According to the BBC, nearly seven million patients are on National Health Service (NHS) waiting lists for care in England. The data came from a recent NHS report, which found 6.84 million people waiting for some type of care. These figures are up from 4.2 million before the Covid pandemic. Also keep in mind the population of England is about 56 million people so approximately 1 out of every 8 people living in England are on an NHS waiting list.
Category: News and Events
Friday Links
- The US was one of only two among 21 similarly wealthy countries— along with Israel — in which life expectancy continued to decline last year.
- Covid seemed to crowd out the flu for the last two years. Some experts expect a big comeback this fall.
- Not following the science: In one of the few education programs the federal government directly oversees — Head Start preschools and child care centers for low-income families — mandatory masking rules are still on the books for teachers and children as young as 2-years-old.
- David Henderson: School shutdowns will shorten lives.
- DeLong: for at least 300,000 years – up until about 1870 – virtually all of our ancestors lived at the subsistence level.
- Some states spend twice as much per person on health care as other states.
- CVS is spending $8 billion to bring back doctor house calls.
Don’t Trust Your Gut, Use Your Brain (and Data) for Decision-Making
We’ve all met that person whose knee-jerk reactions are based on emotions even if they’re illogical to anyone but them. I’ve also heard people who say, “always go with your first thought, it’s usually the correct decision.” Or I’ve heard others say, “Always trust your intuition, it’s usually right.” Aren’t so-called gut-feelings the same as intuition and emotions?
Should intuition and gut-feelings play a role in logical decision making? Not according to the new book Don’t Trust Your Gut, by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. Stephens-Davidowitz was a philosophy major at Stanford, who later earned a PhD in economics from Harvard. He is a former data scientist for Google. This is what he told Vox in an interview…