Good morning. Monday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with scattered thundershowers and a high of 74. Sunrise is 6:33 AM and sunset 7:06 PM for 12h 33m 14s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 45.6% of its visible disk illuminated. Whitewater’s Planning Commission meets at 6 PM. On this day in 1956, the…
Health
Coronavirus, Covidiocy, Health, Public Health
A Private Insurance Response to Vaccine Refusal (Updated)
by JOHN ADAMS •
Elisabeth Rosenthal and Glenn Kramon write, in Don’t Want a Vaccine? Be Prepared to Pay More for Insurance, about insurance companies rejecting waivers for anti-vax insureds who expect coverage for expensive COVID-19 treatment. Insurance companies should go farther, as Rosenthal and Kramon advocate: Get a Covid-19 shot to protect your wallet. Getting hospitalized with Covid-19…
Coronavirus, Federal Government, Health, Trump
Trump: 2016 to 2020
by JOHN ADAMS •
Trump in 2016: “I alone can fix it.” Trump in 2020: “I don’t take responsibility at all.” Here's the clip. On the lack of testing #Covid_19 and the "failure" of the response, @realDonaldTrump: "No, I don't take responsibility at all." #COVID pic.twitter.com/rpTh5DcILr — Kyle Morse (@Kyle_A_Morse) March 13, 2020
Health, Opioids
Oxycodone consumption, US vs. Europe
by JOHN ADAMS •
Drug War, Health, Law, Opioids
Treatment Should Always Be a First, Readily-Available Option
by JOHN ADAMS •
At the Asbury Park Press, Shannon Mullen, Lisa Robyn Kruse, Austin Bogues, and Andrew J. Goudsward report on the unfair disparity in the treatment of Crack v. Heroin use: Dannis Billups’ addiction nightmare began with an actual nightmare when he was about 4 years old. His daddy sat him on his knee and gave him a half-can…
Health
The Hidden Crisis in Rural America
by JOHN ADAMS •
It’s prohibitively difficult to access mental-health services in rural America. That’s because, relative to urban areas, rural counties have so few mental-health professionals. The majority of nonmetropolitan counties in the U.S. don’t have a psychiatrist, and almost half lack a psychologist. The paucity has resulted in a public-health crisis—rural Americans suffering from a psychiatric condition…
America, City, Economy, Health, Local Government, Opioids
Opioid Crisis : Great Recession :: Dust Bowl : Great Depression
by JOHN ADAMS •
It’s a loose analogy (yet a useful one) to say that the opioid crisis is to the Great Recession as the Dust Bowl was to the Great Depression. These deep economic downturns did not cause, respectively, either the Dust Bowl or the opioid crisis, but each downturn did exacerbate the severity of its coincident calamity.…
Economy, Health
Society of Actuaries: Economic Cost of the Opioid Crisis
by JOHN ADAMS •
In Whitewater, in the Midwest, and opioid addiction has been personally devastating and economically debilitating. In a recent study, the Society of Actuaries estimates the Economic Impact of Non-Medical Opioid Use in the United States: The estimated costs consist of the following: • Nearly one-third ($205 billion) of the estimated economic burden of the opioid…
Education, Health, School District
School Board, 8.26.19: Health
by JOHN ADAMS •
School Board Meeting 08/26/19 from Whitewater Community TV on Vimeo. Whitewater’s school board met in regular session on Monday night, with an agenda of 17 items. Item 8D was a mental health presentation from Dr. Lanora Heim, the district’s director of pupil services. The presentation appears from 1:01:00 to 1:19:36 on the video above, and…
Babbittry, Boosterism, Economy, Health, Wisconsin
The Rural Condition: Life expectancy for Wisconsin babies falls
by JOHN ADAMS •
Boosters’ ceaseless distortions to ‘accentuate the positive’ – so common across the state and in Whitewater before, during, and after the Great Recession – meet their tragic refutation in life expectancy declines for Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Public Policy Forum reports on Troubling trends in Wisconsin: Life expectancy down; alcohol, drug and suicide deaths up: The…
City, Culture, Economy, Education, Health, Poverty, School District
School Board, 7.22.19: One Worthy Question
by JOHN ADAMS •
Whitewater’s school board met in regular session on Monday night, with an agenda of 16 items, of varying importance. In a two-hour, open-session discussion of over a dozen items, with topics great and small (and at least one board member as interested in wheedling or badgering himself into future meetings as any deeper question), there…
Health, Walworth County, Wisconsin
The Washington Post’s Pain Pill Database
by JOHN ADAMS •
The Washington Post, as part of its Opioid Files series, has published Drilling into the DEA’s pain pill database: For the first time, a database maintained by the Drug Enforcement Administration that tracks the path of every single pain pill sold in the United States — by manufacturers and distributors to pharmacies in every town…
Cruelty, Health, Hunger, Immigration, Migrants, Misconduct
‘Hungry, Scared and Sick’
by JOHN ADAMS •
Simon Romero, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Manny Fernandez, Daniel Borunda, Aaron Montes and Caitlin Dickerson report Hungry, Scared and Sick: Inside the Migrant Detention Center in Clint, Tex. (‘An out-of-the-way border station in the desert outside of El Paso has become the epicenter of outrage over the Trump administration’s policies on the southwest border‘): CLINT, Tex. —…