Hidilyn Diaz all out for another...

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Year award at the Diamond Hotel.

"I wish that I'll be able to return here next year for my fifth Athlete of the Year award. Manifesting for weighting and for the Philippines.

Long live the Filipino athlete," she added.

Diaz is tied with boxing champion Nonito Donaire with four PSA Athlete of the Year citations and is just one trophy shy from matching bowling legend Paeng Nepomuceno and boxing great Manny Pacquiao, who has a record five each.

"I'm already 30 plus years old but I'm still here competing, while also working hard to finish my studies. That's why to those people saying that it's too late to start, I don't believe them because age doesn't matter, it's just a number. What matters is how you work hard and how bad you want it," said the 32-year-old Diaz.

"It is important that you love what you're doing, know your purpose, why you're doing it, whether for yourself or for your family. To my fellow athletes, we are doing this for our love of our country and for our sports. Us Filipino athletes, we continue to fight our country. I believe that many of you will follow in my footsteps and win an Olympic gold and be a champion in our field."

The weightlifter leads the nearly 100 awardees at the 2022 PSA Awards Night.

The PSA handed out the President's Award to Filipino tennis sensation Alex Eala and the Hall of Fame trophy to the late Lydia De Vega-Mecardo, once hailed as the fastest woman in Asia in the 1980's. Her daughter Stephanie Paneng Mercado accepted the trophy.

Long jump queen Elma MurosPosadas was handed the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Samahang Weightlifting ng Pilipinas (SWP) was recognized as the National Sports Association (NSA) of the Year.

Philippine Olympic Committee (POC) president Abraham 'Bambol' Tolentino seized the Executive of Year award while Scottie Thompson and Sarina Bolden were named the Mr. Basketball and Ms. Football plums, respectively.

EJ Obiena, Carlos Yulo, the Philippine women's football team, Carlo Paalam, Meggie Ochoa, and Kimberly Anne Custodio received major awards, among others. g

not losing trust in public health officials for changing their advice over time as they work to keep up with the latest scientific research.

Masks are ‘not magic’ Dr. William Schaffner, a professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, led off the session by describing the challenges of conducting mask studies in the first place, whether in a health environment or in the community. “You can’t monitor people about their mask-wearing behavior all the time. That’s certainly something you can’t do, and of course (masks) have to be worn correctly,” he said.

While many researchers have looked at multiple physical measures to prevent people from catching a virus, the Cochrane reviewers evaluated studies that compared just three interventions: surgical masks, N95/P2 respirators, and hand hygiene. Based on the results they were uncertain whether masks help to slow the spread of viruses but decided hand hygiene “may help to slow the spread of respiratory viruses,” Schaffner said.

Yet he also pointed out that in most cases, mask wearing was accompanied by social distancing, and… “in certain communities, we were in a lockdown. we stayed home. So, we did all those things more or less simultaneously. And it’s hard – impossible really – to determine what proportion of the reduction we saw on COVID was due to the mask itself.

As for his own advice, Schaffner emphasized that “masks are not magic.” But he said that people in high-risk groups may start wearing them again next flu season. “They will offer another layer of protection to protect me, a highly vulnerable person, from acquiring an infection from others.”

No more mask mandates “I don’t think we can impose mask mandates on the public anymore,” said Dr. Monica Ghandi, Professor of Medicine and Associate Division Chief of the Division of HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at UCSF in San Francisco.

Gandhi noted a Danish mask study where no mandate was in effect at the time, and two others in Bangladesh and Guinea-Bissau where entire villagers wore masks. The study found “there was very little effectiveness” in wearing masks.

During the Delta surge, Orange County, California did not impose a mask mandate but nearby LA County did.

“And there was no difference in transmission or death rates. Very importantly, the vaccination rates made all the difference,” Gandhi said.

The most important thing people could do during the pandemic is to get vaccinated, Gandhi advised. “I think we have to keep it a choice for the masking.”

Gandhi’s recently published book, Endemic, is about the politicization of public health policy. She said that closing schools during COVID was a politically driven decision and “not good for children in the Blue States, because the Red States kept their schools open.” Dr. Mina Hakim, a pediatric specialist at South Central Family Health Center in Los Angeles, offered a similar view about masks from “down in the trenches.”

“The results of the study were clear in that surgical masks, N95 masks, did not make a difference in the transmission of Covid or the flu,” Hakim said.

“The mask is a small piece of a much bigger shield that we have against COVID. I would use the bigger piece of the shield, which is a vaccine, and I would not recommend masks for the general population,” Hakim added. Like Schaffner and Gandhi, he recommended masks for vulnerable populations.

Kids and masks

He said the Cochrane review looked at a few studies that were specifically for children, and those results were even more definitive.

“Kids are the worst at keeping things on. You’d be lucky if you have a kid with their pants on at the end of the day let alone having a mask on that increases humidity, increases difficulty of breathing, and it’s just overall uncomfortable,” Hakim said.

They’re constantly touching things, wiping their nose, taking their mask off to eat and drink. They share pencils and pens that have been in other kids’ mouths. And teenagers are horrendous at being compliant, Hakim added.

Like Schaffner and Gandhi, Hakim recommended wearing masks for vulnerable people.

“If we could provide masks particularly to those high-risk people, I think that might … increase the trust because we’re not imposing the masks on them, but making them available, so that people feel more comfortable and reassured that it’s a good thing to do,” says Hakim.

All three speakers agreed that as studies like the Cochrane report reveal new findings about the efficacy of preventive care, these should not diminish public trust.

“One of the most difficult things for the general public to understand is that we will give you our best advice today but if we learn something tonight, we may have to change that advice tomorrow, and that this is an ongoing process,” Schaffner says. (Peter White/Ethnic Media Services)

centers, information about this assistance is difficult or impossible to find.

Standards also vary widely, with aid at some hospitals limited to patients with income as low as $13,590 a year. At other hospitals, people making five or six times that much can get assistance.

The result is widespread confusion that has left countless patients who should have been eligible for aid with large bills instead. A 2019 KHN analysis of hospital tax filings found that nearly half of nonprofit medical systems were billing patients with incomes low enough to qualify for charity care.

The groups are asking the IRS to issue rules that would set common standards for charity care and a uniform application across nonprofit hospitals.

(Current regulations for charity care do not apply to for-profit or public hospitals.) The advocates also want the federal agency to strengthen limits on how much nonprofit hospitals can charge and to curtail aggressive collection tactics such as foreclosing on patients’ homes or denying or deferring medical care.

More than two-thirds of hospitals sue patients or take other legal action against them, such as garnishing wages or placing liens on property, according to a recent KHN investigation. A quarter sell patients’ debts to debt collectors, who in turn can pursue patients for years for unpaid bills. About 1 in 5 deny nonemergency care to people with outstanding debt.

“Charitable institutions, which have other methods of collection available to them, should not be permitted to withhold needed medical care as a means to pressure patients to pay,” the groups wrote.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.