Did you get your flu vaccine this year? How about last year? For me it’s been a few years. As I’ve written before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) must decide six months in advance which strains of influenza circulating in Asia are likely to hit North America the following winter. The flu vaccine is a cocktail of four different flu strains designed to combat the strains likely to infect Americans. Sometimes the CDC guesses right, and the United States experiences a mild flu season. In other years a strain that nobody expected somehow becomes dominant and spreads throughout the US and flu is widespread.
Category: Consumer-Driven Health Care
Monday Links
- UK study: When hospitals merge, patients suffer.
- Only about one-third of Americans think the US health care system has minor or no problems–and that percentage hasn’t varied much in the last 20 years. And that includes the passage and enactment of Obamacare.
- UK ambulances took an average of 1 hour & 32 minutes to respond to heart attacks & strokes last month. 5 X higher than target, double the average in November.
- Study: Even a little alcohol can be harmful to your health.
- A lot of health provisions were stuck in the omnibus spending bill. (NYT)
The Cost of Lockdowns
A new Stanford study looking at the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress found “eighth-grade math fell for every state, with a national average decline of eight NAEP scale score points” or enough to wipe out all the gains made since 2000. So much for “no child left behind,” and other slogans that were going to fix our public schools.
We will continue to pay for the lockdowns for years to come. “Students on average face 2 to 9 percent lower lifetime income” depending on where they went to school and the states are estimated “to face a gross domestic product that is 0.6 to 2.9 percent lower each year for the remainder of the twenty-first century.”
From the Committee to Unleash Prosperity
Friday Links
- Reason (magazine) investigation: CDC used Facebook to silence Covid dissent.
- More than 1,000 nursing homes reached a 75% infection rate during the Covid pandemic.
- For: more off label uses of existing drugs.
- IRA bill is already affecting drug development – negatively.
- What it will cost to attend this year’s Super Bowl game: almost $9,000.
- The Manchin/Capito Trust Act would force Congress to do what it doesn’t want to do: Tackle our unfunded entitlement liabilities.