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Did COVID-19 Kill The Anti-vax Movement?

Posted by on Feb 26, 2021 in Psychology | Comments Off on Did COVID-19 Kill The Anti-vax Movement?

In past years there has been ongoing concern that not enough people got the annual flu vaccine.

Some of it was laziness, some of it was lack of education. There were few outright deniers that flu was a problem. Instead, it seemed to be the opposite. If someone had a bad cold they still said they had the flu, and some said they think they might have the flu, which led most doctors to remind people that if you think you have the flu, you don't have the flu.

The real vaccine deniers were more coastal elites who believed a discredited former doctor, Andrew Wakefield, who was interested in selling a competitor to existing vaccines, and used a tiny sample of hand-picked kids to claim that vaccines caused autism in a paper that was then retracted.

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The Biden Administration Is Blaming Trump For EPA Siding With Environmentalists Against Agricultural Science

Posted by on Feb 24, 2021 in Environment | Comments Off on The Biden Administration Is Blaming Trump For EPA Siding With Environmentalists Against Agricultural Science

A small fish in central Texas, a freshwater mussel in the Mobile River basin, and another mussel in Alabama’s Coosa and Cahaba Rivers have something strange in common; they appeared on an EPA list of threatened species “likely to be adversely affected” by a popular herbicide named atrazine.

I don't see how could things get worse for the San Marcos gambusia, the Upland Combshell and the Southern Acornshell. They're all extinct. I lived in the southern US in the early 1970s and never saw a Southern Acornshell. It would have been impossible, it was gone by then.

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New RAND Paper Argues Government Control Of Health Care Pricing Will Reduce Costs Better Than Competition

Posted by on Feb 23, 2021 in Public Health | Comments Off on New RAND Paper Argues Government Control Of Health Care Pricing Will Reduce Costs Better Than Competition

Rather than making affordable health care reality, the Affordable Care Act sent costs for many privately-insured people up as much as 700 percent. The federal government allowed insurers to pass through their new losses to everyone else and even with that, many insurers fled states due to the program being insoluble.

Perhaps the solution is not to have people pay 700 percent more, but to force hospitals to be transparent about costs. And that would mean more realistic pricing without a reduction in quality.

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Coca-Cola And Disney Succeeed Because They Have Linguistically Feminine Names, Says A New Paper

Posted by on Feb 17, 2021 in Random Thoughts | Comments Off on Coca-Cola And Disney Succeeed Because They Have Linguistically Feminine Names, Says A New Paper

Coca-Cola and Disney do not simply share being on Interbrand's Global Top Brands, says a new paper, they also share linguistically feminine names, and that helps their success with men and women. In fact, the highest-ranking companies have, on average, more feminine names than lower-ranked companies, they claim.

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Coca-Cola And Disney Succeeed Because They Have Linguistically Feminine Names, Says A New Paper

Posted by on Feb 17, 2021 in Random Thoughts | Comments Off on Coca-Cola And Disney Succeeed Because They Have Linguistically Feminine Names, Says A New Paper

Coca-Cola and Disney do not simply share being on Interbrand's Global Top Brands, says a new paper, they also share linguistically feminine names, and that helps their success with men and women. In fact, the highest-ranking companies have, on average, more feminine names than lower-ranked companies, they claim.

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The Biden Administration Should Eliminate EPA’s Strange New Unscientific Approach To Pesticide Evaluations

Posted by on Feb 16, 2021 in Chemistry | Comments Off on The Biden Administration Should Eliminate EPA’s Strange New Unscientific Approach To Pesticide Evaluations

Imagine you hire a plumber and he needs to work on your plumbing and instead of coming over to fix that he sends his cousin who owns a lawn service.

That is analogous to what is happening at EPA regarding a common herbicide (the second most popular in the U.S.) named atrazine.

There is nothing wrong with it scientifically, it is causing no harm, but EPA is still going to hand it over to a group like the US Fish and Wildlife Services and let them just decide whether or not it might harm endangered species. No science needed.

They are even blaming it for extinctions that occurred nearly 50 years ago.

The Forever War on Science story has been in development...forever...but this is the first time they introduced time travel.

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The Biden Administration Should Eliminate EPA’s Strange New Unscientific Approach To Pesticide Evaluations

Posted by on Feb 16, 2021 in Chemistry | Comments Off on The Biden Administration Should Eliminate EPA’s Strange New Unscientific Approach To Pesticide Evaluations

Imagine you hire a plumber and he needs to work on your plumbing and instead of coming over to fix that he sends his cousin who owns a lawn service.

That is analogous to what is happening at EPA regarding a common herbicide (the second most popular in the U.S.) named atrazine.

There is nothing wrong with it scientifically, it is causing no harm, but EPA is still going to hand it over to a group like the US Fish and Wildlife Services and let them just decide whether or not it might harm endangered species. No science needed.

They are even blaming it for extinctions that occurred nearly 50 years ago.

The Forever War on Science story has been in development...forever...but this is the first time they introduced time travel.

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The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic Had Up To Four Waves – The Last Was 18 Months Nearly 2 Years Later

Posted by on Feb 12, 2021 in Immunology | Comments Off on The 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic Had Up To Four Waves – The Last Was 18 Months Nearly 2 Years Later

Do you think food is medicine? While Whole Foods imagery touted that in 2019, the coronavirus pandemic that began in Wuhan later that year punctured efforts to convince the public that health is a moral or economic issue - you owe it to your kids to buy overpriced food. SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 pandemic showed that eating expensive onions won't save anyone from anything. 

What may help save people is remembering the past rather than wishful thinking about the present. In this case, looking back at the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic which killed far more than COVID-19.

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Most Don’t Need Social Authoritarianism When It Comes To The Environment, Asking Works Just As Well

Posted by on Feb 11, 2021 in Psychology | Comments Off on Most Don’t Need Social Authoritarianism When It Comes To The Environment, Asking Works Just As Well

If a tourist doesn't know messing around with a coral reef is bad, they may try to touch them or pet turtles, but after being told by someone local that it has risks for the nature they are there to see they far less likely to do so.

A new paper found that such "nudges" works well. Which would mean we often don't need government 'ignore of the law is no excuse' type shaming policies to change behavior.

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Most Don’t Need Social Authoritarianism When It Comes To The Environment, Asking Works Just As Well

Posted by on Feb 11, 2021 in Psychology | Comments Off on Most Don’t Need Social Authoritarianism When It Comes To The Environment, Asking Works Just As Well

If a tourist doesn't know messing around with a coral reef is bad, they may try to touch them or pet turtles, but after being told by someone local that it has risks for the nature they are there to see they far less likely to do so.

A new paper found that such "nudges" works well. Which would mean we often don't need government 'ignore of the law is no excuse' type shaming policies to change behavior.

read more