"Public health" isn't just about vaccinations, clinics and urgent care: it's a holistic discipline that encompasses all the contributors to health outcomes, which include things like housing, employment, transportation, pollution and more.

1/

A new working paper from @nberpubs estimates the number of US covid deaths that could have been prevented with a coherent, effective eviction moratorium and a ban on utility cutoffs: 164,000.

https://t.co/pfAeN7TRo0

2/
The paper, written by a multidisciplinary group of Duke researchers from medicine and economics, found that housing precarity (a risk of losing your home) drove risky behavior that increased the spread of the disease and the resulting deaths.

3/
For example, it forced people to double-up on lodgings, making social distancing impossible, to say nothing of self-isolating after an exposure. It also drove people to tolerate high-risk workplace conditions, including illegal conditions.

4/
The authors used regression techniques to control for confounding variables, and used like-for-like counties with different utility and eviction policies to estimate the effect that these had on infection rates.

5/
"Public health" is a notion that challenges the very foundation of neoliberal ideology, which says that all outcomes are the results of your individual choices - that your right to swing your arm ends at the tip of my nose.

6/
Public health says that our decisions about treating covid (and other health issues) affect all of us - that the system matters more than individual choices.

7/
Public health says that we're all in the same swimming pool. Neoliberal choice theory says that if some of us want to piss in the pool, we can just create a "pissing" and a "no pissing" end.

8/
And that the answer to the yellowing of both ends is to make the pool longer, and that the market opportunity is to charge people who want to swim in the no pissing end to use the toilets and fine them if they can't afford the charge.

9/
Because here's the kicker: although covid mostly kills poor, racialized and otherwise marginalized people, it doesn't do so exclusively. Even people who can afford high quality care and thus recover face unknown, long-term health consequences.

10/
Keeping rentiers' income streams intact by allowing evictions made us ALL sicker, put us ALL at risk. Even the landlords.

Treating system problems as a matter of personal choice is like telling people to recycle harder to avert the climate emergency.

11/
The parochial gains to the minute class of landlords came at the expense of mass-scale, social costs - human lives, human misery, widespread infection, and traumas and waste that will drag us down for decades to come.

12/
Image: Luis Prado (modified)
https://t.co/4necfqJQ3x

CC BY
https://t.co/WK3VwLNIio

eof/

More from Cory Doctorow #BLM

Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: ADT insider threat; Billionaires think VR stops guillotines; Privacy Without Monopoly; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/nu1HbReiEX

#Pluralistic

1/


This Wednesday, I'm giving a talk called "Technology, Self-Determination, and the Future of the Future" for the Purdue University CERIAS Program:

https://t.co/po5IivZyr4

2/


ADT insider threat: If you build it they will spy.

https://t.co/kJrmtu8L3S

3/


Billionaires think VR stops guillotines: TARP with tasps.

https://t.co/MIKwvsICkr

4/


Privacy Without Monopoly: Podcasting a reading of the latest EFF whitepaper.

https://t.co/R2sl75y4rb

5/
Today's Twitter threads (a Twitter thread).

Inside: Thinking through Mitch McConnell's plea for comity; Further, on Mitch McConnell and comity; Understanding the aftermath of r/wallstreetbets; and more!

Archived at: https://t.co/1rRmrJa4FK

#Pluralistic

1/


Thinking through Mitch McConnell's plea for comity: A thoughtful analysis.

https://t.co/2T74ykb3Ws

2/


Further, on Mitch McConnell and comity: I thought about it some more.

https://t.co/mTQ225Lr3X

3/


Understanding the aftermath of r/wallstreetbets: Even if there's no angels, there's still a path to glory.

https://t.co/x7BaqUQ0hj

4/


#10yrsago Morrow’s Diviner’s Tale is a tight, literary ghost story https://t.co/XFW0AGFwhI

#10yrsago ATM skimmer that doesn’t require any modifications to the ATM

More from Health

You gotta think about this one carefully!

Imagine you go to the doctor and get tested for a rare disease (only 1 in 10,000 people get it.)

The test is 99% effective in detecting both sick and healthy people.

Your test comes back positive.

Are you really sick? Explain below 👇

The most complete answer from every reply so far is from Dr. Lena. Thanks for taking the time and going through


You can get the answer using Bayes' theorem, but let's try to come up with it in a different —maybe more intuitive— way.

👇


Here is what we know:

- Out of 10,000 people, 1 is sick
- Out of 100 sick people, 99 test positive
- Out of 100 healthy people, 99 test negative

Assuming 1 million people take the test (including you):

- 100 of them are sick
- 999,900 of them are healthy

👇

Let's now test both groups, starting with the 100 people sick:

▫️ 99 of them will be diagnosed (correctly) as sick (99%)

▫️ 1 of them is going to be diagnosed (incorrectly) as healthy (1%)

👇

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Oh my Goodness!!!

I might have a panic attack due to excitement!!

Read this thread to the end...I just had an epiphany and my mind is blown. Actually, more than blown. More like OBLITERATED! This is the thing! This is the thing that will blow the entire thing out of the water!


Has this man been concealing his true identity?

Is this man a supposed 'dead' Seal Team Six soldier?

Witness protection to be kept safe until the right moment when all will be revealed?!

Who ELSE is alive that may have faked their death/gone into witness protection?


Were "golden tickets" inside the envelopes??


Are these "golden tickets" going to lead to their ultimate undoing?

Review crumbs on the board re: 'gold'.


#SEALTeam6 Trump re-tweeted this.