- People are waiting almost four weeks to see a doctor.
- Biased poll: Americans give the health care system an “F”.
- One reason for the labor shortage: 300,000 people of working age died of Covid and another 1.9 million are believed to have gotten long Covid. That adds up to 18% of unfilled jobs.
- A giant fern has twice as many nucleotide base pairs and three times as many chromosomes as humans do. (NYT, gated)
- An unusual jellyfish can live forever.
Category: COVID-19 and Public Health
Americans Boozed it Up During the Lockdown and Never Stopped
During the pandemic Americans were stuck at home with little social outlet and apparently boozed it up to relieve the stress of Covid, according to an article in The New York Times. Or maybe they thought alcohol taken internally was a good sanitizer for Covid.
Alcohol tax revenues collected by the U.S. Treasury Department rose by eight percent in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2021, compared with the previous year, and remain well above pre-pandemic levels.
Monday Links
- Biden rule reverses Trump: Illegal aliens will be given green cards and access to Medicaid, CHIP and other health benefits. (gated)
- Fauci: “We don’t have time” to run clinical trials for updated boosters.
- The booster has been tested on mice. But did the mice survive?
- Laffer lives: Overall tax revenue is up $822 billion or 23 percent so far this year, on pace to be $1 trillion more than CBO projected when the Republican-passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) passed, and $1.7 trillion more than the pre-TCJA revenue level.
- From 1986 to 1994, hundreds of Cubans suffering extreme economic hardship injected themselves with HIV-infected blood to gain admittance to sanitariums that offered regular meals and air conditioning. (NYT, gated)
NHS Waiting Lists for Care in England Up 50% Compared to Pre-Covid
According to the BBC, nearly seven million patients are on National Health Service (NHS) waiting lists for care in England. The data came from a recent NHS report, which found 6.84 million people waiting for some type of care. These figures are up from 4.2 million before the Covid pandemic. Also keep in mind the population of England is about 56 million people so approximately 1 out of every 8 people living in England are on an NHS waiting list.