Covid-19 cases are creeping back up in schools and amongst the general population. Not to mention wastewater levels around Boston rising again as well. Overall positivity rate has slowly increased.
When will this pandemic change to “endemic” stage?
It will, Philip. Just not yet.
Well, I hope it happens sometime during the second half of THIS year.
Update as of yesterday: MA virus cases up 20%. Positivity rate is 2.75%.
Case numbers nationwide have barely moved. Similarly, hospitalizations haven’t budged much. I’m suspicious that part of this has to do with the ways in which cases and hospitalizations are counted. I’m not happy with our government. It should level with us, rather then play politics.
And why should we care? Well, the latest life expectancy data are really bad. Preliminary figures indicate we’ve lost yet another half year of life expectancy in 2021. This loss is worse than almost all of our peer nations. The life expectancy itself is down to 76.6 years; WORSE than ALL peer nations, by a wide margin. I think this year we’ll barely be treading water, when we should definitely be recovering losses in life expectancy and going well beyond that.
Life expectancy figures are a function of excess deaths. And these excess deaths have exceeded official Covid death tallies. It’s a grim situation to be in, especially for a country as wealthy as ours, and one that spends as much as we do on healthcare. I have always believed our priorities on healthcare spending are askew. Not totally wrong, but not balanced either. And the bias has always been against public health measures, which by and large are our most clinical- and cost-effective means of improving life expectancy.
typo: rather THAN play politics; not THEN. Good lord, I’m losing it. I’ve been noticing so many typos and errors in my writing. It’s concerning. It’s not Alzheimer’s Disease, but it is a loss of brain function. I also can’t remember things as well as I used to.
For those interested, wrote a piece on the House bill which recently passed on curbing insulin out-of-pocket costs at the pharmacy counter. For starters, it does nothing for the uninsured and nothing to limit the rise in list prices.
Thanks TK.
Covid-19 cases are creeping back up in schools and amongst the general population. Not to mention wastewater levels around Boston rising again as well. Overall positivity rate has slowly increased.
When will this pandemic change to “endemic” stage?
It will, Philip. Just not yet.
Well, I hope it happens sometime during the second half of THIS year.
Update as of yesterday: MA virus cases up 20%. Positivity rate is 2.75%.
Case numbers nationwide have barely moved. Similarly, hospitalizations haven’t budged much. I’m suspicious that part of this has to do with the ways in which cases and hospitalizations are counted. I’m not happy with our government. It should level with us, rather then play politics.
And why should we care? Well, the latest life expectancy data are really bad. Preliminary figures indicate we’ve lost yet another half year of life expectancy in 2021. This loss is worse than almost all of our peer nations. The life expectancy itself is down to 76.6 years; WORSE than ALL peer nations, by a wide margin. I think this year we’ll barely be treading water, when we should definitely be recovering losses in life expectancy and going well beyond that.
Life expectancy figures are a function of excess deaths. And these excess deaths have exceeded official Covid death tallies. It’s a grim situation to be in, especially for a country as wealthy as ours, and one that spends as much as we do on healthcare. I have always believed our priorities on healthcare spending are askew. Not totally wrong, but not balanced either. And the bias has always been against public health measures, which by and large are our most clinical- and cost-effective means of improving life expectancy.
typo: rather THAN play politics; not THEN. Good lord, I’m losing it. I’ve been noticing so many typos and errors in my writing. It’s concerning. It’s not Alzheimer’s Disease, but it is a loss of brain function. I also can’t remember things as well as I used to.
For those interested, wrote a piece on the House bill which recently passed on curbing insulin out-of-pocket costs at the pharmacy counter. For starters, it does nothing for the uninsured and nothing to limit the rise in list prices.
While I don’t blame politicians for trying to do something, I’ve always believed that piecemeal, fragmented legislative approaches (definitely a U.S. thing) to a problem that requires a comprehensive solution, often don’t work as intended and sometimes make things worse in the long run. Sound familiar? Yes. Because it’s what our Covid-19 approach has been from the get-go.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2022/04/08/insulin-bill-would-help-diabetic-patients-by-lowering-out-of-pocket-costs-but-it-wouldnt-bring-prices-down/?sh=1c2a82193946
C-19 for 4-9 is ready.