On Jan. 24, I got a text from the UK’s National Health Service telling me if I had returned from Wuhan and felt ill, to call a number to arrange a phone consultation. The request to stay away from my local NHS facility was polite but firm: “Please do not attend.” One month later I got another text, with a longer list of countries (China, Hong Kong, Italy’s Lombardy region, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, Republic of Korea, Singapore and Taiwan). If ill, self-isolate and call 111.
I...
Quartz
Coronavirus is revealing ugly truths about social structure in the US
The coronavirus pandemic is affecting every possible aspect of life—and thus confronting Americans with ugly truths about the way US society functions.
Any crisis or emergency throws into sharp relief the lack of a social safety net in the US. This virus outbreak, the most widespread in decades, is exposing the country’s social vulnerabilities all at the same time. Some of them will be addressed in a comprehensive relief package that Congress and the White House agreed upon...
Bill Gates’s plan to tackle a possible pandemic only works if governments handle health care
The Covid-19 epidemic has yet to go global, yet there are fears among public health professionals it could be our century’s Spanish flu.
The 1918 pandemic circled the world three times over two years, infecting a third of the popul...
The cost of American health care could help coronavirus spread in the US
That Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, will spread widely in the United States is now considered a matter of when, not if. There are 60 known cases of the disease in the US, including at least one person with no known foreign travel or contact wit...
Listen to how precious-metals sellers psychologically manipulate elderly conservatives
“There is an evil that’s against us,” the precious-metals salesman says to his elderly, conservative client on the phone. Later, he adds, “they want to see this country go down in flames.”
The dramatic language is part of the sales pitch at Metals.com, cau...
Patients can’t afford for doctors to misunderstand the healthcare business
When I was in medical school, my teachers started a lot of their stories with the same phrase:
“Back in my day, I still helped patients who couldn’t pay.”
“Back in my day, we didn’t have 100 checklists.”
“Back in my day,...
