Healthy Spaces

  There is no perfect way to measure which government did best in managing the COVID-19 pandemic.   But with 48 full months of data from January 20, 2020 to January 27, it is now possible to score which area did best across the whole marathon.   For example, Hong Kong was an early sprinter getting an A+ and then faltering in vaccinating seniors and withstanding Omicron variant.   Other jurisdictions fumbled the exit ramp from Zero Covid-type policies to opening their economies.     Because testing rates varied, a measure like COVID cases, hospitalizations, or deaths could cover up a lot of hidden illness and deaths in places that could not or did not test as much as others.   This post uses Cumulative Excess Mortality numbers drawn from Our World In Data   (OWID) which were drawn from The Economist .   OWID published data for all jurisdictions regardless of how good the estimates were. I advise against making distinc...

Asset- demiology is a neologism that does not come up in Google (yet) 1 .  Sound it out—the “ ology ” of peoples ’ assets and strengths.  It is the logical comp anion , but neglected anti-thesis of the usual approach to health.     Health care work is all about deficits .  The work of a doctor, whether human or robot, is to transform a living breathing human into a diagnosis, problem list and treatment plan. Medical s tudents and interns are socialized to walk out of the treatment room and recite to their supervisors all the deficits and problems they uncovered.  There is no place in a standard medical record to actually list a patient’s strengths and capabilities.   The AI-training sets for robot ic medical algorithms have no way to learn the clinical relevance of patients’ strengths. To a doctor , patient=problem list .   Public health has the same pessimistic vibe.     A deficit focus has rubbed off on public healt...