- Age-adjusted deaths from cold are ten times greater than deaths from heat.
- The first Generalist Medical AI system is out.
- Nate Silver on left-wing bias in the media.
- Is there anything wrong with having AI romantic partners? Apparently, yes.
- During the Covid pandemic, some hospital ICUs were overloaded, while neighboring hospitals had excess capacity. Worst victims of the lack of market clearing mechanisms: Medicaid enrollees and Blacks.
Category: COVID-19 and Public Health
Tuesday Links
- George W. Bush’s program to combat AIDS in Africa has saved as many as 25 million lives — more lives than any other US government policy in the 21st century.
- Sunday was the 58th birthday of Medicare and Medicaid. The cost of Medicare has grown from $10 billion in its first year to nearly $750 billion last year. Taxpayers spend nearly $730 billion a year on Medicaid, up from under $1 billion at its inception.
- Chip Kahn and a whole slew of hospital affiliated authors: If value based purchasing doesn’t work, it’s not our fault.
- The cost of medical privacy: The original Privacy Rule from 2000 is 419 pages of dense legalese. This is in addition to revisions to the rule from 2002 (93 pages), 2013 (137 pages), 2014 (27 pages), and 2016 (15 pages).
- Over the last few years, the rate of death from Covid for the unvaccinated has been between 300% and 900% higher than for the vaccinated.
- Mental health problems diminish with income HT: Tyler
- Stress really can cause your hair to fall out. (NYT)
- Some patients are paying as much as $100,000 a year for unproven ways to live longer. (WSJ)
Saturday Links
- The Biden White House pressured Facebook and Instagram to censor Covid facts, including its origin.
- Now we know: Scientists who signed a paper claiming a natural origin for Covid turn out not to have believed it themselves. (WSJ)
- The real DeSantis record: In 2020 Florida had the tenth lowest age-adjusted Covid death rate in the country, nearly 20% lower than California’s. (WSJ)
- When did people stop being drunk all the time? From the Middle Ages to the pre-industrial era, the average person consumed about a liter of beer a day, around four times as much as consumption in modern beer-drinking countries. HT: Tyler
- DEI training doesn’t work: 30 years of data from more than 800 U.S. companies show that mandatory diversity training programs have practically no effect on employee attitudes — and may even backfire.
- An estimated 795 000 Americans become permanently disabled or die annually because dangerous diseases are misdiagnosed. Just 15 diseases account for about half of all serious harms. HT: Arnold Kling
Tuesday Links
- Matthew Holt goes to Disneyland and sees …… fat people!
- Extending life expectancy in mice. HT: Tyler
- Why it’s hard to know how many people died because of Covid.
- A better way to practice drug price discrimination: plan by plan.
- New GAO report on improper pandemic payments: over $500 billion in fiscal years 2021 and 2022. [That equals $5,000 for every household in America.]
- Against the Endocrine Society’s guidelines on gender affirming care. (WSJ)