Priorities

The issues I started this blog to discuss, the ones I usually write about, the stuff I like to think I particularly know something about, ought to be among the most important issues facing Americans these days. How we can stay healthy, get healthier, live full and good lives, take care of everybody who needs taking care of, conquer injustice and inequality -- that's what public health is about. This is the wealthiest society ever, we all should benefit from that, and have plenty left over to do our part for the rest of the world too.

But right now, the work I do and the problems I like to write about just aren't all that important. We're facing some very scary crises -- a bunch of them at once -- with the most depraved and incompetent leadership the United States has ever had, and our important civic institutions -- the news media, the political parties -- prostituted, cowardly and inept.

If I've been off my game lately with this blog, that's why. I think I'm not the only one, as a matter of fact. I have a long list of subjects I want to write about -- the future of employer-provided health insurance (not looking good); progress in understanding the relationships between social and economic status and health; continuing my critical review of psychopharmacology; the historical context of the U.S. health care non-system and possible ways forward; yet more on public health ethics; the promise and perils of electronic health records; how to make the physical environment safe, how to structure the physical and social environment to encourage healthy behavior -- there's a serious backlog.

But it just doesn't seem important. The obsession of the ruling cabal with force and violence; their wilfull blindness to every fact that doesn't suit their narcissistic delusions or might inconvenience their thuggish, greedy friends; their disdain for democracy and for the people, have sent the country on a path to ruin and placed the entire world in grave peril.

So, I've put that on the record. I've said what had to be said. Now I will get back to business, with that boring subject of insurance next on the agenda.