Month: September 2009

Several recent studies have concluded that the novel H1N1 flu virus might be more contagious and contagious longer than was anticipated. Currently, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advice is to stay home for two days after fever symptoms subside, but researchers have found that the virus may still be in the nostrils of a infected person for a week or more and as long as 16 days after symptoms have abated.

The studies did show that people tend to shed high quantities of virus two days before they show symptoms and for two days after the symptoms abate. Unfortunately, the studies were inconclusive about how much virus is required to infect a person. So although a person might still have virus present a week after her last fever, she might not be shedding sufficient virus to infect others. However, researchers noted that for full precaution, infected persons should stay isolated until two days after they stop coughing.

It would appear the medical folks have resigned themselves to the fact that there is just no containing the virus at this point:

It is unclear whether the new research will lead the CDC to rethink its advice on how long people with swine flu should hole up. Long breaks from school and work do not seem worth it for a virus that now seems to cause mostly mild illness, said the CDC’s flu chief, Nancy Cox. Swine flu is spreading so widely now that confining the sick does less good, she said.

“We tried to have our guidance balance out all of these factors,” she said. “It’s just virtually impossible not to have virus introduced into settings such as schools and universities.”

Just try not to get it before the vaccine arrives in a month. Yeah, good luck with that ….

The numbers in this article are absolutely astounding. It now costs more for family health insurance than it does to rent an average two-bedroom apartment? You’re making my head hurt. But that’s not a pre-existing condition, I swear! Please don’t take away my coverage.

The average cost of job-based family health insurance climbed 5 percent to $13,375 in 2009, making this the 10th straight year that health care premiums have increased faster than workers’ wages and overall inflation have.

Insurance costs have increased 131 percent since 1999, when a year of family coverage cost about $5,791, according to the 2009 Employer Health Benefits Survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust.

That supercharged growth rate far outpaces the 38 percent increase in wages and 28 percent growth of inflation over the same period.

The article goes on to quote a small business owner who’s been changing insurance companies in a vain attempt to stay ahead of premium increases but who opposes the government getting involved. Oy vay!

“It ain’t the government’s business,” Goodwin said. “They don’t need to be running a car company, and they sure don’t need to be running health care.”

If there’s a way to keep costs down without the government getting involved, however, Goodwin said he’s all for it.

There “ain’t” no way to do that, Goodwin. Just get over it and let’s make some progress here.

A new poll from the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) finds that a significant majority of physicians nationwide favor including a government-provided medical insurance option, as proposed by Pres. Obama and congressional Democrats:

A total of 62.9 percent of physicians who participated in the survey … said they favored a public option, or government insurance plan, against 27.3 percent backing a private system alone.

Another 9.6 percent favored a completely government-owned health care coverage system.

“It’s clear that the majority of US physicians support both public and private options to expand coverage,” NEJM said, noting that between 52 and 69 percent of Americans favor a supplemental public option.

The survey found that even 58.9 percent of Southern doctors want reforms to include a public option.

The poll also found that 58.3 percent of doctors are in favor of expanding Medicare to people as young as 55 years old.

Jody Powell, the longest-serving and probably closest aide to former President Jimmy Carter, died on Monday at his home near Cambridge on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, said Jack Nelson, the journalist and his friend. He was 65.

Mr. Powell collapsed outside his home, and efforts to revive him at a hospital were unsuccessful, Mr. Nelson said. He added that Mr. Powell’s wife, Nan, said that her husband had suffered a heart attack…

In recent years, he had been chairman of Powell Tate, a Washington-based public relations firm.

NPR:

Powell was a familiar face during the four stormy years of the Carter presidency — during the Israeli-Egyptian summit, the Iranian hostage crisis and Carter’s 1980 campaign, first against Edward Kennedy and then Ronald Reagan.

A Georgia native known for his deep Southern drawl, he also worked on Carter’s presidential campaign in 1976 and served as the Carter administration’s spokesman between 1977 and 1981.

Powell, along with the late Hamilton Jordan, joined up with Carter several years before he was elected governor of Georgia in 1970. Powell served as Gov. Carter’s press secretary, then, as well.

At one point, President Carter said that “Jody Powell knows me better than anyone else except my wife.”