ABSTRACT
The final act of Philip Roth's achingly poignant novel, Nemesis, based on the 1944 polio epidemic condenses the trajectories of each of the main protagonists' lives as a result of events that sultry summer, Bucky Cantor, swapping life stories with a former pupil at his school. [...]the implications for long term (psychological and physical) health are arguably worse: late presentation for other febrile illness (EDs have never been so empty—something is wrong);fear of infection by dint of ‘exposure' to a health facility;interruption of standard health surveillance particularly vaccination;mental health;child abuse as a result of prolonged internment and loss of, at least the social side of, education. The reasons for less aggressive disease are still not completely understood, though there are a number of candidate explanators: host-response factors;lower infective dose (as most often from an adult household member);age related ACE receptor differences and more recent exposure to antigenically similar coronaviruses conferring relative immunity.
ABSTRACT
PurposeThis paper aims to explore challenges and opportunities of shifting from physical to virtual employment support delivery prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic. It investigates associated changes in the nature and balance of support and implications for beneficiary engagement with programmes and job search.Design/methodology/approachThe study draws on longitudinal interviews conducted with beneficiaries and delivery providers from a neighbourhood-based employment support initiative in an English region with a strong manufacturing heritage between 2019 and 2021. The initiative established prior to the Covid-19 pandemic involved a strong physical presence locally but switched to virtual delivery during Covid-19 lockdowns.FindingsMoving long-term to an entirely virtual model would likely benefit some beneficiaries closer to or already in employment. Conversely, others, particularly lone parents, those further from employment, some older people and those without computer/Internet access and/or digital skills are likely to struggle to navigate virtual systems. The study emphasises the importance of blending the benefits of virtual delivery with aspects of place-based physical support.Originality/valuePrevious studies of neighbourhood-based employment policies indicate the benefits of localised face-to-face support for transforming communities. These were conducted prior to the Covid-19 pandemic and the more widespread growth of virtual employment support. This study fills a gap regarding understanding the challenges and opportunities for different groups of beneficiaries when opportunities for physical encounters decline abruptly and support moves virtually.
ABSTRACT
[...]recent years have seen a dramatic shift in utilization of rTSA in which rTSA is increasingly used to treat OA in patients with an intact rotator cuff, with a corresponding decline in use of aTSA.1-5 The reasons for this shift in usage are multi-factorial but may be due to the perceived lower risk of revision surgery with rTSA relative to aTSA, as the quality of the rotator cuff muscles and tendon are not necessary for a functional rTSA but are pre-requisite for a functional aTSA. Furthermore, these registries have high rates of government-mandated compliance such that all patients are enrolled and very few patients are lost to follow-up, thus minimizing the potential for selection bias that is inherently present in nearly all nongovernment registry clinical outcome studies. [...]to better understand the relative differences in primary aTSA and primary rTSA usage and performance, we analyzed two different government joint registries for survivorship and for reasons for revision associated with one platform shoulder system and compared trends in usage of aTSA and rTSA over a period of over 10 years to elucidate reasons for any market trends. Additionally, reasons for revision and the cumulative revision rate were assessed across the government joint registries to quantify and compare the performance of this platform shoulder prosthesis for primary aTSA and primary rTSA in each country over the study period. Over the period of analysis, use of primary aTSA and primary rTSA with the particular platform system has increased year to year in both Australia and the UK, with the exception of a decline in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19.
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[...]the UK meets more of its food needs, the country risks having potentially counterfeit food imports and disrupted supply chains. The book describes relevant aspects of British food history, defines terms, lists foods imported and exported, measures freight shipped through UK airports, defines greenhouse gas emissions from livestock and crop production, documents food price trends, gives feed conversion rates for food animals, lists advertising spending by major food companies, explains water rights, and states how much land is owned by the British aristocracy, corporations, and Crown. Lang was a member of the EAT-Lancet Commission and he calls on the UK Government to adopt the Commission's Great Food Transformation recommendations to improve public health, the environment, food citizenship, wage scales, and democratic accountability, and to redistribute power in the food system.
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The main aim of the current article is to compare economic and Quality of Life (QL) indices in G7- (Germany, France, United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Italy and Canada) and BRICS-member countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). The research was developed based on selecting indices available in the NUMBEO, UN (United Nations) and OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) databases. Results have evidenced that emerging countries belonging to the BRICS bloc have shown lower QL indices than those observed for developed countries in the G7 bloc. With respect to economic data, the USA, China, Japan and Germany were the countries presenting the highest GDP growth. It was possible concluding that countries belonging to the G7 block have better economic and labor indices, which, in their turn, are associated with better QoL indices.
ABSTRACT
This article critically analyzes the human rights perspective upon what has emerged as one of the most significant socioeconomic and political challenges confronting many millions of people residing within high-income, liberal-democratic societies: rising poverty and socioeconomic inequality. This article argues that international and domestic human rights law and the social and political imaginaries of the wider human rights community largely fail to adequately diagnose and effectively respond to poverty and inequality within high-income, liberal-democratic societies. As a political and ethical doctrine founded upon a normative commitment to social justice, human rights should be taking the lead in efforts to condemn, understand, and develop responses to the poverty and inequality which blight the lives of many millions of people within many of the world's most affluent and, allegedly, most "liberal” societies. Human rights law has historically not done so. We, as a community, have not done so. This article offers a specific explanation for this continuing failure, by focusing upon the absence of any concerted recognition of or engagement with social class as it contributes to and compounds our exposure to poverty and inequality. Human rights remain largely blind to the many ways in which social class is intricately connected to poverty and inequality. The human rights community within high-income, liberal-democratic societies characteristically fails to take class seriously. Building upon previous writing in this area, this article explains why class is rarely recognized or engaged with by the human rights community. This article also sets out the basis for how we might begin the task of overcoming this highly damaging class blindness, to set the stage for what the author asserts as an urgent need if human rights is to provide the kind of political and ethical leadership required to effectively engage with poverty and inequality in affluent societies: the degentrification of human rights.