💊 Amgen extends layoffs season; Covid may have begun with dogs; India staring at a Covid wave?

#300 | Gut bacteria making women sad; For live sports events, you should be glad; Heavy workloads for mental health are bad

Hello, and welcome back to a brand-new week with The Kable and a possible new origin theory for Covid. Elsewhere, parts of America don't want schoolgirls even discussing menstruation; new bird flu vaccines promise much; India looks to make regulations regulatory; disaster damages run into the billions; and a whole lot more.

Layoffs in biopharma show no sign of abating, with Amgen becoming the latest to hop on to the bandwagon with 450 cuts.

A new study in the US finds high rates of cancer in military pilots and also ground crews.

The US state of Florida looks to enforce regulations banning even the mention of periods in elementary schools.

The WHO is likely to bring Covid on par with the flu later this year.

Speaking of Covid, is India entering a new wave? Detection of the XBB 1.16 variant has been on a steady rise over the past few weeks, igniting fresh concerns that the country might be on the brink of an outbreak.

Also, in India, as an indication of how effective regulations are, the country's DCGI has mandated that all medicines should only be sold under the supervision of pharmacists.

Burundi has declared a fresh outbreak of circulating poliovirus type 2, its first in over 30 years.

And finally, a ray of hope from a Dutch lab where two new vaccines against bird flu have proven effective at both curtailing infections and preventing transmission.