Health and Sanity category archive
The Grievance Train 0
Sam and his caller discuss the irrationality of equating a stay-at-home order during a pandemic with slavery or internment camps.
Going Viral on the Disinformation Superhighway 0
After examining what percentage of tweets about the coronavirus contain misinformation and downright falsehoods (hint: far too much), Phil Reed, writing at Psychology Today Blogs, moves on to examine why others pick them up and spread them. His answer will not bolster your faith in humans as rational creatures (but, these days, what does?). Here’s the nub; follow the link for the evidence and citations (emphasis added):
The Medicine Show 0
Will Bunch argues that it is all show and no medicine.
Standing Out from the Herd 0
Sweden’s experiment in “herd immunity” against COVID-19 has not worked out well.
A False Choice 0
At the Inky, Robert I. Field explains that the notion that you can somehow choose between the economy and public health is–er–misguided. An excerpt:
Meanwhile, PoliticalProf takes a look at the stock market.
All That Was Old Is New Again 0
Ina fascinating discussion, David speaks with Tulane professor John Barry about the 1918 flu epidemic.
Numbers Gaming, Reprise 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Matthew Edlund untangles the numbers about COVID-19 testing and fatalities and what they say about the Trump administration’s failure to deal with the pandemic. A nugget (emphasis added):
Lots of people died.
Now when people around the world call the CDC no one calls back.
Numbers Gaming 0
Matthew Fleischer looks at Georgia’s game of three-card monte with COVID-19 stats. An excerpt:
And yet data don’t lie. Or do they?
Thanks to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, we now know things did indeed look too good to be true.
Georgia’s coronavirus numbers looked so rosy because officials misrepresented the data in such a way it’s difficult to believe it wasn’t done on purpose.
Aside:
One of the links to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the one cited around the phrase “misrepresented the data” in the excerpt above, is broken. Try this one instead.
American Exceptionalism: Everybody Except America 2
Afterthought:
This is what can happen in a two-party “system” when one of the two major political parties decides that there is no such thing as the common good.
“What They Don’t Know Won’t Hurt Us” 0
In line with Sam Seder’s comment that I cited earlier this week,
That’s the Trump strategy in a nutshell: If we don’t have evidence, there’s no way for people to know about it . . . .
now comes Florida Man (much, much more at the link):
Rebekah Jones, whose work to build the user-friendly COVID-19 Data and Surveillance Dashboard drew praise and publicity, said her commitment to maximum transparency resulted in her removal from the dashboard project.
All That Was Old Is New Again 0
My local rag reports on a recently-discovered letter written by a man’s mother, when she was still a teen, to her brother, who was in France during World War I, about life during the 1918 flu pandemic.
It is both fascinating and eerily familiar.
The Epidemiologist Speaks 0
As aside, I must say that this is potentially a most disturbing news item.
Image via The Bob Cesca Show Blog.