Not the mainstream polls taken recently. I just heard a piece on NPR where McConnell kept saying that the American people don’t want health reform, and if Democrats pass it, reform will hurt their election chances in November. Not true.

According to a March 10, 2010 Benenson Strategy Group report, a large majority of Americans want reform, and if anything, they believe reform doesn’t go far enough.

He also said that “forcing” the bill through reconciliation is unprecedented and it denies the “majority” in the Senate the right to vote on the bill. Last time I checked, 59 out of 100 votes is a big majority. If McConnell has such a problem with reconciliation, why did he vote yea on reconciliation bills 13 times in the past? There have been 21 reconciliation bills over about the past 30 years. Sixteen were Republican bills. It’s not an unprecedented procedure at all.

Me thinks he dost protest too much. I believe the Republicans are obstructing, lying and posturing so much because they realize if health care reform passes, their asses are grass in the coming November mid-term election, and Democrats and Independents are the lawn mower.

One GOP talking point is that the Democrats will be in big trouble and lose their majorities in the House and/or Senate. Why would they give this legislation so much time and energy? Since when did the GOP care how the Democrats will do in an upcoming election as long as it’s worse than GOP candidates? It’s because they are terrified at how much passing health reform will boost Democrats in the mid-term election. If they believed their own rhetoric, they would get out of the way and let health reform pass, and reap the benefits of extremely poor Democratic policy.

Another talking point is health care reform will increase the budget deficit substantially. Also not true. According to the CBO, it will decrease the budget deficit substantially:

This bill isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I would like to see a lot of changes, and I believe over time, all the fixes, including a public option or single-payer system, will become part of the legislation. The problems will be fixed as needed in the future just like Medicare has been amended since it first passed. One thing is certain. Doing nothing is not an option.

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: budget reconciliation, federal budget, health care reform, public opinion on health care reform, Senate health reform bill of 2009

This is part 4 of a multi-part article on the Ugandan kill-the-gays bill. Links to parts 1, 2, and 3 are after the quote. Part 5 will be published in a couple of days.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region most
heavily affected by HIV. In 2008, sub-Saharan
Africa accounted for 67% of HIV infections
worldwide, 68% of new HIV infections among
adults and 91% of new HIV infections among
children. The region also accounted for 72% of the
world’s AIDS-related deaths in 2008. (3)

Uganda is located in Sub-Saharan East Africa. It’s adult (aged 15-49) HIV prevalence as of 2005 was 6.4%. (3) For comparison, the U.S. HIV prevalence for the entire population is 0.36% (2009 CDC statistics).

• Part 1 can be found here
• Part 2 can be found here
• Part 3 can be found here

Heterosexual transmission is currently the most prevalent mode of new infections, followed by rate increases in men having sex with men, IV drug use, and medical injections in clinics not always using sterile needles. A person is 2.35 times more likely to contract HIV if they’ve had 5 or more injections in a year. The Ugandan blood supply wasn’t always 100% safe until recently. (3)

HIV prevalence as of 2007 is higher among adults in the wealthiest group than among those in the poorest group (3). This seems counter intuitive because wealth is usually thought to correspond to higher levels of education. Education level and HIV infection rate are closely related. Those with the highest levels of education are the least likely to become infected. (3)

Heterosexual couples over age 25 have the fastest-growing rate of new HIV infections. Proportions of people transmitting HIV in supposed low-risk heterosexual partnerships are actually high. People in monogamous relationships with one partner HIV positive and the other HIV negative were estimated to account for 43% of incident infections in 2008. (3)

In some African countries, as is true in many other countries around the world, there is a high incidence of regular non-marital sexual partners among married people. This is widely known and socially tolerated. In Uganda, the proportion of long-term partnered men (aged 15–49) reporting multiple sexual partners increased from 24% in 2001 to 29% in 2005. In 2008, 46% of new HIV infections in Uganda were estimated to have occurred among people with multiple sexual partners and the partners of such individuals. Some men choose other men as extramarital sexual partners some of the time. (3)

Though married and long-term partnered couples are at the highest risk for new HIV infections, they are the group least targeted for preventive measures, testing, and treatment. (3)

A household survey in 2008 indicated that HIV-infected individuals who knew their HIV status were more than three times more likely to use a condom during their most recent sexual encounter compared with those who did not know their status. Not knowing one’s HIV status leads to unintended virus transmission. (3)

From 2000-2008, about 42% of men who have sex only with men are HIV positive. Men who have sex with both women and men have a lower incidence (as low as 1/4) of the male homosexual-only HIV prevalence. (3)

Widowed people are more than six times more likely to be infected with HIV than those who have never been married as of 2006. (3)

Many more women aged 15-24 are infected with HIV compared to men the same age. 5% of women in this age group are HIV positive while 2% of men the same age are HIV positive. These women are in the range of being most likely to bare children. If undiagnosed and untreated during pregnancy, the newborn children will have HIV. (3)

As of 2007, only 25%-49% of HIV infected pregnant women received antiretroviral treatment to prevent HIV infection of their unborn children. But this rate of treatment has significantly prevented the infection of babies born with HIV and is reducing the rate at which children are orphaned. (2) “A study in Uganda found that timely initiation of antiretroviral therapy and co-trimoxazole prophylaxis reduced mortality by 95% and also produced a 93% reduction in HIV-related orphanhood”. (3)

Because of the wider availability of antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV, many people may have become complacent about using preventive measures. HIV is seen as a chronic, treatable disease and not a death sentence. But, not everyone knows their HIV status and about half of all people affected don’t have access to treatment should they become infected. Since Africa’s drugs are paid for by other countries, the cost of having HIV is not borne by the infected individuals. (3)

In general in Sub-Saharan Africa the HIV-AIDS epidemic peaked in 1995, and HIV prevalence has declined, but current downward trends are much slower or stagnant. After nearly 20 years of effort to bring the HIV-AIDS epidemic under control, some countries are making real progress in education, behavioral changes and treatment. In other countries, there is little data and few programs are available to those populations. Even in the countries with better access to resources, only about 50% of those who need antiretroviral treatment are receiving it. (3)

Sources:
(1) The Rachel Maddow Show
(2) UNAIDS 2008 Global AIDS Epidemic Report
(3) UNAID AIDS Epidemic Update December 2009

Part 5 is located at this link.

Technorati Tags: AIDS, HIV, kill-the-gays bill, Statistics, Uganda, UNAID AIDS Epidemic Update 2009

Check this video out. It’s a two-segment section with Rachel Maddow on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon after her bought with swine flu.

If you’re sick in bed, what do you do when you don’t have TV? Rachel reads non-fiction graphic novels, watches movies based on classic literature, oh and sleeps a lot. If you want titles, Rachel can hook you up. She posted the websites where you can find such graphic novels: Blame Joe Sacco: http://is.gd/2KEMO and AD: http://is.gd/2KF0t.

Rachel and Susan have a TV and cable (including internet) at their apartment in New York, but don’t have TV at their home in Massachusetts. Cable doesn’t reach to where they live, and they don’t want two satellite dishes on the house. They already have one for high speed internet access. Susan can watch Rachel’s show in the city, and they can watch Red Sox games when they can’t go to them in Boston. They don’t really watch TV when they have it.

Part of the reason they don’t get TV at the house is they want to get away from it all on the weekends (and they both have a TV phobia that they’ll become addicted if they watch it more than a few shows once in awhile). Getting away from TV for Rachel means getting away from work at MSNBC. Even if you don’t really watch TV, if you work in TV you watch some of it.

Getting away from TV gets you away from quite a lot, I have found. When our cable has been out after hurricanes for weeks until the company can fix it, life is very different. We spend a lot of time when the TV is out working around the house, talking, cooking, reading and watching DVDs. The peace and quiet, change in activities and interpersonal communication are so relaxing. Even turning on talk radio doesn’t glue you to the machine like TV does.

After such experiences, I have been tempted to turn off the cable TV service and just leave the cable internet service on. I had two packages removed from our digital plan last week because we really don’t watch much more than 6 channels, and only 2-3 most of the time.

I want a TV option where you choose only the channels you want to watch and don’t get any of the others. Would it be cheaper or more expensive? Probably more expensive. I can think of a bunch of equipment and computer stuff that would have to happen to bring such a service to us.

Anyway, being sick with the flu (Influenza A, strain H1N1 in this case) puts you in bed. You don’t get up except to eat and go to the bathroom. You have to drink lots of fluids or the fever will dehydrate you, but you have to do that in bed. Believe me, you aren’t well enough to be out of bed for long. Not being distracted from dozing off is probably a much faster way to get well than lying around like a lump watching TV.

I had pneumonia my senior year in high school and had to stay in my room where the vaporizers were to keep my lungs open. I didn’t have a TV in my room, so I read, did homework and slept a lot. I don’t know that I got well faster, but I got a lot of required reading done for English literature class. I was ahead when I got back to school and caught up on everything else. It’s amazing what you can get done without TV. No wonder we never watched it in college, even though every dorm had a huge TV in the lobby.

Tamiflu is a fantastic drug. I was on it the last time I caught the flu and I got well much faster. It shortened the illness from two weeks to 5-6 days, and after that time I was completely back to normal, not just dragging around like I would usually be after a bought with the flu. As you can see in the video, Rachel is back up to snuff after one week. She was well enough to do one show at the end of the week she was sick from a studio in Massachusetts close to home. She sounded horrible, but was nonetheless on TV hosting her show.

Get your flu shot. If you get the flu, go to the doctor early and get one of the flu antiviral drugs. You will get better much faster. Then have a White Lady after you get well to celebrate your recovery! Watch the video to learn how to make it.

Reference: rachel.msnbc.com

Technorati Tags: guns, H1N1 flu virus, health care reform, Jimmy Fallon, Late Night, NBC, Rachel Maddow, swine flu, White Lady cocktail