In no particular order:
Low-wage workers prop up the nursing home industry. They’re quitting in droves.Those still on the job face a “crisis on steroids” as omicron inflames staff shortages
...Frustration is surging among the low-wage workers who make up the backbone of the nursing home industry, as tens of thousands of their colleagues call out sick with covid-19, inflaming shortages that already were at crisis levels. Hailed as “heroes” during the early months of the pandemic, these workers, most of whom are women and people of color, say they’re facing untenable levels of pressure....
'Post-Truth Era' Complicates COVID-19 Response, Trust in Science...The new study ― The Rise and Fall of Rationality in Language, published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ― found that facts have become less important in public discourse.
As a result, unsupported beliefs have taken precedent over readily identifiable truths in discussions of health, science, and politics. The upshot: "Feelings trump facts" in social media, news reports, books, and other sources of information.
And here's the kicker: The trend did not begin with the rise of former President Donald Trump, the COVID-19 pandemic, or the advent of social media; in fact, it has been growing for much longer than you might think....
Vaccination, Religion, and Science: An Astonishing 300-Year-Old Story— It's time for a history lesson in the roots of vaccine advocacy and resistance
The debate about COVID-19 vaccinations rages with fury -- to an extent that has gone beyond the realm of medicine or rational thought. Some readers might believe that those who are strongly grounded in science are inevitably vaccine advocates, whereas those who are vaccine resistant are willfully ignorant of the facts or live life as religious fanatics.
Such assumptions are horribly unhelpful in the current era. But a short history lesson demonstrates that these preconceptions are historically inaccurate, especially if we explore the origins of vaccination in the U.S. Americans have a strong tradition of both vaccine advocacy and resistance, and the inceptions of these movements are astonishing. We can gain important insights by going back 300 years -- to the Boston Smallpox Epidemic of 1721....
Inside this Maryland ICU, a depleted staff struggles to keep going...Like hospitals across the country, Luminis Health Doctors Community Hospital is facing a two-pronged crisis in this surge, with thin staffing and more covid-19 patients than ever before. Employees who remain have no choice but to shoulder bigger burdens. Among the heaviest, they say, is the emotional weight of so much preventable death.
About 70 percent of patients admitted to the hospital are unvaccinated, as are more than 90 percent of those who die there.
...
“Everyone in the hospital dealt with lack of PPE, a lack of testing, health-care narratives rooted in political nonsense … on top of all the death,” said Kanak Patel, the ICU [medical director].
“You put any workforce through that,” he added, “and it’s not going to be whole. And we’re far from whole right now.”...
U.S. coronavirus hospitalizations slow, with the Northeast showing a steep decline...But in some corners of the nation, hospitals continue to reel from waves of omicron infections, creating chaos as droves of patients seek care during an already busy season, and front-line workers head to the sidelines in greater numbers than at any point in the pandemic. Some hospitals are finding valuable medical supplies harder to come by, even as the days of widespread shortages of personal protective equipment have passed.
On Wednesday, U.S. hospitals reported treating about 150,000 coronavirus patients, down from a record 160,000 last week. Per capita admissions are starting to decline sharply in the Northeast, to about 50 per 100,000 residents, on par with the South, where hospitalizations are leveling off. Hospitalizations are also falling in the Midwest but rising in the West....
Where Are the Public Health Experts When We Need Them Most?— Milton Packer, M.D. wonders who can be trusted to make key decisions during a pandemic
...We may or may not like the answers we get, but we will all get terribly distressed if the answers change from month to month -- or from week to week. We get particularly confused when different leaders give different answers to the same questions during a 3-day period.
Some leaders will say they are following the "science." But as a scientist, I do not understand what this is supposed to mean. Throughout most of this pandemic, we did not have enough reliable data to make an informed decision. In the absence of reliable data, how does one "follow the science?" Claiming we are "following the science" in the absence of data simply gives science a bad name....
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