Health and Sanity category archive

At Psychology Today Blogs, Christian Miller reports on research that suggests how persons wear masks in these viral times sheds light on their character. A bit; follow the link for details.

Suppose one person is wearing her mask properly, covering her mouth and nose. Suppose the other person only has his mask on his chin, or maybe down around his neck. From this difference alone, it could be that the second person is more likely to be dishonest in other situations as well.

That, at least, is what the economist Yossef Tobol at the Jerusalem College of Technology and his colleagues found in a recent study published in the journal Economic Letters.

The variable in the haystack.

H/T Susan for calling my attention to this article.

Protesting the protesting marauders.

David Lazarus investigated a hospital bill. A snippet:

Tony Summers, 82, underwent outpatient sinus surgery in October. His stay at San Diego’s Scripps Mercy Surgery Pavilion lasted less than three hours. He described the quality of care as excellent.

Summers received his insurer’s explanation of benefits recently.

There are any number of things we could nitpick about. But what really jumped out at me was a charge of almost $77,000 for “medical services,” a mysterious fee above and beyond the roughly $5,000 billed separately by Summers’ surgeon and anesthesiologist.

Follow the link for the story of his quest to find out what “medical services” warranted charges at the rate of $25,666.66 an hour for a three-hour outpatient procedure.

In a thoughtful article at The Seattle Times, Danny Westneat compares the different approaches to delivering COVID-19 vaccines in the neighboring states of Washington and Oregon and the larger implications thereof.

Here’s a bit:

There’s a real-time experiment in medical ethics and triage playing out right now between us and our sister state to the south, Oregon.

At its core is an uncomfortable question that nobody wants to fall on the wrong side of: Who really is essential in a society?

So who’s up next?

Here in these parts we are seeing similar arguments being played out on a much smaller scale as neighboring cities struggle with questions of, for example, reopening schools and restarting high school sports. Westneat offers a reasonable and reasoned assessment of the situation.

Macho man.

Instagram covidiots.

An excerpt from Dr. Fauci’s remarks:

One of the things that was made clear as recently as about 15 minutes ago when I was with the President is that one of the things we are going to do is to be completely transparent, open, and honest. If things go wrong, not point fingers, but correct them.

The veiled criticisms of the recently departed federal administrator are subtle and striking. The comments at about the 17 minute mark are truly of moment.

This is a must-listen.

Florida Woman.

At the Roanoke Times, Keith Young marvels at those who go maskless in blunderland. (Frankly, the piece could use a little help from an editor, but he makes good points.) Here’s a bit:

First Amendment extremists espousing “give me liberty or give me death” as the reason to ignore simple life saving requests will definitely receive one of those wants, though I think not the liberty they pine for, rather maybe get the virus-induced pine box. Freedom without rules is chaos, thus we have a Constitution and amendments. We give up a few personal freedoms to preserve our country’s freedom. As a Vietnam combat veteran I have seen true sacrifice, even under fallible political leaders. Masking and distancing are NOT sacrifices.

Will Bunch offers a theory as to why the roll out of the COVID-19 vaccine has been so badly botched. He suggest that is the fault of a president, but not necessarily the one who might spring first to mind.

. . . the president who created this mess was Ronald Reagan, who assured a similarly anxious nation upon taking office in 1981 that “[i]n this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem — government is the problem” and then put a lack of money where his mouth was. The early years of Reagan’s presidency saw a budget cut of 25% for the Department of Health and Human Services and, with that, the elimination of vital public health programs.