I find it really annoying when people smoke cigarettes outside of buildings downtown … 🚭
Not only is cigarette smoking unhealthy, it smells really bad for people passing by, going out for a walk, not wanting to breathe in your second hand smoke. Cigarette smoking is fine in a suburban backyard or a rural area, but it shouldn’t be allowed out in front of tall buildings downtown or near bus stops where people are either going for a walk, or just trying to catch a bus somewhere.
A complete ban on smoking downtown, would reduce the amount of second-hand smoke people are forced to breathe in, while forcing smokers to either quit, or risk being arrested and fined. While I don’t think that it makes sense to ban all tobacco products, if they prohibited smoking in public places, it would greatly reduce the nuisance and health impacts of smoking in dense urban areas.
Fantasilandia in Chile, one of Latin America’s largest theme parks, has replaced its most frequently touched surfaces with copper to help reduce the spread of germs and protect the health of its visitors. But why? Because copper and its alloys exhibit impressive antibacterial, antiviral and anti-fungal properties.
Copper has been exploited for health purposes since ancient times. Egyptian and Babylonian soldiers would sharpen their bronze swords (an alloy of copper and tin) after a battle, and place the filings in their wounds to reduce infection and speed healing.
Corona-virus should help boost sales of brass door handles.
The Trump administration is scrambling to reconcile the president’s contradictions of statements made by federal health scientists about the emerging coronavirus crisis. Their solution: muzzle scientists, require that all statements be politically vetted through Vice President Pence, and punish federal employees who draw attention to gross negligence. This is a highly dangerous power grab that undermines both emergency response and public faith in the reliability of information coming out of the government. And it speaks to the incompetence and incoherence of the response to this crisis so far.
It’s hard to keep track of the number of Trump appointees who should know basic facts about the coronavirus but don’t. Then yesterday, we learned that the actual public health experts in government would no longer be allowed to speak publicly about the outbreak without the vice president’s blessing.
There is, however, a way to eliminate those bank-busting surprise medical bills without eliminating health insurance. Just ask Europe. Several European countries have health insurance just like America does. The difference is that their governments regulate what insurance must cover and what hospitals and doctors are allowed to charge much more aggressively than the United States does.
When I described surprise medical bills to experts who focus on different western-European countries’ health systems, they had no idea what I was talking about. “What is a surprise medical bill?” said Sophia Schlette, a public-health expert and a former senior adviser at Berlin’s National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians. “Seriously, they don’t happen here.”
I think improving healthcare affordability should be a top priority of our leaders in Washington DC. Not putting forward message bills, but making practical changes to existing law to make prices on health insurance come down, and ensure people have access to affordable healthcare at all stages of life.
While I’m quite young and relatively healthy still, I am well aware how the high-cost of health insurance outside of a job can be a limit. Even if I have enough money at some point in the future to retire or work part time, in a place where I actually want to live, having access to affordable care may prove difficult. I am not sure if we should be going for universal care, but we should be going for something that is better and more affordable for all.
Federal health officials issued a blunt message Tuesday: Americans need to start preparing now for the possibility that more aggressive, disruptive measures might be needed to stop the spread of the new coronavirus in the U.S.
The strongly worded warning came in response to outbreaks of the virus outside China, including in Iran, Japan, South Korea and Italy, which officials say have raised the likelihood of outbreaks occurring stateside.
"It's not so much a question of if this will happen anymore, but more really a question of when it will happen — and how many people in this country will have severe illness," Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters during a briefing.
