Public Health
- “Beware the cancer quack / A reputable physician does not promise a cure, demand advance payment, advertise” by Max Plattner, Works Progress Administration – Federal Art Project NYC, for the U.S. Public Health Service in cooperation with the American Society for the Control of Cancer, ca. 1936–38, via Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/98518641/.
- “No home remedy or quack doctor ever cured syphilis or gonorrhea / See your doctor or local health office” by Leonard Karsakov for the United States Public Health Service, ca. 1941, via Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/96502760/.
😷 Got an email from the hospital in Berlin, NH, saying that masks are currently mandated there again. Encouraging to see the health of their patients take precedence over ideology. ❄️ Got some snow today I hadn’t been expecting, maybe 4 in or 10 cm.
Where is big pharma on a Sec RFK Jr for HHS? Do they really want to work with dozens of different health departments because there are no more common national standards? Or will lobbying only begin after a monster takes over HHS?
Rural health nurse, upstate New York, by Lewis Wickes Hine for the Milbank Memorial Fund, ca. 1934. The New York Public Library, image ID 460823.
Squaring the Anti-Science, Pro-Technology Circle
I sometimes read on social media about the apparent contradiction between right-wingers' positive attitudes toward tech and their negative attitudes toward a lot of medicine. After all, both are rooted in science. That said, there is a commonality between these two sets of attitudes: the role of regulation. A lot of tech is under- or unregulated, and the supplements that Trump’s favored quacks and talking heads peddle are not regulated either. Medicine and medications, on the other hand, are regulated. And we have mandatory public health measures.
This is not to say that there is anything principled about their dislike of regulation. If the FDA was founded in 1906 with the support of business because expert-based standards and trust would benefit business, that insight seems to be absent from the current discourse. Instead, the quacks, grifters, and monopoly capitalists value their freedom to muck about with society and the environment as they please, secure in the knowledge that they’ll have the might to be right on the so-called open market of goods and ideas, especially after capturing the federal government.
Two U.S. Public Health Service Posters Warning against Quacks, ca. 1936–41
Imagining Some of the Worst: Domestic Edition
I doubt I’ll have the bandwidth to follow the machinations in Washington’s halls of power, as I did during the previous administration. I got out of the habit under the current one because I was exhausted, didn’t feel threatened, and ended up living a twelve-hour drive away. And now I want to focus on the parts of my life and world where my individual agency, talents, and interests might be leveraged for things more constructive, more life-affirming.
First, though, I’ll allow myself to imagine some of the worst coming our way, just to get the darkness out of my mind and into words: the destruction of the regulatory state and of our public medical, environmental, climate, and weather research infrastructure; the violent and cruel erasure of entire communities; the enslavement, indentured servitude, or other forms of abusive exploitation of people without papers under the “protection” of unscrupulous employers, landlords, neighbors, and government agents; the creation of a new generation of Hoovervilles inhabited by people with no health insurance, no immunizations, and pensioners whose Social Security checks and Medicare benefits no longer keep them housed; preventable contagious diseases killing our children; lawfully mandated medical malpractice killing girls, women, and trans men with the bad luck to become pregnant; the loss of LGBTQ+ family, friends, and community members to exile, to self-harm, and to the violence of bullies given license by their chosen leader; the possibility that insulin might grow out of my reach; the knowledge that Medicare will never cover the costs of help with elder care while I still need such help, and while private equity funds squeeze what they can out of old folks homes, leaving them woefully understaffed, their populations vulnerable to contagious disease, inattention, and abuse.
It doesn’t have to go this way, not even under the next president. But do we think a GOP-controlled Senate will respect the filibuster the next time around, if they manage to get the House too? Isn’t that just one more convention that the next president can demand they drop? And have any of them demonstrated even the slightest willingness to defend their institution, sure in the knowledge that they are part of a separate branch of government? GOP representatives in the House are no better, as they demonstrated during the previous president’s two impeachments.
American presidents have enormous amounts of power, and now, it seems, controlling the party and the mob will give the next president even more. Or will some Republican legislators put their constituents ahead of the slash-and-burn ideologues? What groups will they decide government might have a role in protecting? Of course, the House could still flip Democratic. Some Republicans could develop a conscience. Or the ambitions, incompetence, and contradictory aims, values, and beliefs of Orange Face’s supporters could lead to lots of friendly fire and delays.
Caveat: the GOP marched in lockstep to regain the presidency, but we have no idea what goes on behind the scenes. It’s possible they prefer to carry out dissent internally. It’s also a sure thing that Mr. Red Tie will keep all eyes on himself, with lots of help from the media, while the poisons are concocted in Congress and in other parts of the executive branch.
Today we have a code orange air quality alert in Mt. Washington Valley due to particulate matter from all the smoke produced by wild fires in Canada.😷
We Are the Problem
We blame the virus for
the disastrous condition
of our schools
the catastrophic state
of our hospitals
the ruinous structure
of our workplaces
the collapsing authority
of our institutions
so we need not acknowledge
the virus is not cause
but revealer
of our society’s frailty.
—@PlaguePoems
Pandemic Dreams
Recurring theme in my pandemic-era dreams: I am in a social situation with many other people, and then I notice none of us is wearing a mask. These scenes used to freak me out, even wake me up. Now my dreaming mind sometimes thinks, “not this again.” Seems the thrill is gone.
Statistics and Tears
“In fact, the more who die, sometimes the less we care,” [Paul] Slovic said in an interview. In greater numbers, death becomes impersonal, and people feel increasingly hopeless that their actions can have any effect.
“Statistics are human beings with tears dried off,” Slovic said. “And that’s dangerous because we need tears to motivate us.”
– William Wan and Brittany Shammas (Washington Post)
Alpharetta, Georgia
[A] great American experiment got underway in a place promising “the luxury of the modern South” with none of the death.
'The Public Health' (1840)
Via JSTOR Daily, which describes an 1840 pamphlet advocating "a four-pronged approach to public healthcare that sounds remarkably like our own."
Noooo!
I have had health insurance through my employer these past seven years, but I still depend on the Affordable Care Act. It has made the scope of coverage meaningful, especially by including so-called preexisting conditions. It has also relieved me of anxiety caused by not knowing if I would have health insurance from one year to the next. Yes, coverage has been growing more expensive, but at least there have been those statewide exchanges and—if need be—subsidies, which, I thought, would still make insurance possible.
Enter bomb-throwing DJT.
Image: Angela De Rosette, SP.M.0911, 2001, Library of Congress
Nonsmoking Workers Fired in Germany?
There’s a strange story going around that in northern Germany the boss of a computer company fired employees who had requested a non-smoking workspace. To avoid such complaints in future, he has vowed only to hire smoking employees. Other sources say the three employees were fired for other reasons. And then there’s a commenter for the story who says he made it all up. Wherever the truth might lie, the story’s resonance (evidenced by the accompanying comments as well as those on another site that picked it up) points to an interesting circumstance: non-smokers in Germany are increasingly willing to stand up for their right to clean air, and smokers have to defend their supposed right to smoke. This situation is the opposite of what I experienced in the previous two decades. The balance is tipping.
Smoke Stinks
Some will call me a thankless twit. Invited to spend Christmas week in Davos, Switzerland, I have been miserable for much of the time. I am staying at the Hotel Schatzalp and I have had diner twice at the Steigenberger, luxurious home of the famous World Economic Forum. I am a guest of some very kind people. I don’t have to—and couldn’t possibly—pay for this vacation. Nonetheless, I am not liking it. The company, food, scenery, and service are all excellent. Attitudes towards smoking, on the other hand, are dreadful.
I used to put up with smoke when I lived in Europe, but things have changed. Some four years ago I came down with asthma. Now I have to worry about more than smelly clothes, burning eyes, and the long-term consequences of second-hand smoke. I have to weigh having an asthma flare-up against offending my hosts. And they don’t even smoke. I have been drawing the line at hanging out in the smoke-filled hotel lobby, but I could hardly say no to diner on Christmas Eve, which German speakers call Heiliges Abend, the most important family evening of the year in this part of the world. No one was smoking anywhere I could see, but there was smoke in the air. Result: I had to use my rescue inhaler twice after going to bed. Normally I do not need it at all.
Now I have to choose between being outside or hanging out in my room. The outdoor world is beautiful here, as is the view from my room, but sooner or later a body wants coffee or beer—and company too. I cannot hang out in the beautiful lobby of my hotel, which was built some 100 years ago. I cannot enjoy the ambience of a place made famous by Thomas Mann in The Magic Mountain. I cannot visit my hosts in the Steigenberger. On the other hand, the restaurant in the Hotel Schatzalp is smoke-free, even if I have to hold my breath to get to it.
There is more good news on the horizon. A woman at the reception desk at the Steigenberger was actually sympathetic enough to my problem to tell me that the Swiss canton of Graubünden will go smoke-free in March. Apparently that will be the the second smoke free canton in Switzerland. The first is in the Italian-speaking part of the country. Other parts of Europe with smoking bans include Italy and Ireland, and Germany has a law on the books that will take effect in January. France will also step up its efforts to limit smoking in public places.
I hope these bans work. I enjoy Europe and the company of my wife’s family, but I am unwilling to give up breathing in order to see them.