Before Fred Kalfon began exercising at the Grey Team veterans center a couple months ago, the 81-year-old rarely left his Florida home.
Parkinson’s disease, an inner ear disorder and other neurological problems, all likely caused by the Vietnam vet’s exposure to the infamous defoliant Agent Orange, made it difficult for him to move. His post-traumatic stress disorder, centering on the execution of a woman who helped his platoon, was at its worst.
Treatment through the federal Department of Veterans Affairs didn’t work, he said.
“I felt stupid the way I walk around and stumble,” said Kalfon, who led a medical aid unit as a first lieutenant in 1964-65. “I was depressed.”
But after months in a veteran-specialized gym and recovery program, the retired pharmaceutical researcher and sales manager is socializing and has thrown aside his walker for a cane.
He’s among the latest of 700 veterans of all ages working with the Grey Team, a 7-year-old organization combining personalized workouts, camaraderie, community outings and an array of machines in a 90-day program targeted at improving physical and mental health.
“It’s the machines, sure. It’s the therapy you are taking. It’s the (staff’s) encouragement — they are there all the time for you. They are caring. Caring makes a difference,” Kalfon said.
The nonprofit center, located in a converted warehouse in Boca Raton, Florida, gets its name, in part, from the brain’s nickname: “gray matter.” Many of the vets who apply and are accepted into the free program suffered head trauma in battle or have PTSD.
“What we have created here is really magical,” said Grey Team co-founder Cary Reichbach, 62, a physical trainer and former Army police officer. The goal, he said, is to get the vets off medications for their mental and physical ailments when possible. Even after completing the program, participants can still workout, hang out and participate in outings.
With the government saying vets are 50% more likely to kill themselves than non-veterans, Reichbach is proud the center helps combat that statistic.
“We want to tackle the suicidal ideation before it even starts,” he said.
He concedes suicide prevention is easier because the center doesn’t accept clients who are homeless or have uncontrolled addictions.
“I wish we had the funding to tackle” those issues, he said.
The Grey Team’s program features an array of machines using infrared light, lasers and sound waves meant to relieve stress, heal mental and physical wounds and help the vets sleep without the use of pharmaceuticals. The program is run by a primary team of seven, including a medical director.
Drugs are overutilized in other veteran programs, such as those in VA hospitals, often because “they have a budget and they have to spend it,” Reichbach said.
Ohio State University psychologist Craig Bryan, a former executive director of the National Center for Veterans Studies, said the successes of the Grey Team program are not surprising given the selective participant pool.
“They are selecting from a subgroup with less severe problems,” said Bryan, a former Air Force captain who now works with the VA.
His skepticism also extends to the effectiveness of the machines.
“To my knowledge, they’ve never been rigorously studied so it’s hard to know if they have any benefit at all and/or if they have side effects or cause harms,” Bryan said. “Exercise is a common feature of many therapies and treatments that have demonstrated efficacy for PTSD, depression and suicide risk.”
University researchers are collecting data that Reichbach said he believes will show his program’s treatments work.
Reichbach’s 93-year-old father, Ed, offers hugs and back slaps to everyone entering the Grey Team lobby. Sometimes the Army vet and former university professor drops to give 10 rapid-fire pushups — a demonstration to give older vets a jolt on their first visit.
“We have to get them in here, that’s the difficult part,” he said.
Upstairs in the center’s “safe space” community area, Navy vet Bill Tolle discussed his service as a meteorologist and oceanographer from 1983 to 1990. As a petty officer second-class stationed in Puerto Rico, Hawaii and Antarctica, he never experienced combat.
But in 1988, Tolle witnessed a plane crash at his Antarctic base that killed two people. A year later, he sustained a back injury in a helicopter crash. The back-to-back traumas left him with PTSD. He worked as a firefighter and then a registered nurse in an inner-city emergency room. His PTSD led to alcoholism.
“I really wasn’t familiar with what PTSD was. I always thought it was combat-related,” Tolle said. “For years I went untreated and it got progressively worse.”
He finally was diagnosed in 2016 but didn’t get treatment until 2020 through a residential VA program. He then lived at the Salvation Army, which introduced him to the Grey Team.
Tolle is a believer in the center’s machines.
“My thinking was foggy, at best. A lot of short-term memory stuff. I would forget. I can now think things through, resolve things,” he said. “My whole cognitive function is sharper.”
In the center’s gym, Kalfon talked about walking through Vietnam jungles still wet with Agent Orange, the herbicide sprayed by the U.S. from planes to kill the brush where enemy soldiers hid. It has been linked to veterans’ health problems.
His health began failing about seven years ago. First, a heart attack and quintuple bypass. Then the neurological problems. His health insurance agent told him about the Grey Team and he applied, seeing it as a last hope.
For about two months, Kalfon has been coming to the center three times weekly. He can now walk up stairs and has set a goal to jog 3 miles (5 kilometers).
“When I can do that,” he said, “I think I will have accomplished everything I need.”
A university professor who spent 100 days living underwater at a Florida Keys lodge for scuba divers resurfaced Friday and raised his face to the sun for the first time since March 1.
Dr. Joseph Dituri set a new record for the longest time living underwater without depressurization during his stay at Jules’ Undersea Lodge, submerged beneath 30 feet (9.14 meters) of water in a Key Largo lagoon.
The diving explorer and medical researcher shattered the previous mark of 73 days, two hours and 34 minutes set by two Tennessee professors at the same lodge in 2014.
“It was never about the record,” Dituri said. “It was about extending human tolerance for the underwater world and for an isolated, confined, extreme environment.”
Dituri, who also goes by the moniker “ Dr. Deep Sea,” is a University of South Florida educator who holds a doctorate in biomedical engineering and is a retired U.S. Naval officer.
Guinness World Records listed Dituri as the record holder on its website after his 74th day underwater last month. The Marine Resources Development Foundation, which owns the lodge, will ask Guinness to certify Dituri’s 100-day mark, according to foundation head Ian Koblick.
Dituri’s undertaking, dubbed Project Neptune 100, was organized by the foundation. Unlike a submarine, which uses technology to keep the inside pressure about the same as at the surface, the lodge’s interior is set to match the higher pressure found underwater.
The project aimed to learn more about how the human body and mind respond to extended exposure to extreme pressure and an isolated environment and was designed to benefit ocean researchers and astronauts on future long-term missions.
During the three months and nine days he spent underwater, Dituri conducted daily daily experiments and measurements to monitor how his body responded to the increase in pressure over time.
He also met online with several thousand students from 12 countries, taught a USF course and welcomed more than 60 visitors to the habitat.
“The most gratifying part about this is the interaction with almost 5,000 students and having them care about preserving, protecting and rejuvenating our marine environment,” Dituri said.
He plans to present findings from Project Neptune 100 at November’s World Extreme Medicine Conference in Scotland.
Ashish Jha, the White House’s point person on the COVID-19 response, will depart from the administration next week.
The White House said Thursday that Jha will return to Brown University, where he had served as the dean of the university’s school of public health before joining the White House as its COVID-19 coordinator in April 2022. His departure comes after the federal government ended its twin national emergencies on the virus earlier this spring.
In a statement announcing Jha’s departure, President Joe Biden said COVID-19 “no longer controls our daily lives.”
“As one of the leading public health experts in America, he has effectively translated and communicated complex scientific challenges into concrete actions that helped save and improve the lives of millions of Americans,” Biden said in the statement announcing Jha’s departure. “I extend my deepest thanks to Ashish and his family. We are a stronger and healthier nation because of his contributions to public service.”
Biden’s first COVID-19 czar was Jeff Zients, now the White House chief of staff.
A special Italian court has shut down a probe into whether the country’s former premier and former health minister caused unnecessary deaths by failing to extend a lockdown zone in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Court of Ministers in Brescia threw out the case against ex-Premier Giuseppe Conte and ex-Health Minister Roberto Speranza on Wednesday.
The investigation alleged errors were made in not extending a “red zone,” initially imposed on a limited number of towns in northern Italy’s Lombardy and Veneto regions, to neighboring Bergamo as the number of deaths there skyrocketed.
Both officials have said they acted according to scientific knowledge and expert opinion available at the time.
Conte told RAI state TV that the court’s decision “comforts me.”
“We were facing a virus that by then was galloping, and within a few days we made the decision to close other regions in a very strict way,’’ Conte said, adding that the court’s decision also made clear that the government made a reasonable call given the data available.
A court in Bergamo must still decide wither to indict more than a dozen other people. The Court of Ministers handles cases involving Italian Cabinet members.
The three-year-long probe alleges that more than 4,000 deaths could have been prevented if the lockdown had been extended on Feb. 27, 2020, as Bergamo province became Italy’s COVID-19 hot spot.
The city’s morgue was so overwhelmed that the army had to send in trucks to bring coffins to other morgues for cremation.
On Feb. 21, 2020, Italy became the first county outside Asia to confirm a case of COVID-19.
The first “red zones” were imposed three days later around 10 towns in Lombardy and one in Veneto, and extended to all of Lombardy and 14 other provinces in the north on March 8. Conte put the entire country on lockdown two days later.
Debate surrounding Florida’s new restrictions on gender-affirming care focused largely on transgender children. But a new law that Republican presidential candidate and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed last month also made it difficult – even impossible – for many transgender adults to get treatment.
Eli and Lucas, trans men who are a couple, followed the discussions in the Legislature, where Democrats warned that trans children would be more prone to suicide under a ban on gender-affirming care for minors and Republicans responded with misplaced tales of mutilated kids. Eli said he and his partner felt “blindsided” when they discovered the bill contained language that would also disrupt their lives.
“There was no communication. … Nobody was really talking about it in our circles,” said Eli, 29.
Like many transgender adults in Florida, he and Lucas are now facing tough choices, including whether to uproot their lives so that they can continue to access gender-confirming care. Clinics are also trying to figure out how to operate under regulations that have made Florida a test case for restrictions on adults.
Lucas, 26, lost his access to treatment when the Orlando clinic that prescribed him hormone replacement therapy stopped providing gender-affirming care altogether. The couple also worries about staying in a state that this year enacted several other bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community.
“My entire life is here. All my friends, my family. I just got a promotion at my job, which I’m probably not to be able to keep,” Lucas, who works in a financial aid office at a college, said. “I’m losing everything except Eli and my pets moving out of here. So this was not a decision that I took lightly at all.”
The Associated Press is not using Eli’s and Lucas’ last names because they fear reprisal. While their friends and families know they are trans, most people who meet them do not.
The new law that bans gender-affirming care for minors also mandates that adult patients seeking trans health care sign an informed consent form. It also requires a physician to oversee any health care related to transitioning, and for people to see that doctor in person. Those rules have proven particularly onerous because many people received care from nurse practitioners and used telehealth. The law also made it a crime to violate the new requirements.
Another new law that allows doctors and pharmacists to refuse to treat transgender people further limits their options.
“For trans adults, it’s devastating,” said Kate Steinle, chief clinical officer at FOLX Health, which provides gender-affirming care to trans adults through telemedicine. Her company decided to open in-person clinics and hire more physicians licensed in Florida in order to continue to provide care to patients who have already enrolled, even though that represents a major change to the company’s business model.
Eli has been seeing a physician for years and therefore still has access to care. But SPEKTRUM Health Inc., the Orlando clinic that prescribed Lucas hormone replacement therapy, has stopped providing gender-affirming care.
“There are a lot of people looking for care that we’re no longer legally able to provide,” said Lana Dunn, SPEKTRUM Health’s chief operating officer.
Florida has the second-largest population of transgender adults in the U.S., at an estimated 94,900 people, according to the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. It used state-level, population-based surveys to determine its estimates. Not all transgender people seek medical interventions.
At least 19 states have now enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. But restrictions on adults haven’t been part of the conversation in most places. Missouri’s attorney general tried to impose a rule in that state, but it was pulled back.
Florida is “the proving ground of what they can get away with,” Dunn said.
Her organization treats about 4,000 people — most in Florida and some out-of-state telehealth patients, she said. While SPEKTRUM has bolstered its mental health services since the law passed, it and other organizations heavily rely on nurse practitioners to provide care.
Dunn estimates that 80% of trans adults in the state were getting their health care from a nurse practitioner and now have lost access.
“Right now what we’re seeing in the community is just chaos,” Dunn said.
The law also contains language that she said could scare off doctors who would be otherwise willing to treat trans patients, such as a 20-year statute of limitations to sue over care they provide.
As a trans woman herself, Dunn is grappling with losing her own access to hormones while trying to provide support to terrified patients. That’s taken “a significant emotional toll,” she said.
“Not only am I faced with this lack of care for myself but a lot of people within the community are also facing the same thing, and they’re reaching out to me for guidance,” Dunn said. “So I’m doing my best to help guide people and console them, but nobody’s really reaching out to me saying, ’How are you doing? Are you OK?’”
Lucas, who transitioned eight years ago when he was 18, anticipates running out of hormone treatments in June. In the best case scenario he can foresee now, he will be able to get a new prescription in August. He fears he might start to get his period again.
“It’s just going to be extremely difficult mentally to have your body changing in a way that doesn’t align with your brain,” Lucas said.
Eli and Lucas have switched to a month-to-month lease and tentatively plan to relocate to Minnesota in November. They said they would leave sooner if they can afford it and started an online fundraiser to help. Moving with their dog and two cats increases the expense and difficulty of finding a new place.
“I just never thought it could happen this way, this fast and to us,” Eli said.
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Beaty reported from New York City and Schoenbaum reported from Raleigh, North Carolina.
An Austrian federal court said Thursday that the state can’t be held liable for a COVID-19 infection from an outbreak at an Alpine ski resort as the pandemic hit Europe in early 2020.
The Supreme Court of Justice announced its verdict in a long-running legal battle involving a German resident who traveled to Ischgl on March 7, 2020 and visited several apres-ski venues before returning home six days later. He experienced the first coronavirus symptoms shortly afterward.
The plaintiff sought damages and a ruling that the Austrian federal government was liable for harm to him resulting directly or indirectly from authorities’ errors or failings connected to the “mismanagement” of COVID-19 in Tyrol province in late February and early March 2020.
The outbreak in Ischgl, a popular resort in western Austria, was considered one of Europe’s earliest “super-spreader” events of the pandemic.
An independent commission concluded in late 2020 that authorities in Tyrol acted too slowly to shut down ski resorts after it became clear they were dealing with one of Europe’s first coronavirus outbreaks. But the panel didn’t find evidence that political or business pressure played a role in the decision.
The federal court found that the regional government gave incorrect information in a March 5, 2020 statement suggesting that Icelandic passengers who had flown from Munich to Reykjavik and then tested positive were infected on the plane rather than in Tyrol. In fact, the court said in its May 15 verdict, authorities had already had an indication that at least one man developed symptoms before flying home.
However, it said that incorrect information would be a grounds for liability only if it created a “basis of trust” that would induce people to make faulty decisions. That wasn’t the case because the statement in question was formulated vaguely and in the subjunctive, noting that the evaluation was based on initial information and further clarification was in progress, the court found.
It also upheld lower courts’ findings that authorities’ obligations under anti-epidemic laws were designed “exclusively to protect the general public.”
The legal director of Austria’s Consumer Protection Association, Peter Kolba, said the verdict was “a deep disappointment” for people from 45 countries, some of whom he said “suffered severe damage because of the mistakes of authorities in Tyrol.”
He said in a statement that the association would examine the court’s decision carefully and consider further action for damages against the Austrian state.
