This week I took a dive into the rising price of food and the way Subway has run afoul of labeling. Then I read a piece on the tradeoff between taking a risk and an abundance of caution.
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I get it. People are sick and tired of COVID and endlessly cranky about having to deal with the changing facts and rules. Some of this discontent is expressed as dissatisfaction with the vaccines. While this frustration may be understandable it is not warranted. The vaccines are nothing short of a medical miracle. Don't shoot the messenger RNA. Blame the virus.
"... the public in these areas are not being exposed to excessive levels of asbestos or other harmful substances … Given the scope of the tragedy from last week, I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C., that their air is safe to breathe, and their water is safe to drink."
Christine Todd Whitman, EPA Administrator, Sept. 2001
As of today, people who are immunocompromised are allowed to receive a booster shot. Sounds simple, right? That is, until the madness becomes evident.
Last week Governor de Santis of Florida threatened to withhold funding (and salaries) from local superintendents and school board members who disregarded his executive order, effectively prohibiting mask mandates in local school districts. The order came in the face of the Fort Lauderdale-Broward County’s school district vote to require masks.
The President immediately interceded -- promising federal funds to cover local salaries. Some days later, the Governor seems to have backtracked. But conflict between local, state, and federal powers to regulate pandemic conduct has rooted and is spreading. Interestingly, this is nothing new. Pandemics invite politics, often including scientifically apathetic politicians. Exactly 129 years ago, it happened like this:
Three well-known anti-GMO groups have attacked the New York Times for publishing a generally excellent story about crop biotechnology. Natural News, for example, called the article "pure propaganda masquerading as journalism." Unsurprisingly, Natural News is wrong.
As the Delta variant becomes THE primary source of COVID-19 infections there’s a growing body of knowledge to explain why this is happening. Let's consider two new studies and a fact we may have forgotten.
Maia Szalavitz's terrifying article in Wired, which described the cruel laws and punitive regulations that pain patients are forced to abide by, brought to mind hundreds of similarly tragic comments I've been reading for years. These can be found following any of my ~100 articles about pain, opioid denial, or government malfeasance and ineptitude. Here are a few.
The COVID-19 media is saturated with vaccination information and news. Information includes vaccine performance, vaccination availability, hospital crowding. The news includes local mandates, compliance statistics, breakthrough infections, masking requirements. Data on demonstrated public health benefits of vaccination are scarce; we set out to fill that gap. Our primary goal was to define quantitative relationships between vaccination and subsequent rates of infections as of July 24, 2021.
Masks offer some protection against COVID-19 infection, but not nearly as much as the authorized vaccines. By telling the public they have to continue masking after immunization, we all but guarantee skeptics will forgo both shots and masks.
Anti-vaccine group Children's Health Defense is abusing a new study of COVID-19 breakthrough cases to badmouth very effective shots.
48 of the 50 states allow some form of legal cannabis sale and use, the exceptions Nebraska and Idaho. 31 states have decriminalized its use. At last count, 17 states are allowing recreational sales. The feds continue to maintain it as a Schedule 1 drug, its possession punishable by up to a year in jail and a minimum fine of $5,000.
I just got my COVID booster! I'm quite happy about this but it was a rather strange experience. Here's why.
Several superficially plausible arguments against COVID-19 vaccination continue to pop up across the internet, usually phrased as leading questions. Are they as solid as they seem? A little investigation suggests they are mostly speculation.
Big news in the NFL! Superstar Aaron Rodgers, who claimed that he was "immunized" was playing the hidden ball trick with the public. He was nothing of the sort. Rodgers got homeopathic "treatment" instead of a vaccine and caught COVID. Perhaps he has taken too many shots to the head and not enough in the arm.
It's the silly season once again when oldsters are asked if they want to change their Medicare coverage. And especially to Medicare Advantage – the plans that are often free and come with lots of extras: like vision, dental, hearing, and even over-the-counter medications. But are they really an advantage?
Everybody wants to know that when they turn on their tap, their drinking water is safe. According to the EPA, the U.S. enjoys one of the world’s most reliable and safest drinking water supplies. But these days, when we question everything, it’s essential to understand the basic facts about drinking water.
Media attention has focused on recent downturns in COVID-19’s breakthrough cases in hopes that the nation can reach a continuing and tolerable endemic status. Others have warned about a potential 4th wave in conjunction with increased cold weather exposures. A New York Times commentary claimed to have discovered 2-month cycles in the U.S. and globally and concludes “the worst of the pandemic is almost certainly behind us” [1].
What’s going on here? What does the future portend, given what we’ve endured thus far?
“Scientists initially estimated that 60 to 70 percent of the population needed to acquire resistance to the coronavirus to banish it. Now Dr. Anthony Fauci and others are quietly shifting that number upward.” NY Times December 2020
“Reaching ‘Herd Immunity’ Is Unlikely in the US, Experts Now Believe” NY Times July 2021
Is this poor communication, flip-flop, or evidence of conspiracy?
Once, a long time ago, it seems, individuals used rules-of-thumb, fancy name heuristics to navigate transactions – social or commercial. As the scale of our interactions grew, rules-of-thumb gave way to algorithms, which were, in turn, unleashed to create new algorithms based upon artificial intelligence. Somewhere along the way, those artificially intelligent algorithms became dangerous. What is high-risk artificial intelligence? Spoiler alert – it is already upon us – welcome to our version of Skynet.
This article is written by Dr. Peter Attia [1]. It is helpful to understand the study of health, especially in the time of COVID. Summarizing it does not do it justice - so we are reprinting it from his website, with their permission.
Apparently, the U.S. Department of Justice thinks the answer to the above question is “yes.” The agency presumes to know just how much pain medication, and what type and dose, each and every inhabitant of the country will require each year, an upside-down debacle by any measure.
Antiviral drugs will be a necessary addition to vaccines to tamp down COVID. Both Pfizer and Merck have drugs in the clinic and they both look good. Roche also has a candidate but things are looking pretty grim. How grim? Better read this.
The media likes to compare COVID-19 outcomes in different states based on carefully selected metrics. A closer look indicates that these match-ups are less compelling than reporters think. This has consequences for the public's trust in science.
To paraphrase a well-known phrase about government intervention, can there be any words more feared than these: “I’m from Amazon, and I’m here to help.” After a failed endeavor – in conjunction with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway, known as Haven – Amazon is moving into healthcare on its own. What might that mean for physicians and patients?
Pagination
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