Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
We are getting close to eradicating polio…but we are not there yet. That is why a recent article in this week’s Economist on polio vaccination in Pakistan is so troubling. Worried parents began arriving at hospitals in ones and twos, then dozens and soon hundreds. Each was convinced their child was sick, poisoned by polio…
Not surprisingly, the answer is yes, but not by as much as one might guess. In part due to a measles outbreak at Disneyland, California outlawed non-medical exemptions for vaccinations. An NBER working paper by Richwine et al. (2019) provides background on the situation in California prior to enacting the ban. Prior to the policy…
Are Democrats or Republicans more likely to argue against vaccination? A recent article by Charles McCoy in The Conversation reveals that the answer is not so clean cut. What I found is that the more political someone is, the more likely he or she is to believe that vaccines are unsafe. Those who are “very…
How does health policy and pricing affect investment in innovation? This is the research question investigated in Amy Finkelstein’s 2004 QJE paper on Static and Dynamic Effects of Health Policy. She examines three policy changes: 1991 CDC recommendation that all infants be vaccinated against Hepatitis B 1993 decision for Medicare to cover (without any copayments…
For which diseases should vaccines be developed? Although ideally the answer is “all of them”, given that there are limited resources in the world, which diseases should be prioritized? The Institute of Medicine’s Strategic Multi-Attribute Ranking Tool for Vaccines (SMART Vaccines) tool is one effort to make such prioritization explicit based on fixed attributes. The attributes are…
No, this story is not about parents who don’t vaccinate their kids. It’s about parents who have vaccinated their kids (or plan to), but want to keep their children away from unvaccinated children. From the LA Times: A Bay Area mother formed a Facebook page where parents could arrange play dates for their children with…
A powerful article from Medium about an autistic person’s view of the measles debate: No matter what other lofty ideas of toxins and vaccine-related injury anti-vaxxers try to float around in their defense, that’s really what all of this is about: we’re facing a massive public health crisis because a disturbing number of people believe…
The Atlantic has an interesting article about recent efforts to create a flu vaccine that protects patients against influenza for decades, or even their entire lifetime. Currently, the flu vaccine helps the body produce antibodies that attack influenza surface proteins. The problem is that the flu is quick learner; it readily mutates ts surface proteins…
According to the CDC, this year is on track to be the worst for measles in more than a decade. CNN reports that: There were 159 cases of measles in the United States from January 1 through August 24, according to the CDC. If that trend continues, there will be more cases in 2013 than…
The Houston Chronicle reports confirming six deaths and 1,153 cases as of Aug. 31 in Texas from pertussis, commonly known as the whooping cough. Texas’ death toll accounts for nearly half of the deaths from the disease nationwide so far this year. Whooping Cough had previously been eradicated from the U.S. Why is this outbreak…