Health

German population at record high, but growth slowest since 2012 | Reuters

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Germany’s population reached a record high of 83.2 million people last year thanks to migration but it grew at the slowest pace since 2012, the statistics office said on Friday as Europe’s largest economy experiences a chronic birth deficit.

Germany has one of the oldest populations in the world and has recorded more deaths than births ever since 1972. The aging population is a challenge for the country’s public pension system and is causing headaches for companies eager to hire skilled workers.

Source: German population at record high, but growth slowest since 2012 – Reuters

Why Experts Are Worried About a New Virus in China | Council on Foreign Relations

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The new virus belongs to the same family as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which afflicted China and thirty-six other countries in 2002–03, killing more than 770 people worldwide. The impact was severe enough to hurt the economies of China and countries in Southeast Asia.

Like SARS coronavirus, this virus is expected to have high mutation rates, which means it can rapidly develop resistance to new drugs and vaccines.

It was reported that the new virus bears 80 percent similarity to SARS.

Yet the virus does not appear to be as dangerous as SARS. The latter is highly contagious and life-threatening.

Source: Why Experts Are Worried About a New Virus in China | Council on Foreign Relations

The voice of sadness is censored as sick. What if it’s sane? | Aeon Essays

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The reason for my depression was a breakup. But what led to depression was not so much the reaction to our split, but the realization that the one you believed loved you, who was closest to you and promised to be with you forever, had turned out to be someone else, a stranger indifferent to your pain.

I discovered that this loving person was an illusion. The past became meaningless, and the future ceased to exist. The world itself wasn’t credible any more.

In that state of depression, I found the attitude of others changed dramatically. Depression is not particularly tolerated in society, and I realized that those around me were of two persuasions.

One group of people wanted to fix me, telling me to pull myself together or recommending professional help. The other group tended to shun me like a leper.

In hindsight, I understand this reaction: after all, I had become cynical, agnostic and pessimistic, and I hadn’t bothered to be polite.

Source: The voice of sadness is censored as sick. What if it’s sane? | Aeon Essays

Here’s How Much Longer You Can Live With a Healthy Lifestyle | Time

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In a 2018 study, an international group of researchers led by scientists at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that adopting five healthy habits could extend life expectancy by 14 years for women and by 12 years for men:

  • eating a diet high in plants and low in fats
  • exercising at a moderate to vigorous level for several hours a week
  • maintaining a healthy body weight
  • not smoking
  • consuming no more than one alcoholic drink a day for women and two for men

Source: Here’s How Much Longer You Can Live With a Healthy Lifestyle | Time

‘Gold rush’: Race is on for health data in East Europe’s frontier market | Reuters

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Eastern Europe is a new frontier for private medical care, and insurers and tech startups are racing to steal a march on their rivals by harnessing the region’s health data.

Growing numbers of people in Eastern European states, from Hungary and Poland to Romania, are turning to private health. The shift is being driven by rising wages, coupled with low public health spending which has often led to staff shortages and long waiting times for tests and surgery.

Source: ‘Gold rush’: Race is on for health data in East Europe’s frontier market – Reuters

Here’s what 20 years of work can do to your body

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Of course, the doll was not designed out of altruism. Fellowes benefits if it can shock companies into buying more comfortable desks and workstations for their employees.

But Fellowes has some solid science on its side. Prolonged sitting has been linked to a range of health problems.

So, yes, Emma is creepy—but long-term musculoskeletal issues are even scarier.

Source: Here’s what 20 years of work can do to your body

Is Farming the Most Interesting Job in America? Kristin Kimball Makes a Case | Vogue

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Kimball and her husband Mark began Essex Farm in 2003. They had 80 acres, $15,000, and a plan. “It’s either brilliant,” Mark said at the time. “Or very, very stupid.” They fixed sagging fences, patched leaky roofs, and installed a grant-funded solar panel array. Then they started producing all types of food: Not only grass-fed beef, pastured pork, free-range chicken and eggs, but also vegetables, berries, tree fruit, flour milled from their grains, syrup from their maple trees, even soap from excess animal fats.

Unlike many community-supported agriculture (or CSA) programs in which local farms offer a weekly box of fruit and veg during the growing season to supplement a family’s grocery purchases, the Kimballs planned to offer a “full-diet” CSA. Their 300 members, Kimball writes in her latest book, “eat the way farmers do—or the way they did two generations ago: a whole diet, year-round, unprocessed, in rhythm with the seasons, from a specific piece of land, with a sense of both reverence and abundance.”

The goal of Essex Farm is deceptively simple: “feed people, be nice, don’t wreck the land.” And yet achieving that goal has been anything but simple.

Source: Is Farming the Most Interesting Job in America? Kristin Kimball Makes a Case | Vogue

Fortune Brainstorm Health | Fortune Conferences

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The fifth FORTUNE Brainstorm Health conference will be held April 21-22, 2020 in Marina Del Rey.

Click here to register.

FORTUNE Brainstorm Health gathers not only C-suite leaders of top companies, hospitals, insurers, and cutting-edge pharma and biotech companies, but also titans of venture capital, tech and telecom, and other industries, all of who are rapidly changing the face of health care.

At Brainstorm Health–presented in association with IBM Watson Health–our aim is not only to push some boundaries in each of these areas, but also to show how businesses, both established and new, can lead the way.

Source: Fortune Brainstorm Health | Fortune Conferences

The World’s Least Corrupt Countries: The U.S. Drops Out of the Top 20

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The index, which ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople, uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean. More than two-thirds of countries score below 50 on the 2018 index, with an average score of just 43.

For the third year running, the top seven countries in this year’s survey include the four Nordic nations—Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway—plus New Zealand, Singapore and Switzerland. All score between 84 and 88 points. Somalia, South Sudan and Syria are at the bottom of the index, with 10, 13 and 13 points, respectively.

The United States drops out of the top 20 this year, with a score of 71—four points lower than last year. The report says “the low score comes at a time when the U.S. is experiencing threats to its system of checks and balances as well as an erosion of ethical norms at the highest levels of power.”

Source: The World’s Least Corrupt Countries: The U.S. Drops Out of the Top 20

The U.S. Spends $2,500 Per Person on Health Care Administrative Costs. Canada Spends $550. Here’s Why. | Time

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These costs have increased over the last two decades, mostly due to the growth of private insurers’ overhead. The researchers examined 2017 costs and found that if the U.S. were to cut its administrative spending to match Canadian levels, the country could have saved more than $600 billion in just that one year.

“The difference [in administrative costs] between Canada and the U.S. is enough to not only cover all the uninsured but also to eliminate all the copayments and deductibles, and to amp up home care for the elderly and disabled,” says Dr. David Himmelstein, a professor at the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College and co-author of the study. “And frankly to have money left over.”

Source: The U.S. Spends $2,500 Per Person on Health Care Administrative Costs. Canada Spends $550. Here’s Why. | Time