With hurricanes, wildfires and other calamities, authorities pound home to the public the importance of preparedness. So why should preparing for an infection outbreak be any different? Yet more disclosures have raised disturbing questions about the dearth of crucial emergency planning by nursing homes and other long-term care facilities, their owners and operators, and federal….
Continue ReadingArchives for May 2020
Buyer beware: J&J pulls its baby powder, as officials warn about vapeware
Consumers have gotten stark reminders of the safety risks of two different kinds of products, one a household classic and the other a bootlegger’s nightmare. Caveat emptor about baby powder and street-purchased vaping devices. As for Johnson and Johnson’s family familiar talc, the company may have timed well its decision to yank it from shelves….
Continue ReadingHealth disparities, laid bare by the virus, lead to loss of both lives and limbs.
Although the Covid-19 pandemic may be opening more and more Americans’ eyes to the harsh effects of the country’s economic and racial inequities, the stark damage from the nation’s health disparities can be plain to see — in truly disheartening ways. Lizzie Presser, a reporter for the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative site ProPublica, deserves high praise….
Continue ReadingOfficials’ shiftiness in pandemic response fuels public confusion and concern
Because Covid-19 is caused by a novel coronavirus, the world has much to learn about it and its effects. For the voting and taxpaying public, a critical line of inquiry in the days ahead may be this: Why does this disease also seem to cause such an outbreak of shiftiness among our leaders? Let’s start….
Continue ReadingHuman fault or act of nature in coronavirus’s deadly assault on nursing homes?
Is the coronavirus’s staggering toll on patients in nursing homes something to be written off as a force of nature for which humans bear little fault? Or are there lessons to be learned about shortcomings that could help preserve lives the next time? News media reports keep unearthing institutional misery and a blindness to the suffering….
Continue ReadingEven with coronavirus lockdowns, reckless driving and violent attacks abound
The Covid-19 pandemic has kept most Americans locked down for weeks now, but the tight public health measures, alas, haven’t slashed as much as might be hoped two leading, non-virus causes of harms to people: reckless driving and senseless violence, especially with guns. The road mayhem is a real head-scratcher, as a frequent factor in….
Continue ReadingVirus may upend hospitals’ finances, but not dubious Big Pharma behavior
When it comes to aggravating parties in the U.S. health care system, a certain French phrase captures an uncomfortable reality: “Plus ça change” — as in plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose or “The more it changes, the more it stays the same.” We can see that here: Big Pharma, even in the midst….
Continue ReadingTough choices loom for all of us as states ease public-health restrictions
Do I, or don’t I? Do we, or don’t we? As the stringent public health measures designed to bend the curve with the Covid-19 pandemic begin to lift or ease — including in Maryland and Virginia — hundreds of millions of Americans will make difficult individual decisions about their lives and livelihoods. Fears are high….
Continue ReadingAs nursing home toll rises, many U.S. and state responses fall to new lows
Federal and state officials almost seem as if they are competing with each other to race to new lows in their wrong-headed failure to protect elderly, sick, and injured Americans who require institutional care and whose health and lives are being savaged by the novel coronavirus. An estimated 1.5 million Americans live in long-term institutions,….
Continue ReadingResearchers digging in to discover how novel coronavirus affects youngsters
Federal officials have launched what may be an aptly named, important, and reassuring study for kids, parents, families, and communities — the large-scale “Heros” investigation on Covid-19 and youngsters. As the National Institutes of Health explains the “Human Epidemiology and Response to SARS-CoV-2” work: “[It will] help determine the rate of novel coronavirus infection in children….
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