These Towns Trusted a Doctor to Set Up Covid Testing. Sample Patient Fee: $1,944. – The New York Times

Ms. Sussman, 51, took her whole family to get tested, and the results came back negative.

Then the paperwork came: $6,816 had been charged to insurance for four coronavirus tests. Ms. Sussman’s fees alone were $1,944.

She started looking through the itemized costs. One insurance claim showed that she had been tested for a dozen respiratory diseases. She found that odd; the town emails advertised only a coronavirus test. There was also a surprise $480 charge for a short phone call relaying her results.

“That’s when I realized something was wrong,” Ms. Sussman said. “When in the history of medical appointments does it ever cost to get a phone call giving you your test results?”

Cities and towns gave Dr. Murphy free access to public property and rented tents on his behalf. One city provided internet hot spots. Bedford, where Ms. Sussman lives, recruited volunteers to assist Dr. Murphy with his work and arranged for residents to donate lunches.

Dr. Murphy committed to not billing patients directly but retained control over how he would examine patients and what he would charge health insurers.

Billing documents show that Dr. Murphy did not test patients just for coronavirus. He routinely billed insurers for a large panel test for at least 20 respiratory pathogens, including rhinovirus and enterovirus.

Medical experts said Dr. Murphy’s testing and billing practices were out of line with current standards.

Offering one large panel when looking for the virus “is unusual and, in my opinion, inappropriate,” said Dr. Alexander McAdam, director of the infectious disease laboratories at Boston Children’s Hospital. “That panel should only be used for the critically ill or immuno-compromised, so we don’t over-test and generate too large of a bill for our patients.”

Denmark drops plans for mass mink cull after Covid mutation fears | Denmark | The Guardian – (could kill tens of thousands of humans to save profits)

Andersson believes a cull is the safest option, however, for public health and animal welfare. “This is a tiny sector, we could easily live without it, given the risk of compromising a vaccine. We should be shutting down mink farms and culling all the animals. Sick animals are not being treated which is another mink welfare issue,” he said.

Poland and Finland are reported to be free of Covid-19 on mink farms, while in the Netherlands fur farming will effectively end this year. In Ireland, a tiny player in the mink sector, testing at the country’s three farms is reported to have begun already.

In the US, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention presentation last week said 11 mink farms had Covid-19 outbreaks. The most recent list on the US Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service website shows outbreaks on mink farms in Utah, Wisconsin and Michigan.

The American Veterinary Medical Association said at least 8,000 minks have died of infection with Sars-CoV-2 on farms in Utah. And nearly 3,400 mink are reported to have died from the coronavirus at a mink farm in Wisconsin. It added that the infection seems to be deadlier among older minks.

statement from US veterinary NGO the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association said the apparent rapid mutation of the virus in mink, and the lack of a cull, was both a public health and a welfare risk.

Source: Denmark drops plans for mass mink cull after Covid mutation fears | Denmark | The Guardian

The Covid-carrying Danish mink are a warning sign – but is anyone heeding it? | Coronavirus | The Guardian

  • Danish researchers report that one of the variants of the virus found in mink isn’t as easily defeated by the antibodies that humans produce against Covid-19. One risk is that people who have recovered from Covid-19 may have antibodies that are less able to fight off the mink strain of the virus, leaving them open to reinfection. And most of the vaccines under development, on which we are pinning so much hope, are intended to induce antibodies that target the spike protein in the virus that causes Covid-19 in humans. While it’s too early to say for certain, one possibility is that these vaccines could be less effective against the mink virus, because it has a different spike protein.
  • In this age of zoonotic epidemics, with Sars, Mers and now Covid-19 all emerging in the past 20 years, we must think carefully about how we intensively farm mammals that are known hosts of human coronaviruses. Before the pandemic, the Netherlands was already in the process of stopping intensive mink farming. But many dangerous types of animal farming still continue. Consider the palm civet. This animal was implicated in the emergence of Sars in 2003, acting as a probable intermediary between the bats in which the Sars virus originated, and the people whom it later infected.

    As an animal that might have helped to trigger a pandemic, are we now keeping the palm civet at a safe distance? Quite the opposite. In parts of Asia the palm civet is farmed intensively, fed coffee cherries, and the beans collected from its faeces are used to make the world’s most expensive coffee, kopi luwak.

    Given the huge human, social and economic costs of pandemics, there’s a compelling argument that in order to prevent future catastrophes, we can no longer afford to take such risks.

  • Source: The Covid-carrying Danish mink are a warning sign – but is anyone heeding it? | Coronavirus | The Guardian

US records seventh consecutive day of more than 100,000 new Covid cases | World news | The Guardian

Monday also saw the US surpass 10m total cases and reach an overall death toll of 238,256.

There were 111,433 new cases on Monday and 590 new deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Hospitalizations were also rising, with more than 59,000 hospitalized nationwide, reported the Covid Tracking Project, which saw the biggest single-day increase since 10 July. It found South Dakota had the highest hospitalization rates in the country and that Illinois had reported more than 10,000 cases for four days straight.

Source: US records seventh consecutive day of more than 100,000 new Covid cases | World news | The Guardian

Lebanon Imposes Another Lockdown over Virus Surge — Naharnet

Caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab Tuesday announced a fresh two-week lockdown to stem the spread of coronavirus despite a grinding economic crisis that has already battered businesses.

“We’ve reached a stage of critical danger as private and public hospitals don’t have the capacity to receive severe cases,” Diab said in a televised address.

He said the lockdown, with limited exemptions, would go into force from Saturday until November 30.

Source: Lebanon Imposes Another Lockdown over Virus Surge — Naharnet

How children with lethal cancers and other incurable illnesses have benefited from the Affordable Care Act – and why they’ll suffer if the Supreme Court overturns it

The ACA extended health care insurance to a broad range of people – about 20 million. While the little-known provision about children with cancer may not be as broad in scope, the effect is deep.

Until the ACA was enacted 10 years ago, there were two care choices for kids with cancer whose parents were told they had less than six months to live: They could continue treatment for their little ones, or they could decide to cease treatment and enter hospice. In most cases, when a patient enters hospice care, insurers no longer will pay for treatment. Instead, the care becomes comfort care. The decision to enter hospice care is always one of the toughest decisions patients and their families ever make. It is impossible to know the heartbreak that parents of children with cancer must make in choosing between hospice care or treatment.

Source: How children with lethal cancers and other incurable illnesses have benefited from the Affordable Care Act – and why they’ll suffer if the Supreme Court overturns it

Lawyers Still Can’t Find the Parents of 666 Migrant Children

Lawyers say it’s the parents in the latter group who have been more difficult to track down since many of them were deported before the court order that they be reunited with their children. But part of the problem is also that DHS did an extraordinarily terrible job of keeping track of parents’ contact information: According to a 2019 report from the Office of Inspector General, DHS lacked the “system functionality” to carry out this evil task, knew this to be true, and moved forward with the separations anyway. Terrifyingly, this assessment suggests the possibility that the Trump administration may not be withholding the phone numbers Herzog requests in his email—rather, the administration might not have them at all.

Source: Lawyers Still Can’t Find the Parents of 666 Migrant Children

Defining Cultures by Their Occupation(s) and Environment(s)

Foundation Operation X for Languages, Cultures and Perspectives

Written by Dyami Millarson

Figuring out the traditional or historical primary means of subsistence of (usually small and isolated) communities has been relevant to our language preservation efforts, because it helps us to identify what kind of language community we are dealing with. For instance, a people such as the Hindeloopen Frisians who were historically sea-faring traders is deeply connected with the language they speak, thus they are influenced by their historically transmitted terms and idioms which reflect their unique sea-faring trade history. After studying the vocabulary of the endangered language we are interested in, we move on, as a matter of procedure, to study the occupational history of the community of speakers in order to confirm what the vocabulary was already telling us about the chief occupation(s) of the speakers. We operate by the principle that an orally transmitted endangered language would not possess certain terms that are connected…

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You Keep Me Running… #poetry

I run toward the sun

press hope to my soul

will feet forward

rough and dusty road

Look over my back

pursuit darkness’ aim

a claim upon my life

forward, aghast they gain

I run toward the son

press hope to my soul

will feet forward

rough and dusty road

*

life is in the balance

in my shoe a stone

press on a little longer

closer now, I’m home

penned in moon dust

I run toward the sun

press hope to my soul

will feet forward

rough and dusty road

Look over my back

pursuit darkness’ aim

a claim upon my life

forward, aghast they gain

I run toward the son

press hope to my soul

will feet forward

rough and dusty road

*

life is in the balance

in my shoe a stone

press on a little longer

closer now, I’m home

David a shepherd, a psalmist, a king understood the running from and running toward “something.”

David was always running toward God in faith and running from enemies, his own king, his son, his guilt…

What are you running from? what are you running toward?

Are you longing for a peaceful green pasture to lay down on today?

Are the talons of fear and darkness digging into all hope, all resolve?

Call out to Jesus you who are weak, afraid, burdened.

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