Alejandra Barunda
Appearances
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
I mean, because it kind of is everywhere and there's data to back that up. Brand name Wegovi sales have been increasing, for example, and the companies that make these drugs have been ramping up production to deal with the fact that they initially weren't able to meet this huge demand. And ZocDoc says more patients are trying to book appointments to ask about these drugs than really ever before.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
Yeah, sure. So that's a fair question. So they work basically by mimicking a hormone in the body that tells the pancreas to make more insulin, and that lowers blood sugar, and that keeps you feeling full, things like that. So it started as a diabetes drug, but it has been super effective at helping people lose weight. Mm-hmm.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
But the drugs have been in short supply thanks to really unprecedented demand, which has allowed this sort of strange thing to happen, which is that pharmacies can essentially make copies of brand-name drugs when those medicines are in short supply. And that process, which is different from the production of generic drugs, is called compounding. That's so cool.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
But they've also been a lifeline for patients whose doctors have prescribed these drugs for them, but their insurance won't cover them. So instead of paying more than $1,000 out of pocket a month, they can pay a few hundred, which is still expensive, but at least somewhat more manageable. But it's not a permanent solution.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
Once the shortages end, and they will eventually, the compounders will have to stop. There's really been a ton of back and forth about that. One drug was taken off the shortage list but might go back on again. Patients who rely on the compounded versions are confused and scared and stockpiling, and it's a mess. Where do you see all this going next year in 2025?
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
I think demand is only going to grow, but I think access looks like it's going to continue to be a problem, especially as the compounding situation winds down. insurance coverage is still an issue. The price is still an issue.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
Yeah, even though, as we'll get into later, Ozempic is a diabetes drug.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
The Biden administration also proposed a new rule that would extend Medicare and Medicaid coverage to include obesity drugs like Wagovi and Zepbound, which is another one of these, though it will be up to the Trump administration to decide whether or how to implement that. Meanwhile, the drugs got approved to do new things like lower the risk of heart attack in some patients. Wow.
Short Wave
The Biggest Health Stories of 2024
And that very well may continue into 2025 and beyond as the research continues. On the flip side, we may learn about new side effects as more people take these drugs for longer.
Up First from NPR
Palisades Fire Expands, 2024 Hottest On Record, TikTok Arguments Pro And Con
Yeah, glad to be here.
Up First from NPR
Palisades Fire Expands, 2024 Hottest On Record, TikTok Arguments Pro And Con
So the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and NASA just announced their official numbers on Friday. And they both say that 2024 was about 1.5 degrees Celsius hotter than it was back in the 1800s before people started burning tons of fossil fuels. For reference, that's about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. And 1.5 C, you might have heard of it.
Up First from NPR
Palisades Fire Expands, 2024 Hottest On Record, TikTok Arguments Pro And Con
It's kind of a symbolic number because back in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, most countries tried to pledge to keep global warming to less than 2 C and ideally less than 1.5. And I want to be clear that being past that number for just one year, that doesn't mean those goals are breached, but it's not a good sign.
Up First from NPR
Palisades Fire Expands, 2024 Hottest On Record, TikTok Arguments Pro And Con
Yeah, 2023 and 2024 were both off the charts hot. Here's how climate scientist Zeke Hausfather describes some of the temperature records from 2023.
Up First from NPR
Palisades Fire Expands, 2024 Hottest On Record, TikTok Arguments Pro And Con
Very descriptive. And so the last two years, they were about two-tenths of a degree Celsius hotter than scientists even expected. And that might not sound like a lot, but Hausfather says it's equivalent to about a decade of global warming. And that really matters because it's important to know if this extra heat represents a permanent change to the climate or something else. And why?
Up First from NPR
Palisades Fire Expands, 2024 Hottest On Record, TikTok Arguments Pro And Con
That is definitely the question. Scientists have looked at so many things. They looked at stuff like the solar cycle. That wasn't it. They looked at dust in the air. That wasn't it either. And then there was this other idea about a volcano that erupted in 2022. And that volcano shot water vapor into the atmosphere, which could theoretically heat up the planet. But that didn't pan out either.
Up First from NPR
Palisades Fire Expands, 2024 Hottest On Record, TikTok Arguments Pro And Con
So the next idea was El Nino, which is part of this natural climate cycle. And during El Nino years, the planet is generally warmer. But when it first got unexpectedly hot, El Nino hadn't even started yet. Gavin Schmidt is a climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies.
Up First from NPR
Palisades Fire Expands, 2024 Hottest On Record, TikTok Arguments Pro And Con
It turns out that El Nino probably had some effect on 2024's numbers, but overall, scientists were still scratching their heads.
Up First from NPR
Palisades Fire Expands, 2024 Hottest On Record, TikTok Arguments Pro And Con
Yeah, they went to one other place, Scott. The next thing they looked at were these weird kinds of clouds.
Up First from NPR
Palisades Fire Expands, 2024 Hottest On Record, TikTok Arguments Pro And Con
That's Andrew Gettleman. He's a climate scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Ships burn fossil fuels, and the pollution from that actually creates these cloud trails behind them that cool Earth. And in 2020, that ship fuel actually got cleaner, and that meant smaller ship track clouds and increased in turn, a hotter planet.
Up First from NPR
Palisades Fire Expands, 2024 Hottest On Record, TikTok Arguments Pro And Con
And that could actually make up about half of the mystery heat. And scientists think decreases in other clouds that were also formerly caused by pollution might make up another chunk.
Up First from NPR
Palisades Fire Expands, 2024 Hottest On Record, TikTok Arguments Pro And Con
Yeah, it's not ideal. But scientists like Schmidt say that that just means cutting fossil fuel emissions is even more important to get at that main driver of climate change.
Up First from NPR
Palisades Fire Expands, 2024 Hottest On Record, TikTok Arguments Pro And Con
Yeah, glad to be here. Thanks.