djsmithers.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

A little announcement on the show today: It's our 29th birthday! 🎂

submitted 9 days ago • 41 comments

I recommend this podcast, which includes interviews with fired federal workers. It does a good job capturing the personal cost of handing the government over to power-hungry sociopaths who don’t believe in competent governance. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

submitted 9 days ago • 4 comments

Yeah, these takes give away just how little someone understands about healthcare. Nursing is a fundamentally human-centric role. Eg, inpatient they’re the most familiar with who patients are, what they typically look like, etc. They’re the eyes and ears for entire teams. That can’t be AI-ed.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

“There are currently four people remaining over there to do the work of 15 people. The danger to the national airspace can’t be understated." "This is a very real threat to the American flying public.” EXCLUSIVE ⤵️

submitted 10 days ago • 289 comments

Reading @chrislhayes.bsky.social’s The Sirens’ Call and @superwuster.bsky.social’s The Attention Merchants not to help me quit social media, but instead to have a higher brow inner monologue about why I should feel bad for being perpetually online

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

You should go sub to Ellie’s newsletter; my longstanding issue w the epidemiologic transition concept is it’s a bit of scientific ideology that has made it impossible for several generations of epidemiologists to think about infectious diseases in anything but the barest of biomedical terms

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

It's a horrendous flu season. It's killing kids, it's killing adults. It's killing people who were perfectly healthy before and people who, like most Americans, have chronic illness. It costs NOTHING to keep existing resources available. Our government is spending money to make Americans sicker.

submitted 12 days ago • 10 comments

In most people with cirrhosis, acetaminophen (up to 2g/day) is a safer analgesic than NSAIDs (kidneys, GI mucosa) or opioids (CNS function, gut motility) Spreading the word from @shreyatrivedimd.bsky.social @ebtapper.bsky.social

submitted 10 days ago • 3 comments

1/ I am seeing a lot of comments on the slashing of NIH support along the lines of “universities should just spend their huge endowments.” I’m the last person to cheer on the institutional stratification rising endowments have contributed to. But let me explain why this is not a solution.

submitted 10 days ago • 46 comments

Major news: Entire first-year class of the Epidemic Intelligence Service must be out by 5pm, sources say. Also: a major CDC contractor "just let go." Others may follow. This is an attack on our ability to detect outbreaks. More, with quotes from CDC officials: open.substack.com/pub/insideme...

submitted 14 days ago • 16 comments

If there’s a Disease X outbreak in the next four (or more?) years we literally will be flying blind, we just fired the people who would have tracked it

submitted 14 days ago • 24 comments

Still thinking about the NIH, et al.: The largest employment sector in ME, MA, RI, CT, PA, MD, DE, MN, ND, SD, AZ, UT, ID, WA, and AK are hospitals and med centers. In VT, NY, NC, MI, IA, NE, NM, CA, and HI: public universities. For most of the rest of the country it's retail.

submitted 19 days ago • 23 comments

They are going to ignore court orders. If they ignore court orders, the social contract is dead and buried, the constitution is no longer in effect. It's a rubicon that cannot be uncrossed.

submitted 19 days ago • 462 comments

Here are some facts about "facilities and administrative" (F&A) costs, what we in the business call "indirects" and what Musk is calling "overhead" as he tries to convince Americans with being ok with cutting billions on dollars from medical and public health research at universities & hospitals 1/

submitted 19 days ago • 7 comments

1. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%. I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters. grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

submitted 21 days ago • 270 comments

I'm not sure how to explain how financially devastating this will be for universities. This is, literally, catastrophic for universities and for science in the United States.

submitted 21 days ago • 13 comments

It's hard to keep track of all the awfulness, but Idaho has introduced a massive attack on Medicaid, proposing the elimination of Medicaid expansion if they don't impose a work requirement, cap enrollment to 50k, and restrict benefits to being for only up to 3 years open.substack.com/pub/miranday...

submitted 23 days ago • 7 comments

And let's be clear that Medicare 'fraud' is largely done by health insurance companies (e.g. Medicare Advantage plans) and health care executives (e.g. Rick Scott). www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/u...

submitted 23 days ago • 4 comments

CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) -- which, since 1990, has tracked high school students' behaviors that can influence health and social outcomes (like smoking, drug use, and dietary habits) -- is now offline

submitted 28 days ago • 9 comments

This is a big deal, y'all. Federal health websites are being stripped of content or removed in their entirety. Stick with this thread for a look at what's disappeared so far! 1/x

submitted 28 days ago • 324 comments

It’s true that there are health policy tradeoffs in many arenas. But one thing that is not a tradeoff is our decision, in the US, to punish the sick: Deductibles, copays, coinsurance, “medical debt”, medical bankruptcy are socially useless, socially harmful, policy decisions.

submitted 47 days ago • 0 comments

"commissioners in climate disaster–prone states...have favored overly lenient regulation of insurers in terms of the adequacy of their loss reserves, in order to encourage them to keep providing insurance at all" prospect.org/blogs-and-ne...

submitted 46 days ago • 0 comments

$2.3 trillion in Medicaid spending cuts reportedly being considered by Republicans represents 31% of projected federal Medicaid spending over the next decade. @robinr.bsky.social www.kff.org/quick-take/h...

submitted 46 days ago • 1 comment

There are and will be many public health issues to defend in the coming years. We can all have an impact individually, and we can have a greater impact working together.

submitted 48 days ago • 2 comments

Hello BlueSky! We are a grassroots organization of thousands of public health professionals who are dedicated to sharing evidence-based public health science. We will post about our actions here and let you know how you can get involved. We look forward to interacting with you! Stay tuned.

submitted 49 days ago • 3 comments

The GOP's "menu" of reconciliation pay-fors (via Politico) makes it clear that cost-savings aren't possible without deep cuts to Medicaid — these big-ticket proposals will both hurt beneficiaries and piss off governors. www.politico.com/f/?id=000001...

submitted 49 days ago • 25 comments

I once naively thought that since child mortality was so much higher back in the day people would be inured to it. But reading the Stoic philosophers (Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius in particular) made it apparent: no, it was experienced as fully devastating, it took immense fortitude just to go on.

submitted 60 days ago • 21 comments

It never ceases to amaze my colleagues from elsewhere around the world when they understand there is NO, repeat, NO federal funding mechanism for humanities research. None. My colleagues on health sciences campuses also don’t really understand this, IME. H/t @djvanness.bsky.social

submitted 63 days ago • 3 comments

omg a student somehow accidentally wrote an email addressed to a faculty-wide NYU listserv and my inbox is now a master class on who understands the difference between a listserv and an email chain

submitted 61 days ago • 210 comments

"In the first half of the 19th century, between 40% and 50% of children in the U.S. didn’t live past the age of 5." @aktange.bsky.social theconversation.com/infectious-d...

submitted 61 days ago • 12 comments

So many problems with this story. Health insurers denying care for profit. GoFundMe using people's strife as a profit-making machine. All while we tolerate utterly inadequate social safety nets. As @kenworthy.bsky.social's latest book reminds us, there are costs. mitpress.mit.edu/978026254803...

submitted 66 days ago • 0 comments

May everyone’s coffee be strong, fireplaces warm, conversation inviting, and reading engaging. Happy holidays!

submitted 64 days ago • 0 comments

did not get cut

submitted 68 days ago • 11 comments

US: what stage of imperial decline u at? France: I dunno lol maybe 3rd or 4th, you? US: you are like a little baby. Watch this

submitted 66 days ago • 9 comments

“Race is not a biological category that naturally produces health disparities because of genetic differences. Race is a political category that has staggering biological consequences because of the impact of social inequality on people’s health.” — Dorothy E. Roberts, Fatal Intervention (pp 11)

submitted 66 days ago • 12 comments