Coming soon to the lives of American smokers: cigarette labels that go far beyond a simple warning. Imagine gruesome color photographs showing a mouth riddled with cancer, lungs blackened, a foot rotten with gangrene. If the images sound sickening, well, that's the point.
Coming soon to the lives of American smokers: cigarette labels that go far beyond a simple warning.
Imagine gruesome color photographs showing a mouth riddled with cancer, lungs blackened, a foot rotten with gangrene. If the images sound sickening, well, that's the point.
Read the first post again. Wellness and chronic disease are wrapped up in health reform. It is a notional health goal to reduce cigarette smoking. There is a self-organized GUS (give up smoking) support group right here on Daily Kos, but professional help is an important alternative for some.
With any major action on health care reform postponed until all of Congress resumes in September, this week provides an outline of how Congressional Democrats and the White House are ramping up their sales pitch and how Republicans and insurers are cranking up the opposition.
see also Health Plan Opponents Make Voices Heard.
In 1976, a small group of soldiers at Fort Dix were infected with a swine flu virus that was deemed similar to the virus responsible for the great 1918-19 world-wide flu pandemic. The U.S. government initiated an unprecedented effort to immunize every American against the disease. While a qualified success in terms of numbers reached-more than 40 million Americans received the vaccine-the disease never reappeared. The program was marked by controversy, delay, administrative troubles, legal complications, unforeseen side effects and a progressive loss of credibility for public health authorities. In the waning days of the flu season, the incoming Secretary of what was then the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Joseph Califano, asked Richard Neustadt and Harvey Fineberg to examine what happened and to extract lessons to help cope with similar situations in the future. The result was their report, The Swine Flu Affair: Decision-Making on a Slippery Disease.
The Obama administration is finalizing guidelines that would scale back when the federal government recommends closing schools in response to the swine flu pandemic, several people involved in the deliberations said Monday.
While school closures are a local decision, local folks want federal guidance. with school starting in less than a month, major efforts are underway to define when and how schools should close, with many states running summer workshops for superintendants. The results should mean better coordination this fall, as compared to spring. Closing schools and just for cleaning counters and handrails is useless and a waste of money, and if the virus is embedded in the community already, school closure has a different role (less useful) than if not (more useful.)
The H1N1 virus infected tens of thousands of people and caused the deaths of 200 others, more than in any country outside the United States. In the midst of the Southern Hemisphere's winter, Brazilian tourists who usually flock to ski resorts in Patagonia, in Argentina's snowy southwest, stayed home. The small-business association here estimated losses in Buenos Aires alone at $1 billion, with the usual bustle at restaurants and tango clubs falling off sharply.
Estimates of swine flu damage to the Mexican economy run more than 2 billion dollars. Recessions are not optimal times for pandemics.