Glory be to God…we no longer have to worry about ISIS!
That according to the Prime Minister of Iraq.
I guess they retook Mosul (how many times is that now?) and ISIS is on the ropes.
This is a huge fucking relief.
I dunno about you, but the idea that an ISIS fighter could kill me was keeping me up at night.
Not!
According to the New York Times, ISIS attacks around the world have killed just 1,200 people.
Just.
And that report came out last July. Maybe the number is up to 1,300 by now, perhaps 1,400.
Big fucking deal.
That according to the Prime Minister of Iraq.
I guess they retook Mosul (how many times is that now?) and ISIS is on the ropes.
This is a huge fucking relief.
I dunno about you, but the idea that an ISIS fighter could kill me was keeping me up at night.
Not!
According to the New York Times, ISIS attacks around the world have killed just 1,200 people.
Just.
And that report came out last July. Maybe the number is up to 1,300 by now, perhaps 1,400.
Big fucking deal.
So what should we really be scared of?
How about what’s really killing us…and who’s behind it.
Here in America we know that 75% of all deaths “are attributed to just 10 causes, with the top three of these” accounting for over 50% of total deaths.
What’s more, these causes of death “have remained fairly consistent” over the past 5 years.
Here’s how that breaks down:
- Heart Disease: 614,348 deaths
- Cancer (malignant neoplasms): 591,699
- Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease: 147,101
- Accidents: 136,053
- Stroke: 133,033
- Alzheimer’s: 93,541
- Diabetes: 76,488
- Influenza & Pneumonia: 55,227
- Kidney Disease: 48,146
- Suicide: 42,773
When it comes to cancer we know these are the leading killers for 2016:
- Lung: 85,920 deaths for men, 72,160 for women
- Breast: 40,450 for women, 460 for men in 2017 (expected)
- Prostate: 26,120
- Colon: 26,020 for men, 23,170 for women
So what are some commonalities between these diseases?
- “Eating a diet that is low in salt, refined sugars, total fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol…”
- “Exercise regularly.”
- “…related to being overweight, obese, inactive (sedentary), or poor nutrition.”
- “Smoking.”
- “High blood pressure, high cholesterol, and smoking…”
- “…regular physical activity…maintaining a healthy body weight.”
Prevention.
The main reason Americans are dying each year is because they eat poorly and are too fat.
We’ve got hundreds of thousands of Americans dying each year because of what they eat.
Hundreds of thousands more die because they couple that poor eating with little or no exercise.
And yet here in America our government, our media, and our politicians ignore this.
- For them, ISIS is the big problem.
- For them, something causing perhaps 100 deaths is more important than something causing millions.
- For them, you and your family aren’t important at all.
Besides Americans being stupid about their own eating and exercise, we have to assign some blame to the old, rich white men that profit off those bad choices.
I picked up a book at the library yesterday called Undoctored: Why Health Care Has Failed You and How You Can Become Smarter Than Your Doctor.
It was written by William Davis in 2017. He’s a cardiologist.
He tells us that 10% of Americans are employed by the healthcare industry.
He talks about the “creed of greed” that has hepatitis C drugs selling for $750 a pill.
At one point Davis tells us about Lovaza, a $60 a capsule omega-3 fatty acid fish oil drug that reduces “the level of triglycerides in the bloodstream, a risk for cardiovascular disease.”
That’ll cost you $2,880 a year for a supply of that drug.
Why not just go to Costco and buy the 684 mg omega-3 fatty acid pills they sell?
The same dose as the Lovaza will cost you $150 a year.
That’s a savings of 95% for the exact same dosage of fish oil-derived omega-3 fatty acids.
The creed of greed is right.
How about putting a stent in?
Back in 2011 we know that around 600,000 stents were put in each year.
That very same year we also know that 111,000 Americans had this operation done when they didn’t need it.
That comes to 22% of the total stent patients, though some hospitals had numbers around 40%.
Doctors are paid $2,000 to $3,000 for each artery that a stent goes into.
Patients usually pay $36,000 to go to the hospital for this operation.
The manufacturer chargers hospitals $500 to $3,000 for each stent.
Based on weight, stents are more valuable than gold, coming in at 0.2 grams. That puts the going rate for that kind of steel at $2.2 million a pound.
It’s an interesting book and I’m only up to page 40.
One of the interesting things is that we know the brain needs cholesterol, and our love affair with statin drugs is actually making our dementia/Alzheimer’s epidemic worse.
The brain is 60% fat, much of it made up of cholesterol.
A couple years ago we even had the medical community reverse course, saying that cholesterol isn’t that bad.
Kind of makes you wonder what else they’re wrong on, what they’ve been wrong on for years.
America is a sick country, with one of the lowest life expectancies for a developed nation.
$10,345 is spent per person, on average, on healthcare each year.
That’s a $3.3 trillion a year industry.
And much of it is nothing more than snake oil and voodoo medicine and lots of greed.
A couple days ago Last Best News had some doctor writing about cancer.
I left a comment saying in effect, ‘we’ve spent so much money on curing cancer over the past decades, but it never gets done. It’s because treating cancer is more profitable than curing it.’
And that’s true.
It costs about $10,000 a month to fight cancer, up from the $4,500 a month it was a decade ago.
Nearly $34 billion was spent on cancer drugs alone in 2014.
Imagine if we had drugs that cured cancer instead of just fighting it for months on end.
- Doctors would lose a lot of money.
- Hospitals would lost a lot of money.
- Shareholders would lose a lot of money.
- Old, rich, white men would lose a lot of money.
That’s mostly what America is about – keeping old, rich white men happy.
That's what the new Obamacare/Trumpcare plan is about.
You and your family don’t factor into it, except as a way to feed their greed for more, more, more…always more.
