Afghanistan to start polio vaccination drive next month | News | DW | 18.10.2021

First campaign in three years

The campaign will be the first in more than three years aimed at all children in Afghanistan, with a total of 9.9 million children under the age of five, and more than 3 million in remote and previously inaccessible areas.

“This decision will allow us to make a giant stride in the efforts to eradicate polio,” Hervé Ludovic De Lys, UNICEF Representative in Afghanistan, said in a statement.

“To eliminate polio completely, every child in every household across Afghanistan must be vaccinated, and with our partners, this is what we are setting out to do,” he said.

Afghanistan’s new rulers had also committed to “providing security and assuring the safety of all health workers across the country, which is an essential prerequisite for the implementation of polio vaccination campaigns,” the UN said.

Source: Afghanistan to start polio vaccination drive next month | News | DW | 18.10.2021

Hospital COVID patients may owe thousands as insurance waivers end | CIDRAP

Out-of-pocket costs $1,500 to $3,800

A team led by University of Michigan researchers analyzed data on 4,075 COVID-19 hospitalizations of Americans with private or Medicare Advantage insurance from March to September 2020. The study used the IQVIA PharMetrics Plus for Academics Database, which collects claims data from multiple US insurers.

Among all patients, 33.8% were privately insured, 46.5% required intensive care unit (ICU) stays, and the average length of stay was 7.3 days (9.2 for ICU patients).

The investigators found that the vast majority of COVID-19 patients weren’t billed for hospital services such as room and board, suggesting that their insurance companies footed the bill. But patients who were responsible for payment were out thousands of dollars.

That means that COVID-19 patients who have sought emergency or hospital care since that time could face out-of-pocket costs of roughly $3,800 (for those with private insurance), while those with Medicare Advantage plans could pay $1,500, the researchers said. Total out-of-pocket costs were higher than $4,000 for 2.5% of privately insured patients, compared with 0.2% of Medicare patients.

The out-of-pocket costs are just a small fraction of total hospital charges, however. The authors said that insurers cap hospitalization costs of COVID-19 patients with private insurance at, on average, $42,200, while the cap is $21,400 for those using Medicare.

Source: Hospital COVID patients may owe thousands as insurance waivers end | CIDRAP

Beyond tree planting: When to let forests restore themselves

  • Tree-planting schemes are common these days, and they’re touted as one of the best tools we have to combat climate change, species extinction, and other environmental crises.
  • But natural regeneration — allowing forests to reestablish themselves — is increasingly being recognized as a more cost-effective strategy for meeting ambitious forest restoration targets.
  • Natural regeneration can occur on its own, just by stepping back and letting trees grow. But sometimes it’s more effective to assist regeneration with measures such as putting up fences, removing weeds, and addressing the pressures that lead to logging and other disturbances.
  • Recent research focuses on identifying the conditions necessary for natural regeneration to occur.

In May, the U.K. Forestry Commission announced a grant program designed to encourage the creation of new English woodlands as a means of mitigating climate change, boosting biodiversity, and reducing flooding.

The program will make 15.9 million pounds ($21.7 million) available in its first year to “provide greater financial incentives for landowners and farmers to plant and manage trees,” according to a statement a Forestry Commission spokesperson provided to Mongabay. But tree planting isn’t the only woodland-creating activity the grant supports: For the first time ever, the British government will also pay landowners for allowing forests to naturally reestablish themselves.

Source: Beyond tree planting: When to let forests restore themselves

Evidence and faith

LANDBACK Friends

I find it increasingly difficult to make sense of what is going on today. All the terrible things I had anticipated for the future are suddenly happening now. And things I never imagined, like the assaults on truth and science, come at a time when they are desperately needed.

There are all kinds of ways to divide/categorize the American public: there’s the urban/rural divide, the differences between Republicans and Democrats, people who are college educated versus those who are not…One distinction that is rarely highlighted but incredibly important doesn’t even have a descriptive term–it’s the difference between people who recognize and respectevidenceand those who don’t.

Think of it as the difference between people who accept the Enlightenment emphasis on empirical reality and those who are “faith-based.” Being faith-based, at least as I am using the term, doesn’t necessarily mean “religious.” It means preferring an ideological commitment–something taken on…

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Eco-Kids Want to Protect the Environment and Now it is Easy for Adults to Tell Them How

FunWritings

Since the eco-friendly children’s eBooks are being loaned on Amazon, every child can learn more tips and develop good eco habits so they can help to implement the zero waste plan

We will see more climate action when even the children start believing that they can

We shouldn’t be watching the climate crisis get worse each year

When we can change the way we talk about environmental care

Photo by Julia M Cameron on Pexels.com

Now that the climate solutions are simplified so that children can understand them

More people can work towards solving the very huge problem

We can plan for a green future and reduce our bills each day

When we start using eco-friendly tips in many different ways

Photo by Vlada Karpovich on Pexels.com

It is now easier for parents to pass on information to children with eBooks they can borrow

Let us all get ready to…

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As mulheres sempre foram inferiorizadas em relação aos homens

Pensamentos.me/VEM comigo!

As mulheres sempre foram inferiorizadas em relação ao homens. Um exemplo claro dessa maneira de pensar vem do próprio Rousseau ao defender uma educação com qualidade inferiorizada as mulheres. Ele, assim como, os homens de sua época contribuíram para aquela ideia de que a mulher só devia cuidar da casa, filhos e marido.
A educação é um dos instrumentos de emancipação feminina. Por que se percebe por exemplo que, muitas mulheres avançaram no seu modo de pensar, ser e se comportar? Algumas evoluíram principalmente, na forma de pensar e atuar, outras não. Você já avaliou esse fator? Nem todas aprendem na mesma proporção. Claro, culturalmente estamos evoluindo. O comportamento feminino vem mudando bastante nas últimas décadas, mas ainda vemos mulheres com uma certa limitação em acompanhar as outras na sua maneira de pensar. O comportamento, assim como os costumes de uma sociedade, é algo que leva tempo para mudar. Então…

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Reading While Texan | The Weekly Sift

Worse, “debated” and “controversial” are fundamentally subjective notions. An issue becomes “debated” not because it is objectively dubious, but because somebody chooses to debate it. It becomes “controversial” whenever someone starts a controversy, no matter how baseless that controversy might be. [3] As much as I want to accept the school district’s assurance that “this bill does not require an opposing viewpoint on historical facts”, I can’t find such a clear statement in the text of the law.

And even if you grant an exemption for “historical facts”, the very distinction between facts and opinions is itself controversial these days. The essence of Trumpism is to deny that objective facts can be found by examining evidence. (American intelligence agencies say one thing, but Vladimir Putin says something else. Who can determine where the truth lies?) If Trump repeats something often enough, it is true — or at the very least it becomes an “alternative fact“. Any evidence that refutes his opinion is “fake news”.

So it appears to me that if, say, a large number of people in some Texas community believe the Earth is flat — or if the Oracle of Mar-a-Lago starts making that claim — a classroom’s globe might become debated and controversial; it might need to be balanced against some other representation of the Earth. HB 3979 would then require teachers not to “defer” to the view that the Earth is spherical.

Or suppose one of your students has a parent like this guy, who wore a “Six million wasn’t enough” shirt to a Proud Boys rally in December. (They’re available online.) Would that make the Holocaust “controversial” enough to invoke the provisions of 3979? Or maybe you regard the fact of the Holocaust as beyond controversy, but describing it as “a terrible event” is a value judgment that this guy disputes. Doesn’t that make it “debated”? How many people have to agree with him before it’s “widely” debated?

Source: Reading While Texan | The Weekly Sift