2018-09-30

Still Not Convinced You Need a Flu Shot? First, It’s Not All About You - The New York Times

In a good year, we might see as few as 114,000 people hospitalized with flu-associated illnesses. In a bad year, that number rises to more than 700,000.

In 2014, more than 57,000 people died of influenza/pneumonia. It was the eighth-most common cause of death, behind diabetes (just under 80,000 deaths). It's also the only cause of death in the top 10 that could be significantly reduced by a vaccine. Lowering risks of heart disease, cancer or Alzheimer's are much, much harder to do.

In 1995, the worst year of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, fewer than 51,000 people died of it. In 2014, just over 6,700 deaths were attributable directly to H.I.V. Yet it is H.I.V., not the flu, that people dread far more.

Because the flu is so common, we tend to minimize its importance. Consider the contrast with how the United States responded to Ebola a few years ago. We had a handful of infections, almost none of them contracted here. One person died. Yet some states considered travel bans, and others started quarantining people.

Worldwide, just over 10,000 people died in the 2014-15 West African outbreak of Ebola: a relatively new, frighteningly contagious illness that people feared could become a global pandemic. It's not surprising that it got a lot of attention. Yet the tens of thousands who died of influenza in the United States the same year barely made the news.

2018-09-12

iPhone prices

I guess all those rumors that Apple was going to cut prices turned out not to be true.  Anybody want to spend $1300 on a smartphone?

https://youtu.be/vjxvrG_t-Rs

Apple's new ad is cool.


That's what it looks like when you spend 5 billion dollars on a building.

Association of dairy intake with cardiovascular disease and mortality in 21 countries from five continents (PURE): a prospective cohort study - The Lancet

Higher intake of total dairy (>2 servings per day compared with no intake) was associated with a lower risk of the composite outcome, total mortality , non-cardiovascular mortality, cardiovascular mortality, major cardiovascular disease, and stroke. No significant association with myocardial infarction was observed. Higher intake (>1 serving vs no intake) of milk and yogurt was associated with lower risk of the composite outcome, whereas cheese intake was not significantly associated with the composite outcome. Butter intake was low and was not significantly associated with clinical outcomes.