Monday open thread: Your Monday morning good news

I was going to write about Twitter's continuing implosion. But then this came across my various social media feeds:

Drug overdose fatalities soared to a record high during the early Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020, deaths from overdoses in the United States rose to 91,799, a 30 percent spike from the previous year. Researchers say synthetic opioids such as fentanyl are partially responsible. These drugs were involved in more than half all fatal overdoses in 2020. More than 150 people die every day from synthetic opioids.

“Fentanyl is killing Americans at an unprecedented rate,” Anne Milgram, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said in an April statement. “Drug traffickers are driving addiction and increasing their profits by mixing fentanyl with other illicit drugs. Tragically, many overdose victims have no idea they are ingesting deadly fentanyl, until it’s too late.”

Now, researchers at the University of Houston say in a statement they have a potential solution that could be a “game-changer” in the fight against opioid overdoses: a new vaccine that blocks fentanyl from entering the brain.

In a study published in Pharmaceutics, scientists tested their vaccine on 60 rats. The immunized animals could produce anti-fentanyl antibodies that stop the drug’s effects, allowing it to exit out of the body via the kidneys. This blocks the “high” caused by fentanyl, and it would theoretically make it easier for people to quit using the drug or avoid a relapse.

As someone who has just been trained on how to use Narcan in case one of our patrons OD's, this is a big deal.

Look, I don't give a rat's ass that fentanyl and opioid addiction are categorized as "white trash" addictions. I will always choose the side of humanity. And if this saves one person, then I'm for it. And, as I said, in multicultural LA, we're being trained to administer Narcan.

So, yay for science. We hairless apes are wicked clever.