In 2012, there were roughly 41,000 overdose deaths in the United States. Last year, the number topped 100,000. In 2012, there were 4.7 murders for every 100,000 people. Last year, the rate hit an estimated 6.9, a 47 percent increase. A decade ago, you rarely heard of carjackings. Now, they are through the roof. Shoplifting? Ditto. The nation’s mental health was in steep decline before the pandemic, with a 60 percent increase of major depressive episodes among adolescents between 2007 and 2019. Everything we know about the effects of lockdowns and school closures suggests it’s gotten much worse.
Author: John C. Goodman
Monday Links
Doctors file lawsuit against HHS over paying more to docs who practice “woke” medicine.
Why don’t medicines have names that are easy to pronounce and remember?
Biden Adm. wants certificate of need for charter schools.
There aren’t enough Covid boosters for everyone to have a second booster by Sept 1.
Sec. Mark Esper: Trump proposed shooting Patriot missiles into Mexico to destroy drug labs.
What if Future Voters Could Vote?
An interview with Alex Tabarrok:
Future residents don’t have the vote, so we prevent building which placates the fears of current homeowners but prevents future residents from moving in. Future patients don’t have the vote, so we regulate drug prices at the expense of future new drug innovations and so forth. This has always been true, of course, but culture can be a solution to otherwise tough-to-solve incentive problems. America’s forward looking, pro-innovation, pro-science culture meant that in the past we were more likely to protect the future.
Friday Links
Surgeon quality matters. HT: Tyler
Where health care research misses out.
The healthcare system tracks data on people who are patients, not on people when they aren’t. We’re not looking at the people when they don’t need health care; we’re not gathering data on what it means to be healthy. I.e., the “missing patients.”
Medicare is paying doctors to be woke.
Senate votes to revoke Biden’s preschool (Head Start) mask mandate. (7 Democrats voted with all the Republicans)
Apple employees to Tim Cook: Making us go back to work is racist.