Thursday, September 28, 2023
OSU professor uncovers new Ebola transmission insights Kennedy Thomason News & Lifestyle Editor
sity of Georgia and the Cary Institute of Ecosystems Studies. The team also studied the potential host range of Ebola viruses, which was led by Mekala Sundaram, who was New findings on Ebola transmission have been discov- at OSU when the study was published. ered. Stephens said scientists Patrick Stephens, inhave been curious about which tegrative biology assistant animals are natural hosts, or professor at OSU, and his reservoirs, for Ebola. His team team published a new study worked to identify the natural on the transmission of Ebola. The study was conducted with hosts, who transmit the virus to humans or other animals. researchers from the Univer-
“This is really important because species that are both likely to develop infections when exposed to the virus and tolerate infections well are the best candidates for primary reservoir species,” Stephens said. “These species will survive long enough to spread the virus to many other species. Our models appear to be able to predict which species will succumb quickly to or tolerate infections with about 90% accuracy.” See Ebola on 6
Tribune News Service Winning The Fight founder Kathy O’Keefe teaches McKinney High School health class students about mental health, drugs, addictions and their consequences at the McKinney, Texas school, on Sept. 14, 2023. Along with her son, Brett Morgan OÃKeefe, who died from an accidental drug overdose, she uses examples of students in North Texas that have died from deadly drug overdoses, including fentanyl.
The opioid epidemic is deadly and expensive. Here’s what it has cost Texas Marin Wolf The Dallas Morning News
Courtesy of OSU Patrick Stephens, integrative biology assistant professor at OSU, and his team published a new study on the transmission of Ebola.
OSU professor pushes natural solutions to environmental issues Kennedy Thomason News & Lifestyle Editor Mary Foltz is part of the effort to save the environment and push for sustainability. Foltz, assistant professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at OSU, influences change through her students. “My goal is to challenge and change perspectives and minds as it pertains to our environment and sustainability,”
Foltz said. “If I can change one student’s mind, then they might choose to pursue a field in environmental sustainability and change 10 more minds.” She has worked for CEAT since the fall of 2021, investigating greenhouse gas emissions, agricultural nutrient cycling and nature-based solutions. Foltz takes a global approach, meaning she thinks through how potential solutions could affect the rest of the environment. Specifically, her team is researching natu-
rally occurring processes, such as denitrification and CO2 sequestration, that create few problems for the environment. “The environment built itself and evolved in a way that can be self-sustained, and it would make sense to apply some of these natural tools to try to reestablish balance,” Foltz said. “However, it can be challenging to find the right tool, especially when you have to balance so many variables such as the environmental cost, monetary cost and the social cost.” See Issues on 7
DALLAS -- Every fentanyl death in North Texas is exponentially destructive. Classroom chairs sit empty. Families mourn. Grandparents go back to work to raise their orphaned grandchildren. Then come the bills. Funeral and medical expenses can cost tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars. But each life squandered to overdose or addiction equals lost hours working, parenting, creating and spending that ripple across the Texas economy in ways that can scarcely be measured. In 2022, Texas lost the financial equivalent of around 15 Dallas Cowboys franchises, or more than Warren Buffett’s net worth, because of opioids. The epidemic’s total financial impact can’t be fully calculated. It’s nearly impossible to separate the cost of fentanyl from the cost of opioids overall. Comprehensive data takes months or years to gather; fentanyl’s invasion of North Texas has been swift. There is no good cost estimate for fentanyl at the state level, said Ray Perryman, president and CEO of the highly-regarded Waco economic research firm The Perryman Group. What economists have been able to analyze is the broader opioid epidemic, and the conclusions are grim. Here’s what we know — and what we don’t — about how fentanyl has burdened the state’s economy. The opioid landscape Beyond Cowboys franchises, last year’s losses in Texas can only be measured by other absurd yardsticks: $135 billion is about the amount that the entire country spent on school supplies this year. The number
is more than 800 times the size of Texas, if you measure Texas in acres. It breaks down like this: Use of fentanyl and other opioids cost Texas $50.1 billion in economic output and $84.6 billion in pain and suffering, lost quality time with family and limited personal activity, according to an analysis by The Perryman Group. It also resulted in the loss of almost 517,000 jobs. “As large as these numbers are, they likely understate the true impact,” Perryman said. “It’s widely acknowledged that drug addiction is underreported.” The research firm’s recent report, prompted by questions from The Dallas Morning News, examined medical expenses, drug treatment costs, criminal justice costs and lost earnings across more than 500 industries last year. It pulled data from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies in its analysis. The people who died of overdoses in 2022 left a hole in the economy that will ultimately cost the state $114.6 billion in gross product and 1.2 million years of work, the study showed. Losses measured in the billions across an entire state can be hard to conceptualize, but Kathy O’Keefe had to face such a reality when her son Brett died of an accidental drug overdose in 2010. O’Keefe and her husband, who live in Flower Mound, had to file for bankruptcy because of the growing pile of bills from hospital visits, rehab stays and funeral costs. Brett overdosed three times, the second of which led to a $726,000 hospital stay. “You’re scrambling just trying to keep your kid alive,” O’Keefe said. “You’re doing everything you can possibly do, and then you get hit with all the financials.” See Opiod on 8