New stuff I’m learning about living dying what matters most - Sun, Jan 17 2021

For years, systems scientist Dora Raymaker and physician Christina Nicolaidis have spent Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Eve together. Though they are not exactly family, they are close, both figuratively and (in pre-pandemic times)…

Jeff Cohn A long article that is well worth staying with. I love the term 'neurotypical' as opposed to normal. Autism as an atypical but not pathologic neurological (?) state helps open doors and minds..

When Penelope Spheeris heard that Tommy Lasorda passed away on Friday at 93, she knew many people would be touched by the sad news, particularly in Los Angeles. The city has long been her home and it is also where Lasorda became a baseball icon…

Jeff Cohn It seems to me there is something about a society in which stories like this happen and our current society that enables Proud Boys and other white racist organizations to flourish, often linked, at least tenuously, with religion..

(CNN) There's a distance of just over two miles between the Lincoln Memorial and the US Capitol. It was in 1963, on the Lincoln Memorial's steps, that The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. told the 250,000 people gathered there: 'I have a dream that one…

Jeff Cohn The story of this WNBA team's role in getting their owner voted out of office is pretty amazing...

When my time in Congress ended on Jan. 3, 2017, I borrowed an RV nicknamed “Lucille” and set out on a journey meant to last a few weeks. It turned into four months, 12,000 miles and 45 states. As a Black woman in an RV, traveling…

Jeff Cohn 'No one should have been surprised by what came to pass in Washington on Jan. 6. Thinking back to my RV “friends,” I suspect Trump answered some of their prayers, especially the one about protecting America’s Whiteness.'

It's scary out there right now. It's going to be scary for some time to come. What has been unleashed, what has been revealed, is ugly. It is what makes democracies die. In the despair, it is easy to lose perspective. I certainly do all the time.

Jeff Cohn The beginning of a Civil War, the end of a backlash..these are ways of looking at the present that can only be stated with certainty looking backwards from some point in the future. We live in the present, and our current present day is really hard...

On Wednesday, exactly one year to the day that the first person in the United States was diagnosed with COVID-19, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be inaugurated as President and Vice President of the United States. Moments later, I will be sworn…

Jeff Cohn 'Every system is perfectly designed to get the outcomes it produces.' So far we've 'designed' a system to let >4K people die daily from COVID-19 and vaccinate a fraction of our targets. Let's design a better one!

The crashes of online vaccine scheduling systems have become a sad symbol of how technology has hampered the nation's Covid-19 vaccination campaign, leaving people unable to sign up or find out when and where they can get their shots. But it…

Jeff Cohn There are sites to register for vaccines that allow you to get an appointment even though you've put in info that should make you ineligible- we have so many people who know how to build these systems well, we should turn it over to them now...

The Washington Post – Fenit Nirappil, Karin Brulliard, Sarah Fowler – Jan 16, 4:00 AM

It was another frustrating day in a quest that started Monday, when the city opened registration to those 65 and older. Cohen spent 12 hours that day making futile attempts to book appointments by phone and online, only to be foiled by messages…

Jeff Cohn When I was in practice a worst-case scenario was having long wait time to get appointment and having slots not get used due to no-shows. We need to get vaccines in arms and getting them in lower risk people's arms is better than having them go to waste..

This story also ran on USA Today and GateHouse Media. It can be republished for free. As an emergency physician, Dr. Eugenia South was in the first group of people to receive a covid vaccine. She received her second dose last week — even…

Jeff Cohn Agree to a point. Once I and friends are all immunized I feel we'll begin to get together in person, maskless, knowing we're at virtually no risk of getting seriously sick/dying of COVID-19, because the vaccines work really well!!

After five years, Kami Cayce worked her last shift as a nurse in September. For the 27-year-old Texan, the decision to leave seemed inevitable after a tumultuous year turned upside down by the coronavirus. After initial stay-at-home orders, Cayce's…

Jeff Cohn People can suck it up and respond to a crisis for only so long before burning out. Too many deaf ears have ignored the realities of folks on the front lines with many of the challenges having preceded the pandemic..