Southern Flu
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the southern hemisphere appears to have totally skipped flu season. In Australia, positive influenza cases are down 98.5% despite testing being down only 20%. With all the distancing measures being taken, colds, flu and other commonly spread respiratory illnesses should be tamped down from historical norms, for a while at least. That's good since flu plus Covid would probably be pretty horrific.
Might this lead to an internationally-coordinated masking effort for, say, three weeks every four years? Something like an Olympics for human health? One can dream.
With so little flu in the southern hemisphere, there's only a small reservoir of it to spread north from the tropics. With most northern hemisphere citizens masking up, how could influenza get a foothold anyways? Plus, since flu symptoms overlap quite a bit with Covid, you would expect flu carriers to be far more careful than in a typical year and stay away from others when symptomatic.
This will probably be a very light flu season. But get your flu shot anyways.
Nonprofit Hospitals
Ever wonder why medical care at a nonprofit hospital costs the same as at a for-profit hospital? It's because 'nonprofit' just means they have to spend all their money instead of paying shareholders. They do this by overpaying executives, advertising excessively and more.
They pay no property taxes, no income taxes, no sales tax - but you'd better believe the police show up for emergencies at the hospital. Such a scam. CEO of a nonprofit conglomerate (a great contribution to the 1984 newspeak lexicon) banked $21.6M last year. But hey, not like any Americans are lacking good health care, so nothing to see here.
In fairness to smaller hospital systems/regions, there are many nonprofit hospitals that are providing a much needed service and not outrageously compensating executives. But at the top end it's pretty bad.
Scientific American
The 175-year old publication has endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time ever. No spoilers here - you'll have to click to discover which of the candidates they have deemed most pro-science.
When it comes to science as a political issue, this is most likely the widest chasm between the two leading presidential candidates in American history, so if SciAm was ever going to do this, now seems like a logical time. But it also works nicely as a publicity stunt.
Sturgis
It did sound a little far-fetched didn't it? 20% of all US cases being attributable to a motorcycle rally that ended only a couple weeks prior?
Digging a little deeper, the thrust of that paper last week was probably right, but it's also a case of correlation vs causation. The extrapolation and attribution of 260,000 cases to the Sturgis event was extreme, but the correlation was real - counties the bikers went back to did generally see higher case rate increases. The counties with a higher percentage of biker-citizens may have just had case counts that were already going to trend higher when compared to lower biker-density counties.
The rally couldn't have helped, but not likely the sole source. Throwing a number like a quarter million out there was not reasonable.
Virus from the Heavens
If you need an insane conspiracy theory and "Plandemic" just isn't wack-a-doodle enough for you, let us introduce you to the Alien Invasion hypothesis.
There is a group of 'scientists' who have published ten papers on this subject. In their July 14th article, which deserves absolutely no link here, they imply this virus is so novel, the only explanation is a meteorite that landed over a thousand miles from Wuhan. Never mind the fact that we call it coronavirus because it looks the other coronaviruses discovered here on Earth over the past 50 years.
