Sacramento Bee: Camp Fire Update: 79 Now Dead, 699 Still Unaccounted For
The number of reported dead in Butte County’s Camp Fire increased by two Monday, bringing the total to 79, Cal Fire said in an incident report. One of the human remains found Monday was located in a structure in Paradise; the other was located outside in Magalia, according to a press release from the Butte County Sheriff’s office. Of the 79 dead, 64 have been tentatively identified, according to the release. (Darden, 11/19)

Sacramento Bee: Volunteers Conduct Much Of The Search In Paradise For Camp Fire Victims
They are retired SMUD engineers and school principals. One is a full-time mom, another a professional farrier. They are the volunteer members of El Dorado County’s search and rescue team, usually dispatched to find lost hikers and hunters in the hills and forests that stretch between Placerville and Lake Tahoe. Last week, in the aftermath of the Camp Fire, they were in Butte County on a singular mission. (Lillis, 11/20)

The Washington Post: With Disease In Shelters And Hotels At Capacity, Wildfire Evacuees Desperately Seek Refuge
The main exhibit hall at the Yuba-Sutter Fairgrounds here has become the home of last resort for 68 people who fled the fires that swept through a broad swath of forest and hill towns nearby. And some days, an ambulance shows up. A team of paramedics, wearing protective masks and disposable yellow plastic aprons, wheeled a sick man out of the exhibit hall Monday on a stretcher, another victim of the bitter repercussions of mass displacement that the Camp Fire has created. (Sellers, Wilson and Craig, 11/19)

Los Angeles Times: Thousands Of Homes Incinerated But Trees Still Standing: Paradise Fire’s Monstrous Path
Driving toward Paradise on the afternoon of Nov. 8, Jonathan Pangburn was less worried about the flames burning through the forest than he was about the smoke. Black and thick, it billowed over the road like a dangerous fog, cutting visibility to less than three feet in places. A member of the incident management team with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Pangburn knew the signs. Gray smoke meant vegetation. Black smoke meant homes, possibly entire city blocks. The Camp fire was no longer just a wildland fire. (Curwen and Serna, 11/20)

San Francisco Chronicle: Stunned Residents Start Returning To Paradise In Fire’s Terrible Aftermath
A handful of residents returned to their homes in the burn zone Monday, among the first allowed back since the Camp Fire tore through town Nov. 8, some walking up to unscathed houses while friends and neighbors stood in disbelief in front of piles of ash and twisted metal. (Thadani, Sernoffsky and Tucker, 11/19)

KQED: Overcoming A Lifetime Of Trauma, Then Facing A New One: Wildfire
Sabrina Hanes has faced a lot of trauma in her life, most of it in her childhood. As part of her healing, she moved to a Northern California town called Paradise. There she built strength and community, but that was upended when the Camp Fire tore through Paradise, burning her home and turning her life upside down. (Klivans, 11/19)

California Healthline: Paradise Lost: Wildfire Chases Seniors From Retirement Havens To Field Hospitals
After barely getting out of Paradise alive before the Camp Fire turned her town to ash, Patty Saunders, 89, now spends her days and nights in a reclining chair inside the shelter at East Ave Church 16 miles away. It hurts too much to move. She needs a hip replacement and her legs are swollen. Next to her is a portable commode, and when it’s time to go, nurses and volunteers help her up and hold curtains around her to give her some measure of privacy. Rinker, 11/19)

San Jose Mercury News: Camp Fire: PG&E Power Line Linked To Blaze Had 2012 Problem
In December 2012, a fierce winter storm toppled five steel towers that support the same PG&E transmission line that malfunctioned minutes before the Camp Fire roared to life. Now, six years later, the 115,000-volt Caribou-Palermo transmission line near Poe Dam and the tiny resort town of Pulga is again under the microscope. PG&E reported damage to it around 6:15 a.m. Nov. 8, about 15 minutes before flames were first reported under the high-tension wires, according to a regulatory filing and firefighter radio traffic. Another transmission line in nearby Concow also malfunctioned a half hour later, possible sparking a second fire. (Gafni, 11/19)

Los Angeles Times: California Fires: Trump Administration Now Blames Devastation On 'Radical Environmentalists'
The political battle between the Trump administration and California over blame for the the devastating wildfires that have killed scores and left nearly 1,000 missing continued Monday. U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blamed the state’s fires on “radical environmentalists” who he said have prevented forest management. (Reyes-Velarde and Serna, 11/19)

KQED: California Firefighters Use Supercomputers To Forecast Wildfires
The deadly blazes burning in California have put a spotlight on the crucial role of evacuation. To save lives and property, firefighters must predict where a fire will spread within moments after it starts. Now, California firefighters are getting some help from a powerful new tool: supercomputers. Crunching real-time data from satellites and weather stations, banks of servers are providing forecasts of how wildfires could behave over the next few hours. (Sommer, 11/19)

The New York Times: ‘Like A Terror Movie’: How Climate Change Will Cause More Simultaneous Disasters
Global warming is posing such wide-ranging risks to humanity, involving so many types of phenomena, that by the end of this century some parts of the world could face as many as six climate-related crises at the same time, researchers say. This chilling prospect is described in a paper published Monday in Nature Climate Change, a respected academic journal, that shows the effects of climate change across a broad spectrum of problems, including heat waves, wildfires, sea level rise, hurricanes, flooding, drought and shortages of clean water. (Schwartz, 11/19)

San Jose Mercury News: California Fires: Why More Disasters Like Paradise Are Likely
Fire crews are still working to contain the deadly inferno that leveled the town of Paradise, virtually wiping it off the map. Thousands of people are homeless, living in tents, trailers and parking lots. Dozens are dead. Hundreds are still missing. And massive, choking plumes of smoke continue to blanket Northern California. Forecasters say rain might arrive by Thanksgiving to clear away the smoke and mercifully reduce fire danger. But the optimism is tempered by a grim reality. Scientists say as temperatures continue to warm, drying out brush, grasses and trees into explosively flammable fuel by late summer and autumn, catastrophic fires and the unhealthy smoke they spew hundreds of miles away will almost certainly become more frequent in California and across the West in the coming years. (Rogers, 11/19)

Sacramento Bee: Study Says Smog Is Taking Years Off People’s Lives
People could add years to their lives in California and other smog-plagued parts of the world if authorities could reduce particulate pollution — soot from cars and industry — to levels recommended by the World Health Organization, a new study reported Monday. No other large U.S. city would benefit more than Fresno, which has soot concentrations at roughly twice the WHO guidelines. Fresno residents would live a year longer if the region could meet the health organization’s recommended levels of exposure, according to Monday’s study by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. (Leavenworth, 11/19)

The Washington Post: How Many Years Do We Lose To The Air We Breathe?
The average person on Earth would live 2.6 years longer if their air contained none of the deadliest type of pollution, according to researchers at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute. Your number depends on where you live. (11/20)

Stat: Air Pollution Exposure During Pregnancy Linked To Autism Diagnosis
Two new studies suggest that rising autism rates might be connected at least in part to air pollution from traffic. They are not the first to show a link between exposure to pollutants during pregnancy and the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders. But both studies look at large populations and find a link with relatively low levels of pollutants. In a study of 132,256 births in Vancouver, Canada, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers detected an association between exposure to roadway pollution in utero and later diagnosis with autism. The study’s strengths were its large size and its method of diagnosing autism, which can be inconsistent. (Weintraub, 11/19)

San Jose Mercury News: Holiday Eating: Is Carb-Cutting The Secret To Losing Weight?
Step away from the mashed potatoes. So long stuffing. Here comes bracing new research about carbohydrates just as we approach holiday feast season. Flying in the face of conventional wisdom that you have to cut calories to lose weight, a large new study recently published in the British Medical Journal shows that overweight adults who cut carbohydrates from their diets and then replaced them with fat sharply increased their metabolisms. After only five months on the low-carb diet, their bodies burned off 250 calories more per day than those who ate a high-carb, low-fat diet, which suggests that cutting carbs may help people maintain their weight loss more easily. The low-carb group also had significantly lower levels of ghrelin, known as the hunger hormone. (D'Souza, 11/19)

San Francisco Chronicle: Court Overturns $1.6 Million Jury Award In Bay Area Asbestos Case
A state appeals court has overturned $1.6 million in damages awarded by an Alameda County jury against a pipe supply company last year in a suit by a former construction worker who was stricken with cancer after cutting pipes laden with asbestos. (Egelko, 11/19)

In more news from across the state —

San Francisco Chronicle: SF Mayor Breed Takes Step To Ensure Prop. C Homeless Tax Becomes Reality
After initially assailing Proposition C as a well-intentioned but ill-conceived way to fund services for the homeless, San Francisco Mayor London Breed has taken a significant step to help ensure the measure’s success. On Monday, Breed announced that she has introduced an ordinance that would allow City Attorney Dennis Herrera to seek a court order validating the city’s use of a simple-majority vote to pass Prop. C. (Fracassa, 11/19)

Reuters: House Democrats Target DOJ Decision Not To Defend Obamacare
Democrats will scrutinize the Trump administration's decision not to defend Obamacare in federal court, when Democrats take control of the U.S. House of Representatives next year, a leading Democrat said on Monday. In June, the Department of Justice declared the healthcare law's individual mandate unconstitutional in federal court, which threatened to undermine insurance protections for people with preexisting conditions, and helped make healthcare a winning issue for Democrats in House elections on Nov. 6. (11/19)

In other national health care news —

CQ: Democrats Weigh Path Forward On 'Medicare-For-All'
Progressives in the House are calling for a vote on a single-payer “Medicare-for-all” bill in the next Congress, but the expected chairmen who will set the agenda for next year say they have other health priorities. Still, the progressives’ push could earn more attention over the next two years as Democratic candidates begin vying to take on President Donald Trump in 2020. A handful of potential presidential candidates expected to declare interest have already co-sponsored “Medicare-for-all” legislation, an issue that was also a flashpoint in Democratic primaries over the past year. (McIntire, 11/19)

The Wall Street Journal: FDA Menthol Ban Will Be A Slow Burn
The Food and Drug Administration’s war on menthol cigarettes could take years. Investors have time to sift the ashes and decide which tobacco stocks are best prepared for tougher U.S. regulations and a shift to alternative forms of smoking. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb last week said he wants to ban menthol brands, which are more addictive than regular tobacco, but didn’t give a timeline. He will immediately restrict sales of flavored e-cigarettes to fight rocketing use among young Americans—3.6 million middle- and high-school students are now e-smokers, up from 2.1 million in 2017. (Ryan, 11/20)

Stat: FDA Proposes New Regulations For Some Health Smartphone Apps 
The Food and Drug Administration wants to ramp up the way it regulates smartphone apps linked to prescription drugs — like medication reminders or symptom trackers. In a new proposal released Monday, the agency said it may treat some apps like drug advertisements — which would allow companies to distribute apps without going through a review process with every update. Right now, the apps aren’t covered by existing regulations. (Sullivan, 11/19)

The New York Times: Chicago Hospital Shooting Leaves 4 Dead
This city’s hospitals have grown all too accustomed to receiving victims of gunshot wounds from unrelenting violence on the streets, but on Monday, one hospital became the scene of a shooting that left four people dead and sent health workers and patients alike scrambling for safety. As a frantic scene played out inside and outside Mercy Hospital, south of Chicago’s downtown, four people were shot and killed, Superintendent Eddie Johnson of the Chicago Police said. Among the dead, according to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, were a police officer, a doctor and a pharmacy employee. (Smith, 11/19)

The Associated Press: 3 Killed When Air Ambulance Crashes In North Dakota
An air ambulance on its way to pick up a patient crashed shortly after taking off in North Dakota, killing all three people on board, and military officials involved in the response said the plane may have broken up in midair. The twin-engine Bismarck Air Medical airplane took off about 10:30 p.m. Sunday and crashed shortly after in a field about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of Bismarck. Air traffic control officials lost contact with the plane about 11 p.m., county spokeswoman Maxine Herr said. (11/19)

USA Today: Alcohol Taxes And Restrictions Could Curb Problem Drinking, But Are Hard To Sell
When health officials wanted to reduce deaths from tobacco, they spread messages about the proven cancer risks, pushed to ban smoking in public places and worked to raise taxes on cigarettes. Alcohol, which causes 88,000 deaths a year in the United States, is a similarly grave public health concern. But the way forward is less clear. What worked with smoking may not work with drinking, which still enjoys broad social acceptance. Nearly all the potential solutions are hitting considerable roadblocks. (O'Donnell, 11/19)

CNN: One-Third Of US Parents Plan To Skip Flu Shots For Their Kids
Thirty-four percent of US parents said their child was unlikely to get the flu vaccine this year, according to a report published Monday by C.S. Mott Children's Hospital. The online poll, which was administered in October, looked at 1,977 parents who had at least one child, whether parents would get their children the flu vaccine and their reasoning, among other things. Of parents polled, 48% said they usually followed the recommendations of their child's health care provider when making choices about the flu vaccine. (Thomas, 11/19)