Fed interest rates, heat-induced stupidity & queer penguins 🐧
Coming in hot, one more healthcare newsletter you never asked for. But I promise, we’re cooler.
Think about it 💡
🏦 Fed interest rate increases & credit card medical bills. To battle inflation, the US central bank increased its benchmark interest rate by 0.75 percentage points last Wednesday (the second consecutive one, yay). Most credit cards have variable rates, and are as a result directly tied to the Fed's benchmark rate. When the federal funds rate increases, so does the prime rate, and so do credit card rates. While some consumers max out their credit card from miscellaneous purchases such as a double neck guitar or a fluorescent fish tank, some do it for health reasons, and consequently become collateral damage to the ongoing increases.
🐒 The monkeypox outbreak is now a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. The WHO has declared a PHEIC (pronounced fake - and, let’s be honest, they could have picked a slightly different acronym) following the rapid spread of the virus. More than 16,000 cases have been reported from 75 countries. Covid 19 will not be the last of the pandemics, as we begin to get proof of. Now would be the time to deploy political means to not repeat the history of vaccine access inequality.
It’s getting hot in here … so don’t write dumb tweets 🟥
🤦 I’ll tell ya, this week’s episode was this close to turning into a compilation of the internet’s stupidest most misinformed stances on the ongoing heatwave.
The heatwave is not a fun and bonding time we will fondly look back on come January. The effects of extreme temperatures such as the ones we are currently experiencing go far beyond dehydration or heat exhaustion. Mental health deterioration, work injuries, increasing risk of infection or heart attack…and that’s not all. For people with chronic conditions (which today represents, well, basically everyone) such as migraines, lupus, rosacea, type 2 diabetes, hypertension and so on, heat can set off flare-ups, and even increase the odds of these conditions developing. Heatwaves are serious stuff.
Still not worth a DefCon 8 level 3 killer death warning, Jeremy?
Now, on to the Neat News 🗞️
💸 Eka care raised $15 million. With over 30 million users and 5,000 practitioners on their platform, Eka wants to lead the digitalisation of Indian patients’ health records. Neat.
👩🔬 Scientists have successfully tested a device that may one day be able to use chemical biomarkers in sweat to identify alterations in a person's health. Very neat.
❤️ Caption Health received the CE mark for its AI platform which assists professionals with minimal training in conducting cardiac ultrasounds, and is now headed to the European market. Ultra neat.
What the hellth? 🔬
🐧 Science says, queer animals are everywhere. “Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it”, sang Cole Porter in 1928. Actually, same-sex penguins, gorillas, flour beetles and another 1,500 animal species do it - and have always been doing it. The postulate of heterosexuality in animals took its first hit back in 1834, so how come are we only really reading about it now? Could this dismissal of animal sexual diversity be due to our own century-old cultural and systemic blinders??? Well, yes. But it also results from a lot more.
Consumable Content 🧁
✍️ August 2022 and you are yet to test positive for Covid? Apparently, there is a very exclusive club you can join.
😰 In need of an instant mood detractor? We got you covered! Here is the state of digital health report for Q2’22. Spoiler alert: the state is not good.
👩⚕️ Tired of reading the same 2003 edition of Cosmopolitan in your doctor’s savannah-themed waiting room? I get ya. Asynchronous care is the way out of your suffering. Nabla’s deputy medical director wrote a blogpost about it.
This is what you came for 🍑
A dating site carried out a super scientific, peer-reviewed, and reliable study among 17,628 women and concluded that the women whose first name ends in A have more sexual partners than those whose first name ends in any other letter. On average, a woman would have 4.4 partners against 9.7 for the Jessicas or Priscillas of this world. To sum it up, you should blame your parents.
Out the door, 🦕.