Consulo Indicium - 2/17/25
Information for your Consideration…
A New Word For Our Lexicon – I attended a meeting this past week and learned a new word that encapsulates the evolving experience for many of us in the current environment. It is: exhausterwhelmulated. It represents the accumulated experience of three words that seem to be percolating forward for many. The words are: Exhausted / Overwhelmed / Stimulated. When smushed together they become “Exhausterwhelmulated”. Boy, that does seem to capture it – at least on this end!!
But, There Is A Downside – The rate of discontinuation among those who start on the GLP-1 drugs is more than 50% based on another research finding published in JAMA Network Open. This was especially prominent among those without Type 2 Diabetes or, the overweight individuals. And, despite the dramatic effect of the GLP-1 drugs, if individuals don’t stay on the drugs, there is clearly a high risk of fall back to their prior weight. It’s clear that we’re still at the formative stages of evaluating the impact of these medications as a first line of defense against obesity.
Now, The Downside – A recent report by Netwrix noted that 84% of healthcare organizations identified a data breach in 2024! Of those reporting a breach or ransomware attack, 74% reported that the user- or administrator-source of the attack was in a cloud environment versus a comparatively lower 44% for in-house data centers. But, even more ominous is the fact that the year-over-year increase in incidents was 32%!! Check the data above!
Black Women In Childbirth = 3.5X Higher Death Rate Than White Women!! – The CDC released data in late January (before the purge of resources befalling the agency by DOGE) showing the pre-pandemic racial gaps continue for women during childbirth. The CDC issues a dire warning by stating “white women around the time of childbirth in 2023, as maternal mortality, fell below pre-pandemic levels overall but racial gaps widened” with the added caveat noting “the maternal death rate for white women dropped from 19 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2022 to 14.5 per 100,000 in 2023...” while “for Black women [the rate] went from 49.5 to a little above 50. Clearly, the ongoing problem of a differential in morbidity continues…
The Potential Shift From Birds To Humans – Everyone seems to be a dither about the price of eggs, including me. But, the potential for a “bird flu epidemic” is also lurking in the background. As reported in the New York Times in late January, bird flu “has infected more than 900 herds and dozens of people, killing one, and the outbreak shows no signs of abating.” Most of the experts agree that a “human pandemic” is not necessarily inevitable although it is possible given the increasing prevalence of the flu. Louise Moncla, Ph.D. an Evolutionary Biologist at the University of Pennsylvania noted that: ”…a series of developments over the past few weeks indicates that the possibility [of a human pandemic] is no longer remote…[since the virus] “could circulate on farms indefinitely, finding opportunities to evolve into a more dangerous…‘high-risk’ scenario.
