- Climate anxiety is a mental health problem.
- Biden: the pandemic is over, but not his emergency Covid powers.
- IRS is about to end the Obamacare “family glitch” by re-wring then law. (gated)
- The CDC has lost the public’s confidence. Is the answer to give it more money?
- The 340b program was supposes to support drug therapy for low-oncome patients. Hospitals are using it to rip us off.
- Why don’t men get more vasectomies?
Category: Direct Primary Care
Wednesday Links
- 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.
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.
White House: Covid is Here to Stay, as are Annual Boosters
Covid boosters are here to stay according to White House officials. They will likely be similar to annual flu shots, with a new booster to defend against a new variant every year. There were discussions a year ago that suggested drug makers were looking for a common denominator that would be present in all Covid variants, but I doubt that will happen. First of all it’s not easy or it would have been done already for flu shots and Covid boosters. Second, why would drug makers make a universal vaccine when they can sell boosters for new variants every year?