Doctors, clinics, urgent care facilities, and hospitals are laboring to get out an important message tied to the Covid-19 pandemic: Patients should not delay seeking their needed medical services, especially urgent or emergency treatment, due to fears of getting infected with the novel coronavirus. It made sense to postpone many types of medical services as….
Continue ReadingArchives for June 2020
Pillars of medical establishment wobbling under pandemic’s big stresses
As the Covid-19 pandemic has put huge stresses on medical systems around the globe, the strains have taken their toll: The credibility and authority — of federal agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and elite professional journals….
Continue ReadingU.S. data show Covid-19’s terrible and unrelenting toll on nursing homes
Federal regulators have issued, at long last, the data they have collected on the novel coronavirus’ effect on nursing homes, giving an incomplete but still devastating look at how in just a few months some of the nation’s most vulnerable people have been savaged by Covid-19. With 12% of the nation’s nursing 15,000 homes yet….
Continue ReadingSaying a big ‘No!’ to racism, excessive police force, and health disparities
Like a patient already struggling with serious illness or injury, the nation saw its underlying conditions flare up in distressing fashion in recent days: The country first found itself grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic that has infected almost 2 million and killed more than 100,000. It gasped as the economy plunged and joblessness hit rates….
Continue ReadingHere’s another kind of needed safety distancing — with scooters and bikes
As visitors and workers in the Washington, D.C., area slowly return from the Covid-19 home-stay restrictions, they may be hit with a worry about a different kind of distancing: Keeping themselves safe on byways more heavily trafficked by bicycles and scooters, notably rental models whose mechanical soundness is under increasing question. It is difficult to….
Continue ReadingAs world focuses on Covid, Bayer pushes billions in Roundup settlements
Although Covid-19 is disastrous for people around the globe, Big Pharma is finding advantage in the infection: Bayer, a pharmaceutical and agricultural products’ giant, is on the brink of what would be an $8 billion-plus settlement of an estimated 85,000 lawsuits involving the familiar weed killer Roundup. Bayer has taken a $39 billion hit to….
Continue ReadingWith U.S. virus response, taxpayers may need to keep demanding: Who benefits?
Cui bono? That query in Latin — Who benefits? — affirms for linguists that sketchy practices date to Ancient Rome and earlier. But who knew the phrase would be so applicable for U.S. taxpayers considering dubious aspects of many of the nation’s pricey Covid-19 pandemic responses. Herewith a sizable list of conflicts and coziness in….
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