Author: Ann Marie Marciarille

And this map tells you much about Missouri politics. The vote was close. Did it take the loss of employer sponsored health insurance on a mass scale as fall out from the pandemic to make it happen? If so, add this to the list of absolutely remarkable after shocks from this pandemic.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/outdoor-schools-coronavirus/614680/?ncid=newsltushpmgnews

Even a few weeks of outdoor teaching, in particularly unforgiving climates, might benefit students. Sometimes it is better to be satisfied if the first step is a small victory and not necessarily insist upon swinging for the fences.

Well, since Herman Cain is reported to have gone without a mask right up until the day of his diagnosis with Coronavirus, we may never know. Cain’s representatives said in a statement after the diagnosis that “there is no way of knowing for sure how or where Mr. Cain contracted the coronavirus.” So, yes, once an infectious disease reaches the pandemic stage, it can be very difficult to attribute the time, place, and manner of infection.  A diagnosis nine days after the Trump Tulsa rally ought to make us all stop and think, though.

Herman Cain was a cancer survivor and has been quoted as feeling called to do something bigger, greater, more significant after his completion of cancer treatment.  If you contribute to a call to reason and decency about mask wearing, sir, you will have accomplished that goal.

 

 

 

Here's a good overview of what is going on for the July 2020 Missouri bar exam.  All the PPE discussion is here as part of the explanation that it is essential to have an in-person exam in a state trending toward uncontrolled Covid-19 status.  But why no discussion of the mandatory waiver of liability the Missouri bar examiners require? Oh, maybe that is covered by the last sentence's referral to mental health services available to bar applicants.

 

 

I am just loving the fake pharmacy set for the signing of a few executive orders today relevant to prescription drug pricing. So, were those real or fake pharmacists surrounding them?  Kind of interesting to think a real pharmacist would engage with such a crowd without a mask.  Asking for a friend.

 

 

And it is just as simple as that.

 
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I have, on multiple occasions, observed that we can learn something about who we are as a people by discerning what about social insurance programs collectively repel us. We have a hard time with public health concepts — our health is mutually interdependent, to a degree, on the health of others — because they contradict a rugged individualist health ethos. Now, some who missed the earlier program are appalled to discover that what applied to the ACA or, even more, various universal health care proposals also applies to Coronavirus social distancing and mask wearing protocols. We, are a people, who simply cannot get our minds around the idea that we are involuntarily  interdependent.

Doctor Anthony  Fauci noted, only a few days ago, that  “I think we need to emphasize the responsibility that we have both as individuals and as part of a societal effort.”

Smart move, that making this a matter of individual responsibility. May be the only way to sell it to Americans.

I, too, think the reopening of dentistry may be a bellwether for the reopening of much of America.  But, unlike the New York Times,  I don't see decreased consumer demand as only a study of higher unemployment producing lower numbers of individuals with dental coverage. 

Two thirds of all Medicare beneficiaries have no dental coverage.   AHRQ tells us (as of their 2010 survey): "[d"ental expenditures are distinguished from overall health care expenditures in the distribution by sources of payment. In 2010, a higher percentage of dental expenditures was paid out of pocket (47.5 percent for dental versus 14.2 percent overall) and a lower percentage was paid by Medicaid (5.8 percent versus 10.4 percent)."

Dental expenditures in the United States are a middle class luxury.  Let them be  a bellwether of that category of consumption.

Thank you to the panelists on yesterday's opening session on The Poverty Narrative.  Panelist Zoe Greenberg noted “there are people who suffer from [poverty], and people … who have stakes in maintaining it.”  I want to hold this thought. I will hold this thought.