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DraftKings Casino App is Now Available on IOS and Android – Crossing Broad

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

DraftKings Casino has been available in select states for some time but just this week it has completed its migration to standalone app.

The DraftKings Casino app is now available as a standalone app on both iOS and Android in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Users can download the app directly from the iOS App Store or through a direct download link on Android.

Get it here:

Previously, DraftKings online casino was contained inside the DraftKings Sportsbook PA app. Now its off on its own.

The DraftKings Casino app is available in the Apple App Store in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but you should first register online to get a$500 deposit match and $100 free Blackjack credit.

Heres how:

Pretty straightforward.

In addition to the $500 deposit bonus, DraftKings offers $100 in free Blackjack credits. But there is a substantial play-through requirement on the deposit bonus.

Sportsbook operators like DraftKings and FanDuel originally, or ostensibly, had little interest in offering casino games alongside their popular sports betting features. But the legalization of iGaming paved the way for both brands, with large install bases, to capitalize on the highly popular (and lucrative) wave.

DraftKings was first, offering its casino app in New Jersey with best-in-class online Blackjack features that included a live custom-branded studio with a modern feel. They scaled up from there and hopped across the river into Pennsylvania. The FanDuel Casino app quickly followed suit.

But the signup experience proved confusing for many. While there is certainly overlap among hardcore gamblers, casino players look distinctly different than sports bettors, particularly the ones to which DraftKings app appeals. That meant a slightly older demographic looking for online slots was often met with proposition for sports bets when trying to find slot games inside the app.

Spin it off, baby.

The solution was obvious. DraftKings spun off its casino product into its own app,but casino games are still available inside the sportsbook app itself.

This allows sports bettors the sample the casino offerings, while segmenting out traditional casino players into a more focused product.

Though the global pandemic and its associated shutdown had largely brought sports betting to a halt, big-name betting brands like DraftKings Sportsbook and FanDuel Sportsbookshifted their focus to their online casino apps in Pennsylvania.

Everything ranging from slots to table games to sports-themed Blackjack and Roulette are available in DraftKings Casino. Live dealer is coming later this year.Thus far, all of this has existed inside the sportsbook app, making it confusing to new players searching for DraftKings Casino.

That all changes for users in Pennsylvania.

In case you havent heard, DraftKings went public a few months ago and watched its stock (ticker symbol:DKNG) run up almost 400% before settling at a roughly 250% gain in recent days. Not bad. All of this during a time with no major sports.

One reason is because DraftKings is one of the few legal sports betting plays they have little exposure to physical casinos and are entirely US-based.

But the other, more subtle reason is that DraftKings, along with rival FanDuel, began offering online casino games to its players during a time when casino-goers shifted their attention to the web. This opens up an entire new market for DraftKings beyond its young male, sports fan demo.

Per sources we talked to, DraftKings realized that separating its casino audience from sports bettors probably made sense (dont worry, you can still share a wallet between all of DraftKings gambling apps) to make it easier for customer to find what they were looking for (and also reduce bloat in the app).

Pennsylvania, following in the footsteps of New Jersey, became the second state to legalize large-scale online gambling, thus making it a huge focus for gaming operators.

DraftKings Casino app becomes just the latest example of that.

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DraftKings Casino App is Now Available on IOS and Android - Crossing Broad

Spin the Wheel: Casinos cleared to reintroduce roulette – SouthCoastToday.com

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

Roulette wheels can spin once again in Massachusetts casinos, but only with COVID-19 safety precautions that outlaw the typical rowdy atmosphere of players and spectators around the table.

The Massachusetts Gaming Commission approved the reintroduction of roulette to MGM Springfield and Encore Boston Harbor at a meeting Thursday that also saw regulators approve a variety of mostly minor changes to the rules of the games offered at Massachusetts casinos.

When the commission allowed casinos to reopen in July, regulators did not allow poker, craps and roulette on the gaming floors. Loretta Lillios, interim director of the commission's Investigations and Enforcement Bureau, said Thursday that the state's two full-scale casinos requested that the games be allowed now that they have been open for about three months without significant issues.

"We have worked with them to identify health and safety measures that could be implemented with roulette nad in doing so we tried to hew closely to the measures that the commission already approved for the blackjack-style games," Lillios said. "One of our obligations with a request like this is that we consult with the Department of Public Health ... and the department raised no objections to the reintroduction of the game and it communicated that it is comfortable doing so in conjunction with the minimum safety measures outlined here."

Another factor that the DPH took into consideration, Lillios said, was that Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey casinos are offering roulette, meaning that most Massachusetts roulette players have the option of gambling in another state within easy driving distance.

The commission approved a series of safety guidelines the casinos must follow if they plan to offer roulette. Instead of the usual nine players seated and others standing around the table, the game will be capped at a maximum of three players, all of whom must be seated and separated by plexiglass. No spectators will be allowed to stand around the table.

Only 16 roulette tables will be allowed at Encore and MGM is allowed up to seven tables. Neither casino will be allowed to increase its current maximum occupancy in conjunction with the addition of roulette.

The other significant change roulette players will notice is a new prohibition on wagers placed once the ball is in motion. IEB Assistant Director Bruce Band said roulette is a very verbal game and there was a concern that the plexiglass barriers could make it more difficult for a dealer to recognize verbal bets once the ball is in motion, so the decision was made to simply eliminate those wagers. Band said MGM and Encore are supportive of the change.

Commissioners said they were now comfortable with the reintroduction of roulette the commission denied a request in August to reintroduce both roulette and craps because of the small number of compliance issues in the months since the casinos reopened, the safety measures put in place, and because Lillios said the return of roulette would result in Encore hiring back 60 employees it had laid off and MGM hiring back an undetermined number.

"I think we now have a history of watching our licensees and patron compliance," Commissioner Eileen O'Brien said. "The numbers are not static, they are trending in the opposite direction of what we would like to see. But on balance I think if you look at the integrity of the games, the protections in place, the lack of increase to occupancy, the additional rehires that would occur as a result, I think it is an appropriate time now to discuss this and vote on it as a commission."

The commission on Thursday also approved a raft of changes to the rules of the games as posted on the commission's website. Most of the changes deal with terminology or address situations like when a dealer forgets to "burn" a card at the start of a hand rather than significantly altering how any game is played.

"These changes are being made for continuity throughout all the games' rules to reduce errors by dealers who deal multiple games. Other changes include the modernization of all the technology used in gaming, as well as social distancing protocols needed during times of a pandemic," Burke Cain, assistant chief of the Gaming Commission's Gaming Agents Division, said.

The commission approved changes related to blackjack that are meant to clear up some of the confusion that led in 2019 to a lawsuit being filed alleging that Encore Boston Harbor was duping customers by paying out at less favorable odds for blackjack wins.

All references to the "6 to 5 variation" of blackjack will be removed from the commission's rules, which the commission said would "remove the confusion between the game of blackjack using the option to pay blackjack at odds of 6 to 5."

The commission's old rules used "6-to-5" in two different ways: one to refer to a variation of blackjack that uses different dealing procedures than the standard game, and the other related to standard blackjack and included options for the gaming licensee to pay out those wins at 3-to-2 odds or 6-to-5 odds. The first type of reference was removed Thursday, leaving casinos the option of paying out at 6-to-5 odds as long as it is clearly printed on the table.

A Reading attorney filed a class action complaint against Encore last year claiming that the new Everett casino "brazenly stolen and will continue to steal" from customers by ignoring "established rules of the game of Blackjack to increase its statistical advantage and lower the lawful payouts owed to its customers." The commission ruled at the time that the Everett casino was not violating any Gaming Commission rules or regulations.

Carrie Torrisi, the Gaming Commission's associate general counsel, said Thursday that there were two lawsuits filed over the blackjack issue one in Superior Court was dismissed and one in District Court was dismissed in part, though part remains active in the court system.

"One of the main issued raised in the decision that was issued on the motion to dismiss was that there was confusion as to what the term 6-to-5 meant when 6-to-5 was referring to a 6-to-5 game variation versus when it was referring to 6-to-5 payout odds," she said. "The changes ... address these concerns and clarify the meaning of 6-to-5 by eliminating the 6-to-5 variation from the game of blackjack and we think that that addresses the issues."

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Spin the Wheel: Casinos cleared to reintroduce roulette - SouthCoastToday.com

What is the Secret Behind Live Blackjack Technology? – Techzimo

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

Blackjack has come a long way since its invention in the 17th century. For a long time, the only way to play Blackjack was with friends at gambling halls. Then, the Internet was invented and Classic 21 exploded in popularity.

Today, people play blackjack online for many reasons. Some find it convenient. Others love that its cheap and available 24/7. Lately, the primary reason people are visiting blackjack websites is to play the game in a live setting.

They want to play blackjack with a human dealer and not RNG software. They want the privacy of online betting but also socialize with human players. And sure enough, live blackjack is fun, sociable, and profitable.

But what technology makes playing live blackjack possible? Whats the secret?

#1: Web Cameras

Lets start with the obvious. You need a web camera to access a live blackjack room. On the flip side, casinos must also feature cameras to showcase gaming tables, the dealer, and everything else in the blackjack room.

A decade ago, you required a powerful web camera to stream live online games smoothly. But these days, your iPhone or laptop camera can do the job. On the other hand, casinos use Optical Camera Recognition software to provide low-latency streams and to showcase multiple angles with one camera.

Crucially, the cameras used these days support high-quality resolutions. HD and Full HD are the standard resolutions at many blackjack websites. But at the best websites, you could stream live blackjack in 4K or 8K resolutions.

#2: Game Control Unit (GCU)

The Game Control Unit is a shoe-sized device that encodes and decodes data transferred within a live blackjack room. Its like the brain of the entire operation. And without it, it would be impossible to play casino games live.

The GCU helps both the dealer and the players. When you bet or make a move on your computer, it encodes the information and shows it to the dealer. On the flip side, it uses sensors and magnetic strips to update players with whats happening inside the blackjack room.

#3: The Dealers Monitor

Every blackjack dealer uses a monitor to keep up with the players moves. It helps the croupier know how the number of players in the game, their bet sizes, and their cards. Additionally, monitors help dealers communicate with players better.

Thats because they can easily see the names of each player. And they can chat with the player through the monitors. Or they could turn on their microphones and chat through voice communication.

On some websites, dealers have a large monitor installed on the wall. Then they can deal with cards or respond to players transparently. In many cases, these wall monitors apply to blackjack tournaments.

#4: Websites and Mobile Apps

This goes without saying. Live blackjack would be impossible without websites and apps. Casinos need a platform to run games on the Internet. And thats where web and mobile app design comes into play.

These days, casinos are trying hard to eliminate native apps. Its probably not their fault. The demand for native app is declining. Instead, people want mobile-friendly websites. Sites that dont require downloading large files to play a few rounds of blackjack.

The best blackjack sites provide a smooth gaming experience on both Android and iOS devices. They load fast. Games are responsive and depositing money is a breeze. To learn more about the best live online blackjack casinoscheck this article by Alexander Birch. Youll also discover how to find sweet welcome and loyalty bonuses.

#5: Shuffling Device

Live blackjack casinos shuffle cards in two ways. A dealer could shuffle all cards manually. Or she could let a device do the job. Many online casinos use devices to make the process fair and hard for card counters.

For the uninitiated, card counting is a real thing in the blackjack community. Some people have made millions of dollars through the art. That said, its something casinos dislike and could even fire you as a customer for doing it.

Its not really banned. You cant be jailed for doing it. But as mentioned, you can be thrown out of a casino.

#6: Gaming Software

The standard online blackjack website has at least five variations of the game. The software comes from independent developers like Playtech, NetEnt, Microgaming, BetSoft, and Evolution Gaming.

Most of these developers dont support live blackjack. So, you must be careful about the games you choose. Evolution Gaming, NetEnt, and Playtech are the most well-known live blackjack providers.

Some of the most popular blackjack variants you can find online are:

#7: Security Tools

One of the requirements of running a blackjack website is to ensure its safe. As such, you cant find a licensed online casino without security tools like SSL encryption, log in details, and data collection acceptance forms.

SSL helps secure your information so that when you visit a blackjack site no one can intercept your data. On the flip side, a data collection acceptance firm ensures that operators only collect your data if you authorize them.

Depending on the casino, there could be more security tools. For example, some websites have payment compliance certificates to verify that they only work with safe payment companies. They could also invite independent auditors to verify the fairness of their games.

#8: Online Banking Options

Online payment methods make casino games more enjoyable. Thats because you dont just play for the fun of it. You also know theres a reward at the end of it. Fortunately, casinos provide a smooth way to deposit and withdraw money.

You could use credit cards like Visa or MasterCard. Alternatively, you could choose e-wallets like PayPal, Skrill, Neteller, and Paysafecard. Another option is to deposit money through bank transfer or cryptocurrencies.

The best part of it is that you can spend as little or as much as you want. All you need is to choose a blackjack site with flexible limits. Additionally, you want a website whose blackjack games support adjustable betting limits.

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What is the Secret Behind Live Blackjack Technology? - Techzimo

How to Win More Money Gambling – Winning More With Casino Games – BestUSCasinos.org

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

Who wouldnt want to learn how to win more often when playing casino games? After all, if you master winning more often, cant you get rich in a short period of time?

Its actually more complicated than that. Depending on the payout odds for a casino game, you might still lose money even if youre winning half the time.

This post explains how to win more often when playing casino games and why that isnt necessarily profitable in the long run.

Suppose you want to learn how to win more often playing roulette for real money. This is a subject Im sure I can help you with.

The first step to winning more often at roulette is to choose the bets with the higher probability of winning. This means betting on red, for example. Thats the bet most likely to win. On an American roulette wheel, you have a 47.37% probability of winning.

A roulette wheel has 38 numbers on it. 18 of them are red, so the probability of winning a bet on red is 18/38. Thats where the 47.37% comes from.

If you bet on a single number in roulette, the probability of winning that bet is obviously much lower1/38, or 2.63%. Theres more to it than that, though. You also need to keep in mind the payout odds.

Youve probably heard or read the expression house edge before. Its just a term used to describe the casinos statistical advantage over the player. Its expressed as a percentage.

The idea is that if you look at a large dataset of bets, your average loss per bet will eventually look like the house edge. In roulette, the house edge for that bet on red is 5.26%.

Would you be surprised to learn that the house edge for the bet on a single number is ALSO 5.26%? Thats because the house edge accounts for the payout size for the bet.

On a single number bet, youll win less often. On average, youll win 1 out of 38 spins. But when you do win, youll win 35 to 1 on your money. Bet $100, and youll win $3,500 when you win.

On that bet on red, youll win WAY more often. On average 18 out of 38 spins. But when you win this bet, youll only win even money. Bet $100, and youll win $100 when you win. But if you play either way for 10,000 spins or so, youll eventually see the same resultsa loss of about $5.26 every time you bet $100.

You actually have a lower probability of winning a hand of blackjack than you do of winning an even money roulette bet. The probability of winning a hand of blackjack is significantly lower than the probability of winning an even money roulette bet.

Youll only win a hand of blackjack 42.22% of the time. But everyone knows that blackjack has a much lower house edge than roulette. Its about 1% instead of 5%. How can that be if its harder to win in blackjack?

The difference has to do with the probability of getting the bonus payout for a natural, or blackjack. Thats a two-card hand that totals 21. The only way to get a blackjack is to get a two-card hand with a 10 and an ace in it.

The standard payoff for a blackjack is 3 to 2. It happens often enough that it improves the house edge dramatically, assuming youre playing with basic blackjack strategy.

So, you see, just because youre more likely to win some bets, it doesnt mean that you can generate a long-term profit from that strategy.

In the long run, if your hope is to be profitable, your best chance is to stick with the game with the lowest house edge. You could get lucky and see a standard deviation early on that will make you a profitable player.

The truth is, though, that ANY time you play a game where the house has an edge over the player, you will eventually lose all your money. Its just a matter of how fast or slow you lose it. The other consideration is how much fun youre having during the experience.

Casinos use a formula to estimate how much theyll make from a casino game in the long run. Gamblers can use the same formula to decide how unprofitable such a game is for the player. The formula is simple:

House edge X hourly action = expected hourly loss

You need a second calculation to get your average hourly action, but its just another simple multiplication problem:

Average number of bets per hour X average size of bet = hourly action

Slot machines are some of the most expensive games in the casino. Lets assume youre playing Megabucks, which costs $3 per spin to play. Lets also assume that the house edge on the game is 9%. (We dont know what the real number is, but thats probably not a bad guess.)

An average slot machine player might make 500 spins per hour. At $3 per spin, your hourly action is $1,500. With a house edge of 9%, your expected loss is $135.

Standard deviation might result in an hour or two of wins, but once youve put in about 20 hours of play, you should be coming pretty close to the expected loss per hour. In fact, by then, you should have lost about $2,700 on the game. Thats a sobering thought

Lets look at another exampleblackjack. Lets assume you play with perfect basic strategy, and youve found a game with good rules. The house edge you face is 0.5%.

Lets also assume youre playing for $5 per hand. If youre playing heads up with the dealer, you might be getting 200 hands per hour.

Your hourly action is $1,000. If you lose 0.5% of that on average, youll lose an average of $5 per hour. You have a couple of questions to ask yourself.

Would you rather lose $5 per hour gambling or $135 per hour gambling? Are you getting an additional $130 per hour of entertainment playing the slot machine game instead of the blackjack game?

If youre a recreational gambler, you should change your mindset and start thinking about gambling as an entertainment activity. Then, you can analyze whether youre getting your moneys worth from your entertainment dollars.

Even though every game in the casino has a built-in house edge, you can still find ways to get an edge when gambling. If you repeatedly place bets with an edge, youre considered an advantage gambler. And you can use the same formula as above for calculating those projected profits.

Heres an example: Lets say you learn how to count cards, and you estimate that you have a 1% edge over the casino when counting. Lets also say that you ONLY play heads-up, and your average bet size is $20. (Since youre raising and lowering the size of your bets based on the count, the average will almost always have to be higher than $5 per hand.)

So, youre playing 200 hands per hour at $20 per hand, and youre putting $4000 per hour into action. If youre estimating that youll win 1% of that, youre looking at hourly winnings of $40 on average.

The example above may not seem like a lot, but if you can get in 10 hours at the tables per week, you can make an extra $20,000 income over the course of a year.

The easiest way to increase your annual winnings is to increase your average bet size. To do that, though, you need to have a bigger bankroll.

Standard deviation is the expression that mathematicians use to describe the deviations from the expected results in a probability experiment. It means that in the short term, random events dont usually hit the expectation, theyre usually higher or lower.

Heres an example: You flip a coin 6 times in a row. The expectation is that youll get heads 3 times and tails 3 times. But it wouldnt be unusual to get heads 2 times and tails 4 times.

It wouldnt even be that crazy to see heads once and tails 5 times. Its not unthinkable to get heads all 6 times, either. Those are all examples of deviations from the mean. The bigger the deviation, the bigger the multiple of the standard deviation is.

How does that apply to our hypothetical card counter at the blackjack table? It means that even when youre playing with an edge over the house, you might go on a losing streak in the short run.

And if the losing streak is long enough, you can go broke before you ever reach the long run.

The possibility that this will happen is called the risk of ruin. Its a probability, too.

If you have a small bankroll compared to your average bet size, you have a bigger risk of ruin than if you have a larger bankroll compared to your average bet size.

If you really want to be profitable in the long run, you must have a big enough casino bankroll for the action to minimize your risk of ruin.

How can you win more often when playing casino games? Thats easy. Just choose the bets with the highest probability of winning.

But youre asking the wrong question. Youre probably more interested in getting a long-term edge over the casino.

Most gamblers just arent up for the dedication and work required to pull that off, but it can be done.

Counting cards is just one way to do it. Read my other blog posts for additional techniques for getting an edge and beating the casinos.

Casino Games Pros and Cons – Best and Worst Parts of Gambling Games – BestUSCasinos.org

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

All casino games stack the odds in favor of the casino. Thats obvious. The casinos wouldnt stay in business if they didnt.

But people play casino games anyway.

Why?

They find them entertaining.

But what one casino gambler finds entertaining varies from what another casino gambler might find entertaining.

This post looks at what pros and cons each of the various casino games offer players.

The biggest pro that blackjack offers is that it offers some of the best odds in the house. The house edge for blackjack, when played with perfect basic strategy, is less than 1%.

The house edge is the statistically predicted amount youll lose on each bet. The lower the house edge is, the better your chances are (generally speaking) of walking away from the game a winner.

The biggest pro in blackjack is that you have a certain amount of agency when playing the game. Agency refers to your ability to affect the outcomes with your decisions. In most casino games, you have no agency at all. You make your bet and hope for the best.

But in blackjack, you get to make decisions that either improve your odds or make them worse.

This is also the biggest con of the game. Some gamblers dont want to play a game where they have any decisions to make. Its too much pressure.

The other big con to blackjack is that its impossible to win any kind of big prize at the blackjack table. If you bet $10, youll win $10 or $15 if you get a blackjack. Some people prefer bigger payouts even if it means they get paid off less often.

The biggest pro for playing real money slots is that you can win a large enough amount of money on a single bet to really make a difference in your life. Even the lower ranges of flat-top machines average a top prizes of 1000 coins. I dont know many people playing dollar slots who wouldnt get excited about a $1000 win.

Of course, this ignores the progressive jackpots that are available, too. These are games where you can literally win a life-changing amount of money. Megabucks has a starting jackpot of $10 million and gets bigger every time someone in Nevada spins the wheel.

Also, slot machines dont involve any skill at all. For some gamblers, this is a great perk. Theyd rather not have the pressure of making decisions. Other gamblers, though, might find the lack of agency disturbing or boring.

The biggest con for playing slot machines is that theyre a huge drain on your bankroll over time. You calculate your expected hourly loss by multiplying the house edge by your hourly action. Most people make 500+ spins per hour at a slot machine, which drives their hourly action through the roof.

Think about it this way:

If youre risking $3 per spin on a slot machine, youre probably putting at least $1500 per hour into action.

If the house edge on the slot machine is only 6% which would make it one of the best-paying slot machines out there you hourly expected loss on that machine is $90.

Compare that to a game like blackjack, where the best you can hope for is 200 hands per hour (and thats if youre heads-up with the dealer). If youre betting $5 per hand, youre only putting $1000 per hour into action. Since the house edge for blackjack is around 1% or as bad as 2% if you play poorly, your hourly loss is likely to be in the $10 to $20 range.

The biggest drawback to slots is that you never know what the house edge is for the game. With all other casino games, you can calculate the house edge for the game by looking at the difference between the odds of winning and the payout odds for a win. Slots odds is important information not made available to gamblers.

I prefer my gambling games to be transparent about the odds theyre offering, and thats just not the case with slot machines. You could play 2 identical slot machines sitting right next to each other on the casino floor, and one might have a house edge of 6%, while the other might have a house edge of 12%.

The biggest pro of craps is that its more fun than any other game in the casino. Its an adrenaline rush, and its a streaky game. You can start off with very little money on the table and find yourself up several times that in minutes.

You can also see all those winnings washed away with a single throw of the dice that goes badly.

The other pro of craps is that it offers some of the best odds in the casino if you stick with the right bets. I always suggest sticking with games where the house edge is 1.5% or less. Craps makes the cut if you stick with the pass or come bets. You can also play dont pass and dont come bets. Taking or laying odds has a house edge of 0%.

You should skip all the other bets at the craps table. This is one of the cons of the game a huge number of bets with a high house edge that the casino staff is going to pressure you to make every time the dice are thrown.

Being a reader of my blog, though, youll be immune to the casinos sales techniques.

The other con is that the game seems complicated to newcomers, and it can be intimidating to learn how craps betting works. Dont worry about it, though. Its less complicated than you think, and most craps players are more welcoming to newcomers than you might think.

The biggest pro for roulette is that its easy to understand. I was able to pick up how to play in a couple of bets, and most gamblers are smart enough to do the same. You dont have to stress out about learning a lot of jargon or looking foolish at the roulette table.

The other big pro for roulette is that you have some flexibility with how volatile you want your bets to be. If you want to experience lots of small wins, you can place even money bets which win half the time. If you prefer to see larger wins that happen less often, you can place bets on single numbers and see a payoff of 35 to 1 when you win.

You can place bets with payouts in between, too.

The biggest pro for roulette is that its a relaxed, slow-paced game where you dont have to put much money into action per hour. This reduces your average hourly loss. The biggest cons for roulette are the high house edge and the lack of a skill element.

In American roulette, the default house edge is 5.26%, which is far outside of my usual recommendation. If you can find a European roulette game, though one with a single zero instead of a 0 and a 00, you can get a lower house edge of 2.70%.

In most Vegas casinos, the European roulette games have a higher minimum bet than the standard American roulette tables.

Some people fall for some terrible casino betting systems related to roulette, like the Martingale. If youre a sucker for those kinds of things, roulette might be a game youd be better off avoiding.

If you like having some influence over the outcome of your gambling games, video poker might be ideal for you especially if youre an introvert. I usually recommend blackjack to casino players who want to make decisions that matter.

But introverts often dislike blackjack because of the necessity of sitting with other players at the table.

Another pro to video poker is the low house edge. You can find video poker games with a house edge of between 0.3% and 0.5%. You must be able to use close-to-optimal video poker strategy to see those numbers, though.

Video poker doesnt lack cons, though. Its as fast-paced a game as slot machines, so youll be putting a lot of money into action per hour when you play video poker. Just like slots, youll probably make 500 bets per hour when playing video poker games.

Its also more volatile than some of the games with a low house edge. Even though the house edge is low, part of why its low is because of the payout for a royal flush, which only comes up once every 40,000 hands. That means youll only see a royal flush on average once every 80 hours or so.

The other con to video poker is that the house edge varies based on the pay table. If youre not familiar with how the various pay tables work, you might easily find yourself at a video poker game where the house edge is 6% or 7% instead of the 0.3% to 0.5% I was touting earlier.

All gambling games in a casino have their pros and cons. Much of the decision about what you should and shouldnt bet on in the casino boils down to your personal preferences.

There are no right or wrong answers, although I think you should stick with games where the house edge is lower than 1.5%.

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Casino Games Pros and Cons - Best and Worst Parts of Gambling Games - BestUSCasinos.org

How to Choose an Online Casino – Finding the Best Gambling Sites – BestUSCasinos.org

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

I always suggest new players join two or three online casinos. Doing this gives you the option to test-drive several of your favorites.

Youre not a beginner anymore, though. Youve progressed into the world of intermediate or perhaps the advanced online gambling.

As you transition from a beginner player into a veteran, some things will become apparent. For example, one of the sites you initially signed up with will provide you with an overall better user experience.

This may be as simple as a more easily navigable interface. Many of the factors that will be steering you to your favorite site will be fairly obvious.

You may be missing out on features that will definitely increase your entertainment. If you are diligent, you could even see increased winnings. So how do you spot the major differences between online casinos?

Youre not a beginner anymore, but youre no pro either. It can be easy to miss key opportunities to enhance your experience. Especially if you arent sure what youre looking for.

Dont fret. Im going to cover the top five things to look for in a gambling site.

These factors will be things you likely missed or overlooked completely as a beginner. Its time to take your game to the next level, and you must have the gambling site along for the ride.

You undoubtedly checked out the games before you ever signed up. You likely browsed their vast selection of online slots and checked the typical boxes.

So, I would be surprised if you went with a gambling site that doesnt offer popular games like craps, roulette, and blackjack. Even players that dont play one or more of these top games will check to make sure theyre available.

Suppose your favorite way to spend a relaxing Saturday afternoon is by playing roulette. As a beginner, you probably checked out the varieties offered before signing up.

Some beginners will take things a step farther and carefully investigate each games rules to make sure the house edge is as diminished as possible.

What if I told you there are gambling sites that provide live dealer gambling for some table games?

This feature transforms your living room, office, or poolside into your personal casino floor.

Having a live dealer at the blackjack table adds a tremendous amount of enjoyment to the overall experience. I enjoy having a face to look at and somehow feel better about the bad breaks.

A brief smile after I hit a blackjack from the other side of my computer screen is a welcome addition to my online gambling experience.

As you leave your online gambling beginner phase in the rearview, try out some live dealer games. You may have a new favorite way to spend your Saturdays.

Most beginner online gamblers wont consider mobile features when picking a gambling site.

Part of this is strictly out of an abundance of caution. Beginners often have legitimate concerns about the privacy of their personal information.

However, most cases are a result of fear over facts. There are some truly frightening tales of gamblers that have given critical financial information and personal details to the wrong people.

Lets cut this fear out of the equation at this point. Reputable online gambling sites take exhaustive measures to protect their customers data.

These precautions translate to their online mobile sites and apps. If youre confident in the safety and security of the gambling site you favor, it may be time to look into their mobile applications.

Gaming on the go is taking over as the preferred method for millions of gamblers. Sports bettors, in particular, clamor for the chance to place their bets on phones and tablets.

Having an app on your phone means never missing out on a favorable last minute adjustment to the line. It also means that if you get a report that a teams QB has just been benched due to injury. You can pounce immediately from anywhere you have a reliable signal.

Of course, it isnt just sports bettors cashing in on mobile apps. Players can enjoy a seemingly endless supply of slots on the go.

Players that dont want to miss out on their beloved table games can also download and go.

Blackjack, roulette, and craps are all prominently featured on the top mobile apps.

Before you settle on a gambling site upgrade, look into the top contenders mobile apps. This is an important enough feature to sway most serious gamblers in one direction or another.

The length of time a gambling site takes to process your payout may be the precise reason youre in the market for a new home.

Payout schedules vary dramatically from site to site. Some of the best online gambling sites with fast payouts will begin processing your payout immediately or at least the same day.

Some gambling sites may take from 48 to 72 hours to start your payment. Others have an established schedule as to when they will process withdrawal requests.

Gambling sites that only process payment requests on specific days can be the most frustrating. Imagine you want to cash out some of your winnings or possibly worse, your deposit to take a last-minute trip.

You request the withdrawal from the online site and anxiously await your funds. Surely, it wont take more than a day or two, and you have plenty of time.

You wake up the next day, half expecting your funds to be waiting in your bank account. Still not there, though.

No worries, youre sure it will be there by the time you have dinner. Unfortunately, bedtime comes, and the cash is still in limbo.

You decide to call your financial institution and see what the hold-up is. They inform you that there have been no attempts to transfer funds to your account.

You begin to panic and call customer service for the gambling site. At this point, they inform you that payout requests are only paid out on a twice a week schedule.

And because you made your requests on late Friday, the request wouldnt be completed until Tuesday. This can be a gutshot for many unprepared gamblers.

Avoid this pitfall by doing your due diligence. A little bit of legwork at the start can prevent some major inconvenience and undue stress in the long run.

I see many beginners get so caught up in the deposit bonus that they completely ignore the loyalty programs.

These VIP rewards can continue to be cashed in after your deposit bonus is dust in the wind.

Advanced gamblers understand that these online casino VIP programs are another key to stretching your gambling dollar to its fullest.

Free spins, anniversary gifts, and increased deposit bonuses are a few of the most sought after loyalty rewards. Some loyalty programs will even provide cashback rewards to its VIP clientele.

Of course, the higher you climb up the VIP ladder, the better rewards you will be blessed with. Before you decide on a new gambling site, you should check out their loyalty programs.

It may seem small at first, but you could see tremendous benefits down the road. Gambling sites spend a ton of money attracting new customers.

They cant stand the thought of having those dollars strolling out the doors. Give them the shot at keeping your business, but make sure they earn it.

Beginner gamblers probably arent aware of any software differences when they get started. All I knew when I began my online gambling career was that I could finally lay action online.

It hadnt occurred to me that the gambling sites software would have a significant impact on my user experience. How different can slots really get among these online software developers?

It didnt take long to see some major differences between gambling sites I was using. It isnt enough for the gambling sites you frequent to have smooth, clear graphics.

The interface needs to be intuitive and seamless. Youll likely be spending a lot of time and money on these gambling sites.

Dont allow glitchy software to ruin your experience or cost you money.

Youre not a beginner anymore. Its time to ditch the big wheel and ride with the big dogs. The top five things to look for in a gambling site will guide you in your decision.

Im not suggesting at all that the site you settled on as a beginner cant continue to be your best choice as you grow. First, you need to make sure it checks all of the boxes for you.

Above all, remember that gambling is meant to be entertainment. You will do best to find a gambling site that will keep you excited about your favorite hobby.

How to Choose an Online Casino - Finding the Best Gambling Sites - BestUSCasinos.org

United States Online Gambling Market Report 2020-2025: Pennsylvania is the Fastest Growing Market – ResearchAndMarkets.com – Business Wire

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "United States Online Gambling Market- Growth, Trends and Forecasts (2020-2025)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The United States online gambling market is projected to register a CAGR of 15.41% during the forecast period (2020 - 2025)

The current legislation framework for online betting in the United States allows only bookmakers licensed in Nevada, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey to operate legally, as these are the four states where online betting is regulated

New Jersey is currently the largest market for regulated online gambling in the United States. Over a dozen legal and licensed online casino sites and poker rooms compete for an overall market that is worth more than USD 225 million a year. There are a number of sportsbooks and online sports betting apps live in the state.

As per the data released by the Division of Gaming Enforcement (DGE), in June 2019, the revenues from the top three online casinos in New Jersey were as follows. The Golden Nugget/Betfair accounted for USD 13.6 million, the Resorts AC recorded USD 6.39 million revenue, and Borgata/Party earned a revenue of USD 5.66 million.

Key Market Trends

Live Casino Gaining Momentum in The Country

The live casino market is still at nascent stage in the country, owing to its stringent regulations. However, software providers, like Ezugi and Evolution gaming, have been granted licenses to provide their live deal games in New Jersey. Thus, global players are investing significantly and entering into this market, in order to broaden their geographical presence and customer base. For instance: In January 2018, Evolution Gaming opened its first live casino studio in Vancouver. The New Jersey studio offers ten tables of various games, including American Roulette, Blackjack, Baccarat, and Slingshot Roulette.

Moreover, Evolution Gaming signed contracts with several licensed operators, such as Ocean Resort Casino, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Atlantic City, 888casino, and PokerStars Casino New Jersey. Apart from key players, software providers are also embarking on mergers and acquisitions as one of their key strategies to achieve consolidation and optimize their offerings. For instance, in January 2019, Evolution gaming acquired live dealer gaming provider Ezugi. Ignition Casino, BetOnline, MyBookie, Bovada, 5Dimes, and The BoVegas Casino are some of the prominent players offering live casino games across the country.

Pennsylvania is The Fastest Growing Market

Pennsylvania is the fourth and biggest state to legalize and regulate online gambling. The new law allows for online casinos, online poker, sports betting, and more. Casino gaming (including slots and casino table games, such as roulette and blackjack), poker, sports/horse race betting, and fantasy betting are regulated by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, whereas lotteries are regulated by the Pennsylvania Lottery. Also, as per the data published by the American Gaming Association, the total gross gaming revenue of Pennsylvania casinos amounted to approximately USD 3226.92 million in 2017, which was the second-highest after Nevada.

Therefore, regulation of online casinos in the state is expected to increase the number of downloads of various online casino games and add more revenues in the overall online gambling market. After the imminent launch of internet gambling in 2019 in the state of Pennsylvania, the companies are forming partnerships, to handle the spur of demand for these online casino platforms and provide consumers with better online casino-playing experience

Competitive Landscape

The United States gambling market is a highly fragmented market and comprises regional and global players such as 888 Holdings PLC, William Hill PLC, Caesars Entertainment Corporation and others. Major players are focusing on mergers and acquisitions to expand their presence in the country and to enhance their brand portfolio to cater to various preferences of the consumers. Merger and acquisition is the most preferred strategy in the casino gambling market.

The key players are also entering into partnerships/agreements to enhance their offerings. Moreover, these players are also focusing to launch their offering in the new potential markets.

For instance: In 2018, 888 Holdings PLC launched a new portfolio of live dealer casino games in New Jersey, as part of the continued expansion of its business in the Garden State.

Key Topics Covered:

1 INTRODUCTION

2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

4 MARKET DYNAMICS

4.1 Market Drivers

4.2 Market Restraints

4.3 Porter's Five Forces Analysis

5 MARKET SEGMENTATION

5.1 By Game Type

5.1.1 Sports Betting

5.1.2 Casino

5.1.2.1 Live Casino

5.1.2.2 Slots

5.1.2.3 Baccarat

5.1.2.4 Blackjack

5.1.2.5 Poker

5.1.2.6 Other Casino Games

5.1.3 Other Game Types

5.2 By End Use

5.2.1 Desktop

5.2.2 Mobile

5.3 By Geography

5.3.1 New Jersey

5.3.2 Pennsylvania

5.3.3 Delaware

5.3.4 Rest of the United States

6 COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

6.1 Most Active Companies

6.2 Most Adopted Strategies

6.3 Market Share Analysis

6.4 Company Profiles

6.4.1 William Hill PLC

6.4.2 MGM Resorts International (Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa)

6.4.3 Flutter Entertainment PLC

6.4.4 Caesars Entertainment Corporation

6.4.5 Wild Casino

6.4.6 El Royale Casino

6.4.7 DraftKings

6.4.8 888 Holding PLC

6.4.9 Slots Empire Casino

6.4.10 Borgata

6.4.11 BoVegas

6.4.12 Cherry Gold Casino

7 MARKET OPPORTUNITIES AND FUTURE TRENDS

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/nmiwhe

United States Online Gambling Market Report 2020-2025: Pennsylvania is the Fastest Growing Market - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Business Wire

Ladbrokes Casino bonus: how good is the 2020 welcome offer? – Telegraph.co.uk

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

Ladbrokes Casino is the stylish, substantial, Playtech-powered casino offering from one of the UKs best known and most established sports betting and gaming brands.

The Ladbrokes Casino bonus offer for new customers gives you an impressive amount of bang for a modest amount of your buck. Already signed up to their famous sportsbook? No problem, as long as you havent previously staked money at Ladbrokes Casino, you can still claim your welcome bonus.

New customers can take advantage of this Ladbrokes Casino bonus offer.

Our detailed Ladbrokes Casino review reports on what you will find there beyond the bonus. It includes analysis of their games offering, existing customer promotions, customer service, live casino, software and deposit and withdrawal methods.

This Ladbrokes Casino bonus is a very nice welcome offer that gives you a bonus of 50 in return for your first 10 stake on the casino part of the site.

True, there are online casino bonus offers out there with more eye-catching bonus figures attached, but these are often matched-deposit offers, meaning you only get the same bonus as the amount you are willing to deposit.

However, at Ladbrokes Casino you get a very nice welcome bonus without having to deposit and stake a large amount before you have tried the site, meaning a smaller initial commitment for you.

IMPORTANT: Deposits via Envoy, PayPal, Skrill, Neteller, Paysafe, Moneybookers, prepaid cards and certain debit cards will NOT qualify.

Like all casino bonus welcome offers, you will need to play through your Ladbrokes Casino bonus winnings until you have satisfied the wagering requirements before they turn into funds you can withdraw from your account.

The wagering requirements for the offer were looking at here are 40x, meaning you have to play through 2,000 worth of stakes on qualifying games within the 30 days before you can take cash from your account.

Wagering requirements of 40x are towards the lower end of the scale when it comes to casino welcome offers, with requirements of 50x or 60x not uncommon for new customer bonuses on UK online casino sites.

As mentioned above, you have to satisfy the wagering requirements of the offer before you can withdraw any winnings associated with your bonus. Once you have done so you can withdraw your winnings using one of the following methods:

The Ladbrokes Casino bonus offer for new customers is a generous promotion that gives new players the opportunity to play with bonus funds worth a generous five times their qualifying bet.

A relatively low qualifying bet of 10 means new sign-ups dont need to spend too much to gain enough bonus funds to give the casino a comprehensive tryout.

The goal of withdrawing bonus-associated winnings feels more realistic than some of Ladbrokes Casinos rivals thanks to relatively low wagering requirements and having 30 days to satisfy them in order to withdraw any bonus-associated winnings.

If you like the sound of this welcome offer, Paddy Power Casino and Ladbrokes sister brand Coral Casino have similar welcome bonus offers that are also worth a look.

18+. New Casino players only. Deposit required. Min stake 10 on qualifying games. 40x wager reqs (bonus only) on selected games. 24hrs to accept. Bonus valid for 48hrs. Certain deposit types excluded. Bets covering >70% of Roulette table excluded. T&Cs apply.

The following Casino games are excluded from the Ladbrokes Casino Welcome Bonus discussed in this article and any bets placed on any of these games will not count as a qualifying bet:

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2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine Goes to Scientists Who Discovered Hepatitis C – The New York Times

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

[View the latest updates to the 2020 Nobel Prize winners list.]

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded jointly to Dr. Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice on Monday for the discovery of the hepatitis C virus, a breakthrough the Nobel committee said had made possible blood tests and new medicines that have saved millions of lives.

For the first time in history, the disease can now be cured, raising hopes of eradicating hepatitis C virus from the world population, the committee said in a statement. They announced the prize at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

About 71 million people worldwide live with a chronic infection of the hepatitis C virus, a blood-borne pathogen that can cause severe liver inflammation, or hepatitis, and is typically transmitted through shared or reused needles and syringes, infected blood transfusions and sexual practices that lead to blood exposure.

Tests and treatments all start with being able to recognize the virus exists, said Craig Cameron, chair of the department of microbiology and immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a hepatitis C virus researcher.

The discovery of the hepatitis C virus solved a thorny scientific mystery that had plagued physicians and researchers for years.

A number of hepatitis viruses can infiltrate the liver and cause a range of health problems, some of which are fatal. One of the main ways that hepatitis is transmitted is through blood transfusions, a life saving procedure central to modern medicine that could have deadly consequences when blood was contaminated.

The hepatitis A virus usually has few long-term impacts on the people it infects. Another virus, hepatitis B virus, tends to linger in the body and is responsible for hundreds of millions of chronic infections around the world, many of which remain undiagnosed. The discovery of the hepatitis B virus earned Baruch Blumberg the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976.

In the 1970s, Dr. Alter led a team of scientists in discovering that most cases of post-transfusion hepatitis couldnt be linked to Type A or B viruses a hint to the existence of a pathogen that had not yet been described.

In the 1980s, Dr. Houghton, along with two colleagues Qui-Lim Choo and George Kuo, became the first to identify and formally name the hepatitis C virus as the infectious culprit. The work led to the development of a diagnostic test to identify the virus in blood, enabling doctors and researchers for the first time to screen patients and donors.

Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia who spent her postdoctoral fellowship working on the hepatitis C virus, described the pathogen as a tricky virus to work with. She added that Dr. Houghtons work, which isolated the viruss genetic sequence, bolstered the case that it was a new pathogen and distinct from the viruses behind hepatitis A and B.

Updated Oct. 9, 2020

Dr. Alter and Dr. Houghton later shared the Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research in 2000 for their work.

Dr. Rices genetic experiments added important details to scientists understanding of the virus, showing that it could be isolated in the lab and cause disease in an animal host, the chimpanzee. These studies nailed the hepatitis C virus as the sole infectious agent responsible for the mysterious non-A, non-B cases of hepatitis and set up a crucial animal model for future studies.

Without Charlie, we still probably would not have completed the story, Dr. Cameron said.

The hepatitis C virus is responsible for tens of millions of long-term infections around the world. Because the infections can spread and persist without symptoms, many dont know they carry the virus. But once it establishes itself in the body, the pathogen can silently erode the livers function over the course of years and decades, later flaring up as severe inflammation or cancer.

If not caught early, a long-term hepatitis infection can be extremely difficult to treat. Many people infected with the hepatitis C virus require liver transplants.

Work by the three awardees paved the path for highly accurate and effective blood tests for the hepatitis C virus. In many parts of the world, screening blood for hepatitis has driven post-transfusion hepatitis rates down to near zero.

Still, most people living with the hepatitis C virus have not received a diagnosis, especially in low-income countries, where testing rates remain below 10 percent.

Numerous life saving treatments have also been developed for the hepatitis C virus, many of which are in regular use today. When available, hepatitis C antivirals can block the virus from multiplying in the body, and can cure people of the infection in weeks. Researchers around the world, including Dr. Houghton, are now at work on a vaccine that could prevent future hepatitis C virus infections and disease.

For the longest time, we had nothing to treat this virus with, said Dr. Guadalupe Garcia Tsao, a cirrhosis expert at Yale University. Preventing the disease, she added, was also nearly impossible without accurate tests. For most of my career, it was the bane of my existence. But from the moment they made these discoveries, the numbers of sick people went down dramatically.

Even hepatitis C drugs that originally failed to clear the approval pipeline have found new use in modern times: Remdesivir, one of only a handful of treatments with emergency authorization from the Food and Drug Administration to treat severely sick Covid-19 patients, was originally developed as an antiviral against the hepatitis C virus.

Thats really the story of investing in basic science, and having it pay off later down the road, said Stephanie Langel, a virologist and immunologist at Duke University.

Dr. Alter, an American, is a medical researcher for the National Institutes of Health in Maryland. Born in 1935 in New York, he earned a medical degree at the University of Rochester before joining the N.I.H. in 1961.

After treating some of the first non-A, non-B hepatitis patients decades ago, Dr. Alter expressed wonder at watching treatment for the illness evolve. Modern drugs can cure more than 95 percent of patients.

I could never have imagined this, really, not in my lifetime, he said Monday during a N.I.H. news conference.

With more testing and affordable access to drugs, it would be possible to eradicate this disease over the next decades, even in the absence of a vaccine, he said.

Dr. Rice, born in Sacramento in 1952, is a professor at Rockefeller University in New York. From 2001 to 2018, he was the scientific and executive director at the Center for the Study of Hepatitis C. He earned his Ph.D. from Caltech in 1981.

In an interview Monday morning, Dr. Rice described the utter shock he felt at receiving the early morning phone call notifying him of the award.

I thought it was because a freezer in the lab was warming up, or it was a wrong number, he said. Even after getting over being mad at the phone for ringing, added Dr. Rice, a self-described night owl, my initial impression was this had to be a crank phone call.

Dr. Cameron, a frequent collaborator of Dr. Rices, described him as welcoming, generous and a dedicated and prolific mentor. His lab has really populated the flavivirus field, Dr. Cameron said, referring to the virus family that includes hepatitis C virus. I was not formally a trainee, but I feel like I was adopted by him early on.

Dr. Houghton, born in Britain, is a Canada Excellence Research Chair in Virology and the Li Ka Shing professor of virology at the University of Alberta. He is also director of the Li Ka Shing Applied Virology Institute at the university. He earned his Ph.D. from Kings College London in 1977.

Shortly after the awards announcement, scientists on social media noted that Dr. Houghton in 2013 declined to accept the Canada Gairdner International Award, which he criticized for failing to include his colleagues Dr. Choo and Dr. Kuo. But in a news conference on Monday, Dr. Houghton said he felt it would be really too presumptuous to turn down a Nobel, and highlighted the contributions of his colleagues, with whom he is now developing a hepatitis C vaccine.

Great science is often a group of people, he said. Going forward, we somehow need to incorporate that.

The Nobel science prizes have long been criticized for failing to amplify the achievements of women and people of color in the scientific community.

While I am always happy to see virologists recognized for their excellent work, the Nobel committee continues its streak of recognizing the achievements of white men, Dr. Rasmussen said. I really wish the Nobel committee would consider recognizing equally substantive achievements by women or people of color, and by scientists outside of North America or Europe.

Dr. Rice also stressed the importance of community and collaboration in his discoveries.

Were all a few in a cast of thousands, he said. I feel a little bit odd a combination of humbled and embarrassed. I think there are many people who should feel very good about what they contributed today.

The prize was awarded to William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for discoveries about how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability. These cellular mechanisms control, for example, adaptation to high altitudes and how cancer cells manage to hijack oxygen.

Original post:

2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine Goes to Scientists Who Discovered Hepatitis C - The New York Times

UW Medicine, Fred Hutch test experimental antibody treatment used on Trump for COVID-19 – KING5.com

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals' cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies was used to treat President Donald Trump for COVID-19.

SEATTLE Researchers at UW Medicine are partnering with the Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center to lead a study of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals' antibody cocktail as a way to prevent COVID-19 infections.

The researchers are currently recruiting patients for the study.

The same experimental Regeneron Pharmaceuticals cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies was used to lower the level of the COViD-19 virus in President Donald Trump after he became infected.

Its the same antibody cocktail, that can be used for both prevention and treatment, said Dr. Ruanne Barnabas, co-principal investigator and associate professor of Global Health and Allergy and Infectious Diseases at University of Washington School of Medicine. But trials for both prevention and treatment are ongoing.

The trial, which also includes 100 additional sites and plans to recruit 2,000 patients, is focused on helping people stay healthy after a close member in their own household becomes sick with COVID-19. The antibody cocktail is called REGN-COV2.

If thats the case, why not use this antibody in lieu of vaccines, a number of which are in the final trial phases?

Dr. Barnabas said, These antibodies last for a short time, for a number of weeks. But a vaccine will teach our bodies to make these antibodies that will last for years. Thats the plan.

The presumption is someone given the cocktail would have enough antibodies immediately to last long enough to get through their housemates infection.

"Monoclonal antibodies could help us achieve and end to the pandemic," said Dr. Shelly Karuna with Fred Hutch in a statement.

People wanting to participate in the study must have a confirmed household member test positive for COVID-19 to qualify. To learn more about getting involved call (206) 773-7129 or visit the UW Medicine website.

President Trumps doctor is a D.O, not an M.D. Whats the difference? – Tampa Bay Times

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

Dr. Katherine Pannel was initially thrilled to see President Donald Trumps physician is a doctor of osteopathic medicine. A practicing D.O. herself, she loved seeing another glass ceiling broken for the type of doctor representing11% of practicing physiciansin the U.S. and now1 in 4 medical studentsin the country.

But then, as Dr. Sean Conley issued public updates on his treatment of Trumps COVID-19, the questions and the insults about his qualifications rolled in.

How many times will Trumps doctor, who is actually not an MD, have to change his statements? MSNBCs Lawrence ODonnelltweeted.

It all came falling down when we had people questioning why the president was being seen by someone that wasnt even a doctor, Pannel said.

The osteopathic medical field has had high-profile doctors before, good and bad. Dr. Murray Goldstein was the first D.O. to serve as a director of an institute at the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Ronald R. Blanck was the surgeon general ofthe U.S. Army. Former Vice President Joe Biden, challenging Trump for the presidency, alsosees a doctor who is a D.O.But another now former D.O., Larry Nassar, who was the doctor for USA Gymnastics, was convicted of serial sexual assault.

Still, with this latest example, Dr. Kevin Klauer, CEO of the American Osteopathic Association, said hes heard from many fellow osteopathic physicians outraged that Conley and by extension, they, too are not considered real doctors.

You may or may not like that physician, but you dont have the right to completely disqualify an entire profession, Klauer said.

For years, doctors of osteopathic medicine have been growing in number alongside the better-known doctors of medicine, who are sometimes called allopathic doctors and use the M.D. after their names.

According to theAmerican Osteopathic Association, the number of osteopathic doctors grew 63 percent in the past decade and nearly 300 percent over the past three decades. Still, many Americans dont know much about osteopathic doctors, if they know the term at all.

There are probably a lot of people who have D.O.s as their primary (care doctor) and never realized it, said Brian Castrucci, president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, a philanthropic group focused on community health.

Both types of physicians can prescribe medicine and treat patients in similar ways.

Although osteopathic doctors take adifferent licensing exam, the curriculum for their medical training four years of osteopathic medical school is converging with M.D. training as holistic and preventive medicine becomes more mainstream. And starting this year, both M.D.s and D.O.s were placed into one accreditation pool to compete for the same residency training slots.

But two major principles guiding osteopathic medical curriculum distinguish it from the more well-known medical school route: the 200-plus hours of training on the musculoskeletal system and the holistic look at medicine as a discipline that serves the mind, body and spirit.

The roots of the profession date to the 19th century and musculoskeletal manipulation. Pannel was quick to point out the common misconception that their manipulation of the musculoskeletal system makes them chiropractors. Its much more involved than that, she said.

Dr. Ryan Seals, who has a D.O. degree and serves as a senior associate dean at the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth, said that osteopathic physicians have a deeper understanding than allopathic doctors of the range of motion and what a muscle and bone feel like through touch.

That said, many osteopathic doctors dont use that part of their training at all: A 2003 Ohio study said approximately75%of them did not or rarely practiced osteopathic manipulative treatments.

The osteopathic focus on preventive medicine also means such physicians were considering a patients whole life and how social factors affect health outcomes long before the pandemic began, Klauer said. This may explain why 57 percent of osteopathic doctorspursue primary carefields, as opposed to nearly a third of those with doctorates of medicine, according to theAmerican Medical Association.

Pannel pointed out that shes proud that42 percentof actively practicing osteopathic doctors are women, as opposed to36 percentof doctors overall. She chose the profession as she felt it better embraced the whole person, and emphasized the importance of care for the underserved, includingrural areas. She and her husband, also a doctor of osteopathic medicine, treat rural Mississippi patients in general and child psychiatry.

Given osteopathic doctors' likelihood of practicing in rural communities and of pursuing careers in primary care,Health Affairsreported in 2017, they are on track to play an increasingly important role in ensuring access to care nationwide, including for the most vulnerable populations.

To be sure, even though the physicians end up with similar training and compete for the same residencies, some residency programs have often preferred M.D.s, Seals said.

Traditional medical schools have held more esteem than schools of osteopathic medicine because of their longevity and name recognition. Most D.O. schools have been around for only decades and often are in Midwestern and rural areas.

While admission to the nations37 osteopathic medical schoolsis competitive amid a surge of applicants, thegrade-point average and Medical College Admission Test scoresareslightly higherfor the155 U.S. allopathic medical schools: Theaverage MCATwas 506.1 out of 528 for allopathic medical school applicants over a three-year period, compared with 503.8 for osteopathic applicants for 2018.

Seals said prospective medical students ask the most questions about which path is better, worrying they may be at a disadvantage if they choose the D.O. route.

Ive never felt that my career has been hindered in any way by the degree, Seals said, noting that he had the opportunity to attend either type of medical school, and osteopathic medicine aligned better with the philosophy, beliefs and type of doctor he wanted to be.

Many medical doctors came to the defense of Conley and their osteopathic colleagues, including Dr. John Morrison, an M.D. practicing primary care outside of Seattle. He was disturbed by the elitism on display on social media, citing the skills of the many doctors of osteopathic medicine hed worked with over the years.

There are plenty of things you can criticize him for, but being a D.O. isnt one of them, Morrison said.

Lauren Weber is Midwest correspondent for Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation), which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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President Trumps doctor is a D.O, not an M.D. Whats the difference? - Tampa Bay Times

Laughter is the best medicine, and may also be quite effective during Covid – Economic Times

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

By Richard Schiffman

Some enlightened doctors, nurses and therapists have a prescription for helping all of us to get through this seemingly never-ending pandemic: Try a little laughter.

Humor is not just a distraction from the grim reality of the crisis, said Dr. Michael Miller, a cardiologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Its a winning strategy to stay healthy in the face of it.

Heightened stress magnifies the risk of cardiovascular events, including heart attacks and strokes, Miller said. Having a good sense of humor is an excellent way to relieve stress and anxiety and bring back a sense of normalcy during these turbulent times.

Laughter releases nitric oxide, a chemical that relaxes blood vessels, reduces blood pressure and decreases clotting, Miller said. An epidemiological study of older men and women in Japan confirmed that those who tend to laugh more have a lower risk of major cardiovascular illness. Possessing a healthy sense of humor is also associated with living longer, an epidemiological study from Norway reported, although the correlation appears to be stronger for women than for men.

Armed with this growing body of research, Miller prescribes one good belly laugh a day for his patients. Its not just going ha, ha, he explained, but a deep physiological laugh that elicits tears of joys and relaxation.

There also appear to be cognitive benefits. Watching a funny video was tied to

While the long-term impacts of such a practice remain unknown, Sophie Scott, a neuroscientist at University College London, said that laughter has also been shown to reduce the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline and increases the bodys uptake of the feel-good endorphins.

There also appear to be cognitive benefits. Watching a funny video was tied to improvements in short-term memory in older adults and increased their capacity to learn, research conducted by Dr. Gurinder Singh Bains of Loma Linda University found.

Perhaps most relevant today, possessing a sense of humor also helps people remain resilient in the face of adverse circumstances, said George Bonanno, a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University.

In one study, Bonanno interviewed young women who had been sexually abused and noted their facial expressions. Those who managed to laugh or smile at moments during their interview were more likely to be doing better two years later than those who had not, he said. Humor keeps negative emotions in check and gives us a different perspective, allowing us to see some of the bad things that happen to us as a challenge rather than a threat.

Humour and tragedy may be more intimately connected than one would think.

Charlie Chaplin once said In order to truly laugh you need to be able to take your pain and play with it, said Paul Osincup, the president of the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor. Write down all of the most difficult and annoying things about quarantine, Osincup recommends. Play with those. See if you can find any humor in your situation.

Humour can also serve to powerfully reaffirm ones humanity in the face of illness or disability.

Most of the time you try to deflate a painful situation, she said. In my therapy work, its more like lets blow it up, lets make it so absurd that we laugh about it. This releases anxiety, and were able to approach the topics that werent approachable initially. It takes the power away from the trauma and helps to defuse it.

Increasingly humor is being integrated into mainstream medical practice with a similar goal, said Dr. Kari Phillips, a resident physician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

Phillips observed over a hundred clinical encounters and discovered that humor typically surfaces about twice during a half-hour doctor visit. It is initiated in equal measure by doctors and patients, often to break the ice between them or to help to soften the impact of a difficult medical conversation.

We found that introducing humor results in better patient satisfaction and empowerment, and it helps people feel more warmth in their connection with the doctor, she said.

Dr. Peter Viccellio, a professor of emergency medicine at Stony Brook University Hospital on Long Island, has seen many COVID-19 patients during his hours in the emergency room. A touch of playfulness and kindly humor, he said, has helped to ease an enormously painful situation for both his patients and members of the overburdened hospital staff.

Genuine levity can make patients believe that they are not going to meet their doom today Viccellio said, but he added that it needs to flow naturally. If you are empathetic with the person, your humor tends to fit them, its not forced. If you are not emotionally connected to them and force a joke it can go very wrong.

A case in point: A colleague of mine once said casually to a patient whose medical history he did not know, Dont worry about it, at least its not cancer, Viccellio recalled. The patient replied, Actually, Doc, it is.

Other kinds of joking that are potentially destructive, he said, are the in-group humor that mocks patients or other members of the hospital staff, and the gallows humor that focuses on the darker sides of medicine. And one needs to be careful not to appear to be making light of somebody elses pain.

Despite these potential pitfalls, some hospitals have initiated formal humor programs, making funny books and videos available and inviting clowns in to interact with their younger patients. Some caregivers are also innovating ways to bring humor into their own practice.

Mary Laskin, a nurse case-manager at Kaiser Permanente in San Diego, has been working with her chronic pain patients online, teaching them laughter exercises alongside practices designed to develop other positive mental states like gratitude and forgiveness.

This pandemic is like a tiger creeping toward us, a huge slow-motion stressor that makes the experience of pain worse. Humor helps my patients relax and release their grip on pain, she said.

Laskin suggests that her patients treat humor as a discipline like physical exercise that they set aside time for on a daily basis. She recommends laughter first-aid boxes, where they can stash joke books, funny toys and other props for this purpose.

Our health care system focuses on passive ways to manage pain like taking a pill or getting an operation, Laskin said. I encourage people to actively cultivate the healing power of laughter, which puts them back in the drivers seat.

Humor can also serve to powerfully reaffirm ones humanity in the face of illness or disability, said Dr. B.J. Miller, a palliative care physician in San Francisco who suffered a freak electrical accident in 1990 that cost him two legs and an arm.

After the accident, he said, most people including medical staff members viewed him as an object of pity. There is a solemnity in how people look at you, he said. You are essentially walled off from others, they stop treating you as a sexual being, they stop treating you as a source of humor.

The one exception, he recalled, were the men who scrubbed off his burned skin in the hospital. Its a terrible job, I mean you are inflicting reams of pain on someone to save their life, Miller said. But this ragtag crew, they were freaking hilarious. One of them had a flask and was drinking during the procedure, they were cracking jokes the whole time.

It made me stronger because they were looking at me and saying this guy can handle the pain and he can also handle a joke it made me feel like a human being again.

Inspired by their example, Miller said, he uses every opportunity to bring a dose of comic relief into his own medical work. Increasingly, he sees his colleagues doing so as well.

The culture is beginning to shift injecting humor and humanity back into medicine, he said. If you cant change what you are dealing with, you can at least change how you view it. Humor gives us the power to do that.

Here are five smart ways listed by Anjali Malhotra, Chief Customer Marketing and Digital Officer Aviva Life insurance to prevent heart problems in today's busy life.

A daily exercise schedule in any form of physical activity for a period of 30-45 minutes is crucial to ensure that the arteries remain flexible.

Small changes in your physical activity can help in bringing positive change in your routine.

Studies have shown that brisk walking may add about two hours to the life expectancy of some adults.

Few changes in lifestyle such as taking the stairs instead the elevator, parking at the furthest end of a parking lot and taking a break from the office for a short walk during your lunch hour help in keeping the body in shape and inculcating a habit of healthy living.

In addition, few yoga asanas such as Virbhadrasana, Tadasana, Utkatasana, Bhujangasana and Vrikshasana also helps in preventing heart problems. If you practice these five yoga postures daily, you can reduce substantial risk of heart problems.

What you eat directly affects your heart. Therefore, ensure the intake of green and leafy vegetables, exclude sugar and aerated drinks from your diet, replace sweetened beverages with water as much as possible and bring down the intake of processed foods and refined flour.

Too much sodium can also cause excess fluid in the body that puts an extra strain on your heart. Therefore, it is best to adapt to variety of spices, herbs and flavours that are an alternative to salt.

Also, exclude red meats from the diet in order to avoid bad cholesterol. Keep the intake of oil and sugar minimal which will further help in reducing the risk of heart problems.

Keep a check on BMI (Body Mass Index) and maintain it to optimal levels.

Not only that, it leads to overall disruption in the normal functioning of the heart. Therefore, it is advisable to avoid consumption of both or consume it in moderation and gradually phase it out. It may be difficult to follow but worth the effort.

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Laughter is the best medicine, and may also be quite effective during Covid - Economic Times

How Medicine Bow National Forest Got Its Name – Kgab

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

Medicine Bow National Forest is located in south-central Wyoming extending into Colorado. It is one of the Cowboy State's natural crown jewels. It started life as Medicine Bow Forest Reserve when it was designated by President Theodore Roosevelt in May of 1902. The legendary origin of the name goes way back.

Along with forest, Medicine Bow includes several mountain ranges of the Rocky Mountains: Gore Range, Flat Tops, Parks Range, Medicine Bow Mountains, Sierra Madre, and Laramie Range.

At these assemblies, there were ceremonial powwows for the cure of disease which, in the hybrid speech that developed between the Indians and the early settlers, was known as making medicine. Eventually, the settlers associated the terms making-medicine and making bow, and Medicine Bow resulted as the name for the locality. - US Forest Service

The name gained a foothold in popular culture thanks to Owen Wister's Wyoming-Territory set novel, The Virginian

Along with forest, Medicine Bow includes several mountain ranges of the Rocky Mountains: Gore Range, Flat Tops, Parks Range, Medicine Bow Mountains, Sierra Madre, parts of the Snowy Range, and Laramie Range.

The National Forest includes Medicine Bow Peak in the Medicine Bow Mountains. The mountain is the highest point in southern Wyoming at 12,018feet tall.

Thunder Basin National Grassland and the Routt National Forest (named forJohn N. Routt, the last territorial governor and first state governor of Colorado) are also part of Medician Bow.

In 1993, the consolidation of the Medicine Bow National Forest and Thunder Basin National Grassland with the Routt National Forest was proposed. The Chief of the Forest Service approved the consolidation in February 1995, and the forests were administratively combined. - US Forest Service

The story of the townof Medicine Bowstarted asanother bustling transcontinental stopwest of Cheyenne. The population, though,decreased in the post-Lincoln Highway era,when I-80 went around it.

WILDFIRE: The Latest on the Mullen Fire, burning in Medician Bow National Forest (October 2020)

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How Medicine Bow National Forest Got Its Name - Kgab

The Future of Precision Medicine – Rutgers Today

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

The new Ahmed Lab at Rutgers Institute for Health is charting the course with advanced data and technology

Precision medicine is a rapidly growing approach to health care that focuses on finding treatments and interventions that work for people based on their genetic makeup, rather than their symptoms.

Zeeshan Ahmed, director of the new Ahmed Lab at Rutgers Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research, discusses the future of precision medicine, what needs to be done to successfully analyze the data necessary to develop individualized treatments and the role genetics play during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What new trends do you see emerging in precision medicine?

One emerging trend in precision medicine is the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the traditional symptom-driven practice of medicine, allowing earlier interventions using advanced diagnostics and tailoring better and economically personalized treatments.

Development of cutting-edge, new artificial intelligence and machine learningbased big data platforms has the potential to revolutionize the field of medicine and allow a high volume of data to be analyzed quickly. While this poses unprecedented challenges in data storage, processing, exchange, and curation, it will ultimately provide us with a better understanding of biology.

But we need to improve procedures for genetic testing in health care settings and integrate the study of genetic and metabolic makeup and function into the traditional health care process. We also need to develop prevention and therapeutic strategies and build a library of information about how to use genetics in health care.

Our lab will continue researching and developing useful analytic tools, modern technologies, and big databases in order to provide better personalized health care.

Ahmed Lab recently launched a new mobile app. How will this help drive precision medicine?

There has been a dramatic increase in the availability of genetic and health data over the past decade resulting in a crucial need for databases and technology to effectively store and analyze this wealth of information.

Our lab has initiated a new project to study evolving information about the links between different genes, genetic variants and diseases. We focused on helping researchers, medical practitioners and pharmacists better understand the genetic basis of common diseases.

We developed a mobile app known as PAS that allows users, including scientists and health care providers, to quickly and easily search a comprehensive worldwide database of genes, variants and related diseases and drugs.

Our project is focused on humans, but we will be extending research and development to include other species in the future and plan to develop a new web page and online tools.

What should patients know about the PAS app?

Although approaches that combine clinical and genomic information are becoming increasingly common, scientists and health care providers still face the daunting challenge of identifying what genes may be relevant to the part of the body or biological system they are studying, and how variants may impact health in unique ways for each patient. They need standard information to help them make health care decisions.

PAS brings together clinical, genetic and other health data and information to help map health conditions to their corresponding diseases, to benefit all users, including researchers, medical practitioners, pharmacists, life science students and even patients.

Patients can also access detailed information about their disease and prescribed medications. And individuals who have sequenced their DNA/RNA can use the app to easily search and access information on their genes and potential associated health conditions.

The COVID-19 pandemic also has highlighted the useful contribution of the app and our research. Despite many significant scientific and medical discoveries, the genetics of COVID19 remains far from clear. PAS allows users to look for and connect relevant information to COVID19, including genes, variants, and disease codes in health records.

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The Future of Precision Medicine - Rutgers Today

East Alabama Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine Player of the Week Nominees – Opelika Auburn News

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

Central-Phenix City running back Joseph McKay (23) stiff arms Auburn's James Hume (16) during the Auburn High vs. Central-Phenix City high school football game on Friday, Oct. 2, at Garrett-Harrison Stadium in Phenix City.

Nick Farrow, running back

Loachapoka

Farrow made the most of every carry he got in the Indians' shutout victory over Verbena. When the game was over, he had four carries for 149 yards and two touchdowns.

Joseph McKay, running back

Central-Phenix City

McKay made history for Central with back-to-back 200-yard performances to end September, and he came back strong on Thursday. McKay had 16 carries for 200 yards with two touchdowns to help the Red Devils take care of Prattville.

Juicy Hughley, running back

Reeltown

Hughley didn't get the ball much in the Rebels' blowout victory over Beulah, but when he did he made it count. Hughley had three carries for 123 yards and two touchdowns to help Reeltown take a 47-13 region victory.

Back

Vote for the Opelika-Auburn News Player of the Week at OANow.com/high-school. Voting ends at 11:59 p.m. (Central) Tuesday night.

*During the season, if a player wins Player of the Week, he is ineligible to be nominated the following week. He is eligible two weeks later.

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East Alabama Orthopaedics & Sports Medicine Player of the Week Nominees - Opelika Auburn News

WTEN: St. Peter’s Health Partners may Merge with Ellis Medicine – St. Peter’s Health Partners

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

WTEN reported on the virtual press conference where SPHP and Ellis Medicine announced signing a letter of intent to examine the formation of a joint affiliation between the two health systems.

From the story:

St. Peters Health Partners and Ellis Medicine may merge. Both health care systems have signed a letter of intent to examine a joint affiliation.

While a potential merger is in its early stages, St. Peters Health Partners and Ellis Medicine will be partaking in a review process over the next several months to help determine whether or not both health care systems will join together.

Representatives made it clear, that the pandemic is not the main reasoning behind this potential merger, adding that St. Peters Health Partners and Ellis Medicine have joined together in the pastworking on initiatives such as the Innovated Health Alliance of New York.

A final agreement will require the approval of both boards of trustees, as well as state and federal regulatory agencies.

Click here to watch the full report.

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WTEN: St. Peter's Health Partners may Merge with Ellis Medicine - St. Peter's Health Partners

CBHJ, School of Medicine and Wayne County develop toolkit of COVID-19 mitigation strategies for Michigan county jails – The South End

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

The Wayne State University School of Social Work Center for Behavioral Health and Justice collaborated with the Wayne County Jail to identify key mitigation strategies county jails can use to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in their facilities. The toolkit provides guidance for implementation of testing, contact tracing, information sharing and discharge planning, along with examples of practices put in place in the Wayne County Jail.

As the disease spread across Michigan and mitigation efforts began to emerge, county administrators worked with the Wayne State University School of Social Work Center for Behavioral Health and Justice and the School of Medicine to formulate strategies to slow the spread of the virus. Funding was provided from the Michigan Justice Fund to facilitate the collaborative efforts of community, public health, social work, criminal-legal judicial stakeholders and the development of four COVID-19 Mitigation Strategies that are expanded within the toolkit: 1) COVID-19 testing, 2) community contact tracing, 3) information sharing, 4) discharge planning.

Incarceration settings account for a large portion of the COVID-19 outbreaks nationally, surpassing other vulnerable settings such as nursing homes and food processing plants, so mitigating the spread in these facilities should be key to any community mitigation efforts said Brad Ray, director of the CBHJ.

Combining jail testing data with data regarding the surrounding community and region is important in informing decisions related to jail operations. Since March 2020, jails across the country have taken measures to prevent COVID-19 transmission, including verbal screening, freeing inmates, restricting movement within facilities, prohibiting visitation and suspending internal programming. However, few have implemented testing or implemented effective data measures.

This toolkit will provide better access to information and protocols on limiting contact with COVID-19 in our jails, said Jennifer Caruso, director of the Wayne County Clinical Services Division.

The goal of the toolkit is to provide the experience and knowledge gained thus far in Wayne County (Detroit) to other public county jails, as well as outline key considerations for jail facilities, and the successes, or barriers, of recommended practices from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other criminal justice, public health and community stakeholders. Mitigation strategies will differ for each jail depending on a number of factors. The recommendations contained in the toolkit should not supersede guidance from governing entities, such as state health and correctional departments or local public health agencies.

View the toolkitto learn more or contact the CBHJ for more information.

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CBHJ, School of Medicine and Wayne County develop toolkit of COVID-19 mitigation strategies for Michigan county jails - The South End

Navigating the 2020 flu season – SCNow

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

Nine-month-old Laura Hope Derrick plays with her new book after receiving her first dose of the flu shot at HopeHealth Pediatrics in Florence. She will return after 30 days for her second dose. Children age 6 months to 8 years getting vaccinated for the first time and those who have only previously gotten one dose of vaccine should get two doses of vaccine this season spaced at least four weeks apart. Your childs health care provider can tell you if your child needs two doses.

After more than seven months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are approaching winter and flu season. The influenza virus (flu) and its potential confounding effects are forefront in the minds of health care professionals.

How can you prepare for both the flu season and COVID-19? Experts are in debate, but a few points can be gained by looking at each virus and their past effects.

COVID-19

As of Oct. 1, there have been approximately 147,000 cases, 9,000 hospitalizations and 3,500 deaths in South Carolina alone. Transmission primarily occurs person-to-person via respiratory spread with shedding of infectious material 48 hours prior to any symptoms and 10 or more days after symptom onset.

The highest shedding of infectious material occurs during that period prior to any symptoms. Once exposed, it can take up to 14 days for any symptoms to occur. Symptoms, initially stated as cough, fever and shortness of breath, have been expanded to include fatigue, headache, nasal congestion, muscle aches, sore throat, new loss of smell or taste, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

Influenza

The 2019-2020 flu season, as of April 25, had 6,639 cases, 2,954 hospitalizations and 126 deaths in South Carolina. Transmission primary occurs person-to-person via respiratory spread. Shedding of infectious material can occur 48 hours prior to any symptoms and seven or more days after symptom onset. The highest shedding of infectious material occurs during symptoms and, once exposed, it can take up to four days for symptoms to occur. Symptoms include fever, cough, fatigue, headache, nasal congestion, muscle aches, sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

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Navigating the 2020 flu season - SCNow

Regenerative Medicine Market | Increasing Prevalence of Chronic Diseases to Boost the Market Growth | Technavio – Business Wire

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The global regenerative medicine market size is poised to grow by USD 9.55 billion during 2020-2024, progressing at a CAGR of over 20% throughout the forecast period, according to the latest report by Technavio. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. The report also provides the market impact and new opportunities created due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Download a Free Sample of REPORT with COVID-19 Crisis and Recovery Analysis.

The increasing prevalence of various chronic diseases is one of the primary factors which will drive regenerative medicine market growth during the forecast period. The incidence of many musculoskeletal disorders and bone injuries such as arthritis, osteoporosis, and severe limb trauma injuries requiring hospitalization is also increasing. Regenerative medicine opens the possibility of overcoming previously untreatable diseases using new treatment methods like processed cells for reconstructing tissues. It has the unique capability of altering the fundamental mechanisms of disease and also helps in reducing healthcare costs by eliminating the need for long-term hospitalization or drug regimes. This is leading to the increased adoption of regenerative medicine for the treatment of chronic diseases.

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Increasing Number of Clinical Trials will be a Key Market Trend

One of the most significant regenerative medicine market trends is the growing number of clinical trials. The rise in the number of clinical trials is primarily attributed to the increasing initiatives and support from various international and national public and private organizations. There are many regenerative medicine products at different stages of clinical trials ranging from discovery, pre-clinical phase to mid-stage and late-stage period. The increasing number of products completing clinical trials and receiving product approval will drive the regenerative medicine market to grow during the forecast period.

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Regenerative Medicine Market 2020-2024: Key Highlights

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Executive Summary

Market Landscape

Market Sizing

Five Forces Analysis

Market Segmentation by Technology

Customer landscape

Geographic Landscape

Drivers, Challenges, and Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendor Analysis

Appendix

About Us

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavios report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavios comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

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Regenerative Medicine Market | Increasing Prevalence of Chronic Diseases to Boost the Market Growth | Technavio - Business Wire

All the president’s medicine: How doctors are treating Donald Trump – ABC News

Posted on October 10, 2020 by Danzig

The leader of the free world is now fighting his own battle with a virus that's laid global siege. A concoction of some experimental treatments is helping him do it.

On Monday evening, after spending three nights undergoing treatment for COVID-19 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, President Donald Trump returned home to the White House.

Standing on the balcony, Trump removed his mask and gave a double thumbs up to the crowd.

Minutes later, in a produced video released via tweet, Trump claimed his victory over the virus.

"I didn't feel so good," Trump said to camera. "Two days ago I felt great, like better than I have in a long time... better than 20 years ago."

"Now I'm better -- and maybe I'm immune! I don't know. But don't let it dominate your lives. Get out there. Be careful. We have the best medicines in the world, and they're all happened, very shortly, and they're all getting approved."

Trump has been recovering under close watch from a team of physicians administering world-class care and special access to therapeutics. Monday, his personal physician, Dr. Sean Conley, told reporters Trump "has continued to improve" over the past 24 hours, having "met or exceeded all standard hospital discharge criteria."

There is not enough evidence to confirm when, or if, some level of immunity to COVID-19 occurs, and how long it might last. Experts say right now, the president is likely still contagious. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says COVID-19 patients should stay isolated for at least 10 days after the start of their symptoms or after receiving a positive test. Trump's doctors said Monday he "may not entirely be out of the woods yet," but they are using what they have called a "multi-pronged approach" in his treatment, which will continue as he recuperates at home.

Trump's diagnosis early Friday morning plunged a nation already in chaos into further crisis, uncertainty and fear for his well-being of urgent concern amid a pandemic that has now claimed the lives of more than 210,000 Americans.

Over the weekend, Trump assured the public he was feeling "much better" since being given a sundry mix of medication, some of it experimental, which he called "miracles coming down from God."

A car with US President Trump drives past supporters in a motorcade outside of Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland on October 4, 2020.

The full picture of what treatments Trump has received thus far is still evolving, as still-outstanding questions in the public interest are met with more fulsome, forthright detail. Monday, his medical team told reporters they continue to treat him with the intravenous antiviral Remdisivir, and have continued with the steroid Dexamethasone.

Of the combination of medicines and supplements now being deployed to help him recoup, many are not yet definitively known to beat the novel coronavirus, but are thought to help mediate the virus' symptoms and severity in the body. There is, as of now, no drug "approved" by the FDA for COVID-19 treatment, though some have been given emergency authorization.

Some experts have raised questions about the uniquely robust drug regimen now being administered to the president. Dr. Lew Kaplan, president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and a surgeon at the University of Pennsylvania, said these types of "non-standard processes" can " invite error." This exact combination of medications has not been tested together yet in large-scale studies.

NIH treatment panel guidelines member Dr. Mitchell Levy assured that there is no "miracle" drug yet available.

"If you look at our guidelines, we just don't think there's enough evidence to recommend one way or the other," Levy, chief of pulmonary critical care at Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, told ABC News. "So little is proven. It's like the Wild West, and he's the president of the United States, and so you feel like: 'I want to do anything I can to prevent the disease from progressing.' That often drives us to do things outside of the normal standard. And that is never a good idea. There's a standard of care for a reason. With COVID-19, part of the problem is, we're never really sure what the standard of care is."

Other experts are more optimistic

"All of these treatments shift the odds in your favor," Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told ABC News. "None of them is a magic wand that suddenly makes you feel better," he added, explaining that Trump's treatment plan was made respecting the parameters of available science.

The president's doctors have said he is taking at least eight medicines and supplements. The timeline of Trump's illness remains murky; however, here's what we know about what the president is taking -- and when he started taking it.

Remdesivir

Before Trump was to check out of Walter Reed and head back to the White House Monday evening, his physicians told reporters they planned to administer the fourth dose of the antiviral drug Remdesivir. He has been receiving Remdesivir intravenous infusions since Friday, within 24 hours of revealing his diagnosis. Initially developed for Ebola treatment, it has solid evidence supporting its use in COVID-19 patients, according to the National Institutes of Health, and based on that promising potential, the FDA has issued emergency authorization for its use. Typically given to patients with severe infection, it works by hindering the virus' replication in the body.

Once Trump settles back at the residence, his doctors say, they've made arrangements for the fifth and final dose of his treatment course, Tuesday evening.

In this undated image from video provided by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals on Friday, Oct. 2, 2020, vials are inspected at the company's facilities in New York state, for efforts on an experimental coronavirus antibody drug. Antibodies are proteins the body makes when an infection occurs; they attach to a virus and help the immune system eliminate it.

Regeneron monoclonal antibody "cocktail"

Trump is taking a cocktail of two synthetic, pharmaceutical versions of what occurs naturally in the body to fight off infection. A mix of monoclonal antibodies, this one made by biotech company Regeneron, is thought to be promising, though still in its experimental phase. Late last month, Regeneron published positive, yet preliminary data for its cocktail treatment showing it improved symptoms in patients without severe disease.

While it is not yet FDA-authorized, Trump has been granted access to it under "compassionate use," enabling him to get it outside of a clinical trial. A Regeneron spokesperson confirmed to ABC News that Trump's medical staff reached out to them for permission to use their monoclonal cocktail, and it was cleared with the FDA.

Dexamethasone

Trump's personal physician told reporters Monday afternoon that they continue to treat the president with the steroid Dexamethasone, in response to temporary drops in his oxygen levels.

A corticosteroid used for its anti-inflammatory effects, Dexamethasone has solid evidence supporting its use in COVID-19 patients, according to the National Institutes of Health. In severe cases it's thought steroids can fight the haywire inflammation caused by the virus; however in milder cases, one trial found "no benefit (and the possibility of harm) among patients who did not require oxygen."

When pressed by reporters Monday afternoon, Conley, Trump's personal physician admitted that the president had, in fact, been given supplemental oxygen twice since falling ill. Previously, Conley had said he was not sure if Trump had received it a second time, and would have to check with the nursing staff.

Regarding those two times Trump received supplemental oxygen, Conley said, "it wasn't required."

Schaffner told ABC News that though the press and public have not seen the president's chest X-rays or CAT scans, prescribing the steroid is "a borderline indication within the physicians' prerogative."

Whatever was on those CAT scans, Schaffner said, along with his oxygen levels, seems "undoubtedly what targeted physicians' decision to add dexamethasone," in hopes that it would moderate his immune system response's "collateral damage."

Famotidine

Famotidine, more commonly known by its brand-name Pepcid, is an FDA-approved for heartburn, not COVID-19. Some early, observational studies showed improved survival amongst hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Still, experts caution that observational studies are no substitute for high-quality, randomized trials designed to demonstrate a treatment's true effectiveness. A trial for an intravenous infusion of famotidine is still ongoing.

Zinc

This is not the first time Trump has said he is taking Zinc. In mid-May, Trump told reporters he had been taking both Zinc and Hydroxychloroquine as a "preventative" measure. On Friday, as his doctors listed off the treatments he would now receive for his infection, Zinc again appeared on the list. As an over-the-counter supplement, Zinc is subject to less regulatory oversight. Its virus-fighting properties have shown mixed results in prior studies. Schaffner described Zinc, along with Vitamin D, as "adjunctive therapies, the benefits of which are not known."

"There is some data that Zinc is helpful if you have the common cold," he said. "But not COVID."

Vitamin D

Trump's doctor announced the president is also taking a vitamin D supplement. Studies show an association between vitamin D deficiency and a greater risk of and dying from COVID-19. However, most people get enough vitamin D from their diet. At this point, studies have not demonstrated that taking a vitamin D supplement can help fend off COVID-19 related illness, although there is an ongoing, randomized trial that may offer clarity.

Melatonin

Melatonin is a naturally-occurring hormone with antioxidant, anti-inflammatory properties also helping regulate circadian rhythms. Some researchers have suggested that the supplement might help compliment other COVID-19 treatments. At this point, research showing that this supplement helps COVID-19 patients is limited, but there is at least one small, randomized study ongoing in the U.S.

Aspirin

Available over the counter, aspirin have been taken internationally as concomitant treatment for COVID-19 -- in response to the strange prevalence of clotting and pulmonary embolism doctors have seen crop up in some patients. Aspirin may also help reduce low grade fevers. Saturday, the president's medical team said he no longer had a fever, after less than a day's time. On Monday afternoon, his medical team told reporters Trump "has not been on any fever reducing medications for over 72 hours," but declined to elaborate.

For people for people who don't have increased cardiovascular risks or COVID-19, daily aspirin use is no longer recommended as a way to reduce the risk of heart attacks, because the risks are now believed to outweigh the benefits.

Before taking any medication, people should always check with their doctor, as every patient's situation is different.

This report was featured in the Monday, Oct. 5, 2020, episode of "Start Here," ABC News' daily news podcast.

"Start Here" offers a straightforward look at the day's top stories in 20 minutes. Listen for free every weekday on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, the ABC News app or wherever you get your podcasts.

ABC News' Eric Strauss and Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.

All the president's medicine: How doctors are treating Donald Trump - ABC News

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