Ruby Mellen, Foreign Affairs Reporter - Washington Post
Stephan: I have been looking for months for a general audience report -- I did not have time to write it myself -- that would explain why humidity is as big a deal as temperature in terms of climate change's effect on humans. This is another reason that large parts of the world are going to become uninhabitable. Politicians in general and particularly American Republican politicians don't seem to have a clue about what is coming, but you should.
When it comes to heat, the human body is remarkably resilient — it’s the humidity that makes it harder to cool down. And humidity, driven in part by climate change, is increasing.
A measurement of the combination of heat and humidity is called a “wet-bulb temperature,” which is determined by wrapping a completelywet wick around the bulb of a thermometer. Scientists are using this metric to figure out which regions of the world may become too dangerous for humans.
A term we rarely hear about, the wet-bulb temperature reflects not only heat, but also how much water is in the air. The higher that numberis, the harder it is for sweat to evaporate and for bodies to cool down.
At a certain threshold of heat and humidity, “it’s no longer possible to be able to sweat fast enough to prevent overheating,” said Radley Horton a professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
Scientists have found that Mexico and Central America, the Persian Gulf, India, Pakistan and Southeast Asia are all careening toward this threshold before the end of the century.
Stephan: Something very interesting going on in the United States in this phase of the pandemic. Rather than admit they have been wrong about masks and vaccination, yet facing the catastrophe of their policies, the Republicans think they have developed a way out, an alternative to vaccines and masks. The social outcome data from this strategy are going to be very interesting.
St. Louis infusion center Credit: St Louis Post-Dispatch
Republican governors in some of the states hardest hit by the pandemic are pushing expensive Covid cocktails over cheap masks.
The governors in Florida, Missouri and Texas are promising millions of dollars in antibody treatments for infected people even as they oppose vaccine and mask mandates, saying they can potentially keep people with mild Covid symptoms out of hospitals that are being swamped by new cases. But the treatments and cost of providing them are thousands of dollars more than preventive vaccines, and tricky to administer because they work best early in the course of an infection.
Republican governors in some of the states hardest hit by the pandemic are pushing expensive Covid cocktails over cheap masks.
The governors in Florida, Missouri and Texas are promising millions of dollars in antibody treatments for infected people even as they oppose vaccine and mask mandates, saying they can potentially keep people with mild Covid symptoms out of hospitals that are being swamped by new cases. But the treatments and cost of providing them are thousands of dollars more […]
Stephan: The pandemic may produce one good news trend. Americans are finally waking up to the fact that we don't have a healthcare system in the United States, we have an illness profit system. Not the doctors, nurses, and technicians. They are the system's equivalent of hourly wage workers, just as the engineers for Boeing are their equivalent in the military-industrial complex. It is the corporations that makeup and control the illness profit system. For example, three corporations own and control a third of the emergency rooms in U.S. hospitals.
With hospitals across the U.S. refusing to comply with a new federal rule requiring them to disclose the prices they negotiate with health insurers, a sampling of previously secret data published late Sunday reveals how much basic medical procedures cost at dozens of major hospitals in a project that critics of the for-profit healthcare system said reveals the severity of its dysfunction. The database of hospital rates compiled by the New York Times and researchers at University of Maryland-Baltimore details how patients are charged drastically different prices for the same medical care depending on what insurance company they use—with some procedures costing less if a patient has no insurance at all.
“Keep these prices in mind the next time you see a report…that tries to figure out whether a particular single payer plan’s reimbursement rate would be unworkable.” —Matt Bruenig, People’s Policy Project As the Times reported, at University of Mississippi Medical Center a patient with a Cigna plan can expect to pay $1,463 for a colonoscopy, while someone with Aetna insurance would be charged more than $2,100. An uninsured patient would be billed for $782. Patients receiving an M.R.I. at Memorial […]
Stephan: I've had it with the anti-vaxxers, the anti-maskers. And I am really tired of MAGAts telling me what a wonderful drug, Ivermectin is for treating Covid. 37.8 million Americans have contracted Covid, and 628,000 have died, 185 yesterday. I am tired of the whining, tired of the stupidity, tired of the politicization of something that should be seen only as a health issue to be dealt with on the basis of science, not ideology. Tired of people who insist on seeing themselves as victims. Tired of the nonsense the government is run by pedophiles who drink the blood of small children. I'm tired of my fellow White people who have wet their pants screaming about how they are being replaced. And I am really sick and tired of the Republican Party.
The United States, like every other nation on earth, is faced with the existential reality of climate change. We need to come together to create social policies that foster wellbeing for everyone. We need to restructure our justice system and create one with real integrity. If we fail to do these things, our children and their children will inherit a nation that is a nightmare. It's our choice? What do you choose?
Johnston UNC Health Care emergency manager Lee Stikeleather, RN, offers guidance for dealing with the current surge of the COVID-19 Delta variant. Credit: Robert Willett
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a strong and unusual warning on Saturday: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
On Friday, Mississippi’s health department issued a warning that more than 70% of recent calls to the state’s poison center came after people took ivermectin bought at livestock supply centers.
The FDA was reacting to alarms from Mississippi, the state with the worst outbreak in the U.S., that people have been taking ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19. The drug is often used against parasites in livestock.Thomas Dobbs, the state health officer, said earlier this week he knew of only one hospitalization but was hearing reports of people taking the drug “as a preventative.”
“Which I think is really kind of crazy, so please don’t do that,” he said at a news briefing. The health department warning said 85% of callers had mild symptoms but that one person was “was instructed […]
Stephan: Apparently, the actual Covid numbers are much larger than previously reported. And since this has become not entirely, but mostly, a Republican anti-vaxxer disease it will be interesting to see what effect this has on the MAGAt base. Could so many MAGAts die that it affects the 2022 vote? I have no idea, but it is going to be interesting to see how this plays out.
Credit: JR Bee, special to ProPublica
Meggan Ingram was fully vaccinated when she tested positive for COVID-19 early this month. The 37-year-old’s fever had spiked to 103 and her breath was coming in ragged bursts when an ambulance rushed her to an emergency room in Pasco, Washington, on Aug. 10. For three hours she was given oxygen and intravenous steroids, but she was ultimately sent home without being admitted.
Seven people in her house have now tested positive. Five were fully vaccinated and two of the children are too young to get a vaccine.
As the pandemic enters a critical new phase, public health authorities continue to lack data on crucial questions, just as they did when COVID-19 first tore through the United States in the spring of 2020. Today there remains no full understanding on how the aggressively contagious delta variant spreads among the nearly 200 million partially or fully vaccinated Americans like Ingram, or on how many are getting sick.
The nation is flying blind yet again, critics say, because on May 1 of this year — as the new variant […]
