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...

“Reflection Deficit Disorder” (RDD) is not a disease, but it might be the most important pandemic we have ever faced. The COVID Crisis Group authors think this rampant condition explains why communities and governments are failing to take on needed public health reforms 1 .   Reflection requires examining the root causes of recent events to learn from mistakes to make systems and structures stronger and better.   Reflection is the opposite of playing a quick round of the blame game.   Blaming assumes the system is sound and suffered the bad luck of being operated by a few flawed humans.   Reflection asks how to put in fail safes and checks that will help the system succeed despite flawed humans. The secret to success in communities that had the fewest cumulative COVID deaths over the last 3 years was reflection prior to COVID. Exemplar countries like Qatar and South Korea had both a recent major epidemic and an organized effort to reflect and reform.   After...

 David Bishai, MD, MPH, PhD By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. Psalm 137:1. Pity the eternal frustration of priests--knowing what people ought to do and never being able to get them all to do it. The priest's playbook ties promises of heaven and hell to scriptural conformity.  "Repent or be damned!" echoes from pulpits and tabernacles.   Tales of Babylon and brimstone hailing down at any hint of idol worship still quicken the blood of would-be sinners.  Maybe before the printing press and the enlightenment olden-day priests came close to wiping out sin, but I doubt it.   Other social species are wired for conformity, but in humans the neural circuits for assent run through the frontal lobe.  For 1000 people to do the same thing, 1000 brains have to deliberate.  F or 990 out of 1000 conforming is the easy way.  Doing what others do can save time and effort.    Independent thought ...