Stephan: Here is a potentially game-changing neurology breakthrough.
Ian Burkhart
A cutting-edge implant has allowed a man to feel and move his hand again after a spinal cord injury left him partially paralyzed, Wired reports.
According to a press release, it’s the first time both motor function and sense of touch have been restored using a brain-computer interface (BCI), as described in a paper published in the journal Cell.
After severing his spinal cord a decade ago, Ian Burkhart had a BCI developed by researchers at Battelle, a private nonprofit specializing in medical tech, implanted in his brain in 2014.
The injury completely disconnected the electrical signals going from Burkhart’s brain to his hands, through the spinal cord. But the researchers figured they could skip the spinal cord to hook up Burkhart’s primary motor cortex to his hands through a relay.
A port in the back of his skull sends signals to a computer. Special software decodes the signals and splits them between signals corresponding to motion and touch respectively. Both of these signals are then sent out to a sleeve of electrodes around Burkhart’s forearm.
But making sense of these signals is extremely difficult.
Stephan: Here is an early report on another trend that I think is coming out of the pandemic: We are going to see the bankruptcy of department stores and decreased patronage at malls, because increasingly people who have started buying online like it and will continue. I think stores like groceries will also be pressured by customers to continue to support online ordering and drive-by delivery.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
All low-contact services measured continue to be used more frequently
Pickup services see highest increases in use
A majority of more frequent users will continue using these services
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As social distancing guidelines persist in the U.S., growing numbers of consumers are increasingly turning to virtual, delivery and pickup options for essential goods and services. Gallup began tracking six of these measures on its probability-based web panel in late March, and the latest April 13-19 update finds Americans reporting more frequent use of each.
Among these services, Americans are most likely to report increased use of pickup services now than before the COVID-19 situation. Thirty-two percent of Americans say they are ordering takeout from a restaurant more often than they used to, and 28% say the same about curbside pickup from retail stores. Over the last few weeks, reports of greater reliance on curbside pickup have grown the most — 12 percentage points from the initial reading on March 29.
All Low-Contact Services May Enjoy Permanent Gains
Americans’ expectations of whether their increased use of each of these services will continue after […]
Stephan: Yet another food report showing the utter failure of the Trump administration. Here is the latest on the Rotting Food Trend. Neither Trump nor his familiars apparently thought or cared enough about ordinary people to even consider that a food crisis was the inevitable result of Trump's wrong-headed immigration policies, the administration's failure to manage the Covid-19 pandemic, and the self-isolation policies that were required. As a result just as there is food scarcity developing, American farmers are plowing tens of millions of pounds of produce back into the ground.
The complete and total incompetence and lack of planning by Trump and his administration, and the lack of an American social safety network revealed by the Covid-19 pandemic, should tell each of us that we must do our part to see the country converts to a system that fosters wellbeing. It requires a change in consciousness in each of us.
A tractor pushes cabbage into the ground shown April 23 near Belle Glade, Fla. | Credit: M. Scott Mahaskey/Politico
Tens of millions of pounds of American-grown produce is rotting in fields as food banks across the country scramble to meet a massive surge in demand, a two-pronged disaster that has deprived farmers of billions of dollars in revenue while millions of newly jobless Americans struggle to feed their families.
While other federal agencies quickly adapted their programs to the coronavirus crisis, the Agriculture Department took more than a month to make its first significant move to buy up surplus fruits and vegetables — despite repeated entreaties.
“It’s frustrating,” said Nikki Fried, commissioner of agriculture in Florida. Fried, who is a Democrat, and much of the Florida congressional delegation asked Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue nearly a month ago to use his broad authority and funding to get more Florida farmers plugged into federal food purchasing and distribution programs as the food service market collapsed.“Unfortunately, USDA didn’t move until [last week].”
Tom Vilsack, who served as agriculture secretary during the Obama administration, put […]
Stephan: The United States already pays many multiples more than any other country on earth for pharmaceuticals; the greed of the industry is legendary. I think this should be seen as just a particularly vile example of that greed, and a cautionary tale showing why we need to ditch the illness profit system and replace it with a real healthcare system.
And be very clear, as Covid-19 reveals the doctors, nurses, orderlies, and technicians are not the source of this problem. All of this is about corporate greed. Greed is the besetting sin of America.
A pharmaceutical maker jacked up the cost of its only FDA-approved drug immediately after asking the federal government to expand its use as a coronavirus treatment.
Jaguar Health more than tripled the price of the antidiarrheal medication Mystesi shortly after asking the Food and Drug Administration to authorize emergency use for COVID-19 patients, reported Axios.
Jaguar Health had asked the FDA on March 21 to approve the drug, which is typically prescribed to HIV/AIDS patients who are on antiretroviral drugs, for coronavirus patients suffering from diarrhea associated with certain antiviral treatments.
The FDA denied the request April 7 for unspecified reasons, but Jaguar Health remains in discussions with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases about evaluating the drug’s effectiveness against the coronavirus.
The company’s CEO told Axios that Jaguar Health decided to raise the cost in December because it was […]
Stephan: The reason we don't have universal single-payer and a real healthcare system in the United States is Americans. As a person watches what goes on each day how can they not understand the failure of the nation's health care system?
Do not confuse the bravery and selflessness of millions of Americans, from doctors and nurses to grocery clerks with the system. Their lives are made so much more difficult and put at such great risk, as are ours, because of the illness profit system, and its control over the federal government through the bribery made possible by Citizens United.
But until enough of us understand that, things are not going to change. Look at the graph, the figures are reliable and they do not lie.
For many years, Kaiser Family Foundation has been tracking public opinion on the idea of a national health plan (including language referring to Medicare-for-all since 2017). Historically, our polls have shown support for the federal government doing more to help provide health insurance for more Americans, though support among Republicans has decreased over time (Figure 2). But this never translated into majority support for a national health plan in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan until 2016 (Figure 3). A hallmark of Senator Sanders’ primary campaign for President in 2016 was a national “Medicare-for-all” plan and since then, a slight majority of Americans say they favor such a plan (Figure 4). Overall, large shares of Democrats and independents favor a national Medicare-for-all plan while most Republicans oppose (Figure 5). Yet, how politicians discuss different proposals does affect public support (Figure 6 and Figure 7). In addition, when asked why they support or oppose a national health plan, the public echoes the dominant messages in the current political climate (Figure 8). A common […]
