Friday, March 17, 2023

March 17

 Ah, St. Patrick's Day and we are half past March. We had rain from late yesterday evening through now. At times it was heavy enough to produce little rivers flowing down the street. Better than the heavy snows other areas are getting. I am still waiting for the patio to dry out a bit so that I can clean up the leaves and the seed hulls the birds have scattered.

CNN put up this article this morning about the difficulty some parents are experiencing in getting their seriously sick children into a pediatric hospital or pediatric ward. Last fall the rapidly rising numbers of children with the RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus, I hope that is the right spelling since the spell check insists on it) overwhelmed the hospital system. The author notes that the stress of that surge of hospitalizations following so quickly after the COVID pandemic (which, though not at epidemic levels any more, still kills around 500 people per day) on the people who have to deliver the care has led to a massive exodus from the medical professions. This is a complicated article which covers many different trends feeding the shortage of medical facilities and personnel for pediatric care. As I read the article I wondered if there is a parallel problem with adult care that is now off the new radar.

A story on the early morning news featured an Axios survey in which about 20% of the respondents agreed with the notion of a "national divorce." That isn't surprising given the divisions in the country today. The link goes beyond the headline and drills into what groups actually favor a national divorce.

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