The Uncountable Cow (and the Owl with a Scowl)

52-Week Challenge. One post a week, near a hundred and fifty words each. Surgical pathology and board games amongst many other irrelevant rants. Grammatical incorrections and orthographic mistakes included for free!

[jayparkinsonmd]

There are two healthcare systems in America, I call them The Last 5% and The First 95%.

The Last 5%

It’s characterized by expensive daily drugs, highly specific tests, detailed imaging, super-specialized specialists, robots, massive hospital campuses, and every expensive thing but the kitchen sink. It’s the world’s best. It’s powered by specialists and big hospital buildings. And when people talk about the US healthcare system being the world’s best, it’s because of this “Last 5%” System. It’s life-changing when everything goes right. It’ll cost you an arm and a leg, but it can sometimes work miracles, if your definition of miracle is maintaining a beating heart. It’s also highly unsafe, risky, and prone to complications, hospital-acquired infections, and disconnected care. But that’s not something The Last 5% likes to think about. I call it The Last 5% because it’s solving the last 5% of human health problems. Remember, 80% of your lifetime medical costs are spent in the last 6 months of your life. It’s treating people, mostly adults, at the end of their life, after an unhealthy lifestyle from an unhealthy culture and environment has done a number on their bodies. Any problem where you’re trying to solve the last 5% of the problem is ungodly expensive and can only get more expensive.

The First 95%

It’s vaccines, clean water, short-term antibiotics, quick fixes, healthy food, exercise, education, and environments. It’s powered by neighborhood primary care doctors in small practices, farmers markets, bike paths, relationships with family and friends, and anything else that helps you get to the last 5% of your life. Health insurance companies are terrible at impacting this System for the better. But for an idea of how they could, see how the largest health insurance “company” in America has agreed to pay for removing lead in Flint. Compared to The Last 5%, there’s not a lot of money to be made here. That’s why the medical component of this sort of looks and feels like the DMV. It’s also not really connected to the Last 5% System. But it’s 95% of the solution. It helps you live a wonderful life throughout your life. And that’s what matters. That’s why all I want to do with my life is fix 95% of the problem.

[myjetpack]

A recent cartoon for New Scientist magazine.

[uncountablecow]

Shut up and take my money!

[uncountablecow]

«I will not become a page in someone else's history book.»

[savagechickens]

Practice.

More music.

[uncountablecow]

This is me. But change the kid for a grown up and the violin is my bass (hey, 4-stringed thingy... almost the same)

[historical-nonfiction]

As a child Roald Dahl and a group of other school children were selected by Cadbury to be temporary taste-testers. (This was common practice for candy companies at the time.) Perhaps this lucky stint helped inspire one of his more beloved classics, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

[uncountablecow]

Positively it did. He himself tells the story in his sort of autobiographical book Boy, which keeps hints of the fine and dark sense of humour of his fiction.

[chrishallbeck]

Schooled.

http://minimumble.thebookofbiff.com/2014/09/30/539-schooled/

[uncountablecow]

Of course, that’s the problem with my life!

I’ve always been a 12-colour guy who thought that had became a 24-colour one. But haven’t...

[life]

In November 1956, LIFE published a story about the University of Michigan’s hospital in Ann Arbor about animal therapy - a similar image ran with this caption: “Bedside pleasure for 3-year-old Peggy Kennedy is provided by ducklings paddling around in tub. Peggy is polio victim, wears a plastic chest respirator.” (Francis Miller—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images) #wildLIFEwednesday

[historical-nonfiction]

This Was How Science Worked In Ye Olden Days?

To disprove the theory that breast cancer was caused by an imbalance of the four body humors, namely an excess of bile, French physicians Jean Astruc (1684-1766) cooked a slice of breast cancer tissue and a slice of beef and then chewed both. He said that because they tasted exactly the same, a breast cancer tumor does not contain bile or acid.

[squid-bits]

We can all relate.

[uncountablecow]

Because, you know, cows... Countable, but cows

[uncountablecow]

[plumzeri]

My uterus has problems

[uncountablecow]

But after that step several have to come… |(• ◡•)| / \ (❍ᴥ❍ʋ)

[jayparkinsonmd]

See that weird rash caused by a fitbit? That’s the only time a doctor will ever care about your fitbit. They’ll never care about the data generated from these devices, ever. Why?

Because ignorance is bliss. Imagine if a doctor’s typical panel of 2500 patients all had fitbits and were all generating data and sharing all that daily data with doctors. That’s a lot of data for a doctor to digest on a daily basis. Of course the doctor surely wouldn’t be responsible for all of that data. The doctor would only be responsible for the data that sets off some sort of trigger. Let’s say that there’s a miracle device with a miracle algorithm that flags 1% of users as atypical and something the doctor should be analyzing. That means a doctor would then be looking at data from 25 patients a day. Doctors typically see 25 patients a day in their practice, so now they are responsible for 25 more patients, analyzing their data, and then acting on the results. Meanwhile they’re not getting paid for this kind of management. Would this be a co-pay that patients pay? Could doctors open up cases for you that would then give them the freedom to take your co-pay whenever they want?

And what happens when they overlook a blip in someone’s data and don’t act on it? Are they negligent? Will they be sued for malpractice? Will you also be able to sue Apple or Fitbit because of a flawed algorithm that didn’t trigger alarms for life-threatening data it’s collecting about you? 

It’s the same issue with paper records. If you have your paper records and deliver an inch-thick of paper to your new doctor, it’s in the doctor’s best interest to refuse to take them. Because if they do take them, they are assuming responsibility for them and are then expected to know the information in that stack of papers. If they don’t take them, they can always claim ignorance. And, legally, ignorance is much better than negligence.

For doctors, it’s best to ignore these devices and this data. Too much data coming at you. And too many unknowns. With increasing data streams targeted at you and increasing risk of malpractice, it’s probably better to just keep your distance and call them “cute.”

[uncountablecow]

[nedroidcomics]

[squid-bits]

Sunday Morning Internal Organ Comics!

http://squidbitsstore.bigcartel.com/product/may-contain-sharks-pre-order

[uncountablecow]

I can't get enough of these appendix jokes :P

[uncountablecow]

Crisis on Infinite Earths… and in my shelves

At last I caught up with reading of this iconic DC tome.

And well, this might not be my cup of tea as I miss many of the references: haven't read neither the series which converged in this story nor the series originated by the collapse of the multiverse into a single universe. But the story is solid, told without evident flaws and closing as many threads as new ones are generated (everything is about keep selling comics, and CoIE does it well).

But I still don't know why, recently bought Infinite Crisis. And it sucks. It can also be named "Unnecessary Crisis" (ok, the joke is definitely better in Spanish as Unnecessary and Infinite both start with the same syllable).

And I'm not talking about series conveying to die and new ones to born (I assume that I can feel lost but it is in big part my own fault), but about characters acting as cheap drama villains, with sudden changes in their behaviour and unnecessary long explanations of their motives as it is not deducted reading the previous pages.

As editorial policy it can be fine to start over to get new readers into your comics (I came into them because of this), but there are clear differences between the former and the latter, being one a well woven start over and the other a mere excuse to call it a new beginning. I still hope that 52 is worth the time and the money. If not, I probably won't give DC Comics another chance.