Cassandra, in Greek mythology, was a Trojan priestess dedicated to the god Apollo and fated by him to utter true prophecies but never to be believed. In modern usage her name is employed as a rhetorical device to indicate a person whose accurate prophecies, generally of impending disaster, are not believed.
posted by dave @ 6:33 PM
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The People’s CDC is a coalition of public health practitioners, scientists, healthcare workers, educators, advocates and people from all walks of life working to reduce the harmful impacts of COVID-19.
The CDC is creating the appearance that the pandemic is over.
ITS NOT
To read more about why the People’s CDC began and why it is still necessary, check out the full op-ed in The Guardian. Though the op-ed was written in February, the themes and calls to action are more poignant now than ever.
posted by dave @ 3:07 PM
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Key Findings
Income Inequality Has Risen Since the 1980s, Driven by Increased Inequality in Labor Market Earnings
- Much of this increase has been driven by increased concentrations in the top 1 percent of the income distribution.
Inequality and inequality of opportunity are correlated across countries.
- However, measures for inequality of opportunity do not show the same consistently upward trend that was experienced by income inequality.
- Antipoverty policies implemented in the United States over the last five decades may have helped stave off poverty and inequality of opportunity despite labor market trends.
Not All Policies That Affect Inequality Will Have the Same Impact on Inequality of Opportunity
- There are no direct measurements that allow us to gauge the current impact of policies on inequality of opportunity.
posted by dave @ 8:56 AM
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The record shows that Leonardi has been remarkably prescient, constant and often correct. Yes, his thesis about exhausted T cells and immune dysfunction still remain a working hypothesis. Still, there is much evidence that the virus is causing widespread immune dysregulation in both mild and severe cases.
posted by dave @ 11:57 AM
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the classic vision of the Apocalypse in the Book of Revelations starred only Four Horsemen: Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death. The Fearsome Four are all obviously romping over the globe and not just in Ukraine. But nowadays the quartet travels in the company of a veritable thundering herd of other monsters: creatures representing serial climate disaster, inflation, rising interest rates, looming global debt crisis, and broken supply chains, to reel off a few. Not the least of the newcomers is one native to the USA: the prospect that the U.S. midterm elections may confer significant power on a true anti-system party akin to those that terminated the Weimar Republic.
…
we think a fresh analysis of the voting base of the Trump wing of the Republican Party provides a perfect opportunity to test out twenty-first century machine learning techniques to see if they might shed additional light on the roots of Trump’s appeal. Could they perhaps yield new evidence on the hotly disputed question of how much economic issues matter to Trump voters?
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These results, we think, confirm that Trump’s appeal to his base rests importantly on economic issues, especially economic growth. We repeat that we are not claiming that the economic issues are all that matter: anyone, now, should be able to see how Trump routinely exploits racial and ethnic themes. But the economic appeal is important and not reducible to the others.
posted by dave @ 7:37 AM
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posted by dave @ 7:54 AM
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Despite notable scientific and medical advances, broader political, socioeconomic and behavioural factors continue to undercut the response to the COVID-19 pandemic1,2. Here we convened, as part of this Delphi study, a diverse, multidisciplinary panel of 386 academic, health, non-governmental organization, government and other experts in COVID-19 response from 112 countries and territories to recommend specific actions to end this persistent global threat to public health. The panel developed a set of 41 consensus statements and 57 recommendations to governments, health systems, industry and other key stakeholders across six domains: communication; health systems; vaccination; prevention; treatment and care; and inequities. In the wake of nearly three years of fragmented global and national responses, it is instructive to note that three of the highest-ranked recommendations call for the adoption of whole-of-society and whole-of-government approaches1, while maintaining proven prevention measures using a vaccines-plus approach2 that employs a range of public health and financial support measures to complement vaccination. Other recommendations with at least 99% combined agreement advise governments and other stakeholders to improve communication, rebuild public trust and engage communities3 in the management of pandemic responses. The findings of the study, which have been further endorsed by 184 organizations globally, include points of unanimous agreement, as well as six recommendations with >5% disagreement, that provide health and social policy actions to address inadequacies in the pandemic response and help to bring this public health threat to an end.
posted by dave @ 11:08 PM
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