Week in Review: Rural hospitals closing | Nurses union suing | Facebook users fibbing

Pending votes on Capitol Hill, hospitals are soon to receive relief from pandemic economics in the form of a $480 billion-plus aid package agreed upon by Congressional leaders and the White House late Tuesday afternoon.

If three or more significant and similar occurrences signify a trend, the U.S. hospitals that have closed in the heat of the COVID-19 crisis—mostly rural institutions—may be harbingers of things to come.

If the group’s actions are successful against the three entities named, unions representing healthcare workers elsewhere in the U.S. may be incentivized to take their cases to the courts in similar fashion.

The media watchdog NewsGuard has compiled a list of Facebook users who seem only too happy to “repeat, share and amplify” everything from quack cures to conspiracy theories.

Tracing contacts of COVID-19 carriers sounds simple. It isn’t. Infected people must be interviewed. They’re not always cooperative. Or they are but can’t remember key details.

Substituting butter, margarine, mayonnaise or dairy fat with olive oil can lower a person’s risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) and total cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to new research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

“In a pandemic of this magnitude, flexibility is paramount for a healthcare system under siege by COVID-19,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said. 

Researchers in Northern Italy have found CT quantification can be used to predict how severe the disease will become in positive-testing patients whose lungs are relatively clear when they’re admitted.