Category: Health

Imagine Being Patient #4,154,560

Bad News, Gummint, Health

The next time some dreamy pinko starts whining about how wonderful Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is, feel free to show him or her this article (when you are done kicking their ass, of course):

The NHS waiting list in England is the longest it has been in 11 years, official figures have revealed today.
A staggering 4,154,559 people – around six per cent of the entire UK population – were waiting to start hospital treatment at the end of August.  This number is the highest it has been since August 2007, and more than 3,000 people have been waiting more than a year for routine treatment.
A&E [ER] departments are also getting busier and cancer treatment waiting times have been missed for the 32nd month in a row, NHS data showed.  Experts today warned ‘alarm bells’ are ringing and the health service is heading straight for another winter crisis as it buckles under ‘relentless pressure’.  An ageing population and shortages of doctors and nurses have been blamed for increasing strain on the NHS and it taking longer to treat patients.

But hey… as long as it’s free, right?

And speaking of free, of course it turns out that “free” also means “rationing” (emphasis mine):

Shortages of Fluad, a new super-vaccine offering better protection for over-65s, means pensioners across the country are being turned away by GPs.  Deliveries of the vaccine to surgeries and pharmacies are being staggered due to supply problems and 40 per cent of the 7.8 million doses will not be available until next month.
The Government’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation recommended Fluad last December, but it took NHS England until February 5 to tell GPs and pharmacies they needed to buy it.  Clinics that failed to order by the April 12 deadline have had no stock delivered, forcing them to beg for supplies from others.

So if you’re (say) 63 years old, British and catch a potentially-deadly strain of flu, that’s just too bad.  Life’s lottery — or, to be more precise, the NHS lottery — just gave it to you between the cheeks.

Wear boots when kicking.

 

Another Truism

Advice, Gummint, Health

“That which government cannot force you to do because of Constitutional- or legal prohibition, it will force your employer to do on their behalf.”

Such as with the execrable “voluntary” wellness programs (whatever the fuck that means).  Thank goodness I don’t work for Global MegaCorp Inc. anymore, or else I’d burn out the pic below (which I’d be constantly sending in response to their latest poxy diktat ):

Truism

Advice, Gummint, Health

“You may make a bad mistake;  the company you work for can make an even worse mistake;  but to really screw things up, you need government.”

Kim’s Corollary:

“…and the higher the level of government, the exponentially-greater the mistake will be.”

Hence the recent pronouncement which basically states that absolutely everything the fucking federal government has ever told you about health and nutrition, is wrong.  Not just wrong, but catastrophically wrong.

As I’ve said countless times before:  I longer believe anything the government — any level of government — tells me, whatever the topic.

And if we want to wander into the Tinfoil Hat Forest ever so slightly, we may note that in the above case, the beneficiaries of said bad governmental advice have been the pharmaceutical companies who, incidentally, hire lobbyists and donate barrow-loads of money to politicians.

Protip:  if you ever look at the “Department” subheadings under my post title, and see the words “Advice” and “Gummint” appearing simultaneously, you’ll have fair warning as to where the post content will be going.

Not Wanting

Health, Men & Women

If ever anyone were to ask you the question, “Why is Kim steadfastly refusing to dive into the dating pool again?”, this would be one of the good reasons why:

Sexually-transmitted diseases continue to hit all-time highs in the U.S. with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reporting a 10 percent spike for chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis in 2017. The federal health agency said in a report released Tuesday that the numbers, which include nearly 2.3 million new cases of the aforementioned diseases, reflect a “steep, sustained increase” in STDs since 2013.

And as to why I would never date a young woman (other than psycho-social reasons), there’s this little nugget in the study:

While primary and secondary syphilis diagnoses went up by 76 percent, chlamydia remained the most commonly reported to the CDC with nearly half of the new cases occurring in females ages 15-to-24.

Given the increasing fascination with “dating apps” such as Tinder (even, regrettably, amongst men and women of my age group), it will be a cold day in Hell before I dip my wick into that little vat of social battery acid.

Science To The Rescue

Health

Seriously?

Using psychoactive drugs such as magic mushrooms could help people defeat their addiction to tobacco, scientists have suggested.  This is because the intense psychedelic experiences mean they forget withdrawal symptoms.

“Cigarette smoking is today a huge public health scourge and there are no effective reliable treatments,” said Tehseen Noorani of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Durham University.  “An open-label pilot study had impressive results in the treatment of cigarette smoking addiction with psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy, and we wanted to understand better how it worked – commonly referred to as the ‘mechanisms of change’.”

The people in the study reported heightened levels of aesthetic appreciation, openness to experience and engagement in the community.

I’ll bet they did.  Yeah, that’s so much better:  kick the smoking habit by substituting one addiction for another, equally-destructive one.

Fucking hell.  What kind of world are we living in?