Three health stories you might have missed

Your post-Thanksgiving catch-up: long covid treatments, abortion in Georgia and federal judges

Welcome back from the Thanksgiving respite, where on Capitol Hill, it’s a sprint to the next holiday break. This morning we’re diving into three stories you may have missed and why they matter.

• Covid long-haulers are turning to treatments without robust scientific evidence as the slow pace of research into the condition frustrates advocates.
• Georgia’s Supreme Court has reinstated a ban on most abortions as access to the procedure remains limited across the South.
• Senate Democrats will continue to confirm federal judges next year, but the makeup of the courts over the last two years hasn’t shifted substantially.

Manufacturers are pushing to the market a spate of remedies purporting to treat long covid, often with little data behind them. But the sluggish pace of research into the condition has left covid long-haulers desperate for relief turning to pricey unproven treatments, our colleague Frances Stead Sellers reports.

One nonprofit is promoting ivermectin, which the Food and Drug Administration has approved to treat some parasitic worms. Major professional groups, like the American Medical Association, oppose using the drug outside of clinical trials, and it hasn’t been shown to effectively treat acute covid-19. Others are touting dietary supplements that aren’t regulated by the FDA, a process known as “blood washing” in Cyprus or $25,000 stem cell treatments in the Cayman Islands.

Yet, government-funded research into the condition has been slow. The National Institutes of Health is working to understand the biological basis of long covid, and recently announced its intent to investigate whether the antiviral Paxlovid helps with long covid — but the results aren’t expected until 2024.

Why it matters: Some outside experts contend more federal funding is needed to speed up the country’s understanding of long covid and develop treatments. But as we reported last week, Congress is highly unlikely to fulfill the Biden administration’s request for $750 million for long covid amid Republican resistance to more pandemic aid.

Most abortions are again paused in Georgia after the state Supreme Court reinstated a ban on the procedure after fetal cardiac activity can be detected.

The one-page order Wednesday came in response to an emergency petition from the state, The Post’s Kim Bellware reports. Georgia’s Republican attorney general had immediately appealed a Nov. 15 ruling from a Fulton County judge, who wrote that key parts of the law “were plainly unconstitutional when drafted, voted upon, and enacted.”

That legal rationale was novel, essentially saying that abortion bans weren’t constitutional if passed before Roe v. Wade’s…