Taxpayers spent over $1 Trillion on the PPP program, of which, $200 billion is thought to be fraudulent. Another case of only corporations get socialism in the US.
Physician here. Masks absolutely reduce transmission and the chance of contracting COVID.
Here is the definitive study on the subject.
Here is a video of a presentation by one of the authors along with some demonstrations and explanations.
TLDR: Here is the Abstract:
There is ample evidence that masking and social distancing are effective in reducing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission. However, due to the complexity of airborne disease transmission, it is difficult to quantify their effectiveness, especially in the case of one-to-one exposure. Here, we introduce the concept of an upper bound for one-to-one exposure to infectious human respiratory particles and apply it to SARS-CoV-2. To calculate exposure and infection risk, we use a comprehensive database on respiratory particle size distribution; exhalation flow physics; leakage from face masks of various types and fits measured on human subjects; consideration of ambient particle shrinkage due to evaporation; and rehydration, inhalability, and deposition in the susceptible airways. We find, for a typical SARS-CoV-2 viral load and infectious dose, that social distancing alone, even at 3.0 m between two speaking individuals, leads to an upper bound of 90% for risk of infection after a few minutes. If only the susceptible wears a face mask with infectious speaking at a distance of 1.5 m, the upper bound drops very significantly; that is, with a surgical mask, the upper bound reaches 90% after 30 min, and, with an FFP2 mask, it remains at about 20% even after 1 h. When both wear a surgical mask, while the infectious is speaking, the very conservative upper bound remains below 30% after 1 h, but, when both wear a well-fitting FFP2 mask, it is 0.4%. We conclude that wearing appropriate masks in the community provides excellent protection for others and oneself, and makes social distancing less important.
Good! Providing a cheap service at the cost of the staff doing the work is not acceptable.
This is all just grandstanding anyway. They may leave, but likely they will just increase their rates.
Want to find the money? Increase the ability of the IRS to perform more audits. The richest folks are already not paying the taxes they should be. $688 billion per year!
There were many senior leaders on the flight: Prigozhin, Utkin (early founder, commander), Chekalov (economic & security leader), Makaryan, Propustin, Totmin, Matuseev (all various commanders). While this seems super dumb to have all these folks on the same flight at the same time, apparently they were. With this much senior leadership now suddenly gone, the Wagner group may be struggling to get their own house in order before they can take organizational action.
I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand, she didn't delay it until after the election which is wonderful. However, I am not confident that the trial will be over by the election. Trumps team will keep trying to delay the clock with jury selection, continuances, etc. which may push it bast the election.
False equivalency. They. Are. Not. The. Same.
Do both parties have some issues in common? Sure. Does our system need reform? Absolutely. But just because there is some overlap in the Venn diagram that is our political system does not make them the same. At least the democrats are trying to govern.
Physician here. The psychological impacts of gender identity issues are very real and would occur even if society was 100% accepting of trans people. Sadly, society is not which makes it worse. These folks need and deserve healthcare. That care involves not only helping them work through their journey, but also supporting it with psychiatric care, hormonal options, and in some cases, surgical treatment. Transphobes make it sound like society is allowing minors to be injured by these practices. This couldn't be further from the truth.
Puberty blocking medications are a reversible option for adolescents. If they determine that they would like to proceed with their biological identity later, the meds are stopped and their puberty ensues. Very few minors receive any type of gender reassignment surgery. Most of the time, patients will start with hormonal treatment and pursue surgical options when they are done growing and usually when they are over 18. But there are exceptions.
Putting extra negative attention on people going through this and limiting their treatment options is draconian and must stop.
Here is the correct quote from Winston Churchill: "If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty, you have no brain."
Also, conservatism in Churchill's era is absolutely NOT what conservatism is now.
Physician and Chief Medical Officer here. I started my practice on the tail end of paper records and I have been through, and led, several different renditions of electronic medical records. Like any other software, the technology has evolved and matured over the last 20 years. Electronic Health Records are just about patient information anymore either. They incorporate patient info, clinician orders, billing, and also provide numerous cross checks and safety systems to improve patient care.
The article discusses the issue with digitizing handwritten notes. This is always problematic as they are not searchable, indexed, etc. and can be very difficult to work through. The system where I work has been on the same medical record system for over 10 years. This provides an efficiency that I didn't have when I was working in a paper system. The entire chart is searchable. Medical history sections are filled out and robust.
From a safety perspective, these systems give us so much more than we had. One prime example is bedside scanning. When a nurse administers a medication in a hospital environment the medical record plays a pivotal role. As a physician I enter and order for a medication. If there is an allergy, medication interaction, or a host of other things, the system will alert me to it before the order is signed. Once signed, the order then goes to a pharmacist to review and approve. The patient's nurse will then be notified of the order and be able to pull the medication from an integrated medication storage unit with multiple drawers and compartments to ensure the right medication is taken. Finally, the nurse must use the EHR to scan the patient's armband and the medication barcode. If there is any discrepancy, the medication is not given until the issue is resolved.
From a user perspective, I can now create notes and write orders faster than I could in a paper world, even with dictation. Most docs use a combined template/voice recognition approach which works well. There has been a great deal of work in the Epic world (one of the largest EHR systems) to increase efficiency and improve the user experience.
Are these systems perfect? Far from it. But things are better now, at least where I work, than this article makes it seem.
Hear me out: If the GOP could just, I don't know, at least talk to the other 49% of the House, they may be able to get at least some of the things they want.
Apparently I'm really optimistic today.
He may be doing this intentionally. He and his team may be looking for a judicial reaction in order to use it as grounds to move the trial to another location citing unfair bias.
Speeding up the trial would be a good move. The judge still needs to be careful so that she doesn't give grounds for appeal. I vote for huge fines.
This is great!
Right now there is a serious issue with discharging patients from the hospital environment into skilled care. Since COVID, many nursing homes don't take admissions over the weekend, limit admissions to long term care (as opposed to transitional care which is short term - and better reimbursed), and often have wait times. This has the effect of increasing the length of time a patient is in the hospital unnecessarily, thus decreasing hospital capacity.
Yes, the nursing homes have staffing issues, but they pay for shit. Many of them pay less than $20/hour. You need to goto school to get your CNA license which isn't free. You can get many other jobs for better pay without the investment of education.
Source: I am a hospitalist physician. I work with nursing homes a great deal and my wife used to work at one as a CNA.
Physician here.
Medicine is one of the few professions in which capital is tied to labor (at least of the licensed independent clinicians). Hospitals, clinics, etc., can't run any test, provide any service, perform any surgery, without a physician (or other licenses clinicians) order.
Health systems rely on their physicians to drive clinical practice. Physicians are the experts after all. It's a mutually beneficial relationship, but at its core, it is a partnership. This partnership certainly has it's ups and downs. But this is what happens when the health system forgets that it is a partnership.
Physician here. There are too many possible issues with pregnancy, social situations, etc. to ever effectively be able to navigate that decision tree via legislation. It is barbaric to force women through a non-viable pregnancy. It is barbaric to withhold medical care from a woman whose life is threatened by her pregnancy. It is barbaric to force women into a devastating social situation.
Society will never agree on where the line should be placed or what is morally correct. The decision needs to be in the hands of the mother and their medical team.
Finally, for those who believe in "natural consequences". No birth control is 100% effective. Not all sex is consensual. Non-viable pregnancies happen regardless of how careful you are. Bad outcomes aren't always the result of bad choices.
Up until a couple years ago, the Pacifica was the only hybrid available. The Sienna has a hybrid now. But that's it.
Be sure to drink your ovaltine
True, but this is House bullshit, not the Senate
Do the police compare DNA to genealogy databases? The odds the person used one is low, but maybe a family member?
We use Fluency Direct, but you are correct. Dragon is quite popular too.
Right now US privacy laws aren't compatible with one overarching centralized healthcare record.
Short of that, however, would be an interoperable system. Epic, which is the largest US medical record system, allows for different facilities on the same platform to share information. It is up to the specific facility if a records release is required. Most systems in a given region will have that worked out ahead of time and build it into their general consent for treatment (a form everyone signs). It works quite well. Where I practice, I am able to get all the information I need from across the country, assuming they are on the same platform at the time I am seeing the patient.
For other platforms, it's more mixed. Federal law requires certain interoperability, but it is fairly limited and not real time. Generally it involves a flash drive with the info on it.
As for the comment about changing platforms in a similar system, that is a struggle. Hospitals are required to keep patient information forever. When they first started going up on electronic systems, they only went back so many years as the scanning costs were huge. As time has moved forward, many systems are bringing all the information over to the new system so they don't have to maintain more than one electronic system for archive purposes.
Source: I am a physician and chief medical officer.
I enjoy listening to morning edition - usually through the app. I also contribute to NPR monthly. They have to stop the on air fundraising campaigns. It really drives listeners away. At least give those that already contribute an alternative feed.
Everything the man does is transactional. Support me and I'll support you (for a little while anyway). Fuck me and I fuck you
Watch him be the one that starts the electoral schism of the Republican party
Physician here. I completely agree. I have seen quite a few changes and additions to therapy for DM in the last 20 years of my career. Thankfully, most of these have shown a continual decrease in the likelihood of heart attack and stroke associated with DM. As you say, the GLP1s are a miracle and offer very convenient dosing (in some cases weekly).
I agree. Fundamentally, these folks that support him now are not doing well. It's not the same for everyone. Some are feeling disenfranchised from parts of daily life, some are experiencing undesired change, some are terribly unhappy and don't know where to point their frustration, etc. Trump isn't a likely cult leader. He isn't very charismatic like we normally associate cult leaders. But he came with the right message at the right time and for a very large segment of our population, that message made sense to them. It gave them a REASON for how they were feeling, even if they didn't understand their own feelings in the first place.
When the day comes that the spell is broken, society must be ready to re-engage with these people in a meaningful way. Otherwise we are doomed to repeat it with the next person to show up and given them another reason.
This comes after a temporary stay in the redrawing of the map prior to the 2022 election.
Did someone throw the boy from the ferry?
Interesting fact: Israel does not have a formal written constitution. Instead, they have a series of Basic Laws which is like rolling out a chapter at a time. Very interesting reading here.
The wheels of democracy turn slowly, but they do turn. Should it have gotten anywhere close to this far? Hell no. But this does bring me some very very cautious optimism.
Time to pull out the papal infallibility card.
Most tests had their expiration dates extended.
In order to be worthwhile, rail needs to be faster and cheaper than a car. To do so, it would need to be fairly high speed as well. The capital expenditure for something like that would be enormous and the return on investment would take decades. Not to mention all the eminent domain issues. That type of project can only really be done via public dollars.
In the context of insurance, absolutely.
When it comes to health care delivery (clinics, hospitals, etc), you have to define more of what you mean. These places need to make a little money on the care they provide because they need to buy new equipment when the old stuff dies, fix the roof, repair stuff, etc. If those places are not making a profit, they will eventually die.
Now if you mean a profit that goes to anything but maintaining the ability to deliver care (e.g. shareholders), that is despicable. There is no place for shareholders in a healthcare company.
That is why Medicare can administer funds cheaper than an insurance company. No shareholders!
As users of these platforms, you are not the customer, you are the product. Your attention, your eyeballs, your information. That product is sold to the real customers - advertising agencies, marketing groups, retail companies, service companies, etc. Now that production of that product has gone through the design phase and scale up, it's time to monetize.
The real issue with Reddit didn't have anything to do wtih API rates. It had to do with product value. Third party apps don't carry through their ads, thus reducing their value to their customers (again, not you). Moving NSFW subs, which significantly increases their product (you), increases the value to their customers. If they were going to allow third party apps to exist, they desire recompense for the dilution in value, hence the high API costs.
This is the future of centralized web services.
Here is an image of neutrinos emitted from the sun taken THROUGH the Earth!
I've had issues the other way too. Smaller servers (even my own) that don't send notifications or list badges on channels.
Aesculapius@kbin.social to 
Politics@kbin.social – 59 points – 
Physician here. The best marker we have of covid prevalence is wastewater testing. With the availability of home kits (and no reporting) and people refusing to test when symptomatic, the old markers of positivity rates and number of positive tests aren't as valid. Even hospitalization numbers can fluctuate for multiple reasons. Municipal wastewater testing truly gives a sense of covid in a population.