Healthcare

Children at sunset

Concern about COVID and kids has to be put in perspective.

By Justin Katz | October 26, 2021 |

I read somewhere not long ago that the thing with alcohol isn’t so much that it lowers inhibitions as that it narrows one’s focus.  Having fun in the moment, touching base with your high school friend at 4:00 in the morning, anger at that guy looking at you funny across the bar… these things become…

A water drop and ripples

Delta was no more deadly, although more contagious.

By Justin Katz | October 25, 2021 |

It’s important to mark findings like this so we can develop perspective over time: The highly transmissible Delta variant of COVID-19 does not appear to cause more severe disease among fully vaccinated or unvaccinated hospitalized patients, compared to earlier forms of the virus, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The…

A child being vaccinated

Injecting small children is where I get off the COVID vaccination train.

By Justin Katz | October 22, 2021 |

Pfizer is claiming a diluted version of its COVID-19 vaccine is more than 90% effective among small children, but the numbers in its study implicitly raise the question of whether it’s necessary: A Pfizer study tracked 2,268 kids in that age group who got two shots three weeks apart of either a placebo or the…

A water drop and ripples

Private sector jobs were down in RI in September, partly owing to health care workers.

By Justin Katz | October 21, 2021 |

The RI Department of Labor and Training has changed the way it reports monthly labor information. But one notable observation is that the number of payroll jobs based in Rhode Island actually fell from August to September.  Total jobs went up, however, owing to big increases in state and local government jobs. The industries that…

A blurry streetscape

Shouldn’t “epidemiologist” Bostom be better with numbers?

By Justin Katz | October 21, 2021 |

As a Rhode Island conservative, nothing would please me more than letting Andrew Bostom go off and do his thing.  Unfortunately, people with whom I generally agree and think of as allies keep citing him as a credentialed epidemiologist (which he’s not) and even utilizing him as an expert witness in court. Look, I agree…

A water drop and ripples

Take note of what the government thinks “working” means when it comes to mandates.

By Justin Katz | October 20, 2021 |

The title of this Barbara Morse piece on WJAR carries an important point of political philosophy: Health leaders say Rhode Island health care COVID-19 vaccine mandate is working By “working,” they mean that the percentage of healthcare workers who have been vaccinated has gone up to 95%, which is probably an increase of around 10…

Image of COVID as planet Earth

UPDATED: Tiverton is last for vaccination but near-best for COVID hospitalizations?

By Justin Katz | October 20, 2021 |

Living in the town, of course it caught my eye that Dan McGowan of the Boston Globe outed Tiverton as the only town in Rhode Island with a vaccination rate below 50%: Tiverton is now the only city or town in Rhode Island with a COVID-19 vaccination rate below 50 percent, according to data from the…

A water drop and ripples

Modern medicine will keep doing what it does if we let it.

By Justin Katz | October 19, 2021 |

Such stories as this one are among the first things to come to mind every time our political system lurches left: Over a decade ago, UCLA physician-scientists began using a pioneering gene therapy they developed to treat children born with a rare and deadly immune system disorder. They now report that the effects of the…

A water drop and ripples

We’re in a dangerous spot when seeing your children is conditional on your being vaccinated.

By Justin Katz | October 18, 2021 |

In New York City, a judge has suspended a father’s visitation rights to his daughter “unless he submits COVID-19 tests on a weekly basis or gets vaccinated.”  He’s had the virus before, as well. The key, though, is the judge’s reasoning, which is (let’s say) pretty far from the actual science: “Here, in-person parental access…

Silhouette over digital background

Maybe rediscovering distrust of tech and government was a good thing.

By Justin Katz | October 18, 2021 |

In the amazing advance of our technology comes the possibility of smart watches’ diagnosing health issues before symptoms begin, Steven Reinberg reports for HealthDay News.  Keeping track of your vital stats on an ongoing basis as you go about your day (and sleep at night), you can get an early start on treatment, which can…