- The new Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines are formulated to a particular variant that is currently giving rise to only 3% of covid infections.
- Paragon: “We estimate the ACA led to only 1.6 million more Americans with private health insurance despite $60 billion in annual subsidies — an … annual cost of roughly $36,800 for each additional private-insurance enrollee.”
- Neanderthal DNA in modern humans has been linked to serious hand disease, the shape of people’s noses and various other human traits.
- Study: People with positive beliefs around getting older lived seven and a half years longer than those who felt negatively about it. (NYT)
Category: Health Reform
The New York Times (and the FDA) Does a Hatchet Job on Regenerative Medicine
The New York Times did a hatchet job on regenerative medicine. A visiting researcher at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and other surgeons had performed numerous surgeries using BioBurst, a processed umbilical cord fluid, to help fuse together bones in minimally invasive surgeries. The fluid was administered to reduce healing time and reduce the need for more invasive back surgery.
Tuesday Links
- The Board of Tea Experts, established on March 2, 1897, is finally being mothballed.
- Deborah Laufer has filed more than 600 different lawsuits —typically against small hotels — and Laufer accuses them of failing to comply with the federal disabilities law. Will the Supreme Court shut her down?
- Yglesias: Loneliness isn’t aloneness. And contra Nicholas Kristof, it is highly correlated with low incomes.
- Tyler Cowen: ten ideas on reducing the number of single parent families.
Blue Zones: A Spartan Lifestyle That Will Make You Blue
The concept of healthy living goes back to ancient Greece and then to the Romans. Nowadays healthy living often comes off as preaching about how people should live their lives rather than how they choose to live their lives. An interesting saga of improving life and longevity is by National Geographic Fellow Dan Buettner. He began with the study of centenarians, people who reach the age of 100.