Category Archives: Health Care

Health Care, Politics

Altruism and Covid

As I understand it the objective of developing vaccines for Covid was to minimize deaths from the virus. Our current policy is not doing that as well as it could. We are vaccinating many people at low risk of death from Covid. For instance “front line workers” aged under 30 and 50 year old teachers who still won’t go back into the classroom.

The State of Connecticut keeps really good COVID data, here it is in summary from the Naked Dollar Blog: 

                    Deaths by Age Group As a Percentage of Group Population
     Age Range    Deaths/Population
  0-29                 0.001%

 30-49                0.014%
 50-69                0.122%
 70-79                0.584%
   80+                 2.424%
The last two groups, those 70 and over, have accounted for 81% of the deaths even though they are only 12% of the population. Those 80 and over have a 3,954 times greater chance of dying than those under the age of 30.

Since you should be skeptical about information on the internet here is a link to the source document. https://data.ct.gov/Health-and-Human-Services/COVID-19-Cases-and-Deaths-by-Age-Group/ypz6-8qyf

Based on this it seems to me that we should be making an effort to vaccinate everybody over 70 in the world rather than the current effort to vaccinate everybody in the United States regardless of age. The benefits to the United States would be that we would gain international goodwill and we would demonstrate that we do put science ahead of politics.

DECLINE, Health Care, Henges, Recommendations

Death by Acronym

Acronyms are extremely dangerous.

On Christmas Eve I had a DVT that caused a PE that nearly killed me. I’m fine now and recovering.

Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) form in your extremities and sometimes throw off pieces of clot that travel to your lungs causing a Pulmonary Embolism (PE). They can kill you or in my case cause massive pain and then let you live. Kudos to Dr Douglas Dang and the Banner Health ER team who treated me.

Photo is of Pill Bottle Henge which I made a month or so ago. Perhaps with a sense of foreboding.

Health Care, Humor, Simon Says

A Silver Lining

4 Comments
Every cloud has a silver lining.

Ten Positive things about the COVID Pandemic:

  • Plexiglass is fashionable again.
  • People are decluttering and giving the postcards to me.
  • The pandemic news takes your mind off President Trump’s latest.
  • We are all learning a lot more about statistics and probability.
  • I’m learning how to cook again.
  • “The Virus” is a universal excuse for not getting things done.
  • Being anti-social is not anti-social.
  • Your Doctor will talk to you on the phone.
  • There are no tour buses or cruise ships clogging up the tourist sites.
  • There is lots of time to send and decipher postcards.

And finally I have a new name: “Simon Silver Lining”

Health Care, Humor, Simon Says

Mask Induced Injuries

2 Comments

Here in the Time of Covid masks are an important tool. They might stop the spread of the virus and they definitely signal virtue and conformity to the community and therefore promote hand washing, social distance and staying home when sick.

But not everything about masks is good. MII (Mask Induced Injury) is real. Wearing a mask makes it harder to be heard especially with the slightly hearing impaired because they depend on watching your lips. This might lead to dangerous misunderstandings.

Masks are certainly a sarcasm inhibitor because you need facial expressions to indicate sarcasm. Face masks narrow your field of downward vision and will cause some people to stumble and fall down stairs. If the mask gets caught on your glasses the struggle to untangle it could cause injury. At the extreme one could envision eye injuries from snapped elastic. How long before one of these generates a lawsuit?

This is a joke.! Wear your mask. it is the communal thing to do.

“Be careful out there.” (from the TV cops show we can’t remember the name of)