San Francisco Chronicle: How To Take In Traumatic News Events And Preserve Your Mental Health
Last week brought a relentless wave of horrific news events: two California mass shootings two days apart, the release of video footage showing Memphis police officers’ violent beating of Tyre Nichols, and the release of a body-cam recording showing an intruder’s attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul in the couple’s San Francisco home. Each incident was disturbing, and in some cases exacerbated the stress many communities — including Asian American and Pacific Islanders, Black Americans and migrant workers — have already experienced as instances of anti-Asian violence and police brutality gained in visibility during the last few years. (Ho, 2/1)

Harvard Public Health: New Gun Deaths Data In U.S. Show Continued Rise In Suicides
Gun homicides, including mass shootings, are a pervasive and horrific issue, and we have rightly focused attention on reducing them. But a majority of gun deaths, 54 percent, in the U.S. aren’t homicides, they’re suicides. Indeed, as the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence puts it, suicide is “the untold story of gun violence in America.” Both suicides and gun deaths have increased over the last two decades, and there is a strong link between firearms and suicide deaths. Suicide-by-gun makes up most of both gun deaths and overall suicide deaths (over half of each). (Kelly, 2/1)

Politico: Guns In The House? A Raucous Natural Resources Panel Debate 
House Natural Resources Committee Republicans on Wednesday defeated Rep. Jared Huffman’s (D-Calif.) push to reinstate an explicit ban on carrying firearms to the committee room after a lengthy and occasionally heated debate. The panel’s chair, Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), repeatedly declined to clarify, under questioning from Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Huffman, whether he interpreted House rules as barring firearms from committee rooms. Multiple Democrats contended that different members have various interpretations of the House rules, but Westerman referred their questions to the Administration Committee, which sets the chamber’s internal standards. (Adragna, 2/1)

AP: Yelp Sees Sharp Increase In Racist Anti-Asian Business Reviews
As if running a restaurant during a pandemic wasn’t tough enough, Christopher Wong also had to contend with a racist troll. “I will not have my dog eat in this place because they might cook him,” read the Yelp review of Wong’s eatery, the Curry Up Cafe in suburban Los Angeles. “The owner works for the Chinese government.” Yelp removed the review after Wong and several regular customers complained, but not before it had already been seen by an unknown number of potential customers. ... Last year, Yelp, which is based in San Francisco, removed more than 2,000 racist business reviews before they went online — a nearly tenfold jump over the year before. (Klepper, 2/1)

EdSource: California Ends Plans For Kids’ Covid Vaccine Mandate
The end of the state's Covid-19 state of emergency this month effectively ends plans to require kids to be vaccinated against the virus. California state leaders seem to be quietly closing the door on the Covid-19 vaccine mandate for schoolchildren. The California Department of Public Health hasn’t made an announcement, but officials told EdSource that the end of the state’s Covid-19 state of emergency on Feb. 28 effectively ends its current plan to add Covid-19 vaccinations to the list of 10 vaccinations children are required to have to attend school in person. (Lambert, 2/1)

Sacramento Bee: Sacramento Back In CDC’s Low COVID Level; Mask Rules Loosen 
With COVID-19 numbers improving in Sacramento County, masks are no longer required in certain settings in accordance with California’s pandemic protocols. The county, in a weekly update Thursday from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, returned to the “low” community level for COVID-19 danger for the first time since the end of November. (McGough, 2/1)

San Francisco Chronicle: COVID In California: Fauci Says ‘Anything Is Possible’ For Pandemic
“Anything is possible,” Fauci said. “One cannot predict, exactly, what the likelihood (is) of getting yet again another variant that’s so different that it eludes the protection that we have from the vaccines and from prior infection.” He noted that each omicron sublineage appears to be progressively better at eluding immune response developed by the vaccines and prior infection. (Vaziri, 2/1)

Bloomberg: Merck Covid Drug Linked To New Virus Mutations, Study Says
Merck & Co.’s Covid-19 pill is giving rise to new mutations of the virus in some patients, according to a study that underscores the risk of trying to intentionally alter the pathogen’s genetic code. Some researchers worry the drug may create more contagious or health-threatening variations of Covid, which has killed more than 6.8 million people globally over the past three years. (Lauerman, 2/1)

Reuters: U.S. FDA Removes COVID Test Requirements For Pfizer, Merck Pills 
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday removed the need for a positive test for COVID-19 treatments from Pfizer Inc. and Merck & Co Inc. Pfizer's Paxlovid and Merck's Lagevrio pills were given emergency use authorizations in Dec. 2021 for patients with mild-to-moderate COVID who tested positive for the virus, and who were at risk of progressing to severe COVID. Still, the FDA said the patients should have a current diagnosis of mild-to-moderate COVID infection. (2/1)

Axios: The Funding Cliff For Student Mental Health
Public school districts that received a windfall of COVID relief funds for mental health services are confronting a new dilemma: How to sustain counseling, screenings, teletherapy and other programs when the money runs out. (Moreno, 2/2)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. Students Will Be Able To Carry Narcan In Schools
Students will be able to carry Narcan, a nasal spray that can reverse an opioid overdose, in Los Angeles Unified schools under a soon-to-be-updated policy. The move, announced to school board members in a message from Supt. Alberto M. Carvalho, comes amid continued alarm about the dangers of illicit fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that has been consumed unknowingly by teens in counterfeit pills that look like Xanax or OxyContin. (Reyes, 2/1)

San Francisco Chronicle: Tenderloin Welcomes Infusion Of Funds For Small Projects As Next Step In Mayor Breed’s Drug Crisis Initiative
Two dozen community projects are set to get a chunk of $3.5 million in funds from Mayor London Breed’s ongoing Tenderloin initiative, launched out of her temporary emergency to address drug deaths and street conditions in the neighborhood. Applications getting money include a program to help kids get safely to and from school, the neighborhood’s first-ever dog park and a center for Arab youth. (Moench, 2/1)

The Hill: 20 GOP Attorneys General Tell CVS, Walgreens Plans To Dispense Abortion Pills ‘Both Unsafe And Illegal’ 
Twenty Republican state attorneys general sent a letter to U.S-based pharmacy chains Walgreens and CVS on Wednesday, telling both companies their plans to distribute abortion pills through the mail are “both unsafe and illegal.” In the letter, the coalition wrote that federal law prohibits anyone from using the mail to send or receive any drug that will “be used or applied for producing abortion,” referring to the Comstock Act of 1873. (Oshin, 2/1)

NPR: A Trump-Appointed Texas Judge Could Force A Major Abortion Pill Off The Market
A case before a federal judge in Texas could dramatically alter abortion access in the United States – at least as much, some experts say, as the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision last year, which overturned decades of abortion-rights precedent. (McCammon, 2/1)

Stat: FTC Commissioner: GoodRx Fine For Health Data Leaks Was Too Low
On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission made history by enforcing, for the first time, its power to go after companies that don’t notify consumers about health data breaches. The agency said it will fine GoodRx $1.5 million for sharing its users’ private health information with data brokers and advertising platforms such as Facebook and Google. To one of the commissioners, though, that’s chump change. (Trang, 2/1)

Stat: FTC: GoodRx Leaked Sensitive Health Data To Facebook, Google
The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday accused GoodRx, the prescription drug discount platform, of sharing sensitive personal information about its users’ prescriptions and health conditions with big tech companies. (Ravindranath, 2/1)

KQED: Feds Grant Reprieve On Laguna Honda Patient Transfers Until May
Federal regulators have agreed to continue to hold off on patient discharges and transfers out of Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center until at least May 19, 2023, San Francisco officials confirmed on Wednesday. The reprieve comes just one day ahead of when the pause on patient transfers was set to expire. (Johnson, 2/1)

Capitol Weekly: Stem Cell Agency Chooses New Board Chair Amidst Funding Uncertainty 
Vito Imbasciani is a man of many parts. Pianist, linguist (English, French, Italian Spanish, German), surgeon, urologist, combat physician, musicologist and head of the $440 million state Department of Veterans Affairs – all of that, at least so far. Come March 28, Imbascani is scheduled to be sworn in as the new chairman of the $12 billion California stem cell agency – an 18-year-old state program to develop revolutionary treatments for such things as brain and blood cancers, heart disease, diabetes, sickle cell disease, spina bifida, incontinence, blindness, arthritis, HIV, stroke, epilepsy and much more. In all, a host of afflictions that affect about half of the families in California, according to agency backers. (Jensen, 2/1)

KQED: Last Remaining Portion Of Oakland's Largest Homeless Encampment Faces Eviction
On Friday, a federal district judge will decide whether evictions at one of Oakland’s longest-running settlements of unhoused people can proceed. The Wood Street Commons, home to upwards of 60 people, is the last remaining segment of a larger settlement that ran parallel to Wood Street in West Oakland, mostly under the Interstate 880 freeway. The expansive site at one time stretched for more than 25 city blocks with an estimated 300 people living there. (Baldassari, 2/1)

San Francisco Chronicle: ‘Game Changer’: New S.F. Homeless Housing Gives Hope, But Thousands Still Live In Dilapidated Hotels
A new oasis for San Francisco’s formerly homeless has just opened on Mission Street — a housing complex painted with warm reds and yellows and graced with high ceilings, a lush courtyard and big windows for the sun to splash in. All the rooms at 1064 Mission St. in SoMa have their own bathrooms and kitchenettes and — perhaps most importantly — there’s abundant space dedicated to mental health care, where clinicians can connect with residents like 61-year-old Michael Jackson. (Thadani, 2/1)

Berkeleyside: The State Rejected Berkeley’s Housing Plans. What Happens Next?
State regulators rejected Berkeley’s eight-year housing plan this week, with a letter telling the city to go further in its planned work to upzone wealthy neighborhoods and make other changes to prove it can plan for nearly 9,000 new homes by 2031.The decision by officials in California’s Department of Housing and Community Development means Berkeley has missed the deadline Tuesday to put in place a plan, known as a Housing Element, that state officials judge to be a realistic roadmap for meeting ambitious growth targets. (Savidge, 2/1)

Voice of OC: Sacramento Is Investigating Pay Spikes And Hiring Practices At OC’s Health Plan For The Poor
Orange County’s publicly funded health plan for the poor is facing a state probe for controversial hiring and contracting practices – along with large salary spikes. “We have administrators in our public agencies making close to $1 million from public tax dollars. [That] to me is something we should be shining a light on,” said Assemblywoman Sharon Quirk-Silva, who prompted the state audit by making a formal request last year. (Gerda, 2/1)

San Diego Union-Tribune: Jill Biden To Visit San Diego For Cancer, Veterans Events
First lady Jill Biden will visit San Diego this week to discuss the administration’s “cancer moonshot” efforts and initiatives for military and veteran families. (Brennan, 2/1)

Los Angeles Times: 'Dr. Phil' Is Ending After 21 Seasons
After 21 seasons, “Dr. Phil” is coming to an end so that the daytime TV host can expand his audience with another planned venture. In a Wednesday statement, CBS Media Ventures and host Dr. Phil McGraw said that the daytime TV star wants to expand his audience in a new venture, as he has “grave concerns for the American family.” (Saad, 2/1)

The Washington Post: New Concussion Protocol For Kids: Get Them Back To School Sooner 
For years, the treatment protocol for children with concussions involved keeping them out of school to rest in a quiet, dark room with reduced access to screens until they felt better. In the past decade, however, doctors have been moving toward encouraging kids to return to school and light activity after only a couple of days of rest, even if symptoms persist. A recently released study involving more than 1,500 children backs the new approach. It found that an early return to school — which researchers defined as missing less than three days — benefited children ages 8 to 18, who had less severe symptoms two weeks after their concussion compared with kids who stayed home longer. In fact, a longer stay at home seemed to delay recovery. (Chang, 2/1)