternoon. (Scauzillo, 1/30)

Daily Breeze: Wait-And-See Period Dawns As New LA County Leaders Redouble Homeless Housing Efforts
When Los Angeles rolled out its ambitious and highly publicized strategy to fight homelessness under former Mayor Eric Garcetti, plans centered on quickly putting up temporary shelters, and building both interim and permanent housing. Not unpredictably, none of it happened fast — and the reception among some in the city fell short of a warm embrace. (Littlejohn and Love, 1/29)

Berkeleyside: Berkeley Students Aiming To Prevent Fentanyl Overdoses Say ‘Don’t Do Drugs’ Won’t Cut It
A student group is spearheading an effort to educate their Berkeley High peers about drug use, focusing on overdose prevention and fentanyl. Called the Harm Education and Reduction Organization, or HERO, the club gives presentations in ninth-grade classrooms with the mission of making sure that if students are doing drugs, they have the resources to do so safely. “The ‘don’t do drugs’ talk doesn’t work,” said 11th grader Madeleine Regan during a Friday club lunch meeting. (Markovich, 1/27)

Fresno Bee: California State Prisoners Among The Influx Of Madera Patients In Fresno-Area Hospitals
Fresno County officials are warning people to avoid local hospital emergency rooms as much as possible as hospitals absorb a surge of patients from Madera — including state prison inmates. (Montalvo, 1/29)

Los Angeles Times: Lawmakers Want Investigation, Hearings Into ‘Wild West’ Of California Cannabis And Farm Work
California lawmakers are calling for a sweeping investigation into corruption in the state’s cannabis industry, legislative hearings on the exploitation of farmworkers and new laws to thwart labor trafficking in response to revelations of rampant abuses and worker deaths in a multibillion-dollar market that has become increasingly unmanageable. The proposals follow a series of Times investigations last year showing that California’s 2016 legalization of recreational cannabis spurred political corruption, explosive growth in illegal cultivation and widespread exploitation of workers. The Times found that wage theft was rampant and that many workers were subjected to squalid, sometimes lethal conditions. (St. John and Elmahrek, 1/29)

Axios: Surgeon General Vivek Murthy: 13 Is Too Young For Social Media
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said on “CNN Newsroom” on Saturday he believes 13-year-olds are too young to join social media and that being on those platforms does a "disservice" to children. Scientists have warned of a connection between heavy social media use and mental health issues in children, saying that the negatives outweigh the positives.(Ravipati, 1/29)

USA Today: Diabetes In American Children, Teens To Surge By 2060: CDC Study
The statistics are concerning and should stir urgency in addressing the health of American young people, such as prioritizing efforts to bring down rates of obesity, a risk factor for Type 2 diabetes, experts say. Despite a known link between obesity and Type 2 diabetes, "it’s very unsettling that we have not made any progress to really decrease this risk of Type 2 diabetes in children," said Dr. Colleen Buggs-Saxton, a pediatric endocrinologist at Wayne State University. (Hassanein, 1/30)

CNN: Sleep Disorders Are Associated With More Parental Stress
According to a new study, disrupted sleep in parents and disrupted sleep in their children are each correlated with increased stress in the parents. In fact, it didn’t matter whether the parent had a sleep disorder or the child did. Both equally affected the parent’s stress levels. (Chaudhary, 1/28)

CNN: Weight Loss Surgery Extends Lives, Study Finds
Weight loss surgery reduces the risk of premature death, especially from such obesity-related conditions as cancer, diabetes and heart disease, according to a new 40-year study of nearly 22,000 people who had bariatric surgery in Utah. (LaMotte, 1/28)