Los Angeles Times: Half Moon Bay Suspect Claims He Was Bullied, Admits Killings
Amid a state investigation into workplace conditions at the San Mateo County farms where seven people were killed this week, the farmworker charged in the massacre said he had experienced “years of bullying” and working long hours before opening fire. Chunli Zhao, 66, in a jailhouse interview with NBC Bay Area, admitted that he took a semiautomatic handgun and opened fire on his co-workers Monday. (Petri, Hernandez and Castleman, 1/26)

KQED: 'I'm Afraid': Half Moon Bay Shootings May Have Been Extreme Case Of Workplace Violence
Authorities are currently investigating whether the mass shooting in which seven agricultural workers were killed in Half Moon Bay on Monday was an instance of “workplace violence.” Workplace violence, defined by the U.S. government as any act or threat of violence, harassment, intimidation or other threatening behavior on a work site, is one of the leading causes of occupational deaths in the United States. (Johnson and Romero, 1/26)

Los Angeles Times: Could Domestic Violence Explain The Monterey Park Mass Shooting? 
"Individuals who are willing to hurt those closest to them are more likely to hurt other people in the future,” said Lisa Geller, director of state affairs at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions and a scholar of mass shootings. Geller’s 2021 study showed that almost 60% of mass shooters targeted a current or former partner in their attacks — women who shared their surnames, their house keys, their kids. Still more had a history of domestic abuse. On average, such assailants killed more people and were more likely to take their own lives than other mass shooters. (Sharp and Licari, 1/26)

The Washington Post: Monterey Park’s Asian Diaspora Adopts A New Rite: Mourning After Gun Violence 
For decades, Monterey Park has been a beacon for Asian immigrants — a place that can feel less like an enclave and more like an extension of one’s birth country, while simultaneously serving as a gateway to the rest of the United States. Today, the city’s leaders describe it as the heart of Asian American culture and activism, and a place where diaspora communities can thrive alongside of, and commingle with, American tradition. But this is one American ritual they never thought they’d have to confront. (Hernandez and Thebault, 1/26)

Los Angeles Times: Asian Seniors Should Keep Dancing — And Other Advice On How To Rebuild After A Tragedy
The victims of the Monterey Park shooting included first-generation Asian American immigrants in their 50s, 60s and 70s — a strong, resilient community. “I think in this generation,” said Phuong Tang, a therapist at Yellow Chair Collective in Los Angeles, “what they had to do a lot was just survive” — building safer and more prosperous lives for the next generations of their families. So it is heartbreaking, she added, to think about seniors being attacked while doing something joyful and healthful for themselves. Yes, healthful. Even if seniors don’t consider the exercise they do and the parties they have with their friends as mental health care, these activities are great ways to take care of both body and mind. (Tseng and Garcia, 1/26)

Bay Area Reporter: SF Officials Announce New Hate Crimes Protocol 
San Francisco officials announced a new, coordinated citywide response protocol to address hate crimes as the city's Asian American community is in the midst of Lunar New Year festivities. The new protocol features better support and connection to services and more multilingual services, officials said. The January 26 news conference by Mayor London Breed came after back-to-back mass shootings in California that impacted the Asian American community. On January 21, a gunman, who was an older Asian man, opened fire at a dance studio in Monterey Park (Los Angeles County), killing 11 Asian people. He was later found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot. (Ferrannini, 1/26)

California Healthline: FDA Experts Are Still Puzzled Over Who Should Get Which Covid Shots And When
At a meeting to simplify the nation’s covid vaccination policy, the FDA’s panel of experts could agree on only one thing: Information is woefully lacking about how often different groups of Americans need to be vaccinated. That data gap has contributed to widespread skepticism, undervaccination, and ultimately unnecessary deaths from covid-19. (Allen, 1/27)

NPR: An FDA Committee Votes To Roll Out A New COVID Vaccination Strategy
A committee of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously on a proposal to simplify the nation's strategy for vaccinating people against COVID-19. The recommendation is that future COVID-19 vaccines should be interchangeable: no matter whether you're getting your first dose or a booster, the vaccines would all have the same formulation targeting the same viral strain or strains, regardless of the manufacturer. The vote was unanimous: 21-0. (Hensley, 1/26)

Stat: FDA Advisers Recommend Updating Covid Vaccines 
The panel voted 21-to-0 to direct vaccine manufacturers Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, and Novavax to “harmonize” the primary series of their vaccines — the first doses that people receive — with the new booster shots that contain both the original strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and a new Omicron strain. Members of the panel were also supportive of the FDA’s plan to move to a single annual vaccine dose for most Americans, which will be matched annually to circulating strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. (Herper and Branswell, 1/26)

Bloomberg: AstraZeneca’s Covid Drug Loses US Authorization Due To Variants
Astra’s drug, called Evusheld, was authorized in December 2021 to prevent Covid infection in high-risk people, but has been rendered less effective by the virus’ mutations. (Muller, 1/26)

San Francisco Chronicle: Judge Who Struck Down California’s COVID Misinformation Law Questions ‘Scientific Consensus’ On Vaccines
The coronavirus is “a disease that scientists have only been studying for a few years, and about which scientific conclusions have been hotly contested,” U.S. District Judge William Shubb of Sacramento said Wednesday in a ruling halting enforcement of the law, which had taken effect this month. “COVID-19 is a quickly evolving area of science that in many aspects eludes consensus.” (Egelko, 1/26)

San Francisco Chronicle: First COVID Year Linked To Spike In Heart-Related Deaths, Report Says
The number of people dying from cardiovascular disease in the U.S. spiked during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, marking the steepest single-year increase since 2015, according to a new report from the American Heart Association. In 2020, there were 928,741 deaths related to heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure — marking a substantial increase from the 874,613 fatalities linked to cardiovascular disease (CVD) in 2019. The latest figure also tops the previous record of 910,000 from 2003, based on the data published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Circulation. (Vaziri, 1/26)

San Francisco Chronicle: More Than 80% Of Test Results Not Publicly Reported, UCSF Study Finds
As home coronavirus tests become the standard, fewer results are reported to public health agencies, substantially skewing epidemiological data on public dashboards. A study by UCSF researchers that measured the prevalence of home testing as it became increasingly common last spring and summer found that as of August, more than 80% of all SARS-CoV-2 test results were not reported to official tallies. (Vaziri, 1/26)

CIDRAP: Study: Home COVID Tests Lead To Vast Undercount Of Cases, Positivity Rates
With over 80% of US COVID-19 tests now being conducted at home, official case counts underreport the number of positive results and greatly underestimate the number of true infections, suggests a research letter published yesterday in JAMA Network Open. (Van Beusekom, 1/26)

CNN: It's Been Three Years Since The First Covid-19 Case In The United States. What Have We Learned And What More Do We Need To Understand?
It’s been three years since the first Covid-19 case was diagnosed in the United States, on January 20, 2020. In the time since, nearly 1.1 million Americans have died from the coronavirus; the US has reported 102 million Covid cases, more than any other country, according to Johns Hopkins University. Both figures, many health officials believe, are likely to have been undercounted. (Hetter, 1/26)

The Washington Post: FDA To Ease Blood Donation Ban On Gay Men, Allow Monogamous To Give
Gay and bisexual men in monogamous relationships will no longer be forced to abstain from sex to donate blood under federal guidelines to be proposed in coming days, ending a vestige of the earliest days of the AIDS crisis. The planned relaxation of restrictions by the Food and Drug Administration follows years of pressure by blood banks, the American Medical Association and LGBT rights organizations to abandon rules some experts say are outdated, homophobic and ineffective at keeping the nation’s blood supply safe. (McGinley, Amenabar and Nirappil, 1/26)

NPR: Why Inventing A Vaccine For HIV Is Harder Than For COVID
The four-decades long effort to create an HIV vaccine suffered a blow last week with news that Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a division of Johnson & Johnson, was discontinuing the only current late-stage clinical trial of a vaccine. Results showed it to be ineffective. "I was disappointed in the outcome," says Mitchell Warren, executive director of AVAC, an organization that advocates for HIV prevention to end AIDS. "It was a setback in the search for a vaccine." (Brink, 1/26)

The Hill: McCarthy: ‘We Won’t Touch Medicare Or Social Security’ 
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said on Thursday that House Republicans will not target Medicare or Social Security in their negotiations over the debt ceiling. “We won’t touch Medicare or Social Security,” he told Donald Trump Jr. in an interview in the Speaker’s office for Trump’s “Triggered” podcast. (Shapero, 1/26)

Fox News: Biden Growls At The High Costs Of Insulin For People Not On Medicare 
President Biden, on Thursday, got angry about the price of drugs like insulin preventing some parents from being able to provide necessities for their children. During his visit at the Steamfitters Union Hall in Springfield, Virginia on Thursday, Biden spoke about how great he believes the economy is, "no joke," and the accomplishments of his administration during his first two years in office. (Wehner, 1/26)

Bloomberg: Democrat Dads Form House Caucus To Fight For Child Care, Paid Leave, Tax Credit
The Congressional Dads Caucus officially launched on Thursday and will “highlight issues facing working families and advocate for policies that support all parents and children,” according to a fact sheet from Congressman Jimmy Gomez, a California Democrat. Other founding members include Rashida Tlaib, Joaquin Castro, Andy Kim, Jamaal Bowman, Rob Menendez, Dan Goldman and Joe Neguse. All are parents and Democrats. (Butler and Ceron, 1/26)

CBS News: After Years Of Denials, VA Urges Millions Of Veterans Exposed To Burn Pits To File Claims
Andrew Myatt was willing to give his life for his country serving in the Army. After 9/11 he was deployed to Iraq, where he performed dangerous missions like searching for improvised explosive devices to disarm and destroy. But the 24-year Army veteran never thought the greatest risk to his health would show up years later. (O'Donnell and Hastey, 1/26)

Stat: After Nearly 4 Years, FDA Punts On How To Regulate CBD
The FDA is giving up on trying to figure out a way to regulate CBD on its own. The agency announced Thursday that it is formally calling on Congress for help — and, according to one official, looking for guidance on other hemp products like Delta 8 THC, too. (Florko, 1/26)

The Washington Post: CBD Not Shown To Be Safe Enough For Use As Dietary Supplement, FDA Says 
There’s bad news for cannabidiol fans. The Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that products infused with CBD, which is derived from cannabis or hemp and used in items as varied as soap and seltzer, do not appear to meet federal safety standards and require stricter regulations. The announcement was a blow to the burgeoning CBD industry, which had hoped the agency would greenlight CBD’s use. Instead, the agency asked Congress to pass new regulations governing its use. (Reiley and Gilbert, 1/26)

Roll Call: FDA Seeks End Of Regulatory Wild West For CBD Products
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday announced that CBD products, increasingly popular but largely unregulated, will soon join the ranks of other more mainstream, regulated products. (Cohen, 1/26)

Sacramento Bee: California Offers Health Insurance For $10 A Month. The Deadline Is Days Away
Sacramento Vice Mayor Eric Guerra and Covered California leader Jessica Altman made a last-chance appeal Wednesday to roughly 200,000 uninsured residents in the Sacramento region to sign up for health insurance before open enrollment ends Tuesday. Many locals are paying $10 or less in monthly health insurance premiums for policies through Covered California, and that deal is still available for others, Altman stressed at a news conference on the west steps of the Capitol. (Anderson, 1/26)

Fierce Healthcare: Blue Shield Of California Bringing Wellvolution To Medi-Cal
Blue Shield of California is bringing its Wellvolution program to Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program. Blue Shield's Promise Health Plan, the insurer's Medicaid managed care organization, is making the four-pillar digital health program available to its members, according to an announcement released Monday. Through Wellvolution, members can access lifestyle and mental health supports that can be tailored to fit their personal needs. (Minemyer, 1/26)

The Washington Post: FBI Shuts Down Ransomware Gang That Targeted Schools And Hospitals
The FBI and law enforcement in Europe have shut down a major ransomware operation accused of extorting more than $100 million from organizations across the world by encrypting victims’ computer systems and demanding payments to provide a key to unlock them, U.S. officials said Thursday. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the ransomware group called Hive attacked hospitals, school districts, financial firms and others, stealing and sometimes publishing their data. Like some other prolific groups, Hive partnered with independent hackers who broke in through phishing or other means: The gang provided the encryption program and ransomware negotiations, and split the profits with the hackers. (Menn, Stein and Schaffer, 1/26)

The Bakersfield Californian: New Suicide And Crisis Lifeline Call Center Humming With Lifesaving In Bakersfield
According to Kern Behavioral Health and Recovery Services Director Stacy Kuwahara and the agency's telephone hotline program supervisor, Ellen Eggert, calls to the county's Suicide and Crisis Lifeline call center in downtown Bakersfield typically decrease during the holidays. (Mayer, 1/26)

The Bakersfield Californian: Houchin Community Blood Bank Appoints Fifth CEO In Four Years 
Houchin Community Blood Bank’s board of directors has chosen a new chief executive, the organization's fifth CEO in a little more than four years. (Mayer, 1/25)

San Gabriel Valley Tribune: Nurses Picket Southern California Hospitals, Demand More Staffing 
Registered nurses at six Southern California hospitals picketed their facilities Thursday, Jan 26 as part of a nationwide call for increased staffing amid a winter surge of RSV, influenza and COVID-19 patients. (Smith, 1/26)

The Desert Sun: Desert Regional Nurses Rally In Palm Springs, Saying They're Understaffed
As the sun set on the valley floor Thursday, handheld candles illuminated the sidewalk in front of Desert Regional Medical Center along North Indian Canyon Drive in Palm Springs. (Sasic, 1/26)

California Healthline: Did Your Health Plan Rip Off Medicare?
Today, KHN has released details of 90 previously secret government audits that reveal millions of dollars in overpayments to Medicare Advantage health plans for seniors. The audits, which cover billings from 2011 through 2013, are the most recent financial reviews available, even though enrollment in the health plans has exploded over the past decade to over 30 million and is expected to grow further. (Schulte, 1/27)

Reuters: Anti-Abortion Protesters Break Into Walgreens AGM Meeting Room
Anti-abortion protesters broke into the room where Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc held its annual shareholders meeting in Newport Coast, California on Thursday for its decision to start selling abortion pills, the pharmacy chain said. (1/26)

California Healthline: 'What the Health' Part I: The State Of The Abortion Debate 50 Years After ‘Roe’
In Part I of this special two-part episode, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Sandhya Raman of CQ Roll Call, and Sarah Varney of KHN join KHN chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner to discuss how the abortion debate has evolved since the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to abortion in 2022, and what might be the flashpoints for 2023. Also in this episode, Rovner interviews Elizabeth Nash of the Guttmacher Institute, about changing reproductive policies in the states. (1/26)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Grueling, Early Morning Count Collects Vital Data On County's Homeless 
About 1,600 volunteers throughout San Diego County walked down dark streets, peered into vehicle windows, drove through neighborhoods and walked unmarked trails in the pre-dawn hours Thursday in an annual effort to learn more about the area’s homeless population. (Warth, Diehl, Murga and Nelson, 1/26)

Napa Valley Register: Napa County Homeless Count Proceeds With A Return To Pre-Pandemic Norms
A group of about 50 community volunteers, Napa city and county staff, and local homeless service providers gathered before sunrise Wednesday in the South Napa Century Center parking lot, in the chilly darkness of the early winter morning, to kick off Napa County’s annual one-day homeless tally known as the point-in-time count. (Booth, 1/25)

Stat: In California, It’s Easy To Buy Flavored Vapes, Even In Cities With Longtime Bans
California cities are supposed to be cracking down on sales of flavored vapes, which are now illegal across the state. But even cities that have banned such vapes for years are unwilling — or unable — to police the sellers. (Florko, 1/27)

Politico: Social Media Is A Defective Product, Lawsuit Contends
A California court could soon decide whether social media firms need to pay — and change their ways — for the damage they’ve allegedly done to Americans’ mental health. Plaintiffs’ lawyers plan to file a consolidated complaint in the Northern District of California next month, accusing the tech giants of making products that can cause eating disorders, anxiety and depression. (Reader, 1/26)

San Francisco Chronicle: How SF Medic Revived Baby From Diagnosed Fentanyl Overdose At Park
All Robert Kuzma knew at first was that bystanders were conducting CPR on a child in cardiac arrest at Moscone Park. It was Nov. 29, just before 3 p.m., when the paramedic rescue captain raced in his red San Francisco Fire Department SUV to the park in the Marina. (Moench, 6/27)

AP: San Diego Man Gets 13 Years In Teen's Fentanyl Death 
A man who sold fentanyl-laced pills that killed a 15-year-old San Diego County boy was sentenced Tuesday to 13 years in federal prison. Kaylar Junior Tawan Beltranlap, 21, of San Diego was sentenced for distributing fentanyl in the form of counterfeit oxycodone pills. (1/26)

San Francisco Chronicle: How You And Everyone You Know Can Help Stop California Mass Shootings
Four mass shootings in California in the past 10 days have left many wondering why this is still happening and what we can do to prevent it. In the Southern California city of Monterey Park, 11 people were killed in a ballroom by a man who was a frequent patron there. In Half Moon Bay, seven people were shot and killed at two agricultural sites by a co-worker. In Oakland, one person was killed and four injured during a gun battle that sprayed bullets into a crowd of bystanders. South of Fresno in Goshen, six people were murdered execution style at home in the middle of the night, including a teenager and her baby. (Amy Barnhorst and Garen Wintemute, 1/26)

Los Angeles Times: Will 19 Dead In California Alter The Balance Between Your Right To A Gun And My Right To Live?
Individualism has been a defining and admirable American trait throughout this nation’s history on a vast, varied continent. But so has its opposite: communitarianism, collectivism — a focus on the common good, even if that means curbing some individuals’ liberty. The two impulses aren’t mutually exclusive; they coexist, if in tension. In some periods, one impulse is more prominent than the other. When President Hoover’s reliance on what he called Americans’ “rugged individualism” proved woefully inadequate to the Great Depression, the nation turned to Franklin D. Roosevelt for the greatest burst of collective action ever to that point — the creation of a federal safety net that endured and expanded. (Jackie Calmes, 1/27)

Los Angeles Times: Why The Monterey Park Shooting Feels Like An Attack On Asian America
For thousands of fellow Asian Americans, Monterey Park is our home — even if we don’t live there. For immigrants and their children, the location of Saturday’s tragedy that killed 11 people was personal and familiar: a dance hall during festive Lunar New Year celebrations. And more so, it was Monterey Park — a town whose Asian strip malls, stores and houses of worship reflect the everyday lives of our ancestors who chose to put down roots in the United States. (James Zarsadiaz, 1/23)

Sacramento Bee: Decades-Old California Sex Abuse Lawsuits Give Survivors A Chance At Healing
The cascade of recent lawsuits alleging sexual abuse of children throughout California has been sobering. It also offers untold thousands of victims an opportunity for some healing, including many telling their heartbreaking stories for the first time — decades after they happened. Teachers, scouting leaders, pastors and church volunteers, foster parents and coaches — the people we often pay and usually trust to lift and guide our children — are implicated by the score in these lawsuits, estimated at 1,000 in Northern California alone. (1/26)

San Francisco Chronicle: I Got COVID But Threw My Paxlovid Pills In The Garbage. Here’s Why
It’s been a month since I threw my Paxlovid pills in the garbage. I only took the three-pill, twice-daily dosage for one day instead of the prescribed five. But no matter how many cough drops I sucked on or sticks of gum I chewed, I could not shake the rancid, metallic-tasting dumpster fire that has seemingly taken up permanent residence in my mouth. (Debbie Cohen, 1/25)

San Diego Union-Tribune: End Of COVID-19 Vaccine Rule For City Workers Was Inevitable 
The San Diego City Council’s unanimous decision this week to end its mandate that city workers be vaccinated for COVID-19 had a sense of inevitability about it. Widespread vaccinations and new treatments for those with severe cases have sharply limited hospitalization rates and deaths. (1/26)

San Francisco Chronicle: COVID Is Endemic. Here’s How Monica Gandhi Says We Keep It That Way
On Sept. 18, President Biden famously said “the pandemic is over.” He very quickly followed that up by saying: “We are doing a lot of work on it.” These notions may sound contradictory, but they are indeed the way to approach the concept of endemicity; combating COVID-19 will take ongoing and hard work. (Monica Gandhi, 1/21)

San Diego Union-Tribune: UCSD Heart Health Breakthrough Could Help The Entire World 
As reported Wednesday by the journal Nature, UC San Diego engineers and physicians have developed a wearable ultrasound device the size of a postage stamp that uses custom AI “deep learning” algorithms to assess the structure and function of the human heart for up to a full day. (1/26)

Los Angeles Times: Does Physical Therapy Work For Severe Pain?
Chronic pain affects 1 in 6 people in the United States and around the world, and is the most common cause of disability. Yet medicine’s desperate attempts to treat chronic pain sparked the opioid epidemic. And while many promising non-opioid therapies exist, some of them newly developed, patients face innumerable barriers in accessing them. To overcome the opioid epidemic, it is not enough to just reduce how many opioids physicians prescribe. We need to be able to offer patients evidence-based alternatives. Yet for that to happen, we must also better understand the fundamental nature of chronic pain, which is as much an emotion we feel in our minds as it is a physical sensation experienced by our body. (Haider Warraich, 1/24)