For you from some of my recent magazine reading.
A paradox of freedom
The more people’s choices expand, the more human beings demand a stable space in which to make them. When this is threatened security eclipses liberty, for if order in society can no longer be relied on freedom has little value.
The lesson of the pandemic is that most people will welcome an extension of state power if they think it will keep them safe.
Continuity of Care
In August, the British Journal of General Practice published the largest ever study conducted into continuity of care. Researchers at the University of Bergen had analysed the health records of 4.5 million people – almost the entire population of Norway – and looked at what patients derive from a long-standing relationship with their GP.
Patients who’d had the same family doctor for many years were:
30 percent less likely to use out-of-hours services
30 per cent less likely to be admitted to hospital as an emergency
25 per cent less likely to die
than people registered with their GP for under a year.
The risk of emergency care or dying began to decrease once patients had been with their doctor for as little as two years and continued to fall steadily thereafter.
This ‘dose-response’ relationship (in which the more you have of something, the more you benefit) strongly implies causality. Knowing and being known by your GP really is good for your health.
Billionaire Wealth Surge from the Institute for Policy Studies
$5.5 trillion – Increase in the wealth of the world’s 2,690 billionaires from March 2020 – July 2021.
$4.4 trillion – what it would cost to give a one-off $20,000 cash grant to all currently unemployed workers in the world.
Julian Worker UK Blog 