We're likely gonna hit ~800,000 US deaths by year's end. I'm seein' packed sports stadiums, concerts, theater re-openings, schools back in sessions (with endless #FreeDumb fights over mask requirements)... have to have concerns.
ERRATA
Starting to see these news items every day. In my uncharitable moments, I call this "U.S. Covid19 Herd Immunity Threshold Denominator Reduction."
FROM NEW ISSUE, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
In the senior community where my mom lives, death is a frequent visitor. When we talk about a recent loss, the story is often the same: her neighbor fell, and things got worse from there. Falls are the seventh-leading cause of death for adults aged 65 and older in the U.S., and their prevalence has jumped more than 30 percent in recent years, according to a 2018 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even when a spill doesn't cause serious injuries, it can be the beginning of the end for elderly adults, explains Patricia Dykes, who studies fall prevention at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. “They become afraid to move. They'll think, ‘Maybe I shouldn't walk so much.’ Then they get weaker, and their balance gets poorer.” This starts a spiral of more falls, increased injuries and worsening health.“Fear of falling prevents older people from doing the things that would prevent falls,” she says. There are likely many reasons for the rise in fall-related deaths. For one thing, more people are surviving heart disease, cancer and strokes and living into their 80s and 90s with impairments and chronic conditions that make them unsteady, says epidemiologist Elizabeth Burns of the CDC, who co-authored the 2018 report. “We also know that Americans use more medications than they used to,” she says. Polypharmacy—taking four or more medications—increases the chance of falling. So does taking a drug that impacts the central nervous system, such as an opioid or antidepressant. Age-related changes in eyesight, cognition, muscle strength and balance also raise risk.
But experts insist that falling is not inevitable. Targeted exercises, modified drug regimens and fixing vision problems can reduce the risk. New technology may help, including smartphone apps that analyze gait, as well as AI tools that alert busy health-care providers to fall risks among their patients…
Yeah. I have to remind myself that I am a "senior" now pushing 76. Addled with Parkinson's, and increasingly wobbly. "Elderly." An admitted fall risk (I've had several). 19 months of Covid19 restrictions have not helped. After my 2018 SAVR px in California, I'd made it all the way back to the basketball court by late 2019. 5-6 hours a week of 5-on-5 pickup. Check Ball.
On March 13th, 2020, they had to shut down our basketball gym. It remains closed.
My new Baltimore cardiologist had razzed me in December 2019: "Y'know what the number one cause of death is for guys like you? Falling."
Gee, thanks, Doc.
BOOKS ON DECK
Stay tuned.
MORE FROM SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
POLICYIndeed. Dr. Oreskes rocks. See also my #SciComm posts.
Scientists: When Talking to the Public, Please Speak Plainly
Jargon is appropriate when you’re speaking with colleagues, but it’s a turnoff for the rest of us
By Naomi Oreskes | Scientific American October 2021 Issue
With the persistence of vaccine denial, as well as many Americans still reluctant to face the facts of climate change even in the face of devastating floods and record-breaking heat, social media has been suffused with theories about why people don't trust science. In my own work, I have talked about how 40 years of partisan attacks on government have led to distrust of government science and then of science generally.
But this past year another issue has been bugging me. It's the way scientists talk. This is not a new concern. Many years ago science writer Susan Hassol and atmospheric scientist Richard Somerville wrote a humorous but serious piece about how the terms that climate scientists use mean one thing to them but often something very different to others. In the climate system, for example, “positive feedback” refers to amplifying feedback loops, such as the ice-albedo feedback. (“Albedo,” itself a bit of jargon, basically means “reflectivity.”) The loop in question develops when global warming causes Arctic ice to melt, exposing water that is darker and reflects less of the sun's warming rays, which leads to more warming, which leads to more melting ... and so on. In the climate system, this positive feedback is a bad thing. But for most, it conjures reassuring images, such as receiving praise from your boss…
Examples of confusing and misleading scientific terms abound. When astronomers say “metals,” they mean any element heavier than helium, which includes oxygen and nitrogen, a usage that is massively confusing not just to laypeople but also to chemists. The Big Dipper isn't a constellation to them; it is an “asterism.” Computational scientists declare a model “validated” when they mean that it has been tested against a data set—not necessarily that it is valid. In AI, there is machine “intelligence,” which isn't intelligence at all but something more like “machine capability.” In ecology, there are “ecosystem services,” which you might reasonably think refers to companies that clean up oil spills, but it is ecological jargon for all the good things that the natural world does for us. And then there's my favorite, which is especially relevant here: the theory of “communication accommodation,” which means speaking so that the listener can understand.
Studies show that alien terms are, in fact, alienating; they confuse people and make them feel excluded. One study showed that even when participants were given definitions for the terms being used, jargon-laden materials made them less likely to identify with the scientific community and decreased their overall interest in the subject. In plain words: jargon turns people off…
COVID-19 CODA: SUSAN B. GLASSER IN THE NEW YORKER
…Consider the news this week that now one in five hundred Americans has died in the pandemic; total deaths in the country approach seven hundred thousand. What’s worse, covid deaths—the vast majority of them preventable, avoidable deaths, now that science and the federal government have provided us with free vaccines—are continuing to rise across large swaths of vaccine-resistant Trump country. This is not a tragic mistake but a calculated choice by many Republicans who have made vaccine resistance synonymous with resistance to Biden and the Democrats. The current average of more than nineteen hundred dead a day means that a 9/11’s worth of Americans are perishing from covid roughly every thirty-eight hours. To my mind, this is the biggest news of the Biden Presidency so far, and it has nothing to do with Afghanistan, or the fate of the budget-reconciliation bill, or Bob Woodward’s new book.
America spent twenty years fighting wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East because of 9/11. The 2001 attacks reordered American foreign-policy and national-security thinking for a generation. Does anyone believe that something comparable will happen as a result of the pandemic’s catastrophic death toll, which is far vaster than that of any other crisis in the modern era? It’s hard to imagine, especially because the continuing loss of life is a result of G.O.P. political strategies that intentionally undermine the success of Biden’s policies. How can this President, or any President, reset from that?…
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