WyoRock

"For now, the important thing to understand is that people like DeSantis are attacking education, not because it teaches liberal propaganda, but because it fails to sustain the ignorance they want to preserve."

The G.O.P.’s Long War Against Medicare and Social Security

"Just think, that piece of gold on your finger—every bit of it started off in a cosmic cataclysm that is among the most violent and powerful forces in the universe. '

The Health Risks of Gas Stoves Explained

What Does "Value" Mean?

"I once met a guy who wrote his PhD thesis about whether popularity and value are the same thing in art."

#######################

Absence from work at record high as Americans feel strain from Covid

One analysis in New York found that 71% of long Covid patients who filed for worker’s compensation still had symptoms requiring medical attention or were unable to work completely for at least six months. Two in five returned to work within two months, but still needed medical treatment. Nearly one in five (18%) of claimants with long Covid could not return to work for a year or longer after first getting sick.

...

People who are on the less-sick end of long Covid, maybe they can keep working, but every now and then they might need a day or two off just because they have overdone it or something happened that triggered a symptom flare.

...

Nearly one in five Americans developed long Covid after their initial infection, with some 7.5% of all American adults currently experiencing long Covid, according to the CDC. The CDC began collecting data on how many people have long Covid in 2022.

...

Employers can adjust to this new normal by offering as many accommodations as possible, both for those suffering initial bouts of Covid infection and those experiencing longer-term symptoms.

#######################

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/the-science-and-business-behind-covid

"False information goes farther, faster, deeper and more broadly than the truth. One study (published in 2018—before the pandemic) found false news was 6 times faster at spreading than the truth, reached far more people, and was more broadly diffused."

#######################

We are all playing Covid roulette. Without clean air, the next infection could permanently disable you

"A massive study in the US found that the risk of brain, nerve, heart, lung, blood, kidney, insulin and muscular disorders accumulates with every reinfection. The impacts of long Covid, according to health metrics researchers, are “as severe as the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury”. "

"The virus is now embedded, and will continue to mutate to avoid our defences, grinding down – unless we treat each other with respect and demand universal standards of clean indoor air – our immune systems and our health, until everyone’s life is a shadow of what it might have been."

"Do we really mean to sit and watch as this infection encroaches on our freedom to be well, brutal winter after brutal winter? Or do we step in where the government has failed, and normalise concern for the lives of others once more? Like all the other moral challenges we face, this is now on us."

#######################

As the Colorado River Shrinks, Washington Prepares to Spread the Pain

Long Covid Is Keeping Significant Numbers of People Out of Work, Study Finds

What Does "The" Mean?

As Covid-19 Continues to Spread, So Does Misinformation About It

Privilege corrupts, and it very easily breeds a sense of entitlement.

Social Security disability benefits excellent description of Social Security problems

A near-majority of voters in Georgia would rather vote for a moral delinquent with no grasp of the issues at hand than someone with whom they merely disagree.

- Bret Stephens, New York Times

In praise of public officials who can admit when they got things wrong

The norm instead is to deny, deny, deny. Never admit error. Never apologize. Never back down. Most seem to believe that acknowledging missteps would make them look weak, regardless of how minor or obvious the blunder might be.

Former president Donald Trump turned this strategy into an art form, reportedly on the advice of his mentor Roy Cohn. But refusal to concede any error has been embraced not just by Trump himself, but by many other politicians and presidential appointees.

...

But it’s better to be governed by policymakers who acknowledge error, even when that error is embarrassing; address why they miscalculated; and then explain what they’ve learned for next time.

- Catherine Rampell