Bozos of the Cosmos

Spring – Wk 10: Lunar Eclipse on a Rainy Morning | Saint Sawbones Strikes Again | Dr. Google Sees All | Federalist Podcast Next Week

Lunar Eclipse on a Rainy Morning

The ancients placed great significance on astronomical events, especially an eclipse. To witness a Blood Moon felt like a miracle. To predict a Blood Moon was to speak for the gods.

Because of the ancient priesthood's relationship to the stars, they were seen as emissaries of the heavens.

People used to be so damn superstitious.

Today, astronomers can predict a lunar eclipse within nanoseconds. They can tell you when the earth's shadow will first touch the moon, all the way up to the full totality, when it looks like a glowing dead eye in the sky.

Because scientists have demonstrated a close relationship to the stars, they've been given authority to interpret the universe.

People are still so damn superstitious.

One thing scientists can't do yet, though, is control the weather with any real accuracy. So it would've been pointless to contact the weather control technicians at HAARP and ask them to evaporate the rain clouds above my head so I could watch the lunar eclipse unfold Monday night. They'd probably just keep me on hold or redirect me to a robo-operator, anyway.

“Press 1 for ‘storm control.’ … Press 2 for ‘targeted lightning strikes.’ … Press 3 for ‘fog on little cat feet.’ … Or press zero for more options.”

Instead, I just stared up at the gushing rain, missing yet another eclipse.

Nature is cruel, and scientists are barely helping.

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Saint Sawbones Strikes Again

Weird coincidences abound. On Monday, I submitted an article that jumps off from a 2016 Johns Hopkins study that found “medical error” accounts for about 10% of deaths in America.

If accurate, that's over 250,000 deaths per year. So every two years nearly the same number of people who supposedly died “from Covid” (or “with Covid,” or whatever) are being killed by “medical error.”

No wonder “trust the Science” is repeated like a religious mantra.

The following afternoon, I was sitting outside a local establishment. A guy comes outside with a bandage on his arm and medical documents in hand. He'd been laid up in the hospital, and was skinny as a rail.

He says hello to another guy.

The guy asked the the skinny man how he was doing after the incident, and he said, "I was misdiagnosed! Completely."

"How did it happen?" the guy asked.

"I got sick at the beginning of the year. I was sweating buckets, but with no fever. I got aches in my knee one morning, then it would be my foot the next day. The doctors tested me for Covid, and I was negative. But they said my blood was full of antibodies.

"So they told me I had 'long haul Covid' and sent me home. But it only got worse and worse. When I went back, they said they've seen it a lot in Covid patients. Hopefully, it'll go away."

After weeks of agonizing decline, he found himself in the ICU. Turns out he's had severe bacterial endocarditis for five months. The microbes were breeding inside his heart! 

Now, he's injecting antibiotics every day. Too little, too late. The bacteria have chewed his aortic valve to a pulp. He's gotta get cut open and have an artificial valve installed.

If they'd caught it right away, he said, it would have only taken a couple of weeks to recover.

Trust the Science, indeed.

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Dr. Google Sees All

The final part of my article—filed Monday—deals with Dr. Daniel Kahneman's prediction that many medical experts will soon be replaced by artificial intelligence.

So it gave me a jolt when I woke up Wednesday morning and read the Wall Street Journal headline “Google Strikes Deal With Hospital Chain to Develop Healthcare Algorithms”:

Tech giant expands health-sector presence in latest deal to develop tools to improve medical care, as privacy concerns arise

Alphabet Inc.’s Google and national hospital chain HCA Healthcare Inc. have struck a deal to develop healthcare algorithms using patient records, the latest foray by a tech giant into the $3 trillion healthcare sector.

HCA, which operates across about 2,000 locations in 21 states, would consolidate and store with Google data from digital health records and internet-connected medical devices under the multiyear agreement. Google and HCA engineers will work to develop algorithms to help improve operating efficiency, monitor patients and guide doctors’ decisions, according to the companies.

“Data are spun off of every patient in real time,” said Dr. Jonathan Perlin, chief medical officer of HCA, which is based in Nashville, Tenn. “Part of what we’re building is a central nervous system to help interpret the various signals.”

Sounds like a digital superorganism, doesn’t it?

As ropes of nerves guide the body’s healing process, so shall the processors and electromagnetic waves of the Googley God heal the one cybernetic Self.

The deal expands Google’s reach in healthcare, where the recent shift to digital records has created an explosion of data and a new market for technology giants and startups. Data crunching offers the opportunity to develop new treatments and improve patient safety, but algorithm-development deals between hospitals and tech companies have also raised privacy alarms.

Google also reached an ambitious deal with Mayo Clinic that combined storage of voluminous medical, genetic and financial data with algorithm-development efforts. The Google deal with Mayo allows Google access to identifying patient information, when needed.

…

HCA said Google isn’t permitted to use patient-identifiable information under the agreement.

And anyway, why would we ever expect Google to get greedy with their data collection? In any event…

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed by the companies.

...

Personal patient information is protected under the federal health-privacy law, known as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act [HIPAA]. The law allows hospitals and some other healthcare companies, such as health insurers, to share information with contractors, which must also abide by the law’s privacy protections.

...

Companies may also use the data under the law in ways to develop products that boost corporate profit, with no visibility or control for patients over how their data is used.

...

The multiyear HCA-Google agreement will seek to develop algorithms using data from 32 million annual patient visits that could help monitor patients and guide treatment, said Dr. Perlin.

Google is hellbent on knowing all of us inside-out, from the genome to neural structure to the psyche to the soul of our culture.

Why? What do they get out of it, exactly? Warm fuzzies?

At the same time, you have to wonder if Google Rx could have done a better job of diagnosing the poor guy who laid around for months with bacteria feeding on his heart.

Either way, do we need better technology or more thorough physicians? Something tells me that if doctors cared more about patients than profits, there would be far less desire to replace them with machines.

Federalist Podcast Next Week

Earlier this week, I joined senior editor Joy Pullman on The Federalist Podcast to discuss technology, virtual reality, and why kids need to play outside in the dirt. It should be released some time next week.

The conversation was delightful. As a mother, Joy has a deep stake in the future, and her concern about kids getting high on screentime was a breath of fresh air.

Unfortunately, my brain-chip was acting up again, so I mistakenly said the “London College” pandemic model instead of the “Imperial College” pandemic model.

Oh well, whatever. You see one London college, you’ve seen ‘em all.