Not a Fitness Blog, but . . .

Last updated on: September 6, 2021 at 2:41 pm By Jennifer Fitz

PSA and then a personal update at the bottom, hope you are enjoying the holiday weekend. So here’s an interesting study on blood sugar (glucose) levels and COVID outcomes. Finding: We conclude that elevation in glucose levels can facilitate the progression of the disease through multiple mechanisms and can explain much of the differences in disease severity seen across the population. Super good news, if it holds up to further scrutiny, because getting your blood sugar down is much more... Read more

Hyperventilating Over Gender Roles – And Harming Women While We’re at It

Last updated on: August 12, 2021 at 7:37 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Gender Problems in Medieval Finland? In my goofing off today someone pointed me towards this study, “A Woman with a Sword? – Weapon Grave at Suontaka Vesitorninmäki, Finland”. The actual research is pretty interesting, if you can get past the tiresome obsession with desperate searches for ancient cultures that affirm contemporary gender ideology. The authors hypothesize the interred individual may have had Klinefelter syndrome. If you’d like to think up a genetic hypothesis of your own, here’s Wikimedia’s list of... Read more

Bacon Famine 2022?

Last updated on: August 12, 2021 at 10:11 am By Jennifer Fitz

Those of us who lean conservative have a knee-jerk tendency to ask, “Can anything good come out of California?” Hence a recent spate of gloating over the prospect of that state waking up New Year’s Day 2022 to a bleak, bacon-less dystopia caused by 2018’s Proposition 12 ballot initiative. If you aren’t familiar with the law, here are three articles that provide varying perspectives. If you only have time to read one, go with the piece from Civil Eats, as... Read more

Points of View on COVID Policy Making

Last updated on: July 30, 2021 at 2:55 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Domenico and Melanie Bettinelli are high on my shortlist of people whose opinions I respect immensely, so I wanted to comment on Dom’s post today, “I Will Not Go Underground.” He provides important background to his comments: We have followed the general recommendations for keeping us safe from the coronavirus COVID-19: wearing masks in public before a vaccination, hand sanitizer, limiting trips out, and so on. In April of this year, Melanie and I got our vaccinations as soon as... Read more

Threats vs. Science in Public Health Policy

Last updated on: July 30, 2021 at 9:57 am By Jennifer Fitz

NPR reports that the Biden administration is about to lay down vaccination requirements for federal employees: He is expected to announce that federal employees will need to confirm they are vaccinated — or face regular testing and be required to wear masks at all times while on the job. The federal government is one of the largest employers in the nation, and the move could spur private sector companies to take similar steps. Some already have. Reminder: The vaccines in... Read more

School Choice as a COVID Solution

Last updated on: July 26, 2021 at 9:13 am By Jennifer Fitz

The stakes are high in return-to-school debates, because no matter what you do, there will be negative side effects. Life is dangerous. COVID-19 is dangerous, mitigation efforts bring dangers of their own, and let’s be honest: School’s been a mixed bag on the safety profile all along. Whether it’s gun violence or curriculum choices or you-name-it, our solution to date has been to host bitter feuds over The One Best Policy. It’s not just chasing after the wind, it’s going into... Read more

Facing Reality on COVID-19 Harm Reduction

Last updated on: July 24, 2021 at 10:27 am By Jennifer Fitz

The Jerusalem Post has what I think is a helpful discussion of why two different studies of the Pfizer vaccine’s effectiveness show radically different results. Between this and the acknowledged reality of vaccine-breakthrough infections and post-COVID reinfections, I think what we need to recognize is that humans don’t, at this time, have the technology to eradicate COVID-19. What we have is the technology to radically reduce (not eliminate) the vulnerability of high-risk persons from a virus that is likely to remain... Read more

More Stats from The Pillar

Last updated on: July 23, 2021 at 6:19 pm By Jennifer Fitz

The Pillar reports this afternoon: . . . after a review of commercially available app signal data showed patterns of location-based hookup app use at more than 10 archdiocesan rectories and clerical residences during 2018, 2019, and 2020. There are 212 parishes in the Newark archdiocese. Assuming that “more than ten” is less than fifteen, that means between 4.7% and 7% of parishes in the diocese were affected. Let’s round conservatively to approximately 5%, and we can console the extremely aggravated... Read more

7QT: Life as a Walking Knock-knock Joke

Last updated on: July 23, 2021 at 12:38 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Since it’s that time of week, seven things to make you glad you don’t live inside my head all the time: #1 I will almost certainly watch a little bit of Olympics this year, but honestly I’ve lost my taste for them. Reasons: The regional chokeholds on broadcast coverage. I can’t watch the sports I want to watch, nor the commentary (or silence) I want to watch, because heaven forbid the television monopolies discover that half a dozen geeks worldwide... Read more

Nuances in the Vaccine Conversation

Last updated on: July 22, 2021 at 3:10 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Oh heck, why not talk about vaccines, too, while I’m at it? Ed Yong at The Atlantic has a good interview up this morning on the reality that unvaccinated folk are not a monolith of science-deniers but a complex group of people with serious questions and obstacles to getting vaccinated. (You can get the summary on Twitter at the first link if you can’t get past the paywall at the magazine.) I can vouch for the barriers-to-access. When I went to... Read more