Weekly U.S. Influenza Surveillance Report | CDC
Seasonal influenza activity in the United States remains lower than usual for this time of year.
Healthcare
Planet Money : NPR
Wendell Potter spent decades scaring Americans. About Canada. He worked for the health insurance industry, and he knew that if Americans understood Canadian-style health care, they might.... like it. So he helped deploy an industry playbook for protecting the health insurance agency.
Today on the show, a former hitman for health reveals how he terrified Americans, and why.
It's a story about manipulating statistics, fighting Michael Moore, and getting mysterious packages in the mail. It's even got secret code names.
Throughline : NPR
When a cook who carried typhoid fever refused to stop working, despite showing no symptoms, the authorities forcibly quarantined her for nearly three decades. Perfect villain or just a woman scapegoated because of her background? What the story of Typhoid Mary tells us about journalism, the powers of the state, and the tension between personal responsibility and personal liberty.
NPR
Given the long family experience in this field, Peter Salk said he is optimistic about a COVID-19 vaccine. But he cautioned about racing ahead before one is fully tested.
"I congratulate the impulse on the part of the federal government right now to want to speed things up as much as possible," he said. "What concerns me is knowing that in the past there have been unexpected things that have taken place with vaccines that had not been foreseen."
A Suspicious Cough Leads To ER : Shots – Health News : NPR
Moral of the story, if you are concerned about the high cost of health care in America call NPR.
NPR
Shots – Health News : NPR
Psychiatrist Philip Muskin is quarantined at home in New York City because he's been feeling a little under the weather and doesn't want to expose anyone to whatever he has. But he continues to see his patients the only way he can: over the phone.
"I've been a psychiatrist for more than 40 years; I have never FaceTimed a patient in my entire career," says Muskin, who works at Columbia University Medical Center, treating outpatients in his clinical practice, as well as people who have been hospitalized. Normally, he says he walks patients to the door, shakes their hand or touches their arm or shoulder to reassure them. "Now I'm not doing that, and that's weird to me. So it's a whole new, very unpleasant world."