Mushie & Co, a baby goods store, announced a voluntary recall of its FRIGG pacifier after more than 200 reports that the pacifier’s silicone nipple detached from its base.More than 330,000 pacifiers have been voluntarily recalled by their manufacturer after reports that they could pose a choking hazard, according to a notice posted by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.Mushie & Co, a baby goods store, is recalling its FRIGG silicone pacifiers because the “base of the silicone nipple has a fine slit that can cause the nipple to detach from the plastic shield, posing a choking hazard,” according to the recall notice, which was posted on Wednesday.Mushie received more than 200 reports internationally that the nipple detached from the plastic shield of the pacifier, according to a company statement. No injuries have been reported, the company said.Mushie was founded in 2018 by Mushie and Levi Feigenson, according to the company’s website. The company’s owners did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday afternoon.Mushie told consumers that they should stop using the pacifiers immediately and contact the company for a full refund or store credit. To obtain the refund, customers should cut the silicone nipple from the base of the pacifier and send a photo of both the detached silicone nipple and the pacifier base to the company.The FRIGG silicone pacifiers came in two designs, Classic and Daisy.The Classic design is an all-silicone nipple attached to a round plastic shield. The Daisy design is the same, except the shield is scalloped.Each design was made in two sizes: one for infants up to six months old, and a larger size for babies six to 18 months old. The FRIGG silicone pacifiers were sold in more than 40 colors.The Daisy and Classic pacifiers were sold at various stores in the United States, such as SpearmintLOVE, T.J. Maxx, Lil’ Tulips and Olivia & Jade Company, as well as on Mushie’s website and on Amazon.Both models were sold from April 2021 through December 2021 and cost about $8 for a single pacifier and about $15 for a pack of two.

In addition to naloxone, a medication used to reverse opioid overdoses, the machines will distribute free syringes, toiletries and safe-sex kits.New York City health officials have announced a plan to install 10 “public health vending machines” that would dispense sterile syringes, an anti-overdose medication and other “harm reduction” supplies to help neighborhoods that have been hit hard by drug overdoses.The vending machines, which are planned for neighborhoods in all five boroughs, will also carry toiletries and safe-sex kits, according to Michael McRae, acting executive deputy commissioner of the city’s health department. All items in the vending machines will be free, he said, adding that the department hoped to have the vending machines on the street this year.“This is really about expanding access to health and wellness services,” he said of the initiative, a $730,000 pilot program seeking up to six contractors.The main purpose of the vending machines is to curb overdoses across the city by increasing the availability of naloxone, a drug that works to quickly reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. “Every four hours there’s an overdose here,” Dr. McRae said. “This is something that doesn’t allow for people to die every hour.”As they have across the country, opioid deaths in New York City, have risen significantly during the coronavirus pandemic. There were 2,062 overdose deaths in the city in 2020, according to data published last year by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene — the highest total since reporting on overdose deaths began in 2000 and over 500 more than in 2019.“Overdose deaths in New York City are not equally distributed citywide, with some groups and neighborhoods disproportionately experiencing increases,” the nonprofit Fund for Public Health in New York said last month in a request for proposals from organizations interested in taking the lead on the project. The fund, which issued the request on behalf of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, set a Jan. 20 deadline for proposals. The health department will award the contracts on Jan. 31.According to 2020 health department data, overdose deaths among white New Yorkers had decreased during the preceding three years, while rates among Black New Yorkers had increased in the previous year, and rates among Latinos had increased for five consecutive years.Residents in impoverished Black and Latino neighborhoods like Mott Haven in the South Bronx and East Harlem in Manhattan reported the highest rates of unintentional overdose deaths in 2020.“Structural racism in drug policy and enforcement has been linked to decreased access to services, poorer health outcomes and increased overdose risk,” the request said.The solicitation for proposals identified several neighborhoods as priorities for the machines, including Central Harlem and Union Square in Manhattan, Far Rockaway in Queens, Stapleton in Staten Island and East New York in Brooklyn.Access to clean needles is important to prevent the spread of H.I.V. and hepatitis C as well as skin and soft tissue infections, Mike Selick, an associate director at the National Harm Reduction Coalition, said on Thursday.“We know that syringe access is effective; this is just another form of it,” he said in an interview. Syringe access programs are a proven way to slash H.I.V. infection rates by limiting the reuse of contaminated needles, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Proposals like New York’s are “about making the material, the health equipment and the health supplies accessible to the people who need it the most, where they’re already at, on their schedule and on their timeline, and without the stigma or shame,” Sheila P. Vakharia, deputy director for research and academic engagement at the Drug Policy Alliance, said on Thursday.In New York State, people can already get up to 10 clean syringes at pharmacies participating in the state’s Expanded Syringe Access Program. But according to Dr. Vakharia, many drug users would rather avoid a face-to-face interaction with a pharmacist, and many pharmacies are closed late at night, when drug use is more prevalent and people need safe supplies the most.The same for goes for access to naloxone, she added. “It’s a medication that should be readily available and accessible to people when they need it the most, and it doesn’t hurt if we can make” it more readily available, she said.Critics of the proposal have said that the vending machines fail to address the most critical issues around addiction.“I agree we cannot ignore the devastating data on drug addiction and overdoses without doing more,” Councilman David Carr, a Staten Island Republican who represents one of the neighborhoods prioritized in the plan, said in an email on Thursday.“But I feel it is irresponsible to simply place vending machines filled with syringes and Narcan in neighborhoods, without providing addicts the support and real assistance they need,” he added, referring to a brand-name version of naloxone.But advocates of the plan maintain that installing the vending machines is “the smart thing to do.”“We don’t want it to be easier to get dirty needles,” Mr. Selick, of the National Harm Reduction Coalition, said. “We don’t want it to be easier to get drugs on the street than it is to get the help and the supplies and the good information that you need to know.”

As cases surge, a doctor says that some people are pleading for discretion when they receive the vaccine, worried about what their friends and families will think.Even as the more contagious Delta variant drives a surge in infections, the Covid-19 vaccination effort has become so polarized in Missouri that some people are trying to get shots in secret to avoid conflicts with friends and relatives, a doctor there said.In a video circulated by her employer, Dr. Priscilla A. Frase, a hospitalist and the chief medical information officer at Ozarks Healthcare in West Plains, Mo., said this month that several people had pleaded for anonymity when they came in to be vaccinated, and that some appeared to have made an effort to disguise themselves.“I work closely with our pharmacists who are leading our vaccine efforts through our organization,” she said, “and one of them told me the other day that they had several people come in to get vaccinated who have tried to sort of disguise their appearance and even went so far as to say, ‘Please, please please, don’t let anyone know that I got this vaccine.’”It was not clear how many people had tried to alter their appearance to avoid recognition, or how they had done so. Dr. Frase, who wore a mask in the video, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Some people, she said in the video, were “very concerned about how their people that they love, within their family and within their friendship circles and their work circles, are going to react if they found out that they got the vaccine.”“Nobody should have to feel that kind of pressure to get something that they want, you know,” she added. “We should all be able to be free to do what we want to do, and that includes people who don’t want to get the vaccine as well as people who do want to get the vaccine. But we’ve got to stop ridiculing people that do or don’t want to get the vaccine.”The video was circulating online as public health officials in Missouri were confronting a resurgent outbreak, driven by the Delta variant and concentrated in the state’s south and southwest.The state’s vaccination rate lags that of most other states and the nation as a whole. According to a New York Times database, 41 percent of Missouri residents have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, compared with more than 49 percent nationwide. In Howell County, Mo., where Ozarks Healthcare and Dr. Frase are based, only 20 percent of residents are fully vaccinated.Nearly 2,500 new cases of Covid-19 were reported in Missouri on Wednesday, an increase of 54 percent over the previous two weeks. Hospitalizations were up 38 percent over the same period.Studies suggest that the approved vaccines remain effective against the Delta variant, but public health experts say Delta poses a serious threat to unvaccinated populations..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Despite that evidence, public health measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus, including vaccinations, have been politicized across much of the country. In some places, including in parts of Missouri, being unvaccinated has become a point of pride for some people. In a Politico report this week, few people who were interviewed at Lake of the Ozarks, a popular tourist destination, acknowledged that they had been vaccinated, and some said that they had been shamed by friends or relatives.In the video, Dr. Frase said she was particularly troubled by the increased spread of misinformation about the vaccines.“My fear is that people are getting information from the wrong sources and therefore actually making uninformed decisions rather than informed decisions,” she said.“I want people to ask medical people,” she added, “or ask somebody that they trust who has good knowledge — not rely on the stuff that’s out there on social media, not rely on people who have opinions not based on facts.”It was “disheartening,” she said, “to have gotten to that place where we, as health care providers, thought that maybe things were finally back to whatever our new normal is going to be after this pandemic.”