The Vaccinated Protect the Unvaccinated

If 234 000 deaths from COVID-19 could have been prevented with a primary series of vaccinations (https://bit.ly/3XrFXfz) between June 2021 and March 2022, I estimate that 140 400 of these deaths would have been among Republicans. This is, of course, not a surprise because Republicans are less likely to be vaccinated than Democrats, and, as the Texas Department of Health put it, “Texas Data Shows Unvaccinated People 20 times More Likely to Die From COVID-19” (https://bit.ly/3H0ACog). T...

 The Myth of Individual Responsibility Regarding Obesity

When mining jobs disappeared in the 1970s and 1980s, communities were left with neither industrial employment nor the agricultural infrastructure that had once sustained them. Into this vacuum stepped corporations like Dollar General, which has explicitly targeted rural communities with limited retail options. The company now operates over 17,000 locations nationwide, becoming the primary food retailer in many Appalachian communities while offering primarily processed foods with long shelf l...

 A Early Definition of Human Social Progress

Disease is largely a removable evil. It continues to afflict humanity, not only because of incomplete knowledge of its causes and lack of individual and public hygiene, but also because it is extensively fostered by harsh economic and industrial conditions and by wretched housing in congested communities. ... The reduction of the death rate is the principal statistical expression and index of human social progress. It means the saving and lengthening of lives of thousands of citizens, the ext...

 Science Saves Lives

Even at its best, pre-modern medical practice did not save many. Queen Anne was the last Stuart monarch of Great Britain. In the last seventeen years of the seventeenth century, she was pregnant eighteen times. Only five children were born alive. Only one of them survived infancy. He died before reaching adulthood, and before her coronation in 1702. There seems to be no evidence of some genetic disorder. She had the best medical care money could buy. Diseases that once tragically carried off...