- In addition to Obamacare’s “family glitch” there is also a “rural glitch.”
- Why don’t the Chinese use a highly effective mRNA vaccine as a booster? Because that would be tantamount to admitting that their homegrown Sinopharm vaccine was inferior.
- State of Virginia to foster kids: turn over your Social Security benefits or else.
- Improved prevention, screening and treatment has helped to avert 3.5 million cancer deaths in the US over the past 3 decades. However, the cancer death rate among Blacks is almost twice the rate for Whites.
- Cancer cure breakthrough: personalized treatment that relies on the patient’s DNA. HT: Tyler
Author: John C. Goodman
Did Efforts to Protect the Elderly from Covid Cost the Lives of the Young?
Peter Coy writes:
the number of people ages 25 through 44 who died from all causes in the United States in 2021 was 52 percent higher than the number who died in an average year from 2015 to 2019,
whereas among seniors the increase was only 9 percent.
An NBER Working Paper by Casey Mulligan and Robert Arnott calls the elevated death toll among younger Americans “a historic, yet largely unacknowledged, health emergency.” It asks whether young adults suffered “collateral damage” from policies such as lockdowns that were meant to protect older people. They write:
All of this suggests that large and sustained changes in living habits designed to avoid a single virus had not only “economic” opportunity costs, but also cost a shockingly large number of young lives.
$783.5M in Covid Relief Money Went to Prisoners
Passed in March, the American Rescue Plan granted $1,400 in stimulus money to people making less than $75,000 per year. Republicans objected to sending these checks to incarcerated individuals, but lost on a party line vote. According to a Fox News report:
In response to a public records request from conservative group American Crossroads, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) revealed that the money flowed to 560,000 individuals who were incarcerated for the full tax year 2020.
Among the recipients of Covid money was the Boston Marathon Bomber.
Friday Links
- 80 experts object to a proposal to slap a 95% tax on drugs that do not submit to price controls.
- China has matched the United States in output in seven high-tech sectors, including pharmaceuticals and medical products.
- If worry about climate change is a mental health issue, why is the W.H.O. contributing to the problem?
- The good news on immigration.