Yesterday, Trinette came by. I didn’t have a lot for her to do this week. I was working on my closet more than clutter. She says hi to all.
The Reich on the left is right as usual – about the likely event – and I hope he is equally right about the lag time. Much more than that and it will be too late. I apologize for not making a note of where i read this, but apparently some polling in swing states specifically showed voters positivw abot their state’s economy but negative about the national economy (which makes little sense -but i guess that’s why they’re swing states.)
I don’t know how public this knowledge is – by which I mean, technically it’s public knowledge, but no one will know it if news outlets don’t pick it up.
Yesterday, The radio opera was Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore” (“The love Potion”) and I’m afraid I slept through half of it. My alarm went off and I decided not to get up. I’m not a big Pavarotti fan, and while there were other major stars of the time, including one with whom I shared a violin teacher (not of course at the same time – decades apart actually) I just wasn’t inspired to get up then. I did get up in time fpre the second act (there are only two). One of the four main characters is a “snake oil salesman” and i see enough of that in real life.
Heather Cox Richardson is an historian, not an economist – but you don’t really need to be an economist to know that “supply-side” economics does not work. You just need to be over 40 and not blind. The Biden/Sanders video she speaks of is the second with Biden’s name on it in the list of Xitter videos below her list of links. Iy’s supposed to have sound, and it definitely has CC.
April, in the South, is Confederate Heritage Month. The Southrern Poverty Law Center find that less than acceptable. So they are pushing for a celebreation of good things in southern history to replace it – or at least alleviate the bad taste of it.
When I saw this article (and particularly when I learned something else I’ll get to after the article). I figured I had to go right to the top – Athena, the goddess of wisdom. Athena is likely so intellectual because she wasn’t born as we understand it – she emerged fully formed and an adult from Zeus’s head (I assume without the helmet, although the size of the helmet does suggest a large brain.)
At a time when we are aware that Alzheimer’s disease exists, and that there is no cure, many of us are terrified of it – of having it ourselves, and of it happening to someone near and dear. I know my mother was terrified of it. (She was spared it – she was still expertly solving crossword puzzles until her final coma, caused by pneumonia, at age 93.) So I can’t imagine anyone willing to miss out on any opportunity to avoid it, or to slow its progress.
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New studies suggest millions with mild cognitive impairment go undiagnosed, often until it’s too late
Mild cognitive impairment – an early stage of dementia – is widely underdiagnosed in people 65 and older. That is the key takeaway of two recent studies from our team.
In the first study, we used Medicare data for about 40 million beneficiaries age 65 and older from 2015 to 2019 to estimate the prevalence of mild cognitive impairment in that population and to identify what proportion of them had actually been diagnosed.
Our finding was sobering: A mere 8% of the number of cases with mild cognitive impairment that we expected based on a statistical model had actually been diagnosed. Scaled up to the general population 65 and older, this means that approximately 7.4 million cases across the country remain undiagnosed.
Mild cognitive impairment is an early symptom of Alzheimer’s disease in about half of cases and progresses to dementia at a rate of 10% to 15% per year. It includes symptoms such as losing the ability to remember recent events and appointments, make sound decisions and master complex tasks. Failure to detect it might deprive patients of an opportunity to get treated and to slow down disease progression.
In 2023, the Food and Drug Administration approved the drug lecanemab as the first disease-modifying treatmentfor Alzheimer’s disease, the most common cause of mild cognitive impairment. In contrast to previous drugs, which can temporarily improve symptoms of the disease, such as memory loss and agitation, this new treatment addresses the underlying cause of the disease.
An earlier diagnosis leads to early treatment and better outcomes.
What still isn’t known
Many factors contribute to the lack of timely detection. But researchers don’t have a good understanding of the relative importance of those individual factors or how to reduce the high rate of underdiagnosis.
While distinct, symptoms are subtle and their slow progression means that they can be overlooked or misinterpreted as normal aging. A neurologist in China told our research team that diagnosis rates spike in China after the New Year’s holiday, when children who haven’t seen their parents for a year notice changes that are harder to pick up when interacting with someone daily.
Doctors also commonly discount memory concerns as normal aging and doubt that much can be done about it. While cognitive tests to distinguish mild cognitive impairment from pathologic decline do exist, they take about 15 minutes, which can be hard to come by during the limited time of a doctor’s visit and may require a follow-up appointment.
What’s next
People, particularly those in their 60s and beyond, as well as their families and friends need to be vigilant about cognitive decline, bring it up during doctor’s appointments and insist on a formal assessment.
Just as physicians ask patients about unexplained weight loss and take those concerns seriously, we believe questions that explore a patient’s cognitive state need to become the norm.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
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Pat B, (who is celebrating her fiftieth wedding anniversary today) has graciously given me permission to share that this coming Friday she has an appointment with her Doctor to discuss her memory loss. While no one can prove it, I would not be surprised to learn this was inspired by Athena. I can’t imagine anything wiser than getting checked out for any possible signs of dementia, knowing that waiting will not make it any better but it could make it worse. Thank you, Athena, and may you inspire all of us who are 65 or older to be wise also.
Yesterday, I found it refreshing for an earthquake to be newsworthy in some place other than California. (And, since there were no injries, the humor is a nice touch. “The Empire State Building”sent some messages via Xitter: “I am fine.” “I am still fine.” and then another “I am fine.”) Also I got my lost made of people whom I haven’t yet paid. There are seven of them, one of them whom I guess I saw twice, so there are eight charges. When new bills come in they should be easy to find. Also – the “Phone Call” Robert Hubbell prodived a summary for yesterday – Beau did a video on it It’s over 10 minutes, so I sdon’t wast to embed it. But it’s detailed enough i do wany to make it available. So, here’s the link.
This really is madness. Sadly it’s predictable (and in-character) madness. Russia is not going to be destroyed by migrants. But it very wwell may be destroyed by its own government.
Very often I can’t find a particular story on “Law and Crime,” appaently because there’s so much crime that stories get pushed to the back. This time I found the one I was looking for. A value of $40.000.00 sounds like grand theft to me.
Yesterday must have been an interesting day. I reveived four separate Axios alerts before 1:30 pm. The first was about Democrats putting pressue on Mike Johnson over foreign aid, particularly Ukraine (sure glad to hear that.) The second was that the judge on the Georgia cas rejected Trump’s “First Amendment” challenge to the gag order – also good. The third – and this is huge – No Labels is dropping out of the Presidential race. and the final one was to announce that Aileen (“Loose”) Cannon has again dismissed a Trump** motion to dismiss his case.Four good new breaking alerts in one day is, to put it mildly, rare.
I knew that this was a Civil Rights song. I did not know it was written specifically for the Little Rock Nine. I’m glad to have learned.
I mentioned in a comment that the person who spilled the beans on Kyle Rittenhouse was the defense lawyer at his trial. This story has the details. I think he’s upset that he was taken in and wants to ensure as best he can that no one else is.
Yesterday, Hump Day, I accomplished almost nothing. Fortunately, there are other days.
On the last day of Women’s History Month, Heather Cox Richardson posted a biography of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (And of Marty, from when they met.) I held it a few days because it’s timeless, as opposed to court and political news.
Thom Hartmann frequently uses clickbaity headlines, but he knows a fact when he sees one – his content is as reliable as possible.
From danarheaelliott’s keyboard to God’s monitor. I will say that some of this is so downright idiotic that people of normal and up intelligence may be confused. Don’t worry about it.
Yesterday, I looked up on the HRA website to make sure that a payment of $10.84 was sent to one of the providers involved in my hospital and rehab time. Because they keep billing me and billing me – and I paid it. I did find the proof, with all the details- including the date the check was cashed – which was March 27. So I made no attempt to contact them right away. But I did take a screenshot and circled a few details, and saved it, so if it doesn’t (finally) stop now, I’ll be prepared. After the one I was looking for information on yesterday, I think there are now few enough who haven’t billed me to make a separate list of them in one place so I won’t have to go through 9 MSEs for every bill.
Joyce Vance’s weekly “The Week Ahead” is generally useful,and this week’s appears to be no exception, even a couple of days late.
Now this was just revealed yesterday. You should have heard about it – it’s a story large numbers of people will care about (and get angry. I did see it in The Daily Beast – they interviewed Chef Jose Andrés and got an earful.) DU has the story, but they got it from a xeet from World Central Kitchen. A commenter there found it on Yahoo! news.
Yesterday, it literally took me more than four hors to payy just one medical bill with a credit card. A big part of that was that the bill showed a single figure which I had to go through 11 MSNs (formerly EOBs) where i found more than 10 line items for this particular service, not all of which were from this provider, and the only way I could find out which were was by trial and error adding p combinations until I foundthe combination that matched the bill. That took about three hours. Then I spent 15-20 minutes making a PDF of just the claims which applied to this provider,because it would have taken even longer to do it later, and w=even paying by credit card on line I willl eventually have to provide documentation to my HRA. The outher hpur was spent fighting with the provider’s billing agency’s website. I wasn’t expecting that, and after spending all that time just putting the information tpgether, I was not in a good mood to begin with. And then I had to get back to my email inbox, which was pretty well stuffed.
This is a “Missouri leads the way” story, which I can now put up because Nameless’s computers (yes, that’s plural – everything was down) are fixed. It’s not the Missouri government, of course – it’s individual Democrats working together to unsure there is a Democrat in every race.
This is a very moving story about an extraordinary person, who has a warning for all of us.
