KQED’s health coverage spans daily news to deep-dive stories from the Bay Area and beyond. We cover policy, health trends and the issues that show up in your life and at your doctor appointments.
California Joins Suit Over Trump Rule Making It Harder for Immigrants to Get Green Cards
How Trump’s Immigration Policies Can Leave Doctors Feeling Powerless
Yes, Bay Area Bats Have Rabies. How Real Are Your Risks?
A New COVID Vaccine Is Here (Without Much Fanfare). When Should You Get It?
Medi-Cal Won’t Pay for Assisted Living in Most of California. One Brother Fought Back
Trump Administration Threatens Billions in State Welfare Funding
She Killed Her Children. Can We Forgive Her?
What Happened to the Quantified Self Movement?
In Oakland, Kaiser Nurses Take Staffing, AI Concerns to the Picket Lines
Bay Area Nurses Protest Use of Palantir’s AI Tech at Hospitals
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(Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The lawsuits challenge the Department of Homeland Security’s expansion of whom it deems a “public charge,” a term used to describe a noncitizen who relies primarily on government benefits. U.S. immigration law allows the government to deny a visa or green card based on that policy.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In public charge determinations historically, DHS has been able to consider only cash-assistance programs and long-term institutional care through Medi-Cal. Under the new “public charge” rule \u003ca href=\"https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/07/20/2026-14539/public-charge-ground-of-inadmissibility\">issued\u003c/a> in July, however, they’ll also be able to account for income-based benefits, like Medicaid, food and housing assistance, and free and reduced-price school lunch programs.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The Trump administration tried to similarly expand the scope of public benefits it considered in 2019, but that effort was blocked by courts across the country until the Biden administration rescinded the rule in 2022.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>More than 20 states and Washington, D.C, joined the suit brought by Bonta and New York state Attorney Letitia James, while New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is leading a separate lawsuit brought by a coalition of cities including San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle, as well as Santa Clara, California, and King County, Washington.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bonta said Monday that the expanded rule could allow immigration officials to unlawfully consider whether children who are citizens in mixed-status families receive Medicaid or food benefits such as free or reduced-price school lunch when deciding if their parent is a “public charge.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“The rule treats all of these as a reason to deny immigrants a green card, and it goes even further,” Bonta said. “The benefits that child lawfully receives can be held against their parents. The administration wants to punish immigrant families for using benefits that their children are legally entitled to, that their children rely on, are eligible for.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>DHS has \u003ca href=\"https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2026-14539/p-1537\">predicted\u003c/a> that at least 10% of people in mixed-status households will disenroll from public benefit programs as a result. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-05-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12083331\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-05-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-05-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-05-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">City Attorney David Chiu speaks during a press conference at the parking lot on 3rd and Harrison streets in San Francisco on May 11, 2026, to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case Yick Wo v. Hopkins. (Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If thousands leave Medi-Cal, SNAP and CalFresh programs, it could cost San Francisco millions in federal reimbursements alone, Chiu said Monday.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“This rule will strain San Francisco’s Human Services Agency, our Department of Public Health, Disability and Aging Services, and other city departments who serve our most vulnerable,” Chiu said. “We are asking the court to vacate this rule, to permanently block its enforcement, and to affirm what the law has long made clear.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“San Francisco will always welcome immigrants from every corner of the world,” he continued. “We will always defend their right to live here safely, with dignity, and without fear.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/jsmall\">\u003cem>Julie Small\u003c/em>\u003c/a> \u003cem>contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“The rule treats all of these as a reason to deny immigrants a green card, and it goes even further,” Bonta said. “The benefits that child lawfully receives can be held against their parents. The administration wants to punish immigrant families for using benefits that their children are legally entitled to, that their children rely on, are eligible for.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“This rule will strain San Francisco’s Human Services Agency, our Department of Public Health, Disability and Aging Services, and other city departments who serve our most vulnerable,” Chiu said. “We are asking the court to vacate this rule, to permanently block its enforcement, and to affirm what the law has long made clear.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“San Francisco will always welcome immigrants from every corner of the world,” he continued. “We will always defend their right to live here safely, with dignity, and without fear.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>California and Bay Area counties sued the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/president-donald-trump\">Trump administration\u003c/a> Monday over its latest attempt to restrict immigration by expanding the ability of enforcement agents to deny entry into the U.S. based on wealth.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Companion lawsuits filed in New York federal court Monday by a nationwide coalition of state and local law enforcement officials allege that a rule change set to take effect Friday would unlawfully upend years of immigration policy, and could have reverberating negative effects on local medical systems, schools and economies.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“This is a cruel policy designed to force immigrant families to forgo healthcare and food assistance programs out of fear that using them could jeopardize their immigration status,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said, announcing the suits alongside San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu and Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti. “The Trump administration cannot take this unlawful action.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RobBontaAP.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12063671\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RobBontaAP.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RobBontaAP-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RobBontaAP-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">California Attorney General Rob Bonta speaks to reporters as Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, left, and Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, right, listen outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 5, 2025. (Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The lawsuits challenge the Department of Homeland Security’s expansion of whom it deems a “public charge,” a term used to describe a noncitizen who relies primarily on government benefits. U.S. immigration law allows the government to deny a visa or green card based on that policy.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In public charge determinations historically, DHS has been able to consider only cash-assistance programs and long-term institutional care through Medi-Cal. Under the new “public charge” rule \u003ca href=\"https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/07/20/2026-14539/public-charge-ground-of-inadmissibility\">issued\u003c/a> in July, however, they’ll also be able to account for income-based benefits, like Medicaid, food and housing assistance, and free and reduced-price school lunch programs.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The Trump administration tried to similarly expand the scope of public benefits it considered in 2019, but that effort was blocked by courts across the country until the Biden administration rescinded the rule in 2022.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>More than 20 states and Washington, D.C, joined the suit brought by Bonta and New York state Attorney Letitia James, while New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is leading a separate lawsuit brought by a coalition of cities including San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle, as well as Santa Clara, California, and King County, Washington.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bonta said Monday that the expanded rule could allow immigration officials to unlawfully consider whether children who are citizens in mixed-status families receive Medicaid or food benefits such as free or reduced-price school lunch when deciding if their parent is a “public charge.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“The rule treats all of these as a reason to deny immigrants a green card, and it goes even further,” Bonta said. “The benefits that child lawfully receives can be held against their parents. The administration wants to punish immigrant families for using benefits that their children are legally entitled to, that their children rely on, are eligible for.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>DHS has \u003ca href=\"https://www.federalregister.gov/d/2026-14539/p-1537\">predicted\u003c/a> that at least 10% of people in mixed-status households will disenroll from public benefit programs as a result. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-05-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12083331\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-05-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-05-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/20260511-YICKWOCOMMEMORATION-JY-05-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">City Attorney David Chiu speaks during a press conference at the parking lot on 3rd and Harrison streets in San Francisco on May 11, 2026, to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court case Yick Wo v. Hopkins. (Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If thousands leave Medi-Cal, SNAP and CalFresh programs, it could cost San Francisco millions in federal reimbursements alone, Chiu said Monday.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“This rule will strain San Francisco’s Human Services Agency, our Department of Public Health, Disability and Aging Services, and other city departments who serve our most vulnerable,” Chiu said. “We are asking the court to vacate this rule, to permanently block its enforcement, and to affirm what the law has long made clear.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“San Francisco will always welcome immigrants from every corner of the world,” he continued. “We will always defend their right to live here safely, with dignity, and without fear.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/author/jsmall\">\u003cem>Julie Small\u003c/em>\u003c/a> \u003cem>contributed to this report.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\n\u003cp>When a patient comes into Dr. Miguel San Miguel Benavides’ exam room at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco-general-hospital\">San Francisco General Hospital\u003c/a> with a cough, a rash, diabetes or high blood pressure, he knows where to start. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But over the past year, people have been bringing him a problem he feels less equipped to tackle as a primary care physician: their fear over immigration enforcement. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Among other actions, the Trump administration has rolled back protections keeping immigration agents away from healthcare facilities and sought to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kff.org/immigrant-health/potential-implications-of-the-new-medicaid-data-sharing-agreement-between-cms-and-ice/\">give ICE access to Medicaid data\u003c/a>. Since then, San Miguel and colleagues at SF General who work with immigrant patients say they’ve watched with a sense of powerlessness as people avoid or delay treatment, and as mounting stress exacerbates their underlying conditions.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://phr.org/news/ice-tactics-and-deportation-fears-limit-access-to-health-care-for-children-of-immigrants-survey/\">2025 survey\u003c/a> of healthcare workers who serve immigrants echoes that experience: Among hundreds of respondents across 30 states, 84% said patient visits were down substantially; many said their ability to provide preventive care and manage chronic conditions suffered.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-5-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097362\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-5-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-5-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-5-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Miguel San Miguel Benavides, a resident physician at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, poses for a portrait at the hospital on Aug. 26, 2026. (Gina Castro for KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Now, a small study from UCSF suggests that immigration policies can force some doctors to practice in a way that’s at odds with their sense of moral or professional duty, taking a toll on them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The experience has become routine for San Miguel as he finishes his residency.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“This is the type of care that I always wanted to give,” he said of working with patients who, like him, immigrated to this country. “But I think part of that has become realizing that the amount of support we can give isn’t necessarily enough.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Researchers call that kind of ethical conflict “\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2012/11/21/165663154/moral-injury-the-psychological-wounds-of-war\">moral injury\u003c/a>,” a term coined by a Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrist working with Vietnam War veterans.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Dr. Marlene Martín, a UCSF clinical medicine professor, was inspired to do the study last summer, around the time ICE was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12049326/as-ice-operations-expand-how-are-immigrant-allies-responding\">conducting widespread raids\u003c/a> in Los Angeles. A colleague who works with immigrant patients told her no one had shown up to their appointment that day at SF General. If that was happening in San Francisco, where there was relatively little high-profile ICE activity at the time, Martín wondered what doctors elsewhere were seeing. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So she and her colleagues interviewed 38 primary care doctors in 13 states about their experiences caring for immigrant patients in this climate. They recently published their findings \u003ca href=\"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2851433\">in JAMA Internal Medicine\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The interviews confirmed that doctors across the country were seeing patients miss appointments, with some suffering more from chronic diseases as their treatment lapsed. For instance, Martín said, one interviewee described a patient whose diabetes had spiraled out of control because his son, who’d been driving him to his appointments, had been arrested by ICE. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“You can’t fix that,” she said. “You can’t address that in a clinical visit.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Some doctors told the researchers they were afraid to even ask their patients how they were doing, “because it would open this whole topic that they didn’t know how to answer. They didn’t know how to make it better,” Martín said. “In medicine we’re used to being able to address things that patients are talking about and to help them get better.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One doctor described to researchers the kind of dilemmas they face, given fears about encountering immigration agents in hospitals: “Would I rather have [my patient] be at home while they’re having substernal, crushing chest pain vs. what are the costs and benefits of going [to the hospital]?” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1350\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-10-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097364\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-10-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-10-KQED-160x108.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-10-KQED-1536x1037.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center on Aug. 26, 2026. (Gina Castro for KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In some cases, the interviewees reported their clinics had stopped accepting undocumented patients altogether, for fear of losing federal funding. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Those experiences, day after day, are what can lead to moral injury.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What surprised study co-author Dr. Alicia Fernandez was how much doctors changed the way they practiced in response to immigration policy changes. “What we saw was many physicians and practices, entire practices, altering their patterns of care,” the UCSF professor and SF General primary care doctor said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Some transitioned to telehealth appointments. Others switched medications so patients didn’t have to go into the clinic or pharmacy as often. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But Fernandez said the changes can come at a cost — both for the patients and the doctors who care for them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1421\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-8-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097363\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-8-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-8-KQED-160x114.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-8-KQED-1536x1091.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Miguel San Miguel Benavides, a resident physician at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, and Alicia Fernandez, a UCSF professor and general internist at SF General, talk at the hospital on Aug. 26, 2026. (Gina Castro for KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We definitely feel that our patients are getting worse, and we feel that the care that we are giving is an inferior form of care, and that’s why it’s associated with moral distress,” Fernandez said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>She points to a recent experience with an undocumented patient who’d avoided being seen out of fear. “He came in already having damage from his diabetes,” she said. “That’s a terrible feeling.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This kind of distress isn’t just bad for individual doctors. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Moral injury can contribute to burnout,” said Dr. Robert Pearl, a physician and Stanford professor who served as CEO of the Permanente Medical Group for nearly two decades. And data show burnout affects doctors’ quality of care.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“If the patient before you required all this extra work, has had this added fear, had all these challenges,” he said, referencing the study, “when the clinician sees you, he or she may not be as good and sharp as you would like them to be.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-11_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12099231\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-11_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-11_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-11_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Individuals walk towards the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center on Aug. 26, 2026. (Gina Castro for KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Burnout and moral injury can also lead doctors and other healthcare workers to leave their professions, he said, with particularly dire effects in primary care. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We already have a shortage,” he said, so “when you need a primary care doctor, that individual might not be there. And we’re certainly seeing that in many communities across the United States, where it’s almost impossible to find a primary care physician with an open panel.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For doctors in the study who were themselves immigrants, the distress was compounded. That has broad implications given that almost half of the country’s internal medicine doctors are foreign-born, according to \u003ca href=\"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2852745?guestAccessKey=da3ba888-5ff2-456f-9d94-b301cf5d2884&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=081226\">a study\u003c/a> released last month. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While the UCSF study on moral injury is small and qualitative, it points to ways healthcare institutions can support staff in an increasingly difficult environment. Doctors whose clinics protected patients’ immigration-related information and expanded telehealth, for example, described ways those changes helped them care for patients.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A sense of powerlessness contributed to the moral distress doctors in the study felt. Carolyn Dewa, a psychiatry and behavioral medicine professor at the UC Davis School of Medicine, said social support can protect against that. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“If you feel supported by colleagues and peers, or you feel supported by supervisors,” she said, “if people are not isolated from one another but feel that they’re part of a group, it also is protective.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The doctors interviewed for the study also described the importance of having a sense of agency. “This paper pointed out that feeling like you could take an active role does help mitigate some of the distress,” said Dr. Anne Rosenthal, who runs the adult primary care clinic at SF General, where Fernandez and San Miguel work. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Her clinic has tried to do that in part by training staff on what to do if immigration enforcement shows up and proactively educating patients about what they need to do to keep Medi-Cal coverage as state enrollment rules change.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/over-two-million-more-californians-projected-to-lack-health-insurance-by-2030/\">UC Berkeley Labor Center projects\u003c/a> half of undocumented residents in California under age 65 could be uninsured by 2030, double the rate now.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We live in fear of losing our patients, because we know that their physical health will suffer, the health of their kids will suffer, and the health of the community will suffer,” she said.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-5-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097362\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-5-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-5-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-5-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Miguel San Miguel Benavides, a resident physician at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, poses for a portrait at the hospital on Aug. 26, 2026.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Gina Castro for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Researchers call that kind of ethical conflict “\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2012/11/21/165663154/moral-injury-the-psychological-wounds-of-war\">moral injury\u003c/a>,” a term coined by a Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrist working with Vietnam War veterans.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Dr. Marlene Martín, a UCSF clinical medicine professor, was inspired to do the study last summer, around the time ICE was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12049326/as-ice-operations-expand-how-are-immigrant-allies-responding\">conducting widespread raids\u003c/a> in Los Angeles. A colleague who works with immigrant patients told her no one had shown up to their appointment that day at SF General. If that was happening in San Francisco, where there was relatively little high-profile ICE activity at the time, Martín wondered what doctors elsewhere were seeing. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Dr. Marlene Martín, a UCSF clinical medicine professor, was inspired to do the study last summer, around the time ICE was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12049326/as-ice-operations-expand-how-are-immigrant-allies-responding\">conducting widespread raids\u003c/a> in Los Angeles. A colleague who works with immigrant patients told her no one had shown up to their appointment that day at SF General. If that was happening in San Francisco, where there was relatively little high-profile ICE activity at the time, Martín wondered what doctors elsewhere were seeing. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So she and her colleagues interviewed 38 primary care doctors in 13 states about their experiences caring for immigrant patients in this climate. They recently published their findings \u003ca href=\"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2851433\">in JAMA Internal Medicine\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So she and her colleagues interviewed 38 primary care doctors in 13 states about their experiences caring for immigrant patients in this climate. They recently published their findings \u003ca href=\"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2851433\">in JAMA Internal Medicine\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The interviews confirmed that doctors across the country were seeing patients miss appointments, with some suffering more from chronic diseases as their treatment lapsed. For instance, Martín said, one interviewee described a patient whose diabetes had spiraled out of control because his son, who’d been driving him to his appointments, had been arrested by ICE. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The interviews confirmed that doctors across the country were seeing patients miss appointments, with some suffering more from chronic diseases as their treatment lapsed. For instance, Martín said, one interviewee described a patient whose diabetes had spiraled out of control because his son, who’d been driving him to his appointments, had been arrested by ICE. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“You can’t fix that,” she said. “You can’t address that in a clinical visit.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Some doctors told the researchers they were afraid to even ask their patients how they were doing, “because it would open this whole topic that they didn’t know how to answer. They didn’t know how to make it better,” Martín said. “In medicine we’re used to being able to address things that patients are talking about and to help them get better.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Some doctors told the researchers they were afraid to even ask their patients how they were doing, “because it would open this whole topic that they didn’t know how to answer. They didn’t know how to make it better,” Martín said. “In medicine we’re used to being able to address things that patients are talking about and to help them get better.” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>One doctor described to researchers the kind of dilemmas they face, given fears about encountering immigration agents in hospitals: “Would I rather have [my patient] be at home while they’re having substernal, crushing chest pain vs. what are the costs and benefits of going [to the hospital]?” \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In some cases, the interviewees reported their clinics had stopped accepting undocumented patients altogether, for fear of losing federal funding. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Those experiences, day after day, are what can lead to moral injury.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>What surprised study co-author Dr. Alicia Fernandez was how much doctors changed the way they practiced in response to immigration policy changes. “What we saw was many physicians and practices, entire practices, altering their patterns of care,” the UCSF professor and SF General primary care doctor said. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Some transitioned to telehealth appointments. Others switched medications so patients didn’t have to go into the clinic or pharmacy as often. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-8-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097363\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-8-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-8-KQED-160x114.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-8-KQED-1536x1091.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Miguel San Miguel Benavides, a resident physician at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, and Alicia Fernandez, a UCSF professor and general internist at SF General, talk at the hospital on Aug. 26, 2026.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Gina Castro for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“We definitely feel that our patients are getting worse, and we feel that the care that we are giving is an inferior form of care, and that’s why it’s associated with moral distress,” Fernandez said. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>She points to a recent experience with an undocumented patient who’d avoided being seen out of fear. “He came in already having damage from his diabetes,” she said. “That’s a terrible feeling.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>She points to a recent experience with an undocumented patient who’d avoided being seen out of fear. “He came in already having damage from his diabetes,” she said. “That’s a terrible feeling.” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This kind of distress isn’t just bad for individual doctors. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“Moral injury can contribute to burnout,” said Dr. Robert Pearl, a physician and Stanford professor who served as CEO of the Permanente Medical Group for nearly two decades. And data show burnout affects doctors’ quality of care.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“Moral injury can contribute to burnout,” said Dr. Robert Pearl, a physician and Stanford professor who served as CEO of the Permanente Medical Group for nearly two decades. And data show burnout affects doctors’ quality of care.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“If the patient before you required all this extra work, has had this added fear, had all these challenges,” he said, referencing the study, “when the clinician sees you, he or she may not be as good and sharp as you would like them to be.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“If the patient before you required all this extra work, has had this added fear, had all these challenges,” he said, referencing the study, “when the clinician sees you, he or she may not be as good and sharp as you would like them to be.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-11_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12099231\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-11_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-11_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-11_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Individuals walk towards the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center on Aug. 26, 2026.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Gina Castro for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Burnout and moral injury can also lead doctors and other healthcare workers to leave their professions, he said, with particularly dire effects in primary care. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“We already have a shortage,” he said, so “when you need a primary care doctor, that individual might not be there. And we’re certainly seeing that in many communities across the United States, where it’s almost impossible to find a primary care physician with an open panel.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“We already have a shortage,” he said, so “when you need a primary care doctor, that individual might not be there. And we’re certainly seeing that in many communities across the United States, where it’s almost impossible to find a primary care physician with an open panel.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>For doctors in the study who were themselves immigrants, the distress was compounded. That has broad implications given that almost half of the country’s internal medicine doctors are foreign-born, according to \u003ca href=\"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2852745?guestAccessKey=da3ba888-5ff2-456f-9d94-b301cf5d2884&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=081226\">a study\u003c/a> released last month. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>For doctors in the study who were themselves immigrants, the distress was compounded. That has broad implications given that almost half of the country’s internal medicine doctors are foreign-born, according to \u003ca href=\"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2852745?guestAccessKey=da3ba888-5ff2-456f-9d94-b301cf5d2884&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=081226\">a study\u003c/a> released last month. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>While the UCSF study on moral injury is small and qualitative, it points to ways healthcare institutions can support staff in an increasingly difficult environment. Doctors whose clinics protected patients’ immigration-related information and expanded telehealth, for example, described ways those changes helped them care for patients.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>While the UCSF study on moral injury is small and qualitative, it points to ways healthcare institutions can support staff in an increasingly difficult environment. Doctors whose clinics protected patients’ immigration-related information and expanded telehealth, for example, described ways those changes helped them care for patients.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>A sense of powerlessness contributed to the moral distress doctors in the study felt. Carolyn Dewa, a psychiatry and behavioral medicine professor at the UC Davis School of Medicine, said social support can protect against that. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>A sense of powerlessness contributed to the moral distress doctors in the study felt. Carolyn Dewa, a psychiatry and behavioral medicine professor at the UC Davis School of Medicine, said social support can protect against that. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“If you feel supported by colleagues and peers, or you feel supported by supervisors,” she said, “if people are not isolated from one another but feel that they’re part of a group, it also is protective.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“If you feel supported by colleagues and peers, or you feel supported by supervisors,” she said, “if people are not isolated from one another but feel that they’re part of a group, it also is protective.” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The doctors interviewed for the study also described the importance of having a sense of agency. “This paper pointed out that feeling like you could take an active role does help mitigate some of the distress,” said Dr. Anne Rosenthal, who runs the adult primary care clinic at SF General, where Fernandez and San Miguel work. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The doctors interviewed for the study also described the importance of having a sense of agency. “This paper pointed out that feeling like you could take an active role does help mitigate some of the distress,” said Dr. Anne Rosenthal, who runs the adult primary care clinic at SF General, where Fernandez and San Miguel work. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Her clinic has tried to do that in part by training staff on what to do if immigration enforcement shows up and proactively educating patients about what they need to do to keep Medi-Cal coverage as state enrollment rules change.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Her clinic has tried to do that in part by training staff on what to do if immigration enforcement shows up and proactively educating patients about what they need to do to keep Medi-Cal coverage as state enrollment rules change.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/over-two-million-more-californians-projected-to-lack-health-insurance-by-2030/\">UC Berkeley Labor Center projects\u003c/a> half of undocumented residents in California under age 65 could be uninsured by 2030, double the rate now.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/over-two-million-more-californians-projected-to-lack-health-insurance-by-2030/\">UC Berkeley Labor Center projects\u003c/a> half of undocumented residents in California under age 65 could be uninsured by 2030, double the rate now.\u003c/p>\n"
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"excerpt": "The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is making it harder for primary care doctors who work with immigrant patients to do their jobs, a UCSF study finds.",
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"title": "How Trump’s Immigration Policies Can Leave Doctors Feeling Powerless | KQED",
"description": "The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is making it harder for primary care doctors who work with immigrant patients to do their jobs, a UCSF study finds.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>When a patient comes into Dr. Miguel San Miguel Benavides’ exam room at \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco-general-hospital\">San Francisco General Hospital\u003c/a> with a cough, a rash, diabetes or high blood pressure, he knows where to start. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But over the past year, people have been bringing him a problem he feels less equipped to tackle as a primary care physician: their fear over immigration enforcement. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Among other actions, the Trump administration has rolled back protections keeping immigration agents away from healthcare facilities and sought to \u003ca href=\"https://www.kff.org/immigrant-health/potential-implications-of-the-new-medicaid-data-sharing-agreement-between-cms-and-ice/\">give ICE access to Medicaid data\u003c/a>. Since then, San Miguel and colleagues at SF General who work with immigrant patients say they’ve watched with a sense of powerlessness as people avoid or delay treatment, and as mounting stress exacerbates their underlying conditions.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://phr.org/news/ice-tactics-and-deportation-fears-limit-access-to-health-care-for-children-of-immigrants-survey/\">2025 survey\u003c/a> of healthcare workers who serve immigrants echoes that experience: Among hundreds of respondents across 30 states, 84% said patient visits were down substantially; many said their ability to provide preventive care and manage chronic conditions suffered.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-5-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097362\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-5-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-5-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-5-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Miguel San Miguel Benavides, a resident physician at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, poses for a portrait at the hospital on Aug. 26, 2026. (Gina Castro for KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Now, a small study from UCSF suggests that immigration policies can force some doctors to practice in a way that’s at odds with their sense of moral or professional duty, taking a toll on them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The experience has become routine for San Miguel as he finishes his residency.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“This is the type of care that I always wanted to give,” he said of working with patients who, like him, immigrated to this country. “But I think part of that has become realizing that the amount of support we can give isn’t necessarily enough.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Researchers call that kind of ethical conflict “\u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2012/11/21/165663154/moral-injury-the-psychological-wounds-of-war\">moral injury\u003c/a>,” a term coined by a Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrist working with Vietnam War veterans.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Dr. Marlene Martín, a UCSF clinical medicine professor, was inspired to do the study last summer, around the time ICE was \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12049326/as-ice-operations-expand-how-are-immigrant-allies-responding\">conducting widespread raids\u003c/a> in Los Angeles. A colleague who works with immigrant patients told her no one had shown up to their appointment that day at SF General. If that was happening in San Francisco, where there was relatively little high-profile ICE activity at the time, Martín wondered what doctors elsewhere were seeing. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So she and her colleagues interviewed 38 primary care doctors in 13 states about their experiences caring for immigrant patients in this climate. They recently published their findings \u003ca href=\"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2851433\">in JAMA Internal Medicine\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The interviews confirmed that doctors across the country were seeing patients miss appointments, with some suffering more from chronic diseases as their treatment lapsed. For instance, Martín said, one interviewee described a patient whose diabetes had spiraled out of control because his son, who’d been driving him to his appointments, had been arrested by ICE. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“You can’t fix that,” she said. “You can’t address that in a clinical visit.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Some doctors told the researchers they were afraid to even ask their patients how they were doing, “because it would open this whole topic that they didn’t know how to answer. They didn’t know how to make it better,” Martín said. “In medicine we’re used to being able to address things that patients are talking about and to help them get better.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One doctor described to researchers the kind of dilemmas they face, given fears about encountering immigration agents in hospitals: “Would I rather have [my patient] be at home while they’re having substernal, crushing chest pain vs. what are the costs and benefits of going [to the hospital]?” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1350\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-10-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097364\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-10-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-10-KQED-160x108.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-10-KQED-1536x1037.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center on Aug. 26, 2026. (Gina Castro for KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In some cases, the interviewees reported their clinics had stopped accepting undocumented patients altogether, for fear of losing federal funding. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Those experiences, day after day, are what can lead to moral injury.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>What surprised study co-author Dr. Alicia Fernandez was how much doctors changed the way they practiced in response to immigration policy changes. “What we saw was many physicians and practices, entire practices, altering their patterns of care,” the UCSF professor and SF General primary care doctor said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Some transitioned to telehealth appointments. Others switched medications so patients didn’t have to go into the clinic or pharmacy as often. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But Fernandez said the changes can come at a cost — both for the patients and the doctors who care for them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1421\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-8-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097363\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-8-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-8-KQED-160x114.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-8-KQED-1536x1091.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Miguel San Miguel Benavides, a resident physician at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, and Alicia Fernandez, a UCSF professor and general internist at SF General, talk at the hospital on Aug. 26, 2026. (Gina Castro for KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We definitely feel that our patients are getting worse, and we feel that the care that we are giving is an inferior form of care, and that’s why it’s associated with moral distress,” Fernandez said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>She points to a recent experience with an undocumented patient who’d avoided being seen out of fear. “He came in already having damage from his diabetes,” she said. “That’s a terrible feeling.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This kind of distress isn’t just bad for individual doctors. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Moral injury can contribute to burnout,” said Dr. Robert Pearl, a physician and Stanford professor who served as CEO of the Permanente Medical Group for nearly two decades. And data show burnout affects doctors’ quality of care.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“If the patient before you required all this extra work, has had this added fear, had all these challenges,” he said, referencing the study, “when the clinician sees you, he or she may not be as good and sharp as you would like them to be.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-11_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12099231\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-11_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-11_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/20260826_UCSFStudy_GC-11_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Individuals walk towards the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center on Aug. 26, 2026. (Gina Castro for KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Burnout and moral injury can also lead doctors and other healthcare workers to leave their professions, he said, with particularly dire effects in primary care. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We already have a shortage,” he said, so “when you need a primary care doctor, that individual might not be there. And we’re certainly seeing that in many communities across the United States, where it’s almost impossible to find a primary care physician with an open panel.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For doctors in the study who were themselves immigrants, the distress was compounded. That has broad implications given that almost half of the country’s internal medicine doctors are foreign-born, according to \u003ca href=\"https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2852745?guestAccessKey=da3ba888-5ff2-456f-9d94-b301cf5d2884&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=081226\">a study\u003c/a> released last month. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While the UCSF study on moral injury is small and qualitative, it points to ways healthcare institutions can support staff in an increasingly difficult environment. Doctors whose clinics protected patients’ immigration-related information and expanded telehealth, for example, described ways those changes helped them care for patients.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A sense of powerlessness contributed to the moral distress doctors in the study felt. Carolyn Dewa, a psychiatry and behavioral medicine professor at the UC Davis School of Medicine, said social support can protect against that. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“If you feel supported by colleagues and peers, or you feel supported by supervisors,” she said, “if people are not isolated from one another but feel that they’re part of a group, it also is protective.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The doctors interviewed for the study also described the importance of having a sense of agency. “This paper pointed out that feeling like you could take an active role does help mitigate some of the distress,” said Dr. Anne Rosenthal, who runs the adult primary care clinic at SF General, where Fernandez and San Miguel work. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Her clinic has tried to do that in part by training staff on what to do if immigration enforcement shows up and proactively educating patients about what they need to do to keep Medi-Cal coverage as state enrollment rules change.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/over-two-million-more-californians-projected-to-lack-health-insurance-by-2030/\">UC Berkeley Labor Center projects\u003c/a> half of undocumented residents in California under age 65 could be uninsured by 2030, double the rate now.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We live in fear of losing our patients, because we know that their physical health will suffer, the health of their kids will suffer, and the health of the community will suffer,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "yes-bay-area-bats-have-rabies-how-real-are-your-risks",
"title": "Yes, Bay Area Bats Have Rabies. How Real Are Your Risks?",
"publishDate": 1789124400,
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"headTitle": "Yes, Bay Area Bats Have Rabies. How Real Are Your Risks? | KQED",
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"content": "\n\u003cp>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/han/php/notices/han00533.html\">health advisory \u003c/a>to doctors about increased rabies in animals and human exposures nationwide this summer, saying it received 17% more rabies-related inquiries in July and August than during that same time last year.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Rabies has, alarmingly, also featured in a number of Bay Area headlines this summer.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Three Humboldt County children were \u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/09/08/3-humboldt-county-kids-had-to-be-treated-for-rabies-exposure-after-touching-bats/?utm_campaign=mrf-bluesky-mercurynews.com&utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&mrfcid=202609086a9d1d83f046393007a3a5d5\">treated for exposure\u003c/a> to rabies from bats in the past two weeks. \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/news/dead-bat-tests-positive-for-rabies-at-curry-village-in-yosemite-national-park.htm\">A dead bat\u003c/a> in Yosemite National Park also tested positive for rabies. The city of Berkeley confirmed in late August that it has found \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/2026/09/03/rabid-bats-berkeley\">five rabies-positive bats\u003c/a> in residential and commercial areas of the city this year. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://health.alamedacountyca.gov/program/rabies/\">And a domestic cat\u003c/a> in Pleasanton — which health officials said “may have been exposed to rabies by a bat on a balcony” — was also found to have rabies in late June.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While these events might sound unusual, “finding a rabid bat is not terribly uncommon,” said Scott Gilman, the director of health, housing and community services for the city of Berkeley. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We normally have about two a year if you look back in time,” he said. “But because we found five already this year, it’s a little bit of a spike.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Gilman confirmed that all five of the bats in Berkeley were found dead. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1302\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12099032\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty2-160x104.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty2-1536x1000.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A dead bat in Yosemite National Park also tested positive for rabies, while Berkeley has found five rabies-positive bats in residential and commercial areas this year. (McDonald Wildlife Photography Inc../Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Valerie Ahlgren, senior vector control biologist for Alameda County’s Vector Control Services District, said 13 bats with rabies have been reported in the county alone this year. And while Ahlgren couldn’t pin this year’s increase on any particular cause, she said rabies can appear to be cyclical, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/as-bats-hibernate-through-the-winter-so-does-rabies\">peaking during summer months\u003c/a> and lying dormant — along with the hibernating bats that host it — during the winter\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Bats are the No. 1 reservoir of rabies,” she said. “They maintain it in their population for years and years.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Luckily, transmission of the virus from bats to humans is rare: Just 17 people in the state have ever been reported with rabies since 1980, the most recent case in 2024, when a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/Pages/NR24-040.aspx\">Fresno man died\u003c/a> from the virus. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And thankfully, it’s also treatable in humans if caught early. But once symptoms do appear, the virus is virtually always fatal — only a very small number of people worldwide have ever \u003ca href=\"https://www.aaas.org/membership/qualia/surviving-rabies-now-possible\">survived symptomatic rabies\u003c/a>. That’s why Gilman’s office \u003ca href=\"https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/Provider%20Alert_Rabies-positive%20bats%20in%20City%20of%20Berkeley.pdf\">sent a letter\u003c/a> to local physicians in August notifying them of the uptick and \u003ca href=\"https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2026-08-26%20%20Increase%20in%20Rabies-Positive%20Bats%20Identified%20in%202026%20in%20the%20City%20of%20Berkeley.pdf\">sounded the alarm to the city council\u003c/a> as well. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“If you find a bat in your house, it \u003cem>really \u003c/em>is something that you have to take very seriously,” he said. “And it can be considered a medical emergency if you were bit by a bat.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Read on for everything you need to know about the animals and your risk of rabies.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How common are bats in the Bay Area?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Most people living in the Bay Area don’t know just how prevalent — and diverse — the local bat population is here, said Evan Cole, natural resource manager for San Mateo County Parks.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In general, bats have the most species of any mammal in the world and are particularly good at adapting to different habitats, including urban areas. But because they are nocturnal, they aren’t as noticeable, Cole said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In general, bats have been under-studied in academia, he said — “and I think that kind of trickles down into the public knowledge and our ability to properly educate people on the benefits and hazards of bats around us.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In fact, there are 16 species of bat in the Bay Area alone, Cole said. They are insectivores, so they feed on bugs, and they “roost” in a variety of habitats, including local tree species like redwoods, eucalyptus and, of course, human structures. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But unless they have a disease like rabies, bats in the wild aren’t something to be afraid of. In general, they are not interested in humans and don’t have any innate desire to bite you. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bats should also be sleeping during the day, so any daytime activity means they’re either sick or in distress, Cole said. “Anytime you see a bat flying during the day, that’s bad news for the bat,” he said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Because bats can form a critical part of our local ecosystems, Cole said protection of their natural habitats — including in places like local parks — is important, especially as their survival is threatened by factors like climate change, diseases like \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/articles/what-is-white-nose-syndrome.htm\">White-nose syndrome\u003c/a>, loss of insect populations globally and habitat transformation. That’s why San Mateo County Parks is careful not to disturb local bat populations when they’re most vulnerable, like during the nighttime, their springtime maternity season and during the winter months.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Bats are being kind of boxed into a corner in many ways, and we need to do our best to respect, protect them, and educate people about them, about the uses and benefits that they provide to people,” Cole said. “And then also invest in protection and restoration of open spaces like we do in parks to make sure that these native landscapes are still there as refuge for them.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What is the real risk of rabies from bats?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The headline: “Rabies should always be assumed to be present if you find a bat in your home,” Gilman said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And this is out of a justified abundance of caution. Rabies in animals is actually not overly common —\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/rabies.aspx#WashBite\"> an average of just 200 cases \u003c/a>of rabies in animals are reported statewide each year, according to the California Department of Public Health.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1332\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty3.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12099034\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty3.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty3-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty3-1536x1023.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A little brown bat with its mouth wide open bares its teeth. (Gunter Marx Photography/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While all mammals can get rabies, bats and skunks are among the most common in California. So far this year, there have been 213 cases statewide, over 90% of which were in bats.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Some signs of rabies in bats include increased daytime activity or interaction with humans, as bats are nocturnal and tend to avoid humans. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Remember: transmission of rabies from animals like bats to humans is rare, but it’s virtually always fatal if you do get rabies.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What should I do to protect bats — and myself — in the Bay Area?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While places like San Mateo County Parks are focused on protecting natural bat habitats — and you can do so, too, in your yard, Cole said — you \u003cem>should \u003c/em>make sure bats aren’t living inside your home.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Bats are really important,” Cole said. “They offer great ecosystem services. They may find themselves in your house and enjoy it as a roof structure, but you should not be encouraged to keep them there.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Gilman advised residents to close up any holes or access points that bats may have into their home. That includes holes as small as a quarter of an inch, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you suspect bats might be roosting in your home and you live in San Mateo or Alameda counties, you can \u003ca href=\"https://www.smcmvcd.org/request-service\">request a free inspection\u003c/a> and get advice on how to relocate the animals. Ahlgren said she talks to someone with a bat in their home in Alameda County at least once a week.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We don’t want to remove them from their natural habitat, but we also don’t want them living in people’s attics where they can get inside,” Ahlgren said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you think that bats might be living in your home, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">the CDC recommends\u003c/a> observing how they are getting in and out of your home, counting them, and attempting to seal entrances once they have left the building.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>CDPH also advises people to vaccinate their pets against rabies both for their health and to prevent the spread of the virus. California law requires all pet dogs to be vaccinated for rabies by 4 months old.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While there are no laws regulating outdoor cats, Ahlgren said these pets are at particular risk of contracting the virus.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“They’re actually one of the more likely pets to come into contact with bats,” she said. “And if your cat is unvaccinated and catches a bat, that’s a six-month strict quarantine, which is hard on cats.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What to do if you see a bat in your home that might have bitten you\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>First, do not touch the bat, whether it’s dead or alive. It’s especially important to teach your children to never touch a bat, said Gilman.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’re able, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">safely trap the live bat\u003c/a> in your home without touching it \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">(and if this sounds tricky, the CDC has a full set of instructions on pulling this off\u003c/a>). Then, call your local vector control group to get it relocated and tested for rabies.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You probably aren’t going to even \u003cem>know \u003c/em>if you were bitten by a bat, Gilman said — because their teeth are so tiny that they barely leave a mark. If you do have a noticeable bite, though, thoroughly washing the bitten area with soap and water is a good idea, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/rabies.aspx#WashBite\">according to CDPH\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty4.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12099035\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty4.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty4-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty4-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A fringed Myotis bat (Myotis Thysanodes) hanging from a ceiling while sleeping. (M. Flower/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Then, you should immediately seek medical attention and an evaluation and report the bite to your local disease prevention program and vector control service. Your health care provider might recommend you get a series of vaccinations to stop you from getting sick. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Reporting the bat and seeking medical attention are important even if you aren’t sure if you’ve been bitten, health experts say. Not only are a bat’s teeth so small that a bite might not be noticeable, but rabies, if untreated, is almost always fatal in humans.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Rabies is deadly,” Gilman said. “So the assumption if you are bit by a bat is that you need to have prophylactic medication.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>By the time you feel any symptoms, which typically begin 4 to 8 weeks after exposure to the virus, you won’t be able to recover, Ahlgren said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“You absolutely don’t wanna wait for symptoms because there’s no saving somebody that develops symptoms,” Ahlgren said.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/han/php/notices/han00533.html\">health advisory \u003c/a>to doctors about increased rabies in animals and human exposures nationwide this summer, saying it received 17% more rabies-related inquiries in July and August than during that same time last year.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/han/php/notices/han00533.html\">health advisory \u003c/a>to doctors about increased rabies in animals and human exposures nationwide this summer, saying it received 17% more rabies-related inquiries in July and August than during that same time last year.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Rabies has, alarmingly, also featured in a number of Bay Area headlines this summer.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Three Humboldt County children were \u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/09/08/3-humboldt-county-kids-had-to-be-treated-for-rabies-exposure-after-touching-bats/?utm_campaign=mrf-bluesky-mercurynews.com&utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&mrfcid=202609086a9d1d83f046393007a3a5d5\">treated for exposure\u003c/a> to rabies from bats in the past two weeks. \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/news/dead-bat-tests-positive-for-rabies-at-curry-village-in-yosemite-national-park.htm\">A dead bat\u003c/a> in Yosemite National Park also tested positive for rabies. The city of Berkeley confirmed in late August that it has found \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/2026/09/03/rabid-bats-berkeley\">five rabies-positive bats\u003c/a> in residential and commercial areas of the city this year. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Three Humboldt County children were \u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/09/08/3-humboldt-county-kids-had-to-be-treated-for-rabies-exposure-after-touching-bats/?utm_campaign=mrf-bluesky-mercurynews.com&utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&mrfcid=202609086a9d1d83f046393007a3a5d5\">treated for exposure\u003c/a> to rabies from bats in the past two weeks. \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/news/dead-bat-tests-positive-for-rabies-at-curry-village-in-yosemite-national-park.htm\">A dead bat\u003c/a> in Yosemite National Park also tested positive for rabies. The city of Berkeley confirmed in late August that it has found \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/2026/09/03/rabid-bats-berkeley\">five rabies-positive bats\u003c/a> in residential and commercial areas of the city this year. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://health.alamedacountyca.gov/program/rabies/\">And a domestic cat\u003c/a> in Pleasanton — which health officials said “may have been exposed to rabies by a bat on a balcony” — was also found to have rabies in late June.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://health.alamedacountyca.gov/program/rabies/\">And a domestic cat\u003c/a> in Pleasanton — which health officials said “may have been exposed to rabies by a bat on a balcony” — was also found to have rabies in late June.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>While these events might sound unusual, “finding a rabid bat is not terribly uncommon,” said Scott Gilman, the director of health, housing and community services for the city of Berkeley. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>While these events might sound unusual, “finding a rabid bat is not terribly uncommon,” said Scott Gilman, the director of health, housing and community services for the city of Berkeley. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“We normally have about two a year if you look back in time,” he said. “But because we found five already this year, it’s a little bit of a spike.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“We normally have about two a year if you look back in time,” he said. “But because we found five already this year, it’s a little bit of a spike.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Gilman confirmed that all five of the bats in Berkeley were found dead. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Gilman confirmed that all five of the bats in Berkeley were found dead. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12099032\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty2-160x104.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty2-1536x1000.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A dead bat in Yosemite National Park also tested positive for rabies, while Berkeley has found five rabies-positive bats in residential and commercial areas this year.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (McDonald Wildlife Photography Inc../Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12099032\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A dead bat in Yosemite National Park also tested positive for rabies, while Berkeley has found five rabies-positive bats in residential and commercial areas this year.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (McDonald Wildlife Photography Inc../Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Valerie Ahlgren, senior vector control biologist for Alameda County’s Vector Control Services District, said 13 bats with rabies have been reported in the county alone this year. And while Ahlgren couldn’t pin this year’s increase on any particular cause, she said rabies can appear to be cyclical, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/as-bats-hibernate-through-the-winter-so-does-rabies\">peaking during summer months\u003c/a> and lying dormant — along with the hibernating bats that host it — during the winter\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Valerie Ahlgren, senior vector control biologist for Alameda County’s Vector Control Services District, said 13 bats with rabies have been reported in the county alone this year. And while Ahlgren couldn’t pin this year’s increase on any particular cause, she said rabies can appear to be cyclical, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/as-bats-hibernate-through-the-winter-so-does-rabies\">peaking during summer months\u003c/a> and lying dormant — along with the hibernating bats that host it — during the winter\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“Bats are the No. 1 reservoir of rabies,” she said. “They maintain it in their population for years and years.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“Bats are the No. 1 reservoir of rabies,” she said. “They maintain it in their population for years and years.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Luckily, transmission of the virus from bats to humans is rare: Just 17 people in the state have ever been reported with rabies since 1980, the most recent case in 2024, when a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/Pages/NR24-040.aspx\">Fresno man died\u003c/a> from the virus. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Luckily, transmission of the virus from bats to humans is rare: Just 17 people in the state have ever been reported with rabies since 1980, the most recent case in 2024, when a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/Pages/NR24-040.aspx\">Fresno man died\u003c/a> from the virus. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And thankfully, it’s also treatable in humans if caught early. But once symptoms do appear, the virus is virtually always fatal — only a very small number of people worldwide have ever \u003ca href=\"https://www.aaas.org/membership/qualia/surviving-rabies-now-possible\">survived symptomatic rabies\u003c/a>. That’s why Gilman’s office \u003ca href=\"https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/Provider%20Alert_Rabies-positive%20bats%20in%20City%20of%20Berkeley.pdf\">sent a letter\u003c/a> to local physicians in August notifying them of the uptick and \u003ca href=\"https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2026-08-26%20%20Increase%20in%20Rabies-Positive%20Bats%20Identified%20in%202026%20in%20the%20City%20of%20Berkeley.pdf\">sounded the alarm to the city council\u003c/a> as well. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And thankfully, it’s also treatable in humans if caught early. But once symptoms do appear, the virus is virtually always fatal — only a very small number of people worldwide have ever \u003ca href=\"https://www.aaas.org/membership/qualia/surviving-rabies-now-possible\">survived symptomatic rabies\u003c/a>. That’s why Gilman’s office \u003ca href=\"https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/Provider%20Alert_Rabies-positive%20bats%20in%20City%20of%20Berkeley.pdf\">sent a letter\u003c/a> to local physicians in August notifying them of the uptick and \u003ca href=\"https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2026-08-26%20%20Increase%20in%20Rabies-Positive%20Bats%20Identified%20in%202026%20in%20the%20City%20of%20Berkeley.pdf\">sounded the alarm to the city council\u003c/a> as well. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“If you find a bat in your house, it \u003cem>really \u003c/em>is something that you have to take very seriously,” he said. “And it can be considered a medical emergency if you were bit by a bat.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“If you find a bat in your house, it \u003cem>really \u003c/em>is something that you have to take very seriously,” he said. “And it can be considered a medical emergency if you were bit by a bat.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Read on for everything you need to know about the animals and your risk of rabies.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Read on for everything you need to know about the animals and your risk of rabies.\u003c/p>\n"
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"text": "How common are bats in the Bay Area?",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How common are bats in the Bay Area?\u003c/h2>\n",
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"\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How common are bats in the Bay Area?\u003c/h2>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Most people living in the Bay Area don’t know just how prevalent — and diverse — the local bat population is here, said Evan Cole, natural resource manager for San Mateo County Parks.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Most people living in the Bay Area don’t know just how prevalent — and diverse — the local bat population is here, said Evan Cole, natural resource manager for San Mateo County Parks.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In general, bats have the most species of any mammal in the world and are particularly good at adapting to different habitats, including urban areas. But because they are nocturnal, they aren’t as noticeable, Cole said.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In general, bats have the most species of any mammal in the world and are particularly good at adapting to different habitats, including urban areas. But because they are nocturnal, they aren’t as noticeable, Cole said.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In general, bats have been under-studied in academia, he said — “and I think that kind of trickles down into the public knowledge and our ability to properly educate people on the benefits and hazards of bats around us.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In general, bats have been under-studied in academia, he said — “and I think that kind of trickles down into the public knowledge and our ability to properly educate people on the benefits and hazards of bats around us.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In fact, there are 16 species of bat in the Bay Area alone, Cole said. They are insectivores, so they feed on bugs, and they “roost” in a variety of habitats, including local tree species like redwoods, eucalyptus and, of course, human structures. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In fact, there are 16 species of bat in the Bay Area alone, Cole said. They are insectivores, so they feed on bugs, and they “roost” in a variety of habitats, including local tree species like redwoods, eucalyptus and, of course, human structures. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But unless they have a disease like rabies, bats in the wild aren’t something to be afraid of. In general, they are not interested in humans and don’t have any innate desire to bite you. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Bats should also be sleeping during the day, so any daytime activity means they’re either sick or in distress, Cole said. “Anytime you see a bat flying during the day, that’s bad news for the bat,” he said. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Bats should also be sleeping during the day, so any daytime activity means they’re either sick or in distress, Cole said. “Anytime you see a bat flying during the day, that’s bad news for the bat,” he said. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Because bats can form a critical part of our local ecosystems, Cole said protection of their natural habitats — including in places like local parks — is important, especially as their survival is threatened by factors like climate change, diseases like \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/articles/what-is-white-nose-syndrome.htm\">White-nose syndrome\u003c/a>, loss of insect populations globally and habitat transformation. That’s why San Mateo County Parks is careful not to disturb local bat populations when they’re most vulnerable, like during the nighttime, their springtime maternity season and during the winter months.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Because bats can form a critical part of our local ecosystems, Cole said protection of their natural habitats — including in places like local parks — is important, especially as their survival is threatened by factors like climate change, diseases like \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/articles/what-is-white-nose-syndrome.htm\">White-nose syndrome\u003c/a>, loss of insect populations globally and habitat transformation. That’s why San Mateo County Parks is careful not to disturb local bat populations when they’re most vulnerable, like during the nighttime, their springtime maternity season and during the winter months.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“Bats are being kind of boxed into a corner in many ways, and we need to do our best to respect, protect them, and educate people about them, about the uses and benefits that they provide to people,” Cole said. “And then also invest in protection and restoration of open spaces like we do in parks to make sure that these native landscapes are still there as refuge for them.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“Bats are being kind of boxed into a corner in many ways, and we need to do our best to respect, protect them, and educate people about them, about the uses and benefits that they provide to people,” Cole said. “And then also invest in protection and restoration of open spaces like we do in parks to make sure that these native landscapes are still there as refuge for them.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"text": "What is the real risk of rabies from bats?",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The headline: “Rabies should always be assumed to be present if you find a bat in your home,” Gilman said.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The headline: “Rabies should always be assumed to be present if you find a bat in your home,” Gilman said.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And this is out of a justified abundance of caution. Rabies in animals is actually not overly common —\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/rabies.aspx#WashBite\"> an average of just 200 cases \u003c/a>of rabies in animals are reported statewide each year, according to the California Department of Public Health.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And this is out of a justified abundance of caution. Rabies in animals is actually not overly common —\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/rabies.aspx#WashBite\"> an average of just 200 cases \u003c/a>of rabies in animals are reported statewide each year, according to the California Department of Public Health.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty3.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12099034\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty3.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty3-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty3-1536x1023.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A little brown bat with its mouth wide open bares its teeth.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Gunter Marx Photography/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty3.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12099034\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A little brown bat with its mouth wide open bares its teeth.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Gunter Marx Photography/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>While all mammals can get rabies, bats and skunks are among the most common in California. So far this year, there have been 213 cases statewide, over 90% of which were in bats.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>While all mammals can get rabies, bats and skunks are among the most common in California. So far this year, there have been 213 cases statewide, over 90% of which were in bats.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Some signs of rabies in bats include increased daytime activity or interaction with humans, as bats are nocturnal and tend to avoid humans. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Remember: transmission of rabies from animals like bats to humans is rare, but it’s virtually always fatal if you do get rabies.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Remember: transmission of rabies from animals like bats to humans is rare, but it’s virtually always fatal if you do get rabies.\u003c/p>\n"
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"text": "What should I do to protect bats — and myself — in the Bay Area?",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>While places like San Mateo County Parks are focused on protecting natural bat habitats — and you can do so, too, in your yard, Cole said — you \u003cem>should \u003c/em>make sure bats aren’t living inside your home.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>While places like San Mateo County Parks are focused on protecting natural bat habitats — and you can do so, too, in your yard, Cole said — you \u003cem>should \u003c/em>make sure bats aren’t living inside your home.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“Bats are really important,” Cole said. “They offer great ecosystem services. They may find themselves in your house and enjoy it as a roof structure, but you should not be encouraged to keep them there.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“Bats are really important,” Cole said. “They offer great ecosystem services. They may find themselves in your house and enjoy it as a roof structure, but you should not be encouraged to keep them there.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Gilman advised residents to close up any holes or access points that bats may have into their home. That includes holes as small as a quarter of an inch, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Gilman advised residents to close up any holes or access points that bats may have into their home. That includes holes as small as a quarter of an inch, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If you suspect bats might be roosting in your home and you live in San Mateo or Alameda counties, you can \u003ca href=\"https://www.smcmvcd.org/request-service\">request a free inspection\u003c/a> and get advice on how to relocate the animals. Ahlgren said she talks to someone with a bat in their home in Alameda County at least once a week.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>If you suspect bats might be roosting in your home and you live in San Mateo or Alameda counties, you can \u003ca href=\"https://www.smcmvcd.org/request-service\">request a free inspection\u003c/a> and get advice on how to relocate the animals. Ahlgren said she talks to someone with a bat in their home in Alameda County at least once a week.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“We don’t want to remove them from their natural habitat, but we also don’t want them living in people’s attics where they can get inside,” Ahlgren said.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>“We don’t want to remove them from their natural habitat, but we also don’t want them living in people’s attics where they can get inside,” Ahlgren said.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If you think that bats might be living in your home, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">the CDC recommends\u003c/a> observing how they are getting in and out of your home, counting them, and attempting to seal entrances once they have left the building.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>If you think that bats might be living in your home, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">the CDC recommends\u003c/a> observing how they are getting in and out of your home, counting them, and attempting to seal entrances once they have left the building.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>CDPH also advises people to vaccinate their pets against rabies both for their health and to prevent the spread of the virus. California law requires all pet dogs to be vaccinated for rabies by 4 months old.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>CDPH also advises people to vaccinate their pets against rabies both for their health and to prevent the spread of the virus. California law requires all pet dogs to be vaccinated for rabies by 4 months old.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>While there are no laws regulating outdoor cats, Ahlgren said these pets are at particular risk of contracting the virus.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>While there are no laws regulating outdoor cats, Ahlgren said these pets are at particular risk of contracting the virus.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“They’re actually one of the more likely pets to come into contact with bats,” she said. “And if your cat is unvaccinated and catches a bat, that’s a six-month strict quarantine, which is hard on cats.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“They’re actually one of the more likely pets to come into contact with bats,” she said. “And if your cat is unvaccinated and catches a bat, that’s a six-month strict quarantine, which is hard on cats.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"text": "What to do if you see a bat in your home that might have bitten you",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What to do if you see a bat in your home that might have bitten you\u003c/h2>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>First, do not touch the bat, whether it’s dead or alive. It’s especially important to teach your children to never touch a bat, said Gilman.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>First, do not touch the bat, whether it’s dead or alive. It’s especially important to teach your children to never touch a bat, said Gilman.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If you’re able, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">safely trap the live bat\u003c/a> in your home without touching it \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">(and if this sounds tricky, the CDC has a full set of instructions on pulling this off\u003c/a>). Then, call your local vector control group to get it relocated and tested for rabies.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>If you’re able, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">safely trap the live bat\u003c/a> in your home without touching it \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">(and if this sounds tricky, the CDC has a full set of instructions on pulling this off\u003c/a>). Then, call your local vector control group to get it relocated and tested for rabies.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>You probably aren’t going to even \u003cem>know \u003c/em>if you were bitten by a bat, Gilman said — because their teeth are so tiny that they barely leave a mark. If you do have a noticeable bite, though, thoroughly washing the bitten area with soap and water is a good idea, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/rabies.aspx#WashBite\">according to CDPH\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>You probably aren’t going to even \u003cem>know \u003c/em>if you were bitten by a bat, Gilman said — because their teeth are so tiny that they barely leave a mark. If you do have a noticeable bite, though, thoroughly washing the bitten area with soap and water is a good idea, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/rabies.aspx#WashBite\">according to CDPH\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty4.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12099035\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty4.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty4-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty4-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A fringed Myotis bat (Myotis Thysanodes) hanging from a ceiling while sleeping.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (M. Flower/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty4.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12099035\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A fringed Myotis bat (Myotis Thysanodes) hanging from a ceiling while sleeping.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (M. Flower/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Then, you should immediately seek medical attention and an evaluation and report the bite to your local disease prevention program and vector control service. Your health care provider might recommend you get a series of vaccinations to stop you from getting sick. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Then, you should immediately seek medical attention and an evaluation and report the bite to your local disease prevention program and vector control service. Your health care provider might recommend you get a series of vaccinations to stop you from getting sick. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Reporting the bat and seeking medical attention are important even if you aren’t sure if you’ve been bitten, health experts say. Not only are a bat’s teeth so small that a bite might not be noticeable, but rabies, if untreated, is almost always fatal in humans.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Reporting the bat and seeking medical attention are important even if you aren’t sure if you’ve been bitten, health experts say. Not only are a bat’s teeth so small that a bite might not be noticeable, but rabies, if untreated, is almost always fatal in humans.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“Rabies is deadly,” Gilman said. “So the assumption if you are bit by a bat is that you need to have prophylactic medication.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“Rabies is deadly,” Gilman said. “So the assumption if you are bit by a bat is that you need to have prophylactic medication.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>By the time you feel any symptoms, which typically begin 4 to 8 weeks after exposure to the virus, you won’t be able to recover, Ahlgren said.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>By the time you feel any symptoms, which typically begin 4 to 8 weeks after exposure to the virus, you won’t be able to recover, Ahlgren said.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“You absolutely don’t wanna wait for symptoms because there’s no saving somebody that develops symptoms,” Ahlgren said.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“You absolutely don’t wanna wait for symptoms because there’s no saving somebody that develops symptoms,” Ahlgren said.\u003c/p>\n"
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"excerpt": "A recent spike in rabies cases in the East Bay has officials on alert. How worried should you be — especially if you know there’s a bat around your home?",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/han/php/notices/han00533.html\">health advisory \u003c/a>to doctors about increased rabies in animals and human exposures nationwide this summer, saying it received 17% more rabies-related inquiries in July and August than during that same time last year.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Rabies has, alarmingly, also featured in a number of Bay Area headlines this summer.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Three Humboldt County children were \u003ca href=\"https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/09/08/3-humboldt-county-kids-had-to-be-treated-for-rabies-exposure-after-touching-bats/?utm_campaign=mrf-bluesky-mercurynews.com&utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&mrfcid=202609086a9d1d83f046393007a3a5d5\">treated for exposure\u003c/a> to rabies from bats in the past two weeks. \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/yose/learn/news/dead-bat-tests-positive-for-rabies-at-curry-village-in-yosemite-national-park.htm\">A dead bat\u003c/a> in Yosemite National Park also tested positive for rabies. The city of Berkeley confirmed in late August that it has found \u003ca href=\"https://www.berkeleyside.org/2026/09/03/rabid-bats-berkeley\">five rabies-positive bats\u003c/a> in residential and commercial areas of the city this year. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://health.alamedacountyca.gov/program/rabies/\">And a domestic cat\u003c/a> in Pleasanton — which health officials said “may have been exposed to rabies by a bat on a balcony” — was also found to have rabies in late June.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While these events might sound unusual, “finding a rabid bat is not terribly uncommon,” said Scott Gilman, the director of health, housing and community services for the city of Berkeley. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We normally have about two a year if you look back in time,” he said. “But because we found five already this year, it’s a little bit of a spike.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Gilman confirmed that all five of the bats in Berkeley were found dead. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1302\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12099032\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty2-160x104.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty2-1536x1000.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A dead bat in Yosemite National Park also tested positive for rabies, while Berkeley has found five rabies-positive bats in residential and commercial areas this year. (McDonald Wildlife Photography Inc../Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Valerie Ahlgren, senior vector control biologist for Alameda County’s Vector Control Services District, said 13 bats with rabies have been reported in the county alone this year. And while Ahlgren couldn’t pin this year’s increase on any particular cause, she said rabies can appear to be cyclical, \u003ca href=\"https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/as-bats-hibernate-through-the-winter-so-does-rabies\">peaking during summer months\u003c/a> and lying dormant — along with the hibernating bats that host it — during the winter\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Bats are the No. 1 reservoir of rabies,” she said. “They maintain it in their population for years and years.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Luckily, transmission of the virus from bats to humans is rare: Just 17 people in the state have ever been reported with rabies since 1980, the most recent case in 2024, when a \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OPA/Pages/NR24-040.aspx\">Fresno man died\u003c/a> from the virus. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And thankfully, it’s also treatable in humans if caught early. But once symptoms do appear, the virus is virtually always fatal — only a very small number of people worldwide have ever \u003ca href=\"https://www.aaas.org/membership/qualia/surviving-rabies-now-possible\">survived symptomatic rabies\u003c/a>. That’s why Gilman’s office \u003ca href=\"https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/Provider%20Alert_Rabies-positive%20bats%20in%20City%20of%20Berkeley.pdf\">sent a letter\u003c/a> to local physicians in August notifying them of the uptick and \u003ca href=\"https://berkeleyca.gov/sites/default/files/2026-08-26%20%20Increase%20in%20Rabies-Positive%20Bats%20Identified%20in%202026%20in%20the%20City%20of%20Berkeley.pdf\">sounded the alarm to the city council\u003c/a> as well. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“If you find a bat in your house, it \u003cem>really \u003c/em>is something that you have to take very seriously,” he said. “And it can be considered a medical emergency if you were bit by a bat.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Read on for everything you need to know about the animals and your risk of rabies.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How common are bats in the Bay Area?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Most people living in the Bay Area don’t know just how prevalent — and diverse — the local bat population is here, said Evan Cole, natural resource manager for San Mateo County Parks.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In general, bats have the most species of any mammal in the world and are particularly good at adapting to different habitats, including urban areas. But because they are nocturnal, they aren’t as noticeable, Cole said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In general, bats have been under-studied in academia, he said — “and I think that kind of trickles down into the public knowledge and our ability to properly educate people on the benefits and hazards of bats around us.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In fact, there are 16 species of bat in the Bay Area alone, Cole said. They are insectivores, so they feed on bugs, and they “roost” in a variety of habitats, including local tree species like redwoods, eucalyptus and, of course, human structures. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But unless they have a disease like rabies, bats in the wild aren’t something to be afraid of. In general, they are not interested in humans and don’t have any innate desire to bite you. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Bats should also be sleeping during the day, so any daytime activity means they’re either sick or in distress, Cole said. “Anytime you see a bat flying during the day, that’s bad news for the bat,” he said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Because bats can form a critical part of our local ecosystems, Cole said protection of their natural habitats — including in places like local parks — is important, especially as their survival is threatened by factors like climate change, diseases like \u003ca href=\"https://www.nps.gov/articles/what-is-white-nose-syndrome.htm\">White-nose syndrome\u003c/a>, loss of insect populations globally and habitat transformation. That’s why San Mateo County Parks is careful not to disturb local bat populations when they’re most vulnerable, like during the nighttime, their springtime maternity season and during the winter months.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Bats are being kind of boxed into a corner in many ways, and we need to do our best to respect, protect them, and educate people about them, about the uses and benefits that they provide to people,” Cole said. “And then also invest in protection and restoration of open spaces like we do in parks to make sure that these native landscapes are still there as refuge for them.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What is the real risk of rabies from bats?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The headline: “Rabies should always be assumed to be present if you find a bat in your home,” Gilman said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And this is out of a justified abundance of caution. Rabies in animals is actually not overly common —\u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/rabies.aspx#WashBite\"> an average of just 200 cases \u003c/a>of rabies in animals are reported statewide each year, according to the California Department of Public Health.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1332\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty3.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12099034\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty3.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty3-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty3-1536x1023.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A little brown bat with its mouth wide open bares its teeth. (Gunter Marx Photography/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While all mammals can get rabies, bats and skunks are among the most common in California. So far this year, there have been 213 cases statewide, over 90% of which were in bats.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Some signs of rabies in bats include increased daytime activity or interaction with humans, as bats are nocturnal and tend to avoid humans. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Remember: transmission of rabies from animals like bats to humans is rare, but it’s virtually always fatal if you do get rabies.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What should I do to protect bats — and myself — in the Bay Area?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While places like San Mateo County Parks are focused on protecting natural bat habitats — and you can do so, too, in your yard, Cole said — you \u003cem>should \u003c/em>make sure bats aren’t living inside your home.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Bats are really important,” Cole said. “They offer great ecosystem services. They may find themselves in your house and enjoy it as a roof structure, but you should not be encouraged to keep them there.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Gilman advised residents to close up any holes or access points that bats may have into their home. That includes holes as small as a quarter of an inch, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you suspect bats might be roosting in your home and you live in San Mateo or Alameda counties, you can \u003ca href=\"https://www.smcmvcd.org/request-service\">request a free inspection\u003c/a> and get advice on how to relocate the animals. Ahlgren said she talks to someone with a bat in their home in Alameda County at least once a week.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We don’t want to remove them from their natural habitat, but we also don’t want them living in people’s attics where they can get inside,” Ahlgren said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you think that bats might be living in your home, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">the CDC recommends\u003c/a> observing how they are getting in and out of your home, counting them, and attempting to seal entrances once they have left the building.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>CDPH also advises people to vaccinate their pets against rabies both for their health and to prevent the spread of the virus. California law requires all pet dogs to be vaccinated for rabies by 4 months old.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>While there are no laws regulating outdoor cats, Ahlgren said these pets are at particular risk of contracting the virus.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“They’re actually one of the more likely pets to come into contact with bats,” she said. “And if your cat is unvaccinated and catches a bat, that’s a six-month strict quarantine, which is hard on cats.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">What to do if you see a bat in your home that might have bitten you\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>First, do not touch the bat, whether it’s dead or alive. It’s especially important to teach your children to never touch a bat, said Gilman.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’re able, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">safely trap the live bat\u003c/a> in your home without touching it \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdc.gov/rabies/prevention/bats.html#cdc_generic_section_4-how-to-safely-capture-a-bat\">(and if this sounds tricky, the CDC has a full set of instructions on pulling this off\u003c/a>). Then, call your local vector control group to get it relocated and tested for rabies.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You probably aren’t going to even \u003cem>know \u003c/em>if you were bitten by a bat, Gilman said — because their teeth are so tiny that they barely leave a mark. If you do have a noticeable bite, though, thoroughly washing the bitten area with soap and water is a good idea, \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/rabies.aspx#WashBite\">according to CDPH\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty4.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12099035\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty4.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty4-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/BatsGetty4-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A fringed Myotis bat (Myotis Thysanodes) hanging from a ceiling while sleeping. (M. Flower/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Then, you should immediately seek medical attention and an evaluation and report the bite to your local disease prevention program and vector control service. Your health care provider might recommend you get a series of vaccinations to stop you from getting sick. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Reporting the bat and seeking medical attention are important even if you aren’t sure if you’ve been bitten, health experts say. Not only are a bat’s teeth so small that a bite might not be noticeable, but rabies, if untreated, is almost always fatal in humans.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Rabies is deadly,” Gilman said. “So the assumption if you are bit by a bat is that you need to have prophylactic medication.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>By the time you feel any symptoms, which typically begin 4 to 8 weeks after exposure to the virus, you won’t be able to recover, Ahlgren said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“You absolutely don’t wanna wait for symptoms because there’s no saving somebody that develops symptoms,” Ahlgren said.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "where-can-i-find-new-updated-2026-27-covid-vaccine-near-me-moderna-pfizer-cvs-walgreens-safeway-vaccinations-health-insurance-cost",
"title": "A New COVID Vaccine Is Here (Without Much Fanfare). When Should You Get It?",
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"headTitle": "A New COVID Vaccine Is Here (Without Much Fanfare). When Should You Get It? | KQED",
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"content": "\n\u003cp>The new 2026-27 \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/covid-19\">COVID-19\u003c/a> vaccine is here — although unlike in previous years, there’s a chance you might not even have heard about it yet.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the updated shots last week. But this year, there’s been \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/09/02/nx-s1-5947884/covid-flu-rsv-vaccine-recommendations\">no formal guidance\u003c/a> from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about who should actually get it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In the absence of any federal guidelines, the California Department of Public Health issued \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/IMM-1481.pdf#msdynmkt_trackingcontext=42181725-f337-476b-805b-39989c120200\">its own recommendations \u003c/a>on Friday about who should absolutely seek out the new COVID-19 shot. State health officials’ strongest recommendations are for everyone age 65 and older, those with risk factors that increase their chances of getting severe COVID-19, pregnant people, children age 6 to 23 months and healthcare workers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/COVIDGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12053910\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/COVIDGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/COVIDGetty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/COVIDGetty-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A new COVID-19 vaccine is now available. (Luis Alvarez/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But the state also said that basically everyone else — or in their words, “all who choose to reduce risk of severe illness” — can get the 2026-27 COVID-19 shot, too, and that it’ll be covered by health insurance.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Six years out from the onset of the pandemic, the language around COVID-19 vaccine recommendations has definitely changed. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Keep reading for how to understand the latest guidelines, why you’re not hearing anything from the CDC this year and when you should consider getting your own vaccine to lower your chances of getting a nasty bout of COVID-19 this fall and winter.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">First off, are appointments for the new 2026-27 COVID vaccines already available?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Yes: The new shots have already rolled out at pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens around the state. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Pharmacies are the first place that COVID vaccine supplies become available each fall right after the FDA and CDC sign off, because they take their orders from the federal government rather than the state. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In the coming weeks, the updated 2026-27 COVID vaccine will soon become available at doctors’ offices, clinics and health systems like Kaiser Permanente.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’re a parent wanting to vaccinate your kid sooner rather than later, however, remember: The state says that pharmacies \u003cem>aren’t\u003c/em> authorized to vaccinate children age two and under. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This means that unless your child is age three or older, you won’t be able to get their COVID shot at a pharmacy, and you should talk to your child’s pediatrician about how best to get their shot. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The exception to this is CVS’s MinuteClinics, which are staffed by providers who are permitted to administer a COVID vaccine to kids age 18 months and older.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Will my fall COVID shot still be covered by health insurance?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Yes: “All vaccines recommended by the California Department of Public Health continue to be covered by health insurance regulated in California,” CDPH said in its Friday statement announcing its recommendations around the 2026-27 COVID-19 vaccines.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One wrinkle to remember if you get your healthcare through a system like Kaiser Permanente: If you’re considering getting your COVID-19 vaccine at a pharmacy for convenience, rather than from your own provider, you usually \u003cem>can’t\u003c/em> get vaccines fully covered by your insurance. But, according to Kaiser, “you may be able to get up to \u003ca href=\"https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/northern-california/health-wellness/coronavirus-information/vaccine-appointments\">half of the cost \u003c/a>reimbursed.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’re going the reimbursement route, bear in mind that \u003ca href=\"https://www.cvs.com/immunizations/covid-19-vaccine\">the out-of-pocket cost of getting your COVID-19 vaccine\u003c/a> at CVS this year is now $278.99 — up 40% from $198.99 last year.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cem>When \u003c/em>should I get my 2026-27 COVID shot?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Higher-risk groups\u003c/h3>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The 2026-27 COVID-19 vaccine is available to patients age 6 months and older, but California health officials are strongly recommending the updated vaccine for the following higher-risk groups:\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Children:\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>All children age 6-23 months\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>All children age 2-18 years with \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/populations-at-risk-covid.pdf\">risk factors\u003c/a> or who’ve never been vaccinated against COVID-19\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>All children who are in close contact with others with risk factors\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Adults:\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>All age 65 years and older\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Anyone who’s pregnant, planning to become pregnant or is postpartum\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Anyone age 9-64 years with \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/populations-at-risk-covid.pdf\">risk factors\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>All who are in close contact with others with risk factors\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>All healthcare workers\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12033385\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A syringe is filled with a dose of the Johnson & Johnson Janssen COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination site inside Reuther Hall at Forty Acres on March 13, 2021, in Delano, California. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’re in one of the above groups — meaning you’re either at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19 yourself or at higher risk of spreading COVID-19 to others — it’s a good idea to seek out your updated vaccine soon, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at UCSF.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“There are some populations who I just don’t want there to be any doubt about, because they’re very important,” Chin-Hong said. “I’m on the highest alert around them, because those are the people who are still coming into the hospital [with COVID-19], either inpatient or going to the emergency room.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In a nutshell: If you’re one of the people in the list above, or your kid is, seek out your new COVID-19 shot as soon as you can.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>See the full list of CDPH’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/publichealth4all/vaccines.aspx#table\">recommendations for respiratory vaccines\u003c/a> this year.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">People who aren’t at higher risk\u003c/h3>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you or your child isn’t listed in those higher-risk groups above, you fall into CDPH’s recommendation that “all who choose to reduce risk of severe illness” can still get the updated 2026-27 COVID-19 shot.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But what does that mean practically? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One thing to know: The Bay Area is still in a summer COVID wave, as shown by \u003ca href=\"https://data.wastewaterscan.org/tracker/?charts=CoYBEAA4AUgAUgY1NzlkYTNSBjM3NDMwYVIGZTllODdlUgYwN2NlZDdSBjhhOWI0YlIGYzhkMzU3UgYyNTQ4MTlSBmRkMzZmYlIGZmEyZDYzUgZiNzIzYWVSBmJjNzlmOVIGODRkNDg5UgZkZGU4OGZaBk4gR2VuZXifAYoBBmQyY2RlNrgBiwg%3D&selectedChartId=d2cde6\">levels of coronavirus in the region’s wastewater\u003c/a> (aka human sewage). And “based on current patterns, we still have plenty of the current wave ahead of us,” said Dr. Matt Willis, the state’s correspondent for \u003ca href=\"https://yourlocalepidemiologistca.substack.com/\">Your Local Epidemiologist California, who was formerly Marin County’s public health officer at the height of the pandemic. “\u003c/a>It still hasn’t peaked, and then there’s a few weeks on the downslope to expect.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>With that in mind, Willis told KQED by email that “if you want to be protected even if you’re not high risk, I would still go ahead and get the vaccine now.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In California, he said, “We haven’t really seen COVID-19 activity in the winter, at least judging from the past two years. So the likelihood of being infected with COVID-19 is likely higher for the next couple months than it may be for the rest of the year, until next summer.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Of course, there are people — like Kaiser patients, or people who prefer to get their COVID vaccine at their own doctor’s office — who’ll be waiting to get their shot until supplies of the new vaccine become available beyond pharmacies. And Chin-Hong said there are other reasons some people might consider waiting a little, too.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>As a physician, “I put an exclamation point next to the people who I \u003cem>really \u003c/em>want to get it,” Chin-Hong said. But “for everyone else, it could be used strategically,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Getting the new vaccine will give you “a buffer for infection for about three months or so,” Chin-Hong said — and it’ll take around two weeks after getting your shot for your body to develop the fullest immunity. So you might consider strategically timing your updated COVID-19 shot to coincide with any travel you have coming up this fall, he said — or to have good protection for around the holidays.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A boy with a tuxedo T-shirt and a face mask holds his mother's hand as he receives a shot in the arm by a nurse.\" class=\"wp-image-11961112\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A child receives a COVID-19 vaccine on Sept. 12, 2023. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If just getting out to \u003cem>get \u003c/em>your vaccines is difficult, you could also opt to conveniently get your COVID shot and your flu shot during the same appointment in October, said Chin-Hong. As for that specific timing, it’s best to get your flu shot sometime before Halloween, he said, and you don’t want to get it \u003cem>too \u003c/em>early ahead of flu season, which might arrive a little later this year if Australia’s flu season — \u003ca href=\"https://www.today.com/health/cold-flu/flu-guide-2026-season-severity-symptoms-treatment-mrna-vaccine-rcna595714\">traditionally used as a barometer of what the U.S. can expect\u003c/a> — is any indicator.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>However, if you’re the kind of person whose calendar and obligations get packed in the fall and you’re concerned you’ll forget to get your shots altogether, release yourself from the burden of overstrategizing and just go get your vaccine when you can.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And remember: If you were one of the many folks in the Bay Area who got taken down by COVID-19 during \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12091325/summer-covid-test-2026-wastewater-variants-isolation-contagious-xfg-san-francisco-bay-area-california\">this summer’s ongoing wave\u003c/a>, your infection has given you around three months’ natural immunity — so you should wait until that “expires” before seeking out your latest COVID-19 vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Will the new 2026-27 COVID shot protect me from the latest strains out there right now?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Yes, Chin-Hong said — each year the COVID-19 vaccine is updated for maximum efficacy, to target the variants that are most likely to try to take you down this year.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The 2026-27 shot actually only targets one strain, XFG, “which is the number one strain right now circulating,” Chin-Hong said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>People infected with XFG have often reported a scratchy, hoarse throat that’s easily mistaken for allergies, along with the kind of primarily respiratory symptoms we’ve come to expect from COVID-19.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Where can I find the new COVID vaccine — other than a pharmacy?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Through your healthcare provider, when available\u003c/h3>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you have health insurance, check with your healthcare provider to see whether they can offer you an updated COVID-19 vaccine, and when.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you don’t have health insurance but get medical care through a city- or county-run provider, you should check with that location to see whether they can offer you the new COVID-19 vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1405\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12028314\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-800x562.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-1020x717.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-160x112.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-1536x1079.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-1920x1349.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A CVS in Huntington Park on Aug. 28, 2024. (Christina House/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In addition to talking with your healthcare provider directly, check the website of your provider to see whether it offers the ability to make appointments and sign up for their vaccine notifications if that’s an option.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Through My Turn, when available\u003c/h3>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Throughout the pandemic, \u003ca href=\"https://myturn.ca.gov/\">My Turn has been the state’s site\u003c/a> for Californians to schedule vaccination appointments or find walk-in locations, regardless of health insurance status.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Through your county, when available\u003c/h3>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Check your county’s public health website to see if the updated COVID-19 vaccine will soon be available to residents, especially those who are uninsured or underinsured.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">I heard the FDA and CDC tried to restrict eligibility for COVID vaccines last year. Can I still get my shot?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Yes — because California’s own recommendations overrule the federal government when it comes to you accessing this vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>To understand the backstory: In August 2025, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12053906/covid-vaccines-booster-2025-fda-cdc-who-can-get-updated-vaccine-novavax-pfizer-moderna-where-find\">the FDA under President Donald Trump’s second administration announced\u003c/a> that the agency would be limiting eligibility for the updated shots for the first time — and that the 2025-26 vaccines would be available only to people age 65 and over and to anyone with a health condition that puts them at higher risk from COVID-19. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>At first, the shots rolled out across California pharmacies only for these groups. But shortly after, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the state would join Oregon and Washington in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12054491/in-rebuke-of-rfk-jr-the-west-coast-unites-on-vaccine-policy\">launching a new “West Coast Health Alliance,”\u003c/a> a coalition that now issues its own state-specific vaccine recommendations — effectively overriding the FDA and CDC’s attempts to limit eligibility for your COVID-19 vaccine in California.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1337\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GavinJenniferNewsomGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12087658\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GavinJenniferNewsomGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GavinJenniferNewsomGetty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GavinJenniferNewsomGetty-1536x1027.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks as his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom (left), looks on during an election night gathering at California Democratic headquarters in Sacramento, California, on Nov. 4, 2025. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In a joint statement, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12054491/in-rebuke-of-rfk-jr-the-west-coast-unites-on-vaccine-policy\">the governors said the CDC had “become a political tool\u003c/a> that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences,” adding that “California, Oregon and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12056289/california-law-sets-states-own-vaccine-schedules-deepening-rift-with-cdc\">Newsom has also signed a law\u003c/a> which now allows the state to act independently from the CDC when it comes to vaccine recommendations, “empowering California to chart its own path and reject corrupted federal guidelines,” according to a statement from the governor’s office. As for how California is able to expand beyond the FDA’s eligibility restrictions, that FDA decision affects what’s called the vaccine’s “label” — and California is now making the shot available to people outside of the FDA’s limitations “off-label.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And what about the CDC, which has issued annual recommendations for who should get these vaccines since they were first released in 2021? In summer 2025, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dissolved the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices panel and \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-health-chief-kennedy-names-new-members-vaccine-advisory-committee-2025-06-11/\">replaced its members with a number of doctors and researchers\u003c/a> who have repeatedly questioned the safety of commonly used vaccines and ingredients.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But after a lawsuit earlier this year that blocked \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/03/16/nx-s1-5749530/judge-blocks-rfk-jr-vaccine-changes\">the Trump administration’s efforts \u003c/a>to reduce routine vaccines for children, the CDC’s process for issuing annual vaccine guidelines — including COVID-19 — remains in limbo, and for the first time since 2021, the agency has released no formal guidelines for the COVID-19 shot. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The CDC’s recommendations used to be what insurance companies based their coverage on when it comes to vaccines. But the state has confirmed that all vaccines recommended by CDPH — which includes COVID-19 vaccines for anyone who wants them — “continue to be covered by health insurance regulated in California.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The new 2026-27 \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/covid-19\">COVID-19\u003c/a> vaccine is here — although unlike in previous years, there’s a chance you might not even have heard about it yet.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The new 2026-27 \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/covid-19\">COVID-19\u003c/a> vaccine is here — although unlike in previous years, there’s a chance you might not even have heard about it yet.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the updated shots last week. But this year, there’s been \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/09/02/nx-s1-5947884/covid-flu-rsv-vaccine-recommendations\">no formal guidance\u003c/a> from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about who should actually get it.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the updated shots last week. But this year, there’s been \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/09/02/nx-s1-5947884/covid-flu-rsv-vaccine-recommendations\">no formal guidance\u003c/a> from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about who should actually get it.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In the absence of any federal guidelines, the California Department of Public Health issued \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/IMM-1481.pdf#msdynmkt_trackingcontext=42181725-f337-476b-805b-39989c120200\">its own recommendations \u003c/a>on Friday about who should absolutely seek out the new COVID-19 shot. State health officials’ strongest recommendations are for everyone age 65 and older, those with risk factors that increase their chances of getting severe COVID-19, pregnant people, children age 6 to 23 months and healthcare workers. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In the absence of any federal guidelines, the California Department of Public Health issued \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/IMM-1481.pdf#msdynmkt_trackingcontext=42181725-f337-476b-805b-39989c120200\">its own recommendations \u003c/a>on Friday about who should absolutely seek out the new COVID-19 shot. State health officials’ strongest recommendations are for everyone age 65 and older, those with risk factors that increase their chances of getting severe COVID-19, pregnant people, children age 6 to 23 months and healthcare workers. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/COVIDGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12053910\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/COVIDGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/COVIDGetty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/COVIDGetty-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A new COVID-19 vaccine is now available.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Luis Alvarez/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/COVIDGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12053910\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A new COVID-19 vaccine is now available.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Luis Alvarez/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But the state also said that basically everyone else — or in their words, “all who choose to reduce risk of severe illness” — can get the 2026-27 COVID-19 shot, too, and that it’ll be covered by health insurance.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But the state also said that basically everyone else — or in their words, “all who choose to reduce risk of severe illness” — can get the 2026-27 COVID-19 shot, too, and that it’ll be covered by health insurance.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Six years out from the onset of the pandemic, the language around COVID-19 vaccine recommendations has definitely changed. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Six years out from the onset of the pandemic, the language around COVID-19 vaccine recommendations has definitely changed. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Keep reading for how to understand the latest guidelines, why you’re not hearing anything from the CDC this year and when you should consider getting your own vaccine to lower your chances of getting a nasty bout of COVID-19 this fall and winter.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Keep reading for how to understand the latest guidelines, why you’re not hearing anything from the CDC this year and when you should consider getting your own vaccine to lower your chances of getting a nasty bout of COVID-19 this fall and winter.\u003c/p>\n"
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"blockName": "core/heading",
"attrs": {
"text": "First off, are appointments for the new 2026-27 COVID vaccines already available?",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">First off, are appointments for the new 2026-27 COVID vaccines already available?\u003c/h2>\n",
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"\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">First off, are appointments for the new 2026-27 COVID vaccines already available?\u003c/h2>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Yes: The new shots have already rolled out at pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens around the state. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Yes: The new shots have already rolled out at pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens around the state. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Pharmacies are the first place that COVID vaccine supplies become available each fall right after the FDA and CDC sign off, because they take their orders from the federal government rather than the state. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Pharmacies are the first place that COVID vaccine supplies become available each fall right after the FDA and CDC sign off, because they take their orders from the federal government rather than the state. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In the coming weeks, the updated 2026-27 COVID vaccine will soon become available at doctors’ offices, clinics and health systems like Kaiser Permanente.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>In the coming weeks, the updated 2026-27 COVID vaccine will soon become available at doctors’ offices, clinics and health systems like Kaiser Permanente.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If you’re a parent wanting to vaccinate your kid sooner rather than later, however, remember: The state says that pharmacies \u003cem>aren’t\u003c/em> authorized to vaccinate children age two and under. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>If you’re a parent wanting to vaccinate your kid sooner rather than later, however, remember: The state says that pharmacies \u003cem>aren’t\u003c/em> authorized to vaccinate children age two and under. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This means that unless your child is age three or older, you won’t be able to get their COVID shot at a pharmacy, and you should talk to your child’s pediatrician about how best to get their shot. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>This means that unless your child is age three or older, you won’t be able to get their COVID shot at a pharmacy, and you should talk to your child’s pediatrician about how best to get their shot. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The exception to this is CVS’s MinuteClinics, which are staffed by providers who are permitted to administer a COVID vaccine to kids age 18 months and older.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>The exception to this is CVS’s MinuteClinics, which are staffed by providers who are permitted to administer a COVID vaccine to kids age 18 months and older.\u003c/p>\n"
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"blockName": "core/heading",
"attrs": {
"text": "Will my fall COVID shot still be covered by health insurance?",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Will my fall COVID shot still be covered by health insurance?\u003c/h2>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Yes: “All vaccines recommended by the California Department of Public Health continue to be covered by health insurance regulated in California,” CDPH said in its Friday statement announcing its recommendations around the 2026-27 COVID-19 vaccines.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Yes: “All vaccines recommended by the California Department of Public Health continue to be covered by health insurance regulated in California,” CDPH said in its Friday statement announcing its recommendations around the 2026-27 COVID-19 vaccines.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>One wrinkle to remember if you get your healthcare through a system like Kaiser Permanente: If you’re considering getting your COVID-19 vaccine at a pharmacy for convenience, rather than from your own provider, you usually \u003cem>can’t\u003c/em> get vaccines fully covered by your insurance. But, according to Kaiser, “you may be able to get up to \u003ca href=\"https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/northern-california/health-wellness/coronavirus-information/vaccine-appointments\">half of the cost \u003c/a>reimbursed.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>One wrinkle to remember if you get your healthcare through a system like Kaiser Permanente: If you’re considering getting your COVID-19 vaccine at a pharmacy for convenience, rather than from your own provider, you usually \u003cem>can’t\u003c/em> get vaccines fully covered by your insurance. But, according to Kaiser, “you may be able to get up to \u003ca href=\"https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/northern-california/health-wellness/coronavirus-information/vaccine-appointments\">half of the cost \u003c/a>reimbursed.” \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If you’re going the reimbursement route, bear in mind that \u003ca href=\"https://www.cvs.com/immunizations/covid-19-vaccine\">the out-of-pocket cost of getting your COVID-19 vaccine\u003c/a> at CVS this year is now $278.99 — up 40% from $198.99 last year.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>If you’re going the reimbursement route, bear in mind that \u003ca href=\"https://www.cvs.com/immunizations/covid-19-vaccine\">the out-of-pocket cost of getting your COVID-19 vaccine\u003c/a> at CVS this year is now $278.99 — up 40% from $198.99 last year.\u003c/p>\n"
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"blockName": "core/heading",
"attrs": {
"text": "When should I get my 2026-27 COVID shot?",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cem>When \u003c/em>should I get my 2026-27 COVID shot?\u003c/h2>\n",
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"text": "Higher-risk groups"
},
"innerHTML": "\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Higher-risk groups\u003c/h3>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The 2026-27 COVID-19 vaccine is available to patients age 6 months and older, but California health officials are strongly recommending the updated vaccine for the following higher-risk groups:\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The 2026-27 COVID-19 vaccine is available to patients age 6 months and older, but California health officials are strongly recommending the updated vaccine for the following higher-risk groups:\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Children:\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Children:\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>All children age 6-23 months\u003c/li>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>All children age 2-18 years with \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/populations-at-risk-covid.pdf\">risk factors\u003c/a> or who’ve never been vaccinated against COVID-19\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>All children age 2-18 years with \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/populations-at-risk-covid.pdf\">risk factors\u003c/a> or who’ve never been vaccinated against COVID-19\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>Anyone who’s pregnant, planning to become pregnant or is postpartum\u003c/li>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cli>Anyone age 9-64 years with \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/populations-at-risk-covid.pdf\">risk factors\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n",
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"\n\u003cli>Anyone age 9-64 years with \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/populations-at-risk-covid.pdf\">risk factors\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12033385\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A syringe is filled with a dose of the Johnson & Johnson Janssen COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination site inside Reuther Hall at Forty Acres on March 13, 2021, in Delano, California. \u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12033385\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A syringe is filled with a dose of the Johnson & Johnson Janssen COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination site inside Reuther Hall at Forty Acres on March 13, 2021, in Delano, California. \u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If you’re in one of the above groups — meaning you’re either at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19 yourself or at higher risk of spreading COVID-19 to others — it’s a good idea to seek out your updated vaccine soon, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at UCSF.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>If you’re in one of the above groups — meaning you’re either at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19 yourself or at higher risk of spreading COVID-19 to others — it’s a good idea to seek out your updated vaccine soon, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at UCSF.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“There are some populations who I just don’t want there to be any doubt about, because they’re very important,” Chin-Hong said. “I’m on the highest alert around them, because those are the people who are still coming into the hospital [with COVID-19], either inpatient or going to the emergency room.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“There are some populations who I just don’t want there to be any doubt about, because they’re very important,” Chin-Hong said. “I’m on the highest alert around them, because those are the people who are still coming into the hospital [with COVID-19], either inpatient or going to the emergency room.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In a nutshell: If you’re one of the people in the list above, or your kid is, seek out your new COVID-19 shot as soon as you can.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>In a nutshell: If you’re one of the people in the list above, or your kid is, seek out your new COVID-19 shot as soon as you can.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>See the full list of CDPH’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/publichealth4all/vaccines.aspx#table\">recommendations for respiratory vaccines\u003c/a> this year.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>See the full list of CDPH’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/publichealth4all/vaccines.aspx#table\">recommendations for respiratory vaccines\u003c/a> this year.\u003c/p>\n"
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"\n\u003cp>If you or your child isn’t listed in those higher-risk groups above, you fall into CDPH’s recommendation that “all who choose to reduce risk of severe illness” can still get the updated 2026-27 COVID-19 shot.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But what does that mean practically? \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>One thing to know: The Bay Area is still in a summer COVID wave, as shown by \u003ca href=\"https://data.wastewaterscan.org/tracker/?charts=CoYBEAA4AUgAUgY1NzlkYTNSBjM3NDMwYVIGZTllODdlUgYwN2NlZDdSBjhhOWI0YlIGYzhkMzU3UgYyNTQ4MTlSBmRkMzZmYlIGZmEyZDYzUgZiNzIzYWVSBmJjNzlmOVIGODRkNDg5UgZkZGU4OGZaBk4gR2VuZXifAYoBBmQyY2RlNrgBiwg%3D&selectedChartId=d2cde6\">levels of coronavirus in the region’s wastewater\u003c/a> (aka human sewage). And “based on current patterns, we still have plenty of the current wave ahead of us,” said Dr. Matt Willis, the state’s correspondent for \u003ca href=\"https://yourlocalepidemiologistca.substack.com/\">Your Local Epidemiologist California, who was formerly Marin County’s public health officer at the height of the pandemic. “\u003c/a>It still hasn’t peaked, and then there’s a few weeks on the downslope to expect.”\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>One thing to know: The Bay Area is still in a summer COVID wave, as shown by \u003ca href=\"https://data.wastewaterscan.org/tracker/?charts=CoYBEAA4AUgAUgY1NzlkYTNSBjM3NDMwYVIGZTllODdlUgYwN2NlZDdSBjhhOWI0YlIGYzhkMzU3UgYyNTQ4MTlSBmRkMzZmYlIGZmEyZDYzUgZiNzIzYWVSBmJjNzlmOVIGODRkNDg5UgZkZGU4OGZaBk4gR2VuZXifAYoBBmQyY2RlNrgBiwg%3D&selectedChartId=d2cde6\">levels of coronavirus in the region’s wastewater\u003c/a> (aka human sewage). And “based on current patterns, we still have plenty of the current wave ahead of us,” said Dr. Matt Willis, the state’s correspondent for \u003ca href=\"https://yourlocalepidemiologistca.substack.com/\">Your Local Epidemiologist California, who was formerly Marin County’s public health officer at the height of the pandemic. “\u003c/a>It still hasn’t peaked, and then there’s a few weeks on the downslope to expect.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>With that in mind, Willis told KQED by email that “if you want to be protected even if you’re not high risk, I would still go ahead and get the vaccine now.”\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>With that in mind, Willis told KQED by email that “if you want to be protected even if you’re not high risk, I would still go ahead and get the vaccine now.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In California, he said, “We haven’t really seen COVID-19 activity in the winter, at least judging from the past two years. So the likelihood of being infected with COVID-19 is likely higher for the next couple months than it may be for the rest of the year, until next summer.”\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>In California, he said, “We haven’t really seen COVID-19 activity in the winter, at least judging from the past two years. So the likelihood of being infected with COVID-19 is likely higher for the next couple months than it may be for the rest of the year, until next summer.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Of course, there are people — like Kaiser patients, or people who prefer to get their COVID vaccine at their own doctor’s office — who’ll be waiting to get their shot until supplies of the new vaccine become available beyond pharmacies. And Chin-Hong said there are other reasons some people might consider waiting a little, too.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Of course, there are people — like Kaiser patients, or people who prefer to get their COVID vaccine at their own doctor’s office — who’ll be waiting to get their shot until supplies of the new vaccine become available beyond pharmacies. And Chin-Hong said there are other reasons some people might consider waiting a little, too.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>As a physician, “I put an exclamation point next to the people who I \u003cem>really \u003c/em>want to get it,” Chin-Hong said. But “for everyone else, it could be used strategically,” he said.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>As a physician, “I put an exclamation point next to the people who I \u003cem>really \u003c/em>want to get it,” Chin-Hong said. But “for everyone else, it could be used strategically,” he said.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Getting the new vaccine will give you “a buffer for infection for about three months or so,” Chin-Hong said — and it’ll take around two weeks after getting your shot for your body to develop the fullest immunity. So you might consider strategically timing your updated COVID-19 shot to coincide with any travel you have coming up this fall, he said — or to have good protection for around the holidays.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Getting the new vaccine will give you “a buffer for infection for about three months or so,” Chin-Hong said — and it’ll take around two weeks after getting your shot for your body to develop the fullest immunity. So you might consider strategically timing your updated COVID-19 shot to coincide with any travel you have coming up this fall, he said — or to have good protection for around the holidays.\u003c/p>\n"
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"srcset": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A boy with a tuxedo T-shirt and a face mask holds his mother's hand as he receives a shot in the arm by a nurse.\" class=\"wp-image-11961112\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A child receives a COVID-19 vaccine on Sept. 12, 2023. \u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A boy with a tuxedo T-shirt and a face mask holds his mother's hand as he receives a shot in the arm by a nurse.\" class=\"wp-image-11961112\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A child receives a COVID-19 vaccine on Sept. 12, 2023. \u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If just getting out to \u003cem>get \u003c/em>your vaccines is difficult, you could also opt to conveniently get your COVID shot and your flu shot during the same appointment in October, said Chin-Hong. As for that specific timing, it’s best to get your flu shot sometime before Halloween, he said, and you don’t want to get it \u003cem>too \u003c/em>early ahead of flu season, which might arrive a little later this year if Australia’s flu season — \u003ca href=\"https://www.today.com/health/cold-flu/flu-guide-2026-season-severity-symptoms-treatment-mrna-vaccine-rcna595714\">traditionally used as a barometer of what the U.S. can expect\u003c/a> — is any indicator.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>If just getting out to \u003cem>get \u003c/em>your vaccines is difficult, you could also opt to conveniently get your COVID shot and your flu shot during the same appointment in October, said Chin-Hong. As for that specific timing, it’s best to get your flu shot sometime before Halloween, he said, and you don’t want to get it \u003cem>too \u003c/em>early ahead of flu season, which might arrive a little later this year if Australia’s flu season — \u003ca href=\"https://www.today.com/health/cold-flu/flu-guide-2026-season-severity-symptoms-treatment-mrna-vaccine-rcna595714\">traditionally used as a barometer of what the U.S. can expect\u003c/a> — is any indicator.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>However, if you’re the kind of person whose calendar and obligations get packed in the fall and you’re concerned you’ll forget to get your shots altogether, release yourself from the burden of overstrategizing and just go get your vaccine when you can.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>However, if you’re the kind of person whose calendar and obligations get packed in the fall and you’re concerned you’ll forget to get your shots altogether, release yourself from the burden of overstrategizing and just go get your vaccine when you can.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And remember: If you were one of the many folks in the Bay Area who got taken down by COVID-19 during \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12091325/summer-covid-test-2026-wastewater-variants-isolation-contagious-xfg-san-francisco-bay-area-california\">this summer’s ongoing wave\u003c/a>, your infection has given you around three months’ natural immunity — so you should wait until that “expires” before seeking out your latest COVID-19 vaccine.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>And remember: If you were one of the many folks in the Bay Area who got taken down by COVID-19 during \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12091325/summer-covid-test-2026-wastewater-variants-isolation-contagious-xfg-san-francisco-bay-area-california\">this summer’s ongoing wave\u003c/a>, your infection has given you around three months’ natural immunity — so you should wait until that “expires” before seeking out your latest COVID-19 vaccine.\u003c/p>\n"
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{
"blockName": "core/heading",
"attrs": {
"text": "Will the new 2026-27 COVID shot protect me from the latest strains out there right now?",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Will the new 2026-27 COVID shot protect me from the latest strains out there right now?\u003c/h2>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Will the new 2026-27 COVID shot protect me from the latest strains out there right now?\u003c/h2>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Yes, Chin-Hong said — each year the COVID-19 vaccine is updated for maximum efficacy, to target the variants that are most likely to try to take you down this year.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Yes, Chin-Hong said — each year the COVID-19 vaccine is updated for maximum efficacy, to target the variants that are most likely to try to take you down this year.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The 2026-27 shot actually only targets one strain, XFG, “which is the number one strain right now circulating,” Chin-Hong said. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>The 2026-27 shot actually only targets one strain, XFG, “which is the number one strain right now circulating,” Chin-Hong said. \u003c/p>\n"
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{
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>People infected with XFG have often reported a scratchy, hoarse throat that’s easily mistaken for allergies, along with the kind of primarily respiratory symptoms we’ve come to expect from COVID-19.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>People infected with XFG have often reported a scratchy, hoarse throat that’s easily mistaken for allergies, along with the kind of primarily respiratory symptoms we’ve come to expect from COVID-19.\u003c/p>\n"
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{
"blockName": "core/heading",
"attrs": {
"text": "Where can I find the new COVID vaccine — other than a pharmacy?",
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},
"innerHTML": "\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Where can I find the new COVID vaccine — other than a pharmacy?\u003c/h2>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Where can I find the new COVID vaccine — other than a pharmacy?\u003c/h2>\n"
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{
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"attrs": {
"level": 3,
"text": "Through your healthcare provider, when available"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Through your healthcare provider, when available\u003c/h3>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Through your healthcare provider, when available\u003c/h3>\n"
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{
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"attrs": {
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If you have health insurance, check with your healthcare provider to see whether they can offer you an updated COVID-19 vaccine, and when.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>If you have health insurance, check with your healthcare provider to see whether they can offer you an updated COVID-19 vaccine, and when.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If you don’t have health insurance but get medical care through a city- or county-run provider, you should check with that location to see whether they can offer you the new COVID-19 vaccine.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>If you don’t have health insurance but get medical care through a city- or county-run provider, you should check with that location to see whether they can offer you the new COVID-19 vaccine.\u003c/p>\n"
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"srcset": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-800x562.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-1020x717.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-160x112.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-1536x1079.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-1920x1349.jpg 1920w",
"sizes": "(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12028314\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-800x562.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-1020x717.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-160x112.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-1536x1079.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-1920x1349.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A CVS in Huntington Park on Aug. 28, 2024. \u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Christina House/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12028314\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A CVS in Huntington Park on Aug. 28, 2024. \u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Christina House/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In addition to talking with your healthcare provider directly, check the website of your provider to see whether it offers the ability to make appointments and sign up for their vaccine notifications if that’s an option.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>In addition to talking with your healthcare provider directly, check the website of your provider to see whether it offers the ability to make appointments and sign up for their vaccine notifications if that’s an option.\u003c/p>\n"
],
"innerBlocks": []
},
{
"blockName": "core/heading",
"attrs": {
"level": 3,
"text": "Through My Turn, when available"
},
"innerHTML": "\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Through My Turn, when available\u003c/h3>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Through My Turn, when available\u003c/h3>\n"
],
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},
{
"blockName": "core/paragraph",
"attrs": {
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Throughout the pandemic, \u003ca href=\"https://myturn.ca.gov/\">My Turn has been the state’s site\u003c/a> for Californians to schedule vaccination appointments or find walk-in locations, regardless of health insurance status.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Throughout the pandemic, \u003ca href=\"https://myturn.ca.gov/\">My Turn has been the state’s site\u003c/a> for Californians to schedule vaccination appointments or find walk-in locations, regardless of health insurance status.\u003c/p>\n"
],
"innerBlocks": []
},
{
"blockName": "core/heading",
"attrs": {
"level": 3,
"text": "Through your county, when available"
},
"innerHTML": "\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Through your county, when available\u003c/h3>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Through your county, when available\u003c/h3>\n"
],
"innerBlocks": []
},
{
"blockName": "core/paragraph",
"attrs": {
"dropCap": false
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Check your county’s public health website to see if the updated COVID-19 vaccine will soon be available to residents, especially those who are uninsured or underinsured.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Check your county’s public health website to see if the updated COVID-19 vaccine will soon be available to residents, especially those who are uninsured or underinsured.\u003c/p>\n"
],
"innerBlocks": []
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{
"blockName": "core/heading",
"attrs": {
"text": "I heard the FDA and CDC tried to restrict eligibility for COVID vaccines last year. Can I still get my shot?",
"level": 2
},
"innerHTML": "\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">I heard the FDA and CDC tried to restrict eligibility for COVID vaccines last year. Can I still get my shot?\u003c/h2>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">I heard the FDA and CDC tried to restrict eligibility for COVID vaccines last year. Can I still get my shot?\u003c/h2>\n"
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{
"blockName": "core/paragraph",
"attrs": {
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Yes — because California’s own recommendations overrule the federal government when it comes to you accessing this vaccine.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>Yes — because California’s own recommendations overrule the federal government when it comes to you accessing this vaccine.\u003c/p>\n"
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},
{
"blockName": "core/paragraph",
"attrs": {
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>To understand the backstory: In August 2025, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12053906/covid-vaccines-booster-2025-fda-cdc-who-can-get-updated-vaccine-novavax-pfizer-moderna-where-find\">the FDA under President Donald Trump’s second administration announced\u003c/a> that the agency would be limiting eligibility for the updated shots for the first time — and that the 2025-26 vaccines would be available only to people age 65 and over and to anyone with a health condition that puts them at higher risk from COVID-19. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>To understand the backstory: In August 2025, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12053906/covid-vaccines-booster-2025-fda-cdc-who-can-get-updated-vaccine-novavax-pfizer-moderna-where-find\">the FDA under President Donald Trump’s second administration announced\u003c/a> that the agency would be limiting eligibility for the updated shots for the first time — and that the 2025-26 vaccines would be available only to people age 65 and over and to anyone with a health condition that puts them at higher risk from COVID-19. \u003c/p>\n"
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{
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>At first, the shots rolled out across California pharmacies only for these groups. But shortly after, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the state would join Oregon and Washington in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12054491/in-rebuke-of-rfk-jr-the-west-coast-unites-on-vaccine-policy\">launching a new “West Coast Health Alliance,”\u003c/a> a coalition that now issues its own state-specific vaccine recommendations — effectively overriding the FDA and CDC’s attempts to limit eligibility for your COVID-19 vaccine in California.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>At first, the shots rolled out across California pharmacies only for these groups. But shortly after, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the state would join Oregon and Washington in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12054491/in-rebuke-of-rfk-jr-the-west-coast-unites-on-vaccine-policy\">launching a new “West Coast Health Alliance,”\u003c/a> a coalition that now issues its own state-specific vaccine recommendations — effectively overriding the FDA and CDC’s attempts to limit eligibility for your COVID-19 vaccine in California.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GavinJenniferNewsomGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12087658\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GavinJenniferNewsomGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GavinJenniferNewsomGetty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GavinJenniferNewsomGetty-1536x1027.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks as his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom (left), looks on during an election night gathering at California Democratic headquarters in Sacramento, California, on Nov. 4, 2025.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GavinJenniferNewsomGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12087658\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks as his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom (left), looks on during an election night gathering at California Democratic headquarters in Sacramento, California, on Nov. 4, 2025.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In a joint statement, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12054491/in-rebuke-of-rfk-jr-the-west-coast-unites-on-vaccine-policy\">the governors said the CDC had “become a political tool\u003c/a> that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences,” adding that “California, Oregon and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In a joint statement, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12054491/in-rebuke-of-rfk-jr-the-west-coast-unites-on-vaccine-policy\">the governors said the CDC had “become a political tool\u003c/a> that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences,” adding that “California, Oregon and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12056289/california-law-sets-states-own-vaccine-schedules-deepening-rift-with-cdc\">Newsom has also signed a law\u003c/a> which now allows the state to act independently from the CDC when it comes to vaccine recommendations, “empowering California to chart its own path and reject corrupted federal guidelines,” according to a statement from the governor’s office. As for how California is able to expand beyond the FDA’s eligibility restrictions, that FDA decision affects what’s called the vaccine’s “label” — and California is now making the shot available to people outside of the FDA’s limitations “off-label.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12056289/california-law-sets-states-own-vaccine-schedules-deepening-rift-with-cdc\">Newsom has also signed a law\u003c/a> which now allows the state to act independently from the CDC when it comes to vaccine recommendations, “empowering California to chart its own path and reject corrupted federal guidelines,” according to a statement from the governor’s office. As for how California is able to expand beyond the FDA’s eligibility restrictions, that FDA decision affects what’s called the vaccine’s “label” — and California is now making the shot available to people outside of the FDA’s limitations “off-label.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And what about the CDC, which has issued annual recommendations for who should get these vaccines since they were first released in 2021? In summer 2025, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dissolved the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices panel and \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-health-chief-kennedy-names-new-members-vaccine-advisory-committee-2025-06-11/\">replaced its members with a number of doctors and researchers\u003c/a> who have repeatedly questioned the safety of commonly used vaccines and ingredients.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And what about the CDC, which has issued annual recommendations for who should get these vaccines since they were first released in 2021? In summer 2025, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dissolved the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices panel and \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-health-chief-kennedy-names-new-members-vaccine-advisory-committee-2025-06-11/\">replaced its members with a number of doctors and researchers\u003c/a> who have repeatedly questioned the safety of commonly used vaccines and ingredients.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But after a lawsuit earlier this year that blocked \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/03/16/nx-s1-5749530/judge-blocks-rfk-jr-vaccine-changes\">the Trump administration’s efforts \u003c/a>to reduce routine vaccines for children, the CDC’s process for issuing annual vaccine guidelines — including COVID-19 — remains in limbo, and for the first time since 2021, the agency has released no formal guidelines for the COVID-19 shot. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But after a lawsuit earlier this year that blocked \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/03/16/nx-s1-5749530/judge-blocks-rfk-jr-vaccine-changes\">the Trump administration’s efforts \u003c/a>to reduce routine vaccines for children, the CDC’s process for issuing annual vaccine guidelines — including COVID-19 — remains in limbo, and for the first time since 2021, the agency has released no formal guidelines for the COVID-19 shot. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The CDC’s recommendations used to be what insurance companies based their coverage on when it comes to vaccines. But the state has confirmed that all vaccines recommended by CDPH — which includes COVID-19 vaccines for anyone who wants them — “continue to be covered by health insurance regulated in California.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The CDC’s recommendations used to be what insurance companies based their coverage on when it comes to vaccines. But the state has confirmed that all vaccines recommended by CDPH — which includes COVID-19 vaccines for anyone who wants them — “continue to be covered by health insurance regulated in California.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"excerpt": "The updated 2026-27 COVID-19 vaccine is now rolling out across California. What to know about where to get yours — and what’s covered by insurance.",
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"title": "A New COVID Vaccine Is Here (Without Much Fanfare). When Should You Get It? | KQED",
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"headline": "A New COVID Vaccine Is Here (Without Much Fanfare). When Should You Get It?",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>The new 2026-27 \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/covid-19\">COVID-19\u003c/a> vaccine is here — although unlike in previous years, there’s a chance you might not even have heard about it yet.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the updated shots last week. But this year, there’s been \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/09/02/nx-s1-5947884/covid-flu-rsv-vaccine-recommendations\">no formal guidance\u003c/a> from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about who should actually get it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In the absence of any federal guidelines, the California Department of Public Health issued \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/IMM-1481.pdf#msdynmkt_trackingcontext=42181725-f337-476b-805b-39989c120200\">its own recommendations \u003c/a>on Friday about who should absolutely seek out the new COVID-19 shot. State health officials’ strongest recommendations are for everyone age 65 and older, those with risk factors that increase their chances of getting severe COVID-19, pregnant people, children age 6 to 23 months and healthcare workers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/COVIDGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12053910\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/COVIDGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/COVIDGetty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/COVIDGetty-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A new COVID-19 vaccine is now available. (Luis Alvarez/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But the state also said that basically everyone else — or in their words, “all who choose to reduce risk of severe illness” — can get the 2026-27 COVID-19 shot, too, and that it’ll be covered by health insurance.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Six years out from the onset of the pandemic, the language around COVID-19 vaccine recommendations has definitely changed. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Keep reading for how to understand the latest guidelines, why you’re not hearing anything from the CDC this year and when you should consider getting your own vaccine to lower your chances of getting a nasty bout of COVID-19 this fall and winter.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">First off, are appointments for the new 2026-27 COVID vaccines already available?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Yes: The new shots have already rolled out at pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens around the state. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Pharmacies are the first place that COVID vaccine supplies become available each fall right after the FDA and CDC sign off, because they take their orders from the federal government rather than the state. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In the coming weeks, the updated 2026-27 COVID vaccine will soon become available at doctors’ offices, clinics and health systems like Kaiser Permanente.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’re a parent wanting to vaccinate your kid sooner rather than later, however, remember: The state says that pharmacies \u003cem>aren’t\u003c/em> authorized to vaccinate children age two and under. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This means that unless your child is age three or older, you won’t be able to get their COVID shot at a pharmacy, and you should talk to your child’s pediatrician about how best to get their shot. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The exception to this is CVS’s MinuteClinics, which are staffed by providers who are permitted to administer a COVID vaccine to kids age 18 months and older.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Will my fall COVID shot still be covered by health insurance?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Yes: “All vaccines recommended by the California Department of Public Health continue to be covered by health insurance regulated in California,” CDPH said in its Friday statement announcing its recommendations around the 2026-27 COVID-19 vaccines.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One wrinkle to remember if you get your healthcare through a system like Kaiser Permanente: If you’re considering getting your COVID-19 vaccine at a pharmacy for convenience, rather than from your own provider, you usually \u003cem>can’t\u003c/em> get vaccines fully covered by your insurance. But, according to Kaiser, “you may be able to get up to \u003ca href=\"https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/northern-california/health-wellness/coronavirus-information/vaccine-appointments\">half of the cost \u003c/a>reimbursed.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’re going the reimbursement route, bear in mind that \u003ca href=\"https://www.cvs.com/immunizations/covid-19-vaccine\">the out-of-pocket cost of getting your COVID-19 vaccine\u003c/a> at CVS this year is now $278.99 — up 40% from $198.99 last year.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cem>When \u003c/em>should I get my 2026-27 COVID shot?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Higher-risk groups\u003c/h3>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The 2026-27 COVID-19 vaccine is available to patients age 6 months and older, but California health officials are strongly recommending the updated vaccine for the following higher-risk groups:\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Children:\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>All children age 6-23 months\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>All children age 2-18 years with \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/populations-at-risk-covid.pdf\">risk factors\u003c/a> or who’ve never been vaccinated against COVID-19\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>All children who are in close contact with others with risk factors\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Adults:\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>All age 65 years and older\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Anyone who’s pregnant, planning to become pregnant or is postpartum\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>Anyone age 9-64 years with \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/CDPH%20Document%20Library/Immunization/populations-at-risk-covid.pdf\">risk factors\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>All who are in close contact with others with risk factors\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>All healthcare workers\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12033385\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/GettyImages-1231697879_qed-1920x1280.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A syringe is filled with a dose of the Johnson & Johnson Janssen COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination site inside Reuther Hall at Forty Acres on March 13, 2021, in Delano, California. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you’re in one of the above groups — meaning you’re either at higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19 yourself or at higher risk of spreading COVID-19 to others — it’s a good idea to seek out your updated vaccine soon, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease expert at UCSF.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“There are some populations who I just don’t want there to be any doubt about, because they’re very important,” Chin-Hong said. “I’m on the highest alert around them, because those are the people who are still coming into the hospital [with COVID-19], either inpatient or going to the emergency room.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In a nutshell: If you’re one of the people in the list above, or your kid is, seek out your new COVID-19 shot as soon as you can.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>See the full list of CDPH’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CID/DCDC/Pages/publichealth4all/vaccines.aspx#table\">recommendations for respiratory vaccines\u003c/a> this year.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">People who aren’t at higher risk\u003c/h3>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you or your child isn’t listed in those higher-risk groups above, you fall into CDPH’s recommendation that “all who choose to reduce risk of severe illness” can still get the updated 2026-27 COVID-19 shot.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But what does that mean practically? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>One thing to know: The Bay Area is still in a summer COVID wave, as shown by \u003ca href=\"https://data.wastewaterscan.org/tracker/?charts=CoYBEAA4AUgAUgY1NzlkYTNSBjM3NDMwYVIGZTllODdlUgYwN2NlZDdSBjhhOWI0YlIGYzhkMzU3UgYyNTQ4MTlSBmRkMzZmYlIGZmEyZDYzUgZiNzIzYWVSBmJjNzlmOVIGODRkNDg5UgZkZGU4OGZaBk4gR2VuZXifAYoBBmQyY2RlNrgBiwg%3D&selectedChartId=d2cde6\">levels of coronavirus in the region’s wastewater\u003c/a> (aka human sewage). And “based on current patterns, we still have plenty of the current wave ahead of us,” said Dr. Matt Willis, the state’s correspondent for \u003ca href=\"https://yourlocalepidemiologistca.substack.com/\">Your Local Epidemiologist California, who was formerly Marin County’s public health officer at the height of the pandemic. “\u003c/a>It still hasn’t peaked, and then there’s a few weeks on the downslope to expect.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>With that in mind, Willis told KQED by email that “if you want to be protected even if you’re not high risk, I would still go ahead and get the vaccine now.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In California, he said, “We haven’t really seen COVID-19 activity in the winter, at least judging from the past two years. So the likelihood of being infected with COVID-19 is likely higher for the next couple months than it may be for the rest of the year, until next summer.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Of course, there are people — like Kaiser patients, or people who prefer to get their COVID vaccine at their own doctor’s office — who’ll be waiting to get their shot until supplies of the new vaccine become available beyond pharmacies. And Chin-Hong said there are other reasons some people might consider waiting a little, too.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>As a physician, “I put an exclamation point next to the people who I \u003cem>really \u003c/em>want to get it,” Chin-Hong said. But “for everyone else, it could be used strategically,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Getting the new vaccine will give you “a buffer for infection for about three months or so,” Chin-Hong said — and it’ll take around two weeks after getting your shot for your body to develop the fullest immunity. So you might consider strategically timing your updated COVID-19 shot to coincide with any travel you have coming up this fall, he said — or to have good protection for around the holidays.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A boy with a tuxedo T-shirt and a face mask holds his mother's hand as he receives a shot in the arm by a nurse.\" class=\"wp-image-11961112\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/005_SanFrancisco_UnitedinHealthKidsCOVIDVaccination_11092021-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A child receives a COVID-19 vaccine on Sept. 12, 2023. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If just getting out to \u003cem>get \u003c/em>your vaccines is difficult, you could also opt to conveniently get your COVID shot and your flu shot during the same appointment in October, said Chin-Hong. As for that specific timing, it’s best to get your flu shot sometime before Halloween, he said, and you don’t want to get it \u003cem>too \u003c/em>early ahead of flu season, which might arrive a little later this year if Australia’s flu season — \u003ca href=\"https://www.today.com/health/cold-flu/flu-guide-2026-season-severity-symptoms-treatment-mrna-vaccine-rcna595714\">traditionally used as a barometer of what the U.S. can expect\u003c/a> — is any indicator.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>However, if you’re the kind of person whose calendar and obligations get packed in the fall and you’re concerned you’ll forget to get your shots altogether, release yourself from the burden of overstrategizing and just go get your vaccine when you can.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And remember: If you were one of the many folks in the Bay Area who got taken down by COVID-19 during \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12091325/summer-covid-test-2026-wastewater-variants-isolation-contagious-xfg-san-francisco-bay-area-california\">this summer’s ongoing wave\u003c/a>, your infection has given you around three months’ natural immunity — so you should wait until that “expires” before seeking out your latest COVID-19 vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Will the new 2026-27 COVID shot protect me from the latest strains out there right now?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Yes, Chin-Hong said — each year the COVID-19 vaccine is updated for maximum efficacy, to target the variants that are most likely to try to take you down this year.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The 2026-27 shot actually only targets one strain, XFG, “which is the number one strain right now circulating,” Chin-Hong said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>People infected with XFG have often reported a scratchy, hoarse throat that’s easily mistaken for allergies, along with the kind of primarily respiratory symptoms we’ve come to expect from COVID-19.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Where can I find the new COVID vaccine — other than a pharmacy?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Through your healthcare provider, when available\u003c/h3>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you have health insurance, check with your healthcare provider to see whether they can offer you an updated COVID-19 vaccine, and when.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you don’t have health insurance but get medical care through a city- or county-run provider, you should check with that location to see whether they can offer you the new COVID-19 vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1405\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12028314\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-800x562.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-1020x717.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-160x112.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-1536x1079.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/02/FluGetty-1920x1349.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A CVS in Huntington Park on Aug. 28, 2024. (Christina House/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In addition to talking with your healthcare provider directly, check the website of your provider to see whether it offers the ability to make appointments and sign up for their vaccine notifications if that’s an option.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Through My Turn, when available\u003c/h3>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Throughout the pandemic, \u003ca href=\"https://myturn.ca.gov/\">My Turn has been the state’s site\u003c/a> for Californians to schedule vaccination appointments or find walk-in locations, regardless of health insurance status.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Through your county, when available\u003c/h3>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Check your county’s public health website to see if the updated COVID-19 vaccine will soon be available to residents, especially those who are uninsured or underinsured.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">I heard the FDA and CDC tried to restrict eligibility for COVID vaccines last year. Can I still get my shot?\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Yes — because California’s own recommendations overrule the federal government when it comes to you accessing this vaccine.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>To understand the backstory: In August 2025, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12053906/covid-vaccines-booster-2025-fda-cdc-who-can-get-updated-vaccine-novavax-pfizer-moderna-where-find\">the FDA under President Donald Trump’s second administration announced\u003c/a> that the agency would be limiting eligibility for the updated shots for the first time — and that the 2025-26 vaccines would be available only to people age 65 and over and to anyone with a health condition that puts them at higher risk from COVID-19. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>At first, the shots rolled out across California pharmacies only for these groups. But shortly after, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the state would join Oregon and Washington in \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12054491/in-rebuke-of-rfk-jr-the-west-coast-unites-on-vaccine-policy\">launching a new “West Coast Health Alliance,”\u003c/a> a coalition that now issues its own state-specific vaccine recommendations — effectively overriding the FDA and CDC’s attempts to limit eligibility for your COVID-19 vaccine in California.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1337\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GavinJenniferNewsomGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12087658\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GavinJenniferNewsomGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GavinJenniferNewsomGetty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/GavinJenniferNewsomGetty-1536x1027.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks as his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom (left), looks on during an election night gathering at California Democratic headquarters in Sacramento, California, on Nov. 4, 2025. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In a joint statement, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12054491/in-rebuke-of-rfk-jr-the-west-coast-unites-on-vaccine-policy\">the governors said the CDC had “become a political tool\u003c/a> that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences,” adding that “California, Oregon and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12056289/california-law-sets-states-own-vaccine-schedules-deepening-rift-with-cdc\">Newsom has also signed a law\u003c/a> which now allows the state to act independently from the CDC when it comes to vaccine recommendations, “empowering California to chart its own path and reject corrupted federal guidelines,” according to a statement from the governor’s office. As for how California is able to expand beyond the FDA’s eligibility restrictions, that FDA decision affects what’s called the vaccine’s “label” — and California is now making the shot available to people outside of the FDA’s limitations “off-label.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And what about the CDC, which has issued annual recommendations for who should get these vaccines since they were first released in 2021? In summer 2025, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dissolved the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices panel and \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-health-chief-kennedy-names-new-members-vaccine-advisory-committee-2025-06-11/\">replaced its members with a number of doctors and researchers\u003c/a> who have repeatedly questioned the safety of commonly used vaccines and ingredients.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But after a lawsuit earlier this year that blocked \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/03/16/nx-s1-5749530/judge-blocks-rfk-jr-vaccine-changes\">the Trump administration’s efforts \u003c/a>to reduce routine vaccines for children, the CDC’s process for issuing annual vaccine guidelines — including COVID-19 — remains in limbo, and for the first time since 2021, the agency has released no formal guidelines for the COVID-19 shot. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The CDC’s recommendations used to be what insurance companies based their coverage on when it comes to vaccines. But the state has confirmed that all vaccines recommended by CDPH — which includes COVID-19 vaccines for anyone who wants them — “continue to be covered by health insurance regulated in California.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "medi-cal-wont-pay-for-assisted-living-in-most-of-california-one-brother-fought-back",
"title": "Medi-Cal Won’t Pay for Assisted Living in Most of California. One Brother Fought Back",
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"headTitle": "Medi-Cal Won’t Pay for Assisted Living in Most of California. One Brother Fought Back | KQED",
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"content": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Welcome to CalMatters, the only nonprofit newsroom devoted solely to covering issues that affect all Californians. Sign up for \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/whatmatters\">WhatMatters\u003c/a> to receive the latest news and commentary on the most important issues in the Golden State.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Last summer, siblings Roselie and John Aiello decided it was time for Roselie to leave her home of 73 years. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Raised on a cattle ranch in the small town of Mount Shasta, Roselie spent her life working as a butcher and handling animals, assisting her father until his death. When her three brothers moved away, she stayed at home on the ranch, with its winding dirt roads and green pastures. But over the years, the hard manual labor left her bones weak and her back curved, slowing her pace. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>John moved back to the ranch in far \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/northern-california\">Northern California\u003c/a> to take care of Roselie, who needed some assistance with showering and getting dressed. But these tasks began to weigh on John as he balanced his career as a writer with tending to the land, which was getting more difficult for Roselie to navigate. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The two siblings made a decision: Roselie, who qualified for Medicaid, would move into assisted living. John would find an appropriate place for her to live and receive care.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But when John tried to apply for assisted living benefits on his sister’s behalf, he found that Medi-Cal — California’s version of Medicaid — does not offer a waiver to pay for assisted living care in Siskiyou County, nor does it in 42 others across the state. Only \u003ca href=\"https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/services/long-term-care-alternatives-home-and-community-based-service-options/assisted-living-waiver/\">15 California counties\u003c/a>, most of them urban, offer this option.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This has created geographic disparity that gives aging adults in urban areas more options for care than those in rural areas, pushing Northern California seniors like Roselie Aiello into nursing homes or out of their communities, not because they need that level of care, but because they can’t afford to pay out of pocket for assisted living. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“You’re wasting money by dumping somebody like my sister in a skilled nursing facility and lessening her quality of life and her chance at doing better,” John said. “By doing this, it makes no fundamental sense.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" data-id=\"12098658\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12098658\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Roselie Aiello at Sundial Assisted Living in Shasta County on March 25, 2026. \u003cbr> (Jessica Blough for CalMatters)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" data-id=\"12098659\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare3.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12098659\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare3.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare3-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare3-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Roselie Aiello at Sundial Assisted Living in Shasta County on March 25, 2026. (Jessica Blough for CalMatters)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In the coming decade, many more Californians may face the same predicament, given that one in four will be older than 60. As the state prepares for this explosion in the older adult population, it is prioritizing the ability to age in community-based settings like homes or assisted living facilities. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But availability of assisted living options varies county to county and is based on decisions by the various managed care providers contracted to deliver healthcare to the state’s lowest-income residents.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“There’s not a lot of options to begin with in rural counties. You take (the assisted living waiver) off a table, which already has a history of a long waiting list, and the options are pretty bleak,” said Maura Gibney, executive director of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr />\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/PCZuA/\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Partnership HealthPlan, which Roselie Aiello is enrolled in, contracts with the state to provide coverage to almost a million Californians on Medi-Cal, making it the largest Medi-Cal managed care plan in Northern California. It is the only Medi-Cal managed care plan available in a separate set of 15 California counties. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Managed care providers are encouraged, but not required, to offer as many “\u003ca href=\"https://calaim.dhcs.ca.gov/pages/community-supports\">community supports\u003c/a>” as they can, Tessa Outhyse, a spokesperson for the California Department of Health Care Services, said in an email. CalAIM, the state’s multiyear initiative to overhaul Medi-Cal, includes community supports such as assistance transitioning to an assisted living facility as well as transitional rent, caregiver respite and personal care services. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>These services are intended to offer healthcare options to Medi-Cal members before their conditions escalate to needing more serious care, therefore saving money. Even when CalAIM’s current waivers expire at the end of the year, the community supports benefits will continue through the managed care plans. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>When determining which supports to offer, managed care plans take into consideration provider availability and local capacity to offer care, Outhyse said. Partnership chose not to offer assisted living support based on financial factors and a lack of appropriate facilities in the rural areas where it provides care, said Dustin Lyda, spokesperson for the organization. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Lyda said any change in what the organization offers would require proof that assisted living facilities would be safer and healthier for members than nursing homes. But he acknowledged that options are more limited for rural members. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“There’s definitely a lot more work that we need to do on our end to navigate the more rural areas,” Lyda said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"hitting-roadblocks\">Hitting roadblocks\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>When John Aiello heard about assisted living benefits through Medi-Cal, he saw it as the perfect match for his sister’s needs. He knew that he likely would have to move her out of Siskiyou County, where there was only one facility for Medi-Cal recipients, a nursing home.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Roselie had spent some time at an assisted living facility in neighboring Shasta County, which they saw as a better fit. But Partnership didn’t offer assisted living as a community support in that county. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Instead, the provider offered Roselie a waiver to go into assisted living in Sonoma County, which is about five hours from her home. The Aiellos turned that down, thinking it would not be good for Roselie. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“If you remove her totally from a family contact, she would not be thriving right now. She needs to see family,” John Aiello said. “When there were resources available that fit her needs in Redding — that’s the closest point to her home county — why do I need to move her to Oakland, to Los Angeles, to San Diego?”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Over the course of nine months, John sent dozens of emails and spent hours on phone calls to get Partnership HealthPlan to cover Roselie’s placement in assisted living. He had the support of her doctor and a spot for Roselie at the residence in Shasta County. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The process was so intense and frustrating that it drove a wedge between him and his sister in their final months of living together. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“He was doing all of this to help me,” Roselie said. “Where was it going to end?”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"encouraged-or-required\">Encouraged or required? \u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Most people prefer community-based services over skilled nursing care, which is \u003ca href=\"https://heller.brandeis.edu/community-living-policy/research-policy/publications/pdfs/briefs/hcbs-improve-outcomes-and-reduce-costs.pdf\">generally more expensive\u003c/a>. But nursing home beds are in short supply and should be reserved for those who truly need them, Gibney said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We really try to help people look at the other options that exist for remaining in the community,” Gibney said. “You’re going to have better health outcomes, better quality of care, if you can stay in the community and out of an institutional setting.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Research indicates that while assisted living may provide better outcomes for some, people in assisted living are more likely than nursing home residents to be hospitalized, which can drive up costs, said Dr. Kenneth Lam, a geriatrician and assistant professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“The evidence suggests that it’s a trade-off,” he said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Contracts for managed care plans are not competitively bid, Outhyse said. And potential contractors aren’t asked to include specific community supports, such as assisted living, in their managed care plans.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Whether a plan chooses to provide specific community supports is not a factor in contract renewal, which focuses instead on overall compliance with state and federal performance standards,” Outhyse wrote in the email.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Partnership’s contract with the state was set to expire in December, but will be extended until 2029 because the state \u003ca href=\"https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/services/Pages/ManagedCarePlanProcurementUpdate.aspx\">delayed\u003c/a> the process of soliciting managed care contracts. Lyda said Partnership is facing increasing demand for its community supports — which mainly address social needs, such as housing and food security — and for assisted living benefits. But even people in counties where the managed care provider offers an assisted living benefit can have a long wait for placement. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>After years of constant increases, the number of Californians receiving an assisted living waiver for the first time dropped at the beginning of 2025, though the waitlist continued to climb. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>By September, the number of Californians waiting for a waiver had surpassed the number of people who were being supported by it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr />\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/kH9D7\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Gibney said that Medi-Cal members are often encouraged to get on the waitlist before applying for assisted living funding, which could contribute to the long wait. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Older adults might spend months on a waitlist, only to be told that they are ineligible for assisted living coverage. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“It’s a lot of shifting sand, that’s what people are finding themselves in the middle of,” Lam said. “They’re being told that they get to choose, but it’s a complex choice.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"a-new-home\">A new home\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In March, Roselie moved into her new home, Sundial Assisted Living, the Shasta County facility where she had previously spent some time. Two months earlier, Partnership had informed the Aiellos that it would cover Roselie’s assisted living care. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Partnership offered Roselie early access to a pilot program that launched on July 1, which extends the assisted living options to select members of the network. There will be no open application process, but members can ask to be considered or referred through a healthcare provider. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The goal is to discover if offering the assisted living option will provide better health outcomes at a lower price.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Success would also be having these individuals being able to continue to receive care within their community setting, being in their home,” Lyda said. “We know that that is more impactful to health than being completely taken out of a familiar area.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The adjustment has not been easy for Roselie. She has been hospitalized twice since she moved to Sundial and briefly entered a nursing home. \u003cs> \u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Socially, things have gone better. Roselie has made friends and is often called on to teach card games to her fellow Sundial residents. While she was hospitalized, her neighbors and caretakers at Sundial visited her. She’s grateful to John for navigating through red tape to get her here. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“I’m looking at it like this: It’s a new adventure,” she said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>John worries about his sister’s health issues and whether Sundial will be a long-term solution for her. He’s gratified that his fight ended with his sister’s placement in their chosen facility. But he resents having to wage the battle.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“I don’t understand why I was the guy fighting for everybody,” John said. “I’m just one person trying to support myself, trying to take care of a family member.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Jessica Blough reported on this story while with the\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://journalism.berkeley.edu/programs/mj/investigative-reporting/\">\u003cem>Investigative Reporting Program\u003c/em>\u003c/a> \u003cem>at UC Berkeley Journalism School, with a grant from\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://www.thescanfoundation.org/\">\u003cem>The SCAN Foundation\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Welcome to CalMatters, the only nonprofit newsroom devoted solely to covering issues that affect all Californians. Sign up for \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/whatmatters\">WhatMatters\u003c/a> to receive the latest news and commentary on the most important issues in the Golden State.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Welcome to CalMatters, the only nonprofit newsroom devoted solely to covering issues that affect all Californians. Sign up for \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/whatmatters\">WhatMatters\u003c/a> to receive the latest news and commentary on the most important issues in the Golden State.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Last summer, siblings Roselie and John Aiello decided it was time for Roselie to leave her home of 73 years. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Raised on a cattle ranch in the small town of Mount Shasta, Roselie spent her life working as a butcher and handling animals, assisting her father until his death. When her three brothers moved away, she stayed at home on the ranch, with its winding dirt roads and green pastures. But over the years, the hard manual labor left her bones weak and her back curved, slowing her pace. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>John moved back to the ranch in far \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/northern-california\">Northern California\u003c/a> to take care of Roselie, who needed some assistance with showering and getting dressed. But these tasks began to weigh on John as he balanced his career as a writer with tending to the land, which was getting more difficult for Roselie to navigate. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>John moved back to the ranch in far \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/northern-california\">Northern California\u003c/a> to take care of Roselie, who needed some assistance with showering and getting dressed. But these tasks began to weigh on John as he balanced his career as a writer with tending to the land, which was getting more difficult for Roselie to navigate. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But when John tried to apply for assisted living benefits on his sister’s behalf, he found that Medi-Cal — California’s version of Medicaid — does not offer a waiver to pay for assisted living care in Siskiyou County, nor does it in 42 others across the state. Only \u003ca href=\"https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/services/long-term-care-alternatives-home-and-community-based-service-options/assisted-living-waiver/\">15 California counties\u003c/a>, most of them urban, offer this option.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This has created geographic disparity that gives aging adults in urban areas more options for care than those in rural areas, pushing Northern California seniors like Roselie Aiello into nursing homes or out of their communities, not because they need that level of care, but because they can’t afford to pay out of pocket for assisted living. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“You’re wasting money by dumping somebody like my sister in a skilled nursing facility and lessening her quality of life and her chance at doing better,” John said. “By doing this, it makes no fundamental sense.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In the coming decade, many more Californians may face the same predicament, given that one in four will be older than 60. As the state prepares for this explosion in the older adult population, it is prioritizing the ability to age in community-based settings like homes or assisted living facilities. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“There’s not a lot of options to begin with in rural counties. You take (the assisted living waiver) off a table, which already has a history of a long waiting list, and the options are pretty bleak,” said Maura Gibney, executive director of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Partnership HealthPlan, which Roselie Aiello is enrolled in, contracts with the state to provide coverage to almost a million Californians on Medi-Cal, making it the largest Medi-Cal managed care plan in Northern California. It is the only Medi-Cal managed care plan available in a separate set of 15 California counties. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Managed care providers are encouraged, but not required, to offer as many “\u003ca href=\"https://calaim.dhcs.ca.gov/pages/community-supports\">community supports\u003c/a>” as they can, Tessa Outhyse, a spokesperson for the California Department of Health Care Services, said in an email. CalAIM, the state’s multiyear initiative to overhaul Medi-Cal, includes community supports such as assistance transitioning to an assisted living facility as well as transitional rent, caregiver respite and personal care services. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>When determining which supports to offer, managed care plans take into consideration provider availability and local capacity to offer care, Outhyse said. Partnership chose not to offer assisted living support based on financial factors and a lack of appropriate facilities in the rural areas where it provides care, said Dustin Lyda, spokesperson for the organization. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Lyda said any change in what the organization offers would require proof that assisted living facilities would be safer and healthier for members than nursing homes. But he acknowledged that options are more limited for rural members. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“There’s definitely a lot more work that we need to do on our end to navigate the more rural areas,” Lyda said. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>When John Aiello heard about assisted living benefits through Medi-Cal, he saw it as the perfect match for his sister’s needs. He knew that he likely would have to move her out of Siskiyou County, where there was only one facility for Medi-Cal recipients, a nursing home.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Roselie had spent some time at an assisted living facility in neighboring Shasta County, which they saw as a better fit. But Partnership didn’t offer assisted living as a community support in that county. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Instead, the provider offered Roselie a waiver to go into assisted living in Sonoma County, which is about five hours from her home. The Aiellos turned that down, thinking it would not be good for Roselie. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“If you remove her totally from a family contact, she would not be thriving right now. She needs to see family,” John Aiello said. “When there were resources available that fit her needs in Redding — that’s the closest point to her home county — why do I need to move her to Oakland, to Los Angeles, to San Diego?”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“If you remove her totally from a family contact, she would not be thriving right now. She needs to see family,” John Aiello said. “When there were resources available that fit her needs in Redding — that’s the closest point to her home county — why do I need to move her to Oakland, to Los Angeles, to San Diego?”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Over the course of nine months, John sent dozens of emails and spent hours on phone calls to get Partnership HealthPlan to cover Roselie’s placement in assisted living. He had the support of her doctor and a spot for Roselie at the residence in Shasta County. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Over the course of nine months, John sent dozens of emails and spent hours on phone calls to get Partnership HealthPlan to cover Roselie’s placement in assisted living. He had the support of her doctor and a spot for Roselie at the residence in Shasta County. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The process was so intense and frustrating that it drove a wedge between him and his sister in their final months of living together. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“He was doing all of this to help me,” Roselie said. “Where was it going to end?”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Most people prefer community-based services over skilled nursing care, which is \u003ca href=\"https://heller.brandeis.edu/community-living-policy/research-policy/publications/pdfs/briefs/hcbs-improve-outcomes-and-reduce-costs.pdf\">generally more expensive\u003c/a>. But nursing home beds are in short supply and should be reserved for those who truly need them, Gibney said.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“We really try to help people look at the other options that exist for remaining in the community,” Gibney said. “You’re going to have better health outcomes, better quality of care, if you can stay in the community and out of an institutional setting.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Research indicates that while assisted living may provide better outcomes for some, people in assisted living are more likely than nursing home residents to be hospitalized, which can drive up costs, said Dr. Kenneth Lam, a geriatrician and assistant professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Contracts for managed care plans are not competitively bid, Outhyse said. And potential contractors aren’t asked to include specific community supports, such as assisted living, in their managed care plans.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“Whether a plan chooses to provide specific community supports is not a factor in contract renewal, which focuses instead on overall compliance with state and federal performance standards,” Outhyse wrote in the email.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Partnership’s contract with the state was set to expire in December, but will be extended until 2029 because the state \u003ca href=\"https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/services/Pages/ManagedCarePlanProcurementUpdate.aspx\">delayed\u003c/a> the process of soliciting managed care contracts. Lyda said Partnership is facing increasing demand for its community supports — which mainly address social needs, such as housing and food security — and for assisted living benefits. But even people in counties where the managed care provider offers an assisted living benefit can have a long wait for placement. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Partnership’s contract with the state was set to expire in December, but will be extended until 2029 because the state \u003ca href=\"https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/services/Pages/ManagedCarePlanProcurementUpdate.aspx\">delayed\u003c/a> the process of soliciting managed care contracts. Lyda said Partnership is facing increasing demand for its community supports — which mainly address social needs, such as housing and food security — and for assisted living benefits. But even people in counties where the managed care provider offers an assisted living benefit can have a long wait for placement. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>After years of constant increases, the number of Californians receiving an assisted living waiver for the first time dropped at the beginning of 2025, though the waitlist continued to climb. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>After years of constant increases, the number of Californians receiving an assisted living waiver for the first time dropped at the beginning of 2025, though the waitlist continued to climb. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>By September, the number of Californians waiting for a waiver had surpassed the number of people who were being supported by it.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Gibney said that Medi-Cal members are often encouraged to get on the waitlist before applying for assisted living funding, which could contribute to the long wait. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Older adults might spend months on a waitlist, only to be told that they are ineligible for assisted living coverage. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“It’s a lot of shifting sand, that’s what people are finding themselves in the middle of,” Lam said. “They’re being told that they get to choose, but it’s a complex choice.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“It’s a lot of shifting sand, that’s what people are finding themselves in the middle of,” Lam said. “They’re being told that they get to choose, but it’s a complex choice.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In March, Roselie moved into her new home, Sundial Assisted Living, the Shasta County facility where she had previously spent some time. Two months earlier, Partnership had informed the Aiellos that it would cover Roselie’s assisted living care. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In March, Roselie moved into her new home, Sundial Assisted Living, the Shasta County facility where she had previously spent some time. Two months earlier, Partnership had informed the Aiellos that it would cover Roselie’s assisted living care. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Partnership offered Roselie early access to a pilot program that launched on July 1, which extends the assisted living options to select members of the network. There will be no open application process, but members can ask to be considered or referred through a healthcare provider. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Partnership offered Roselie early access to a pilot program that launched on July 1, which extends the assisted living options to select members of the network. There will be no open application process, but members can ask to be considered or referred through a healthcare provider. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The goal is to discover if offering the assisted living option will provide better health outcomes at a lower price.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“Success would also be having these individuals being able to continue to receive care within their community setting, being in their home,” Lyda said. “We know that that is more impactful to health than being completely taken out of a familiar area.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The adjustment has not been easy for Roselie. She has been hospitalized twice since she moved to Sundial and briefly entered a nursing home. \u003cs> \u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Socially, things have gone better. Roselie has made friends and is often called on to teach card games to her fellow Sundial residents. While she was hospitalized, her neighbors and caretakers at Sundial visited her. She’s grateful to John for navigating through red tape to get her here. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“I’m looking at it like this: It’s a new adventure,” she said. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>John worries about his sister’s health issues and whether Sundial will be a long-term solution for her. He’s gratified that his fight ended with his sister’s placement in their chosen facility. But he resents having to wage the battle.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>John worries about his sister’s health issues and whether Sundial will be a long-term solution for her. He’s gratified that his fight ended with his sister’s placement in their chosen facility. But he resents having to wage the battle.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“I don’t understand why I was the guy fighting for everybody,” John said. “I’m just one person trying to support myself, trying to take care of a family member.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Jessica Blough reported on this story while with the\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://journalism.berkeley.edu/programs/mj/investigative-reporting/\">\u003cem>Investigative Reporting Program\u003c/em>\u003c/a> \u003cem>at UC Berkeley Journalism School, with a grant from\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://www.thescanfoundation.org/\">\u003cem>The SCAN Foundation\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "A pilot program providing more assisted living coverage in rural California has emerged from one man’s fight to change his sister’s options.",
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"title": "Medi-Cal Won’t Pay for Assisted Living in Most of California. One Brother Fought Back | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Welcome to CalMatters, the only nonprofit newsroom devoted solely to covering issues that affect all Californians. Sign up for \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/whatmatters\">WhatMatters\u003c/a> to receive the latest news and commentary on the most important issues in the Golden State.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Last summer, siblings Roselie and John Aiello decided it was time for Roselie to leave her home of 73 years. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Raised on a cattle ranch in the small town of Mount Shasta, Roselie spent her life working as a butcher and handling animals, assisting her father until his death. When her three brothers moved away, she stayed at home on the ranch, with its winding dirt roads and green pastures. But over the years, the hard manual labor left her bones weak and her back curved, slowing her pace. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>John moved back to the ranch in far \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/northern-california\">Northern California\u003c/a> to take care of Roselie, who needed some assistance with showering and getting dressed. But these tasks began to weigh on John as he balanced his career as a writer with tending to the land, which was getting more difficult for Roselie to navigate. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The two siblings made a decision: Roselie, who qualified for Medicaid, would move into assisted living. John would find an appropriate place for her to live and receive care.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But when John tried to apply for assisted living benefits on his sister’s behalf, he found that Medi-Cal — California’s version of Medicaid — does not offer a waiver to pay for assisted living care in Siskiyou County, nor does it in 42 others across the state. Only \u003ca href=\"https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/services/long-term-care-alternatives-home-and-community-based-service-options/assisted-living-waiver/\">15 California counties\u003c/a>, most of them urban, offer this option.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This has created geographic disparity that gives aging adults in urban areas more options for care than those in rural areas, pushing Northern California seniors like Roselie Aiello into nursing homes or out of their communities, not because they need that level of care, but because they can’t afford to pay out of pocket for assisted living. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“You’re wasting money by dumping somebody like my sister in a skilled nursing facility and lessening her quality of life and her chance at doing better,” John said. “By doing this, it makes no fundamental sense.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" data-id=\"12098658\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare2.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12098658\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Roselie Aiello at Sundial Assisted Living in Shasta County on March 25, 2026. \u003cbr> (Jessica Blough for CalMatters)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" data-id=\"12098659\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare3.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12098659\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare3.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare3-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/CMHealthCare3-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Roselie Aiello at Sundial Assisted Living in Shasta County on March 25, 2026. (Jessica Blough for CalMatters)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In the coming decade, many more Californians may face the same predicament, given that one in four will be older than 60. As the state prepares for this explosion in the older adult population, it is prioritizing the ability to age in community-based settings like homes or assisted living facilities. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But availability of assisted living options varies county to county and is based on decisions by the various managed care providers contracted to deliver healthcare to the state’s lowest-income residents.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“There’s not a lot of options to begin with in rural counties. You take (the assisted living waiver) off a table, which already has a history of a long waiting list, and the options are pretty bleak,” said Maura Gibney, executive director of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr />\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/PCZuA/\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Partnership HealthPlan, which Roselie Aiello is enrolled in, contracts with the state to provide coverage to almost a million Californians on Medi-Cal, making it the largest Medi-Cal managed care plan in Northern California. It is the only Medi-Cal managed care plan available in a separate set of 15 California counties. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Managed care providers are encouraged, but not required, to offer as many “\u003ca href=\"https://calaim.dhcs.ca.gov/pages/community-supports\">community supports\u003c/a>” as they can, Tessa Outhyse, a spokesperson for the California Department of Health Care Services, said in an email. CalAIM, the state’s multiyear initiative to overhaul Medi-Cal, includes community supports such as assistance transitioning to an assisted living facility as well as transitional rent, caregiver respite and personal care services. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>These services are intended to offer healthcare options to Medi-Cal members before their conditions escalate to needing more serious care, therefore saving money. Even when CalAIM’s current waivers expire at the end of the year, the community supports benefits will continue through the managed care plans. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>When determining which supports to offer, managed care plans take into consideration provider availability and local capacity to offer care, Outhyse said. Partnership chose not to offer assisted living support based on financial factors and a lack of appropriate facilities in the rural areas where it provides care, said Dustin Lyda, spokesperson for the organization. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Lyda said any change in what the organization offers would require proof that assisted living facilities would be safer and healthier for members than nursing homes. But he acknowledged that options are more limited for rural members. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“There’s definitely a lot more work that we need to do on our end to navigate the more rural areas,” Lyda said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"hitting-roadblocks\">Hitting roadblocks\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>When John Aiello heard about assisted living benefits through Medi-Cal, he saw it as the perfect match for his sister’s needs. He knew that he likely would have to move her out of Siskiyou County, where there was only one facility for Medi-Cal recipients, a nursing home.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Roselie had spent some time at an assisted living facility in neighboring Shasta County, which they saw as a better fit. But Partnership didn’t offer assisted living as a community support in that county. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Instead, the provider offered Roselie a waiver to go into assisted living in Sonoma County, which is about five hours from her home. The Aiellos turned that down, thinking it would not be good for Roselie. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“If you remove her totally from a family contact, she would not be thriving right now. She needs to see family,” John Aiello said. “When there were resources available that fit her needs in Redding — that’s the closest point to her home county — why do I need to move her to Oakland, to Los Angeles, to San Diego?”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Over the course of nine months, John sent dozens of emails and spent hours on phone calls to get Partnership HealthPlan to cover Roselie’s placement in assisted living. He had the support of her doctor and a spot for Roselie at the residence in Shasta County. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The process was so intense and frustrating that it drove a wedge between him and his sister in their final months of living together. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“He was doing all of this to help me,” Roselie said. “Where was it going to end?”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"encouraged-or-required\">Encouraged or required? \u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Most people prefer community-based services over skilled nursing care, which is \u003ca href=\"https://heller.brandeis.edu/community-living-policy/research-policy/publications/pdfs/briefs/hcbs-improve-outcomes-and-reduce-costs.pdf\">generally more expensive\u003c/a>. But nursing home beds are in short supply and should be reserved for those who truly need them, Gibney said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We really try to help people look at the other options that exist for remaining in the community,” Gibney said. “You’re going to have better health outcomes, better quality of care, if you can stay in the community and out of an institutional setting.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Research indicates that while assisted living may provide better outcomes for some, people in assisted living are more likely than nursing home residents to be hospitalized, which can drive up costs, said Dr. Kenneth Lam, a geriatrician and assistant professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“The evidence suggests that it’s a trade-off,” he said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Contracts for managed care plans are not competitively bid, Outhyse said. And potential contractors aren’t asked to include specific community supports, such as assisted living, in their managed care plans.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Whether a plan chooses to provide specific community supports is not a factor in contract renewal, which focuses instead on overall compliance with state and federal performance standards,” Outhyse wrote in the email.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Partnership’s contract with the state was set to expire in December, but will be extended until 2029 because the state \u003ca href=\"https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/services/Pages/ManagedCarePlanProcurementUpdate.aspx\">delayed\u003c/a> the process of soliciting managed care contracts. Lyda said Partnership is facing increasing demand for its community supports — which mainly address social needs, such as housing and food security — and for assisted living benefits. But even people in counties where the managed care provider offers an assisted living benefit can have a long wait for placement. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>After years of constant increases, the number of Californians receiving an assisted living waiver for the first time dropped at the beginning of 2025, though the waitlist continued to climb. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>By September, the number of Californians waiting for a waiver had surpassed the number of people who were being supported by it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr />\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/kH9D7\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" scrolling=\"yes\" class=\"iframe-class\" frameborder=\"0\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Gibney said that Medi-Cal members are often encouraged to get on the waitlist before applying for assisted living funding, which could contribute to the long wait. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Older adults might spend months on a waitlist, only to be told that they are ineligible for assisted living coverage. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“It’s a lot of shifting sand, that’s what people are finding themselves in the middle of,” Lam said. “They’re being told that they get to choose, but it’s a complex choice.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"a-new-home\">A new home\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In March, Roselie moved into her new home, Sundial Assisted Living, the Shasta County facility where she had previously spent some time. Two months earlier, Partnership had informed the Aiellos that it would cover Roselie’s assisted living care. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Partnership offered Roselie early access to a pilot program that launched on July 1, which extends the assisted living options to select members of the network. There will be no open application process, but members can ask to be considered or referred through a healthcare provider. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The goal is to discover if offering the assisted living option will provide better health outcomes at a lower price.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Success would also be having these individuals being able to continue to receive care within their community setting, being in their home,” Lyda said. “We know that that is more impactful to health than being completely taken out of a familiar area.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The adjustment has not been easy for Roselie. She has been hospitalized twice since she moved to Sundial and briefly entered a nursing home. \u003cs> \u003c/s>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Socially, things have gone better. Roselie has made friends and is often called on to teach card games to her fellow Sundial residents. While she was hospitalized, her neighbors and caretakers at Sundial visited her. She’s grateful to John for navigating through red tape to get her here. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“I’m looking at it like this: It’s a new adventure,” she said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>John worries about his sister’s health issues and whether Sundial will be a long-term solution for her. He’s gratified that his fight ended with his sister’s placement in their chosen facility. But he resents having to wage the battle.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“I don’t understand why I was the guy fighting for everybody,” John said. “I’m just one person trying to support myself, trying to take care of a family member.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Jessica Blough reported on this story while with the\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://journalism.berkeley.edu/programs/mj/investigative-reporting/\">\u003cem>Investigative Reporting Program\u003c/em>\u003c/a> \u003cem>at UC Berkeley Journalism School, with a grant from\u003c/em> \u003ca href=\"https://www.thescanfoundation.org/\">\u003cem>The SCAN Foundation\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Trump Administration Threatens Billions in State Welfare Funding",
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"content": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/california\">California\u003c/a> is at risk of losing nearly $12 billion in federal funding for public assistance programs after the Trump administration threatened to cut off grants to states unless they report every known unauthorized immigrant to immigration authorities.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The threat came in the form of a new legal \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-clarifies-duty-states-report-known-illegal-aliens-under-welfare-reform\">opinion\u003c/a> this month reinterpreting a 1990s welfare-reform law to mean that all agencies in states receiving welfare funding — which is every state in the nation — must report all “individuals known to be not lawfully present” to the federal government or risk losing grants that aid low-income people.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That’s a dramatic reversal from the Clinton-era interpretation of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which said that only state agencies administering the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs needed to provide information to federal immigration authorities. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office was defiant in its opposition to the threat.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260116-NewsomLuriePresser-32-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12070630\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260116-NewsomLuriePresser-32-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260116-NewsomLuriePresser-32-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260116-NewsomLuriePresser-32-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference at the Friendship House Association of American Indians in San Francisco on Jan. 16, 2026. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“This is nothing new — Trump has always tried to play cruel games with states that protect working families,” Newsom spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo said. “The courts have repeatedly rejected the Trump administration’s politically motivated attacks on blue states — should the Trump administration move forward, we expect the same here.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>TANF — known in California as CalWORKS — is short-term cash assistance for people in poverty, including \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5057\">nearly 900,000 Californians\u003c/a> as of 2024. SSI provides cash benefits to elderly, blind or disabled people with low incomes, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/ssi_sc/2025/ca.pdf\">1.1 million Californians\u003c/a> as of 2025. That’s roughly 2 million Californians benefitted from the two programs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>California receives a $3.7 billion annual block grant for TANF and roughly $8 billion a year in SSI funding, according to Ryan Woolsey, a policy analyst at the state Legislative Analyst’s Office. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The Trump administration said it believes Congress intended for every state agency to report unauthorized immigrants to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. And officials suggested that those immigrants were benefiting from the welfare programs.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“When a state chooses to participate in TANF, it accepts the obligation to report illegal aliens in the United States,” Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said in a statement. “Tax dollars intended to help vulnerable Americans should not perversely encourage illegal entry into the United States, but rather should reinforce our laws and our borders.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In fact, people who are not lawfully present in the U.S. are \u003ca href=\"https://acf.gov/ofa/policy-guidance/acf-ofa-im-25-01\">not eligible\u003c/a> for \u003ca href=\"https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/spotlights/spot-non-citizens.htm\">either program\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If California were to comply with the new federal requirements, however, it would spotlight for federal immigration enforcement many of the \u003ca href=\"https://data.cmsny.org\">estimated 2.6 million people\u003c/a> in the state without legal status, including those who have lived in the U.S. for years and have U.S. citizen children.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>California has information on a lot of residents without legal immigration status because, over the past two decades, lawmakers have made them eligible for public resources, including driver’s licenses, emergency health care and in-state tuition, UC Davis law professor Kevin Johnson said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“The risk is bigger in California because California has been willing, in exercising its legislative judgment, to provide more services and benefits to undocumented immigrants than many other states,” Johnson said. “It’s done so legally, and it’s done so without the knowledge that it might be required to share information with the federal government.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/AP26020827442794-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12070624\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/AP26020827442794-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/AP26020827442794-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/AP26020827442794-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Sen. Adam Schiff, right, walks with Sen. Alex Padilla, during a visit to an immigration detention center on Jan. 20, 2026, in California City, California. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2026/04/california-dmv-shares-immigrant-driver-data/\">More than a million\u003c/a> unauthorized immigrants have California driver’s licenses, thanks to a 2013 law known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-identification-cards/assembly-bill-ab-60-driver-licenses/\">AB 60\u003c/a> that allows residents to obtain a license regardless of their immigration status. And more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.higheredimmigrationportal.org/state/california/\">100,000 students\u003c/a> without status are enrolled in California public universities, where they qualify for in-state tuition and some state financial aid \u003ca href=\"https://www.csac.ca.gov/post/california-nonresident-tuition-exemption\">under AB 540\u003c/a>, passed by the Legislature in 2001.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Sen. Alex Padilla, who helped spearhead AB 60 when he was a state lawmaker, called the administration’s move an effort to vilify immigrants by holding hostage aid to seniors, people with disabilities and struggling families.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Instead of doing anything to make life more affordable, this administration is choosing to distract from their disastrous policies by sowing chaos and fear,” Padilla told KQED in a statement. “Kids and working families will pay an even greater price because of their cruelty, and I won’t stop fighting for the justice they deserve.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Johnson called the Department of Justice’s new opinion unusual from a legal standpoint, and he said he expects it to be challenged in court by states such as California on the grounds that it is arbitrary and capricious and doesn’t consider the interests of those who’ve relied on the Clinton-era understanding of the law. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“It’s very rare to reinterpret an interpretation that was put into place a quarter-century ago and has never been questioned or undermined by legislation or a court decision in any way,” he said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But Johnson cautioned that the opinion was carefully written and could be challenging to overturn.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the office is reviewing it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“The Trump administration is continuing to try to coerce states into its hateful agenda, this time by attempting to rewrite decades-old law,” spokesperson Nina Sheridan said. “We’re evaluating the Office of Legal Counsel’s opinion.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The threat came in the form of a new legal \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-clarifies-duty-states-report-known-illegal-aliens-under-welfare-reform\">opinion\u003c/a> this month reinterpreting a 1990s welfare-reform law to mean that all agencies in states receiving welfare funding — which is every state in the nation — must report all “individuals known to be not lawfully present” to the federal government or risk losing grants that aid low-income people.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The threat came in the form of a new legal \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-clarifies-duty-states-report-known-illegal-aliens-under-welfare-reform\">opinion\u003c/a> this month reinterpreting a 1990s welfare-reform law to mean that all agencies in states receiving welfare funding — which is every state in the nation — must report all “individuals known to be not lawfully present” to the federal government or risk losing grants that aid low-income people.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>That’s a dramatic reversal from the Clinton-era interpretation of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which said that only state agencies administering the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs needed to provide information to federal immigration authorities. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260116-NewsomLuriePresser-32-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12070630\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260116-NewsomLuriePresser-32-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260116-NewsomLuriePresser-32-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260116-NewsomLuriePresser-32-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference at the Friendship House Association of American Indians in San Francisco on Jan. 16, 2026.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“This is nothing new — Trump has always tried to play cruel games with states that protect working families,” Newsom spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo said. “The courts have repeatedly rejected the Trump administration’s politically motivated attacks on blue states — should the Trump administration move forward, we expect the same here.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>TANF — known in California as CalWORKS — is short-term cash assistance for people in poverty, including \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5057\">nearly 900,000 Californians\u003c/a> as of 2024. SSI provides cash benefits to elderly, blind or disabled people with low incomes, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/ssi_sc/2025/ca.pdf\">1.1 million Californians\u003c/a> as of 2025. That’s roughly 2 million Californians benefitted from the two programs. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>TANF — known in California as CalWORKS — is short-term cash assistance for people in poverty, including \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5057\">nearly 900,000 Californians\u003c/a> as of 2024. SSI provides cash benefits to elderly, blind or disabled people with low incomes, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/ssi_sc/2025/ca.pdf\">1.1 million Californians\u003c/a> as of 2025. That’s roughly 2 million Californians benefitted from the two programs. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The Trump administration said it believes Congress intended for every state agency to report unauthorized immigrants to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. And officials suggested that those immigrants were benefiting from the welfare programs.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“When a state chooses to participate in TANF, it accepts the obligation to report illegal aliens in the United States,” Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said in a statement. “Tax dollars intended to help vulnerable Americans should not perversely encourage illegal entry into the United States, but rather should reinforce our laws and our borders.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In fact, people who are not lawfully present in the U.S. are \u003ca href=\"https://acf.gov/ofa/policy-guidance/acf-ofa-im-25-01\">not eligible\u003c/a> for \u003ca href=\"https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/spotlights/spot-non-citizens.htm\">either program\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If California were to comply with the new federal requirements, however, it would spotlight for federal immigration enforcement many of the \u003ca href=\"https://data.cmsny.org\">estimated 2.6 million people\u003c/a> in the state without legal status, including those who have lived in the U.S. for years and have U.S. citizen children.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>California has information on a lot of residents without legal immigration status because, over the past two decades, lawmakers have made them eligible for public resources, including driver’s licenses, emergency health care and in-state tuition, UC Davis law professor Kevin Johnson said.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“The risk is bigger in California because California has been willing, in exercising its legislative judgment, to provide more services and benefits to undocumented immigrants than many other states,” Johnson said. “It’s done so legally, and it’s done so without the knowledge that it might be required to share information with the federal government.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“The risk is bigger in California because California has been willing, in exercising its legislative judgment, to provide more services and benefits to undocumented immigrants than many other states,” Johnson said. “It’s done so legally, and it’s done so without the knowledge that it might be required to share information with the federal government.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/AP26020827442794-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12070624\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/AP26020827442794-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/AP26020827442794-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/AP26020827442794-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Sen. Adam Schiff, right, walks with Sen. Alex Padilla, during a visit to an immigration detention center on Jan. 20, 2026, in California City, California. \u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2026/04/california-dmv-shares-immigrant-driver-data/\">More than a million\u003c/a> unauthorized immigrants have California driver’s licenses, thanks to a 2013 law known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-identification-cards/assembly-bill-ab-60-driver-licenses/\">AB 60\u003c/a> that allows residents to obtain a license regardless of their immigration status. And more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.higheredimmigrationportal.org/state/california/\">100,000 students\u003c/a> without status are enrolled in California public universities, where they qualify for in-state tuition and some state financial aid \u003ca href=\"https://www.csac.ca.gov/post/california-nonresident-tuition-exemption\">under AB 540\u003c/a>, passed by the Legislature in 2001.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2026/04/california-dmv-shares-immigrant-driver-data/\">More than a million\u003c/a> unauthorized immigrants have California driver’s licenses, thanks to a 2013 law known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-identification-cards/assembly-bill-ab-60-driver-licenses/\">AB 60\u003c/a> that allows residents to obtain a license regardless of their immigration status. And more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.higheredimmigrationportal.org/state/california/\">100,000 students\u003c/a> without status are enrolled in California public universities, where they qualify for in-state tuition and some state financial aid \u003ca href=\"https://www.csac.ca.gov/post/california-nonresident-tuition-exemption\">under AB 540\u003c/a>, passed by the Legislature in 2001.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Sen. Alex Padilla, who helped spearhead AB 60 when he was a state lawmaker, called the administration’s move an effort to vilify immigrants by holding hostage aid to seniors, people with disabilities and struggling families.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“Instead of doing anything to make life more affordable, this administration is choosing to distract from their disastrous policies by sowing chaos and fear,” Padilla told KQED in a statement. “Kids and working families will pay an even greater price because of their cruelty, and I won’t stop fighting for the justice they deserve.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Johnson called the Department of Justice’s new opinion unusual from a legal standpoint, and he said he expects it to be challenged in court by states such as California on the grounds that it is arbitrary and capricious and doesn’t consider the interests of those who’ve relied on the Clinton-era understanding of the law. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“It’s very rare to reinterpret an interpretation that was put into place a quarter-century ago and has never been questioned or undermined by legislation or a court decision in any way,” he said. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But Johnson cautioned that the opinion was carefully written and could be challenging to overturn.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the office is reviewing it.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“The Trump administration is continuing to try to coerce states into its hateful agenda, this time by attempting to rewrite decades-old law,” spokesperson Nina Sheridan said. “We’re evaluating the Office of Legal Counsel’s opinion.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "The administration says states won't get funding unless they report known unauthorized immigrants to federal authorities, a move that could affect more than a million California residents. ",
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"title": "Trump Administration Threatens Billions in State Welfare Funding | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/california\">California\u003c/a> is at risk of losing nearly $12 billion in federal funding for public assistance programs after the Trump administration threatened to cut off grants to states unless they report every known unauthorized immigrant to immigration authorities.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The threat came in the form of a new legal \u003ca href=\"https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-clarifies-duty-states-report-known-illegal-aliens-under-welfare-reform\">opinion\u003c/a> this month reinterpreting a 1990s welfare-reform law to mean that all agencies in states receiving welfare funding — which is every state in the nation — must report all “individuals known to be not lawfully present” to the federal government or risk losing grants that aid low-income people.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That’s a dramatic reversal from the Clinton-era interpretation of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which said that only state agencies administering the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs needed to provide information to federal immigration authorities. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office was defiant in its opposition to the threat.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260116-NewsomLuriePresser-32-BL_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12070630\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260116-NewsomLuriePresser-32-BL_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260116-NewsomLuriePresser-32-BL_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/260116-NewsomLuriePresser-32-BL_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference at the Friendship House Association of American Indians in San Francisco on Jan. 16, 2026. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“This is nothing new — Trump has always tried to play cruel games with states that protect working families,” Newsom spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo said. “The courts have repeatedly rejected the Trump administration’s politically motivated attacks on blue states — should the Trump administration move forward, we expect the same here.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>TANF — known in California as CalWORKS — is short-term cash assistance for people in poverty, including \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/5057\">nearly 900,000 Californians\u003c/a> as of 2024. SSI provides cash benefits to elderly, blind or disabled people with low incomes, including \u003ca href=\"https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/ssi_sc/2025/ca.pdf\">1.1 million Californians\u003c/a> as of 2025. That’s roughly 2 million Californians benefitted from the two programs. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>California receives a $3.7 billion annual block grant for TANF and roughly $8 billion a year in SSI funding, according to Ryan Woolsey, a policy analyst at the state Legislative Analyst’s Office. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The Trump administration said it believes Congress intended for every state agency to report unauthorized immigrants to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. And officials suggested that those immigrants were benefiting from the welfare programs.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“When a state chooses to participate in TANF, it accepts the obligation to report illegal aliens in the United States,” Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel said in a statement. “Tax dollars intended to help vulnerable Americans should not perversely encourage illegal entry into the United States, but rather should reinforce our laws and our borders.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In fact, people who are not lawfully present in the U.S. are \u003ca href=\"https://acf.gov/ofa/policy-guidance/acf-ofa-im-25-01\">not eligible\u003c/a> for \u003ca href=\"https://www.ssa.gov/ssi/spotlights/spot-non-citizens.htm\">either program\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If California were to comply with the new federal requirements, however, it would spotlight for federal immigration enforcement many of the \u003ca href=\"https://data.cmsny.org\">estimated 2.6 million people\u003c/a> in the state without legal status, including those who have lived in the U.S. for years and have U.S. citizen children.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>California has information on a lot of residents without legal immigration status because, over the past two decades, lawmakers have made them eligible for public resources, including driver’s licenses, emergency health care and in-state tuition, UC Davis law professor Kevin Johnson said.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“The risk is bigger in California because California has been willing, in exercising its legislative judgment, to provide more services and benefits to undocumented immigrants than many other states,” Johnson said. “It’s done so legally, and it’s done so without the knowledge that it might be required to share information with the federal government.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/AP26020827442794-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12070624\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/AP26020827442794-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/AP26020827442794-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/AP26020827442794-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Sen. Adam Schiff, right, walks with Sen. Alex Padilla, during a visit to an immigration detention center on Jan. 20, 2026, in California City, California. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2026/04/california-dmv-shares-immigrant-driver-data/\">More than a million\u003c/a> unauthorized immigrants have California driver’s licenses, thanks to a 2013 law known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/driver-licenses-identification-cards/assembly-bill-ab-60-driver-licenses/\">AB 60\u003c/a> that allows residents to obtain a license regardless of their immigration status. And more than \u003ca href=\"https://www.higheredimmigrationportal.org/state/california/\">100,000 students\u003c/a> without status are enrolled in California public universities, where they qualify for in-state tuition and some state financial aid \u003ca href=\"https://www.csac.ca.gov/post/california-nonresident-tuition-exemption\">under AB 540\u003c/a>, passed by the Legislature in 2001.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Sen. Alex Padilla, who helped spearhead AB 60 when he was a state lawmaker, called the administration’s move an effort to vilify immigrants by holding hostage aid to seniors, people with disabilities and struggling families.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Instead of doing anything to make life more affordable, this administration is choosing to distract from their disastrous policies by sowing chaos and fear,” Padilla told KQED in a statement. “Kids and working families will pay an even greater price because of their cruelty, and I won’t stop fighting for the justice they deserve.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Johnson called the Department of Justice’s new opinion unusual from a legal standpoint, and he said he expects it to be challenged in court by states such as California on the grounds that it is arbitrary and capricious and doesn’t consider the interests of those who’ve relied on the Clinton-era understanding of the law. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“It’s very rare to reinterpret an interpretation that was put into place a quarter-century ago and has never been questioned or undermined by legislation or a court decision in any way,” he said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But Johnson cautioned that the opinion was carefully written and could be challenging to overturn.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>A spokesperson for California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the office is reviewing it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“The Trump administration is continuing to try to coerce states into its hateful agenda, this time by attempting to rewrite decades-old law,” spokesperson Nina Sheridan said. “We’re evaluating the Office of Legal Counsel’s opinion.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "She Killed Her Children. Can We Forgive Her?",
"publishDate": 1788544841,
"format": "standard",
"headTitle": "She Killed Her Children. Can We Forgive Her? | KQED",
"labelTerm": {
"term": 26731,
"site": "news"
},
"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s note: This story was originally published in February 2020 and was republished when the 2026 trial of Lindsay Clancy in Plymouth, Mass. reignited a long-running debate about how the legal system interprets postpartum psychosis and handles cases of women like Clancy and Coronado who kill their children.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years later, Rudy Coronado still refers to what happened as “that day.” He thinks about what he said, what he didn’t say and what he wishes he could take back. The signs he missed – and the signs he saw, but ignored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That day, Carol was acting kind of weird,” he stammered. “She was just different.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not different the way his wife was usually different, the traits that charmed Rudy when they first met at a doughnut shop in Carson: her simple, no makeup, no celebrity gossip style; her book-loving, hard-working focus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12098278\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/GettyImages-567386861-e1788460092156.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12098278 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/GettyImages-567386861-e1788460092156.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" />\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Family and friends gather around Rudy Coronado, second from left, the father of the slain girls, as he speaks to media after the arraignment hearing for his wife, Carol Coronado at the Compton courthouse, Thursday, May 29, 2014. Carol Coronado has been charged with killing her three young children at their home in an unincorporated area near Carson.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Not quirky, the way she was quirky, separating the rice and beans and vegetables on her plate, and always eating one thing first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not precise and meticulous, the way she learned to be in the military and then later applied to motherhood, keeping spreadsheets on all the daily activities of their three daughters: Sophia, 2, Yazmine, 1, and Xenia, 3 months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every time she breast fed, every bottle she gave them – everything was documented,” Rudy said. “Every time they pooped, how they pooped, everything. Everything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That day, May 20, 2014, was different. Carol seemed to wake up in a panic. She called her mom over and over, leaving one desperate message after another: “Mommy, please call me. Please — Please — Please. I’m tired. I’m exhausted. I’m hungry,” she said, crying and rambling until the voicemail system cut her off four times in a row.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the sixth message, Carol sounded spent: “Mom. Please call me. I love you. Bye.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the afternoon, Carol was barely saying anything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Rudy came inside after working on his ’68 Chevy truck across the street from their home in Torrance, Sophia was running around with no diaper on. There was poop on the carpet, poop on the walls, poop on her hands. Carol was lying on the bed. Her eyes were blank, black.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rudy started yelling. And that’s when he said the thing he wishes he hadn’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was like, ‘Carol – to what extreme is this going to get to?’ And I regret telling her that,” he said. “Because I don’t know if that’s what kind of sparked her to do something dumb? To do that?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rudy went back outside. He was working on his truck when Carol’s mom came over after her shift driving a local school bus. She went into the house, then ran out, screaming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All three girls were dead. Carol had taken a knife from the kitchen and stabbed them each in the throat and through the heart. Then she laid them on the bed, in order from youngest to oldest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At first glance, it was weird, ’cause I didn’t see no blood. I don’t remember seeing blood. So when I walked up and I touched Sophie, she was cold,” he recalled, his voice catching. “I was like, ‘What’d you do?’ I couldn’t believe my eyes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carol looked at Rudy and told him she loved him. Then she pushed the knife into her own chest.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Victim or the Monster?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Carol did not die that day. If she had, perhaps she would have been mourned, alongside her daughters, as one of the victims of an inexplicable tragedy. But her survival meant that day would have to be explained — in court, by prosecutors, who would cast Carol as a criminal, driven by revenge, and deserving of society’s harshest judgment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' align='right' citation='Carol Coronado, the day she killed her three daughters']‘Mommy, please call me. Please — Please — Please. I’m tired. I’m exhausted.’[/pullquote]Even though several psychiatrists testified that Carol was suffering from postpartum psychosis, a severe mental illness triggered by childbirth, the judge would set that evidence aside: The law used to evaluate these cases was written a century before any doctor had uttered such a diagnosis, and the web of clinical symptoms simply doesn’t fit the legal test for insanity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California, more than 100 women are in prison for killing their children, data analysis by KQED shows. The state prison system doesn’t track these numbers, so KQED reviewed thousands of court records and news reports to calculate them. Forty percent of these women took their baby’s life before they were a year old. Seventy percent of those women are serving life sentences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This doesn’t happen in other developed countries. \u003ca href=\"http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/1-2/36/section/1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">England\u003c/a>, Canada, Australia, Japan, Brazil, Sweden and \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2174580/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">more than a dozen other nations\u003c/a> have specific laws for these cases. Most are modeled after Britain’s Infanticide Act, which says if a woman harms her child within a year of giving birth, it is presumed she suffered from a postpartum mental illness. She is often sentenced to treatment, not incarceration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s an assumption that something was off,” said Diana Lynn Barnes, a psychotherapist in Southern California who frequently serves as an expert witness in infanticide cases. “Most of the time these women are found guilty of manslaughter, and in many cases they don’t even go to prison.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few states have pushed for similar laws to allow judges to reconsider and lower harsh sentences with evidence of postpartum mental illness in mind. Only one succeeded: \u003ca href=\"http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/fulltext.asp?Name=100-0574\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Illinois\u003c/a> in 2018. When California advocates broached the topic that same year, they said lawmakers told them, “No, not now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without a uniform standard for these cases in the U.S., judgments have been \u003ca href=\"https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1060&context=uclf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">arbitrary and variable\u003c/a>, from life without parole to probation, often depending on the sympathies of the judge or jury. Most courts continue to view women who harm their children the same as trained assassins, experts say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carol Coronado was charged with three counts of first-degree murder. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office considered \u003ca href=\"https://www.dailybreeze.com/2014/05/23/mother-charged-in-daughters-murders-near-carson-could-face-death-penalty/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">seeking the death penalty\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/postpartumfinal3.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11800379\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/postpartumfinal3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1447\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/postpartumfinal3.png 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/postpartumfinal3-160x121.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/postpartumfinal3-800x603.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/postpartumfinal3-1020x769.png 1020w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘It Was the Disease’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The first time Rudy and Carol Coronado ever heard of postpartum psychosis was after Carol was taken to jail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doctors later told them that Carol’s break from reality was caused by hormonal changes from her last pregnancy, lack of sleep and the relentless cycle of breastfeeding and caring for three babies under three. \u003ca href=\"https://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1325&context=lawreview\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Two-thirds of women\u003c/a> who kill their children following childbirth suffer from postpartum psychosis, a 2000 study found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everybody who saw her, all of the doctors, within hours and days of this event found that she had some kind of a psychotic disorder,” said Barnes, the expert witness in Carol’s case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carol’s bizarre behavior, her confusion and detachment, she said, these are all symptoms of postpartum psychosis — and they can develop without warning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She will look disheveled, not just unkempt, but disheveled. She’ll start to look glazed over,” Barnes said. “She may be looking around as though she’s taking things in from the environment that may or may not be there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rudy finally had an explanation for Carol’s sudden change in behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was thinking like a demon possessed her or something because her eyes went black,” he said. “Now I know that it was the disease.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s what frustrates Rudy now — knowing there’s treatment that could have cleared Carol’s symptoms and prevented what happened that day. If he had only known what he was seeing and what else to look for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' align='right' citation='Psychotherapist Diana Lynn Barnes, the expert witness in Carol’s case']‘Everybody who saw her, all of the doctors, within hours and days of this event found that she had some kind of a psychotic disorder.’[/pullquote]Postpartum psychosis affects \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109493/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">one to two moms\u003c/a> out of 1,000 births, but many reproductive psychiatrists believe that is an \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11710961/she-strived-to-be-the-perfect-mom-and-landed-in-the-psych-ward\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">underestimate\u003c/a> because the symptoms are easy to miss, and the doctors who most often see new moms are not trained to recognize them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Postpartum psychosis often presents with delirium-type symptoms, mainly confusion and disorganized thoughts and not classic hallucinations or paranoia,” said Nirmaljit Dhami, a reproductive psychiatrist in Mountain View. “And the symptoms wax and wane. I had one patient who was confused at times and very clear at other times.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Women with postpartum psychosis often experience a mood disturbance, too, either mania or depression. Carol’s lawyer argued she was depressed, but that her doctors missed that, too. Her primary care doctor, Bijan Ghatan, testified at her trial that Carol didn’t “seem depressed” to him, when he saw her six days before the deaths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She was her usual jovial self,” Ghatan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was 2014, four years before the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists \u003ca href=\"https://www.acog.org/Clinical-Guidance-and-Publications/Committee-Opinions/Committee-on-Obstetric-Practice/Screening-for-Perinatal-Depression\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">rewrote its guidelines\u003c/a> to recommend doctors administer a formal screening test for postpartum depression, and five years before \u003ca href=\"http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB2193\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">California law\u003c/a> made the test \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/362521/woman-seeks-help-for-post-partum-depression-the-nurse-calls-the-cops\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">mandatory\u003c/a>. So Carol’s doctor said he didn’t do one. He said Carol didn’t seem depressed, so he didn’t ask.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we enter an exam room, we always say, ‘Hey, you look great! Look at the baby! Yay!’ ” said Torie Sepah, a reproductive psychiatrist who has delivered many babies over many years in family practice. “That leaves no room for the mom to not be doing great. To say, ‘Actually, I’m really miserable.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Women are conditioned to act like they’re happy and have it together, Sepah said. To admit otherwise might invite others to believe she’s a bad mom, or, worst of all, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/362521/woman-seeks-help-for-post-partum-depression-the-nurse-calls-the-cops\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">trigger a call\u003c/a> to a government agency that might take the baby away. That’s why testing is now required for all new moms, she said, no matter how they present in the doctor’s office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To Sepah, who treated Carol at a Los Angeles jail in the days after her daughters’ deaths, there is no doubt she had postpartum psychosis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even before the children were killed, Sepah said, there were clinical signs that something was off, in particular, Carol’s weight loss: She weighed less after having her third baby than she did before getting pregnant with her first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11800227\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11800227\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis_hospital_Carol-Coronado-qut-800x610.jpg\" alt=\"After Carol Coronado was arrested, she was taken to a hospital where she was treated for self-inflicted stab wounds and given anti-psychotic medication.\" width=\"800\" height=\"610\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis_hospital_Carol-Coronado-qut-800x610.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis_hospital_Carol-Coronado-qut-160x122.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis_hospital_Carol-Coronado-qut-1020x778.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis_hospital_Carol-Coronado-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">After Carol Coronado was arrested, she was taken to a hospital where she was treated for self-inflicted stab wounds and given anti-psychotic medication. \u003ccite>(Evidence file/Compton Courthouse)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>What Carol Remembers\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>That day, Carol was treated briefly in the hospital for a punctured lung, then taken straight to jail. She was on suicide watch for the next 21 months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That whole time, Carol says she didn’t know what was going on or what had happened. The scar, from plunging the knife into her chest? She had no idea how it got there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' align='right' citation='Rudy Coronado']‘I was thinking like a demon possessed her or something because her eyes went black. Now I know that it was the disease.’[/pullquote]It’s common for people not to remember what happened during a psychotic episode, said Dr. Sepah. Cognitive pathways short circuit and synapses stop firing correctly: “Instead of going A, B, C, they’re going A, D, G,” she said. Those kinds of thought patterns are too disorganized for memories to form.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carol says her memories stop about a week before the killings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s about the time my brain began to stutter and shut off, memory-wise. Before it completely broke,” she says over a scratchy phone connection from prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She does remember having nightmares.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was terrified to go to sleep. I wasn’t showering, taking a bath, brushing my teeth. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t doing anything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She couldn’t concentrate. She put socks away in the fridge and milk in the dresser. She felt overwhelmed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Like I was worthless, helpless, hopeless and I’d be better off dead,” she says. “That nobody needed me. That I was nothing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Legal Insanity: The Twinkie Defense to Today\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Carol was not much help to her defense attorney. At the time, she did not have the insight into her feelings that she is beginning to have now, five years later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her lawyer’s strategy was an insanity defense. And here the odds were against them: Less than 1% of criminal cases end with a successful insanity defense, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.researchgate.net/publication/21370218_The_Volume_and_Characteristics_of_Insanity_Defense_Pleas_An_Eight-State_Study\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a seminal study\u003c/a> from 1991.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a very, very hard defense to make,” said Michelle Oberman, a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law. “It almost never works in postpartum mental health defenses.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is because of what happened in 1981, when John Hinckley Jr. fired multiple gunshots in his attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. Hinckley, 25, said he was in love with actress Jodie Foster, and he was convinced that she would fall in love with him if he killed the president.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Psychiatrists said Hinckley had schizophrenia and the jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity. He spent the next 30 years in a psychiatric hospital.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Americans were outraged: The day after the verdict, \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0879235330/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">83% said justice\u003c/a> had not been done. Lawmakers from 38 states rewrote their insanity laws to ensure that another Hinckley “would not get off.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' align='right' citation='Michelle Oberman, law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law']‘The test for proving insanity is so out of keeping with the way that we understand how the mind works.’[/pullquote]One of them was \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_California_Proposition_8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">California\u003c/a>. The state had its own version of the Hinckley case a few years earlier in 1978, when Dan White climbed through a window into San Francisco City Hall and shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>White’s lawyer argued what would from then on be remembered as the infamous “Twinkie defense.” He said White suffered from depression, which made him periodically obsessed with junk food, and which compromised his capacity to understand or control what he was doing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The jury found White guilty of manslaughter, rather than murder, and sentenced him to eight years in prison. San Francisco erupted in riots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After this, just when the jury delivered the Hinckley verdict, California voters passed a tough-on-crime measure that included an overhaul of the state’s insanity defense law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is one of \u003ca href=\"https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-procedure/the-insanity-defense-among-the-states.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">25 states\u003c/a> that now uses a strict legal test for insanity established in 1843. It’s focused on whether a person knows the difference between right and wrong — it’s a moral test, not a clinical one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The test for proving insanity is so out of keeping with the way that we understand how the mind works,” law professor Michelle Oberman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it completely ignores the \u003ca href=\"https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1152&context=jhcl\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">risk factors\u003c/a> researchers now know are associated with infanticide: isolation and shame. These moms spend long hours alone with their kids with little to no help, Oberman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like a lot of moms, they start to feel like a failure, like a bad mom. But with psychosis in the mix, this belief becomes a full-on delusion. Up to \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2174580/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">29% of moms\u003c/a> who kill their kids also kill themselves, and even more attempt suicide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They start to believe that their children would be better off with them in heaven,” Oberman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11800241\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11800241\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis-postpartum-depression-coronado-house-800x609.png\" alt=\"Outside the home of Carol and Rudy Coronado after she killed the couple's three daughters.\" width=\"800\" height=\"609\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis-postpartum-depression-coronado-house-800x609.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis-postpartum-depression-coronado-house-160x122.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis-postpartum-depression-coronado-house.png 978w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Outside the home of Carol and Rudy Coronado after she killed the couple’s three daughters. \u003ccite>(Evidence file/Compton Courthouse)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>The Trial\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When Carol Coronado went on trial in 2015, she said she couldn’t remember anything from the day her daughters died. And even though this is common with psychotic episodes, it was the biggest weakness in her legal defense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be found insane, Carol would have to prove that she didn’t know what she was doing was wrong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Carol says she didn’t know what she was doing at all. She had no explanation for why she did what she did — even a psychotic explanation that her babies would be better off in heaven.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' align='right' citation='Carol Coronado']‘I literally kept looking for my children, having delusions that they were on the other side of that door, that they were going to walk in at any moment and I would be able to hold them .’[/pullquote]The prosecutor, Emily Spear, exploited this weakness at every turn, filling the void in Carol’s memory with her own narrative of what happened. She said Carol’s motive was revenge. She said Rudy was a jerk, leaving Carol in charge of three little girls with no help. She said Carol had had enough that day and decided to get back at Rudy by killing their daughters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The marriage was not a good one,” Spear said during her opening statement. “Finances were very, very tough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was a crime of rage, of desperation, but not delusion, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spear interpreted all of Carol’s actions from that day according to this revenge narrative. She framed each move as a premeditated moral failing — while the defense reframed everything as a clinical symptom of psychosis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The prosecutor pointed to statements Carol gave to a detective hours after she was arrested, when he asked her if she killed her children to “get back at her husband.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said: “If that’s true, do I get a better deal?” When the detective asked her, “What do you need from us in order to tell us what happened?” Carol responded: “Bedpan.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A psychotic mind has a logic all its own,” said defense expert witness Diana Lynn Barnes. “The state is attempting to use rational, logical thought to explain psychosis, which is illogical and delusional.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the thing about postpartum psychosis that most often gets confused in court, she added: the way the symptoms wax and wane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because if one moment I’m telling you something, but then in the next moment I can’t remember what I just did – that kind of looks like I’m faking it,” Barnes said. “But it’s actually the clinical presentation of postpartum psychosis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Calm, Just Like Me\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When Carol came into the visiting room at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, she looked — four years after the trial — as she did in the courtroom shot of her that ran in the paper over and over: straight brown hair, a little greasy; pale skin and no makeup.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' align='right' citation='Defense expert witness, Diana Lynn Barnes']‘A psychotic mind has a logic all its own. The state is attempting to use rational, logical thought to explain psychosis, which is illogical and delusional.’[/pullquote]Carol is getting some treatment here, but it’s hard to tell if it’s working. Conversation with her jumped around. She easily veered off on tangents. Sometimes she said things that didn’t make sense. On other topics, she went deep into detail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like the last time her family went to the beach together. Rudy and Sophie went straight for the ocean. But Yazi stayed with Carol. She liked to run her little rake through the sand, look at the lines, then wipe them flat and do it again. Sophie is just like Rudy, social and playful. Yazi is Zen, calm. Just like me, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of these stories about the girls still come out in the present tense. Throughout her trial, Carol said she thought her children were still alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I literally kept looking for my children, having delusions that they were on the other side of that door, that they were going to walk in at any moment and I would be able to hold them,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When her family called her in prison and Carol asked after the girls, her mother just said they were “gone.” Rudy said they were “safe.” Carol figured they were at their godparents’ house or her sister’s house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was her lawyer who told her what happened. The specifics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I flipped out. I became hysterical and inconsolable. I was screaming,” Carol said. “I did not believe it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What Carol’s case came down to was what the judge believed. She opted for a bench trial, deciding not to take her chances on a jury.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, the judge said he thought Carol did suffer from a mental health condition. He said he believed she needed treatment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the insanity law is the law. He said she would have to get treatment in prison. He sentenced her to three consecutive life sentences. No parole.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A Successful Insanity Defense\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Angela Burling once stood before a judge like Carol did, after she killed her son. There were a lot of similarities between Angela’s case and Carol’s, except the outcome: One went to prison, and the other went home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I couldn’t have been more fortunate,” Angela said from her home outside Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1983, nine months after Angela gave birth to her second child, Michael, she stopped breastfeeding him abruptly, rather than weaning him gradually as doctors now recommend. She started having strange thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt I had a calling to expunge the world of evil,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She began to believe her husband, Jeff, was Jesus. She was the bride of Christ. And her baby Michael, was the devil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt I needed to drown Michael,” she said. “But then I thought, ‘He’ll come back to life. Jeff will raise him from the dead in three days. Then the world will know: Jeff is Jesus and peace will reign.’ So that’s what I did. I drowned him.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was the thing that made the difference in Angela’s case – her account of what happened fit the strict legal test for insanity. She believed her son was the devil and that killing him was the right thing to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The judge found her not guilty by reason of insanity. He sentenced her to outpatient treatment, meaning Angela could go home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Angela recovered. The psychosis went away and Angela has since been doing well taking regular medication for bipolar disorder – doctors now understand women with the disorder have a \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109493/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">30% likelihood\u003c/a> of experiencing postpartum psychosis. Women who have had postpartum psychosis with one pregnancy have a \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23651079\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">50% chance\u003c/a> of having it again with a subsequent pregnancy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' align='right' citation='Angela Burling, who drowned her son while suffering from postpartum psychosis']‘I make a case for understanding how it can happen to anybody. I could be your sister, or your daughter, or your wife.’[/pullquote]So when Angela became pregnant with her third child, she put together a team of top-notch psychiatric providers to be on call. In their care, she was sure the psychosis would not come back, and even if it did, she was certain no harm would come to her baby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I found out I was pregnant, I was the happiest woman on earth,” she said. “Because I felt like, I have another chance – to raise another baby. And prove I’m a good mom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She went back to school for her master’s degree in nursing, and when her first marriage frayed under the tensions of what happened, she remarried. She and her second husband have been together for 25 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like what happened to me is what should happen to other women in my situation,” said Angela, now 64. “I make a case for understanding how it can happen to anybody. I could be your sister, or your daughter, or your wife.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Angela believes the way to level the field for all women is for California to adopt a law similar to Britain’s \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide_Act_1938\">Infanticide Act\u003c/a>, which says any woman who kills her baby is presumed to be mentally ill and faces a maximum charge of manslaughter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in 1989, a California senator was so moved by Angela’s story that \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6769000-Senate-Resolution-23-Complete-Apr-4.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">he recommended California adopt a version of this law\u003c/a>. But it never went anywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a pretty bold resolution,” she said. “I don’t know if society was ready for it then.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Illinois, the one state that has managed to make a small change, now allows judges to give women lower sentences if postpartum mental illness was a factor in her baby’s death. For women already convicted, they could get a new hearing and a reduced sentence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is the first criminal statute in the U.S. that mentions postpartum psychosis by name. Advocates in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York are considering a similar law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If California were to follow suit, KQED’s data analysis shows more than 40 women currently in prison could have their cases reheard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can’t fail these moms twice,” said Joy Burkhard, executive director of \u003ca href=\"https://www.2020mom.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2020 Mom\u003c/a>, an advocacy group seeking a sponsor for a similar law in California. “They’re failed by the health care system, then again by the legal system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11800250\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11800250\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"Rudy Coronado reading a letter from Carol.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-1832x1374.jpg 1832w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-1376x1032.jpg 1376w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-1044x783.jpg 1044w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-632x474.jpg 632w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-536x402.jpg 536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rudy Coronado reading a letter from Carol at his home in October 2018. \u003ccite>(April Dembosky/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>‘Speak to the Dads’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Rudy Coronado packs up oil, anti-freeze and wiper blades from his stall at the Alpine Village flea market in Los Angeles. He’s been selling auto parts here since his girls were born, about eight years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used to want to get rich, to leave something for my daughters. That was my fire, that was my fuel,” said Rudy, now 41. “Now, my fire is gone.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He still feels guilty that he didn’t know what was happening to Carol. He still thinks about the way he talked to her or if there was something he could have done to stop it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[pullquote size='medium' align='right' citation='Joy Burkhard, executive director of 2020 Mom']‘We can’t fail these moms twice. They’re failed by the health care system, then again by the legal system.’[/pullquote]So when women’s health advocates asked him for help, he said yes. He always says yes. He speaks at rallies and forums and in the state Legislature. His testimony helped pass a package of laws in 2018, including the one requiring mandatory screening of new moms for postpartum mental illness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hospitals now also have to \u003ca href=\"http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB3032\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">train staff\u003c/a> how to recognize symptoms, and the state is \u003ca href=\"http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB1893\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">applying for more federal money\u003c/a> to do more outreach to families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I always make it an issue to go and speak to the dads,” Rudy said of his public appearances. “Because no one never talks to the dads.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He tells them: Postpartum mental illness is real. Look for it. Research it. Don’t confuse it with “baby mama drama.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a famous thing,” Rudy explained. ” ‘Aw, my baby mama’s trippin.’ Now I tell them, ‘Your baby mama is not trippin. Your baby mama’s going through it.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The work has helped him to understand what happened to Carol that day, but not necessarily to forgive her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way I think about it, like, I blame the disease, not Carol,” he said. “It’s not that I forgive Carol. I’ve kind of, somehow, not really blamed her.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11800253\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11800253\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"Rudy Coronado reading a letter from Carol.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-1832x1374.jpg 1832w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-1376x1032.jpg 1376w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-1044x783.jpg 1044w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-632x474.jpg 632w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-536x402.jpg 536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rudy Coronado shows a drawing that Carol sent to him from prison in November 2017. \u003ccite>(April Dembosky/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>‘Should Have Been in a Hospital’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Last October, the Saturday before Carol’s 36th birthday, her parents, David and Julie Piercey, got up at 4 a.m. and drove their Dodge minivan five hours north from Los Angeles to the prison in Chowchilla.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the visiting room with Carol, they didn’t say much. They just played round after round of dominoes. Later in the parking lot, they both said Carol doesn’t belong here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She had no business going to prison,” her dad said. “She should have been in a hospital, period.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s all they wanted from an insanity defense, for Carol to go to a place where she could get real treatment. Not a place where she says other inmates beat her up and call her a baby killer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her parents said Carol still says things that don’t make sense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She tells us, ‘I’m going to be getting out in a couple of weeks or three weeks or a month,’ ” David said. “It’s heart-wrenching because I know it’s never going to happen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her dad can’t bring himself to say anything in response. Her mom can’t help but say something.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>” ‘OK Carol. I’ll be happy when you get out, sweetheart!’ ” she said. ” ‘Mama’s waiting for you.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[aside postID=news_11710961,news_11744174,news_362521]These conversations are too hard for Rudy. He doesn’t visit Carol anymore. He hasn’t talked to her on the phone in three years. He said she’s not the same person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carol still writes to Rudy. He has stacks and stacks of her letters. But he stopped reading those, too. He said she never mentions what happened. She never writes about the girls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She doesn’t even write their names. Just draws cryptic images of threes: three pumpkins, three stars. Three hearts with three letters inside, the girls’ initials: S, Y, X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>April Dembosky is a health correspondent at KQED public radio and The California Report. She is also a recipient of a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s Kate Wolffe contributed research for this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>Editor’s note: This story was originally published in February 2020 and was republished when the 2026 trial of Lindsay Clancy in Plymouth, Mass. reignited a long-running debate about how the legal system interprets postpartum psychosis and handles cases of women like Clancy and Coronado who kill their children.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Years later, Rudy Coronado still refers to what happened as “that day.” He thinks about what he said, what he didn’t say and what he wishes he could take back. The signs he missed – and the signs he saw, but ignored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That day, Carol was acting kind of weird,” he stammered. “She was just different.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not different the way his wife was usually different, the traits that charmed Rudy when they first met at a doughnut shop in Carson: her simple, no makeup, no celebrity gossip style; her book-loving, hard-working focus.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12098278\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003ca href=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/GettyImages-567386861-e1788460092156.jpg\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12098278 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/GettyImages-567386861-e1788460092156.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" />\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Family and friends gather around Rudy Coronado, second from left, the father of the slain girls, as he speaks to media after the arraignment hearing for his wife, Carol Coronado at the Compton courthouse, Thursday, May 29, 2014. Carol Coronado has been charged with killing her three young children at their home in an unincorporated area near Carson.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Not quirky, the way she was quirky, separating the rice and beans and vegetables on her plate, and always eating one thing first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not precise and meticulous, the way she learned to be in the military and then later applied to motherhood, keeping spreadsheets on all the daily activities of their three daughters: Sophia, 2, Yazmine, 1, and Xenia, 3 months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Every time she breast fed, every bottle she gave them – everything was documented,” Rudy said. “Every time they pooped, how they pooped, everything. Everything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That day, May 20, 2014, was different. Carol seemed to wake up in a panic. She called her mom over and over, leaving one desperate message after another: “Mommy, please call me. Please — Please — Please. I’m tired. I’m exhausted. I’m hungry,” she said, crying and rambling until the voicemail system cut her off four times in a row.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the sixth message, Carol sounded spent: “Mom. Please call me. I love you. Bye.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the afternoon, Carol was barely saying anything.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When Rudy came inside after working on his ’68 Chevy truck across the street from their home in Torrance, Sophia was running around with no diaper on. There was poop on the carpet, poop on the walls, poop on her hands. Carol was lying on the bed. Her eyes were blank, black.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rudy started yelling. And that’s when he said the thing he wishes he hadn’t.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was like, ‘Carol – to what extreme is this going to get to?’ And I regret telling her that,” he said. “Because I don’t know if that’s what kind of sparked her to do something dumb? To do that?”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rudy went back outside. He was working on his truck when Carol’s mom came over after her shift driving a local school bus. She went into the house, then ran out, screaming.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>All three girls were dead. Carol had taken a knife from the kitchen and stabbed them each in the throat and through the heart. Then she laid them on the bed, in order from youngest to oldest.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“At first glance, it was weird, ’cause I didn’t see no blood. I don’t remember seeing blood. So when I walked up and I touched Sophie, she was cold,” he recalled, his voice catching. “I was like, ‘What’d you do?’ I couldn’t believe my eyes.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carol looked at Rudy and told him she loved him. Then she pushed the knife into her own chest.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>The Victim or the Monster?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Carol did not die that day. If she had, perhaps she would have been mourned, alongside her daughters, as one of the victims of an inexplicable tragedy. But her survival meant that day would have to be explained — in court, by prosecutors, who would cast Carol as a criminal, driven by revenge, and deserving of society’s harshest judgment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Even though several psychiatrists testified that Carol was suffering from postpartum psychosis, a severe mental illness triggered by childbirth, the judge would set that evidence aside: The law used to evaluate these cases was written a century before any doctor had uttered such a diagnosis, and the web of clinical symptoms simply doesn’t fit the legal test for insanity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In California, more than 100 women are in prison for killing their children, data analysis by KQED shows. The state prison system doesn’t track these numbers, so KQED reviewed thousands of court records and news reports to calculate them. Forty percent of these women took their baby’s life before they were a year old. Seventy percent of those women are serving life sentences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This doesn’t happen in other developed countries. \u003ca href=\"http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/1-2/36/section/1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">England\u003c/a>, Canada, Australia, Japan, Brazil, Sweden and \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2174580/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">more than a dozen other nations\u003c/a> have specific laws for these cases. Most are modeled after Britain’s Infanticide Act, which says if a woman harms her child within a year of giving birth, it is presumed she suffered from a postpartum mental illness. She is often sentenced to treatment, not incarceration.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There’s an assumption that something was off,” said Diana Lynn Barnes, a psychotherapist in Southern California who frequently serves as an expert witness in infanticide cases. “Most of the time these women are found guilty of manslaughter, and in many cases they don’t even go to prison.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few states have pushed for similar laws to allow judges to reconsider and lower harsh sentences with evidence of postpartum mental illness in mind. Only one succeeded: \u003ca href=\"http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/fulltext.asp?Name=100-0574\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Illinois\u003c/a> in 2018. When California advocates broached the topic that same year, they said lawmakers told them, “No, not now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Without a uniform standard for these cases in the U.S., judgments have been \u003ca href=\"https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1060&context=uclf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">arbitrary and variable\u003c/a>, from life without parole to probation, often depending on the sympathies of the judge or jury. Most courts continue to view women who harm their children the same as trained assassins, experts say.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carol Coronado was charged with three counts of first-degree murder. The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office considered \u003ca href=\"https://www.dailybreeze.com/2014/05/23/mother-charged-in-daughters-murders-near-carson-could-face-death-penalty/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">seeking the death penalty\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/postpartumfinal3.png\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-11800379\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/postpartumfinal3.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1447\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/postpartumfinal3.png 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/postpartumfinal3-160x121.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/postpartumfinal3-800x603.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/02/postpartumfinal3-1020x769.png 1020w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\" />\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>‘It Was the Disease’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The first time Rudy and Carol Coronado ever heard of postpartum psychosis was after Carol was taken to jail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doctors later told them that Carol’s break from reality was caused by hormonal changes from her last pregnancy, lack of sleep and the relentless cycle of breastfeeding and caring for three babies under three. \u003ca href=\"https://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1325&context=lawreview\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Two-thirds of women\u003c/a> who kill their children following childbirth suffer from postpartum psychosis, a 2000 study found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everybody who saw her, all of the doctors, within hours and days of this event found that she had some kind of a psychotic disorder,” said Barnes, the expert witness in Carol’s case.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carol’s bizarre behavior, her confusion and detachment, she said, these are all symptoms of postpartum psychosis — and they can develop without warning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She will look disheveled, not just unkempt, but disheveled. She’ll start to look glazed over,” Barnes said. “She may be looking around as though she’s taking things in from the environment that may or may not be there.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rudy finally had an explanation for Carol’s sudden change in behavior.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was thinking like a demon possessed her or something because her eyes went black,” he said. “Now I know that it was the disease.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s what frustrates Rudy now — knowing there’s treatment that could have cleared Carol’s symptoms and prevented what happened that day. If he had only known what he was seeing and what else to look for.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Postpartum psychosis affects \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109493/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">one to two moms\u003c/a> out of 1,000 births, but many reproductive psychiatrists believe that is an \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11710961/she-strived-to-be-the-perfect-mom-and-landed-in-the-psych-ward\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">underestimate\u003c/a> because the symptoms are easy to miss, and the doctors who most often see new moms are not trained to recognize them.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Postpartum psychosis often presents with delirium-type symptoms, mainly confusion and disorganized thoughts and not classic hallucinations or paranoia,” said Nirmaljit Dhami, a reproductive psychiatrist in Mountain View. “And the symptoms wax and wane. I had one patient who was confused at times and very clear at other times.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Women with postpartum psychosis often experience a mood disturbance, too, either mania or depression. Carol’s lawyer argued she was depressed, but that her doctors missed that, too. Her primary care doctor, Bijan Ghatan, testified at her trial that Carol didn’t “seem depressed” to him, when he saw her six days before the deaths.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She was her usual jovial self,” Ghatan said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was 2014, four years before the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists \u003ca href=\"https://www.acog.org/Clinical-Guidance-and-Publications/Committee-Opinions/Committee-on-Obstetric-Practice/Screening-for-Perinatal-Depression\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">rewrote its guidelines\u003c/a> to recommend doctors administer a formal screening test for postpartum depression, and five years before \u003ca href=\"http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB2193\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">California law\u003c/a> made the test \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/362521/woman-seeks-help-for-post-partum-depression-the-nurse-calls-the-cops\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">mandatory\u003c/a>. So Carol’s doctor said he didn’t do one. He said Carol didn’t seem depressed, so he didn’t ask.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When we enter an exam room, we always say, ‘Hey, you look great! Look at the baby! Yay!’ ” said Torie Sepah, a reproductive psychiatrist who has delivered many babies over many years in family practice. “That leaves no room for the mom to not be doing great. To say, ‘Actually, I’m really miserable.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Women are conditioned to act like they’re happy and have it together, Sepah said. To admit otherwise might invite others to believe she’s a bad mom, or, worst of all, \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/stateofhealth/362521/woman-seeks-help-for-post-partum-depression-the-nurse-calls-the-cops\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">trigger a call\u003c/a> to a government agency that might take the baby away. That’s why testing is now required for all new moms, she said, no matter how they present in the doctor’s office.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To Sepah, who treated Carol at a Los Angeles jail in the days after her daughters’ deaths, there is no doubt she had postpartum psychosis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even before the children were killed, Sepah said, there were clinical signs that something was off, in particular, Carol’s weight loss: She weighed less after having her third baby than she did before getting pregnant with her first.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11800227\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11800227\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis_hospital_Carol-Coronado-qut-800x610.jpg\" alt=\"After Carol Coronado was arrested, she was taken to a hospital where she was treated for self-inflicted stab wounds and given anti-psychotic medication.\" width=\"800\" height=\"610\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis_hospital_Carol-Coronado-qut-800x610.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis_hospital_Carol-Coronado-qut-160x122.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis_hospital_Carol-Coronado-qut-1020x778.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis_hospital_Carol-Coronado-qut.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">After Carol Coronado was arrested, she was taken to a hospital where she was treated for self-inflicted stab wounds and given anti-psychotic medication. \u003ccite>(Evidence file/Compton Courthouse)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>What Carol Remembers\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>That day, Carol was treated briefly in the hospital for a punctured lung, then taken straight to jail. She was on suicide watch for the next 21 months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That whole time, Carol says she didn’t know what was going on or what had happened. The scar, from plunging the knife into her chest? She had no idea how it got there.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>It’s common for people not to remember what happened during a psychotic episode, said Dr. Sepah. Cognitive pathways short circuit and synapses stop firing correctly: “Instead of going A, B, C, they’re going A, D, G,” she said. Those kinds of thought patterns are too disorganized for memories to form.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carol says her memories stop about a week before the killings.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s about the time my brain began to stutter and shut off, memory-wise. Before it completely broke,” she says over a scratchy phone connection from prison.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She does remember having nightmares.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I was terrified to go to sleep. I wasn’t showering, taking a bath, brushing my teeth. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t doing anything.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She couldn’t concentrate. She put socks away in the fridge and milk in the dresser. She felt overwhelmed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Like I was worthless, helpless, hopeless and I’d be better off dead,” she says. “That nobody needed me. That I was nothing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Legal Insanity: The Twinkie Defense to Today\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Carol was not much help to her defense attorney. At the time, she did not have the insight into her feelings that she is beginning to have now, five years later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her lawyer’s strategy was an insanity defense. And here the odds were against them: Less than 1% of criminal cases end with a successful insanity defense, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.researchgate.net/publication/21370218_The_Volume_and_Characteristics_of_Insanity_Defense_Pleas_An_Eight-State_Study\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a seminal study\u003c/a> from 1991.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s a very, very hard defense to make,” said Michelle Oberman, a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law. “It almost never works in postpartum mental health defenses.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is because of what happened in 1981, when John Hinckley Jr. fired multiple gunshots in his attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. Hinckley, 25, said he was in love with actress Jodie Foster, and he was convinced that she would fall in love with him if he killed the president.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Psychiatrists said Hinckley had schizophrenia and the jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity. He spent the next 30 years in a psychiatric hospital.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Americans were outraged: The day after the verdict, \u003ca href=\"https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0879235330/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">83% said justice\u003c/a> had not been done. Lawmakers from 38 states rewrote their insanity laws to ensure that another Hinckley “would not get off.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "‘The test for proving insanity is so out of keeping with the way that we understand how the mind works.’",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>One of them was \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_California_Proposition_8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">California\u003c/a>. The state had its own version of the Hinckley case a few years earlier in 1978, when Dan White climbed through a window into San Francisco City Hall and shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>White’s lawyer argued what would from then on be remembered as the infamous “Twinkie defense.” He said White suffered from depression, which made him periodically obsessed with junk food, and which compromised his capacity to understand or control what he was doing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The jury found White guilty of manslaughter, rather than murder, and sentenced him to eight years in prison. San Francisco erupted in riots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After this, just when the jury delivered the Hinckley verdict, California voters passed a tough-on-crime measure that included an overhaul of the state’s insanity defense law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>California is one of \u003ca href=\"https://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-procedure/the-insanity-defense-among-the-states.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">25 states\u003c/a> that now uses a strict legal test for insanity established in 1843. It’s focused on whether a person knows the difference between right and wrong — it’s a moral test, not a clinical one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The test for proving insanity is so out of keeping with the way that we understand how the mind works,” law professor Michelle Oberman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And it completely ignores the \u003ca href=\"https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1152&context=jhcl\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">risk factors\u003c/a> researchers now know are associated with infanticide: isolation and shame. These moms spend long hours alone with their kids with little to no help, Oberman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like a lot of moms, they start to feel like a failure, like a bad mom. But with psychosis in the mix, this belief becomes a full-on delusion. Up to \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2174580/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">29% of moms\u003c/a> who kill their kids also kill themselves, and even more attempt suicide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They start to believe that their children would be better off with them in heaven,” Oberman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11800241\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11800241\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis-postpartum-depression-coronado-house-800x609.png\" alt=\"Outside the home of Carol and Rudy Coronado after she killed the couple's three daughters.\" width=\"800\" height=\"609\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis-postpartum-depression-coronado-house-800x609.png 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis-postpartum-depression-coronado-house-160x122.png 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/postpartum-psychosis-postpartum-depression-coronado-house.png 978w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Outside the home of Carol and Rudy Coronado after she killed the couple’s three daughters. \u003ccite>(Evidence file/Compton Courthouse)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>The Trial\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When Carol Coronado went on trial in 2015, she said she couldn’t remember anything from the day her daughters died. And even though this is common with psychotic episodes, it was the biggest weakness in her legal defense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To be found insane, Carol would have to prove that she didn’t know what she was doing was wrong.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Carol says she didn’t know what she was doing at all. She had no explanation for why she did what she did — even a psychotic explanation that her babies would be better off in heaven.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The prosecutor, Emily Spear, exploited this weakness at every turn, filling the void in Carol’s memory with her own narrative of what happened. She said Carol’s motive was revenge. She said Rudy was a jerk, leaving Carol in charge of three little girls with no help. She said Carol had had enough that day and decided to get back at Rudy by killing their daughters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The marriage was not a good one,” Spear said during her opening statement. “Finances were very, very tough.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was a crime of rage, of desperation, but not delusion, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Spear interpreted all of Carol’s actions from that day according to this revenge narrative. She framed each move as a premeditated moral failing — while the defense reframed everything as a clinical symptom of psychosis.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The prosecutor pointed to statements Carol gave to a detective hours after she was arrested, when he asked her if she killed her children to “get back at her husband.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She said: “If that’s true, do I get a better deal?” When the detective asked her, “What do you need from us in order to tell us what happened?” Carol responded: “Bedpan.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A psychotic mind has a logic all its own,” said defense expert witness Diana Lynn Barnes. “The state is attempting to use rational, logical thought to explain psychosis, which is illogical and delusional.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This is the thing about postpartum psychosis that most often gets confused in court, she added: the way the symptoms wax and wane.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Because if one moment I’m telling you something, but then in the next moment I can’t remember what I just did – that kind of looks like I’m faking it,” Barnes said. “But it’s actually the clinical presentation of postpartum psychosis.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Calm, Just Like Me\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>When Carol came into the visiting room at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, she looked — four years after the trial — as she did in the courtroom shot of her that ran in the paper over and over: straight brown hair, a little greasy; pale skin and no makeup.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Carol is getting some treatment here, but it’s hard to tell if it’s working. Conversation with her jumped around. She easily veered off on tangents. Sometimes she said things that didn’t make sense. On other topics, she went deep into detail.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Like the last time her family went to the beach together. Rudy and Sophie went straight for the ocean. But Yazi stayed with Carol. She liked to run her little rake through the sand, look at the lines, then wipe them flat and do it again. Sophie is just like Rudy, social and playful. Yazi is Zen, calm. Just like me, she says.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some of these stories about the girls still come out in the present tense. Throughout her trial, Carol said she thought her children were still alive.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I literally kept looking for my children, having delusions that they were on the other side of that door, that they were going to walk in at any moment and I would be able to hold them,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When her family called her in prison and Carol asked after the girls, her mother just said they were “gone.” Rudy said they were “safe.” Carol figured they were at their godparents’ house or her sister’s house.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was her lawyer who told her what happened. The specifics.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I flipped out. I became hysterical and inconsolable. I was screaming,” Carol said. “I did not believe it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What Carol’s case came down to was what the judge believed. She opted for a bench trial, deciding not to take her chances on a jury.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the end, the judge said he thought Carol did suffer from a mental health condition. He said he believed she needed treatment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But the insanity law is the law. He said she would have to get treatment in prison. He sentenced her to three consecutive life sentences. No parole.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>A Successful Insanity Defense\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Angela Burling once stood before a judge like Carol did, after she killed her son. There were a lot of similarities between Angela’s case and Carol’s, except the outcome: One went to prison, and the other went home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I couldn’t have been more fortunate,” Angela said from her home outside Sacramento.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 1983, nine months after Angela gave birth to her second child, Michael, she stopped breastfeeding him abruptly, rather than weaning him gradually as doctors now recommend. She started having strange thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt I had a calling to expunge the world of evil,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She began to believe her husband, Jeff, was Jesus. She was the bride of Christ. And her baby Michael, was the devil.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I felt I needed to drown Michael,” she said. “But then I thought, ‘He’ll come back to life. Jeff will raise him from the dead in three days. Then the world will know: Jeff is Jesus and peace will reign.’ So that’s what I did. I drowned him.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was the thing that made the difference in Angela’s case – her account of what happened fit the strict legal test for insanity. She believed her son was the devil and that killing him was the right thing to do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The judge found her not guilty by reason of insanity. He sentenced her to outpatient treatment, meaning Angela could go home.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Angela recovered. The psychosis went away and Angela has since been doing well taking regular medication for bipolar disorder – doctors now understand women with the disorder have a \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109493/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">30% likelihood\u003c/a> of experiencing postpartum psychosis. Women who have had postpartum psychosis with one pregnancy have a \u003ca href=\"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23651079\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">50% chance\u003c/a> of having it again with a subsequent pregnancy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>So when Angela became pregnant with her third child, she put together a team of top-notch psychiatric providers to be on call. In their care, she was sure the psychosis would not come back, and even if it did, she was certain no harm would come to her baby.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I found out I was pregnant, I was the happiest woman on earth,” she said. “Because I felt like, I have another chance – to raise another baby. And prove I’m a good mom.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She went back to school for her master’s degree in nursing, and when her first marriage frayed under the tensions of what happened, she remarried. She and her second husband have been together for 25 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I feel like what happened to me is what should happen to other women in my situation,” said Angela, now 64. “I make a case for understanding how it can happen to anybody. I could be your sister, or your daughter, or your wife.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Angela believes the way to level the field for all women is for California to adopt a law similar to Britain’s \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide_Act_1938\">Infanticide Act\u003c/a>, which says any woman who kills her baby is presumed to be mentally ill and faces a maximum charge of manslaughter.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Back in 1989, a California senator was so moved by Angela’s story that \u003ca href=\"https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6769000-Senate-Resolution-23-Complete-Apr-4.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">he recommended California adopt a version of this law\u003c/a>. But it never went anywhere.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was a pretty bold resolution,” she said. “I don’t know if society was ready for it then.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Illinois, the one state that has managed to make a small change, now allows judges to give women lower sentences if postpartum mental illness was a factor in her baby’s death. For women already convicted, they could get a new hearing and a reduced sentence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It is the first criminal statute in the U.S. that mentions postpartum psychosis by name. Advocates in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York are considering a similar law.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If California were to follow suit, KQED’s data analysis shows more than 40 women currently in prison could have their cases reheard.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We can’t fail these moms twice,” said Joy Burkhard, executive director of \u003ca href=\"https://www.2020mom.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2020 Mom\u003c/a>, an advocacy group seeking a sponsor for a similar law in California. “They’re failed by the health care system, then again by the legal system.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11800250\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11800250\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"Rudy Coronado reading a letter from Carol.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-1832x1374.jpg 1832w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-1376x1032.jpg 1376w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-1044x783.jpg 1044w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-632x474.jpg 632w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Rudy-Coronado-3-reading-letter-qut-536x402.jpg 536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rudy Coronado reading a letter from Carol at his home in October 2018. \u003ccite>(April Dembosky/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>‘Speak to the Dads’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Rudy Coronado packs up oil, anti-freeze and wiper blades from his stall at the Alpine Village flea market in Los Angeles. He’s been selling auto parts here since his girls were born, about eight years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I used to want to get rich, to leave something for my daughters. That was my fire, that was my fuel,” said Rudy, now 41. “Now, my fire is gone.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He still feels guilty that he didn’t know what was happening to Carol. He still thinks about the way he talked to her or if there was something he could have done to stop it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>So when women’s health advocates asked him for help, he said yes. He always says yes. He speaks at rallies and forums and in the state Legislature. His testimony helped pass a package of laws in 2018, including the one requiring mandatory screening of new moms for postpartum mental illness.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hospitals now also have to \u003ca href=\"http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billCompareClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB3032\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">train staff\u003c/a> how to recognize symptoms, and the state is \u003ca href=\"http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180AB1893\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">applying for more federal money\u003c/a> to do more outreach to families.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I always make it an issue to go and speak to the dads,” Rudy said of his public appearances. “Because no one never talks to the dads.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He tells them: Postpartum mental illness is real. Look for it. Research it. Don’t confuse it with “baby mama drama.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This is a famous thing,” Rudy explained. ” ‘Aw, my baby mama’s trippin.’ Now I tell them, ‘Your baby mama is not trippin. Your baby mama’s going through it.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The work has helped him to understand what happened to Carol that day, but not necessarily to forgive her.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The way I think about it, like, I blame the disease, not Carol,” he said. “It’s not that I forgive Carol. I’ve kind of, somehow, not really blamed her.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11800253\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 800px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-11800253\" src=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-800x600.jpg\" alt=\"Rudy Coronado reading a letter from Carol.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-800x600.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-1020x765.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-1832x1374.jpg 1832w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-1376x1032.jpg 1376w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-1044x783.jpg 1044w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-632x474.jpg 632w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2020/04/Edited_Carol-drawing-close-up-qut-536x402.jpg 536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rudy Coronado shows a drawing that Carol sent to him from prison in November 2017. \u003ccite>(April Dembosky/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003ch2>‘Should Have Been in a Hospital’\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Last October, the Saturday before Carol’s 36th birthday, her parents, David and Julie Piercey, got up at 4 a.m. and drove their Dodge minivan five hours north from Los Angeles to the prison in Chowchilla.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the visiting room with Carol, they didn’t say much. They just played round after round of dominoes. Later in the parking lot, they both said Carol doesn’t belong here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She had no business going to prison,” her dad said. “She should have been in a hospital, period.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That’s all they wanted from an insanity defense, for Carol to go to a place where she could get real treatment. Not a place where she says other inmates beat her up and call her a baby killer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her parents said Carol still says things that don’t make sense.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“She tells us, ‘I’m going to be getting out in a couple of weeks or three weeks or a month,’ ” David said. “It’s heart-wrenching because I know it’s never going to happen.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her dad can’t bring himself to say anything in response. Her mom can’t help but say something.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>” ‘OK Carol. I’ll be happy when you get out, sweetheart!’ ” she said. ” ‘Mama’s waiting for you.’ ”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>These conversations are too hard for Rudy. He doesn’t visit Carol anymore. He hasn’t talked to her on the phone in three years. He said she’s not the same person.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carol still writes to Rudy. He has stacks and stacks of her letters. But he stopped reading those, too. He said she never mentions what happened. She never writes about the girls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She doesn’t even write their names. Just draws cryptic images of threes: three pumpkins, three stars. Three hearts with three letters inside, the girls’ initials: S, Y, X.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>April Dembosky is a health correspondent at KQED public radio and The California Report. She is also a recipient of a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for Mental Health Journalism.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>KQED’s Kate Wolffe contributed research for this story.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Before Apple Watches, Oura Rings and Fitbits delivered mountains of health data to the masses, a group of obsessive self-tracking enthusiasts in Silicon Valley started a movement with the tagline “self-knowledge through numbers.” This was the Quantified Self. From tracking “urges to take aspirin” to using infrared cameras to keep tabs on sleeping positions while snoring, these eccentric knowledge-seekers built a community around technical expertise and an ethos of self-discovery. Reporter Gabriela Glueck traces what happened when self-tracking went mainstream — and how the data-obsessed idealists watched their movement get swallowed up by corporate tech giants with products to sell.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-megaphone wp-block-embed-megaphone\">\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\nhttps://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC7979965838\n\u003c/div>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://bookpassage.com/book/9781523527922\">The Quantified Self: Learning to Observe\u003c/a> — Gary Wolf, \u003cem>Workman Publishing Company\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/data-overload-quantified-self-really-future-n189596\">Data Overload: Is the ‘Quantified Self’ Really the Future?\u003c/a> — John Fortt, \u003cem>NBC News\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/kg8-D4h5miE?si=3_PxJY0A6qK4qz6c\">Wearable Health Tech: Helpful Tool Or Health Hype\u003c/a> — @TalkingWithDocs, \u003cem>YouTube\u003c/em> \u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.seattletimes.com/business/the-cutthroat-wearables-battle-is-about-more-than-tracking-your-fitness/\">The cutthroat wearables battle is about more than tracking your fitness\u003c/a> — Brent Crane, \u003cem>The Seattle Times\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.businessinsider.com/wellness-tracking-apps-sleep-score-stress-hurting-health-2026-6\">Wearables, Health-Tracking Apps Are Stressing Users, Causing Harm\u003c/a> — Emily Stewart, \u003cem>Business Insider\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckbrooks/2026/08/25/the-new-world-of-wearables-from-health-monitoring-to-human-augmentation/\">The New World Of Wearables: From Health Monitoring To Human Augmentation\u003c/a> — Chuck Brooks, \u003cem>Forbes\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> Hey Tabbies! We cover a lot on this show, but it’s basically impossible to keep tabs on everything going on online. So if there is a specific topic or story or rabbit hole you’re curious about that we haven’t done a deep dive into yet, you’re in luck! We just launched a listener question form, so you can ask us about internet trends, tech subcultures, or other online oddities you want Close All Tabs to cover! Check it out at KQED.org/closealltabs, and scroll to the bottom of the page. Or, click the link in our show notes. Ok, let’s get to the episode.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>There’s a good chance you’re being tracked, by you. Nearly one in three U.S. adults uses a wearable device to track their health and fitness. I’m talking Apple Watches, Oura Rings, Fitbits. Even our phones and cars have trackers. We track our sleep, heart rate, steps, location, behaviors, habits, and so much more. Self-tracking has become the norm but it wasn’t always this way.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For much of history, self-tracking was the domain of eccentrics and obsessive academics. They were the freaks to the rest of polite society. Like in the 1600s, Venetian physician, Santorio Santorio built the weighing chair and obsessively tracked his weight. He measured everything he ate and drank, as well as everything that came out of his body. Founding father, Benjamin Franklin, also a meticulous self-tracker. He kept detailed accounts of his daily activities. But these were more than just diary entries. They were detailed charts, a rubric of the 13 virtues he wanted to live up to, logged every day of the week, also known as a habit tracker. And then there’s Buckminster Fuller, the architect, philosopher, inventor, and all-around futurist. From 1917 up until his death in the 1980s, Buckminster Fuller kept an exhaustive archive of his life: newspaper clippings, drawings, blueprints, receipts, and all correspondence. As a lifelong journaler, I aspire to archive my life like that. But again, these were outliers.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Then, in the late 2000s, a group of self-tracking enthusiasts started a movement to create and share ways of obsessively collecting data on themselves. It was called the quantified self. Today, we’re exploring the early days of this obscure tech subculture and what changed when tracking went mainstream. And we’ll try to understand whether our mountains of self-track data are actually helpful.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Ready? This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. This week, I’m passing the mouse and the mic to KQED reporter and producer, Gabriela Glueck. She is going to lead this deep dive.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Thanks, Morgan. I’ll start like you do, by opening a new tab: The Quantified Self Movement. We’re going back to 2007, 2008, a time, technologically speaking, that feels so far from where we are today, you could consider christening it vintage. Apple had just released the first model of something they decided to call the iPhone.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Apple Event]\u003cbr>Voice Over: Apple is going to reinvent the phone.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Lots of people were getting online to join a thing called Facebook.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Film The Social Network (2010)] \u003cbr>\u003cem>Mark Zuckerberg character: That’s what the Facebook is going to be about. People are going to log on because after all the cake and watermelon there’s a chance they’re actually going..\u003cbr>Eduardo Saverin character: …to get laid\u003cbr>Mark Zuckerberg character: …meet a girl. Yes.\u003cbr>Eduardo Saverin character: That is really good.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>And the first Kindle even made its debut.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Kindle Commercial] \u003cbr>Voice Over: Now there’s a way to put 80,000 books, newspapers, and blogs right in the palm of your hand.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Complete with Blackberry-esque buttons that made it look more like a giant calculator than a book. Culturally, things were also a buzz. The final installment of Harry Potter had hit bookstores, Obama was about to get elected, and Rihanna was dropping bangers. -.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Rihanna song] \u003cbr>♪ You can stand under my umbrella. You can stand under my umbrella.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>This was the backdrop that Gary Wolf found himself in.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>I was working as a journalist at that time and writing about the cultural impacts of new technologies.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Gary was working for Wired Magazine, and he’d been getting interested in a new tech trend – self-tracking. More specifically, he was interested in how technology was allowing people to track their lives in novel and interesting ways. Suddenly, you could do things like input everything you ate into an online calculator to track calories, or clock every single restaurant, coffee shop, and store you went to.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>The very first popular geolocation systems were just coming out. So Foursquare, which is ancient now, so people were tracking where they had been.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>And courtesy of 23andMe, you could even spit into a test tube, mail it back to a lab, and log online to find out more about your own DNA. People had begun thinking about themselves and their behaviors as data. It was all enough to make Gary wonder.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>How are we going to use those tools? And what effect were they going to have on how they thought about ourselves?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>That question fascinated Gary. It brought together both his love of new technology with his penchant for philosophizing. So he brought the idea to his editor at Wired Magazine, a guy named Kevin Kelly. Basically saying, ‘hey, this seems really interesting. Nobody is talking about it that much. I feel like we should report on it.’ Then they came up with the name for the new beat.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>We put up some things on a whiteboard and I put the name “quantified self” on it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Quantified self.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>The self is the topic, and the quantified is, okay, what is the effect on the self of having access to data, access to new reasoning capacity, access to observational capacity through sensing.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>When Gary told me the story about how it all went down, the quantified self, or QS, sounded interesting, but still kind of abstract and theoretical. And maybe the Wired duo were dealing with that same feeling because their next step was all about grounding their questions in the real world, finding people who were doing early self-tracking projects and trying to understand why.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>We didn’t know that we would be encountering an already existing DIY culture of knowledge making, but it was there. So where did it come from? How did it get there?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>They decided the best way to get answers would be to bring the stories to them. So they organized a meetup. It was gonna be at Kevin’s house in Pacifica, a coastal bay area town right next to tech’s epicenter. Although they didn’t know what to expect, the turnout was pretty good, about 20 or so people. Being basically right on top of Silicon Valley probably helped them draw a crowd. Anyways, they were all crowded into the space, sitting in an assortment of chairs. All pointed towards the front of the room.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>And we were sitting around talking about what we were doing, very informally, and introducing ourselves, and somebody walked in late, and Kevin turned to him, his name was Ka-Ping Yee,, and said, “okay, you came in last, you go first, what are you doing? “\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Instead of offering up a standard introduction, Ka-Ping Yee opened his computer.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>And showed this detailed time diary of everything he’d done in the last year while he was working on his dissertation in 15-minute increments. And it was so fascinating.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>After Ka-Ping, other people presented their projects. There was Berkeley psychology professor, Seth Roberts.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>I think he presented something about improving his balance. He was measuring it by standing on one foot. And so he would just start a timer and he would stand on one and he would see how long he could stand on a foot for.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>When I talked to engineer and businessman Rajiv Mehta, who was at that first meeting, he said the common reaction from people who showed up was shock, shock that there were enough people nerdy enough to care about this sort of thing at all.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rajiv Mehta: \u003c/strong>And so it was just fantastic that there were other people interested in, just as importantly, to discover the huge range of interests in that tiny little group, which gave us all a sense of, this is much richer than any of us actually had thought.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>And among the attendees were people who’d later go on to become famous, like Tim Ferriss, author of “The Four Hour Workweek.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rajiv Mehta: \u003c/strong>He’d been a wrestler in high school and college and so forth and he talked about how, like, he had these detailed records of what he ate and his exercise and so forth. And he made the claim that even today, if he wanted to hit a certain weight that he would be able to reproduce it by going to his old notes and following them.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Even though everyone’s project was different, a kind of unifying undercurrent ran through the group. They were all the type of people who would spend their free time doing a QS project.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>People were sort of attracted to this kind of self-tracking practice because they had two interests at the same time. On the one hand, they had a personal question that they were really interested in and they were scientific and technical professionals.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>When they had a personal question, it made sense to use the science techie tools they were already familiar with. As Gary tells it,\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Without us really even doing anything, this genre was born.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The Pacifica Meetup became the first of many, something called the Quantified Self Show and Tell.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Like looking back to second grade. And it was really nice and interesting because it wasn’t about pitching anything, it wasn’t about convincing anybody that you had some magic solution, which was very common in the tech world. It was really just about saying what you personally had learned from doing something that you hadn’t necessarily been able to do even a year or two ago with the tools that were available then.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Though they didn’t fully know it at the time, the Pacifica meeting was the start of something, something that was about to get big, or at least bigger. To get into that, let’s open a new tab: quantified self goes mainstream.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>After that first meeting in 2008, QS started to generate some buzz. Gary and his Wired editor, Kevin, made a blog for the quantified self as a way to catalog their discoveries and possibly showcase their incredible tagline, “self-knowledge through numbers. “There was also a QS forum and it gained traction as people shared their idiosyncratic projects and experiences online. Gary says this kind of knowledge sharing was a big part of the early community’s ethos. Very much in line with the budding DIY culture of the late 2000s and early 2010s.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>So people were sharing information on the internet about how to do things that were part really of a professional research repertoire but had started to become available to somewhat technical people to do at home.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>QSers began spreading the show-and-tell format nationally and then internationally. One 2014 report points to over 100 QS meetup groups in 30 countries, with about 20,000 overall participants. Clearly, they’d hit upon something that resonated.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bob Troia: \u003c/strong>It was just a great way to just connect with a community of people all like-minded folks and really just learning from each other.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Bob Troia attended one of the early QS meetings in New York City, after hearing about some Bay Area folks who’d started some kind of self-research movement. He was already interested in tracking himself, and the association with Tim Ferriss didn’t hurt either.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bob Troia: \u003c/strong>And I showed up one day and watched people get these like 10, 12 minute talks about their own self-experiments, very informal, very casual, but it was very inspirational. And then I was like, wow, there’s actually a lot of people out there just, just like me. I’m not the weird one.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Bob quickly got deep into QS. He even visited the Bay Area for a QS conference. After that…\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bob Troia: \u003c/strong>I set up a blog that night like while I was in a hotel room and I just started writing I think my first post and I went and got a domain name quantifiedbob.com\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>If you talk to more people in the early QS movement, you’ll hear a similar story. They were outcasts, nerds, the weird ones tracking their every move. Here’s Gary again.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>I think people who have really intense scientific and technical interests, many of them are used to being outliers in some way.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>He says this outsider identity became something like a point of pride and made the meetups that much more important. When you’re doing something that’s so far from the mainstream, community really matters. It’s kind of hard to imagine today since Apple Watches and self-tracking devices like Oura rings, a wearable smart ring, are so popular. But back in the 2010s, this was really niche stuff. And there was another piece of it. Because the technology was less advanced with way more friction. You had to put in a lot of effort to get data on yourself. Instead of just strapping on an Apple Watch and checking your phone, it was more like…\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Okay I set up an infrared camera and I recorded myself as I slept and tried to figure out if my snoring was connected to my posture.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>To understand just how intensive or well thought out early QS projects were, Gary likes to point to examples, and there are many to choose from. But for the sake of time, we’ll look at one: the story of Jakob Eg Larsen. He’s one of Gary’s friends and co-founder of Quantified Self Copenhagen. His problem? Headaches.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>He took regular medication for those headaches, painkillers, and he decided that he wanted to really understand whether there was some pattern to his headaches and whether there were some things he could do besides take painkillers that would help him.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Step one for Jakob, figure out how to measure a headache.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>And he found it surprisingly difficult. There are so many apps for recording headaches, but they require you to make a lot of subtle judgments like, ‘okay, my headache started and now I think it’s gone and now it’s back again. Does that count as one headache or two headaches?’\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Gary calls these moments of evaluation “little frictions.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>They’re just demoralizing and they become a bother.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Jakob needed to come up with a better metric, narrow his focus, figure out what data he could get that could help him understand his problem. So he decided to track each time he took an aspirin. That’d mean the headache had reached a certain threshold worth noting.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>So he just focused on observing. He didn’t focus on intervening. And already he started to learn a lot.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>He learned he was taking aspirins more than he thought, and more than was recommended. One side effect of too much aspirin consumption? More headaches.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>By tracking the aspirins, he sort of adjusted his willingness to sit with the headache a little bit longer before taking the aspirin, and eventually his headaches got better and his aspirin consumption went to zero.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>But Jakob wanted to keep up his tracking, so he refined his data metric, this time to the urge to take aspirin.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>So this was a wonderful example of being able to get really useful empirical data from your daily life, even though you’re not really following any kind of pre-established or vetted protocol that comes to us from biomedicine.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>This project is a classic example of many early self-tracking efforts. It took a lot of thinking, refining, and all in all, a lot mental work. Also, it didn’t necessarily take fancy technology, just a little persistence. And for many people who were, for lack of a better word, desperate to learn something about themselves, that effort was worth it. Take Swedish engineer Sara Riggare. She’s quite famous in the QS world and has done many self-experiments, including one to help her understand how medication for her Parkinson’s was actually impacting her. Here she is in a short video from Salzburg Global.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Salzburg Global Video]\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>Sara Riggare: Patients can do a lot for themselves in that I have actually optimized my own medication effect by learning about my individual responses over time.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>As she likes to point out, many patients see their neurologist or doctor once or twice a year, maybe for an hour or less. The rest of the year is self-care.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>If you have a good medical practitioner, they are gonna use a lot of trial and error with you. They’re gonna ask you, ‘how did that work?’ And you’re getting a better answer about how that worked is very helpful.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Projects like Sarah’s and Jacob’s helped reveal the potential of self-investigation.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>So there was this feeling that there were new possibilities. They hadn’t been turned into products yet. At those very early meetings, you know, we were just meeting the people who would go on to start Oura Ring and the Fitbit and other tools that were just a few years down the road.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>But of course, if an impulse can be had, it can be sold. That’s next, after this break.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In 2014, Tim Cook walked onto the Apple stage wearing an Apple Watch, the ad for Apple’s first watch iteration playing on the screen.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Apple’s September 2014 Event] \u003cbr>Tim Cook: Apple Watch is the most personal device we’ve ever created.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Because you wear it, he says, they invented new, intimate ways to connect and communicate directly from your wrist.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Apple’s September 2014 Event] \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003cem>Tim Cook: And it’s also a comprehensive health and fitness device.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>By 2014, the Fitbit had already been out for a fat minute, and the Oura ring was just around the corner. And as the 2010s climbed to their peak, Gary says something about the QS movement started to shift too.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>There’s a way in which those ideas have become very mainstream. And when that happens, you don’t necessarily need a special place to work them through. Like, okay, I’m the only one doing this, I’m using these DIY tools, I need to meet some other people so I don’t feel like I’m crazy to apply scientific methods to my own questions. That stopped really being the case.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>A blog from the time declared the quantified self-movement dead, but many QS enthusiasts online begged to differ. One commentator on the QS forum wrote, It’s a bit dystopian to think that big companies can/should/will replace the basic agency of I want to understand something in my life by handing answers to people. But of course, in some ways, that’s what happened. And the questions that first drew Gary in, ‘how people would use the technology’ and ‘how it would shape their lives’ were no longer being answered by a careful group of self-experimenters, but by everyone else. Which brings us to a new tab: Is all this tracking actually helping us?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>These days, wearable tracking devices are everywhere, and they collect health data seamlessly. So what’s the impact of all this automated number crunching? Are we any healthier or happier? Have we all finally achieved self-understanding? And what, if anything, have we lost? To help answer these questions, I’m fast forwarding. From where we left off around 2017, 2018 to present day.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The term “obsessive tracker” has now taken on a different meaning. It’s for people obsessed with their Fitbits, not their infrared camera setup that helps them track their posture in relation to snoring. I figured I needed to talk to someone who had at one point been a bit of an obsessive tracker. So I called up the host of this very show, Morgan Sung. She got into the whole thing a couple years back, when she switched her ADHD meds and realized they weren’t really working.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And I was having like these really weird reactions and like, I was so sweaty and my heart rate was like kind of all over the place and I just like felt kind of sick all the time.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>As one does, Morgan got on Reddit and came across a post from a user recounting a similar experience. That user was wearing an Oura ring when it all happened and was able to collect some data validating their symptoms. So Morgan got a ring.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I was like, for the next two weeks, I’m going to be a little bit miserable, but I can probably at least see if like what I’m feeling is real or maybe I’m just making it up. Cause I think I was, like, oh, maybe, maybe this is purely psychosomatic.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Turns out it was real. Her heart rate and body temperature were spiking dramatically throughout the day. And Morgan says it was kind of reassuring to have what she thought she was feeling confirmed by data.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Especially if you’re a marginalized person in any way who is maybe not often listened to by doctors.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The Oura Ring was also giving her insight into things she hadn’t necessarily asked for and offered up mountains of sleep data. Over time, her relationship with the device began to change.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So at first it started as a novelty, and then I think, yeah, it did kind of become a little bit of a compulsion. I don’t think it was, like, obsessive, but, you know, I would, like, wake up in the morning, turn off my alarm, open the app, and check how I slept instead of just thinking, hmm, I slept this way. You know?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>If the app said she slept badly, it’d put a damper on her day, even if she herself disagreed. If she went out drinking with friends the night before, her ring would clock that. If she pushed herself harder at the gym, she’d find herself wondering what her ring would say, if it would notice, if would tell her she did well. After a while, it all started to get into her head.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I think like trying to optimize my body in that way made me feel like I was having less fun in my life.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Then something happened that forced her to cut ties with the ring for good.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>She lost the charger. I was visiting my parents on the other side of the country and I left it at their house. I was like, I’m not gonna buy a new charger. I’m just gonna go visit my parents and pick up my charger then. And it was funny because I went back home and my charger wasn’t there. And at that point, I think I just, I don’t know, it fizzled out. The novelty wore off and I guess I was, like, wow, I don’t know if this has added to my life significantly. I felt like I wasn’t missing anything.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Morgan likens her experience before, during, and after wearing her Oura ring to this meme that’s popular online. It has three characters in it, all at different stages of enlightenment about wearable trackers. On the far left of the spectrum is this guy who’s a total beginner. He’s never touched a wearable. He thinks the whole idea is stupid. Then in the middle, there’s a guy who has become obsessed with them, kind of like Morgan at the height of her Oura-ring obsession. And he’s like…\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Oh, I wear the wearables. I know I can’t sleep without my Oura ring. I need to use my Whoop, or I need my Apple Watch to tell me if I slept well. And then on the far right is this guy who’s reached full enlightenment. Like, very sage-looking, hooded figure who’s like, you don’t need a wearable to be happy. These days, Morgan says she feels more like him. I think wearables can be really helpful, but I do kind of feel like that meme sometimes where I’m like, oh, you know, I can trust my body. I can be intuitive. You know, I can, kind of, trust myself to tell when something is feeling off.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Of course, this is just Morgan’s story, but take a look at the Oura Ring Forum and you’ll find similar tales. Still, I was curious if at a large scale these tracking devices are helpful for most people. So I gave Australian sociologist Deborah Lupton a call. She studied health tracking for quite a long time and she gave me a very good scientist answer: kinda, maybe, sometimes.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Deborah Lupton: \u003c/strong>I’ve done research where people have said, look I’m bored with self-tracking, I’ve had enough of it, I’m just, you know, it hasn’t helped me, so I’m stopping. I’ve had research findings where people have said, say with chronic health conditions that on the one hand, yes it gives me control over my condition, it makes me feel as I have more control, but on the other hand I’m sick of it. It’s turning my home into a clinic. It’s complicated.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Take some of the recent research on sleep trackers, for instance. One survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine says that more than half of adults who use sleep trackers say they’ve changed their sleep habits based on what they’ve learned. So on one hand, tracking can encourage healthy habits. But this effort at sleepmaxing, like so many optimization dreams, can also hurt.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Deborah Lupton: \u003c/strong>In fact, in some ways it can make things worse because we know from sleep studies and studies with people with insomnia that the more you fret and worry about your sleep, the more it can then have this vicious circle where you can’t sleep.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>For Gary’s part, these tracking devices have kind of lost the plot of what the original quantified self-movement was all about, an approach to self-discovery, not a technology or a product.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>The idea is something like I’m just gonna get the tool and something great is gonna happen. But what did you care about? That question was never answered.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The early days, that first meeting in Pacifica, the thousands of personalized science projects, they all took so much effort, thinking, adjustment, and reflection. Just strapping on an Apple Watch, he’d argue, can’t be a replacement for all that.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>I think, thinking about what’s going on and learning about what is going on with yourself, it requires active processing, right? Being told what’s happening is not the same thing as learning what’s happening from observation.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The effort, it turns out, was part of the quest for self-knowledge too.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>That whole process led to a kind of deeper insight, which is commercial self-tracking tools, they’re products and products are designed to serve people who have needs, specific needs. They’re fantastic if that’s your goal. What if your goal lies outside that area where all the attention has been focused? Nobody’s gonna make a product for you.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>These days, the movement, if it should be called that, is in a limbo state. One QS member told me that COVID basically killed the last of the meetups, although apparently there are some people trying to pick them back up. Gary says that for anyone wanting to carry on the spirit of quantified self, he has one piece of advice.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Don’t start with the data. That’s often a big mistake.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Start with the question and work backwards. Ask yourself what it is about yourself you want to learn. Then become your own personal scientist, figuring out how you might answer it, going back to the drawing board again and again and again.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Like, scientific practice and a scientific mindset, it belongs to absolutely everybody. And if we want to solve problems, it helps to think about them.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>It feels like an obvious takeaway, but maybe these days it’s not.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That was KQED reporter and producer, Gabriela Glueck. That’s it for today’s deep dive. If you need to open more tabs on the quantified self-movement and the mass adoption of wearable trackers, check out the show notes for some further reading. And if that’s not enough, stick around after the credits for some bonus content. And if you need to close your rings or whatever, well, that’s not my problem. I’m finally free from the wearables. Okay, let’s close all these tabs.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was reported by Gabriela Glueck. It was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. The Close All Tabs team also includes editor, Chris Hambrick and audio engineer, Brendan Willard. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our director of podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor-in-chief.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local. This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran, and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. Thanks for listening.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I thought Apple Watches, and I still do, and I maintain this, I’m sorry if you get offended, anyone else, I think Apple Watches are very ugly. I’m so sorry to anyone who wears an Apple Watch, but I will not get that tan line. Like, I have yet to see a wearable tracker that isn’t a little bit heinous.\u003c/p>\n",
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"The Quantified Self: Learning to Observe — Gary Wolf, Workman Publishing Company",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> Hey Tabbies! We cover a lot on this show, but it’s basically impossible to keep tabs on everything going on online. So if there is a specific topic or story or rabbit hole you’re curious about that we haven’t done a deep dive into yet, you’re in luck! We just launched a listener question form, so you can ask us about internet trends, tech subcultures, or other online oddities you want Close All Tabs to cover! Check it out at KQED.org/closealltabs, and scroll to the bottom of the page. Or, click the link in our show notes. Ok, let’s get to the episode.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> Hey Tabbies! We cover a lot on this show, but it’s basically impossible to keep tabs on everything going on online. So if there is a specific topic or story or rabbit hole you’re curious about that we haven’t done a deep dive into yet, you’re in luck! We just launched a listener question form, so you can ask us about internet trends, tech subcultures, or other online oddities you want Close All Tabs to cover! Check it out at KQED.org/closealltabs, and scroll to the bottom of the page. Or, click the link in our show notes. Ok, let’s get to the episode.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>There’s a good chance you’re being tracked, by you. Nearly one in three U.S. adults uses a wearable device to track their health and fitness. I’m talking Apple Watches, Oura Rings, Fitbits. Even our phones and cars have trackers. We track our sleep, heart rate, steps, location, behaviors, habits, and so much more. Self-tracking has become the norm but it wasn’t always this way.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>There’s a good chance you’re being tracked, by you. Nearly one in three U.S. adults uses a wearable device to track their health and fitness. I’m talking Apple Watches, Oura Rings, Fitbits. Even our phones and cars have trackers. We track our sleep, heart rate, steps, location, behaviors, habits, and so much more. Self-tracking has become the norm but it wasn’t always this way.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>For much of history, self-tracking was the domain of eccentrics and obsessive academics. They were the freaks to the rest of polite society. Like in the 1600s, Venetian physician, Santorio Santorio built the weighing chair and obsessively tracked his weight. He measured everything he ate and drank, as well as everything that came out of his body. Founding father, Benjamin Franklin, also a meticulous self-tracker. He kept detailed accounts of his daily activities. But these were more than just diary entries. They were detailed charts, a rubric of the 13 virtues he wanted to live up to, logged every day of the week, also known as a habit tracker. And then there’s Buckminster Fuller, the architect, philosopher, inventor, and all-around futurist. From 1917 up until his death in the 1980s, Buckminster Fuller kept an exhaustive archive of his life: newspaper clippings, drawings, blueprints, receipts, and all correspondence. As a lifelong journaler, I aspire to archive my life like that. But again, these were outliers.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>For much of history, self-tracking was the domain of eccentrics and obsessive academics. They were the freaks to the rest of polite society. Like in the 1600s, Venetian physician, Santorio Santorio built the weighing chair and obsessively tracked his weight. He measured everything he ate and drank, as well as everything that came out of his body. Founding father, Benjamin Franklin, also a meticulous self-tracker. He kept detailed accounts of his daily activities. But these were more than just diary entries. They were detailed charts, a rubric of the 13 virtues he wanted to live up to, logged every day of the week, also known as a habit tracker. And then there’s Buckminster Fuller, the architect, philosopher, inventor, and all-around futurist. From 1917 up until his death in the 1980s, Buckminster Fuller kept an exhaustive archive of his life: newspaper clippings, drawings, blueprints, receipts, and all correspondence. As a lifelong journaler, I aspire to archive my life like that. But again, these were outliers.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Then, in the late 2000s, a group of self-tracking enthusiasts started a movement to create and share ways of obsessively collecting data on themselves. It was called the quantified self. Today, we’re exploring the early days of this obscure tech subculture and what changed when tracking went mainstream. And we’ll try to understand whether our mountains of self-track data are actually helpful.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Ready? This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. This week, I’m passing the mouse and the mic to KQED reporter and producer, Gabriela Glueck. She is going to lead this deep dive.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Thanks, Morgan. I’ll start like you do, by opening a new tab: The Quantified Self Movement. We’re going back to 2007, 2008, a time, technologically speaking, that feels so far from where we are today, you could consider christening it vintage. Apple had just released the first model of something they decided to call the iPhone.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Thanks, Morgan. I’ll start like you do, by opening a new tab: The Quantified Self Movement. We’re going back to 2007, 2008, a time, technologically speaking, that feels so far from where we are today, you could consider christening it vintage. Apple had just released the first model of something they decided to call the iPhone.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>This was the backdrop that Gary Wolf found himself in.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>I was working as a journalist at that time and writing about the cultural impacts of new technologies.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Gary was working for Wired Magazine, and he’d been getting interested in a new tech trend – self-tracking. More specifically, he was interested in how technology was allowing people to track their lives in novel and interesting ways. Suddenly, you could do things like input everything you ate into an online calculator to track calories, or clock every single restaurant, coffee shop, and store you went to.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>The very first popular geolocation systems were just coming out. So Foursquare, which is ancient now, so people were tracking where they had been.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>And courtesy of 23andMe, you could even spit into a test tube, mail it back to a lab, and log online to find out more about your own DNA. People had begun thinking about themselves and their behaviors as data. It was all enough to make Gary wonder.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>How are we going to use those tools? And what effect were they going to have on how they thought about ourselves?\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>That question fascinated Gary. It brought together both his love of new technology with his penchant for philosophizing. So he brought the idea to his editor at Wired Magazine, a guy named Kevin Kelly. Basically saying, ‘hey, this seems really interesting. Nobody is talking about it that much. I feel like we should report on it.’ Then they came up with the name for the new beat.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>We put up some things on a whiteboard and I put the name “quantified self” on it.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Quantified self.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>The self is the topic, and the quantified is, okay, what is the effect on the self of having access to data, access to new reasoning capacity, access to observational capacity through sensing.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>When Gary told me the story about how it all went down, the quantified self, or QS, sounded interesting, but still kind of abstract and theoretical. And maybe the Wired duo were dealing with that same feeling because their next step was all about grounding their questions in the real world, finding people who were doing early self-tracking projects and trying to understand why.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>We didn’t know that we would be encountering an already existing DIY culture of knowledge making, but it was there. So where did it come from? How did it get there?\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>They decided the best way to get answers would be to bring the stories to them. So they organized a meetup. It was gonna be at Kevin’s house in Pacifica, a coastal bay area town right next to tech’s epicenter. Although they didn’t know what to expect, the turnout was pretty good, about 20 or so people. Being basically right on top of Silicon Valley probably helped them draw a crowd. Anyways, they were all crowded into the space, sitting in an assortment of chairs. All pointed towards the front of the room.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>They decided the best way to get answers would be to bring the stories to them. So they organized a meetup. It was gonna be at Kevin’s house in Pacifica, a coastal bay area town right next to tech’s epicenter. Although they didn’t know what to expect, the turnout was pretty good, about 20 or so people. Being basically right on top of Silicon Valley probably helped them draw a crowd. Anyways, they were all crowded into the space, sitting in an assortment of chairs. All pointed towards the front of the room.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>And we were sitting around talking about what we were doing, very informally, and introducing ourselves, and somebody walked in late, and Kevin turned to him, his name was Ka-Ping Yee,, and said, “okay, you came in last, you go first, what are you doing? “\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>And we were sitting around talking about what we were doing, very informally, and introducing ourselves, and somebody walked in late, and Kevin turned to him, his name was Ka-Ping Yee,, and said, “okay, you came in last, you go first, what are you doing? “\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Instead of offering up a standard introduction, Ka-Ping Yee opened his computer.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>And showed this detailed time diary of everything he’d done in the last year while he was working on his dissertation in 15-minute increments. And it was so fascinating.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>After Ka-Ping, other people presented their projects. There was Berkeley psychology professor, Seth Roberts.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>I think he presented something about improving his balance. He was measuring it by standing on one foot. And so he would just start a timer and he would stand on one and he would see how long he could stand on a foot for.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>When I talked to engineer and businessman Rajiv Mehta, who was at that first meeting, he said the common reaction from people who showed up was shock, shock that there were enough people nerdy enough to care about this sort of thing at all.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rajiv Mehta: \u003c/strong>And so it was just fantastic that there were other people interested in, just as importantly, to discover the huge range of interests in that tiny little group, which gave us all a sense of, this is much richer than any of us actually had thought.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rajiv Mehta: \u003c/strong>And so it was just fantastic that there were other people interested in, just as importantly, to discover the huge range of interests in that tiny little group, which gave us all a sense of, this is much richer than any of us actually had thought.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>And among the attendees were people who’d later go on to become famous, like Tim Ferriss, author of “The Four Hour Workweek.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>And among the attendees were people who’d later go on to become famous, like Tim Ferriss, author of “The Four Hour Workweek.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rajiv Mehta: \u003c/strong>He’d been a wrestler in high school and college and so forth and he talked about how, like, he had these detailed records of what he ate and his exercise and so forth. And he made the claim that even today, if he wanted to hit a certain weight that he would be able to reproduce it by going to his old notes and following them.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rajiv Mehta: \u003c/strong>He’d been a wrestler in high school and college and so forth and he talked about how, like, he had these detailed records of what he ate and his exercise and so forth. And he made the claim that even today, if he wanted to hit a certain weight that he would be able to reproduce it by going to his old notes and following them.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Even though everyone’s project was different, a kind of unifying undercurrent ran through the group. They were all the type of people who would spend their free time doing a QS project.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Even though everyone’s project was different, a kind of unifying undercurrent ran through the group. They were all the type of people who would spend their free time doing a QS project.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>People were sort of attracted to this kind of self-tracking practice because they had two interests at the same time. On the one hand, they had a personal question that they were really interested in and they were scientific and technical professionals.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>People were sort of attracted to this kind of self-tracking practice because they had two interests at the same time. On the one hand, they had a personal question that they were really interested in and they were scientific and technical professionals.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>When they had a personal question, it made sense to use the science techie tools they were already familiar with. As Gary tells it,\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>When they had a personal question, it made sense to use the science techie tools they were already familiar with. As Gary tells it,\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Without us really even doing anything, this genre was born.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Without us really even doing anything, this genre was born.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The Pacifica Meetup became the first of many, something called the Quantified Self Show and Tell.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The Pacifica Meetup became the first of many, something called the Quantified Self Show and Tell.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Like looking back to second grade. And it was really nice and interesting because it wasn’t about pitching anything, it wasn’t about convincing anybody that you had some magic solution, which was very common in the tech world. It was really just about saying what you personally had learned from doing something that you hadn’t necessarily been able to do even a year or two ago with the tools that were available then.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Like looking back to second grade. And it was really nice and interesting because it wasn’t about pitching anything, it wasn’t about convincing anybody that you had some magic solution, which was very common in the tech world. It was really just about saying what you personally had learned from doing something that you hadn’t necessarily been able to do even a year or two ago with the tools that were available then.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Though they didn’t fully know it at the time, the Pacifica meeting was the start of something, something that was about to get big, or at least bigger. To get into that, let’s open a new tab: quantified self goes mainstream.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Though they didn’t fully know it at the time, the Pacifica meeting was the start of something, something that was about to get big, or at least bigger. To get into that, let’s open a new tab: quantified self goes mainstream.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>After that first meeting in 2008, QS started to generate some buzz. Gary and his Wired editor, Kevin, made a blog for the quantified self as a way to catalog their discoveries and possibly showcase their incredible tagline, “self-knowledge through numbers. “There was also a QS forum and it gained traction as people shared their idiosyncratic projects and experiences online. Gary says this kind of knowledge sharing was a big part of the early community’s ethos. Very much in line with the budding DIY culture of the late 2000s and early 2010s.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>After that first meeting in 2008, QS started to generate some buzz. Gary and his Wired editor, Kevin, made a blog for the quantified self as a way to catalog their discoveries and possibly showcase their incredible tagline, “self-knowledge through numbers. “There was also a QS forum and it gained traction as people shared their idiosyncratic projects and experiences online. Gary says this kind of knowledge sharing was a big part of the early community’s ethos. Very much in line with the budding DIY culture of the late 2000s and early 2010s.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>So people were sharing information on the internet about how to do things that were part really of a professional research repertoire but had started to become available to somewhat technical people to do at home.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>So people were sharing information on the internet about how to do things that were part really of a professional research repertoire but had started to become available to somewhat technical people to do at home.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>QSers began spreading the show-and-tell format nationally and then internationally. One 2014 report points to over 100 QS meetup groups in 30 countries, with about 20,000 overall participants. Clearly, they’d hit upon something that resonated.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>QSers began spreading the show-and-tell format nationally and then internationally. One 2014 report points to over 100 QS meetup groups in 30 countries, with about 20,000 overall participants. Clearly, they’d hit upon something that resonated.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bob Troia: \u003c/strong>It was just a great way to just connect with a community of people all like-minded folks and really just learning from each other.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bob Troia: \u003c/strong>It was just a great way to just connect with a community of people all like-minded folks and really just learning from each other.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Bob Troia attended one of the early QS meetings in New York City, after hearing about some Bay Area folks who’d started some kind of self-research movement. He was already interested in tracking himself, and the association with Tim Ferriss didn’t hurt either.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Bob Troia attended one of the early QS meetings in New York City, after hearing about some Bay Area folks who’d started some kind of self-research movement. He was already interested in tracking himself, and the association with Tim Ferriss didn’t hurt either.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bob Troia: \u003c/strong>And I showed up one day and watched people get these like 10, 12 minute talks about their own self-experiments, very informal, very casual, but it was very inspirational. And then I was like, wow, there’s actually a lot of people out there just, just like me. I’m not the weird one.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bob Troia: \u003c/strong>And I showed up one day and watched people get these like 10, 12 minute talks about their own self-experiments, very informal, very casual, but it was very inspirational. And then I was like, wow, there’s actually a lot of people out there just, just like me. I’m not the weird one.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Bob quickly got deep into QS. He even visited the Bay Area for a QS conference. After that…\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Bob quickly got deep into QS. He even visited the Bay Area for a QS conference. After that…\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bob Troia: \u003c/strong>I set up a blog that night like while I was in a hotel room and I just started writing I think my first post and I went and got a domain name quantifiedbob.com\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bob Troia: \u003c/strong>I set up a blog that night like while I was in a hotel room and I just started writing I think my first post and I went and got a domain name quantifiedbob.com\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>If you talk to more people in the early QS movement, you’ll hear a similar story. They were outcasts, nerds, the weird ones tracking their every move. Here’s Gary again.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>If you talk to more people in the early QS movement, you’ll hear a similar story. They were outcasts, nerds, the weird ones tracking their every move. Here’s Gary again.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>I think people who have really intense scientific and technical interests, many of them are used to being outliers in some way.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>He says this outsider identity became something like a point of pride and made the meetups that much more important. When you’re doing something that’s so far from the mainstream, community really matters. It’s kind of hard to imagine today since Apple Watches and self-tracking devices like Oura rings, a wearable smart ring, are so popular. But back in the 2010s, this was really niche stuff. And there was another piece of it. Because the technology was less advanced with way more friction. You had to put in a lot of effort to get data on yourself. Instead of just strapping on an Apple Watch and checking your phone, it was more like…\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Okay I set up an infrared camera and I recorded myself as I slept and tried to figure out if my snoring was connected to my posture.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Okay I set up an infrared camera and I recorded myself as I slept and tried to figure out if my snoring was connected to my posture.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>To understand just how intensive or well thought out early QS projects were, Gary likes to point to examples, and there are many to choose from. But for the sake of time, we’ll look at one: the story of Jakob Eg Larsen. He’s one of Gary’s friends and co-founder of Quantified Self Copenhagen. His problem? Headaches.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>To understand just how intensive or well thought out early QS projects were, Gary likes to point to examples, and there are many to choose from. But for the sake of time, we’ll look at one: the story of Jakob Eg Larsen. He’s one of Gary’s friends and co-founder of Quantified Self Copenhagen. His problem? Headaches.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>He took regular medication for those headaches, painkillers, and he decided that he wanted to really understand whether there was some pattern to his headaches and whether there were some things he could do besides take painkillers that would help him.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>He took regular medication for those headaches, painkillers, and he decided that he wanted to really understand whether there was some pattern to his headaches and whether there were some things he could do besides take painkillers that would help him.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Step one for Jakob, figure out how to measure a headache.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Step one for Jakob, figure out how to measure a headache.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>And he found it surprisingly difficult. There are so many apps for recording headaches, but they require you to make a lot of subtle judgments like, ‘okay, my headache started and now I think it’s gone and now it’s back again. Does that count as one headache or two headaches?’\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>And he found it surprisingly difficult. There are so many apps for recording headaches, but they require you to make a lot of subtle judgments like, ‘okay, my headache started and now I think it’s gone and now it’s back again. Does that count as one headache or two headaches?’\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Gary calls these moments of evaluation “little frictions.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>They’re just demoralizing and they become a bother.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Jakob needed to come up with a better metric, narrow his focus, figure out what data he could get that could help him understand his problem. So he decided to track each time he took an aspirin. That’d mean the headache had reached a certain threshold worth noting.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Jakob needed to come up with a better metric, narrow his focus, figure out what data he could get that could help him understand his problem. So he decided to track each time he took an aspirin. That’d mean the headache had reached a certain threshold worth noting.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>So he just focused on observing. He didn’t focus on intervening. And already he started to learn a lot.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>He learned he was taking aspirins more than he thought, and more than was recommended. One side effect of too much aspirin consumption? More headaches.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>He learned he was taking aspirins more than he thought, and more than was recommended. One side effect of too much aspirin consumption? More headaches.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>By tracking the aspirins, he sort of adjusted his willingness to sit with the headache a little bit longer before taking the aspirin, and eventually his headaches got better and his aspirin consumption went to zero.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>By tracking the aspirins, he sort of adjusted his willingness to sit with the headache a little bit longer before taking the aspirin, and eventually his headaches got better and his aspirin consumption went to zero.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>But Jakob wanted to keep up his tracking, so he refined his data metric, this time to the urge to take aspirin.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>But Jakob wanted to keep up his tracking, so he refined his data metric, this time to the urge to take aspirin.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>So this was a wonderful example of being able to get really useful empirical data from your daily life, even though you’re not really following any kind of pre-established or vetted protocol that comes to us from biomedicine.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>So this was a wonderful example of being able to get really useful empirical data from your daily life, even though you’re not really following any kind of pre-established or vetted protocol that comes to us from biomedicine.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>This project is a classic example of many early self-tracking efforts. It took a lot of thinking, refining, and all in all, a lot mental work. Also, it didn’t necessarily take fancy technology, just a little persistence. And for many people who were, for lack of a better word, desperate to learn something about themselves, that effort was worth it. Take Swedish engineer Sara Riggare. She’s quite famous in the QS world and has done many self-experiments, including one to help her understand how medication for her Parkinson’s was actually impacting her. Here she is in a short video from Salzburg Global.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>This project is a classic example of many early self-tracking efforts. It took a lot of thinking, refining, and all in all, a lot mental work. Also, it didn’t necessarily take fancy technology, just a little persistence. And for many people who were, for lack of a better word, desperate to learn something about themselves, that effort was worth it. Take Swedish engineer Sara Riggare. She’s quite famous in the QS world and has done many self-experiments, including one to help her understand how medication for her Parkinson’s was actually impacting her. Here she is in a short video from Salzburg Global.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Salzburg Global Video]\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>Sara Riggare: Patients can do a lot for themselves in that I have actually optimized my own medication effect by learning about my individual responses over time.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Salzburg Global Video]\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>Sara Riggare: Patients can do a lot for themselves in that I have actually optimized my own medication effect by learning about my individual responses over time.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>As she likes to point out, many patients see their neurologist or doctor once or twice a year, maybe for an hour or less. The rest of the year is self-care.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>As she likes to point out, many patients see their neurologist or doctor once or twice a year, maybe for an hour or less. The rest of the year is self-care.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>If you have a good medical practitioner, they are gonna use a lot of trial and error with you. They’re gonna ask you, ‘how did that work?’ And you’re getting a better answer about how that worked is very helpful.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>If you have a good medical practitioner, they are gonna use a lot of trial and error with you. They’re gonna ask you, ‘how did that work?’ And you’re getting a better answer about how that worked is very helpful.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Projects like Sarah’s and Jacob’s helped reveal the potential of self-investigation.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Projects like Sarah’s and Jacob’s helped reveal the potential of self-investigation.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>So there was this feeling that there were new possibilities. They hadn’t been turned into products yet. At those very early meetings, you know, we were just meeting the people who would go on to start Oura Ring and the Fitbit and other tools that were just a few years down the road.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>So there was this feeling that there were new possibilities. They hadn’t been turned into products yet. At those very early meetings, you know, we were just meeting the people who would go on to start Oura Ring and the Fitbit and other tools that were just a few years down the road.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>But of course, if an impulse can be had, it can be sold. That’s next, after this break.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>But of course, if an impulse can be had, it can be sold. That’s next, after this break.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In 2014, Tim Cook walked onto the Apple stage wearing an Apple Watch, the ad for Apple’s first watch iteration playing on the screen.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In 2014, Tim Cook walked onto the Apple stage wearing an Apple Watch, the ad for Apple’s first watch iteration playing on the screen.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Apple’s September 2014 Event] \u003cbr>Tim Cook: Apple Watch is the most personal device we’ve ever created.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Apple’s September 2014 Event] \u003cbr>Tim Cook: Apple Watch is the most personal device we’ve ever created.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Because you wear it, he says, they invented new, intimate ways to connect and communicate directly from your wrist.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Because you wear it, he says, they invented new, intimate ways to connect and communicate directly from your wrist.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Apple’s September 2014 Event] \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003cem>Tim Cook: And it’s also a comprehensive health and fitness device.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Apple’s September 2014 Event] \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003cem>Tim Cook: And it’s also a comprehensive health and fitness device.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>By 2014, the Fitbit had already been out for a fat minute, and the Oura ring was just around the corner. And as the 2010s climbed to their peak, Gary says something about the QS movement started to shift too.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>By 2014, the Fitbit had already been out for a fat minute, and the Oura ring was just around the corner. And as the 2010s climbed to their peak, Gary says something about the QS movement started to shift too.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>There’s a way in which those ideas have become very mainstream. And when that happens, you don’t necessarily need a special place to work them through. Like, okay, I’m the only one doing this, I’m using these DIY tools, I need to meet some other people so I don’t feel like I’m crazy to apply scientific methods to my own questions. That stopped really being the case.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>There’s a way in which those ideas have become very mainstream. And when that happens, you don’t necessarily need a special place to work them through. Like, okay, I’m the only one doing this, I’m using these DIY tools, I need to meet some other people so I don’t feel like I’m crazy to apply scientific methods to my own questions. That stopped really being the case.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>A blog from the time declared the quantified self-movement dead, but many QS enthusiasts online begged to differ. One commentator on the QS forum wrote, It’s a bit dystopian to think that big companies can/should/will replace the basic agency of I want to understand something in my life by handing answers to people. But of course, in some ways, that’s what happened. And the questions that first drew Gary in, ‘how people would use the technology’ and ‘how it would shape their lives’ were no longer being answered by a careful group of self-experimenters, but by everyone else. Which brings us to a new tab: Is all this tracking actually helping us?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>A blog from the time declared the quantified self-movement dead, but many QS enthusiasts online begged to differ. One commentator on the QS forum wrote, It’s a bit dystopian to think that big companies can/should/will replace the basic agency of I want to understand something in my life by handing answers to people. But of course, in some ways, that’s what happened. And the questions that first drew Gary in, ‘how people would use the technology’ and ‘how it would shape their lives’ were no longer being answered by a careful group of self-experimenters, but by everyone else. Which brings us to a new tab: Is all this tracking actually helping us?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>These days, wearable tracking devices are everywhere, and they collect health data seamlessly. So what’s the impact of all this automated number crunching? Are we any healthier or happier? Have we all finally achieved self-understanding? And what, if anything, have we lost? To help answer these questions, I’m fast forwarding. From where we left off around 2017, 2018 to present day.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>These days, wearable tracking devices are everywhere, and they collect health data seamlessly. So what’s the impact of all this automated number crunching? Are we any healthier or happier? Have we all finally achieved self-understanding? And what, if anything, have we lost? To help answer these questions, I’m fast forwarding. From where we left off around 2017, 2018 to present day.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The term “obsessive tracker” has now taken on a different meaning. It’s for people obsessed with their Fitbits, not their infrared camera setup that helps them track their posture in relation to snoring. I figured I needed to talk to someone who had at one point been a bit of an obsessive tracker. So I called up the host of this very show, Morgan Sung. She got into the whole thing a couple years back, when she switched her ADHD meds and realized they weren’t really working.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The term “obsessive tracker” has now taken on a different meaning. It’s for people obsessed with their Fitbits, not their infrared camera setup that helps them track their posture in relation to snoring. I figured I needed to talk to someone who had at one point been a bit of an obsessive tracker. So I called up the host of this very show, Morgan Sung. She got into the whole thing a couple years back, when she switched her ADHD meds and realized they weren’t really working.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And I was having like these really weird reactions and like, I was so sweaty and my heart rate was like kind of all over the place and I just like felt kind of sick all the time.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And I was having like these really weird reactions and like, I was so sweaty and my heart rate was like kind of all over the place and I just like felt kind of sick all the time.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>As one does, Morgan got on Reddit and came across a post from a user recounting a similar experience. That user was wearing an Oura ring when it all happened and was able to collect some data validating their symptoms. So Morgan got a ring.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>As one does, Morgan got on Reddit and came across a post from a user recounting a similar experience. That user was wearing an Oura ring when it all happened and was able to collect some data validating their symptoms. So Morgan got a ring.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I was like, for the next two weeks, I’m going to be a little bit miserable, but I can probably at least see if like what I’m feeling is real or maybe I’m just making it up. Cause I think I was, like, oh, maybe, maybe this is purely psychosomatic.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I was like, for the next two weeks, I’m going to be a little bit miserable, but I can probably at least see if like what I’m feeling is real or maybe I’m just making it up. Cause I think I was, like, oh, maybe, maybe this is purely psychosomatic.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Turns out it was real. Her heart rate and body temperature were spiking dramatically throughout the day. And Morgan says it was kind of reassuring to have what she thought she was feeling confirmed by data.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Turns out it was real. Her heart rate and body temperature were spiking dramatically throughout the day. And Morgan says it was kind of reassuring to have what she thought she was feeling confirmed by data.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Especially if you’re a marginalized person in any way who is maybe not often listened to by doctors.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Especially if you’re a marginalized person in any way who is maybe not often listened to by doctors.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The Oura Ring was also giving her insight into things she hadn’t necessarily asked for and offered up mountains of sleep data. Over time, her relationship with the device began to change.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The Oura Ring was also giving her insight into things she hadn’t necessarily asked for and offered up mountains of sleep data. Over time, her relationship with the device began to change.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>If the app said she slept badly, it’d put a damper on her day, even if she herself disagreed. If she went out drinking with friends the night before, her ring would clock that. If she pushed herself harder at the gym, she’d find herself wondering what her ring would say, if it would notice, if would tell her she did well. After a while, it all started to get into her head.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>If the app said she slept badly, it’d put a damper on her day, even if she herself disagreed. If she went out drinking with friends the night before, her ring would clock that. If she pushed herself harder at the gym, she’d find herself wondering what her ring would say, if it would notice, if would tell her she did well. After a while, it all started to get into her head.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>She lost the charger. I was visiting my parents on the other side of the country and I left it at their house. I was like, I’m not gonna buy a new charger. I’m just gonna go visit my parents and pick up my charger then. And it was funny because I went back home and my charger wasn’t there. And at that point, I think I just, I don’t know, it fizzled out. The novelty wore off and I guess I was, like, wow, I don’t know if this has added to my life significantly. I felt like I wasn’t missing anything.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Morgan likens her experience before, during, and after wearing her Oura ring to this meme that’s popular online. It has three characters in it, all at different stages of enlightenment about wearable trackers. On the far left of the spectrum is this guy who’s a total beginner. He’s never touched a wearable. He thinks the whole idea is stupid. Then in the middle, there’s a guy who has become obsessed with them, kind of like Morgan at the height of her Oura-ring obsession. And he’s like…\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Oh, I wear the wearables. I know I can’t sleep without my Oura ring. I need to use my Whoop, or I need my Apple Watch to tell me if I slept well. And then on the far right is this guy who’s reached full enlightenment. Like, very sage-looking, hooded figure who’s like, you don’t need a wearable to be happy. These days, Morgan says she feels more like him. I think wearables can be really helpful, but I do kind of feel like that meme sometimes where I’m like, oh, you know, I can trust my body. I can be intuitive. You know, I can, kind of, trust myself to tell when something is feeling off.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Oh, I wear the wearables. I know I can’t sleep without my Oura ring. I need to use my Whoop, or I need my Apple Watch to tell me if I slept well. And then on the far right is this guy who’s reached full enlightenment. Like, very sage-looking, hooded figure who’s like, you don’t need a wearable to be happy. These days, Morgan says she feels more like him. I think wearables can be really helpful, but I do kind of feel like that meme sometimes where I’m like, oh, you know, I can trust my body. I can be intuitive. You know, I can, kind of, trust myself to tell when something is feeling off.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Of course, this is just Morgan’s story, but take a look at the Oura Ring Forum and you’ll find similar tales. Still, I was curious if at a large scale these tracking devices are helpful for most people. So I gave Australian sociologist Deborah Lupton a call. She studied health tracking for quite a long time and she gave me a very good scientist answer: kinda, maybe, sometimes.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Deborah Lupton: \u003c/strong>I’ve done research where people have said, look I’m bored with self-tracking, I’ve had enough of it, I’m just, you know, it hasn’t helped me, so I’m stopping. I’ve had research findings where people have said, say with chronic health conditions that on the one hand, yes it gives me control over my condition, it makes me feel as I have more control, but on the other hand I’m sick of it. It’s turning my home into a clinic. It’s complicated.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Take some of the recent research on sleep trackers, for instance. One survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine says that more than half of adults who use sleep trackers say they’ve changed their sleep habits based on what they’ve learned. So on one hand, tracking can encourage healthy habits. But this effort at sleepmaxing, like so many optimization dreams, can also hurt.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Take some of the recent research on sleep trackers, for instance. One survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine says that more than half of adults who use sleep trackers say they’ve changed their sleep habits based on what they’ve learned. So on one hand, tracking can encourage healthy habits. But this effort at sleepmaxing, like so many optimization dreams, can also hurt.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Deborah Lupton: \u003c/strong>In fact, in some ways it can make things worse because we know from sleep studies and studies with people with insomnia that the more you fret and worry about your sleep, the more it can then have this vicious circle where you can’t sleep.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Deborah Lupton: \u003c/strong>In fact, in some ways it can make things worse because we know from sleep studies and studies with people with insomnia that the more you fret and worry about your sleep, the more it can then have this vicious circle where you can’t sleep.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>For Gary’s part, these tracking devices have kind of lost the plot of what the original quantified self-movement was all about, an approach to self-discovery, not a technology or a product.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>For Gary’s part, these tracking devices have kind of lost the plot of what the original quantified self-movement was all about, an approach to self-discovery, not a technology or a product.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>The idea is something like I’m just gonna get the tool and something great is gonna happen. But what did you care about? That question was never answered.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>The idea is something like I’m just gonna get the tool and something great is gonna happen. But what did you care about? That question was never answered.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The early days, that first meeting in Pacifica, the thousands of personalized science projects, they all took so much effort, thinking, adjustment, and reflection. Just strapping on an Apple Watch, he’d argue, can’t be a replacement for all that.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The early days, that first meeting in Pacifica, the thousands of personalized science projects, they all took so much effort, thinking, adjustment, and reflection. Just strapping on an Apple Watch, he’d argue, can’t be a replacement for all that.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>I think, thinking about what’s going on and learning about what is going on with yourself, it requires active processing, right? Being told what’s happening is not the same thing as learning what’s happening from observation.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>I think, thinking about what’s going on and learning about what is going on with yourself, it requires active processing, right? Being told what’s happening is not the same thing as learning what’s happening from observation.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The effort, it turns out, was part of the quest for self-knowledge too.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>That whole process led to a kind of deeper insight, which is commercial self-tracking tools, they’re products and products are designed to serve people who have needs, specific needs. They’re fantastic if that’s your goal. What if your goal lies outside that area where all the attention has been focused? Nobody’s gonna make a product for you.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>That whole process led to a kind of deeper insight, which is commercial self-tracking tools, they’re products and products are designed to serve people who have needs, specific needs. They’re fantastic if that’s your goal. What if your goal lies outside that area where all the attention has been focused? Nobody’s gonna make a product for you.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>These days, the movement, if it should be called that, is in a limbo state. One QS member told me that COVID basically killed the last of the meetups, although apparently there are some people trying to pick them back up. Gary says that for anyone wanting to carry on the spirit of quantified self, he has one piece of advice.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>These days, the movement, if it should be called that, is in a limbo state. One QS member told me that COVID basically killed the last of the meetups, although apparently there are some people trying to pick them back up. Gary says that for anyone wanting to carry on the spirit of quantified self, he has one piece of advice.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Don’t start with the data. That’s often a big mistake.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Don’t start with the data. That’s often a big mistake.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Start with the question and work backwards. Ask yourself what it is about yourself you want to learn. Then become your own personal scientist, figuring out how you might answer it, going back to the drawing board again and again and again.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Start with the question and work backwards. Ask yourself what it is about yourself you want to learn. Then become your own personal scientist, figuring out how you might answer it, going back to the drawing board again and again and again.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Like, scientific practice and a scientific mindset, it belongs to absolutely everybody. And if we want to solve problems, it helps to think about them.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That was KQED reporter and producer, Gabriela Glueck. That’s it for today’s deep dive. If you need to open more tabs on the quantified self-movement and the mass adoption of wearable trackers, check out the show notes for some further reading. And if that’s not enough, stick around after the credits for some bonus content. And if you need to close your rings or whatever, well, that’s not my problem. I’m finally free from the wearables. Okay, let’s close all these tabs.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That was KQED reporter and producer, Gabriela Glueck. That’s it for today’s deep dive. If you need to open more tabs on the quantified self-movement and the mass adoption of wearable trackers, check out the show notes for some further reading. And if that’s not enough, stick around after the credits for some bonus content. And if you need to close your rings or whatever, well, that’s not my problem. I’m finally free from the wearables. Okay, let’s close all these tabs.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was reported by Gabriela Glueck. It was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. The Close All Tabs team also includes editor, Chris Hambrick and audio engineer, Brendan Willard. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our director of podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor-in-chief.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was reported by Gabriela Glueck. It was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. The Close All Tabs team also includes editor, Chris Hambrick and audio engineer, Brendan Willard. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our director of podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor-in-chief.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local. This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran, and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. Thanks for listening.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I thought Apple Watches, and I still do, and I maintain this, I’m sorry if you get offended, anyone else, I think Apple Watches are very ugly. I’m so sorry to anyone who wears an Apple Watch, but I will not get that tan line. Like, I have yet to see a wearable tracker that isn’t a little bit heinous.\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003cem>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Before Apple Watches, Oura Rings and Fitbits delivered mountains of health data to the masses, a group of obsessive self-tracking enthusiasts in Silicon Valley started a movement with the tagline “self-knowledge through numbers.” This was the Quantified Self. From tracking “urges to take aspirin” to using infrared cameras to keep tabs on sleeping positions while snoring, these eccentric knowledge-seekers built a community around technical expertise and an ethos of self-discovery. Reporter Gabriela Glueck traces what happened when self-tracking went mainstream — and how the data-obsessed idealists watched their movement get swallowed up by corporate tech giants with products to sell.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-megaphone wp-block-embed-megaphone\">\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\nhttps://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=KQINC7979965838\n\u003c/div>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://bookpassage.com/book/9781523527922\">The Quantified Self: Learning to Observe\u003c/a> — Gary Wolf, \u003cem>Workman Publishing Company\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/data-overload-quantified-self-really-future-n189596\">Data Overload: Is the ‘Quantified Self’ Really the Future?\u003c/a> — John Fortt, \u003cem>NBC News\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://youtu.be/kg8-D4h5miE?si=3_PxJY0A6qK4qz6c\">Wearable Health Tech: Helpful Tool Or Health Hype\u003c/a> — @TalkingWithDocs, \u003cem>YouTube\u003c/em> \u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.seattletimes.com/business/the-cutthroat-wearables-battle-is-about-more-than-tracking-your-fitness/\">The cutthroat wearables battle is about more than tracking your fitness\u003c/a> — Brent Crane, \u003cem>The Seattle Times\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.businessinsider.com/wellness-tracking-apps-sleep-score-stress-hurting-health-2026-6\">Wearables, Health-Tracking Apps Are Stressing Users, Causing Harm\u003c/a> — Emily Stewart, \u003cem>Business Insider\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\n\n\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckbrooks/2026/08/25/the-new-world-of-wearables-from-health-monitoring-to-human-augmentation/\">The New World Of Wearables: From Health Monitoring To Human Augmentation\u003c/a> — Chuck Brooks, \u003cem>Forbes\u003c/em>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Follow us on \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\">Instagram\u003c/a> and\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\">TikTok\u003c/a>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-content post-body\">\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong> Hey Tabbies! We cover a lot on this show, but it’s basically impossible to keep tabs on everything going on online. So if there is a specific topic or story or rabbit hole you’re curious about that we haven’t done a deep dive into yet, you’re in luck! We just launched a listener question form, so you can ask us about internet trends, tech subcultures, or other online oddities you want Close All Tabs to cover! Check it out at KQED.org/closealltabs, and scroll to the bottom of the page. Or, click the link in our show notes. Ok, let’s get to the episode.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>There’s a good chance you’re being tracked, by you. Nearly one in three U.S. adults uses a wearable device to track their health and fitness. I’m talking Apple Watches, Oura Rings, Fitbits. Even our phones and cars have trackers. We track our sleep, heart rate, steps, location, behaviors, habits, and so much more. Self-tracking has become the norm but it wasn’t always this way.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>For much of history, self-tracking was the domain of eccentrics and obsessive academics. They were the freaks to the rest of polite society. Like in the 1600s, Venetian physician, Santorio Santorio built the weighing chair and obsessively tracked his weight. He measured everything he ate and drank, as well as everything that came out of his body. Founding father, Benjamin Franklin, also a meticulous self-tracker. He kept detailed accounts of his daily activities. But these were more than just diary entries. They were detailed charts, a rubric of the 13 virtues he wanted to live up to, logged every day of the week, also known as a habit tracker. And then there’s Buckminster Fuller, the architect, philosopher, inventor, and all-around futurist. From 1917 up until his death in the 1980s, Buckminster Fuller kept an exhaustive archive of his life: newspaper clippings, drawings, blueprints, receipts, and all correspondence. As a lifelong journaler, I aspire to archive my life like that. But again, these were outliers.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Then, in the late 2000s, a group of self-tracking enthusiasts started a movement to create and share ways of obsessively collecting data on themselves. It was called the quantified self. Today, we’re exploring the early days of this obscure tech subculture and what changed when tracking went mainstream. And we’ll try to understand whether our mountains of self-track data are actually helpful.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Ready? This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. This week, I’m passing the mouse and the mic to KQED reporter and producer, Gabriela Glueck. She is going to lead this deep dive.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Thanks, Morgan. I’ll start like you do, by opening a new tab: The Quantified Self Movement. We’re going back to 2007, 2008, a time, technologically speaking, that feels so far from where we are today, you could consider christening it vintage. Apple had just released the first model of something they decided to call the iPhone.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Apple Event]\u003cbr>Voice Over: Apple is going to reinvent the phone.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Lots of people were getting online to join a thing called Facebook.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Film The Social Network (2010)] \u003cbr>\u003cem>Mark Zuckerberg character: That’s what the Facebook is going to be about. People are going to log on because after all the cake and watermelon there’s a chance they’re actually going..\u003cbr>Eduardo Saverin character: …to get laid\u003cbr>Mark Zuckerberg character: …meet a girl. Yes.\u003cbr>Eduardo Saverin character: That is really good.\u003c/em>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>And the first Kindle even made its debut.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Kindle Commercial] \u003cbr>Voice Over: Now there’s a way to put 80,000 books, newspapers, and blogs right in the palm of your hand.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Complete with Blackberry-esque buttons that made it look more like a giant calculator than a book. Culturally, things were also a buzz. The final installment of Harry Potter had hit bookstores, Obama was about to get elected, and Rihanna was dropping bangers. -.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Rihanna song] \u003cbr>♪ You can stand under my umbrella. You can stand under my umbrella.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>This was the backdrop that Gary Wolf found himself in.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>I was working as a journalist at that time and writing about the cultural impacts of new technologies.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Gary was working for Wired Magazine, and he’d been getting interested in a new tech trend – self-tracking. More specifically, he was interested in how technology was allowing people to track their lives in novel and interesting ways. Suddenly, you could do things like input everything you ate into an online calculator to track calories, or clock every single restaurant, coffee shop, and store you went to.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>The very first popular geolocation systems were just coming out. So Foursquare, which is ancient now, so people were tracking where they had been.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>And courtesy of 23andMe, you could even spit into a test tube, mail it back to a lab, and log online to find out more about your own DNA. People had begun thinking about themselves and their behaviors as data. It was all enough to make Gary wonder.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>How are we going to use those tools? And what effect were they going to have on how they thought about ourselves?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>That question fascinated Gary. It brought together both his love of new technology with his penchant for philosophizing. So he brought the idea to his editor at Wired Magazine, a guy named Kevin Kelly. Basically saying, ‘hey, this seems really interesting. Nobody is talking about it that much. I feel like we should report on it.’ Then they came up with the name for the new beat.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>We put up some things on a whiteboard and I put the name “quantified self” on it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Quantified self.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>The self is the topic, and the quantified is, okay, what is the effect on the self of having access to data, access to new reasoning capacity, access to observational capacity through sensing.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>When Gary told me the story about how it all went down, the quantified self, or QS, sounded interesting, but still kind of abstract and theoretical. And maybe the Wired duo were dealing with that same feeling because their next step was all about grounding their questions in the real world, finding people who were doing early self-tracking projects and trying to understand why.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>We didn’t know that we would be encountering an already existing DIY culture of knowledge making, but it was there. So where did it come from? How did it get there?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>They decided the best way to get answers would be to bring the stories to them. So they organized a meetup. It was gonna be at Kevin’s house in Pacifica, a coastal bay area town right next to tech’s epicenter. Although they didn’t know what to expect, the turnout was pretty good, about 20 or so people. Being basically right on top of Silicon Valley probably helped them draw a crowd. Anyways, they were all crowded into the space, sitting in an assortment of chairs. All pointed towards the front of the room.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>And we were sitting around talking about what we were doing, very informally, and introducing ourselves, and somebody walked in late, and Kevin turned to him, his name was Ka-Ping Yee,, and said, “okay, you came in last, you go first, what are you doing? “\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Instead of offering up a standard introduction, Ka-Ping Yee opened his computer.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>And showed this detailed time diary of everything he’d done in the last year while he was working on his dissertation in 15-minute increments. And it was so fascinating.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>After Ka-Ping, other people presented their projects. There was Berkeley psychology professor, Seth Roberts.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>I think he presented something about improving his balance. He was measuring it by standing on one foot. And so he would just start a timer and he would stand on one and he would see how long he could stand on a foot for.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>When I talked to engineer and businessman Rajiv Mehta, who was at that first meeting, he said the common reaction from people who showed up was shock, shock that there were enough people nerdy enough to care about this sort of thing at all.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rajiv Mehta: \u003c/strong>And so it was just fantastic that there were other people interested in, just as importantly, to discover the huge range of interests in that tiny little group, which gave us all a sense of, this is much richer than any of us actually had thought.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>And among the attendees were people who’d later go on to become famous, like Tim Ferriss, author of “The Four Hour Workweek.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Rajiv Mehta: \u003c/strong>He’d been a wrestler in high school and college and so forth and he talked about how, like, he had these detailed records of what he ate and his exercise and so forth. And he made the claim that even today, if he wanted to hit a certain weight that he would be able to reproduce it by going to his old notes and following them.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Even though everyone’s project was different, a kind of unifying undercurrent ran through the group. They were all the type of people who would spend their free time doing a QS project.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>People were sort of attracted to this kind of self-tracking practice because they had two interests at the same time. On the one hand, they had a personal question that they were really interested in and they were scientific and technical professionals.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>When they had a personal question, it made sense to use the science techie tools they were already familiar with. As Gary tells it,\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Without us really even doing anything, this genre was born.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The Pacifica Meetup became the first of many, something called the Quantified Self Show and Tell.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Like looking back to second grade. And it was really nice and interesting because it wasn’t about pitching anything, it wasn’t about convincing anybody that you had some magic solution, which was very common in the tech world. It was really just about saying what you personally had learned from doing something that you hadn’t necessarily been able to do even a year or two ago with the tools that were available then.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Though they didn’t fully know it at the time, the Pacifica meeting was the start of something, something that was about to get big, or at least bigger. To get into that, let’s open a new tab: quantified self goes mainstream.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>After that first meeting in 2008, QS started to generate some buzz. Gary and his Wired editor, Kevin, made a blog for the quantified self as a way to catalog their discoveries and possibly showcase their incredible tagline, “self-knowledge through numbers. “There was also a QS forum and it gained traction as people shared their idiosyncratic projects and experiences online. Gary says this kind of knowledge sharing was a big part of the early community’s ethos. Very much in line with the budding DIY culture of the late 2000s and early 2010s.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>So people were sharing information on the internet about how to do things that were part really of a professional research repertoire but had started to become available to somewhat technical people to do at home.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>QSers began spreading the show-and-tell format nationally and then internationally. One 2014 report points to over 100 QS meetup groups in 30 countries, with about 20,000 overall participants. Clearly, they’d hit upon something that resonated.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bob Troia: \u003c/strong>It was just a great way to just connect with a community of people all like-minded folks and really just learning from each other.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Bob Troia attended one of the early QS meetings in New York City, after hearing about some Bay Area folks who’d started some kind of self-research movement. He was already interested in tracking himself, and the association with Tim Ferriss didn’t hurt either.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bob Troia: \u003c/strong>And I showed up one day and watched people get these like 10, 12 minute talks about their own self-experiments, very informal, very casual, but it was very inspirational. And then I was like, wow, there’s actually a lot of people out there just, just like me. I’m not the weird one.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Bob quickly got deep into QS. He even visited the Bay Area for a QS conference. After that…\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Bob Troia: \u003c/strong>I set up a blog that night like while I was in a hotel room and I just started writing I think my first post and I went and got a domain name quantifiedbob.com\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>If you talk to more people in the early QS movement, you’ll hear a similar story. They were outcasts, nerds, the weird ones tracking their every move. Here’s Gary again.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>I think people who have really intense scientific and technical interests, many of them are used to being outliers in some way.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>He says this outsider identity became something like a point of pride and made the meetups that much more important. When you’re doing something that’s so far from the mainstream, community really matters. It’s kind of hard to imagine today since Apple Watches and self-tracking devices like Oura rings, a wearable smart ring, are so popular. But back in the 2010s, this was really niche stuff. And there was another piece of it. Because the technology was less advanced with way more friction. You had to put in a lot of effort to get data on yourself. Instead of just strapping on an Apple Watch and checking your phone, it was more like…\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Okay I set up an infrared camera and I recorded myself as I slept and tried to figure out if my snoring was connected to my posture.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>To understand just how intensive or well thought out early QS projects were, Gary likes to point to examples, and there are many to choose from. But for the sake of time, we’ll look at one: the story of Jakob Eg Larsen. He’s one of Gary’s friends and co-founder of Quantified Self Copenhagen. His problem? Headaches.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>He took regular medication for those headaches, painkillers, and he decided that he wanted to really understand whether there was some pattern to his headaches and whether there were some things he could do besides take painkillers that would help him.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Step one for Jakob, figure out how to measure a headache.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>And he found it surprisingly difficult. There are so many apps for recording headaches, but they require you to make a lot of subtle judgments like, ‘okay, my headache started and now I think it’s gone and now it’s back again. Does that count as one headache or two headaches?’\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Gary calls these moments of evaluation “little frictions.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>They’re just demoralizing and they become a bother.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Jakob needed to come up with a better metric, narrow his focus, figure out what data he could get that could help him understand his problem. So he decided to track each time he took an aspirin. That’d mean the headache had reached a certain threshold worth noting.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>So he just focused on observing. He didn’t focus on intervening. And already he started to learn a lot.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>He learned he was taking aspirins more than he thought, and more than was recommended. One side effect of too much aspirin consumption? More headaches.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>By tracking the aspirins, he sort of adjusted his willingness to sit with the headache a little bit longer before taking the aspirin, and eventually his headaches got better and his aspirin consumption went to zero.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>But Jakob wanted to keep up his tracking, so he refined his data metric, this time to the urge to take aspirin.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>So this was a wonderful example of being able to get really useful empirical data from your daily life, even though you’re not really following any kind of pre-established or vetted protocol that comes to us from biomedicine.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>This project is a classic example of many early self-tracking efforts. It took a lot of thinking, refining, and all in all, a lot mental work. Also, it didn’t necessarily take fancy technology, just a little persistence. And for many people who were, for lack of a better word, desperate to learn something about themselves, that effort was worth it. Take Swedish engineer Sara Riggare. She’s quite famous in the QS world and has done many self-experiments, including one to help her understand how medication for her Parkinson’s was actually impacting her. Here she is in a short video from Salzburg Global.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip from Salzburg Global Video]\u003c/em>\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\u003c/strong>\u003cem>Sara Riggare: Patients can do a lot for themselves in that I have actually optimized my own medication effect by learning about my individual responses over time.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>As she likes to point out, many patients see their neurologist or doctor once or twice a year, maybe for an hour or less. The rest of the year is self-care.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>If you have a good medical practitioner, they are gonna use a lot of trial and error with you. They’re gonna ask you, ‘how did that work?’ And you’re getting a better answer about how that worked is very helpful.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Projects like Sarah’s and Jacob’s helped reveal the potential of self-investigation.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>So there was this feeling that there were new possibilities. They hadn’t been turned into products yet. At those very early meetings, you know, we were just meeting the people who would go on to start Oura Ring and the Fitbit and other tools that were just a few years down the road.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>But of course, if an impulse can be had, it can be sold. That’s next, after this break.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In 2014, Tim Cook walked onto the Apple stage wearing an Apple Watch, the ad for Apple’s first watch iteration playing on the screen.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Apple’s September 2014 Event] \u003cbr>Tim Cook: Apple Watch is the most personal device we’ve ever created.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Because you wear it, he says, they invented new, intimate ways to connect and communicate directly from your wrist.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Clip of Apple’s September 2014 Event] \u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003cem>Tim Cook: And it’s also a comprehensive health and fitness device.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>By 2014, the Fitbit had already been out for a fat minute, and the Oura ring was just around the corner. And as the 2010s climbed to their peak, Gary says something about the QS movement started to shift too.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>There’s a way in which those ideas have become very mainstream. And when that happens, you don’t necessarily need a special place to work them through. Like, okay, I’m the only one doing this, I’m using these DIY tools, I need to meet some other people so I don’t feel like I’m crazy to apply scientific methods to my own questions. That stopped really being the case.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>A blog from the time declared the quantified self-movement dead, but many QS enthusiasts online begged to differ. One commentator on the QS forum wrote, It’s a bit dystopian to think that big companies can/should/will replace the basic agency of I want to understand something in my life by handing answers to people. But of course, in some ways, that’s what happened. And the questions that first drew Gary in, ‘how people would use the technology’ and ‘how it would shape their lives’ were no longer being answered by a careful group of self-experimenters, but by everyone else. Which brings us to a new tab: Is all this tracking actually helping us?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>These days, wearable tracking devices are everywhere, and they collect health data seamlessly. So what’s the impact of all this automated number crunching? Are we any healthier or happier? Have we all finally achieved self-understanding? And what, if anything, have we lost? To help answer these questions, I’m fast forwarding. From where we left off around 2017, 2018 to present day.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The term “obsessive tracker” has now taken on a different meaning. It’s for people obsessed with their Fitbits, not their infrared camera setup that helps them track their posture in relation to snoring. I figured I needed to talk to someone who had at one point been a bit of an obsessive tracker. So I called up the host of this very show, Morgan Sung. She got into the whole thing a couple years back, when she switched her ADHD meds and realized they weren’t really working.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>And I was having like these really weird reactions and like, I was so sweaty and my heart rate was like kind of all over the place and I just like felt kind of sick all the time.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>As one does, Morgan got on Reddit and came across a post from a user recounting a similar experience. That user was wearing an Oura ring when it all happened and was able to collect some data validating their symptoms. So Morgan got a ring.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I was like, for the next two weeks, I’m going to be a little bit miserable, but I can probably at least see if like what I’m feeling is real or maybe I’m just making it up. Cause I think I was, like, oh, maybe, maybe this is purely psychosomatic.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Turns out it was real. Her heart rate and body temperature were spiking dramatically throughout the day. And Morgan says it was kind of reassuring to have what she thought she was feeling confirmed by data.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Especially if you’re a marginalized person in any way who is maybe not often listened to by doctors.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The Oura Ring was also giving her insight into things she hadn’t necessarily asked for and offered up mountains of sleep data. Over time, her relationship with the device began to change.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>So at first it started as a novelty, and then I think, yeah, it did kind of become a little bit of a compulsion. I don’t think it was, like, obsessive, but, you know, I would, like, wake up in the morning, turn off my alarm, open the app, and check how I slept instead of just thinking, hmm, I slept this way. You know?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>If the app said she slept badly, it’d put a damper on her day, even if she herself disagreed. If she went out drinking with friends the night before, her ring would clock that. If she pushed herself harder at the gym, she’d find herself wondering what her ring would say, if it would notice, if would tell her she did well. After a while, it all started to get into her head.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I think like trying to optimize my body in that way made me feel like I was having less fun in my life.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Then something happened that forced her to cut ties with the ring for good.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>She lost the charger. I was visiting my parents on the other side of the country and I left it at their house. I was like, I’m not gonna buy a new charger. I’m just gonna go visit my parents and pick up my charger then. And it was funny because I went back home and my charger wasn’t there. And at that point, I think I just, I don’t know, it fizzled out. The novelty wore off and I guess I was, like, wow, I don’t know if this has added to my life significantly. I felt like I wasn’t missing anything.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Morgan likens her experience before, during, and after wearing her Oura ring to this meme that’s popular online. It has three characters in it, all at different stages of enlightenment about wearable trackers. On the far left of the spectrum is this guy who’s a total beginner. He’s never touched a wearable. He thinks the whole idea is stupid. Then in the middle, there’s a guy who has become obsessed with them, kind of like Morgan at the height of her Oura-ring obsession. And he’s like…\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>Oh, I wear the wearables. I know I can’t sleep without my Oura ring. I need to use my Whoop, or I need my Apple Watch to tell me if I slept well. And then on the far right is this guy who’s reached full enlightenment. Like, very sage-looking, hooded figure who’s like, you don’t need a wearable to be happy. These days, Morgan says she feels more like him. I think wearables can be really helpful, but I do kind of feel like that meme sometimes where I’m like, oh, you know, I can trust my body. I can be intuitive. You know, I can, kind of, trust myself to tell when something is feeling off.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Of course, this is just Morgan’s story, but take a look at the Oura Ring Forum and you’ll find similar tales. Still, I was curious if at a large scale these tracking devices are helpful for most people. So I gave Australian sociologist Deborah Lupton a call. She studied health tracking for quite a long time and she gave me a very good scientist answer: kinda, maybe, sometimes.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Deborah Lupton: \u003c/strong>I’ve done research where people have said, look I’m bored with self-tracking, I’ve had enough of it, I’m just, you know, it hasn’t helped me, so I’m stopping. I’ve had research findings where people have said, say with chronic health conditions that on the one hand, yes it gives me control over my condition, it makes me feel as I have more control, but on the other hand I’m sick of it. It’s turning my home into a clinic. It’s complicated.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Take some of the recent research on sleep trackers, for instance. One survey from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine says that more than half of adults who use sleep trackers say they’ve changed their sleep habits based on what they’ve learned. So on one hand, tracking can encourage healthy habits. But this effort at sleepmaxing, like so many optimization dreams, can also hurt.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Deborah Lupton: \u003c/strong>In fact, in some ways it can make things worse because we know from sleep studies and studies with people with insomnia that the more you fret and worry about your sleep, the more it can then have this vicious circle where you can’t sleep.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>For Gary’s part, these tracking devices have kind of lost the plot of what the original quantified self-movement was all about, an approach to self-discovery, not a technology or a product.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>The idea is something like I’m just gonna get the tool and something great is gonna happen. But what did you care about? That question was never answered.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The early days, that first meeting in Pacifica, the thousands of personalized science projects, they all took so much effort, thinking, adjustment, and reflection. Just strapping on an Apple Watch, he’d argue, can’t be a replacement for all that.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>I think, thinking about what’s going on and learning about what is going on with yourself, it requires active processing, right? Being told what’s happening is not the same thing as learning what’s happening from observation.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>The effort, it turns out, was part of the quest for self-knowledge too.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>That whole process led to a kind of deeper insight, which is commercial self-tracking tools, they’re products and products are designed to serve people who have needs, specific needs. They’re fantastic if that’s your goal. What if your goal lies outside that area where all the attention has been focused? Nobody’s gonna make a product for you.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>These days, the movement, if it should be called that, is in a limbo state. One QS member told me that COVID basically killed the last of the meetups, although apparently there are some people trying to pick them back up. Gary says that for anyone wanting to carry on the spirit of quantified self, he has one piece of advice.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Don’t start with the data. That’s often a big mistake.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>Start with the question and work backwards. Ask yourself what it is about yourself you want to learn. Then become your own personal scientist, figuring out how you might answer it, going back to the drawing board again and again and again.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gary Wolf: \u003c/strong>Like, scientific practice and a scientific mindset, it belongs to absolutely everybody. And if we want to solve problems, it helps to think about them.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Gabriela Glueck: \u003c/strong>It feels like an obvious takeaway, but maybe these days it’s not.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>That was KQED reporter and producer, Gabriela Glueck. That’s it for today’s deep dive. If you need to open more tabs on the quantified self-movement and the mass adoption of wearable trackers, check out the show notes for some further reading. And if that’s not enough, stick around after the credits for some bonus content. And if you need to close your rings or whatever, well, that’s not my problem. I’m finally free from the wearables. Okay, let’s close all these tabs.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was reported by Gabriela Glueck. It was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. The Close All Tabs team also includes editor, Chris Hambrick and audio engineer, Brendan Willard. Additional music by APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our director of podcasts and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor-in-chief.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local. This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran, and recorded on his white Epomaker Hi75 keyboard with Fogruaden red samurai keycaps and gateron milky yellow pro v2 switches. Thanks for listening.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Morgan Sung: \u003c/strong>I thought Apple Watches, and I still do, and I maintain this, I’m sorry if you get offended, anyone else, I think Apple Watches are very ugly. I’m so sorry to anyone who wears an Apple Watch, but I will not get that tan line. Like, I have yet to see a wearable tracker that isn’t a little bit heinous.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>"
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"content": "\n\u003cp>Nurses at nearly two dozen \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/kaiser\">Kaiser\u003c/a> facilities across California are picketing to protest their concerns about inadequate staffing and potentially questionable AI practices in the company’s future patient care technology. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The scarlet-clad nurses gathered outside Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center on Tuesday, holding signs and chanting for “safe staffing” levels. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The Kaiser workers’ latest action is a sign that ongoing contract negotiations between the hospital and its union, the California Nurses Association, are already hitting a snag since their existing deal expired Aug. 31.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-image\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"aligncenter size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1067\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-5-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097886\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-5-KQED.jpg 1600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-5-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-5-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Dozens of nurses staged what they called an “informational picket” outside Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center on Tuesday to demand better staffing levels and limits on AI. (Courtesy of California Nurses Association)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-3 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1067\" data-id=\"12097892\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-1-KQED-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097892\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-1-KQED-1.jpg 1600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-1-KQED-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-1-KQED-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Dozens of nurses gathered outside Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center on Sept. 1, 2026. (Courtesy of California Nurses Association)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1067\" data-id=\"12097883\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-2-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097883\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-2-KQED.jpg 1600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-2-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-2-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Workers also voiced their concerns about the steadily increasing use of AI in health care systems, which they believe could adversely impact staffing decisions and patient care. (Courtesy of California Nurses Association)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Outside the center on Broadway, veteran pediatric nurse Craig Cedotal said that, in nearly a dozen bargaining sessions so far, management has failed to properly address his concerns.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Cedotal said he believes Kaiser’s short staffing is evidenced by the Assignment Despite Objection forms that procedure nurses use to signal concerns on a shift. “We’re talking about 5,000 of them altogether,” he said, regarding the volume of forms submitted.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We know what the problems are — they disagree with what we say — but that’s not uncommon for management to disagree,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In a statement, Kaiser said it staffs at state-mandated ratios using a system that the company co-developed alongside the California Nurses Association.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Workers accused management of manipulating that system to their advantage, with avoidable consequences.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Mixing infectious patients with noninfectious patients … that happens. Now, we do have PPE that we can put on,” Cedotal said, using shorthand for personal protective equipment. “But if you can staff to a point where you don’t even have to risk the exposure, why would you?”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The protest also marked \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12097097/bay-area-nurses-protest-use-of-palantirs-ai-tech-at-hospitals\">yet another opportunity\u003c/a> for workers to voice their objections to the increasing use of artificial intelligence in the health care system, which they said could inappropriately influence staffing decisions and care.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Nursing, we need to speak to our patients. We’re compassionate because we’re humans, right?” said patient care coordinator and bargaining team member Robin Carson. “AI does not have compassion.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Kaiser said its deal with CNA already ensures that technology supports its nurses to care for patients and apply their clinical expertise, not to replace them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Union leaders said the two sides have not yet discussed wages. Talks are expected to resume Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“We know what the problems are — they disagree with what we say — but that’s not uncommon for management to disagree,” he added.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Workers accused management of manipulating that system to their advantage, with avoidable consequences.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“Mixing infectious patients with noninfectious patients … that happens. Now, we do have PPE that we can put on,” Cedotal said, using shorthand for personal protective equipment. “But if you can staff to a point where you don’t even have to risk the exposure, why would you?”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The protest also marked \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12097097/bay-area-nurses-protest-use-of-palantirs-ai-tech-at-hospitals\">yet another opportunity\u003c/a> for workers to voice their objections to the increasing use of artificial intelligence in the health care system, which they said could inappropriately influence staffing decisions and care.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“Nursing, we need to speak to our patients. We’re compassionate because we’re humans, right?” said patient care coordinator and bargaining team member Robin Carson. “AI does not have compassion.” \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Kaiser said its deal with CNA already ensures that technology supports its nurses to care for patients and apply their clinical expertise, not to replace them. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Union leaders said the two sides have not yet discussed wages. Talks are expected to resume Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Ongoing contract negotiations between Kaiser and its unionized nurses have reportedly faced roadblocks since their existing deal expired on Aug. 31.",
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"title": "In Oakland, Kaiser Nurses Take Staffing, AI Concerns to the Picket Lines | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>Nurses at nearly two dozen \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/kaiser\">Kaiser\u003c/a> facilities across California are picketing to protest their concerns about inadequate staffing and potentially questionable AI practices in the company’s future patient care technology. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The scarlet-clad nurses gathered outside Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center on Tuesday, holding signs and chanting for “safe staffing” levels. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The Kaiser workers’ latest action is a sign that ongoing contract negotiations between the hospital and its union, the California Nurses Association, are already hitting a snag since their existing deal expired Aug. 31.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\u003cdiv class=\"wp-block-image\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"aligncenter size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1067\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-5-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097886\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-5-KQED.jpg 1600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-5-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-5-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Dozens of nurses staged what they called an “informational picket” outside Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center on Tuesday to demand better staffing levels and limits on AI. (Courtesy of California Nurses Association)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/div>\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-3 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex\">\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1067\" data-id=\"12097892\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-1-KQED-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097892\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-1-KQED-1.jpg 1600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-1-KQED-1-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-1-KQED-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Dozens of nurses gathered outside Kaiser Permanente Oakland Medical Center on Sept. 1, 2026. (Courtesy of California Nurses Association)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1067\" data-id=\"12097883\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-2-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097883\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-2-KQED.jpg 1600w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-2-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/09/Kaiser-Labor-2-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Workers also voiced their concerns about the steadily increasing use of AI in health care systems, which they believe could adversely impact staffing decisions and patient care. (Courtesy of California Nurses Association)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Outside the center on Broadway, veteran pediatric nurse Craig Cedotal said that, in nearly a dozen bargaining sessions so far, management has failed to properly address his concerns.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Cedotal said he believes Kaiser’s short staffing is evidenced by the Assignment Despite Objection forms that procedure nurses use to signal concerns on a shift. “We’re talking about 5,000 of them altogether,” he said, regarding the volume of forms submitted.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“We know what the problems are — they disagree with what we say — but that’s not uncommon for management to disagree,” he added.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In a statement, Kaiser said it staffs at state-mandated ratios using a system that the company co-developed alongside the California Nurses Association.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Workers accused management of manipulating that system to their advantage, with avoidable consequences.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Mixing infectious patients with noninfectious patients … that happens. Now, we do have PPE that we can put on,” Cedotal said, using shorthand for personal protective equipment. “But if you can staff to a point where you don’t even have to risk the exposure, why would you?”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The protest also marked \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12097097/bay-area-nurses-protest-use-of-palantirs-ai-tech-at-hospitals\">yet another opportunity\u003c/a> for workers to voice their objections to the increasing use of artificial intelligence in the health care system, which they said could inappropriately influence staffing decisions and care.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Nursing, we need to speak to our patients. We’re compassionate because we’re humans, right?” said patient care coordinator and bargaining team member Robin Carson. “AI does not have compassion.” \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Kaiser said its deal with CNA already ensures that technology supports its nurses to care for patients and apply their clinical expertise, not to replace them. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Union leaders said the two sides have not yet discussed wages. Talks are expected to resume Wednesday.\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Bay Area Nurses Protest Use of Palantir’s AI Tech at Hospitals",
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"content": "\n\u003cp>More than a hundred registered nurses in red union T-shirts blocked traffic and chanted outside \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101864924/a-deeper-look-into-palantir-technologies\">Palantir’s\u003c/a> former headquarters in Palo Alto on Thursday, calling on hospital executives and elected officials to cut ties with the artificial intelligence software and data analytics giant. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>National Nurses United, which held similar protests in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and four other cities, said the demonstrations were the union’s largest to date against Palantir, now based in the Miami area. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Nurses are worried that the company, which has won lucrative but controversial contracts with federal defense and immigration enforcement agencies, is expanding into healthcare.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Hospital executives at HCA Healthcare, one of the largest for-profit hospital operators in the U.S., have introduced Palantir’s AI-powered tools for nurse staffing and scheduling. New York’s Mount Sinai Health System uses the company’s products to evaluate patient records and determine which ones are eligible for at-home care, according to Palantir’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.palantir.com/offerings/palantir-for-hospitals/\">website\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097137\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-03-KQED-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-03-KQED-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Nurses place Band-Aids over photos of notes written by children detained by U.S. immigration agents at a protest against intelligence giant Palantir in Palo Alto on Aug. 27, 2026. (Courtesy of National Nurses United)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Craig Cedotal, a pediatric nurse at Kaiser Oakland who previously worked at an HCA hospital in New Orleans, said nurses want more transparency and a greater say in the use of AI in hospitals, including Palantir’s platforms.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“It’s affecting staffing decisions and care decisions in ways that are not in line with what healthcare should be,” said Cedotal, one of the protesters in Palo Alto. “A machine should not make decisions about how we take care of each other. That is not good healthcare.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Palantir did not respond to a request for comment. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.palantir.com/q2-2026-letter/en/\">letter to\u003c/a> shareholders this month, CEO Alex Karp said the company’s business has nearly doubled in a span of 12 months. Palantir earned nearly \u003ca href=\"https://investors.palantir.com/news-details/2026/Palantir-Reports-Q2-2026-U-S--Comm-Revenue-Growth-of-149-YY-and-Revenue-Growth-of-93-YY-Raises-FY-2026-Revenue-Guidance-to-82-YY-Growth-and-U-S--Comm-Revenue-Guidance-to-134-YY-Crushing-Consensus-Expectations/\">$2 billion\u003c/a> in net income, after expenses, during the first half of this year. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“The core of our business, in the United States, continues to expand at an unrelenting and breakneck pace,” Karp said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On Thursday, California lawmakers approved a bill sponsored by the California Nurses Association that would establish some guardrails in the deployment of AI in patient care. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab1979\">bill\u003c/a>, by Assemblymember Mia Bonta, D-Oakland, would prohibit a health facility or doctor’s office from using an AI tool to perform any function that requires a professional license. Gov. Gavin Newsom is considering the proposed legislation.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Cedotal said that nurses at HCA hospitals have found the new automated staffing platform disruptive, with scheduling not always matching the needs of the day. The union contends the technology is exacerbating an understaffing crisis in the healthcare industry.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“The major concern is that humans are not involved in the equation,” said Cedotal, who has worked as a nurse for 32 years. The software “recommendations usually end up being something unfavorable for staffing or the nurses or patient care in general, or all three together.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-04-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097138\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-04-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-04-KQED-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-04-KQED-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Nurses block the street in Palo Alto outside the headquarters of artificial intelligence giant Palantir on Aug. 27, 2026. The actions cited the “deadly costs” of Palantir’s products, including its development and operation of ELITE, an application used by federal agents that identifies people for arrest using, in part, Medicaid data. (Courtesy of National Nurses United)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hcahealthcare.com/about\">HCA Healthcare\u003c/a>, which operates about 190 hospitals in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, did not respond to a request for comment. Good Samaritan Hospital in San José is affiliated with the company.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>National Nurses United, which represents more than 225,000 members nationwide with affiliates like the California Nurses Association, is getting ready to begin contract negotiations with HCA, Kaiser Permanente and other major employers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>At the protest Thursday, the union joined community groups in criticizing Palantir for profiting from the Trump administration’s push to arrest and deport thousands of immigrants, and working with Israel’s Ministry of Defense to support its war in Gaza.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Their technology has enabled the systematic destruction of hospitals, the killing of hundreds of healthcare workers, and the collapse of Gaza’s most vital infrastructure, how can we in good conscience place that same technology at the heart of U.S. healthcare facilities?” said Aisha Nizar with the Palestinian Youth Movement, in a statement. “Our message for the Bay Area is clear: Protect patients, stop fueling genocide, and cut ties with Palantir immediately.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>National Nurses United, which held similar protests in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and four other cities, said the demonstrations were the union’s largest to date against Palantir, now based in the Miami area. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Nurses are worried that the company, which has won lucrative but controversial contracts with federal defense and immigration enforcement agencies, is expanding into healthcare.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Hospital executives at HCA Healthcare, one of the largest for-profit hospital operators in the U.S., have introduced Palantir’s AI-powered tools for nurse staffing and scheduling. New York’s Mount Sinai Health System uses the company’s products to evaluate patient records and determine which ones are eligible for at-home care, according to Palantir’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.palantir.com/offerings/palantir-for-hospitals/\">website\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097137\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-03-KQED-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-03-KQED-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Nurses place Band-Aids over photos of notes written by children detained by U.S. immigration agents at a protest against intelligence giant Palantir in Palo Alto on Aug. 27, 2026.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Courtesy of National Nurses United)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097137\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Nurses place Band-Aids over photos of notes written by children detained by U.S. immigration agents at a protest against intelligence giant Palantir in Palo Alto on Aug. 27, 2026.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Courtesy of National Nurses United)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Craig Cedotal, a pediatric nurse at Kaiser Oakland who previously worked at an HCA hospital in New Orleans, said nurses want more transparency and a greater say in the use of AI in hospitals, including Palantir’s platforms.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“It’s affecting staffing decisions and care decisions in ways that are not in line with what healthcare should be,” said Cedotal, one of the protesters in Palo Alto. “A machine should not make decisions about how we take care of each other. That is not good healthcare.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“It’s affecting staffing decisions and care decisions in ways that are not in line with what healthcare should be,” said Cedotal, one of the protesters in Palo Alto. “A machine should not make decisions about how we take care of each other. That is not good healthcare.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Palantir did not respond to a request for comment. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.palantir.com/q2-2026-letter/en/\">letter to\u003c/a> shareholders this month, CEO Alex Karp said the company’s business has nearly doubled in a span of 12 months. Palantir earned nearly \u003ca href=\"https://investors.palantir.com/news-details/2026/Palantir-Reports-Q2-2026-U-S--Comm-Revenue-Growth-of-149-YY-and-Revenue-Growth-of-93-YY-Raises-FY-2026-Revenue-Guidance-to-82-YY-Growth-and-U-S--Comm-Revenue-Guidance-to-134-YY-Crushing-Consensus-Expectations/\">$2 billion\u003c/a> in net income, after expenses, during the first half of this year. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.palantir.com/q2-2026-letter/en/\">letter to\u003c/a> shareholders this month, CEO Alex Karp said the company’s business has nearly doubled in a span of 12 months. Palantir earned nearly \u003ca href=\"https://investors.palantir.com/news-details/2026/Palantir-Reports-Q2-2026-U-S--Comm-Revenue-Growth-of-149-YY-and-Revenue-Growth-of-93-YY-Raises-FY-2026-Revenue-Guidance-to-82-YY-Growth-and-U-S--Comm-Revenue-Guidance-to-134-YY-Crushing-Consensus-Expectations/\">$2 billion\u003c/a> in net income, after expenses, during the first half of this year. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“The core of our business, in the United States, continues to expand at an unrelenting and breakneck pace,” Karp said. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>On Thursday, California lawmakers approved a bill sponsored by the California Nurses Association that would establish some guardrails in the deployment of AI in patient care. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab1979\">bill\u003c/a>, by Assemblymember Mia Bonta, D-Oakland, would prohibit a health facility or doctor’s office from using an AI tool to perform any function that requires a professional license. Gov. Gavin Newsom is considering the proposed legislation.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab1979\">bill\u003c/a>, by Assemblymember Mia Bonta, D-Oakland, would prohibit a health facility or doctor’s office from using an AI tool to perform any function that requires a professional license. Gov. Gavin Newsom is considering the proposed legislation.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Cedotal said that nurses at HCA hospitals have found the new automated staffing platform disruptive, with scheduling not always matching the needs of the day. The union contends the technology is exacerbating an understaffing crisis in the healthcare industry.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Cedotal said that nurses at HCA hospitals have found the new automated staffing platform disruptive, with scheduling not always matching the needs of the day. The union contends the technology is exacerbating an understaffing crisis in the healthcare industry.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“The major concern is that humans are not involved in the equation,” said Cedotal, who has worked as a nurse for 32 years. The software “recommendations usually end up being something unfavorable for staffing or the nurses or patient care in general, or all three together.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>“The major concern is that humans are not involved in the equation,” said Cedotal, who has worked as a nurse for 32 years. The software “recommendations usually end up being something unfavorable for staffing or the nurses or patient care in general, or all three together.”\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-04-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097138\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-04-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-04-KQED-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-04-KQED-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(min-width: 992px) min(100vw, 1536px), (min-width: 768px) min(100vw, 1280px), min(100vw, 1020px)\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Nurses block the street in Palo Alto outside the headquarters of artificial intelligence giant Palantir on Aug. 27, 2026. The actions cited the “deadly costs” of Palantir’s products, including its development and operation of ELITE, an application used by federal agents that identifies people for arrest using, in part, Medicaid data.\u003ccite class=\"wp-inline-image-credit\"> (Courtesy of National Nurses United)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hcahealthcare.com/about\">HCA Healthcare\u003c/a>, which operates about 190 hospitals in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, did not respond to a request for comment. Good Samaritan Hospital in San José is affiliated with the company.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hcahealthcare.com/about\">HCA Healthcare\u003c/a>, which operates about 190 hospitals in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, did not respond to a request for comment. Good Samaritan Hospital in San José is affiliated with the company.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>National Nurses United, which represents more than 225,000 members nationwide with affiliates like the California Nurses Association, is getting ready to begin contract negotiations with HCA, Kaiser Permanente and other major employers. \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>At the protest Thursday, the union joined community groups in criticizing Palantir for profiting from the Trump administration’s push to arrest and deport thousands of immigrants, and working with Israel’s Ministry of Defense to support its war in Gaza.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>“Their technology has enabled the systematic destruction of hospitals, the killing of hundreds of healthcare workers, and the collapse of Gaza’s most vital infrastructure, how can we in good conscience place that same technology at the heart of U.S. healthcare facilities?” said Aisha Nizar with the Palestinian Youth Movement, in a statement. “Our message for the Bay Area is clear: Protect patients, stop fueling genocide, and cut ties with Palantir immediately.”\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\n\u003cp>More than a hundred registered nurses in red union T-shirts blocked traffic and chanted outside \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101864924/a-deeper-look-into-palantir-technologies\">Palantir’s\u003c/a> former headquarters in Palo Alto on Thursday, calling on hospital executives and elected officials to cut ties with the artificial intelligence software and data analytics giant. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>National Nurses United, which held similar protests in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and four other cities, said the demonstrations were the union’s largest to date against Palantir, now based in the Miami area. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Nurses are worried that the company, which has won lucrative but controversial contracts with federal defense and immigration enforcement agencies, is expanding into healthcare.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Hospital executives at HCA Healthcare, one of the largest for-profit hospital operators in the U.S., have introduced Palantir’s AI-powered tools for nurse staffing and scheduling. New York’s Mount Sinai Health System uses the company’s products to evaluate patient records and determine which ones are eligible for at-home care, according to Palantir’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.palantir.com/offerings/palantir-for-hospitals/\">website\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-03-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097137\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-03-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-03-KQED-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-03-KQED-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Nurses place Band-Aids over photos of notes written by children detained by U.S. immigration agents at a protest against intelligence giant Palantir in Palo Alto on Aug. 27, 2026. (Courtesy of National Nurses United)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Craig Cedotal, a pediatric nurse at Kaiser Oakland who previously worked at an HCA hospital in New Orleans, said nurses want more transparency and a greater say in the use of AI in hospitals, including Palantir’s platforms.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“It’s affecting staffing decisions and care decisions in ways that are not in line with what healthcare should be,” said Cedotal, one of the protesters in Palo Alto. “A machine should not make decisions about how we take care of each other. That is not good healthcare.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Palantir did not respond to a request for comment. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>In a \u003ca href=\"https://www.palantir.com/q2-2026-letter/en/\">letter to\u003c/a> shareholders this month, CEO Alex Karp said the company’s business has nearly doubled in a span of 12 months. Palantir earned nearly \u003ca href=\"https://investors.palantir.com/news-details/2026/Palantir-Reports-Q2-2026-U-S--Comm-Revenue-Growth-of-149-YY-and-Revenue-Growth-of-93-YY-Raises-FY-2026-Revenue-Guidance-to-82-YY-Growth-and-U-S--Comm-Revenue-Guidance-to-134-YY-Crushing-Consensus-Expectations/\">$2 billion\u003c/a> in net income, after expenses, during the first half of this year. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“The core of our business, in the United States, continues to expand at an unrelenting and breakneck pace,” Karp said. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On Thursday, California lawmakers approved a bill sponsored by the California Nurses Association that would establish some guardrails in the deployment of AI in patient care. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab1979\">bill\u003c/a>, by Assemblymember Mia Bonta, D-Oakland, would prohibit a health facility or doctor’s office from using an AI tool to perform any function that requires a professional license. Gov. Gavin Newsom is considering the proposed legislation.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Cedotal said that nurses at HCA hospitals have found the new automated staffing platform disruptive, with scheduling not always matching the needs of the day. The union contends the technology is exacerbating an understaffing crisis in the healthcare industry.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“The major concern is that humans are not involved in the equation,” said Cedotal, who has worked as a nurse for 32 years. The software “recommendations usually end up being something unfavorable for staffing or the nurses or patient care in general, or all three together.”\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cfigure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-04-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12097138\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-04-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-04-KQED-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/08/260827-Palantir-Nurses-04-KQED-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\" />\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Nurses block the street in Palo Alto outside the headquarters of artificial intelligence giant Palantir on Aug. 27, 2026. The actions cited the “deadly costs” of Palantir’s products, including its development and operation of ELITE, an application used by federal agents that identifies people for arrest using, in part, Medicaid data. (Courtesy of National Nurses United)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.hcahealthcare.com/about\">HCA Healthcare\u003c/a>, which operates about 190 hospitals in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, did not respond to a request for comment. Good Samaritan Hospital in San José is affiliated with the company.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>National Nurses United, which represents more than 225,000 members nationwide with affiliates like the California Nurses Association, is getting ready to begin contract negotiations with HCA, Kaiser Permanente and other major employers. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>At the protest Thursday, the union joined community groups in criticizing Palantir for profiting from the Trump administration’s push to arrest and deport thousands of immigrants, and working with Israel’s Ministry of Defense to support its war in Gaza.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>“Their technology has enabled the systematic destruction of hospitals, the killing of hundreds of healthcare workers, and the collapse of Gaza’s most vital infrastructure, how can we in good conscience place that same technology at the heart of U.S. healthcare facilities?” said Aisha Nizar with the Palestinian Youth Movement, in a statement. “Our message for the Bay Area is clear: Protect patients, stop fueling genocide, and cut ties with Palantir immediately.”\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"tagline": "Where conversation and cultura meet",
"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"marketplace": {
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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"planet-money": {
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"politicalbreakdown": {
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"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"title": "PRI's The World: Latest Edition",
"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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},
"radiolab": {
"id": "radiolab",
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"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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"reveal": {
"id": "reveal",
"title": "Reveal",
"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
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"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/",
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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"order": 16
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},
"science-friday": {
"id": "science-friday",
"title": "Science Friday",
"info": "Science Friday is a weekly science talk show, broadcast live over public radio stations nationwide. Each week, the show focuses on science topics that are in the news and tries to bring an educated, balanced discussion to bear on the scientific issues at hand. Panels of expert guests join host Ira Flatow, a veteran science journalist, to discuss science and to take questions from listeners during the call-in portion of the program.",
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},
"snap-judgment": {
"id": "snap-judgment",
"title": "Snap Judgment",
"tagline": "Real stories with killer beats",
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