Carlos Alvarado Quesada, the former president of Costa Rica, recently participated in a fireside chat at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dean Michelle Williams introduced Alvarado to a small group of faculty and students for the fireside chat. Alvarado guided Costa Rica through the COVID-19 pandemic, which the country was able to weather well due to its strong…
Category: Medical Tourism
Mosquitoes Bite Some People More than Others
My wife and I like to sit out on our patio in the evening with our dog Clementine. This is a ritual we’ve done for years. We’ve noticed something curious about sitting outdoors. My wife gets bitten by mosquitoes far more than I do. We spent a month at an Airbnb in a Costa Rican jungle a few miles from the Pacific coast back in 2018. My wife had to fight off mosquitoes and no-see-ums while I hardly noticed them.
Covid-Chasing Travel Nurse Bubble Burst but Not Going Away
The Wall Street Journal had an article about the falling use of travel nurses. At the peak of the pandemic nurses willing to travel from one hot spot to another could sometimes earn as much as $10,000 per week.
Hospitals across the U.S. have had to dig deep to treat patients during the Covid-19 pandemic as some of the most lucrative parts of their business, elective surgeries, were constantly postponed. The flip side of that has been a bonanza for the companies that helped them keep staffing levels adequate as well as for the brave and flexible people who filled those positions.
By contrast, nurses who stayed in their regular jobs often found themselves working mandatory overtime in understaffed hospitals filled to the brim with Covid patients. When they complained about too many hours, low wages and a lack of personal protection equipment their complaints were often dismissed.
Friday Links
- 80 experts object to a proposal to slap a 95% tax on drugs that do not submit to price controls.
- China has matched the United States in output in seven high-tech sectors, including pharmaceuticals and medical products.
- If worry about climate change is a mental health issue, why is the W.H.O. contributing to the problem?
- The good news on immigration.