As pandemic-curtailed traffic returns to greater normality, motorists, bikers, and pedestrians may need to pay increased attention to two novel means of transportation taking to the roads: monster-sized SUVs and zippy high-tech scooters. Even as officials in the nation’s capital approved, as expected, new rules on e-scooters, Andrew Hawkins, a reviewer at the Verge news….
Continue ReadingArchives for October 2020
Vulnerable, especially in nursing homes, unsafe in covid’s community spread
Audiences laugh when Sancho Panza, a sage but servile character in the musical “Man of La Mancha,” observes that “whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, it’s bad for the pitcher.” A paraphrase of that aphorism — regarding community spread of the coronavirus and the elderly, particularly those in nursing….
Continue Reading$8.3 billion in opioid fines but no criminal charges for execs and family owners
Christmas arrived before Halloween for a notorious Big Pharma firm. Federal prosecutors effectively gave its family founders and its executives gilded skates, so they can slide away for now from major criminal charges and severe financial penalties for their part in fostering the opioid abuse and drug overdose crisis that has killed hundreds of thousands….
Continue Reading‘Turning a corner’ on pandemic? The hard numbers disagree.
Numbers can tell a persuasive story, but will even overpowering figures shock Americans into taking the steps needed to deal with the coronavirus cases surging across the country? By many metrics, it is counter-factual to contend, as President Trump insists, that the nation is “rounding the corner” on the Covid-19 pandemic and “the country is….
Continue ReadingFor nursing homes, a quarter lack PPE, half have infected staff, study finds
For residents of nursing homes and their loved ones, new and disturbing information has come out on long-term care facilities’ persistent failure to safeguard the vulnerable from the coronavirus that has killed tens of thousands of the institutionalized and infected hundreds of thousands of them and their caregivers. Six months after the pandemic exploded across….
Continue ReadingIt was avoidable. Its harms can be lessened. Fall’s Covid surge is under way.
As the weather has turned crisper, and autumn leaves have begun to fall, in sadly predictable fashion, coronavirus cases are rising once again coast-to-coast. More than 8 million Americans have been infected — roughly equivalent to the population of New York and far exceeding the number of people who live in metropolitan Washington, D.C. The nation….
Continue ReadingVirginia gynecologist’s fraud trial surfaces hundreds of mistreatment claims
A Virginia criminal case, while focusing on claims of fraud against the federal government, also has exposed a long-running and nightmarish pattern of what prosecutors assert has been a Chesapeake gynecologist’s rampant mistreatment of his patients, many of them women of color and poor. Dr. Javaid Perwaiz is on trial because authorities say he “manipulated….
Continue ReadingCenturies of restraint fall: Top journals assail Trump’s science denialism
They are a unique combination — august publications in science and medicine that harken back for centuries yet now inform 21st century practitioners about the latest advances in their fields. And now these leading scientific journals say the present moment forces them to abandon their prized political neutrality to oppose the science denialism of the incumbent….
Continue ReadingThe health insurance mess: Worker costs jump anew, as kids’ coverage falls
The Covid-19 pandemic has forced many Americans to reconsider their transportation options, what with fears of infection and the slashing of public transit systems’ routes and schedules. That has made used cars, motorcycles, and bicycles hot commodities. Those who are working and considering how their finances might stretch may take little comfort in another reality….
Continue ReadingWill plutocrats pay $3 billion to keep $13 billion and elude opioid charges?
So, who doesn’t daydream a little about money? Maybe even big money. Just imagine a scenario where, if you could put up $3,000, you could keep $13,000, or if you forked over $30,000, and walked away with $130,000? So how great would it be if you paid $3 billion but could stuff $13 billion into….
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