My wife and I caught Covid back in… I don’t even recall which year. I think it was the winter of 2021 if I recall correctly. My wife got her first and only Covid vaccine shot not long after, whereas I had gotten shot and a booster earlier in the fall or maybe it was later in the spring. Basically, I don’t recall much about the Covid outbreak. It’s all a blur at this point and I’ve basically lost interest. Apparently, I’m not alone.
Category: COVID-19 and Public Health
Wednesday Links
- Why we age.
- Can Ozempic be used to fight opioid, alcohol and nicotine addiction?
- The case for a natural origin for Covid.
- “A whopping 36.2% of respondents aged 18-25 reported a diagnosable mental illness according to the DSM IV in the last year.… At the extremes, 57% of very liberal students in our study reported feelings of poor mental health at least half the time, compared to just 34% of very conservative students.” HT: Arnold Kling
- The U-Shaped happiness curve has disappeared.
Tuesday Links
- Product hopping: “Drug companies use either temporary discounts and sales pitches or dramatic changes like pulling a drug off the market to get doctors to start prescribing a new, modified version of a familiar, about-to-lose-its-patent drug. These tactics delay the entry of generics into the market and preserve monopoly prices for the company.”
- Almost everything you want to know about the relationship between money and happiness.
- What scientists got wrong about the Covid vaccine.
- Did McKinsey commit treason?
- Gaza campus protests: mostly a phenomenon at elite, private schools. HT: Tyler
- Are doctors still sterilizing sickle cell patients?
New Uses for Telemedicine are Taking America by Storm
The decade that began with Covid is the decade of telemedicine, and we’re not even halfway through the 2020s. One outcome of Covid is that more and more people became comfortable talking to a doctor on the phone. Also, more health plans and Medicare began to accept telemedicine as a normal way to consulting with physicians. Prior to Covid, Medicare did not reimburse telemedicine in most cases. Beginning March 6, 2020 the Trump administration announced telehealth services would be available to seniors across the country.